The DWmegawad Club plays: Doom 2 in City Only [vote now]

[Insaneprophet]

Map 20: A Wilted Clover's Lullaby by eater29

 

This was indeed a behemoth. This also seems to be, maybe not the trend but, a proliphic segment of the slaughter genre. Though not my cup of tea many will find this map to be amazing. I on the other hand got about 5 or 6 hundred kills in and decided it so wasnt for me that I was probably not going to finish it, but then... I was bored. I started a new game on Im To Young To Die and warped to lvl 20. This was still not what Im looking for in my Doom but was surprisingly palatable. The monster count had been halved, from 4000+ to 2000+, and though each new fight killed me the first time, finding a strat was simple enough while still giving a feeling of challange without making it feel as if I had hit or was beating my head against a wall. Ive seen lower skill levels make a joke out of maps like this and Ive seen them not change enough to make a difference, I would say that must be a fine line to walk but Eater did a phenominal job here. While I wont be playing it again to climb the difficulty ladder or to hunt the other half of the secrets that I missed, I was at least able to enjoy my time with this and get what I feel is the full experience without walking out before the end of the movie so to speak. A fine inclusion in our menegerae of city maps... lets hope there arent too many more like it. 😝

 

hmmm after just checking I dont know how my memory got so goofed up but the difference between UV and ITYTD isnt in monsters, they are both 2k+. I think my first attempt was in a different universe cuz I absolutely remember being floored by seeing 4000some on the counter... 😝

Edited April 21 by Insaneprophet

[eater29]

Following others who have written notes about their own maps, I figured I'd chip in and talk a little about map20's development.

 

Some time ago, I wanted to make a map in the style of Magnolia map03 in terms of a large, nonlinear layout and a secret hunt. The MIDI was also chosen at the start of development I started work on it somewhere in January, hoping to make it a solo release or a potential submission to Hardfest 3 (don't ask), but I didn't get far (I wasn't confident in making nonlinear progression at the time) and left it on the backburner while I worked on other stuff. Taviow told me a slot had opened up in D2ICO, so I took the slot and decided to use this old map as a starting point.

 

This was the map on the day it was plucked for the project:

Spoiler

 

Quite early on, I had come up with the main progression of the map - Fight through the buildings for at least 3 of the keys, then grab the yellow skull key and exit. I started by blocking out some random shapes as buildings and connecting them via the outdoors areas. After which, I fiddled around with the things that had been drawn, then filled in the buildings with random shapes or some fight ideas that were in my head at the time. By the end of the first week I had a mostly complete layout.

Spoiler

(I'm a bit disappointed the finale is so disconnected from the rest of the map, but I'm very happy with the rest of the layout, even the more linear routes for the blue keys since I felt that they wound around themselves and other parts of the map quite well.)

 

On the visual side of things, it turns out my usual way of detailing (stairbuilder spam, nonsensical but cool-looking lighting gradients, weird glowing lights) works pretty well in a "speedmapping" style, since I wanted to finish detailing it in a week so I could complete it within the deadline. I also started making houses and placing windows everywhere in an attempt to look like a lived-in city. All in all I'm quite happy with how it looks, and doubly happy that it's under the sidedef limit for something of this scale.

 

About the gameplay/other notes:

• This plays almost nothing like the actual Magnolia map03 and is closer (combat wise) to my usual setpiece encounter combat style. I wanted to keep most of the combat indoors as I thought that having monsters sprinkled around everywhere would be annoying.
• Once you grabbed the BFG, I wanted to flood the entire map with monsters, but the verticality and amount of winding paths across would have made it play terribly since you would be able to camp a ledge or corner. By this point the deadline was too close to try implementing anything super complex to make it play nicely, so I settled for the cross fight at the place where you get the BFG.
• Admittedly some of the hyper-cramped setups are quite rough, though I've tried to tweak around with the difficulties to make this play less stressful while not taking away too much from the encounter's original form on UV. Hopefully they're still fun!
• The secret fight was another concept that I'd wanted to make for quite a while, though the rather extreme nature of the fight pushed it into becoming an optional area to reward the player for getting all six keys.
• I had realised about this time that I never really used arachnos and spiderdemons that much in my map (mostly because they're too big a lot of the time) so I was hoping to make some use out of them in this map. The secret fight and finale are the products of these attempts.
• Kudos to taviow for testing this map when I sent it to him at like 1am in my timezone. He found quite a lot of silly bugs and things I missed in the map before I submitted it.

I quite enjoyed making this map as rough as the combat is. I definitely want to try making more large-scale, non-linear maps like this in the future, but not at such a speed ever again.

 

Footnote: I was recently made aware of the giant softlock pit in the middle of the map as well as a few other visual issues. They have since been fixed and should be in the next RC whenever that gets released. Sorry about that!

[Treehouseminis]

3 minutes ago, eater29 said:

Following others who have written notes about their own maps, I figured I'd chip in and talk a little about map20's development.

 

Some time ago, I wanted to make a map in the style of Magnolia map03 in terms of a large, nonlinear layout and a secret hunt. The MIDI was also chosen at the start of development I started work on it somewhere in January, hoping to make it a solo release or a potential submission to Hardfest 3 (don't ask), but I didn't get far (I wasn't confident in making nonlinear progression at the time) and left it on the backburner while I worked on other stuff. Taviow told me a slot had opened up in D2ICO, so I took the slot and decided to use this old map as a starting point.

 

This was the map on the day it was plucked for the project:

  Hide contents

 

Quite early on, I had come up with the main progression of the map - Fight through the buildings for at least 3 of the keys, then grab the yellow skull key and exit. I started by blocking out some random shapes as buildings and connecting them via the outdoors areas. After which, I fiddled around with the things that had been drawn, then filled in the buildings with random shapes or some fight ideas that were in my head at the time. By the end of the first week I had a mostly complete layout.

  Reveal hidden contents

(I'm a bit disappointed the finale is so disconnected from the rest of the map, but I'm very happy with the rest of the layout, even the more linear routes for the blue keys since I felt that they wound around themselves and other parts of the map quite well.)

