head_cannon

Suspended in Dusk Ironman_sid_hc.zip Category 2, Dead on MAP03 with 251 kills. Suspended In Dusk has a pretty decent scare in its opening encounters (I respect any level that finds clever ways to make the player run for their lives from things), but I wouldn't blame anybody for turning the combat off and just taking a -nomonsters trip around to admire the visual art. Definitely a benchmark for the vanilla format. - Bauhaus Ironman_bauhaus_hc.zip Category 1, Dead on MAP04 with 272 kills. Man, this set is a great mini-campaign. It's aesthetically-pleasing and is adept at applying pressure to the player in unexpected & interesting ways. The escalation in MAP04's length & complexity was a little much, but understandable since it's at the end of the game and you're already invested at that point. I had a lot of fun with Bauhaus; thanks for selecting it!

Ironman_DVII-1i_hc.zip Category 1, Dead on MAP01 with 171 kills. I went back afterwards to at least finish the three E1 maps. All the impassable fences in MAP02 and all the blocking decorations in 03 were kind of annoying, but damn do these levels look great.

IEslithHMPhc.zip Category: 1 Difficulty: HMP Dead on MAP03 with 108 kills. The E4-esque visuals were pretty solid, and the choice of community-enhanced TNT midis also had a neoclassical charm to it. I had fun with this one; I especially loved the theatricality of how the Arch-Vile villain in MAP02 would occasionally appear to harass you before fleeing again, until it was time for the final showdown with him at the end. I'll definitely be going back to see other half of this set. Thanks for selecting it for this month!

I actually quite liked the cryptic and convoluted nature of this unfriendly Deimos base, but I'm afraid that I softlocked myself on e1m3 and must file a bug report. It happened in the eastern wing which houses the intended path to the yellow key. If I'm reading it correctly, what's supposed to happen is: Reaching the red-textured room at the end of that winding path (with the Pinky & barrels blocking the way so the player will fire & wake up the army waiting behind the yellow doors) lowers the elevator on the west side of the broken, flooded corridor, rendering it unusable and trapping the player in that east wing until they find the switch in one of the side-rooms the army flooded out of - that switch raises the elevator back up and finally allows the player to return to where they were. Since I heard doors opening & monsters growling behind me, I turned back to see what was happening, and so I found the switch that re-enables the elevator before actually getting around to proceeding into the red-textured room (which disables it). That switch that lets you out can only be activated once, so, unless I missed something, it looks like the player can get permanently stranded in that section. othermon_e1m3_softlock.zip I've attached an eight-minute -complevel 3 demo that, uh, demonstrates the possibility of reaching those two progression points in the wrong order in case my text description is too unclear. I do like the complexity in this mapset and how the player is occasionally just left high and dry until experimentation reveals new facets, but the set can't get away with the audacity to stonefacedly say "It's on you. Figure it out." if the player ever actually ends up truly stuck. Hopefully this one wrinkle can be smoothed out - this episode shows a lot of promise, and the proposed duology's hook of "what if the two moonbases' light-world - dark-world contrast was reversed?" is a neat angle for a tribute set.

IronmanICAR2015hc.zip Category 1 Dead on MAP01 with 31 kills. Huh, a patch WAD for a patch WAD. You don't see that everyday. Neat that it uses the menu & status bar graphics along with using the Icarus midis. I went back with saves to at least see what's past the earlygame; made it as far as MAP05 before getting fatigued. Eternal has a knack for cool sector machinery, and is damn good at hiding things well enough to require thorough investigation. That measured pace makes for something that seems easy to get discouraged & burnt out on in a marathon setting, but it certainly has its moments. I'll probably tackle things in a disconnected, piecemeal fashion if I take a closer look at this campaign and Eternal's similar 11-level tribute to TNT.wad. The "cover song" aspect of using the inspiration's aesthetics & soundtrack is something I always find intriguing when done well.

IEcastevilHMPhc.zip Category: 1 Difficulty: HMP Survived in 6:50 I went back after recording and spent an hour looking around the castle grounds. I respect how the player seems to be able to gain traction and get underway no matter which way they go from start, and how those tangled interconnected paths make each playthrough different. But once the initial adventure is over and the monsters are dead, it's really awkward to try to untangle and navigate those paths from place to place when double-checking for anything that was overlooked. The scale of the place was still impressive, especially for 1994.

Thus concludes the February 2024 event. My thanks to everyone who showed up to test themselves against hommage25_2022.wad - the final standings are recorded on the scoreboard in the OP. The next thread should be up within the next 24 hours.

IEpreacherHMPhc.zip Category: 1 Difficulty: HMP Dead on MAP01 with 18 kills. Cool-looking cathedral (I love the decorative cemetery outside), but the grit & gloom of the palette + texture choices camouflages the brown-colored health packs in a bit of an annoying way. Just a nitpick; the desaturation looks great overall.

