The DWmegawad Club plays: Hadephobia

dobugabumaru said:

A friendly reminder to vote for three out of the five episodes to play next month if you haven't yet!

Coffee Break
HYMN
Fava Beans

Coffee Break
Fava Beans
HYMN

Excluding Melon's suggestions, these are our current standings.

Coffee Break - 10
Fava Beans - 9
Double Impact - 8
HYMN - 6
Dark Resolution 2008 - 3

Also, since it's three separate episodes, we'll jump right into it May 1st.

Hrm, while I guess it's meant to be a community choice thing, as a guy who has a map in HYMN, it'd really be incredibly helpful to have a load of folks play through it. I've only gotten the bare minimum set of feedback from it thus far, and as a Heretic mapset, it's a bit more difficult to attract attention/players/whatnot especially in an alpha stage.

If it's not one of the top three, does it not get played at all?

Xaser said:
If it's not one of the top three, does it not get played at all?

Well, I guess it would definitely mean the club will not play it in May, and there will be no guarantees as to if/when it would get played. I suspect it would not be in time for useful alpha stage feedback. I'm pretty disappointed about that, since I think the club has given useful feedback for other megawads, and I would have liked us to help with finding and addressing HYMN's issues as well.

I will play HYMN during May and give feedback, even if it does not get the club's nod.

Heh, leave it to me to pick the bottom three. Fortunately (for me anyway), I'm not particularly picky about my killin.'

Map 29 -- Dead Planet - 100+% Kills / 100% Secrets

Purist! This was a thoroughly enjoyable map; a decent setting and tons of fun. I'm surprised it's as big as it is (though hardly gargantuan), given that I've seen you say at a number of points that you don't really like large maps, but I'm certainly not complaining. Fittingly, a very traditional DooM II / Hell on Earth setting is depicted here--a stark, utilitarian UAC facility positioned in a sprawling and somewhat seedy "inner city" barrio, complete with flats, flophouses, some kind of municipal building, and a part of a water/sewage treatment plant. The color scheme is dominantly Doombrown and lighting is pretty uniform, but both make sense given the largely outdoor city setting, and neither is absolute--in the arena of color, for instance, there's the red brick of the municipal building or the slate gray of the UAC facility to vary things up a bit. The main visual hooks are probably the scenes at opposite ends of the map; Baphomet's triumphant visage as he surveys the carnage in the west, and the lone evacuation ship waiting in the east. I liked the music track, too--it did a good job of both driving the constant gunbattles and conveying the horror at discovering that your attempts to stop the invasion were a total failure.

Naturally, what really makes the map is the action, though--this is probably the single biggest battle in Hadephobia. Broadly speaking, the fights tend to have a lot in common in that they generally involve large, heterogeneous waves of hellspawn which are fought in large open areas with plenty of room to move and facilitate infighting, but on the individual level, each is made unique by particular architectural features of each battleground. To pick out some highlights of this, there was that central neo-classic modern art podium....thingy.....that houses the yellow keycard in the courtyard which Baphomet overlooks, which is just complicated enough a structure to add unpredictability to what is otherwise a generally symmetrical area, given that its presence allows effective introduction of arch-viles into the mix. Another example, the large mounds of earth with dead plants in the yard beyond the municipal building that double as both cover and obstacles as the yard floods with evil, with demonic artillery firing from superior elevated positions on the ledges/walkways overlooking the area; again, effective arch-vile use in this area. Finally (and I could go on and on), there's the housing development along the southern edge of the map, which juxtaposes violent chokepoint conflicts in the alleyways and tacky little yards with the open-air battles against imps and cacos once you make your way onto the rooftops; incidentally, cacodemon usage in this map is consistently good, with hordes of them periodically teleporting in at distant locations and then gradually making their way towards you via their flight advantage, wherever you happen to be at a given time....certainly one of the best sorts of implementation for these gasbags. Additionally, I appreciate that you remembered to reuse some of the spaces for more than one fight, e.g. the yard with the huge wooden crates just beyond the yellow door, which is at first characterized by hitscan snipers in the windows of the UAC building (delightful rocket fodder) with arachnotrons closing in on the ground, and is then later the site of one of the cyberdemon battles (complete with arch-viles to resurrect some of the many corpses likely littering the area) as Hell mounts one of its last attempts to stop the marine; as I think I've said before, reusing space like this is satisfying to a player in a way that's difficult to fully describe, but I reckon it's got something to do with helping to create the impression that you're alone in a 'real' place (as opposed to each area 'just happening' to contain one specific encounter), with demons constantly homing in you from beyond the boundaries of the area currently being explored.

Secret-hunting was pretty fun, too--they have a sort of Downtown-esque flavor to them. I couldn't figure out how to get the plainly visible but apparently inaccessible first BFG until after I'd essentially completed the map, but this was entirely my fault, as I was just overthinking the problem to no small degree...in fact, I reckon a few folks will probably find it purely accidentally. In terms of balance, given the shit-ton of ammo and other pickups littering the yards and rooftops, it's really not a particularly hard map, but it feels like a pitched, bloody battle for its duration nonetheless. The only significant complaint I can think of right now is really not very significant to the play at all, but pertains to verisimilitude--some of the housing structures in the southern part of the map (the ones with imps and barrels atop them) completely lack entrances of any kind, suggesting that the residents enter/leave simply by climbing through the ground floor windows.

Very nice work. A fitting map for slot 29, and one of the best maps in the set.

