Ancient Aliens - final version on idgames

[jmickle66666666]

Article in PCGamesN http://www.pcgamesn.com/doom/new-doom-levels :)

[scifista42]

^ Ha, they now have a "SKILLSAW" tag!

[ChaosSmurf]

Finding time for this is going to involve less sleep, less work, less Stellaris or all of the above, but I have a feeling it will be worth it.

[savagegrant]

I've been waiting months for a wad like this to come out and drag me away from working so hard on my website. I'm loving the visuals and gameplay so far. I'm up to MAP02 and was wondering if sector 235 was supposed to be too wide to cross after it's lowered because I didn't notice the sector 378 secret until towards the end of the level and now I can't get to it. :(

[dannebubinga]

Looks cool! Will play :]

[Gothic Box]

I think Doom 4 will have to wait this week, I think I'm going to try my luck at following in the footsteps of Fox Mulder this wad.

[punnyone]

This is a complete surprise! I'm only on the first episode so far and I'm already loving the color scheme and map design!

[joe-ilya]

Streaming this : https://www.twitch.tv/joe_ilya

[Salt-Man Z]

Holy shit

[Roofi]

I found a glitch on map 18.

You don't need to shoot the switch at the beginning because the space between the wall and the switch is too wide. My run is shitty but it shows how easier the level is if you don't shoot the first switch.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/je3f55w813ey2w3/Map18_AA_glitch.lmp

[Ex Inferis]

Excellent news! Was aching for something worth playing and this looks really promising...

[Shadow Hog]

Random aside, but I kinda hope there are some proper demos for this thing in the final release. Always love popping up GLBoom+ and seeing if the WAD maker bothered to record some new ones.

savagegrant said:

I've been waiting months for a wad like this to come out and drag me away from working so hard on my website. I'm loving the visuals and gameplay so far. I'm up to MAP02 and was wondering if sector 235 was supposed to be too wide to cross after it's lowered because I didn't notice the sector 378 secret until towards the end of the level and now I can't get to it. :(

Try crossing it diagonally - both strafing and moving forward at once. As you probably already know, you move faster when you do that, and that speed is sufficient to clear the gap.

[kuchitsu]

I've made a decision to post in this thread.

Pick up a key, get ambushed. Press a switch, get ambushed. Walk 5 metres, get ambushed. Open a door, get on the floor, everybody walk the dinosaur.

[Tarnsman]

kuchitsu said:

I've made a decision to post in this thread.

Pick up a key, get ambushed. Press a switch, get ambushed. Walk 5 metres, get ambushed. Open a door, get on the floor, everybody walk the dinosaur.

It's at times like this I wish I had an edit of a 'NOW That's What I Call Music' cover that said 'NOW That's What I Call Memfis'

[Justince]

r_init: getpostnumberforname: post not found!

Edited August 1, 2017 by Justince

[june gloom]

Tarnsman said:

It's at times like this I wish I had an edit of a 'NOW That's What I Call Music' cover that said 'NOW That's What I Call Memfis'

You're welcome.

[valkiriforce]

It's not untrue though, I mean, most doom maps are.

[dew]

valkiriforce said:

It's not untrue though, I mean, most doom maps are.

I'll make sure skillsaw adds "TRIGGER WARNING: WAD CONTAINS DOOM MAPS" to the textfile.

[40oz]

why do you guys get so butthurt about what kuchitsu says? It's all subjective. If the wad isn't for him, its not for him. Just have your own fun.

I was expecting to find this to be a little weird and experimental but I'm enjoying it even more than vanguard and valiant. Skillsaw's style has really solidified here. I'd say he's in close competition with Ribbiks/dannebubinga at mastering really challenging difficulty, though its in a way thats very different. He has gotten really good at putting the pressure on and making you move. I gotta take a little break from MAP08. The adrenaline is pumpin and its a little long with 200+ monsters but I'll come back to it soon. I think we're very lucky to have a mapper as good as skillsaw in the community who is also super productive. :)

[HavoX]

40oz said:

why do you guys get so butthurt about what kuchitsu says? It's all subjective. If the wad isn't for him, its not for him. Just have your own fun.

It's all fun and games until someone goes a bit too far.

You are correct on the subjective part though.

[skillsaw]

Thanks all! I'm noting the bugs and stuff that have been reported and am working on getting some fixes in. Probably nothing immediately, maybe I'll get another RC out this weekend with fixes. One thing I do hope to look at is skill1-2 and hopefully tone it down a bit for improved playability/accessibility to players because I as I look at this more closely it probably does begin too tough on those skill settings.

rileymartin said:

I have to ask though, what made you go back to using vanilla monsters after howgreat Valiant turned out with its more threatening and interesting bestiary?

Valiant is it's own thing. Maybe I'll do more stuff like it someday.

jmickle66666666 said:

Article in PCGamesN http://www.pcgamesn.com/doom/new-doom-levels :)

Yay, supercool. They really picked up on this one fast.

