The DWmegawad Club plays: Realm of Chaos

[Memfis]

21 - -fast demo - noooo, I didn't like this at all: the map forced me to play very slowly and it looked so ugly with just one main texture. Very few mappers manage to use the ROCK1-3 textures well in my opinion (but I believe I did in map02 of this) and you certainly can't do that by using them exclusively! Not a warm welcome to hell. Oh, and another shocking ending heh.

[Capellan]

Map21
Forewarned about the ending, I made no attempt to fight back against the chaingunners. Yay, excitement!

As for the rest of the map ... the central courtyard / walkway thing is actually pretty good fun, though the imp teleporters seem a bit wonky: several imps teleported below the floor, where they were harmless to me and easily shot.

Sector 88 can die in a fire.

I skipped the western section completely, just running through it, because there frankly seemed no reason to stick around.

The ending arena was ugly, but fairly good fun to play, on the whole.

[dobu gabu maru]

MAP21: A surprisingly thrilling map from Berkowitz! The start is a rough one as you go through a bunch of repetitive doors just to enter into the central chamber where a big warp party begins. When you try to leave through another marble door you realize that the boring sets of encounters were a sign of what you’d be facing if you chose to flee. It was a great encounter in my opinion, really creating some nasty tension as you bobbed and weaved on the thin platform above the blood. The rest of the map is at least somewhat challenging, although not as tightly choreographed as the starting fight, with a continual use of imprisoned imps and nobles to assault you. It could’ve had a stronger end, and I’m a bit disappointed to see the same type of ending used right after MAP20 (as it diminishes the impact of it), but this hellish prison was a good map for me, one of Berkowitz’s strongest.

[Steve D]

Map20 (Continuous) – Teleporter Central by Antoni Chan – Kills – 96, Items – 90, Secret – 60. Time 19:46. End Health 1, Armor 0. Death Count - Zero

Map20 (Pistol Start) – Teleporter Central by Antoni Chan – Kills – 98, Items – 80, Secret – 80. Time 15:35. End Health - Dead, Armor - None. Death Count - 1

Fun map by Antoni. Nice and gimmicky in solid Doom 2 tradition, with Antoni’s traditional hub-spoke construction, albeit this time non-linear since you can grab the keys in any order.

I played continuous by taking the blue key path first, which IMO is the wrong path. I then did two pistol starts, one with the same blue key path, and the other taking the yellow key path. IMO, the yellow key path is nicest, because you get all the heavy weapons immediately, although on pistol start I died once on both paths. The first, at the blue key, because I ran out of ammo and lost a punch-out with a Hell Knight, and the second, on the yellow key path, I got unlucky against the Arachnotrons, and instead of dusting them easily with SSG they both nailed me with plasma. Ah, the random factors in Doom!

Once you get past the first battle, the rest is pretty easy, alas, owing to an overabundance of health. The fighting arenas were simply not optimized, although the red key battle was still exciting thanks to the flood of Imps. Yowza! The first time I chaingunned them, the next two times it was the SSG.

Still, the best fight for me was the blue key battle, when taken first, thanks mainly to the well-used Baron and the tightness of ammo. The giant teleport trap for the yellow key is IMO the worst of the setpieces, since if you aren’t suckered into shooting the Pinkie, you can run all around the little Parthenon, grab the BFG and rocket launchers, and then enjoy overwhelming firepower against your enemies. The main excitement came after my first BFG blasts when monsters continued teleporting in, especially if I rounded a corner to be sliced-up by a Chaingunner. More Chaingunners arriving late would’ve made this a much more dangerous fight. The nobles here were just meat to be slaughtered. So the second-best fight for me was the red key Imp Extravaganza, which could have been so much better either without all those Medikits or without the Soulsphere, or some combination of both to make this a real nail-biter. Instead, even though I suffered numerous hits in killing the Imp Army, I was shocked to find myself still at 125% health. Not good.

