The DWmegawad Club plays: ConC.E.R.Ned & Draft Excluder

[Never_Again]

Khorus said:

Never_Again said:

You have 24 hours to change it to "BG is an over-rated POS and I don't want to see it again".

Sorry to hear the wad isn't to your taste.

BG is OK. Not great but OK. The quote you quoted was my guess at how Memfis must have felt when aborting his FDA pack halfway through the episode.

[driftyloon]

Just wondering is there anyone else who is not getting the midi replacements? When I was watching Lingyan203's playthrough on youtube , it had the replacement music. But when I am playing there is just the standard episode 4 music playing. Anyone know why?

[scifista42]

driftyloon said:

Just wondering is there anyone else who is not getting the midi replacements? When I was watching Lingyan203's playthrough on youtube , it had the replacement music. But when I am playing there is just the standard episode 4 music playing. Anyone know why?

Do you use some autoloaded wad with fixed music tracks or anything? Which source port do you use, and did you do anything with its settings? Do you consider the fact that the first 2 maps of Draft Excluder use stock music?

[driftyloon]

scifista42 said:

Do you use some autoloaded wad with fixed music tracks or anything? Which source port do you use, and did you do anything with its settings? Do you consider the fact that the first 2 maps of Draft Excluder use stock music?

Really, well watch his video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgP9UuWrnSQ&list=PLgS1ZoidySwMZH3oFNUmh92tA4asXZzB2&index=1

[scifista42]

I've checked in SLADE3, and those M1 and M2 songs are not in the wad, at least not in the official /idgames release that I'm using and that's linked in the OP.

He's probably using a music mod to replace stock tracks that weren't replaced in the wad.

[driftyloon]

scifista42 said:

I've checked in SLADE3, and those M1 and M2 songs are not in the wad, at least not in the official /idgames release that I'm using and that's linked in the OP.

He's probably using a music mod to replace stock tracks that weren't replaced in the wad.

ok, thanks alot. Mystery solved!

[cannonball]

E4M5 - "Life Support"
I guess this would be a decent submission for Spawning vats.
So we are still in the hell-tech theme, but this time the dominant textures are the red marble and flesh textures. I guess this will jar a little more with people than the green marble style, that said a dark hue to the map along with the E2M2 music track should add a darker mood compared to the previous map.
This map is a little more trap-centred compared to the previous map, along with being shorter in length. My biggest regret was not properly sealing the final room to force people to fight the hordes of various hellspawn which swarm the map. I died a couple of times at the end, but no issues elsewhere (including rocketing a spectre at point blank range). Good job me!!!

For the record, E4M1 and E4M2 just use the stock tracks, I guess ling wasn't keen and added his own soundtrack to the first two levels.

[Larzuk]

scifista42 said:

He's probably using a music mod to replace stock tracks that weren't replaced in the wad.

This has to be the case. This song isn't in the oldest beta version that I have.

[mouldy]

E4M5 - "Life Support"

Great action start. Feels at first like more of the last map only in red, but the layout is a bit more focused and less of a chaotic sprawl. Getting the red key suddenly gives you a lot of options, and each one seemed to be telling me to go away and find a rocket launcher. So I dipped a toe in each one and behold, a rocket launcher. I did well with secrets too, so on the whole I was beefy enough to deal with most of what the map could throw at me. The map also provides a lot of escape routes which is nice. Although this also means the final battle can be completely avoided by simply running back out after flicking the switch, and watching the carnage through the barred windows. You feel like an utter coward doing that, especially with the secret invul available to go and get stuck in. But you know, there is a degree of pleasure to be had from watching in saftey while a room full of meat destroys itself.

[scifista42]

E4M5 - "Life Support"

I didn't remember the Barons teleporting into the start room, maybe they weren't included in the previous version I've played half a year ago, or maybe I just forgot. Anyway, this was a good map, continuing in the same spirit as the previous one, and not disappointing. All fights were good and all monsters (including Barons and bosses) were used well, IMO. This time I liked even the final battle, it was definitely better than E4M4's one, and even though it wasn't that difficult, it forced me to move from time to time. I really digged the map's visuals, color theme and fancy level design, too. I haven't found any way up to the Invisibility on top of the marble Baron face cube, despite the fact that I've got 100% secrets.

