LadyMistDragon Posted February 15, 2023 Map 07: Gateway to Hell Here's a map that seems less to challenge a player and more to annoy the ever-living shit out of them. The simple long marble hallway with a Cacodemon and Pain Elemental at the end doesn't really seem like too much, although you have to run behind the column at the end to find adequate weaponry for them. Hit the switch that's also here and don't worry so much about the Revenant and imp up here, then the walls of this hallway lower down, lowering down a broadly diamond-shaped and quite large outdoor arena with Mancubi on each of the platforms. Seems like shooting fish in a barrel but for basically no reason whatsoever, a few of the pillars will have Mancubi teleport to replace their fallen comrades! Unless some justification is found like in Map 03 of Ancient Aliens, this is just an idiotic timesink that needlessly slows things down. You should at least try to kill the ones on the platform with the berserk because stepping on said platform causes the blood to dissipate (a trick that has to be learned in vanilla so its kind of impressive in the technical aspect) and various weapons though because you'll need them, as you might expect. But otherwise, head back to the little nook where we saw the Revenant and Imp at the other end of the hallway then hit the switch here, which unleashes some chaingunners, shotgunners, Imps, Revenants and lastly, some crazy Arachnotrons! Try to get some of them to infight with the Mancubi, but the superior elevation of the Mancubi, not to mention the pillars in the middle, make this prospect at least somewhat daunting. The corners of the map where these enemies emerged from contain blood that saps twenty percent of your health. Inexplcably, one of these pools is larger than the other, meaning that we'll have to do some tic-counting in order to get across safely with the low amount of health we have. Honestly, we should have saved the Megasphere after the first death, but we were in a rush. The little rooms at the ends here have switches which when both pressed, will unleash two pairs of arch-viles from either side of the blood pool. Oh, and the Mancubi pillars will do nothing but reduce the damage you take from their flame attacks so only hide behind them as a last resort While we can take out the ones closest to us, the other 2 will be able to resurrect a fair amount of enemies, including chaingunners and Arachnotrons that all but forced a rewind or two, the reason saving the Megasphere is actually fairly wise! So once everything else is dead, there'll be a large wooden door with some medkits on the ledge next to it that thankfully has solid ground that you can wait on. Deal with the trash in the curving and descending hallway, kill a chaingunner in the exit room because that's the tone of #1, then finally exit! This would probably be easily the best so far, more so than Country Side, but those replacement Mancubi, along with arguably needlessly stingy health, do drag this thing down a ways. I'm pretty sure teleporting enemies onto pillars especially if they're accessible, is a huge pet peeve of mine. So annoying #killtng07-.zip 7 Quote Share this post Link to post
Ralgor Posted February 15, 2023 On 2/14/2023 at 4:27 PM, Andromeda said: You can actually access this closet through an unmarked lift. That would have made that room quite a bit easier if I had known about it. I'm wonder why Angelo didn't mark the lift. It's not marked as a secret, and without the lift that room is kind of annoying to clear. 2 Quote Share this post Link to post
Book Lord Posted February 16, 2023 MAP 08 – Hell’s Welcome DSDA-Doom v0.24.3, UV, Pistol start, non-blind run w/saves The highlight of this level was the fierce committee of monsters that Jefferson set up to give the warmest Hell’s Welcome. The Tyson-equipped pistol starter is flung into a brown stone room filled with vicious opponents, most notably Chaingunners, overwhelming Cacodemons, Revenants shooting from a cage and Demons ready to get in the way. I struggled a bit to get past this abrupt choke point, and I noticed that sprinting resolutely upstairs granted better chances of survival, along with the SSG. Spoiler I was badly wounded, and I played so sloppily in the next corridor shooting session that I dropped at 1% health. There were some bonuses and a freebie Combat Armour, so I carried on but must play carefully for the whole stretch to the BSK. This section was not particularly interesting: a supremely brown indoor area with frontal opposition, adding only a few closets that repopulated the way back to the blue door. The RSK section worked in a similar fashion, except that the walls were BROWNGRN and the compartments with enemies opened closer to Doomguy. Backtracking to the red door was idle again, so I took the opportunity to check the automap: I discovered a hidden room with health and even a Soul Sphere, surprisingly missing the secret sector tag. The last third of Hell’s Welcome consisted of passable corridor shooting with nothing worthy of mention, until the courtyard with the slime river was encountered. The outdoor area featured elevated Revenants & Imps, paired with Arachnotrons and hitscanners on the floor. Breaking through the door was tricky, and dropping in the chasm exposed me to Spectres and unusually effective Troopers. On UV, a Radiation Suit was placed deep inside the acid tunnel, where it was useful only for the return. I rode up the lift with a Cacodemon and met 2 Pain Elementals in a small space; I was forced to hug them to avoid Lost Soul spawning and punch. Once I picked up the rocket launcher and the YSK, a Cacoswarm and a group of Barons assaulted me from the opposite side. I did not have enough rockets for the job, so I must finish them off with all my leftover ammo. I retrieved the plasma rifle from the obvious secret and scored the two other secret sectors, which were likely an oversight just as the previously untagged secret. Spoiler The plasma rifle allowed me to rapidly vanquish the remaining enemies between the courtyard and the exit. I had mixed feelings about this map: the first room was hectic and exciting, and the outdoor courtyard demanded both strategy and appropriate tactics, but they were flashes in the pan. Most of the action was hallway shooting, and the uninspired visuals matched the general dullness. I suppose this was one of the author’s first Doom II efforts, gaining a position in the second third of the megaWAD only because of the shocking first room. 7 Quote Share this post Link to post
brick Posted February 16, 2023 GZDoom, Doom compat, software, HNTR, blind, continuous with saves. TNG MAP07 - “Gateway to Hell” A much shorter map, though I hesitate to call it a breather, as it's pretty intense at times. Most of the action happens in the central arena, with a series of switches successively opening the next one and unleashing waves of various enemies. One such enemy is the damaging floor, excursions across it are short but there are no radsuits, and it does limit the ability the dodge on a couple of the fights. Not much to say, it's a simple (not necessarily easy) map, and show once again Angelo's desire to constantly try something different. TNG MAP08 - “Hell’s Welcome” Back to a more traditional exploration-style map. It's not technically a hot start, but the very first lift puts you in a pretty hairy situation. The map is very fond of having enemies behind you to give you a tap on the shoulder. Even the progression works a bit like this, there are many switches and they often open one or more closet on the way back, never a dull backtrack. One memorable bit is an unofficial secret leading to a Supercharge that puts you right back at the start, going through the "entry" door that is often there in the iwad maps and is never an actual door. I think the trickiest part was in the NW, there's a slime pit you have to wade through to get to the yellow key. I foolishly picked both radsuits, and on the way back found a baron (UV has 3!) attacking from above and many cacos flying in, while my radsuit time ticked away. Frantically dealing with just enough cacos so I could make my way back up and then cleaning the rest with rockets was very fun. 7 Quote Share this post Link to post
dististik Posted February 16, 2023 MAP06 - Central Command I'm torn on how to feel about this one. This (or I guess yesterday now that it's 2am) morning I happened to wake up early, was in a much better mood than the day before, I booted up Doom and thought this is a good opportunity to get two maps out of the way and not fall behind again. First 10 or so minutes was pretty engaging, it was fun carefully peaking around corners at low health trying to salvage arms off of the myriad of hitscanners -- something about this map made that process more enjoyable than the previous, probably the lack of snipers -- had a laugh at the random hall of mirrors, made my way to the crate maze and as I was leaving I noticed oh huh, this secret hallway on the automap rendered, I wonder how I saw it. Not long after I noticed a small hole in the wall and heard the zombies behind it, ah gotcha so there's some trigger somewhere that'll open that bit of the wall up, surely, since interacting with it does nothing. I probably just haven't reached it yet. So, I keep going, and then I notice two more secrets on my automap just like it. Okay, weird, maybe they all open up from the same place? After all it's not unlike this mapper to put several near-identical secrets in the same map and have them each individually count as secrets. Hitscanners continue to beat me down a bit, I admit I was playing pretty sloppy and standing around those secrets occasionally got me shot by the lads inside, but I push on and eventually find the big room with the damaging floor moat. I somehow miss the radsuit each time I take a dive in so I think the intended strat is to push the switch and book it for the raising bridge. After all, despite being a concrete flat, the floor by the button was also damaging and I have all these monsters on my tail so that's got to be what I have to do. So I go through with that plan, and realize an issue. I entered this room with 48% health and my plan was way too costly to get out with that much, I simply take way too much damage from the floor. Okay, that's irritating, so I backtrack a bit, insistant to myself that this is surely what the level wants me to do. While I backtrack I keep hearing the zombies in the secrets and this starts to really tick me off. "What am I supposed to do to get to you?!" Eventually I find some medkits, bumping me up over 75%, go through with my plan on the damaging floor, frustrated at the vision of map progression I convinced myself Angelo had, completely miss the rocket launcher, and then push onwards. Past the blue key door I notice yet even more inaccessible secrets as the hitscanners high above the ensuing chaos very rarely, but common enough to get on my nerves, land hits on me. That's 5 in a row now that I have no idea how to get. I clear out the computer room, humping literally every wall in the place, eventually get tired and move on. At this point I have much lower ammo than I'd like, but 32 rockets. "Why in the everloving fuck would this map give me 32 rockets but no rocket launcher," past me wonders in what's critically approaching genuine anger. This was the point of no return. The next fight is perfectly doable but every little thing gets on my nerves. Every mapping mistake, every lost soul, every bit of not immediatley obvious progression; I accidentally grabbed the red key through the impassible line def but because I happened to kill a cacodemon in front of it I thought it was just on the floor, not realizing the maze with ambushes I did afterwards was the intended way to get it. That caused me to get even more irrtated when I fully explore it and come to the false conclusion that it was all pointless. I then spend entirely too long roaming around the map looking for ways to open up the secrets, realize it had come about time for me to leave for work, I check the wiki and it tells me that LONG ago these secrets became perminantly inaccessible. I am nearly fuming. Not counting loads, that entire experience took me nearly 50 minutes, counting them I'm sure it approaches 90. Into the Beast's Belly has been seared into my brain literally all day long. Fortunately I'm not a spiteful person so the time away from the video game makes me look back at this and really realize how much of a big baby I was being and laugh -- none of this is the map's fault (okay maybe the radsuit could have been telegraphed a bit better but I digress), I'm just kind of a klutz. Since I don't want to get hung up on the map yet again, I'm going to leave it at this, but let those intense, engaging first 10 or so minutes have the final say on the map. I'm going to assume present and future me would like it (especially now that I know how it all functions). MAP07 - Gateway to Hell This sure is one of the maps of all time. I'm going to chalk to a bit of a skill issue on my behalf and also being a bit tired after work but unlike the previous map where I was just being Doom's largest dingus this one just goes down a checklist of things I'm not a huge fan of. Being forced to take damage multiple times in the presence of high damage monsters? Check. Being punished for using my rockets before when I assume the map wanted me to? Check. Unclear map progression? Check. Top it all with excuse me how many archviles? With this ammo? In this economy? I also could not figure out how to reach the end without an archvile jump (which lead to me opening UDB and looking at the previous map as well, still not entirely sure) and I supremeley could not be arsed to properly kill every vile so we're going to cheat a little here and call killing 102 out of the 88 monsters while keeping three of them alive all the kills. It's our little secret. 7 Quote Share this post Link to post
