The DWmegawad Club plays: Ancient Aliens

[Steve D]

In Map05 we discover The Last Refuge of The Anasazi, and it's even nastier than your typical Motel 6. Indeed, the irritable desk clerk is none other than His Cybieness himself, and he's coming after you like a Mafia collection goon intent on prying $150,000 out of your whiney little ass. As you take off in panicked flight, an assortment of low-level henchmen and stumbling jagoffs try to sink their mitts in you, slowing you up just enough to take a rocket up your tailpipe.

After the 3-outta-4 turret encounters in the first quartet of maps, it's a refreshing change to be chased around this attractive landscape. Not much corner abuse this time, and no wall-hugging at all, just wild racing from one spot to another, shrieking in terror, and popping off a few shots here and there.

Even on UV, the ground-level antagonists account for little more than litter, mere obstacles to your progress except for a couple nasty Chaingunner traps, one apiece at the blue and red keys. They got me at the red key when I hesitated while looking for the Cyb and got shredded. I also noticed a few Hell Knights, but never so much as shot at one, as Cybie took care of them all for me.

Skillsaw pulls weapon-trolls on the player three times in this map, including twice with the rocket launcher -- at least if you pistol-start, and this is why everyone should pistol-start, because continuers will never feel the impact of these traps.

I have a special fondness for rocket-launcher trolling -- defined as taking advantage of the RL being automatically selected when you first pick it up by throwing monsters immediately in the player's face, so they tend to shoot instinctively and thus kill themselves -- given that I was there at the dawn of such things when Antoni Chan did his "Here's your Rocket Launcher, and now here's a whole mess of Spectres in your face" troll in his Escape wad, which became Map17, "No Escape" in Realm of Chaos, all the way back in 1996. It also inspired me to do a different kind of Rocket Launcher troll in Map09 of that megawad. Ah, those thrilling days of yesteryear! ;D Aside from pimping my ancient shit, this serves as an example of how far back in history some of these trolly tropes go.

Taking them one by one as I encountered them, the first was at the secret RL, the only secret I found before killing everything. As an aside, this type of map lends itself to replay if you want to better your performance, because once you know all the secrets, you can grab that Plasma Gun straightaway, and then the SSG, which eliminates the final weapons troll. Anyway, the RL secret is beautifully staged, much, much nicer than what Antoni and I came up with in '96 -- shock! ;D It was so pretty I was literally floating on air! ;) Before you grab the RL and set off the insanity to come, Skillsaw kindly provides a Blue Armor. Once you grab the RL some Revvies teleport in, which is standard issue for RL traps, but the troll part is the Pain Elementals spitting Lost Souls in your face for that "Good at Doom!" rocket suicide. If you find this secret, the second RL troll won't be as bad, when you find yourself in a lovely grotto full of hanging vines, and grabbing the RL sends a bunch of Mancs and Pinkys teleporting in. The Pinkys are the troll, and it can be argued that this isn't really a hardcore troll since most players will have picked up the Zerk, and you have plenty of time to select your fist over the RL, but the Mancs pressure you with fireballs and you find yourself wanting to shoot that RL to get them off your ass. I died when I did that, so the next time through I maintained fistic discipline and only dealt with the Mancs after the Pinkys were dead. The Arachnotrons firing through the waterfall took out a couple as well.

The final troll was with the SSG after you leap into a courtyard. In this case, the trolling is that you're immediately attacked by a shit-ton of Revvies, and the SSG has been automatically selected when what you really want is the RL, so this is a clever inversion of the previous trolls. I had to figure out the angle for strafe-jumping so I could avoid the SSG and thus have the RL in my hands when the Revvies poured out. A bonus is that the Revvies are deaf, so I only faced one batch at first, and took them out before blowing-away the next batch. A PE and some shotgun snipers in the adjoining courtyard are a further danger here, for those who manage to sneak past the Revvies.

This map shows the beginnings of more attention paid to architecture as opposed to the simple structures with excellent point-detailing we've seen thus far. The waterfall grotto is a real highlight. Skillsaw shows IMO his best-yet use of the psychedelic neon textures. Really cool. All in all, my new favorite up to this point.

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP06 Sinkhole Showdown

A name like that just screams concept map. The sand keeps sinking and I'm dealing with arena-style combat here. Though shotgun guys can be infinitely times more annoying when you are always distracted. It helps to get everything before pressing any switches. Appropriately fun.

