The DWmegawad Club plays: 50 Shades of Graytall & Erkattäññe

[Magnusblitz]

I'm not accusing you of having sinister motives behind the project, I'm just saying that's the feeling that playing the map, alone out of any other context, gave me.

Though, since you brought it up... reading the textfile (which I admit I hadn't done) I do find it somewhat interesting that the idea is clearly "come up with interesting gameplay/layouts" with the limited texture scheme as a way of forcing maps to be good on those merits, rather than being seen as good/high quality because they're pretty. In that way, it really is the spiritual successor to the Monochrome Mapping Project. I say it's interesting because some others (including myself) in this thread find the project intriguing from the approach of "what can be done with limited textures" such as needing to find alternate ways of showing switches or key doors or whatnot.

[Demon of the Well]

Map 07 -- Address Unknown - 101% Kills / 85% Secrets (I think I actually got them all but managed to skip physically registering one)
Marcaek is another author whose work I've only had a limited exposure to, mostly a handful of smaller maps in a few concept/gimmick-based community projects (MAYhem 2048, Plutinya 1024, things of that nature), so I suppose it's fitting I see a fuller map by him in another limitation-based project led by his own self. Given the nature of the engagement I suppose I still can't say I really know what his personal aesthetic/architectural style is (there's a lot of structural difference between this and his older maps, the main similarity being a certain penchant for not entirely intuitive multi-tiered layouts), but one thing I have come to expect from him is a very strict style of game balance that creates significant challenge not so much via facing the player with meaty hordes and elaborate encounters that can inflict a rapid death as via efficiently spiteful monster placement coupled with very limited amounts of healing (and occasionally ammo as well) that requires very pragmatic, precise play in order to avoid a slow and ignominious death via raw attrition. This sort of thing is very much an acquired taste (his MAYhem 2048 map was widely panned by the Club for its heavily austere balance, as I recall) and generally most palatable in small doses (IMO), and starting out in this map--which it's immediately obvious is the largest thing he's publicly released to date--I had some vague misgivings that I might be in for a grueling session of tantric teasing and perpetually delayed catharsis, though fortunately that doesn't turn out to be the case once you really start digging your teeth in.

On that point, it seems that I enjoyed the map more than most did. It is indeed extremely unkind to the player at the start, and unless you quickly grasp certain early fight/progression concepts (e.g. use the distant arachnatron as your main weapon in the first major balcony fight, rather than spending all of your ammo fighting directly) you will very likely be behind the 8-ball for the whole runtime and end up limping your way out feeling like you've simply lived to fight another day rather than truly winning. Very dommy, Marcaek. That being said, if you do hone in on some of the map's underlying threads, you will steadily become more and more powerful (with or without pixel-perfect dodging and fortuitous RNG damage-rolls), to the point where you will be firmly on the offensive by around the halfway point. The key here--and this is one of those things that's always going to be very controversial in the community, I suppose--is that whether or not you can find some of the secrets (or even some of the not-flagged-secret-but-nevertheless-hidden goodies) makes a potentially MASSIVE impact on the timbre and nature of the gameplay as one progresses through the map, as most of the armament and a huge chunk of the map's healing potential is found in secrets--in my case I feel like I pretty much had it won as soon as I made the tricky leap for the megasphere early on. The lion's share of the hidden stuff is accessed by parkouring and catwalking around on bits of trim and guardrail, prompting you to really think both laterally and vertically in terms of traversal, very interesting--at some points you almost have to start thinking about the environment in the way you might in a third-person character-based platformer.

Though there is some muddling of the concept here and there--i.e. the map rewards you for finding clever/roundabout ways of reaching apparently unreachable areas, but also occasionally poses bits of terrain that REALLY look like you ought to be able to reach them somehow even though you never actually can (and experimenting/exploring will occasionally see you punished by damage-floor, an inclusion I feel was pretty much needless in this case), and I totally agree with other players that the map's exit is quite badly telegraphed--overall I feel this game-swinging balance decision feeds nicely into the map's underlying theme of optional content, where your experience of the map hinges largely on whether you're content simply to get through it, or desire to see all of the sights and do all of the....doings. The combat, which is initially based on conservation and constant situational awareness (e.g. to make sure you don't eat a projectile fired from 5.7 miles away on the other end of the map, which you then will probably only have a used band-aid and a blot of chewing gum to heal with) eventually gives way to a much more cavalier free-for-all where you fluster your enemies by zipping and hopping around the many-tiered islands as your arsenal and momentum grow, to the point where it nigh feels leisurely (but bloody-leisurely, the way I like it) by the end, when you're facing what is on paper the map's heaviest opposition, your reward for your diligence and ingenuity. Again, something of a niche approach to map pacing, I guess, but a very valid style, I think.

