The DWmegawad Club plays: Ancient Aliens

[rehelekretep]

MAP23 - "Trinary Temple" by Pinchy demo here

full disclosure: im playing this without saves, so your experience saving may be different!

this replaces 'Code' as my least favourite map. while i didnt like Code's ammo starving, and the auto-aim trouble, it wasnt a boring map, and you could tell a lot of thought had gone into the encounters.

this map, unfortunately, i found very dull. a map can get away with some boring fights if its short, however this map took me 30 minutes trying to avoid as much as i could! the reason i think theyre boring as most of them are not difficult, and require the same steps to complete every time you play them, so everything before the last two temple fights is just going through the motions for 20 minutes.

the whole bit before entering the temple is extremely dull - unloading SSGs into arachnotrons in wide open spaces (check the circle strafing bit on the temple entrance i had to do every time i replayed...)

the fight against the revenants is very fiddly and annoying, you have about 8 rockets by that point so you have to make them count, all while trying not to fall off and have to ride the elevator again (luckily they are quite good-looking and move fast). you cant really skip this bit as youll get blindsided by their rockets while retrieving the red & blue keys.

the red key onwards (aside from the 3-spider broadsiding i mentioned above) is more fun - the mancubi/chaingunner/caco bit after the megasphere is cool. by the end i just wanted to exit so slipped past the cybers and was away. didnt like the exit method either; i think maintain consistency with skillsaw's teleporters or have the exit trigger be the spacecraft - having just off the lift feels like the game is crashing.

+ OK MIDI
+ nice paddy-field steps
+ caco/mancubi/chaingunner fight is fun

- laggy as fuck on my PC unfortunately
- dull encounter design
- too long for a no-save player
- the start with the backpack - if you pick up the shotguns and shells first, one shell pickup will not fit in your 50 capacity, so you have to pick up the backpack, then backtrack for 1 shell. this is just BAD design. its not a massive problem, just feels lame.

[SoundofDoomDoors]

MAP25: Xenoarboreum

98% Kills 66% Secrets

That was fun. I was a little confused when I picked up the rocket launcher. "Why am I not being overwhelmed?" I thought to myself. Good job changing up the pace. I found the switch at the end to access the plasma rifle area. It wasn't clear when I hit it what it did, but I guessed based on having roamed around the map between setpieces what it opened. That was a fun optional battle. The area behind the red key door was very interesting. My first instinct was to rambo it. I ran into an archvile and 10 plasma jerks. Taking it easy worked better. I killed the mancubus blockade and camped the plasma guys until they were thinned out enough. Then I killed the archvile on my own terms. Strange for a strategy like that to work in a skillsaw map. I like the variety.

[Pirx]

MAP22 - "Acerola-Orion" by esselfortium

a map that perfectly combines technologic and ancient themes, mesoamerican frescos and teleporters: that's what ancient aliens is about. and it does it so beautifully, it looks like an alien skyline from some places, with the string of monoliths with teleports at the top. i'll add some hi res screenshots because this map deserves it. every time you flip a switch, something in the architecture - paths, stairs - opens, allowing the player to continue his adventure. gameplay is also spot-on, challenging with well placed enemies, without being too difficult. actually i made it through comfortably in one piece because i learned this type of ambushes, mostly a vile with some rabble that serves to restrict player movement (plus watched about 5 min. of suitpee's stream on this map where he ranted about misplaced revenants). the last ambush is in the open, but you should be able to tank a blast or two at that point and make short work of both viles. music is also excellent.












MAP23 - "Trinary Temple" by Pinchy

big and airy, looks like an earthly setting this time, a river with hills and rice fields which is mostly empty, until enemies teleport in. i didn't rely much on infighting here since there are shell boxes scattered around and arachnotrons can do lots of damage, however ssg-ing these arachs in the water was a bit tedious. liked the plasma gun fight because the plasmagunners can do more damage than the archvile and deny use of rockets because they're so fast. the temple is at the top of a hill with nice vegetation and becomes the scene for a large fight with lots of fodder, drones and mid-tier enemies emerging from the yellow (?) key. nice music here too.

[dobu gabu maru]

Bloodstain is pretty much running away with the nomination (8 votes!!!) so I think it's safe to call it here. Just a gentle reminder that if you want a megawad played, keep voting for it until it becomes part of the club's subconscious :P

rdwpa said:

This is an interesting topic, I think: should mappers avoid spots where having less than a certain amount of HP is essentially equivalent to being walking dead or ends up making an encounter incommensurate with the difficulty level of the rest of the map. (Talking about maps that aren't specifically designed to be quite hard, where anything goes ofc.) Avoiding mandatory nukage crossings, like, say, before the exit, is something mappers are told to do, and this is sort of like the same thing. But on the other hand, there should be some penalty for taking too much damage, and some fights are more interesting precisely because they use monsters to guard the health that might be available, forcing you to re-prioritize targets (e.g. you might kill a baron squatting on a soulsphere instead of going after an AV).

