The DWmegawad Club plays: Vile Flesh

[Rook]

SteveD said:
But anyway, there you have it. Modern players, it seems, are more accustomed to maps that use a lot of heavy meat rather than hitscanners, and with a lot of health and ammo so they can try and kill the meat while dodging their attacks, thus, the survivalist approach is maybe less popular than it used to be. I still like it, though. ;)

Thanks for the welcome - I'm sure you're right about the changing expectations. I certainly don't have much experience of old WADs besides the IWADs to draw on. To be honest I don't really remember many instances of feeling particularly under the gun in the IWADs, although always playing continuously may have something to do with it.

I'm definitely becoming pretty frustrated with Vile Flesh (I've actually played a little further and made notes as I've gone along - obviously I won't post my thoughts until the right dates come around) so I'm tempted to either take a step down from UV or do as plums is doing and try with a mod of some description.

[plums]

MAP03 (continuous, UV, Pirate! - 100% k 67% s)
Glad I started with full health, those chaingunners at the start and then later in the dark bunkers took off quite a bit of health. Regarding this kind of gameplay (hitscanners vs. high-tier monsters) I don't mind it, but it can be a bit random and annoying at times. Pistol start would have been quite frustrating.

The layout of this level is a little more interesting and I like the big slime areas, they give the level a sense of being a real place that is worth exploring. There's also a lot of strange design decisions going on though. I agree with Demon of the Well that the central area feels pretty underused, and Dragonsbrethren about going the wrong way to hit a dead end, which also means the walk out is empty. There's some weird things going on with linedef blocking, you can't get onto the terminals but you can go through some of the grates. But that's pretty minor. Revenant "trap" at the end can be handled safely by sniping them before hitting the switch.

I actually really like secrets like the one that gives you the soulsphere (though it did make the map quite easy). You have to notice that there's a walled off area with a switch, and intuit that there must be a way there somewhere. It feels more rewarding to find than just "spot the misaligned texture". I did go back and find the remaining secret (but didn't claim it), I'm a bit surprised I didn't catch it but after those chaingunners in the preceding area I was on guard for some more resistance.

Rook: welcome! Many of the IWAD levels were designed with pistol start in mind, thanks to some mis-communication among the design team. It really changes the way they play, particularly Sandy Petersen's maps.
Pirate Doom is a great mod with a good number of fun maps of its own. I'm not a great player by any means so I'm fine with things that mix the gameplay up at the expense of challenge, at least sometimes. It uses GZDoom, as do most mods that alter gameplay significantly, so you should be fine to run it. Samsara is another fun one, that (for better or worse) tends to make gameplay much easier.

[Rook]

plums - thanks for the welcome. I'd never heard about that miscommunication before, despite having read Masters of Doom (but then again that book never really goes into enough depth about actual development). I actually can't really stand a lot of Doom II's maps, and really wish Romero and Shawn Green had designed more.

MAP04: Mainframe

After “Processing”, there had to be a “Mainframe”, right? I was surprised at how small this map is relative to the previous map, but applaud the efforts to make the design fit in with the title and theme. Again I found ammo to be extremely tight, to the extent that I had to punch the last monster to death (just an imp, mercifully) and then had to do a quick scout around for a secret, for which I was rewarded with a chaingun and a clip, I think. That's a thought – it seems that the reason Vile Flesh is so very scant in terms of munitions is that Williams uses clips and shotgun shells so frequently, and ammo boxes and shell boxes so rarely, at least so far.

Unfortunately, I think the most memorable thing about this map is the particularly poor texture alignment, particularly on the black square walls throughout much of the map. If we're supposed to identify secrets using misalignment, well – there are a lot of red herrings.

[plums]

Ah, the great Sandy Petersen debate. I too prefer Doom 1's maps, I like Doom 1 more than Doom 2 in general.

http://doomwiki.org/wiki/Pistol_start
"Most people started levels with some kind of significant equipment. However, almost all our playtesting was done starting each level with just a pistol. We made the game too easy for the average player."

I thought there was another Petersen interview with him where he talks about making things too easy but I can't find it right now.

MAP04 (continuous, UV, Pirate Doom! - 100% k, 1/2 s)
Great music here, really nice track. The switch to a blue-and-silver theme is a welcome change, and I like this look more than that of the previous levels anyhow.