As far as aesthetics go, I don't disagree about what most of the other players have said about the visual presentation, though I would consider said presentation to be largely superfluous to what I liked about the map. On the surface it's definitely not much of a looker--even the sense of vista you might theoretically get looking across the expanse of astral void from one fort-island to another is sort of diminished by the broadstroke GRAYTALL texturing turning distant fixtures into nondescript concrete blobs--but as the case with 'Count Trakula's Castle', I found the environment itself to be enough of a fun place to play in/move around in that the surface aesthetic (and its various foibles) was not really on my mind much while actually playing. Structurally and architecturally, I think the layout makes for a good abstract climb-and-jump game environment, and in this case this is all that was really needed.


As a related point about the mapset as a whole, for the sake of contrast I want to toss out there that for my part, seeing how different authors manage the technical minutiae of the project's texture limitations is actually not really at the heart of why I personally was eager to play the WAD. It's an interesting angle of consideration, no doubt!.....but to me, the main draw of 50 Shades of Graytall is the author list, and not the project gimmick. That is, I was looking forward to playing new (to me) maps by Mechadon, Joshy, Mouldy, Ribbiks, Xaser, Dobu and the rest, simply because I generally enjoy playing those dudes' maps, while also getting a chance to learn more about mappers I'm less familiar with, which I also enjoy doing for its own sake. That all of these maps were apparently going to be textured in nothing but GRAYTALL, FIREBLU, and doortrack was largely extraneous to my fundamental interest in the WAD, if you see what I'm saying. So, in that sense, I guess I'm mainly evaluating these levels in terms of how I feel about their 'naked design', rather than in terms of how they wrangle and supercede (or fail to supercede) the aesthetic restrictions of the project. A contrast in emphasis certainly worth considering, I think, since I reckon some of these maps succeed wildly in terms of gameplay without doing much to supercede the aesthetic restrictions (ala 'Address Unknown', for example), while for others the case is more or less the polar opposite.

[dobu gabu maru]

Marcaek said:

If you really think the whole idea behind this was "I don't feel like texturing a map so I'm going to come up with this idea so I can just make a map and not texture it." I invite you to read the textfile or the project thread.

Since my thoughts echo closely with Magnus', I just wanted to say that I didn't see it this way either. To the project's strength, there aren't any shit maps here where we can see that being clearly done, so your map tends to stick out not because it's bad but because all of the authors that came afterwards had (presumably) more time to hone their style and integrate the textures in a far more smoother fashion. It's still a commendable effort that's fun to play; I'd sooner replay this than go back to Kama Sutra or Vile Flesh.

Demon of the Well said:

[...] I reckon some of these maps succeed wildly in terms of gameplay without doing much to supercede the aesthetic restrictions (ala 'Address Unknown', for example), while for others the case is more or less the polar opposite.

Yup, and I tend to be that opposite case—it can be hard for me to get invested into a map if I'm not lured in by the presentation. I'd still consider myself a gamplay > graphics type of person, but the joining of the two creates a far superior, marvelous union. Speaking of...

MAP08: mouldy does what mouldy does best: make a beautiful, chaotic nightmare to fill with corpses. I absolutely adore the visual work he did here—the cyndrical FIREBLU growths lend a certain strangeness to the alabaster cavern, and the placement of the red stripes and additional lamps & posts towards the end are brilliant. The map is a bit of a bastard too, constantly warping in enemies on all sides and pressuring you to keep moving about; sometimes I wish I recorded FDAs so he could see how much I suffer :P. It’s mouldy’s typical MO but it's not confined to a small space, making it a lot of fun as he can jam in more lambs for the slaughter. Due to its sheer creativity it’ll probably end up being my favorite map in the set—he really pulled all he could out of these textures.

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP08 At The Mountains of Madness

Well I totally did not see that gameplay style coming. "Chaotic Evil" returns in Graytall. the whole first section constitutes that well and the second one with the exit brings it on home with more chaotic evil. Good idea to smack on the invulnerability when the cyberdemon appears with the teleporting hordes, by the time it's over, I realized I had got everyone.

[baja blast rd.]

Map08: "At the Mountains of Madness"

In contrast to the inevitable chaos of much of Going Down, "At the Mountains of Madness" is a sort of DIY shitstorm kit, where the action in the first half actually feels softballed unless you set out to unleash multiple waves of baddies at once. The rocky arena is scaled large, allowing projectiles to coast in from all the way across the map, emanating from darkness-lurking monsters you forgot existed. The very last encounter, in the interdimensional transport research facility, is the tricky part. The FIREBLU cylinder houses a cyber, as expected, and you can't just camp out on the top deck and plasma it out at leisure, not only because cacos occasionally pop in to say hello, but also because the rockets would detonate right behind you.

