finnks13

I will catch up eventually, but not today :P ~~~ E3M5 - Helium Refinery by Captain Toenail: 15:16/0 Deaths I feel rather conflicted. This map looks awesome, with a ton of incredibly neat little details sprinkled everywhere - I especially love the large pipes that are presumably responsible for transporting the helium around and the text on the floor of the opening room declaring that we're in "Helion Base". Unfortunately, the gameplay in the map is so incredibly bland that despite having played it pretty recently, I could not begin to tell you anything much about it. I think the little secret area that takes you to an inaccessible courtyard with a bunch of pinkies & imps was my favourite part of the map, since I love berserk combat. One little thing that annoyed me is finding some secret light-amp goggles that managed to obscure the switch required for progression, since the glow effect that was meant to guide you to it wasn't present - the danger of using the gargoyle switch textures I guess. I feel bad about having this little to say about a map that has obviously had a bunch of effort put into it's craft, but ultimately while this map is solid, it neither wowed me nor upset me, it was just another stop on the megawad bus.

Played this all the way through yesterday, it's absolutely fantastic. The theme is really interesting and unique (I'm intrigued about just how much of this is based off of the original folklore and how much you made up on top of it) and I really like the custom sprites. I did have a little trouble navigating some of the maps (I'll put some suggestions in the spoiler below alongside some bugs I found), and I do think the wad gets a fair bit easier the further you get through it just because ammo is far more abundant in the later maps, but neither of these spoiled the overall experience for me. I would highly recommend this to anyone who wants to play a really high-quality, fun and unique total conversion, it's great! Some things I found:

E3M3 - Deep Space Observatory by dac: 9:42/0 Deaths Another great map, Deep Space Observatory is one of those maps that is just a pleasure to play, since it all comes together so perfectly in a manner that feels absolutely effortless. I love the moonrock and lava combo, once again, and the large amount of dark metal used alongside them provides a really nice contrast that I think looks fantastic. I also like the increased amount of hellish stuff, the marble temple that houses the plasma gun is a particular highlight in that regard. I actually saw this map come together, as dac was posting updates about it in the NaNoWADMo discord regularly, so seeing it fully finished and in such a fun state is really cool. The layout is great, you can tackle the whole map in any order you want, needing the three keys to exit. This had the inevitable downside for me in that I managed to do it in the worst possible order, being stuck without even a shotgun for a shockingly long time (I can't really blame the map for this, there's a chaingun pretty near the spawn, I'm just blind :P). I was able to find the plasma gun secret reasonably early on, and it absolutely carried me through the rest of the level, nothing can really stand up to it and you're given tons of cells to blast through the monsters with. I really liked the rocket launcher fight in the northern part of the map, and the red key area was fun too. The ending room reminded me of Hell Revealed 2, with it's series of Gotcha! ambushes right before the exit, though unlike HR2, this felt pretty fair! E3M4 - Fusion Plant by BluePineapple72: 19:18/0 Deaths Wasn't overly fond of this one unfortunately. The atmosphere is nice, thanks to both the MIDI and the generally dark and dismal surroundings, it makes you wonder what happened to this place to cause it to be in such a state, especially considering that the rest of the episode has taken place in mostly in-tact buildings. The very claustrophobic environments defintely help with building this feeling of tension, though this map is so claustrophobic that it has the unfortunate side-effect of making it a pain in the arse to get around as you'll be constantly bumping into walls and other props - and this is made far worse when you actually have to fight monsters. I do think the visuals are a little incoherent, you go from very industrial processing areas with conveyors & fork-lifts, to lava caves, and then to toilets and dining rooms within a couple of rooms of each other and this makes the map feel rather cluttered. I wasn't overly fond of the gameplay for the aforementioned claustrophobic reasons, but the majority of the combat was at worst fine, if a little forgettable. I found getting out of the yellow key area incredibly unintuitive, you have to press on a switch that is surrounded by yellow bars in order to unlock the yellow key and leave - I hope I don't have to explain why this is a rather poor way of marking progression elements. The most memorable part of the map is the final area, a large mine with a cyberdemon stuck in a silo in the middle, and this fight is a pretty cool setup, with the cyberdemon posing a pretty reasonable threat, though I found it rather annoying when trying to navigate through the area after killing everything else - though I might just be mad that I chaingunned the cyber to death before finding out that a crusher is activated that can do all the work for you :P Ultimately, this sort of map just isn't my cup of tea.

E3M2 - Tranquility Terminal by Rhhe82: 9:19/0 Deaths A nice little map by a club regular, Tranquility Terminal is aptly named as you're well supplied, plenty of health is lying around and there's a bunch of fodder to make your way through - the tranquility mostly referring to the very chill state of mind I entered while playing this, rather than the large quantity of explosions! The gameplay being almost entirely berserk & rocket launcher focused makes me happy, and there's about as many monsters as you'd want to make sure you're not falling asleep while not posing much of a challenge. There's quite a few barons in the map, all marked by the marble baron faces on the wall (someone's been following Sandy Petersen's texturing rules!) but because you're given so many rockets, they don't become a pain in the arse to kill. If anything, it feels a little odd that this isn't the episode opener, since it's easier, shorter and feels more similar to the moonbase aesthetic we're getting in the rest of the episode than E3M1 - but I suppose the ammo starvation gimmick wouldn't work too well on E3M1 if you entered it with a bunch of supplies! I like the visual design of the map, it feels rather cosy while you're inside the base, but as you progress into the cave sections and the outside areas, things start feeling more hostile. The combo of moonrock and lava looks really cool and it's one I hope is explored more throughout the rest of the episode. Something that I don't particularly like - and this isn't the mapper's fault - is that the moonrock texture doesn't loop vertically very nicely at all, I'm not sure why this version of the texture was used rather than the altered one from Lunatic, but perhaps it's going for that slightly rough 90's aesthetic. I think the SIGIL midi is an odd pick, but it's fast pace fits the flow of combat well enough. Not much else to say, it's a solid and fun map.

