SCF

Category 1 Difficulty: HMP Dead on: MAP08 Kills: 229/231 DWIE-22-10_ETERNYOUR_SCF.zip "What did that switch do?", the wad. I was close to giving up at the end of map 7 (and I still have no idea how the exit opened up), so I guess I no longer had the energy left to think about not dying.

Category 1, dead with 158 kills DWIL_22-10-sharp_SCF.zip Lost all focus while shotgunning a cyber to death. Was distracted thinking about other things, like how I thought I'd gotten myself softlocked when I fell down the first time and didn't see a way back up.

I was planning on revising my entry, but I ran into a lack of motivation and a lack of ideas. The nature of the challenge combined with all the voodoo doll contraptions I used makes it very hard to fine-tune the difficulty. I'm not very happy with the end result, but that's just how it is. I did make a small update to fix the issue @alexsa2015sa found. The SSG has been moved so it will always drop down with you, in case you missed it. DevDev_SCF_v2.wad

I was contuining to write notes about fights until I pressed ctrl-z to correct an error and somehow that made the form eat my entire post, so never mind that. I'm far from finished still, but I did want to mention two things:

Finished parts 11-20. After 90 minutes of playtime (excluding reloads), I'm now... 12.5% of the way through the total kill count.

I figured I'd chronicle my journey through this monstrous map, encounter by encounter. These are first playthrough impressions so they're not going to be very refined. I don't know how many fights there will be in total, but the first 10 are here.

Came here to report the same thing. You don't even have to miss the stairs, I just went back down first to grab some ammo. Anyway, good stuff so far. I'm only, uhh... 1/40th of the way through all the kills.

I played through the first batch of levels when they came out, and just finished 11-13 as well. Very fun map set, and I'm looking forward to more. It reminds me a lot of mouldy's work, but not in a derivative way. It has a similar sense of humor, creativity and architecture, but it's clearly its own thing. There's a lot of neat and memorable moments. The only minor gripe I had was on map 11, the double doors between train wagons. There's a few places where I wanted to pick off enemies in the next car before rushing in, and having to deal with two doors both constantly closing in your face can be a little annoying. Especially when you're trying to fire rockets at an arch-vile. Other than that I don't have much to mention. You mentioned in your post that the difficulty was "hard to evil" but I found it quite pleasant. Challenging enough to keep you on your toes (with the occasional nasty trap), but nothing that a reload and retry can't solve. And not too stingy with health, so you can recover from a few mistakes.

Personally, I dislike well-hidden secret fights precisely because I play Doom to play Doom. I don't care about secret hunting, so I'll happily exit a level without finding all of them. But if I missed a secret area with actual gameplay (and not just two imps guarding a megasphere), I want to go back for it. And if it's too obscure, I will absolutely look it up in the editor instead of wandering around aimlessly. I wouldn't say that this is borne out of a misguided sense of completionism or FOMO. If I'm enjoying a map set, it makes sense that I want to experience all it has to offer, particularly when the combat is the wad's focus. And when (in an extreme case) half a level is hidden behind a secret, then it's no longer just about a number on the end screen. There really is significant content to miss. But if your view is that, by not solving the puzzle, I didn't earn the right to see that content, I can't really argue with that. My opinion has always been that people should play the game in whatever way they enjoy most, even if it's not how the map maker intended it.

Category: 1 Difficulty: HMP Episode 1: Survived in 32:32 Episode 2: Died on Map 2 with 22 kills DWIE_22-09-pd-anom_SCF.zip I found a secret, and the reward was a pinky I couldn't hit biting my face off. Doom 1 wads don't really do it for me. Ran most of the way through e1, but having to start over from scratch in e2 was rough.

DWIL_22-09-sckrpnch_SCF.zip Category 1 Died on Sucker Punch 1, Map 6 22/43 Kills Don't want to use my last BFG shot, that would be a waste. Oh no now I'm trapped and dead.

@ViolentBeetle DIY_scf_v5.wad The teleporter at the end of the optional fight now takes you to a secret exit room (you can still return to the regular level).