I mean, of course it's up to the mapper on what to do, but the general etiquette is that you "prepare" the player with health before an encounter (unless the health is easy to grab during the battle). For more difficult mapsets (say, whatever you and Ribbiks make), I won't be as upset if you pull this kind of a dick move, but Ancient Aliens has not once dropped the player into a shitty situation without some kind of mercy thrown their way. To me, it's more important to keep an "internal mapset consistency" regarding difficulty than abiding to certain rules wholesale, and this red key encounter breaks that (it's also why I've complained about the difficulty of MAP18 & MAP21—I've obviously played harder mapsets but I feel these are a level of challenge that's unbefitting of Ancient Aliens). Also players that take too much damage are penalized because they have less health to work with.

[rehelekretep]

sorry im not going to add much to this discussion, but do you mean map17? 18 isnt very difficult...

[dobu gabu maru]

rehelekretep said:

sorry im not going to add much to this discussion, but do you mean map17? 18 isnt very difficult...

I definitely meant 18. It's not difficult when you know what to do/where to go, but it's not friendly on the first play.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP24: Culture Shock
100% kills, 1/1 secret

Well, this map certainly gets a lot of points just for the unique setting - the almost heavenly "city above the clouds" is sold very well here. Unfortunately, the level is also very cramped, which can make for some frustrating gameplay... for example, the early ammo balance is definitely tilted towards rockets, which are almost unusable for most of the first half, meaning lots of running around worrying about running out of clips or shells at the worst moment. Lack of room to dodge also means taking a lot of extra fireballs to the face and being at low health for a lot of the time.

I'll echo Dobu's point about the red key imp warp-in... just seems like it wasn't tested very well, since there's simply nowhere to go and no plasma gun to defend with. I ended up beating it by standing on one of the imp teleport spots, which doesn't seem like it should be the intended solution. The AV/imp/manc/pinkie fight in the stone/plant area at the end, by contrast, is much better designed... it's tough, but in a way that feels properly challenging instead of frustratingly designed. Reading the comments, there's apparently a cyberdemon somewhere around here on lower difficulties, but not on UV, weirdly enough.

I'm pretty forgiving of some of the oddities with a map that pushes the edges of design like this, but there were a couple parts that stuck out enough to be worth noting. One is that the lift/platform here does some funky stuff depending on how the switch is pushed... examples here (posts lowered, tops didn't) and here (first full sections lowered, third didn't). I guess the switch is made of lots of multiple parts and it only works when they all get pushed together from the front? Also, the faux-3D tower at the end after the main last fight isn't very well designed - you can see the dead end at the top from before the teleport line, and I was able to see the black dead end at the bottom from above as well at one point.

[lupinx-Kassman]

Thanks for the feedback so far! Certainly going to look at tuning the imp ambush. Will likely follow Dobu's suggestion regarding HP near that area (as well as a few other changes). Also may take Manbou's suggestion regarding the bars in the tower.

Magnusblitz said:

MAP24: Culture Shock
there were a couple parts that stuck out enough to be worth noting. One is that the lift/platform here does some funky stuff depending on how the switch is pushed... examples here (posts lowered, tops didn't) and here (first full sections lowered, third didn't). I guess the switch is made of lots of multiple parts and it only works when they all get pushed together from the front? Also, the faux-3D tower at the end after the main last fight isn't very well designed - you can see the dead end at the top from before the teleport line, and I was able to see the black dead end at the bottom from above as well at one point.

Yes this switch and the one in the UFO at the start use pass-thru lines to achieve the desired effect. The cost is that hitting the switch at a strange angle will cause only one of the specials to trigger. This could be resolved with a fast door in a dummy sector and voodoo doll trickery, but it may overcomplicate things, so I'll consider it.

