The DWmegawad Club plays: NOVA II

[Obsidian]

scifista42 said:

If a DEHACKED entity is based on anything other than a monster (for example on a decoration), it will not be able to open doors on its own in ZDoom-based ports - but ZDoom 2.7.1 appears to have fixed it.

I could probably fix this by whipping up some DECORATE that replicates the boss, considering this is a bug only associated with ZDoom-based ports. I'll see what I can do.

[dobu gabu maru]

mouldy said:

this one had a much more regimented turnaround.

Geez Louise did it ever: we finished NOVA 2 in about a year while it took 2.5 just to get to the first beta for NOVA 1. There is some merit to the unusual quirkiness of the first megawad though, and I think it's because all of us were relatively "unknown" at the time and had no direction... I definitely think if there's going to be a NOVA 3 it should get back to the basics and accept primarily "no-names" within its midst, though I fear without a decent leader to reject maps or keep up with compiling it could potentially stymie the project. Should be some time before the thread pops up though, I imagine.

===VOTING===
Alright, so it's basically tied between STRAIN and Sunlust so any more votes from people likely to participate next month is critical. Honestly I'm leaning more towards the latter than the former (which would be a -1 for STRAIN and +1 for Sunlust), so speak now or forever hold your peace.

Also I just realized how strange it is to have Getsu of all people vying for HR2 o_O

[Obsidian]

As beautiful as Sunlust is I have a feeling that most people are going to get squashed by the rather intimidating gameplay and stop participating, so my vote is for STRAIN.

[Linguica]

You should really hold off on Sunlust until it's final, if for nothing else than anyone wanting to try their hand at FDAs...

[mouldy]

I'd rather wait for sunlust to be finished, and would be nice to play something older this time, so I'll put my vote towards strain.

[AD_79]

be right back, I'm gonna go strain some pasta

[Obsidian]

AD_79 said:

be right back, I'm gonna go strain some pasta

*Throws colander at AD_79*

[Jaxxoon R]

The problem with playing a game every day of the month is that you have to play a game every day of the month. And that's hard yo.

[scifista42]

One more complaint regarding the final text screen in NOVA II: The red background makes the red text uncomfortable to read.




Also, I vote STRAIN for the next month for a change. I've played a lot of fancy modern stuff lately, so STRAIN should be a unique experience. And the idea that Sunlust should be finished first also sounds reasonable.

[Pirx]

mouldy said:

I'd rather wait for sunlust to be finished, and would be nice to play something older this time, so I'll put my vote towards strain.

OK as capellan's proposal of playing underrated wads has not gained enough votes, i'm leaning towards STRAIN for this reason: to give Sunlust time to get finished first. sunlust gladly next month.

I don't remember much of strain anyway.

[TheOrganGrinder]

Casting my vote for Strain also. :)

[Capellan]

Pirx said:

OK as capellan's proposal of playing underrated wads has not gained enough votes, i'm leaning towards STRAIN for this reason: to give Sunlust time to get finished first. sunlust gladly next month.

IIRC, STRAIN was one of the most mentioned 'underrated' wads in that thread anyway.

[gaspe]

I confirm my vote for STRAIN for the next month.

[NuMetalManiak]

dobu gabu maru said:

Also I just realized how strange it is to have Getsu of all people vying for HR2 o_O

that's not strange. HR2, along with Alien Vendetta, are my two most played megawads. I shit you not.

ok I guess I'll vote for the one that is the name of a Flesh Field album.

[Demonologist]

Getsu Fune said:

ok I guess I'll vote for the one that is the name of a Flesh Field album.

heh lol

[dobu gabu maru]

Capellan said:

IIRC, STRAIN was one of the most mentioned 'underrated' wads in that thread anyway.

Yup it was between STRAIN and TVR, and more people were going for STRAIN in this thread so that's what I "chose" as the "underrated" champion. I'll get to work on setting up the thread for it.

[SoundofDoomDoors]

Good choice. After someone here linked me to STRAIN, I played through the first 5 maps. It was pretty good, just note the DEH file has to be forced to load if you're launching via ZDL like me. Select all files, and load STRAIN.DEH alongside the main wad. I'm just mentioning it because I've played other wads with DEH files, but I've never had to do that before. If you don't, the custom monsters won't show up.