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP06: Sinkhole Showdown

This is another iteration on the 'evolving arena' concept, with the level's progression taking the player through the changing states of a single playing space as much as from one place to another. Ease of navigation is maintained throughout, and it's interesting to watch the playing area first expand then contract as changes occur and successive waves of enemies enter the fray. The mix of monsters provides for various approaches - engage directly, or attempt to cause extensive infighting without catching too many stray shotgun pellets, or decide your own target priorities within each wave. It's focused and efficient.

[baja blast rd.]

map06

Another really good map. The outdoor encounters are fairly simple and typical in monster composition and general approach but they feel like something I really haven't seen before, anywhere, and that's because of the unique environment: stone tablets serving as obstacles instead of the usual generic pillars, and the whole ground-lowering g...ggg...ggg.....gg....ggggggg *starts sweating profusely* ggggiiigigigiigi.... GIMMICK!!!

If there are any criticisms, it's that AV-releasing mechanism in the YK fight is somewhat opaque, and the soulsphere secret is really really OP. Getting to the two-AV fight with 200% health allows you to tank damage and really takes the sting out of what was, during my pre-club playthough, my favorite fight in the maps I've played. I'm not sure what it could be replaced with that might not end up superfluous (a blue armor (might not work if you hold off on picking the second blue armor), or a PR and some cells maybe, or a rocket box or two and some medkits if there's reason not to give away the PR?). It's also not such a hard secret to find, because it looks like a door.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/583hb7lrqyt7hyt/aaliensrc3a_06_rdwpa_demo.lmp

dew said:

I'll explain this one. Limiting chaingun further increases the shotgunner threat, the obvious gimmick of this map (hi, rdwpa). You can stay in their line of sight and stunlock the first row while the back of the mob start bickering, or you can aim at a corner and continuously mow down anything that peeks around it. In comparison, the shotguns tend to destroy a group of the sarges at once, but then you lose initiative for a few moments and hurt zombies will retaliate before you reload. Furthermore, if you start swinging in and out around a corner, they'll be more likely to attack as well. So by denying you chaingun ammo, skillsaw is committing his greatest cliche: making you move.

Hi. I think it's actually possible to just go to the SSG area and kill whatever's there and then wait for the rest to come to you non-threateningly, but so early in the map that's unnecessarily boring. I'd rather even tempt the RNG.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/qpbz437ye7shfj9/aaliensrc3a_06_rdwpa_shotgunnerstuff.lmp

I think a lot of fights in larger geographically irregular arenas might have pathing exploits like this, but it's map06 and there's easily enough health to actually have fun, so whatever. :D

[mouldy]

MAP06 - "Sinkhole Showdown" by skillsaw

Excellent map. For maximum fun, run around at the start grabbing keys and tripping all the traps at once, but don't forget to grab that blue armour first. I'm a big fan of maps that transform as you play them, it seems to be one of the advantages doom still has over more modern shooters.

[Steve D]

jerrysheppy said:

MAP05 Again I missed out on the full impact of a turret-type bad guy, even if a mobile one this time, as the cyber wasn't there on the skill level where I'm playing. Kind of disappointed, as I could probably have taken it out given that I'm playing through. This points to a general question that mappers seem to disagree on, namely: how do you create an appropriate level of difficulty in your maps? Often (as in this megawad so far) it's by taking out tougher monsters, either removing the monster placement altogether or by replacing them with smaller ones. Certainly this is logical on its face, but it can be hard to create a linear reduction in difficulty this way-- for example, I lost a lot more health to the demon/mancubus ambush in the natural rock area than I typically do to a well-staged cyberdemon fight. Maybe it would have been more fun overall to leave the cyberdemon in, but simply give lower difficulty levels the weapons and ammo necessary to kill it early?

I always love to discuss this topic.

I figure there's no perfect answer to the question of difficulty settings. First, I don't believe they mean as much anymore as they did in the '90s when relatively few PWADs of quality were even as hard as the IWAD maps. In any case, there was a known standard for the concepts of UV, HMP and HNTR. Nowadays, HNTR in a Ribbiks map is almost always significantly more difficult than UV in BTSX E1. You need to try -solonet in the latter to get something more comparable. The point being, as I believe everyone would agree, that difficulty settings are relative to the mapset at hand and thus have no absolute meaning anymore.

So now the question of how each mapper sets the difficulty in their maps. Again, that's relative to the mapper. Some mappers work alone, others with a small group of more or less internal testers, while others have large followings and can get a dozen or more testers right on the forums. The latter group will probably be more successful at honing settings other than UV. For the most part, everyone plays UV and tests UV, including players who are not really skilled at UV and cry "too hard" at tough mapsets. The bottom line is that UV is well attended-to while other settings, typically, are not.