I started out thinking that playing continuous with Pirate Doom might just be too easy, but then all it takes is one chaingun guy to ruin your day sometimes, and seeing as this map is so far chaingunner-heavy, I'm not inclined to switch playstyles yet.

The back-and-forth switch action took me a moment to figure out, I didn't notice that a second switch popped up, but that's my fault really. The switch-releases-enemies bit was clever because the third one didn't, and I actually wasted a fair bit of ammo winding up the Pirate Doom gatling gun shooting at a swarm that never arrived.

The second secret which I cheated to find after completing the map, and didn't claim, seemed both random and a fairly powerful bonus for those that find it. Don't know how I feel about that.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP04: Mainframe
56/56 kills, 1/2 secrets

A short little map, built around flipping switches in the middle of the map to proceed and surviving the teleporting monsters. Not much to say - it's pretty inoffensive, but with nothing to really recommend it either.

[dobu gabu maru]

MAP03: Not too shabby. By playing it extra safe (sans the chaingunners in the dark which is a really dick move) I was able to climb back to a comfortable health level and the SSG brightened my day. Nothing else really stood out as pressing, so I was able to admire some more architectural quarks. So far the theme I'm experiencing is that I really enjoy seeing what little details Williams adds to spice up the same handful of textures we’ve seen time and time again, but on the gameplay front I’m pretty disappointed… nothing stands out to me as inventive or fun. I’ll see how my tastes fare, especially considering the hitscanner heavy starts of megawads are usually my least favorite.

MAP04: A short map that likes to throw chaingunners at you. Nothing too bad here… I always enjoy walking through a primarily COMPBLU area. Music was the best part. Other than that, it remains somewhat forgettable.

[cannonball]

Map04 - “Mainframe”
That secret rocket launcher is really needed here or it's infighting you need. Also there is again very few recovery items. I guess this map isn't that great if you take it slowly, but it does give enough lee way to allow an aggressive approach as the monsters turn on themselves which can help steer fire away from you. Layout is very simple but works ok.

[Dragonsbrethren]

plums said:

I thought there was another Petersen interview with him where he talks about making things too easy but I can't find it right now.

Possibly the Matt Chat video interview posted earlier this year (I think), I don't have time to load it up and confirm, though.

Edit: No, wasn't this.

[Cynical]

Map 04:
The only secret I found was the Chaingun + Clip, and I desperately needed that ammo.

Aside from the ammo tightness (which nothing interesting is done with), this is a pretty dull map. Walk back and forth along a hallway, when you hit a switch you get a lame teleport fight. Flow? Layout? Ha, not here!

Blech. Luckily, the next map is pretty decent.

[Dragonsbrethren]

I didn't even find that secret. I just save scummed at the second-to-last switch until I got good RNG and had enough enough ammo to finish the map. I still had to skip killing the revenant and an imp since there was no way I was punching them down with that little health.

I didn't really enjoy this one at all outside of the music. The aesthetics take a turn for the worse as others have pointed out, only the COMPBLUE area looks good, and the monster teleport gimmick got old after the second switch. The difficulty again came from hitscanners in dark places and too little health to make up for any mistakes/bad luck. Ammo balance was incredibly tight, I know I'm playing with a controller, but I doubt I would've managed it much better with a mouse.

[Demon of the Well]

Map 04 -- Mainframe - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets
Very tiny map, with a very simple premise. The actual 'mainframe' admin pit marks the first time in Vile Flesh that any significant number of enemies are fought in one place at one time, which is good, because even WADs that operate on a conservation/survival basis need occasional spats of mass-murder to keep things moving. Except for chaingunners firing through grates it's not very dangerous; again, the issue is that there is no armor and very little in the way of medical aid available, and ammo can be a problem unless you find at least one of the two secrets or you don't try to do all of the dirty work yourself.

