The DWmegawad Club plays: Slaughter Until Death & The Evil Unleashed & Obituary

[Demon of the Well]

4 hours ago, vdgg said:

 

Please tell us how.

No DSDA demo has 100% secrets and I spent an hour looking for one missing secret in various source ports and map editors. Apparently it's sector #91 according to DeepSea, but it's nowhere to be found. TheOrganGrinder also found 5/6.

When I've no recording of a map, or when I have a recording I don't have the time/wherewithal to watch it and am writing about the map some time after the fact, I go by memory on what the ending stats were. Usually I have a pretty good head for these things, but of course am not beyond being mistaken. Not to doubt you or DSDA, just for posterity I ran through the map again a few minutes ago, and lo and behold I couldn't find the sixth secret either. Can't even see it on the automap with IDDT/max magnification, as a matter of fact. One would surmise that the elusive sector #91 might be one of the razor-thin border sectors between the main route and one of the secret cubbies or the like (ala m1's multi-sector secrets), but couldn't find anything like that. Then I thought it might be the little offmap TiC sector-signature for some fool reason, but again, no dice.

 

I will of course amend the post quoted above to help avoid further confusion. ;)

 

E2M4 -- Death Pain - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets

Very nearly died in the first 30 seconds of this one, not too shabby for a map from '94. The brigade of zombiemen and their relentless pincers advance is not to be underestimated, and you have to pistol a pair of sergeants at point-blank range to get your shotgun (without armor and while wounded, realistically). Pretty saucy. After this the map's intensity bleeds off almost entirely back to the gentle shuffle of E2M2 and its demon-dungeon segment, though cacodemons here make strides at contending with pinkies for Denis's favorite monster. There is one other potentially dangerous part, involving an incredibly cheeky (but again, telegraphed!) crusher paired with another pincer attack from a couple of sergeant squads, though for whatever reason I was able to recall/avoid the crusher thanks to long past experience.

 

In progression terms this plays out a lot like E2M2 from earlier, in that again you just sort of wander around in search of things to shoot while the environment quietly rearranges itself in the background to open the way forward while you're not looking, though I felt that the effect here wasn't quite as organic; the necessary backtracking that earlier maps in the set found various ways to disguise is more baldfaced (slightly less so if you find certain secrets at first opportunity, perhaps), and often I'd stumble upon the newly opened area before I thought I would, as new rooms/corridors (including the eventual exit) tend to open off of initially unremarkable interstitial passageways rather than off of major rooms or junctions, leaving some of them feeling oddly underutilized, particularly the big room with blue pillars a ways beyond the yellow door; the initially harried flavor of the mapstart only makes the later bits seem all the emptier, I thought. There are some neat ideas dotted around, ala the surprisingly elaborate (if mostly toothless) 'zoobreak' crossfire trap first seen when entering the yellow door's room for the first time, but on the whole the map comes off as being significantly more impromptu and less polished than its predecessors, particularly where things like the really blatant failure of perspective visible on approach to the big southern room off of the toxic junction near mapstart.

 

E2M5 -- Mutilated Corpses - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets

Despite the somewhat dramatic name (presumably based in the sordid little upstairs 'trophy room' near the westernmost red door, complete with display case), this one feels a little more ambling and thoughtful than Thomas's earlier maps in the set, as though he decided to try his hand at Denis's slower, more environmentally-focused approach to progression and gameplay. A number of its major rooms or features read more like architectural experiments than spaces intended for combat, perhaps best exemplified by the central raised crossroads with the elevator platform in its center, a really crafty simulation of true room-over-room structure over the course of the progression, where the composite 'ducts' you can initially walk under if you've a mind are replaced behind the scenes with the two-part bridge connecting the 'silos' room with the exit pillbox, which you are standing all of 3 feet away from at mapstart, funnily enough. Other than a couple of sergeants in the sight-walled peripheral access corridor, there are no monsters present here, a bold and somewhat atypical decision for Thomas, but one that I think works quite well--really gets you to look at and appreciate the structure more. By contrast, another carefully crafted bit of construction is the collapsing/elevating central corridor in the cement outbuilding housing the storeroom where the red keycard is found, which perhaps even more convincingly simulates 'true 3D' precisely because you're likely too busy blasting zombies and other malcontents in the congested hallways to immediately realize you've doubled back and under the upper pathway into a previously inaccessible area. Clever!