That's fine with me, but I think it would make more sense to have the secret exit be in the secret arena area. Shall I add it to the map? I can have it done before the end of the week. And I assume you'd move it to slot 15 then? I guess it's not required in MBF21, but since we have a regular 32 map structure it might be confusing to have the secret exit somewhere else. By the way, the main reward of the secret fight is the BFG. And of course the satisfaction of beating it :)

Map 13 must've been submitted late into the project since I hadn't played it before. I had to give up about 25 minutes in, after the blue skull switch, when I reached a wall and had no idea what to do next. That said, I normally don't care for puzzle maps, so it held my attention for longer than I was expecting anyway. The one thing that bothered me was the (inescapable?) slime pit in the dark room with the yellow skull key. That felt a little cheap. The project didn't specify what kind of map you had to make, as long as it had 30 monsters in it. So this was a perfectly valid entry, and if it's not your cup of tea you should just move on (it's obvious pretty quickly what kind of map it is). It's inevitable that a project of this size would have maps that don't appeal to everyone, and you shouldn't feel obliged to finished every map. However, I can understand if the project title has misled some people. It was intended to be a challenge for map makers to produce something with 30 monsters, rather than to make a 30 monster map that's challenging. So if you go in expecting a set of compact, combat-focused maps, you may be disappointed (although there's still plenty of those).

Category: 1 Difficulty: HMP Dead with 30 kills. DWIE_22-08-vrealms_SCF.zip In which I spend 5 minutes aimlessly running around trying to figure out where to go, only to get splattered by an absolutely perfectly timed rocket. I'm not even mad.

Loved seeing your models on twitter. Congratulations on the release. The only thing that feels a bit off are medkits and powerups like supercharges, because they may be facing the 'wrong' direction. Having them rotate like you did with keys would probably look better. Had to try this even though only Doom 1 monsters are replaced. Surprised I was still getting a playable framerate.

I downloaded the current RC1 from the OP, and looking at your map there are no linedefs with the block players flag. Is it an outdated version of the map? The barrels at the end being visible seems to only happen in GZDoom when using OpenGL, not software rendering.

I think that's normal. I used a similar (but less elegant) solution in my own map.

@MFG38: I'll take another look at the map later this month and do another revision. I was running out of ideas so I just wanted to finish a playable first version and take a break from it. For the blue key fight, I'm surprised you found the HNTR version the hardest. It has the most space and you can just circle around the room, plus the archviles are mostly harmless. It still may need to be a bit easier at least to fit the lowest difficulty. I've give it another look. The UV version of the red key room is definitely the hardest fight. I found a reliable strategy and figured that was good enough, but it may be out of step with the rest of map. For reference, what I did was:

Category 1 Survived in 1:08:27 Quite a difference in difficulty compared to last month. DWIL_22-08-intime_SCF.zip

Agnosia Version 1 Map name: Agnosia Author: SCF Play time: 10-15 minutes Music: Dark Matter, by Tristan Clark Difficulty settings: Yes Description: Dark techbase with linear progression Notes: All objects (enemies, weapons, resources) are the same on all difficulty levels. Only the map geometry and triggers are different. The three key fights were the main focus. Some of the connecting areas between them are kind of uninspired and don't change much between difficulties. It turns out it's hard to make such areas noticeably different on three different difficulty levels. As a mapper, this was an interesting challenge to think about, but I wonder how well it'll work from a player perspective. You'd have to play each map multiple times to really appreciate the design, otherwise it'll just be no different from a regular map. Screenshot:

Since I didn't see it in the credits.txt, the music for my map is "Lab 16's Ruins" from Chrono Trigger.

Prepared run Died on Map11 with 46 kills DWIL_22-07_Vigor_Prep_SCF.zip My goal was to beat the first 10 maps, so I'm satisfied. Everything went worse than in practice (as usual), but I ended up with a very reliable route so there was plenty of room for mistakes. Not sure if I want to keep doing prepared runs, it's pretty stressful when you only get one shot at it. I ended up practicing until I did multiple successful runs, and even then I wasn't confident. Props to all the mappers for making a set that was still fun to play after so many playthroughs.

I finally got around to making a few small changes to my entry. Routine Maintenance v2 Added a monster blocking linedef to the passage to the blue key, so if you leave any revenants alive they can't come in and swarm the teleporter exit You can no longer stop the final archviles from teleporting in by not shooting during the last fight.

This sounds fun, I'll give it a go. The first idea that came to mind was to keep enemies and pickups the same on all difficulties, but have the map geometry be radically different. I'll have to try and see if I can make it work.