The DWmegawad Club plays: NOVA II

[scifista42]

MAP25 - "Parasite Hive" by Pinchy

Pinchy is an excellent newcomer mapper. My impression is that he understands what makes Doom maps fun and appealing, and he puts focus to make these aspects daringly amplified and spiced up with uniqueness in his maps. I really liked this map's non-linearity, organic curves in epic sized environments that made me stand in awe, the volume of action, and varied design encouraging free exploration, even vertically. Very fun and quite unique experience.

[Urthar]

ZDOOM - HMP - Pistol Starts

MAP26 - Surreptitious Ichor

This map is a game of two halves, opening with a session of murder in the dark, followed by straight up slaughter. Both are very visually appealing and feature distinctive architecture.

Initially I died quite a lot on this map, until I realised there was a SSG directly in front of the starting area, at which point I stopped running around like a headless chicken, and methodically dismantled the encounters one at a time. Generally I prefer more reckless play, but the music definitely suited the slower pace. The darkness was handled very well, with lots of back lights and silhouettes which gave the shadows form, and even the cave section had lots of candles and torches to help guide the player around.

The second half dragged on for a bit longer I would have prefered, but encouraged a looser and more fluid approach, and on HMP seemed to cater to my own skill level very well. Visually it reminded me a little of Sunder, but possessing it's own developed style.

In summary, not my favorite sort of map, but defintely a high quality one.

[gaspe]

SoundofDoomDoors said:

You don't want to play it.

Yes I want it, it's my favourite wad.

[mouldy]

MAP26 - "Surreptitious Ichor" by dobu gabu maru & cannonball

Definitely a map to be played on a rainy sunday afternoon. 45 minutes of game time, probably more like an hour with the number of deaths, its a surprisingly long adventure in that it doesn't seem that long. Its almost like playing 3 different maps in a row with all the varied locations along the way. Man that scenery is great, the fractalised chaos that is something of a dobu trademark, a complexity that teeters on the edge of confusion. The gameplay is a steady ramp of increasingly fraught encounters, eventually discarding all incidental monster usage in favour of set-piece battles. Pain elementals proved to be the most annoying monster throughout, denying the use of rocket launcher, soaking up precious ammo and filling the large spaces with junk to mop up. I have to say I'm not a fan of those creatures used in certain slaughter scenarios, where rockets already carry their own risks with the number of monsters in your face. Thats just my taste though, and they aren't too problematic here. On the whole, the fights are really well set up, and the most of the spaces allow for a lot of movement (once you have carved your way through the monsters). My favourite fight is the double cyber with hellknight cross fire, can get some great infighting going there, and despite the option of escaping off the edge its actually more fun to stay up there. Marvellous.

[NuMetalManiak]

eh, STRAIN has a few rather odd puzzles that don't have a lot of good hints to them, just my thoughts.

Not like anyone will pay attention to my posts since I'm clearly the most ignored forum user ever.

MAP26 Surreptitious Ichor 3/5

the collaboration between two alumni, or should I say at this point, slaughtermappers? I'll be honest, I still hate this style of gameplay, but playing it a second time gave me a slight appreciative thought. Of course, that's probably because of preknowledge of playing it the first time (first time betatesting it I remember not finishing it at all). it's best to rush for the SSG that the cacos have before firing one shot off. The first half of the level really isn't too harsh on this skill setting with the proper strategy, and apart from the yellow key room which was just too close for comfort, rather well done.

of course I still hate the second half. It's an all out war where strangely enough, the demons and lost souls were the most annoying monsters, rather than the bigger ones (except for the pain elemental of course). I almost never seem to have a good strategy here, instead, hitting a few demons and arachnotrons with rockets until they get close, plasmaing the pain elemental, and definitely getting rid of the trolls inside the exit room. then it's just running around trying not to die. Seems easy enough with the soul spheres, blue armor, and ammo around, but it's not my preferred playstyle.