I long ago gave up trying to hone settings other than UV. How do you even do it unless you have real, genuine HMP and HNTR testers, by which I mean people who preferentially play on those settings? Luckily, I do have one very good HMP player as a tester, who is also one of the greatest mappers around, but now, try finding an HNTR tester. Might be easier to find a living sabertoothed cat. ;) I tend to believe that only a real HNTR player can test HNTR for you. Therefore, it is impossible for me to develop a well-honed HNTR, so I don't even try.

My answer to this thorny dilemma has been a variation on what you describe as a "linear reduction in difficulty," which I call The Power of Threes because it sounds incredibly pretentious. :D It's a very simple method -- if I have, for example, 3 Revvies in a particular encounter on UV, then on HMP there will be 2 and on HNTR there is only 1. I don't trade 3 Revvies for 3 Imps because there is a huge difference between those enemies, and changing the monster type changes the entire character of the combat. Now, in some cases I might go from 3 Chaingunners to 3 Sergeants, but I don't like to do that if I can avoid it. Another thing I don't do is make any change in health, armor or ammo. After all, if you reduce the health and ammo commensurate with the reduction in monsters, don't you essentially create a map just as hard as on UV but with fewer monsters? What's the point of that?

Of course, we can then wonder what constitutes an HMP or HNTR player. Are they less skilled, in which case giving them all the health and ammo of UV helps give them an edge, or are they actually skilled players who would rather not deal with hectic combat against large numbers of monsters in situations where health and ammo is tight? In other words, they're quality players who like a more relaxing pace, in which case, the extra health and ammo still seems like a good bet for a casual playthrough. I can only say that so far, my method has drawn no complaints from my HMP tester, and as for HNTR, no one has tested any of my maps on that setting except me.

You and Eris are both playing HNTR-continuous, making you basically the ultimate nightmare for mappers. :D So now I can finally get to your question about the Cyb. I personally tend to replace Cybs with Mancs on HNTR, but I've never liked doing that in situations where, for example, a trap has 1 or 2 Cybs, rather than 3. If you have a Manc and a Cyb you have the potential for infighting which ruins the encounter, so I believe that in the future, where I release 1 or 2 Cybs in an area, I'll keep them both and rely on the other enemy reductions to reduce the overall difficulty. I'm glad you brought this up because it's something that's been bugging me for awhile.

[Yugiboy85]

Map 06 - "Sinkhole showdown" (Skillsaw) - UV-MAX (kills/secrets)

Man, I really like this map. It reminds me of a map I played quite recently that was present in ad_79's "violence" and occupied the second slot. The map in question had a similar trap and was named "sinkhole". Anyhow, enough about violence, we are here to talk bout ancient aliens.

Just like the title says, you are gonna be fighting in a huge sinkhole for pretty much the entire map (with a few areas on the sides but, I'll get to these later). As soon as you pick up the shotgun, the hole starts to well sink and you are greated with an army of shotgunners coming from every direction. Move arround and try to find a safe spot, although, don't camp in it or you'll get blown up. There is a megaarmor arround but, I wouldn't suggest taking it now, unless you REALLY need it (that's what I did at least).

Once that is done, you can move on to go fetch the red skull (and a handy ssg) but, you'll be ambushed with 4 revenants and a bunch of monsters (demons, imps, shotgunners) teleporting in the surrounding areas. Again, I'd suggest moving arround although, try not to get stuck with the pinkies or you'll have a really bad time. I tried to get as much infight as possible going on although, I did have to kill the 1 or 2 revs that survived. Before pressing the red switch, I went to grab the berserk pack (in one of the side indoor areas), the rocket launcher and the one and only secret of the map (a soulphere). Speaking of that secret, once you open the wall that has the soulsphere (the one on the left), imediately head to the one on the right to dispose of the pain elementals (a few rockets/ssg shots shoudl do the trick) and then, you can grab the much welcomed soulsphere.

If you haven't picked up the blue armor by now, do it, you will absolutely need it for the next fight. Now, go and press the red switch and be greated with yet another sink in the hole and a "few" monsters :D
This time though, you will have not one but 2 viles scatering arround the areas and reviving shit so, get rid of them as quickly as you can. The rest should be easy. Don't forget to grab the blue skull in one of those alcoves. Oh, if you haven't picked the RL before the second sink, fair not as you will have a second one at your disposal.

Now, you'd think that you are done right? Wrong, there is one last encounter worth mentioning and that one is in the side area, pass the blue "door". It is quite tricky but, if you move arround carefully, you should be fine. This is where you get the last skull (the yellow one) and basically, you have to fight shit in a rather cramped area, including a cheaky archvile + mancubus.

