Helm

That was fun, got a max on first go, the viles were well placed. I think you have a bit too much soulsphere, medipacks and blue armors littered around if I could get out of some of these situations on first attempt. I liked the texturing and detailing, quite a vibrant locale! I agree all that's missing, if you want, is a lighting pass. I didn't find any bugs or anything. A general feeling I got out of this map is that it feels like miniature. 20% smaller than a techbase, you know what I mean? Miniature is cute so it's got that going for it, but literally if you took the layout and you blew it up 125% and then retextured, you'd leave more room for fun stuff. But this is all down to play style and how much movement chops you need to get stuff done in your playstyle. Thank you for sharing your map with us! I hope you make more.

Cat 1 Dead on map03 71/140 kills Helm_Post.zip

Eh, more of a hallway problem there not even a real door to keep opening and closing on them. I think tactical retreat to a nice corner to funnel enemies is part of the fun of the fact that doom is a 3d game where you can backtrack at will. I actually liked the 2 braincells activating making me go 'ok... retreat a little, too many cacos too many souls, find a nice funnel'. If you want to solve this permanently still, just lock me in just in front of where I camped in my video and put a switch to open the dropped door behind me permanently somewhere in a difficult to reach place in the caco plus souls arena. But as I said I do not consider this a door fight personally, I think you good. It's more about that second AV fight being something more I think. And the last fight is a true lock in (jump in, so it's telegraphed) with the staggered arachnos which is hard enough with just a single barrel.

minor tweaks only is going to be a good exercise Fixing infinite tall actors is not a minor tweak it changes everything for how the game plays, so it stays I guess. But that'd be my one major tweak. That would also come with Things over Things and a host of other positive potentials but it's a different game now. Focusing on what wouldn't make it a different game, just a more polished one: 1. faster weapon switching 2. lost souls less health but more aggressive 3. faster chaingun 4. fix blockmap bug, perhaps nerf chaingunner slightly for this new, blockmap-less world 5. (m)arks on the map should not all be (c)leared at once, and the save file should remember marks. (f) to hover over a mark and press c to clear it. 6. when marking the map allow for optional verbose notes when you hover over the mark, a la Ultima Underworld. 7. OR show keys and other major items, once line-of-sighted in the map if John Romero says 'Doom isn't about reading and writing verbose notes, nerd'. Generally the map needed more work. 8. green armor and blue armor do the same thing in terms of damage reduction, their ammo amounts would need some balancing though. 50 and 150? 50 and 100? 200 200 should only be possible via megasphere? 9. health potions and armor shards are 2%-3% 10. I love the idea that the barons just straight up one-shot you up close, stealing it. Unbalanced in the best of ways. Pretty sure the dev team would throw this suggestion out immediately tho. 11. linedef that triggers more linedefs, or at least 'spawn these enemies at these locations' for less time wasted on monster closets and exact spawns / no sleepy stragglers. I imagine the most hacky way to do this would be to place monsters in blank voidspace (outside of map), turn off all AI checks and tag them to go to a teleport destination directly on trigger and have a 'alarmed to player / still sleeping' flag upon teleport in. 12. the pistol needs some fixing but I don't know what would be best. I love the Supercharge pistol but messing around with clips in vanilla would be a no no. 13. Icon of Sin hinging on lack of mouse aim is a sublimely idiotic climactic encounter for Doom II. That would be my comment in the studio, but I have nothing to offer as to how to make a better ending to the game with just minor tweaks. 14. add 'reacts as if -fast' flag per enemy

