The DWIronman League dies to: Stardate 20X6

[Steve D]

11 hours ago, seed said:

 

Excuse me, you're stealing my rank.

 

No one else has died on MAP01 yet (beside JudgeDeadd) :D.

 

Just give me a chance, I'm sure I can manage it. ;)

[Pegleg]

On 3/3/2019 at 8:40 AM, seed said:

 

Excuse me, you're stealing my rank.

 

No one else has died on MAP01 yet (beside JudgeDeadd) :D.

 

Judging by my performance this year so far I think I can step up to the plate and challenge that.

[Alfonzo]

2-2-3. Sucks wet, spongy Mud Bunnies.

 

dwironman_33_alfnz4.zip

 

I had three — count 'em, three — opportunities to join the illustrious 1% club. Alas, you need to actually survive the map to gain admission, and while I was doing an excellent job of cajoling the RNG after every hilarious misstep (how many revenant rockets can you juggle before you drop them onto your head, dingus?), no good thing lasts forever. Or even three maps, apparently.
 

Spoiler

 

Death 1: Ribbiks 101: Observe and react. Do not blindly and completely premeditate your execution simply by looking at the layout of the area. I judged the pillars spawning arch-viles to be the likely threat. They weren't — not at first. You have to bait those cyber rockets into the mancubus hordes and then swing around to clear out some space to joust with. Death number one comes at the hands of poor understanding of author intent and design. Not good.

 

Death 2: But this is worse. I legitimately chickened out. I got scared, ran for an exit that didn't exist and got my poor marine plastered against the exit door by a blinding comet trail of rockets. This is gutless Doom at its absolute finest, but it's also remarkably stupid. Of course that exit door wouldn't be open after a time, and spamming spacebar a million times wasn't going to magically open the thing either.

 

Death 3: Completing the idiot trifecta is this pathetic handling of MAP03's great southern arena. Everything was panning out reasonably well for about 50 seconds, and I made the prudent decision to route a way quickly into the middle to pick up the megasphere (no way was I going to play hard-to-get in this situation). In one of the four dividing alleyways, however, I realized two things. 1) I had not adequately shepherded the revenants so that I had enough time to punch a hole into the center and sprint out, and 2) the plasma gun I had selected in anticipation of this problem was empty. I had no cells. There were no cells in the map, in fact — or none that I had seen — and the ones I did have were all carried over from the previous one.

 

 

It's map sets like these that make naked your inadequacies as both a player and problem solver, and these demos have shown me to be an unintelligent coward :). I can console myself with the fact that I haven't played 20X6 in many years (save for MAP01 and part of MAP02, which I recently revisited, and other bits and pieces I clevved to to remind myself of the set's Ironman credentials), but let's be real: March is going to be a long month.

 

Where's the hand grenade of Antioch when you need it?

 

EDIT: @NaZa Just noticed that I accidentally recorded the third demo on HMP. Only the first two demos count, then, and the performance should be marked DNF. Stinks!

Edited March 5, 2019 by Alfonzo
Botched demo

[Bdubzzz]

Category 3 - played through sd20x6 as a reminder on some of the fights yesterday.

 

UV - dead on final fight of Map 02.. 

Spoiler

did it 1st try yesterday no issues but ya.. cyber teleported in front of me pretty much, ate a rocket then died to the follow up rev rockets. Im 99% sure i would of made it through Map 03, Map 04 has 1 "risky" fight, same with 05. 06 has a few fights that could be run stoppers then 07 well id never expect to survive the teleporting rev fight and the final fight in an ironman :p

 

HMP - dead on the final of map 02.. well isn't this familiar.. yeah not trying HNTR.

 

Dubz-SD-IM.zip

[NaZa]

6 hours ago, Alfonzo said:

EDIT: @NaZa Just noticed that I accidentally recorded the third demo on HMP. Only the first two demos count, then, and the performance should be marked DNF. Stinks!

Alright. To all, sorry for not updating my monthly board, as I have been fairly demoralized by my run, but it will be updated through this week

[Bob9001]

Well I would think, I could be some what good at these

 

but nah, couldn't even make it past the first map.

 

Best attempt was HMP were I got some what into the map.

 

1-1-1

 

Category 1. Probably won't try this again until I see a wad that I know.

 

dwironman-Bob.zip

Edited March 5, 2019 by Bob9001

[NaZa]

 

1 minute ago, Bob9001 said:

Category 3

That's prepared run, blind is category 1.

 

Also woah I'm not last...

[Bob9001]

27 minutes ago, NaZa said:

 

That's prepared run, blind is category 1.

 

Also woah I'm not last...

Thanks, I didn't know if it was 1 or 3.