I liked the look of the map. There was a theme – brown, with a bit of Sladwall. That’s good enough for me. I thought Antoni was also clever with his use of columns and little squinchy pathways. IMO, this is one of the most fun designs in RoC, which could have been so much better if all the fights had been more like the blue key battle in terms of health/ammo balance. Nonetheless, I remain a Chan loyalist and look forward to playing his Map25, Castle of The Hellknights, with its nice little joke using the Baphomet.

[Steve D]

esselfortium said:

Haha, well, I'd like to think my mapping has come a long way since 2004-2005. The lighting in Testing Facility was pretty darn inconsistent, as my short attention span was having me trying all sorts of different techniques and trying to mimic the styles of various other WADs and screenshots to see what I could get away with, before I really had my own sense of what looked good. As such, some rooms used big smooth gradients with tons of sectors, others just had a square light sector with a small single square sector around it (which IMO typically looks pretty bad), and other ideas were tried inconsistently all over the place. I wouldn't really advise using it as a style metric. :)

I definitely agree with Tarnsman's suggestion that having ceiling lights cast more diffusely across larger spaces typically looks better than the laser spotlights that happen with small gradients, and you can still get lots of contrast with big diffuse lights if they're set up right.

Thanks, by the way :)

Thanks for the comments, essel, and at the risk of fangasming, allow me to say that despite the inconsistencies in lighting style, Testing Facility remains one of the best-looking tech-base maps I've ever seen. Indeed, your kitchen-sink approach to lighting makes this map a handy way to study many aproaches to lighting a map. Alongside that is my amazement that anyone would -- or could -- construct a map of nearly 1,900 sectors in Hellmaker. Your set-up must have been more stable than mine, since I'd have ended-up slitting my wrists before even reaching 1,000. ;D

I'm not seeing a lot of maps by you -- or any by Tarnsman -- at idgames. Perhaps you could suggest maps representing your current aproaches that I can download elsewhere?

[Steve D]

Capellan said:

Map19
Everything up to the one-way teleporter was fine. Then we got, well, a one-way teleporter, for starters. Tough luck if you had a megasphere saved for later.

Fair warning, Map22 and Map27 both have one-way teleporters, too. This was common in my pre-E1 style maps, which often had no real flow and thus were linear Hamburger Hill PWADs typical of many from that time. I liked the idea of teleporting the player from one type of area into a completely different style of area.

In Map22, teleporting won't cost you anything you need to go back for, and in Map27 you get teleported into the EEE-Vile room. Just wait til you lay your eyes on that one! ;D

[Steve D]

Demon of the Well said:

Don't get a swelled head, Steve, but you're putting most of your co-mappers in RoC to shame, thus far (although granted in some cases that's not exactly much of a feat, I guess...).

And now it's your turn to not get a swelled head, because these demos were fantastic, not merely good, but staggering. I especially loved the Map19 infighting in the first Megasphere area. Absolute Doom ballet, it was!

If I could play at your level, the maps I'd make would cause people to scream in agony. ;D

To continue with this fangasming, your detailed commentary is also very helpful, for example the way you found a bug in Map06 that has gone unnoticed since 1997. That's no small thing.

If I could, I'd hire you as my personal playtester. ;)

[Steve D]

Jayextee said:

Ah well, next levels are a change in sky graphic; one I liked so much I stole it without asking when I made Murderous Intent. Sorry guys! ^^;

No worries, Jayextee. Clint Sago had already left the building by then, so there was no one to get permission from. By the same token, I took the sky texture from UAC_Dead without even thinking about Leo Martin Limm's reaction. He should be happy with the way I worship that map, in any case. ;)

BTW, I did some checking of Murderous Intent, and I'm happy to report that you, sir, are an axe-murderer! That's a very good quality for a Doom mapper. ;)

[Steve D]

Memfis said:

19 - the only thing I didn't like is doomguy opening very tall and/or wide doors, just doesn't feel right. There should be switches for that in my opinion.

alfonzo noted the same thing in his playthrough when he said, "With the merest touch of my finger, I lift a 14-ton door." I almost fell outta my chair laughing over that one. So switches are coming, Memfis. Thanks for the suggestion.

