HR2 Hell's Cauldron remake (cl 9)

[El Inferno]

This is a recreation of Hell Revealed 2 map 29 "Hell's Cauldron". Some other HR maps were remade to death but I think that map 29, which is probably the best HR2 map, also needs some love. And it kinda fits the Halloween theme I guess :D

I made the map from scratch while looking at the original map in the editor. Apart from the cauldron, the visuals are pretty basic but hopefully OTEX will make it more pleasant to look at :) 

The main focus is on combat though, I tried to redesign the fights in this map to be more fun and challenging than original.

 

Essentials: 

Slot: Map01, Monsters: 1119, Music: When The Sun Won't Rise Anymore, Risen From the Dead, Thorny Wall by Thyrbse

Difficulty settings: UV only

Boom compatibility, playtested by me on dsda-doom, made using UDB and Slade 3

Build time: 8 hours, in 1 day.

 

Link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/4dct2xmyxb0kmax/cauldron_remake.wad?dl=0

 

Edited November 5, 2021 by El Inferno

[galileo31dos01]

I gave this an attempt, out of curiosity, in prboom+ with several saves.

 

There's a lot of nice homages and evil twists that I appreciated, cursed and then laughed at, like the BFG secret and its crew of revenants, the chaingunner hills, the barons bridge with new cybs behind me, the cave system with revenants in front of and several archviles on platforms - likely ending up as a personal highlight because I surprisingly did phenomenal if I'm being humble -- and generally speaking a nice sense of scale too, yeah I also liked the original map (to a certain extent) so it's a pretty cool achievement what you went for.

 

I may have not appreciated much the distant revenants at the first (or second?) curvy fight, only because I relied a lot on the cyb and barons getting them occupied and cleaned up for me for some peace of mind, specially when it was time to deal with the archvile deniers, and luckily they thinned them out almost entirely (I saw a lone baron alive way later, lol), and of all the archviles in the map I think my favorites include the ones slowly lowering one by one along with the cyb trio and arachnotrons, because that was a twist in the plot heh, and the "massive" teleporting fight with HKs and imps, which I slightly lucked out thanks to most archviles being immediately caught through crossfire, but it was exciting. Least favorites I think those lone cubicle ones in the stairs, I just had bad luck with complete exposure. Why am I talking so much about one enemy type idk...

 

I did have to put a stop in the ending cauldron. Not sure what's the best way to not be archviled into oblivion simultaneously with infinite heighted by the cacodemons, because once those skinny legends arrive I feel lost already, so many cacodemons in the way. Maybe I have to time out their arrival and hope for the best while bumrushing them? The cell count isn't very generous outside of the centre, which hints me that I should be using rockets on the cacos and spiders, as I did, but my rockets fly over the cacos descending to my spot. One thing I tried was to block the cacos spawning at the entryway, but it didn't make a difference (actually it was worse for me). So yeah, I shall wait for someone knowing better than me what's the plan.

 

Oh, the SMM in the teleporting fight seemed to have troubles arriving in time and spawned when I was at the next bit with cacos/PEs/mancs -- the thing actually set me free from being eaten alive, so it was weird but a win nonetheless. And what's with the bonus potion? (lemme guess, troll move? that's okay though, fits the theme imo)

 

Anyways, thanks for sharing. This wall of text is all over the place omg

[El Inferno]

Thanks for the wall of text @galileo31dos01 :D glad you liked (most of) what I did here 

Those health potions are where the secret megas were previously, but you cant get them anyway since I removed all teleports from lava pits :) 

The original final fight was embarrassingly easy and had the most potebtial imo so I tried to make the most out of it. 

I'll record a playthrough or max at some point but my strat for the final is

Spoiler

First clear the tower with revs and HKs using rockets, then go down and spam bfg to clear imps and atachno and a bit of cacos. 

After about 90 seconds viles are getting revealed (lol) so after about 1 minute of the fight I climb back on the ledges where viles cant target me and slowly circumstrafe sparingly using bfg to clear cacos in the way.

After 1 or 2 loops its over and I clean up stuff with rockets. 

 

That SSM teleport is intentionally pretty slow, cool that it can be helpful in the next fight

 

Edited November 1, 2021 by El Inferno

[El Inferno]

File updated with some minor balance fixes, interpic and intermission music. No new changes will be made unless I somehow broke stuff. Doing some demo attempts but not getting there yet :D

Not sure though if this is going to a standalone map or a part of a bigger project. 

 

Link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/4dct2xmyxb0kmax/cauldron_remake.wad?dl=0

[Nefelibeta]

Just played it, pretty fun, but I wonder how the hell do you beat the final fight consistently with all that arch-viles?

[Vile]

Played through this and it's certainly an improvement on the original.  The textures and sky do improve the atmosphere and I liked the punched-up fights.  The ending was the most problematic and took some time to figure out.  I settled on clearing out the revs/hks, climbing around the outside platforms before eventually moving into the middle and firing away all of the BFG shots that I could and leaving before the archviles arrived, then I went back to the outside and cleared out the cacodemons until I could rocket down the archviles in the middle.  I'm not sure how many approaches there are to this fight but it seems like since the only cells are in the middle and trying to BFG the viles as they appear doesn't work too well, using as many of the cells as possible before they become inaccessible feels like the play.