The DWmegawad Club plays: Super Mayhem 17

[tmorrow]

map25: bastille bowser, by Breezeep
zdoom2.8.1, uvmax, pistol start, no saves, first time played

Breezeeps's Bastille Bowser is a mighty fortress. You know you're getting close to bowser because everyone is trying to kill you. Meanwhile bowser is probably getting some shuteye in some cozy room tucked away in this very fortress.

The map opens in a hectic manner. You've got to slog your way up the fortress stairs picking up what ammo and weapons you can along the way. The yellow key you see on a stand can't be grabbed yet.

Fight your way through to the other side of the castle where you can see a red key on a stand. These guys store keycards in strange places! More fighting takes you over to a bunch of crates and the first actionable switch. The switch releases cybie and a bunch of floaters. If you are unlucky cybie will teleport away because that means your final fight is going to be a lot tougher. If you are lucky cybie will stay and party hard with the cacodemons and pain elemental and you can polish him off for good.

Now you can return to the starting area to find a switch to lower the yellow key and proceed to the final area. The final area can be quite nasty if cybie has teleported there as you will face him, a spider mastermind, an archvile, several revenants and arachnotrons. There's a cool protective dome over the exit that you can hide briefly during the battle. Find and action the 3 pswitches to open the exit pipe to end the map.

There are 4 secrets to find on the map. The rewards are a mixed bag, a berserk pack that's not really needed given the fights, a bfg with one shot available (who will you spend it on), some ammo, a megaarmor. I'd rate the megaarmor as the best of the lot since the only other armor on the map is a combat armor.

There are easter eggs on the map:
 

Spoiler

You can see bowser through one of the north windows as you head up the east side stairs going to yellow switch. If you idclip you can enter bowser's quarters and beat him up if you like but I don't think you can engage him in legitimate play. This means that 99% kills is the most you can get.

Another easter egg can be found on the west side stairs where if you idclip through the north wall you will find a small room with a bed, drawers and lamp, a marine's quarters perhaps.

 

[tmorrow]

Hmm! Voting for next month. So many good wads and so little time!

 

+++ Heroes' Tales https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/megawads/ht

 

[mun]

+++ Mayhem 16 and Dimension Of The Boomed

 

[Salt-Man Z]

MAP16: Skyward Vivarium

9:08 | 100% Everything

Short and sweet and lots of fun on continuous; just run around like crazy and blast everything that moves. The staircases down to the exit room seemed like they'd be real easy to miss. (I obviously didn't, though.)

 

MAP17: All the Monster’s Teeth Are Perfect

17:36 | 100% Kills | 95% Items | 50% Secrets

When I first played this map, it was in slot #2, and I was like WHAAAAT. The opening in particular is just harrowing: guys teleport in behind you, so you run forward only to be harried from all sides, including more baddies popping up right in your face. I really do hate those insta-pop ambushes, though: they've always struck me as ridiculously lazy, and well, just plain obnoxious. Neat how the level loops around on itself like that; not sure why a warp pipe was needed to get up to the upper level, when it seems like a lift somehow might make more sense. Couldn't for the life of me figure out how to lower the megashroom. Otherwise, pretty fun.

 

MAP18: C’mon Peach, You’ve Got What I Want, Now Give This Plumber Cake!

12:58 | 100% Everything

Wow, hitscan hell right off the bat. I like the items hidden in the ? bricks, though it would have been helpful if they turned brown once used (like they did in Obsidian's map.) I liked the take on the classic castle maze, though the section it opened up could have been made more obvious. (I dropped out of that area without going through the necessary warp pipe, and then spent like 6 minutes trying to find my way back; couldn't remember how, and kept uselessly trying all the pipes. I recognized the exit area for what it was immediately; that was fantastic.