29 - DEAD PLANET
...The portal takes you into another UAC base. You make your way out outside in search of the Baphomet and immediately realise you're back on Earth. It's a ruined mess though. Hell's invasion had progressed much faster than you dared to hope and the planet is beyond salvation.

In the distance you see a hovering spaceship in a UAC compound. You identify it as a personel carrier, which means the UAC are planning an evacuation. Your mission now is to get to the compound and join the escape party before it leaves. Only problem is the compound has been heavily secured against Hell's forces by several locked gates and a lowered bridge. Not to mention Earth's population has now been replaced by Demons.

After literally going through Hell you finally make it through the Demon proof gates and into the UAC compound. From here on it should be easy...

MAP29: And here we go. We’re given a damn fine map for the last true level of the megawad, brimming and bursting with absolutely non-stop action. Purist constructs a really large city area that may at first remind some of MAP29 of Scythe or Plutonia, but this one is a much more basic, concentrated affair, lending well to the constant assault the player will experience. The yellow key courtyard may be full of baddies looking to chew on some doomguy for breakfast, but it’s just the start of this slog through hell’s new estate. Funny enough, there’s way more opposition in this invasion than in any of the hell maps prior, making me wonder what the demons were up to when I was trashing their place.

The blue key path is my favorite since I had the most dynamic, stress filled fights there, although the final bout in the map was also a struggle due to my low cell. Twice I had to scavenge around for health and ammo, so I’d say there’s a good balance here for the consecutive players, and I can only wish the best for pistol starters. Visually it’s not a knockout, but purist does the best he can do with large open areas, keeping the focus on gameplay so as to not distract from where the enemies are at all times. It works well, and serves as a damn good quasi-finale to this whole journey. My duel with the final cyberdemon was especially memorable, since I parked myself between the two green torches opposite of him and strafed his one-hit-kill rockets until I filled him with more lead than he had blood. Let’s see how it closes out, eh?

MAP29 - Dead Planet by purist
Ah the first city map, only map29 eh :P
This map combines some unusual textures (well ones I don't often use), it works really well. The city is constructed mostly out of brick and mortar with the triumphant icon of sin on one side of the city and the UAC base on the other. Between the two places you have one almighty slog against you. The action never stops and when you think it's just about safe another wave comes or an arch vile warps into a previous area and revives half of what you just killed.
For me the map was tough but never hit the extreme rating and was very fun to play. I found 4 of the secrets (one I didn't know how to access)
Fantastic map, one nitpick is the final cyber which has a trivial solution where you can use the walls around the canal to stop rockets hitting you, I just took him out with plasma. Btw I've never had so much fun rocket spamming the place like I did here.

MAP29 - DEAD PLANET

Yup, this one is big (but not sprawling or long, which I like) and action-packed. Come to Earth and find it infested with hellspawn, constant fights... good stuff. The music helps set the mood but did start to grate after awhile (especially the start tone). Cell ammo is actually somewhat sparse, meaning lots of rockets. My only complaint is that some of the set pieces seemed a bit repetitive (teleporting AVs into already-fought areas, Pain Elementals in pits surrounded by lost souls) but that's a minor complaint for one map.

I went ahead and did MAP30 just to see how it ended, running through it without trying to kill anything. Gonna play it normally tomorrow.

Map29
Good level. Lots of fun. Plenty of memorable battles. Demon of the Well has covered a lot of the specific elements already.

I found what is either an easter egg, or a bug. From sector 35 you can jump to sector 114, and then squeeze around the western end of line 2915 - or loop all the way around the building - to reach the exit from the 'wrong' side. This basically allows you to skip everything after the red door at sector 74.

Looks to me like you need to set linedefs 1290 and 1289 to be teleporters, like line 2915-7. Speaking of those latter three lines, they have the impassable flag set, which is probably not intentional. You also need to block the loop around the back of the building, either with an impassable item or a teleport line.

And yes, I did use this to cheese the ending and skip all the post red-door stuff. :)

Oh, and story text note: "Hell's invasion had progressed much faster than you dared to hope" indicates that the player wanted the invasion to be fast, which I doubt is correct either. I think you meant "Hell's invasion had progressed much faster than your darkest fears".

Capellan said:

Map29
I found what is either an easter egg, or a bug. From sector 35 you can jump to sector 114, and then squeeze around the western end of line 2915 - or loop all the way around the building - to reach the exit from the 'wrong' side. This basically allows you to skip everything after the red door at sector 74.

Good find, done a uv speed demo for the map. Finished the map in just 1:07 :)
Purist you don't need to fix this, it's just one of those silly things we like :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lmGq4LFpB0

MAP29 - Dead Planet by purist

I opted for this slot because I thought it was a pivotal point in the megawad and story (see also my involvement in MAP06, MAP11, MAP15 & MAP20). Although I do not tend to enjoy large levels as DOTW notes, I wanted to abide by the tradition of MAP29 being a sprawling, violent affair.

The story had put us back on Earth with the Baphomet back in action. Since MAP20 was a surprise monster spawning type of level I wanted to avoid a typical IoS MAP30 so I threw something of a curveball to try to discourage this.

Melon's MAP28 exit put us back on Earth but in a fairly non-descript tech base so I could pretty much set this level wherever I wanted. However, I wanted it to be clear to the player they are back on Earth so I decided to make a city map. This was my first attempt at a big MAP29 and my first attempt at a city map. Probably because this was a little daunting I made a deliberate point of seeking inspiration from another map, which is unusual for me. Odyssey of Noises of the Plutonia Experiment was an obvious choice.