I imagine lots of folks will find the hidden chaingun, or at least lots of folks that have played a lot of older PWADs, where its method of concealment is more common. The rocket launcher secret, much like the soulsphere secret in the previous map, works on purely inductive grounds--that is, you start seeing single rockets sitting around here and there in this level, and this coupled with the fact that there are no rocket launchers in previous maps is supposed to be the hint that there's one around here. Without this hint, it's extremely unlikely that anyone would find it or even look for it, except for those rare individuals who still play DooM maps as though they were Wolf3D maps (that is, humping every wall as SOP), since the misalignment in the wall it's behind is both small and difficult to see in the first instance given the cross-hatch aspect of COMPBLUE. The ironic thing is that the launcher isn't even particularly useful in this map, its most likely application being to ultimately save other types of ammo vs. hell knights, since lining up a good shot against fodder groups is difficult in this environment--I myself only fired one shot from it, for a net kill of three zombies and an imp.

Apart from some of the dodgy alignment/cutoff issues, I don't have any problem with the aesthetic here; the black paneling used as a structural texture isn't something that looks fundamentally wrong to me, probably because it's something I got to used to seeing in a number of old mapsets. Again, it's the lighting that steals the show here; a lot of it is quite striking (though of course not always strictly realistic) if one stops to look at it.

[Steve D]

Map04 – Mainframe. Kills – 100, Items – 100, Secrets – 50. Time – 11:39. End Health – 100, Armor – 52. Death Count – 1

I . . . liked it.

Contrary to some, I find myself agreeing with DoTW. I thought the Modwall and Complue themes looked pretty cool, and the map was overall very clean apart from numerous Floor Rule violations. I also really enjoyed the stark lighting. The action was the best of any map so far, with all the teleporting enemies. I got a little careless blasting away, thinking, “Hah! I’m playing continuously, I got nothing to worry about,” only to get dusted by the exit room Revvie when I fell 2 shells short of what I needed to kill it. I then re-fought the map from the final Hell Knight Teleport Party and played ring-around-the-rosie in that tinyass room so the HKs would kill some Imps and Pinkies for me. Thanks to them, I finished the map with 6 shells and a fair number of bullets.

I feel like a fool for missing the RL secret. I was humping all over that area and probably missed that door by 2 pixels. Congrats to DoTW and his Super Secret Radar, which almost never fails. ;) The chaingun secret was easy, since not only was that approach used earlier, but I also played the old classic Moonbase 2000 by Michael Krause earlier today, and grew accustomed to pressing every console I saw.

So I thought this map was quality work, nice and clean and atmospheric. I got killed, so I’m happy. ;D I may try the next map on both continuous and pisatol so I can feel some of the pain others are experiencing.

[vdgg]

MAP05. I feel this one is awesome in the beginning. One should immediately sense this is going to be another tech, only on a much grander scale. The music helps also, and it's a great tune.

I assume I would find 3/7 secrets, but I decided to play pistol start, no secrets on purpose, for extra difficulty (mind I know these maps, some of them more, some less). This means the ammo may be tight - no SSG until the very end -, depending on how the infighting goes. For the first time in the WAD I think, but not for the last, there is a big COMPBLUE arena-type of room with lots of dangerous monsters.

Sorry Gwyn, but you ruined your map with that warehouse in the end. I'm curious if any other player will like it.

[fabian]

Cynical said:

Is there any way to tell PrBoom + to draw fullscreen on a widescreen monitor, but draw black bars on the side to maintain original aspect ratio? Widescreen feels really weird to me; at home, my monitor automatically detects non-widescreen resolutions and draws the black bars on its own, but no such luck on this monitor.

I think it's really a matter of video driver and hardware. I play prboom+ in 640x480 resolution in fullscreen on a 1600x900 screen (Thinkpad T430) and it is automatically scaled up with its aspect ratio kept intact and black vertical bars left and right.

[Rook]

MAP05: Outpost

What begins with a refreshing glimpse of the great, sparsely-detailed outdoors ends with an extremely frustrating and cramped crate maze packed with hell knights and revenants. Between the two, the ambush in the blue room was entertaining enough but its pack of yet more chaingunners might have been a nightmare had I not located the rocket launcher secret.

Speaking of secrets, these seem to get more and more esoteric as the maps go on – which is all the more frustrating given how essential they seem to be to survival. Trawling around empty maps searching for convoluted secrets in order to make sure you don't start the next instalment on 4% health just isn't fun. At least one of the secrets just seems a bit broken to me – I was eventually able to obtain a desperately-needed soulsphere in the crate maze by creeping around the edges of crates, but it's actually an adjacent crate stack I wouldn't know how to get to that is marked as secret.

A pretty horrid map.