Hello Nikamir! Quite enjoyed your map. Thank you for posting it. I did a little run through in UV with saves (rewinds only for me trying dumb platforming stuff), 2 deaths, I think. Here's the feedback. . I actually like iwad music for this? You did a great job making a map that works with the ancient midi. Understated and discrete, good music for the tiptoeing around. . It starts off pretty dark and given that a comedy of errors ensues (moving forward triggers more traps and enemies, which worked well) I think tiring my 40 yr old eyes isn't the best way to get difficulty out of doom in 2024. I pushed gamma twice instead. . Very close to death after the rough start but health packs at the right places mean that even though this map is of the devious type, affordances are made for recovery. I appreciate it. . Did not find the SSG in my run which made this a quite technical map and probably slowed it down too, I don't mind single barreling down an archvile or two, it's the patrician choice after all but I wonder how much the experience changes towards the easier with the SSG. I guess that's why I don't like SSG secrets that much, they add to longevity and replayability once but they make for a bit of a drastically different difficulty experience I tend to think. . All the parkour secrets are well made, spottable and fun to uncover. You have a real voice with your level design, without needing fancy doomcute or overwhelming sights to get there. . The caco cloud plus souls was a fun encounter in contrast with the rolling encounter with low tier in the beginning. . The first av encounter in the room with the windows is where I died the first time. I have to say these kinds of encounters communicate things to the player that I obviously understand (as I said, this map falls in the devious category even though it's not too many monsters and not too much high tier monsters as well!) but it sets my mind to work thinking if the communication's worth the first death. The key is clearly boobytrapped and you're supposed to have a movement challenge of running out of the room without getting body blocked by av quarterback... it's half a second to formulate a plan of retreat... I don't know, I don't generally like encounters like these even though they're completely in line with the tricksy feel of the map. Now, if I could defenestrate myself through those windows next to the key and go around, perhaps then you've got a more exciting twitch solution to surprise av. If this trivializes the ecounter, it's all about aftering the layout to get the distances right. With surprise AV while holding a shotgun these miliseconds matter. . I don't know why I lost so much time time trying to find a pretty blatant red teleporter in the Block O' Destruction part but don't take it to mean the map is confusing, I think that was on me. . Nonetheless some really good twitchy gameplay in your Block O' Destruction that you've put there. Lost another life to a rev rocket I think? . You hear that AV breathe and moan in there and even spot their arms so much, when you finally reveal it it's just a preemptive rocket launcher victim. Put like, 3 viles in there and more rockets strategically peppered around perhaps. But could they get anywhere interesting anyway? could they revive anything? There's so much cover I am not sure you're getting the bang for your buck in this layout with at late av reveal. I am being nitpicky because I can really tell you love mapping and have considered many minute details in your map about how it'd play and I think the second av reveal is a bit weak? . Even while I'm hunting for that red teleporter pad and I roam around and backtrack, I always find something extra in a nook, like a nice backpack. Perhaps the soulsphere is a bit too much though. That's a good way to make up for any confusions if gradually you feel you're getting more of a mastery of the space and the opportunities presented. . Yellow key series of switches is kind of funny? reminds of some older stuff. Sometimes compounding switch press sequences that you make people go through is the slightest sense of humour that a tricksy map can definitely benefit from. . Really cool arachno encounter, actually. Getting a lot of mileage out of an elegant setup. All in all: very enjoyable, kinda-tough map on first blind playthrough, I hope you map more! Thank you again for putting the results of your creativity up for people to enjoy. footage: .

I'm not great but I'm not a total beginner anymore. Been playing on and off since 1993 but more seriously the last 5 years or so. What really broke it open for me was a couple of summers ago I committed to 100% saveless run on the first map of Sunder, Python, one of the maps that I've always loved the look and atmosphere of. I used to be a scaredy cat that quicksaves every 15 seconds before... for decades. I threw a few thousand attempts at it. I won't go into all the layers of emotions and ideas you have to work through once you realize how much you fundamentally suck and all the little steps of progress that need to happen but if you throw a thousand attempts or two thousand at something, you'll feel it for yourself. After I got 01, I saw that 02 was also doable for me which really surprised me. I did 03 with one midsave/reload but it's too goaty and long for me to grind so I moved on to other things for the moment -- but the plan is, hone skills elsewhere and then return a year later and you'll just get the saveless run much easier. I'm not tryharding demos nor do I intend to do all of Sunder, I'm not a speedrunner, it's just a personal quest to get good at a game I love and really immerse myself in a map once in a while, really live there. I'll say to anyone: if you learn to move around and understand the particularities of how doom works and you can get out of the first building of Sunder (no freeaim, no saves) consistently, now you've got about a thousand great wads available to you that'll comparatively feel like a breeze. There isn't any substitute for a thousand attempts at something hard, no giving up, no self-defeating talk. If you can't move well, you'll learn to move well. If you can't shoot, it'll fix you. If you don't understand infighting, you'll just have to. Get out of the room. How hard could it be? I would like to note though that there's many different skills that go into being an all rounded player and you will get quite a different type of training in long, grindy keep-your-concentration slaughter maps versus like, let's say, Swift Death. I value consistent advantageous play over long periods of time but I can't do it yet, around 20 mins is where I get mind fatigued, which means my mental stack is overwhelmed by choices that need to become even more rote, more muscle memory. Whatever facet you're working on will feed into everything else, but the groundwork seems to me to be: 1. learn to move in an FPS like doom. You think you know how to move in it, but you don't. Once you do it'll feel different, even though this road is endless (....platforming....) 2. learn to parse what visual cues you're given as fast as your brain can take them in and be decisive in how you act on them. Even if not a speedrunner, watch demos. There are gods that walk amongst us and they have recorded pure poetry in motion to learn from. 3. deep knowledge of the minutiae of the game logic and AI. You won't learn all of that at one place but whichever place you decide to use as a training ground don't be a tourist in it. Immerse, live in the wad, utilize everything that's given.