40oz said:

why do you guys get so butthurt about what kuchitsu says? It's all subjective ..

I don't think anyone is getting butthurt about Memfis's opinion (I certainly am not), just having fun with the way he stated it, heh. Anyways, glad you like what you've seen so far!

[Spectre01]

kuchitsu said:

I've made a decision to post in this thread.

Pick up a key, get ambushed. Press a switch, get ambushed. Walk 5 metres, get ambushed. Open a door, get on the floor, everybody walk the dinosaur.

This pretty much describes every popular "hard" wad in the last 5-10 years though. I agree that it can be annoying and it's something that Speed of Doom took to the extreme. I think Valiant struck the perfect balance between traps and populated maps. But trap abuse in general is a major concern in modern pwads and it would be nice if mappers had some self control regarding that.

[Cynical]

Tarnsman said:

It's at times like this I wish I had an edit of a 'NOW That's What I Call Music' cover that said 'NOW That's What I Call Memfis'

I don't think that's an unfair characterization in this case. At least judging from the first 10 maps (didn't finish map 09 though, lol 2 arch-viles in a small room with no cover, not bothering with that retarded bullshit), the combat in the Skillsaw maps has gone far away from the heavy incidental-combat style of Vanguard, Lunatic, and UR27 to a "sequence of setpieces" style of combat, and I really don't think it's a shift for the better in this case, given how dry so many of the setpieces are (seriously, how many variations of "blind lift/drop/teleport into mancubi facing you do we need?) and how overscaled the interstitial areas are.

[Tarnsman]

Cynical said:

I don't think that's an unfair characterization in this case.

It's less his opinion and more "I've made a decision to post in this thread.". Skillsaw can attest that I've given him crap for the "every single thing is trapped" gameplay before.

[Lizardcommando]

I haven't played too many maps, but from what I've seen so, this is pretty cool. I love the colors used for the maps. The splashes of colors really make these maps stand out. The music is really awesome too

[Joshy]

Cynical said:

(didn't finish map 09 though, lol 2 arch-viles in a small room with no cover, not bothering with that retarded bullshit)

Tsk tsk Cynical, you disappoint me. :P

[Varis Alpha]

i'm not entirely a fan of how high-profile mapping projects seems to indulge itself in crazy-high difficulty and trap-scenarios myself, but that's not to say i hate them or anything. they're fine as they are. i guess it would be nice to have some really good-looking levels that WASN'T just there to kick your ass into the ground over and over though. there's a lot of these difficulty pretty wads around, it would be nice to have some more 'laxed pretty wads to counteract that.

that being said, this does looks really damn cool and i'll probably enjoy giving this a spin at some point.

[Ribbiks]

Doomhuntress said:

i'm not entirely a fan of how high-profile mapping projects seems to indulge itself in crazy-high difficulty and trap-scenarios myself

I have a theory that any maniac willing to spend so much time with doombuilder and make huge detailed projects is probably rather adept at the game. Couple that with a map-familiarity during playtesting and it's not hard to imagine difficulty scaling with project size :)

also, blah blah difficulty settings, etc..

[baja blast rd.]

FDA for map09, since Cynical's post got me curious. :P http://www.mediafire.com/download/c7om7m0rfmtbiqn/aaliensrc1_09_rdwpa_fda.lmp

It's quite long, at 40:15: no deaths, but I was lost for a good 5-10 minutes.

My play in the beginning is sloppy (moving too much and in an uncontrolled, panicky way, etc.*) but there was easily enough health/etc. to make up for the constant stream of mistakes lol.

*(Re 40oz: I think the thing about many fights in the Skillsawus Combaticus taxonomy group, which Joshy's opening setup is reasonably in line with, is that they provide a big psychological impetus for the player to move, surrounding her with all sorts of baddies, but are a lot more manageable when you know how to move as little as possible. But I'm not good enough to habitually pull that off in unknown, higher-pressure setups.)

Yeah I agree with Cynical about those two arch-viles. It seemed way more likely to be lethal than nearly everything else in the level. It always feels a bit weird to me when certain msic mini-encounters are a lot more deadly than the centerpiece encounters in a level. You can metagame it by using the "ledge trick", but I didn't think to do that in the first playthrough, because panic. Incidentally my biggest mess-up came a bit later, with the trio of AVs that I didn't expect at all. And because panic. I was lucky to have lots of health in both cases.

The cyber fight seems to be designed to scare you. It's literally non-threatening unless you, I don't know, actually focus too much on killing things. I don't think I fired a single shot, iirc, until it was time to take out the cyber. Maybe one or two fewer AVs elsewhere and make that fight more beefy?

[Darsycho]

This is probably the most gorgeous mapset I've ever seen.
edit: whups top post