The DWmegawad Club plays: Ancient Aliens

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP20 Code

The guy with the relevant avatar makes a map here. Interesting use of "weapon choice" at the beginning, and two distinct paths to take. I think I went for the red key area before the blue key one in my last playthrough, but I went there first this time. Highlight are the arch-holograms with barrels teleporting on them, hiding, you guessed it and I'm not gonna say it. The path to the blue key was honestly not as fun as I had previously expected. The blocks help in dodging but that's about it. Only need one of the two keys but I'm always open for the optionalility. Don't like that one rocket box secret much. I wonder if I'm the only one who hates getting secrets at the very end of a level when everything is already done. I mean it helps the continuous players of course, but with all these people pistol starting, what use is it to them?

[KBlaney]

Map 19: This map exists in a near constant state of low ammo and it is amazing how well balanced it is on that fact. The berzerk pack comes in handy as something more than just a quick 100% health bonus. You have to be careful with your ammo because they manage to give you two of the most ammo eating weapons in the game but not a lot of ammo to go with them. I also really like the opening area's environmental story telling continued from the previous episode. The soulsphere for telefraging the archvile is much appreciated here.

Others are commenting on the UV version of this map being mostly fists and few guns about it being a major shift in difficulty. Generally I don't think this is a bad thing. Those of us who don't really want to spend hours trying to get through a single map or otherwise suck too much to play on UV are likely going to burn through our ammo really quick because the weapons provided eat a lot of ammo quickly. There isn't so much ammo to completely change the level provided a lower skilled player. As I was saying above, it really speaks to Skillsaw's skill as a mapper that he managed to balance this map for us noobs.

Map 20: Straight forward key finding mission here. Keeps the ammo pressure up which is tough to do over so many levels playing continuous. No real major gotchas here, but the scarce ammo keeps you on your toes. There's a cool little mechanic here where blowing up a barrel spawns an archvile. (This is hinted at very clearly by the hologram archvile standing over the barrel. Good conveyance is always nice.)

Magnusblitz said:

Extracting it out and playing it backwards...

Spoiler

https://cdn.meme.am/instances/500x/42887155.jpg
(well, it's missing the "to me" but still)

You are a gentleman and a scholar, Magnusblitz.

["JL" was too short]

MAP20

This level is another example of what I've previously (MAP17) referred to as the megawad finally hitting its stride. The integration of textures here, in particular, feels like it's arrived at the proper ethos-- an integration of the technological and the arcane/sacred that feels as though it's made by a society that knows its way around both, in much the same way as Doom's demons have always been implied to do. In other words, we've finally moved past the "Eternal Doom" school of combining texture themes and are now in something that feels more authentically techno-arcane. As such, this is simply a great map to run around in and enjoy the eye candy while blasting demons, which is really all you could ever ask for.

Gameplay-wise, you only need one key to exit, though of course I was having enough fun that I got both for completion's sake. Both keys involve some sort of arch-vile gimmick fight, and both of them were nicely thought out. I did the red key first, and other people have commented on it but I'd just like to be the one to dub this gimmick "The Barrellian Candidates."

The airborne streams of what I'm assuming is the 'code' of the title are a really neat visual hook and make me want to see someone do the same thing with hellish sigils.

[mouldy]

MAP20 - "Code" by AD_79

A well made map, fun to play, but I'm a bit confused as to where I am now. The rocky surroundings look a bit earth-like, and are littered with cow skulls. Unless the cows are also aliens perhaps? Or maybe thats why the aliens came to earth, to abduct a bunch of cows for snacksies. Anyway, the action is much as to be expected, with the added bonus of chaingunners everywhere. Nice to get all the weapons straight after a fisticuffs map. I'm still playing continuous so I'll be keeping all those, thanks. There were some painful battles, first the weird barrel/archvile set-up that required a little bit of luck. The other nasty bit also featured 2 archviles, I'm not sure even luck would have helped me with that one, I just had to take a hit and survive somehow. Nothing too traumatic though.

[dobu gabu maru]

MAP20: Always enjoy playing a new AD map, and this is no different. While there was a whole kerfuffle about AD being too “skillsaw inspired” in the 50 Monsters thread, I feel like this does a good job at proving his individuality. Whereas they both love using descending floors to reveal monster closets, AD’s general architecture here has a bit more consistency and symmetry to it. His texture use is also considerably more flamboyant, as one can picture him enthusiastic mashing reds, purples, and blues together to form this neon tract of land. But the enemy placement is probably his greatest strength, as AD routinely relies on placing you in shitty situations at the end of teles/tops of lifts, rather than having the tough encounters “reveal” themselves by way of trap closets. That, and he always sprinkles in hitscanners amidst the standard enemies to keep you on your toes. The two key battles also have some nifty mechanics going on, and *gasp* the player only needs one key to exit! I approve.

Really fun map that gels better with the set than Joshy’s MAP09. Love the midtex code floating throughout the level too. Props to using the same exit room as skillsaw too. Only qualm is that I associate this specific texture with a key door, so seeing it used as a "regular" door is jarring.

[Tristan]

dobu gabu maru said:

While there was a whole kerfuffle about AD being too “skillsaw inspired” in the 50 Monsters thread, I feel like this does a good job at proving his individuality.

If only we didn't know which maps were the guest maps, a little game of "Spot the AD" would put this to the test :)

Spoiler

Ah, there's one!

--

MAP20: Code - AD_79
Time: 04:20 (03:05:23) | Deaths: 2 (18)

I think I agree with dobu though, it feels distinct enough from the skillsaw maps, though exactly why this is I'm not sure. Maybe I only think it's distinct because I knew beforehand it's not actually a skillsaw map? Maybe there's only two keys in it and that gives the game away? :P

Anyway, what sets this map up to stand out from the crowd a bit is that the start area is noticeably symmetrical - not a complaint, mind you - and only one of the two keys is required, and this is where I assume Getsu Fune missed the intent with the secret that requires going to the exit; the rockets are there to help you deal with the monsters surrounding the key you didn't go for, assuming you didn't go for both. I didn't because I went for all the red doors in turn, missing the blue completely and I expect I'm not alone in that.
I did go back and try and get the blue key for the sake of completeness, but I lowered some platforms, it spawned monsters nearby, I used those rockets on them and the platforms rose back in my face again :( Didn't bother trying it again, since I already had to do the exit again following that death.
My other death is quite embarrassing, but also quite apt given that this is AD's map. I encountered just one of the monsters that many of us have taken to naming in reference to him, but it was only here I realised they explode quite dangerously upon death, and I was just a bit too close to this one. So that explains the mysterious disappearances of some of them when they appear in groups, that confused me a few times.