As Tarnsman and Alfonzo said, this map wears this inspiration on it's sleeve aesthetically (in parts) but it does not work on a grid or play sandbox style like city maps usually tend to. I felt more comfortable isolating set pieces so the map is quite compartmentalised but I tried to disguise this a little by making large scale play areas and battles.

Most of the level came together without too much straining of the creative juices. My process was to draw out the whole layout in it's basic form and decide what fundemental purpose each area would serve e.g. the yellow key area to house the Baphomet, the opposite section to house the escape ark, the west to feature the slum and to the east a park. Luckily the set pieces came quite naturally. Only the caco swarms were really planned before the architecture was created although the recurring monsters in a pit setup was something I had been planning to work in to one map or another.

So, this was an attempt to make a map in the style that I do not necessarily prefer yet could still be enjoyed by others. So far it's had positive reactions which I'm really happy about because if nobody else liked it there wouldn't be the consolation of having made something for myself.

cannonball said:
Good find, done a uv speed demo for the map. Finished the map in just 1:07 :)

I guess it lets you skip a lot more than just the red key section, then!

purist said:
NOTHING ABOUT THE SECTOR 35 JUMP, BECAUSE HE IS A MEANIE

:)

Slightly early posting for me since I have some stuff to take care of.

30 - HADEPHOBIA
...You should have guessed by now that anything that can go wrong will go wrong. The compound is densely guarded by rioting demons. The door you need to access to board the Evacuation Ark is secured and as you progress in reaching the access keycard further reinforcements are deployed from Hell to make life harder.

Finally, after vanquishing the last of the infernal defence, you breach the Ark and finally permit yourself some optimism as the thunder of the burning jets lift you up towards the atmosphere of the subjugated hellground that is now Humanity's former home...

MAP30: After clawing my way through infested islands, boiling caves, deserted outposts and even hell itself, I finally arrive to a spaceship that’s infested with… a handful of demons. Seriously, when the final wave of the cybers and their two golden minions popped in, I was excited to have a long battle with them... just to finish it about two minutes later with plenty of cell left. I ran back to the red key door, eager to find my next target when I hit some switches and blasted off. While it did have a “final fight”, I still feel there wasn’t enough pressure/difficulty to hit home a nice cap to the journey. It felt a anticlimactic, although I’m unsure if I would’ve wanted an IoS fight or not (no IoS is better than lift IoS IMO).

Sad that even after all this survival, doomguy is just left out in space... or plummets back to earth... it’s kind of vague regarding his fate. Another bummer is that there wasn’t a final mastermind... for a creature so prominent in the start if the story, you think there would be one more haunting our hero, but nope, just a couple of rocket slinging bruisers as doomguy up and quits earth. Final time: 6:37:04

======

FINAL THOUGHTS:
Favorites were 15, 17, 20, 29 with the low points being 12, 22 and possibly 30 (guess I'm a fan of purist!). Everything in-between was still quite delectable; this megawad didn’t feature such a wide range of quality like Interception did. It’s a really strong mixture of maps that fares on the easy/medium side for the entire trip, being a good experience for any newcomers who are looking to see what kind of gameplay Doom offers beyond the IWADS. I enjoyed the special touch of prose each author added, although as others stated there’s really not much you can’t get from just using your intuition while looking around.

A big bummer for me was lack of the Mastermind focus... when I first heard about it from the opening text, I thought it was neat to have a somewhat Doom 1 centered theme, with the mastermind spearheading hell, but after its breeding den there was very little left to do with the Hadephobia condition and more to do with Baphomet (who really did everything off camera, to the disappointment of the player). That and slaying the mastermind in MAP11 is the final real narrative accomplishment, as everything the player finds after that is either destroyed in front of him or dead, leading to a lot of thematic hopelessness. It would've been nice to get some kind of reprieve, or that doomguy could catch a break sometime, although it is interesting to have the badguys win in the end.

Its overall quality is not as sublime as something like CC4 (which is a given since it began as a smaller speedmapping project), but it’s the second best megawad we’ve played so far IMO (although Jenesis might earn that spot as it was loads of fun too).

Finally, congrats to PRIMEVAL for making some excellent music! MAP20 and MAP29 had my favorites and really helped out the atmosphere; they definitely would have been missing a key aspect without his musical touch.

Since dobu went ahead I will too.

MAP30 - HADEPHOBIA

So um, yeah. Really disappointed by this ending, not gonna lie. The start provides a nice atmosphere, with the eerie music and mostly empty base setting the stage. The fights are, unfortunately, quite easy. The first two fights are rendered toothless since it's one monster closet per switch, easy to simply pull out the rocket launcher and blow everything away (especially since the density of the monsters usually results in infighting). There are a few monsters that come through the teleporter, but they're only shotgunners and demons, and the player can put them in the line of fire so they're from the same direction. Hit both those switches and the player's already 2/3rds of the way done. The BFG teleports in a few more monsters but nothing tough. Finally, the red key teleports in multiple Cyberdemons and a few AVs, but again, this fight isn't really that difficult given the way the room is shaped. After that... the end. Aesthetically, the map is decent-looking enough, but nothing special (especially compared to the treat that was MAP10, A.Gamma's other map).

