The DWmegawad Club plays: THT: Threnody & No Rest for the Living

[Salt-Man Z]

MAP11: Parallel Dimension
54:04 | 100% Kills | 98% Items | 80% Secrets

Whoa, that took me almost an hour? Didn't feel like it. This is a great take on "Wormhole", with your marine having to shunt back and forth between reskinned versions of more or less the same map, one in a techbase theme, the other Heretic gothic. I liked how (in traditional mirror-world video game fashion) actions taken in one dimension were reflected in the other world. Very, very cool. Combat is pretty relentless throughout, and even though I came in pretty more or less loaded from the previous level, I still chewed through most of my ammo a couple of times. (I exited at about 50% or so.) That MIDI just won't quit either, will it? A nice, driving tune that makes you want to just keep barreling forward. I should make special mention of the chapel at the end; the way the floor drops out and suspends you in darkness while baddies pop in all around you was pretty awesome—and panic-inducing (but nevertheless not terribly taxing, fortunately.) I missed a single secret/item: a final berserk pack hidden behind an upper-level bookcase; no clue how to access it.

[Spectre01]

Map 13: Binde Haldetmand Palae

We get a bit of a breather map here after a bunch of really large ones back to back. This is a straightforward castle map, using mostly Heretic textures, similar to the medieval style seen before. The fights are rather low-key, aside from the big teleport in the starting area, and mostly focus on SSG action with a few rockets if you managed to grab the secret. A bit strange considering its place in the wad and the trivial difficulty for continuous players.

The combat is mostly teleport trap-based with the usual stuff spawning in front and behind you. Nothing forces you to commit to the fights though and they are all easy to retreat from or invoke infighting. Not much else to say aside from the map being easy on the eyes compared to the detailing craze prior and the translucent exit portal cube looked cool. That Baron also gave me a chance to unload some rockets.

Looks like the activity dropped quite a bit in this thread too with some marines going MIA from map08 onward. D:

[Capellan]

Map06
Not as into this map as I was the last one. The opening had what felt like a bit of pointless backtracking. Red door at start. Go one room and oh hey yellow door with red key behind it, double back and go two rooms, find yellow key, double back and get red key, double back ... felt like an inelegant "you must see all the rooms I built!" thing.

After that things picked up a little for a while. I can see the secret SSG being an issue on pistol start but it's really rather easy to find (most of the secrets are - I got 100%). Then we get to the blue door with the key right in the same room, and eh. I get that it makes you explore the whole room to move forward but I prefer 'soft' pushes like "if you explore you'll find cool goodies" than these more heavy-handed tactics.

Once past the blue door I felt it turned into a very camping-friendly map with quite a lot of shooting around corners. The gstone room had enough angles on you to make this tougher than it was in most other parts but it was still the optimal strategy.

The blue armour in sector 271 seems highly unneccesary except for continuous play, and even then the player's probably left the the one in sector 19 until right before it.


Map07
And I thought the last map had a lot of backtracking! Half my playtime was wandering back to areas I'd previously cleared out now I finally had the key I needed. The map did occasionally release a few new monsters to challenge me during those long journeys, but nowhere near enough to make it engaging.

I wonder if this was always intended as map07 or just ended up in the position? Feels weird that it uses mancs and 'trons as enemies and then has no 666 or 667 tags. It would have been pretty easy to edit the map to use them for the exit process.

Speaking of the exit, obvious Icarus homage there. It and the amusing if silly red key fight were about the only memorable moments in the map though, really. Everything else was relatively humdrum with the spectre maze in the south east being a particular low-light.

[Demtor]

MAP13 - “Binde Haldetmand Palae” by Paul Corfiatis
UV - gzDoom - Pistol Start

Short and fun. Nice midi. Well balanced difficulty. Sad to admit I died once on such an easy map. Damn this wad and their quiet teleporting! Couple of Revs caught me without armor fighting the two Caco demons in the first small room. Whoops! (Need more coffee this morning.)