Doomy__Doom Posted February 16, 2023 (edited) MAP 07 Easily the best combat so far. A weapon that forces you to come close, or at least not snipe from absolute safety of the door/switch. Torches that remove "easy" cover from the equation. Just enough ammo that you'll have to move for pickups on the platforms. My only complaint here is that I'd prefer a streamlined option of less shells and no replacement Mancs. You can get them stuck on lifts to punch out easily anyway once you've tripped the "floor fix". Then comes an open space wave which features hitscan, so you can't just blindly circle strafe, but also can't stay in place due to revs/spiders. Well, unless you did really well in part one and still have decent armor and refill Mega, which is something you really want to save. But even then, you'll want to circle with a chaingun instead of the usual choices for that activity. And then the excellent Vile wave - faraway group is guaranteed to spread around in a way that forces to adapt. Plenty of pillars to work with, but the manc podiums can only consume blast damage. I can see 20% floor being unpleasant for many, but you can nukage rhytm most of it so it's okay in my book. MAP 08 Eww. An ugly tyson start followed by a slow grind through stuff with 3/4, while picking up almost 300 plasma, to only see the actual weapon after ~80% of the enemies are dead and the area it's in could use the thing to clear it in the first place. And RL is also there. Just... WHY??? Why could that plasma not be behind blue door? Sorry, I got nothing nice to say here. Falling back into terrible weapon allotment is a solid idclev09/10. Edit: I've played MAP09 ahead just now and got a warning - I've triggered an intercept overflow (all-ghosts bug) by firing south-west on a "balcony" at the end of BSK section. So if you're playing on a port which emulates this behavior, consider a visit to the settings/different complevel/different port. Edited February 16, 2023 by Doomy__Doom 6 Quote Share this post Link to post
Roofi Posted February 16, 2023 (edited) Number One Kill The Next Generation - Map 08 "Hell's Welcome" I'm currently on map 12 in this wad on continuous , and whereas I expected a polished mapset for the 90's era, I underestimated its difficulty to the point I start to consider that the doom community tends to overrate "Hell Revealed" as a reference for old-school hard wads. I think Angelo 1KIll's traps tend to be more creative and efficient, specifically because the barons are not overused and the ammo is tightly balanced. I also noticed he has the gimmick to create traps with a floak of cacodemons accompanied with few pain elementals (not the case in this map though). Map 08 represents the point where Angelo doesn't joke anymore with ammo management. The mandatory berserk pack in the very first lift is not here by decoration. You have to use it in order to not run out of ammo in this map, considering you have to cross narrow paths and perform backtracks. There is a plasma gun in this map but obtainable very late in this map , and in a secret ! Maybe too late because I finished this map with a lot of cells while I was struggling with my few shells and bullets. The RL is only useful in the trap involving the few barons and cacodemons. Contrary to the Ultimate Doom's episode, Getting powerful weapons late in the level not only makes the game grindier but also considerably more difficult. As several maps in this wad, map 08 has an unfriendly start with notably some hitscanners ready to turn you into pieces. Just for this reason, I strongly advice you to play this wad on continuous before attacking on pistol start. Don't try camping below the lift because the cacodemons will prevent you from going up. About the theme, it takes place in an earthy base which resembles to a kind of sewers. I can't see the link with hell, except the monsters. Anyway, I like this map. The next one should be a lot nastier on pistol-start ! Grade : B Edited February 16, 2023 by Roofi 6 Quote Share this post Link to post
Helm Posted February 16, 2023 MAP08 Oh boy what a grind... I tried to play more ammo conservative but I ran out of stuff at many points. There is a lot of saving and reloading before I get the exit. I am starting to be of the mind that the best way to play these is to start any given map, just tntem, find where the closest good gun is and then start from the top. I took a long detour and single barreled a lot of stuff meant for both barrels, but the endgame plasma is inexcusable. Honestly, the late RL is pretty terrible too. The map is good, has good flow, I didn't get confused anywhere and no doom machinery broke. So this is purely down to layout and item placement and those are occasionally cruel but only the late map guns are bad in that anti-fun way for pistol start at least. footage 5 Quote Share this post Link to post
Celestin Posted February 16, 2023 MAP08: Hell's Welcome This map was not intended for pistol-start, period. Not only it's tight on ammo, but there are encounters which are a royal pain in the ass to beat without bringing an arsenal from previous levels. Exhibit A: the starting area, an open room with chaingunners, pinkies, cacodemons and two revenants behind nearby bars. What do you have to deal with them? A berserk pack. Good luck. Exhibit B: the yellow key area. It's a complete clusterfuck, where you have to go down into a trench filled with poison, spectres and zombies, kill two pain elementals in a guardpost and open a door to reveal the key an a rocket launcher. If you fire a shot, the whole courtyard fills with cacodemons. The only way out is an elevator, but there are revenants and/or barons on a platform above. If you're unluckily, they'll maul you to death. Now, camp in a room from where you came from - cacodemons tend to congregate near the window overlooking the courtyard, so wait until barons kill. If barons teleport to your side of the trench, that's actually good, as you can easily dispose of them with berserk and whatever ammo you have left. A plasma rifle would be nice, you get plenty of ammo along the way, but you only find one in a secret right after dealing with all this bullshit, when the map is almost over. It feels like spitting in player's face, besides, who is it meant for? Obviously not for pistol-starters, but continous players could find one in two previous levels. I get I might have played the map in a way that was not intended, but this is the most frustrating entry of this month. 5 Quote Share this post Link to post
Ralgor Posted February 16, 2023 MAP08 - “Hell’s Welcome”dsda-doom v0.25.6 cl2, UV, Pistol start, blind run, single segment 100% kills and secrets Deaths: 14 This map should have just been called "Brown With a Dash of Green". There's very little color in this map. The exceptions are the keys and one pond of water. So much of this map just blends together to the point where I can't remember much of it. This might be the blandest map of Angelo's yet. When pistol starting, the opening to this map is the most brutal yet. The best way I found was to charge the imp at the top of the stairs and punch him, and then go for the chaingunner. Then you can pick up the SSG and take out the cacodemons. This strategy doesn't work most of the time, but I can't imagine charging a chaingunner from across the room with nothing but berserk would work any better. The only real challenge left in this map is to slip past the pinkies at the bottom of the stairs and take out the chaingunner next to the door. Then you can take your time clearing the rest of this room, and in fact the rest of the level. There's really no point in giving a play-by-play of rest of the map, since there's very little to talk about. I screwed up once and let a baron kill me, but it was entirely my fault. The rest of my fourteen deaths were in the opening room, the shortest of which lasted only 11 seconds. My second attempt past the first room was a success. The map also has way too much backtracking. If you don't pick up the blue key through the bars in the first room, it's going to require you to trek through the map to get to the blue door. And then again for the red door. There's no shortcuts to unlock either. The secrets were just silly. Two of them were just across the nukage and didn't have anything worthwhile on them. Most players probably wouldn't bother attempting the jump since there's no point. Then you have some hidden resources that should be secrets but aren't. It seems like Angelo just doesn't like common secrets. The map can be a little tight on ammo if you don't use the provided berserk pack, and be careful about picking up excess ammo early on in the map. In my last playthrough I relied on berserk a little too much, but it made things more interesting. Unfortunately, despite the copious ammo for it throughout the level, the plasma rifle is placed near the end. Having it earlier would probably have made the level even more boring though. Grade: D MAP08 - 26:27.37 (26:27) K: 243/243 I: 58/58 S: 3/3 ralgor_#1killtng08.zip 6 Quote Share this post Link to post
Book Lord Posted February 16, 2023 (edited) 5 hours ago, Roofi said: I'm currently on map 12 in this wad on continuous , and whereas I expected a polished mapset for the 90's era, I underestimated its difficulty to the point I start to consider that the doom community tends to overrate "Hell Revealed" as a reference for old-school hard wads. I think Angelo 1KIll's traps tend to be more creative and efficient, specifically because the barons are not overused and the ammo is tightly balanced. I also noticed he has the gimmick to create traps with a floak of cacodemons accompanied with few pain elementals (not the case in this map though). The main differences between Hell Revealed and this WAD are the scale (HR inflates its monster count and HP but usually gives ample resources, while TNG keeps both things under control) and in the quality over quantity approach. I cannot say #1KillTNG is an ultra-polished work, as it features bugs and oversights that are not present in HR, but the gameplay relies on deadly ambushes that might kill you with a handful of monsters if unprepared. I am replaying it on pistol start and I am enjoying it even more than on continuous, observing a tight balance in the provided ammo and weaponry. MAP07 and MAP08 are examples of difficult pistol start and bad weapon progression, but things tend to improve a lot in the next maps. The level stretch 09-16 has some great stuff to play and admire. I cannot change the mind of people playing pistol start on their first attempt, but I think they should reconsider it, or turn the difficulty down a bit. The reviews on ONEMANDOOM.com are often critical towards Angelo's encounter design, but the author never thinks it might be better to play on a lower difficulty. Ironically, the review of Hell Revealed on the same site cites Donner's famous observations about people always playing on UV and complaining that HR is too difficult, instead of playing at a lower skill to practice the maps. Angelo was not that clear (and taunting) in his statements, but he wrote "first two = ultra violent in doom and hurt me plenty in doom2, hurt me plenty = ultra violent doom2 hurt me plenty final doom, Ultra violent = hurt me plenty with fewer health and more monsters". According to this statement, UV should be a hardcore version of Final Doom on Hurt me plenty with reduced health and more monsters, which sounds a bit like UV Plutonia with less health. Still, there are moments when things go well beyond what we have seen in the Casali IWAD. Some advice for the next maps: - do not rush into new areas - enter a teleporter and use a blind elevator with your fastest weapon equipped - check the automap as you progress - always try to acquire a weapon on display - do not waste rockets or cells - be careful before approaching keys or pressing switches that look important - there's no shame in saving when you do not know what to expect Enjoy! Edited February 16, 2023 by Book Lord 8 Quote Share this post Link to post
LadyMistDragon Posted February 17, 2023 (edited) Map 08: Hell's Welcome I hate dying like this..... What a hot start! The Super Shotgun is actually not that far away at all, but these largely claustrophobic environs really contribute to making this quite difficult. I survived this opening salvo but was left with 1 percent of health. The layout is a bit of a bland mess, with lots of twisting corridors in something that probably draws inspiration from Doom 1 techbase with the mix of brown and green. Although misalignments are quite common as a result basically whenever there's lots of sharp curves. Combat has some lulls, but never lets up. The Pain Elementals prove to be the absolute worst, and while the chaingunners are nearly as bad, it's at least possible to hide from them long enough to get a bead on them.....mostly, apart from one case where a close-quarters Arachnotron really managed to make things difficult. Ammo is also quite tight, though not to the point of unreasonbility, but just prepare to do a fair degree of Tysoning of Revenants, Cacodemons, maybe a Pain Elemental or two and even hitscanners in close quarters. We were fairly careful but progress still became next to impossible as we reached easily the best-looking part of the entire map: a slime river with some towers surrounding it. Things then become close to downright infuriating as we drop down in the slime, head to the right and realize there's nary a rad suit to be fine until we get close to the lift at the end. I can just imagine Angelo scoffing at continuous players as he was designing this map, and it's really easy to see him saying "Oh, you want health at this point? TOO BAD FUCKER!!" as he was deciding the slime ought to be damaging. Take the lift up and we're greeted with more close-quarters nonsense, zero ammo and barely, if any health. Punching the two Pain Elementals to death would have been much wiser but at any rate, we were left wanting BADLY for ammo and actually quite relieved at the red key trap because we had plenty of rockets to use against the Caco horde, though probably not against the distant Barons of Hell, one of which is standing quite close to the plasma rifle secret. Not like that really made much difference because whilst running back, too much slime soaked into our skin and we thusly keeled over and probably got fed to some pinkies. Thus ends the travails of Doomguy, melted face-down, in a slime river just outside an ugly-ass base. We did check the exit room out though, and there are a couple of Imps, standing next to an exit switch. Actually slightly more elaborate than most exits thus far. This is probably running neck and neck with Country Side for best map so far. For a map as largely indoors as this, it really manages to bring it outdoors where it counts near the end. Not to mention, combat flow is close to perfect. And while resources are skant given the 200+ enemy count, at least some of that comes this being emphatic on the continuous side of things. It's probably not something that's recommended to those who are bad with ammo management in general, but your skills will be tested there even if you consider yourself quite good at it. lmd_#1killtng08.zip Edited February 17, 2023 by LadyMistDragon improvement to my obituary 7 Quote Share this post Link to post