Now... the ending itself. What. the. shit. Now, I'm one of those guys who loves to rip apart plots and analyze every little detail, so it probably won't bother many people (I freely admit I was one of those people who was immensely pissed off by the ending to Mass Effect 3, for example). But after ten levels of seeing the Baphomet and following him around as he gets rebuilt and then transported to Earth, showing up and rocking through the onslaught of MAP29... to then spend MAP30 jumping on a spaceship and leaving the planet is a fucking terrible ending. I mean, sure, I guess it leaves it open for Hadephobia 2 but ... goddamn. To tease the big bad and then have the player just run away? I can understand not wanting to an IoS, since they're pretty cliche at this point, but c'mon. I know that it's Doom, and story isn't exactly the strong point, but the WAD itself is built around the concept of having a story, so it becomes more important than it would normally be.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

Favorite Maps: MAP13 (Metal Territory), MAP17 (Communication Tower), MAP25 (Sacrifice), MAP29 (Dead Planet)

Least Favorite Maps: MAP05 (Rumex Crispus), MAP06 (Hull Revealed), MAP19 (Satan's Fortress), MAP27 (Drilling Station)

Going through my reviews and making the above lists was hard, as the level of quality was fairly similar throughout. No real stinkers, and nothing amazing either. Pretty much every map had its good points and bad. MAP10, MAP19 and MAP26 look amazing, but the gameplay was frustrating. MAP18 has a dull first half and a great second half. MAP25 has a great gimmick with the yellow key rising lava but otherwise is ho-hum. Etc, etc.

Overall, I think the largest problem is that the gameplay is pretty ho-hum, with very few challenging maps or setups. That's fine, and I'd probably rather err on the side of "too easy" than get too hard, especially when it turns into frustrating stuff like Barons in tight spaces or seas of damaging floors with not enough radsuits like 2002:ADO. Still, I can't say there's enough here that would really make me want to sit down and say "yeah, let's play this again!"

I think the story aspect was somewhat underutilized. The start was fairly strong, but the hadephobics angle kinda came out of nowhere around MAP20 and the rest was basically "you get to another fortress of Hell and see the Baphomet" concluded with the awful ending that I've already complained about above. The story doesn't really add anything that can't be understood from playing the levels... early on, it's pretty clear what's going on, and the story doesn't really do anything to explain stuff later on when the levels just become generic underground hell keeps.

Also, please include some goddamn EXIT signs. I didn't keep a running tally, but there were some truly frustrating "wait, why is the score screen popping up?" moments throughout the WAD.

Map 30 -- Hadephobia - 101% Kills / 100% Secrets
The final battle completely eschews any IoS elements, which is at least a little surprising, given that Baphomet is presumably still hanging out just a few blocks away. Of course, those players who can't stand IoS fights will probably be delighted by this decision, but for my part, taking this approach seems to entail no small amount of risk, saddling the mapper with the formidable task of creating a finale that's different from the other maps, offers the prospect of climactic combat, and is aesthetically striking. Does A. Gamma succeed at doing this here? Hmm....well, in some senses, yes, but it's certainly not a homerun. The setting and the initial pacing are both fine. The shuttle pad is apparently located next to a fairly pleasant-looking corporate park of some kind, which serves as the venue for the action. There's nothing particularly striking about the area, but the texture/color combinations are tasteful, and there's not much to really complain about. The area is conspicuously very quiet for the first couple of minutes or so, as well, which lent to a suitably ominous feeling. When the real action does start, it's quite straightforward, involving escalating waves of closet/teleporter monster attacks, with small fry early on all the way up to cybers and viles at the end. Given that there's a lot of space (and a lot of ammo) readily available, most of this is not terribly threatening, as long as one keeps in mind that it's map 30 and hence steers clear of the teleport landing spots. It's a decent battle for what it is, but far from being climactic or unusual enough to feel like a strong finale for me. Incidentally, part of it can be made trivial by the presence of an invulnerability artifact, although it's at least hidden (though easily accessible if you know it's there), in contrast to the way 2002ADO tended to just give them away. After subduing this assault there's not much left between you and the end of the game but a couple of pain elementals....the space shuttle was a nice touch, though, and I felt the ending text was a legitimate surprise to at least some degree.

But wait, there are also bonus maps!

Map 33 -- Pre-Destined Mortality
Already commented on this one a bit earlier, but to reiterate, this is an extremely Cellish Hell map with a pronounced techbase portion--heavily detailed, very space-restricted, rather prolonged progression, and eclectic in theme...similar in many ways to 'Satan's Fortress', in other words. As I said earlier, having played it, I personally preferred it to map 19, and would liked to have seen it in that slot. In this regard, I reckon there will be as many people who disagree as agree with me, though--it's all down to what you liked/didn't like about map 19. In terms of raw floorspace, this map is actually even more cramped (and more detailed)--but I didn't find playing in it to be as irritating, because prop objects are generally used in a far less disruptive manner within what space is available. Conversely, the one thing I did like about map 19 was its propensity for secrets. If that map had a feast of them, this one has a veritable cornucopia, which at their utmost become a massive chain that eventually leads to an alternate ending. In this sense, unraveling the map can be enjoyable, but as a whole, much like map 19, it's a very flawed creation, albeit less flawed. Incidentally, I think the Cell maps that I enjoyed the most as overall experiences were his smaller maps early in the set, 02 and 07.