 

On the visual side of things, it turns out my usual way of detailing (stairbuilder spam, nonsensical but cool-looking lighting gradients, weird glowing lights) works pretty well in a "speedmapping" style, since I wanted to finish detailing it in a week so I could complete it within the deadline. I also started making houses and placing windows everywhere in an attempt to look like a lived-in city. All in all I'm quite happy with how it looks, and doubly happy that it's under the sidedef limit for something of this scale.

 

About the gameplay/other notes:

• This plays almost nothing like the actual Magnolia map03 and is closer (combat wise) to my usual setpiece encounter combat style. I wanted to keep most of the combat indoors as I thought that having monsters sprinkled around everywhere would be annoying.
• Once you grabbed the BFG, I wanted to flood the entire map with monsters, but the verticality and amount of winding paths across would have made it play terribly since you would be able to camp a ledge or corner. By this point the deadline was too close to try implementing anything super complex to make it play nicely, so I settled for the cross fight at the place where you get the BFG.
• Admittedly some of the hyper-cramped setups are quite rough, though I've tried to tweak around with the difficulties to make this play less stressful while not taking away too much from the encounter's original form on UV. Hopefully they're still fun!
• The secret fight was another concept that I'd wanted to make for quite a while, though the rather extreme nature of the fight pushed it into becoming an optional area to reward the player for getting all six keys.
• I had realised about this time that I never really used arachnos and spiderdemons that much in my map (mostly because they're too big a lot of the time) so I was hoping to make some use out of them in this map. The secret fight and finale are the products of these attempts.
• Kudos to taviow for testing this map when I sent it to him at like 1am in my timezone. He found quite a lot of silly bugs and things I missed in the map before I submitted it.

I quite enjoyed making this map as rough as the combat is. I definitely want to try making more large-scale, non-linear maps like this in the future, but not at such a speed ever again.

 

Footnote: I was recently made aware of the giant softlock pit in the middle of the map as well as a few other visual issues. They have since been fixed and should be in the next RC whenever that gets released. Sorry about that!

It was a great map.  Though I suck at secrets I think I found 2/15 lol.  The secret/optional fight was really fun tho. 

 

I got stunlocked at a certain point, I can't remember the context of the area but it was a cramped area with viles in the middle and HKs appearing through 2 doors besides the viles.  It's like a split second of hesitation when the fight starts and you'll run out of room if you don't kill them asap.

[Novaseer]

MAP20 "A Wilted Clover's Lullaby" by eater29 (100% K, 46% I, 66% S, 1:32:10, A LOT of saves)

 

The first four-digit monster map since MAP03, at a whopping 2,190 demons. The first map to consistently trigger dsda-doom's slow key framing of the set so far, and the first to do so at all since MAP05. If I remember correctly, the first map with over 10 secrets since MAP05, and the most of the set so far at 15. The first six-key hunt since MAP03. The first map where the ending timer exceeds 60 minutes, and it does it by more than doubling the length of the former longest map of the set.

 

The first that has actively made me recognise that it's too hard for me.

 

It doesn't take someone who's played Sunlust to know what Ribbiks' (and, by extension, dannebubinga's) influence looks like, and A Wilted Clover's Lullaby wears it proudly. The epic vistas dominated by green, the way eater29 details the map... and the brutally constricting fights that no amount of firepower is going to be sufficient for.

 

I don't know how many times I died, but I know it was over a hundred - and once we subtract the 90 minute in-game timer from the two and a half real life hours it took me to beat, at least an hour of my time in this level was spent on failed attempts. I don't think it's hyperbole to say that A Wilted Clover's Lullaby is the hardest map I've ever completed - it has far more of a mean streak than the other behemoths I've challenged in the past (probably because I typically stick to casual megawads so its only real competition is Eviternity MAP32 "Anagnorisis" and Eviternity II MAP36 "Kenosis") and for any given fight there is no way in hell you're going to ace it first try without prodigal Doom instincts... which I lack.

 

Speaking of lacking, I'm a dumb fuck and couldn't find secrets for at least 30 minutes, and still missed five. eater29 hides them really, really well, and they don't often give much of a reward. At least twenty of my minutes were hunting secrets, an endeavour in which even iddt didn't help... considering my MAP34 review, maybe I'm just bad at using iddt.

 

Frankly, I'm in awe that this entire thing was constructed under as much time crunch as it was. The scope is massive, detail is staggering, the fights are well-calibrated and all combines into a sadistically tight-knit package. That being said, though, I'm not particularly a fan of cock and ball torture, so I don't know if I'll play this again.

[cannonball]

MAP20 - "A Wilted Clover's Lullaby" by eater29

 

Holy moly, okay this map really goes over the line in regards to this project. This magnum opus feels like it has a lot of the chemistry seem in the likes of Miasma and other huge exploratory murderfests. I think this one goes a little too over the top in terms of length and difficulty, I wouldn't have too much issue if this was a solo map, but here this could prove to be a major showstopper for many.

As for the map itself, oddly the big fights (Yellow skull, the automap fight and the final fight) felt easier to beat than many of the smaller scale fights, mostly because ammo/health and movement were more forgiving. As such a lot of the preamble fights felt a little repetitive and often frustrating, that said you do get major payoffs with the big fights that allow you to blow off major steam with the BFG.

I won't go much further, I don't think a map like this suits a community project such as this, however as a singular piece this is well worthy of being placed on the pedestal that includes Miasma, Entropy etc. It is a top notch map but I must confess to feeling exhausted after finishing this.