I kinda completely forgot to do write-ups for 5 days, whoops! I'll be catching up over the next couple of days :P ~~~ E2M7 - Research Complex by Cannonball: 9:43/0 Deaths I must admit, in this sea of newcomers, it's a little weird to see someone like Cannonball in the lineup of mappers for the project. That being said, this map was great fun so I'm glad he's here! To start with, I really like how the automap looks in this map, there's something that's just so satisfying about this very geometric layout with all the different shapes of various sizes fitting together perfectly. I could honestly scroll around, looking at maps like this for ages, I just love this stuff. The map itself looks fantastic too, the grey & red theme is well chosen and the stark, tall architecture feels imposing and the MIDI helps with this feeling. Cannonball has made a bunch of Ultimate Doom maps, so expectations were high, but he definitely met them here as this map is great fun to blast through! I really liked the key ambushes, the yellow key one especially which I managed to get through by the skin of my teeth, with all the barons closing in on you from pretty much every angle in the claustrophobic arena - and honestly, thanks for removing a bunch of barons here or I'd have definitely died here a lot! The finale is perhaps a little too generous with the amount of space it gives you, but that's not a problem because it's still very entertaining. The massive cave that this final ambush leads you to looks absolutely breathtaking too. Fantastic stuff. E2M8 - Ceres Gateway by Nefelibeta: 16:15/1 Death Bit of an odd climax to the episode, this was far longer and more involved than I was expecting. Not that longer finales are a bad thing mind you, just E1M8 made me assume these episode ending maps were going to be brief. It being mostly rocket launcher based very much helps on that front, as I'm fairly sure it's impossible to make a fast-paced rocket launcher fest against fodder not at least pretty fun, but there's some good set-pieces here too. I especially liked the ambush where you get the rocket launcher itself and the blue key fight, they're both fairly claustrophobic encounters where you have to clear out the pinkies to gain space before dealing with the fodder while avoiding the heavies' attacks and they're both fun. The plasma gun fight can be entirely avoided by opening the door you came from and just leaving, but it's still funny to shoot stuff through windows I guess :P The main part this map falls down on for me is it's visual design which feels both oddly overly done, and very lazy at the same time. You've got a load of borders and little details inset into walls both inside the complex and outside, but they've not had their flat changed from the surrounding area which clashes horribly with both the walls they're around and the detail itself, and this just feels lazy to me. The cave areas also look pretty awful, they feel unnaturally bright and are entirely surrounded by a box which really takes away from the pretty nicely drawn landscapes a lot - it's been mentioned that the visuals had to be altered a lot to fulfill the episode's criteria, but surely there was a less lazy way to do it than just deleting the sky textures and making no other changes? This is a shame especially because the final area looks fantastic, it's an excellently lit and nicely colour coordinated room containing a cyberdemon ambush that isn't entirely a pushover, it's a shame the rest of the map doesn't feel more like it. Overall, while this map is pretty ugly, it definitely delivers on being a fun romp and ends the episode off nicely. E3M1 - Lunar Gateway by LordEntropy: 13:42/1 Death Once again I find myself wondering how I've missed this person's previous mapping output, as Lunar Gateway is an absolutely phenomenal map. The introduction of this wad's moonbase visuals is striking and I was very impressed by how just a couple of moonrock textures are present here, with the rest of the work being done via the vanilla textures. The massive scale to the buildings really works in the map's favour to make you feel miniscule, and the presence of flesh and blood everywhere if you go looking for it makes me hope for a moon episode that's more visually unique than the norm. It's perhaps a little long for an episode opener but I didn't get frustrated with it's length since I was having a great time playing it. There's very little ammo and you're encouraged to explore to scavenge any supplies you can - to the point where the two(!) secrets that contained only 4 shotgun shells were genuinely helpful. The secrets in general are really cool, most of them have little side areas to explore, the highlight being a section where you fall into a cave of flesh to find a familiar looking red fortress buried below the surface of the moon - I thought it was Deimos that floated above hell itself, so I wonder how this got here :P The combat is very tense and entertaining, since you often have to leave stuff behind and run past imps, cacodemons & pinkies to grab more ammo, inevitably running into more foes and getting flanked in the process, and this rhythm to the combat never really lets up until right at the end. I think the way the exit portal is placed a little away from the rest of the map that lets you turn back and admire what you've fought through to get there was a nice touch, and it was the bow on the top of an excellent level.

Thanks for the playtest, I'm glad you liked it! I don't really have a specific strategy in mind for the final bit if I'm honest, I normally tend to run past the cacos & pain elementals as soon as possible since it's rather easy to get trapped in the road you come out of the building on and the arachnotron shooting everything in the back is quite useful (here's a demo in case this makes no sense lol: rustydemo.zip ). I could definitely add a few more rockets here, or remove a couple of pain elementals if the fight's too difficult for this slot in it's current state, though I'll wait to see what others think.