I really liked the double wood doors that actually swing open before the Rocket Launcher secret room with creepy shadows and one lone dead guy hanging to the side.

Also this window was a visual treat.



Love the sky choice. Also this was neat.

[The_SloVinator]

Map 13 - Binde Haldetmand Palae

Good, short map. Sort of "calm after storm" type of map with no big traps.

This would fit perfectly as a custom map for Heretic since it uses its textures.

Ost is cool.

[cannonball]

MAP11 - “Parallel Dimension” by antares031
Some questionable monster placement at times (Pain elementals in particular), an some of the progression was a little off at times, but maybe I am not the most observant. Otherwise this was pretty fun to play, a lot of plasma to zap into a mix of low and mid-tier enemies which was fun.
Overall a decent effort and a nice spin on the wormhole motif.

[Tristan]

MAP13: Binde Haldetmand Palae - Paul Corfiatis
Time: 07:37 (03:03:49) | Deaths: 3

The striking orange sky makes its proper debut in this map, and the medieval castle setting is a perfect introduction. A much shorter and easier offering than the previous five or six maps, combat here is quite easy in itself, but where it becomes slightly tricky - and all my deaths can be attributed to this - is that once you lose health, have fun not getting back again. I think I counted one medikit in the whole map? Maybe two? Plus I didn't have much health to start with going into this one thanks to my changemap ragequit from MAP12, oh well.
In such cases easier combat and a smaller map is a must as this sort of thing would grow kinda tiresome after a while, but I don't really mind it much here.

This is pcorf's second and final map in Threnody, after delivering a solid MAP03. I can't say I enjoyed this one quite as much, the gameplay isn't quite as strong, and nor is the music, though that's really more of a reflection on how good MAP03 was. However, visually and atmospherically speaking, this map is way stronger than MAP03. Having to shoot a stained-glass window generally seems more like a good way to hide secret rather than being key to progression, through the map, but I don't remember getting lost here the first time I played it, and it must have sat in the back of my mind this time, as I just subconciously knew I had to shoot the window. No one else so far seems to have had a problem with it, so I assume it's not a problem in general.

After an empty exit room in MAP03, we're finally treated to the trademark Pcorf Baron™. Not really much else to say about this map, but it makes for a pleasant breather map nonetheless, and with a bunch of large maps behind us, and a bunch more still to come, this map is certainly welcome to mix things up a bit.

[baja blast rd.]

Map 13: Binde Haldetmand Palae

The most notable design choice is that progression is overwhelmingly switch-gated, which starts to feel parodic after a while, when you hit a switch to open a door right beside it. Cool sliding door effect in the secret. Gameplay is okay, apart from the ubiquity of lost souls, one of the main enemies of maxrunners. The first big brawl is fun, but I would have liked it if the last fight were more interesting, the vile on the ground on one side, pinkies on the other, some pinkies in the exit room instead of the PCorf Baron, if preventing a quick exit were the goal. Structurally, this map is a welcome breather after the trio of long maps before it, and it kicks off the second part of THT, which is more purely set in Eternal Doom-like castles and fortresses and stuff.

[baja blast rd.]

Map 14: Labout of Despair

Sorry, I don't like this at all. Friction is such an obnoxious effect, and spending even a few seconds in these rivers of blood irritates me terribly. The map geometry is awkward. Only threat in the map is being oblivious to revenant missiles launched at you from thousands of map units away. I liked the secret soulsphere area, but it could have had either a beefier encounter than imps teleporting to the same destination to be slain one by one or no encounter whatsoever.

From here on out, I'm not maxing any really big maps or any maps I really don't like.