The design is the most notable part of the level. The cave portion sees GRAYTALL's red strips being hidden entirely in order to convincily depict a complex single-chamber cave, with FIREBLU representing rifts and deposits of -- not lava but -- fireblunium, a substance valuable enough that someone (or something) has set up a facility to mine and transport it. The facility is built of GRAYTALL too of course, but the red strips are now all over the place: as highlights; as borders; as detail insets; as full-surface decals, creating the impression of a monolithic red texture; even as standalone props, like gates, and long strips of beef jerky! The neat, predominantly 90° and 45° architecture further drives home the constrast from the cave region. Going Down revealed mouldy to be a virtuoso of Doom furniture, designing props that made you think, "Wait, what? That's a stock resource?" And so, reduced to a small set of textures but hoping to spice things up more than that set would permit, mouldy brings out the lamps, including the notably cumbersome "tall technopillar" -- and the way he insets them in the walls creates the impression not of objects but of additional textures. (Though maybe the techno floor lamps at the northernmost point of the map could have been something else -- another redstrip+FIREBLU pattern or something -- because they seem to exist only so that something exists there and they don't look anywhere near as good as much of the other detailing.) Of course it isn't a true mouldy map without at least one comedic touch -- in this case the big concentric ring of gore, using Boom's fake floor effect to simulate bodies stacked on top of bodies. Oh yeah, there's a free backpack and shotgun behind you at the start, cheekily placed to punish those who thoughtlessly charge ahead at the start. Tip for starting off Doom levels: if you get a calm moment, always check your ass.

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP08: At the Mountains of Madness

One of my favourite H. P. Lovecraft stories in the title there, let's see what this map has in store for us. The theme seems to be one of confined action in defined spaces, wave upon wave of enemies pouring into the cavernous initial arena, some at the touch of a button, others in reponse to player movement; the impression I get is that rushing around to collect all of the available weapons and supplies at once would fill the cavern with a truly chaotic mess of different creatures, difficult to avoid but also offering the best opportunities for infighting. Then it's on to a miniature techbase set deeper within the mountain for another multi-stage arena battle, this one concluding with a cyberdemon duel (though the truly chaotic moments in that particular battle came when I was scrambling to deal with the arch-viles simultaneously unleashed; the cyberdemon and his rockets fell into the background as hostile terrain elements that were simply to be avoided while I sought to stop his high priests undoing all my earlier murderwork).

Visually this one uses GRAYTALL initially to create a natural-seeming cave of chalk, alabaster, or limestone, into which outcroppings of SKY-topped FIREBLU intrude like crystals or mineral veins. It's as fully-realised and un-abstract as possible with this texture set, and elements like the mountain of corpses are very well presented. The later techbase area is one of the few locations so far where I've been consciously aware of decorative things being used to strongly emphasise a sense of place; the earlier pile of bodies, or the decorative items scattered in other maps, didn't assert "I am X, obviously, because the place you're in is Y," to quite the same degree. The corrugated exterior texture of the building, creature with narrow columns of GRAYTALL's red stripe, is something I'd regard as a negative in a more conventional map set, but here, lacking alternatives I can see why it's been done. Generally I'm more a fan of exploration-heavy maps than those which seem to want to cram as much combat as possible into a small number of areas through wave assaults, but this a well-crafted example of that style of gameplay.

[Budoka]

No more demos until I successfully record one for MAP07.

MAP08: At the Mountains of Madness by Mouldy

Hey, it’s the midi track from Deepest Reaches. I like that one. A giant pile of monster corpses is quite a foreboding first sight. Apparently, we are in a surprisingly convincing GRAYTALL cavern complete with creepy stalactites, so let’s chose a direction to go in first and tread carefully… or maybe it’s a surprise slaughtermap, that’s fine too. Are those all Mouldy ever makes? So, this is the toughest map yet by a long shot, but it’s also easily the most exciting. The previous hard maps could be irritating in some ways, but this one flows very well and never feels unfair (though health and armor distribution is quite strict).

The Berserk wave in particular (after the second switch) is great fun, and the building section (quite impressive looking, I might add) is intense as hell. Speaking of, that final wave seemed a little overboard at first, until I realized that a hidden escape route actually opens up at that point. Excellent work by Mouldy, I’m starting to understand why Suitepee is such a big fan of his work.

[baja blast rd.]

I really think the term "slaughtermap" is overused, especially if map08 is considered one. I guess you could make it a slaughtermap if you want by setting everything free at once, but that's hardly obligatory. I'd just consider it a somewhat highly populated regular map.