[Surreily]

E3M9: Cyberslayer - 100% kills, 100% secrets
Cyberdemons everywhere
Lots of fun I had
Blowing them all back to hell.

E3M7: Back to System Control - 100% kills, 100% secrets
Lots of twisty little halls
Lots of monsters too
Made it through alive and well

(at this point I realized I was doing the Haiku wrong)

E3M8: Fortress of Tyrants - 100% kills, 100% secrets
Challenging and fun
Monster count is through the roof
Just one word: Epic.

E4M1: The Lost Bastion - 100% kills, 100% secrets
I just went berserk
Punching barons in the face
Escaped on a boat.

E4M2: Putrefied Docks - 100% kills, 100% secrets
Great job with this map
Looks and plays like Ep. 4 should
Favorite one so far!

E4M9: Thy Mappeth Faileth - 100% kills, 100% secrets
Interesting map
Overwhelming at the start
Took me a few tries.

Alright, enough of the Haiku. Overall, episode 3 was interesting and drew inspiration from the original episode 3 from Doom. I enjoyed it very much, especially the last map which felt truly epic. Episode 4 (Draft Excluder) is looking to be a fantastic episode 4-inspired WAD. I am a big fan of blood, wood, marble, metal, and stone themed maps, so I think I am gonna have a blast with these ones. The difficulty has definitely been cranked up too!

[Magnusblitz]

E4M5: Life Support
100% kills, 5/5 secrets

Good map. Does feel like another crack at E4M4's style, still very much in the 'helltech' setting, which I would say is not quite E2 since it uses the "hell" textures like marble green and brick red instead of the normal greys, and more hell stuff overall throughout. In any event, really glad you didn't get pigeonholed into doing the wood/marble E4 style for the whole episode, which I kinda feared after the first ocuple maps.

This one felt a bit tighter than E4M4, and I really liked the lighting - helped set the mood, and the glowing red areas really looked nice. The fights are good throughout, and the final battle is a lot better than last map's (although it seems like it's still fairly easy to run away, or run past everything to the exit switch). Good job.

Scifista: the baron cube with the invisibility lowers when you walk through the red door next to it.

[scifista42]

Magnusblitz said:

Scifista: the baron cube with the invisibility lowers when you walk through the red door next to it.

Heh. Apparently I've never gone through that door.

[TheOrganGrinder]

E4M5: Life Support

This map feels like a refinement of the themes developed in the previous level: a heavily subverted techbase wrapped around a cavernous central space that begins play as a visible but inaccessible void, only becoming accessible and dangerous towards the end of the map. Here, the whole level is gloomier and more filled with menace; the subversion of the techbase is more advanced; and the cavernous final area fills with a much larger and more dangerous population of monsters, though the spider mastermind is again reduced to the role of gun turret rather than presenting a more mobile threat.

I'm in two minds as to whether the proximity of two levels with such similar themes and layouts helps me to appreciate the visible evolution better, or if I'd have enjoyed them individually with one or more levels of different theme and layout in between. As with E4M4, though, I enjoyed this a great deal; the layout allows you multiple avenues of advance and retreat, multiple options for dealing with even the most orchestrated of ambushes and encounters. I do wonder if the final battle would have been improved by opening paths from the central space to the passage overlooking it that, at the very least, the lost souls and cacodemons in the teleport pack could have taken advantage of; as it is, withdrawing to that passage and moving from one set of bars to another allows the player to unload their heaviest weapons onto the cacoswarm with relative impunity.

