SCF

Download Map Name: Crushy Christmas Author: SCF Music: Didn't have time to find one, so whatever's the default Gimmicks: 4 Cyberdemons, 7 Crushing Ceilings Difficulty Settings: No Build Time: Exactly 1 hour Comments: First time trying speedmapping, so I'm happy just to have produced a functioning map before running out of time. Screenshots: 

30 Reasons to Die by @Razza Hantrepaut by @Roofi

@dac: Tried the new version, and no longer seeing any issues with the Undying. The only thing is that they can now actually be gibbed by the pistol. It messes with my map a little since the idea was that they're pestering you while you have to unlock the rocket launcher, and now they may just explode on the first shot. I'm not sure that was intended, but if not, it may be worth reducing the pistol damage (and raising its fire rate so the dps is the same). Edit: After trying again, I may be mistaken. It might've been friendly fire from another Undying or an imp fireball. Anyway, here's my first submission: 30mc2_scf_m1_v2.wad Map Name: Performance Review Author: SCF Music: Zombie Goes Shopping by Mouldy Difficulty Settings: Implemented Ports Tested: dsda-doom 0.22.4 Description: UAC management are dissatisfied with your quarterly performance metrics. Can you prove your demon slaying credentials and save your job? Notes: Intended to be a lower-difficulty early map, and a natural introduction for the Undying. I moved the shotgun back a bit after seeing the power of the buffed pistol, so don't underestimate it. Screenshot: Version history:

The remaining two maps: Cyan Softcore by @Origamyde Tech(nicolor) Base by @Thelokk

Played some of the maps posted so far. Note that any demos will likely be incompatible with the upcoming resource pack update. General note on the arch-diabolist after fighting him in several maps: they seem much easier to deal with than regular arch-viles since you can easily avoid their attacks by moving. But there's also very little indication that you're getting targeted, so sometimes it felt like I just died out of nowhere. I'm not sure if they need changing, but at the very least, in the final map order the they should be introduced in a map that gives the player the opportunity to learn (and not one where they appear in a chaotic battle with 10 other enemies at the same time) Dust Bunny v3 by @NiGHTS108 UAC Spacecraft X by @LGmaire Outpost Chroma by @jazzmaster9

Ah, so the rocket impact kills it before the splash damage has a change to get applied. That explains it. If I understand the doom wiki correctly, a rocket impact can do 20, 40, or more damage, and at least 41 damage is required to gib a full health Undying. If so, lowering the health to 19 would already halve the failure rate without making much of a difference otherwise. For my own map, I just added a berserk at the exit as a failsafe, so you can always go back and gib the remaining enemies even if you ran out of rockets.

I've pretty much finished my first map, but since it makes use of the Undying I'll wait until the fix before posting it. @dac: One more thing about the Undying, I noticed that it can sometimes fail to gib from a rocket, even on a direct hit. I'm not sure if that's possible or something weird is going on. If I'm not mistaken, since they have 20 hp, they should gib from any attack that deals 40 or more, and it seems like the only way it's possible to take less than 40 from a direct rocket hit is if the enemy somehow took no splash damage. As it is, it's a little annoying because whever it happens, you have to wait for the Undying to get back up, and you could theoretically even run out of rockets (happened to me once, after 3 non-gibs in a row).

You may have already found it, but just in case: it seems like it crashes whenever the Undying revives and doesn't have line-of-sight on the player. I don't know why that would happen, but I was able to reproduce it pretty consistently that way.

@dac: I'm trying out the Undying, and I noticed something odd. Every time one revives, it shows the pistol fire sprite on screen for about a frame (it's always the same sprite, even with a different weapon selected). This is in dsda-doom 0.22.4. I also got one game crash that seemed to be Undying-related, but it hasn't happened again so I don't know what might've caused it. It was just two Undyings in a room, with no other corpses nearby.

Thanks, apparently the "User-defined" category was added in a newer version of UDB than I was using. I see why the assets have to be converted to the AA palette, but why aren't they already included in the pack? I figured the reason was you can't distribute the commercial Doom resources, but I see that Ancient Aliens itself also included them.

I'm having some trouble getting this set up in UDB. I loaded both wads as resources, and the AA textures and enemies look fine, but all regular Doom 2 enemies/items have a messed-up palette. Also, how do you add the new custom enemies to a map? The two AA enemies replace the Keen/SS, but the other ones don't correspond to an existing thing type, and if I manually change the type to for example 155 it doesn't show up at all.

Will definitely try to make something for this. I may have missed it somewhere in the post, but is there a limit to how many maps one person can submit? Surprised there was so much negative feedback on the death exits that it warranted a change. With the small map size and arbitrary order, I can't imagine it's a good continous play experience.

Cat 2, UV difficulty Survived (with secret maps) in 109:25 + 57:30 = 166:55 Died and restarted on MAP23 DWIL_Doom2_SCF.zip I realized after the fact that you're probably supposed to restart and continue within the same demo, instead of starting a new one. I just took a short break and then started again from map 23. If that disqualifies the second part of the run, then whoops! My inexperience with these maps really shows. Knowing the general layout is one thing, but I frequently got lost because I didn't know where to find a certain key or switch. Died blowing myself up on a Barrel o' Fun(tm). I didn't expect to survive that map on pistol start, but had a miraculous recovery. Als features the worst Icon of Sin fight in demo-recorded history. I didn't know the rocket timing, accidentally grabbed both megaspheres at the same time, and the icon kept spawning pain elementals.

Cat 1 Dead on map 08 with 7/120 kills DWIL_22-12_xmaschill_SCF.zip Almost died on the first map because of the visual overload and having no idea what health kits looked like. Maybe next year I'll manage a good run.