Ralgor Posted February 17, 2023 5 hours ago, Book Lord said: The main differences between Hell Revealed and this WAD are the scale (HR inflates its monster count and HP but usually gives ample resources, while TNG keeps both things under control) and in the quality over quantity approach. I cannot say #1KillTNG is an ultra-polished work, as it features bugs and oversights that are not present in HR, but the gameplay relies on deadly ambushes that might kill you with a handful of monsters if unprepared. I am replaying it on pistol start and I am enjoying it even more than on continuous, observing a tight balance in the provided ammo and weaponry. MAP07 and MAP08 are examples of difficult pistol start and bad weapon progression, but things tend to improve a lot in the next maps. The level stretch 09-16 has some great stuff to play and admire. I'm pretty happy to read this. Even though I'm doing pistol starts and abandoned saving so I can record demos, I really didn't find either MAP07 or MAP08 to be that bad. MAP07 is just difficult throughout, but you're given plenty of weapons and ammo. You just have to develop a strategy. MAP08 is pretty overwhelming... for the first minute or two. Then the rest of the map is actually pretty easy on UV, at least from my perspective. It probably helps that I always play like I'm about to run out of ammo. It just makes things more interesting. I usually can only get myself to stop playing that way when there is an excess of ammo and the level is hard enough to make me stop worrying about it. The only reason I haven't rated some of these maps higher: MAP06 -- too many technical issues. MAP07 -- I already gave this one a B, but if I had known about the berserk pillar raising the floor, I might have given it an A. I would also have given it an A if the damaging floor wasn't 20/sec. I really enjoyed it, but I think playing this continuous would have reduced the fun I had with it. MAP08 -- Just way too easy in the middle, not enough texture variation, and too much backtracking. All of the elements are there for me to really enjoy these maps... I keep hoping the next one will be the one that gets it all right, in one map. I'm pretty excited to start MAP09 after I make this post! 6 Quote Share this post Link to post
Book Lord Posted February 17, 2023 (edited) MAP 09 – The Pit DSDA-Doom v0.24.3, UV, Pistol start, non-blind run w/saves The Pit marked the transition from the first half of the megaWAD, arguably consisting of Jefferson’s first attempts at mapping with Doom II assets, to the second part characterised by more mature and personal concepts. The visual presentation showed additional polish with improved lighting, sensible texture choices, and an atmosphere that screamed Plutonia out loud. Besides featuring a hub with a sludge pit at the centre, the likely reason why MAP09 had been named like the IWAD slot was to skip the work for graphics replacement. Spoiler An interesting trait of this map was its largely optional progression. If the player knew the layout in detail, he could just collect the secret Megasphere in the middle, jump in the titular pit, open the door in the corridor at the bottom, navigate the 20% damaging sludge maze and reach the exit with life to spare, as seen in the DSDA UV-speed footage. Newbie players and maxers must survive through challenging combat set pieces instead, corresponding to each one of the skull keys found in succession, and to the quest for the plasma gun. Spoiler The RSK trap entailed sure death on my first encounter; the 30 s bars caught me unexpectedly on a tiny ledge, where 5 Hell Knights teleported and cornered me before I let out a gasp. With foreknowledge and promptness, Doomguy can either get away before the bars raise or block the teleport destination. I do not see other solutions without a carryover plasma rifle. The much more cramped BSK sandwich was perfect for the newly acquired rocket launcher, though ammo was limited and the Arch-Vile should not be allowed too much freedom. The switch did not lower the screen blocking the door and sent me on a detour, starting with a welcome Soul Sphere. At the end of the section, a plasma rifle could be obtained by overcoming a double closet full of baddies. Spoiler The way to the hub was open again, so I proceeded to the blue door collecting cells and killing frontal opposition. The Cyberdemon courtyard was a lot of fun, even if the boss was a bit static, and the cloud of flying tomatoes and potatoes that appeared when picking up the YSK was equally entertaining. The only door was sealed by a linedef around the key podium; if triggered more than once, it might generate the illusion of a soft lock, but anyone familiar with E2M7 of Number One Kill knows that Angelo was prone to such imprecision, and that the door will open after 30 s. Spoiler The labyrinth accessed from the bottom of The Pit might seem aggravating at first glance, and it was probably inspired by the infamous section of Mount Pain, but Angelo’s take was much better. The hard-earned YSK granted access to several locked storages in the sewer tunnels, providing Radiation Suits to keep the player (almost) safe while he trod on hazardous floor and killed the roaming creatures. I was very impressed the first time I played this level, and even if I did not like the RSK cage the rest was top-notch Plutonia stuff, corroborated by Jefferson’s original ideas. An accomplished level for 1997, I am glad to reveal this will not be the last. Edited February 17, 2023 by Book Lord 7 Quote Share this post Link to post
Veeda Vidlak Posted February 17, 2023 I've had a bit of vertigo the last couple days. I'll try not to fall too far behind while it clears up. Map06 “Central Command” Here we have quite the ambitious work, a sprawling complex of hitscanners that reminds me a lot of Memento Mori’s Twilight Lab. It also feels kind of like a Drake O’Brien TNT map, with its nondescript executive name, abstract hallway shootouts, and sizeable monster count (though not his customary grandiose ending). Our starts continue to escalate, this time eschewing the empty beginning room to stick you on a balcony outside a large lobby with some chaff enemies and three approaching cacodemons. Hitscanners occupy booths just inside and patrol a walkway in the back, constraining the player with suppressive fire. Killing the cacos from the windows tends to get me hit, but I found that quickly clearing one of the booths works pretty well, allowing me to run in there and take cover. From here there are countless routes you can take in this massive, nonlinear morass of whiteness. Tons of small optional rooms, hundreds of enemies, and switches everywhere that probably do something important. I’ll briefly go over what I’d recommend for an initial route. 1. First, go up the west lift, head north past the walkway you were getting sniped from, and enter the first door on the right. There are two small doors to your left leading to a little room shaped like a bullet containing security armor. Important for the early grind. 2. Next, go north into a dark room with quite a few enemies and go through a door/switch sequence that obtains the SSG. You’ll also snag the yellow key on the way back. 3. Finally, head back south to the long walkway above the entryhall, take a pit stop for the backpack (through the easternmost of the three doors there), and head northeast into the crate area. Clearing out this place nets you a berserk, a lot of ammo, and most importantly, a plasma. From this point you should have the armaments to proceed however you like. To get to the next part of the level, you will need the blue key, found in a well-defended bastion to the far west of the map. This place is a bear to break into but the worst part is raising the bridge. First you have a gasbag swarm (you’d better have the plasma for this) and afterwards you must jump in the damaging nukage and use your psychic powers to locate the tucked away radsuit before you die. Then you have two rude ambushes that net you a rocket launcher. I’m really getting annoyed at the RL placements in this wad, that weapon should absolutely have been provided before the long range caco/PE fight. Also, if you can’t seem to reach the blue key it’s because you haven’t done the mess of switches in the rooms to the south. Just hit all of them, I don't know which ones actually let you get it. With the blue key in hand head to the east and up the lift to start the Computer Station part of this map. I personally find this area a bit of a clusterfuck. There are enemies all over the place and its easy to take cheap hits from cacos and the bothersome hitscanners on the overhead platforms. You can’t really camp, most of the monsters won’t pathfind to your location, so you need to get in there. There's a megasphere up top, but getting to it requires wading through most of the opposition on the ground and if you haven't picked off the hitscanners up there you'll get reamed upon taking the lift (have your plasma out). All of this adds up to a room I like. It requires aggression and gives the enemies a substantial but not unfair tactical advantage, which is better design than the blue key room. The last section of the level leads you to the red key and is actually pretty slaughtermapish. You engage large groups of chaingunners, pinkies, and pain elementals sprinkled with revenants in some pretty tight areas. I’d save all the cells you can for this as the plasma is a lifesaver here, particularly during the pinky swarms and one very nasty switch ambush you won’t forget. Once you have the red key, backtrack to the Computer Station area and find the little red switchdoor (?) to leave. Central Command is an impressive behemoth but ambition and risk go hand in hand and there’s a lot in this map to criticize. Three major areas (the blue key room, the red key room, and the Computer Station section) are contentious and likely to provide wildly different amounts of enjoyment depending on the inclinations of the player. The nonlinear layout does not mesh well with the overwhelmingly white visuals and the keys, while needed for progression, feel like afterthoughts I barely remember picking up, which I consider a substantial negative. Then there are all sorts of little things, like inconsistent nukage floors and the various texturing errors. I also got softlocked by complete accident while fighting in the red key area. I strafed over the cell pack and into one of the PE chambers, which I then had to idclip out of (I'm not resetting for that). Finally, special mention has to go to the borked secrets in this map. Initially, I had no idea how to get them, having only found one on the crates and none of the remaining five during either playthrough. I thought I knew where three of them were as there are little slits with enemies above them that you can hear (and I was at least able to get maxkills because you can hit them with the chaingun). However, as it turns out you can’t get those three at all… and the other two (in the CS area) become inaccessible once the monsters leave, which happens well before you get to their location. This black mark is exacerbated by two not secrets that absolutely should be… a blue armor in the blue key nukage (good for the making it to the CS megasphere) and a hidden lift in the red key room leading to some snipers. So overall? This one is a big mixed bag and unsurprisingly I have mixed feelings for it. That said, the positive moments outnumber the negative ones. I liked the majority of the combat, the layout, and the sense of flow, with the red key part in particular playing at a blazing pace. There are too many quibbles for it to be my favorite map so far but I do think it's a good one, and is placed well in the wad. I'm sure this won't be the only epic in TNG and hopefully the next one will be more polished. 7 Quote Share this post Link to post