Thanks also for noting that you can swipe the yellow key in Map18 by getting it through the fence. I think you have some special ninja-Doomer capabilities, like how you squeezed through a 32-wide space in Map07, but I'll change that key location in case there's any more ninjas out there. ;)

[Steve D]

Hurricyclone said:

Oh, and thanks for zombie action at the start of MAP22. I really deserved that, NOT!

What did you think this was, a Carnival Cruise? ;D

[cannonball]

MAP21 - “The Prison” by Rob Berkowitz
Back to using random textures for doors again.
This map is rather ugly and the first half of the map is extremely blocky and has a lot of pointless doors.
The dark tunnel was also annoying.
The level did improve when height variation and differing room shapes took hold. I must say the ammo was pretty well done in my opinion, the level actually became quite fun to play.
Then the exit happened, no just no! :/

[Jayextee]

MAP21 - THE PRISON
by Rob Berkowitz

The beginning is the thing with this map; it's a cruel teleport ambush whichever way I sliced it, having tried several different methods to try and dispatch the incoming volley of imps. None of it really worked well, the mid-textures in the inner cage mean that there's no real cover from fire across the courtyard; the opening niche (and all its clones) are a little too 'sticky' to reliably peek-a-boo the imps and pick them off. So I headed opposite and BFG'ed the baron and knight and ended up seemingly where I started; with an additional pitch-black snaky hallway that I would skip to-and-fro the automap to navigate.

A revenant scream almost made me lose my shit; in automap view! Automap scared me? Nice move, Berkowitz. ;)

After this, the map is super-straightforward. And really easy to boot. A small gauntlet of caged imps (and occasional revenant, plus swimming barons) and then a donut-shaped area that offered a little action; and then the chaingunners. I had SSG out, was not prepared. But it was a type-11, so that's good.

I remember the next map. I may swear a bit.

[Jayextee]

SteveD said:

BTW, I did some checking of Murderous Intent, and I'm happy to report that you, sir, are an axe-murderer! That's a very good quality for a Doom mapper. ;)

Thanks! I've been half-tempted to reboot the follow-up lately (there was one, a few computers ago, that has since been lost to the aether). And I did just finish a small mapset...

[Steve D]

Map21 (Continuous) – The Prison by Rob Berkowitz – Kills – 93, Items – 100, Secret – 100. Time 27:29. End Health Dead, Armor 0. Death Count - 6

Rob brings the pain for this one, at least for me he did. All 6 of my deaths occurred at the start after I materialized with a soaring 1% health. Yay. Well, soon I was at 51%. ;) The ensuing action, begun at 4AM, convinced me that consecutive playthrough would be quite enough in this map. ;)

The fights were easy in the series of doors, it was the teleporting Imps who nailed me. Even the PG couldn’t save me against those things. Most wonderful of all, twice in a row I thought I had killed them all, then I opened a door, and as I shotgunned a Pinkie, an Imp teleported behind me and took me out. Fabulous bit of design there.

I took advantage of Risen3D’s wonderful default gamma while traveling the super-dark (light level 32) Sector 88 tunnel Capellan hated so fiercely. But in Risen3D I could actually see the Revvie – dimly, yes, but see him I did. Alas, that means I wasn’t shocked like Jayextee was. A simple PG blast got rid of Mr. Revvie.

