The DWmegawad Club plays: Back to Saturn X E1 & Favillesco E1

[dobu gabu maru]

What is the DWmegawad Club?
This is a place where we settle down, have a cup of tea (or drink of your choice) and take a month to play through a megawad on our own, together! Any keen observations, criticisms, or frustrated ranting about it goes here in the discussion. As long as you want to say something about what you've played, feel free to speak your mind.

Can I join?
Sure. The only rule is that you have to play at least some of the levels in our monthly megawad to contribute, but you're generally encouraged to finish the whole thing, even if you've played it before.

What levels am I allowed to post about?
Whatever day of the month it is, is the upper limit for the map you can post on. So if it's the 6th, you may discuss up to MAP06.

Do I have to post an entry every day?
Nope, not at all. This is only for our more enthusiastic members. As long as you play through it with us you’re part of the club.

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The megawad we are playing through is Favillesco E1

>>>DOWNLOAD BACK TO SATURN X EPISODE 1 HERE<<<
>>>DOWNLOAD FAVILLESCO E1 HERE<<<

Back to Saturn X Episode 1: “Get Out Of My Stations” is, besides a mouthful, a vanilla compatible “21”-map episode that essel or tarnsman can probably elaborate on more than me. The beta was released in 2012 and features a whole bunch of goodies like new music, textures, progression and even a new palette! Favillesco - Episode 1: Genuflected on Io V1.2 is a Doom 1 episode designed entirely by Nicolas Monti that attempts to emulate the Phobos style to the best of his abilities, released in 2013.

Maplist & authors for BtSXE1:

Quote

MAP01 - “Back to Saturn X Radio Report” by Esselfortium/Tarnsman

MAP02 - “Postal Blowfish” by Torn/Esselfortium
MAP03 - “The Room Taking Shape” by Skillsaw
MAP04 - “A Good Flying Bird” by Esselfortium
MAP05 - “Total Exposure” by Pavera
MAP06 - “Mix Up The Satellite” by Iori
MAP07 - “Metal Mothers” by Vader

MAP08 - Episode Hub by Esselfortium

MAP09 - “Some Drilling Implied” by Esselfortium/Traversd
MAP10 - “A Proud And Booming Industry” by Skillsaw
MAP11 - “The Colossus Crawls West” by Ed
MAP12 - “Underground Initiations” by Traversd/Skillsaw
MAP13 - “I'll Replace You With Machines” by Esselfortium/Skillsaw
MAP14 - “Big Chief Chinese Restaurant” by Foodles/Esselfortium
MAP15 - “Tricyclic Looper” by Mechadon

MAP16 - Episode Hub by Esselfortium

MAP17 - “Navigating Flood Regions” by Esselfortium
MAP18 - “Cyclone Utilities (Remember Your Birthday)” by Sirjuddington/Esselfortium
MAP19 - “Bingo Pool Hall of Blood” by Tarnsman/Esselfortium
MAP20 - “U.S. Mustard Company” by RottKing
MAP21 - “Failed Experiments & Trashed Aircraft” by Hobomaster/Tarnsman
MAP22 - “Gonna Never Have To Die” by RottKing/Skillsaw

MAP23 - Episode Hub by Esselfortium

MAP24 - “Tough Skin River” by Tango

Secret
MAP31 - “The Hard Way” by Skillsaw

Maplist for Favillesco:

Quote

E1M1 - “Observatory”
E1M2 - “Technological Complex”
E1M3 - “Bio Research”
E1M4 - “Waste Treatment”
E1M5 - “Io Lab”
E1M6 - “Atmospheric Processor”
E1M7 - “Hardware”
E1M8 - “Io Anomaly”
E1M9 - “Monitoring Terminal”

Also,

Seeing as it's been a year since our first megawad, BF_THUD! Thanks to everyone that stuck around and ensured the survival of the club!