[leodoom85]

Well, surprise that I went all yolo and played this set completely blind and GLBoom+ was used on this. How it went? Here's the result:

• UV: Dead on map 02, big fight, 159/449 monsters (Yes, I checked the demo to see how much monsters are dead before I was killed).
• HMP: Dead on map 03, another big fight, 174/436, same check as before for demo.
• HNTR: Dead on map 04, yet another big fight, 148/370, same thing.

And here's the demo: dwironman_sd206_ld85.zip

Contain all 3 demos, last letter has the difficulty used on demo (E for easy, M for medium, the other one without letter is the hard skill)

I can say that it was a nice wad from the maps that I played...

[SleepyVelvet]

Dead: 2-2-3 (Category 2)

 

Cool

edit: last fight of Map03 did me in.  It kinda snuck up on me because I never played that far into stardate yet

Edited March 6, 2019 by NoisyVelvet

[NaZa]

Wha- my run is missing from the OP again...

[Scotty]

Map02 death (map01 beaten in 13:35). That teleporting monster fight is a bitch at the best of times and i couldn't really remember what the good strategy for it was. My time for map01 isn't really quick but i am expecting a lot of people to die on map02 so hopefully it's good enough for an ok placing.

 

I think Alfonzo was on a mission to ensure zero survivors this month with this pick, after the pretty high survival rates on Formalhaut :D 

 

 

Scotty20x6.zip

[seed]

Speaking of survivors, it's going to be even more interesting when 20x7 will be eventually chosen for Ironman, that's gonna be another guaranteed MAP01 death on my list :D.

[Urthar]

Category 1, UV(1) & HMP(2). I might give HNTR a go tomorrow.

 

DWIronmanStardateUrth.zip

 

Update: Pretty much died in the same place on HNTR.

 

dwironman_stardate_urthar_HNTR.zip

Edited March 10, 2019 by Urthar

[Pegleg]

On 3/7/2019 at 6:51 PM, Scotty said:

I think Alfonzo was on a mission to ensure zero survivors this month with this pick, after the pretty high survival rates on Formalhaut :D

 

That might not be far off. Alfonzo seems to have taken to following up mass survivals with mass casualty events. In fact, in the introduction for "Combat Shock 2," he wrote:

Easy sets like Mapgame have been followed up with more harrowing stuff like Vae Victus.

 

But is he trying for more than that? Is he trying for more than just following up "easy" maps with "hard" maps?

 

2017

• In April, Alfonzo selected "Mapgame." There were 21 survivors (out of 39). By his own admission, he chose Mapgame to make up for the difficulty of "Back to Saturn X: E1" the month before. So how did Alfonzo follow up Mapgame? In May, 2017, he selected "Vae Victus I & II" and there were only 4 survivors (out of 32).
• In December, Alfonzo selected "Doom the Way iD Did." There were 13 survivors (out of 36). The next month, he selected "Combat Shock 2" and there were 2 survivors (out of 32).

2018

• In March, Alfonzo selected "Warlock's Hearth." There were 14 survivors (out of 42). In April, Alfonzo selected "50 Monsters." No one survived (out of 38) and only 3 competitors even made it to the final third of the megawad.

Yes, it's possible to find exceptions to this rule, but the trend seems not entirely unfounded. Last month, 13/34 survived Formalhaut. This month, he chooses a Ribbiks mapset.

 

I leave it to you, dear readers, to decide for yourselves.

[Pegleg]

By the way, in case anyone was wondering, based on @NaZa's spreadsheet through last month (yes, competitors and survivors are rounded to the nearest whole number where necessary), these are the statistics for monthly participation through 32 months of the DWIL:

 

 

 

^{Yes, the standard deviation for survivors is greater than the median. That is due to the outliers that skew the averages and the fact that the distribution is not statistically uniform.}

[Steve D]

On 3/11/2019 at 1:29 PM, Pegleg said:

 

That might not be far off. Alfonzo seems to have taken to following up mass survivals with mass casualty events. In fact, in the introduction for "Combat Shock 2," he wrote:

Easy sets like Mapgame have been followed up with more harrowing stuff like Vae Victus.

 

Great analysis. It gives me hope. Tbh, I actually have hope that I can beat Map01 of Stardate20x6 on UV. Doesn't mean I will, but my practice run seemed promising halfway through. All I need now is time to actually play Doom. Frustrating month on that front so far. :(

[DMPhobos]

Come up! come up! and see some deaths that normaly should had been easily avoided
 

Died at map01 on all lives, completely blind

[leodoom85]

Thought that Stardate session would be kinda dead but no.....there's still time to test the skills

[Suitepee]

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/400666291

 

Cat 1 run. 1-3-3.

