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

[Pirx]

The Green Herring said:

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.

ok... finding that radsuit and armor was no problem, i just ran into them the very first time i played map01. same for the supercharge. the secret part of the map however was a different story. i never found that part and finished the map with just a shotgun and chaingun, berserking the hell knights for lack of ammo, and wishing i had an ssg. oh well :p

[Demon of the Well]

Trying to catch up with the pack....

Map 04 -- A Good Flying Bird - 101% Kills / 100% Secrets
While it's true that the progression path here--e.g. locked doors that function mainly as shortcuts, and the propensity for keycards to turn up near the doors they unlock--is more than a little similar to what we've seen in previous maps thus far (particularly in maps 01 and 03), I don't really agree with the sentiment that it has little to set it apart from its predecessors. The two most memorable parts here are the fight in and around the small control kiosk in the courtyard ( given this structure, the skyview in the second secret, and the map's name, I imagined this to be some sort of air traffic control station) for the red card, and the charmingly clever secret Berserk pack.

Aesthetically this persisted in reminding me of the middle stretch from Vanguard, of all things--no doubt due to the prevalence of concrete with bits of metal set into it, as architecturally there isn't much similarity, of course. I think the more subdued color scheme here, which generally gives each main area a single dominating color (green outside, grey inside), strikes a pleasant contrast with some of the busy rainbow-hued scenes from previous maps, and allows for emphasis of accent colors where they do appear (like the sea-blue floor in the lower reaches of the station). Really, if you stop to admire it, it's perhaps the nicest-looking map thus far; I rather like the vertical depth of the inner reaches, and the buttresses that swoop over the yellow key/door walkway.

The meat of the action, as aforementioned, centers around the control tower/getting the red keycard. While the first thing you're presented with out here is one of the nests of revenant snipers, the heavier weaponry is either on the walkway (SSG) or down in the courtyard itself (RL), giving the player a strong incentive to push forward and leave the snipers be for a moment. Doing this results in a fastpaced romp down through the demon-choked stairway and into the yard, where the combination of barrels and weaklings makes for some simple carnage. The appearance of cacos from beyond the compound walls upon grabbing the red key in the tower is expected but not at all unwelcome, and the introduction of the arch-vile back on the walkway is the icing on the cake, although since the pinkies in the stairway are deaf, they naturally tend to be confronted/killed in said stairway, somewhat depriving the vile of any real opportunity to make use of his resurrection powers (I think all he had up there when I played was a zombie corpse or two). I suppose you could carefully progress through this sequence by carefully eliminating each group of monsters in turn before awakening the next one (e.g. you could use the cover afforded by the low ceiling of the access tunnels to dart in and out and potshot the revenant snipers, esp. easy on a continuous playthrough), but that's not an approach the map makes any concerted attempt to force on you; both fast-paced and slow-paced styles are quite viable here, so I wouldn't say it has a cumbersome slant towards either.

Map 05 -- Total Exposure - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets
Now, this is quite a change of pace, offering noticeably more legroom and longer straightaways than its predecessors. Depicted is some kind of docking facility, laden with more mid-tier monsters than any previous map, with revenants and arachnatrons making a particularly strong showing. This map also introduces the cyberdemon, although he unfortunately debuts as more of an environmental hazard than anything else.

Visually and architecturally, this is perhaps the simplest and cleanest of the maps thus far; it focuses more on creating a sense of airy open space (mainly horizontal/lateral, as opposed to vertical) rather than on establishing picturesque facades/vistas or tightly interwoven progression paths. The task of carrying visual interest is largely left to the steady introduction of different textures (I particularly like the green/grey checkerboard flooring), which has moderate success. Lighting is far more simplistic than in previous maps, with the majority of the space being neutral-bright, although I suppose this is not too unreasonable given just how much of the play space is open to the sky in this outing. Some of the perimeter views, particularly in the red key area and the outdoor fork near the rocket launcher, look a bit bare/unadorned (that is, by the standards of the mapset thus far); no doubt the render limits making themselves felt here. Not a bad-looking map by any means, but certainly one with the most noticeable 'function over form' bent thus far.

