The DWmegawad Club plays: Dimension of the Boomed & MAYhem 2016

[LHSpanner]

Here we go, my first ever DWMC (though I've been reading with interest for a couple of years.) Playing on HNTR as I've never played DOTB or MAYhem before - I generally start on HNTR so I can find my way around without constantly dying.

 

Map01: Slipgate Vertigo

 

So we start with a loving recreation of the first room of Quake's E1M1.  Colour me seriously impressed!  And the rest of the map gets better

from there.  I will admit I've sometimes had computer game-related dreams; this map reminds me of one of those dreamscapes, intricate and complex but not confusing (bar the well-hidden switch near the end.)  The dark ambient soundtrack was one of the my favourite things about Quake, and it really adds to the atmosphere here.  As others have commented, it is essentially Quake, with the additional advantage of having Doom's monsters, meatier weapons, and ability to handle large complex maps.

 

Time to finish - 7:28

 

Map02: Blight Wharf

 

Once again, we start with a recreation - this one from E1M2.  The surreal atmosphere in the first level continues here, in the castle/medieval

theme.  The sliding doors and the deep water make it even more Quake-like.  It has a similar complexity, length and difficulty to the first level,

though the empty section at the end with the corpses made me wary of being ambushed.  Sure enough, the switch brings in a load of HKs, imps and former humans.  

 

So far, the BFG has been the only obvious secret.  Seeing it up there on the ledge made me think "how can I get to that?" and sure enough, the answer is close by.  Initially I though having a BFG this early in the set was overkill, but I liked the fact you only have enough ammo for one shot, meaning you have to use it strategically.

 

Time to finish - 8:55

 

Map03: Gibbous Grotto

 

This one is longer and more substantial, and incredibly atmospheric with its Lovecraftian theme.  As it put me on edge (once again, the music

makes a huge contribution), I took things slowly and cautiously.  The map looks exquisite, much more vibrant and detailed than Quake was, and thelighting is something else!

 

The initial appearance of the scrag startled me, in my mind the sprite was somehow associated with a much nastier monster.  Whether that's a

half-recalled memory or something else, I don't know.  A few of the traps were hairy, and kept me on my toes - the imp/demon and chaingunner trapsafter the silver key, and the crowd that appears when you hit silver key switch.  The shambler at the end was easily dealt with by repeatedlyducking round the corner, in much the same way you would with an archvile.

 

My only complaint so far is that in Quake, the glowing red buttons indicated they had to be shot; here, they are used as normal pressable buttons, which I'll admit was a little confusing.

 

Time to finish - 15:16

 

If it continues at this standard, I am eagerly looking forward to the rest of it!

Edited June 3, 2018 by LHSpanner

[Salt-Man Z]

Is everyone else spelling it "Blight Warf" just because the OP typoed it? The level graphic and automap both say "Wharf" (I had to double-check when I did my writeup.)

[Aquila Chrysaetos]

2 minutes ago, LHSpanner said:

Here we go, my first ever DWMC (though I've been reading with interest for a couple of years.)

Welcome! I was a lurker myself before joining the first time last month.

Unfortunately, I'm still going to have to sit this one out until my laptop can be replaced.

[FrancisT218]

I'm tying to beat the par times on Hard pistol start. It requires a lot of speed and a precise route! Did Level 2:

 

 

Edited June 3, 2018 by FrancisT18

[Catpho]

Thanks for the heads up @Salt-Man Z, i just copy paste them in :P

MAP02 - “Blight Wharf”

Step into the slip gate and enter the real Dimension of the Doomed/Boomed. Such an epic feast for the eyes with the gorgeous Quake inspired textures, great medieval themed architecture and effective lighting that i will forgive ambient music that sounds like a haunted attraction in an amusement park (Kidding! Welp, mostly). The gameplay and the mapset so far is something i would like to describe as "Quake the way Doom did", with still many of the elements that grip me in MAP01 returning like the beefed up chaingun, monster placement that has a good mix of "trash" monsters and mid-tiers. This map also has a characteristics of its own aside from the setting: having Boom's deep water play a big role. Not only it adds to the looks, but also makes exploration so much more interesting. Nice introduction to one of Quake's meanest baddies. It's like an archvile that abandons the medic act, instead opts for straight up murder, with combat inspired by a Ninja (????).