the secret BFG pretty much saved my ass on the first battle up the stairs in the second area, even though I used it on one archvile and the other one after pressing the switch. the sniper revenants from afar proved annoying, especially with the rockets going through the outer caged area. I think the second archvile should be alerted when his platform comes down to make the combat a bit more interesting should I save a few monsters in the initial area. second setpiece, the cyber should be hitting other enemies to make it fun, but I hated this most due to stray projectiles. the setpiece right after the BFG; now I sure that I'd get lucky if I did it on a higher difficulty setting, because it's stuff like this that lowers my score. the switch press in the southeast has another bit of luck surviving a nasty teleporting ambush, plus the tension of the archie behind the ever-lowering wall, who you'd be tempted to wait for just to blast his ass. too bad there's a lot more business outside.

so while I did like playing Surreptitious Ichor a second time, and do like it more than MAP23, I'm still under the delusion that Dobu and ceeb clearly love to watch everyone die in lots of gruesome ways possible in Doom. I really can't be arsed with the torture of this kind of gameplay, yet I do it anyway for entertainment purposes.

[Pirx]

Capellan said:

I will once again propose the idea of doing one of the top "most underrated" picks from http://www.doomworld.com/vb/doom-general/73365-most-overrated-and-most-underrated-megawads-of-all-time/

i support that idea too. so no one says we play only high-profile wads and could run out of them :p

some people voted for eternal doom... well, some maps are fun, others just take an eternity to complete, the embodiment of "sprawling maps".

i've fallen behind again in a pretty stupid way, i fell on my left hand while biking and couldn't play with it bandaged. hope i get to post a 10 map update today.

and demon could write a book on doom mapping, fun to read and watch every time.

[baja blast rd.]

I like DotW's communication via butt-wagging and fist-pumping. Always get a chuckle out of me.

[SoundofDoomDoors]

MAP26 starts out slow, but has a roaring finish. Carrying my guns over may have affected the way I feel about the beginning. The viles in the cage when you first walk out into the area with the waterfalls are a pain. Maybe the number of them in there should go down. I also got instantly killed by a cyberdemon after coming through the teleporter that leads to the exit switch. The time I cleared the map though: telefrag. Leave him right where he is.
100% kills 60% secrets

Postscript: In my case, this felt like two maps, not three. The first one went until the false exit, and the second being the rest. The crazy slaughter section (150-something monsters if I remember my count correctly) before the above-discussed cyber teleport was amazing. I got through it in one try, but died right afterward to a rocket in the back.

To make my choices for next month clearer, here are three in order of preference. HR is there because it seems like the front-runner right now. SoD is similar to HR in style, so it's at the bottom. What's STRAIN? I've never heard of it.

3. Speed of Doom
2. Doom PSX TC
1. Hell Revealed

[Firedust]

Map 26 is awesome, just the kinda gameplay I was looking for. Challenging but not impossible. The visuals and the level progression are also great. Good job, guys!

[Pirx]

a partial conversion, more sci-fi style with a psychic blaster weapon and flying drones:

revieww and download a eric's baker repackaged version which is easier to use than the original:

http://onemandoom.blogspot.nl/2011/11/strainwad.html

[dobu gabu maru]

MAP26: As I explained on the first page, I suggested doing a collaboration with someone in NOVA II in order to reserve more space for newbies, and cannonball opted to work with me. What started as a “let’s make a medium-sized hell map” slowly became “oh god what have we done” as we worked on it piecemeal, trading the wad back and forth until ZenNode told us “enough!” For those that are curious, here’s the visual rundown on each of our designs and the order we essentially completed them. While we each have our own sections, I worked quite extensively on the detail over the entire map (as those that have played it can surmise), trying my best to give it a very somber, enigmatic, and frightening vibe.

I’ve made enough maps by now that people should know that I love nasty pistol starts because it’s one of the few instances where the author has complete control. This bastard in particular leaves you weaponless until you can grab some armaments past some monsters, and once the first shot rings out all hell breaks loose. The hardest part of the map is arguably the start as you’re horrendously outmatched, forcing you to pick and choose your targets while dashing about. The red key fight is especially tricky too as health is scarce and your enemies come at you fast—cb planted those arachs in the water, while I added a cache of cacos and PEs to pressure the player. The dark cavern section is meant to cool the player down before the brief scuffle for the YK, and then the fun really begins.