After this, Risen3D’s painfully obdurate auto-aim resulted in endless hassle trying to rocket and shoot the caged Imps because the Barons in the blood were much more exciting to R3D. Eventually I had to jump down there and use BFG and rocket launcher to kill them so I could go on fighting. The Barons simply had to die or the fight was impossible. This was a gnarly section nonetheless, which gave me endless trouble back then and still does today. But in time I had all the nasties cleared and it was on to the final area, which, in fighting terms, was quite a disappointment. Rather like Antoni’s Teleporter Central, and so many maps in this megawad, it gets easier as it goes owing to an over-accumulation of health and ammo and also progressively less challenging fight design. Rob’s love of circular spaces betrays him here as he uses the easiest collection of fireball monsters to try and defend it, and they fail miserably. It was a fest of simple butchery leading to the second death-exit in a row. Still, thanks to the first snarly teleport fight, I rate this map a success overall in spite of this being the most over-the-top use of single-texture design one could possibly ask for.

The transition from this map to Map22 is the only story aspect of this megawad I can actually remember. You’re supposed to bust out of prison and into Hell, but in Map22 you’re there at the door leading out of prison, and not quite yet in Hell. So there it is, that’s the story, and a crappy story it is, but who cares about story in Doom? I get my stories from books, not first-person shooters. ;)

The alert – and even the most unalert – will quickly see that there’s no obvious progression between Map21 and Map22 in terms of theme or architecture, and how could we expect such a thing in this megawad anyway? ;D

Just remember, grab that Map22 Zerk quick!

[Kristian Ronge]

Map 20 -- Teleporter Central
Cramped map wherein you visit a plethora of small areas via teleports to collect the three keys needed to exit the map (via a courtyard guarded by a Cyberdemon). Progression is quite free and there are lots of ways to complete the map, as you can visit most of the areas in any order. I played through in the order goat-baron-archvile (i.e. did the two teleports with the goat texture in between them first, and so on). That was a breeze, as I was handed a megasphere, rocket launcher, plasma rifle and BFG almost right away.

When contructing a concept map such as this, where the players may choose any random teleporter, it is of course immensely difficult to balance health and ammo supplied to them so that it's possible to complete the map no matter which sections they play first and which they play later, but this handout, after having only played about a minute or so, felt absolutely ridiculous. I played it through in the complete reverse order, and, yep, it was still incredibly easy. Antoni solved the problem inherent with these designs by handing out powerups like they're stimpaks. Everywhere you look there's a blue armour, megasphere, or soulsphere. The fights are still very fun, though, even if they're not dangerous in the least. The Lost Soul skirmish at the start was great fun, and the two major traps feature tons of monsters to waste, it's just that I almost feel sorry for them as they have no chance against me, armed to the teeth and juiced up.

The secrets were all right, although perhaps a trifle easy to find, apart from the one you open up behind you right after teleporting. Not surprisingly, sometimes the secret contained an item which could only be useful for a player who chose to play the particular area first. Yay, I'm near 200/200 and found a green armour! ;-)

The Cyber showdown was a little exciting because of the relatively small courtyard wherein you face it, but it's too easy for it to get stuck on a rising pillar and become a sitting duck...er... standing Cyber. The ending requires some quick reactions (or luck) to achieve 100% kills, but it's not frustrating and I liked the shock trap. All in all, I can see what Antoni tried to achieve, but the execution feels so-so, in spite of some neat fights and traps. --3/5

[esselfortium]

SteveD said:

Thanks for the comments, essel, and at the risk of fangasming, allow me to say that despite the inconsistencies in lighting style, Testing Facility remains one of the best-looking tech-base maps I've ever seen.

It's hideous! Hideous! D:

Indeed, your kitchen-sink approach to lighting makes this map a handy way to study many aproaches to lighting a map. Alongside that is my amazement that anyone would -- or could -- construct a map of nearly 1,900 sectors in Hellmaker. Your set-up must have been more stable than mine, since I'd have ended-up slitting my wrists before even reaching 1,000. ;D

I eventually had to disable Hellmaker's built-in node builder and build the nodes externally using ZenNode, because Hellmaker's own node builder would just crash on saving once the map reached a certain size. And I ended up having to crap together my own ZenNode frontend that I could keep open and just rebuild nodes with a single button, because the OS X port of ZenNode would automatically quit and have to be relaunched (and wad locations reselected, etc) after running once.