[Veinen]

Well, due to limited time available I couldn't manage to do a proper maxdemo for 26 but I did do those for the rest of the maps so it's probably better to post these anyway. I did play 26 in cl2 too as a practice using saves and I can confirm that it's maxable. It's also one of the few maps I did a successfull FDA for when it was initially released and it doesn't seem like much has changed...

Demos for maps 27-30.

Map26: Surreptitious Ichor by cannonball & dobu gabu maru

One of the best maps in the set and also one of, or perhaps the most, difficult map as well. Getting weapons at the beginning isn't so tough if you have some kind of a strategy on how to do it. There's a lot going on though so you have to be alert to survive the initial chaos. Once the dust settles the map gets a little easier for a while as the cavern section is really a walk in the park compared to the rest of the map. The two slaughtery battles in the second part of the map pose the biggest challenge this wad has to offer, maybe along with Demonologist's maps finale. The first battle is just unpredictable chaos with extremely threateningly placed Cybers and Archies. The second one is more claustrophobic but just as chaotic and intense. I did get this far in one of my attempts but I completely botched the timing of my first BFG shot that wakes up the entire arena and was killed literally in seconds. In the practice run it seemed so easy... just pummel through the hordes to take out the Archies and worry about the rest later. Visually the map is stunning as was expected with these two guys as the authors. Great work.

Map27: Engraved Bones by Obsidian

A small breather map in the trademark Obsidian style. I like the start, the SSG is pretty far away but getting it fast is a must from a maxing pov so you shouldn't be spending time taking out middleweights with the SG. The rest is kind of slow going though and the climax is pretty lame since the second Archie is rather impotent behind the monster blocking line and with little pressure regarding ammo consumption. BK can be grabbed from below but it doesn't seem to make any difference since the teleporter doesn't lower until you've been up where the BK actually is. Spekaing of which, the four-way teleporter is definitely not a good idea since there's no indication (or is there?) that different sides do different things. I spent a good 5-10 minutes searching for a way before giving up and checking it out on DB.

Map28: Messe Noire by Demonologist

A very different Demonologist map. While I'm usually not a good enough player to fully enjoy his standard level designs, I think I would have preferred something of his usual style to this. I thought you could see from the design of this that the mapper isn't really used to designing combat of this ilk and the less interesting combat doesn't really complement his relatively simplistic visual style either. The start is good, the middle part in the church area is decent and the finale is alright but everything in between seems mostly filler. The BK corridors especially are very forgettable. I had a horrible strategy for the final battle since I didn't eally bother practicing it but somehow I didn't die. It's a tough one whatever tactic you're using I'm sure though so the map ends with a high note. The BFG secret is kind of dumb since you have to backtrack for such a long way... I can understand why you don't want to give it too early, and I agree with it, but still.

Map29: anaemia by Ribbiks & tourniquet

Awesome map. Ribbks and tourniquet do what they do best and create an absolutely stunning looking map with plenty of opportunities to die in many different ways. Wasn't actually an overly difficult map to max all in all, I think the side quest for one of the keys in the damaging blood filled area and just a single radsuit gave me most trouble. The one with the Zombieman onslaught is quite easily the least problematic and the third one is middle of the pack difficulty. In any case they're all fun battles and there's nothing here that I would dislike or complain about. The demo is pretty long, I think like 30 minutes or so, and a first exit since I didn't eally have the time to practice or do more attempts. One of the highlights has to be the very well spent secret Megasphere...

Map30: Legion by mouldy

Another map with where you could instantyl tell the author. Very much a mouldy map and since he's a great mapper, I don't really have any issues with that. Starts slowly enough but eventually turns into a complete mess with stuff spawning in with a rapid pace and filling the hallway and pouring into the sides as well. The custom boss monster is a decent enemy although not super challenging. The Rev rocket phase he has is the most dangerous one but it was greatly helped by the fact that there were a dozen of him at that stage. Enjoyable and a fitting finale for the wad.