Another excellent outing. Can't get enough of Quake, i mean Doom, i mean Doom with Quake paint, i mean arghhh

Some screenies:

 

 

[cannonball]

MAP03 - “Gibbous Grotto”

 

Well this continues in the same vein of the pat couple of maps, we now get a scragg like monster into the mix which is pretty much a flying imp. Nothing troublesome in terms of difficulty so this monster is there more for the ambience. This map again is well laid out with a good use of the deep water effect again as well as a mix of weaklings, mid tier monsters and a couple of shamblers and archviles which pose as the main threat.

The silver switch trap was the most bothersome with the chaingunners being real pain in the backside but there is plenty of cover as long as you can keep the nobles from overwhelming you. Another very good map.

[gaspe]

Dimension of the Boomed

 

MAP01: It's been a good while since I played Quake 1 so I'll miss the more subtle references if there are any, the start of the original E1M1 is iconic so at least I could catch that. For the rest the map becomes something else. The cyberdemon was well incorporated in the map and it didn't feel like a cheap gimmick. It's a nice introduction and I loved that the ambient sounds were included. I must say that I'm irked by the lifts that have longer times before they raise.

[baja blast rd.]

02: Blight Wharf

 

This is a 'gear up' sort of map. Most of the content is optional, as a beeline for the gold key (netting the SSG on the way back) will allow you to get to the exit quickly, but will also put up a decent amount of resistance against the understaffed player. But there are six secrets (most with their own chambers or side paths), and some non-secret underwater resources, an optional berserk and an optional rocket launcher. All of that combines to make the map feel richer than a typical map of this size. 

 

I'm out of words, so here's a playthrough. 

 

 

[Urthar]

MAP02 Blight Wharf

 

Half of Quake's shareware episode maps were made by Tim Willits, and they share a similar look, which I knew I would have to try to recreate with at least one map. In hindsight, I think there's too much of Castle of the Damned's DNA in there, but the map was an excellent test bed for getting all the Quake elements I wanted implemented and working, and testing the resource BOOMQTEX.wad

 

On the whole it's sort of map I tend to build when I don't have any particular direction or idea in mind. A sort of roaming, incidental combat map with looping layout, and the odd surprise. It's very similar to maps 3 and 8 in that regard, and they're quite fun to make, since you don't really know what's coming next yourself as the mapper.

 

If you're playing on Normal or Hard then you meet your first Shambler here. Originally I intended him to be a 'Better Baron', but I had no real experience of using Dehacked, and didn't even know if I'd be able to make him work. So I started roughing out some sprites from the Quake MDL, and realised I'd have to do a lot of pixel work to smooth out all the rough edges of the original low polygon model. But then I stumbled across an updated MDL of the Shambler by Skiffy, which looked fantastic, and merely required the additional of some pixel blood, lightning and a bit of shading. So I was very fortunate to get his permission to use it to generate some Doom sprites.

In the end I got him as close I could in Dehacked to something resembling the original, but I don't know if he's really at home in Doom. You can place multiple Cyberdemons, Archviles and hordes of other Doom monsters and make it scale, but I'd be very wary of placing more than two Shamblers, and they have to be placed at short to medium range. Once you get to long range his lightning attack is horribly unfair, which is probably why he has a limited maximum range in Quake itself.

 

Still I'll give him his due, he's great at scarying players to the point that they'll reach for the BFG when they hear his roar.

Edited June 4, 2018 by Urthar

[galileo31dos01]

MAP03: Gibbous Grotto

 

We get some more upper-tier dudes now, the majority come in mixed groups of tiers as part of progression, like in classic gameplay, the monster composition gets higher in both number and quality. More deep water exploration and to my surprise the invulnerability sphere wasn't a secret. That thing being there for free gives the player an option to rush quickly through their least favourite part, I didn't grab it though until the end, to hit the 100% score. There's also the introduction of the pain elemental and scrags, which are like flying imps. A full close SSG should kill it most of the times, that or chainsaw works too, which is nice for me. A thing that really catches my attention is how well polished is light variation, the torches illuminating the walls in a triangle shape, the caverns being almost pitch black. Points for atmosphere, besides the music. Very pleasant map overall.

 

A small detail, you can get trapped here, near the exit.