The running theme of the action here is crossfire. Again, I suppose there are several places where the action could be largely nullified by implementing safety-first conservative tactics, but given all of the open space you're provided with, it's generally more fun to charge in headlong and stay on the move. Most areas with significant monster population are revisited at least once along the route, so you can generally afford to stay loose and do a main pass, and then final cleanup on the second pass (although I do have to break flow to take out a straggler imp on a raised platform in my FDA). The space means that dodging projectiles coming from several directions is quite doable, and all but a couple of areas are pretty light on hitscanners.

Nowhere is this theme more evident than on the walkway overlooking the starting area. The cyberdemon is introduced here, along with a crowd of revenants--I thought it was clever that the cyb beams in on the very spot where I myself started the map, and the dual banks of revenants discharged by the large fast-rise lifts was a nice touch as well. The cyb essentially becomes your best weapon at this point; no strategy seems more efficient here than using him as an unwilling turret to devastate all of his compatriots, given the multiple firing angles that his position affords him; this is even fairly effective against the two sneakily-employed arch-viles, who are otherwise a relatively credible threat, given the scarcity of easy cover in the area. Unfortunately, once the cyb is the last thing left, there's really no elegant way to dispose of him...just pound away with rockets and/or SSG until he folds. I found some cells but I never saw a plasma weapon, despite achieving 100% secrets and seemingly visiting all areas; even just a PR would've made this last bit of cleanup run more smoothly. It's of course true that nothing forces you to eliminate the cyb, but as a player who likes to kill everything on every map, in my selfishness I do wish there was some more euphoric/cathartic way of doing so.

Entertaining maps, anyway. Here's a semi-FDA ('semi' in that I saw some early parts of this map on the Where's All the Data streamthrough before I stopped watching to prevent too many spoilers) of Total Exposure. Things go pretty well for me, barring a strange ammo drought at one point (I think I was just too irresponsible with rockets and shells early on), and a hitch where I fall off of a huge walkway for absolutely no apparent reason. No demo for map 04 right now, I'm afraid...in fact, the only reason I have one for map 05 is that I forgot to change the command line back to Eternity/non-recording when I started it.

[j4rio]

Hree it is
http://www.mediafire.com/?1ytlpica363a33y

They are not really FDAs since I briefly recall stuff from playing this half a year back nor nowhere near anything considerable as speedruns, so you can call it queer gameplay footage, or something.

[dew]

j4rio said:

The second is moment when just few inches behind you opens up closets and tiny hallway seemingly for camping off arachs far off suddenly gets filled with specters and av. Are you serious? After forcing me to camp away a good chunk of map, you suddenly want to punish me for doing so? Unstrategical and completely dickish, and fuck you.

:D

dew is very happy now!

[Moustachio]

MAP04:

[Capellan]

Demon of the Well said:

kayfab(e)

Hmmm, I smell a wrasslin' fan.

SteveD said:

I like the Ston5gry and Bronbk24 textures very much

I did too. Looks-wise, I think map04 is my favourite so far. A lot of maps still to see, though.

Pavera said:

while designing it, the playtesters and I all kinda approached it in a similar way

This is a danger with any project, and not just in Doom. One of the things we briefly touched on in the playtesting Program B was trying to get a good cross section of people with different priorities and playstyles to test your stuff, because inevitably when you release it someone complains about a thing you never even considered. It's something I have experienced with Phml's response to my cchest4 map, and also from watching Suitepee's reactions to levels in various sets. In Suitepee's case, he's purely a player with no level-making experience, and his reaction to stuff is very different to my own.

The real challange is finding people who give you that cross section of different priorities and playstyles - not easy!

[Steve D]

Map05 (Continuous) – Total Exposure by Pavera – Kills – 100, Items – 100, Secret – 100. Time 28:52. End Health 100, Armor 0. Death Count – 9

Map05 (Pistol Start) – Total Exposure by Pavera – Kills – 98, Items – 100, Secret – 100. Time 28:37. End Health 100, Armor 0. Death Count – 3

This map has a completely different character on continuous and pistol start. In spite of my high continuous death count, this map is trivially, insultingly easy on continuous for me, a shitty player, on UV. There is literally no fight anywhere in the map until you get to the Cyb area. Until that point, the map was nothing but a shooting gallery for me. By contrast, it’s pretty exciting from a pistol start, as you wade through swarms of hellspawn, without the benefit of a rocket launcher, until you challenge the long walkway anchored by an Arachnotron backed by a small, unseen air force of Cacos just waiting for you to open fire. This was a super-fun battle on pistol because I said, “Fuck it, I’m running out there,” and somehow I survived and only got dropped to 43% by the time I got the RL, and most of that was thanks to the wickedly-placed Chaingunner just waiting for a dumbass like me to dodge away from the Arachnotron and hide alongside the building. Now that is solid monster placement.