[plums]

MAP05 (continuous, UV, Pirate Doom! - 100% k, 6/7 s)
I like the structure in the intro, the idea of a base facing out into a harsh and remote desert (we're on Earth here, right?) is always nice and the architecture communicates this quite well. Those distant chaingunners I'm less of a fan of, but I guess that's just how it's going to be here. I've been good about not unfairly sniping them with vertical mouse-aim so far, but I don't know that that will last much longer.

A lot of secrets seem like they're based on intuition, thinking "I should check here", with minimal visual clues. I'm finding most of them so it's working OK for me, but I'm sure some people will be pretty frustrated. The teleport to get the RL is silly though, makes for a lot of needless backtracking. Actually excessive backtracking with nothing new to fight seems to be another theme developing in these levels. At least Doomguy runs fast.

I rather liked this crate maze, surprisingly, there were a lot of things to explore on top of the crates and several ways of handling that section. Triggering all the secrets on top of the crates was a bit of an annoyance though. In the end I missed one secret in the level and I have no idea if it was supposed to be on a crate, or somewhere I missed entirely.


SteveD: I liked MAP04 too, on the whole. This wad doesn't seem to be too-well received so far, and while I'm not thrilled with it, it's got its moments.

[Veinen]

Map03: Processing

Ehh, pretty inoffensive but nothing really stands out either. It's a hitscanner parade mostly so the spacious layout works against you in a few spots but overall the map is rather easy. Especially if you find the soulshere secret, which isn't that hard to find even. We have an SSG in the map too but honestly it's not even needed, other than maybe the final Rev trap. Visually it's more of the same: simplistic tech base stuff without that many details. The slime pit in the starting area looks pretty neat. Decent but forgettable.

Map04: Mainframe

Well this was a little better. The main texture choice changes drastically and I kinda like how it looks and mixes with the blue. Gameplay is based on flipping switches and exterminating the teleporting monster mash that follows in the same area. Grab the RL and you're overpowered, don't take it and the map is a bit trickier and maybe even a bit more enjoyable. I only found it after killing everything in my first go so I played it the harder way. The music was pretty cool too.

Map05: Outpost

It's a pretty good map, if not for the idiotic crate maze stupidity at the end. Good flow and has a few interesting combat situation, like the BK arena. Ammo is again pretty tight in a few spots if you play wastefully like I did. I ran out of ammo and health when I entered the crate maze so the pace slowed down to a crawl and I had to hop around the cratestacks like an idiot to scrape up enough ammo and health to deal with the remaining monsters. Missed a bunch of secrets too, most notably the RL. Like Rook, I too apparently used the "wrong" way to obtain the soulsphere though and missed the secret attached to it. Or maybe the crate next to it was just so special that it needed to be a secret? Who knows. But yeah, take out the warehouse and it's a pretty good map.

[Cynical]

Map 05:
Finally, something good! The outdoor area is ok, as is the first building, but the big building is where the action is- and for the first time in the wad, here's a map with some real action. Plenty of health and ammo around, even on a pistol start, even if you don't figure out how to get to that Rocket Launcher (I didn't), but fights like the ones around the blue key or the action in the crate maze add a bit of adrenaline that's been missing from the wad so far. I do think that the "One switch lets you leave the blue key room, the other gives you four Revenants, choose wiselyguess well!" bit is a stupid idea that should have stayed from where it came in "Link to the Past"'s starter dungeon, but whatever.

That SSG at the end will be a real boon to those of you who are continuous players. For pistol-starters... well, it was nice to have for about two enemies, heh.

I also did the Soulsphere the "wrong" way.

[Demon of the Well]

Map 05 --Outpost - 100% Kills / 71% Kills
^^Should've been 6/7 secrets instead of 5/7....I've found the blue armor before, but just plain forgot about it this time. Still absolutely no clue where the one secret I've never found is.