 

This 'less is more' approach to battle in deference to elaborate level geometry doesn't work as well elsewhere, necessarily. Many have mentioned the relative tedium of the silos room at the north of the map, a short trial-and-error pathfinding exercise limply punctuated with the occasional momentary bit of gunfire. I use the term 'tedium' with some significant hyperbole here, mind you, bearing in mind the whole sequence only takes a minute or so, but nevertheless there seemed to be a lot of opportunity here for a more credible fight that never came. There are chambers at the sides of the room which open up to release a few lost souls at a couple of points (their mapset debut, IIRC?), suggesting that the author had paid some mind to the potential of the plentiful void space around the narrow walkways, but nothing else is done with the idea--plenty of scope for more cacos afoot or banks of dodgeball imps or the like, methinks.

 

Being E2M5, there is of course a secret exit here, and unlike the original it's rather unlikely anyone is going to just stumble into this one by accident halfway through the mainline progression. In terms of visual tell and mode of access there is very little that's obvious or intuitive about accessing the switch to open the teleporter to the remote side area where the alternate exit is found--you have to shoot at or strike an otherwise nondescript panel of a wall in an equally nondescript corridor--but of course this is only half the story. This is a secret patently made to be found using the computer area map, which is hidden in a more or less intuitive non-official secret room off of the storehouse. It's a simple thing, but again, a secret mini-quest leading to the secret map is not something to be taken for granted in this era of mapping, where many sets didn't use the secret slot at all.

 

E2M9 -- Arena of Punishment - 95% Kills / 100% Secrets

The secret map itself seems somewhat less well-considered, of course. The best thing about it is undoubtedly the flashy billiards-style trickshot with the barrels flying out and killing the ledge snipers on either side of the BFG pillar, methinks; other than that it tends to be a bit of a bore.

 

Somewhat like E2M4, in many ways this map is quite rough both technically and in terms of design, with a disproportionately large fraction of its bodycount and gameplay found in the comb-toothed quasi-maze of alcoves and hallways in the southerly region. The actual 'arena'--presumably the large wooden room with the pentagram windows on the west side--is virtually featureless in comparison, making the area feel unfinished. The comb-toothed maze being the biggest talking point here, I think the comparison to the final detour in the original "Warrens" is well-founded; I was also immediately reminded of "Late for Supper" by Bob Carter, which serves as E2M9 of The Lost Episodes of Doom, among other things. Carter's rendition of the same concept is in some ways more daft--most of the zombies in it aren't deaf, and I seem to recall there's a cyberdemon trudging around somewhere inside of it at some point (AND it's juxtaposed with a random dining room full of 90s Doom furniture)--but whatever else we might say for it, it has a little more spark than what we see here, which is an extremely repetitive sequence only lent some semblance of life by the opportunity it presents to use the berserk pack and/or its potential for being a tense health-starvation stretch, which is soundly alleviated should you happen to find the Wolfenstein-style secret room literally carpeted in stimpacks near the entrance to the maze.

 

The map uses "Sign of Evil" for its music track and generally gave me the impression that it was intended to a tough, intimidating challenge-type map, and to some degree this is potentially true from pistol-start, since healing, ammo and other supplies available on the main route are all notably sparse--moreso than in any of the previous maps, really--especially during the first half or so. Accessing any number of the secrets rapidly flips the balance almost entirely around, however, offering early hi-test weaponry and a veritable embarrassment of soul spheres over the course of the level, and can lead to you becoming stupidly overpowered in very little time, which is perhaps the intentional design from an episodic perspective. The BFG 9000, notably, is not hidden and accessed quite early on (you get a chance to try again later should miss the jump the first time), though from pistol-start you only ever get to fire it one time, and there's only one place it makes any sense to do so, in the ambush outside the exit room. In terms of flow and physical scale/structure the level is definitely most similar to E2M3 from earlier, though progression is more vague/haphazard, with a number of walkover lines used in totally unhighlighted areas driving developments at a number of points.

 

Lots of folks have commented on the impossibility of getting 100% Kills here (and it's a royal pain in the ass to get as many as possible), but did anybody else happen to notice that poor imp stuck in the floor of the walkway around the wooden arena?

[vdgg]

Thank you Demon of the Well for clarification, now I can sleep peacefully ;)

 

E2M6

A brutal and a very interesting pistol start. The room with square platforms moving up and down kind of fits the theme, but it's annoying of course. I really liked the atmosphere and aesthetics in the corridors behind the blue key door. The map has plenty of flaws, misalignments, stuck monsters, but as a whole I think it was great. Time to watch the demo to figure out where the weapons were. (I found the plasma gun, but its placement was weird, too late. Is there only one?)

 

E2M7

DNF. I found the red key and the excellent setting NuMetalManiak mentioned. I couldn't figure out how to get the blue or yellow key. No patience at the time I was playing the map. I will watch the demos now.