Anyhow, overall this map is nice but tricky. It revovles arround a well executed concept and, it also looks nice (as you would expect from skillsaw by now). I had fun playing this.

["JL" was too short]

MAP06 - Excellent map, unquestionably the best so far. Gameplay is almost exactly what I was advocating for in terms of lower difficulty balance with my post on MAP05-- viz., intense fights but with enough supplies to get through them in (mostly) non-frustrating fashion. Visually, the natural rock formations and the structures are immaculately constructed and integrated with each other. The only thing I thought was a little off was the presence of Egyptian motifs-- Egypt makes a logical place for this megawad to go since, y'know, aliens built the pyramids and all that, but everything else aside from the few Egyptian textures seems to suggest that we're still solidly in the Native American Southwest/Mesoamerican regions of unreality. You could chalk it up to the vision quest/reality-bending/whatever blending the two themes together, but that strikes me as a little lazy. Oh well. Great map.

SteveD said:

You and Eris are both playing HNTR-continuous, making you basically the ultimate nightmare for mappers. :D So now I can finally get to your question about the Cyb. I personally tend to replace Cybs with Mancs on HNTR, but I've never liked doing that in situations where, for example, a trap has 1 or 2 Cybs, rather than 3. If you have a Manc and a Cyb you have the potential for infighting which ruins the encounter, so I believe that in the future, where I release 1 or 2 Cybs in an area, I'll keep them both and rely on the other enemy reductions to reduce the overall difficulty. I'm glad you brought this up because it's something that's been bugging me for awhile.

Wow, I wasn't expecting to get a thoughtful reply like this. What you've written is great, and I do agree with what you say about the linear-reduction approach working in a good deal of cases. But that, of course, just makes it stand out more strongly when it doesn't. And with vanilla monsters, there isn't really a good way to put 1/2 or 2/3 of a Cyberdemon in a map, so to speak-- you can replace it with a Mancubus, but a Mancubus isn't 1/3 of the threat of a Cyberdemon (assuming you're using it in the same way, as a major setpiece for a fight, and not the way you would use a Mancubus normally). It's much closer to 1/10th, I'd say, mainly because it's so much faster to kill. So for adapting Cyberdemon fights to low skill levels, I'm much more in favor of making sure the player has, say, a Megasphere and plenty of weapons/ammo, where they otherwise might not, than replacing it with another monster.

I'd say MAP01 is the rare case where the Mancubus is a fine lower-difficulty counterpart to the Cyberdemon, precisely because its damage output is of primary relevance and its health relative to the player's arsenal is less relevant. That is, no player on any skill level is expected to fight the monster normally at any stage of the map. I think I did end up shooting it with rockets at the end rather than figure out how to open the teleporter, but I could just as easily have exited.

[Deleted_Account]

Playing with GZDoom, on Ultra-Violence, continuous play, keyboard+mouse, no freelook, no jumping etc.

Map 07: Dare To Fly Where Eagles Soar

Verticality, Eagle warps and the quest for the three keys! I had a blast playing through this map. Everything about this map is awesome, I love the details and overall design and the different ways you can approach this map really work for me. For a map 07 I was expecting a homage to Dead Simple, but this was so much more. I especially like the central portion of this map with the various 'towers' where you can leap down onto them towards the teleport at the very end just to warp back to the start of the map. Makes for interesting ways to tackle the combat in that part of the map.

[Tristan]

I'm actually more of a HMP player, generally, because I'm well aware that I'm nowhere near good enough to handle most maps of at least this decade on UV. HMP I can usually manage, but when I know a mapset is going to be difficult I won't hesitate to drop it down to HNTR. Sunlust has quite a reputation for its difficulty, but on the whole it was reasonably manageable on hntr. Is this wad in the same league as sunlust for difficulty? Perhaps not but rc1 tore me to shreds in ways that sunlust didn't until map17 and beyond. Not knowing what to expect in rc3, I stuck with hntr. The way things have gone, given I'm also forced to play keyboard-only at the moment, I could probably handle HMP.

Now I'm hoping this doesn't look like I complained about it being too hard and now I'm complaining it's too easy, because I'm totally not. I'm really enjoying this so far.

I'm still a tester's worst nightmare though because I'm not entirely sure I have a clear idea on what good gameplay is (thanks for that explanation by the way dew). Even I find the small number of maps I've made to be complete failures in the gameplay department :p

By the way, loving these pictures, Piper Maru xD

[baja blast rd.]

map07

This one has a greater degree of kinship with skillsaw's earlier works -- Valiant especially, but a bit of Vanguard -- than anything we've seen so far. The emphasis is on a hopscotchy progression through a very simply shaped central area, into various simply shaped areas in the perimeter to pick up keys. Retexture it, replace the baron party with pyro knights, and sprinkle in some arachnorbs, it wouldn't be so out of place in the first half of Valiant's blood episode.