 

Now, videos:

 

 

[Pirx]

On 6/1/2018 at 12:32 AM, tmorrow said:

Dimension of the Boomed
Changed: Cyberdemon hit points 4000 -> 3000

1. Changed: Lost Soul hit points 100 ->75
2. Changed: Spider Mastermind hit points 3000 -> 2000 (wolfensteinss replacement)
3. New: Shambler 900 hit points (spider mastermind replacement)
4. New: Scrag 180 hit points (bossbrain replacement)
5. New: Spawn 80 hit points (commander keen replacement)
6. Reaction time of chaingunner changed from 8 to 16 (time from seeing player to attacking is doubled)
7. Max Clips: 200/400 -> 300/600
8. Max Cells: 300/600 -> 200/400

 

 

 

big thanks for this list. imo these alterations are well thought out, as they balance the weapons better than the doom standard. especially seeing the souls with less hp is welcome. now this is certainly the best quake to doom conversion i've seen. it's difficult too translate quake's novel 3d maps into their doom equivalent, but dotb does it very naturally, nothing seems a gimmick placed just for the sake of being there. i've asked several times for quake enemies for doom, now they're here, and fun to fight. i have fond memories about quake, although it ran like a slog on my then new pentium 166 (timedemo 14 fps iirc), then i traveled a bit just to see the first 3dfx voodoo card in action when someone told me how incredible the game looked on it, and bought it instantly. however, i missed the old doom ssg, and the enemy numbers, and so i guess we have the perfect hybrid on our hands. the dark, visceral graphics and sounds of quake take away from the more cartoony doom style.

 

 

 

MAP01 - “Slipgate Vertigo”

 

starts like q1m1 and continues more like q4m1, anyway that's where the rusty metal and the flooded pipes were from.  one has to cross several paths under the watchful eye of a siege cow at the highest level of the facility, so action against imps and zombies has to remain quick. the revenant are a good replacement for the ogre, since they have similar attacks and can be tricked into meelee too. thx urthar for the "making of", i like these kinds of posts, especially when you have a map of size and quality. 

 

 

 

MAP02 - “Blight Warf”

 

again, it's the unmistakable start of q1m2 (with quake2 crates, even), then it evolved into something resembling btsx, anyway it's a fairly large map. the only thing the original did better is the water one  can dive in, but that's the doom engine and hardly the author's fault. the shamblers are somewhat quicker to accommodate for doomguy running faster, i think. they're a great addition. the scrag is rather weak, at least it looks creepy.

 

 

 

MAP03 - “Gibbous Grotto”

 

that's the q1m3 grotto combined with the q1m5 wizard's  manse, featuring a growing amount of tougher enemies, especially mancs and shamblers. you have to cross these caves a lot. there's an ambush with several chaingunners at the silver key, iirc, where one archvile not only appeared in my back, but teleported from here onto a gallery overlooking the fight, not sure if intentional, but i barely got away here. "gibbous" was the mass of zombies in one room? i didn't have enough ammo for them yet, so i went another way, and when i came back, there was literally one of them standing.

[Capellan]

I don't actually like Quake very much, so I will skip DotB.  I may play Mayhem '16, depending on how busy my month gets.  I'm about 9 weeks out from getting married right now, so things are a bit hectic, even with both of us very determined to keep the wedding itself as relaxed as possible :)

 

[Salt-Man Z]

2 hours ago, Capellan said:

I'm about 9 weeks out from getting married right now, so things are a bit hectic, even with both of us very determined to keep the wedding itself as relaxed as possible :)

Congratulations, sir! Enjoy your her big day! (I tease.)

 

MAP03: Gibbous Grotto

43:10 | 99% Kills | 77% Items | 50% Secrets

 