 

E2M8

Doors with arches! Cool. Besides, nothing special

 

As a whole I'm not a big fun of Slaughter Until Death. It has potential but it's too "raw". In the past I played it after Obituary, so that maybe justifies my feelings. E2M5 and E2M6 are "moderate classics" and best maps. The best Thomas map was E2M3, but no worries, he will completely overshadow Denis in their next release.

 

[TheOrganGrinder]

E2M8: Baphomets Throne

 

It's a cyberdemon fight with some interesting-for-its-era architecture, though I don't know if the tight confines of the throne room are the intended battleground or if they're deliberately built in a way that's unfriendly to rocket-dodging in order to push the player back out into the surrounding wilderness with the cyberdemon on their heels; alas, with maps of this era we can only interrogate the author's intent through the map as it's constructed and sometimes the answers are inconclusive.  I like the castle/cathedral layout as an interesting alternative to the relatively anonymous boxy architecture of the original E2M8, but otherwise this isn't remarkable.

[NuMetalManiak]

E2M8 Baphomet's Throne

 

Not really Baphomet, but a cyberdemon on the throne in this big open map. And he's inside, while a folly of imps are just sitting outside while the demons stay inside with the cyberdemon (of course, this doesn't work in their favor in the slightest). The biggest challenge of the map is actually remembering to kill the enemies on the other ends of the castle. The poor fellows are really easily forgotten, as the way to their area is on the backside of the castle. Anyways, this cyber fight is way easier than Doom's traditional E2M8, owing to his mostly enclosed position, making rocket firing actually a decent strategy for once. And when it's all open, there's not much to talk about.

 

this wad is fun but TEUTIC is better.

[gaspe]

E2M8: Not so much to say here, It's like the original E2M8 but the boos is inside a small castle. The arches on the door and the windows were nice.

 

This started to get interesting at the third map, with E2M5-M6 as the more interesting levels in the set though there were some nice ideas here and there in the other maps too. The maps progressively get better, this makes me a bit optimistic that TEUTIC will have some better offerings overall.

[Demtor]

E2M8 - “Baphomet's Throne” by Thomas Möller

gzDoom - UV – pistol start/continuous/no saves

 

A cyberdemon battle inside of a castle. Kind of a cool throne with pairs of monsters waiting before their lord and master. That set up allows for fun, almost guaranteed, infighting to kick things off. Very little space to move from the on coming rocket fire though so most players will retreat out the lovely arched doors and wait for a better angle.

 

For a ‘94 episode 2 ender, this was pretty good. There was a secret side room that really helps out pistol starters and also a couple of RL’s on both roof sections. It’s interesting to me that even before Memento Mori, TiC liked to focus on co-op.

 

Final Thoughts

Overall, for it’s time this episode was pretty decent. Lots of interesting designs and unique choices. I’d say it’s a little light on the difficulty though. Nothing was all that challenging aside from a few problematic pistol starts. I am encouraged by the amount of energy the two of them put into this though. You could tell that they were really putting forth a best effort for a first time wad. I am looking forward to seeing how they learn and develop from one wad to the next.

[rehelekretep]

s2t6 fda

jesus christ that start is a bit brutal; escape the pinky/imp traps and then get burnt or crushed around the RK.

after 3 attempts or so thinking 'where the hell are the weapons?' i caved and IDDT'd to see the chainsaw. once i had that it was a much easier map, almost easing off completely towards the end aside from some lift + associated danger near to the YK. the RK crusher though; with any monster caught inside, the trap slows right down and thus blocks you from escaping. therefore you can see me in my demo, waiting down below for the crusher to stop crushing silly imps so that i could actually progress. bit crap but oh well.

[Salt-Man Z]

Am I the only one who never entered the castle in E2M8? At one point early on I fired into a window to get everyone riled up, then when I finally opened the door, cybie bulled his way out, where we dueled to the death. (I almost got killed a couple times backing into trees while dodging/firing rockets.)

[rehelekretep]

i went in there to check it out

[Capellan]

SUDTIC Overall

Mostly I’m pleasantly surprised.  The age of the WAD is obvious, but that it’s a cut above the average of the time is also clear.  Not every idea works, and there’s a lot of technical polish still to be learned, but I can see why it was well-received at the time.

 

TEUTIC E3M1

I didn’t bother to install the kick graphics since that appears to be a purely cosmetic change.

 

Two things are immediately apparent in this map.  First, that TiC have progressed significantly in their layout and aesthetic abilities.  And second, that Denis is still way too fond of lots of fighting lots of hit points with only popguns for weapons.  Though to be fair to him, these encounters were probably considering more challenging for the average 90s player than they are for people playing Doom today.

 

The TiC affection for requiring unprotected dashes across nukage also continues, though Denis smartly doesn’t require it to be a leap of faith: you can see that there’s a safe place not too far away before you make the drop.

