The DWmegawad Club plays: A.L.T.

[Beezle]

16 hours ago, Pirx said:

sounds like a plan. it's that stupid 28 day month again, and eviternity isn't finished as i see.

Yeah as amazing as Eviternity is, I was gonna suggest that we wait til RC2 but it didn't get any votes. 

[Crusader No Regret]

Only up to map 23 in-game as of this writing.  Less far along with putting my thoughts into text.  I got my mammoth map 11 writeup into a finished state; it's lurking around on page 5.  I'll get around to writing up 13 later.

 

Map 31: 100% kills, 5/5 secrets

 

  The gimmick is that the playspace takes place within the BOS clan logo.  it has its moments and its little annoyances.  Like the small puzzly bits like the yellow key and how to make use of the invulnerability in an optional area.  My annoyances seem to be different than anyone else's being hitscanners shooting at me through walls I can't see through and one faraway chaingunner in the S section that pecks away while I'm going for a switch.  The zoo on the left bracket amuses me with matching textures to the monsters within.  Will concur it's basically shooting monsters in a box.  As for the right bracket optional fight, the pain elementals are corralled by monster block lines so it's easy enough to stand back and let the cyber do most of the work.  The invulnerability is more of a convenience to take out the mass fast than necessary for survival.

 

Map 32: 95% kills, 0/1 secret

 

  I seem to have a very high level of patience for completionism.  This map is an exception.  I'd already 100%ed this before and had no desire to do so again so I took the speedrun path through the map.  Didn't go at speedrun pace and finished with most of the kills anyways.  The frozen AVs are awakened by shooting a wall behind the barrel on a pedestal.  Schmuck bait!  Except I end up blowing it up from a different angle and my gunshots miss the trigger.

 

Map 16: 100% kills, 8/8 secrets

 

  Nothing to add.  For completionists, past the red key door is a point of no return.  I nearly gave up on the soulsphere in the crate room.

 

Map 17: 100% kills, 3/3 secrets

 

  Ordinary techbase that could be dropped into nearly any more conventional mapset.  Despite the ordinariness, still liked that secret outdoor bit.  Computer map secret at the end felt a little silly though it conceivably could be of use.

Edited February 1, 2019 by Crusader No Regret

[Salt-Man Z]

So, uh... are we taking February off? You okay, @dobu gabu maru?

[Magnusblitz]

Looks like Earth / Dawn of the Dead / Classic Episode had enough votes to win (5/14, with NDCP and ESP2 both at 2 votes).

 

I might go ahead and start making a thread for it since Dobu hasn't said anything.

[dobu gabu maru]

Oop, been out of the loop for a while! I'll sit down to make the thread

[Tristan]

Wow that timing was something else

[Demon of the Well]

Sorry to bump this so late, but it'll drive me nuts to leave it unfinished with just a couple of maps to go, like the Icarus playthrough from however long ago that was now.

 

Map 28 -- Gehirn

Quite the opening view, no? In a nighted cavern vaster than any space yet seen, a titanic thread or stem of pale, sickly-looking organic matter stretches from the void above to the charred, dead firmament below, while the screams and gibbering of nightmares made flesh commingle and resound in the ever-growing dark, like the voice of insanity itself. Like a hymn.

 

In "Gehirn" ("Brain") the objective is to destroy the entity or consciousness nestled at the center of the fleshy stem, in what looks like a junction point between the ground below and the void above. This is here represented by Romero's head, though in practical terms you're probably never meant to see it, since the junction is always much too far above or much too distant from any available vantage for a good look (then again, since Johnny's head was displayed so openly in m24 prior, maybe this is merely incidental to the design rather than an attempt at concealment for the story's sake). Some of the in-game conveyance is a bit muddled in that the thing placement seems to build up to your collection of the rocket launcher (suggesting you're supposed to fire it at the junction), yet moments after finally getting it you actually telefrag the head instead (which you've still not actually seen), without firing a shot. Regardless, though, the overall intention is fairly clear--dramatically sever the stem despite all adversity. Gameplay is fairly light--given the space it's quite simple not to fight anything at all if you don't want to--though I don't feel this detracts particularly much in this case. This map and the next represent an alternative way of accomplishing what a traditional endgame IoS does (or should ideally do) in other megaWADs, that being to act as a cathartic display of spectacle.