[LateNightPerson]

Map06 guy here. Glad that you enjoyed my map (or didn't, that's valid). Here's some trivia about the development of my map:

 

- The map is intended to be a homage to Iron Maiden, which is where the map got its name

- The original midi used during development was a rendition of "Stranger in a Strange Land" by Iron Maiden. This was changed very late into development for copyright reasons

- The map's structure is more-or-less an evolution of the city map designs from my Ultimate Doom megawad

- Early versions of the map had way more archviles that would spawn in. They were toned down for obvious reasons

- The mall was very losely inspired by an actual mall in my city... yeah, it doesn't resemble its inspiration whatsoever lol

- I initially wanted to put Deckard's spinner into the map as a Blade Runner reference, but i couldn't convincingly recreate it within the engine limitations. Same story goes for Kaneda's bike, which i also couldn't recreate convincingly

- the timed secret was intentionally made cryptic to give it a mystique, but it instead pissed people off lol

 

There are several easter eggs in the map, some more obvious than not:

 

1. The bloody ax near the body outline is a reference to Killers

2. The "Eddie Lives" text nearby is a reference to Somewhere In Time (the text is seen on the album's cover art)

3. The egypt-themed restaurant is a reference to both Powerslave and Somewhere In Time

4. The park has the word "nyctophobia" embedded into the dirt walkaway. This is a reference to Fear Of The Dark

5. The capsule bar is a reference to Akira

6. The capsule bar has a vinyl record. It is supposed to be a record for The Number Of The Beast

7. The plasma rifle in the mall's gun store is a reference to The Terminator ("phased plasma rifle in the 40-watt range")

8. A new RC added a hidded Akira logo in the map's outskirts

9. Same new RC added a hidden Iron Maiden logo in the timed secret area

 

[Celestin]

MAP21: Cruels End by Shawny

 

Cruels End reminds me of Shawny's maps from Skulltiverse, especially its MAP21. It's also a corrupted city with monster-dense fights that the author uses a lot in his works, however D2ICO's map is far longer and drawn out. On a purely mechanical level, this is a three-way key hunt with a lot of frantic encounters. My favourite was the one before the red key. At first I couldn't figure out how this works, the square arena started filling with imps and four archviles appear in cages in the centre. I had no idea how you were supposed to dodge them, only to realise you have to press buttons that block their sight. You have to be on a constant lookout for switches while trying not to get blocked by whatever spawns here. When it finally clicked how this works, it turned into the best fight of the map. I also enjoyed the hotel, which drops down the dividing walls, turning into a single open arena.

 

Once again, when I think about it, the map shouldn't have taken an hour to complete. Two reasons I can think of is a low supply of rockets (which made me more reliant on SSG) and the large, open courtyard you visit early on. That place is way too large for the amount of monsters it holds and coupled with a lack of rockets, clearing this out was a drag. There's also a side-quest, where you get a BFG if you find five hidden switches. Cool, but you get it at the very end, with the only thing it's useful for is a completely optional horde of 80 revenants. You can't even take it to the next level, as the map ends with a death exit. I don't get it, to be honest.

 

I'm on the fence with this one. There's definitely a lot of appealing qualities here, great visuals and the design of some fights being the main draw, at the same time, Cruels End felt like it needed some streamlining

[Insaneprophet]

Map 21: Cruels End by shawny

 

Back to UV and a warp to lvl 21 and away we go. I quite liked this map. Its in the upper eschelon of the mapset filled to the brim with maps that I like and or love. This was another fully immersive city wide sweep that has you cleaning out the buildings surrounding a huge public promenade. I would guess that you can go in any of three directions but I found myself just tip toeing around for a while, getting the feel off the area and trying to arm myself before taking on anything too deeply. Luckily for me the cyber in the courtyard scared me enough to finally commit to the opposite side of the map which takes you to the yellow key appartments that houses a super fun fight that should leave you well enough armed to feel secure heading into the blue key buildings. All throughout the level we are faced with mid tiers and heavies in dense groupings either just living in the environment or teleporting in to back up the residents trying to defend their home town, this is hell after all. With two keys in hand I had no other options than to head over by the cyber's hangout, where his gang of revenants and hell knights have laid claim to this section as their turf and you better wear the right colors, know the hand signs or be a bad ass mofo to enter this territory. Well green aint their color and I dont know sign language.... Having gone through three quarters of the map you should be fully equiped to deal with anything until you get to the red key fight, you are strapped for it as well but till you understand its gimmick it just might look like a show stopper. I almost thought I wouldnt be able to handle it but after only a few attempts all became clear and it really is pretty easy, especially if youve already got the bfg, saved the mega sphere and mega armor and maybe even kept the invuln for just such an occasion. (Invuln wont get you far here but can ease the pressure for the first wave or so, and stops the viles who are down there from zapping you right as you jump down and arm yerself) So Ive ended the map missing just one secret and like 20 or so kills but Im really interested in figuring out what Im overlooking, Ive been all over and used iddt but nothing seems apparent, gunna give it a few more runs before having to call it a wash.

 

I take it back, Im missing one secret and 80 kills...

Edited April 21 by Insaneprophet

[Novaseer]

MAP21 "Cruels End" by Shawny (90% K, 94% I, 50% S, 1:01:22)

 

That's right people, your reward for making it through an hour plus slugfest yesterday is... another hour plus slugfest. Welcome to Hell, here's eight hundred monsters in the first map of the episode. Enjoy your stay.

 

Things I like about this map: there are multiple setpiece fights which revolve around dynamic terrain, which are cool. Forcing players to think on the fly like that is fun, and it makes for a nice "oh shit!" moment when walls raise or lower around you to drastically change the arena you're in.

 

Things I don't like about this map: most everything else.

 

Visuals range between over- and under-detailed with no in-between (and it draws quite heavily from the TNT style of Hell that I've grown to dislike), progression is obscure, secrets are even more obscure and by the looks of things lock 80 enemies, low ammo so you have to put yourself to sleep SSGing hordes of hell knights, archvile basement, archvile basement, archvile basement. Did I mention that I don't like the archvile basement?

 

Speaking of archviles, they have pretty scummy placement across the whole map. What's that, you're locked in a fight with very little cover and have 40 revenant rockets trailing you from the first 20 seconds of the fight? Here, have two viles behind you, so you have as little time to react as possible. Gee, thanks.

 

And, as you'd probably expect from a distinctly non-slaughter map with 800 monsters, it's rather overlong (especially for an episode opener, which up to this point the longest has been MAP06 at just over 20 minutes) - which isn't helped by the relative scarcity of resources forcing you to backtrack for medkits quite a lot.