This map's thing is the area with the rotating archvile hologram, which I remember some people in TNS tried shooting at for maybe a bit longer than they really should have, heh. What I forgot was their function, so it remained a nice surprise here. There is that initial "oh shit" feeling when you first see them because ultimately, it's two arch-viles in their attack stance, but then you realise they're rotating, and there's no flames. And they're red. And hovering.
So I thought I knew what was going to happen, so I had the plasma gun ready for two archviles, I hit the switch and...

Well, now I understand the nicknames referencing Valiant MAP07. Very surprising to just see two barrels appear instead of monsters, but although I knew at this point what the trick was, it didn't stop me using rockets here, and of course one of them blew up and the vile appeared instantly. As I already mentioned in this thread, Valiant 07 wasn't to my liking the idea had potential, and I think this kind of confirms that. While this is done on a much smaller scale, when you consider that the entire map in Valiant was based around the mechanism, and the danger is far less significant because of that, I feel that the implementation is a good enough improvement over the map that introduced it. Yeah, while you have to be careful not to blow up the barrels, I guess it is still prone to a monster destroying them instead, but it seems that the player has a lot more control over the situation this time, probably because we're working with a smaller number of monsters, and they're all low-tier, they aren't coming from virtually every possible direction, and it's just a smaller space making them easier to deal with. I think it also helps that barrels obviously don't fight back like monsters do, which never helped the situation in the Valiant map.
The rest of the gameplay is pretty standard, like the map really only wants to show off it's Valiant homage, and there's just fairly basic combat for the rest of it, but it's enjoyable enough to stop it detracting from the map as a whole.

Visually it's on point, fitting in nicely and consistently with the rest of the WAD with regards to texture use, though I agree with mouldy, I'm not entirely sure where we are now. This doesn't seem to be where MAP19 took place, so was that just a flying visit? Are we to see more of this mysterious location in future maps?

8/10

[AD_79]

Any possible homages/similarities to Valiant MAP07 with the red key area are purely coincidental and were not intended. I simply had an idea of having barrels block monsters from teleporting in, and then implemented it. Don't think I had Valiant on the brain at the time.

Glad to see you guys are at least enjoying the map. I was rather curious to see how it would be received :)

[Suitepee]

AD_79 said:

Glad to see you guys are at least enjoying the map. I was rather curious to see how it would be received :)

Any chance of 'Violence 2' using the AA texture pack?

[AD_79]

Suitepee said:

Any chance of 'Violence 2' using the AA texture pack?

I'll absolutely try and do more with the Ancient Aliens resources, but not anytime soon. So, no :P

[SoundofDoomDoors]

MAP20: Code (AD_79)

100% Kills 100% Secrets

This map had a pretty crazy start with the weapon selection, skeletons, and that DAMN chaingunner shielded by imps that messed with my autoaim. I feel I made the wrong choice taking the rocket launcher early, and then going into the blue key wing, which proved much MUCH harder than the rest of the level. I took five or six deaths there. A few were blowing myself up on the pillars trying to kill the viles. The others were the enemies themselves frying me. Then I blazed through the rest of the map. Either it got easier as I played or I stumbled into the most difficult section first.

The archvile setpiece in the red key area was pretty cool too. I took one chaingun shot at the holograms. Then I noticed they didn't react and continued on my way. I didn't know The Mancubian Candidate used a similar setup with the monsters being held back. I think I shot one of the barrels before I understood the trap, caught on, and a monster triggered the last one. Neither vile got far before I blew him up with the rocket launcher.

[Steve D]

And now for Map12 where Skillsaw lays a little Magenta Heat on us. But first;

dobu gabu maru said:

Cold Seep HNTR removes the cyber so naturally I need more enemies in his place to fill his "danger" role. For the most part the rest of my maps also follow the decreasing enemy number trend though—Cold Seep is the outlier due to the cyb. Also I hope you're not getting as obsessed with enemy number disparity as you are with pelts :P

Okay, now I get it about Cold Seep. Makes perfect sense. As for my many Doom obsessions, yeah, I've eased up a bit on the pelt issue, so your record will probably stand forever. :) I'm playing a few of these AA maps in UV and Easy just to get a feel of the difference in a mapset that's still quite smashmouth but somewhat more traditional than the all-out slaughter stuff. I also have the ulterior motive of begging for HNTR testers, so I'm hoping some of the HNTR guys in this thread will show up for my next beta release. ;)

As for Magenta Heat, yep, it was an entirely different map on UV -- which I struggled through first, whining and bitching all the way -- than it was on HNTR, which was an absolute breeze.

What made UV tough was that it's practically a survivalist map, one of my least favorite Doom tropes. You really had to make almost every shot count. Being a keyboarder, I'm less accurate than a good mouser, and flicking from one target to another is likely to result in wasted ammo. Combine that with a miserly amount of health and especially armor, throw in Speed Racer plasma jagoffs plus flying Revvie-rocket assholes and you can start counting the SteveD pelts handed over to Skillsaw. Oh, and don't forget the distant Chaingunners sniping at you when you have 10% health and you're trying to corner-abuse your way through. I also failed to find the secret Soulsphere on UV so I was a bleeding wreck until almost the very end.