Wow. This one actually vaguely reminds me of MAP04 of Tangerine Nightmare (and probably only because we just played it earlier this year. Well, that and the orange-y hue.) Big step up in, well...everything here: a longer map, more monsters, stronger monsters, more deadly ambushes, harder secrets. And right off the bat, we have a new beastie—agh! what is that thing! Freaky, but at least they go down fairly easily. They're cool and all, but do they fill a niche that cacos don't? They fly, shoot fireballs, and take roughly 2 SSG blasts to kill...? Combat-wise, this one destroyed me. I only barely survived the first shambler fight. That was just after I took my first death heading into the tunnels where pinkies suddenly appeared in front of and behind me, pinning me in and killing me. The fight after nabbing the silver key almost did me in, too: I made it out of the key room, saw the closet full of chaingunners, and ran, only to get confronted by a shambler with a vile backing him up. Took them out and headed back in to mop up, not realizing there were still a ton of dudes left down there; at one point I found myself back in the silver key room with 4% health, popping in and out of the doorway to pick off stray chaingunners. But the worst fight of all was, of course, the finale in the grand hall. I was either getting perforated by chaingun fire, or surrounded by hell knights and plastered. About a dozen attempts in, I got a foothold—only to get nailed in the back by the manc two rooms down. Yeesh. Probably took me another half dozen attempts to finally get something going. I did manage to get myself stuck in the geometry of the penultimate room (whilst fighting the last shambler; it was a decent hiding space for the fight, but I had to noclip out):

 

Edited June 4, 2018 by Salt-Man Z

[Capellan]

1 hour ago, Salt-Man Z said:

Congratulations, sir! Enjoy your her big day!

 

We have marriage equality now, you know.  It could be a him!

 

... it's not, but it could be! :)

 

(Actually, until the recent change in the laws, celebrants in Australia were legally forced to make a statement that marriage here was only between a man and a woman.  Both my fiance and I are very happy that won't happen at our wedding.)

 

[gaspe]

MAP02: This follows more the original. It's a good level but nothing particularly striking to me. The boom underwater effect was well done. The shambler encounter scared me, I read that there are included some Quake monsters with dehacked, but you don't know when they will appear.

 

MAP03: This level was very good. I really liked the setting and the aesthetics of the reddish brown bricks and stone looks really cool, also good work on the texturing. The lack of the SG on pistol start is odd, there are many lone foes around and you forced to use the chaingun for various clean ups.

[baja blast rd.]

03: Gibbous Grotto

 

A lot like 'Blight Warf' in that underwater areas and various tucked away caves contribute to the sense that there is more to the environment than what is actually in the map. Monster placement regularly veers into that 'fodder slaughter' territory that I liked a lot about Counterattack, regular clusters of low-tiers designed to be gibbed or mowed down or cluster killed with the SSG. Fun stuff. Encounters are also more interesting tactically. Neat fake-out at the YK, with that light dual mancubus encounter as just a prelude for the real showdown, a vile-shambler-stuff encounter that calls for a strategic movement plan within the surrounding area. The last fight around the silver key switch is a true slaughter fight, as managing the horde of nobles is essential to success. The easy approach is a traditional and typical one -- get rid of the low-tiers first to get more room to work with. There seems to be a calculated effort to populate little recesses in cave areas with small assortments of goodies, to reward exploration. Again, underwater non-secrets are useful; the invul lets you take the sting out of the first big fight. Overall, a good map and worth studying. 

 

There are some minuses though: I found the map quite disorienting, and had to regularly say 'okay go [left / right] now' to guide myself, which generally indicates an inadequacy of visual waypointing. Some of the teleporter locations are also quite wonky: the blue armor secret leads me away from where I actually want to be. And I prefer to be able to avoid chainsaws that I don't want, because switching to the berserk forces an awkward cycle through the chainsaw. On a more minor, cosmetic note, scrags are an okay monster, but the one imp projectile feels too puny of an attack -- a burst of two would be better for appearances, even if it didn't change much about the combat properties. 

 

 

Edited June 4, 2018 by rdwpa

[FrancisT218]

3 hours ago, gaspe said:

The lack of the SG on pistol start is odd, there are many lone foes around and you forced to use the chaingun for various clean ups.

There is one, but strangely it's in an almost quasi-secret area. It's on the side of the big centralized room with the RL.

[Urthar]

MAP03 Gibbous Grotto

 

 

The terracotta theme is one of my favorites in Quake, with a sort of a Late Roman feel to it. So I thought it might be fun to build some catacombs embedded into an underground cave.

 

Once again there's quite a bit of roaming exploration and incidental combat, so to differentiate it from the previous map I decided to make shotgun ammo relatively scarce, and be fairly generous with rockets and bullets, which led to having bigger, more dense fights where the rocket launcher in particular would come to the fore.