[Demon of the Well]

E4M3 -- Ravine of the Damned - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets - FDA
Now this is a proper adventure! That ephemeral quality of "sense of place" that we often talk about is really this map's bread and butter. There is a certain believability to the setting here, eliding from the situation of a group of pragmatically Doom-abstract temples (and a few ruined outbuildings) in the context of a map-dominating topographical feature, that being the huge bloody ravine that rends deep into the island's ashy pith like an autopsy incision into a cadaver's pale flesh. After a bit of preamble, the player is quickly introduced to the ravine, and a hail of projectiles from its other side and all around that makes lollygagging about to simply drink in the sight a bit of a non-proposition. Running under fire for cover and in search of enough firepower to quell the flock of cacodemons that slowly home in from afar, many players will find themselves gradually pushed towards the dark, ominous eastern cavern that the blood river disappears into, likely with the cacos in pursuit. Even those players who successfully utilize the space and resources on the south side of the ravine (probably what I should have done--I tried to ignore them and then was subjected to some infinitely-tall vengeance when I got too sloppy) to quell the killer tomatoes and other unfriendly fauna in the area will soon enough find themselves hitting a dead end, with the only path available leading into black yawning maw of the ravine's deeper reaches--time for some spelunking!

This whole run/gun scene represents a very effective introduction of the level's defining feature (the titular Ravine), and then very organically seagues into a major sub-location within that broader setting (the caverns) before the player emerges victorious from the nighted depths, keys in hand, back into the upper area to cross the ravine (thus surmounting the level's main obstacle to progression) before exiting after a little postludium--rather than a series of choreographed fights or challenges to be overcome where geometry is either purely pragmatic or simply serves as a backdrop (not that maps taking this tack can't work very well in their own right, mind you), it's a definite quest/objective framed heavily in the context of the specific setting, where it is the broader location itself rather than the monsters per se that is your main adversary and companion as you play. This impression can be tricky to pull off given that idtech1 is generally much more suited to abstract constructions than very specific, 'rational' scenes, but when mappers do achieve this successfully I feel that the results are often (disproportionately often, even) some of the best material that Doom has to offer.

From an action standpoint, this style of progression is often less likely to be setpiece-dominated (though setpieces can still definitely be effectively worked into this style of map with enough class and wit), and indeed "Ravine of the Damned" is very definitely a bit of a cooldown and a drop in overall pace from the three maps that open the episode. It's still a lot of fun, though, and not simply from an exploration standpoint. While almost purely incidental, combat nevertheless varies robustly in style over the course of the map, a natural function of the stark differences in geometry and construction between the two major areas necessary for establishing the setting--topside, the wide open airy space with a soft yet very decisive movement restriction (i.e. you can't make it across the ravine without a key) is a prime venue for a freeform caco-flock battle with a side of projectile-hell from the snipers across the ravine, while the cavern area emphasizes close-quarters combat in the context of non-linear and rather vertically rich exploration (e.g. lots of dead-drops and hill-climbing and a light but persistent platforming element), with damaging blood as a relevant secondary factor in many of the scenarios.

This is a really satisfying map, and the level of growth/new versatility it shows in Cannonball's repertoire from the ConCERNed period is huge, far moreso than in Draft Excluder's first three maps (which played like better-executed and nicer-looking iterations of many of the same ideas that dominated ConCERNed)--really good stuff! The setting was cool enough that I really wanted to see all of its secrets, hence why I go back for the last one at the end in the demo (sorry about that for anyone that might watch it, not particularly courteous I know). Incidentally, once again I saw where said secret was because its door is visible as a door on the automap--if CB does this as a conscious stylistic choice, fair enough, but if not, it's definitely a free bone he should probably stop throwing the player in future maps. ;)

[Steve D]

Demon of the Well said:

. . . that being the huge bloody ravine that rends deep into the island's ashy pith like an autopsy incision into a cadaver's pale flesh.

And DotW is in fine form today! :)

[Capellan]

e4m5
This is another nice-looking hellbase from cannonball, though in the red theme rather than green this time. There's certainly nothing to complain about in the visual design of this episode.

There are some complaints that could be made about the gameplay; or specifically about the 'climactic' battle, which is anything but. Even with infinitely tall on it was trivially easy to evade the monsters boiling into the final chamber. I did a couple of laps, camped the eastern end for a while, and then strolled to the exit while the spider mastermind in fought with a good dozen lesser demonspawn.