 

Not one of my favourites, all things considered. And judging by the portent @Celestin has provided, I imagine we're in for more of the same in the coming days.

[Celestin]

MAP22: Lifeless Sanctum by Snaxalotl

 

This was one of the maps of D2ICO I was the most interested in playing, since Snaxalotl is a mapper that receives a ton of praise for her work, yet I haven't played any map she made. This is definitely an interesting map, with a highly detailed layout and moody atmosphere, set in a corrupted complex of clearly human origin. The start was somewhat tricky as guns are placed deeper into the map, so the start has you punching demons and occasionally taking down other monsters with a shotgun. I'd say it eases up somewhat once you get the rocket launcher, you can comfortably get the three keys and head towards the exit.

 

To be fair, the gameplay feels solid, but the one think I'll remember is the finale - a large arena, filled with blood and guts. It spawn a small crowd with a group of archviles in the centre. You get a BFG not long before, it however still was tricky to pin them down, all the while you avoid revenant missiles and cyberdemon rockets. It's a fine map where time flies surprisingly quickly.

 

One thing I'd like to add is I was having some technical issues here, more than with other maps. I've seen a lot of missing textures in Woof!, but this might have been a source port thing, as they disappeared when checking this map in DSDA-Doom. Also, should I be able to pass through fences? Like the railing on the way to the blue key or a gate near three-key switch. This feels a bit like an oversight.

[Insaneprophet]

Map 22: Lifeless Sanctum by snaxalotl

 

Right from go this feels like a map right out of Absission, like the same exact start, with only a beserk pack and pinkies, imps and hell knights on the dry land, a climbable path of rocks and ledges behind you in the damaging liquid and alot of cussing by me because Im not very good at punching shit, but it truely  isnt super difficult and the similarities are really only superficial. The map opens up with multiple options for progressing and truely dwarfs anything from said previous set so enough comparisons and on to the gameplay. Weapons are handed out kind of slowly and are tricky to aquire but you should have plenty and by playing cat and mouse with the demons the early sections can be cleared in what becomes, to me, a fun and unorthodox style. The map also feels exploration heavy with all of the different climbable levels and paths but the lack of unpassable linedefs on dsda can lead you to uncountable dead ends, deaths and softlocks in what should be inaccessable areas. Fun in its own way but ultimately pointless and a huge time waste. The only super aggregious one is the fence on the blue key walkway, it really needs to be blocking because its too easy to fall off in the middle of combat with whats up there or when dodging fireballs from below. Anywho, I liked this level alot, all of the killing was varied in its presentation so we werent just in a, lock in press switch and repeat loop, but set piecs fights were included and this was yet another take on what a city in hell might look like and I found it kind of believable as it didnt appear to be anything a human mind might construct. We have hit a stretch of massive levels here but this one, along with the last one, have made what they are sandwiched between, bareable. I can understand where some people can get burned out on this stuff but I am still on the side of loving it when there is still a good mix of regular maps that are oversized and straight up outright monuments to the slaughter/challange scene. 😝

[cannonball]

MAP21 - "Cruels End" by Shawny

 

This one has its moments, now lets get some good points in, the big fight for the red key is great once you know how it works mechanically, you need to hit switches periodically to keep the archviles covered and survive the rest of the ambush (The viles are killed automatically after a certain amount of time), the yellow key house looks good and puts up a bit of a fight. However it is hard to ignore that some many parts of this map feel oversized for the opposition you face (The outdoors sections feel very empty), a lot of the fights just sort of happen without too much thought into defeating and the whole blue key section was to be honest rather dull, there is another little put the blocks together section but you can handle this section piece by piece, which is slow, there is a cyber that is just annoying to face and the follow up fights lack any kind of bite.

This was a mixed bag and honestly I struggled in parts to keep focussed, there are some clever parts to this map, but unfortunately they often require quite a bit of work to yield the reward. I can't help but feel that this map would be far better in a condensed form. Shawny is a smart cookie, but there is too much padding to make this feel light a high point of the wad.

PS - I know this is biased, but the midi choice here also feels off, "Arrival" feels like such an "Endgame" midi, so hearing it at the start of an episode feels wrong and honestly for such an awesome track and I even got a little tired of hearing it.

 

 MAP22 - "Lifeless Sanctum" by Snaxalotl

 

A flawed masterpiece......

This truly is Sandy's City, a city built from flesh, brick and tech, strewn together in a way where there was little care taken as to whether it makes sense at all. At close range some of the sights look kind of garish, but the crazy thing is that when put altogether in the whole broad picture, this map is truly a sight to behold. The combat is very different to the last couple, the first few minutes are harrowing, you have essentially nothing to work it except your fists, there is a shotgun you can get too with a bit of dexterity, but you will be leaning on berserk until you get the yellow key essentially. I had over 100 kills down before I had anything that could hold its own in a proper fight. Finally with the SSG (by the three key switch), you can go to the upper structures to get the blue keycard. Now when I said this map was flawed, the biggest one currently is here because the railings are passable. There were also a couple of spots where I got softlocked, inconsistent damaging flaw usage, a lot of misalignment in the texturing and some nodebuilding issues that create slimetrails (I really hope these get resolved by the way). Something odd happened at the red key, I couldn't escape but I am not sure whether I didn't wait long enough or I managed a linedef skip, I nocliped to the other side of the fence and reentered this area and everything seemed to work fine? Beyond the red skull you can traverse the rocky terrain to get a blue skull that I am not sure of its use (The blue keycard works on everything). Well behind the three key switch is the BFG and the final set of fights, the first is pretty straightforward infight fodder, but the last fight carries some serious bite, not only that but the switches are haphazardly placed (In a good way), lots of damaging floor and the centre is covered in arch viles. This was nasty and I loved it.