I really like the way the SSG was staged, too.

OTOH, nobles were very poorly used apart from the first Archie’s HK meat shield. There was too much room for dodging, so they just became time/ammo sinks.

Since this mapset is optimized for pistol starts, why on earth does it contain cell charges when there is no Plasma Gun? I checked the map in DB2, and there is indeed no PG anywhere. There is, however, a Visual Mode camera left in. ;D

The meat of the map is the Cyberdemon Turret Trap. First, allow me to echo those who appreciated the Cyb’s roar the first time you open fire. I missed it the first two times because Jimmy’s outstanding Atmospheric Pressure track is too loud. It does seem louder to me than the other tracks. Anyway, I started on pistol twice just so I could lower the music volume to hear that greatest of all sounds in Doom, the roar of the Cyberdemon, which still has the power to make me go a bit wobbly.

I used continuous play to work out the strategy for fighting this area. I tried a mix of cautious and kamikaze, and learned that, as usual, the most important thing is to take out the Archies. This was a bit of a challenge for someone of my meager skill level, because getting the Archie away from his meat shield while avoiding Cyb rockets was not easy for me, and it was also important to figure out where the second Archie came from later. I also suffered numerous Dumbass Deaths on continuous because, like an idiot, I didn’t save my game after killing the Cyb, so when I got killed later by Archie number 2, I had to do it all over again, to the tune of 4 more deaths. ;D

The ultimate strategy for me was to take out the Revvies first, get the first Archie while suffering the smallest possible damage, get the blue key, then attract the attention of Archie #2, taking his ass out before dusting off the Mancs. This worked pretty well, and I only would have died twice on pistol except for a mistake I made in peek-a-boo fighting with a Manc. To only die twice, really, on pistol start, in an area like that, was for me a big success, and I had a lot of fun fighting this area. I should mention that I was, in fact, able to take out clusters of monsters sequentially, showing my shoulder here or there to entice some nobles or Chaingunners to come out and play. I decided to let Herr Cyb live on pistol start, not wishing to do the arduous peek-a-boo battle with him for a third time in one day.

This is another map that doesn’t look like anything except, perhaps, the upper level of a submarine pen. It’s very abstract and can hardly be called a tech base, it’s just one of those odd locales where you kill monsters in Doom. It looks alright, with nice outdoor areas and those cool bunker textures. It also really feels in keeping with the overall Quake2 theme. It had the single most challenging fight I’ve yet encountered in this mapset and I liked it.

Edit: I forgot to mention that barrel placement was very good, and I actually managed to do some barrel destruction in GZDoom! Will wonders never cease? ;D

[Steve D]

dew said:

the "easy" solution is, of course, to lock the player in an arena every time you're afraid he might exploit his bit of free space. tbh i'm quite sick of this approach, because it's omnipresent in nowadays mapping and the more it's used, the more it breaks immersion. i get reminded to save and switch to plasma immediatelly after the barrier goes up, because it's not the monsters who will threaten me, it's Whatshisname "Mapper" Someguy and i need to beat his scripted little thingy here that took away my choices. even btsx has a hefty share of these fights (skillsaw's on board, after all), so adding more is something i'd protest, even if it means occasionally allowing lazy or scaredy players to treat themselves with a little CoD-like corridor spam from behind a crate.

