The DWmegawad Club plays: MAYhem2048

[Solarn]

MAP28, "Cold Seep" by dobu gabu maru. Played in prBoom+.

This was a pretty good map, although one that would have definitely benefited from more space, especially for the key areas. As it is, the strongest part was actually the beginning, before getting any of the keys. It was intense in a fun way and required some quick thinking to survive until I could clear a safe spot for myself. It also didn't feel as cramped as I thought it would, unlike the key areas (especially the one for the blue key). I found the gimmick of not showing them on the map kind of pointless to be honest. The exit was a bit annoying until I found out what the switches actually did, after that it was just a matter of pressing them quickly enough so I could get a few shots off in the general direction of the Romero head, then repeating until it died.

By the way, did you know that you only need the yellow key and one other to access the exit? I actually decided to forgo the red key area (which I found the most difficult) because of this.

[dobu gabu maru]

Post Mortem: Before the MAYhem rules were set I had in mind a large arena with three towers the player had to explore, with each trespass flooding the landscape with more and more baddies until a chaotic finale. However due to the 2048 constriction this idea was tossed in the trash and I had to start over. Cold Seep (initially titled “Blood and Brine”) is a bastard by design—from the outset I had two goals in mind: I wanted a cyberdemon to hound the player throughout the map, and I wanted three keys hidden somewhere within, any of which can lead the player to finish the level. I began with the starting room and from there I developed the underwater theme as my setting (since the Eternal pack had multiple water textures I felt most comfortable turning it aquatic).

After detailing the SSG area right beside the start, I worked next on the finale (I often bookend the layouts of my maps by working first on what I want the player to see/experience, followed by the final battle so I can know what dire situation they’ll end up in). I initially planned for the player to travel upwards into space, but seeing as water was the daily special I decided to reverse direction and plunk them down on the sea floor. I’m really happy with how the grating illusion on the floor turned out here but significantly less so with the walls, as the tidal powers embedded in them don’t really… look too stunning. The central pillar with Romero is an alright contraption too, but less impressive considering that I wanted a magnificent alien city to be the final vista (ran out of time in that regard). It’s also a ball-buster when you play it, killing the player in mere seconds, and I had to tweak space/pillar placement quite a bit until I could find a semi-viable method for completing it (fun fact: in all of my attempts to beat my own map, not once have I used the BFG for the finale). As long as the second AV goes down you should be fine, but getting the cyber to fire on him straight away involves quite a bit of luck, which is an unfortunate failing on my part.

After that I gazed wearily at Doom Builder for a long time afterwards, trying to determine how I would place the remaining rooms in the small box of space I had. Rather than determining the layout I decided on a philosophy—asymmetry. I think this was important for me to pick since symmetry has been by far my most consistent quirk with my indoors maps (my MAYhem2013 maps are PERFECTLY symmetrical in comparison). This focus made designing the sunken fortress a pain in the ass, since it extended the amount of work required to get the cyber to stomp around (the eastern section underwent a couple of height tweaks in order to ensure he could travel up the stairs).

I suppose before I discuss each key path, I’ll make a note of the cyber—I’m happy with how the brute works out here. In fact, besides how tough it was to fit him into some places, the hardest thing to determine was whether to include him on HMP (which I did since I felt like keeping one of my original goals was integral to the essence of the map [he would be too much for HNTR however]). The easiest solution is to get him to infight with all of the barons, but each time I played I purposely killed him before then, in order to test out whether the player had enough ammo to finish the map. Perhaps the only unfortunate thing is that that particular infighting may come across as the intended way to deal with the cyber, while I actually think that fighting the AV/baron horde solo is a much more satisfying and nutty battle than having rocket daddy clean 'em up.

The red key fight works as intended but was a huge disappointment for me thematically, as my initial design was to have the water wall descend and showcase an elaborate chapel with the bony church-goers climbing all over the pews. The room itself is alright, although I did a lot more ceiling texturing than I should’ve, and the floor feels too plain in contrast. The mastermind fight works fine I think, although knowing about the ambush/PEs does diminish the intensity of the encounter on replay

Perhaps my biggest failure was properly conveying how to obtain the blue key—often as a designer you feel like your secrets may be too obvious, while other players wind up being completely stumped on how to find/solve it. The encounters are also my least favorite, being small & very manipulatable (partially due to the lack of space since this set was designed last). At the end of the blue key journey I originally had a second cyber teleport in to wreck shop, but after playtesting this a handful of times it was way too much of a headache to get him to infight with the cacos, and balancing ammo around having to kill him was a headache (any player that didn’t engage the first cyb with the barons would be dry by then). I ultimately left him out, instead dishing out a couple more PEs.

The yellow key gauntlet is by far my favorite, mainly because I played each scuffle around 20-30 times in testing. All difficulties have been tested with monsters being tweaked repeatedly over and over (and in the case of the dual AV fight, the central pillar expanding by pixels at a time), until I felt like I had a great composition for each encounter. It becomes a bit rote by the end as others have noted, but I feel like this small, precise, and brutal slog is something I’m quite satisfied with, coming out exactly how I wanted it to be (especially on lower difficulties). The only questionable thing was adding the megasphere before you warp in since expending the 200/200 before going into the depths makes the sequential fights nigh-impossible, but I’m glad to see it actually help Seele. Also if you want to know how enemy placement/behavior can be integral to the flow of battle, look at the difference between the HMP and UV dual AV fights—one imp can cause a whole lotta problems.