 

MAP19: Your Princess Is in Another Fort, Asshole

16:07 | 100% Kills | 4% Items | 66% Secrets

This is a weird, compact little map. It took me a little bit to wrap my head around the way the layout was transformed. I missed the secret that must have had, like, all the items in it. I assume it had to do with that gold brick in the wall, but I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to activate it.

[Salt-Man Z]

On 4/24/2018 at 5:41 PM, Spectre01 said:

Voting for next month should be open. Be a responsible citizen and cast your vote!

A.L.T.

I could get behind that; I played the first 5 maps already last month.

 

Otherwise, I've been getting the itch to replay a Nicolas Monti set lately, like Mano Laikas (or even Eviltech.)

Edited April 28, 2018 by Salt-Man Z

[Catpho]

MAP24 - “Bowser’s Daddy Dungeon” by Rottking

My my, some creepy undertones with that title :P

This underground prison actually has vegetation (so the grey brick colors arent dull), some nice architectural designs and flashing windows. My best guess for this is that bowser, after his victory, will be coming down here often with the princess for some errr... actually you people fill in that part. Gameplay wise its a mostly enjoyable affair. A scramble at start as mancs, arachnotrons and revs, very effective turrets, are in desirable positions, plus imps and hitscanners scatter around hunting you. Theres a good amount of roughness while shotguning and blasting, but there was never a hair pulling moment, maybe the rk room is tricky with a lingering abyss, whomps (known in doom as crushers) and A PAIN ELEMENTAL. Ending is not really imaginative, but gets the job done. Also i would have never thought that this map is a mairo ghost house reference too, if it werent for the final scene.

Some of the personality that made his works endearing are present in bits and pieces, but this is not one of Rottking's most captivating works. Just a good map, no more, no less.

Some screenies (should i start taking GIFs here too?):

 

 

Edited April 25, 2018 by Catpho

[mun]

Well I've been slowed down by real life, so I couldn't catch up.

Here're some thoughts on the maps that I find most interesting:

 

Map 15 - Zigenhaus by Xaser

Whew, this was a bumpy ride. This map is packed with lots of meaty monsters and some tricky ones so it caused a huge amount of frustation for me to play it. The town's visuals are uniquely designed, straying away from the usual circle spam the author was know for. I don't think this is the author's best but certainly worth blasting through. Also forgot to mention that the hunting red coins thing was a novel idea :)

 

Map 31 - Sinkysand Switchland by dobu gabu maru

A puzzle map, of course! Making puzzle-orientated maps has been a recent trend for this mapper. The puzzle aren't terribly hard, however. All it requires is good observation. A relaxing detour, glad I'm here!

 

Map 16 - Skyward Vivarium by Pinchy

Another speedmap. This one is rather ingenious though. It created a rather action-packed and clever layout from only a few rectangles. The simple detailing worked rather well here. Guess you'll only need a few shapes to create a pretty map!

Spoiler

Also while the intended map ending is depressing on it's own, it's made all worse when you try to bypass the exit line using the arch-vile, only to realize the princess is just a cardboard cutout...

10/10 Oscar worthy ending cue awards please. 

 

[rehelekretep]

ive drifted off Doom this month so wont be voting but will be interested to see what people go for :)

[Catpho]

Lets go Quake on may, i also need an excuse to finish mayhem16

+++ Mayhem16 and Dimension of the Boomed

[Poncho]

+++ Sector 666

+++ Aeternum

+++ Return to Hadron (Ep 1 and 2)

 

Those first two I suggested last time.

[Catpho]

This is one hell of a HOM in map25. How did it got through the radar :P

[Capellan]

+++ 99 Ways to Die, The Trooper's Playground, The Talosian Incident

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP24 Bowser Daddy's Dungeon

 

Love having ordinary levels like this one with space to move around in and mostly fair encounters to have. Nothing much else to note, go around the outer perimeter and inside things, avoiding the big black void as usual. The northeast area has the interesting stuff, Thwomp crushers with platforming, teleporting trickery with bonuses around, and the key with its designated guardians. The inner buildings are a little bit less fun until after you get the key; I actually went there first and there wasn't much apart from one of the secrets and the red door. The red door leads to the finale, where the headaches of a constantly teleporting arch-vile are annoying as shit and then you have the four switches for the exit. And the exit is the SMW goal post thing.