Gameplay is starting to get slightly meaner purely in terms of composition, with a lot of close-ranged rev traps (among my favorite simple things in Doom), and with the encounters that don't use hitscanners as a primary threat (which is most of them) revolving around threatening your space with beefy monsters. But the balance is probably the most generous so far -- two blue armors, a free soulsphere and quartet of medkits in addition to the ample health doled around, and a lot of rockets -- so mistakes will be forgiven, if they don't kill you first.

Some of use noticed the mancubeaux positioned in a symmetrical way at the outset and assumed we were in for a Dead Simple remix, but despite their perched presence -- presumably as the map's titular "eagles", who happen to fly only when you aren't looking -- the customary 666/667 tags are completely unused, so I imagine map07 is in the running for some bonus points.

[Pirx]

MAP05 - "Last Refuge of the Anasazi" by skillsaw

very fun map indeed. a kind of arena with pillars and walls as obstacles, and that cyber whose complicated relationship with doomguy tends to ruin the lives of many lesser inhabitants of this place, set in the same desert as the maps before. basically it's grab berserk pack, run circles until they eat rockets, or bash their faces in if they don't. the keys needed for leaving the place are found in the "leaves" branching off the central arena. the red key (iirc) is found in a that part with a pool and a waterfall, where i skated around like a clown to rocket the mancs without having pinkies get in the way, before discovering that killing the aranchnotrons behind the waterfall and fighting from there is probably safer. i didn't get the plasma gun on my first playthrough and exited somewhat surprised, with the frustrated cyber still alive. actually, he's never a threat as long as you keep moving, that fucking revenant on the ledge to the left of the starting point was much more annoying.



MAP06 - "Sinkhole Showdown" by skillsaw

the, um, gimmick of this map is that the floor sinks in, revealing more of the map, as well as enemies. the first reveal is a lot of shotgunners. the second one, when you grab the ssg, is more serious, with a bunch of revs and 2 archies, who need some hide & seek around the stone pillars in the sinkhole until they're done. the exit is rather unexpected, as the few imps on the rocks above seemed just a decoy, but the exit is right there.



MAP07 - "Dare to Fly Where Eagles Soar" by skillsaw

another map that puts you on the move right from the start. leap across the platforms to collect weapons and return to the starting point to shoot rockets at the cacos so they don't follow you everywhere. a few mancubi acting as turrets don't need to be shot, instead they will learn the power of the eagle warp (one by one, there's not this telefragging them in a row). i guessed a solution like that this time and enjoyed moving through the map quickly so the mancs never found a target, all to a happy tune that doesn't sound like doom. only the baron trap at the rocket launcher got me, i entered very carefully but the barons are released after the first step already so you have to snipe the arachnotrons right there, hugging the wall, to have enough space to deal with the barons. the map flows beautifully, you return to the platforms every time via teleport and jump somewhere else until you have all 3 keys. surprisingly the exit isn't guarded heavily.

[Pirx]

Piper Maru said:

]http://i.imgur.com/1ESQSnC.png

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Spectre01]

Map 07

Excellent map. Love the vertical aspect of it as well as the tighter, literally, combat scenarios. I have to admit I got roasted by that Manc that spawns in behind you by trying to get out and getting blocked by him. Much better to run into one of the dark rooms that opens up. There's also a much better way to handle the Cacoswarm by taking the teleporter back to the starting area and letting them come to you, while probably infighting in the process. I decide to rocket them all in that small area while getting shot from every which way. I managed to grab the Soulsphere secret quite early but never found the second one, even after a bit of searching. Also, during that Baron encounter, it's possible to kill the Shotgunners and spiders before the Barons appear by being very careful in shooting around corners after the initial drop. Great midi too but I say that for nearly every map.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP06: Sinkhole Showdown
100% kills, 1/1 secret

This is a nice, quick 'n' bloody map. Nice little gimmick here, which gives the level a bit of charm but feels more like a clever presentation than anything that really changes up the playstyle - at it's core, it's just a way to keep unleashing waves of hellspawn at the player. I like the mix of enemies here, and the way they're placed at different ends, really giving the player a chance to run around and choose how to start tearing through things.