Visually on the whole, I’m partially contented with how the map turned out. Certain architectural flow, like with the first handful of rooms and the corpses dangling from the ceiling, provide good asymmetrical detail and can catch the eye while leaving the floor clear and open for munitions to be seen. But the right side (where the mural is) feels a little less… elaborate than I think I’d like (though the small placement of the dangling corpse behind the stained glass sword is my favorite personal detail). The big balconies surrounding the tunnel to the exit are also terribly empty and lacking flair to play against the repeating texture of wood/metal casings. The invisible bridge in the middle of the map is also another aspect I think I conveyed well, as I attempted to give the idea that the player was suspended above a study down below by some strange or powerful magick (though I think Demon referred to the enchantments as “chandeliers”). I felt that the fortress had a dark, gloomy intrigue so I picked Stewboy’s track from Interception MAP10, as that was an eerily haunting piece (I was close to picking his track from MAP14 but felt that was a little too upbeat/investigatory).

In the end, Cold Seep was an alright map to stitch together, though I do agree that it gets too claustrophobic for its own good. I designed HMP to remedy this issue a bit, removing many monsters that otherwise clog up the map, but the trouble with adding difficulties in a compilation is often the player that starts on UV isn't keen lowering the difficulty, especially if they've been playing continuously. This will be my last time working with a lot of intrinsically tight space, so hopefully this won't be a curse that follows my maps forever (and hopefully Phobus will find a map of mine he likes some day).

Sorry if my longwinded drivel annoyed anyone and thanks for reading!

[PS there’s a way to finish the map without setting foot inside the finale too]

[Magnusblitz]

MAP28: Cold Seep
64% kills, 0/3 secrets

I'm really torn on this map, because it looks fairly nice and has some pretty cool design ideas - I'm a big fan of the "puzzle fights" though I admit finding some frustration. But there are a number of drawbacks as well that keep me from giving it top marks.

Firstly, I will say that this map feels very cramped, and that it could be better re-done as its own independent map without the 2048x2048 requirement. While much of the start is just difficult due to trying to find a weapon while surrounded by heavy-duty monsters (even a Cyberdemon!), part of it is also difficult just because of the lack of area to move. I also caused myself a bit of frustration by saving when I was at fairly low health, then going into the southeast outdoors area, only to find nothing down there helpful except a backpack. Whee. I went back up and managed to play peek-a-boo with the Cyberdemon for awhile, before finding the Megasphere/shotgun shell room and deciding I finally had enough ammo to just take out the Cyber with the SSG instead of waiting for a bigger weapon.

Now the problematic part... I grabbed the megasphere by barely touching it, without triggering the silent teleport into the rest of the water zone. I did this multiple times, too, completely unintentionally - not sure why. In any event, this means I never saw the yellow key or had any idea where it was.

After emptying out the main area of the level, I could finally tackle what would eventually be the red key area. I found the AV/baron setup to be actually very interesting and fun - it's not something you see often, and it makes for a VERY tricky fight when you only have an SSG because of how the Barons make for a meat wall while the AVs blast you from safety. I eventually settled for just running away, dragging the fast-moving Viles from their slow-moving tanks, then playing lots of peek-a-boo with the hallways. Eventually I even ducked in and grabbed the RL they were guarding to finish them off. The next fight I kinda cheesed, I ended up just stunning the spider with the SSG and hiding between one of the columns near the red key and cheesing the spider with the SSG, then finishing off the revvies with rockets from relative safety.

So, here I am with a hard-won red key, I can see the blue key (but have no idea how to get to it)... still no idea where the yellow key is. I shot the lions head switch above my head, it opened something, what, I have no clue. I wander around the level some more and decide to press the exit bar. Hey, what do you know, it opens all three doors with the red key alone. I shrug and continue on. The two cybers down below make my life hell... just had trouble dodging their rockets with the columns in the way (there's also a bit of lag in ZDoom in this room due to the transparent column effects, I think). Eventually I manage to kill them (love the AV teleporting in after one dies, by the way). Hit the switches in the back... notice they lower the central column Icon of Sin style, so I throw a few rockets... no scream or anything. I try it again with some chaingun shots since the "doors" close quickly... no scream, but there is the subtle "picked up a soulsphere" sound... fuck you, RETRES.wad. After several tries I'm finally able to put enough damage in it to kill it and end the level.

So... it looks nice (and that "invisible" corridor with the floating torches is fucking awesome) and I like some of the setups. On the other hand, it's also a bit frustratingly cramped and I missed large parts of the level (and had the keys been required, I probably would've given up and needed to use DB2). So, like I said, kinda split on this one. I think it could be a great map re-done without the 2048x2048 limit and with some areas crafted a bit differently.

[Magnusblitz]

One thing to add (since I didn't realize it until after reading dobu's post)... I really missed the entire "underwater" theme. Mainly, I think it's because the outside is so dark that unless you take the time to stare directly at the ceiling, it just looks black. I was far too busy running around to really notice, even in the outside area.

[Steve D]

dobu gabu maru said:

Sorry if my longwinded drivel annoyed anyone and thanks for reading!

I enjoyed it. I'm a map geek and I'm interested in how other mappers approach things. One point of interest is that you seem to work in ways not too dissimilar from mine in that, for this map at least, you didn't pencil it out as many mappers seem to do, and fought with the space constraints right in the editor. OTOH, you put more effort into perfecting your fight design, whereas I'm a run 'n gunner who relies mainly on incidental combat of varying intensity, and arbitrary approaches to difficulty settings because I don't have time to customize them and you basically cannot get HNTR testers.

Alas, I was out most of the day, and when I finally had time to myself, instead of playing Doom, I kicked backed with some tea and listened to great Bossa Nova music by various members of the Gilberto family -- Joao Gilberto invented Bossa Nova -- then some Rimsky-Korsakov and Khachaturian, some Benny Goodman and finally some Miley Cyrus. An odd mix, but a very satisfying one. ;) That took a couple hours and now I'm gonna crash, which backs me up a bit, so I'll start catching-up on the maps when I wake up.

BTW, as with Magnus, the underwater theme went right past me.

[plums]

MAP26: Neither the most unfair, nor the most square, map in the wad, but I did enjoy the pun. Starts out quite difficult but if you can survive, things turn in your favour pretty quickly. Reminds me a bit of Plutonia in that it hits you hard with a small monster count, and also gives you lots of supplies, and is over relatively quickly.