[Demon of the Well]

Can I finish on time? We're about to find out....

Map 28 -- Messe Noire - 116% Kills / 50% Secrets - FDA (uses beta D3)
I reckon this map is probably that much more interesting to folks who have played a number of Demonologist's older maps released in other places. Prior to this particular map, I think I very easily could've written the same general analysis that I did of Obsidian's map 27 and had it stick--e.g. "this is a mapper who uses a base template for pretty much everything he releases publicly" etc. etc.--but 'Messe Noire' seems to be an experiment, a foray somewhat outside of the author's comfort zone.

Demonologist's usual deal is a form of what is now called 'slaughtermapping', generally emphasizing crowd control in self-contained arenas that are for the most part quite geometrically simple, and usually (but not always) fairly spacious. His particular brand of bloodshed generally looks very simple on paper, but more often than not his fights hinge on a very subtle strategy of one sort or another, nearly as liable to involve clever manipulation of some arcane facet of the game's base ruleset (e.g. specific little quirks in monster movement/behavior) as a pure fire/movement plan, given the relative simplicity of most of his arenas. His fights also tend to be highly lethal, in the sense that it's very difficult to get through them on raw twitch reflex alone (especially with no foreknowledge)--if you don't have some inkling of the intended approach, you will generally be overwhelmed and killed almost instantly in most of his marquee assaults; one might say that his mapping is very resistant to simple brute-forcing attempts, which perhaps makes his stuff quite unapproachable to those unaccustomed or disinclined to this style of action.

'Messe Noire' features a couple of the one-off monster-focused fights that have been Demonologist's bread and butter in the form of the very first panicked skirmish outside the small graveyard at the very start and the perched cyberdemon + vile-squad combo in the monument field at the very end, but the stuff in between is quite off-type for him, seemingly an attempt at creating something a little more restrained and incidental in approach and structure, where the player could feasibly use more conventional/traditional Doom combat tactics and still find success. Most of the combat in the middle part of the map features quite a bit less time pressure than his usual killbox fights as well, although overly cautious/conservative play can still prove to be a deadly liability in the long side-hall ambush at least (slowball it too much and you'll probably run out of decent ammo, and thus be pretty screwed). The results are......mixed, to say the least.

The opening and ending fights are both enjoyable enough, particularly the former, featuring a delightfully cruel combination of specters, arch-viles, and low-light conditions with relatively limited cover. You can use either the SSG or the RL for this fight, but both involve complications, many of which elide from the specters being essentially invisible in this particular environment--they tend to block shots fired at the viles, and in this scenario can easily flank you far more easily than most monsters in Doom are generally able to manage; while fighting, I was essentially locating and firing at them more by sound than by sight, not something one does too terribly often in this game, but quite satisfying in its way. I know that quite a lot of bellyaching involving perceived unfairness came the author's way regarding this fight, but I'm glad he stuck to his guns for UV skill at least; really effective specter usage is all too rare, and it's good to see them get a chance to really shine and assert their value as a unique part of the demonic roster, as opposed to just being stuck as the palette-swapped pinky they are so often treated as. Incidentally, this kind of thing is what I was referring to when saying that Demonologist's fights often gain their flavor from attention to detail in how focusing on very specific game elements can impact the flavor of largescale battles. This is what he's comfortable doing, what he's good at.