Here's my submission, this was very fun to work on :D Map name: New Swindon Author: finnks13 Midi title and composer: Car dealership from Gran Turismo 3 (sequenced by Viscerality) Source port used: DSDA-Doom v0.25.6 Difficulties: Yep Coop starts: Yep A short description of your map: It's a city in the future, so that means everything's made of shiny metal, including the roads, benches, grass, fences, blue bricks & spiders! Download: drill_finnks_v1.zip Obligatory Screenshot:

E2M5 - Abandoned Tunnels by ViolentBeetle: 6:12/1 Death A bitesize little map and the second by project leader ViolentBeetle, Abandoned Tunnels looks quite nice but is mostly pretty dull in the gameplay department. It reminds me quite a lot of the second episode of Revolution! visually, especially near the start, with the focus on brown stone, bricks & nukage but the combat feels rather more out to get you than anything you'd see in that. You'll be wanting for ammo for most of the opening minutes of the map and will likely have to rely on the chainsaw to not get bitten to death, a thing I realised a little too late. Once you've gotten out of this first area the map kinda meanders to it's conclusion, which is in a little crate-maze, and then it sorta ends. I wish the map was a bit more forthcoming with the rocket launcher as it would have made it a bit less of a slog, especially since you get a bunch of rockets after the point in the level where they'd be most useful. The secret exit is pretty neat though, the way you get to it was very clever and I really liked finding it. Overall, it's a fine map :P E2M9 - Artifact Storage by Hitboi: 6:33/0 Deaths We're two for two in "really weird secret maps" and while I quite enjoyed this one (and know that this can't have been the case because of how the wad was developed) this does feel like it was placed in the M9 slot for fears of being too odd and amateurish compared to the other maps. I liked the visuals here - others have said that a lot of the details feel like 90's doomcute and I'd definitely agree, with the piles of props in the opening room feeling like something straight out of Spirit World HQ (I actually like that map, I'm not bringing this up to hate on Gene Bird :P). I also like that you travel between the various areas of the map by using the various artefacts that are stored here - including a genuine quantum accelerator! The main thing I didn't like about this map was the MIDI which I found just really annoying to listen to, and so I IDMUS'd to a perhaps less fitting, but easier on the ears song pretty quickly. The gameplay is simple, but it's always pretty action packed and the high amount of low health enemies made the map go by fast. A highlight for me was the little encounter that happens after grabbing the yellow key - the lack of space make the barons a decent threat but you've got enough rockets that it's not a massive slog - I also really liked the smiley face on the wall here! I also really appreciated the fact that spectres weren't spammed in the dark cave section, since I always kinda hate that (I won't get into an unhinged rant about my hatred of spectres now, but some day...) It's a little weird how none of this last area is marked on the automap, but I suppose it's meant to be you travelling to an unmarked location by messing with something that you really shouldn't have. I appreciate the bait BFG in the exit room, it was an appropriate and amusing end to the level. Cool stuff overall. E2M6 - Transport Nexus by Jark: 15:51/0 Deaths This map is absolutely fantastic. I dunno what it is about M6s in Ultimate Doom wads, but they always tend to be my favourite maps of the episode (this is at least the case for Doom itself as well as Doom the way id Did) and this wad is definitely keeping that trend going. Just from the setting which is unique so far in the wad, in that the techbase you're exploring this time has been consumed by some horrible demon and you need to traverse both the nukage & trap filled halls of the base and the acid filled tunnels of this monster's innards. I absolutely love this theme, and the quieter moments of just wandering through the train tunnels not sure what I'd find next were incredibly compelling. I think a highlight of the map, and the whole wad so far, was the section where you go into a train that the UAC evidently tried to ram this demon with, and then fall into it's belly, which was absolutely awesome. The combat is no slouch either, with you getting a plasma gun early and having to use it often. Some highlights were the small blue key section where you get surprised by some doors not opening in the expected manner, the crossroads (or should that be crossrails?) ambush where you get surrounded by a bunch of horrible stuff, and the finale which really tests you to rocket pinkies in a pretty small room before you get overrun by their baron friends. I really liked the secrets, they were fun to find and often had really cool little side-areas associated with them that you wouldn't get to see otherwise. Having played E2M7 before I started writing this, I also want to say how cool it is that the final room of this map connects to that map visually, since they share a grey & red theme that looks very nice (but I'll talk about that when we get to that map!). Episode 2 has been losing me a little bit, so this was a much needed boost. Great stuff!

This seems neat, can I take Map16 please?

E2M4 - Air Filtration Plant by Weird Sandwich: 8:28/0 Deaths A bit of a lower-key entry after the previous entry, Air Filtration Plant is one of those maps that is necessary and appreciated in these sorts of projects - something pretty solid that's short and keeps the pace up, at the cost of being a little bit boring. There's some oddities to talk about here, such as the map throwing 80% of it's monsters at you in the first minute and then plodding for another five minutes to the end. But the main weird thing about this map is that pretty much every single monster you fight in this map is placed as part of a single-monster-type grouping, you have groups of zombiemen, groups of imps, even a small group of barons at the end, but never a group of imps & zombies (you do fight different monsters at the same time, they're just never placed like that). Is this meant to be a joke about this being a Filtration Plant or am I reading into this way too much? (Probably that.....) It's visually pretty low-key, but I honestly think after the last map's ridiculous level of detail, a more IWAD-style map was appreciated for me just for variety's sake. There's a couple of pretty cool fights here, the blue key fight in particular being a fiendish encounter that requires swift reactions, mostly to realise that the rocket launcher you've just been given is probably not the best tool to deal with cacos & pinkies in an absolutely tiny room! I also liked the finale, since you won't have enough rockets to deal with all of the barons immediately, you have to rush to kill a couple of them granting a safe space to whittle the others down which I think is actually a pretty good use of the baron's high health pool. Overall, this is a solid enough map that made me go slightly mad with trying to notice patterns so good job :P