MAP27: Fun concept map. The huge amount of monsters are more of a gimmick than anything, but there were enough to keep me moving. Simple visual details. I liked the conveyor. The set of switches for the 2nd crusher are pretty obscure (didn't find them without a map editor), and I think there are a few monsters stuck in closets.

MAP28: Oh my god did I lame the fuck out of this map. Sorry dobu, you cooked a gourmet meal and I slathered it in store-brand ketchup. Tons of saving, avoiding alerting monsters by playing pacifist except in the areas where sound wouldn't travel, abusing lifts, hiding for minutes while infighting happened... it was terrible playing on my part. It still took me a great while to get through, but I did win in the end. I'll have to give it a proper go on HMP later on.

I loved the visuals but wouldn't have exactly pegged it as "underwater" either, without reading what you wrote about it (which I did enjoy reading, btw). I would've thought an underwater temple with so much wood would be a bit leakier, I guess.

The layout was really nice too, felt a bit cramped but for a 2048 map there is a whole lot of nonlinearity and room to explore.

Minor complaints, other than the extreme difficulty (which I'm not really complaining about):
* Some of the AV setups, especially in the yellow key area, felt a bit random - success at times is largely dependent on whether or not they go into their pain state. Despite this, the close fights in that spot are very well done though.
* The blue key path is pretty obscure, as you yourself note.

[mouldy]

Map29 - “Imago Mortis” by Demonologist

Dunno how this one made it through playtesting, its stupidly difficult. There's a thing that happens when I map, and I guess other people do it too, where you get so familiar with your creation that it becomes too easy, so you keep bumping the difficulty up a notch. Maybe that happened here, maybe it didn't, but anyway, a bit of outsider testing really should have toned it down a bit (unless of course the only people who tested it are godly skilled like dotw). Its one of those try-and-survive-this type puzzle maps that demands you learn each encounter intimately and play perfectly to get through it, which I find tiresome enough as it is these days, but here the challenge has been ramped up beyond any kind of fun. This kind of thing can work well with a bit more imagination, but here its just shooting corridors of meat until they roll over you, or squeezed in a little room with a stupid amount of opposition. The visuals look cool, but by the second cyberdemon I just gave up and went into god mode. The problem is, I'm not sure if making the fights easier would improve it, because other than that there isn't much else going on here. I guess maybe there is an audience for stuff like this, and obviously it isn't me, but even so I think it has problems. On the positive side, like I said the design definitely looks the part, creating a real atmosphere of pain and menace. I'd suggest going a bit easier on the bumpy floors though, they can get a bit obnoxious when you are dancing around in tight spaces.

[NuMetalManiak]

Demonologist said:

Well, Getsu Fune, it's a nice opportunity for you to tell me just how much I suck at mapping! Seriously though, I repeat that I didn't want to insult anyone directly, but I was still probably too harsh and delivered my message a bit too efficiently, and for that I apologize, even if it's a bit late. Forgive me if you can. Next time I'll behave.

i have absolutely no idea what you are even talking about when you say this, given that you DID shit all over my map in the most unsupreme fashion. not once have i said that you sucked at mapping, heck i've never said to anyone on the forums that they suck.

but after having played through the entirety of DMP2013, and experiencing Ex Tenebris, and ungodly using IDDQD after intense frustration with the first room, I can easily tell that your maps are far more unfair than my map here (or Marcaek's map, for that matter).

[plums]

MAP29: It's Ex Tenebris Jr.! Quite hard indeed, but I had a decent time with it actually. Lots of moments where you have to make the right move at exactly the right moment, so foreknowledge comes in handy a lot. But that's what saves are for. I think the first battle was my favourite though, since it's deceptively puzzle-like, yet not overly hard once you crack it.

I'm curious as to what the intended way to beat some of these fights are. I ended up leaving the first cyberdemon alive, and then managed to beat the revenant alley fight only by hitting the switch when he was right in the middle of the spawn spots.

I do agree that the bumpiness was a bit much in places. Also using things for blocking paths leads to some really hard to navigate areas, especially the first staircase. Perhaps this was intentional to prevent the player easily escaping down there, I don't know.


MAP30: I hope it's not too early to post this. Since there are two days left, but maps 33-35 to go, I figure it's fair game. Also this way I'm ahead of the curve, for once.

After the past two maps, this one seemed like a walk in the park. I did enjoy the visual theme though, good use of those Heretic stained glass textures. The mechanism for raising the stairs was clever, too. Not a huge fan of the instant-death teleport ledges, but I guess it's nicer-looking than just falling and slowly dying. Anyhow it's not a bad map, the IoS fight itself it relatively easy once you figure out how to do it, which is fine by me.

Obsidian did you get Heretic and/or Hexen yet? I feel like it would be worth it for you as a texture resource alone :p (though lots of them are in retres.wad anyhow...)

[Marcaek]

I don't really mind that people dislike my map for its difficulty, but comments implying I didn't test it kind of miff me a bit, if I may be honest. I can beat B&B consistently on UV, and I know that foreknowledge may be considered an argument there, but I did intend the map to be a challenge gauntlet on UV, and made considerations for lower skill levels. Removing archie from his perch on HNTR makes a huge difference in how pressure is applied in an case, heh.

[Phobus]

Probably worth pointing out that, if lots of people are complaining that your map is full of dick moves and bullshit and therefore they don't like it, saying that you intended it to be that way doesn't really improve things any.