I can see your point. but I also like to use this type of trap on occasion. The 96-monster trap I put in an E1M7 is like that. The only way out is through, because a player has to kill a significant number of the monsters before they can hit the 2 switches that allow escape from the room. Personally, I always kill everything first. I guess my feeling is that I'm not going to all the trouble of making a 96-monster trap and then let someone back into a stairway, camp there, and take everything out piecemeal. You simply have no choice except to run around shooting like crazy until you kill everything, or almost everything. It's not really super-hard, it has all the needed health and ammo. I suppose some players, maybe most players, wouldn't like it, but then again, maybe they would. ;D

I agree that it shouldn't become a big habit, though. Maybe 3 such traps in a 9-map set is okay, at the max. It's really kinda like those locked-room fights in Serious Sam. Memfis mentions that game a lot. I still grumble over the one where you get locked in a room and attacked by wave after wave of exploding frogs . . . shudder! :D

[Moustachio]

MAP05:

[Seele00TextOnly]

I don't think one should have to be too concerned with worrying about players doing camp gameplay. Any player worth their salt won't be doing that the whole time; I've seen a lot of comments from people that detest playing that way somehow asserting that nonetheless that's how they're playing. To that I have to say: um, don't do that then?

But it is true that more ways of preventing that gameplay can crop up from time to time, the point is if you hate playing like that, then stop playing like that. It's within the realm of the absurd if I continue to read of folks who hate camping complaining about the fact that they're choosing to camp.

[Capellan]

Seele00TextOnly said:

I've seen a lot of comments from people that detest playing that way somehow asserting that nonetheless that's how they're playing.

I'm seeing a lot of comments from people saying "this map rewards camping in pretty much every fight, and perhaps you should think about changing that". That's really not the same thing.

[Seele00TextOnly]

Capellan said:

I'm seeing a lot of comments from people saying "this map rewards camping in pretty much every fight, and perhaps you should think about changing that". That's really not the same thing.

If you're not enjoying camp gameplay then it isn't rewarding you, actually. At that point it's more like someone playing something while determined from the outset to have a bad time.

As for 'rewards camping' the countermeasure would thus be 'punishes camping' from what I can gather, as the way Doom is structured as a game the main player is overpowered anyway with relation to the monsters and camping whenever possible is by default rewarding. So, the argument sounds more like 'punish/prevent camping' constantly, which not only would further tax the vanilla limits in many areas, but also is being requested almost solely for folks that, to my eye, seem to be dragging their feet through the entire affair and intending to have a bad time.

If you dislike camping, then camping is never rewarding. Get out there and shoot some monsters. A game can't force a player to enjoy themselves when the player is putting zero effort into their own actions and part in the affair.

[esselfortium]

Capellan said:

I'm seeing a lot of comments from people saying "this map rewards camping in pretty much every fight, and perhaps you should think about changing that". That's really not the same thing.

Allowing camping and "rewarding camping" are kind of equivalent, though, I think. Unless ammo is kept extremely tight throughout or the player's escape routes are forcibly blocked off at every other turn, Doom's gameplay tends to inherently allow (and by extension, reward) camping. There are lots of places where you're attacked from multiple angles, but outside of certain types of setpiece traps there's almost always going to be some safe point you've cleared out that you can back up to and let monsters come to you if you're determined to find it.

[ClonedPickle]

Fun fact: some people refer to camping in Doom as "playing it safe" and only resort to it at low health to prevent having to restart the map / load a save file and typically find it less fun than going balls out. When a player finds themselves resorting to this tactic a bit too often, they might seek strategies such as "lowering the difficulty" and "playing a different map set" in order to have fun again!

[Tarnsman]

End1.wad has a level in E2 that is literally a door camping session for 20 minutes because bothering to venture into the room is pretty much death. That's rewarding camping. Giving the player miles upon miles of room to move with and then having them choose to door camp is not rewarding camping.

You can camp anything in doom despite how "anti-camp" proof it is and outside of the level punishing the player for trying to move rapidly through the level you are never "rewarded" for camping. Unless you like camping, which I'm sure some players do. Mr Chris sniping zombiemen for 10 hours in Brutal Doom comes to mind.

[dobu gabu maru]

Seele00TextOnly said:

It's within the realm of the absurd if I continue to read of folks who hate camping complaining about the fact that they're choosing to camp.

As Capellan stated, the issue stems from camping being the optimal solution compared to the gung-ho style of gameplay. I'm not sure I agree with the criticism overall, but it is a clear style of play when you open a door and a chaingunner, two sergeants, and a whole load of imps are waiting behind them, pushing the player back.