Map 34 -- Hadephrenia
This is essentially an alternate map 30 (the building facade at the start is identical). Much like the map actually occupying that slot, it contains no IoS battle, and is in fact even more concise than its counterpart. I'd say it's actually more dangerous, too, given that it must be played from a pistol-start; open either door and you get promptly filled full of lead unless you can trick the zombies into dispatching each other or otherwise find a way to dispose of them quickly. The exit (again, same setup as the actual map 30) can be reached once all three keys are acquired, but the yellow key is guarded by a group of four cyberdemons, which must be simply BFG-spammed into oblivion. Apart from the potentially interesting combat in the first 60 seconds or so, this one is pretty clunky/hamfisted, and it's easy to see why A. Gamma's map occupies slot 30 instead.

Map 35 -- Scotch Bonnet
A small slaughtermap by Grain of Salt (talk about redundant phrasing, I know), with a couple of BooM features at the start. Like the GoS maps in Slaughterfest 2011, it's very geometrically simple and utilitarian in appearance (though there's some tasteful ceiling detail), but I think this one is a bit more interesting to play than most of them were. Monster count is fairly modest; the challenge here comes mainly from the way the 4 arch-viles are placed, coupled with a bit of movement restriction via lava and ammo placement that periodically forces you to change positions, whether you want to or not. The viles at the start, while immobile, are the most dangerous things in the map, and they demand that you immediately move to one of the four outer wings the moment your feet hit the ground, or else suffer a fiery death; the dias that you land on is too short to use it to effectively break line-of-sight with all of them at once. Once you clear out one of the wings (I suggest the north) you can start kiting around the hell nobles in the center in order to open up firing lanes on the viles; after they're dead, cleanup is pretty easy, especially if you co-opt the cyberdemon into getting rid of many of the aforementioned nobles. No official secrets, although there's a soulsphere and a chaingun of all things that, as far as I can tell, can only be reached via vile-jump. The design of the exit area and the generally fast playthrough that the rest presents lead me to suspect that this may be a fragment of what was intended to be a larger map, but as it is, it's just a quick outing. It's neither an awful nor an exceptional example of the general style, but it's stylistically very far removed from the other 34 maps (which, of course, contain a great degree of variety amongst them), and not too hard to see why it's in a bonus slot.


I'll post some final thoughts on the WAD later (favorite maps, etc.), but for now, I'll say that I mostly had fun playing it, and want to thank the team for making it.

Map30
A rather limp ending to the megawad, in terms of botn story and level. We finally pursue Baphomet to Earth ... so we can run away? And we do it through a map where the only really significant fight is easily neutered by the invuln sphere in its one secret area.


Overall
Despite the end, a solid map set, though the relative easiness of episode 4 is a pacing issue.. I liked maps 7, 13, 20 and 29 very much, as well as map17 up to the blue door. Only 5 and 6 stand out as "ugh" moments for me, with 27 and possibly 30 also going in the disappointing pile.

The story? Ehh. Interesting experiment, and I'm glad it was tried, but I don't know that it worked all that well. I suspect that having a more structured plot up front, and being tougher on mappers who didn't follow it, might be a necessary step toward something approaching truly 'narrative' Doom.

I'm pretty surprised no one mentioned map32 as the least favourite. I hated it so much that it made me ragequit and I'm sure I will never play it again. Being a (primarily) continuous player I'm not even willing to play through the whole wad because of that awful map.

I'm not too keen on hellish levels in general, but that one was so terrible and rage-inducing that it almost made me smash my laptop. And I usually keep calm during playing. Its nonsensical construct, butt-ugly looks and shitty gameplay literally made my blood boil.

On the other hand though, map10 definitely deserves a lot of praise. It was so detailed and immersive that it could easily become part of Alien Vendetta. I can't agree with complaints about its gameplay, as it played okay, and looked absolutely stunning. If I load up Hadephobia again, then it'll be because of that masterpiece of a map by A. Gamma.

I liked map10, but it had too many instalift monsters for me to love it.

As for map32, it wasn't one I liked, but - as with "Shaman's Device" - I could appreciate what the map author was attempting, so I was able to shrug if off, afterward. Also, it was an optional map.

Map 30. Besides map 10, Map 24 was my only other map in the set, but due too a massive hardrive crash I ended up losing a lot of progress and rage quited, even though I never told anyone!
Some months ago I sent a PM to purist apologizing. He accepted my apology and actually asked me to do another map!

Map 30 is what I came up with, It's an okay level I guess, but it is definitely not a good close to Hadephobia.

Overall I enjoyed mapping for Hadephobia, the continuity from map to map is something I had rarely seen before, and definitely needs to be done more often. Also, I apologize to all project members for never submitting map 24 and bogging down the project. Special thanks to purist for being so patient with me, even though I failed to deliver maps on time.

[Completely unrelated note and a shameless self-plug]
Feniks if you liked map 10 you should play test HYMN, I made map 6 and consider it superior to my Map 10 on every aspect (Also HYMN could use playtesters!).
[/Completely unrelated note and a shameless self-plug]

A.Gamma said:[Completely unrelated note and a shameless self-plug]
Feniks if you liked map 10 you should play test HYMN, I made map 6 and consider it superior to my Map 10 on every aspect (Also HYMN could use playtesters!).
[/Completely unrelated note and a shameless self-plug] [/B]

Well, given that I've never played Heretic as of yet (shameful, I know), it would be completely insane of me to playtest that project. I doubt my suggestions would be of any value, but I might try it for myself anyway.