[scifista42]

MAP05 - "Last Refuge of the Anasazi" by skillsaw

There were only three minor things I disliked about this map: That a couple areas were needlessly symmetrical (-0.1 star), that the SSG secret was hidden behind a completely random wall (-0.1 star), and that the rocket launcher secret was disconnected from the otherwise very compact map (-0.05 star). Otherwise, the map was excellent. Good layout and visuals, fun gameplay, progression and music, all fitting each other more than nicely. 4.75/5

[rehelekretep]

MAP06 - "Sinkhole Showdown" by skillsaw FDA here

wow! just when i was letting my hype deflate (can hype deflate?) this map wins me back - absolutely loved almost everything about it

+ the floor lowering is a fantastic way to refresh and make use of a similar layout, but with enough changes to make it challenging for the player
+ the revenant SSG ambush is fantastic (there's a particularly cool rocket dodge in the youtube vid)
+ another great MIDI

- the 4 shotgunners and lone arachnotron felt a little bit lonely/bit-part; i feel like they could be removed and it wouldnt hurt the map at all
- despite the confusion of the first shotgun ambush, if you run to the RK area you can snipe them as they come round each corner (in the video)

[baja blast rd.]

[edit: nvm, something strange on my end]

[dobu gabu maru]

SteveD said:

So now the question of how each mapper sets the difficulty in their maps. Again, that's relative to the mapper.

Tru dat. I'm someone that generally disregards the "linear decrease" approach to balancing and preferring instead to manually "toggle" problematic monsters. The 3/2/1 ratio stuff can work well, but more often than not the player ends up struggling due to tricky monsters or ambushes. Think about it—rarely will the player get mauled by three imps/demons/cacos, but three revs/chaingunners/AVs? They can most certainly ruin a run. On top of that, I adhere to 40oz's philosophy of "worse players don't want to fight less monsters" (still the best advice I've read on here), and often find replacing perched revs with imps to be a "fun" alternative to removing the enemy in that spot altogether.

It may also depend on how integral monsters are to the map's theme or not too. Ancient Aliens' MAP01 doesn't necessarily need a cyberdemon in it as much as it needs a central foe that's not easily dispatched, so I think the change to a mancubus is a good inclusion. With MAP05 it's a bit trickier since the player has more means to combat the cybie, so the big stomper's addition would be a better (read: more approachable) fit than MAP01... I guess it depends if skillsaw saw him as the central theme to the level or not. Also another means of depreciating a high-tier monster's threat is to always provide plenty of armor too, since keeping an HNTR player well dressed definitely helps survivability in the face of a tough encounter.

MAP06: Alright, a multi-tiered arena battle! This one was a lot of fun despite being pretty quick, thanks to a constant stream of hitscanners and—of course!—the archviles. I had a momentary bout of stubbornness and tried to fend of both AVs at 30% health with just the SSG, which took... a long time to do. Felt great when I finally pulled it off though! A fun little massacre of a map.

MAP07: This was an alright map. Doesn't feel as notable as the last few, but it's more of a well-balanced level, giving you time to take things at your own pace after the initial rush. Not too hard either, though some parts were surprisingly risky—like the big baron fight—and it ends just about when you'd expect it to.

[Steve D]

Map06, Sinkhole Showdown, the keyboarder's nightmare! Well, this keyboarder, anyway. ;D

I hated this map on UV. Outright loathing. It was all because of the Pain Elementals in the Archie fight. Everything aside from them was fairly easy, which for me, on a bite-sized, monster-heavy map like this, means about 8 deaths or so. Thanks to the PEs, it was maybe north of 20. I don't mind dying as long as I'm having fun, and getting through a map without being killed isn't even on my radar as a goal. Indeed, if I manage to beat a map on UV without getting killed, I'll get pissed at the mapper. I mean, you're not even trying if you can't get an easy out like me, so please turn in your copy of DB2 at the door, because you're not good at this, thank you very much. ;D

Time after time I almost beat that Archie fight only to have one of the widely-scattered Lost Souls zoom in from some unseen quarter and bite me to death. For my dismal playing skills, I didn't have the right weapons and ammo to deal with the PE threat. I really needed a Chaingun for anti-air defense, though a Plasma Gun would be even better. I was never able to isolate the PEs -- except for once -- to use the RL. It was hard to see them against the dark rock and behind a cloud of Lost Souls. I'll have to watch the Keleher video and the rdwpa demo to see how they handled it.