Anyway... MAP29:
Over remarkably quickly, as all of the enemies come in large groups (when they're not turrets) and I think save-scumming was by far and a way the most useful advantage, although the BFG I carried in from earlier in the map set did make the bullshit pop-up Cyb & Revs trap a lot more tolerable. I think, other than that bullshit, the two chaingunners that spawn behind the player when the first Cyberdemon puts in an appearance are a textbook dick move that you have to know about to deal with, particularly as being trapped in a pit with an advancing wall of meat and Revenants shooting down on you beforehand will leave you pretty fragile. As I've said, I have beaten this map from a pistol-start before (with save-scumming) and I got through it quickly this time, so despite the dickishness that does rather mar my opinion of this map, it's still not awful. It also does look brilliant, I have to concede.


Unlike plums, I won't be bothering with the bonus maps, so I'll do MAP30 tomorrow and that's my lot!

[Solarn]

I'll have to bow out, because a lightning struck our block and my computer's power supply and/or CPU got fried, and all of my Doom stuff was on that machine. Currently I'm using my laptop, which despite being ostensibly better than my desktop in every way can't even run Doom without stuttering, so I guess this is it for me until my desktop gets repaired.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP29: Imago Mortis by Demonologist
100% kills, no secrets

While I'm a fan of what has been deemed "puzzle fights", I think there's a difference between a fight that's difficult to figure out at first and requires trial-and-error for strategic reasons, and a fight that's just "throw the player in with a wall of monsters in a box" and relying on the ability to dodge projectiles in a tiny, constrained place. Compare this to last map... the baron/AV battle before the red key in Dobu's map is certainly difficult, and the hallways are narrow, but there's also plenty of room to run around and play cat-and-mouse with the enemies. Here, the player is constantly stuck in either a small box or a small hallway, with no real strategy beyond "try to cause infighting" or "hold the trigger and hope you can dodge enough fireballs." Playing these types of battles over and over again and hoping to get the infighting going or that you just happen to get the right number of non-homing revenant missiles isn't fun, it's just grindy. Sitting at the end of a corridor holding the RL firing key down... yeah, just frustrating. It's also designed in such a way (pop-up enemies, blind teleports, walls blocking off escape) that there's no way to pre-plan the fights, except the opening one.

In it's favor, it does look decently nice, with the open "void" look and some nice columns. Doesn't even use half the map space though, which seems a waste. On the other hand, I'm kinda glad it didn't, since the amount of fights was enough for me.

[Magnusblitz]

Marcaek said:

I don't really mind that people dislike my map for its difficulty, but comments implying I didn't test it kind of miff me a bit, if I may be honest. I can beat B&B consistently on UV, and I know that foreknowledge may be considered an argument there, but I did intend the map to be a challenge gauntlet on UV, and made considerations for lower skill levels. Removing archie from his perch on HNTR makes a huge difference in how pressure is applied in an case, heh.

So what's your philosophy on the Arch-Vile that can basically kill the player from safety at the top of the lift on the western side? Getting past this part seems like it's entirely at the whims of the AI making the Arch-Vile run around instead of attacking. That just smacks of poor design, I feel, because it makes it all about luck, not player skill. I feel somewhat similarly about the imp trap near the beginning.

[mouldy]

Marcaek said:

I don't really mind that people dislike my map for its difficulty, but comments implying I didn't test it kind of miff me a bit, if I may be honest. I can beat B&B consistently on UV, and I know that foreknowledge may be considered an argument there, but I did intend the map to be a challenge gauntlet on UV, and made considerations for lower skill levels. Removing archie from his perch on HNTR makes a huge difference in how pressure is applied in an case, heh.

Think the issue was the frustration more than the difficulty. People don't tend to mind save spamming their way through difficult maps where difficulty can be negated by skill or foreknowledge, but there are certain things that will frustrate players: enemies out of range/sight, movement hampered by damaging floors/awkward scenery, ammo/health/space limitations. I guess these are things that arbitrarily remove control from the player and minimise choices, and the level of frustration can only be tested by getting other people to play.

[dobu gabu maru]

Miley Cyrus Steve? I can't really picture you twerking

MAP29: Oof this is a helluva map. Demonologist confines movement to a minimum and demands versatility in almost every situation, only handing out lone medikits between battles (and you know being given anything more than that means trouble). There’s a handful of fights that I scratch my head at, wondering how a runner would possibly get through it without saving beforehand, but everything is mostly put together smartly (although that trap where the two chaingunners warp in around you with sergeants on all sides is straight-up bullshit). A creepy, dark and brutal map—shame that there’s no alternate difficulties for continuous HMP/HNTR players. It's also silly to note that Demonologist feels that this is easier than my map, while I think this one is quite harder.

Oh, and feel free to post MAP30-33 any time you guys want.

[Demonologist]

Since I was asked about handling the fights more than once...
Here's a 'casual' playthrough since I've got nothing better to do after midnight. Speeding things up is on my to-do list for possible future recordings on this mapset.

@ Getsu Fune: Well, the line about sucking at mapping was ironic. Apologies, however, were not. Oh well.
I can see where your attitude on my stuff comes from, I'm perfectly aware that only a few people will be able to appreciate the things I make, if at all, and I'm okay with that. One thing I'd like to point out though - challenges I unleash upon the player are not ammo-based, ammo starvation is probably my biggest pet peeve among them all, so no surpise it makes me really angry.
In the end though - I see that you're actually willing to improve and take people's advice on that, and it's a fact that's hard not to admire. Good luck with your mapping odyssey. No irony here.

@ All: Thanks for the feedback so far, both positive and negative. I think I'll actually change some things shortly. I don't really mind traps requiring prior knowledge, especially in short maps, as long as the map that utilizes them is still interesting enough to retry, one way or another. Anyhow - sorry if this one's too much for someone. Playtesters for this map were Ribbiks and dannebubinga, in case you wonder, and their words didn't go unheard.