On HNTR, you get a Blue Armor right at the start! Holy Toledo, it's a Skillsaw Christmas. The second I grabbed that thing I figured there was no chance of me dying, which turned out to be correct, because by this time I'd read the commentaries and figured out where the secret SS was, though in the end it wasn't necessary. But with the SS and the BA, I was able to play with the soaring confidence of a low life jagoff suddenly given a grenade launcher in the midst of a neighborhood dispute. Fuck with me now, bitches! ;D I'd already been through the trenches on UV, so I understood which tactics worked for me. At that first big trap up the stairs which had been murder on UV, I killed literally everything with 2 shotgun blasts! Yeah, for real! I killed 2 plasma jagoffs with my first blast, which still had enough buckshot to fly past them and detonate a mass of barrels that eliminated an entire wing of monsters. I then took 1 step forward, turned right, and kablooey!!!!! -- a Revvie and some other monsters vanish in a cloud of toxic flame. I couldn't fucking believe it! :D

The jollies continued as every lesson painfully learned on UV was applied to the expeditious mass murder of each drooling malcontent on this base. HNTR gives you a Soulsphere before you open the red door. I was at 177% so I didn't bother with either the Blueberry or the Zerk. I knew this time not to fall for the Skillsaw troll where a Sergeant is behind the barrels. I ran forward, set off the trap, and leaped off the platform before the Sarge could fire, teleported back up across the way, and laid some unholy rocket and barrel waste on those mofos.

Now it was Archie time. On UV I'd grabbed the Zerk even though I was at 95%, and it did me very little good as Archie had too much room to slide by. A Doom Boxing Match between me and an Archvile is like pitting some stumbling drunk swinging at the clouds against Floyd Mayweather Jr. The results are predictable. On my second try, I was able to hug the wall and chaingun his shoulder, which peeked past the wall while an Imp blocked him from entering the hallway. He dodged back towards the exit door, which allowed me to unlimber the RL, duck into the Sergeant closet and launch a barrage which finished him off. On HNTR, The Archie is behind a ton of barrels, so one rocket to set them off and almost kill him, and a second to take him out.

I'll have to agree with Dobu, it's just fine for HNTR to have a completely different feel than UV. I finished HNTR with a fair amount of ammo, including 9 rockets, and a big smile on my face because it was such fun to have a relaxing blast through a map which had just whupped my ass an hour earlier. Revenge is so sweet. ;)

I'll also lodge a mild disagreement with Eris. I obviously haven't played everything, but saying this map is like a techbase you'd find "in any modern megawad," should be more like, "in any modern megawad of the highest quality." This level of detailing, including IMO instances of overdetailing, is a lot of work. Yes, it does use patently BTSX E1 methods in detailing, and why not, since Skillsaw did 2 maps for that project -- btw, nice catch by rdwpa of its similar layout to Map03 of BTSX E1 -- and I agree that a mere riot of color is not in and of itself a very "alien" aesthetic. Eternal did a very alien-looking environment in one of his Epic 2 maps, and Soundblock's "Plasmaplant" had some otherwordly areas as well. Maybe someone should rip textures from the alien areas of Star Trek Voyager:Elite Force. So as I said, a mild disagreement.

Overall, I quite enjoyed this one.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP20: Code
100% kills, 0/2 secrets

Looking at the maplist, Episode 3 has a lot more 'guest authors' than the other two episodes, and this is the first one of the episode. Funny enough, my main criticism for other AD_79 maps I've played has been his overuse of color... not a problem for this mapset, it's practically required!

This one gave me a fair amount of trouble though, with some dastardly traps and (what seemed to me at least) very stingy ammo and health provided. I was around 50 health and 50 green armor after finishing the red key wing, saw how both keys open the same doors, and decided to go back and try the blue key wing for completeness' sake... and when I came back, I was almost out of ammo across the board. Thankfully the last fight provides a fair amount of ammo (and is one of the easier fights in the level) but man, those two wings were a doozy. I liked the red key barrel/AV setup (I'm assuming that area is the front of an Arch-Vile strip club, btw), and I really liked the blue key fight where the greedy player will be punished by not having any cover. Good addition to the set by AD, and it fits well, though I also agree with mouldy that I'm not quite sure where we're supposed to be story-wise as the setting has shifted again.

[Tristan]

@SteveD: Well those weren't my exact words :P
I was talking about more about the shapes used rather than the level of detailing, because MAP12 doesn't lack detailing any less than other maps (and I take back the comment about lighting, I had that one wrong), but it almost entirely uses lots of shapes that are intended to make something look more interesting - since the consensus these days is that 90° angles are the worst thing to happen to mapping in the last 89 years - and yes it's true that it's got a very nice level of detailing, and it does indeed look better than it would if it were primarily orthogonal in design, but despite all this, I just don't find it to be a particularly interesting map to look at, and that really makes it stick out like a sore thumb in this WAD, where the vast majority have quite a lot going for them.

The colours are all it really has going for it, visually, and even then the dark magenta on the glowing SHAWN textures is pretty ugly from a distance, and I'm not sold on the liquid in darker light levels either. No, it's not an all-round bad looking map, but I think more interesting looking techbases can be found in just about every modern mapset that I remember playing.

[Steve D]

Eris Falling said:

@SteveD: Well those weren't my exact words :P

Right you are! My apologies, I was quoting the impression I got from your words, not the words themselves. My bad.

Personally, I haven't thought the earlier maps, in general, were all that marvelous visually in terms of their bare structure. Map01 stands out as basically kind of blah to me, and Map02 only slightly better in terms of the architecture. In E1, it was the batch from 07 thru 10 that grabbed me, with 10 being an absolute stunner. Of course that comes down to personal taste, where I tend to prefer epic scope to bitsy maps. There's a reason why Michael Krause remains one of my favorite mappers. Epic scope was his specialty, more than anyone else I can think of in Doom history. And Mr. Krause was, as I said in those bygone days when I had the privilege of playtesting his maps, "the master of the rectangle," which dovetails into another of your comments. ;)

However, all the maps in Ancient Aliens, whether their basic structure thrills me or not, are finished to an extraordinary level, especially in terms of decorative non-playable areas outside the map, which lend them a sense of scope and place. That element was missing in Map12, as it's the first one entirely contained within its borders. I thought it did well with those limits, though some of the fiddly detail, such as the floor on the path to the blue key, with all its 8-unit drops, were merely for the sake of visual interest, I presume.