The interstitial section of the map, by contrast, is something that very clearly doesn't come naturally to him. Much of the combat here is simple corridor-sweeping through periodic HP blockades, intermixed with a handful of very basic and very obvious closet/backstab traps; the author's strongly evinced preference for the higher end of the monster hierarchy means that many of these encounters, which could still be dangerous to a green player, are very predictable and makework for the more experienced, and many of them can be solved by backing up and firing your weapon. Much of this brute simplicity elides from the very static/basic architecture/layout in the church interior--when most of the playspace is modest 2D boxes and orthogonal corridors, there's really not so much that can be done with the action (or the visuals, for that matter); I would go so far as to say that the lack of elaboration/structure in the layout is probably the single biggest thing hold this part of the map back. The 'mass' proper represents an attempt at a more fleshed-out encounter in a somewhat more complex environment, using spiders as snipers/overseers firing down at the pews below, which throng with undead parishioners. This does have more depth than the corridor-crawling stuff that precedes it, but its very direct, static implementation robs of it much of its potential--e.g. all the enemies in the room are in their positions as soon as you come to it, so the zombies tend to just get door-camped (Ramboing in with them is not very intelligent in this case due to the random nature of hitscan attacks) and then the spiders sniped away in turn, with the mastermind in particular being quite the time-sink to liquidate. I think that if the overall scenario here had been rigged to develop with the player caught in the middle of it it could've been quite frantic/good; for example, the church could've been more or less empty to start, and then closets/shutters/teleporters could've sprung most of the monsters on the player after locking him/her in the room, perhaps on triggered by a key-get or some other traditional bit of snare-bait (which would've saved the somewhat phoned-in backtrack to the red key, incidentally).

From a 'Big Picture' perspective a lot of this interstitial stuff is 'passable' as opposed to outright bad, but I think it's fair to say that it's the weakest part of the map, undercooked structurally, aesthetically, and in terms of gameplay, and that the map would've been leaner/meaner if it had essentially just been the two marquee fights dovetailed together (or perhaps combined somehow into one big painful clusterfuck), in keeping with the very evident desire to NOVA II to space out its bigger maps with some smaller/shorter numbers. In another sense, though, I'm actually kinda glad that all of this flawed material is in this map....its mere presence indicates that the author is willing to branch out and try to grow his repertoire and command of the game world, something which can only bode well for future maps, even if they are to be generally closer to the author's traditional stomping grounds in style.

[baja blast rd.]

Demon of the Well said:

... involve clever manipulation of some arcane facet of the game's base ruleset (e.g. specific little quirks in monster movement/behavior) as a pure fire/movement plan. ...

Could you give a few more examples of this? I haven't played any of Demonologist's maps that I know of.

Edit: I'll wait until after you're done with map 30 -- the question "can DotW finish on time?" is worth investigating. :)

[Cynical]

rdwpa said:

Could you give a few more examples of this? I haven't played any of Demonologist's maps that I know of.

Edit: I'll wait until after you're done with map 30 -- the question "can DotW finish on time?" is worth investigating. :)

I'm sure he will. "Sonambulation is for those who lack fortitude", after all ;-)

[Demon of the Well]

Map 29 -- Anaemia - 104% Kills / 75% Secrets - FDA (uses beta D3)
One of the running gags about the NOVA II project is naturally just how many of its maps don't seem like novice-level works at all. 'Anaemia' arguably exemplifies this better than any other single map in the set--not only is it clearly not a newbie-type map, the damned thing's well nigh artisanal in quality, which becomes clear as soon as you've been in it for long enough to start getting acquainted with the majestic scope of the mysterious edifice you're running around in. To all appearances a cyclopean temple to nameless powers situated in the epicenter of a massive bloody sinkhole, while playing I got the sense of some sinister import in its paradoxically delicate yet malevolently imposing architecture, the occasional glimpses of radiant power shimmering through its skin of crimson stone and black iron suggestive of some strange antediluvian artifact, unspeakably ancient even by demonic standards, which somehow creates or absorbs dark energy from the vitae of the damned.