BONUS CONTENT
Where's All the Data?'s playthrough: Back to Saturn X E1 1 2a 2b
Suitepee's playthrough: Back to Saturn X 1 2 3 4a 4b 4c
xAn's playthrough Back to Saturn X
----------
OLD THREADS
BF_THUD!
Community Chest 4
Jenesis
MAYhem 2012
Memento Mori
Interception
2002: A Doom Odyssey
Hadephobia
Coffee Break & Fava Beans & Double Impact
HYMN
Stardate 20X6 & Monochrome Mapping Project
Realm of Chaos
Back to Saturn X E1 & Favillesco E1
Kama Sutra
Unholy Realms & Zone 300
Vile Flesh
Ultimate Doom
Whitemare & Sacrament
Scythe
Epic 2
Whitemare 2

Edited May 9, 2023 by dobu gabu maru

[dew]

a sad after-effect of a few days of furious last minute bugfixing: http://imgur.com/a/IKOfn

have fun, guys.

[cannonball]

Raises glass, to a year of the DWmegawad club. It's sure been a fun year for playing doom wads. I think the only wad i mostly missed was Jenesis due to various real life issues and the first half of CC4 which was due to moving house and not having internet for a few weeks.
I've really enjoyed being able to delve deeper into wads I've already played, but also wads I have never touched before and generally see this as one of the best ideas doomworld has come up with for a long time. May it continue for several years to come. Also thanks to Alfonzo and Tarnsman for broadening the scope and scale of the reviews on here with there "where's all the data" programmes (well whenever the recording doesn't screw up :P). It's been fun to watch you play through and suffer the way we suffer, well apart from getting hideously lost even in the simplest of maps ;)
Anyway onwards to Back to saturn X, I've skimmed the maps several times since the first release in December 2012, I also played this online on Zdaemon back then too so I have some idea of what I'm in for here. My first impressions were rather mixed, but lets see if digging deeper into the wad will give me more enjoyment.
I will post thoughts on map01/02 tomorrow. Too tired to play now haha.

[esselfortium]

Nice to see this starting :) Make sure you guys get the latest version posted today, linked in the first post above. There were a couple of minor issues in the release last night that should be taken care of now.

[Jayextee]

Due to lateness, I'll have to cram in two maps tomorrow. Looking forward to it though. :D

[NuMetalManiak]

Even though I've been around for two months, cheers.

dobu, I hope it's okay with you that I actually start with Favillesco first. I'm actually nearly done with all my write-ups for it, and may put them all in one fell swoop of a post.

As for BTSX, I plan on starting that on the 5th, seeing how there's about 25 or so levels for it.

[Capellan]

dobugabumaru said:

What levels am I allowed to post about?[/b]
Whatever day of the month it is, is the upper limit for the map you can post on. So if it's the 6th, you may discuss up to MAP06.

Presumably hub maps (08/16/23) aren't counted for this?

[Suitepee]

Back to Saturn X E1 sounds and looks like a lot of space-themed fun, I will try to cover this via a livestream on my channel as soon as possible!

Also happy 1 year anniversary DWMegawad Club!

[Tarnsman]

Why not? The hub maps are a critical part of BTSX, they add a ton of atmosphere and a sense of progression.

[Marcaek]

Hub maps deserve some commentary IMO, but due to how short they are maybe people should put off playing them until the map after them comes up.

[Capellan]

Tarnsman said:

Why not?

Well for one thing, because there aren't 32 days in the month :)

[dobu gabu maru]

Capellan said:

Presumably hub maps (08/16/23) aren't counted for this?

Oh good point, I really wasn't thinking about that. Seeing as the hubs have no enemies I think they should be discussed along with the next map instead of having a day slotted to themselves.

dobu, I hope it's okay with you that I actually start with Favillesco first. I'm actually nearly done with all my write-ups for it, and may put them all in one fell swoop of a post.

I'd prefer you not to so that you don't encourage others to play out of order (or spoil something for the unfortunately curious). Just do what I do--save your thoughts (in a document) until the day where you can post them.