[Demon of the Well]

Because I know Demonologist likes them (and because I sort of tacitly promised after playing his last standalone map), here's an FDA for map 29, using MAYhem2048-plm2.wad (the one I've been using this whole time, apparently why my impression of map 26 didn't match with anyone else's). I die one time, thanks to mystical IDCLIP-enchanted cyberdemon rocket....probably wouldn't have made it much farther anyway, those chaingunners are DICKS. Please pardon my crass trolling of the first fight, doing so became a sort of personal in-joke with me during the course of my experiences with MAYhem2048 (I really wish I could've done the same thing with map 20's start). I get my comeuppance via boney bitchslap for doing it the second time around, at least.

[plums]

Demon of the Well said:

using MAYhem2048-plm2.wad (the one I've been using this whole time, apparently why my impression of map 26 didn't match with anyone else's)

The only difference between the plm2 and plm3 versions is the addition of one flat for an intermission screen. What version have other people been using?

Demonologist said:

I'm perfectly aware that only a few people will be able to appreciate the things I make, if at all, and I'm okay with that.

Personally I quite liked your map here, the small scale applied to your style keeps things from getting too out of hand.

I also thought this was an easier map than MAP28.


edit to add: The victory text from MAP30 is too wide, it goes off the screen for me.

[Seele00TextOnly]

Map29 - “Imago Mortis” by Demonologist

I'd like to start by saying the refusal to implement any difficulty settings does a real disservice to the players, the wad, and the fellow mappers within the wad who did bother to implement them. A player plays through a whole wad on, say, HMP and then a map comes along that just shows contempt for both them and the other mappers. Bad form, I say. Shameful display.

That out of the way, I could not for the life of me beat the opening room fight of this map on Pistol start. There simply isn't enough shells. I came so close once, only to find myself pecking away at the Baron at the end with the pistol and getting killed by the overlooking Shotgunners. I'd say toss in a Shellbox or something and consider losing the Shotgunners if you don't want the map to feel completely unbalanced for Pistol-starters as well.

Luckily I still have a save from near the end of the previous map so this will be my sole Continuous-play map. I come in Plasma blazing and mow down the opening fight. Next thing I know I'm face to face with a tremendous crowd of Imps. I run out of all my continuous ammo on them and am down to Shells, of which I have plenty. Not that it matters that much because now, after I actually needed the shells in the opening fight and didn't have them, the map is completely swamped with Shellboxes. What kind of sense does that make. I get the Green Armor and right about now the impassable line usage in this map is feeling sort of strange. If you want it to feel like there's railing along the stairs, put some there. If you don't want the player to jump down across sections, make it look like they can't. This is just common sense to me.

I make it through the Hellknight/Revenant gauntlet okay, but next comes instant popup Cyber, Hellknights, and Hitscanners galore. It's like shooting fish in a barrel, only I'm the fish. It feels like a totally bullshit setup. I run it a few times till the RNG allows me to live. Gameplay! I SSG the Cyber, which is loads of fun let me tell you. Now it's time to plow through a row of Mancubus, then Hellknights and an Archie on damage floor. All fairly tepid encounters considering what preceded them. The next fight is Cyber with Revenants, which is actually kind of fun until I realize I'm surrounded by turret Barons. ~Barons~. Four of them.

Since the fight is cheating me, I say screw it and cheat the fight. Once they're all dead, I turn off godmode. My next fight I see... roughly 40 Revenants between me and two Archviles. More fair and balanced fun gameplay, I see. I sigh and re-enable godmode after a few honest attempts at this masochistic setup. I turn off godmode again and kill the Exit Archviles the legitimate way and finally exit this map.

Not my cup of tea in any way whatsoever.

[Magnusblitz]

dobu gabu maru said:

Oh, and feel free to post MAP30-33 any time you guys want.

In that case, I'll go ahead and play the "bonus" maps and save MAP30 for tomorrow.

MAP33: Crypt of Unsilence by General Rainbow Bacon
98% kills, 0/1 secret

This is a doozy, though I should expect that from GRB, I suppose. The start is tough from the get-go, with the walls lowering to reveal plenty of sergeants while the player is occupied with killing the Pain Elemental before it can spawn too many lost souls. Two Arch-Viles get revealed next, which is actually a fun fight, I think - sergeants are a good monster to match with them because they have a relatively high threat value (don't want to eat instant buckshot to the face!) but can be slain quickly as well, making it not feel like a waste of ammo to take them out (as opposed to say, barons, which are just a big ammo dump). The next area of note is the dark maze... some people will hate the effectively-invisible spectres here, but I don't mind since a berserk pack was so thoughtfully provided, and it's quite easy in ZDoom to punch them to death safely as long as your reflexes are good (though I've read the melee fist range isn't as long in other ports).

The big battle is in the pit beyond the yellow door, with a horde of hell knights, an insta-pop cyberdemon guarding the red key, and a AV in there, just for shits and giggles. This one gave me some trouble as the horde can be difficult to maneuver around while trying to snipe the AV... eventually I just got the Cyber to take him out for me and went from there. The next area (after the teleporter) is kinda bullshit though... just two AVs with nowhere to hide. Hope you brought your plasma gun with you, and get lucky with the pain states. While you've been gone, a shit-ton of monsters have warped back into the rest of the level, though they form a nice chokepoint near the chaingunner ambush. Hey, finally, cacodemons are useful for something (blocking other monsters!) Unfortunately, their corpses also block half the screen, making it somewhat difficult to know when to zoom and take out yet another AV or two. I ran by the last two Cyberdemons... didn't feel like doing The Dance.

It's pretty plain looking, with lots of blocky angles, but the texture selection is relatively nice. Of course, being a GRB map, you come for the battles, and it has this in droves. They were pretty tough without being too frustrating. Overall, I'd say this map deserves one of the regular mapslots over some other maps, though I would place it near the end of the road since it's decently tough.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP34: 99 Red Balloons
76% kills, no secrets

This map uses a custom music track, but it isn't "99 Red Balloons." 0/10

In seriousness though... this map basically feels like if Archi's MAP22 and Steve's MAP25 had a baby. Large, grey square, with lots of switchhittery unleashing hordes of monsters. The first swarm is the eponymous Cacodemon swarm (of which there are 99), but there's also some revenants, mancubuses, cyberdemons, AVs, etc. I suppose the map is supposed to be played hitting the switches ASAP to create infighting, but I basically eliminated the cacos/revenants on my own, which left me with nothing but chaingun ammo by the time I got to the arachnatron/mancubus point. After that, I basically just gave up, hit the switches and jumped in the end portal without trying to kill anything else.