I'm not seeing a lot of maps by you -- or any by Tarnsman -- at idgames. Perhaps you could suggest maps representing your current aproaches that I can download elsewhere?

Try the "Shogouki" level from SpaceDM9, Vaporware Demo, or my maps in 32in24-11 or 32in24-12 (well, aside from the detail guide spoof one in -11; please don't refer to that one :P) for some examples of how I do lighting in limit-removing stuff nowadays, or anything I worked on in Back to Saturn X E1 for the vanilla version. There's surely going to be a bunch of inconsistency even among these, like how the 32in24 lights were generally done more quickly than the others and don't usually affect the walls as much as I'd like, but they're more recent than Testing Facility at least :P

To some extent, though, inconsistency with Doom lighting is fine (and downright unavoidable). Light sources can behave differently in different settings, as long as they all make some amount of sense in the scene they're used in, so there's no shame in just fudging it until it looks believable enough to convey what you're going for.

It's also worth noting the oft-ignored potential in Doom's fake-contrast, the effect that darkens horizontal walls by 16 and brightens vertical walls by 16. For the longest time I tried building organic structures to avoid orthogonal lines so that I wouldn't get any stray brighter/darker lines, but in vanilla mapping I've recently taken to building to make lots of use of it intentionally, to make organic rock structures look more complex and to make smooth wall light gradients from only a few sectors. One released example of the latter effect is on the rock walls in the cyberdemon cave in BTSX E1 map17, "Navigating Flood Regions".

[Tarnsman]

SteveD said:

or any by Tarnsman -- at idgames.

Well I only started mapping ~a year and a half ago and nothing I've mapped for is up on idgames. D2Redux sucks if you want to go look at that and is full of tons of the shit I hate in level design to the point where when I do get back to working on it I'll probably scrap 90% of it. You'll have to wait till E2 and E3 of BTSX to see more Tarnsmaps. (My Speedmaps and D2TWID maps don't count because obviously they're made under heavy restrictions)

[Veinen]

Despite my lack of recent activity in this thread I'm still going strong and I've actually played through maps 18-21 already. So with that said it's time for some updating.

Map 18: Dead Radio

This is an another solid map by Steve. Visually it's a pretty standard looking old school level which in this wads case is mostly a good thing. Liked the blinking lights in one of the early corridors but otherwise the lack of light variation bothered me slightly. Nice to see you're working on it though, those screens look really good. The blue room looked pretty nice, though it kind of looks like the ceiling could be emitting microwaves or something so that the entire area would be damaging.

Gameplay was mostly rather easy but I had some unexpected troubles in the major nukage areas. Got killed by the Archvile in the swastika bridges room in my first playthrough and took lots of damage there in the attempts after that too. In the first attempt I somehow managed to run out of ammo and radsuits in my confusion while the archie was roaming free down in the nukage. Had like 12 health and the bridge I had to lower next was next to the quarter the archie was in so the situation was pretty tricky. In the crusher room I fell victim to infinitely tall monsters a few times which was very annoying. The definite best spot in the map was the Manc trap which requires some quick thinking and possibly good dodging skills. Definitely a good level overall.

Map 19: Port Fury

Love the start and the first few rooms, very fast-paced and action packed. The latter parts I didn't really like that much except for the final building. And yes, I agree that the outdoors area is way too empty for it's own good. Died in the red key hitscanner ambush so I suppose I gotta give props for the design there.

It's over 1 am here and I can't think straight anymore so I'll just leave my UV-Maxdemos for these two here for now. Map 18 in 12:19 and Map 19 in 9:42. They're just quick first exits so there's some confusion still at certain points.

[Capellan]

So we're heading toward the end of the month again. What's the plan for next month? It seems like D2INO, Switcheroom, D2TWID and Nova are still a ways from readiness.