Whatever the function of this bloodthirsty pile, the craftsmanship of its form is undeniable, Ribbiksian macrotecture artfully inlaid and filigreed over its every sanguine inch with Tournequetesque detail work. While it may give one an impression of the general aesthetic style, though, the above characterization may be a bit specious in that the two authors' styles have enough in common (esp. considering that one is an avowed influence on the other!) that trying to broadly distinguish between them on a room-by-room, view-by-view, lintel-by-freize basis is a hopeless task, and one I'll not attempt. Suffice to say the thing looks fucking good, folks, from the finescale to the grandscale (the views from huge windows to other, distant parts of the complex are particularly breathtaking). On a nuts and bolts level the structures evince a lot of that minutely inlaid sector-detailing that characterized Tourniquet's map 17 earlier, but unlike in that map there's never really a sense of visual clutter or over-elaboration with this one. At first I was going to attribute this to a more limited texture assortment, but going back and looking at the level again, I don't think that's quite accurate; if we enumerate all of the different textures here it's not so far removed from what 'Zebetite' used, but what makes the difference is that said texture assortment evinces a vastly more focused color scheme, e.g. red-red-RED with black and some tan trim, and a healthy dose of shadowing/light contrast for emphasis. While I am quite interested in seeing mappers adventurously experiment with very off-kilter and highly complex/ornate texture schemes ala 'Zebetite', I suspect that if you were to pit that busy aesthetic style against something more focused like this in a one-off opinion poll or the like I would probably almost always pick the latter, it's an approach that just seems to come so naturally to idtech1.

A rather lengthy map, one might be surprised to hear that it contains very, very little in the way of incidental combat (some imps on a terrace at one point, a stray manc and an arach and later some complementary gasbags in the hub at another point, the sergeants overlooking the hallway to the blue key setpiece, and.....that's all I can really remember at the moment?), nearly every battle is a 'designed' or setpiece encounter of one sort or another, be it a snare-trap for picking up some object, a 'forced entry' fight requiring you to subdue a carefully arranged bevy of opposition upon first being thrust into an important area, or of course one of the requisite key-related brawls. This marked slant towards choreographed encounters is not really surprising if you have some experience with the authors' other works, of course, but it is impressive that a map of this length is able to stay fresh throughout considering that the vast majority of the fights are, broadly speaking, all of the same 2-3 types. This is largely a function of artful variation and contrasts in the finer roster details of encounters, i.e. the fight with the single biggest bodycount, the yellow key battle, is actually one of the simpler, pacier encounters, simply because the majority of said bodycount is comprised by a literal torrent of poor hapless zombiemen. Equally important is a similar degree of variation in the character of the arenas where the battles take place, ala the red key battle, which gets most of its flavor not from the monsters per se but from being centered on an uncomfortably small platform in a vat of harmful blood with only one radsuit to last the area, which will in all likelihood have expired by the time the arch-viles make their appearance, making for some tense cover-hugging struggles. On a subtler level, I think it's also worth noting that the authors seem to understand the value of not being TOO uncompromisingly controlling/micromanaging for the whole length of the map; while it's true that you are physically locked into many of the encounters (and the larger key-quest 'legs' of the adventure, for that matter) once they begin, for example, you are not locked into all of them, and this relative freedom to retreat/regroup, even if only occasional, goes a long way towards furthering 'suspension of disbelief', important in a map this size. Occasionally the very trigger/phase oriented action will hiccup in your face a bit--I remember being puzzled by the essentially pointless encounter consisting of nothing but two distant, perched/immobile arch-viles at the end of the antechamber to the yellow key room--but for the most part the action is consistently engaging and feels natural despite its heavily segmented arrangement.

Not as difficult a map as I might've expected, incidentally, although it's certainly no cakewalk. Generally it's in a very comfortable difficulty range which consistently keeps you busy and on your toes even if it's seldom really merciless--I can and do enjoy maps much more unforgiving than this, but I don't have anything bad to say about the balance here, on the contrary it's part of that spectrum of overall bloodiness/challenge which I will almost always enjoy, somewhere just around the middle I would say. As aforementioned, that not every single detail of every single battle is strictly dictated to you allows you to finesse some situations to your advantage (which is generally compensated by the presence of some battles it's difficult to see coming, ala the little SWTW tribute secret I stumbled into at about the halfway point--I disapprove of taking the megasphere there being mandatory to leave, BTW), and the balance is more forgiving than it may initially seem, especially the supply of soulspheres. Still gets pretty tense over time, though, you'll probably notice that by the time I'm 40 minutes in I'm playing pretty damned carefully (overdodging cyberdemon rockets, etc.), heh. By way of criticism, while I've said the fights do vary nicely one subtle thing I felt was missing is that there's not as much variation in the overall scope of battles as one might expect given the majestic surroundings, e.g. there is no truly big, gaudy fight on offer, most everything is somewhere in the 'mid-sized' range. I also felt the finale was perhaps a little too softballed, but perhaps that's just the masochist in me.