This limp conclusion aside, the level is fun to play, though the limitations of the original Doom bestiary have been pretty fully exposed in the last 33 levels ... you've got sergeants for attrition threat, spectres for stealth threat, and barons for making suitepee so angry he has to go play another wad to calm down :-)

I liked the yellow key as a secret in this, that was quite fun as a gimmick and the platform run to the teleporter was a striking visual.


e4m6
It's another big green marble hellbase, interrupted by growths of fleshiness and skintech. It's all well-executed and looks good, but it feels a bit uninspired somehow. The wooden walkway section to the south-east doesn't help in that regard: it feels very filler-esque. The repetition of 'you must flick X number of switches to move to the next room' gets pretty wearing, too. It's been a feature of all the levels in both conCERNed and Draft Excluder, but I particularly noticed it here. Possibly because the complex didn't feel like a 'real' (for Doom definitions of the term) place. If I can buy into the map as a 'real' place – "oh here's the guard post with the controls for the security door" – then switches are fine. When I feel like a corridor of monsters exists solely so that cannonball can put a switch at the end of it (which will open another switch and let out another group of monsters), then it becomes tiresome.

Overall, I liked this level a lot less than the one before because I was more engaged by the environment of the previous map.

On the other hand, at least this level didn't have a climactic battle you could completely ignore. That's a plus :-) I do wonder if players might get stuck there if they haven't killed off the other cybers on the map and don't know about the 666 special for e4m6. I wasn't aware of it, to be honest, though fortunately I had killed the other cybers.

[Demon of the Well]

E4M4 -- Nuclear Jellocide - 99% Kills / 71% Secrets - FDA
Again something more low-key. Apart from a couple of fairly meanspirited jabs with Baron tagteams in uncomfortably tight spaces (esp. the pair safeguarding the red keycard, I was very lucky that the cacodemons approaching from the rear seemed hesitant to spit much lightning at me in that case), the gameplay here is more in line with what one might expect from a KDiTD replacement--strands of single and small groups of basic monsters that can attack and be attacked from many different directions and angles on account of a high degree of both logistical and purely visual interconnectivity and redundancy (e.g. multiple hallways that all go to the same place, multiple windows presenting similar views out of/into a given area, etc.) in the layout/architecture. In this case, the relative freedom to make use of the complexities and nuances of the architecture to fight in the way that most suits your personal style and temperament is the best of what the map has to offer, e.g. the layout/thing placement seems like it would accommodate both blitzkrieg/berserker players and careful, methodical sniper-style players (and everything in between) fairly well.

Good thing, too, because the actual fights themselves, in terms of choreography and setup, are generally not particularly memorable, and in some cases not even particularly effective. I agree with others that the intended spiderdemon pincer just doesn't seem to work well in practice. I also didn't enjoy the blue key free-for-all as much as I would've liked, largely a function of what I feel to be untowardly counterintuitive placement of the rocket launcher. I ran all around that area stirring everything up, hitting switches, turning all of the extra monsters loose, etc., just like the layout seemed to invite me to do, but I kept searching for and not finding a weapon bigger than the chaingun that would allow me to more efficiently dispatch everything. Eventually I gave up and allowed attrition from infighting and my shotgun to whittle the population down to zilch, only to find a couple of minutes later that the RL and plenty of ammo were farther in beyond a small door (presumably switch-locked) in a simple little setpiece. Maybe a bit too far from the main action, this, and it seems like even if I'd gone in here while everything out there was still alive, I'd have encountered a chokepoint of meat on the way out (even with the back escape route that opens up), which wouldn't have been any more satisfying to fight than the slow-paced shotgun/chaingun janitoring I did instead.

On the bright side, the level is quite appealing aesthetically. The similarities to Jade Earth didn't occur to me while I played, but after seeing Cannonball mention them they are indeed quite pronounced (incidentally, I'm totally making you guys play that leviathan of a level if the DWMC ever goes through with one of those single-map month ideas). Between the marble and polished concrete and subdued lighting and proliferation of greenery, it's another one of those settings that seems like it might be genuinely relaxing to chill out in were it not for the matter of demons from Hell trying to kill you and then do unspeakable things to your corpse every other moment, "The Imp's Song" is a nice fit in the BGM slot, as well. I feel like markedly monochromatic visual themes can be difficult to pull off--e.g. in this map's case everything is green-green-green because the only really stark color contrast comes from the orange sky through the occasional skylight, and even that is often partially obscured by more green hanging vines--but this map manages it well through the introduction of just enough light variation and unobtrusive tech elements to cement the marble/slime theme together, one of few instances where I found myself not objecting to seeing fluorescent striplights affixed to ancient marble surfaces.