[Pirx]

MAP12 - “WormHell” by Z0k, Fonze

tnt wormhole tribute #2, in a more conventional way, meaning the 2 mirrored maps are both techbases, the second one is more corrupted, there's blood coming out of the walls and the like. the base has cool things like conveyor belts, and mancubi seem to have discovered those as their playground, anyway they look hilarious riding around on the conveyor and it's fun to shoot them off there. ammo is given in sufficient quantities, especially rockets, but strewn all over the place, so you have to keep moving to pick it up. there are also plenty of specters and fucking lost souls to restrict use of rockets, efficient although easily annoying. the map is large and competently built, however somewhat too large for my taste, took me ages to complete.




spider web with bullet hole




playground




boring spider






MAP13 - “Binde Haldetmand Palae” by Paul Corfiatis

those are some nice screenshots, demtor. those really show what this map is about, very atmospheric with easy gameplay. a dark stone castle under a cloudy sky, a pure eternal doom / heretic map with no tech stuff. the first fight can be won with firing just few shots, provided no one gets in the way, because if it does, there's not much health available. anyway i missed the secret rocket launcher and the map was still very doable with the ssg. the baron at the exit is pretty pointless though. does the title have any meaning?

[Salt-Man Z]

MAP12: Wormhell
1:35:08 | 98% Kills | 95% Items | 62% Secrets

F@#$ this map. Easily the second-least amount of fun I've ever had playing a Doom map. (Top honors goes to Whitemare 2's "Gloominarch's Realm".) Yes, the level looks nice, but everything else about this absolutely interminable map was ridiculous. Progression was completely obtuse. Combat consisted of nothing but empty rooms/arenas suddenly flooded with insta-pop/teleport ambushes triggered by noise. And after about the third or fourth fake-out exit I was about to put my fist through my monitor. Never mind the ridiculous overuse of PEs, revenants, and viles. And a demon-spitter and a half-dozen cybers at the end? Are you fricking kidding me? (I said that a lot while playing.) Two hours I wasted on this thing, and now it's 1:30 in the effing morning and I regret everything.

[Tristan]

Don't mean for this to have tones of schadenfreude, but I'm glad that for once everyone else has also had a bad time on Wormhell and it isn't just me being full of salt as is usually the case when I don't like a map :P

MAP14: Labour of Despair - Liberation
Time: 12:44 (03:16:34) | Deaths: 2

There's no T in Labour D:

Agreed with tdwpa that friction is annoying, but at least when it's a major hindrance, the combat isn't too tricky, as opposed to that arch-vile encounter in Coffee Break...
Actually this is quite an easy map overall, but there is an element of danger brought about by the large open spaces where monsters will target from far away and can catch you off guard. Just one arch-vile in the whole map, which is a plus, but on balance, there's a hell of a lot of Barons in this map, including a group of 4 while you're still slowly wading through the blood river. While I enjoyed what I played here, I couldn't help but think this would kinda suck from a pistol start. I used the BFG to clear out those barons for example, but you're not really supposed to get it in this map until afterwards, and even then it's a secret area, so it's only really useful for the cyberdemon duo that turns up at the end of the map, and turns them into a piece of cake, unfortunately only metaphorically speaking.

I believe it was Capellan who pointed out on MAP04 that the inclusion of currents and deep water there were paying tribute to the Boom source port, which of course Ty worked on, and this is really only the first map since then that we're seeing the use of some of Boom's more quirky features. In that sense, I can see why the friction was included, but to be honest, I think I would have preferred to see it work the other way and have an ice map thrown in. A thematic oddball perhaps, but as with friction itself, very few maps use the effect - I can only think of CC4 MAP08 and maybe something from 32in24-14 - and it's more fun to move around on IMO than something that completely slows down movement.

Map looks very nice though, showing off nice blends of outdoor, indoor and cavernous areas, and nice music, contributed by a TeamTNT member, no less.
This was as far as I got by myself, I've seen future maps in multiplayer, but haven't played them myself yet, so with the exception of MAP20, I'm like 75%-blind from now on.

7/10

[Spectre01]

Map 14: Labout(sic) of Despair

Rather large medieval castle map with lower than expected monster count for this wad. I'm gonna go on record and say that the map looks great with some very impressive vistas and detailing. I didn't mind the slowing blood that much except for that one Baron tunnel which was a bit annoying. I also missed 10% of the kills and 2 secrets. Found the BFG though which was nice. Overall though, I'm not a huge fan of this type of gameplay. There is constant crossfire from across the map and a heavy number of meaty foes chasing you while you don't have shit for good weapons unless you know all their locations.