 

While the brain/skull cavity symbology is fairly obvious, I also get a strong mind/body or even womb/umbilical cord vibe from the setup here, the stem extending up into the unknown and connecting to the earth below, one nourishing or dependent on the other, consciousness itself (as handily represented by Mr. Romero's noggin) caught somewhere between the two.....and said consciousness is about to go "kablooey."

 

Map 29 -- Aske

....quite literally. Status as a second/separate map from m28 seems largely a sidestepping of engine limitations rather than a vessel for a distinct concept in this case--think of it as part 2 of the same scene, as opposed to a different scene. The god-filament severed, whatever link it represented is now rapidly dissolving, and already the firmament begins to collapse and decay, like the uneven dissipation of a fever dream. Plunging bodily into the gaping wound at the base of the stem hurls the protagonist, as so many times before, through space and time to a place at once strange and familiar, the countryside site of the plane crash from early on, now scorched to miles and miles of ash, slowly but interminably drifting away in the breeze, as though it never was.

 

In practical terms this is very much like part 1 prior, with somewhat haphazard staging and largely inconsequential monsters (many of which may never appear depending on where one roams) acting as extras to a more or less obvious traversal goal. I'm more ready to levy some criticisms of being anticlimactic or undertuned in this case (the almost stupefyingly sloooooow trickle of cacodemons out of the wound could've been SO much more impactful in all regards if it had been better staged on a technical level), but for the most part the same assessment applies.

 

Map 30 -- Afterlife

One of the more unconventional m30s I've seen, certainly, and definitely leaves a lasting impression. Heavily surreal throughout, and with an intriguing conclusion that I assure you is much more difficult to see coming if you're actually playing this blind for yourself (as opposed to reading about it in this thread or elsewhere), it plays variously as either a baffling design non sequitur or as chilling exposition, depending on how much one has been personally inclined to read meaning into the storyline and setting up to this point.

 

Moreso than in any other map in the game, everything here is symbolic: The heavily trigger-scripted opening chamber, framed as a 'puzzle' of sorts, feels in action something like ritual, and to my interpretation is meant to recall the four broad 'arcs' of the story through its four portals. The blue dream, a coalescing recollection, a hollow and meaningless act of retribution, and redemption denied. The dismal, unmapped and unmappable labyrinth of morbid brain-like corpse-clay both a metaphor for the journey itself and a reveal of the true nature of the world navigated in the 30 previous levels. The denouement, emerging from the portal, alive, transformed, absolutely; ready at last for the final, shattering realization. But when faced with the truth, can our hero accept it, or retreat once more into a festering demesne of personal delusions, to repeat the cycle anew...?

 

As ever with ALT, of course, the actual nuts/bolts of design and pacing tend towards the somewhat inelegant, yet at the same time it's hard to imagine many of them having quite the same symbolic gravitas so crucial to the level concept and to the game's conclusion were they more streamlined, the admittedly ponderous slog of the brain-mazes a particularly conflicting case in this regard. Wholly apart from all narrative considerations, I do rather like the novel concept of the final encounter, though once again it's markedly undertuned/underpolished/undertested: if you finish it with any considerable amount of health/armor intact (as though this were inconceivable...?), the explosion in the final reveal will very likely fail to actually kill you, which rather pisses in the narrative's cornflakes (so to speak), and at perhaps the most crucial moment of all, at that.

 

So there we have it, ALT; i.e. Jacob's Ladder, except in Doom, more or less.