[NuMetalManiak]

dobugabumaru said:

save your thoughts (in a document)

I already did.

until the day where you can post them.

Which will likely be on the last day of the month.

Which probably means I'll start BTSX earlier than expected. Still don't know anything about it though.

[mouldy]

Cool, I shall try and keep up with this one. As usual I'll be playing UV pistol starts. I played this wad when it first appeared but I can't remember much about the maps so I'll have a go at recording demos (until the maps get too hard to play without saves)

MAP01 - “Back to Saturn X Radio Report” by Esselfortium/Tarnsman

demo

An enjoyable starting map with a surprising amount of larger monsters. One thing I do remember about these maps is how nice they look, although I gave up on checking for secrets with so many interesting looking walls everywhere, I will probably end up missing most of them. That hub area confuses the hell out of me for some reason, i remember last time I played I never knew where to go in that bit. Thats just me being an old geezer I think.

[esselfortium]

mouldy said:

That hub area confuses the hell out of me for some reason, i remember last time I played I never knew where to go in that bit. Thats just me being an old geezer I think.

Check the overhead map displayed on the big computer screen you see when you enter the hub. The flashing gate letter tells you where to go :)

[mouldy]

esselfortium said:

Check the overhead map displayed on the big computer screen you see when you enter the hub. The flashing gate letter tells you where to go :)

Funny I just noticed that watching the demo back. Nice touch

[Grain of Salt]

dobugabumaru said:

it's been a year since our first megawad, BF_THUD!

I'm just gonna stare into space for a bit.

[j4rio]

Allright I think I'll go ahead and give btsx a replay. Considering that I gave it a go quite some time ago already, I'm sort of knowing what I'm getting into. I'll keep comments solely to gameplay, as whole wad is undoubtedly an achievement in regards to looks of maps.

Map 1 - Played it thrice, on UV, glb+.

Every monster was pretty much straight thrown at player, there was no real engaging trap, no ambush, nothing really trying to surprise the player, take him down or even slightly make player think how to handle this and that part. It's just casual see monster - shoot monster ordeal, which just stopped being appealing to me after a while. Bigger monsters were just time sink to take down with shotgun and chaingun, and there is quite a notable bunch of them, well at least berserk is there. Secrets will be probably especially unintuitive and annoying to uncover due to nature of textures in majority of wad. The only one I found is, to be honest, horrible kind of secret - basically you just need to take some mandatory damage from slime to reach it. Please don't do that. I'd rather have to pass some sunderesque platforming section to get a secret rather than uninteresting unavoidable damage. The other secrets remained a mystery to me despite 10 minutes of intense wallhugging. Exit part is unnecessarily big, considering that it's completely devoid of life, so I think first lift would have been more than sufficient way to trigger exit.

[Tarnsman]

There are next to no wallhump secrets in BTSX, so don't bother wasting your time wall humping.

Edit: by wall humping I mean things that are clearly not "use me and I open/lower" aka Wolfenstein style wall humping. Even then, most secrets are just paths to stumble into or hidden switches that are clearly a switch.

[The Green Herring]

I will start with Back to Saturn X. Although I am listed in the text file, the DEMOs listed in the text file and a fix to prevent HELP from crashing the game were literally all I contributed to this WAD. Thus, essentially the entire WAD will be unfamiliar territory for me.

MAP01: Back to Saturn X Radio Report by Michael Mancuso and Richard Frei

This is a rather big and lengthy level for MAP01 if you don't ignore the optional areas. It's also a bit of a difficult one; unless you find secrets, you'll have no armor, you'll be a bit strapped for health, and you won't have anything stronger than a shotgun or chaingun. The level is generally straightforward otherwise; skip the optional areas and you can complete the level in less than a minute. It's a decent opener for the megawad, especially with the final area where you take a train to the next map, which helps to build atmosphere and a sense of progress (not everything has to serve a gameplay purpose).

A note in regard to a previous post: The "mandatory damage from slime" for one secret is not mandatory if you save the radsuit near the bridge until you decide to cross the slime. Being resourceful can pay off quite well.