 

The end room crusher is a tad goofy, but it’s certainly better than slogging through a room full of pinkies with the weapons on hand.

 

Overall, it definitely feels like a solid evolution from the first episode.  I look forward to seeing how Thomas has progressed in the next level.

 

[Magnusblitz]

E2M7: Dehumanization

100% kills, 17/22 secrets

 

Yeah, all the moving sectors at the start here are really unfun, to the point that they make the ones later on seem worse than they are simply by dint of having you say "no not again!" The rest of the map is pretty bland, unfortunately (aside from the chaingun room as others have mentioned, but that's hidden in a secret and somewhat annoying to get to with the forced damage). Though there is a literal Baron priest, which I'm sure Demon of the Well will appreciate. It's possible to lock yourself in the caco closet in the northwest.

 

E2M8: Baphomet's Throne

1/1 secret

 

Yeah, it's a typical cyber fight. Not a bad looking temple though, good use of those custom textures.

[Demon of the Well]

E2M6 -- Damned Bastards - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets

Aha! An early example of a map robbed of much its character (or divested of most of its obnoxious parts, depending on your point of view) by being played as part of a continuous run, opening from a clean slate with that rarest of ideas, a dedicated chainsaw start. Up until after obtaining the red key, you'll pick up a full load of shells but have no weapon to use them in, and clips for the pistol are as rare as health packs. To top it off, the aforementioned chainsaw is hidden in a secret (albeit an easy one), and so it's quite possible that a first-time player will end up with nothing but an empty gun, a set of brass knuckles, and foul language to defend themselves with before reaching that point, particularly if they make the mistake of trying to shoot the imps on ledges (or the harassers in the cage in the start yard) along the way.

 

Even with the aid of the saw, by 90s standards the early action is still notably demanding, requiring melee battle vs. mixed groups in mid-sized rooms where it's easy to be flanked, duels vs. one or more cacodemons, and a decidedly sardonic slow-crusher setup guarding the retreat from the red key's nook where the psychological pressure of a teleport destination directly atop some damage-floor is used to goad you into making an ill-considered move. Make it through all this, and the map turns out to be decidedly bi-polar, with almost all pressure evaporating in an eyeblink the moment you finally pick up a shotgun off of a corpse (or the chaingun from a secret compartment, available at basically the same point in map progression); this isn't merely a function of enhanced DPS on your part, almost all of the real traps suddenly stop around that point as well. Weird. Other weapons and powerups become available in rapid succession as the map nears its end, situating the level in an unusual spot relative to the ages-old pistol-start vs. continuous dichotomy and giving it a slight feel of anticlimax. The mapstart is really cool while it lasts, though, and I was glad to experience it like this, since this WAD is old enough that the last time I played it was very likely long enough ago that I myself hadn't yet picked up the habit of pistol-starting.

 

In terms of construction and progression, it's actually a significantly less nuanced map than some of its predecessors, where backtracking is more obvious (although IIRC there's a little loop in the layout that shortcuts you back to the yellow doors right after you get the yellow key) and room structures are mostly pretty simple, save for the occasional small cosmetic flourish, ala the recessed corpse-cages flanking the downflight of stairs near the blue armor secret. Most interesting quirk here is that you get a choice of two red doors right after you get the red key, with the 'correct' one being the earlier of the two (or, the one that's farther away from you at the time), which sort of rewards you for having the intuition to test the 'obvious' progression path a little. Go into the nearer door and you have the strange pumping pistons + imp-cage room, which isn't a huge deal, but definitely not at all ideal (and potentially dangerous with the point-blank specter-trap in the cage) if you're still packing nothing but a chainsaw (or an empty pistol and your fists).

 

E2M7 -- Dehumanization - 100% Kills / 81% Secrets (I think?)

Only actually found one secret here IIRC, for the record, but it apparently contained 17-18 sectors all flagged as such. I admit to breathing a little sigh of relief there, myself. :D

 

This map has loads and loads of personality, no denying. While I often find myself taking something of an advocacy position where novel/ambitious ideas seem to slightly outpace smoothness in implementation, I have to admit that I didn't find this very enjoyable, either. Interesting certainly, but enjoyable, no. Best part is again almost certainly the mapstart, which is disorienting and harrying in the right sort of way, but as you leave the first yard and its kaleidoscopic wooden silo-thing behind and head deeper into the map, things rapidly take a turn for the worse, as every minor piece of traversal seems to require either standing around waiting for an auto-cycling lift to let you pass or slamming a switch to open a timed door, or both of these at once on at least a couple of occasions. It's seldom unclear what to actually do in these situations (though there is perhaps a bit of light trial and error regarding the four-switch battery near the red skull), so navigation feels less like unraveling a riddle than it does like trying to commute through a particularly badly-designed roundabout/merge-lane combo at rush hour, something like that. This unpleasantness in moment-to-moment traversal also negatively impacts the sense of progression, even though the actual route/layout uses a carefully linked up hub/wing design very similar to the one that worked at least fairly well in E2M3, and the double-back to actually get the red key (which I assume you can probably 'grab'  early if you know that's a thing?) is perhaps the most flatly opaque piece of progression in an otherwise nicely conducted set.

