MAYhem 2018 - Orange Version!

[Obsidian]

 

There's a new sheriff in town...yes, I am gonna be running this year's MAYhem! With Marcaek stepping down due to his debilitating case of "Fuck This Shit, I'm Out", I'm gonna be running the show for 2018. Therefore, using my newfound dictatorial tendencies, I dub this "MAYhem: Orange Version"!

 

So, to start us off, what's the restriction? Well, just like with Pokemon, this latest edition of MAYhem introduces some brand-new critters to the world of Doom II mapping! Some you may recognize, some you may not: what matters is that they're here to be played with! I'm looking forward to seeing what people accomplish with these and if need be I can tweak the DeHackEd as necessary. Heck, I can even add more creatures if the demand is high enough: as it stands the Wolfenstein SS is still untouched and I don't have any sort of boss to round off the wad. Hit me up if you've got any ideas.

 

As for textures, the pack we'll be using is the illustrious "Orange is the New STARTAN", courtesy of JMickle! It's a mixture of original creations and a selection of complimentary existing textures and the set as a whole is quite pleasant to use. Oh yeah, and there's also a STARTAN key. It owns.

 

Now, the monsters!

 

The Hades Sphere

Replacing the Lost Soul, these are essentially floating bombs. Not very strong, but invisible until they detect the player and can be deadly if they sneak up on you.

 

 

The Ethereal Soul

The Ethereal Soul replaces the Dead Lost Soul decoration and also uses up the Boss Shooter frames. Think the Lost Soul replacement from STRAIN, only more aggressive.

 

The Shadow

This one replaces the Arachnotron and acts as a sniper from the shadows. When it spots the player it zips around the battlefield at high speed, only stopping to fire until the player retreats from view.

 

The Cybruiser

The Cybruiser replaces the Baron of Hell. Not quite as robust as the Cyberdemon at 1000 health and can still take splash damage, but fires its rockets at a slightly quicker pace.

 

The Hades Elemental

Replaces the Pain Elemental. A good miniboss-tier enemy to use that spits out waves of fireballs and fires Hades Spheres when threatened. They also spawn Hades Spheres on death.

 

There's also some tweaks to the weapons and a brand new gun that replaces the chainsaw! What is it? Go on and see for yourself! If you'd like to see the resources in action, I also whipped up a test map.

 

 

Resources

 

Demo.zip

 

Boring old regular rules

 

-Boom format for mapping: test in PrBoom+ to be certain your map works right.

 

-Difficulty settings must be implemented to some degree.

 

-Co-op I'm gonna be a bit more lenient on: if you can balance these maps for co-op then go ahead, else I'll try get someone in that's a bit more of an expert.

 

-If you want to add a new texture or two, run it by me and I'll okay it. Don't go too overboard though!

 

-The deadline is the 1st of June (this year, smartypants). I can be a bit lenient in taking timezones into consideration though.

 

Annnd I think that about covers it! If there's any concerns about the project, feel free to bring them up and I'll answer to the best of my ability. Have an excellent May everyone! :)

 

Edited May 29, 2018 by Obsidian

[Obsidian]

Mapper List

-Benjogami - Heatmonger

-Crunchynut44 - Smagma Flume

-Aquila Chrysaetos - Rigel Kentaurus

-Obsidian - The Infinite Gyre

-Dobu Gabu Maru - Wowee

-Amok - Sun Blows Up Today

-Redead-ITA - Asterion

-NeedHealth - Sundowning

-WH-Wilou84 - Volcaropod

-DanielAlexander - Rushed

-Eris Falling - The Game Never Ends

-Nirvana - Autumn Equinox

-Demonologist - Blazing Gospel

-CarboxylicAcids - Ferrous(ll) Sulphate

-Ozku - Surge

-Paul977 - Orange Stream

-Pinchy - Bovril Bastille

-Roofi - Floréal

-Valkiriforce - Vortex Chambers

-Scotty - Ballistic

-Walter Confetti - Prepare for huge disappointments!