Nevertheless, an outstanding map.

Map 30 -- Legion - 114% Kills / 0% Secrets - FDA (uses beta D3)
Mouldy, another member of the NOVA alumni helping out with the project, closes things out with a hectic bossmap. An elongated, roughly symmetrical keep towering out of a fiery confluence, the Hierophant's domain makes for a battle engagement very much in the style of the author's Going Down megaWAD, housing several stages of combat that steadily up the ante until things have become an outright clusterfuck. Visually it works well enough, displaying the author's usual penchant for using a wide variety of textures to communicate a loosely representational setting in a mostly tasteful way. I didn't care for the cobwebbed derelict computer screens in the upper halls, though, they looked really out of place.

The genius of mouldy's approach to implementing horde-based combat scenarios is that he finds ways to stuff areas with 2 or 3 times more monsters than it seems like they should be physically capable of accommodating, and then somehow making it work through a combination of careful thing placement and selection (e.g. liberally placing lots of potent 'chargeup' points flush with healing and ammo to allow you to soak a ton of incidental damage while inflicting casualties en masse, and by using lots of low-tier monsters that can be easily plowed through to fill out the bodycount alongside their more potent brethren) and equally careful attention to creating a slew of pathing routes (for both player and monsters alike) through the complex environments. I was able to pull out a victory on the first attempt here, but it wasn't easy--the challenge in this case is that you really have to move around constantly in order to maintain enough of an ammo stockpile to allow you to blast your way out of being cornered at any given moment (good example of withholding a backpack making a huge impact on the action, incidentally), which is almost inevitable given how many monsters eventually flood the little two-level keep.

Also of note, of course, is the Emperor of Disgust himself, the Hierophant, who must be defeated once and for all in order to finish the journey. He will initially send mere ephemeral projections of himself to face you (including one small fleet of them at about the halfway point), but shows up in the flesh at a terribly inopportune moment to try to finish you off later on. In broad form, he looks somewhat like a super-Hellified version of the reiver from Hexen, and behaves much like an afrit from Scythe II/Resurgence, launching clusters of explosive asteroids (some of them homing) while floating about the keep at a decidedly relaxed pace. Later on he shows the ability to fire a steady stream of the same black magic spell used by hell nobles, but his real assets are his stout stock of HP (at least in his true form, anyway) and of course his command of an infernal legion, who will be trying to smother you as you scramble for an opening to attack him. Not a particularly large target, he is often able to hide in the midst of the general chaos while his minions do his dirty work for him; I was able to slay him with relative ease when he decided to camp out in one of the upper halls at a bad time, thus isolating himself from most of his backup.

Well, you guys know me, I'm an IoS apologist. This fresh new bossbattle was still pretty cool, though. ;)

*********

NOVA II is a pretty good WAD, with a markedly consistent level of quality given it's framed as a 'newbie' project--naturally, some maps are better/more developed/fleshed out/conceptually complete than others, but the overall impression is of a modern iteration of the classic community megaWAD template of yore (Memento Mori, things of that nature), which is perhaps ironic given that, avowed 'newbie' concept aside, at the heart of it it's really quite similar in origin to how those old classics were made, i.e. a bunch of Doomers of varying levels of experience getting together to put out 32 maps with a very loose overarching story/theme. Concourse sticklers might fairly cast some aspersions in light of the very evident fact that a lot of the so-called 'newbies' participating here are, all modesty aside, really anything but, but as for me, I'm a practical well-dwelling creature, it's always the end result I'm most interested in, not conceptual piousness. I hope and assume the NOVA series will continue, I think it does a lot of mappers a lot of good, even if that good is more in solidifying/experimenting with their identities, and generally just strutting their stuff, instead of acting as a platform for essentially learning to map as originally conceived.

My top 5 maps of NOVA II, in no particular order:
Map 23 -- Vindaloo Chronicles
Map 29 -- Anaemia
Map 15 -- Crumbling Necropolis
Map 26 -- Surreptitious Ichor
Map 09 -- Husk of What Once Was - special shoutout to mrthejoshmon here, of all returning NOVA alumni I'd say he is easily the most improved.