MAP04: Yay for traps! I've had the most fun with this map so far as it actually tended to challenge me instead of letting me waltz through its rusty corridors, although a large part of this is due (again) to revenants. I like the red key trap where the AV is placed above to harass the player into hugging against the walls, making it a touch more difficult to wrangle the cacos as you'd please. I actually had an entertaining moment where I must've aggro'd the archvile as soon as I ducked behind the building, and I exited at the exact frame he does damage on since I didn't see his flames once and thought briefly that there was some nasty voodoo doll shenanigans going on.

I can understand the complaints of the maps feeling "samey", as since essel has done the most work on them so far they all possess the same visual complexity evident in his craft. From the color scheme, layout, and recurring details it does give the player some deja vu now and then as they traverse the elaborate hallways. At least, in my opinion, it's detailed enough to remain entertaining, even if various aspects are lost to the cohesive blob of this first bloc. One thing I'll note that I really like about the texture set is how the key doors are labelled—the glowing rhobus is a pretty unique symbol to choose and fits nicely with the allure of this strange station.

[TimeOfDeath]

I wanna see essel and his girlfriend post max demos of one of the maps to see who's faster. :)

[Capellan]

Seele00TextOnly said:

If you dislike camping, then camping is never rewarding. Get out there and shoot some monsters. A game can't force a player to enjoy themselves when the player is putting zero effort into their own actions and part in the affair.

Yeah, but I'm still not seeing all these alleged posts saying "RAAAGH CMAPING SUXXORS Y U MAKE ME DO IT?!" :)
(typos intentional)

I don't hate camping and I don't love it. I just do whatever seems like it will work to finish the level. And if it doesn't work, I try something else.

In this map, every time, "camp" worked. And sure, it can be hard to counter that, since a player determined to camp can find a chokepoint somewhere. But this map kind of drops you into perfect camp spots at the outset of most fights and does little or nothing to complicate the player's life for using them.

There are ways to make camping less attractive, and I think this map would profit from using them in at least a couple of fights. It's up to the project members whether they agree or not. If they do, great. If they don't ... well, it's not going to keep me up at nights :)

[Tarnsman]

@dobugabumaru:

Yes if camping is clearly the better choice then yeah I consider that a problem. But this is my problem, I just loaded up Total Exposure, turned off run and basically never stopped moving the whole time and at no point was my casual stroll into the open impeded. There was absolutely no reward for camping other than "it's less fun".

Now there can be a discussion about the difficulty and the fact that I can casually stroll through the level with walk on with no problem (and there has been and a lot of difficulty suggestions have been accepted and implemented), which personally I couldn't care less about (despite every BTSX map I've made having to be "toned down" because v1 is "absolute rape, fuck you tarns,") because BTSX E1 to me has always been more about the atmosphere and the locale than anything else (much like Knee Deep in the Dead), I'm not going to complain if it gets harder (I'd probably prefer it) but I think it works just fine as a nice little country-side stroll and E1 does have enough of a difficulty curve.

[esselfortium]

dobugabumaru said:

I can understand the complaints of the maps feeling "samey", as since essel has done the most work on them so far they all possess the same visual complexity evident in his craft. From the color scheme, layout, and recurring details it does give the player some deja vu now and then as they traverse the elaborate hallways. At least, in my opinion, it's detailed enough to remain entertaining, even if various aspects are lost to the cohesive blob of this first bloc. One thing I'll note that I really like about the texture set is how the key doors are labelled—the glowing rhobus is a pretty unique symbol to choose and fits nicely with the allure of this strange station.

There are definitely some stylistic traits I tend to go for in maps I work on, and certain methods of detailing that I've come to rely on in vanilla maps due to their comparative efficiency, but any layout-related similarities between the first four maps are probably mostly coincidental. A large chunk of MAP01's layout is Tarnsman's (particularly all of the side areas), very nearly all of MAP02's layout is Torn's, and MAP03 is entirely Skillsaw's work. (For the next release being worked on, I've made a couple of structural alterations to MAP03, primarily to fix a few difficult VPOs that slipped under the radar, but the core layout, texture theme, and architectural/detailing style are all very much Skillsaw's doing.)

MAP04 is the first one in the set that I can really claim full credit for. It and MAP09 (which was later extended and enhanced quite a bit by traversd) were both originally built in only a few days each, at a time when the project had been going on for quite some time and I had completely failed to finish any of the rather large levels I had been working on since its inception.