As for the faux 3D stuff, I implemented a workaround in RC3B

["JL" was too short]

MAP25

Visually, this is the theme and mood of Ancient Aliens at its very finest. Between the alien purple flesh-rock, cyclopean stonework with its graven images of eldritch gods, and the ever-present otherworldly sky, I can truly believe that we've arrived at the fusion of hell with some alien civilization that it engulfed in the eons before man walked on Earth. The thematic implications of the quiescent soldiers of Hell being shuffled through some sort of higher-dimensional "library space" en route to their ultimate destinations is a very cool one, to the extent that I don't even mind silver textures being used to do it. :D

Just one small flavor/creative note: I'm not sure what the 'arboreum' part of the name is intended to mean. It could be a misspelling of "arboretum," or it could be an attempt to coin a new word, but in either case there's probably some linguistic confusion about either the word or its roots, since I don't see any trees here, not even alien ones. I suspect whoever named the map may have confused arboretums with zoos or other nature preserves (whose functions can sometimes be combined into a single park or preserve; hence, probably, the potential for confusion).

Gameplay-wise, this was fine. The opening was annoying-- I'm not really a fan of huge open areas that make you slowly clear out all the potential snipers before you can really do anything unmolested-- but once I got past that, all the actual staged fights and new areas that opened up were good and fun to play. Amusingly, I had more trouble (or at least needed more tries) on this map's cyberdemon than on MAP24's more cramped one, which I guess goes to show that a larger, more complex space can actually be worse for trying to dodge rockets.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP25: Xenoarboreum
98% kills, 1/3 secrets

And back to the sandy rock temples, purple rock and sunset skies. I absolutely love this color scheme, and while I'm glad Ancient Aliens diverted from it a bit to keep things fresh, I'm also very glad to return to it for the last few maps. And that sky! Very simplistic - just horizontal lines, something that could be find in an Atari game - but works beautifully because of that. I adore that sky.

Anyways, the map is pretty good too... it's still very much a skillsaw-esque linear assault, but manages to hide it well, with the first 'path' being a clearing of the outside, then moving throughout the actual temple. If anything, the progression is actually a little obtuse in parts, since a lot of it is "hit the switch and run around until you find what it opened" but there's usually only one spot to go so it's not too difficult. Fights are good, with lots of emphasis on the rocket launcher (and plasma gun if you've found one) which is always good.

[Spectre01]

Map 26: Chaingunner Metaphysics

This is another guest map in the guest episode by Tarnsman, who I'm familiar with from BTSX and D2TWID. His map 09 certainly pissed me off in the latter with that lift platform!

There was a question earlier in the thread as to where all the Chaingunners were in this wad and well... here's your answer. Run, hide or die, the Chaingunners never stop. This map strictly returns to the Episode 1 aesthetic set within an Egyptian-esque temple with the main difference being it's still floating in a colourful void like the previous map. As the title implies, this map is jam packed with Chaingunners in every elevated and non-elevated position possible. Out of the nearly 200 or so monster present in the map I wouldn't be surprised if they made up half or more of that population.

Playing from pistol start, the map does not give you enough resources in the initial area to handle all the monsters there. The blur sphere and rocket launcher are essential to grab first as there are two Archviles coming for you with a massive clusterfuck of Mancubi, Plasma Troopers and eveything else firing from all directions. There's a second blur sphere that you need to eat as your first one runs out, lest thy arse get perforated. The map is interestingly non-linear with several branching paths. What worked for me was heading left to grab the SSG and then bailing out of there and exploring the right side. The smart thing to do is following the spiraling stairs upwards to the teleporter and clearing the Plasma Rifle area, then grabbing the "secret" BFG from by riding up a lift that lowers as you exit the teleporter. The trigger for it is a bit strange and I had to make several teleporting attempts to reach it in time.

As for me, I chose to ignore that part, despite playing the map once before, and did it the dumb way with a lot of rocket and Chaingun sniping. Despite the massive number of Chaingunners, most of them are in unreachable positions making bullets really tight in the map. (lolwut) Precision Chaingun tapping is your best bet and playing with mouselook certainly helps. Oh, and that BFG is quite nice for the ending with 4 Archviles waiting for you in each corner of the room. I'm interested to see how some poor feller who missed the BFG handles that part.

Also, the pattern in the centre of the UFO is actually the Aliens Meme Guy:

Spoiler

[SoundofDoomDoors]

MAP26: Egyptian "Chaingunner" Metaphysics (tarnsman)

100% Kills 75% Secrets

I think this is the hardest level of the wad so far. Yes there are a lot of chaingunners. The problem? Everything else. Take the blur sphere and the chaingunners can't kill you. Good luck dodging the plasma guys and mancubus projectiles. Don't take the blur sphere? I hope you like turtling to avoid getting turned into swiss cheese. That's what I had to do to beat the map. There's tons of health and armor in secrets. I can't imagine not getting at least two of the ones I found, including the BFG. I had one from the last level, but from a pistol start, not getting that means instant death at the end of the map. There's no cover from that pack of archviles that I could see. I'm amazed I cleared that section in one try. The rest of the map was pretty painful.