[Budoka]

Do you know the history of the slaughtermap concept though ? Even maps as "sparsely" populated as "Last Look at Eden" from Hell Revealed are generally considered to count, especially since the popularity of HR back in the days of its release is the very reason there are so many slaughtermaps these days to begin with (although Deus Vult might be responsible for the "second wave" so to speak). In fact, slaughtermaps used to be called "Hell Revealed-style maps", quite a few of which had lower monster counts than even this one does. Granted, a few existed before HR thanks to the Casali brothers (Showdown, Go 2 It...) but they were few and far between, and even more borderline cases.

[scifista42]

When monsters in a map are placed in such a way that they form distinct groups consisting of so many individuals that you can't conveniently count them, and their behavior is better to be understood and described as a behavior of the whole group rather than behavior of the individuals, and player's goal is to fight such groups in order to survive and reach the exit, I call it a slaughtermap.

[Budoka]

Which would describe this map pretty well, at least the way I experienced it.

[baja blast rd.]

.

[baja blast rd.]

https://www.doomworld.com/vb/post/1212948

DotW had a good post here with what I felt is an accurate modern definition of "slaughtermap".

I've said before that I don't necessarily consider something to feel like a slaughtermap simply because it has a high monster count/fights that throw a lot of monsters at the player at once; I think the point of distinction for me comes when I stop thinking of/reacting to the monsters as individuals or groups (even very large ones) of individuals, and start thinking of them collectively as single cohesive entities or obstacles to be overcome. This might apply to individual contingents of monsters (e.g. different clusters of ledge-snipers, different phalanxes of ground-based 'blockers', etc.), or in some cases it might apply to a whole heterogeneous wave, but the main point is that one tends to look at the opposition and the process of defeating it in a 'big picture' sort of way, rather than as a very long series of discrete skirmishes. Of course, a player with strong fundamental combat/movement skills might be able to make a lot of headway even without looking at the big picture, but again, that's a different issue.

I felt the bulk of map08 was just "quickly eliminate one major threat" -- a rev cluster, a low-tier horde, a duo of AVs, whatever -- and you're in the clear and can clean up or move on to the next wave, as opposed to the sort of prolonged crowd-centric struggle that characterizes slaughter encounters. The upcoming map09 should provide a decent counterpoint.

[Tristan]

It's been a while MAP08 is what I might call slaughter-esque but it's not exactly full-blown slaughter. From what I remember, it's just raw difficulty without throwing millions of monsters at the player. I'll talk more about it when I do my write-up after I actually play it again :P

Tomorrow we play MAP09, and soon also MAP11. Compare and contrast :)

[baja blast rd.]

Yeah I think the next series of maps will afford us a good opportunity to talk about the definition.

[Budoka]

rdwpa said:

DotW had a good post here with what I felt is an accurate modern definition of "slaughtermap".

I relate more to Ribbiks's take on the idea:

First thing to note that despite being a relatively niche genre of doom-mapping (perhaps increasingly popular? idk, I don't have a very good historical context of doom-trends) there are a variety of slaughter flavors that players might have varying degrees of fondness for. I tend to bin them into a few categories:

- old-school: think HR and it's brethren. cramped, more monsters than seem appropriate for a given space, spacious arenas are a rarity, the maps overall seem like "normal" layouts, just with way more shit in them. Mob placement is often campable if you really want to, horde magnitude can border on tedious. AVs seem to be used more for some reason, often perched. iirc SF11 had a few maps that gave me this vibe as well.

- puzzle: think ggg or some ToD maps, phmlspd (or chillax, even), seemingly insurmountable until a decent strategy or specific course of action is ironed out. Possibly unintuitive, possibly gimmicky, usually rewarding.

- gauntlet: this seems to be a prevalent style now, usually arena set-pieces are spread out in either linear or nonlinear layouts. A majority of the stuff I've released is like this I think.

- chaos chaos chaos: think BFG spam maps (ToD has many of these that are great), or anything by armouredblood. Basically unapologetic slaughter, hordes of enemies pack every room and traps might unleash them by the hundreds. megaspheres and cell ammo usually aplenty.


So whatever best-principles you choose to abide by may vary depending on what you're trying to go for, I can mainly offer advice on styles similar to my own.


On a side note the word itself seems to get used more often as a descriptor of gameplay style (e.g. how monsters are presented to player) than an explicit indicator of enemy magnitude/density, I've had encounters with like 8 monsters labeled as "slaughterish", and I can't really disagree because the setup jived with what players expect from the word. So don't feel obliged to stuff your map with thousands of mobs or anything.

I had a peak at the next one and it's certainly a less ambiguous example, but then again it is Johsy. I'll save my comments regarding that for tomorrow though.