E2M2 - Storage Complex by Wavy: 15:14/0 Deaths Unfortunately, this one was doomed from the start it seems. While I quite like the crate-maze theme and E2M2 itself, I'm not sure why one of the requirements for this map (according to the development thread at least) was to include homages to the original - it's already a map called "Storage Complex" on the E2M2 slot, there was gonna be a little Containment Area anyway, why ruin the map by requiring it to host a bunch of pointless homages to the original that serve no purpose other than to ask the player "Hey, do you remember Containment Area??" Even the music is a remix of "The Demons from Adrian's Pen", and like a lot of remixes of IWAD tracks, it's just a worse version of the original that got on my nerves incredibly quickly. The map looks nice, there's a lot of little details that I think work very well and I think the SIGIL cracks on the floor lend a spooky atmosphere to the level that I wish were leaned into more heavily. The gameplay is pretty lame, and honestly if you were going to reference E2M2 this much, could you not have also referenced the "immediately give the player a berserk" thing from the original too? I like punching things and that would have made some of the more dull areas much more entertaining. There's a few too many pointless enemies on crates for my liking, and while I did like the large cave with the catwalks near the end of the map, most of the map lacks the punch of this area. The slap in the face at the end of the map is the pointless backtracking section to the start that holds nothing other than another Containment Area reference. It's a shame really cause the map is not inherently bad at all and feels like a rework away from being a genuinely cool level, it just lacks an identity of it's own and that's something that really frustrates me when playing a level. E2M3 - Stock Exchange by DFF: 20:22/1 Death The episode thankfully does start to pick up a little here, as this map is pretty good. The combat here does feel more polished and set-piece heavy than most of what's come before and it's much more intersting to me for that reason. It's the first map in the wad to intro the Baron of Hell into the regular roster, and unfortunately, it's also the first map in the wad where Doom 1's roster limitations were really felt as some of the combat felt rather sloggy even when I started to skip finishing the clean-up at the end of fights when it was just a bunch of immobile barons. That being said, this was mostly a problem near the start of the map and I was so happy to get to use the rocket launcher this much that I didn't really mind it. I took my first death here, while trying to box a perched baron to death, and I felt like the map was pretty tight on health which might have been my fault for trying to berserk as much as possible in hindsight :P I really like the MIDI, it's not the sort of thing you'd normally hear in a Doom map but I found myself humming along to it after a little bit and I really think it gives the map an exciting yet slightly seedy tone that I really enjoyed. The visuals are absolutely fantastic, there's tons of doomcute everywhere and I love it. It's a little weird how this stock exchange seems to house a club inside it but honestly the variety in scenery makes the rather long length of this map much more palatable. I did think the map started to drag a little at the end, but it managed to wrap up on a high before it started to really irritate me with a fun finale. I also like how there's quite a few elaborate secrets that have little fights, or let you explore the "employees only" areas of this place. Let's hope this continues!

E2M1 - Piazzi Spaceport by Lorenz0: 4:30/0 Deaths A very underwhelming opening to Episode 2, Piazzi Spaceport is standard-fare ExM1 to a fault and is therefore incredibly boring. The only thing of note I can think to write about is the slightly unusual weapon progression in that you're given just the chaingun to deal with the monsters, but because most of the enemies here are zombiemen & imps, this makes the map incredibly easy. Even the few cacodemons, pinkies & lost souls that are present do very little to spice up the combat. I do like the cozy visuals (it's a shame we won't see this sky any more) and the continuity of the spaceship from E1M8 is cool but it feels rather small for a "spaceport" and I don't really feel like the MIDI fits. I didn't hate this map for what it's worth, it's fine, but that's it really.

E1M8 - Huygen's Spaceport by ViolentBeetle: (6:17/0 Deaths) Oh no! The train exploded or something! Thankfully, it seemed to do so after depositing us at the station with the way off this god-forsaken moon, but in order to get to it we'll have to perform our part in the E1M8 play and shoot some Barons of Hell in the face. The spooky atmosphere of this map is well done, largely in part due to the well chosen Plutonia 2 MIDI, but the dim lighting and destroyed scenery that surround you also help. I like the little details such as the jam tart that's next to one of the computers (or is it a pizza :P), and the cool lighting sequences that are present throughout the level. Obviously we all knew where this was going from the start, but I think the reveal of the baron arena with the spaceship was pretty cool in spite of that. Like a lot of these maps, the gameplay here is serviceable, with a couple of highlights, but not outstanding. I really like that areas are repopulated after grabbing the red key when you enter them for the second time, this completely caught me off guard and was a cool moment. I also thought that the baron fight itself was excellent, with the lack of non-damaging space to move, the cacodemons providing pressure on all parts of the arena and the lost souls being very good at getting me to face-rocket myself - it's a little weird that the barons are probably the least threatening part of their own fight, but I guess that's something this shares with Phobos Anomaly too so who cares! ~~~ So Titan Terror was pretty good, and far surpassed my expectations for what an Episode 1 replacement that sticks pretty close to the original's formula (in terms of available assets at least) could be, with a mix of very solid gameplay focused maps that were entertaining to play through purely on that merit, and a lot of rather unusual and quirky maps that were entertaining to play just to see what would happen next. Hopefully Ceres Carnage keeps up this level of quality, I'm looking forward to it!