E4M5 -- Life Support - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets - FDA
I liked this one. I agree with the other players about it seeming to share a certain kinship in general style to 'Nuclear Jellocide' before it (especially in the overall pace and style of encounters), but I feel that for the most part it's more complete and nuanced in its execution. For one thing, there is a more genuine aspect of non-linearity in this map, in that you have a real/relevant choice of directions to explore in after acquiring the red keycard, whereas in E4M4 there was very little non-linearity in effect as regards actual level progression/exploration, rather just some 'non-linear' interconnectivity in layout around a couple of the important combat zones. I'm making such a point out of non-linearity here, of course, because it's a classic "secret ingredient" for adding interest to mid-episode maps like this one and E4M4 that are pretty clearly intended as cooldowns between the real heavy hitters, by dint of prioritizing intrigue over constant relentless action. And it's intrigue, incidentally, that this map seems to invest more heavily in than anything we've seen before it this month (including in ConCERNed), with a very early view into the spaciously sinister techno-creepy incubation chamber which hosts the level's final battle, another secret keycard whose payoff can hedge your bets by taking a lot of the sting out of said battle, and come to think of it, at least one secret area that's worth visiting for a reason other than its material rewards, something that is generally very rare in Cannonball's mapping.

As aforesaid, encounters are generally similar in pitch and intensity to what was in the previous map, although comparatively speaking in this case there's somewhat more of a slant towards traps than purely incidental skirmishing. Unlike in E4M4, I didn't feel like any weapons or such were misjudged in their placements or intended applications, although in somewhat of a stylistic callback to ConCERNed it's true that several of the major encounters can seemingly be defused by simply backing out of them. In most of these cases I feel like this isn't a serious issue since most of the fights invite you/subsidize you to play them in a variety of ways (e.g. the big end battle), but the trigger on the cacodemon closets in the optional blue armor/plasma rifle room behind one of the red-locked doors seemed to be placed too close to the entrance--given the precarious footing, monster-clogged walkway, and rapid simultaneous multi-pronged attack from flying monsters inside of what is not a particularly large room, retreating to the door seems in this case more like something you are actively encouraged/compelled to do (as opposed to something you are merely allowed to do), and doing so reduces the fight to a pretty grindy camping exercise. I also had a an irritating experience with infinitely-tall specters at one point (having them be deaf was probably an unintentional dick-move, I suspect), but generally speaking, while far from the most intense action that Draft Excluder has to offer, I feel like most of the combat here works pretty well in the context of a map more focused on exploration and atmosphere.

And of course, I would be remiss in failing to mention that atmosphere is something this map does well. Both the shift in setting from an overworld to a decisively subterranean locale and the major shift in texture scheme from a more or less traditional E4 green marble/rocks/metal/wood patois towards a bloody redstone-sheathed flesh/tech one comes not only as a refreshing change of pace in moment-to-moment visual fare but also as a boon to the overarching sense of subtle narrative that Mouldy mentioned earlier on. Since leaving the Ravine of the Damned we've been pressing deeper and deeper into the mountainside that the Jellocide facility was set into, and having come far enough to reach the mountain's heart we find that my earlier snowballing based on some peripheral texture detailing in E4M2 might actually have been onto something: the inner/lower reaches of the island really are comprised of a horrid amalgamation of demonic machinery and festering flesh, a blasphemous creation of arcane necro-science older than living memory. What I really like about the theme here is that it is unabashedly centered on the color red, but totally removed from the traditional red-hot lava/hellscape theme that dominates many Hell episodes in the realm of PWADs--it's surprisingly rare to see the crimson masonry couched in a brooding subterranean setting and all too rare to see the glaring bloodshot neons contrasted against shadows and gloom. Perhaps it's my imagination, but even the monster deployment seems like it makes nods to largely atmospheric ends, with specters in the dark, cacodemons that seem to ooze out of dark, squalid little cracks in the walls, and some unusual monster placement in the final room that, in concert with map's name and generally moribund mood, made me imagine it as some sort of unearthly demonic ER or something similar.