This brings up another question -- how does Skillsaw do it? First Valiant, now Ancient Aliens, 2 megawads finished to a fare-thee-well, and whether the maps are smallish or not, that's an incredible amount of high-quality work just on the structural end, to say nothing of developing the gameplay mechanics and testing it all. And then there's the new textures and new monsters -- quite a lot of work done by others but still needing to be integrated, ditto the music, the splash screens and whatnot. Is Skillsaw independently wealthy such that he can devote entire years to designing quality Doom megawads? Is he even now cruising the South Seas in his giant yacht, thinking of new maps for his next megawad while hosting parties loaded with hot bikini babes on the main deck? One wonders. ;)

[Steve D]

Suitepee said:

https://www.twitch.tv/johnsuitepee/v/73224093 = part 3 of my playthrough, covering maps 21-30. (UV, pistol starts)

I should mention that I finished watching Part 1 the other day, and it was quite entertaining, but I expect that from the esteemed Suitepee, whose Doom streams are always a blast to attend. I have, alas, missed every single Ancient Aliens stream, primarily because my damned Yahoo account tends to chuck his Twitch alerts into my Spam folder -- although it seems to pass through all his alerts for Fallout 4, in which I have basically no interest. I'll have to do something about this because I'm getting pissed about missing all these streams.

BTW, congrats John on playing these maps so well. It was a lot easier for you than it was for me. ;)

[Demon of the Well]

Let's catch up a bit? Let's catch up a bit. Was still using version RC3a of the WAD for all of these next few, BTW, but will switch over to the next candidate as of map 21.

Map 16 -- Leave Your Sol Behind - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets
Hmm, this one didn't quite wow me in the way that it did for some, and I'm having some difficulty in substantively recalling it, especially the pre-flight bit. In fairness, I'm now writing about this after having actually played the level 4 or 5 days ago, so perhaps that's factoring in. The overall narrative concept here is certainly endearing--I reckon I've seen the same idea before in other PWADs (i.e. the idea of traveling to a variety of self-contained worlds via a ship or other means), but this is certainly one of the most high-fidelity and convincing presentations of it that I have encountered in my years of playing the game.

All else being equal, "Leave Your Sol Behind" (a much more palatable pun than the one from map 11, IMO ;) ) is essentially a preamble in another cyan/magenta spacebase followed by what feels like a string of three little speedmaps, each of which serves the same general function as the setpiece battles from earlier maps, though when viewed in microcosm only the third/final world is actually laid out as a setpiece in strictly literal terms.

The first, taking place on an icy planet which in presentation immediately reminded me of something from one of the Whitemare WADs, is probably the blandest--it's conspicuously monotextural in a way that seems out of step with pretty much everything else in the WAD to this point (including the more stark "Grey Dwarf"), and laden with monsters of varying shapes and sizes, but all are directly placed along a short linear pretzel-route, so actually fighting through them takes on the feel of a meat-corridor in pretty short order, excepting the initial drop down from your landing site, where you are briefly attacked from two sides rather than one. The most interesting thing here is probably the bizarre secret, which struck me as some kind of in-joke, and which those players given to evaluating the design validity of these things purely in terms of likely material reward will probably want to skip.

The second stop presents a short jaunt through some ruins in a volcanic region which, as others have noted, definitely reminds one of a softer version of a similar concept from the Hell episode in Valiant, where a loose scrappy brawl is conducted under time pressure levied by a combination of harmful terrain and a limited supply of radsuits. Probably my own fault, but I faced a bit of annoyance here--I made short work of the monsters in the segment while taking very little damage, but ended up soaking a fair share of collateral damage via the environment while trying to leave, simply because I repeatedly failed to spot the red door which leads out of the sinkhole after all is said and done. To my eyes, it appears to be essentially the exact same shade and size as the red AAliens marbface freizes which decorate all of the other similar alcoves in the sinkhole, and so was repeatedly overlooked while dashing around in damage-floor with a rapidly dwindling (and eventually dissolving) radsuit. This is actually a navigational problem I've had a few other times in AAliens that I've repeatedly forgotten to mention, but it stuck in my mind in this case because it actually cost me health/armor instead of just time.

The third and final stop is a frantic cyberdemon crossfire setpiece (on an incredibly cool-looking purple planet) where your spirit animals are your trump card. It's an interesting design and a clever way of marrying what is an abjectly tongue-in-cheek narrative with a piece of serious/substantial gameplay, but I did feel that it could use a little retooling, for the reason that rdwpa had mentioned earlier on: when all four cybs are alive, trying to successfully fight the mobs in the central space is a crapshoot, right? The player is clearly compelled to power through one of the fronts out onto the balconies and into one of those shiny, tempting teleporter pads, which leads to the removal of one of the cybers. There is a nasty tax on doing this, though, as after getting the frag you are unceremoniously dumped back into the center of the central space, likely to be promptly gangbanged by the thronging hellspawn--I took serious damage here but fortunately was not killed outright. It's possible the intended strategy here is to kill most of the mob before starting to make the frag circuit, but to my reading this did not seem to be the case, as it's unlike Skillsaw to provide you tools and then punish you for using them in the interest of simply generating or enforcing pressure (in this case, hypothetically being exposed to rocket fire for a more extended period). Assuming I'm not mistaken about that, my suggestion would be to have the after-frag teleport lines dump the player back out on the balcony with the teleporter they just rode (which will now be elevated out of reach). This will make camping the rest of the main mob easier than it currently is, of course, but if the teleporters are staged to eliminate a cyber at the opposite end of the structure rather than one adjacent to the teleporter in question, the player will at least still have to contend with rocket fire if they chose to take this tack, at least for the first couple of frags.

I certainly appreciate the more adventuresome framing of the action in this level, though in practice a lot of the actual combat content didn't appeal to me as much as I'd hoped.