Helm Posted February 17, 2023 (edited) Broad note about the set: I haven't had huge problems with the encounters on UV, at least with saves. Nothing so far I think is unfeasible in a single segment attempt either, and Ralgor is proving the point as we go. The aspects of the experience that are difficult have to do with technical implementation of the doom contraptions, layout woes, or the order of operations as you run the thing. As in, if you don't go the right way and get the right stuff, there's problems. However I do take the 'play more carefully' general suggestion in stride, this map set kind of needs it. It's been a pleasure to watch some of Ralgor's demos and see how they take their time and are cautious, I think this is how this map set wants to be played, but I gotta go fast, It's a character trait. I'm just looking for fight and then the next fight and the next fight, and this isn't the right mentality for this set. Let's adjust a little and see how I do with 08.MAP09 Starting with backpack and SSG already puts me in a good mood re: order of operations and re: ammo shortages. We're listening to a little bit of my playlist this time, hope that's ok with you, mapper from 1997. The map opens up to a perimeter crawl around a tower nukage with a megasphere and a revenant sniper in the middle. Low tier hitscan patrols the outside but there's also a few cacos and a pain elemental complicating things. A bit of cleanup nets you the basic guns, some peace and quiet and a great 200 200 stack. There are no marked secrets on this map but that megasphere - though access feels a bit blatant - is definitely a secret and definitely a very useful one. I am starting to get that Plutonia-like terseness, this doesn't feel as Doom II anymore, though the O of Destruction must have made an impact here as well. The terseness is a good vibe, it's very no-nonsense. I push through as much of the layout as I can to where where things are and a chaingunner takes my life. Second go from the top goes a bit faster but I don't anticipate there'll be an extra boner behind the hidden wall to the mega so I eat some more shit. More patient play nets me that mega and the aforementioned peace and quiet, finally. That's where I deem a good first save point to be. This is a good first challenge, thought it's a bit chaotic with the PE going wherever and fighting whatever, I don't mind the deaths this early on, it just teaches you to expedite the area and note all the false progressions (keycard doors) and the sparse actual progression options. From the center hub we explore north by northwest, which opens up to a blue pool room with 3-4 revenants, some chaingunner backup and such which I elect to pick off from the safety of the door. Boring but safe. This is the red key room, and upon picking up the key the trap that triggers involves a lock in with a slow / trickle teleporter of hell knights in a very small room. It gave me some trouble but I didn't die even on the first try so I judge this a very successful tension builder. Then there's some pinky cleanup that's generally pointless, but what can you do. Red key netted, we go to the red door that hilariously - this is one of my pet peeves - opens up to a short corridor with a blue key in it. If a door opens up to a raw key for another door, why did you even put a second key there? Why are there doors in doom wads? I don't understand like 90% of the doors I see in doom wads. Anyway, this is obviously a trap, it turns out to be an archvile trap and I don't have the guns for it. I beat my head against this encounter with just the chain but it's a no go. I elect to go somewhere else and see if I can find a gun and lo, a short detour finally nets me the crucial RL. If you have a fight that is nearly unbeatable without x gun, you do not really have an open layout nor do you have a non-linear space, what you have is a false impression of a sprawling adventure than in reality needs to be decoded and done in a strict order. This is a curious impression of what doom difficulty should constitute of. Anyway, with the RL the archvile trap is trivial and we get that blue key, but we also had some good fun with the RL up close and personal with pinky and imp barrage and single, well placed archvile in backup. Good encounter, as long as you note the RL need. I burn that nice health stack on a self-rocket but decide to not savescum, might as well move on, the map isn't that hard so far. Generally the health placement has been quite kind on this as I keep running in what I need as I need it. At the northern culmination trap of the whole endeavor we arrive at a lock-in door with what looks like a pretty tight ambush. I elect to keep that lock in door up, trigger the ambush and retreat out of the lock in. Basic doom stuff, I do not regret this bit of cheese to be honest even though I didn't try the encounter straight first, I'll keep those 8 rockets for straight shots at the revenants, thank you. It seems it was good I cheesed the fight because even like this I run out of ammo and have to non-zerk punch a couple of demons, nothing too bad but slow and strictly speaking, the opposite of flow. That chokepoint opens up to a very needed plasma rifle. This is good plasma rifle placement because you get to use it extensively for the rest of the map and you can strategize as to what the ammo is best for. All the work for the blue key and plasma allows us to make progress south. You get a big ammo boost here just before you open up to a metal2 outdoors cyber arena with the moody grayscale sky! Good change of pace, theme, environment, it's memorable, it's a completely different fight, and you have plasma. Good times. Proper simple strafey fun, nothing to write home about but glad there's a climax to the map at least. The cyber 1 on 1 is trivial because he's elevated in such a way most of his rockets will hit the ground, but early on it is possible to get infighting rockets right on your ass so I guess we can say this is a good starter cyber encounter for the wad. Between bloody cyberdemon hooves I recover the final yellow keycard which prompts a second layer of floaters to enter the arena, including enough pain elementals for our plasma inventory, the rockets, the bullets, everything must go. I leave with just about a 100 plasma ammo I will dearly need, soon and had I known I'd be more plasma conservative in this easy cyber arena. Final stretch of the map involves actually jumping in the nukage of the hub room where the mega was and going through a low opening into a... *sigh*, it opens into a nukage maze. You have to find extra radsuits in nooks and crannies and be very economic and efficient with your ammo and SSG play because there's a lot of monsters in the vestigial parts of the maze to kill if you want 100% kills.why No point to complain too much. I was like, ok I'll go left left left and if I make it to a rad suit, I will clean up the space. If I get to the exit, I will exit. So I got to the exit and didn't get 100% kills but I'm a ok with that. I'll take my exit and note that I had way more fun with this one than the last few, and it wasn't just because of my mentality shifting a bit to accommodate. This is just cleaner, simpler and more to the point, aside from hurtfloor concepts and maze concepts that are of their time. This is the most fun I've had with this set so far with the rules I had established for myself. I could have started from the beginning continuous with saves and then the challenge could have been 100%ing everything. But the secrets aren't worth religiously figuring out because so many little things about the doom machinery in these maps has been broken. Not a friendly map set it turns out, not a welcoming place, some slightly outmoded ideas about what makes for doom difficulty and fun but I am happy to time travel back to the day and adjust to the mapper's personal assumptions. Aside from the nukage maze this is close to a great map, for its era.footage Edited February 18, 2023 by Helm 7 Quote Share this post Link to post
Ralgor Posted February 17, 2023 MAP09 - “The Pit”dsda-doom v0.25.6 cl2, UV, Pistol start, blind run, single segment 100% kills and secrets Deaths: 3 total, but see below So this map, for the most part, isn't hard. I managed to reach the exit on my first try, but the problem was getting 100% kills. For the first time, we get an SSG right off the bat. Pistol starters can rejoice, since the weapon progression in this map doesn't suck! And that makes it much better than the last map. The opening as a whole is not a challenge. There are multiple exciting traps here. The red key trap isn't too difficult, unless you get multiple hell knights at once. It should be possible to kill them about as fast as they teleport in, but I suspect you can get a little unlucky here. This trap never killed me and I never felt the need to try to cheese it either. After that is a bunch of pointless pinkies. The rocket launcher is in a little cubby where the pinkies come from, with two specters in front of it that are hilariously stuck together. The blue key trap is pretty easily dispatched using the rocket launcher, but the arch-vile could zap you if you get unlucky. Being able to let loose with the rocket launcher here felt pretty good. The trap on the switch that releases you from the area after the blue key can be pretty tricky. Four revenants along with their entourage will try to corner you. I use the rocket launcher again here to wipe out most if not all of the occupants of the closet nearest the switch, and then retreat and use the SSG for the rest. We see the first appearance of the cyberdemon in this map. He's well placed to make it easy to take a rocket by accident, but you're given a plasma rifle to deal with him. Don't worry about wasting plasma here, since you get plenty for your needs. When you pick up the yellow key, a cloud of cacodemons and elementals come out to swarm you. It does seem possible to escape through the door and cheese the fight if you open it first. I didn't even know it was supposed to lock you in until after I completed the fight on my last attempt. I'm not sure how much more difficult it would be staying in the area. It might actually be easier, considering how much damage I take being too aggressive with the door. All of that is great. If you could just hit the exit and be done, I'd give this map at least a B. But alas that isn't the case. Unfortunately, this map is ended by a giant maze filled with super-heated mud. It gives you a rad-suit at the beginning, and that is barely enough to get through the maze to the exit. In fact that's what I did the first time, and successfully exited my first totally blind run. The problem is I left several monsters behind. I really wanted a UV-Max run, so I had to try again. It's very frustrating trying to clear out this maze. It's very confusing, but the problem is the monsters are moving around while you are. So just because you clear an area out doesn't mean an imp won't wander in there later. You get 5 rad-suits in total, which should be enough (It was on my 5th attempt, though barely). Getting 100% kills on this map probably isn't worth it. Another issue with the maze is a bug in doom itself: the rad-suit is imperfect and will allow damage through. I got hit by this quite a bit in my last run. I could chalk this up to bad luck, but is a good reason why this sort of design isn't a good idea. Despite my whinging about it, I think the maze would have worked pretty well with a little bit more care taken in it's design and if the rad-suit bug didn't exist. You definitely feel the timer counting down while you're trying to navigate the maze, and it will cause you to make more mistakes. It definitely got my adrenaline going! Grade: C First (blind) run: MAP09 - 21:20.49 (21:20) K: 247/256 I: 34/34 S: 0/0 Last (UV-MAX) run: MAP09 - 20:04.54 (20:04) K: 256/256 I: 33/34 S: 0/0 ralgor_#1killtng09.zip I died once to the second chaingunner because I was in a hurry, but I picked up a normal shotgun right before I was going to kill him. I thought it was a funny way to die immediately. The other two deaths were in the yellow key trap, due to me running around and not taking it seriously. 7 Quote Share this post Link to post
Roofi Posted February 17, 2023 Number One Kill The Next Generation - Map 09 "The Pit" Despite sharing the same name, "The pit" delivers a way more sinister atmosphere than its Iwad counterpart. Moreover, "The pit" may represents a real frustrating difficulty spike if you discover all the maps on pistol-start. Prepare to survive in some crampy ambushes, a fight in a small cage against some Hell Knights and the first Cyberdemon in the mapset. And of course, the deadly labyrinth leading to the exit. That one passage scared and annoyed me whereas I played on continuous because the floor can still deal damage even with the radsuit (Yes, it's all -20 Hp kind of floors). However, it was far from being a horrible passage while replaying that map. Jefferson grants you with a megapshere and several radsuits scattered among the maze. As the previous level, I recommand you to find the secrets because the hidden teleporter leading to the caged megasphere will help you surviving the nasty combat in small cage hosting the red key. Actually , the trap doesn't pose a lot of problem if the hell knights appear in succession but you may easily get screwed if several of them appear in short time. The rest of the map was more straightforward with a lot of corridors. The cyberdemon was the most satisfying part because it was so easy to create infights while dodging the projectiles. Overall, I will not lie : this level frustrated me the first time I played it. However, it's one of the level I really enjoyed replaying because anticipating and adopting the right strategy in each tough part provided a lot of satisfaction. The last maze was a bitch move but it but there's not much special about this section once you've visited it. Just spam your cells against the monsters blocking you and reach the exit. Grade : B+ 6 Quote Share this post Link to post
Celestin Posted February 17, 2023 MAP09: The Pit A somewhat managable start is not a norm in TNG, so I welcome a change. The Pit (how original) is a linear hunt for 3 keys through 3 routes radiating from the titular hole. Each path is filled with ambushes. First is a red key, locking you in a cage fight with hell knights, while a horde of pinkies spectates. I recommend saving more shells than I did, as the demons can easily overwhelm you. Next is a blue key with 2 cramped ambushes: first with imps and an archvile, second with imps and revenants. Again, ammo management is the key, but you get a plasma rifle as a reward and cells are aplenty going forward. Yellow key is guarded by a cyberdemon (first in the wad) and company, plus another wave of flying foes when you pick it up. I think this room broke when I was playing and I have to idclip my way out. With a yellow key in hand, drop down into the pit to find a sewer. It's easily the worst part of the map, a maze of 20% hurtfloor with imps, pinkies and cacodemons. While there are radsuits inside, I always felt like I was finding them by accident. I left 6 or so monsters alive in this place, as I ran out of protection and couldn't backtrack without dying. I'm conflicted about this one. It started strong, had a couple decent moments, but fell flat at the end. 5 Quote Share this post Link to post