"Too Hard" is never a valid criticism of a map, since it always really means "Too hard for me" unless it's coming from the mouth of an acknowledged Doom God like DotW. So, considering my conversation about difficulty settings with jerryshappy, I gave it a whirl on HNTR. Wow, what a difference! A Blue Armor and a Blursphere at the start, plus a Soulsphere out in the open on the level with the Soulsphere secret. You can even grab the Zerk without getting a Revvie in your face. And best of all, NO Pain Elementals in the Archie fight! That made it super-easy -- especially with only 1 Archie. Ammo was still limited, as I ran out of shells again. I have to tip my hat to Skillsaw and his brain trust for the tight ammo balance, even if tight ammo isn't something I especially enjoy in a map. ;) Nonetheless, they managed to make it happen. One thing that stayed the same was the Rocket Launcher trap. The yellow key pitfall dick-trap was different, but still very difficult for me because I suck at in-yer-grill traps with monsters coming from 4 directions. You do have time to select the SSG after Skillsaw does yet another weapons troll by auto-selecting the Chaingun when you pick it up, as it's not the right weapon for this situation. Good use of a Baron on HNTR, I must admit, as you can get jammed into a corner and slimed.

UV was too much for me on this map, and HNTR wasn't quite enough. HMP might have been just right but I didn't have time to try it. One of the nice things about pistol-starting is that you don't get stuck on a difficulty setting in order to keep your saves and your stash of weapons/ammo and the all-important Backpack you carry from map to map. Pistol-starters can go up and down the difficulty scale as needed.

Architecture-wise this map reminded me a bit of Map02 or 03 from Valiant, but it lacked the height variation which made that map so much fun for me, although it was a LOT easier than this one. The use of pillars and archways breaks up the floor and allows monsters to approach you from unpredictable directions as they are masked until they step out in the open. If I'd been able to scale to greater heights, I could have gotten more isolation of the PEs, but I'm guessing that the constant-descent gimmick made that difficult or even impossible from an architecture standpoint.

I wasn't really thrilled with this map on the difficulty settings I played, so it continues the theme of this megawad being a mixed bag for me. On a brighter note, the happy, peppy MIDI was just as much fun as that of the previous map.

[rehelekretep]

sorry Steve you will be disappointed as i didnt find any secrets in map06 :(

i think ive found a total of 1 secret in the 6 maps so far! im no good at finding them but that's poor even for me. i think its a combo of the maps forcing you to rush around, and my general distaste for post-fight secret hunting. i dont want to go around the map when everything's dead looking for secrets for 10 minutes.

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP07 Dare To Fly Where Eagles Soar

There's a track from Interception named. Super fun level revolving around jumps, but not the super-annoying kind thankfully. The jumping at the beginning and for the rocket launcher stand out, as are the eagle warps which telefrag those annoying mancubi. I swear skillsaw, the more mancubi I see in your wads... Of course, it's sort of justified in this being MAP07, but I don't remember if there were tags or not, since I was busy having fun with the center and the sides as well. See guys? This is how jumping stuff should be, not the stupid ones that require literally precise timing or something.

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP07: Dare To Fly Where Eagles Soar

I tackled this one fairly cautiously but it seems like the layout and monster placement would allow for some very free-flowing action should a player decide to rush ahead; the small swarm of cacodemons feel like they'd be relatively good at continuing to harass a player no matter which of the three branches of the map they chose to pursue. The repeated use of eagle warps contributes to the map's fun, quirky feel, and the individual challenges preceding each warp and its key are engaging setups. I think I spent more time hunting down the map's last secret (the berserk pack in the west wing) than anything else, but that's mostly due to me failing to recognise the clues presented.

[Steve D]

rehelekretep said:

sorry Steve you will be disappointed as i didnt find any secrets in map06 :(

Actually, your video, and rdwpa's demo, was a big help in allowing me to figure out why my run was so disastrous. Neither of you had to deal with Pain Elementals in the Archie fight, yet you both played on UV like I did. You didn't find the Soulsphere secret, but rdwpa and I did. The secret releases 2 Pain Elementals in the room next door. rdwpa killed them right away because he was familiar with the map. I staggered out of there without even noticing them, until, when I was close to the place where you get the SSG, a Lost Soul went flying past my head, so I turned around and killed the PEs.

As it happens, the spot where I killed the PEs was directly in front of the closet where an Archie would emerge later. As a result, the PEs were not, as I thought, part of the monster horde released for the Archie fight. Instead, they were rezzed by the Archie which emerged from that closet -- the farther one from where you press the switch that lowers the arena. I made a God Mode run to confirm these findings.

The long and short of it is that those PEs ruined the map for me. I'll make a post in Skillsaw's thread about it.

[KBlaney]

Map 06: Ah, here's the Skillsaw maps I remember from Valiant. Crazy amounts of monsters with more spawning in each minute. I think there are two ways to play this: slow/methodical and interesting (where interesting means “Oh god! Oh god! We're all going to die!”). Probably the one kink in the interesting way is the archvile since you are not likely to take him out with monster infighting, so kill a bunch of stuff and then kill him while he's running around raising everything. Lots of fun and non stop action but short enough that I didn't feel the need to save scum anything.