FDA: N/A because it was accidentally overwritten.

UV max in 4:55 and UV speed in 0:46:

UV max took around three hours to accomplish in an overnight session. As usual, whether you can get enemies to infight or kill several of them with barrels mostly depends on luck, and if you forget to pick up some shells and bullets, you can end up strapped for ammo as well. I'm not sure what that last cacodemon was doing wandering around on the upper floor, but at least I used chaingun tapping (tapping instead of holding fire so the chaingun is always 100% accurate) to take him down. My first exit was 5:17, followed by 5:30, 5:21, and finally this time.

UV speed, on the other hand, is straightforward; just run past the enemies, snatch the key, and get to the train on time. The only big difficulty is with the arachnotron, who can rather easily block you from getting to the door in front of the blue key unless you use the chaingun to distract him. You'll also need to shoot some of the chaingunners you pass so they don't cut you down as you try to run along. This run took 18 minutes to do; my first exit was 0:50, followed by 0:49, 0:48, 0:47, and finally this 0:46 demo.

[punnyone]

I've been replaying BTSX for the past few days now, so I figure I'd give this a shot since the levels are still fresh in my head.

Map 01 - Back To Saturn X Radio Report by Essel and Tarnsman

- Nice way of building up suspense in the beginning by not having any monsters at first. I like the color contrast of the blue water with the orange sky. The music track has a slight sense of urgency to it which I feel helps in making you want to push forward. The bridge looks really great, especially considering this is vanilla. I think the level's abstract design makes each room stand out as opposed to being a bunch of similarly designed rooms. Nice lighting and scrolling text in the ending train station.

Only downside I can think of is I thought that the monster and weapon progression was a little bit too sudden. With 3 episodes in all and probably over 80 maps among them, it seems like this pacing felt a bit rushed. I would've personally put more ammo-eating enemies like the arachnotrons at least a level or two ahead. Otherwise, good solid opener map, really sets the pace of the whole story.

[Xaser]

Damn, it's been a whole year since the founding of the megawad club? Damn. I feel old. :P

As for the big enemies in BTSX-E1 MAP01, they're fine IMO for the reason that they're only found in secret areas... Well, the arachs, at least. Then again, on that note, there will be plenty of room for complaints on that front for the eventual BTSX-E3 MAP01, so welp. :P

[punnyone]

Xaser said:

Then again, on that note, there will be plenty of room for complaints on that front for the eventual BTSX-E3 MAP01, so welp. :P

Does that mean the last episode will rival plutonia in terms of difficulty? In that case, by the off-chance there's a cyb or something similar in the first level of that episode, I personally would see it as a good fun challenge, and a way of saying "so you beat the first two episodes? Good luck beating this last one!"


Also, one thing I forgot to mention earlier, I like how the actual Guided By Voices song "Back To Saturn X" is cleverly sampled in both the title music (the melody line) and the intermission music (the chord progression).

[Steve D]

Map01 – Back to Saturn X Radio Report by esselfortium and Tarnsman - Kills – 73, Items – 73, Secret – 33. Time 16:28. End Health 104, Armor 8. Death Count – 1

First thing to get out of the way is that my death occurred because I foolishly decided to practice punching Hell Knights after I grabbed the Zerk. ;D

Play notes: I’m playing in two styles for as long as I can. I’m using Risen3D in Basic Doom Mode for continuous play on UV. For pistol starts I’ll be using GZDoom on UV to take advantage of its monster and secret counter. If necessary, I’ll restart maps on pistol in a lower difficulty than UV if I run into anything I can’t handle after 20 deaths or so. Frequent save and reload in both approaches.

Next thing, congrats to the DWMC for a full year of operation. I’m on the same page as cannonball. This was a great idea, Dobu, perhaps the only thing that could get me to play full megawads, and it’s been a blast ever since I decided to drop in. Many thanks!