FistMarine Posted February 17, 2023 (edited) Trying to catch up. I forgot to specify earlier that it is a blind playthrough I'm doing, I don't recall playing any of the Number One Kill series before but I know for sure I have heard of the series before. Anyway, moving on to Number One Kill - The Next Generation (1Killtng for short). Still the same rules as before: DOSBox 0.74-3, UV 100% continuous with saves. Disappointed that it's all lowercase (should have been 1KILLTNG.WAD instead of 1killtng.WAD) and it was released in November. It should have been released like 3 years after Doom 2 (1.9) came out, to follow the suite of 1Kill being released exactly two years after Ultimate Doom. :P On a more serious note, the first impressions of the megawad were pretty good but then the later levels seemed to go downhill after MAP05 or so. I like that there is a new intermission graphic, which I'm assuming is the BOSSBACK graphic from TNT: Evilution. The soundtrack also contains a mix of Ultimate Doom, Doom 2 and TNT: Evilution songs. Which is basically the answer to Plutonia's soundtrack consisting of a mix of UD/D2 songs. To correct myself from earlier, there's actually EIGHT (not nine!) demos included in the megawad, it seems that DEMO5 is missing but DEMO4 and DEMO6-9 are more like short test demos. And after having watched the third demo in its entirely this time, it appears it desyncs towards the end. The second demo also desyncs but only in the last few seconds, most likely caused by the revenants' projectiles. I ended up watching the demos after finishing MAP08, seeing as I needed to take a break. The levels are generally an improvement from Number One Kill and they are much more action packed, mostly inspired by Plutonia and a bit of Hell Revealed, I guess. Though in the end, I think its difficulty is something closer to somewhere in between TNT and Plutonia or in other words, Final Doom difficulty. I really need to revisit Final Doom and Master Levels after a decade since playing them last time, as I don't remember much from them. I even need to go back to some older playthroughs of ICARUS/MM/MM2/REQUIEM I've started last 1-2 years. It's embarrassing to leave them unfinished after all this time. :P Anyway, I feel like if 1KILLTNG was a full 32-level megawad, it would have been better remembered and possibly even get mentioned in Top 100 Wads. It's a shame it was forgotten, though I don't know how well it compares to other megawads released around that time. As for the debate between Continuous vs Pistol Start, I believe Angelo didn't optimize pistol starts as well as he should have and I highly recommend playing continuous and with saves, especially if you are playing the wad for first time, like I'm doing. You will have a lot more fun that way, especially if you manage your resources well, backtrack for ammo supplies and are saving the blue armor/soulsphere/megasphere for the end of the level, which is what I'm also doing. I realize this will take away some of the challenge but this should make up for some annoying levels/traps later on. I would also recommend taking Book Lord's excellent advices when playing this wad. The automap advice was especially useful, even with vanilla Doom's automap colors, it still helped me identify traps that would lower upon pressing a switch or grabbing a key. Obviously source ports have a more detailed automap that even shows teleporter lines and exits but even the default Doom automap has its uses, so PLEASE USE IT! My thoughts about the levels so far: Spoiler MAP01: Entryway Funnily enough, Angelo couldn't think of a new name for the first map, though it's not a problem, as the automap always reads LEVEL 1: ENTRYWAY, because the vanilla executables are hardcoded to read the original IWAD names, unless you use a DEHACKED patch. Anyway, this is an interesting opener that has a couple tricks up sleeve. First, you want to grab the shotgun and the shell boxes, then take the teleporter. You are about the fight a bunch of zombies. The door splitting returns from the first level of Number One Kill, which is nice, though a bit annoying to open while fighting the zombies. Then afterwards, you should get the Green Armor as it will greatly help, though be careful of the shotgun guy and a pinky demon. After that, clear those imps sniping you and go find the red key! Visit the other building and press the switch to open the central room. There will be THREE Hell Knights that will appear, though you may also want to kill those two revenants in the central area first, which will mostly be busy fighting the imps. You have to do all this with the regular Shotgun, which is a bit challenging but not too bad, as you are given plenty of shells. You will get your hands on the SSG soon if you explore further. Kill the remaining enemies and make a save here. This is the exit but there is still about half of the level left unexplored. I would suggest to check the nearby walls, you should find a SSG and a Mancubus who doesn't react immediately until the wall lowers. Kill the Mancubus and grab the SSG. Go back to collect the backpack and find a much needed secret that contains a Soulsphere and Blue Armor. They will all come handy later on! Go back and find a secret teleporter, which will teleport you to the optional side of the map. I feel this would have worked as a separate level, not sure why this was made part of the first level, it's a weird decision to have this entire second hidden section in the first map. Anyway, once you teleported, you can't come back (at least not yet), so you might want to grab those extra supplies in advance. Don't worry about sacrificing the extra health/armor, there will be a great reward if you manage to survive until the end. Kill the monsters guarding the yellow skull key pillar and then approach the pillar. You can hide in the teleporter room if you want but this leads to mixed results due to vanilla bugs. For one thing, if monsters get crushed by the door, then if the Archvile resurrects them, you will end up with ghosts monsters, which you must save the rockets for! I've had one ghost pinky and one ghost spectre, which weren't that bad to deal with. I don't know what happened to the ghost pinky (maybe he got killed by lost souls?) but I know I had to waste half of my rockets to kill the ghost Spectre when luring him near a wall. Could have been worse. I could have gotten a ghost Mancubus... After that, kill a couple more monsters that will appear and eventually you will get to a room with many pillars. There will be an archvile visible and two barons. They will get revealed upon pressing those switches. The archvile isn't too bad to deal with here but the Barons are pretty much "Bullet Sponge" because even with SSG, they take a while to deal with. But hey, at least you no longer have to shotgun the barons, as SSG-ing them takes much less time and is a lot more satisfying. Yes, you might want to save your rockets for the next section or if you are patient, just use the SSG, as you've still got plenty of shells left. Now comes the hardest part and I recommend saving now. You've got to kill a bunch of random enemies, such as an army of Hell Knights but also TWO Arch-Viles! Retreating to the previous room works well and you can take down the enemies without much problem after you lure them. The problem comes from the AV that will try to undo all the hard work from earlier, so you end up using about 40 or more shells. Once again, if you grab the ammo wisely and you found the backpack earlier, you should still have plenty of shells by the time you finish the map. After a while, you should take them down with just your SSG. You may sometimes have to tank damage (from the other monsters' attacks) just to concentrate on killing the archvile quickly! Once you are done, clear the remaining rooms, kill the last surprise revenant after the green armor pickup and then before taking the exit teleporter, grab the big prize: a Megasphere! Oh and the teleporter takes you right next to the normal exit switch, which allows backtracking, just in case you missed something, which is nice, though I already collected everything before leaving. And due to AV resurrections, I got 120% kills in total for this level. Not a bad start! I like the inspirations from Plutonia and Hell Revealed, as well as the invisible wall tricks that allow you to see what you will fight soon but but I feel like this second section of the map should have been a separate map or at least the concept of this map should have been reused to MAP15/MAP31, so that the normal exit/path sends you to MAP16 and the optional second area sends you to the secret level (MAP31/MAP32). I am also not a fan of introducing the mid/high tier monsters so early on in the first level and the absence of the Chaingun (yes, there weren't any Chaingunners either) but then I realized that Plutonia also had mid/high tier monsters in the first map, so that's fine, any extra challenge is appreciated. Other than the lack of chaingun and some weird things happening, this was a solid starting level that looks promising. MAP02: The Abandoned Mines Disappointed that it's not in the MAP26 slot. OK fine, this joke was already lame and I'm not going to do it again. :P As for the map, the only annoying thing is the lack of Chaingun but it's not like I have to use the Pistol when I still have both Shotguns with 70 shells from the previous level. And since the shells are plentiful and there is the opportunity to switch between the single/double barrel shotgun to conserve ammo (shotgun for sniping and weaker enemies, etc), there shouldn't be any problems with the ammo. After all, this worked well for Quake 1 which discarded the pistol entirely and the starting shotgun was still useful later on, not to mention the plentiful shells. :P OK, now finally talking about the map, it's like a remixed version of MAP02: Underhalls from the original DOOM 2. It's longer and it features mostly the same enemies, plus a bunch of cacodemons and even two revenants in cages that can be easily taken at start with just the basic shotgun. Traps aren't too difficult to deal with, most are pretty straightforward and can be seen in advance, even the blue armor trap with imps wasn't too bad. The only trap that did quite a bit of damage to me was the one when taking down an elevator leading to the SSG and was surrounded by a few monsters. Having extra health and armor helped a lot but then again, playing continuously makings things much easier, especially if the levels are generous with resources and you manage to finish the levels with 200/200. And don't forget to get the secret rocket launcher right next to the exit, which also contains a couple more imps. Then take the elevator down to backtrack for goodies that you saved for later. Not bad! I enjoyed my time with this map. I especially like seeing the author's takes on IWAD inspired maps. MAP03: Space Port This map introduces the Chaingunners (as did the original DOOM 2), so that means you will finally get your hands on the chaingun. There is also a secret chainsaw which is nice to have. There are plenty of interesting traps that aren't difficult to take out. The arachnotrons at beginning can be a bit tricky but you can use the single shotgun to deal with them, if you can afford spending like 20 or so shells in total. Then you will mostly deal with hitscanners, as they are everywhere but they also often get into infights. It feels very satisfying to mow down hordes of zombies with your shotguns/chaingun. The real highlight was the blue skull key trap featuring a couple chaingunners and an army of Hell Knights! I still used the SSG against them and this particular trap felt very Plutonia inspired, which wasn't actually difficult in dealing with this situation. There is another interesting trap later on with the red skull key. Which as the automap showed, there are two closets that will open up with various monsters, including THREE Pain Elementals. Though again, this trap is easy to deal with. Just circle strafe and take down the meatballs quickly. Even with keyboard only controls, this fight was quite relaxing to do, as I only suffered minor damage and still had like 130% or so health and armor left and that's without grabbing the goodies that I saved for the end of the level. Afterwards, backtracking to get the goodies, including the first Chainsaw (I don't think there was another one earlier in the wad, unless I missed it) and the soulsphere/blue armor. Pretty good map overall. I liked it. MAP04: Country Side I thought the map was okay overall, though not as good as the previous ones. There are still some good things about this level. First, I liked the challenge presented for this level, for the most part, with the monster placement being good with some threatening moments. There is that soulsphere located near a sign that says exit. I knew in advance it was a trap (checking the automap helped me identify many traps in this wad, even the default vanilla colors), so I left it for near the end. When I got to this section much later, I didn't have much trouble clearing the horde of pinkies with the SSG. The few hitscanners were blocked by pinkies and when they shot, they were bitten back by pinkies. Standing in the corner and SSG-ing them was a good strategy and in the end I think I only took 40 damage total from this trap. Afterwards, I cleared most of the remaining rooms, leaving only the megasphere secret to check. The only thing I disliked is the Megasphere trap. Since I was catching up, I read a couple comments in the thread when playing the map and I got to expect some of the traps. But I will say this was an exception, as my playthrough is pretty