Originally I had intended for the post-YK door stuff to be a single battle, and I explained to cannonball that I was looking for something “Ribbiksian” in design. But mapping rarely goes the way one plans, and cannonball found himselfmimicking Insane Gazebo instead (which honestly fit his style a lot more—you can see the comparison a bit easier in the original version). The overall design of it really impressed me, but something was missing—the enemies! So I decided to try and move out of my comfort zone by working on this spacious, large-scale encounter. It seemed as though he intended there to be three different “areas” (the progression through this section is all cb’s design) so I tried to design three different fights, which proved to be far more complicated than I thought.

The first was simple—arachs and pinkies in the water, mancs sniping, AVs in their lookout and a big ol’ cyber stompin’ around. The other fights were difficult to work out because the player could always find a way to jump back into the water and trivialize it (while also dragging it out), but thankfully tourniquet suggested the barrier for the second battle (there’s still one embedded in the map for the third battle, but that proved to be a bit too constrictive). The fights are a bit messy due to their size and the potential “easy” strats, but they get the job done—perhaps the only bummer is the fact that the player may not notice the cyber that teleports to the exit switch alcove until it’s too late (he's also real nasty in that you have a 50/50 shot to telefrag him or get blown away at the end if you ignore him).

I felt like I was hogging a lot of the gameplay so I made a final arena on the southern portion of the map and gave it to cb design the brawl (I felt we needed a very stern final battle as the third encounter from the previous area could be fled from and whittled down from afar). Perhaps it was tiredness, mapper’s block, or sheer cruelty, but he decided that the final arena would just warp in a metric shitton of revenants to fight the player. The final wave you fight in the map has about half of the revenants removed from his original placement. It was by this point that development on the map was clearly winding down (we had already finished with every other section), so I took it upon myself to design the “starting half” and tweak the consecutive battle—cannonball gave no objections so hopefully he doesn’t resent me for taking control… he seems so laid back it’s hard to tell!

I suppose when I was talking about Ribbiksian design, I set out to make it myself with the southern arena (it’s also one of the few instances where I drafted it out on paper beforehand). I wanted something ornate and creepy—the idea behind the entire map (for me at least) was that Hell had been gathering their water supply from some unknown, clandestine source. This first manifested itself in that massive glowing room (the “central structure” there was originally the only place pumping blood in the entire map), but when I started the final area I got an idea. What I originally aimed for was that the hellspawn were pumping the life essence out of some massive, eldritch flesh god at the end, sections of its filthy body stowed away in the dangling containers that loom overhead. Unfortunately our map started breaking ZenNode when I was trying to add more lines to the final arena, and the grotesque vista I had planned turned into a boring curtain of bloodfall. The benefit is that I was forced to stop detailing the map and just finish it. The final encounter is brutal, messy, mean and relentless… I still kind of wish there was no BFG allowed for it (that’s how I originally played it each time), but this is a community wad and I have to reserve my thirst for cruelty :P

In the end I think we did a good job, though it is decidedly more “dobu” than “cannonball” due to my obsessive habits of fiddling with monster placement, compulsively adding detail, and continuously altering things; I’m glad that cb at least got to work on his own hell map. In retrospect, NOVA has always been a bit weird for me—for both megawads there’s no map to truly call my own, despite having worked on a great many maps (MAP31 of NOVA 1 was technically mine but I always look at it as more of an eccentric experiment). A certain part of me still feels like I’m still struggling to find my style—I’ve made plenty of maps but have yet to publish a non-speedmap episode of my own—but conversely I’ve always enjoyed players being able to spot tendencies that are undoubtedly “dobu”… makes me feel a bit more accomplished as an author.