Map 17 -- Daylight Under a Dark Sol - 107% Kills / 100% Secrets
This, on the other hand, is really cool, and I enjoyed it from start to finish. If the bright cyan/magenta neon spacestation look of the earlier levels in the episode didn't consistently click with me, I found the aesthetic here more immediately compelling, with a stronger presence of black stone and grey/dark grey steel and composite to ground the circus-y neons and other more vibrant elements. The big winner for texture/color, though, is the deep purple stone which jerrysheppy talked about, which in contrast with the new cold-nova sky gives the setting a distinct, moody look that stands apart from the unremittingly chipper aesthetic of the earlier spacebase levels, as well as serving for a rich platform on which to place other environmental details, ala the iridescent magenta slimeflows or the swirling copper portals. Additionally, while the artificed structures remain as generally abstract as in earlier maps, their situation in the overall natural environment is more evocative of location in this instance, something like a mountain stronghold or citadel on an alien world. The silhouetting of these structures against the sky when viewed from the lower levels of the area is as effective here as it was in map 10 earlier, incidentally, with the various views of the elevated northerly arched causeway standing as particularly striking. Excellent music, too, not that that's surprising.

The action here is brilliantly varied, a classy marriage of incidental and setpiece combat in the context of an open-plan layout that includes plenty of room for exploration and experimentation in both route and tactics, as well as a helping of fully optional content which can really give you an edge if you're game, most notably the BFG pitfight. As I said in some particularly longwinded post earlier on, I personally really like to see designed/setpiece encounters freely framed in the middle of larger, more open playspaces, and there's a lot of that going on here, most notably with the lynch mob which comes howling for your earthling blood on the northerly YK cliffs and the big fracas which eventually develops around the prominent southerly tower--apart from offering terrain which makes them variable in themselves (particularly at the cliffs), players also have the option of decamping to save these fights for later, or perhaps for finding enterprising ways of playing their inhabitants off against other denizens of the wider setting. It is true that this openness does tend to make it more difficult to levy maximum pressure in these scenarios (at least without laying down an utter shitstorm of enemy presence), which is of course why some mapping styles rely more on closed/discrete setpieces, nevertheless this extra TLC for player agency in what is still very bloody combat is something I've always particularly enjoyed.

Of course, you can't always let the player have his/her way, and so here we do see some more closed setpieces crop up at strategic points during progression, most notably the dual-cyber showdown which precedes the exit, where lost souls hilariously manage to be more frightening than the lumbering siegecows themselves. Tying these marquee encounters together are a welter of incidental skirmishes in the outdoor areas and little jabs featuring simple but smart monster placement in the small transitional areas between major phases of play (mostly the actual building interiors, to whit), which provide a pleasing momentary shift in the sense of scale of engagement before letting you back out for your main task. The main outdoor playspace as a whole is also flavored nicely by the two earlier cyberdemons, one apiece on each of the two major artificed structures, who can throw rockets from a great distance into all kinds of comically unlikely nooks if given the chance, adding an extra sense of urgency to your breachings and clearing of the interstitial areas, and a dimension of resource management strategy as you decide when, how, and maybe even if you'll eventually take them out--they can be an asset in certain later encounters if you're willing to put up with them until the appointed time.

Excellent stuff, played it and immediately slated it for the 'Top 5.' The second half of the game, where a lot of the guest maps are apparently found, is going to have a helluva time unseating this one, I'd wager.

[baja blast rd.]

Here's a semi-aggressive playthrough of map08, since I really liked that one.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/8qetegd4dq5e29e/aaliensrc3b_08_rdwpa_pt.lmp

[Demon of the Well]

Map 18 -- Illuminati Revealed - 112% Kills / 0% Secrets
Great sloppy fun, this, really had a blast here. The manic nature of the gameplay here makes my typical mode of (over)analysis difficult, but suffice to say that I felt the level was laid out and balanced very nicely, making for a thrilling combination of adrenaline, spectacle, and absurdity. Lots of absurdity.

This is a nonstandard model of IoS map, quite rare, although one that the DWMC has actually encountered before, via Hadephobia (where a similar concept defined map 19 or 20 or thereabouts). The Icon--some sort of Giorgio-channeling Illuminati idol in this case--cannot be defeated, and so the goal of the level is simply to escape the dark planet aboard another UFO, which involves scrambling around the level like a muskrat on fire in search of a (linear/set) sequence of keycards, navigating some zany environmental hazards and impromptu brawls all while the main hub steadily fills with an endless supply of miscreants. In line with Skillsaw's usual method of balancing, there's a ton of ammo and powerups littered all along the route to keep you ticking and to help power through the occasional roadblock in your path, but the level still offers a significant challenge by dint of the fundamental time pressure which this type of setup offers, so there's a nice give and take between not really having to play immaculately (to put it lightly) yet also needing to be consistently making forward progress at all times. The main stress is probably pathfinding rather than battles per se, although the stuff after using the blue key seems pronounced enough to intimidate, and maybe even downright shock where the arch-vile deadfall is concerned. I was able to find my way through fairly well, but died my first death of the playthrough here on my first attempt. Par for the course with this type of setup, my first/exploratory run was just a bit TOO slow and TOO sloppy to make it--I had reached the end, but had run clean out of both cells and rockets (largely because I was actually thrown by a vile attack out of the last bit of the YK path, heh), and so was engaged in frantically SSGing away the clot of fatsos loafing about on the UFO's boarding pad when I was pasted upside the head by a cyberdemon rocket, which must have come from the fellow after the blue switch, as fired from the balcony where the YK sat, clear on the other side of the map. I remember laughing and clapping my hands in approval at his feat of marksmanship.

On the second run I powered through with little difficulty, thanks to knowledge gained of cache locations and the general route. Once the initial stress of finding the way is past, the action here is just pure silly fun, not meant to be a venue of delicate, finicky dodging or high-level situation management, but simply a proudly crass run-and-gun circuit. I think the length of the route is just about perfect, as judged from my killcount, which topped out over 100% even once I knew the map and was able to evade a lot of the directly-placed monsters (the secret is also really really easy, I just missed it because I'm a dimbulb). You actually have more time to comfortably spend in the level than it may initially seem--the biggest pressure comes not from the IoS' spawns but from the pre-generated cacoswarm which gradually but decisively blots out the sky, so once you realize this and take some time to thin them out at a couple of points early in the run you buy yourself plenty of time to properly manage and enjoy the inset designed fights later along the route before making your getaway (as opposed to having to bullheadedly tank through them), which is quite satisfying.