 

The Scrag appears here for the first time in the beta, and he proved quite useful. Originally in the alpha there were more Pain Elementals around, but they tended to bog the incidental combat down by being too much of a nuisance. Having a lower threat flying monster helped keep things light. I'm tempted to reduce his health a bit more, to guarantee he'll get one shotted by the SSG and RL, but he's about as close as I get to the original within the limitations of Dehacked.

 

The sprites come from a Realm667 monster called the 'Wicked', and I think Eriannce/Amuscaria did a fantastic job in creating something that looks like a Doom monster sprite rather than a set of low polygon renders. But the best thing about the Scrag, for me at least, is his creepy SFX which almost act like an ambient sound all by themselves.

Edited June 4, 2018 by Urthar

[TheOrganGrinder]

All right, let's do this.  ZDoom, Hurt Me Plenty, continuous play with saves.

 

Dimension of the Boomed

 

MAP01: Slipgate Vertigo

 

Right from the start here the WAD balances its Quake textures and atmosphere with a very faithfully Doom-like openness and playful verticality - commingling the claustrophobic gloom and tendency toward small-scale combats of the one with the vividness and the larger scale of maps and combats in the other is no small task, but I think that's been quite nicely achieved here.  This introductory map isn't shy about quickly bringing into play monsters, spaces, and layouts that might be thought of as more at home in the later map slots of typical WAD progression, with resilient threats that really make the most of the provided rocket launcher, the buffed chaingun, and the substitute-for-Quad-Damage BFG.  Overall it's very much got a feel of being more about spaces than structures, with a layout built around and defined by large silo-like voids, across which the player and all sorts of monsters can trace lines of sight and lanes of fire.

[galileo31dos01]

MAP04: Necropolis

 

Out of what I interpreted as an underground base, plus caves, now we are in a cemetery, and lots of hanging bodies. We get to see the sky much better, I like that how it scrolls like a texture. The task is to locate all the switches that grant access to the golden key, which are well guarded and spread throughout the map. A step in difficulty of two/three levels, and these new things are at least 80% responsible of that. If I have to be honest, my first encounter almost made me poop my pants, since I heard it but couldn't see clearly what was moving. The spawn is a scary dark blue blob that chases the player at the speed of the light... not really, let's say at the speed of Scythe 2's possessed marines. It has a melee attack and explodes upon dying. It also discriminates linedefs and height, meaning that it can drop off a ledge just like maulotaurs from Heretic do. Best tactical approach is similar with pinkies, let the thing touch doomguy, immediately retreat and shoot with one of the shotguns available (best if SSG). This, however, only applies to single spawns, when mixed in groups they become primary threats. Heck, I even dare to say they can beat an archvile in target priority, you'll see why later. 

 

So, yes, spawns are hilarious, annoying, rage/laugh-inducing, ???-tier things that make gameplay so random. The map counts with several key setups (key as important/obligatory), from claustrophobic to some incidental groups, but mostly lock-in traps in the vein of slaughter, more demanding than in previous maps. My two highlights are the blueish symmetric room and the all-custom dudes trap, first one because it includes a variety of monsters which are meant to be dealt with SSG/chaingun, there's a RL there but it's tricky to get to it and not so safe to use it when spawns are around. The other part has a lot of spawns and several scrags, includes a shambler which is best to eliminate as soon as possible. Why are these two my highlights? Well, because they both caused most of my deaths when recording the demo. The other encounters weren't that problematic, I could include the one in narrow corridors with barons and other stuff, which was fun. Talking about barons, I was very surprised to find them in the wad, why does the HK have the baron's sound effects if both coexist in the same wad??. 

 

Anyway, from a pistol start, I found ammo to be very tight. It's possible to run out of bullets if used without caution, so shells play the major role. As a contrast to the previous map, rockets aren't abundant to use against meaty composition, but not super necessary. Berserk and chainsaw exist in case ammo starvation becomes an existing problem, and there's a couple of BFG shots to use strategically, if spawns wouldn't get in the way :P. Secrets are more of a necessity, extras that help a lot instead of something that you can live without. I think I agree with this statement:

 

7 hours ago, Urthar said:

I'm tempted to reduce his health a bit more, to guarantee he'll get one shotted by the SSG and RL

 

Scrags seem to have such a thin hitbox that sometimes a close SSG shot may or may not be enough to kill one, which feels inconsistent. If the player is encouraged to be a point blank to guarantee the kill most of the times (considering blockmap), that could be more interesting imo. 