@Capellan - I don't really mind instalift monsters. They might make little sense, but I've got used to so many bizarre teleporting traps that I don't even attempt to make any sense of Doom any more. I think the pop-up traps were well-used for the most part, and I also enjoyed the rough start, but it is just me :)

MAP30 - Hadephobia by A.Gamma
Hmm, a little disappointed with this map, I have already played and did a couple of speedruns for this so knew the score here. This map needs something to make it much more challenging. Perhaps altering the secret perhaps and changing the invulnerability to a megasphere. Perhaps blocking the players path to the exit for a set amount of time (blocking the doors which lead to the building entrance with the red key door might be an idea to seal the player in the slaughter room for a while. I know that when fixed there will be an extra 15 monsters in that room so it might make the battle harder I don't know.
This map neds something to give it that shot in the arm it certainly needs to not end the wad on a damp squib.

Anyway overall thoughts of this wad. I liked it, there were quite a few very good levels and some memorable levels. No map I felt descended below the average or meh line so that's a good thing as I'm left with no sour taste in the mouth. The story I guess was an interesting idea, but was executed inconsistently with the story sort of going all over the place as I'm sure many authors might have struggled with this. On the whole the music was well used and I know Primeval made some tracks for this which were pretty good.
In the end this wad is well worth playing for some interesting moments throughout and an idea which is a little different to the norm.
P.S if there is a progressive fiction 2 I would happily do a map or 2 for it :)

A few overall impressions, now that I've thought about them a little more....

Hadephobia follows a community project standard in that it has a lot of variety, and naturally, a spectrum of overall quality. One of the most pronounced things about the whole WAD is how starkly different the styles of some of the mappers were from each other, e.g. Cell or Katamori contrasted with Purist or Magicsofa; I think the degree of variation in this regard is above-average, which helps keep the player engaged even though actual thematic is variation is, oddly, below-average (e.g. there are an awful lot of subterranean environments). The greatest spike here is probably the vast, open, and relatively empty Eisenhower Heliport, contrasted with the narrower-than-a-newt's-eurethra, stuffy Satan's Fortress. I would've liked (and might've expected) a bit more thematic variation, but on the positive side, Hadephobia is quite unafraid to use darkness, which I applaud, and some of its recurrent themes happen to be ones I'm fond of (e.g. a buried, ancient evil). My main gameplay complaint is that, despite the range of gameplay styles, actual level of challenge remains fairly low throughout. I would go as far as to say that the text file really oversells the difficulty of the WAD, and I think it actually gets easier as it progresses, leading to a bit of an anticlimactic feeling in that regard in most of the final third. These are the impressions of a pistol-starter, note; I imagine coming into each map fully loaded with guns and ammo would exacerbate this even more. Perhaps it would have been better to just balance the thing for continuous play? Naturally, this excludes players who absolutely refuse to do anything but pistol-start, but I've come to think over the years that sometimes certain design goals are just not very compatible with the goal to make everything appeal to as wide an audience as possible, and that this doesn't make them any less worth exploring.

I feel I should comment on the story a bit, as it is one of the distinguishing features of the project. Taken at face value, it's really not anything remarkable...as I said early in the playthrough, I think it basically just does what I and surely some others do with every megaWAD anyway--sort of mentally fill in backstory. Another way of putting this is that it mainly just describes the setting most of the time, rather than telling an actual story. Some cool ideas do arise from it, which do lead to some cool maps (e.g. maps 9 through 11, or map 20), but in many other cases it's pretty obvious that the authors didn't really give a damn about the story, and just wanted to make maps in accordance with their usual preferences. Some of these maps are still quite enjoyable on their own merits--e.g. map 17 or map 25--but I can't help but feel that there's a lot of missed opportunity throughout in this regard. If there is a Hadephobia 2 in the future, one suggestion I might have for mitigating this would be to have a bunch of people figure out the whole story ahead of time via the same "pass the storystick" method, and then assign mapslots afterwards, so that there's no need for either type of creativity (e.g. mapping and storytelling) to limit the other on an individual basis. All that being said, it's a small thing, but I did like the ending, because I'm a sucker for grim, downbeat endings. In fact, I attribute much of this to my experiences with Doom--when I first saw the ending of the original game all those years ago, it made quite an impact on me.

Given the stylistic variation, picking highs and lows is pretty easy for me here. My "Top 5", in no particular order:

1. Map 10 -- Excavation Site
2. Map 32 -- Sirenum Scopuli
3. Map 25 -- Sacrifice
4. Map 29 -- Dead Planet
5. Map 20 -- Ostoyae Anomaly

There were only a few maps I disliked to a very pronounced degree, those being 12, 19, 22 and 24; most of the rest I enjoyed to varying degrees, from most of the constricted detail-heavy Cellmaps to Walter Confalonieri's old-fashioned, low-key, exploration-based Eisenhower Heliport. Overall, I can't say I reckon this one is destined to become some kind of "Classic", but it's certainly worth a look for its simple virtues and its unusual premise, the latter of which might be honed further if the idea is revisited again in the future.

Finally catching up. The last week in any month is always hectic for me.

Map27 – Drilling Station – by Rambosee – Kills – 94, Items – 33, Secret – 50. Time 26:49. End Health 127, Armor 79. Death Count – 6

A strong candidate for my least favorite map in Hadephobia, slugging it out with Satan’s Fortress. This map is baboon-ass ugly, and I do mean shockingly hideous, for much of its length. Specifically, all the annoying, squinchy, crampy corridors with, occasionally, some noxious “detail,” like the Starg1 corridor with an ugly metal duct on the ceiling.