 

**********

This is a fascinating WAD, and while to those with a vested interest of some sort I may have sounded rather cynical about it for most of the duration, the truth is that I'm really quite glad it exists, and would love to see more WADs celebrate and embrace some of the oft forgotten things it celebrates and embraces. Mind you, I don't think one at all needs to be an exaggeratedly jaded PWAD vet to notice its many practical, technical, and other substantive flaws, and virtually every author involved (obvious exceptions being the missing/lost Azamael and Maddzi) would go on to produce broadly stronger work in every sense in its wake. I find myself flatly unable to buy into the assertion that it is artistically 'punk' in a pure level design sense--the vast majority of its content, viewed either piecemeal as a collection of rooms, sequences, and setpieces, or in a grander stylistic sense, is hardly unheralded in either the established [B0S] brand or in the history of PWADs in general, though granted I think that it has more kinship with late 90s/turn of millennium design than is typical of even the famously divergent Russian style.

 

What is special/unusual about it, though, is its general tone and treatment of narrative, and a particularly insightful understanding on how the latter best works in Doom. We have nearly all of us said/agreed that the non-Azamael maps often seem a mite stylistically 'out of place', but most also agree that this doesn't often detract from the sense of momentum and intrigue, somehow; indeed, I'd venture that to a large extent it's actually quite the opposite. Azamael's particular vision paints an eerie world of delusions where the only real character (also the de facto narrator) is fundamentally unreliable, making for a compelling blend of deadpan serious Doomcute and more classically Doom abstraction, using subtle signifiers in gameplay and level arrangement to encourage us to first suspect hidden meaning in things we'd normally take for granted, and eventually to want to develop a personal scheme for what's happened, what it all means, what symbolizes what, etc. The general tone and style is highly suggestive throughout, but by the nature of the medium there are few definitive answers, which is precisely the point, and therein lies much of the fun of continuing on (fun if you have a disposition inclined towards enjoying the macabre, anyway).

 

If all of that sounds terribly ridiculous to you -- "I'm just here to shoot monsters, dude" -- the beauty is that this interpretation is comfortably served as well, taking things at face value likely reading as reminiscent of classic anthology megaWADs ala the MMs or even true collections ala 'Doom Heroes' or such and their catch-as-catch can (or flatly non-existent) approach to thematic progression. The presence of guest mappers operating under more or less loose interpretations of Azamael's fragmented/incomplete vision adds to the whole on a practical level by offering incidental variety, and on the narrative level by providing gaps of abstraction to leap under the power of one's own imagination. This or that segment 'not making sense' or not gelling with Azamael's particular methodology is an opportunity for a particular type of enjoyment in that sense, a self-aware celebration of what we often call "immersion." Even completely dissociated grab-bag level packs offer this opportunity in some sense--it's the nature of the beast with Doom--but few play upon it so actively as ALT, so keenly aware of the potential in megaWADs and longer sets (vs. single maps or short/focused episodes) to be 'greater than the sum of their parts.'

Edited February 12, 2019 by Demon of the Well

[BeeWen]

A lot of work was done to build a single thread of narrative style and preserve the individual handwriting of various map authors. Some levels were completed more than half, some completely. In addition, each map must have its own individual handwriting. This partly managed to do.
The only problem is the release of the collection. Gone is the earlier version without music tracks in the latest levels. Since I paid special attention to the selection of music, I consider the problem quite serious.
Most of the MIDI was taken from various collections where no specific performer is listed. They had only the song number and that's it. But there were indications of authorship. If there is interest, then I will look in my archives and publish a list of tracks for some time.

[Catpho]

16 minutes ago, BeeWen said:

Most of the MIDI was taken from various collections where no specific performer is listed. They had only the song number and that's it. But there were indications of authorship. If there is interest, then I will look in my archives and publish a list of tracks for some time.

Yes please BeeWen, knowing the authors of the tracks would be wonderful :)