 

Given the cramped environments and the aforementioned unpleasantness of movement, combat generally feels like it's there mostly for the sake of checking a box on a clipboard as well, with the notable exception of the big silly nested zombie ambush near the exit, a much-welcome spark of levity. Also of note are some representational environmental details to add flavor to the otherwise mostly nondescript knot of stuffy neutral-lit wooden hallways--a couple of prison cells with a firing squad setup in the yard outside, a gallows, a bona fide PWAD chapel (which I totally didn't remember was actually in this set when I mentioned it earlier, to whit!), the like. Charming, but not charming enough to carry the experience, IMO.

 

E2M8 -- Baphomet's Throne - 100% Kills (presumably) / 100% Secrets

A very period-suited conclusion, basically a fight that's more about ceremony or spectacle than about actual threat or challenge, though of course one should bear in mind that the cyberdemon was generally a lot more intrinsically intimidating to a lot more folks in those days. I seem to recall killing him through one of the windows on an early playthrough (the prospect of which frankly makes me cringe a little today), though he really doesn't need much coaxing to get him to come out and play, where the ceremonial game of rocket-toss can easily proceed more or less unhindered. Note also another very Wolf3D-style bossmap cache of healing and weapons in a simple secret on the perimeter, containing one of the most classic of classic rewards, a blursphere you're better off never using.

 

I actually seem to remember the castle itself being more impressive than it actually is--of being bigger and using more custom assets--but I probably have it confused with some other similar marble castle from the same general time period. Nevertheless, it's certainly an acceptable riff on E2M8, sounding very similar notes but doing its best to humbly put its own spin on the tune.

 

[TheOrganGrinder]

E3M1: Out of Control

 

As with @Capellan I'm not installing the new graphics here beyond those in the WAD itself since they seem like cosmetic changes unrelated to gameplay and I don't really care for the nature of the tweaking involved.

 

This one's on the fiendish side right from the start, with significant opposition thrown in the player's face before they really have the means to deal with it; I generally don't like it when supplies dropped by enemies get crushed in doors but I really felt that at the start here, when one of the shotgunners fell over in a doorway and his boomstick was lost to me.  I feel like even four shells worth of breathing room would have made a big difference to how I approached the level.  It feels like it takes a while for you to really get your feet under you in terms of supplies, especially with no appreciable armour to speak of.  The layout's a nice one, though, tight where it needs to be, just open enough elsewhere for the player not to feel like it's an endless succession of anonymous corridors; I do like the way the descending nukage channel almost forms a spiral that runs parallel to the player's path through the first half of the level, and there's some good use of relatively modest height changes as you descend into the bowels of the facility.  Good stuff, and I'm looking forward to where this goes next.

[gaspe]

TEUTIC

 

E3M1: A rather impressive start. It's complex for being an opening map, quite lots of stuff going on here. Gameplay and visuals feel both more refined here, definetely a step up from SUDTIC . It's cool the secret crusher to kill the demons in the last area. I only hope that this map didn't raise the bar too high for what's coming up next.

[vdgg]

Moving on to TEUTiC, I switched from UV to IWB :)

Spoiler

Skill 1 is named HELP!!!, Skill 2 = Hey, Don't Touch Me!, Skill 3 = Eat Shit Zombie!, Skill 4 = I Want Blood!!!

E3M1

So you guys are impressed and so am I. The first room didn't make my jaw drop, though. It's a small room with two big doors (one of them doesn't open Corfiatis style), so I would say the sense of scale is altered somehow.

 

Then there's a courtyard of sorts with another door, but an impressive one this time. These SUPPORT3 frames look so modern (i.e. not-1994!). I can imagine as the map editor and computer "powerfulness" improved, this door lead evolutionally to something like this (this is from P:AR). I could argue that with the outdoor SKY a lift would be more realistic than a door, but it's good enough not to complain.

 

The map has actually lots of SUPPORT3 and METAL textures which serve as main wall textures. I like it. This will be used so much in Memento Moris and later WADs and again feels "modern" to me. I dare to say a new kind of aesthetics is born, for example this level is mildly hellish, but it has absolutely nothing in common with REDROCK extravaganza or Sandy Petersen offerings.