[scifista42]

MAP07 - "Address Unknown” by Marcaek

Marcaek said that he tried to make this an ""obstacle course map" which would be somewhat challenging to replay even if you know what's coming in advance", and IMO he succeeded greatly. This + the wild but uncluttered architectural shapes + inclusion of a large and rewarding optional area, were traits that really impressed me about this map. Particularly the early setup where I had to survive in a timed arena with imps while being sniped by a distant Arachnotron was unique and a good fun. The Chaingunners at the beginning have so little space on their pedestals that they easily get stuck when you shoot them (at least in Zandronum), not sure if this was intended or not. And I've found a couple "medium-sized(?)" HOMs here and here.

Overally very good map!

[Magnusblitz]

MAP08: At the Mountains of Madness
100% kills, 1/1 secret

Mouldy does probably the best job so far of making something out of nothing when it comes to the textures - for the most part things look like they could be a 'normal' map and don't feel too constrained by the texture selection. Part of this is done by choosing a fairly simple theme and sticking with it - a sort of chalky white cavern with some weird red/blue crystals makes up the entirety of the first section (and first two fights), while the second section is an odd building of some sort, with lots of use of GRAYTALL's red striping and FIREBLU for generators and some sort of energy core. DOORTRAK is barely seen at all, only being used for the core's base and a side tunnel.

Anyways, if you've played a recent mouldy map, you can probably know what's coming - large arena-style fights in a discrete zone with a looping layout for the player to run around in. It works pretty well, and while I died far too often (mostly to me just being lazy) for me it hits the sweet spot between challenge and slogfest. I do question the 'escape tunnel' in the last section though, while I was glad it was there while playing, on further retrospect it might have de-toothed the last section a bit too much.

[mouldy]

Magnusblitz said:

DOORTRAK is barely seen at all, only being used for the core's base and a side tunnel.

heh, the truth is I forgot that doortrack was an option til after I had made the whole map (the escape tunnel was an afterthought).

[dobu gabu maru]

^ Perhaps it's another reason why I enjoyed the map so much: GRAYTALL's red stripe works much better as trimming/decoration than DOORTRAK's abrasive grayscale combination. Its overuse tends to make the map look more schizophrenic than pretty, I think.

MAP09: Joshy never fails to entertain. This level complements mouldy’s madness nicely—whereas mouldy liked pushing the player around a bizarre cavern with a flood of baddies, Joshy constructs two boxy arenas that are filled with some of the most devious monster placement. That central staircase in the second area is a brilliant touch as it forces the player into the middle of the arena (which is a hard thing to do in slaughter/gauntlet maps!) It’s a lot of fun—as his maps usually are—and just reminds me that I should play through Resurgence when I find some free time. Fun yet vicious stuff.

[Tristan]

MAP08: At the Mountains of Madness - mouldy
Deaths: 2 | Time: 11:25

mouldy's take on the GRAYTALL theme appears to be a sort of gemstone mine carved into the side of a mountain, where GRAYTALL and the selected flat make up the generic rocks, and the gemstones are made out of a cool but pretty wacky combination of FIREBLU and sky.

mouldy delivers no less than his usual on the aesthetic front, with smooth lighting gradients dominating the cave and a really cool pattern along the ceiling on the inside of the building. Also of note are all those funny little red things made out of GRAYTALL's infamous red strip, that cover that outside of the building, but are also present inside. That pile of corpses is pretty nice too! It's quite interesting how the cave seems to be completely plastered in GRAYTALL, not unlike MAP07 before it, but it doesn't look nearly as monotonous here. If I remember rightly, MAP07 had very flat lighting, and this one is pretty varied, so although we knew it already, this just goes to show that lighting really does do wonders for a map's appearance. Geometry and architectural details aren't everything!

On the gameplay front, the thing I find the most interesting about this map is that, to a degree, the player actually gets a choice about how difficult the map is, and the implementation is as simple as random triggers dotted around the cave. Those who go off darting about like a madman will set off multiple fights at once, and have a much tougher offering on their hands. This is the more fun way of doing things, but only if you're skilled enough to handle these fights. When I realised how this was working, I slowed right down and took one encounter at a time, by which method, this isn't actually the most challenging map overall, which is the excuse for the rather long time it took me to complete this map.

That said, the interior of the building is quite rough no matter how you approach it. I'm not entirely sure without looking into the map itself in GZDB, but this seemed to almost be the opposite of the cave, with the wall around the central structure being linked to a timer, so you have to actually hurry up before shit gets crazy? Could be wrong, but it felt a bit like that to me.

The cyberdemon is easy to handle alone, but other monsters, particularly those asshole arch-viles are a real means for distraction. I'll admit, before entering this area, I surrendered to what I'm realistically capable of and saved the game. Haven't been doing that so far because I'm not really a huge fan of it, but on larger maps you just have to sometimes, and I knew I wasn't going for a walk in the park when I entered. Sure enough I was proven right; both of my deaths happened in this final room.