 

I guess +++ Switcheroom 2?

Edited April 25, 2018 by NuMetalManiak
vote

[Catpho]

MAP25 - “Bastille Bowser” by Breezeep

Mighty fine castle Breezeep has crafted here, perfect fit for a castle freak like good ol king koopa bowser. Grand in scope, which is impressive for restrictions imposed, plenty of breathtaking sights (that HOM and sky cut is super distracting tho, wat is with that). I could just stare at this for hours! Layout and movements supports it, what rdwpa said: its flowing and interconnected. Combat for the set's penultimate map is surprisingly tame, however. Enemies are mostly scattered and in easily disposable situations, even the ambushes and traps cant really leave a mark for a crafty player. Ive been through more hell in previous maps than this, but at least its not a complete pushover and its not boring, as there's still a lot of commotions forcing you to run around. Felt like a "Calm before the storm" more than anything.

A very cinematic piece. Im still hungering for more blood in this map, but everything else more than makes up for it.

Some screenies:

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP25: Bastille Bowser

 

As castle maps go this is a pretty spectacular layout, getting away from the tendency toward rectilinear, regular shapes that is so often a theme in Doom castles and instead scattering turrets, flights of stairs, and the blocky exteriors of medieval halls about the place in acknowledgement of the uneven, rocky terrain upon which this whole brooding fortification sits.  Paired gates serve to divide the map neatly into eastern and western halves, transforming toward the conclusion of the level's running time into a bridge toward the final arena which I rather skipped my way past, though I suspect that was more by luck than judgment as I was sure at a couple of points that an arch-vile's flame was about to roast me or a stray bullet from the local Spider Mastermind was going to pick away the remaining 3% of my health and send my cooling corpse shuddering to the floor.  The combat encounters make good use of the available space, with a swarm of cacodemons making the most of their freedom to roam should the player try to scoot back from the ground-assault component of that particular encounter and take control of the fight from the relative safety of a bottleneck or campable corner; it's all too easy to get lulled into a false sense of security as the imps and hell knights march forward into the sights of your waiting guns, only for a flight of cacodemons to work their way around and spit ball lightning down on you from an unexpected angle and elevation.

[Deadwing]

Mano Laikas would be a good twist, and I would definetly replay it for the DWmegawad club D:

[Jaws In Space]

+++ Demonfear

[Alfonzo]

There'd be something poetic about Demonfear getting reviewed by the club before one of Capellan's fifty billion attempts to get 99 Talosian Playgrounds through succeeds.

[Memfis]

+++ 99 Ways to Die, The Trooper's Playground, The Talosian Incident

 

It's time.

Edited April 25, 2018 by Memfis

[mun]

My thoughts on the other maps will come later.

Map 25 - Bastille Bowser by Breezeep

Astonishing! A rather cinematic build-up. The map's strengths come from it's well interconnected layout and expansive castle setting. A bit on the easy side for a map preceding a final map however, encounters easily go down without much resistance. The impact this map has on me doesn't change that much though.

 

[Paul977]

+++ Plutonium Winds, +++ Master levels

[gaspe]

36 minutes ago, Memfis said:

+++ 99 Ways to Die, The Trooper's Playground, The Talosian Incident

 

It's time.

No more Heroes' Tales? :(

 

+++ 99 Ways to Die, The Trooper's Playground, The Talosian Incident...

[TheOrganGrinder]

+++ 99 Ways to Die, The Trooper's Playground, The Talosian Incident

 

Let's do it.