much blind. That Megasphere trap with a few cacos and pain elementals was quite dumb, as I took a lot of damage and ended up with less health/armor than what I had before. It didn't matter as it was the last thing I did in the map and before I got the megasphere, I still had around 125% health and armor. I was then forced to pick up megasphere and suffered a lot of damage that when I cleared the monsters, I ended up with like 74% health and 75% armor. And the reason why I checked in advance (as well as looking at Doomwiki.org) was seeing the way to access this secret, which involves jumping into LAVA and finding a hidden teleport line. The good thing news is that I saved the soulsphere and blue armor for the end, so I get back to 200% health and armor. Oh and I liked the room that reminded me of one of the last rooms in DOOM E1M2. Overall, the map was fine but I have a feeling things are going downhill from here on. MAP05: Radioactive Substace Control After seeing people's mixed feelings about this map, I wondered why. Turns out, I didn't like this map too much either. Mainly because of that dark area (you know which one I'm talking about), coupled with stupid 20% damaging floors everywhere (also fuck the radiation suit leak bullshit so much, it happened like 6 times in total with both suits early on) and being unlucky with RNG and taking a few homing revenant missiles to the face (dealing 40-60 dmg), so much that I nearly exhausted my entire armor and had to grab the replacement eventually, which was a great decision, as it got a lot of use later on. Though thankfully, I survived in the end, as the medkits always came in handy to save me. Oh and I just noticed now the level name is supposed to be called Radioactive Substance Control. Angelo didn't double check the spelling, it seems. Well, let's see what else I disliked. Besides the stupid 20% dmg floors early on (I have no idea if later ones were still 20% dmg, as the radiation suit no longer leaked in those acid tunnels), some annoying enemy placement and traps. I was down to 33% health at that point in the tunnels and got saved by the berserk pack that came in handy in the time. I was lucky I didn't get screwed up by those hitscanners in the tunnel, they rarely fired at me. Holding fire on the chaingun also helped to kill them faster before they have a chance to fire. Things went better later on after getting the red key. I got through the traps fine. I couldn't dodge the Baron fireball as the space was too narrow to dodge but mercifully, it only did 8 damage. Don't worry, the next trap with the cacodemons made sure to make me lose half of my health. After retreating on the left side and kill them behind the fences, grabbed two medkits and activated more switches. Noticed a radiation suit that I couldn't reach but still somehow grab. Before doing that, inspecting the walls revealed a few zombiemen and a much needed MEGASPHERE! Obviously I grabbed it at that time, as there was no way I would come back this area, after exhausting every other radiation suit. And as mentioned, I couldn't lower that platform (or find the teleporter that sends me here), so I don't know if I missed something. Upon returning to the earlier parts of the level, killing remaining enemies with minimal damage taken, I made a save and inspected a few secret areas I forgot earlier, like a secret inspired by DOOM2 MAP04: The Focus. And a revealed teleporter secret containing a Caco, a shell box and a Soulsphere! Chainsawed the caco (took a bit of damage doing that), then made a separate save and went back to grab those bonus items (health/armor bonuses). I couldn't reach them at all, as I couldn't find a way to lower those platforms, though I ended up bumping into them so that DoomGuy will grab them eventually. Worked well for health bonuses, took a while for armor bonuses to get grabbed, maybe their hitbox is smaller or something. Kinda weird. Save, grab the soulsphere, make another separate save and finish the level. 100% kills & secrets but 97% items? What did I miss? Loaded the save separately in Crispy Doom and used IDDT to find the missing item while looking at automap. Turns out, I was missing an armor bonus earlier in the acid area, because I was so damn busy dealing with other monsters at that time I didn't even notice I missed an armor bonus, so I loaded the save before getting the soulsphere and had to go through the damn acid to lose 40% armor just to grab that stupid item I forgot earlier. At least the Soulsphere secret helped repair my health back to 200%. I can't be too annoyed at finishing the level with only 151% armor, as it could have been MUCH WORSE! Also if anyone knows how to lower the last radsuit platform (around the red key area) and the health/armor bonuses near the end of the level, please let me know of the intended method, unless you were actually meant to just bump into them to collect them, which is what I did! Kinda mediocre map overall. Let's hope things don't get worse than that. MAP06: Central Command How many monsters? It seems there are 444 in total (I counted them at Doomwiki.org and then loaded the map separately in ZDoom, there are indeed 444, though others already pointed out the number), though most of them are zombies and imps, which gave me flashbacks to that annoying TNT MAP09 but at least, this one is generous on health. Despite the heavy population, the map still works fine in plain DOOM2.EXE in DOSBox. However, I noticed a few errors, like a HOM in the yellow key room. Not sure what's up with that but I will look over this issue, seeing as vanilla Doom doesn't crash upon saving in this level. I never expected vanilla Doom to handle so many monsters in a map, I thought that 300-400 was the maximum it would handle but it looks like I was proven wrong. The map reminds me a bit of Icarus levels with so much gray around here. But unfortunately, there is one thing I really hate at this map! Those inaccessible secrets or rather, secrets that are only accessible temporary. But also half of them are seemingly impossible to access at all. I have a hard time to describe the exact ones I couldn't get but all I know is they are those closets that contain zombies/imps. It appears those two sectors with the monsters are TOO NARROW that the Sergeant/Imp won't cross the teleport line, so they won't lower that elevator. While the third one it can be lowered but trying to get inside will teleport YOU back in the corridor, so that secret is inaccessible too! I tested this separately with cheats in ZDoom as well, which made inspecting secrets easier when trying to figure out how to get those secrets but of course it doesn't work here either, nor in vanilla DOOM2.EXE, which is what I'm using to play. It's not helped that loading a save in vanilla Doom causes enemies to return to dormant state, though it appears you can still wake them up but usually, it's best to do the level in one go if possible, so monsters will usually teleport out of their closets properly, assuming the map has such monster closets. Loading a save before monsters have teleported will sometimes screw things up and prevent 100% kills. This is unfortunately another vanilla limitation I hate but sometimes, I have to deal with it. On the bright side, you CAN kill those enemies stuck in those secret sectors. You will notice a very short line on the top of the sector. Using your chaingun, you can actually snipe them through that tiny gap. The rest secrets it appears you can get fine, though two of them which are located in the large blue area, require you to hear/see the monsters coming out of those secret sectors and then immediately getting there before the secret closes permanently. A great idea, poorly executed. Not helped that I absolutely HATE the one time only secrets. It's not a bad thing for people just wanting to finish but for completionists like me, it hurts. And it also hurts that no one has attempted to UV-Max this map before, nor are there videos on YouTube about this wad. In the end, I got 50% secrets (getting those two Cell Pack secrets in large blue area took me a couple of tries). Can anyone confirm that 50% secrets is the maximum you can achieve? Thanks. The rest of the map remains relatively challenging, with some annoying sections. Unfortunately, I died once nearly the end of the map, at the part you press the switch and then a whole bunch of monsters (imps, demons, chaingunners and a revenant) get unleashed behind you. Even turning around and switching to Plasma in a timely manner still got me killed quickly by a chaingunner remaining (and also a pinky still alive I guess), despite having 116% health and 51% armor prior to that. Was so close to do this map without dying, after many harder parts before that! And then on the next attempt, I barely take any damage at all from this bullshit trap. Stupid RNG! At least the chaingunner trap at the very end didn't get me, so I suppose this evens out. Still, I find it very disappointing I couldn't make it to MAP07 without dying, as MAP07 is the map that often first kills me in a typical megawad, that assuming it doesn't happen earlier, like it did here. I don't have much else to say, to not repeat what it hasn't already been said. I ended up in the end getting 100% kills and items (saved the megasphere for last and killed the last two demons as well) but only 50% secrets (because of reasons mentioned earlier) and the time was funnily enough, 59:59. I was expecting to get a TIME SUCKS but I ended up being a second faster! ;) Overall, this map was better than previous one but I still disliked the inaccessible secrets and how long it dragged towards end that I wanted to end already. Also the various HOM errors and glitches. Maybe the next map will be better. MAP07: Gateway to Hell A surprising sudden difficulty spike. First, you kill a caco, pain and a rev. Then you get to fight 12 Mancubi in total and then press those switches while you are forced to run around a stupid 20 damage floor. I admit I did a bit of saving/loading here to minimize the damage until I realized pressing one of the switches raised the floor and it was no longer damaging, at least for a while. Either way, you need to press all SIX switches in order to be able to reach the switch up there where revenant was standing earlier, which unleashed various monsters. I made a lot of them infight and ended up catching one or two homing revenant rockets when I went to hide in the starting room, thinking that it will be a good strategy but ended up leading to mixed results, though I can't imagine standing in the open would have been better with hitscanners firing at me. Then after killing one or two cacos and pressing switches, the hell begins. This map introduces FIVE fucking archviles (first time encountering them if you did not visit the second half of MAP01), which actually killed me THREE times towards the end. I absolutely hate fighting multiple archviles at once with minimal cover. It is difficult to take cover when another one lights your ass from somewhere else and then you end up getting blasted anyway. Even hugging those pillars didn't help much. The best choices to get rid of them quickly were SSG, Rockets and Plasma. I ended up camping in the switch room and killed those first three archviles without getting blasted in my successful try but instead, ended up hurting myself with rockets because the first archie was more than happy running towards me. Now at 22% health and having to cross the stupid damage floor again. Then grabbing a new blue armor and medkits and dealing with the last two archviles which took me another try because I didn't see where the hell they were coming from. Then after successfully taking them out, grab the megasphere and make it safely to the end. It seems there are a few more monsters to kill but thankfully I got to keep my 200% health and armor. Oh and there aren't any secrets, so vanilla Doom reads 0% secrets at the end. Overall, this was an interesting map that I found really annoying difficulty wise, even on a continuous run. I think the 20% dmg floor and the mini horde of ArchViles towards the end was quite harsh. But despite my frustrations, I realized I'm not doing pistol start saveless, so I should be grateful I'm playing continuous with saves or else I would have probably rage-quitted or something. No, I just wasn't in a very good mood yesterday. :P MAP08: Hell's Welcome Wow, what a hellish welcoming start. Immediately get bombed by revenant rockets while chaingunners are shooting at me while I'm busy killing the pinkies in front of me with the SSG. Didn't help that revenants keep firing homing missiles and one of them rolled 80 dmg, so after clearing the first room, I was left with around 60% health and armor and that was after finishing the previous level with 200/200! I don't want to imagine what are pistol starters going through because a section like this would almost certainly kill you outright on your first attempt. Which is why I insist to finish the maps with as much stuff as possible, to prevent bullshit situations like these. Because of what happened, I had to be extremely careful with the rest of the map, as the health/armor were relatively scarce. I ended up saving the blue armor and the not-so-secret soulsphere for the end of the level, which paid off for the most part. Most of the traps weren't too bad to deal with, especially if you took it slowly (for example, the imps trap at the red skull key was easy to deal with) and I ended up going through most of the map with like 95% health and little armor remaining until the armor was eventually consumed later in the map. With that said, I still managed to die once due to that damn yellow skull key trap towards the end of the level. I tried to rush when seeing my radiation suit is about to expire (I guess I forgot the acid did only 10% damage, my mind said 20% damage in that time) but of course the barons and cacos surrounded me at the elevator. Not much I could do as I only had 100% health by that point, which means DoomGuy is quite fragile and the armor was entirely gone when I reached this section. Too bad, as after I reloaded, I ended up using the rocket launcher to pick off the cacos/barons from the window I got YSK earlier and this ended up being the correct solution to this problem! Then all was left was collecting the official secrets around the area. I even strafed on those platforms, as the Doomwiki claims they are marked as secrets and since vanilla Doom doesn't tell you whether you found a secret, I am judging by what Doomwiki.org tells me. Then after that it was a matter of clearing a couple more imps and one Mancubus, then backtracking for leftover ammo and powerups and the map was finally over! Overall, despite the dumb opening section, this map was fine and I enjoyed most of the challenge presented, though I wish the author was more generous with the armor in some of the maps. Maybe one extra green armor wouldn't have hurt to have. I admit I got a bit frustrated at the end dying for the third map in a row, which makes me realize things aren't as easy as I expected but I am not going to let a vanilla Doom 2 megawad kick my ass, especially not after experiencing the hell that was a certain vanilla D2 megawad chosen at DW megawad club last year (you probably know which one I'm talking about). Deaths so far: 5 (MAP06-MAP08) Screenshots Spoiler I will be away for a few days with my parents in a trip, so I will fall behind yet again. I hope to catch up soon or if not, at least to write something for the last couple maps, in case I don't have enough time for everything. So far, it seems like an improvement over #1KILL.WAD but also introduces its own problems, after initially starting out promising, almost every map had to include something annoying or some weird design choices or to get ruined with random glitches. My hope is that later maps improve again, though MAP08 was better than maps 5-7 combined. Have a nice weekend everyone! Edited February 17, 2023 by FistMarine 6 Quote Share this post Link to post