This is certainly one of the more memorable maps in the WAD for me. While the combat did feel a bit lackluster in the caves for, I fully accept that I chose to play it that way and that it can easily be made more hectic without changing skill level, so really, I have no complaints. All those piles of gemstones dotted around the cave leave quite a vivid image in my head after playing, and the feeling of intimidation before going in to that building all very much work in the maps favour. Wasn't quite to my liking as much as MAP06, but nevertheless, a solid offering, nothing less than I'd expect from mouldy. And to think, when I first played 50shades, I got up to this map and then quit, proclaiming I didn't like this one. I can only assume I played this the faster way, died and got salty. I take it back, this is really cool.

9/10

[baja blast rd.]

Map09: "The Killing Fields"

As harsh as this map looks on paper -- it boasts the largest monster count in the mapset to this point, and is the first pure slaughtermap -- you can almost consider it a cakewalk, the (first) outdoor mass warp-in being the only halfway challenging battle. I have a feeling it was designed that way, however, perhaps as an easy intro to horrors that follow, a merciful lubing up of the player's rear. The monster-block line on the elevator ledge has no reason to exist but to keep the pain elemental spam away in the final fight as you use infinite height blast damage to methodically clean up all of the skeletons. I'd consider that the map's third joke (a cheesy joke, GET IT??!?!?!?!), the other two of course being the chaingunners that self-destruct at the level's commencement, and the central Pedestal Of Nuisance, initially squatted on by a manc, which upon death is replaced by an archy -- fair enough -- which is in turn replaced by a single pain elemental that really serves no gameplay purpose whatsoever but to elicit a chuckle or two (which it did).

Just glancing at the overhead view, this does look like a level straight out of Resurgence. Present are the trademark Joshy styles of manmade geometry -- 90° and 45° base, most of the elaboration coming in the form of chunky terraces instead of thin strips of Almian border candy -- and naturalistic geometry -- basically as anti-Ribbiksian as a modern mapper can get, rocky shapes that seem to be scribbled in the editor in a few minutes' time, glanced at, and followed up by a "Ah, fuck it, that's good enough". While the outdoor arena is a glorious eyesore, the building actually looks kind of good, owing to strong use of lighting and the simple but clean architecture. GRAYTALL alignment is completely ignored, but who cares. To differentiate the skyhole from the non-damaging variety we've encountered thus far, Joshy litters it with Doomguy corpses, but let's be honest -- does anyone look at that and say "Hey, it's damaging?! I'm certainly not stepping on that!" It's always, *walks onto surface* "Ouchy!" *hops off and looks at it* "Ahh I should have known, because there are corpses!" Not a big deal, though. The level has four or five surplus soulspheres anyway. No one is getting mad over 5% damage.

[Budoka]

MAP09: The Killing Fields by Joshy

This is the individual responsible for half of Speed of Doom, nearly all of Resurgence, and some of the nastiest maps committed to community projects this side of the slaughterfest team. Whoever was expecting any kind of respite from this is foolish. While a lot of Joshy’s levels are slaughter-based or slaughter-ish, I can say from experience that he can come up with plenty of other ways to mess with the player. This map is pure straightforward slaughter though.

The thing about Joshy’s merciless, adrenalin-fueled (just like the power metal track he gave us the pleasure of hearing for this map) style though, is that I’ve always liked it. Resurgence may be too much for me most of the time, but there isn’t a single moment when I play it during which I’m not thoroughly enjoying myself. Not to mention that as always, it all looks quite beautiful. It’s not breathtakingly gorgeous like some of his early hellscapes in Resurgence or the Titan surface in “Homecoming”, and less immersive than what Mouldy did with the previous map, but still damn impressive considering the circumstances.

Anyway, being forced constantly bob and weave around hordes of enemies in order to stay alive is quite the pinch in itself, but as often with Joshy, it’s not quite that simple either. This place is bigger than meets the eye (he does that a lot, see “Gauntlet” or “The Courtyard”) and most of the encounters are more devious than they seem. The main point of interest of the opening room, in particular, is that protecting the central Mancubus for as long as possible is much more advantageous than getting rid of it. It’s best to clean up the trash surrounding it as much as possible, so that when it does die, you get a clear enough shot at the Archvile that replaces it. The whole thing reminds me of Valiant’s MAP07, although it’s not quite the same idea.

The main deal with the red key courtyard is that Joshy put in a pain sector and some height differentiation in order to guarantee that crowd control and projectile dodging wouldn’t be quite as simple as just running around. It’s very clever, and makes it seem like he knows exactly how to learn from some of his minor design mistakes from the past (again, “Gauntlet”). Once you do get the red key, you get his classic “fight a pack of Archviles without getting hit” scenario, but in this case it’s more of a breather than anything (nothing like the way it’s used in E3 of Resurgence).