-Marcaek/Breezeep - Argent Orange

 

RC1 - Testing Beta

RC2 - Testing Beta

RC3 - Testing Beta

RC4 - Polished Beta

RC5 - Polished Beta

RC6 - Polished Beta

RC7 - Polished Beta (the other ones weren't polished enough, it seems :P)

 

FINAL RELEASE

 

Archives link.

Edited November 6, 2018 by Obsidian

[Tristan]

Let's see if I can do this for a second year in a row!

shadows = :3

[Archi]

del

Edited May 2, 2018 by Archi

[Obsidian]

Just now, Archi said:

Double rocket launcher cybers please.

 

Heh, I'll consider it.

[Dragonfly]

Count me in for year 3 on the trot.

 

:D

[Roofi]

I will try to make a map , Mayhem 2018 reminds me of Tangerine Nightmare. :)

[Catpho]

lol Jmickle is asking us to finish "Orange is the new STARTAN" for him :P

Awesome!

[Gothic]

An orange themed wad, and the cacodemon isn't replaced by a cacolantern? Shame on you, obsidian.

 

EDIT: Wait, there is one, but it's not the R667 one, but whatever.

Edited April 30, 2018 by Gothic

[Obsidian]

5 minutes ago, Gothic said:

An orange themed wad, and the cacodemon isn't replaced by a cacolantern? Shame on you, obsidian.

 

Nope, just a good ol' Cacorange this time around. :P Quite a few of the alternate sprites were originally in OitNS and I merely ported them over. I could replace them with the Cacolantern sprites, but I'll stick with these for now.

[baja blast rd.]

I cooked up many fights on my own to test the new stuff. My thoughts: 

 

The Hades Sphere is a cool idea. Its low speed should allow it to be an ambush enemy up close without being too unfair, and also it's a cool mechanic rarely seen. In larger spaces I can envision it being more of an asset to the player than a threat, given that slow speed and its enormous splash damage. Unless of course used in high numbers, which could be fun. Going with lower attack but far higher speed is the safer choice (the Valiant suicide bomber archetype) but this should be viable too. 

 

The Ethereal Soul is fun. An unpredictable monster that should be engaging in low numbers, owing to a combination of both an erratic charge and a fireball attack. The fireball itself is more or less a non-threat -- it could fire a few more of them per cycle. 180 HP is slightly too much by 20 or 30 imo. It usually survives an SSG shot from about 128 units away (i.e. close but not point-blank), which feels unsatisfying to me. 

The Shadow needs some reworking. It runs around erratically, during which time one can envision it as a threat, and then comes to a stop, slowly spewing these puny fireballs. In principle, continuous fire is a detriment to a fast-moving projectile monster's threat level rather than an asset, and it shows here, almost to a comical extent. The shadow's attack would be better off faster, and a quick burst of a few projectiles instead of refire, enabling its main asset (its speed) to shine. 

 

The Cybruiser should also go back to the drawing board. This variant is silly imo. :P Valiant did it right -- one rocket, instead of three. Cybruisers that adopt a cyberdemon-like pattern are not good in general. 3x the projectile volume simply makes it an enormous infight asset without increasing its threat level much, if at all. Lack of splash immunity means they infight each other, which is not good since it's not threatening enough to be a lone wolf miniboss, meaning that restricting use in duos or clusters is harmful. In general, I dislike messing around with projectile speeds too because it conflicts with muscle memory, but I don't seem to mind it here too much, oddly. Also the BFG is not in this wad, because otherwise messing with cyb two-shots would be questionable. 