[riderr3]

+++ Plutonium Winds, +++ Master levels

[Capellan]

6 hours ago, Alfonzo said:

There'd be something poetic about Demonfear getting reviewed by the club before one of Capellan's fifty billion attempts to get 99 Talosian Playgrounds through succeeds.

 

I honestly don't think there's any point in doing just Demonfear for a month.  You'd need to pair it with something else, like the club did with Unholy Realms and Zone 300.

 

[tmorrow]

map26: bowser in the black abyss, by Marcaek & rdwpa
zdoom2.8.1, uvmax, pistol start, no saves, first time played

An excellent and hard final map, you can't expect any less from a @Marcaek and @rdwpa tag team effort. Finally you've tracked bowser down to his lair, an ominous and imposing fortress surrounded by a sea of lava. Of course bowser has several obstacles and hurdles you must overcame to earn the right to face him in a final showdown. God knows what he's doing to Peach, the rotter! The rumours of what despicable acts went down in bowsers daddy dungeon are still ringing in our marines ears!

I spent more time on this map than all of the others, a uvmax remaining just out of my reach after 50 attempts. I suffered 2 deaths in the final room with 20 or less enemies. I decided to give 1/2 an hour to it each day for a week and was delighted to finally uvmax this beast after 60-70 attempts in all. Take that bowser!

Including a secret area the map consists of 5 difficult fights, some of them with a heavy RNG element, requiring skill to overcome. The fights are:

1. The secret cybie room with several archviles to pick up the bfg.
2. The east wing silos of lost souls, revenants and other scum.
3. The west wing where the red key is located.
4. The northern pillars room of hell.
5. Bowser's room.

The easiest fights are in the secret cybie/archvile room and the west wing. These rooms both provide a challenge but the enemies can be easily tracked and managed as long as your execution is good.

One of the maps best moments (besides killing bowser of course) is hearing cybie explode in a crushing defeat 15 seconds after teleporting away to an offmap monster closet. Bad call cybie. Makes me smile every time!

The east wing and northern pillar room fights are the most chaotic and varied fights on the map. Of the two, the fight I struggled with most was the northern pillar area where it is extremely difficult to keep track of the enemies and manage several weapon swaps throughout the fight. In the end the strategy that worked best for me was take care of the 2 archviles first and then stick to clearing one side until all of the pillars have come down.
 
I particularly enjoyed the final bowser battle. A great job has been done with bowser. He's the commander keen replacement enemy and he's built like a tank with 8000 hit points, twice that of cybie. Bowser shoots flamethrower, mancubus like fireballs from his mouth like the mancubus shoots them from his arms. In fact bowser's fighting technique can best be described as a mancubus on steroids.

The final fight takes place in a large room covered in lava with a narrow, non damaging walkway circumscribing the central area. There are also some non damaging floors in the 4 corners, that can be zones of temporary safety, especially when the 4 monster telepipes are raised. Of course bowser never fights fair and instead cheats his ass off by summoning over 200 enemies against you in the final fight both from the monster telepipes and from outside the open doorway. In this survival encounter you need to use the narrow path around the room, the corners and the available pillars and pipes for cover to outlast bowser while he helps you clear out most of spawns with his indiscriminate mancubus like fire. Both health and armor spawn on the walkway from time to time that you can snag to stay alive. After the monster waves have subsided you can go on the offensive and focus your attacks on bowser, teaching that turtle koopa a lesson he won't soon forget. Don't stop until bowser has been reduced to a shell of his former self, hahahaha! Never mess with an angry space marine or his girl!

Edited April 26, 2018 by tmorrow

[Salt-Man Z]

Can't believe I forgot to mention the frogsuit/radsuit in MAP19: what a stroke of genius!