[scifista42]

dobu gabu maru said:

here’s the visual rundown
original version
drafted it out on paper

Those are cool and interesting pictures, thanks for sharing! I wouldn't have guessed who made which part of MAP26, but now I see it rather well.

[SoundofDoomDoors]

Pirx said:

a partial conversion, more sci-fi style with a psychic blaster weapon and flying drones:

revieww and download a eric's baker repackaged version which is easier to use than the original:

http://onemandoom.blogspot.nl/2011/11/strainwad.html

Thanks. I read KME's blog all the time, just didn't think to check there before asking.

dobu gabu maru said:

MAP26: As I explained on the first page, I suggested doing a collaboration with someone in NOVA II...I’ve always enjoyed players being able to spot tendencies that are undoubtedly “dobu”… makes me feel a bit more accomplished as an author.

(ellipses added for length)
Thanks for this. The looks inside the design process for some of these maps have been very interesting to read. One thing is I didn't notice the "shitton" of revenants you mentioned. I was so focused in that part on going after the AVs that everything else got relegated to an afterthought. When I ran out of BFG shots, everything was dead but a few skeletons and a cyberdemon in the back. I can't imagine fighting that many enemies without the BFG. (I did in MAP29's ending earlier today, except I didn't fight, I RAN) There's no room in there! I plowed my way through enemies a bunch of times.

About the pistolstart, I carried my stuff over and saved through 26 (I've been doing that for the third episode) and I noticed all the early ammo was in nooks and crannies in the middle of the opening area. I could've never survived a pistol start.

[gaspe]

dobu gabu maru said:

here’s the visual rundown

Well I was """"close"""" :^). And thanks for sharing some other informations on the map, these are always an interesting reading.

MAP27 - Engraved Bones

Kills: 100% | Items: 100% | Secrets: 100%

A really cool short map set in an ancient egyptian tomb. The rooms have only 90° angles, but it's a choice that fits well the theme of a structure made of blocks. There's a nice mix of the TNT's Pharaoh textures with Plutonia's square skulls and switches. Encouters are well made and dangerous in the tight place you have, with some damaging floor to give us some trouble. That moving up/down floor is a nice touch, and it has a cool platform-game vibe. Nice surprise at the Yellow Key, I guess it foretells something...
At first I didn't found the Blue Key and after a while I started to seek for it in all the map I thought it was a reference to the missing YK in TNT MAP31 lol.
A really good map, and it was nice to have something that gives some more breath after the very hectic MAP26.

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP25: Parasite Hive

Aaand it looks like my review got eaten. I think I described this one as "the very definition of a fun romp." It's cohesive but not coherent, if that makes sense; it all hangs together, not as any kind of real place but as an experience, as a fever-dream of colliding Hellish themes - flesh, masonry, lava, rock - in the best of Doom's traditions. It definitely gets points for the way cacodemons can flow through the level along paths the player can't yet navigate, allowing for some very organic engagements from unexpected angles and undermining the player's sense of safety, heightening their paranoia. It's also a map that really does make use of and justifies its own size and scale; it just wouldn't work if the level or its component elements were any smaller or less grand.

Which is a long-winded way of saying I enjoyed it. :)

I'll finish up MAP26 when I do MAP27 tomorrow. The weekend's thrown me for a bit of a loop here.

[Demon of the Well]

Map 25 -- Parasite Hive - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets - FDA (uses beta D3)
Hmm, between this and map 02 I feel like I am beginning to get a feel for Pinchy's (older?) mapping, lots of incidental combat over irregular/starkly undulating topography, with an emphasis on Doomguy's preternatural athletic ability--dashing, skidding, climbing, and leaping all feature heavily in map navigation and exploration, both that necessary for progression and for locating the many out of the way secret crevices that only an enterprising parkour enthusiast will find (incidentally, his beefy Megiddo II maplet seems most 'off-type' for this early snapshot I'm developing what with its conspicuous focus on simple arena fights, although it does have that strange tall 'shield' emblem tower to shore up the general analysis). For all of its sense of spectacle and fairly robust monster infestation, though, 'Parasite Hive' is likely the most laid-back map in this last episode, seldom putting the player under serious duress, instead casting the player as the undisputed apex predator in this particular backwater of Hell (the free BFG at the start is most telling in this regard), providing an expansive, largely non-linear killing ground full of hapless hell-bugs to be variously squished, fried, or zapped at one's own leisure.