Anyway, Outpost is the first (of many) levels in Vile Flesh to start really feeling fully fleshed out, both in combat and in progression/layout terms. It's a very traditional DooM PWAD scenario: start out in rocky valley and penetrate to the heart of a decommissioned techbase overrun by hellspawn. There are a variety of settings here-- the valley, the musty power-control building where the bridge switch is found, a couple of labs, and the storage/warehouse section. These settings tend to engender a gameplay style where monsters are entrenched behind cover or perched in elevated positions, requiring the player to either stay on the move or eliminate the most threatening targets with efficiency, but the upstairs blue-lab changes things up a bit with a simple free-for-all in an open space. The storage area gives a number of options for tackling it: the safest way is probably to clear out the overlooking hallways first, and then eliminate the floor-based monsters that come to congregate around the lift (although there are a few deafies, so they can't all come); what I did was to begin leaping from crate to crate at the outset by strafejumping off of the lift (note that this is the 'intended' way to access the soulsphere, and the reason for that random crate with nothing on it marked secret), fighting a two-front battle against the imps and HKs in the hallways and the assorted shit on the floor (most of the latter being unable to hurt me at most junctures).

One can be a little more cavalier like that here, as the resource austerity starts to ease up a bit on this map. Health kits are still pretty rare, but you're given a green armor at the outset to brunt some of the attrition involved with the initial crop of zombies tottering around the outpost's entrance, and boxes of shells and bullets become more and more common as you make progress, to the point where you might even have a small surplus by the time you reach the warehouse. Of course, once again, finding at least a few of the secrets helps to de-stress the journey; apart from the easy blue armor just inside the main entrance (which I stupidly overlooked, as said above), the other key secret is the first SSG, available in the outbuilding where the bridge switch is found, which ultimately improves ammo efficiency and speeds up the process of clearing out revenants and HKs. Again, the rocket launcher isn't particularly useful, at least on most conventional routes...maybe Gwynn had the idea that players would trigger the ambush in the blue lab, then teleport out to the RL, and then return to the lab to use it on the congregated monsters around the door, dunno.

Aesthetically it's very much in line with previous maps, its general texture/color scheme marking at as very much another part of the same network of installations that the marine has been traversing since the outset (although texture themes begin to vary more and more from this point on, if memory serves). It's not as sharp as maps 01, 02, or 04, probably, particularly in the lighting department, but it certainly seems less oddly empty and under-featured than map 03 did. My favorite section in this regard is probably the outbuilding; not so sure about that fullbright silver lab, by contrast.

[cannonball]

Map05 - “Outpost”
The crate maze is annoying, just for the secrets, it does feel pretty well done but the platforming with keyboard only was complete ass. The rest of the level is absolutely fine. Great music track again.

[plums]

MAP 05 (UV, pistol start - 100% k, 6/7 s)
For the heck of it I played through this again. Didn't find it especially hard, but it feels like pistol start really expects you to know where most or all of the secrets are, something that's true for pretty much all the levels in this wad. I'm not surprised that some people are frustrated playing FDA style. Missing the early SSG would make things a lot trickier, and knowing about the RL teleporter not only gives you that useful weapon but is a good way to cheese out of the potential difficulties of the blue key room.

Speaking of secrets, since it seems no one can find the 7th, I decided to look it up in DB. It's pretty lame and unnecessary.

Spoiler

on the North corridor around the bunker, one of the light columns on the stone doesn't actually have a light. Hitting the stone around it will lower a lift that will take you onto some crates. You don't need that lift to get the stuff on the crates, but it's the lift that is marked as secret.

[vdgg]

MAP06. Another tech, nothing new... yet, this maps gathers all of the known elements just right this time. The map consists of many, many tiny traps and this creates a nice flow. There's not a dull moment, this is IMO the best early Vile Flesh map. Oh, and there's a cool mapping trick with the exit switch.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP05: Outpost
92% kills, 2/7 secrets

Well, this one starts to feel like a full map, though it's still underwhelming in a lot of respects (texture usage/alignment, etc.) I actually thought there was a relatively large amount of health in this level (about a medkit per room) until the crate maze, and there I only got low because I was playing lazy. Nothing in this map is really too hard except for the blue key ambush. I didn't mind the crate maze, and I liked the design of having the monsters around the top and inside it. I might be the only one who grabbed the soulsphere the "right" way (strafejumping from the lift to the secret-marked box to the soulsphere).