 

Overall, once again a fun map. Here's a lovely max with my own route. I got very tense in the blueish room encounter, that spawn dodging my shots (x. The map is done at minute 21, and spent extra minutes to find those camouflaged missing items. Failed on that, meh... 

 

 

One thing, map 05 has a monster that remains idle forever, preventing a max at the moment. 

Edited June 4, 2018 by galileo31dos01
typos

[tmorrow]

map04: Necropolis, by Urthar
zdoom2.8.1, uvmax, pistol start, no saves, first time played

The largest Necropolis you could wish to see. This city of the dead wants to claim you as one of their own. At first you wander around and wonder where the hell are all the enemies. You'll regret that sentiment soon enough. A mean mix of monsters is not far away.

The idea seems to be to find your way into certain tombs or crypts, most of them trap you into an area for a tough claustrophobic fight with the enemies that appear, no doubt pissed off that you have invaded their turf. Some of the tombs have a post/pillar with symbols on it that you can lower. There are 8 of these you must find and lower in order to get access to the silver key that leads to the map exit.

Ammo is tight, especially for the larger areas to the northwest and west. With no backpack available, you can easily run out of ammo during these fights while you are trapped in the tomb area and before you have been able to flick the switches that let you back out.

The gold key is the first pickup for progression. The map is sparsely populated for the most part with pockets of high density enemies in the traps. Progression is mostly linear with the exception of the northern section, that once opened can be done at any time, either before or after the northwest or western section. I eventually opted for finishing western section last after picking up the soulsphere and megaarmor secrets.

Some of the fight are quite nasty, especially the ones with our 3rd and final new monster introduced - the spawn. The spawn resembles a blob that moves like greased lightning by bouncing along like a, er blob. He does modest damage in melee range of 10-15 hit points but has a massive explosion when he dies that can easily dish out 70 hit points of damage if the player is nearby. He can drop down into pits to get at you but doesn't seem to be able to scale heights very easily. The spawn only has 80 hit points but due to his movement can be difficult to target, quite the little fucker, especially in confined spaces where the evil Urthar likes to place them. A group of spawn can easily be fatal if they surround you. This map has 28 of the little buggers on UV.

Once again there is a large and rewarding secret hunt. You can earn 2 bfg's for 2 well placed blasts, one on the shambler maybe. A soulsphere and a megaarmor are the other 2 life saving pickups.

The large number of nasty traps make it the most challenging map in the mapset so far. It took me a few tries to uvmax it. The west side area with the imps, manc, revs, and spawn proved to be quite troublesome until I finally came up with a viable strategy.

A bug. At the first lowerable symbol post in the small pit trap involving a pain elemental, imps and demons. If you hit the dagger switch to raise the lift (sector 5825) and pull back into the pit before the lift raises you will be stuck there. The lift is only lowered by approaching the pit from above. The first I time played the map and hit that dagger switch, I instinctively pulled back not knowing what to expect and had to restart the map because I couldn't get out of the pit.

Edited June 5, 2018 by tmorrow
there are 8 not 6 posts, silly me

[Rook]

MAP03: Gibbous Grotto

 

Another impressively atmospheric map with top-tier lighting and cleverly designed encounters. I must admit, though, that I've now become fairly seriously disoriented in every map in the WAD so far, which is taking the edge off my enjoyment. I also feel that balance is a little odd for me, playing on HMP - it's fairly challenging in parts, but some of the secrets seem overpowered to the point of uselessness on this difficulty (particularly invulnerability spheres and BFGs). There also don't appear to be any scrags on HMP. Again, clever but not excessively hidden secrets are a real pleasure here.

[Urthar]

19 minutes ago, Rook said:

MAP03: Gibbous Grotto

There also don't appear to be any scrags on HMP.

 

They should appear on every difficulty setting. Infact I just downloaded the file to double check, and they're definitely there in PrBoom+ (even on wrong complevels.)

[tmorrow]

51 minutes ago, galileo31dos01 said:

Here's a lovely max with my own route.