While the monsters are many and vary widely in shape and size, the hive's squalid boreworm-sized passages and the many hills and clearings in the surrounding valley generally provide both ample maneuvering room and plenty of convenient cover, so a methodical, situationally-aware player will very seldom be caught offguard, especially since the action's heavy slant towards incidental skirmishing means that you will usually have a safe place to fall back to if you should need/desire to do so. There are some fairly dense pockets of demonic habitation in the hive itself (especially early on), and some of the more open stretches of the valley outside provide artillery-type monsters like arachnatrons and mancubi some solid opportunities for (very) long-range sniping, but generally speaking none of the monster placement is particularly diabolical, so experienced players should be able to cleave through the opposition with fairly little trouble--I was still playing quite badly here (same session as map 24's demo from earlier), but apart from nearly running out of ammo at one point early on I had relatively little trouble, despite some hilariously poor accuracy and a number of other blunders. There is only really one 'designed' encounter (unless you want to count the very straightforward 'boss fight' at the exit) in the form of the revenant kill-pit in the center of the hive itself; most of the action's appeal is from the sense of carelessly tearing through a powerful (speaking in terms of stats) opposing force at a steady pace, particularly if you do what I and a number of other Club players apparently did, making a full sweep of the outer valley upon first reaching fresh air.

On the "atomic" level, most of the battles get their flavor more than anything from the somewhat nontraditional progression/balance of weapons and ammo. Upon seeing the BFG right in front of me when the game began, and the 400+ monstercount on the Boom HUD, I was expecting something that was going to play a lot like Pinchy's Megiddo II maplet, but it's not really like that....you're more or less forced to use the BFG to clear out the first ambush in the core of the hive (the initial imp surprise-party is more for emphasis, I'd wager), true enough, and the early ammo balance is markedly light on shells and bullets in general, prompting further early-game reliance on heavy artillery, but once you break outside for the first time your firepower options increase exponentially, particularly if you nabbed a plasma rifle along the way, as I was able to. This early slant towards larger weapons does a good job of making you feel powerful, and pairs well with both the later glut of more ammo types and the generally incidental/freeform nature of the combat--while in terms of pressure, spectacle, and complexity pretty much none of the battles in this map are anything special, I found myself enjoying the action regardless simply because I had a lot of emergent options, and especially because I felt like almost all of my weapons were getting some quality time in the spotlight (with the exception of the basic shotty, for my style/preferences it shows up too late to get much opportunity to assert itself, but for players who enjoy sniping and such it probably gets some decent facetime too)....it's hard to precisely articulate my genial feeling, here, but in a subtle way I feel like this map made a really good pairing with map 24 before it, both having a pleasantly oldschool feeling to the gameplay that contrasts nicely with the decidedly much more modern stuff comprising most of the episode. I would suggest removing or replacing one of the two spiderdemons, however--the first guy just sort of chilling out in the valley really robs the guy guarding the exit of any emphasis, and emphasis is really all he has to offer what with how unstoppably powerful the player is likely to be by that point.