Fine work, here, a well-done example of a map type that is difficult to do well. I expect the general enmity towards anything involving the IoS in any capacity will see it face a tough crowd, though. In fairness, though, the entire crux of success in this map is finding the route, and the route is not as easy to find as seems to be intended--after the fact one notices how it is signposted with neon techlamps and other things of that nature, but given the explosively, histrionically colorful and neon-saturated visual character of the mapset as a whole, the signposts are simply swallowed by the overall presentation, which is a fair criticism insofar as an aspect of the design intended to alleviate initial player stress is largely ineffective in doing so. I myself initially found my way through more through dumb luck than by accurately reading/analyzing the environment in this case, I must say. Regardless, my overall impression is very positive, and I'm glad that what is sure to be a controversial level has found a home here in the middle of the set.

Map 19 -- Crash Landing - 102% Kills / 100% Secrets
Welp. Hope that thing was insured....

E3 conspicuously begins ahead of its regularly scheduled timeslot here, though convention is here (rather glibly) honored in other ways, most notably by means of the level being framed as a Tyson map. Very doggedly at that, too--it's predictably compact/short, but struck me as being a little longer than average (at least in terms of count of discrete fights) for a map in this genre, and while a shotgun with a few shells is provided for the very last fight, the rest of the action is expressly fist-oriented, with the occasional zombieman loitering casually about, presumably to supply you with occasional 5-bullet infusions to ease the task of janitoring the occasional impish ledge-snipers.

There are a few different tacks an author can take for staging Tyson-based gameplay, to name a few: the austerity angle, where the fights themselves are quite simple but situated in the context of a level with very little healing and other player aids in order to heavily incentivize clean play in a nonstandard style; the claustrophobia angle, where fights are staged to diminish the effectiveness of the infight-based playstyle that many players default to when confronted with a map in this vein; and the situational angle, where the player's lack of ranged damage and relatively limited crowd-control capability prioritize evasiveness and fighting with your brain as much as with your fist. "Crash Landing" seems to be framed chiefly in this third style, maintaining the mapset's slant towards surrounding the player with high numbers of mostly weak monsters, with heavier hitters strategically positioned for a knockout blow against those who get too complacent. Not a difficult map by the standards of the genre, with the author's characteristically generous placement of healing and such to keep you afloat in spite of the occasional black eye or missing molar, its marquee fights seem mostly intended to elicit panic in timider players rather than to be really merciless. I most liked the early fight on the little terrace on the west side, an inventive mashup of fisticuffs play with a cover-based spin usually limited to merely hiding around blind corners and throwing sucker-punches in this type of map. The final fight where the shotgun is (re)introduced is also cheekily amusing in that it baits players who hate fisticuffs into lazily using their few shells on the trash which initially emerges before throwing a few ADbots--as in, the least punchable enemy in Ancient Aliens!--at them as a topper. Oh, Skillsaw. Sassy.

Minor bug: After opening the yellow barrier and riding the little fastlift, and then passing through the small rock tunnel right after, if you look to the north towards the BK's lavabound altar, you can partially see the sprites of the revenant and arch-vile who appear there clipping through the 'floor' of the altar, which of course puts a bit of a damper on their eventual appearance.

[Demon of the Well]

Map 20 -- Code - 103% Kills / 100% Secrets
There's some strange buggy player behavior going on in this one in Eternity 3.40.48 (a very recent build)--Doomguy periodically blips in and out of the ground for some reason, sort of looks like he's compulsively doing hyper-squats or something. Will have to see if this is still the case in the next release candidate before posting about it in the dev thread, but for the nonce I switched to playing this particular map in PrBoom+, where there were no problems.

Died my second death of the playthrough here, in the first 15 seconds to boot. Many of us have been conditioned to rush forward and acquire solid weaponry before really digging into the combat in these modern maps with fast starts, but while you can see a chaingun a few yards away from your start point (to say nothing of potential shotguns from the first few sergeants' corpses, and an SSG that's just a few steps further away slightly out of sight), trying for a Rambo approach is really not very tenable here--it is genuinely better to hang back and dispatch the first group of enemies with your pistol from cover before moving forwards, owing to the sheer saturate damage potential of the blanket of hitscannery covering the first area vs. your unarmored self.

On that note, incidentally, while the similarities (real or merely perceived) between AD_79's and Skillsaw's mapping styles are something of a community mini-meme at this point, another contemporary influence of AD's that one doesn't generally hear much about is apparent here as well, that being Tarnsman and his "Deal With It" philosophy towards ruthless thing/monster placement. While my experience was probably colored to some degree by that first early death (that is to say, I was probably concentrating harder and playing 'cleaner' in its wake than I had been in several maps prior), I felt like this level was notably less amenable to mistakes and sloppy play than anything prior, even the melee-oriented map 19. Conventional ammo is deceptively tight (I exited with more cell ammo than any other type, to whit), and while some degree of healing is usually present on the first trip through any given area, the marked skew towards high-damage foes (chaingunners, revenants, etc.) primed to blindside you or to appear right in your face at the drop of a hat means that you generally cannot come close to recouping your losses if you're making small mundane mistakes alongside taking flak in bigger fights, and a single hit from a bigger monster on the heavy end of the RNG scale can really set you back, an effect also made more pronounced by the aforementioned scarcity of armor. I would personally advocate for having a green armor in the starting area (probably on the ledge opposite the SSG) to smooth over the very pronounced attrition element a bit here.