These tight corridors were relatively difficult to navigate, forcing you to fight some occasional mid to upper-tier monsters in highly unpleasant conditions. The Archie at the PG, for example. Then there were the unavoidable items, like shellboxes in doorways and, to top it off, a Berserk in front of a switch. And when you flip the switch, do you get to jump down and punch out Pinkies? No, you get Imps and Chaingunners. Yay.

Only when the map opened up did it start to get better. The big fight for the BFG, with the Cyb and all his buddies, wasn’t bad. I had to turn on Always Run to beat that puppy, and to move fast enough to grab the invul. I never did get back to the nukage river to check out what must have been a secret area. Might’ve had something useful for the final fight.

The final fight was kind of annoying, mainly because I used up too many of my cells killing HKs and Barons. Too bad I’m not clairvoyant, I would’ve saved them for the Archies and Revvies. ;D I killed a high enough percentage to satisfy me on this map, and ran for the exit, kind of like what I did on De-Moon Side in 2002:ADO, one of those, “Just get me outta this nasty place” deals.

If more of the map had been like the ending sequence, I’d rate it higher, because Rambosee is much better at more standard types of rooms than he is at twisty, squinchy, gnats-ass tight corridors.

End-map ammo; 400 Bullets, 98 Shells, 5 Rockets and Zero Cells.

Map28 – Teleportation Center – by Melon – Kills – 104, Items – 78, Secret – 100. Time 23:13. End Health 124, Armor 100. Death Count – 16

Melon strikes again! This map is fun as hell. It would have been even better if Melon had adhered to Romero’s Rules re: changing floor heights to change floor textures. I know he tried the old “border texture under the door” trick, but it doesn’t look that good.

Anyway, this is a short but violent map. I had no trouble at all in the beginning, dusting off the Sergeants with a chaingun and potshotting Barons through the handy windows. Even my early steps out of the starting room were quite easy, until I went for the blue key and 9 kinds of hell broke loose. I died 2 or 3 times in that series of traps, until I got lucky once and saw the Archie step in front of the fireballing Revvies. Once Archie started fighting those Revvies I rocketed his ugly ass to oblivion. This was the beginning of the end of that huge fight. Also got Herr Cyb to dust all but one of the Revvies. The Cyb still took a long time to kill despite all the infighting. And those PEs behind the blue door had just enough Arachnotron meat shield in front of them to survive my rocket attacks and become a total PITA, which is their specialty.

The end-trap was a bit over-the-top, and on the first go-through, I decided that running around in circles to start infighting was time-consuming and dull, so I God Moded it. However, I felt bad about that, in part because I missed a secret, so I opened an older saved game, turned on Always Run, and went for it. Several deaths later, I finally survived, killed everything, hit all the switches and left.

Although the final trap was a bit controversial, I think this map is a fine example of something that’s hard but fun. I enjoyed all the over-the-top action and didn’t mind getting blasted to smithereens again and again. I also liked the look of the map, more than other club-members, apparently. Everything about this map was cool, including the view of the Baphomet through the windows. Kind of eerie. One of my faves.

End-map ammo; 42 Bullets, 100 Shells, 18 Rockets, 80 Cells.

I'll post the rest (all 12) of my thoughts/rants/incoherent shit about the final stages of Hadephobia later (ImageShack is playing up which isn't helping my cause), but as far as next month's nonsense goes I really wouldn't mind going with:
HYMN
Fava Beans
Coffee Break

HYMN would be a good choice for the sake of some variety, and because it apparently needs a lot of feedback. What better way to give feedback than from a thread of clowns with different playstyles?

^ That makes HYMN one vote behind Double Impact. I have no idea what to do if we have a tie.

I mean, if no one's really opposed to it, I suppose we could go a little crazy and put Hymn in beside another mapset. That way people who don't have Heretic/don't want to play it don't have to comment, while anyone who doesn't prefer one of the three episodes (Coffee Break, Fava Beans, Double Impact) can throw in Hymn (or they can play it alongside one of the episodes, as Coffee and Fava seem relatively short). The only problem from this is that the commenting may get a little busy with Heretic comments interspersed, but I think it's a better solution than leaving it out entirely since we have more than enough people that want to play it (as opposed to throwing in another episode that only 1-2 people will talk about).

Anyone for/against this?

I think HYMN should get played for the sheer benefit the wad would get if there was some decent external playtest. I happy for that wad to go ahead and I will do another wad alongside.

Map29 – Dead Planet – by Purist – Kills – 107, Items – 98, Secrets – 60. Time Sucks. End Health 102, Armor 21. Death Count – 26

Wow, I think that’s the highest death count yet! I didn’t like this map as much as some of you did, but there’s a whole line of bullshit behind that – I had to start playing the last 4 maps at 2 AM, I was tired and cranky, my PC has seen much better days and was howling like a banshee – alla that! :D But I think I would have enjoyed the map much more if I played on HMP, because for me, this was a little too much of a good thing. Too many monsters – well, not really, only 415 on UV. It was more a matter of too many monsters being Revvie and higher. HMP, with 340 monsters, probably would have been just right for my tastes.