 

MAP20: Transformation Palace

20:52 | 100% Kills | 66% Items | 33% Secrets

Cyclopean palace? Cool. Transforming architecture? Very cool. Ever-enlarging horde fights with archviles everywhere? Umm...okay. Having to straferun across the tops of those pillars (once for mandatory progression, again for a secret shroom)? @#$% you. This was still mostly fun, at least! It just kept going, though, and every time I thought "Hey maybe this is the end!" it ended up being a bigger, more obnoxious battle. The megashroom at the end (picked it up before exiting) was nice though, and I definitely needed it for the next level...

 

MAP21: Rainbow Road

10:56 | 100% Kills | 100% Secrets | 38% Secrets

So according to the wiki, the 10 items I missed are all purely decorative, so yay I maxed this one! Whew, this map. First off, it looks absolutely gorgeous. Just amazing what was able to be accomplished here. On the other hand, I was just about to give up on the WAD at this point. Like, okay that's enough for me, I guess! I had tried the red key section first, and just got obliterated. Eventually tried the other keys: left, then right (forget the colors) and then finally red, which was a lot easier once some of the peripheral dudes were out of the picture. Still, none of this was particularly easy, and not terribly fun, either.

 

MAP22: Chocolate Starfish Islands

6:03 | 100% Everything

Oh, wow, this map really is the worst, isn't it? Damaging, slowing water, and the only way out is zigzagging ice blocks? GTFO. The separate rocket launcher section was just abysmal, and the hardest part was just leaving! I will say the monster waterfall made me laugh, so kudos for that. And to think from the opening vista this looked like it could be a nice relaxing breather map...

[baja blast rd.]

I'll add some co-author commentary for map26. Of course I hope everyone plays the map before reading. :) 

 

@Marcaek messaged me to collaborate after the layout was done. The visuals and design -- which are good, as evidenced by my wanting to be credited as a coauthor this time ;) -- are ~90% Marcaek's. I made the secret area with the soulsphere, wired up the cubes in the penultimate fight and the pipe movement in the last fight, and made some changes to structures within an area to suit fight reveals (e.g. tripling the pipes in the RK wing so that three teleport destinations would make better sense visually). Conversely, the encounter design and thing placement are about that proportion mine. Objectively speaking, the toughest part of 'thing placing' a map is designing encounters that work well for the spaces they inhabit, when you either designed such areas without thinking too much about encounters (as people might in a solo work) or when you didn't design the areas at all. Ideally the end result should feel like the geometry and the encounters were made in tandem after all. It took me a couple of days to have ideas I liked. 

 

I decided on leaving the start area and its surroundings mostly unpopulated. The atmosphere of the map can be described as brooding, with inevitable dollops of silly, and I'm not big on trying to cram fights into every inch of real estate a map provides, so that was a natural choice. If you pay attention closely there is "stuff" happening while you are away, though. That was fun to set up. :) 

 

The two compact side areas suggested tighter fights with three or fewer vectors of reveal. If the primary goal was designing fights that I enjoyed (well, duh), the secondary goal was variety -- not only is most of the bestiary represented between these side areas, but all of the fights fit into different archetypes (reactive SSG pugilism against pain elementals and assorted mid-tiers; standing ground against a tight invasion of nobles; cover fighting against a vile with interference; and heatseeker unpleasantry, first with revenants and then lost souls too, which are basically erratic, living homing missiles). All fights on a given side can interact with one another. Leaving monsters alive during the introductory fight of the red key wing can allow the player to fend off the nobles a lot easier if that is where they go first, and on the """optional""" rocket launcher side, one can rush past the manc and chaingunners and simply let those infight when the hell knights appear.

 

@Nine Inch Heels and I discussed this map privately as I was working on it, and my favorite contribution of hers was the idea of rising a barrier on the periphery of the secret BFG fight. I liked the idea -- it not only prevented exit via a dual archvile jump (risky and mostly unhelpful but still unwanted) but looked cool narratively, a wall of fire rising and then lowering to the rhythm of the fight -- and it took about ten minutes to set up and test. Sometimes when people describe voodoo doll setups to the uninitiated, it sounds like code, but it can be quite fast once you get the hang of it. 