E1M7 - Traffic Control by LoreCaco37: 11:27/0 Deaths OK while this map is definitely very rough around the edges, and often feels like someone's first map, I can't deny that I had a lot of fun with it. The detail of the map is incredibly low, with large swathes of the STARTAN variety making up the majority of the buildings in front of you, and that's not starting on LoreCaco37's obvious fascination with the Curve Lines tool, which got an absolute field day here. Nothing is safe from it's curving powers, not the corners of buildings, not the small lakes outside and certainly not the rocks - if I'm being serious here, while this tool can help a lot sometimes, using it on these natural areas makes them look anything but, they're just far too smooth. I do really like the doomcute attempts, such as the metal detectors & baggage conveyor in the first room, and the train station looks pretty great too. It's hard to make mowing down massive groups of fodder not fun, and the often hilariously symmetrical monster placement really doesn't bother me when dealing with them takes 20 bullets from the chaingun. That being said, there's more than a few rough moments in gameplay, especially the monsters rising up and being able to claw you from below in the first room, and the combat in the train station, but I really liked clearing the two large outdoor areas on each side of the map due to the large amount of freedom you're given in tackling them (including hiding in the doorway :P). I found a lot of the secrets very amusing, especially the incredibly generous one in the blue key room that awards you 100% health, a soulsphere AND a blue armour. Overall, I had a great time with this one, it was very simple but very entertaining.

Catching up... E1M5 - Mining Complex by RataUnderground: 10:46/0 Deaths This map was alright, it definitely felt like the work of a newcomer with it's often bizarre texturing and weird secrets. There are two(!) secrets that can be accessed in the first room by lowering the two waterfalls on either side of the area, both of which contained supplies worthy of a Knee Deep in the Dead map - I counted six whole armour bonuses and a stimpack in one and six health bonuses in the other :P The secret on the left has two more secrets (one marked, one not marked) inside it that require you to walk through a window and perform a tightrope walk round the edge of a building, and coming to the thread to post this I read about an intended shortcut that lets you skip almost the entire map? That's some impressive commitment to optional stuff in your map! I like the waterworks theme with all the rocks & waterfalls around the map, though I was surprised to see custom textures at all, even ones so basic as waterfalls since I assumed the whole project would be vanilla textures, barring skies, though I guess they're a pretty understandable addition. Once again there's not much to say about most of the combat, it does the job of an Episode 1 map as you'd expect it to, the notable exception for me was the soulsphere fight which unleashed quite a lot more pinkies & spectres than I was expecting and very nearly got me (that being said, I'm not sure why the monster closet that releases them doesn't open up all the way to the sides, surely that defeats the point of the monster closet being that wide?). The small model showing what a switch does is a cute little touch, even if they're close enough to one another it's probably unnecessary. It's a fine addition to the episode and I think it's odd styling & mad secrets would lend a lot to replayability. E1M6 - Visitor Center by Shawny: 7:49/0 Deaths Out of nowhere we have an absolute banger of a map that manages to capture what can be done with the shareware arsenal to near perfection, there's such a wonderful sense of speed to it. I'd say this is largely thanks to the excellent layout that allows you to go pretty much anywhere on the map from the start, triggering one of many traps that await you. None of the ambushes are particularly challenging and you can get quite the supply of rockets to your name to blast away the small hordes that are released upon grabbing the keys but the flow of this map is unparalleled in the wad so far. There's so many routes between areas and so many little shortcuts you can take, I'd be surprised if two people playing for the club managed to get through it in the exact same way as one another, and I think this level of non-linearity in such a short level should be applauded. I think the map looks great too, it fits the title perfectly. I really respect maps that use a lot of the STUCCO textures and still look fantastic because I've never been able to get that texture to work well for me, and that's not even starting on the lovely little details that are sprinkled around - the highlight of which is definitely the snooker tables which look perfect. I wasn't expecting a moonrock texture to show up in the little cave area with the yellow key, it looks good but is a bit of a departure from the brown outdoor theme that the rest of the maps (apart from E1M1 I guess) have set up. Even though I don't think the Ancient Aliens MIDI really fits the visuals of the map (despite it being an absolute banger), it certainly fits the pace of combat so I think it was a good choice. This is one of those maps that make me want to immediately go and find other maps by the author - it's that good.

E1M4 - Mineral Processing by Death Bear: 11:07/0 Deaths I think Mineral Processing is pretty great, and it definitely feels the most refined of the maps we've played so far. It's a pretty expansive map, with a wide-open layout that allows you to explore around before actually going to the progression. I think it's very pretty visually, and considering 90% of the rock walls use ASHWALL7 that's a pretty big compliment - maybe that texture's not entirely beyond saving! The buildings and catwalks all look nicely detailed, but not overly so and the small machines (that I suppose do the mineral processing) are a really nice touch that make the level feel much more alive than you'd expect. I like that you can tackle the map in a pretty open-ended manner at the start, either rushing straight for the objectives if you know where they are, or taking it slower to gather supplies before taking on the fairly large ambushes. This did backfire a little for me since I managed to completely miss the chaingun despite it being *right* at the start of the level, but finding it halfway through was more of a "oh, neat" feeling than a "aw shit" since the level thankfully is mostly imps & zombies. The ending ambush is a bit of a let-down, an arena that large deserves a bigger horde of baddies right? I suppose it's E1M4 so you don't want to murder the player with a slaughtery horde of death yet :P