EDIT: I knew it! It was aliens! No, seriously I thought it was him.

[baja blast rd.]

map26

No play-by-play because I didn't feel like stopping. The set pieces are decent -- my favorite was the caco + shitstorm pairing in the plasma rifle area -- but the <3 incidental combat <3 and the :@ traps :@ are really what make this map so fun and juicy.

The start is basically a race against time to kill off as many bald buttmunches as you can while trying to ignore the fat buttmunches and not wake up the skinny fiery buttmunches. On the way, you might also encounter a few of the partially invisible plasma-shooting buttmunches, which must be killed with prejudice too. INSIGHTFUL ANALYSIS. But yeah, basically, shoot at the dangerous things.

The thing about partial invisibility is that it inverts a lot of the usual tactics in projectile-heavy maps. Normally in these fights, you absolutely should not be running at full speed as a default. But when you have to deal with lots of mancs -- the third most dickish monster to force the partially invisible player to fight behind cybers (lol) and 'trons -- and also an occasional scattering of revs and HKs, it actually now makes sense to run fast, simply as a way of always staying clear of the possible shooting angles of a drunk monster's fireball. Couple that with chaingunners that you absolutely should try to get rid of ASAP before your invisibility wears off, and with occasional archviles and tenuous cover that's often some distance from where they are released, and you have a map that "forces you to stay moving" more often and more frenetically than basically anything in the set yet. (Okay maybe that was actually insightful.)

The secrets in this map are really powerful: there's a soulsphere, a megapshere, and a BFG! Despite the overall dickishness of most of the map, those secrets are basically freebies. The megasphere is a total freebie, if you can find the soulsphere. Kind of interesting. I actually wonder if Tarnsman was "encouraged" to add those. (It'd be a shame if something happens to your map slot!)

Wrt to the archvile quartet at the exit, I think the BFG-less player is obligated to keep silent and use the monsters that are released via the switch sequence to distract at least two of the viles. The other viles can then be rocketed or plasma'd quickly enough. Alternatively, the BFG-less player can attempt to gtfo as quickly as possible.

Anyway, it's cool that ranter Tarnsman dabbles in mapping too. Good stuff.

rileymartin said:

Also, the pattern in the centre of the UFO is actually the Aliens Meme Guy:

Spoiler

http://i.imgur.com/MafQ0Kk.jpg

LOL

[baja blast rd.]

Criticism:

1. That Mastermind is silly. (Mouldy reminded me of the arrow too; not a fan of things like that.)
2. Music is GOATish obv, which is starting to be par for the course in e3, but there's a part that starts at 1:25 reminds me of that Christmas song that goes parumpuhpum or whatever. The motif recurs a couple of times, with some variations. It's this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryaB5MHVUZM. Kind of pulls me out of being immersed.

[baja blast rd.]

dobu gabu maru said:

I mean, of course it's up to the mapper on what to do, but the general etiquette is that you "prepare" the player with health before an encounter (unless the health is easy to grab during the battle). For more difficult mapsets (say, whatever you and Ribbiks make), I won't be as upset if you pull this kind of a dick move, but Ancient Aliens has not once dropped the player into a shitty situation without some kind of mercy thrown their way. To me, it's more important to keep an "internal mapset consistency" regarding difficulty than abiding to certain rules wholesale, and this red key encounter breaks that (it's also why I've complained about the difficulty of MAP18 & MAP21—I've obviously played harder mapsets but I feel these are a level of challenge that's unbefitting of Ancient Aliens). Also players that take too much damage are penalized because they have less health to work with.

This makes sense.

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP26 Egyptian Metaphysics

fuckfuckfuckshitfuck that is a lot of chaingunners here. also a lot of invisibilities to attempt to counter the hitscan hell. those snipers have to be taken down slowly and methodically each time, plus the invisible soldiers are also a hassle. This is a gameplay decision that I don't enjoy on a map layout I do. At least it's one that keeps me on my toes. I particularly like how weak the end of the map was, getting the yellow key before the door, and the things after that were actually pretty easy. Well, I AM playing on easy.

edit: once again I screwed up the level number.

[mouldy]

MAP25 - "Xenoarboreum" by skillsaw

Enjoyed this one. Very confusing at first with the surreal layout, but it lets you run around quite freely so you soon get the hang of where things are. It also gives a lot of opportunities to fight battles on your own terms. Really like the psychedelic alien look of the place. The cyber was a surprise, but a fun fight, just enough pinkies to be troublesome without totally swamping you (and for once a megasphere prize at the end of the fight rather than the beginning).