Edited March 24, 2019 by Suitepee

[Alfonzo]

@Suitepee I thought you battled manfully in MAP02 and 03, and deserved to survive MAP01 as well. Very nicely done overall. A cyber that has already been alerted to your presence and spawns in at a distance, where it can loose rockets without sound reaching the player, is a sinister thing.

Edited March 25, 2019 by Alfonzo

[dt_]

 

Blind run, snuffed it on map2

 

I feel like I should have tried to participate in that fight, will remember to use weapons next month

[DeletedUser]

One death on Magnus and a skin of teeth finish on HMP.

 

DWIronman_stardate20x6_BlooditeKrypto.zip

 

Which is good, because I would have called bullshit on surviving Magnus on UV xD The finale of Vehelits and some encounters of Magnus start to lean towards requiring some good luck to avoid getting plastered. In this case, fatigue got the better of me as the first Magnus performance was lacking, being clumsy and taking avoidable hits, then succumbing to confusion in the battle which saw my demise, it was a wise decision to take a short break to recharge before tackling it again on HMP. Very proud to reach Magnus though, I was expecting to die at the end of Vehelits but talent and good luck allowed me to cheat death. My highlights would be taking no damage in the Mud Bunny hellspawn warping frenzy and overcoming the red key area of Vehelits. I played Stardate in SP once and in TNS, I rarely replay wads unless I intend to make speedruns. Thanks to @Alfonzo for allowing us to revisit this masterpiece and @Ribbiks for demonstrating his impeccable talent at crafting addicting gameplay and gorgeous architecture.

[Alfonzo]

@Bloodite Krypto Happy to provide a challenge suitable to your skill level every once in a while! And it's also great to see at least one of the veterans giving the 1CC format a fair shake after they cop it on UV. I look forward to watching this run (and learning a few things, while I'm at it).

Edited March 28, 2019 by Alfonzo

[Pegleg]

3 hours ago, Alfonzo said:

I look forward to watching this run (and learning a few things, while I'm at it).

 

I've watched some runs by Bloodite, Ancalagon, ZeroMaster, and many of the other masters and I usually come away with one of two reactions, either:

• "But ... that's what I did! ... I just, you know, died when I tried it."

or

• "What? How? What?"

[Pegleg]

Early in the month, I said to myself, "Self, this month is going to be busy. It will probably be toward the end of the month when there will be time to take a crack at this."

 

Now, as the month is drawing to a close, I said to myself, "Self, this is probably about the only time left this month that won't be taken up with something else. Now is the time."

 

Without further ado, here is my submission for this month's Ironman:

dwi_pegleg_sd20x6.zip

 

Category 1

UV: Dead on Map 01, 14/222

HMP: Dead on Map 01, 13/174 (I killed fewer monsters, but it was a higher percentage of what was there, so does that count as doing worse or better?)

HNTR: Dead on Map 01, 20/174

 

All 3 demos are together in the zip file above as separate files.

 

I will say that I liked what I played of Map 01 of Stardate 20x6. The monster placement was good and the visuals, I thought, were quite nice. Purple in Doom is always an refreshing change from the normal palette. Maps by Ribbiks aren't always my cup of tea, but he does make very good maps, I think.

[Beginner]

Category 3 shitshow. Dead at map 02.

[Grain of Salt]

22 hours ago, Bloodite Krypto said:

The finale of Vehelits and some encounters of Magnus start to lean towards requiring some good luck to avoid getting plastered.

 

There's actually a fairly manageable cheese strat for the end of Vehelits! Available on request.

 

Turns out deleting @s from quotes is one of those things which is unreasonably hard in the new software. Interesting.

[seed]

14 hours ago, Pegleg said:

Maps by Ribbiks aren't always my cup of tea, but he does make very good maps, I think.

 

Except when you run into maps with 6 keys (I think magnolia had such a map, the first one? I don't remember exactly.) These maps are never my cup of tea, they almost always become confusing sooner or later due to their puzzley nature. But then my sense of direction is nonexistent and I often miss obvious things, sometimes even having the answer in front of me and still not seeing it, so whatever...

 

Wish 20x7 was closer to the philosophy of 20x6 tbh. I swear I'm going to kill myself on purpose early on when it will be eventually chosen for Ironman.

Edited March 29, 2019 by seed

[Alfonzo]

6 minutes ago, seed said:

I swear I'm going to kill myself on purpose early on when it will be eventually chosen for Ironman.

 

There's a lot of good Doomin' to get through before we reach 20x7. Who knows when that will be! You could very well grow from a seed to a cedar by then.

 

@dt_ Your video appears to be down. Do you have a demo, highlight or some other past recording I can look at?

Edited March 29, 2019 by Alfonzo