Glaive 2 - a difficult, scythe-inspired mapset (final release)

[EANB]

Final version here: 

https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/g-i/glaive2

 

 

This is a new set of 7 levels for Doom 2 inspired by the gameplay style of Scythe - short, straightforward, and fast paced, with plenty of action and challenge. This is a sequel to the first Glaive mapset which I was pretty happy with. 

 

Requires a limit removing port. Tested in GZDoom and PrBoom. Jumping should not be used, freelook should be fine. Pistol starts are supported, and are possibly the most balanced way to play it (though continuous play is fine)

 

For these maps I had a couple of goals:

A new theme: the first set was techbase, while these maps are set in a hellish environment, with a red-grey color scheme courtesy of the recolored Doom 2 textures pack.

More challenge: On Ultra Violence these should prove to be very challenging. Hurt Me Plenty is slightly more reasonable, though still difficult. Hey Not to Rough is significantly easier. However, monster counts are kept relatively low and I try not to overuse boss monsters.

 

Tell me what you think.

 

 

 

Edited August 22, 2020 by EANB

[General Rainbow Bacon]

Just played the first map.  Really good stuff!  More intense than I was expecting for an opener.  If the rest are like this, please make more.  

[EANB]

Thanks. I wanted to start out intense with some higher tier enemies, though I think I was still able to keep a good difficulty curve throughout the rest of the levels.

[elend]

That is looking great, I will put this in my backlog.

[RonnieJamesDiner]

I played through this between yesterday and today, it took about 45 minutes all together (UV, mostly maxed).

 

I agree, the first map definitely hits you hard (as far as opening maps are concerned), and yet there is still a smooth and satisfying difficulty curve from beginning to end. The second and third map pull it back a bit, giving you lots of firepower and keeping the monsters pretty consistent. By the end of the 3rd map, I could basically smell the Archviles lying in wait -- loved it!

 

The 4th map felt a little like a Dead-Simple-esque arena battle, and served as a nice marker for the WAD shifting gears into the final stretch. My only deaths were on maps 6 and 7, which felt appropriate and made the fights all the more rewarding. I absolutely loved the opening fight on map07!

 

Oh, and...

Spoiler

...the library ambush in map05 was intense. Not sure how I managed to survive that!

 

I had a lot of fun with this, and I was honestly disappointed when it came to an end. Your description, "short, straightforward, and fast paced, with plenty of action and challenge", couldn't have been more bang on. I don't think I'll ever get tired of playing these kinds of Doom maps. I really feel no need to nitpick anything here, this is just pure, fun, classic Doom -- at least, how I think of it.

 

I'll definitely be checking out Glaive 1! 

Edited May 21, 2020 by RonnieJamesDiner

[Defdock]

Is the "chainsaw" included anywhere on the map....?

[Veinen]

Just played through and this is really great stuff. Definitely very classic Scythe-esque aesthetics and I thought combat and difficulty (UV) was very well balanced (for pistol starts at least). A couple of nastier traps (RJD spoiler moment probably the nastiest) but there's really nothing you wouldn't be able to get through first try without foreknowledge. Spheres are pretty abundant so you can recover even if you do get hurt. I left a few of those behind in the later maps but extra health encourages reckless gameplay so I'm not complaining. The invulnerability in map04 could be removed though, in my opinion, as there is really no need for it and it can potentially trivialize the later parts of the map completely.

 

I noticed a few instances of floating items: in 02 the cell pack in the secret was floating above me and wasn't reachable at all, and in 04 some of the single rockets near the edge of the map started floating in mid-air (though they could be grabbed).

 

I recorded UV FDAs for every map, see attachment. Recorded in glboom+ 2.5.1.3 with complevel 2.

FDA_glaive2_Veinen.zip

[EANB]

 

9 hours ago, RonnieJamesDiner said:

I played through this between yesterday and today, it took about 45 minutes all together (UV, mostly maxed).

 

I agree, the first map definitely hits you hard (as far as opening maps are concerned), and yet there is still a smooth and satisfying difficulty curve from beginning to end. The second and third map pull it back a bit, giving you lots of firepower and keeping the monsters pretty consistent. By the end of the 3rd map, I could basically smell the Archviles lying in wait -- loved it!