Since you're going to rework the map, here's a few notes on it. I recorded two UVMAX demos as well (I wasn't happy with the first one... or the second one for that matter). It's short and sweet, but there's definitely room for improvement. FallenLeaves_RC3_Map07.zip I didn't like the cyberdemon. At the start of the map, I had my hands full seeking cover from the arachnotrons and roaming archvile, and it's hard to keep track of a cyber that's somewhere behind you and is too far away to hear when he shoots. I eventually just decided to ignore him entirely and just hope I don't get hit by a rocket. The environment also makes it hard to tell from further away if he has line of sight or not. Before I got used to the layout, I died multiple times trying to grab the green armor and running right off the edge, especially when I was trying to keep my eyes on the archvile. It's also kinda weird that you get a mega armor so soon after that. Might make more sense to put it in one of the revenant closets that open up after you get the BFG. The part where you have to take out the mancubi to progress was an "a-ha" moment at first, but I'm not sure how much purpose they actually serve. They're too far away to pose any threat, so it's basically just a sequence of shootable switches. Also, one of the windows facing the mancubi is in such a place that the cyberdemon can see you through another window, which can lead to a frustrating unexpected death. When the final fight starts, you can just stay inside the building and let all the cacodemons come to you. The other enemies will generally get stuck outside. You can also use that window I mentioned above to get the cyber to hit the wall and start infighting (I tried that in both demos but he didn't want to shoot). Was it intentional that you can take out one of the perched archviles from the window? I liked that, it rewards you for noticing and you still have another one to deal with. If you don't find the secret, the archvile there is a huge pain during the final fight, since he's so far up and can zap you without you even seeing him. I always ended up with a large clump of harmless hell knights left over at the end. Not a big deal to clean up with the BFG, but they're not much of a threat. The first time I played it, I briefly got lost searching for the blue key, because I didn't expected it to be at the key door.

Good stuff. The maps look very nice, and they're fun to play. I didn't think to record demos of my first attempts until map 5, but here they are anyway: FallenLeaves_demos.zip On map 5 at the archvile elevator I accidentally switched to the rocket launcher and had to bail. It gets very awkward after that since you can't easily fight them from below, so you have to teleport right back into the fray. On map 6 I just got blindsided by a rocket I didn't notice. While the palette looks nice, I did feel like it make things harder to see. Oh also, there were multiple bigger fights in maps 1-4 that were pretty soft to just circle-strafing around the room. Not a huge problem, but may not be intended. There's another one in MAP05:

Ah, I didn't think about the fancy triggers you can set in UMAPINFO. Something weird must've happened, because the first time I played it the spider demon never teleported in (and neither did any of the other enemies in the connected closets). They must not have woken up, but I have no idea how that happened considering you have to shoot a switch in the starting room. It worked when I tried the map again.

Am I missing something, or is map 57 broken? The blue key door is inside the starting area, but it doesn't look like you can go back there. The front door can't be opened from the outside. There's a second path that looks like it's intended to be used after getting the blue key, but it's blocked by a barrier, and the linedef that lowers it is behind the blue key door. I checked in doombuilder and I don't see any solution.

Really amazing work. I never played the original KDiZD, but the amount of wizardry involved in making all of this possible in vanilla doom is incredible. Gameplay-wise it's not my favorite, with the sometimes-confusing layouts, but I still finished it just to see the technical achivements and impressive architecture. I'm a bit split on the monster roster though. Each individual new enemy is good (and again it's impressive that they all work in vanilla), but the sheer number of them feels a bit overkill for a relatively short map set. There just wasn't enough time to get used to all of them and to learn to identify them quickly. There's three pinky flavors, and I couldn't tell what exactly made the grey one different until I looked at the dehacked file. And three enemies with different attacks that all look like a "dark imp". I was really curious about that one as well, so I took a look in the editor. Seems like it uses self-referencing sectors to make a fake floor, and the 'reflections' are actually just midtextures, using an inverted copy of the regular texture, placed right below the floor. These textures use transparent pixels to give the illusion that it fades into the floor. The reflected torches use a similar trick, with a second object placed on top of them that have an upside-down sprite.

Took a break for a month before tackling the final fight, and wow, it's insane. There were a few fights throughout the map where I had to use a mid-fight save to get through it, but for the final fight I needed about... a dozen. Looking forward to seeing a playthrough from someone better than me so I can see what strategies I missed. I took a look at the secret fight as wel, but... yeah, I don't think I have the patience to grind out that one. Overall, this map is an amazing achievement. Some great fights in there, and superb detailing for a map of this size. Truly epic. Couple of other comments/observations:

Originally happened in GZDoom on Boom (strict), but I tried it in dsda-doom afterwards to make sure it wasn't an engine quirk and it worked the same there.

Congrats on the release! I've played through the first 11 maps so far, and it's a fun set with great use of the AA textures (I'd already played episode 2 when it came out, but it's been a while). I did run into a softlock at the end of map 11:

UV Cat 2-ish 306/930 kills Dead at 27:05 DWIE_22-11_Foursite_SCF.zip

Cat 2 E1 M4, 35/85 kills (DNF) DWIL_22-11_e1_SCF.zip

Oh, I'm sure it's just beyond my skill level, but I mentioned it because it seemed like a huge difficulty spike to me compared to everything before it (and after, so far). By the way, is it intentional that you can fall through the cracks here and get stuck? The place is littered with corpses so it's almost impossible to see. It's fine when you're running, but it happens pretty easily if you stop moving. Killed me twice and it was pretty annoying.