just one more imp

In principle I follow, yet in practice for all the years of saying 'perhaps I should iddqd through this or -nomonster just to check it out' I never do. I strongly empathize with the aspect of the analysis: there are so many doom worlds, more than I can visit in my multiversal travels in one lifetime. I am in awe and adore that, that every single mapset has unique geometry and meanings attached, waiting to be experienced first hand. I often still click on idgames random button, even though we have this vault of highly enumerated top tier experiences already, just to get that vibe of 'a teenager back in 1995 made these spaces, unconnected from nearly everything else'. More hauntology some times than anything else. Where I diverge from the assumption is that exactly because there are more wads than I can play in my lifetime, to go through them the once or twice I touch them by ripping out the gameplay first, not even giving it a chance feels like the wrong sort of tourism for me, as much as such a thing can be in a digital realm. You can fly to a country and visit the museums and follow the tour guide, or you can immerse yourself in the culture, meet and help locals in their daily lives and get a deeper sense of existence in the space. I am not sure which of the two angles maps best to a -nomonster run or a UV MAX TRYHARD or whatever, your mileage may vary, but my ground level of respect towards a mapset as an artistic artifact, one of thousands, one that I may never play again is to try to play it as intended at a skill level that befits my mood (humans are a series of moods) and to try to take in as much as possible of the holistic vibe. Thought provoking thread, and big ups on JP LeBreton consideration, a beautifully intelligent mind in our broad doom sphere and a comrade to boot.

The biggest one is stealthy and people don't notice it. When you make a 2d game scrolling the player will be presented with visuals in a linear way. You literally cannot miss the event upcoming unless you close your eyes. In a 3d engine where the player can turn their viewport quickly and retreat at any point, go scrutinize anything in a 3d world for 30 seconds... leading the player through spaces, signposting progress was - at the time - a dark art. Leading with light is the trope I want to talk about, one that was massively expounded upon in the era of HL1 and similar, strongly part of the valve design toolbox at that time. But Doom did it first because it needed to do it first. Whenever you feel lost in a dark maze and you see a bright thing in the distance, be it sector, item or enemy, there's loads of study about what your brain is doing to you to go check that out now. Back in 1993 some texan kids were inventing how to get you to move your ass in their scary and dark game by using the tools of contrast available by intuition. Mad 'early days of cinema' stuff, again.

dunno if data points matter but I was 9 yrs old back in 1993 playing doom 2 on release and being fully 3d embodied and immersed into dark corridors was extremely unnerving and at times yeah downright scary. I understand younger players not feeling the same dread even if they also played it at a similar age if they had seen other 3d videogames derived from doom first, perhaps. But for us where this was our first 3d first person engine, I really cannot describe how much doom could get to you back then, even with IDDQD on you would dread going into the darkness. I don't think the tone is Silent Hill or anything that complex, it's straight up first person - press W to go into a dark corridor. We were the first generation to hold down W and to build up the similar backbone, I suppose, to the first cinema viewers watching a huge train rushing towards them for the very first time lol