At some point there will probably be a shame-and-embarrassment release of various early development and scrapped BTSX levels, including stuff like the original completely different versions of MAP13 and MAP17 before I tossed out and replaced roughly 70-80% of both of them, the original rough MAP02 layout Torn submitted back in mid-2009, and my original 2-hour speedmap that Tarnsman magically turned into the new MAP19 during the second half of a continuous 48-hour waking period.

[Demon of the Well]

Mmm, absolute rape. Sounds invigorating.

Can't really comment on whether or not camping is the most optimal solution for many of the situations thus far, since I myself don't usually do it unless I find myself so terribly outmatched that a moment of hesitation essentially leaves me no other choice. If there's an issue, I reckon that it might be that pretty much any basic strategy (including door-marshaling) will work, given that things have been not particularly threatening on the whole. I reckon there's merit to both sides of the argument--I myself want to be presented at times with situations that are dangerous enough that I can't just wing it and do whatever and still easily come out on top despite any strategic inadequacies or errors in execution (in my case this generally means trying to just run around in the monsters' midst until some opportunity for a mass-kill or other pointlessly flashy conclusion comes up, whereas for others it probably means surgically removing the opposition for a position of relative safety), but at the same time, in any map or mapset one plays, at least part of the onus to make the most of the experience is on you (the player), rather than it all being on the mapper. Outside of very tightly-controlled script-heavy ZDooM stuff, there's only so much a mapper can do to actively discourage or encourage a particular playstyle; this variability in basic options is part of what makes the game, and trying to account too heavily for playstyles that persist in hovering around the extremes of the safety/bravado spectrum (for whatever reason) is probably a self-defeating proposition as far as making a dynamic map goes.

[Steve D]

I seem to agree with everyone on the "camping controversy." It's not a controversy to me, because I do what I need to do to get through a map, just as Capellan does. I don't even consider camping to be "less fun" if it's kept to reasonable limits. If I choose to attack the turreted Arachnotron in Map04 from a distance, and kill it, then I have accomplished my tactical objective and I'm pleased. I could charge that objective instead, and most likely win, but IMO, taking out a dangerous turret and then charging the objective is just a smarter way to do it. And while I enjoy the charge of a good free-flowing fight, I don't necessarily need that charge, and only that charge, all through the map. I like to stroll around in maps and soak up the atmosphere, and as Tarnsman said, and as I observed in my comments on Map01, BTSX is a very atmospheric mapset, very artistic, and as I believe my comments have shown, this is right up my alley.

For all of the top-tier players who haven't read my commentaries before, keep in mind that I play keyboard only, no mouse, no 180-degree key (I might change that one soon), and I've managed to bull my way through some very tough maps because . . . I'm not easily discouraged and I don't mind getting killed.

Speaking of which, and since a lot of this controversy seems to be over Adam's comments and the way people have interpreted them, it's worth noting that, to date, no map I've willingly played on UV has owned my ass as bad as Adam's MM2 Map15, where I got killed 14 times in a row at the start! I'm sure Adam has grown tired of hearing about this, but it always gives me a chuckle to think about it. Some of you are probably wondering how I could manage to die so often in a map that easy. Easy to you, anyway. ;D Part of the reason is that Adam had a little something up his sleeve when I tried to camp at the start rather than jumping out to face a PE. Chaingunner, some Sergeants and Imps, all in a relatively small area. He put in a window at the start through which a Caco kept flying through to kill me. With this anti-camping design, he basically forced me out into the open to fight all those enemies, and I distinctly remember having that battle just about won when that damned Caco flew through two windows to deliver a spirit-crushing kill just as I was about to celebrate my victory. That's the kind of jagoff move I can't get enough of. ;D One last thing, I still played at a walking pace when I tackled MM2 Map15. I actually look forward to pistol-starting that sucker again when MM2 comes up on the DWMC radar. And it will.

Last comment, on the "samey" look for BTSX, or at least, some people have felt that is the case. I would call it a "consistent theme," and a very successful one. Quake2 and Doom3 were also techbase from beginning to end. It never bothered me in those games, and it doesn't bother me in BTSX, either. In fact, I love it this way.