This map requires more work because the flaws can lead to some highly frustrating results, however this level feels so alien and hostile and at the same time it doesn't on the whole revolve around big bloated fights, you are naked and being shelled at the start and it is only towards the end where you can let loose a little bit. This map might be the second map in the hell city episode, but this is the one that makes you feel that you truly in hell. Worth noting that the death exit on the previous map was completely necessary because starting with weapons absolutely removes the a huge proportion of the experience. This episode is probably the most controversial and the one with the biggest arguments of rearranging the map placement, now there is one map (foreshadowing) where there was discussions of moving, but I would argue that this would have been a great map to open the hell episode with. The mood and atmosphere are pitched perfectly.

[taviow]

Slightly ahead of MAP23 I'll post a few dev notes. I've spoilered them so that I don't give away anything to anyone who hasn't yet played it.

 

First and foremost here's a few recommendations on how to have the best experience with this map:

• Use the OpenGL renderer in DSDA-Doom. It is the best way to guarantee good performance while playing it. While GZ should work (with MBF21 features enabled), I honestly don't think it will perform great.
• In consideration of anyone who had a hard time with MAP20 (and this will come to happen again in future maps, including 23 and others), it is important to remember that the full range of difficulty settings has been implemented in these maps, especially the hard ones.

Now, let me cover a few points about the map's development:

Spoiler

• While still potentially very difficult, this map was made as a slaughter primer of sorts. The goal for the difficulty was to make it hard enough to give you some pause but not enough to stop you in your tracks or to overly frustrate players. Although things might not actually work that way in practice, in my mind I hope that this map could serve as someone's first ever slaughter experience, and that they might be curious enough to seek out others.
• This map was heavily planned. I made the starting area first, and I already knew from the time I started making it that the first thing you'd see were the massive city gates.
• The BFG was the first weapon I placed in the map. That was a mission statement as much as anything else, as it completely shaped how I designed the combat encounters.
• I took the non-linear progression design goal to heart, requiring only 3 out of the 6 keys to open the city gates (normal exit), along with designing a few optional areas. What key an area will give you is color coded by the lamps in front of the entrance to each major landmark, but I understand this signposting might be lost in the flurry of detailing that I gave the map.
• The version I originally submitted after the 3-week period featured only the main 6 key buildings. The secret exit was added later, along with most of the houses and random locations scattered across the map.
• This map is a love letter to the people who inspired me to take up mapping in the first place. Sunder, Abandon, Sunlust, Fractured Worlds, Occula, among others - they were all part of this. And without standing on their shoulders I would not be playing Doom at all, let alone mapping.
• While one might say it should have been a solo release, this map could not have been made without Myolden's mission statement for the project. It would simply not have happened had the stars not aligned this exact way. I am thankful for him and this project having afforded me the opportunity to make this. I expected to have to sell him this map pretty hard, but he embraced it fully for what it is.
• Here's the oldest screenshot I have of the map, from when I finished the first building. There was nothing else in the map at this time, so for a long time the opening shot stayed solely in my imagination.

While I am immensely proud of it, there's a few lessons I've learned from it that I need to keep in mind for the future.

• I don't want to sacrifice performance to this extent on future maps. In the process of carrying out my vision for it, I ended up making something that just does not perform well. I sure do love my long sight lines, but I need to find ways to accomplish my goals without compromising on performance entirely.
• I crunched intensely to get the map done in 3 weeks. For the entire 3 weeks, every day after work, my life was this map. And during each of the 3 weekends I had, my life was this map. I don't regret it, because the map just wouldn't have got done otherwise, but I don't think I will ever do such a thing again.

 

 

Edited April 22 by taviow

[Snaxalotl]

Thanks for the feedback on my map. After getting used to the tight and compact layouts that vanilla enforces while I made in Abscission I went a little overboard in the sheer scale of this map considering the time constraints (The time limit was more than fair but I failed to account for it properly). I have fixed some issues since DICO got picked for the dwmegawad club but I will be reviewing what you found and address the problems. Thanks again :>

[Insaneprophet]

Map 23: Idumea by taviow

 

I cannot comment very much on this map. I was playing dsda and I wasnt in software but this one is pretty much unplayable for me. I turned the resolution down, I changed the frame rates, I changed the mouse sensitivity, I lowered difficulty to ITYTD, I fidgeted with every setting I thought might help just to be able to experience this one and its still super choppy with huge skips and freezes. Luckily the lowest difficulty makes almost every fight not even close to challenging so I have gone through almost the whole thing. The only kinda hard ones are the red skull and the secret exit. Every other lock in is a joke that doesnt require skill or a computer capable of keeping up. (That is actually a point in this maps favor due to such performance issues that any challenge on the lowest difficulty would truely render this map a full dont even bother endevour) I have to imagine that if ones computer can handle this it is most likely an amazing modern slaughter level with high detailing and well thought out arena fights that I would have liked to be able to try on the harder settings. None of that is meant to be but at least I didnt have to completely nope out. I got to pretty much just hold down the fire button on the bfg, run around avoiding everything that needed killing and made it through most of them on my second or third try. I had to cheese the red skull pretty badly.. and the giant caco cloud fight kind of (prolly woulda played it the same though even if I could see) but have gotten myself all the way to the secret exit fight without cheating once. The jury is still out on wether I can pull that one off. My ending thoughts are that even though this was never going to be my style map nor one of my favorites, I am glad that it found a home in this mapset. It adds to the diversity of the city. 😝

[Celestin]

MAP23: Idumea by taviow

 

I felt speechless after completing this behemoth of a map. Idumea is gigantic, detailed and loaded with monsters, to a point where it takes a considerable toll on the performence. Even walking around the map caused the game to stutter and some combat setpieces were borderline unplayable. I had no qualms about saving mid-fight to a point of abuse, but I think it's the sole reasom why I managed to complete the map and stay sane. What you are looking at is a hub that connects a series of arenas together, both mandatory and optional. It's all setpiece fights with no low-impact breather, so the overall experience is very taxing. You need three keys to finish the map and six to unlock the secret exit, here's a brief list of what you need to complete the map.