here's a different vantage for understanding this: in 1992 what an american marine was in the public imagination was different than the current zeitgeist re: american military forces. You were closer to Rambo 1 and Deer Hunter in that era. Back in 1992 doomguy was some slacker who got thrown in the brig for disobeying unconscientious higher command, the people that wrote doomguy were listening to Megadeth and scratching pentagrams on their lunchbox. America was coming out of the Gulf war and starting to stop into Bosnian Croatian business, but they didn't have an active invasion of Kosovo, Iraq or Afghanistan going yet. At the time the relationship of countercultural figures to american armed forces like some texan teenagers had would have been grounded in very different movies, books, comics, games, presenting the american military prowess in a very different way as well. Few decades of american foreign policy later mean that if you're gonna make a game about an american special forces marine (even all sci-fi'ed up, a space marine is a marine is a marine is a marine), you're going to go a completely different way. If there's one thing we have learned from escalating american military industrial complex propaganda, be it war movies, a Call of Duty or any other piece of agitprop, is that the american military believes it has, at this point, divine right. Whoever the bad guys are will get shot up by the american good guys, who are basically fighting against the forces of global corruption to keep americans safe in perpetuity, right? The world has REALLY changed since 1992, and doomguy represents the culminating american fantasy of our age, that if you are the good guys then it is absolutely not just ok but warranted (by god, fate, destiny, whatever you write it as, it is divine right) to use lethal force and why not, even means of genocide if it means defeating evil. This is why your modern doomguy is some sort of demonshred god and not just a shit out of luck 90s slacker caught between the rock of insubordination and the very hard place of an impending event horizon. The unassuming quality of 1992 doomguy is very key. In his little portrait he seems curious, has almost a bit of a smile, he's keen to notice stuff... That is not who is underneath the 'doomslayer' helmet, right?

not much to say aside from that I just ran into the same wad on my random idgames adventures and when you think of how many thousands of files there are to hit the map twice in the span of a couple of months must be auspicious. I concur with your thoughts, dug the Rush midi, was confused at a myriad of choices, exited with my skin intact and two cyberdemons left to their own devices. What an odd map, but perfect for 1995 shovelling. Anyway, bewildered runthrough here.

Cat 1 UV -cl2 dead on the final map 75 out of 92 monsters, about 37 minutes DWIronman_hommage25_helm.zip

I'm still playing along and reading through just not as studiously. Sorry for short reports but as I said... no time. I really loved 13 and 14 back to back. 13 is a bit ammo stingy so I had to panic exit with some heavy hitters still alive, definitely a map to replay to do a bit better but I loved it. I think it really means a lot for Evi II, this consistency of structure styles and the architectural throughline of making you feel so small when inside, but really cozy and at peace in the colours of the outside. Honestly I don't think there's a lot of pro AA/AAA games that handle this feeling of scale as good as this. Some more commentary in the save strings in the footage. I tried not to do this in the earlier footage and just save it for blah blah in the text but seeing how my enterprise is bust it doesn't matter anymore, as much as I can put in there I did. 14 is actually one of the best doom experiences I've had in the last few years and actually, doing 13 and 14 back to back was super cool. Dragonfly has the confidence to do really solid maps that also act as a layup for the next mapper, not oneupping the crew by doing what *they* do better than them, he keeps to his strengths. This is so important for the vibe of the mapset so far. Cohesion and confidence needs kindness as well, not just skills. Aurelius always kills but much like Celestin above when I got in the map I was a bit apprehensive because it's huge (reminds me of another apex map, the opener of Godless Night) and soon I found out there's puzzles. But the 100% kills was organic! And I did all the puzzle solving without feeling any pressure. Lots of saving but not a lot of deaths actually. So I had this magical experience of just walking in all these different slick fights that are so well calibrated (both in 13 and 14 we start seeing reups with two archviles behind a lot of low tier shit, it led to really good encounters on both maps) and then zen calm puzzle solving time. It shouldn't go without saying that stuff like this is so impressive also in the mbf/boom riggery that it takes to build them but even as a person that let's pretend doesn't have any insider knowledge on doom mapping I think I still would have come out so pleased with the seamlessness and flow of such an ambitious and huge map. Aurelius's calling card seem to be this: no end of ambition, no end of real estate, no end of complex rigged machines... but it flows and funnels you with visual guidelines. You find your way through. In some ways this is apex level design for this old game of ours. I am very glad I spent quite a bit of time in this map. Terribly sorry to skip commentary on some maps, I love you all you are all doing an amazing job on this set.

yeah pulling out of active participation, will try to play when I have a chunk of time but work demands more of my attention. I'll keep reading to see how the rest of you all liked Eviternity II in its totality