[The Green Herring]

Two days ago, the PSU of my desktop computer died. Not only that, but DOSbox Doom is very choppy on my laptop. Therefore, I recorded my FDAs for these two maps with the next best thing: Chocolate Doom 1.7.0. My new PSU will come at least two days from now. Until then, there will not be any videos from me. Oh, and in case you're wondering, I used my regular keyboard and mouse connected to my laptop. (I'm not that masochistic.)

MAP04: A Good Flying Bird by Michael Mancuso -

The fourth base is a small one, mostly indoors, whose signature visual features are the use of floor paneling to separate areas, a little grassy frield full of enemies, and two instances of renderer trickery: seamless fake slopes, and an effect that makes it look like the elevator before the blue key is under (and thus made of) two sectors when it's actually just one. One key is memorably obtained through a running jump onto a platform and the secret berserk is accessed in an unusual and interesting way. It's another easy map, but not as much as the previous ones, and also a straightforward one at that with some good reuse of previously-accessed rooms.

FDA (Chocolate Doom 1.7.0, Ultra-Violence, 5:45 level/total time, 100% Kills/75% Items/0% Secrets, no deaths): https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6650582/BTSX-E1M4-FDA-byTGH.zip

(Video to be recorded and posted here eventually.)

MAP05: Total Exposure by Walker Wright -

This is a much larger base, both in size and the amount of space that you have to move. Unlike the previous map, it takes place mostly outdoors. The map areas are reused in ways both obvious and subtle; it's clear that the path after the red key circles all around the areas of the map you previously accessed, but I didn't realize until I looked at the level in a map editor that the cyberdemon attacks you from the start of the map! You also get attacked from all sides most of the time (hence the title), so you'll need to be swift to get through this one. The one secret is easy to miss if you just press forward without ever looking back.

Several people in this thread have said that the map encourages you to camp the enemies. Which is funny, because the areas in this level are wide open enough that you can run past most of them. That's what I did in my FDA after my first death, because I forgot to set -maxdemo and I was concerned that my demo would suddenly end. That is, until I realized Chocolate Doom disables the demo size limit by default. My reckless play resulted in many deaths, but I pressed on playing the same way to show that you can beat this level without camping. (What would look like camping near the end of the demo isn't, because I have to dodge revenant rockets flying toward me while I'm blasting everyone.)

FDA (Chocolate Doom 1.7.0, Ultra-Violence, 29:58 total time, 3:53 level time, 64% Kills/50% Items/0% Secrets, 11 deaths): https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/6650582/BTSX-E1M5-FDA-byTGH.zip

(Video to be recorded and posted here eventually.)

[Tompig]

Map 06 - Mix up the Satellite

Now the title 'Mix up the Satellite' confuses me, but then again the more accurate title of 'Crouching revenant hidden archvile' would have promised a neo-Tokyo feel.

On this map we find two things...

1: Clearly this map takes place in a rocket production line because daaaaamn son we have more rockets here than our Quake-ing cousins. (Granted they treat theirs less like a weapon and more like a military grade pogo stick.) maybe the revenants were having an ammo cache party.

This is nice because ammo seems to be well balanced around the rocket launcher so its difficult to just SSG your way to victory.

2: The archviles have been trained by the Vietcong, you will face ambush after ambush at the hands of these mothers and if you retreat well you are gonna pay for it because most of these happen at points with lots of dead bodies.

Music was nearly soothing but had a harrowing feel of impending doom. (Probably due to the firey burny archy death that lay around some corners.)

Detail was alright, didn't really look like anything.
But a good tech maze all the same.

[Capellan]

map06
I thought this map was perhaps a fraction too long; I'd probably have made the finish around the large diamond-shaped room after the yellow door (the one with sector 701 at the centre). Probably in the watery area to the west of it.

But instead it goes on for an extra few rooms and corridors and honestly they're all fine, they just feel a bit unnecessary.

Everything else (remembering that I'm only playing on HNTR, which has quite light opposition) was good. I liked the AV trap in the berserk room, and the fact that danger might come from behind as well as in front in several cases. This was an incentive to push forward and engage.

I also liked the barrel jamboree with the AVs to rez all the exploded monsters; it was an amusingly goofy sequence, I thought.

The rest of the level's solid work, but there aren't really any "cool" moments that leap out at me.

[Jayextee]

MAP06 - MIX UP THE SATELLITE

...AKA, Back To Saturn X Finally Finds Its Teeth.