Mostly comprised of tricky sniper postings and other direct monster placements, the action also features three or so peaks in intensity via the small setpiece fights surrounding each of the two keys (which can be gotten in either order) and the exit. Powerups and supplies are allotted more conspicuously generously here (e.g. a free soulsphere precedes each of the two key fights) to compensate for the elevated damage potential of facing pairs of arch-viles in rather confined battlegrounds, the sorcerous tag-team idea apparently being the map's pet concept. Of these, I most liked the RK fight with its flamboyant Disco Inferno holograms; the idea that it would be in my best interest to preserve the barrels which teleport in was immediately intuitive to me within the first 1.5 seconds of their appearance, and the attendant need to shape monsters' firing lanes in a nonstandard way is an interesting spin on an otherwise straightforward fight. Incidentally, conquering one of these setpieces decisively (i.e. losing little or none of the attendant soulsphere) seems to turn the aforementioned balance of attrition on its head, allowing you to much more easily skate/tank through the rest of the level, doubly so since the fight around the exit seems a fair bit easier than either of the key battles. The simple non-linearity/optionality dynamic also seems to have some interesting permutations as far as pace and route go, i.e. the early RL you get from the RK path seems to be far more powerful in the BK fight than the plasma gun you get from the BK path is in the RK fight.

The overall balance here seemed a bit oddball to me (wtf? re: second secret), though not actually dysfunctional in any way, and so perhaps I'm just showing too much deference for personal taste here. Whatever the case, the level does feel different from the great majority of what has preceded it, to whit. Perhaps it's not always easy to tell Skillsaw from AD_79 just going by screenshots alone, I'll grant you, but I reckon you only have to actually play the maps for a minute or two to notice the many differences in execution and predilection, subtle and otherwise. ;)

[baja blast rd.]

Demon of the Well said:

The overall balance here seemed a bit oddball to me (wtf? re: second secret), though not actually dysfunctional in any way, and so perhaps I'm just showing too much deference for personal taste here. Whatever the case, the level does feel different from the great majority of what has preceded it, to whit. Perhaps it's not always easy to tell Skillsaw from AD_79 just going by screenshots alone, I'll grant you, but I reckon you only have to actually play the maps for a minute or two to notice the many differences in execution and predilection, subtle and otherwise. ;)

No couplet of mappers is so identical that you wouldn't be able to tell the difference, outside of actual attempts at imitation. They are the most similar pairing of active mappers, though. (That's not to say anyone is ripping anyone off. :p)

Demon of the Well said:

Died my second death of the playthrough here, in the first 15 seconds to boot. Many of us have been conditioned to rush forward and acquire solid weaponry before really digging into the combat in these modern maps with fast starts, but while you can see a chaingun a few yards away from your start point (to say nothing of potential shotguns from the first few sergeants' corpses, and an SSG that's just a few steps further away slightly out of sight), trying for a Rambo approach is really not very tenable here

Challenge accepted! :)

http://www.mediafire.com/download/t2lgi4cttaxavvk/aaliensrc3b_20_RAMBO.lmp
http://www.mediafire.com/download/6gk3tk5wiw4j522/aaliensrc3b_20_peeshooterlol.lmp

[Demon of the Well]

rdwpa said:

Challenge accepted! :)

http://www.mediafire.com/download/t2lgi4cttaxavvk/aaliensrc3b_20_RAMBO.lmp
http://www.mediafire.com/download/6gk3tk5wiw4j522/aaliensrc3b_20_peeshooterlol.lmp

1. Very nicely done. When I tried that I was essentially sawn in half by three simultaneous 30+ damage shotgun blasts. Probably shot the wrong guy first....
2. It's a BB gun, not a squirt gun!

[Spectre01]

Map 21

I could've sworn there were Cyberdemons in the last area with the crushers before... am I just going crazy? This map felt a bit strange with the item balance. For instance, you get the SSG in the very back of the last area. I was playing UV Pistol Start and had 40+ rockets going in there, making it pretty much useless in that encounter. Health and armour are also extremely generous, especially if you grab the secrets. For some reason I remember having way more trouble here the first time I played in a previous release.

[TheOrganGrinder]

MAP21: Cyberbullying: Beyond Earth

Somewhat twisty again, with a low-intensity and rather creepy piece of music that's a bit at odds with the rough, brawling style of gameplay that the map otherwise seems to encourage. The map's twists loop back toward a main concourse, such that once you've tackled a particular challenge or beaten a particular encounter you're free to zip back and foth along the spine of the map rather than having to pick your way along a meandering route. I really liked the layered semi-circular area in the northern part of the map, and the contrast between that obviously technoligical construction and its meticulous geometry with the more primitive ruin/temple sections and the connecting purple cavern areas; the north-south shooting gallery ruled by the cyberdemon, on the other hand, I'm less enthused about.

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP21 Cyberbullying: Beyond Earth

No shit. This one is a cruel, cruel level for me. A few cramped traps left me with less health than I had originally, mostly in part to the more apparent return of the invisible soldiers. The cyber is also quite memorable. I gotta stop looking for alternate ways to kill these guys now, as there really was no way to telefrag the guy. But then again, him teleporting to the next area sometimes helps with the enemies that teleport into the hall, blast damage notwithstanding. The crusher area was pretty bleh on my setting.

[esselfortium]

Demon of the Well said:

Map 20 -- Code - 103% Kills / 100% Secrets
There's some strange buggy player behavior going on in this one in Eternity 3.40.48 (a very recent build)--Doomguy periodically blips in and out of the ground for some reason, sort of looks like he's compulsively doing hyper-squats or something. Will have to see if this is still the case in the next release candidate before posting about it in the dev thread, but for the nonce I switched to playing this particular map in PrBoom+, where there were no problems.

It's been fixed in the latest Eternity build. If I understand correctly, teleporting voodoo dolls were affecting the rendered player height. (Might have been an oversight with the frame interpolation code, maybe?)

[KBlaney]

Map 21: I can't say I was a big fan of this one. There is a cyberdemon that chases you through the whole level but there is never really a good reason to go out of your way to kill him (and he'll usually vanish by then), nor is there a trick way to kill him as the crushers in the final room simply don't do enough damage to him. In comparison to the super cool “use your spirit animals to kill the cyberdemons” moment from previous levels, this just feels a little flat.

[mouldy]

MAP21 - "Cyberbullying: Beyond Earth" by skillsaw

This one had a few moments of wondering where I'm meant to be going, and also a touch of bullshit concerning the cyber. I guess it wasn't helped by not having any ammo other than a few rockets, but that whole yellow key trap and subsequent shenanigans felt a bit out of place in this wad. A bit trial and error, work out where the buttons are and get out without being rocketed in the back kind of thing. Dunno, its always tricky where cybers are involved, because you can't make any mistakes, but being dropped into a tight space with one plus side monsters and damaging floors, I kept wondering if I had missed an invul or something. Anyway, lots of dying and saving there.