 

Blue skull has you first take on a mass of revenants reinforced by cyberdemons, then fight against more revenants and cacodemons on stairs while a cyberdemon with an archvile choir stands on the top. At some point I managed to kill enough monsters with a BFG and rain rockets down the stairs before eliminating everything upstairs.

 

The yellow skull is a pit of pre-placed corpses that gets resurrected by an archviles. I would have enjoyed this a lot, it's a hectic fight where you try to single out viles before too much monsters get revived if it wasn't for the framerate completely shitting itself. Seriously, this part was nearly unplayable, I haven't seen Woof! performing this badly.

 

The next was the blue key, which first locks you on a bridge under arachnotron fire while spawning cyberdemons to two-shot. Then comes two phases of cramped rocket usage, first around the perimeter, then inside a diamond-shaped building. I like the second part, as the walls block archviles in the corners and a central cyberdemon, while you have to move around avoiding their attacks and eliminating imps and hell knights that pour in.

 

The yellow key was fun at first, as you had to rocket a mass of imps and chaingunners while partially invisible. I have no complaints here, except when you press two buttons that masterminds guard, a metric ton of archviles appear. The familiar feeling of hitting a brick wall from MAP20 returned, this time exacerbated by poor framerate. The amount of viles and respawned chaingunners is ludicrous and the only reason I've completed this part is through save-scumming. I think this is the most difficult part of the map.

 

I think the red keycard was the easiest one, though it's once again a fight where you start by stacking the corpses only to release archviles in phase 2. It's more cramped, but also there's a lot more room to dodge missiles, I only died here like 5 times, which I consider a success.

 

I initially didn't understand how red skull fight works, but it quicky turned out it's the same thing as in MAP21: you need to periodically press switches to hide an archvile horde while defending from the hell nobles flood. This is probably my favourite fight of the map, as I more or less felt I was in control.

 

When you have the three keys, you can open a giant gate that you see from the start. What follows is a horde of 1000 monsters, including several cyberdemon, cloud of cacodemons and teleporting imps and revenants. Despite the abysmal framerate that's only slightly better than playing Nuts.wad in GZDoom, this was the easiest part of the map - Idumea's hub is so spacious running laps around the place was trivial, and all the supplies (cells, rockets and megaspheres) are in abandunce. I wish I could run this at 60 fps, it would have been a sight to behold.

 

Then there is the secret exit. Quite early I've noticed a pier down below and a cave nearby. The part where you have to follow a trail of candles while three cyberdemons launch a missile barrage felt luck-based, so I won't spend much time talking about it. Once you survive this, you make your way to a large ship with locked archviles. When you come here with six keys, you can unlock the Idumea's final challenge: boxes of archviles and hurtfloors keep you close to the mast in the middle, while the map spawns pinkies and a trickle of archviles. This is a creative fight, I won't deny that, and when the area deniers died and I was left with stragglers, I felt this combination of awe, pride and exhaustion. I've been playing this map for two days and while it didn't took me as long as MAP20, I just wanted to move on.

 

Idumea is D2ICO in a nutshell. A lot of love was put in its creation and it's a huge achievement, but it also so big it buckles under its own weight and I won't blame anyone for giving up.

 

MAP35: The Great Gib in the Sky by Danlex

 

After crawling your way through all challenges of Idumea, the player deserve a respite. The early parts of MAP35 actually feature no combat, just moving through rocks high in the mountains and soaking up the atmosphere. Then you reach the gate leading to the Heaven. I have to say, this one took me by surprise. I can't think of that many maps that use this aesthetic, so The Great Gib in the Sky automatically gets a bonus for unique look. 

 

The combat was a fun, rocket-heavy romp with a single caveat. The map has a lot of those long sightlines that let arachnotrons and revenants attack you from the opposite side of the town. I guess it adds a challenge to a map that might lack it otherwise, but dumping rockets into crowds of zombies and imps was so damn relaxing. It's just a perfect wind-down after the previous map. Getting a pair of blue key wasn't hard, just watch out for archviles. Similiarly, the ending was a teleporting horde that I completely cheesed - I easily escaped and proceeded to flank the assault. It seems Heaven isn't meant for the player, so it's back to Hell.

 

I just want to thank Danlex for making a breather. I like this map a lot, it looks great (I especially appreciate the usage of sky transfers to create a varied backdrop) and has this relaxing pacing that I needed.

[Insaneprophet]

Map 35: The Great Gib In The Sky by danlex

 

Everything Celestin just said. The atmosphere was everything in this one. The start where you climb through mountians that perfectly look and feel like the mountians in the sky texture is phenominal. Then we enter a beautiful heavenly villa that looks like it was built for Julius Ceaser to relax in the afterlife but clearly God (Danlex) made this place for doom players. For on the first day he said let there be rocket launchers and he saw that they were good, then from the rib of a pinkie he created fodder enemies and he populted our eden with masses to pulp. I clearly heard his voice in my head telling me that he placed the ammo here for me to consume, all of the resources were for my use, to do with as I saw fit as long as I used them to relax after living a lifetime in the last 4 levels and dont eat from the secret bfg, for then I will be cast out of heaven and sent back to the regular maps, to die and reload, in an eternity of city maps and slaughter.

[cannonball]

MAP23 - "Idumea" by taviow

 

Yeah this was exhausting.

Like others there were a lot of performance issues to the point where clearly mass deployment of archviles would prove to be game over. As such the yellow skull was a horrific experience, especially when the second switch was pressed, honestly this felt far too luck base as I was literally set alight from every conceivable angle. The rest of the keys are fine to be honest, we get an iteration on the trap seen in Map21 too, this was well executed. The end fight I kind of just passed on, again the mass of monsters caused my laptop to melt.

I didn't do the fight for the secret exit, so cannot comment, but I did find the secret exit boat fight, the crawling through the caves and the candle rocket hell was cool. 

In the end this felt more extreme than Map20, which at the least kept a steady performance, on the other hand each fight felt different and was more to the point, which is a plus.. However this is a map where I just had to throw in the towel and leave without getting anywhere near all of the kills. I am going to leave the secret map for tomorrow.