And I mean that in a good way.

Upon starting this map, I thought "Megawad club's going to have a field day with this" because it's so Quake/Doom64 brown tech base, it almost hurts. Almost, because I actually kinda like this aesthetic as long as it is broken up with subtle colour variants, and this is -- with stylish green floors that complement the brown, and nice enough outdoor areas.

Anywho, I admit one of my two deaths was in the first Archvile attack; which led me to focus for the rest of the shebang -- Archviles are used liberally and satisfyingly here. I loved the 'garden' of ready-made corpses where an Archie and his brother had free regin to resurrect the shit out of a varied menagerie of critters whilst soaking up my rockets.

Ah, rockets. I think this map was split evenly between SSG and rocket play for me (with only an occasional guest spot by the chaingun to take out, uh, chaingunners).

But I digress, my second death was due to teleporting and ARRRGH, REVENANTS in the start area; which is a little too cluttered to effectively dodge their missiles -- more frustrating than challenging.

After a very promising early section, the claws come back in somewhat for the rest of the map, save for a late gang of Revenants forcing me nicely into an open courtyard where I rocket-spammed imps and pain elementals until none were left. Cue, exit.

We're getting there, I liked this one quite a bit. One complaint though (to begin and end on aesthetics) was that the brown horizontally-striped texture was maybe a little too ubiquitous in this one. It's broken up nicely, sure. But I felt little progression in terms of themed areas.

[j4rio]

dew said:

:D

dew is very happy now!

I'm not, though. >:|

I don't know, I think that map is embodiement of what I find to be a boring map. That watery bit could have been used for revealing some monster closet and offer a cramped fight. Room with little water 'basin' housing a bunch of monsters including baron, PE, rev and lots of weaklings is just offendingly bad camping ordeal. In the hallway-esque bit before this part, at least one of the 4 cacos could have been PE, preferably the most distant one closest to manc and 2 imps. The revival field for avs could have more living monsters serving as meat shield before you can finally remove avs, maybe baron couple. I could go on.

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP06 Mix Up the Satellite

Text after the level says it all. Why can't a recon mission ever be simple?

Fuckin' bastard of a gameplay going on in this big level. Frantic gameplay assures a good time, simply by running past enemies and grabbing stuff. Berserk trap was quite interesting if done very fast. The layout, surprisingly enough wasn't confusing and I get through fine in most cases, although I'm not fond of one of the secrets (the one without the megaarmor, which forces me to round around again). An SSG fest almost the whole way through to the YK. But on the way, these two archviles are hiding in the corner already trying to attack me. Then the teleport and reserruct all these dead corpses I see lying around (how did they die anyways? I'm confused as to what's going on at this particular section so I'll talk about it later.) Rest of map behind the YK door was okay, although I rushed to get the red key early and ended up either on the wrong side of an archvile or a wandering cacodemon. Nothing else interesting as I go to the exit. There's quite a good mix of enemies from large to small, and a good number of archviles and cacodemons here. Final Time 7:33.

So far this is the largest of the levels, it's overall cool in visuals. But I wonder why the archviles before the yellow key (and one hellknight a bit later on) immediately attacked me when they first noticed me. My guess is that they were injured but not alerted, but when they're alerted they immediately attack the player before making even one move. A sort of dickish thing in my case, cause I hardly remember hurting them at all. And I'm not playing with -fast enabled.

[Urban Space Cowboy]

Map 6: Here's an idea for a trap: Place lots of monsters, blow them up with a domino chain of barrels, then loose a bunch of arch-viles...yikes...

Oh, that secret alcove with the mega armor is a pain in the ass to get at. (In addition to being flagged entirely invisible, a chronic problem with the latest update, of which there are far too many examples to recount here.) Run for it, you hit the ceiling and fall down. Walk for it, you fall short. The only apparent ways to get in the damned thing are to either (a.) strafe-walk for it at just the right angle or (b.) run off the lift at just the right moment, and really, the prize isn't worth the effort of either of these since there's a megasphere/soul sphere/invincibility sphere (depending on skill level) sitting right out in the open nearby and another soul sphere in the other secret. Please move this alcove up or down or make the ledge in front of it a lift or something. :(

[Guest]

Tompig said:

military grade pogo stick

I approve of this phrase.