So, overall, meh. It's very similar to other maps (especially Archi's) and I prefer Archi's, so it's probably okay to keep in a bonus slot.

MAP35: Mansion by joe-ilya
100% kills, 1/1 secret

Oh dear. I mean, the "mansion"/"my house" map has been done to death, so I expected a fairly generic one of those, but this... is quite not that. Walk down a dark hallway (what the heck is up with that moving crusher between the shell ammo?), eat/avoid a shot from a baron who then silently teleports away, then fumble around in the dark like a 14-year-old in a dark closet playing Seven Seconds of Heaven for the first time. When you finally find your way out, grab the secret SSG if you want to kill the grand total of 13 monsters (one baron and 12 lost souls), then... jump out the window that doesn't look like you should be able to jump through it. Done.

Yeah, this map really feels like an unfinished draft... I mean, it's playable, and maxable, but that's about the most positives you can say about it. It also only takes up about half the 2048x2048 area. Yeah, leave this one in the bonus slot for sure.

[General Rainbow Bacon]

Hey Magnusblitz. Just wanted to thank you for the review of my map. For the "bullshit" archies you're supposed to run past them into the dark maze and fight them in there, but I guess some people wouldn't get that the first time through.

Anyway, glad you liked the map.

[Demon of the Well]

Plums: Don't mind me, I was just having a brainfart. One of the things that most struck me about map 26 was how markedly few monsters it fields on UV (39 by count of the two ports I use most often), but other people mentioned having higher monster counts in their writeups, and so my reflexive assumption was that maybe cannonball had updated the map by the time of -plm3.wad (no doubt projecting my own feelings about what it needed onto him). But of course, if I'd used my brain for a second it would've occurred to me that most of the players hereabouts use ZDoom or GZDoom as their default port, which of course counts lost souls as part of the monster total, hence their mention of slightly higher monster counts for the map. Duh, Demon, duh.

Map 29 -- Imago Mortis - 116% Kills / No secrets
A void-themed map that downplays the setting somewhat courtesy of its mostly tight confines and the fact that the void is obstructed from view at crucial moments, a lot of this should seem familiar to those who've played Demonologist's previous maps; I see he even threw in his nascent signature, a revenant + cyberdemon catskinner box. The way the 2048x2048 space is used here is rather strange to me...you can tell the space restriction exists because the fights here allow less running room than the author's maps usually do, but in most cases the amount of space itself is not too uncomfortable to work with (the signature rev/cyb fight may be an exception, I think it was mostly down to idiot luck that I happened to stumble in the right direction at the outset on that one); the main challenges tend to hinge on the balance of momentum between the player and the monsters, rather than on the difficulties inherent in working with less movement space, I think. For example, the fight with the cascade of hell knights materializing on the marble slab is pretty simple if you kill the first couple out of the aether fast enough, but extremely difficult to regain control of without some collateral damage if you start slow and they gain a few extra strides. The same applies to thin blood trench leading up to the cyb/revs, to the final wave of revenants/viles, etc.

There is some crass dickery at work here--the ninja chaingunners + shotgunner gallery accompanying the first cyberdemon that other players have already mentioned is definitely the worst offender--but I would categorically disagree with the notion that its action is fundamentally 'unfair'--it freely gives you the tools you need to handle the situations it presents, and most fights are conceptually quite simple (so, no needing ESP to discern some arcane strategy for success); it's just that the window for execution is often tight, and so it's not particularly forgiving in that regard. One thing I do appreciate about Demonologist's maps is that they tend to alternate harder fights with easier fights pretty consistently, so it's not just stress-stress-stress-hey-let's-escalate-the-STRESS constantly. Incidentally, I would agree with Plums and Demonologist himself that 'Cold Seep' (at least on a maxrun) is more difficult than 'Imago Mortis' (as is 'Black and Blue' as well), primarily because Dobu's map tends to require a lot more attention-splitting and unpredictable monster movement in certain fights (e.g. the final battle without the aid of the secret BFG).

Thematically it's interesting enough, I've always had a soft spot for void maps, ever since the legendary 'Null Space', anyway. For something named after a renascence-era Marduk song I suppose it looks the part--bright highlights, some gore, lots of dingy dark metal. Like so many of the other MAYhem2048 maps it's very flatly lit...the void theme smooths this over somewhat (uniform luminescence always looks less artificial against a stark black background somehow), but I still think it'd look better than it does with more gloom and shadow. I like the forest of pillars ringing the play areas, but I don't actually really care for the glowing light blue/red lightstrips, looks a mite garish to me. Not fond of the stuff on the ceiling over the start area, either, looks a bit busy/messy. And the horrid recolored SHAWN plinths near the hell knight switch, ugh! Despite all my bitching and moaning, though, I don't think it's a bad looking map, and I don't think the floor bumpiness is much of an issue in those areas where it exists.

I think it's a solid map, overall....the author's style translated surprisingly well to the space restriction. Again, I firmly disagree with assessments that the gameplay is untowardly unfair or primarily reliant on luck or favorable RNG rolls, although there are some scenarios where foreknowledge is arguably paramount (although in my case some familiarity with the mapper's usual bag of tricks mostly sufficed).