Now for BTSX. I’m thrilled to be playing this. This is quite a major thing we have here, and a giant step forward from Realm of Chaos last month. From a 1996 megawad by a bunch of noobs to a megawad by experts which delivers the following; new music, new textures, and even a new color palette! This is fucking ridiculous. ;D And at the risk of fangasming, we can blame esselfortium for a lot of this over-the-top nonsense.

Right away, we see what looks a lot like a melding of Quake2 with Doom, which is cool by me because I love the look of Quake2 and it’s my second-fave id game.

The music track by essel, as others have noted on the BTSX thread, imparts a slight sense of melancholy to the affair, in a good way. I really liked it.

I generally play maps at a slow pace until it’s kamikaze time, but I take longer than usual here because I’m just gawping at everything. These new textures are crazy awesome. I’m especially fond of Meshfblu, in part because blues work so well with gradient lighting, and this texture has some nice heft to it. Then there’s the fantastic new water and nukage textures, softer and richer in tone than the regular ones. But I’m guessing we can’t just yank these textures out and use them in our own maps because we need the color palette, too. And let me not forget the outstanding neon textures for the key doors. Superb. Really, this map is just swimming in superbness everywhere you look.

The architecture is also incredible, very effectively getting across the impression of being a tech base where the denizens like to swim in nukage. The Mordeth Bridge is an obvious highlight, but after you cross the bridge, the columns that support the ceiling beams in the Caco-fight area are beautifully worked with exceptional attention to detail. Cheers to essel and Tarnsman for mapping at such a high level. I could gush and keep on gushing about the look and feel of this thing, but I think you get the idea. I’m very, very impressed.

So what do all these features deliver in terms of gameplay? They deliver standard Doom gameplay, which is fine by me. Standard Doom gameplay has kept me around all these years, and I’m not likely to get bored with it soon.

The architecture works well for flow, and for keeping enemies coming at you or firing from multiple angles and elevations. It’s not a very difficult map in spite of the HKs and spider babies you encounter. Chaingunners are the real danger here, with Sergeants at number 2 on the pain parade. There is a rising ramp of difficulty as you go and as you occasionally race into situations that would be of little danger for cautious players. I found the combat engaging even though it wasn’t very lethal. I do think gameplay could have been better with a couple traps thrown in. Instead, the mappers relied on the architectural structure, and placement of on-site enemies. It worked well for me.

This is a massive map for Map01, with a truly huge blockmap and tons of detail, and several secrets. Unless there’s been a change, the toughest fight happens if you find the secret SSG, at which point, when I cheated my way to it last year, you get bitch-slapped with a massively overpowered teleport trap that dumps a bunch of Revvies on you. I’m playing honest this time, and I have no idea how to open that pathway, but I love the idea of massive secret areas with tons of extra gameplay. It’s just a natural progression from principles first seen in IWAD map E1M3, as I frequently like to point out. That said, pathways to secrets are quite obtuse, and let me give thanks to Tarnsman for the heads-up that wall-humping is a waste of time in this megawad. I’m sure DoTW and BaronOfStuff will find many secrets that I miss.

The one irksome thing I encountered was the backtracking to get a radsuit before I ventured out upon the nukage to get the Soulsphere. Other than that, I’d say that essel and Tarnsman achieved a fantastic collaboration to open a mapset that, to me, is as much about mood, art and ambience as it is about combat. Fantastic stuff, I loved it!

[dobu gabu maru]

ZDoom, UV, keyboard, and continuous play this time for a more relaxing stroll. I've never played BtSX nor even looked at it, despite that I know it's adored by much of the community (or, that's the reception I've noticed).

MAP01: There's a couple of things to note right off the bat that really stick out besides the actual level itself—the texture choice being the most distinct of them. It's a mix of the Darkening with Quake but brightened up, not being quite as droll or drained as either of those. The best thing is the very vibrant blue, being of my favorite hue personally and its use fits really well with the brighter shade of colors (although I'm not sure I like it with the interior of the caco's maw).