 

Nice demo @galileo31dos01! My route and strats were quite similar to yours although I did the crusher and northern sections before the northwest (archvile) area. In the north area I cleared the water area before dropping in on the shambler. In the final area in the west (that I found quite difficult), my strategy was to stay up near the pole until all of the spawn had jumped into the pit, just enough time to chaingun the pesky pain elemental before using the bfg secret and then camping the base of one of the mancubus ledges.

Edited June 4, 2018 by tmorrow

[Rook]

2 minutes ago, Urthar said:

 

They should appear on every difficulty setting. Infact I just downloaded the file to double check, and they're definitely there in PrBoom+ (even on wrong complevels.)

 

That's... really odd. I didn't look at my kills percentage, but I'm sure I didn't knowingly see any. Maybe I missed them somehow.

[Urthar]

@RookThat really shouldn't be possible, there's one literally at the start of the map.

 

@tmorrowThanks for pointing that bug out, I'll add it to the fix list.

[gaspe]

MAP04: This is totally different from how I remember Necropolis, I loved to kill the zombies with the grenade launcher there, well that's another story. Here it was done a more proper city, and the map gave me some Doom 64 vibes rather than Quake in the outer area. My favourite thing is that the main area of the city stays without monster all the time, at the start it really builds up some suspence, and usually the mappers later would start to pop up snipers here and there or flood the streets with lots of monsters. The first encounter with the slime monster was a sort of a jumpscare, but its loud squishy sound is very funny, even more when there are many of them. The biggest fights start to get more panic-inducing now, especially the ambush in the western area in those narrow streets. Idk about the crushers, it's an annoying part but it doesn't make so much sense that they are there, it felt like a gimmick to forcefully include crushers somewhere.

[Pirx]

13 hours ago, rdwpa said:

 

 

There are some minuses though: I found the map quite disorienting, and had to regularly say 'okay go [left / right] now' to guide myself, which generally indicates an inadequacy of visual waypointing. Some of the teleporter locations are also quite wonky: the blue armor secret leads me away from where I actually want to be. And I prefer to be able to avoid chainsaws that I don't want, because switching to the berserk forces an awkward cycle through the chainsaw. On a more minor, cosmetic note, scrags are an okay monster, but the one imp projectile feels too puny of an attack -- a burst of two would be better for appearances, even if it didn't change much about the combat properties. 

 

 

no idea where my post disappeared, but anyway:

 

i noticed all you say here too. i can live with the confusing layout, but perhaps urthar could check if the destinations of the teleporters are optimal based on this feedback.

 

that switching to the chainsaw is awkward indeed, i vastly prefer berserk for the mobility i retain, even if the chainsaw is more useful in gzdoom than in vanilla. 

 

as for the scrag, i really like his ghostly appearance. i support the "glass cannon" approach, he could have a burst of several faster (?) imp balls in exchange for further reducing his health, so he poses a threat even if he goes down in one ssg shot. as of now, he's pretty much an imp that floats.

 

btw, any chance for a powerup resembling quad damage? i have savegames in my quake folder just for making it rain gibs  :p

 

Edited June 4, 2018 by Pirx

[galileo31dos01]

1 hour ago, tmorrow said:

 

Nice demo @galileo31dos01! My route and strats were quite similar to yours although I did the crusher and northern sections before the northwest (archvile) area. In the north area I cleared the water area before dropping in on the shambler. In the final area in the west (that I found quite difficult), my strategy was to stay up near the pole until all of the spawn had jumped into the pit, just enough time to chaingun the pesky pain elemental before using the bfg secret and then camping the base of one of the mancubus ledges.

 

Thanks! Initially the blueish room came before the northern parts, so I changed directions at the very last moment, leaving that part to the end. I trusted myself more in that section than in the lift arena, spawns' mobility is so random that you can't lose sight of them, nor the shambler. If you keep in constant movement you can come out unhurt, if one gets in the way you're instantly overwhelmed. That's why I grabbed the soulsphere earlier. It's not like I plan everything, some things work my way, others flow in their own way :P

[Aquila Chrysaetos]

Good news! Maybe. Depends.

Depending on how things go over the next couple weeks, I should have a brand new laptop that can not only play Doom, but, more importantly, connect to the internet directly. How useful! Looking forward to finally getting back in on this.

Also, thanks to @galileo31dos01 for those demos, I'm glad I can see a playthrough firsthand so I don't feel like I'm missing anything.