Edited April 23 by cannonball

[Insaneprophet]

Map 24: Blur Affinity by scionox

 

Ugh, I dont know what to say. This was just as choppy and hard to play as the last map. I dont have a clue what I could do to make these play better outside of getting a new computer maybe. Ive played plenty of large maps before, they are my bread n butter, but Ive never encountered this kind of performace problems. (Thats what he said 😝) I was once again forced to drop to Im Too Young To Die, when I cant even aim at things due to the screen jumping around I just dont know what else to do. Another thing was that on UV I appeared to instant die the second my blur spheres ran out, I cant imagine how there could possibly be enough to make it through the entire map with how many there are. I also cant imagine how one, if their computer could handle it, could possibly play through this on UV without intimate knowledge of the placement of every item. The demons are just so densely packed and swarm the player in such large numbers that just finding weapons becomes impossible. On the lower difficulty, with no instant deaths, there are still a massive amount of demons, enough that Ive seen thousands of maps that were easier on their UV setting but, all of that said, I think I would have truely liked this map had it not run so poorly. The lowest setting provided challenging combat and plenty of exploration. I finished missing just 1 kill out of the 522 and 2 of the 4 secrets with all 6 keys so Im happy with my experience... kind of. I really hope I can get cannonballs next map to run smoother. 😝

Edited April 24 by Insaneprophet

[cannonball]

MAP35 - "The Great Gib in the Sky" by Danlex

 

I must confess that so far the secret maps haven't exactly stood out from the crowd (The lego level was cute though), however this map absolutely delivers, lots of rockets, fodder with some mid tiers sprinkled around. This is just the treat you want after going through an absolute gauntlet of a map that precedes it. Despite the high monster count, this one goes by swiftly with lots of cute details thrown all around.

All in all a great secret map.

 

MAP24 - "Blur Affinity" by Scionox

 

Did not finish.....

Struggled and toiled to clear most of the central area, encountered the blue key area with 4 archviles with no cover and considered that this was not worth continuing. Personally putting a gimmick like having to rush to blur sphere s to stay alive is an interesting idea, but coupling it with such difficult scenarios is going to alienate a lot of people. I don't think I will comment further because it would require me to play the whole map, which I guess by the point I was at was probably impossible due to taking too long.

 

I guess I could play on a lower difficulty, but considering the scope and concept of this wad, we probably shouldn't be pushing well into X tier difficulty. I guess other maps have pushed towards this level but again the other maps don't have the timer waiting to insta-kill the player if they stray from the rules of the gimmick.

Edited April 24 by cannonball

[Celestin]

MAP24: Blur Affinity by Scionox

 

Did not finish.

 

I'm sure there's an audience for an exploratory map that forces you to look for a set of keys and weapons in a huge city under time limit (keep picking up blurspheres or die) all the while running away from 800 monsters, but I'm not among them. I think you are supposed to start on ITYTD/HNTR and keep moving up on the difficulty ladder as you get to know the map better (lower skills give you more time before you need another partial invisibility sphere thanks to some voodoo magic), it's an idea for sure, but not one I find entertaining. Also, the map lags somewhat, though nowhere near as bad as Idumea.

 

I considered skipping MAP24 and moving on, but since I've checked the remaining maps and seeing their monster count, I gave up. I don't rule out trying out the rest at some later point, when I won't feel pressured by posting about one map per day, but in DWMC format, Doom 2 In City Only burnt me out like no other wad did. There's a lot of good maps here, I'm not denying that, but I just can't give it the time it needs. In the end I'd like to say, I recommend this to anyone who thinks BTSX E2 or Community Chest 4 went overboard with magnum opus-caliber maps, if you get as far as I did, you'll likely appreciate how concise those wads were. 

 

I hope May will bring more participants, because this has been the most modest DWMC installment I've been a part of. Here are my votes:

 

+++ Good Morning Phobos
+++ Auger;Zenith, Knee-Deep in Knee-Deep in ZDoom
+++ Autophagy

Edited April 26 by Celestin

[cannonball]

Map25 - Eternal Dis

Author comments;

 

I wouldn't want to try and persuade the above, but I will say that the length of this map is a lot less than the monster count would suggest. However I am also aware that whilst the difficulty and length is lower than preceeding maps, this one will give players a good pounding.

This was the first map I made for this project, being the last level of the episode I knew that I needed to go towards the high end in terms of difficulty, but I was also wanting to keep the playing time low(ish). As such this is more blunt force trauma than a sophisticated hardcore map. Think Scythe 2 level difficulty and how the fights tend to pan out. The crucible where you start was the first part I developed and then the rest sort of came in bits and pieces over a series of days. As such the blue key carries more clout than the red in terms of combat and probably difficulty. I made the yellow key optional to keep with the mission brief. The main part of the map has two floods, the first when you reach this part of the map (Mostly imps and demons) and then after both red/blue keys are grabbed (Revenants). In the end I suspect a lot of this is more bark than bite in terms of difficulty, the lost soul flood idea was one that I kind of curious as to how this would pan out, it turns out to be a lot less obnoxious than I thought it would be. 

In the end I think this could have turned out better, however a lot of the issues stem from being blindsided by some of the other entries in the final third of the megawad, as such it feels less significant than other maps, deposit packing a punch. I did enjoy making some that was very much more blunt than a lot of maps I tend to make and this is one where you will need to keep moving to survive. That said out of the maps in this episode, I don't know whether it feels like a closer to the episode given some of the other behemoths. 

This is another map to use the AV Midi pack, I honestly thought I would never use a Knightrider of Doom midi, but here we are and in fairness this one did need something heavy to keep you pumped. Oh the map name is a pun… naturally.

 

Edited April 24 by cannonball

[LadyMistDragon]

in before everyone else

 

 

+++Abcission

+++ Autophagy

[Moravectomascb]

Someone know how to get that switch for that cell packs in map 24? i don't see any solution. E:Found solution.