Aesthetically, it's in a comfortable design space for a Doom map, communicating a setting that is quite intuitive and specific in concept (e.g. a big nasty fleshy hellhive festering in a verdant crater) while demanding very few significant compromises on the structural/thematic abstractness that suits the idtech1 engine so well. Again, I myself am partial to the sort of grand scale and heavy height variation seen here, and I think in terms of texture selection and the like it all looks very reasonable. I did feel like the heart of the hive was lacking a little something-something visually, though, probably because it's (wait for it:) so bright and flatly-lit. My first impression of the hive interior is that everywhere not near lava out to be much darker, but after touring the map I came around somewhat to the decision of it being generally brighter, by dint of the workable contrast with the neutral-dusk default lightlevel outside. The heart, though, still really needs something...I feel like the start room should be really dark except for the hole the player is supposed to drop down, and that more of the hive core needs to glow or pulse or whatnot, like a few threshold sectors around the central pitfight seem to.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP25: Parasite Hive
99% kills, 1/4 secrets

Like MAP22 this is another weird one, though in a different manner. Seeing a 400+ monster count, the BFG start and the amount of hellknights that teleport in make this map seem like it'll be a slaughter one, but it's not - it's a lot of very, very large winding corridors, with those 400 monster spread out enough that parts of the map actually feel a bit empty.

While it's not the "stream of consciousness" randomness that MAP22 had, it still feels like it lacks a bit of an identity, look-wise - there's a mashup of flesh textures with red brick/wood and red rock and green/brown plains. Overall, it's still somewhat cohesive - some sort of alien hive inside a canyon - but there's a lot of weird little bits here and there that would've made the map's theme a long stronger had they been excised. Stuff like the weird demonic outhouses or the red brick walls on the inside just don't match. Also, thing placement is weirdly spread out in clumps, both for ammo and monsters - the player will be running around in a nearly-empty area, then come across a pack of imps, then more emptiness, then a squadron of sergeants, etc. This comes across as somewhat non-natural.

Progression is also a little off, I was basically just clearing out the level to clear it out as I had killed 300 of the 430 monsters before finally coming across the yellow switch which clued me in that I need to find a yellow key somewhere. Took me quite awhile to find it, too, going into the middle "eye" of the level isn't quite intutive, though actually the divergence point is fairly early in the level, I just happened to instead go in the plasma gun cave and to the outer ring from there. Also, the fight for jumping into the blood pool for the large cell pack feels horribly unfair: surrounded by shotgunners and revenants, you WILL take damage, it's just a matter of hoping you get lucky and can take them out before they take you out. The final ambush can just ignored entirely if the player wants and is a bit of a mis-fire.

That said, I really did enjoy the winding tunnel design, sense of scale and the use of vertical space throughout. Definitely a lot of potential here - tighten up the theme with the texture usage, work on more engaging thing placement, and work on lighting, and this would be a great map. As it is, it's interesting but flawed.

Also, some bugs:
- This Arch-Vile is stuck until shot.
- This sergeant is stuck in an invisible hole.
- Node error in this wall.

[Alfonzo]

http://www.twitch.tv/st_alfonzo/c/6995836

Part 2 of my playthrough on Twitch covering E2, and it was recorded yonks ago by the looks of things - better get a move on! Map11 was omitted due to streamy altercations, but I'm pretty sure mickle already knows what I think of the map and if he's forgotten then he can pester me for a re-run.

Clocks in at almost 3 hours. You'll want to buy the XL popcorn for better value.

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP26: Surreptitious Ichor

Interesting, detailed (if, later on, heavily orthogonal) architecture that you'll probably spend a lot of time entirely unable to appreciate because of the map's steadily increasing focus on slaughter. For me the strongest part of the level is the whole area before the yellow door; the architecture and layout are strong (and there are some fun moments like the large-scale "crying skull" entrances to the northern cavern area) and the gameplay is more varied, with a mixture of large-scale battles and close-quarter fighting in a delightfully gloomy flooded cavern. Once the action moves to the eastern set of arenas it just turns into an unenjoyable slog for me.

MAP27: Engraved Bones

Automap hinting at a modest size? Double-digit monster count? THANK YOU!

Failing to notice the post early in this thread about a bug rendering this map impossible until now? Well, I feel like a dope.