[gaspe]

MAP12 is the weakest/most flawed level in the wad imo and it's overdone without really leaving a mark, though I didn't find it so terrible but maybe it's because I played in more days so I could dilute the experience. And I think it was a very bad decision to put it after Parallel Dimension.

[Demtor]

MAP14 - “Labour of Despair” by Philip “Liberation” Brown
UV - Pistol Start - gzDoom

I liked feeling as if I was surrounded a lot of the times through windows and various sniping spots, but as others have stated... the long distance became silly at times. When a rev rocket takes 30 seconds to reach you and you had no clue it was coming in the first place until BAM! Dead. WTF. That ain't cool.

What is cool, was the unobtrusive detail in this map with all of the blood and how it flows, where it starts and where it goes.









All paths eventually lead to the BK shrine. Which, I'm not sure if everyone noticed above it but the sky detail was a nice touch.



The friction stuff doesn't bother me when it's plain to see that deep pools of blood will bog me down. Not a big deal breaker to me. What is, was the WEAK enemy encounters. Seriously? 10 imps teleport once I grab the soulsphere. That's it? With all of this open space, that's the best you could come up with?

The worst offense of this was the end fight which was hilariously easy to deal with. There should have been twice as many barons and mancubi roaming around. Or had more teleport in after the BK switch. Maybe some pinkies to take up all that space. Few more imps above and on the sides. I dunno, I'm hardly a map designer but there could have been something more to that. The whole encounter was missing teeth, so to speak. LOL at that AV that came with the two Cyberdemons. He didn't last long with all the rockets flying around. Also the Cybes themselves were a breeze to handle. Either by camping out on the cliffs underneath the walls or with complete avoidance by dashing to the easy exit.

Speaking of the exit, another unique and neat looking one here.







Fits in with the blood theme of the map nicely.

[The_SloVinator]

Map 14 - Labour of Despair

With the sky texture, this level has quite an atmosphere along with the great music. I really like the 'sluggish movement' touch on the blood.

My third favorite map in this megawad.

[Demtor]

rdwpa said:

Unfortunately most of those are deathmatch maps. But the good news is that the six-map Vela Pax will be easily as big as a 32-map megawad full of substantially sized maps, and half of it is done already. :)

Thanks for pointing this out! I am usually leary of beta releases but I couldn't resist. Started it today, very glad I did. I am about 3/4's the way through map one and it is unbelievably good. Have all the keys and lost as all hell, lol. Couldn't finish it. Had to leave and I look forward to getting back to it later. Can't remember the last time thats happened to me with a Doom level. Not since maybe I was 17? Anyways, don't mean to sidetrack here from this month's WAD discussion but I just had to share and say thanks.

[Spectre01]

Map 15: TY45-15

Yeah, this is a pretty cool map. Great remix of the intermission music from TNT and good map layout. I particularly liked going up to the roof of that curved townhouse complex. It really felt like a medieval city at times. Gameplay was good but again, strangely low-fi considering we're 3/4 into the wad. I mean, we were BFGing stuff as early as map05 and now the last few maps are mostly SSG action and encounters against weak enemies with plenty of Zombiemen. Seems like the map order is really off, particularly for continuous play. Another memorable exit room too with the lowering candle pillars.

[cannonball]

MAP12 - “WormHell” by Z0k, Fonze
The visuals at times here are fantastic, unfortunately this map plays pretty badly with a lot of frustration at times, it simply isn't fun to play at all. Sorry. I legged it to the exit because screw that final fight.

MAP13 - “Binde Haldetmand Palae” by Paul Corfiatis
This one looks nice and plays pretty decently, the exit baron was pointless though. The map is very much in PCorf's style which is fine, and the shorter length was very welcome after the last few large maps. 100% kills for this one.