And yet, I didn’t resort to Always Run until the ending Cyb fight, and even then it was only after I’d been killed several times, including once by my own rocket when I hit one of those motherfucking torches purist on the canal wall. :D

This is a purist map, however, and although I’d never played a purist map prior to this megawad, I’ve come to expect nothing but high quality maps from this guy, and Dead Planet does not disappoint. I was probably more impressed by the city architecture than most of you, partly because I’ve always felt that city maps – including, and perhaps especially, the IWAD maps – suck donkey ass. They’re ugly, for the most part, which is my main gripe. But purist managed to do a cool-looking one, with snipers on rooftops, no less. I loved it!

DOTW covered this map about as well as anyone could. Mostly, my remarks just give my take on the action, which never lets up. Jesus fucking Christ, purist, it’s like you floored the gas in a Lambo or something! :D

One of the things I did which irritated me was to keep playing the Caco swarm, because I wanted to survive it without taking a hit – and without running. Winning the fight was a snap, but I knew worse was coming, so I kept fighting the damned Cacos until I finally put ‘em all away without taking a scratch, and you know what I did then? I spazzed on the keyboard, and instead of saving the game, I accidentally loaded a save just before the Caco fight. Fuck me!

There were some ugly battles, like in the red brick room with the Mancs and all those Revvies. I almost beat that sucker on the first try with only the chaingun. But that was nothing compared to the courtyard below with the Archies. What really made that one difficult for me is that when I rocketed the Revvies up above, it tended to wake up the PEs. Gad! Archies and PEs at once, what an odious combination. I died several times there, and when I finally won through, it was the only time I didn’t wake up the PEs. I have no idea why that happened. Just lucky, I guess.

Ah, the final Cyb fight. Died many times there while walking. It was the Revvies and Archies coming in from the sides that kept getting me, until finally, when I turned on Always Run, I realized I could just pop out there, wake up the Cyb and all the others, and back straight up into the outer courtyard. This caused the Revvies and Archies to follow me straight into Herr Cyb’s rockets. Only a couple Revvies leaked through, quickly dispatched with SSG. The Cyb killed everything else. I ultimately fed Herr Cyb a diet of rockets because I’d used up my cells on all the other monsters.

I do seem to be mixing up the fight order. There was this one where I teleported onto a roof and a Cyb and Archie and other critters teleported into the open area below me. I think I died only once in that one.

Anyway, after the previous two maps – especially Map28 – I had some combat fatigue at this point. Suffice to say, purist did his usual excellent job. BTW, I never found a way to the BFG down in the slime area. And, yes, this map just might have exceeded what I’m willing to endure, although I did enjoy getting bitch-slapped on many occasions. ;D

End-map ammo; 177 Bullets, 68 Shells, 18 Rockets and 38 Cells.

MAP30 - Hadephobia (the level) by A.Gamma

My first plan for this slot was for it to be auditioned. However, there was not a lot of initial interest so it went to TheMionicDonut. Unfortunately, he had computer issues so dropped out and Melon took it on. Melon could not make anything satisfactory and meanwhile Grain of Salt was making a huge a slaughter-like MAP25 so I suggested they swap. I had an early version of Grain of Salt's MAP30 and it was an epic thing of beauty. It was too hard for me but not in a way that looked unfair and it would have been a great finish for Hadephobia - if it ever got close to finished.

Instead, Melon had completed Sacrifice while Grain of Salt was still toiling over MAP30, eventually she admitted it was unlikely to be finished any time soon (I'd be interested to know if it is done still) so I made a placeholder MAP30 to use if there was nothing else until deadline day.

Then lo and behold A.Gamma PM's me apologising for his no-show on MAP24. I used the situation to guilt-trip him into making a MAP30. The condition was that my MAP30 wouldn't be used if A.Gamma's was finished and neither of ours would be used if by some miracle Grain of Salt's level got finished.

In the event it was A.Gamma's map to finish the megawad. Better than my MAP30 but not a substantial finale. It is slightly hampered by about a dozen monsters failing to teleport but even then it's not a serious challenge.

!Because the level needs a fix to allow 100% kills, I might look at remedying this. If anyone has any good simple suggestions to make the level harder - without radically changing it let me know and I'll consider them. My own idea was to add a spawn shooter.!

Hadephobia (the megawad) by Team Progfic

Overall, I suppose you could say Hadephobia was a success and Progressive Fiction was a failure. By this I mean I think the megawad itself is pretty good for an inclusive community project made up of mostly new mappers. I think this was helped by the thematic continuity because it gave the levels a sense of cohesiveness while the varying styles of the contributors provided variety at the same time. However, the aims of Progressive Fiction were not completely met. I think most mappers were just keen to be involved in the megawad and not really interested in a proper story. Even if they were it was probably unlikely to work within the limits of Doom. The system of week long map slots worked better on paper than practice also as many mappers did not stick to this and the megawad took more than a year longer than planned.

That said, I'm really pleased with the final result and I'm pleased that there's some interesting and unusual stuff as well as some regular solid maps.

Of my own maps my favourite is MAP24 because it is probably the best looking and I like the gameplay risks I took with it. MAP15 is probably my least favourite (excluding MAP34). I like it but it's ugly and it doesn't have the saving grace of being especially creative like MAP20 for instance does.

Excluding my own maps my Hadephobia favourites are MAP02, MAP11, MAP17, MAP23 & MAP25. My least favourite five would be MAP01, MAP16, MAP19, MAP21, MAP27.