LadyMistDragon Posted February 17, 2023 (edited) Map 09: The Pit Well, seems a little more well-built than the last. Pistol-start, a pain in the ass. Because of distractions, we plunged down into the pit twice before realizing there was a red key door we kept forgetting about. The pinkie swarm in that same room was a little tedious and we came rather close to running out of ammo. Not sure it's really tighter than the last one though. Rockets should probably be used on the opening chaingunners though. The fight with the Imps, pinkies, and revenants in the cramped room was really bad though, and pushes the attempts or otherwise to not compare this to Hell Revealed. One of the worst fights for sure. On the plus side, the ugliness of the visuals seems less slammed in our faces because a better job has been done of varying them. The maze at the end isn't really too bad, but it's also quite easy to run out of rad suits in inconvenient spots. I had to rewind at least once because I was too close to the yellow key door when I ran out. The ending is strangely flat. Honestly, the last map flows better, but this would otherwise come very close to matching it. Combat isn't as interesting overall however lmd_#1kiill09-00002.zip Edited February 18, 2023 by LadyMistDragon eliminating a redundancy 7 Quote Share this post Link to post
Ralgor Posted February 17, 2023 1 hour ago, FistMarine said: On the bright side, you CAN kill those enemies stuck in those secret sectors. You will notice a very short line on the top of the sector. Using your chaingun, you can actually snipe them through that tiny gap. The rest secrets it appears you can get fine, though two of them which are located in the large blue area, require you to hear/see the monsters coming out of those secret sectors and then immediately getting there before the secret closes permanently. A great idea, poorly executed. Not helped that I absolutely HATE the one time only secrets. It's not a bad thing for people just wanting to finish but for completionists like me, it hurts. And it also hurts that no one has attempted to UV-Max this map before, nor are there videos on YouTube about this wad. In the end, I got 50% secrets (getting those two Cell Pack secrets in large blue area took me a couple of tries). Can anyone confirm that 50% secrets is the maximum you can achieve? Thanks Your post got me to looking at it again. And it may be just barely possible to enter those secrets, but I can't figure out how to consistently slip past the teleport line. I've done it once or twice by accident, but never intentionally. However, there are additional issues: The closet in the WSW has the front shotgunner stuck in the wall. So you have to kill him to get any of the other monsters to exit. This can be used to your advantage because it lets you focus on the other closet on that side of the map without worrying about this one going empty. The central closet has a little turn right before lift that the monsters generally can't walk through. I had them manage it once over the course of nearly 10 minutes, because a shotgunner behind the one in front fired and pushed the front shotgunner over the line! So if there's only one left it won't open... you need a second shotgunner to shoot at the first. All three of these closets have the issue where the monster will get stuck on the ledge when the lift triggers. When the lift goes back up, the monster will then either teleport without triggering the lift, or get stuck on the lift itself if its companions don't let it go back. This makes it hard to actually get on the lift in the first place. Personally I think 50% should be considered the max. With some insane luck and a lot of persistence it probably is just barely possible to get the rest, but anyone attempting it is plain crazy. 5 Quote Share this post Link to post
Book Lord Posted February 17, 2023 (edited) MAP 10 – The Wicked Metal Garden DSDA-Doom v0.24.3, UV, Pistol start, non-blind run w/saves The former humans encircling Doomguy at the start represented the bad lesson a 90s mapper could learn from The Plutonia Experiment. Thank goodness, the rest of The Wicked Metal Garden was made of clean, aesthetically appealing environments hosting authentic Casali-inspired gameplay, blending naturally with Jefferson’s offhand progression. This map was love at first sight on my continuous playthrough and replaying it on pistol start, with the added challenge of weapon management, only cemented my positive impression. Spoiler Firstly, I should mention the SSG teleport trick. A pistol starter needs the weapon to quickly get through the first segment, but acquiring it involved thinking out of the box, not a simple task considering the pressure applied by hitscanners and the flock of Cacodemons in the courtyard. Angelo conspicuously displayed one of his custom textures in this map, a metal wall covered with green vines; it wrapped the outdoor surfaces and contrasted well with the marble and METAL2 interiors, giving the place a unique atmosphere. The marble atrium was another nice piece of architecture. Spoiler The BSK was visible on a terrace, but there were no other options than going to the north-west into a marble section, ending with a glowing red cross. The danger of being ambushed at any time was palpable: I was low on ammo, and I only possessed a few rockets when I triggered the tripwire in front of the Berserk pack. The number of closets that opened simultaneously was epic: two Barons, two Cacodemons, a horde of 22 Demons ready to fill the corridors, two compartments with Pain Elementals and Cacos around the red cross, and two groups of Imps, Chaingunners & Revenants on the staircase. The seemingly desperate situation allowed for a variety of approaches, depending on the resources the player might have collected before unleashing the mayhem. I was so obtuse to venture there without the SSG, so I had a hard time falling back to the door upstairs and defending it with Berserk fists. Spoiler Being teleported in front of Lost Souls before finding adequate healing was disheartening, but the BSK was near. I entered the north-eastern wing, where I gradually replenished my health and ammo belt. The courtyard with the YSK was visible from the inside, and I strongly recommend killing the Arachnotrons on patrol, as they can cause real trouble when on the grass. The plasma rifle, the cells and the rockets on offer felt like a bad omen, instantly confirmed by the appearance of seven Mancubi ready to unleash a rain of fire on the open ground. My instinct was to approach the YSK pillar and hide behind it, thus releasing the rest of the party: a cloud of Cacodemons and Pain Elementals, backed by a very nasty Arch-Vile that sprinted out of his closet like a 100-meter runner. This was hands down the highlight of the map, and one of the standout moments of The Next Generation. Spoiler The metal chamber accessed through the yellow door was unusually tame if compared to the aggression experienced in The Wicked Metal Garden; the sequence to obtain the RSK was straightforward and felt like a breathing space between the fierce battle and the next level. The relative calm left time for secret hunting and maxing out the map, which might include getting the Megasphere from the water tunnel in the first courtyard (if missed) and backtracking to the yellow switch, just to find some stragglers and cells in the marble section. This was an excellent hard level for 1997 that left most of the competitors in the dust. Edited February 18, 2023 by Book Lord 6 Quote Share this post Link to post
dististik Posted February 18, 2023 MAP08 - Hell's Welcome This one's a bit more my pace. The start is very spicy but I found running to the chaingunner to your right to grab his weapon helps make clearing space out for yourself pretty easy and after that point the level's a lot more forgiving. I guess all the hell really is in the welcome. After that it's not terribly remarkable aside from the yellow key ambush but after having less than good experiences with the previous it was nice. A funny thing I will note is I hit 300 cells long before I got to the secret plasma gun which I used to mop up the rest of the map. Also, I'm not entirely sure how you're intended to get to the third secret on this map (the one not connected to the plasma gun secret); I just did a quick SR50 hop over the moat and tagged it but still ended up with all the kills, items, and secrets, so I can't help but wonder what the point was since there wasn't any items over there that I could see. Maybe an accidental flag? Another thing to quickly note, I'm a big fan of maps the wrap back in on themselves so dropping down to grab the blue key back at the start scratched a very satisfying itch, I just hope you remembered to kill the revs beforehand. 7 Quote Share this post Link to post
brick Posted February 18, 2023 GZDoom, Doom compat, software, HNTR, blind, continuous with saves. TNG MAP09 - “The Pit” Once again, there's an iwad name but the map is very much its own thing. The keys are collected one after the other, each with its own surprise. The RSK locks you in for 30s with teleporting nobles in a very tight spot (RL not recommended). The BSK triggers a tight ambush with imps and demons, then sends you on a small excursion to reopen the door out. The YSK pits you against a cyberdemon and a host of other nasties in a small arena; I had an invulnerability, but this must be a pretty tricky fight on UV since there are so many enemies and not that much space to move. With all this done it's time to drop into the titular pit, and yet another 20% damaging floor maze. The interesting concept here is that you don't technically need the YSK (or any key for that matter) to open the way to the exit, but the YSK will open up little rooms with radsuits along the way to the exit, and it's not easy make it to the exit alive even starting with a Megasphere. I did not enjoy the maze, it goes on for too long, the radsuits leaked all the time, and having to backtrack or taking the wrong path in the maze could spell trouble, as you can find yourself out of radsuit power and not be able to survive getting to the next one. Still I appreciate the concept, and the rest of the map was enjoyable. Visually the lighting is really good in parts, with some great contrast with shadows. TNG MAP10 - “The Wicked Metal Garden” Another action-packed linear key hunt. I wasn't overly fond of the hot start, but found the rest of the map very enjoyable. Elevation is used very well, sometimes allowing you to kill enemies before they can hit you, sometimes protecting you from arachnotron fire, and other times allowing the enemies to hit you more easily instead. The path to the BSK was the hardest for me, as it involved an ambush with demons, barons and cacos in a very tight spot, and I had to reload a couple of times to avoid getting boxed in. The YSK goes for the opposite, with a large outdoor area with successively arachnotrons, then mancubi, then a caco cloud (UV players will have to contend with a cyberdemon and an archvile, to boot). The red key and the exit go pretty quickly by comparison. One nice touch is that, instead of going for the obvious yellow door, you can backtrack for a yellow switch earlier and grab a few goodies, I like this use of keys in optional areas. Another fun level. 7 Quote Share this post Link to post