MAP26 - "Egyptian Metaphysics" by Tarnsman

Cool map, I'm guessing you can blast around at the start with those blur spheres but I chose to take it slow and steady picking off all the snipers. Which wasn't too tedious, they are placed in some sneaky positions so there is a bit of hide and seek to keep things interesting. Its an intriguing place to explore. I died at the plasma rifle trap, I think that was the first surprise ambush I encountered after a fairly easy-going stretch of picking off riff-raff, so I wasn't quite ready for it. The final fight also killed me a couple of times, until I figured out you could teleport back to the ufo for a breather. I like that. I did have to laugh at the arrow on the floor, and the ufo had an interesting neon motif. Good stuff. I bet pistol start is a bitch though..

[stewboy]

rdwpa said:

2. Music is GOATish obv, which is starting to be par for the course in e3, but there's a part that starts at 1:25 reminds me of that Christmas song that goes parumpuhpum or whatever. The motif recurs a couple of times, with some variations. It's this song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryaB5MHVUZM. Kind of pulls me out of being immersed.

"Too much like 'The Little Drummer Boy'". I think that's the most unique criticism I've had so far :P

Getsu Fune: Really appreciate it! Personally my favourite of what I did for this project is still MAP18 followed by MAP22, but MAP25 was probably my most experimental in some ways (apart from a really far-out midi that didn't end up getting used because it was TOO out there even for this wad!)

[baja blast rd.]

The cool thing about map25's music is that the rhythm of the arpeggiated figuration and the melody (and that arpeggios are used at all) really complements the rotating descending tubes somehow. I don't know how, but just looking at the opening scene, and listening to the music, it fits so well. Evokes circularity, or something.

["JL" was too short]

MAP26

Glad I'm playing through, or I imagine I would have spent a lot more time swearing at this map than I did. With a decent amount of weaponry carried over from the beginning, the proliferation of chaingunners wasn't an obstacle for me, though I wouldn't say it made for engaging gameplay as such, either. The map is quite pretty, though yet again I'm not a fan of using caution stripes or other such things that, to me at least, signify terrestrial bases in particular.

Really, there's not that much to say about this map. It's a solid entry in AA's third episode, and that alone puts it ahead of 90% of the maps out there. It's pretty much exactly what you want around the map26 slot.

[rehelekretep]

MAP24 - "Culture Shock" by lupinx-Kassman (additional mapping by skillsaw) demo here

woooo this is pretty :)

+ lovely visuals and MIDI - like someone else said, reminds me of Sonic or another 16bit platformer
+ liked the archvile/imp/pinkie/mancubi fight
+ the wooden ring teleporters were cool - i think map22 teleporter walls should be automatic like these

- the map is slightly too cramped for my tastes - specifically the first tower bit, and the wooden ladders. you tend to bounce off or get stuck on different parts of the scenery which can be quite frustrating
- arghh the cyberdemon at the end was very scary - im not sure i like a cyber fight in such close confines. at least the map is short enough that if you die the replay time isnt that long
- the RK imp fight; what the hell is the method here? i was scratching my head and ended up camping one of the teleporters... seems a bit cheap

[dobu gabu maru]

^ It's kinda funny how almost every player's reaction to the RK has been "was I supposed to camp that tele?"

stewboy said:

Personally my favourite of what I did for this project is still MAP18 followed by MAP22

Crazy to hear—I thought MAP18 wasn't all that special while I thought MAP13 & MAP22 were phenomenal. Great work on the OST over all though, really love hearing your work.

MAP25:Fantastic map. Excellent sense of space, creative use of layout, constant pressure without being overbearing, and some pretty creative fights that don't simply rely on nasty AV placement. I think the use of negative space below the player and the twirly Valiant tubes really help to differentiate it from the rest of the skillsaw maps, though perhaps the constant plasma trooper use seems to match his fingerprint. Excellent stuff though—this is exactly what I want from a medium sized map (still can't get over how great the layout was!)

[Magnusblitz]

MAP26: Egyptian Metaphysics
100% kills, 3/4 secrets

Rdwpa hit upon the main thing this map made me think... usage of blur spheres with a combination of chaingunners (which they're useful against) and fireball enemies like mancs (which they're actually a negative against)... I can't decide if I like it as a catch-22 type of gameplay mechanic, or just find it annoying. In the end, while the immediate start certainly led to some running around, creating and then putting out fires, the middle portion of the map turned into "slowly take out the snipers" which isn't much fun and feels more like janitorial duty than Doom. The most interesting fights for me are the ones that create threat not through a large amount of enemies, but using dangerous enemies in conjunction with limited room to move, like the hallway in the northwest with the AV and flanking enemies, or the caco ambush on the plasma gun. The spiderdemon was a bit silly but I enjoyed BFGing him so hard he flew into the teleporter. The yellow key being in front of the yellow door was also a bit weird, but I admittedly did miss a secret, maybe it leads to that...?