[dobu gabu maru]

^ Good to see you finish up, cheers on the closing thoughts. Hopefully Magnusblitz gets enough time to give us thoughts on the latter half of E3 as well.

[Demon of the Well]

Thanks Dobu, and thanks to the rest of the NOVA II team as well, I had fun playing/blathering about the WAD.

rdwpa said:

Could you give a few more examples of this? I haven't played any of Demonologist's maps that I know of.

Edit: I'll wait until after you're done with map 30 -- the question "can DotW finish on time?" is worth investigating. :)

I did indeed finish on time, at least as far as my own timezone is concerned. It was in no way a guaranteed thing, though, at times I can be dishearteningly prone to distraction.

Anyway, to answer your question about Demonologist's maps (I hope he won't mind my jawing about them some more, as I know he is a highly self-critical mapper), a couple of examples off the top of my head:

* Not too long ago, he made a rather large (and pretty damned HARD) map called 'To Mega Therion' (ah, the days when Celtic Frost were worth a tin shit...), which was distinguished by the lack of visual solidity in the boundaries between its various setpiece fights (e.g. so monsters in other part of the map could sometimes fire at you from what felt like miles away). The starting scenario was highly intractable, to say the least, with an inconvenient to reach BFG and lot of troublesome opposition (inc. arch-viles and pain elementals) in area with a dearth of cover. At first blush one would tend to be pressured into a side area, which at first seemed to present some respite, but tended to be dicey at best without said BFG in hand. So, what to do? Well, overlooking the starting space from a considerable distance there were a number of arachnatrons on pillars, and a clever player could use their continuous fire mechanic to trace attrition all over the battlefield, allowing for relatively easy 'targeted distraction' (as opposed to the standard 'run around in their midst and hope everything works out okay' approach) to buy you time to get the BFG and do other important little tasks, allowing you to get off on right foot moving farther into the map.

* Another, earlier example is a map called 'Irreligious' in his Realm of Demonology release. Essentially just a big scrappy slaughter fight in a box, the genius of this fight is the rows and rows of pews cluttering up the battle space--smaller than the ones in NOVA II's 'Messe Noire', incidentally, but tall enough to block undisciplined player movement beginning in a counterclockwise direction (assuming my memory that the map had a simple north/south orientation is correct) from all but a few points on the battlefield (e.g. the main aisle divisions). It sounds simple, but this little wrinkle turns conventional tactics (e.g. continuously strafe around the perimeter of the hot zone) for handling this type of simple crowd-control fight on their heads, because the opposition was concentrated enough that it would inevitably block your route at some point, and not being able to simply change direction and go the other way on the fly made a huge strategic difference in the battle, especially when one factors in other logistical necessities like restocking on health and ammo (the early wave was comprised of a shit-ton of zombiemen, as I recall, surprisingly high attrition factor).

[Magnusblitz]

I will NOT finish on time, but I'll still try and power through to the end over this weekend.

MAP26: Surreptitious Ichor
100% kills, 5/5 secrets

And I can blame this juggernaut of a map at least partially for falling behind (I actually played everything before the yellow door a few days ago, so memory might be a little hazy). The start definitely feels like Dobu, I recognized his style from his "Warrens" UDINO submission, lots of fiddly cubes creating tight constrictive spaces, with plenty of dickishness in the monster placement (an AV! Baron! Pain Elemental!) It definitely forces the player to run around like crazy since armaments are in short supply... it might be a bit more cramped than I'd like, but it certainly does its job well. The player certainly feels the ammo pinch, too, a theme that continues throughout the entire map... that said, it's balanced pretty well, as though I constantly felt close to running out of ammo (in red numbers almost the whole time) I never actually did, to the point of feeling unfair. That can be a pretty razor edge to get right, so, kudos.