 

Another cool feature: a room-over-room of sorts, which I didn't see in SUDTiC (though I may have missed it). There's a framed door again and you can run a full circle around the pit below using these ramparts and after a while open the door and go under them. Instead of a simple solution (a lift, like in HR MAP18 from 1997), Denis wanted something that some players may not even notice, but for me is mind-blowing. I really wanted to break his map by skipping imps and see if they will get stuck (he didn't use any monster block lines there). But I didn't succeed trying it 10 times, so I guess the trick works flawlessly due to map geometry.

 

I will not compete with Demtor with illustrated stories, maybe 5 more screenshots for the whole WAD, but I had to mention this very nice beaming, also 1994-unlike.

 

The gameplay was fine for me, the blue key was the most brutal and it was surprising to see monsters coming out of their cubicles because these pentagrams would give impression they can't get out. If you have chaingun and decent health you should survive this without problems.

Edited July 8, 2017 by vdgg

[NuMetalManiak]

E3M1 Out of Control

 

My memory of this level is pretty good. A rough start considering I have to pry a gun from the shotgun guy and some demons were nearby, and the nukage makes wandering around quite a bit more troublesome. A few key traps are of note, but nothing the average 2017 player can handle. Yet at the same time, even for '94 I still think of it as a rather challenging map. There's a really cool crusher secret that can be triggered to get rid of demons in the exit room.

 

I remember talking to Ryan W (on doomwiki) about secret sector numbers on this map as well. It seems that both DeepSea and DB2 handle them differently, which meant that the two editors had different sector numbers and all that. @Quasar noted that since DB2 is a de facto standard of doom mapmaking, people like me will use that for referencing sector numbers, but it is quite interesting in how sector numbers were done differently between different editors.

[Pirx]

On 7/1/2017 at 3:59 PM, Slipgate Ranger said:

Hello. Long time admirer of the DWmegawad Club, first time participant. I decided to record myself play through these WADs, because I want to get back into video making and uploading. Anyway, I'm playing on GZDoom, Ultra Violence, and with saves. BTW, this is so cool. My first attempt at this, and it focuses on Doom 1, AND maps from 1994? I chose the best time to do this.

 

 

E2M1: Holy crap, this IS from 94 isn't it? Long hallways, and a big overall feel to it. Level feels very basic...but gameplay wise, it's anything but. I know I'm playing this on UV, but damn, this level really needs to ease up on the shotgun sergeants. Also sucks that the only armor available are those armor boosters. No green armor? Man, this one was tough. I hope I can make it through this entire experience.

I love how there's a room that looks like an alter for a shotgun...a mirror into what the map designer was thinking of at the time perhaps?

 

welcome, ranger!

 

yeah, a start with 50 hp  :p

i don't think anyone would receive much praise for making a map with such a start today.

at least you can grab a shotgun from those sergeants through the bars, making the following much easier.

the map is surprisingly dangerous, especially for a 1994 map, if one underestimates the shotgunners. they can also hit the player from below at the bridge, are hard to see even with mouselook, and that's getting bad quickly, as there's no armor available.

[Pirx]

14 hours ago, Demon of the Well said:

E2M6 -- Damned Bastards - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets

Aha! An early example of a map robbed of much its character (or divested of most of its obnoxious parts, depending on your point of view) by being played as part of a continuous run, opening from a clean slate with that rarest of ideas, a dedicated chainsaw start. Up until after obtaining the red key, you'll pick up a full load of shells but have no weapon to use them in, and clips for the pistol are as rare as health packs. To top it off, the aforementioned chainsaw is hidden in a secret (albeit an easy one), and so it's quite possible that a first-time player will end up with nothing but an empty gun, a set of brass knuckles, and foul language to defend themselves with before reaching that point, particularly if they make the mistake of trying to shoot the imps on ledges (or the harassers in the cage in the start yard) along the way.

 

Even with the aid of the saw, by 90s standards the early action is still notably demanding, requiring melee battle vs. mixed groups in mid-sized rooms where it's easy to be flanked, duels vs. one or more cacodemons, and a decidedly sardonic slow-crusher setup guarding the retreat from the red key's nook where the psychological pressure of a teleport destination directly atop some damage-floor is used to goad you into making an ill-considered move. Make it through all this, and the map turns out to be decidedly bi-polar, with almost all pressure evaporating in an eyeblink the moment you finally pick up a shotgun off of a corpse (or the chaingun from a secret compartment, available at basically the same point in map progression); this isn't merely a function of enhanced DPS on your part, almost all of the real traps suddenly stop around that point as well. Weird. Other weapons and powerups become available in rapid succession as the map nears its end, situating the level in an unusual spot relative to the ages-old pistol-start vs. continuous dichotomy and giving it a slight feel of anticlimax. The mapstart is really cool while it lasts, though, and I was glad to experience it like this, since this WAD is old enough that the last time I played it was very likely long enough ago that I myself hadn't yet picked up the habit of pistol-starting.