[Tarnsman]

Magnusblitz said:

MAP26: Egyptian Metaphysics
The yellow key being in front of the yellow door was also a bit weird, but I admittedly did miss a secret, maybe it leads to that...?

Some optional areas were originally a YK route but I decided to make them optional and then instead of just removing the door I stuck the key in front of it because I could.

[kuchitsu]

+++ Cabro's legacy :D

[Demon of the Well]

Map 23 -- Trinary Temple - 99% Kills / 100% Secrets
Hey, neat.....uh, horizontal escalator-thingy? I know there's a common term for these, but I'm having a brainfart and can't remember what it is for the unlife of me.

Uh, anyway, I enjoyed strolling around this map, personally, but I can't really disagree with the sentiment widely expressed by others that it doesn't seem like it quite fits with the rest of the game. Stewboy's "Grey Dwarf", heretofore the most pronounced stylistic outlier in the set, is perhaps getting off a bit easy in this regard on account of its privileged spot in slot 31, which I think all of us have to a greater or lesser degree been conditioned to think is supposed to house something weird/different. Nevertheless, I felt that its oldschool exploratory layout and heavy focus on incidental combat seemed to pose a natural and intuitive countershade or foil to the setpiece-y arcade action of the rest of the maps. In comparison to the contributions from Esselfortium and AD_79, which blended in more or less seamlessly with the overall gameplay and aesthetic philosophies of Ancient Aliens (IMO), the kinship with this map elides mostly from shared graphical assets, and the impression for me was that it was something like a PWAD for a PWAD, bearing more similarity to Joshy's map 09 (itself quite an outlier) than anything else. Is this really a problem for the set? Well....in my opinion, it's hardly a great cause for concern, but I guarantee you it will eternally be a subject of some remark (or even fixation), for better or for worse, despite sounding like it should fit in seamlessly on paper (e.g. lots of projectiles and running around and all). Maybe it's the scrolling sector water-currents that push it over the edge, heh.

I haven't had as much experience with Pinchy's mapping as some of the other Club regulars, myself, but what I see here I did recognize immediately from the design sensibilities displayed in his portion of "Meggido II" from the second NOVA project--big, airy spaces with a pronounced outdoor/fresh air bent that somehow manage to look sunwarmed and inviting despite taking place under a night sky, hosting loose crowd-based battles punctuated by the occasional landmark-bound trap. It seems to have receded somewhat of late (the incipience and eventual arrival of Doom 2016 probably has a lot to do with this), but there for a while it was pretty popular to draw parallels between the gameplay in Doom (esp. PWADs) and that in the Serious Sam series. Not a comparison I much cotton to myself, mind you, but I have to say that I do get something of a Serious Sam vibe from this map, and from much of what other little material by Pinchy I've seen--the vaguely Meso-Egyptian look and theme to the architecture probably has something to do with this, and of course there is the matter of the prominence of open yard- or arena-based battles, where monsters tend to swarm in homogeneous waves (though there will often be more than one wave active at a time, preventing the bestiary from seeming too unswervingly monotyped).

Describing the action in the first half of this map in detail would probably be tedious, because it is extremely simple in concept--you walk/run around the terrain, and stuff that is generally not particularly threatening materializes around you. Then you shoot said stuff with the steady supply of ammo littered around. Repeat. This would seem almost old-fashioned in its way, were it not for the marked prominence of the warp-in method of introducing monsters--I don't think I've seen this tack leaned on this heavily since back in Dutch Devil's CC4 map. It's not terribly sophisticated stuff, this, but like so much of the base play content in Doom, I reckon it is largely what you (the player) make of it. If you proceed casually and fight everything as it first appears, I imagine it probably starts to seem repetitive and predictable before too long; if you run around and keep your maxkills OCD somewhat in check, it probably develops into rather a livelier party with a much more comprehensive blanket of projectile-lanes and a faster rate of monster attrition due to infighting (my approach in this first playthrough was somewhere between these two ends of the spectrum, incidentally), particularly if you forge ahead far enough to set off some of the loosely inset outdoor setpieces, ala the BK and RK fights.