[Capellan]

Map08
Hated it. To the point that it pretty much ensures I will never play this mapset again.

No clue where I was going or what any of the switches were doing or why carpet was poisonous all of a sudden. Somehow I stumbled across a yellow key, and - having seen a yellow door earlier - I made a beeline for what I hoped was the exit. It was, and I got out of there.

[Tristan]

MAP15: TY45-15 - didy
Time: 11:42 (03:28:16) | Deaths: 0

Gosh, the maps are getting easier! I forced my way through BTSX E2M31 on UV last night, so I don't mind this map being easy in the slightest. Slightly unconventional in map order, but I believe it ramps up again at the end so this map and the 2 before it are like an extended rest. Dunno what to expect at all now in the next map, but anyway.

Didy continues the medieval theme, and executes it brilliantly with a very beautiful offering, set in a village overrun by the demons. Progression in getting the yellow key seemed mildly confusing, but as the actual layout of this map is very small, there isn't a lot of room for getting lost, so it's not a big problem. As I said already, gameplay is very easy here, despite a moderately large fight at the end which includes an arch-vile, my least favourite monster.
Other than that I don't really have much to say other than that the exit sequence is very cool, if a tad ear-rapey :P I also only just realised the numbers in the map title reference Ty's lifespan.

The music from Doomhuntress is one of two Legion of the Lost remixes in the WAD, the other being by yours truly. They contrast quite nicely, for me this is the more interesting of the two, as it's more adventurous and does its own thing, introducing its own melodies, and with more action-packed feel whereas I stayed closer to the original in these regards. This one is also a lot faster-paced than the original. Definitely cool to hear this kind of take on that theme, given that we only ever think of it as being a slow and sad piece. Those pitch bends near the end though x(

8/10

[The_SloVinator]

Map 15 - TY45-15

Nothing special about this map except for few traps. Those were neat.

I assume music is a remix of TNT Pharaoh sad ost?

[Capellan]

Map09
This definitely feels like the least polished Doomkid map so far. In fact I would go so far as to say that it captures the feel of 1994-95 maps much more so than the previous map. Massive changes in ceiling heights, eclectic set pieces, linear corridor set pieces ... felt much more in the "throw a bunch of ideas together" style of early PWADs.

The first cyberdemon was a cheeky surprise to say the least, but a fun fight since it is more than feasible to use the central pillar in the room as cover.

[Demtor]

MAP15 - “TY45-15” by didy
UV - Pistol Start - gzDoom

I wonder why they chose to use all of the Heretic/Hexen resources with this wad. I'm seeing a lot of textures from those games in a lot of these levels. Also some sound effects like the doom guy damage and rocket fire.

The map is pretty damn cool looking if your okay with the H/H style. The medieval look and feel doesn't feel very Doomy to me but it's not that big of a deal when everything looks this good.





Overall, nothing too hard here. Revs at the beginning were easy enough since they were caged. The climb up to the execution barn to get a chaingun was fun. SSG trap was pretty basic but neat looking with the layered fire backdrops behind the teleports. There was a caged in stairway trap that was a little easier than it should be thanks to being able to tuck up nicely at the top and avoid all projectiles without even moving. Couple of point blank AV encounters that were fine.





I possibly found a bug during the roof fight at the end. I hit the two red floor buttons while killing everything and then... nothing. Spent 5 minutes doing circles looking for something I missed because you are stuck there on the roof. Then finally one lone zombietrooper teleported in. Kill him and then after another 15 seconds or so, the walls dropped and the second half of the encounter started. Thought that was odd.

I really liked the detail that's used on the elevator to that roof section. The chains actually moved with the rising of the platform. Small detail, but it helped make something so simple seem pretty nifty.



Pretty cool ending with the lowering candle 'TY' message in the cavern grave area.

[Salt-Man Z]

Demtor said:

I wonder why they chose to use all of the Heretic/Hexen resources with this wad. I'm seeing a lot of textures from those games in a lot of these levels. Also some sound effects like the doom guy damage and rocket fire.