"Concerned" is out, though cannonball and SteveD are probably both a bit over that, right now :) I'd be happy to play it, however.

Or do we look back a year or two for something to play? BtSX ep1, maybe? Or go old school again?

[cannonball]

Hellbound is on idgames now. It looks really impressive and I had fun playing it online so would like to really give it a thorough workout.

[dobu gabu maru]

Capellan said:

Or do we look back a year or two for something to play? BtSX ep1, maybe? Or go old school again?

We could go experimental and help out with Switcheroom or Doom 2 in Name Only, but it depends how burnt out people are about alphas/betas (lest we forget Monochrome). For me I'd say it's a tossup between Concerned and Hellbound, and as much as I enjoy cannonball's maps I've been eager to rip into Hellbound for a long time so that receives my vote. Of course, if we did go with Concerned, we could throw in another episode and BtSX might fit that bill nicely.

[NuMetalManiak]

As much as I hate to say it, I'll vote for Hellbound also.

I've recently decided to (independently) play through Hellbound this month on my own merit. So far, I'm only up to MAP17 of that wad, and timewise for me that is the equivalent of going through Doom 2 at least three times. The levels there are fucking huge, like, Vile Flesh huge, but the detail and good gameplay so far make up for the size.

So it gets a vote from me.

[Capellan]

dobugabumaru said:

Of course, if we did go with Concerned, we could throw in another episode and BtSX might fit that bill nicely.

BtSX "episode" 1 is 23 maps, so not really :)

[Steve D]

I'm not voting this time, given that I've had such luck in recent votes. I look forward to tackling whatever the club chooses. :)

[Tarnsman]

BTSX E1 is still in Beta

[Alfonzo]

Complatanel fin!

Part 2a: http://www.twitch.tv/st_alfonzo/c/2586975
Part 2b: http://www.twitch.tv/st_alfonzo/c/2587025
Part 2c: http://www.twitch.tv/st_alfonzo/c/2587089

Whatever you choose, oh Megawad Club, make sure it's something good. I need an antidote after the awfulness that was Realm of Chaos.

[Capellan]

RlmChaos.WAD has plenty of flaws, but most of it is really not that terrible by 1996 standards. It would definitely be in the top half of releases for that year; probably the top 25%.

Even Memento Mori had "Cesspool" and "Kinetics", after all.

(as far as the next wad goes, like Steve I am not making an official vote - with Borderlands 2 and Shadowrun Returns, my gaming time is going to be pretty stretched)

Edit to add: given the tools being used and the timeframe the wad was made in, it's impressive that RlmChaos isn't worse than it is, really. Merely finishing a 32 level wad in 6 months is quite an achievement. Doing it with an editor as flaky as Hellmaker apparently was is a triumph of the human spirit :)

[dobu gabu maru]

BtSX "episode" 1 is 23 maps, so not really

BTSX E1 is still in Beta

Oop, my mistake. And no promises alfonzo, especially since I hope we play through Eternal one day.

MAP22: Duff tries his hand at a prison as well for the start of this map, ripping the player a new one unless they quickly realize a door is behind them. This map was a… boring one for me. I liked the architecture and texture use, and the main marble arena is very impressive upon first glance, but I didn’t find any fight particularly enticing. There’s a lot of hitscanners which leads to slow combat due to the sniping nature of it, with at least a good balance of health to heal your wounds. BFG armory at the end was completely unnecessary and makes the final fight a breeze. No other comments than that.

Fun note: in the bathroom I stood on the toxic piss to see if it would burn me and oh, indeed it did! Nice touch.

[esselfortium]

Tarnsman said:

BTSX E1 is still in Beta

Indeed.

If you guys want to do it, though, we've got version 1.0 pretty close to ready and could prepare a release candidate or something so you can be beta test guinea pigs! There's been a whole bunch of stuff updated and fixed.

[Capellan]

dobugabumaru said:

I hope we play through Eternal one day.

I'll be skipping that month.