Think I'm going to hang up my boots here for this month, I've seen the lion's share of what this WAD has to offer and enjoyed most of it, but right now I don't think I'm in the right frame of mind to keep going. Thanks to everyone who contributed for a varied and fun set of maps. :)

[Firedust]

Map 27:

Ok, that was a bit on the short side. Perhaps, too short. I guess if you are playing level 26 and 27 back to back then it's alright but otherwise I would prefer if it was like 3 times larger. Also the teleporter in the starting room was a tad confusing. The encounters were very straightforward, nothing particularly challenging.

[Alfonzo]

http://www.twitch.tv/st_alfonzo/c/6996037

Bam! Another vid and now I'm up to speed. Part 3 covers maps 21 through 25 and an awful lot of deaths. If I find time next month I'll start tackling these vids earlier on and then buy some time for write-ups as per the DWMC standard, because I feel like the effort is half-baked if I'm restricting myself to bandying words around on the fly.

[Obsidian]

TheOrganGrinder said:

Think I'm going to hang up my boots here for this month, I've seen the lion's share of what this WAD has to offer and enjoyed most of it, but right now I don't think I'm in the right frame of mind to keep going.

Aww, you won't get to see the boss! :P Also there's a hotfix that got made not long after I found that bug, so you can always just grab that.

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP27 Engraved Bones 2/5

and now for something most definitely needed differently, a map with a low monster count, a spooky feeling, and just, well, what you expect from Obsidian.

by far the one thing that gives this map the score I gave has to do with the ammo from a pistol start. you're stuck with the shotgun most of the time until you get the SSG. yet the ammo isn't as stocked well. even with double ammo I sucked most of it dry against a few common and not-so-common enemies. and there's quite a few high-tier ammo sponges that love to ruin things. that one teleporter near the start where the shotgun was was multi-directional, which doesn't give much in hints, except for dropping down right next to it and taking the closest side means continuing on with the plot of the map. where the game really gets ammo-hairy is the two archie releases, as they will resurrect the monsters you just killed, and even revenants and cacodemons can do numbers to ammo, as if the archviles themselves have done enough. the one room they previously were in had a backpack and some more shells, but in the midst of the action, taking a break to get more shells might end up in more resurrections. Oh well, at least the map is short.

[joe-ilya]

MAP01 5/5
02 5/5
03 3/5 for symmetrical gameplay
04 4/5 I like the lost feeling in this but the map's too wide.
05 5/5
06 2/5 Copied the layout from DTWID2 and made it shittier and replaced the most groups of the low-tier monsters with a single mid-tier monster which is slow and you barely feel progression, you're just pounding meat here.
07 4/5 Creative but could be less buggy.
08 2/5 Not enough ammo and it's too crampy as well.
09 1/5 Lengthy boring gameplay.
10 4.5/5 I didn't like the chaingunner at the start.
11 1/5 It all fun and play and run and suddenly I go to push the exit and I telefrag a bunch of barrels and die, don't do this bullshit, it downgrades it's rating drastically.
12 5/5
13 5/5
14 4/5
15 4/5 Where do I go?
31 4/5
32 0/5 Why was this collab even made? It doesn't look like something I wanna restart ten times just to beat this unless I use saves.
16 5/5
17 4/5
18 1/5 I only like this map for it's usage of textures.
19 4/5
20 3/5 It's fine.
21 4/5 Felt really generic.
22 3/5 The bars scattered all over the map are annoying and the map's too wide at part
23 4/5
24 2/5 Same as the commentary for MAP18, U.O.D. Only it's slightly more fun.
25 4/5
26 4/5 You can get into loads of bad situations here but it's good. I don't understand why people keep putting lullabies in slaughterfest map, you barely even hear it and it doesn't fit anyways, it's like showing a dog cut in half with blood spilled on the highway, come on guys! This isn't Happy Tree Friends, for real.

MAP27

Boring, I shot piles of hell knights and cacodemons with the regular shotgun, then it got better as I started shooting imps instead, and eventually got the SSG, kicked ass, the four last monsters became 30 and soon enough I ran out of shells and by the time I was facing the AVs all I had left was a pistol, crap.