The map for me, while really cool and crisp, was quite unmemorable. It has a respectable use of lighting, a lot of angles so as to avoid boxiness and a smart interconnected structure... but I'm really at a lack as to what stood out. It's good and fun to shoot through, but feels more like a facility map that was populated with demons rather than an actual Doom map. No problem with that of course, it's just not something I enjoy as much as other less atmospheric but strongly designed maps. I will say I liked the exit though, with the multiple elevators into the tram station. Softer closings like those are very welcome early on.

Favorite thing, hands down, is the midi. It hooked my ears almost immediately and remains entrancing—I actually finished the level, went back to MAP01 and have been listening to it as I compose my thoughts. Fantastic job essel, I can't stress how well you convey a very sombre, pushing mood here and I'd love to hear a more fleshed out version of this particular song. Really looking forward to your other compositions.

[cannonball]

MAP01 - “Back to Saturn X Radio Report” by Esselfortium/Tarnsman
A rather large map for a map01 slot, I feel it gets stuck trying to be two things though and kind of fails at both. It tries to place plenty of action at times, but also tries to be a immersive map which draws you in. I kind of felt neither here.
As for the map design, it's a good map though with the areas all connecting up as you feel yourself move round the base from one corner to visit every window in a clockwise manner under you reach the blue key. Once you get the key, it's a long quiet trek to the hub room and onwards into the wad.
The gameplay is pretty easy despite quite heavy chaingunner usage later on in the map. I made quite a few screw ups but yet finished the map with 100 health. I found 2 secrets but left with 29 monsters still breathing in some secret area of the map.
Ok starter map, would rather it had been short and punchy or a bit deeper in atmosphere myself but the map as a whole is well done. No comments are needed on the music as playing this wad the first time led me to conclude that the soundtrack to this is excellent.

[j4rio]

The Green Herring said:
especially with the final area where you take a train to the next map, which helps to build atmosphere and a sense of progress (not everything has to serve a gameplay purpose).

Well you already have an "atmospheric" lifeless beginning and upcoming base entrance, which is quite a notable chunk of map already serving no gameplay purpose.

The "mandatory damage from slime" for one secret is not mandatory if you save the radsuit near the bridge until you decide to cross the slime.

I haven't found any radsuit after 20 minutes of aimless wandering.

[cannonball]

j4rio said:

I haven't found any radsuit after 20 minutes of aimless wandering.

When entering the area with the bridge over the slime. Turn right into the slime and you will find an alcove there which has a radsuit.
Also when you are there, random wallhumping is advised :P

[Obsidian]

Here's hoping I can stick around for this club. :P

MAP01.

Despite the size and heavy enemies, this somehow still felt like a MAP01 to me: it's relatively simple gameplay-wise. Having said that, I can't believe it's for vanilla: it looks freaking gorgeous! Seriously, it's brilliant: I might propose to Essel at some point. Didn't get any of the secrets first time through, so I had another playthrough to get the secrets. And then got my arse handed to me by a gang of Revenants. Heh.

[Capellan]

Playing continuous, no music, frequent save & load. Also playing on HNTR for this. I have a busy month, and this will make it quicker to play.


map01
I like the quiet opening, though I wasn't a fan of the scattered nature of supplies. I guess the intent is to draw out the calm before the storm, by making the player scout around, but it's counter-productive to my mind. Dumping all the gear on the player up front would leave them free to bask in the visuals and atmosphere, instead of being focused on scrounging up cells.

Gameplay is fine. Very linear and straightforward, but that's perfectly fine on map01. Toughest thing on HNTR is a caco, which appears when you get the chaingun. Good timing, that.

Having two lifts to the exit felt unnecessarily drawn out, and I didn't feel the extended ending sequence added to the level.

Not a fan of the palette. The nukage looks goofy to me, and I thought some of the grey and orange wall textures looked kind of ticky-tacky and fake. Didn't like what it did to the METAL type textures, either. Which is a shame, because the design is nice enough: lots of windows and ledges and neat stuff like that.