I actually could've been talked into thinking the whole pre-yellow door was dobu, but a large portion of it is Cannonball, in a bit of a departure from his normal style. I really like some of the bits here, such as the red key elevator, and the 'hidden' switch which raises a small step to return to the drop before it. The Arch-Vile trap in the red key elevator here is excellent. There was something that bothered me a bit in this area but can't remember what it was... oh well. Something about Pain Elementals I'd bet, fuck those guys. Anyways, the caverns are a bit of a cooling off period (intentional apparently), and then there's a rather obvious split with the yellow key hallway that had me thinking the first half was all Dobu and the second half all Cannonball and that they just stuck their maps together. Thankfully, that's not the case, although it's somewhat easy to tell that the large airy part is Cannonball's and the more confined area is Dobu's. Again, lots of projectile hell, not much ammo, but never did quite run out despite my fears. One thing I definitely didn't like was the blind teleport at the end after the last main battle, if you've left that cyberdemon on the ledge alive (easy to do since he's kinda out of the way) then it's quite possible to turn it into a no-win situation and immediately get splattered when teleporting in blind. Not fun.

I'll admit that while there's plenty of nice detail here, the aesthetics aren't really my thing... the theme feels a bit dodgy, to me, while it's all internally consistent (wood and metal with plenty of blue water and red details), I'm not sure how to sum it up or otherwise describe it beyond just listing its parts. I suppose some may enjoy the bit of otherworldness it has, me, I like my themes a bit stronger/obvious. But it certainly has a lot of effort in it and is memorable, so it has that going for it.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP27: Engraved Bones
100% kills, 2/3 secrets

Probably a good idea to place this as a 'breather map' after the last map, though this one provides plenty of bite despite the low monster count. Definitely shades of Countdown to Extinction here with the small, blocky layout. Things start out alright but take a nosedive when the hell knights show up (including that instapop one, sigh) as single-shotgunning hell knights and mancubi isn't really challenging, just slow. Thankfully the SSG sits in the next room and things move along well after that point. I'm always a fan of the AVs-warp-to-corpses trope, though this one was pretty neutered by the setup (fire SSG at wall of meat, repeat until AV gets in front and dies) and by having the second AV stuck behind a block monster line. I found the multi-directional teleporter to just be frustratingly byzantine rather than provide any value or interest. Also, I completely missed that I picked up the blue key until I saw it in my inventory... not even sure where it is, heh.

Overall, it's a bit underwhelming... very blocky, very brown (I like Egyptian maps, but the textures used here seem bland), and the climax is flawed.

(And interesting little preview of the final boss... I admit I may have peeked ahead)

[tourniquet]

Cheers for the demos Veinen & Dotw, i was actually quite suprised that a few of the club paricipants considered Map29 as the hardest map in the set, IMO Map26 is the true beast of Nova2 so i totally agree with you guys. Allthough most encounters are based on lock-ins there's most of the time a quick way to get out or even semi-cheese it like Veinen did in the Caco/Cyb battle near the exit.

Thankfully i've added a couple of backup teleporter otherwise your hunt for the last secret might have ended up lethal Dotw. You were actually pretty close for a couple of times. I also agree about the mandatory secret Megaspehre, guess i'll tweak that.

[Demonologist]

Thanks a lot for your comments 'n' demos Veinen & DotW, and Demon, you're absolutely free to dissect my crap in whichever way you want and as many times as you desire, heh. Should I decide to avoid observations - I would've never shown anything to the public, so no problem at all. On the contrary - thanks for both careful analysis and honest opinions, that means a lot.

tourniquet said:

IMO Map26 is the true beast of Nova2

Oh yes, couldn't agree more.

[Cynical]

Demon of the Well said:

(ah, the days when Celtic Frost were worth a tin shit...)

You didn't like Monotheist? Huh.

[Andrea Rovenski]

Before this thread falls into obscurity, here's my last bit of Nova II.
http://www.twitch.tv/cyberdemon531/c/7005450
I didn't really like any of the last levels.
Overall, I think Nova II is a decent megawad, but not that great of a sequel. Nova 1 had a really nice charm and basic style to it that I really loved that seems to be absent from this one for the most part. Either way, good work to everyone involved and I hope everyone had fun!