It's all in homage to Team TNT's Eternal Doom .

[Demtor]

Ahhhh, there we go. Thanks. Knew I was missing something. I've never played Eternal Doom before. Didn't know that detail.

[baja blast rd.]

Map 15: TY45-15

The gameplay is okay but largely forgettable. The last fight could have been a lot meaner and more dynamic. Moving the second soulsphere up there as well to ensure it won't be squandered prior would allow that fight to be a lot more exciting while still maintaining the current difficulty level. The secrets made me feel as if Didy really wanted us to have a green armor (the second of them is hard to miss), but I appreciate that. :)

TY45-15's strong suit is design: visually dense without being too busy, adorned with a number of pleasant-looking facades. There are quite a few creative design ideas, too, like the arching roofs. The bars at the exit are pretty damn loud, though. :D Solid map overall.

I'm not sold on the current map ordering, with 1-12 and 13-20 representing two episodes, or what feels like it, at least. It seems like many many of the maps from the first "episode" have enough of Eternal Doom in them that smaller maps like 13-15 would blend in neatly, particularly in the midst of the 08-12 block, which is easily the lengthiest five-map stretch in the wad. TY45-15 feels like the third breather map in a row after that, and I suppose I'd judge its gameplay more favorably if it was nestled between 11 and 12. Or maybe the format works, and this trio of maps should have been tuned more harshly.

[Pirx]

MAP14 - “Labout of Despair” by Philip “Liberation” Brown

ok the tht text file says correctly "labour", so i guess it was a typo in the op.
(i just copy from there, lazy as i am)

here we have a large castle, with mostly rectangular shapes, and moats filled with blood that lets you sink in and become slower. there's not much ammo in the beginning, i spent my 40 or so cells of the plasma gun (found in a moat) on arachnotrons when they cornered me there, but was able to continue thanks to some bullet boxes found shortly after. the main ammo eaters were some knights and barons, even with heavy use of infighting, and the greatest annoyance has been already mentioned: revenants perched on battlements really far away, and launching missiles from there, so i spent the first minutes only running between covers because some stupid missiles could be on its way.

then i found myself in a large inner courtyard with plenty of space to dodge stuff thrown at me, i guess i could have shot the 2 cybers with the cells found here, but just ran away and the map ended. a bit hit and miss gameplay, mostly because of said snipers.



MAP15 - “TY45-15” by didy

carrying on with the medieval theme, without any eternal-ish tech inclusions. an old town overrun by demons, with a nice, interconnected architecture that invites the player to explore the town (i ended up at the third or so floor and jumping back on the street). enemies are released with a few traps, but nothing dramatic, especially after you get the ssg, in fact the only time i looked bad was after getting too cocky with a revenant that shot me straight in the face). one bigger fight on the roof, where a vile showed up after i had shot the first wave. convincing architecture, moody sky and a midi i liked a lot, but sounded a bit videogame-like to me, perhaps better fitting a tech map?

[Capellan]

Map10

Lordy.

I had to do this map in two sittings. For my tastes, it frankly is too big and too long - I'd grown weary of it by the time the never-ending quest for the red skull key began, and the heavily slaughter-based gameplay of the entire last act did not do much for me.

Up until that point, though, I was having a great time. The level sometimes challenged my admittedly poor sense of direction, and the automap was way too busy to be much help to me, but it looked great and the fights - a penchant for high up, distant chaingunners aside - were good. And I have to have at least some affection for a map that so thoroughly embraces the might cacodemon, both in terms of the numbers used and the architecture being designed to showcase their maneuverability.

If this had been 30% shorter, I'd probably have raved about it.

[Spectre01]

Map 16: Ayahuasca

Yeah, nah bruh. This was shite from pistol start. Lots of early mid-tier spam, dick all health and armour and no decent weapons until later in the map. Map looks nice etc. but the early item balance is so utterly annoying I couldn't care less about the gameplay. Gets trivial later on when you can spam the secret BFG.