[Rook]

MAP06: Secure Area

Or “Switch Area”, as it should probably be known. For some reason, come MAP06 Williams has decided that switches are clearly the best thing ever and such an excellent way to make traversing simple parts of the map really frustrating. All the switch hunting and connecting hallways do at least create one satisfying moment when the yellow key suddenly becomes exposed. There is also an instance where hitting a switch seems to do nothing except open up an alcove containing two revenants – unless I'm mistaken it's just pure punishment without reward for hitting a switch, which I think is pretty mean to say the least. In roughly the same area I learned repeatedly that a hell knight can take you from 63% health to stone cold dead in one hit if you're constantly starved of armour – the kind of thing Williams wants us to feel repeatedly, apparently.

The map really unravels in my eyes with the final areas, which comprise what I feel is a really bungled false exit. Not only does it use of the ugliest of an ugly bunch when it comes to default Doom textures, but it also involves an apparently invisible/hidden shotgun guy and a big pack of strong monsters with nowhere near enough ammo to drop them. Sadly, I think Vile Flesh is going from bad to worse here. I'm still hoping it picks up, though.

[dobu gabu maru]

MAP05: I’m quite surprised with how difficult I’m finding this mapset already, even playing continuous. Ammo is quite scarce in places and since there’s some more enemy variety there’s more opportunities to catch you off-guard. The crate section is a good example of this, although I found that there were a bit too many baddies down in the maze since one of the choke-points gets congested quite quickly. Good architecture here as well—I’m finding a fondness for Williams’ borders and ceiling sculptures. Plus I’m a big fan of that MIDGRATE.

MAP06: HOPE YOU LIKE HALLWAYS AND SWITCHES MOTHERFUCKKKKKEERRR!

Because that’s all this map is. Nothing really charming about it, especially since some traps demand you to react to two chaingunners in your face almost immediately. Nothing really fun, flashy or fascinating here… just some droll encounters.

[plums]

MAP06 (continuous, UV, Pirate Doom! - 100% k, 100% s )
Maybe this is too easy. Starting with almost 200 health thanks to that soul sphere from the last level sure takes the pressure off. But then what's the point of having an item like that so late in the map in the first place. Oh well, maybe I'll reset from pistol between episodes.

Lots of switch action that is a bit annoying, if nothing serious. More revenants that are easy to predict and deal with. Ending area feels a bit random, maybe I coincidentally did things in the right order, but it felt like a lot of those end fights could have been skipped easily or even accidentally. I didn't have a problem with this level but I found it pretty forgettable.

[Dragonsbrethren]

MAP05 Well I'm a bit late to the party on this one and already read the comments about it, so I was expecting a pretty disappointing map. Maybe it's the fact that I found the SSG, but I found this one much more fun than any of the previous maps, with plenty of health and ammo, and infighting that didn't require peaking out from a narrow corridor. The crate maze...well, it's not the worst I've seen, I like how you can take out most of the monsters above. I think my biggest issue with it is that once you wake the monsters up, getting to more ammo becomes a chore because of infinitely tall actors. Also, 64-wide corridors with a high ceiling and a cacodemon flying around are a dumb idea.

But yeah, overall I liked this one. The health and ammo felt perfect right up till that last area, which is more than I can say about MAP02 or MAP04. Aesthetically the hideous MODWALL panels made a comeback in a few area, other than that it wasn't bad. I really enjoyed the outside section. I'm not a fan of crates unless they're used in a "warehouse" like the end, so the crates earlier in the level actually bothered me more than that section.

[cannonball]

Map06 - “Secure Area”
This map killed me more times than it should have had, typical doom engine mechanics of hitscan weapons, mainly making me miss at point blank ranges and revenant rockets which appear to only do 80 damage.
First secret I couldn't remember to get, also happens to be the most useful in the entire first episode, typical.
Otherwise, it's an ok map, shotgun and chaingun only without secrets though, so infighting is kind of mandatory at times, though it's easy to instigate.

[vdgg]

MAP07. Squarish, too much symmetry. Many chaingunners, a ridiculous switch hunt in the middle. Strange rocket launcher placement. This introduces another MODWALL as a "main" texture, this will be used in MAP24 and MAP25 with better results. I didn't like MAP07.

[Cynical]

Map 06:
You know what this level needs? More switches, and more O-W-C doors where the switch is half-a-world away.

The start is awfully stupid. Pick between left and right- left you breeze through the rest of the very easy level, right you fall down to single-digit health and struggle to rebuild your health stores.

The pushwall to get to the Plasma rifle is a really dumb secret. It's not hard to find, but the wall you have to hump is literally unmarked. Blah.