E1M3 - Barracks by Doomlust: 9:49/0 Deaths So after two levels that feel like they're setting up for a bunch of fairly realistic feeling maps, Barracks brings us back to the cosy realm of Knee Deep in the Dead-esque techbase abstraction. I guess there's a little doomcute with the world's saddest gym near the start of the map (I love the dumbbells, but I'm not sure how four of them are gonna keep an entire barracks fit!) and the medical room that's in the central area but that's not the case for most of the level. This isn't to say I thought the map looked bad, as it pulls off the Knee Deep in the Dead look very well. I liked the scenery around the rocket launcher fight, the large crack in the ground looks very cool, despite the heavy use of ASHWALL7 - one of the few textures in Doom that I honestly think is beyond saving :P I don't have too much to say about the combat, it's pretty standard-fare for a KDITD styled map, which makes sense for something this early into the megawad. The most memorable part of it is weirdly the shotgun guys that are stuck behind the floor lamps just after the main hub area. Not sure why really, I guess it's rather uncommon to see monsters blocked by something that isn't a higher platform or midtexture. The secret exit is a bit dumb since you have to shoot a random wall to open it, but after the initial thought of "THAT'S the secret exit????" I found it pretty funny. Overall, it's a fine map that keeps the pace up for the rest of the episode. E1M9 - Excavation Site by Late Night Person: 9:59/0 Deaths Now THIS is why I love playing community projects, out of nowhere you get something completely insane that owns. You can tell immediately that Excavation Site is going to be an experience with the crusty Half Life 2 MIDI in the background and the GRAYTALL that covers the starting room. The main building in the map houses a few small ambushes and a highlight of my playthrough was seeing an imp getting squished by the excavators(?) without making a single pain sound, which was absolutely hilarious. I really want to highlight the little optional room at the start that houses the Player 2-4 starts, which is completely unnecessary but really cool. The combat here is pretty easy despite the incredibly high monster count, though the introduction of both the cacodemon and lost soul (that really caught me off guard, since I was expecting this to follow Ultimate Doom's monster & item progression pretty faithfully given the first few levels) makes things more interesting. The major ambushes pretty much clear themselves, 90% of the monsters in the yellow key fight will get crushed by the excavators, which makes for a amusing watch. Then you have the red key ambush, which is a ridiculous horde of nearly 100 enemies teleporting into the centre of a circular room at once, and the sheer spectacle of that is something to behold despite how silly it looks and how the entire thing can be circle-strafed into oblivion. I loved this map, it was fantastic.

Alright, after my early exit from CC2 due to some hand pain-related issues, I've been fancying getting back into the DWMC and this seems like a perfect place to start since I've been holding off on playing Solar Struggle until it was picked anyway! Hopefully I'll be able to get through the whole thing, especially since the last couple of episodes look incredibly cool from what little I've seen about the wad. I'm playing through dsdadoom, on UV from a pistol start. I've honestly stopped caring about getting 100% kills at this point, so I'll go back and hunt for secrets & stuff if I feel like it :P E1M1 - Detention Facility by myolden: 4:34/0 Deaths It's always hard to make a megawad opener, so I don't envy myolden for taking the task on for Solar Struggle. I think this map does a good job at grounding you in the story of the wad immediately with you starting in a prison cell, and with a lot of the map's enemies coming out from cells of their own. Kinda makes you wonder why you specifically were spared the horrible demonic transformation that claimed your fellow inmates, and more importantly why you were locked up with a pistol and 50 bullets in the first place! While I do like the prison theme and the gallows in the main courtyard are great, I think this map is pretty ugly if I'm being honest. It's a bit of a pet-peeve of mine when I see details aligned to the lines between the bricks in STONE2/3, like the cell bars & computer panels in the first building are here, but the top and bottom of the texture is completely cut off by ceilings and floors, since at that point, why care about the brick lines at all? I also dislike how SP_ROCK is used alongside the other rock textures on the outer-edge of the map, it's very busy and because of that it becomes the focus of the scenery when it probably shouldn't. The combat here is decent, the pistol-only section doesn't outstay it's welcome and sets you up against just the right number of foes for it to feel engaging but not a slog. I like the incidental combat that takes place after grabbing the shotgun, but the ambushes all feel the same as one another, shotgunning a bunch of imps, shotgun guys and zombiemen that teleport in vaguely around you. I think if one of these were cut (and to be honest the prime candidate is the one right in front of the exit switch) then I wouldn't have this problem at all. Ultimately, it's a fine start to the wad but I feel like a lot of effort was put in the wrong places in this map and the result feels much lesser than it could have been. E1M2 - Admin Offices by Peccatum Mihzamiz: 8:58/0 Deaths This gets the wad going much more strongly than the previous map, with a much greater sense of place and flow to the combat than the norm for an Episode 1. I really love how this map directly continues on from Detention Facility and how you jump down into Barracks at the end, while I'm unsure if this will continue as we progress through the wad - and given that this map was apparently a very late addition that seems likely - it's nice to have here. I absolutely love all the doomcute that's everywhere around the map, from the little office cubicles that are inhabited by grouchy demonic workers, to the water fountains that are found throughout the map and top you off with 15 health bonuses when interacted with and the weird paintings that use the sky and rock textures. The ridiculous sculpture on the ceiling of the yellow key room that's the centerpiece of the map is incredibly cool too. There's not too much to say about the combat, it's mostly incidental here with the main trap of the level taking place for the yellow key but the presence of pinkies really does help with variety and I even didn't mind taking the chainsaw for a spin. The secret chaingun that you get by climbing on a toilet (I really think we did this zombieman a favour by shotgunning him given the state of the scene in here :P) does let you turn your brain off and mow down the fodder, but I found it late enough that it didn't make the entire map mindless, and the toilet area itself is rather easily missed. I think allowing the player to tackle the map either clockwise or anti-clockwise was a good idea since it's a nice surprise to end off the demon slaughter right where you began. The only thing I can really think to complain about here (I've gotta keep up appearances ok?) is the MIDI, who's whimsical tone feels rather out of place in this benign office environment. Great stuff!