2/5

[AD_79]

joe-ilya said:

06 2/5 Copied the layout from D2TWID and made it shittier and replaced the most groups of the low-tier monsters with a single mid-tier monster which is slow and you barely feel progression, you're just pounding meat here.

Yes the map sucks, but you can very easily run past monsters if you don't feel like killing them.

joe-ilya said:

32 0/5 Why was this collab even made? It doesn't look like something I wanna restart ten times just to beat this unless I use saves.

Then use saves. It's that easy (saving, not the map itself).

joe-ilya said:

21 4/5 Felt really generic.

Better generic than shit.

[NuMetalManiak]

I see you two are back to bickering again.

in other news, although I'm still vieing for HR2, I should note that Five Rooms of Doom is on the archives and Switcheroom 2 is in beta-testing mode. Just throwing a few new MWs out there.

[Firedust]

Soooo I just finished the entire thing, very enjoyable. Good job, guys! It's cool to see how much the new mappers have improved from their earlier works. As for the veterans, I just have to hope that Demonologist and CB have a megawad lying around somewhere :p
Maps that I REALLY liked: 15, 17, 21, 23, 26, 29 and 32. Out of these ones I would say 26 and 29 are tied as the best map of the set for me.

It would be cool to see the next Nova project (should there be one) to have a more consistent theme. I know these levels are meant to be played separately but it feels weird when you are thrown from a hellish tech base to an egyptian tomb to some kinda dark temple if you are playing continuous or pistol-starting the maps in their order in the megawad.

What I really liked about this mapset is the gameplay pacing in the second half of the wad. I am not the sort of person who can play difficult non-stop carnage maps one after another so the way the maps were arranged here gave me the necessary breaks to rest. Just my personal taste, I suppose.

[joe-ilya]

I vote doom 2 for next month.

[SoundofDoomDoors]

Firedust said:

Soooo I just finished the entire thing, very enjoyable. Good job, guys!

What I really liked about this mapset is the gameplay pacing in the second half of the wad. I am not the sort of person who can play difficult non-stop carnage maps one after another so the way the maps were arranged here gave me the necessary breaks to rest. Just my personal taste, I suppose.

I just wrapped up too. Also, I second what he said about the breather levels, and take back what I said before about moving 23. I like the order of episode 3 the way it is. Favorite maps off the top of my head, 12 (hot start), 16(feels like a Scythe map), 28(coming soon), and 30(likewise). Here's the commentary for today's level. I have the rest typed and ready, just need to document a level-breaking skip I stumbled over in 29. I'll see if I can do a nomonsters demo in PrBoom. I've never demoed before, but I have plenty of time to figure it out.

From a few days ago:
"MAP27 reminded me of a lot of things I didn't like about epic 2, samey Egyptian corridors and gotcha monsters teleporting right in front of and behind me. I thought it was going to be over quickly, but I had no idea what to do after I got the red key and cleaned out most of the map. It turns out there's a multi-sided teleporter back at the start. It's a clever way to hide a secret (one side nets a soul sphere), but not noticing it and failing to reach the room with the two viles resulted in me rooting around in doom builder to figure out what the hell I was supposed to do. I recommend taking out the teleporter, moving the soul sphere and latter two keys, and connecting the area with the blue/yellow bars to some place on the map. Get rid of the 'gotcha!' ambushes while you're at it, too. Needs a lot of work."
97% kills 66% secrets

TheOrganGrinder said:

Think I'm going to hang up my boots here for this month, I've seen the lion's share of what this WAD has to offer and enjoyed most of it, but right now I don't think I'm in the right frame of mind to keep going. Thanks to everyone who contributed for a varied and fun set of maps. :)

You should play MAP30 when you feel up to it. It was my favorite part of episode 3.

[tourniquet]

SoundofDoomDoors said:

I have the rest typed and ready, just need to document a level-breaking skip I stumbled over in 29. I'll see if I can do a nomonsters demo in PrBoom. I've never demoed before, but I have plenty of time to figure it out.

No need to record a demo, i know that map29 isn't nomo-able. It will be possible with the next update though :)