Anyway, another good map with a more affable pace. Enjoy it while you can, the next map is pretty stressful.

[TheOrganGrinder]

E4M6: Temple of the Forbidden Gods

Or Forbidden Gods, according to the intermission screens, or simply Temple according to the automap.

Structurally, this level owes a debt to Doom 2's MAP29 in that it consists primarily of a central arena around which the player first follows a largely linear path; that path opens up in stages, each of which is its own distinct sub-area, encounter, or challenge. I feel it's also an evolution of ConC.E.R.N.ed's E3M8, too, in the overall feel of its cathedral-like central area and arrangement of the other sections around that. The enormous open-air start area seems to exist primarily to let the player appreciate the grand scale and scope of the temple that lies before them.

The linearity of this level is a bit of a let-down after the sprawling exploration of the prior two levels, though it's also a change of pace, and the combat certainly kicks things up a notch, though it feels a lot more orchestrated, more 'managed,' with only limited opportunities for the opposition to use the map against you in unanticipated ways. With that in mind, the level's biggest set-piece battle at the end feels a little lacklustre; the cyberdemon 'turrets' are easily enough avoided until the swarm of cacodemons and lost souls is neutralised, at which point they can simply be melted at the player's own pace with the thoughtfully-provided BFG.

The level ends as it begins, with an enormous outdoors vista, although in this case you can't actually walk towards the glowing red structure you see in the distance, instead finding the exit in gloomy underground side passage. I'm guessing the building seen in the distance will reappear as either the later portions of E4M7, or as the whole of E4M8? Onwards!

[scifista42]

E4M6 - "Temple of the Forbidden Gods"

Progression in this map was overly straightforward while the map was very long, but it provided the same kind and amount of fun as the several previous maps. Since I've played continuously and had a lot of plasma ammo, I decided to kill the Cyberdemon snipers in my way. I've assaulted the first one in the caged area, but somehow I have moved him with my plasma and he teleported away. But then, I've killed the one that appeared above the "lava crossroad", and then the other one on a high pedestal, whom I've sniped with my hitscan weapons from a safe place below. This allowed me to not encounter any more Cyberdemons until the very final battle. The battle was OK, I've somehow spammed through it. Great visuals, architecture and pace of encounters, again. Good map - if only the progression was less linear.

[dobu gabu maru]

E4M4: This map gave me a real BTSXy vibe, due to how windy and interconnected the passageways are (and how there’s multiple key doors leading to the same area). I like the western wing more than the eastern wing, since the eastern portion is more straightforward and relatively simple. It took me FOREVER to find the rocket launcher, and I was missing it a bit more here than in the last map (especially since barons seem to rule this domain). A good map overall with some hiccups here and there.

E4M5: Glad we went from some GSTONE to SP_HOT, as I was missing those crimson-colored bricks. There’s some good flow to this level, smartly varying between more open sections and enclosed traps before ending on a big finale (which had a much wiser mastermind use than E4M4’s final battle). My only complaint is that I ran into this problem again; I’m trying to be as observant as I can be, but it didn't stop me from aching for the RL on this map. Due to its absence I had to quickly slip past all the monsters at the end, which felt unfortunate since they seemed to be having quite a party. Fun map besides that—I like the absurd amount of red key doors at the beginning.

[Capellan]

e4m7
Well, that's quite a secret area you have there, cannonball. Pretty much a third to a half of the entire map. It's all in pursuit of the blue key, which grants access to the BFG, and it's a nice element of a map I did not otherwise like.

Making such a big chunk of the level hinge on one secret is a pretty gutsy call – it's definitely not the typical little "goodie closet" – so I respect it for that, but I also like that this is an open area with lots of cross-fires and free-flowing battles where cacos pop up out of nowhere to ruin your day. It's a very dynamic zone packed with bastardry. Well, until the end of it, anyway, where you get locked in an arena to fight some barons because this is still an Ultimate Doom wad and it's that or cyberdemons.