Played this with @Christophine Place over the last couple of days, and I feel compelled to post to say just how much I loved it. It's absolutely superb.

Category 1, died on MAP06 at 33:50 with 62/65 monsters dead. Pretty fun set overall, I went through the other maps afterwards and had a pretty good time. ironmanfeb2023_finnks13.zip

I love Underhalls, and puns - sign me up :P Can I take Map18 please!

Hey everyone, just want to announce that Hardfest is finally on /idgames! So, if you were waiting until then to play it, then go nuts :P GET IT HERE: https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/megawads/hardfest Sorry for the long wait, we wanted to have a complete soundtrack before this final release, but it's done now and goes insanely hard (not biased, I promise!) Listen to it here (thanks to @Korp for making the soundtrack video!): And, while I've got you here, if you're interested in mapping for the sequel, check out the announcement thread for more info:

Hello everyone! Hardfest 2 is the sequel project to Hardfest that will once again be focused on hard maps of any style. Like last time, a resource wad will be provided as a basis for you to work from, though this one features altered yellows as well as two custom monsters, and one custom weapon. - Your map should be Boom Compatible (-complevel 9). The intended port will be dsdadoom. - The target IWAD is DOOM2.wad - Difficulty settings should be implemented. - Add co-op starts. Complete co-op support would be nice, though it's not necessary. - Use a sky transfer for any custom sky. - Don't submit obviously low-effort maps, as they will be rejected. - You may submit as many maps as you like. - Custom MIDIs are allowed, though our composers are planning on doing another fully original soundtrack, so they may be replaced. - Pistol starts are intended, though I will not enforce them on every map. - It must be possible to get 100% kills and secrets in your map on HNTR, HMP & UV - Do not map for the MAP30 slot. - Please use the resource wad, as it has custom things that may break if your map is not built with it. - The chainsaw has been replaced by an Infinite Rocket Launcher. If your map contains the Infinite Rocket Launcher, it must end with a death exit. - Every monster has been given the BossDeath action in it's death states, so UMAPINFO boss death actions are allowed. - Custom textures that are not in the resource wad are allowed, though please don't go too nuts with them or include the entire resource wad with your map submission. To get your own textures working, copy the TEXTURE1 and PNAMES lump from the resource wad into your wad, add your new textures to those lumps, and load the texture pack alongside your wad. Flats should just work if they're included between F_START and F_END lumps in your wad. While it's originally based off of CC4tex, some additional textures from Magnolia, Valiant and Jimmytex are here too. Many of the textures have also been remapped to fit the new yellow range better, though there may be a couple of textures that I have missed. A small test map showing off various yellow textures & flats and the custom stuff is included on the Map02 slot. The other new additions are as follows: Arachnorb - 150HP Replaces the Commander Keen. Flies around and fires plasma at you in three round bursts. Unlike the one in Valiant, this cannot spawn from a dead arachnotron and only appears when placed manually. Weak Cyberdemon - 1000HP On the spider mastermind slot (the SMM has been moved to the Wolfenstein SS slot so it is still usable). It's a cyberdemon with 1000HP. Infinite Rocket Launcher Replacing the chainsaw, this functions identically to the infinite rocket launcher in NoSp2, with a much faster firerate and no need to worry about running out of rockets. Due to it breaking the ammo counter for shells, a death exit is required if this is contained in your map. Get the resources here: HF2_TEX_V1 Thanks to @Korp for making the palette (and that snazzy M_DOOM you saw at the top of the post), and to @gabirupee for compiling the Hardfest 1 resources which this is based off. What gameplay style should my map be? "Hard Map" does not just mean slaughter, feel free to interpret that as you want. We had a wide variety of maps last time, including small, Scythe-styled levels, maps with mostly combat puzzles, maps with resource starvation, large slaughtermaps, tough platforming maps and a monsterless puzzle map, so don't worry if you don't think your idea would be considered traditionally "hard". What theme should my map be? I will order the maps roughly by their difficulty, style and weapon progression so don't worry about any specific theme as it'll likely get put between two completely different maps anyway! Are newer mappers welcome? Absolutely! I'd like to think that most of the more active people in the project discord are pretty welcoming and constructive with their feedback, so feel free to join in and give it a go. I have a few more tips for newer mappers here: How do I submit maps? Submissions will be taken only through the discord, in order to make communicating with the mappers easier, though feel free to post maps in the thread to get feedback from people who aren't in it. The deadline for submission is 26th August 11pm BST (UTC+1) How do I sign up as a Mapper/Composer/Tester? Ping me here in the thread with what you'd like to do and join the discord server. Discord Server? https://discord.gg/eg2fSD7hkS Good Luck!