Spoiler

 

Edited April 26 by Moravectomascb

[Insaneprophet]

Map 25: Eternal Dis by cannonball

 

In 1990/91, at the height of the thrash metal movement, three absolute monsters of the scene, Megadeth, Anthrax and Slayer, joined forces to go on a worldwide arena tour named Clash Of The Titans. At this time, in Chicago Illinois, a thirteen year old kid got his older brother and his friends to bring him along to what was going to be the seminol event of the genre. Held in the outdoor venue of the Tinley Park Ampitheater, this was no club show, and none of these bands were opening up for Ozzy Osbourne, Bon Jovi or Aerosmith, so there were no mixed fan bases in the crowd. Only true hardcore headbanging metal heads were in attendance and what I experienced there, was to this day, the absolute largest, craziest mosh pit Ive ever seen. There was no seating in the pavilion, it had been removed so as not to get torn out. The entirety of the lawn section surrounding the arena all the way down to the stage erupted into a non stop frenzied riot of chaos. It was great!

 

This map is the doom equivalent of that show. No city sweep and methodical clearing of buildings, we are thrown right in the middle of the action and forced to kick imps to the curb, slam dance with revenants, throw elbows with mancubi and bang heads with cyber demons. No modern circle pit and no friendly hands to pick you up if you go down, you need to give and take punches and weave your way through the crowd for the whole set list because there is no safe place to stop and catch your breath. Even the t-shirt boothes are dangerous and the bathrooms are deadly, I'd advise against getting in the beer line.

 

Enough story time. I was so pleased to be able to turn all my settings back up to high and return to ultra violence. As stated by the author, the difficulty here isnt in highly callibrated combat senarios or tight lock ins, its just dealing with the hoards and hoards and outlasting everything else. On my last run, of the almost one thousand enemies, I probably only accounted for for a couple of hundred kills but on previous runs, I was more aggresive and prolly took out more than half of, or three quarters of the demons myself. That is not only where this maps fun lies but is also the hallmark of a quality crafted level, the ability to approach it in more than one way leading the player to want to dive back in and try it again. As far as placement goes, I think this is perfect as the episode closer. Hell has kind of turned things on thier heads and we start with two long adventures followed by a huge world of slaughter set pieces backed up by a gimmick slaughter challenge level. It feels great to be able to end it with a giant free for all! Though I could say more about this one, Ive been going on long enough and feel I should stop before youall hate me. Thanks for the fun map cannonball. 😝

Edited April 25 by Insaneprophet

[Lingyan203]

+++Hell Revealations

[Horus]

+++Jason Wainman’s 30 Levels of Doom II

[Insaneprophet]

Map 26: Welcome To Nothing by neilforshaw

 

Now I would normally feel like there should me more demons stationed around here or teleporting in as you explore, maybe some more traps and the like, I still kind of feel that way but honestly I really am ok with how this one played out. I vibed with the void. After coming out of the hell levels and entering this new dimension it was nice to be able to relax and soak up the environment. The sky box here is awesome and the architecture of this first map fits it well, making me feel alone and creeped out by this foriegn space, scared but intigued enough to want to explore. The fights arent hard or anything but thats a good thing, hell was... indeed hell, and Im ready to move on. There is some bugs to report, nothing game breaking, the first key building you get to has a bunch of lifts in it and they all have skull switches at the top and bottom but you dont need to use any of them. Activating the lifts themselves works as well and just stepping on them at the top lowers them down rendering all of the switches useless. I found most of the secrets, I think only one was missed but like I already said, I vibed with the void and wont mind coming back to this one in future playthroughs. I dont imagine the rest of the void will stay as empty as this but it worked as an introduction. 😝

 

So I found my last secret and again this map did something I felt this wad needed at this point in time. Since Im back though I have to point out that the softlock in the green building near the begining at x:-923 y:-1430 z:112 kinda irks me.

Edited April 26 by Insaneprophet

[Celestin]

MAP24: Blur Affinity by Scionox

 

Played on Hey, not too rough.

 

I've left D2ICO for a week and tried MAP24 again, this time lowering the difficulty considerably. While we can all agree Blur Affinity on Ultra Violence is pure CBT to anyone who isn't a Doom god dedicated to relentlessly grinding a map, HNTR removes the time limit completely and nerfs the key fights. This strenghtens my initial theory that you are supposed to learn the map first before even thinking about an UV run.

 

As I've said earlier, the goal is to find all six keys scattered around this hellish town. Some are available right away, some need to be unlocked by a switch, but the only one that gave ma trouble was the yellow card, because I didn't understand how it worked. If you have a pit with several tall islands and a convenient archvile nearby, I thought you need to use him to boost yourself to otherwise inaccessible places. I've spent a while getting zapped, falling into the blood and reloading, only to realise it's much easier - you just need to press a right button on the other side of a map and some walls lower (the vile is used to obtain a BFG early, which I strongly recommend, it helps dealing with crowds and cells are in abandunce).

 

With the keys in hand, you can unlock the exit, eliminate the cyberdemon that stands in your way and leave. Without its gimmick, Blur Affinity is a more relaxed experience, though it still suffers from excessive lenght and performance issues.

[cannonball]

MAP26 - "Welcome to Nothing" by NeilForshaw

 

I guess I should start by calling out pacing and difficulty curve because after being violently abused for several maps on the bounce, we are then greeted with... one of the easiest maps in the entire megawad. 

Not an over-exageration, the monster count is below 100, most monsters come from in front and the only way I think you can die (Aside from giving yourself to the eternal void) is to get to cocky with rockets and face-rocket yourself on one of the few minor traps this map has. As for the map itself it has quite a few flaws, first off the green ruins near the start, you can get stuck in these and as such softlock yourself, secondly the red key requires you to run back through the entire segment, and the ambushes on the way back are pretty weak. It is worth noting that there are a lot of little areas to explore, but have slow lifts that cost quite a bit of time. The map improves once you reach the red door where the progression becomes pretty direct.

Overall, this wasn't that bad, but the map tries firstly to be this surreal/spooky experience, but then drops some tepid fights that result in the map losing a little bit of its identity in the process. The one plus point is the relaxed gameplay to the point where it felt like a breather. However this is probably one of the weaker maps in this set.