Map 07: This map has some telefrag mancs. I can only imagine how crazy this level might be on UV with telefrag cyberdemons instead. All in all, however, not that hard even with the few archviles running around here. I especially liked the spiders on either side of the barrons in the middle. I thought that had me but somehow managed to pull through. It looks like just the right balance between open space to run and cover to not get destroyed by the spiders.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP07: Dare To Fly Where Eagles Soar
100% kills, 2/2 secrets

Ah, back to telefragging enemies with spirit animals, though this time it's more to get keys than eliminate turrets (which are mancs even on UV, so not very dangerous). It's actually a nice little take on the "gather three keys and open up the three-key exit door" bit, with a good fight in the large central chamber before exploring the outskirts for the spirit eagle teleporters to the keys. The map is actually quite easy, I finished on 200/200 and then found the secret soulsphere. The most hardest part for me was getting stuck on the staircase heading to the red key lift and taking some unneccesary shots from an arachnotron.

["JL" was too short]

MAP07 - Yay, we get to make another new animal friend! This time it's a bird--the eponymous Eagle, I assume--helping us reach high places for the keys (and maybe telefrag some monsters in the process), which is certainly thematically appropriate. Other than that, this map felt like a bit of a downgrade after the previous one, which was admittedly a hard act to follow. It's still more than competent on all axes, but felt like veering back towards the 'generic map architecture that happens to be dressed up in AA textures' syndrome that several people have noted in the earlier maps.

I was a little bit surprised not to see the usual text crawl between MAP06 and MAP07. I assume that some sort of zDoom feature was used to skip it, but in a megawad that seems to be as closely tied to a sort of story concept (if a very self-awarely campy one) I was expecting/hoping for a little update on how my vision quest was going. Ah well. While I'm on the subject of text string replacements, I find the replacement of all the monster names with 'Alien' in the zdoom death messages to be a little bit dumb, but that's probably just the fact that the original four Doom novels have made me allergic to anyone trying to suggest that the Doom monsters are space aliens. Yes, I know we're playing a megawad named Ancient Aliens with the aliens meme guy in the menu, but I've been assuming that the demons had just crashed the party somehow and it wasn't literally a case of Barons of Hell piloting flying saucers in lieu of little green men. Anyway, I digress.

Something probably not related to the megawad itself, but twice in this map I saw monsters stand back up after the archvile had died. In one case the resurrection animation started at about the same time the arch-vile started its death animation, which is relatively easily explainable, but the other time I would swear the rez animation started at, or after, the end of the AV's death animation. Spooky. Anyway, either way I don't remember ever having witnessed this before, so for it to happen twice in one map was interesting.

[Yugiboy85]

Map 07 - "Dare to Fly where Eagles Soar" (Skillsaw) - UV-MAX (kills/secrets)

First of all, FANTASTIC midi track. Probably my favorite of the earlier maps. Cujos to stewboy :D

Now, on to the main thing. This map is, well, not as hard as I thought it would be although, there are some tricky parts (Baron/arachnotron combo in the RL section comes to mind). The rest of the encounters were fairly easy although, I must say that the cacoswarm (near the 3 keyed door) was quite a pain in the ass as it left me almost with no ammo at the beginning of the map. Do be careful at them corners as some cheaky shotgunners/chaingunners might plundge you. I'm of course referring to the beginning of the map where you grab the different weapons.

I did die a few times but that was mainly due to my own stupidity. Getting the soulsphere secret on the right side of the exit door area was welcomed. Funilly enough, I did not find myself needing the berserk secret that much. But, it's still a nice addition as it makes punching revs much "easier" (once you have the hang of it) :D

Overall, a fun little map that I would play again, no problem.

Next map is where things get a little more dificult but, it also starts to bring the impressive stuff of the wad :D

[scifista42]

MAP06 - "Sinkhole Showdown" by skillsaw

Another nice map packed with fun challenging fights and twists, this time seemingly flawless, aside from lack of memorable landmarks that would make me remember the map in long term. 5/5

[mouldy]

MAP07 - "Dare to Fly Where Eagles Soar" by skillsaw

More of a straightforward adventure, albeit with some hopping and skipping over tall towers. Thats a great way to start a map, running and jumping into a den of cacos. After that its a case of methodical clearance, which seems like a breather after the frantic hide and seek of earlier maps. But that doesn't stop you from charging around like a maniac of course, should you so desire. Even so, I don't think I died on this one. Pretty sure I've died on all the others so far..