MAP09 - The Transformer by Graf Zahl: 4:16/0 Deaths It's a techbase! That's about it really. I suppose some notable things about this map are it's author - the GZ part of GZDoom :^) - and the very silly amount of shotgunners that exist in the map. Of the 80 monsters, 56 of them are shotgunners, which is a quite a lot. You can get a chaingun in the first room from a secret which removes any challenge this map could have possibly had but I suppose it keeps the pace up. There's six secrets to find in this already pretty easy map, and they mostly consist of using one of the METAL2 walls that a different detail on which is pretty dull. There's no "fights" to speak of really, but I do like the journeys through the courtyards if you find the secrets, and I like how there's a lot of windows between the two buildings which lets you snipe or get sniped by the shotgunners opposite you. The map kind of just ends after you get the keys, and it's very likely that you'll have killed everything before getting either of them which makes the last few minutes of the map a bit dull. It's fine visually, with the classic techbase look and a couple of outside & cave areas to stop the map from being too bland. The doors look a bit weird, but they're weirdly the most memorable part of the map because of that :P The Transformer is fine, it's inoffensive and goes down quickly. MAP10 - Intermission by Volteface: 5:22/0 Deaths Intermission is actually pretty great, getting a lot out of it's tiny monster count and (if the final section was cut) would feel at home as the opener for a classic styled episode. Volteface also created Mt. Chaos from CC1 and I think that this map shows a large evolution in his skill from that map because of the polished visuals and combat scenarios. The little street that connects the various areas of the map is very nicely lit, and really cozy. If I had one complaint about the combat in this map, I wish that barons were used a little less - or they were used with a bit more purpose - as they basically serve as ammo sponges at the moment. I like that you don't get an SSG immediately, the little fights that come before it are fun to deal with, and not a slog. The map ends with a surprise cyberdemon showdown. While I initially rolled my eyes at having to play another non-threatening 1v1 with a cyberdemon, Volteface actually makes it much more interesting by having lost souls flying around behind the cage, which can get caught by rockets and hit you with splash damage you may not have otherwise taken. Similar to Map01, I think this map benefits a lot from the map-by-map review since it's short runtime, lack of original midi, bland name and vanilla visuals made me completely miss a lot of the neat design elements on my first playthrough. Intermission is my sleeper hit of Community Chest 2, and a nice return to form after a few questionable maps.

MAP08 - The Pit by Gene Bird: 11:40/3 Deaths This is the only Gene Bird map that I do not care for at all, while it shares a similar lack of thematic consistency and a love for the super shotgun that borders on unhealthy, which are both common throughout his work, The Pit is just a bit of a slog, which is a weird thing to say about a map with nearly 350 enemies in that takes just over 11 minutes to complete. There's a lot more higher-HP foes in this map than you'd tend to find in a map that focuses on the SSG, so even though you might tear through two thirds of the enemies without thinking, that final third becomes really rather tedious. Even though you actually get all the weapons in this map, there's not many cells & rockets so I limited my use of those to just the larger groups of monsters and just dealing with the fact that I would have to routinely SSG mancs, hell knights & barons in situations where they do not pose any threat to me other than the threat of dying to losing concentration. There's also a couple of parts of the map that I really don't understand why they're here such as the three completely identical rooms, two of which are encountered one after the other, or the very stilted starting section that you never revisit, which could have been cut entirely, or the room that hands you a BFG, an invulnerability and then throws a laughably lame ambush at you. The titular "pit" appears in the second half of the map, and features an incredibly slow lift that you raise a few times during the map to get back out - and then if you're me, you fall back in and have to spend another minute of your life waiting for a floor to raise which was very fun. The Pit isn't very good, I didn't hate playing it but it lacks the simple fun that most of other Gene's maps have to me - thankfully, his other three maps coming up are much better. ~~~ For me at least, I like Dead Simple clones - their main problem is not that they're overdone, but that they can only be included (w/o fancy scripting at least) on a Map07, and because they so often follow the same formula of: Kill Mancubi -> Walls Lower -> Kill Arachnotrons -> Leave, they can start to feel rather samey. While a big group of revenants and a cyberdemon, or a small scale arena with hell noble and revenants are similarly used as "fights" a lot in maps, they're not beholden to a specific mapslot so the appearance of a fight like that isn't the expected thing when you go into a map - no-one thinks "oh it's Map23, time for the wad's cacocloud" since there is no specific tag for cacos on that mapslot. Meanwhile, when you go into Map07, you expect to have to do a small arena fight with mancubi & arachnotrons, and it's this expectation that I think makes people dislike Dead Simple clones since it's never a surprise when they occur. It's a similar problem that boss maps in Doom 1 wads have, even if your E1M8 is really cool, if your bossfight uses the special tags, it's going to be against a number of barons which takes away a lot of the suspense and excitement of what your bossfight will entail. In the case of To Hell and Back, I was particularly disappointed because the map builds up going to hell as a cool event with a cool set-piece throughout the entire map, but that set-piece turns out to be just a Dead Simple clone with a yellow filter on the screen that takes just over a minute to complete. This, to me, felt like a missed oppourtunity because it's the expected thing from a Map07, and I was hoping that the map would go for something cooler, that lives up to the build-up instead of doing what nearly every other Map07 also does.