The blue key wave is the cruelest of all. In Resurgence, Joshy used lighting (or lack thereof) to make the Specters nearly invisible and have them surprise the hell out of you. No lighting trickery this time, but still having a bunch of Specters teleport in on a grey flat makes it very hard to tell where you can tread and where you can’t, and when. It’s utterly devious. Honestly, I might be out of my league again with this one. I did locate the blue switch, but if the exit it opens up is past all those Cyberdemons, that’s going to be a problem. From what I understand the following maps are cut from the same cloth, so it might be time for me to switch to HMP.

EDIT: Nevermind, I pulled it off. I just followed rdpwa's strategy of standing on the upper floor and everything went fine. After which I was rewarded with fighting another of those free-roaming Cyberdemon duos. It's a tried-and-true combat scenario, but I never get tired of it. I guess it's just one of the most entertaining situations you can have in Doom, and I certainly couldn't have asked for a better conclusion.

Once again, a Joshy maps has me rant for half an hour while the work of most other mappers just has me make a couple quick comments. I guess his mind is just so full of unique ideas, compared to some other authors who tend to just have a couple really cool moments, and then a bunch of acceptable filler to go with it.

[scifista42]

I've started playing continuously and with saves since the previous map.

MAP08 - "At the Mountains of Madness” by mouldy

Totally a slaughtermap - the monsters appear in packs and easily flood most of the place by their bodies if I don't kill every new pack of enemies right after it appears, and then the combat is tough. Save/load spam + trial and error = the only way through for me. Very good architecture and detailing, though.

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP09 Killing Fields

Oh wait, it's *that* phaze of Graytall isn't it? crap.

yay, a slaughterfest map, predictably coming in around every megawad's apex or so. well this one's in the middle. let's see, rather cramped indoor section where I start, then open one where overloads of monsters will teleport in. again, action is liable to go so fast you either die or you beat everything without ever knowing you did it. I like mouldy's better. Maps like this one make me hate mancubi more and more.

[Gez]

I went through the Mountains of Madness by running in circles like an hyperfcaffeinated madman and triggering everything I could so as to maximize chaos and infighting, only attacking the monsters directly when some demon or imp was blocking my path. That's how I approach slaughtermaps. After a while the opposition had been whittled down enough to be dispatched by hand.

The second wave (when activating the switches) was played more traditionally, focusing on eliminating the arch-viles before they can raise too many monsters and so that they wouldn't keep blinding me with their flames.

In the building, I progressed pretty much the same way: lots of running in circles, but this time it was more cautious, with cleaning up completely a zone before triggering the next. After releasing the two archviles and the cyberdemon, I tried to lure the cybie into shooting rockets in the general direction of the vile so they'd get off my back. Problem was when some other dumb monster would also shoot the viles, causing it to forget the cybie and then get back to attacking me. It was while running to cover from a vile that I noticed the escape tunnel which wasn't there in my recollection. And yes this really defanged the final part; besides some cacodemons nobody went out to bother me. I just went to show my face at the windows from time to time so as to keep the fires of infighting warm, and after the cybie and the viles all died in the chaos I went back in to finish the stragglers.

One thing I liked about the little fireblu crystals in the cave is that their sky floors are sufficiently small not to appear to be sky at a quick glace. When zooming around as you hurry towards a medikit or trying to dodge some revenant missiles, the stars and constellations that scroll by end up looking like shine and glitter on the crystals, instead of a surreal view of the sky in an impossible place. Was that effect deliberate? Anyway, it works really well, and is only broken if you take a slower look at it once the action has died down.

Now the next map is where it starts to get really hairy. Forcing you to go through the stairs in the middle as the terraces on the sides are too high to climb and the bottom is a damaging sector -- that's fiendish. I'll admit I ended up cheating a bit and jumping to climb up the sides when the path in the middle was hopelessly blocked.

Then the next map after that is Mek's map, and while it isn't too hard in my recollection it's a Mek map, meaning one that is impossibly huge and will take a long while to go through. Good thing the 10 is a Sunday, isn't it?

[Naan]

MAP07 - "Address Unknown” by Marcaek - 2 secrets left and 2 monsters left on UV with a dozen saves/deaths

Well, to say the least it's not a map that makes life easy for the "completitionist" player profile which I tend to belong, and it seems not really UV-Max-able without saves due to RNG at the beginning - and there's a hidden unaccessible lost soul at the upper left corner of the map that makes 100% kills almost impossible. I gave up trying to get the megasphere secret by jumping and I had no idea how to get to the rocket box platform with imps near the near useless invul shere next to the second "island" which I guess is the other secret left.