Less than 48 hours remain for competition submissions. For posterity, I'm reposting here two submissions made on the Ironman Discord: joe-ilya Category 2, Survived in 20:59 hommageIRONMANjoe.zip ClumsyCryptid Category 2, Dead on MAP07 with 23 kills IMClumsy20years.zip

While this thread is temporarily bumped to the frontpage, I'd like to take the opportunity to post a demo pack I've recently finished. The text file specified that the Par Times had been set by the developers playing on the Hurt Me Plenty setting and rounding to the nearest quarter-minute + an extra 30 seconds in the same fashion as the in-house id Par Times. So I started studying these sandboxes on Skill 3 and trying different approaches to find the shortest, most direct route I could, and these bonus challenges ended up being a lot of fun! I've long been fascinated at how the same geometry & thing placement can serve multiple different purposes depending on the context, at how the same encounter might play out in drastically different ways between a new player that panics and hesitates VS a returning player that tries to recklessly shove through and skip it. It's cool to see "Minimum Foreknowledge" and "Maximum Foreknowledge" being catered to simultaneously. D2TWID mostly succeeded at its goal of duplicating the difficulty level of Doom 2 without escalating too far beyond it, but I found that it also incentivizes taking more and more risks and narrowing the margin-for-error to attempt stunts, skip stuff, & set a good time. I'm proud to have beaten the par times for each of the 29 main levels (excluding Map30 since the level's already a race against the clock and since the boss maps didn't have intermissions in the original .exe anyway), and present below the solutions I came up with as a series of -complevel 2 demos recorded in Crispy Doom.

Ironman-Hommage25_2022-hc.zip Category 2 (played it last year but forgot about a lot of the jumpscares and surprises) Survived in 1:00:49 Those points-of-no-return are terrifying, and I got got by a lot of the traps. I find this WAD to be really entertaining stuff, equal parts spiteful and joyful, and I had a lot of fun revisiting it for Ironman. Thanks for letting me take over for a shift. We'll get back to the brutal shit next month.

Thanks for making it! No pressure, work on whatever inspires you in the moment, but just saying: If you ever feel like doing an Inmost Dens or an Abandoned Mines or whatever in this style, I'd play those too.

February, 2024 Standard Leaderboard [2] SURVIVED (20:59): joe-ilya [1] SURVIVED (24:41): Maribo [1] SURVIVED (27:46): Asbadagba [1] SURVIVED (28:07): RedBoule [2] SURVIVED (30:34): Bertt91 [1] SURVIVED (33:12): suzerduzer [1] SURVIVED (33:56): SCF [1] SURVIVED (34:03): galileo31dos01 [1] SURVIVED (37:13): Vytaan [1] SURVIVED (39:22): mancubian_candidate [1] SURVIVED (39:45): ginc [1] SURVIVED (40:52): Hebonky [1] SURVIVED (44:00): dt_ [1] SURVIVED (47:22): Vince Vega [1] SURVIVED (48:39): Beginner [1] SURVIVED (49:08): Darth_wiadar [1] SURVIVED (59:09): L'il Devil [2] SURVIVED (1:00:49): head_cannon [1] SURVIVED (1:10:15): RjY [1] MAP07 (91 kills): Horus [1] MAP07 (87 kills): SilentD00mer [1] MAP07 (75 kills): Helm [1] MAP07 (67 kills): PBeGood [1] MAP07 (64 kills): NaZa [1] MAP07 (53 kills): LadyMistDragon [2] MAP07 (23 kills): ClumsyCryptid [1] MAP07 (0 kills): Andromeda [1] MAP07 (0 kills): Crusader No Regret [1] MAP06 (96 kills): Austinado [1] MAP06 (83 kills): Anima Zero [1] MAP06 (37 kills): SleepyVelvet [1] MAP06 (8 kills): Doomy__Doom [1] MAP04 (45 kills): John Suitepee [1] MAP04 (45 kills): Pegleg [1] MAP04 (43 kills): NiGHTS108 [1] MAP04 (40 kills): Pseudonaut [1] MAP03 (37 kills): Chuckles_troll Prepared Leaderboard [#] MAP03 (21 kills): Pegleg What is the Doomworld Ironman League? The DWIronman League is a monthly competition in which participants aim to survive for as many levels as possible in the given map set, preferably in one sitting. Click the spoiler tag at the bottom of the post for a detailed list of rules. Players of all levels of ability are welcome. It could change the way you play Doom! In February 2024 the DWIronman Club dies to 25 Years Of Doom 2 (aka hommage25), made by @franckFRAG. If you've played 2022 Cacoward runner-up Bellatrix: Tales of Orionis, you may be familiar with this author's aesthetic skill at using the Doom 2 earth textures under a blue dusk/nighttime sky. This set is a smaller, more minimalist affair than Bellatrix, but the compact map sizes can sometimes make things more intimidating since there's nowhere to hide if things go wrong. I don't doubt that you pros are capable of surviving everything this can throw at you & chasing the fastest time, but be warned: after the homages to maps 1-5, we then skip right to the MAP18 tribute and the MAP29 tribute for the finale, which can be quite a spike if you're not expecting it. Essential Info Doom II (doom2.wad) + hommage25_2022.wad loaded. Compatibility level 2, or "Doom (strict)" for ZDoom derivative ports. 7 maps. Time estimate (if survival): 40-60 minutes > Download 25 Years Of Doom 2 (and an additional link to the WAD's forum post, just in case.) Template For Recording: prboom-plus.exe -iwad doom2.wad -file hommage25_2022.wad -complevel 2 -warp 01 -skill 4 -record demo_name.lmp - Rules: Previous threads:

IEadoomHMPhc.zip Category: 1 Difficulty: HMP Dead on E3M4 with 4 kills.

Ironman-BlackRain-hc.zip Category 1, Dead with 93 kills. I went back afterwards with saves to try to push a little farther in. Not a fan of the super-strict health allotment, but the texture palette and lighting were fantastic, almost on par with the later Back To Saturn X stuff like U.S. Mustard Company and Bite. Maybe I'll see if the HNTR settings are less grating, just to get to see the rest of it.