 

The 4th map felt a little like a Dead-Simple-esque arena battle, and served as a nice marker for the WAD shifting gears into the final stretch. My only deaths were on maps 6 and 7, which felt appropriate and made the fights all the more rewarding. I absolutely loved the opening fight on map07!

 

Oh, and...

  Hide contents

...the library ambush in map05 was intense. Not sure how I managed to survive that!

 

I had a lot of fun with this, and I was honestly disappointed when it came to an end. Your description, "short, straightforward, and fast paced, with plenty of action and challenge", couldn't have been more bang on. I don't think I'll ever get tired of playing these kinds of Doom maps. I really feel no need to nitpick anything here, this is just pure, fun, classic Doom -- at least, how I think of it.

 

I'll definitely be checking out Glaive 1! 

 

Thanks for the feedback! I'm glad you liked the map 7 fight, it took a lot of iteration to get it balanced right.

8 hours ago, Defdock said:

Is the "chainsaw" included anywhere on the map....?

 

None of the maps contain a chainsaw. I didn't think it be useful in many fights.

6 hours ago, Veinen said:

Just played through and this is really great stuff. Definitely very classic Scythe-esque aesthetics and I thought combat and difficulty (UV) was very well balanced (for pistol starts at least). A couple of nastier traps (RJD spoiler moment probably the nastiest) but there's really nothing you wouldn't be able to get through first try without foreknowledge. Spheres are pretty abundant so you can recover even if you do get hurt. I left a few of those behind in the later maps but extra health encourages reckless gameplay so I'm not complaining. The invulnerability in map04 could be removed though, in my opinion, as there is really no need for it and it can potentially trivialize the later parts of the map completely.

 

I noticed a few instances of floating items: in 02 the cell pack in the secret was floating above me and wasn't reachable at all, and in 04 some of the single rockets near the edge of the map started floating in mid-air (though they could be grabbed).

 

I recorded UV FDAs for every map, see attachment. Recorded in glboom+ 2.5.1.3 with complevel 2.

FDA_glaive2_Veinen.zip

Thanks for the demos. The floating rockets are odd, they all have the same X position along the wall but only a couple of them float, and seemingly only when the hidden arachnotrons pop up. Pretty weird.

 

Your demos make me think I could push the challenge even more and reduce the amount of health, but I might leave that for a future wad. Agreed about the invulnerability though, I might move that to HMP only. Also interesting to see the map 5 mastermind get itself stuck several times...I may need to adjust her companions.

 

[Aurelius]

Another limit removing set, nice! Gave this a run with Crispy on UV. 

 

Here's some videos.

Really nice set of maps, good fast paced action. I took some of the maps a bit too cautiously on my first attempts, but found more success with the more aggressive approach later on - and wad rewarded by that on multiple occasions. Scythe inspiration is undoubtedly quite obvious here, and even though I've played only a few maps from that set (heresy, I know) I did feel they fit that theme quite nicely. My personal favourite was MAP04, though MAP05 comes very close too.

 

Spoiler

There was no major criticism in any of the maps, so I'll give a few general comments. A couple of times there was something I like to call a "dick trap" where the challenge comes mainly from the surprise, but not the encounter itself (the dual AV trap in the first map for example.) Now a more experienced player might not have troubles adjusting right then and there, but oftentimes if an encounter's challenge is rendered almost entirely obsolete by preknowledge, then it isn't necessarily a very good encounter to begin with. I'm not saying the encounters here were exactly like that, but I feel there were a few that were close.

 

The Dead Simple finish was maybe a mild letdown, mainly because it ramped up the difficulty by spamming cybies, which mainly act as sponges with this much space and ammo. It was certainly threatening to me, since I tend to be a more sloppy player, but I would say it's not to players more accustomed to slaughtermap types.

Ultimately I enjoyed the set, good hour of fun. The maps never overstayed their welcome, had really fun layouts and never did I feel I was grinding through hordes to the point of boredom. Spot on stuff.
 

[ElPadrecitoCholo]

To be honest, it was quite difficult for me but at the same time entertaining trying your wad, I clearly tried it with some mods used for the vanilla mode, and despite the fact that I had a hard time completing it trying not to die trying, in the end it felt quite Well the fact of having passed it, 7 levels of pure entertainment and stress, by the way, in the last level, a strange event happened to me although beneficial for me, and that is that after finishing with the Spider Master Mind, I saw the 3 Cyberdemons kill each other, then finish killing the last survivor and win the game, an action that probably will not repeat again in a new game, but that was amazing in the same way, my respects for having created these maps so inspired from the famous and difficult wad SCYTHE.