One major criticism that I absolutely do agree with, however, is that neglecting to implement skill levels is in rather poor taste--especially in the context of a multimap community set where one's map is something of an outlier in difficulty to begin with. I understand there are always conflicting tensions at play in these matters--for example, many authors intend/wish that their maps be played from pistol-start in order to make the intended impression, but this doesn't stop some players from playing them with carryovers in the interest of convenience or accessibility or simply raw habit--but it's the sort of thing where reasonable accommodations are often for the best, I believe, even if one only goes so far as to remove a few big monsters or add a few surplus powerups for the lower difficulty settings; it's more an issue of courtesy than of trying to actively court public opinion or anything like that. One of the most intractable issues PWADers face is that of people refusing to play on any setting other than UV, and then resenting the map when UV is unpleasantly difficult....mappers refusing to even consider the lower difficulty levels sort of undermines efforts to combat this kind of issue in the community at large. Of course, I'm speaking from a largely selfish standpoint here; I myself pretty much always play on UV (even when the mapper advises trying HMP to start), because the full challenge is generally something I genuinely want and enjoy, even if it means I'm ground into the dust countless times while playing....and I always hate considering the notion that some mappers might feel compelled to adulterate the UV action in their output somewhat just to compensate for that segment of the audience who would probably enjoy themselves more on HMP but instead prefer to have a bad/frustrating time persisting with UV.

Anyway, soapboxing over. I was entertained by the map, but it's not Demonologist's best, or anywhere near his hardest (the amount of times I died getting the hang of 'Irreligious' from 'Realm of Demonology', hooooo boy).

Oh, and this has nothing to do with anything above, but I also really didn't get the impression that map 28 took place underwater. It was damned cool-looking, mind you....but that aspect of the theme just flew way over my head, I guess.

[Demon of the Well]

Bonus round!

Map 33 -- Crypt of Unsilence
Can't say I'm a fan. GRB's style suffers a lot as a result of the 2048x2048 space restriction. IMO, the best aspect of his maps (his more complete/developed maps, I mean, not the speedmaps he sometimes comes out with) is often the setting rather than the gameplay; he likes to make these big meandering expanses of generously-scaled terrain that emphasize things like rises and crevasses and so forth (ala his lost-in-DTWiD:LE 'Sheol's Descent', or his 'Barbatos' Fortress' from Interception), which is something he can't really do freely in a 2048x2048 box. Having this potential curtailed is a blow to his mapping, because the actual thing placement in his maps often amounts to some rather dry and sloggy gameplay; it calls to mind generalizations often made about slaughtermaps by those with no interest in the style, e.g. "You just hold down the fire button and strafe around a little for minutes at a stretch, FUN (not)." I've seen him make his monster-spammy style work more effectively before by being surprisingly stingy/dastardly with the placement of crucial weapons and supplies, going for a quasi-Petersenesque, exploratory, bewildering pistol-start approach (again, 'Barbatos' Fortress' is a decent example of this), but again, that's not something that the space restriction really engenders. So, what we get here is some unusually prolonged room-clearing, some corridor-crawling (at least the specters are used correctly!), and a fight with some potential in the knight/cyb/vile 'finger' room (so much meat can be pressuring) that sometimes misfires based on how efficient the infighting is. Parts of the map look okay (e.g. the grey dungeon, the arch-vile interdimensional tunnel), others look very bland (the starting area). Didn't really hold my interest, overall.

Map 34 -- 99 Red Ballons
Probably the most palatable of the bonus maps, this is an extremely simplistic arena fight with plentiful supplies and a few different waves of monsters, most notably the eponymous red balloons. It's a cakewalk if you take the monsters in stages, but more fun to let everything out at once to become a 'good cauldron' (love that expression). Doing so while playing with classic settings has some complications, again in the form of infinitely-tall cacos getting in everyone's way, but it's still manageable (and still a cakewalk under more modern settings). It's fun enough, but pretty shallow, and given that the map is quite similar to map 22 in some ways I'd say that TMD made the right choice in giving 'Puff' a primary mapslot while letting this one be a bonus map.

Map 35 -- Mansion
This is probably the most thematically coherent map by joe-ilya that I've seen to date, and for that reason arguably the best-looking, even if it is comprised chiefly of a big, dark, wooden box--not much to feast the eyes on, but not much to strain them with either, apart perhaps from a few of his razor-sharp triangular sectors outside. Very little to talk about as regards the gameplay; it makes me think of old 90s PWADs where the thing/monster placement is done in a more 'narrative' way than with an eye towards actually creating fluid gameplay--e.g. the Baron and souls are there more to be scary/imposing than to actually be effective, etc. Not much chop, really, but no worse to play than some of joe's other maps. Maybe if it hadn't been for the 2048x2048 restriction he could've expanded this into something more interesting.

[Wordy]

Map 29 -- Imago Mortis -

A divisive map in a community megawad, very new school slaughter. Extensively choreographed fights which are almost guaranteed deaths first attempt but reward strategy and infighting in the most edifying ways.

Im not fully sure where I stand on maps like these, I enjoy them but the difference between initially facing these encounters with prior knowledge and without is just far too stark. Its Doom on Rails at its most extreme, once you die a few times the strategy appears and its just a matter of intense bullet hell while it plays out.

Still, an enjoyable brush with Doom in its most Neo-Slaughter incarnation.

[dobu gabu maru]

I was actually considering adding in some of Getsu's patented ZIMMER seaweed around the sea floor, but never got around to it. Guess not too much is lost if you don't realize the map is based under the sea.

MAP33: A quaint, vicious map. GRB has always been solid with his ideas but not so much on his execution, and here it’s no different, putting the player into a variety of highly-lethal encounters that get a little dicey. I thought it got a little monster dense towards the end, as I stood near a doorway and just launched rockets for half a minute, but there’s some pretty clever fights in here implemented otherwise.

MAP34: Great horde work by cb here, taking the idea of a single arena and utilizing it to its max. It works well in conjunction with Archi’s level, being a space-themed slaughtermap with a beefy amount of monsters, but this arena stays the same throughout the battle while Archi’s changed in dramatic ways. It’s pretty tough if you want to do more than just circle around and wait for the monsters to thin themselves out, and can take a while to complete. But it’s a really satisfying map to beat in the end.