Roofi Posted February 18, 2023 Number One Kill The Next Generation - Map 10 "The Wicked Metal Garden" "The Wicked Metal Garden" is a delicate association between the metal and the invasive vines. It notably use composite textures made of black metal and green vines. This map doesn't use the most hectic soundtrack fron TNT evilution but it contains sophisticated traps which will not miss to kill you in the case you're too slow. Like the previous map, Angelo has the gimmick to hide very helpful megaspheres in secrets. The one in this map was more cryptic to unlock. It's hidden behind a visible bloody door but you have to press a wall in order to open it. The berserk's ambush doesn't require specific strategy. Reach the berserk pack and run back for your life before the numerous monsters get out of their closets and prevent you from fleeing. There are so many enemies that I even almost died during my continuous play. However, it's gratifying to effortlessly kill the enemies by the camping at the entrance, before the curvy stairs. However, the yellow's key trap represents by far my favourite combat scenario in this map. You have two choices : either, you kill the mancubus range before releasing the flying monsters as well as the lone arch-vile ; or you trigger all the trap at the same time and therefore the mancubus infight with the cacodemons and pain elementals. I really recommand to adopt the second option because the pillars near the door constitute a great help in order to take cover from the projectiles and the arch-vile will not have a lot of opportunity to revive the monsters. You'll save a lot of ammo, which could serve for following maps in case you play on continuous mode. The other parts have nothing special to note. I can say that the many chaingunners and other hitscanners force to progress steadily and the first SSG can easily be missed. In case you didn't grab it before teleporting, just teleport back and you'll obtain it. Overall, it's another tough but good map which, as the previous one, became more fun by replaying it rather than discovering it. Grade : B+ 7 Quote Share this post Link to post
Helm Posted February 18, 2023 MAP10 I end up getting 100% kills, secrets and items for the first time in this set organically, just playing the map. I am a bad secrets marine and I don't even try with items usually so what I am gathering from this experience is that right about here the mapper hits a bit of a stride in terms of realizing that the monsters, items, and secrets in the map don't necessarily have to be contextualized with repeated runs, you can hint enough and help the player enough to get everything you put in there in one go. Therefore this although it isn't the best map I've ever played or anything is my favorite one in the set so far just because it doesn't majorly get in its own way in terms of fun. Things are looking up for the rest! The megasphere secret in the beginning which I found quite late would have made this map way easier for me, but that's fine, it still worked out when I found it. The opening courtyard here has 5-6 different sources of pain, many of them hitscan, so you are incentivized to cross over to the other structure and start consuming the usual symmetrical layout, one side one key card, other side other keycard. The mapper is so fond of this flow. The opening is the hardest part of the map probs until you get situated and decked out. The early green armor in the chaingunner nook is actually super crucial if you don't know of the megasphere yet. Map balanced. The layout has a structured use of verticality which I enjoy. The structure opposing has layers you eventually get to scale and depopulate and climbing up allows for different vantages and easy snipes of floating friends and such. Also the blue key is perched up there. The mapper uses cacodemons, verticality and windows well, I think other friends have mentioned this. I manage to lock myself in a room with an archvile that needs +1 SSG shot from me and get zapped, but at least I live. There's a lot of low health play I wouldn't necessarily save on if I were playing on my own, outside of thread context... actually I wouldn't be playing with saves at all outside of this thread at the moment but whatever. The reason I am saving with 20, 10, 5% life whatever is to see if the mapper allows for recovery from such a state. And this map does, a couple of whole recoveries, as a matter of fact. A waste some lives and time on the zerk ambush until I make a clean getaway and funnel everything. In my footage, from 5:55 to 6:55 it's a continuous engagement for me where I have to really play as much doom as I know how to play in order just to survive. That's a solid minute of hectic time, so I had good experiences on this one. The doughnut shaped layout piece with the way the extra monsters reinforced, circling around from both sides, it's a good setup! Sadly going back in the zerk space to trigger the rest of the monsters wastes a lot of time and attempts for me, I guess it was the comedown from actually having to play for a moment, there. I wish all these monsters were awake when the ambush triggers, generally, so you can push through and get access to the ammo correctly without having the cold shower that most of the ambush is still dormant and waiting for line of sight on you and closing of your exits as you go for an ammo run, already low health and everything. Later I have to make a mad escape with 3% health, grabbing the blue key from the bulwarks and dropping down to get cover and to zerk the lost souls on my ass. More excitement. At that point I figure out the mega secret which was situated at the start of the map and get that dopamine hit. Although I'm not even halfway with the kill count yet, the rest feels easier, especially as the plasma ammo starts making appearances and therefore sweet promises. So the map has an arc, at least it did for me at my skill level. We haven't been talking about it as much but there has been such a gradual increase in mapper proficiency where while we're still in 1997 territory, we are certainly inching closer and closer to a map set with completely different competencies to those of the original TNG. Some layout concepts recur, but the combat and item placement is well more conscious of gameplay flow. It's always a trip to experience this, to see the mapper go from enthusiastic amateur to some sort of actual video-game level designer. Sometimes it's wild, sometimes it's also a bit underwhelming or subtle in some ways, as in this case, because by the point of competence a degree of facelessness has also been 'achieved' as it were. Anyway, I get to an open courtyard and waste some rockets on a manc lineup I should have waited to trigger infighting for instead, come next wave of the fight. An archie appears along with loads of caco and a little PE and he zaps me once but I clean up the whole mess eventually. Autopsy came on my random shuffle and that certainly helped. 50 monsters left, but it feels like the crux of the map has already been conquered. Some incidental stuff later I arrive at yet another final metal2 arena space (visual theme?) with one revenant sniper on a tower in the middle guarding a red key. I just waste the rest of my plasma on the whole encounter, as I said it feels the map is already over. Red key in hand we head towards exit. I end up missing a few monsters by the exit switch so I take a thorough look for extra secrets (since only one is left for me at this point) which might be boring to watch if anyone watches the footage, sorry. The final secret is part of exit progression it turns out, and I had stalled for a while on what looked like the exit switch, but there was more map left to go, classic doom shit. Anyway eventually I hit that false exit switch and chew up the rest. All kills and final secret accessible in the final room of the map. Tidy! I hope and pray the rest is also as tidy.footage 8 Quote Share this post Link to post
Celestin Posted February 18, 2023 MAP10: The Wicked Metal Garden After escaping a firing squad above you, we are tasked with assaulting a demonic fortress, through, again, a linear key hunt. The map, especially in beginning, is rather tight on ammo, but in a fair way. The route to the blue key, the first we need, is the best example. Because shell boxes are placed inside monster closets of a cramped arena, you are forced to break through the enemies, rather than escape. The map eases a bit, you get a berserk, so ammo is less of an issue. A bit of incidental combat later, you grab a plasma rifle, just in time for the yellow key fight. It stands on a column in a large open field, with a balcony full of mancubi as its guardians. Protip: lower the key as soon as you can to reveal more enemies, including an archvile. I know it might be counter-intuitive, but I found out he is much easier to kill him when distracted by infighting. The rest of the map is unremarkable, with the final, red key being just hitscanners and imps firing at you from above, but I think it's the first level in a while that I had fun playing without getting frustrated. It's a strong contender for the best map in the set. 8 Quote Share this post Link to post
Ralgor Posted February 18, 2023 MAP10 - “The Wicked Metal Garden”dsda-doom v0.25.6 cl2, UV, Pistol start, blind run, single segment 100% kills and secrets Deaths: 11 Yikes, that hot start is absolutely brutal, especially with a pistol start. I really don't like this sort of thing, because all you really have to do is keep restarting until you get a good start. That means it's not really hard, just annoying. The SSG is sitting on a teleporter here, and sometimes you can pick it up while going through the teleporter. Sometimes you have to back up, go back through the teleporter to pick up the SSG, and then re-enter the teleporter again. This is kind of annoying too. Past the first teleporter, things don't get a whole lot easier. The best thing I found was to haul ass through the first door, and then turn to the right and kill the zombies there quickly before the pinkies and cacos in the room can react. There's a green armor here that you will really need. Then fight your way to the other side to kill the other zombies. Only then you can clear out the rest of the room without being shot to pieces randomly. There is a megasphere down in the water near the start. I didn't find this until the end of my successful run, but it would help make this level a lot easier. The best time to grab it is probably right off the bat, or maybe after you've cleared out everything up to the berserk pack. The blue door is up to the right, and it's worth going up there immediately for the ammo placed next to it. You're going to need plenty of ammo for the run to the BSK. Up to the left is the rocket launcher. Once you have collected all of this, you can make your way through the door here. Eventually you make your way through a glowing red cross, with the previously mentioned berserk pack at the end. Grabbing this unleashes hell in the entire area. The best strategy I could come up with is to retreat, all of the way back up the steps (this can be tricky) and out the door. Hopefully this causes a bit of infighting. I flat out ran out of ammo in this section and had to punch a baron down, who was luckily trying to get revenge on an annoying revenant. (I can relate.) Next you have to clear out another horde of pointless pinkies using your fists. I wouldn't try to spend the ammo on them, even though ammo starts to become much more plentiful at this point. Once you survive that, you end up getting plenty of ammo in the area you just cleared out, and the rest of the level becomes much easier to deal with. There is a pretty crazy trap around the yellow key, but you're provided with enough rockets and plasma to deal with it. The arch-vile is really the only wildcard. To deal with him, you need to pull the cloud of cacodemons off the platform, and then run to the lift. Go up the lift, and then charge the arch-vile with your strongest weapon. Hopefully you can get some shots off on him before you run up to him. If you don't hurry he can resurrect a bunch of mancubi to make your life miserable. Others have mentioned just releasing both traps at once. That could work, but it might make getting the arch-vile a bit harder. You can just hide behind the pillars for a while I suppose. Once you kill the arch-vile, the level is mostly over. There's still a lot of the level left to complete, but nothing like the first two-thirds of this level. This level is no joke in the beginning, especially only starting with a pistol. It's pretty well the hardest start yet. But the level is actually pretty good. The very beginning isn't a big deal because you can just restart over and over again, as annoying as that is. Once you really have some commitment to the run, the level gets way easier. If I had gotten the megasphere near the beginning though, and picked up the ammo in front of the blue door earlier, this whole level would likely have felt significantly easier than it did. But that's the price I'm paying for playing these blind. Also, I've kind of stopped commenting on the visuals of these levels. While Angelo definitely improved through the first episode into TNG, none of these look great. That's not really the reason why these levels exist though. Some of this is just due to having played modern wads, and 90s levels are going to find it difficult to compete. Still, I had a ton of fun with this level, despite the large number of attempts. Some of those "deaths" were really me just restarting after doing badly at the initial fight, though. If it weren't for the hot start, I think this would be my new favorite level. On a side note, this might be the first map where I've noticed multiplayer-only monster placement. There's a cyberdemon in the YSK courtyard if you're playing this that way. This would make this an interesting map to play in a "UV+" manner. Grade: B MAP10 - 27:11.63 (27:11) K: 255/255 I: 27/27 S: 5/5 ralgor_#1killtng10.zip 8 Quote Share this post Link to post
Andromeda Posted February 18, 2023 20 hours ago, FistMarine said: MAP05: Radioactive Substace Control Also if anyone knows how to lower the last radsuit platform (around the red key area) and the health/armor bonuses near the end of the level, please let me know of the intended method, unless you were actually meant to just bump into them to collect them, which is what I did! The radsuit can be collected by bumping into it like you said, for the bonuses you can activate the west side of the central platform to lower it like a lift, then it's easy to jump to the other platforms to grab the other bonuses. 6 Quote Share this post Link to post
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