 

The penultimate fight is my favorite in the map from a combat perspective. It is the most complex tactically. When I saw the boxes in the original layout, the idea for a timed fight came to me very naturally. Nobles served as meatshields for a pair of archviles, which are roaming and can be elusive. Meanwhile, cover from them is gradually being removed, replaced by a mix of threats of various types, low-tiers and mid-tiers, which can intermingle chaotically, demanding that the player at least pays attention and is able to make some snap judgments here and there. On top of that, there is a final source of time pressure -- the last vile at the end will have an open line of sight of much of the arena, so the monsters that are accumulating should be wiped out at some point rather than left to roam and infight as they ordinarily might be. Elsewhere, the chaingunners on the side can be ignored at first and used to distract other monsters later. It's a rigidly sequenced encounter that can end up playing in different ways each time, which is what I like aiming for with those. 

 

The last fight is mostly for spectacle and catharsis and narrative. I tweaked this fight several times to get it to flow smoothly. First there is a short preliminary period of introduction with Bowser, during which no monsters appear. Perched revenants appear to call the player attention away. The difficult part of staging the pipe lowering turned out to be changing all of the y-alignments of the pipe textures, rather than the voodoo doll setup. After the pipes lower, waves are alternatingly imbalanced to add some nuance to which sides the player happens to be on: there are more revenants on the north side during the imp/revenant wave; pinkies blot out lots of space and pain elementals appear behind cacodemons, so depending on the player's objectives or armament they might find one side more of a priority than the other; and in the third wave the hitscanners appear on one side and the imps on the other to harrass the player if they choose to allow the hitscanners to whittle themselves down. The pipes rise again, and no, it's not fliers, but former human troopers sliding off, LOL. And then mancubi, because those are hilarious. Resource balance is quite generous here, with not only the start megasphere and a few soulspheres but also packs of 25% armor to allow the player the replenish that (taking damage at 0% armor is not something I enjoy myself, so I didn't want that to be much of a factor). I wanted the balance to be such that the player could conceivably recover from a catastrophic mistake during even a first playthrough -- eating a ton of Bowser's fireballs at once, or getting caught among the hitscan warps at the wrong time -- and still prevail.  
 

So that was that. A fun map to work on. I think this is easier than most of my maps but it's good to try that out every now and then, to be more flexible as a mapper. Thank you for reading this wall of text.

Edited April 26, 2018 by rdwpa

[tmorrow]

59 minutes ago, rdwpa said:

I made the secret area with the soulsphere, wired up the cubes in the penultimate fight

 

That added soulsphere does not compensate for the damage dished out by those enemies from the cubes! Ouch! I ended up learning the contents and timing of every one of these "cubes from hell". An excellent and challenging fight.

 

59 minutes ago, rdwpa said:

If you pay attention closely there is "stuff" happening while you are away, though. That was fun to set up. :) 

 

I noticed added carcasses, clips and zombieman after returning from the east wing and a dead marine, 3 cells and an imp after returning from the west wing. Is that the stuff your were referring to or is there more?

 

1 hour ago, rdwpa said:

I think this is easier than most of my maps

 

Your maps are a bit hard to find, most buried in the forums and not many on idgames. The maps I've found are amazing and indeed I find them quite difficult.

 

Many thanks for all of the insights into your contribution to map26, especially the thoughts behind your choices for enemy encounters and the factors going into good enemy placement.

[Catpho]

15 minutes ago, tmorrow said:

Your maps are a bit hard to find, most buried in the forums and not many on idgames. The maps I've found are amazing and indeed I find them quite difficult.

 

Many thanks for all of the insights into your contribution to map26, especially the thoughts behind your choices for enemy encounters and the factors going into good enemy placement.

Ugh, i feel that too. Here is a list of what ive seen so far, im even considering a wiki article for rdwpa for the sake of archiving :P