 

In terms of construction and progression, it's actually a significantly less nuanced map than some of its predecessors, where backtracking is more obvious (although IIRC there's a little loop in the layout that shortcuts you back to the yellow doors right after you get the yellow key) and room structures are mostly pretty simple, save for the occasional small cosmetic flourish, ala the recessed corpse-cages flanking the downflight of stairs near the blue armor secret. Most interesting quirk here is that you get a choice of two red doors right after you get the red key, with the 'correct' one being the earlier of the two (or, the one that's farther away from you at the time), which sort of rewards you for having the intuition to test the 'obvious' progression path a little. Go into the nearer door and you have the strange pumping pistons + imp-cage room, which isn't a huge deal, but definitely not at all ideal (and potentially dangerous with the point-blank specter-trap in the cage) if you're still packing nothing but a chainsaw (or an empty pistol and your fists).

 

 

 

 

i played the tic wads on continuous, and went through sudtic quickly, obviously. i have to post my ramblings tomorrow. i prefer pistol starting normally, but wasn't so sure if this was the intention of the authors, as pistol starting wasn't popular for most people back then, iirc. and being behind, again, i didn't like the prospect of shaking empty fists at imps and demons.

[Magnusblitz]

E3M1: Out of Control

100% kills, 2/5 secrets

 

Definitely a big jump in quality here, at least in aesthetics - as mentioned by vdgg, there's lots of more modernized touches like door frames, free-standing METAL ceiling grates, rounded corners, etc. The layout also does a good job of being interesting by using height differences and some teleporter dead ends, as it avoids the 'hallway room hallway room' feeling of some of the SUDTIC maps. Gameplay-wise it's a bit of a chore, efficiency is king here, as there's not boxes of shotgun shells lying around like before (I actually had to kill a caco or two with just the pistol). I do like the crusher in the final room though.

[Capellan]

TEUTIC E3M2

The map-making progress shown in the first level is entirely absent in this stringy, flat corridor shooter.  It’s not even really up to the standards of SUDTIC, to be honest, with lots of blank orthogonal chambers and not even much in the way of interesting lighting to mix it up.

 

A few amusing barrel moments can’t save the generally stunted gameplay either.  There’s far too many small clumps of monsters just kind of statically standing around waiting for you to arrive and shoot them, without much dynamism to the flow.

[Capellan]

When you come to play OBTIC, I recommend this link, rather than the one in the OP: http://doomedsda.us/lmps/708/obtic11.zip

 

The DSDA version of the zip has a "fixed" subdirectory with files that are ready to work with source ports, thanks to Andy Olivera.

[TheOrganGrinder]

E3M2: Military Depot

 

This one, sadly, isn't as good.  The layout it flat, boxy, and repetitive, with a significant chunk of real estate dedicated to a crate warehouse that felt like E2M2 on a shoestring budget, and a secret-flagged network of teleporters that don't feel as though they add much, if anything, to the gameplay or navigability or the map.  The placement of the blue key right at the start of the map, at the end of a convoluted switchback corridor that meanders its way across most of the level, is a frustrating design choice, since you know you'll have to walk back to get it at some point but there's nothing to tell exactly when the trigger that opens access to it has been activated, so the player is effectively felt fumbling around until they decide "I can't think of anything else to do here and I can't find any more obvious triggers, maybe I should walk all the way through the level to see if something back at the start has changed."  And the fact that there is no shortcut to that particular location as part of the secret teleporter network feels like a missed opportunity to have made a fairly obvious quality-of-life improvement to the map.  So, yeah, not a fan of the proceedings here I'm afraid.

[vdgg]

E3M2

The start looks great; I once gave it as an example in an anti-Sandy Petersen aesthetics rant of sorts. Also, but it should not be a surprise anymore, a pistol start under some pressure (apart from Fortress of Mystery, is there a baron this early in any Doom map?). And second level in a row, the most brutal encounter is near the blue key (this time it's the only key). It is weird though: if you know which switch to press, you may entirely skip the sergeant army.

 

The rest... most of the map is uniform grey, with very simplistic architecture and a few nice touches (4 teleporter room, a room with a lone tech column). ICKWALL corridors are notable for if you take the left path, you will be "guided" right and vice versa. There's a huge crate room. And a corridor with doors on with identical dark rooms on the sides (yawn). Unfortunately, the map doesn't play well unless you somehow manage to treat it as "atmospheric" or "adventure-like" which I couldn't.