The blue key fight's not a bad one to be honest, but it does suffer from the fact that it's a set-piece close-quarters fight in a map that (outside of this area) is pretty much all set-piece close-quarters fights. Go down some steps, swarm of monsters. Flick a switch, swarm of monsters, grab a key, swarm of monsters. Go through key door ... well, I bet you can guess what happens when you flick the switch behind it.

Other than the blue key canyon I found this a rather dull affair, with 'samey', stop-start gameplay everywhere else in the map.

[mouldy]

E4M6 - "Temple of the Forbidden Gods"

Epic opening scenery. This map has quite a penultimate feel to it, even though there is still another map to come before the ending, it feels like Doom throwing everything it can at you. Well having played this episode before I know there is still a lot more that can be thrown at you, but its still quite the evil challenge. That said, the challenge is basically to run through most of it avoiding cyber rockets. I do like how the cybers are used to control the space, though I do hate the one-mistake-and-you-die aspect of it. I end up saving a lot more than I'd like to, just to avoid that roll of the dice to decide my fate. Anyway, Cybers aplenty. Only near the end did I realise I could go back through the map and all the cybers were gone. I'm assuming they are all teleported away for the finale? Very clever. I'm glad it allowed me the chance to go back and find some secrets before the final battle. Messy as I am with bfg, my ammo was down to shells and bullets by the end with two cybers left standing. Enough rockets around to soften them up a bit though. Great map.

[cannonball]

E4M6 - "Temple of the Forbidden Gods"
So you ride the elevator to the surface and find yourself standing before a large marble temple built into the cliff side.
The maps gimmick is a more developed version of E4M6 from 2002ado, which was a long mostly linear romp through a large marble temple. There is a point in this map where a cyber hounds the player before teleporting away. So I thought I would extend and develop this gimmick further. There are two cybers at the start which teleport around the temple to hound and bother the player, before they teleport into the final arena at the end, so for most pistol starters will face 4 cybers at the end.

The flaw with this map is players on continuous can expel their remaining fire power into the cybers in one of the various set ups and remove them from the fight, which neuters later areas and the final arena. But this was a better option than forcing a pistol start on everyone.

At the end you can see your final objective, but you decide to head underneath the fortress via the sewers and dungeons......

[Steve D]

Pistol-starters can really suffer on this map, like I did, losing about 62 pelts. Those lousy continuers. ;D

[dobu gabu maru]

E4M6: I didn’t like this one at all. I mean the visuals and size of it sure are astounding, but I abhorred the gameplay from start to finish. Cyberdemons get countless vantage points on the player and when you’re not being gibbed you’re getting surrounded by cacos and barons in tight hallways. It’s a linear affair where the only redeeming factor is the traps, except that the traps are so cruel and bland that I would’ve had more fun playing with -nomonsters on. It’s not a terrible map, but it’s dickery was really off-putting for me.

[Demon of the Well]

E4M6 -- Temple of the Forbidden Gods - 100% Kills / 83% Secrets - FDA
Stressful, like I said. And intimidating, arguably moreso than any other map in the episode (and thus, any other map this month). Everything worth mentioning here revolves around the phasing cyberdemon twins (who eventually turn out to actually be quadruplets) who hound you all over the temple grounds. The odd moments of downtime--when they're off in whatever warped pocket-dimension beyond space they hail from, snickering and chortling and maybe enjoying the extraplanar analogue to a Hot Pocket(TM) while coming up with devilish new ways to troll the long-suffering Excluderguy--actually feature a lot of the driest and least dynamic combat in the episode, with symmetrical monster placement, very predictable teleport/pincer setups, a touch of Barons-for-the-sake-of-it syndrome, and one very tedious (if somewhat cool-looking) crusher room that more or less mandates inch-by-inch monster-baiting and heavy camping abuse (largely because it also happens to be the most severe incident of the aforementioned Baron-spam). But when the Twins finish their snack break and decide to show up again......my lack of goodness! It's a whole 'nother game.