This relative openness is not without hitches, however--the timings of some of the later arachnatron warp-ins in previously cleared areas make literally zero sense in the context of any kind of ordinary progression path (which continues even inside the temple, come to think of it), the rocket supply seems suspiciously stingy (prompting shotgun/chaingun work in spades during a 'standard' playthrough), and....the arch-vile by the blue switch was swept by the water current down into the arena below when he stopped to attack me in the wrong place, which at first looked terribly comedic (and aesthetically unseemly) and then proved rather obnoxious, as he found ways to make himself quite the nuisance down there. I also felt that the platform with the RL that rises up to the YK fight on the tower needed to be bigger--very easy to fall into the seams there, turning the encounter into a very ungainly ride/pop-a-thon.

The second half of the map inside the temple proper slants more towards traps (as opposed to 'ambushes', which I suppose technically comprise 99% of the combat in this map) in somewhat more controlled/limited spaces, though there's still much scope for running around in the main hub to defuse a lot of pressure. The snare-within-snare nature of several of these, particularly the little hedgerow-garden bit to the east, seems to suggest the way the earlier outdoor segment is perhaps 'meant' to be played--again, by cavalierly moving deeper and deeper down the ambush-tree until things start to reach a proper boil--but a cautious player can tiptoe through the majority of these as well, thereby maintaining/prolonging what may have potentially been a rather slow pace to that point. This passes aside in the final battle, which is a legitimately pressuring usage of rdwpa's Precious (e.g. timed sets of wave triggers) that eventually turns things up to 10 with a small horde of ADbots closely followed by a hitscanner platoon and then a dual cyberdemon reveal, all within a fairly limited space. A fitting conclusion, though perhaps a mite oddly insistent given how one can more or less 1994 their way through the rest of the lengthy map's content.

My text length is already getting a little out of control here (moreso than usual, I mean), so in summation I'll say that I had fun playing the map, but I did get the sense it might've benefited from more polish. I reckon this is the kind of thing that is probably most fun when replayed with prior knowledge and an active mental investment for maximizing its gameplay potential, but because it's also a (potentially) longer map, it finds itself in a somewhat unenviable position, as many players will only ever play a given map to completion once (if that). A little more streamlining or orchestration would probably benefit reception of a map like this in the context of a longer mapset; a lot of the impression that this doesn't quite 'belong' probably stems from the fact that this is the sort of thing more traditionally thought of as standalone fare, I'd wager.

[rehelekretep]

MAP25 - "Xenoarboreum" by skillsaw demo here

please forgive any bumbling about in the video - it was about 90% an FDA so i was scared of random noises and got surprised a few times :D

this map is fantastic

+ loved the enemy encounter design: ones that stood out were the up-down pillar fight with the HKs, and the cyberdemon/imps/archvile one. great stuff! not so sure about the YK trap. i just hugged the wall and it felt a little bit lame.
+ beautiful winding design. the sky is like something out of infochammel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52we39IPpGs
+ MIDI = great as usual

- only really the YK trap, loved everything else.

[Magnusblitz]

Demon of the Well said:

Hey, neat.....uh, horizontal escalator-thingy? I know there's a common term for these, but I'm having a brainfart and can't remember what it is for the unlife of me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_walkway

[Demon of the Well]

"Moving walkway", really? 0/10 for effort, mankind.

Map 24 -- Culture Shock - 105% Kills / 100% Secrets
I did find the secret plasma rifle, and I did spot the Bob Reganess references. :)

Little for me to do here but echo the sentiment of others who've posted before me: it's a delightful visual feast, replete with captivating creativity and ingenuity on both the aesthetic/in-world level and the meta-craft level (those spiraling teleportation ring-circuits, though!), that happens to play somewhat poorly on account of its persistently cramped, squidgy, and generally movement-unfriendly playspace. My overall impression is that it's a place I'm absolutely thrilled to have visited, and one that I'm very glad I don't have to spend any considerable amount of time living in.

Mountains could be said about the visual presentation here, depicting a lost city wreathed in fluffy clouds (whether the main buildings are actually floating or are actually incredibly tall terrestrial towers is unclear) that to all appearances was the home of an enlightened, artisanal society at some point prior to its current habitation by boorish rednecks from the backwoods of Lethe. It's an interesting collision of the general Ancient Aliens aesthetic with Kassman's propensity for worlds built out of hovering platforms, and a great deal of love and care has very evidently gone into breathing life into it as its own unique snow-globe environment, from the custom briefing screen on your hijacked craft's display at the outset to the little 'fluttering birds' trick used around the armchair tower early on in your trip through the area--that so much attention is paid to such a small detail that many will probably miss says volumes about the artistic sensibilities on display here, I think.