["JL" was too short]

MAP21

I'll spare this thread a recap of my thoughts on silver/light gray tech textures and say that, aside from these, this map is lovely to look at and interesting to play.

The cyber gimmick was fun on its face, but the geometry was tuned a bit too tightly for my purposes in several of the encounters--I think if you're going to do this then a player who executes correctly should be able to more or less completely avoid splash damage off of terrain (as opposed to monsters) regardless of their luck, but multiple times I ended up having to reload because this or that cubbyhole was too small or too close to the cyber. It's possible I still wasn't doing it correctly, but I felt like the intended sequence of operations in each encounter was telegraphed pretty clearly, so that wasn't the issue. Admittedly the whole splash damage thing makes it hard for the mapper to control this too tightly and I wonder if the gimmick wouldn't be better served using one or more archviles, who play much fairer with line of sight (obviously you'd need to guarantee that the players would be pistol starting).

On top of this, a few of the cyber encounters (in particular the first one) rely too heavily on pre-knowledge of monster spawns in order to know where you have to run, and how fast, in order to avoid being boxed in and dying.

Was there any visual clue to the plasma gun secret? I found it completely by accident.


e: Agree with KBlaney and others that this was a wasted opportunity to have our spirit friends help us with the cyber at the end. A good honest cyberdemon duel is always more fun than a telefrag, all else being equal (IMO), but this wasn't even that.

[Demon of the Well]

Thanks for the info, Essel, I am now on the June 21st build of Eternity from DRDTeam. Also on RC3B of Ancient Aliens, now, as aforesaid.

Map 21 -- Cyberbullying: Beyond Earth - 109% Kills / 100% Secrets
I do believe that the bit with the cyberdemon in his murderhole right outside of the yellow switch/door is the single nastiest thing Skillsaw has made in his mapping career up to this point (makes me wonder what later maps have in store...). It is genuinely mean-spirited: the firing lane is so narrow that it's difficult to dodge the rockets while you're bumping bodies with the other losers crowding the space, and so naturally your instinct is to jam yourself into one of the little alcoves in order to buy yourself some time to collect your wits. Except, the aforesaid losers are spawning out of the aforesaid alcoves....And then, once you finally wedge your way in, you find that the floor is toxic, and so you can't take a breather there, either! The only recourse is to frantically slam yourself into one of the corners with the cyb's nook right next to you, press your back to the wall, and try to finish the battle (including the warp-in of stealth guys upon hitting the yellow switch) while operating with all of 6 inches of dodging space. DAMN. The man must've been in a foul mood when he designed this. I love it! :D The congested, rocket-powered corridor fight which occurs immediately afterwards is entertaining as well, though not quite as crazy--here the key is simply not to panic, since the cyberdemon has your back in this one (quite literally), whereas gibbering, wide-eyed panic is more or less inevitable in that first bit. The final part of the sequence, with the umbrella-pattern crushers, is a bit jankier--the cyberdemon just sort of got stuck in an awkward angle and didn't do much of anything while I cleaned up everyone else--but in theory I suppose it's as good a denouement as any.

I really liked that whole concluding shindig above, and will probably remember it for quite a while, though ironically most of the rest of the map actually rather rubbed me the wrong way. In line with AD's map 20 and perhaps some of the earlier turret-based maps, ammo is surprisingly scarce here, with rockets needing to be carefully budgeted until the final sequence, and bullets and shells appearing in little dribs and drabs. I reckon my default weapon here was the chaingun, incidentally, not only because it is the best weapon vs. the stealth troopers (who have a strong showing here after being mostly absent in the past several levels), but because there's a lot of finicky picking and pecking to clear the way involved. Using projectile-slinging snipers all over the place is a staple of Skillsaw's design, of course, and here we see them situated in the context of a compact, coiling route where there is always something to fire at you from an uncanny angle. Because there are essentially no truly open areas--only those which are visually open, ala the central cave--the usual tack of handling the snipery via staying constantly on the move gives way to a more slow-paced affair where most of your invested energy is spent on deciding on the right time to spend some of your ammo to remove threats from afar so they don't harass you while you step into one of the several early ambushes, which are all simple dogpiling affairs that, again, seem to hinge more on causing panic than anything, and are generally most practically dealt with by simply refusing to cooperate. Even the most pronounced of these, that being the commando/stealth trooper platoon in the broadly curving northern corridor, is best handled by simply running to the corridor's end, putting your back against the wall, and hiding behind your chaingun.

Most of these fights have some evident angle to them, rather than being entirely phoned-in--for instance, in the aforementioned encounter, if you get scared when the walls lower and try a direct retreat, you run into an arch-vile ganker--but I found they were almost all panning out very flatly/undramatically (e.g. the aforesaid arch-vile is a total non-factor in the encounter as long as you don't directly retreat), and I felt I was going through the motions here more than actually having fun. Fortunately, the last major sequence changed all that and got me feeling involved again, but all and all I reckon this one was more miss than hit.

Edit: Oh yes, the plasma secret. I didn't actually find that until after beating the map and rechecking things for a monster I could still hear grumbling around, which turned out to be a cacodemon who obligingly came out of the false wall while I was looking for him. Without that fluke, I reckon this is probably one of the most difficult secrets in the WAD to this point.

[SoundofDoomDoors]

MAP21: Cyberbullying: Beyond Earth

99% Kills 50% Secrets

Meh. I liked most of the level, not so much the end. Lives up to its name, but I got frustrated with the crusher bit at the end. The way I finally beat it was by clearing the mancubus/arachnotron group, figuring out where the red key was, and leaving the cyberbully behind. I didn't want to spend what I thought would have been all of my ammo to kill him. The yellow key trap wasn't too hard compared to what came after it. I found a megasphere in there, which helped with the plasma jerks that came out of the walls. The section with the barrels and archvile was my favorite part.