In their first 2-3 appearances, they'll come at you singly, perched in central locations in setups based on tried and tested cyber-nemesis encounter designs that many of us have probably seen before (earlier in this very mapset, for example)--traversing a narrow path/maze with no solid walls, being compelled to hug the base of the firing point while fighting off some interference from smallfry, etc.--and at this point, dealing with the scenarios is relatively straightforward: just don't hesitate, stay on the move, keep one eye on that central firing point, and you'll be alright. The deeper into the temple you go, however, the Twins will begin to show up together more and more frequently, and their firing positions will start gravitating away from being placed in central locations in favor of more peripheral vantages, meaning that their fields of fire will overlap more efficiently and thus become more and more suppressive, in turn making their mere presence exponentially more oppressive as the action unfolds, especially as the terrain in the deeper reaches becomes progressively more complicated (or "awkward", as Suitepee would likely say) to navigate.

The core principle at work here is fiendishly simple--rather than attempting to surprise you (usually the single best way to collect a pelt, regardless of map genre) or overwhelm you through force of arms, these scenarios significantly reduce the ease of use of the player character's most powerful weapon of all, that being his agility. The Twins will handily deny you the use of spaces where your speed and maneuverability would normally allow you to effectively combat the various smaller monsters, instead requiring you to wedge yourself into tiny boltholes or other odd places in rooms as you fight to clear the way forward, leaving you handicapped on the dodging front and occasionally requiring you to soak lighter hits rather than expose yourself to a fulminating rocket salvo. This is what I mean when I call this stuff "intimidating"--in places it's almost like getting flashbacks to the early days of one's Dooming career, before dodging was second nature and when groups of monsters could still very easily cause confidence to falter. Shit, even once you make it to end and see that you're finally going to have room to run again, Cannonball ups the ante one more time by arranging things so that all of a sudden you have to worry about up to 12 rockets speeding towards your fragile mortal shell (and from very tricky angles) at any given moment, rather than the 3-6 you might've finally been starting to get used to by that point. Diabolical.

I'm glad I played this, I found it invigorating, in its way, a very different type of challenge from that offered by most of what we've played this month. I also found it exhausting, and I'm glad that it's the only one of its kind in these two mapsets, certainly not a style of action I'd want to partake of on a daily basis.

[Magnusblitz]

E4M6: Temple of the Forbidden Gods
96% kills, 4/6 secrets

My experience was pretty similar to dobu's - the map looks great, with some great size and vistas, but the actual gameplay left me a bit cold. Had to play it out over several sessions because I kept getting frustrated with it. It carries over the "dance around the Cyberdemon" theme from earlier in the episode, but carries it out over an extreme length. The real problem is that often these areas are quite cramped, so the choice is between eating a rocket or taking damage from running into demons/imp fireballs/shotgun pellets etc. Or just plain eating rockets and instantly dying, resulting a heckuva lot of save scumming. It's not a bad idea, just one that I think could've used some tweaking and slightly larger spaces to run around in.

[TheOrganGrinder]

I feel like I must have done something wrong with the cyberdemon 'twins' since in my playthrough both of them got stuck relatively early on - one in sector 202 (cage in the wooden walkway area) and the other in sector 530 (SP_ROCK1 cave area). Both were subsequently quite easy to dispatch - though now that I know what was supposed to be going on there, some of the architectural features later in the level that I couldn't make any real sense of at the time are obviously cyberdemon platforms. Maybe the failure of the cyberdemons to teleport beyond those points in my playthrough is a sourceport issue?

[scifista42]

E4M7 - "Dungeons and Demons"

I didn't like the gameplay in this map. Not that it was terrible, not at all, it was just a letdown compared to what the wad offered me earlier. Most of the time was spent dealing with huge monster hordes, which itself is not my preference when it comes to gameplay. To top of that, I had to kill a lot of them with shotgun and chaingun. I didn't feel like I had enough ammo for powerful weapons to start spamming it, despite the fact that I was playing continuously. I've only got enough ammo in the last fight, which turned out to be easy to skip through without firing at all, and which I totally did and let the monsters behind me when exiting. This is really not the kind of combat that I like. Regarding aesthetics and layout, the map was great as usually. I'd still appreciate more non-linearity, because even though some of the arenas were complex, on the whole they were separate areas tied together linearly.