 

In prBoom+, the Hades Elemental crashes on me when pain-stunned, citing an error 'Bad sfx #: 0', so I can only test it while evading its attack. Spawning Hades spheres is an interesting touch, though; I'm a fan of that. The primary fireball spread is fairly nonthreatening when the player has space to move, and being a flying projectile monster that shouldn't be massed, it won't be so great when airborne either, as shown by its closest analogue, the afrit (the variants that also shoot rev rockets and the Bloodstained variant that doesn't). So, it might end up being best in tight spaces, which feels like a miscalculation to me. The monster could afford to be more formidable in general though, perhaps spawning Hades spheres as a normal attack, because to me this is feeling a lot like an ascended mid-tier with too much HP. (Although 1600 HP is fine in principle.) It also is quite a passive monster, attacking at a fairly low rate -- reducing the delay between Chase codepointers should help.

 

As far as the weapons, the pistol and chaingun could use a beefier sound. It's a bit weird when a sped-up chaingun still has the stock sound. Also that little hitch in the chaingun is pretty annoying and seems inconsequential from a gameplay perspective, so I'd suggest getting rid of that. I do like that both bullet weapons are sped up, however. The faster rocket speed is always fun on the offensive -- it makes it more suitable for the sort of scattered monster placement that modern maps often go for. The rapid fire rocket launcher is fucking awesome, although it's a shame the BFG had to be excluded for it. Both in tandem would surely be one of the best duos I've seen among Dehacked weapons mods. Preserving the BFG and removing the chainsaw instead would be great, if there are frames that can be spared.

 

Edited April 30, 2018 by rdwpa

[Gothic]

If I understand OP, the only limitation is that you must use the new monsters somewhere, right?

[geo]

I for one welcome our new monster invaders. Happy mapping to everyone! I look forward to playing this.

[Urthar]

You had me with custom palette and self inflicted Cybrusier fatalities.

[Danlex]

I'm interested :)

[NuclearPotato]

I'll try and cook something up for this.

[AD_79]

I haven't been successful in contributing to Mayhem since 2015, so I'm hoping I can make something happen for this one. I'm especially interested in those Dehacked changes, can't wait to mess around with those. However, I agree with pretty much everything rd said regarding the new monsters; the edits/reworks suggested would make it significantly more fun, I think.

[NeedHealth]

Could probably do a shorter map for this. No guarantee however.

[Magnusblitz]

I echo a lot of rdwpa's well-thought out points on the new monsters/weapon (new RL is cool, but I can definitely see missing the BFG) and would just like to add one more, that the sound effect for the shadow's fireball should be changed because as it is, it feels far too loud/threatening for what it represents.

[WH-Wilou84]

Dang... Would've been glad to contribute to both this and Interception II, but I don't have much time for mapping these days.
Good luck guys. The DEHACKED monsters sure look interesting, as is the absence of the BFG !

[Grain of Salt]

Just dropping by to yell at @Obsidian for removing arachnotrons.

[Tristan]

What's the feasibility of getting rid of the arch-vile and getting two monsters out of its larger number of frames?

[Breezeep]

Hello I will make something for this.

Also, bring the spiders back.

[rehelekretep]

June or July DWMC already wrapped up then? :D

[yakfak]

hey yo

are we meant to just use oitns textures or can we mix in the originals?

ps I like everything but the cybruiser they are just zero chill enemies i'm too afraid to place anywhere

[Ozku]

I would like to contribute a map here. Any other restrictions I should be aware of? Like map size or difficulty.

[Tristan]

Making an early but cautious start..I have an idea for a MAP01 :) Yes I do want to make something more substantial this year, but I'm probably better off starting with what I know I can already do and maybe I can follow up with a second map...

 

Edited May 1, 2018 by Eris Falling

[NuMetalManiak]

If I somehow make a map for this, credit me as "that one asshole who shows up to Mayhem that just shows up to Mayhem"

[Crunchynut44]

I'm definitely making a map for this! Two years In a row baby

[A.Gamma]

Count me in too for my third Mayhem :D

 

One question though. Are we still allowed to add a few edits here and there to complement the provided textures?