[Egg Boy]

Fun maps! Played on UV in PR-Boom+ Not super hard but a perfect difficulty for me, it even dips into light slaughter towards the end without going to quite the lengths Scythe did. The first three maps really reminded me of something that would appear in E3 of Scythe, while the rest felt a bit more original. One thing they all had in common were their brevity, and common use of some pretty mean traps (especially near the end), these are both positives. My favorite maps were map03, map04, and map06. My least favorite was probably map07, I just got bored of fighting the cyberdemons, there's such a crazy amount of cover that it comes down to simply spamming the bfg in their direction and awaiting their eventual death. Would've liked something more intense by the end, but ended up killing yet more cyberdemons, which you seemed to take a liking to, as they're used in every map after map02, they get a bit grating and I would have preferred more interesting encounters. Overall, a really fun set, I'll have to check out the first Glaive sometime, as it seems to have avoided my detection to this point. 

 

5 hours ago, ElPadrecitoCholo said:

by the way, in the last level, a strange event happened to me although beneficial for me, and that is that after finishing with the Spider Master Mind, I saw the 3 Cyberdemons kill each other, then finish killing the last survivor and win the game, an action that probably will not repeat again in a new game

What port are you using? This is not vanilla behavior as Cyberdemons cannot infight.

 

EDIT: Forgot to mention I played pistol start.

Edited May 22, 2020 by Egg Boy

[Bryan T]

I'm not sure what my feedback is worth considering I played it with mods but I felt that the lower difficulties could be easier. I initially started on HMP since I can usually handle that fine on other wads but on this one I got stomped on the second map. Retried on HNTR and I didn't die until the last map but that was likely because I knew the first two maps at this point and after that I had sufficient gear to make my travels more pleasant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCiqy0Yb4Cc

 

Edit: Bony Member! heh.

 

 

Edited May 22, 2020 by Bryan T

[gaspe]

Have a pack of fdas recorde with prboom+ (on cl 2): glaive2_gaspefdas.zip

 

I remember I enjoyed the first Glaive and I had a good time with this one too. More than Scythe to me this felt more like a "HR-lite" in some parts. I didn't like so much how often those sudden teleporting monsters next to you were used. The first couple of cybies on MAP07 were meh imo, the fight is awkward and they make the final trio more repetitive. I liked the generosity of powerups since they allow you to tackle the maps with different strategies.

Edited May 22, 2020 by gaspe

[EANB]

Thanks for all the feedback. I've made some updates: GLAIVE2f.zip

 

I understand the cyberdemon criticisms, so I've spiced up the final fight. It should be more fitting as finale and be more fitting thematically given some of more notable traps in the wad. It shouldn't be as big of a grind as the old fight.

This should also fix the floating items in glboom and has some minor visual tweaks, and adds co-op starts.

Edited May 23, 2020 by EANB

[ElPadrecitoCholo]

On 5/22/2020 at 2:08 AM, Egg Boy said:

What port are you using? This is not vanilla behavior as Cyberdemons cannot infight.

 

First of all, by vanilla I want to imply the classic method of using the mythical 7 weapons without altering the gameplay environment at all, not only in weapons, but nothing else, for example "FinalDoomer" or "Vanilla as fuck ", among other examples.

 

And second, use the Zandronum port to play both Wads.

[ElPadrecitoCholo]

On 5/22/2020 at 8:35 AM, Bryan T said:

I'm not sure what my feedback is worth considering I played it with mods but I felt that the lower difficulties could be easier. I initially started on HMP since I can usually handle that fine on other wads but on this one I got stomped on the second map. Retried on HNTR and I didn't die until the last map but that was likely because I knew the first two maps at this point and after that I had sufficient gear to make my travels more pleasant.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCiqy0Yb4Cc

 

Edit: Bony Member! heh.

 

 

 

Wow Dude, really you are Bryan T?, I have seen certain gameplays of yours to be able to pass me some maps just because of insecurity, such as, The mega wad called "Nova II"

[Degree23]

Very Scythe-esque! Very much enjoyed these.

[EANB]

Final version is now on idgames: https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/g-i/glaive2

 

This includes another rework of the final fight (it's a bit more elegant than the last version) and a few changes to Map 5.