These are the qualities that most one-time players will surely remember and (rightfully) admire the map for. Repeat visitors or gameplay sticklers surely will not fail to recognize that the thing's a chore of a railshooter to play blind, though, transitioning into what is almost assuredly a tedious exploit-a-thon to replay, at least during key sequences. On paper, it all makes sense: sort of like maps 21 and 22, it's a constrained route with pressuring hazards directly in your path and snipers positioned to cover convenient points of retreat, with small-but-intense setpieces to punctuate milestones during progression. Problem is, though, that the general scale of the playspace has been misjudged, such that almost everything is extremely cramped or physically cluttered, which plays hell with the standard Doom convention of "mobility as defense" and shifts gameplay disproportionately in the direction of knowing ahead of time where snipers are posted so that problems can be defanged before they arise, rather than being able to deal with them on the fly. So, the obvious pains that were taken to ensure that no part of the journey is uneventful in action terms here come off as somewhat overbearing, as even minor placements become nuisances in the context of an environment where you feel as though you can't turn around without scraping your elbows on something. It's the sort of thing that persistently makes you feel clumsy while playing, and that is generally not a good thing.

The RK setpiece that many have talked about is somewhat emblematic of this. Given the space available, by design it seems the only two realistic ways of handling the fight are to either be in a position to tank through it (which is what I did--I had most of a blue armor and my chaingun out at that point, and so was able to inelegantly brute-force through it, at the cost of lots of scratches and scrapes and every bullet in my possession) or to outright exploit it, which seems to be what most others ended up doing. I reckon that fight designs that assume or even mandate some degree of necessary collateral damage are certainly valid enough if spun well, but this is a little beyond the pale here--there's no way to get through it without feeling either like a cheater/coward or like you made a bit of a hash of it, and to a lesser extent this applies to much of the rest of the action as well, though the mini-slaughter outside the tower and the last little traditional-but-satisfying cyber-melee did end things on a more conventionally palatable note.

What would I suggest to improve it? Hmm, well, a rescale is probably not a reasonable request, so I guess some small things are in order. ;) As to the RK fight, I think you can get away with leaving the monster composition as it is if you give the player a little more offensive power (and maybe a health top-up right before) to compensate; my suggestion here would be to put the plasma rifle and a limited quantity of cells along the main route before that point, as having the 'electric chainsaw' to quickly hack through walls of imp-meat with as a sort of short-burst panic button would here shift the balance of the fight to be more accommodating while retaining the fight's generally scrappy, tank-y flavor. The second secret could simply contain a bulk cell cache in exchange (maybe a BFG on lower skill levels, to help with the mini-slaughter and cyberdemon fights?), giving the player more arsenal flexibility in the later fights. For secret completionists, I reckon it's the PWAD reference here that is the real reward, anyway, rather than the plasma gun, which is outclassed by the RL or even the SSG in the later fights anyway. I would also suggest making the arch-vile's armchair just tall enough that you can actually use it to break line of sight with him, and generally be mindful of putting ADbots in places where they can be blown off to the edges of the map to launch fusilades of homing rockets at the narrow, restricted pathways from afar ;).

Visual bug: In Eternity, when standing at the arch-vile's armchair, looking roughly west/northwest you can see some irregular sky-transfer 'cut-outs' in the sky, displaying the purplish sky from around the cyberdemon/portal of wisdom area.

[Spectre01]

Map 27: Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls, by Skillsaw

This maps sort of feels like a throwback to the titular map 08, only with double the amount of UFOs to enter and some large mothership UFO hub as well. The green texturing on the walls there really gave me some strong Duke3D vibes, although I'm sure that's at least partially intentional considering the claw switch that appears throughout the wad is from there as well. This map, like with most teleporter heavy maps, can be confusing to navigate, as you never really know where you'll end up after leaving the UFO. Fortunately, none of the trips are one-way and you can always easily backtrack if you missed something or took the wrong portal. I found the difficulty to be considerably lower than pretty much every other E3 map so far and suffered no deaths despite falling off the blood bridge at least 4 times like an idiot. Perhaps it's intentional that this is more of a breather adventure map since everything that follows is quite the 'fest.

Bug Report: The numerous floating rocks have no collision and monsters tend to hide behind them and shoot through them before you have time to react. This happened to me with a bunch of Imps, but more annoyingly, a group of like 3 Plasma Troopers. Those guys are already tough to see, but then you're taking a rather narrow walkway and eat some plasma from a floating rock.

I also got thoroughly stuck between two sections of a light bridge and had to noclip out.

Spoiler

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