So I went for the "kill chaingunner" route at the beginning and run out until the second island when I stabilized and started killing stuff until I eventually ran out of ammo, which kinda frustrated me on my methodic step by step cleaning style of play. The secret hidden zone was more a traditionnalish level inside the level with more than enough ammo to finish off the map with the max kills possible, which was actually decent and challenging.

Designwise it was alright given it was the very first completed level of the project. A few slight finition glitches as scifista42 pointed out, and some detailing/texturing that was left behind, compared to the other maps texture trimming work. Oh, and those damaged skybox floor was a bit unnecessary, though I guess it would've make some caco fights easier and allows players to go from an island to another without any effort, but that could be resolved with invisible walls. Overall an okayish survival gimmick map I am able to enjoy once in a while.

[Tristan]

MAP09: The Killing Fields - Joshy
DNF

Sorry, not a fan. Though slaughtermaps are funny to see in big multiplayer events such as TNS (I think the bulk of the highlights video is actually from this map with fast monsters on), when it comes to single-player, I wouldn't be the slightest bit bothered if they were completely fazed out (with the exception of Sunlust), and it's maps like this that serve as a reminder as to why. I don't find this sort of thing remotely fun, just sheer frustration, and on the one attempt of my seven where I actually managed to get out of the start, I found that the outdoor area was just running about with the fire button held down for minutes on end. Meh. Don't really see how this is supposed to be easy either, when there's always some monster in the indoor area that's going to get in the way and cause every single damn projectile currently going to hit you.

There's not much to talk about with the visual aspect, it's neither goor or bad, just pretty plain. I did think the little FIREBLU columns that lower into the ground were quite a cool way of implementing switches. Music selection seems appropriate, and to my knowledge, it's the only map in existence that uses one of my Plutonia MIDI Pack submissions, so while I retrospectively look back on it with quite a cold view, I'm personally grateful to Joshy for picking it out for his map.

I really enjoyed the majority of what I've played of Resurgence, so I do respect Joshy as a mapper, and that makes this all the more disappointing. Though 50shades has had maps that are weaker than others, up until this point it's been of a pretty decent and consistent quality, and I've come away from each map having enjoyed what I've played, and when I've finished writing up, it's been a significant amount of time taken out of the day, especially in the more recent maps where I've had quite a lot to write about, even nearly outdoing DotW on MAP06, but it hasn't been a problem at all.

With this map, I just got annoyed, didn't care about what the rest of the map would play like, and ended up using changemap map10 and saving so tomorrow it'll be like I came straight from MAP08. To be quite honest, I feel like I've wasted my time with this one.

2/10, and even that's probably being generous.

[Gez]

Naan said:

there's a hidden unaccessible lost soul at the upper left corner of the map that makes 100% kills almost impossible.

Mouse aiming and a rocket launcher make it possible.

Naan said:

I gave up trying to get the megasphere secret by jumping

That's how you get to it, however.

Naan said:

and I had no idea how to get to the rocket box platform with imps near the near useless invul shere next to the second "island" which I guess is the other secret left.

On the terrace where the three chaingunners from the beginning eventually lowers, you have to drop down to a teleporter which leads you to the second island, right? Well, instead of dropping down to the teleporter, use the stairs on the other side to climb on the surrounding wall, but not on the blue armor! Circle all around the terrace and go to the side of the teleporter. Drop at some point along the way, as long as it's not on the blue armor skyfloor. Follow along the ledge, you'll eventually reach a backpack, a plasma rifle, two medikits, and a teleporter to that rocket box platform.

[baja blast rd.]

Eris Falling said:

Don't really see how this is supposed to be easy either, when there's always some monster in the indoor area that's going to get in the way and cause every single damn projectile currently going to hit you.

It helps to get the imps/demons to one side, and then you can break out through the edge and get rid of some from the open pocket of space, and then maybe repeat once or twice. Circling around very slowly works if you can get them all in the middle at once, but that doesn't always happen. Running around very quickly is usually going to result in tanking damage from fireballs, but you can even do that (eventually -- not while there are still lots of monsters), because there's so much health.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/2zg6y17g8ia5fgn/50s09_start.lmp

The encounters are mostly strategy-based -- it's not easy like "Hey, you're always going to survive your first playthrough" or whatever, but more like once you have some sort of strategy, it isn't so challenging and doesn't really require much in the way of traditional Doom skills (aim, reflexes, etc.); more just implementing a routine.

I hate the PE spam stage. It's sort of pointless. It's not like ammo is hard to come by, so it seems more like a temporary nuisance than any real part of the overall challenge. I would have to figure out how to consistently get rid of them quickly with the RL before 20+ souls are vomited out.

Anyway wrt the overall level, there's a lot of resources so you can tank damage at certain points as long as you don't get killed. I consistently get hit by stuff in the big outdoor fight, but the free soulspheres are helpful.