MAP35: Our final map sees us visiting what I can only assume is Joe’s house, where the mapper himself makes a cameo appearance as the lone baron, then disappears, then forces us to switch hunt in the dark, and then kill him with the SSG he keeps stashed behind his fireplace (a forgotten souvenir from Santa perhaps?). I suppose the thirteen lost souls are those that have played through 1024abc. A silly map, only redeemed by the great(est?) text screen.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP30: Bloodstained Glass by Obsidian
89% kills, 0/1 secret

The start looks cool, but I'm not a fan of how close the instant-death lines are to the edge of the glass boxes (i.e., its very easy to tag them without actually stepping off the boxes). Through the portal and ... hmm, Obsidian is really a fan of the brown brick and stained glass textures, huh? The middle of this map feels very similar to his MAP17 here, with similarly-tight blocky corridors with staircases and lifts.

Nothing too difficult until the red key is grabbed, with two revenants in front of the player and an imp swarm behind. Died a few times when the revvies refused to die to two SSG blasts like God Intended, but finally got through. The next fun moment comes at the red door, which unleashes four AVs, two in front of the player and two back by where the red key was. Those two can be ignored, but if the player takes too long to fight the two in front, monsters will start coming at your backside. I decided to kill everything, which left me very parched of ammo (I think I went into the teleporter at 14 bullets and 12 rockets).

Hit the next portal, and blast the Cyberdemon with your new BFG. Then start the Icon fight... well, or some weird giant spider-looking thing that starts spitting out the obligatory monsters. And man, I can't mention enough times how much the new sounds in this texture pack suck. Wasn't even sure it was the Icon at first... anyways, took me awhile to figure out what the trick was here. One time I managed to get the center stair to rise entirely by accident, I guess the monster fireballs I was dodging hit the marines. So yeah, turns out you need to shoot the marines on the side (why??) Then it's a fairly easy climb to pound some rockets into the very quiet Spider-Icon.

I'm pretty meh on this level. It does the job of filling up the MAP30 slot with the typical Icon fight, and has a couple decent moments beforehand without being too tough. All in all, a bit underwhelming and inoffensive.

(Oh, and screw that part of the staircase that opens up with just a bit of void... I died like five times on that just because I took the corner too fast and barely brushed the telefrag line of death. This is Doom, not a goddamned racing game)

[mouldy]

Map30 - “Bloodstained Glass” by Obsidian

Hey that music sounds familiar :) Interesting little claustrophobic puzzley journey. Starts out fairly simple, albeit with some weird instant death going on, then gets a bit trickier, and then the archviles happen. Fuckin hell how many deaths did that take to get through? It was totally down to luck in the end, not in such a bad way I guess, I could see there were always things I could do, its just that I kept messing up trying to do them, so in the end I just blasted the pair in the soulsphere room with rockets and ssg and hoped I could do it before monsters started biting me up the bum. Cyberdemon was a lot easier, and the final stage was a bit of a head scratcher until i twigged that the cages must have come down for a reason. A fitting end to the wad, maybe a little unambitious in the visuals, but interesting use of black void and surreal floating cubes. Time for some bonus maps I think.

Map33 - “Crypt of Unsilence” by General Rainbow Bacon

Fun stuff, I like how it unfolded. The opening area seemed a little brightly lit for a crypt maybe. The room where the hellknights dribble in, I ended up just hanging around for ages waiting for them to stop coming, seemed like a bit of a waste of time really as they aren't so hard to pick off. Its handy to be able to thin them out though, its the only way I could escape the red key trap in one piece, by dancing around the cyber to pick up the goodies and then leg it for the teleporter, leaving them all to it. I'm not even sure there was enough ammo to deal with all of that, but i needed every bit of it to cope with the army waiting outside. Final 2 cybers I couldn't be arsed to fight in that cramped setting, so I ran for the exit instead. Interesting that I never even considered the size limitation of the map, maybe because you teleport to the other areas so the square boundaries aren't so obvious.

Map34 - “99 Red Balloons” by cannonball

heh, was expecting the red swarm, unfortunately I squandered most of my ammo on it and didn't have enough to kill the final wave. I imagine this map is the most fun when you run around activating all the monsters straight away.

Map35 - “Mansion” by joe-ilya

Didn't see much of this map, it was so dark I played most of it on the automap, then jumped out a window and that was the exit.

So final words on this megawad... its a right old pick n mix of maps, as you'd expect from a one month community project where pretty much anything goes. Some cool maps in here, some ok maps, a few dregs. I've had a fun month though, and even when I've been slagging maps off I have to acknowledge that this is people making the kind of maps they want to make, so all maps have their value in the end (apart from maybe a couple of totally shit ones).

Favourite maps were:
Map01 - "Unorthogon” by Jimmy
Map08 - “Sheltered Outpost” by an_mutt
Map11 - “Escape” by Jaws in Space
Map12 - “Compound Invasion” by z0k
Map16 - “Master Plan” by SFoz911
Map19 - “The Axe Murderer’s Domain” by Chris Hansen
Map21 - “Aberinkula” by Tourniquet

Dobu's map28 narrowly missed that list but is worth mentioning again because its so damn cleverly made, similarly memfis's map06 is also ingeniously designed and good looking. Both were just a bit rough in gameplay terms for me.

[plums]

You guys should use a MUSINFO lump and music changer things for the bonus maps, so the right music plays in PrBoom+ at least.

MAP33: A bit orthogonal, a bit grindy, but still generally fun. GRB has certainly been more vicious in his maps before, and while this one has challenging moments, it's certainly manageable and not as hard as other maps in this set. Good texture use despite rather plain architecture. The red AV tunnel looked great, despite being a bit out of place with the medieval cave theme that occupies most of the rest of the map.