 

[NuMetalManiak]

E3M2 Military Depot

 

This is one weird military depot, complete with gigantic crate maze, walkway over nukage, and large amounts of barrels all next to each other needlessly. There's also an area like in Strain MAP06 with two distinct halls interconnecting one another leading to separate areas, both claustrophobic as hell though. A lot of silver halls too, one area was pretty much inaccessible to me on the lowest setting due to one teleport destination flagged wrong. Unfortunately, I needed to get into this area as it is required to get the blue key, which also was at the very beginning of the map. I think a shotgun guy opened this hall from the other side (it's a DR open close) while the trigger to open all the halls was a W1 stay or something, so I couldn't enter from the side I needed to. Add to the backtracking and you have yourself a big mess of a map. Sure the combat is fun at times, but this level is broken.

[Salt-Man Z]

17 hours ago, Capellan said:

When you come to play OBTIC, I recommend this link, rather than the one in the OP: http://doomedsda.us/lmps/708/obtic11.zip

 

The DSDA version of the zip has a "fixed" subdirectory with files that are ready to work with source ports, thanks to Andy Olivera.

Oddly, older versions of GZDoom (2.0.05 is what most of my setup is still based around) still load this version incorrectly. (Super imps fire the knight's attack properly, but incorrectly retain the knight's hitpoints.) Newer versions of GZDoom (2.3.2 is the newest I have) appear to work correctly, where the super imp only has as much HP as a standard imp.

[Capellan]

TEUTIC E3M3

I like several of the areas of this map, when taken individually, but as a whole it didn’t really gel for me.  Part of that I think is the forced backtracking - especially from getting the blue key onward.  There are also several areas where monsters just seem to have been included to make the player waste time and ammo on them: those in the most eastern section of the map, for instance, which are largely harmless to the player, or the many imps in darkness in the north.  Those most be very tiresome for 100%ers.

 

Bits I did like: the opening, with the sneaky little catwalk around the nukage (I didn’t pick up on the gun switches there at all, but those are also rather clever); the representationalist effort on the room with the yellow key; and the much greater use of both lighting and the vertical axis than we saw in the last map.  I also liked how densely packed most of the level is, layout-wise.

 

The action is still fairly straightforward, of course.  It was 1994 after all.

[Pirx]

On 7/8/2017 at 4:42 PM, Capellan said:

When you come to play OBTIC, I recommend this link, rather than the one in the OP: http://doomedsda.us/lmps/708/obtic11.zip

 

The DSDA version of the zip has a "fixed" subdirectory with files that are ready to work with source ports, thanks to Andy Olivera.

 

thanks a lot for this. people don't like using deusf and what else was necessary back then for playing some maps.

[Magnusblitz]

E3M2: Military Depot

88% kills, 12/15 secrets

 

Yeah, this one was a disappointment after the improvement in E3M1. Lots of featureless hallways and rooms (all slathered in nothing but grey walls or STARG1), lots of 90 degree angles. Even the southern portion of the box maze lacks the use of the small boxes to make things interesting and is instead 128-high walls with box textures instead of walls. The teleporters end up feeling pointless. At least there's lots of barrels to splatter monsters with.

 

 

[gaspe]

E3M2: The starting area looks good, but I lost interest in this map as I progressed tbh. I guess that it has some references to the original E2M2 (the crushers, and the crate area), I liked the ickwall section but the map pretty much lacks in combat and the visuals. I don't know how to feel about the system of teleporters, probably it's the most interesting thing the map does though it isn't used very well.

[Slipgate Ranger]

I'm not sure how many I uploaded here, but to prevent me from cluttering this topic with my videos, I'll just add the last two maps I played. If your curious to see how I did the rest, and opinions, I posted my opinions in each video.

 

 

Just like in the first map of this episode, you start the map with an ambush, which always sucks. The starting area is pretty cool though, as it has a sense of verticality to it, but the lifts were annoying. The lifts were annoying to wait for in the main area, and because this level had a ton of lifts going off all at once, it was annoying to hear.
     The little rooms were cool, like the chapel for example. Overall, it wasn't too bad.

 

 

Whew, what a ride. This final level was short, and felt a bit too easy. I loved how big the size of the level was, as massive sized levels are my favorite in Doom. There was also a niffy little secret, which can be found by looking for a barely visible crack.
     So that's that. Overall, Slaughter Until Death had it's rough spots, but it had some nifty designs here and there. Was just glad that I managed to finish a level set from ye ol dark ages of 1994.

Now onto Doom 2. :-D

Edited July 10, 2017 by Slipgate Ranger