Yasha

I had the idea of a "Sniper-Vile" rolling in my head for quite a bit. Basically, an Arch-Vile, but with a different attack: a fully explosive blast that unlike an AV attack, still goes off even if you get out of the way. Like, if you go behind a pillar, it will just attack the spot it last saw you, but if you keep moving in open space, you can outrun the blast and even catch other demons in it. So, it's effectively a reverse AV--instead of taking cover, you want to stay on the move in open space.

I think this is a similar situation to whenever he plays Ribbiks' stuff: Ribbiks clearly states that HMP is the intended experience for most people and UV is only for god players but MtPain always plays them on UV and then spends half his review going "this was a torture chamber of misery where I had to play every fight 30 times over" and like...yeah. That's what happens when you play Swim with The Whales on UV lol

Jeeeeeeeeeeeeeesuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuussssss christ Even on HNTR this map is insane. I am not ashamed to admit I savescummed my life out to beat the surprise monster closet room.

Well, I am reporting back. I have been trying Valiant on HMP as well as Sunlust, and given a few other WADs a shot. Valiant is a hoot, though damn No Rush gave me quite a bit of trouble. After that it was mostly smooth sailing. I am on Map08 right now, which is honestly pretty damn brutal --the beginning is tough but I got a plain, but that insane chaingunner gauntlet right afterwards is...uh, I dunno how tf you're supposed to do that. As for Sunlust, I am on map 12 now. 06 fell once I consulted Decino's playthroughs. 07 passed without much of a challenge, and 08 had me stuck again in that wicked blue key cyberdemon fight, where I had to consult Decino's playthrough for a strategy again. Sometimes I think "damn, Ribbiks, I'm not THAT bad" but he always manages to pull out a fight that knocks me on my ass like that one and I understand that even on HNTR this wad is not to be fucked with. Interestingly, sometimes the skill difference between HNTR and UV is pretty marginal (map 06 is practically the exact same) and sometimes it's goddamn huge. I've also tried Heartland on HMP, though I'm so stuck on a certain fight that I think I may have to restart map01 entirely, I dunno how tf I'm getting out of this one. That WAD is nuts--I kinda wish we had more WADs that used these kinds of advanced features that still focus on "classic" style gameplay. It's really either super gimmicky GZDoom wads or purist-style Boom ones, it seems. Since I have the Eternity engine now I will definitely give HMP Eviternity a shot too. PRBoom+ is now my preferred source port and I'll save GZDoom solely for gameplay mods and maps that require it. I'm a doom purist now :V I plan to do HMP Scythe 1 and 2 soon, as well as giving HMP Haste a shot. I gave TNT's first three maps a spin--not that hard, though 02 requires some tedious backtracking. Plutonia lies in my folder, taunting me. Terrifying.

I have finally beaten Map 06 of Sunlust. Took some routing to figure out. A quick check of youtube shows that the HNTR version isn't that far off from the UV version. Huh. Map 07 went down easily afterwards, though I think I should go back and get all the secrets to do the showcase fight. I also finally figured out that ZDE apparently can handle any source port, so I gave PRBoom+ a try! It's very weird going from GZDoom with the Beautiful Doom mod, but I've adjusted and I think I'll make this my personal source port of choice--not the least because Beautiful Doom breaks on any WAD with custom stuff and I wanna play Valiant, Ancient Aliens, and whatever other mods that feature custom enemies I want to. ^ Thank you for the suggestions. I haven't actually completed any of the official Doom IWADs yet--let's be real, Doom 1 and 2 are...rough to put it lightly. E1 of Doom 1 is great but E2 drops like a goddamn lead balloon after the first two maps. Doom 2 is just a wonky mess in general. Put them against Sunlust, Valiant, Ancient Aliens, both Scythes and they don't look too hot both visually and gameplay-wise. I haven't even tried TNT or Plutonia, but honestly, I do have them, so I think I will give them a go soon. I've played various wads from Stardate 20X6 to Scythe to Alien Vendetta, but I've never really gotten past map 8 or so of anything. I'd like to finish a megawad eventually, so I'll set my sights on doing that.

Ribbiks maps, with rare exceptions, are not merely not slaughter, but the diametric opposite of slaughter. They are almost exclusively focused on suffocating, constrictive architecture crawling with monsters. They're alien, surreal, tortured monoliths where the only way to survive is constant movement but the level design is specifically claustrophobic to make that as brutally difficult as possible. They are hard, yes. Damn hard. But I'd say they are hard in almost the exact opposite way a WAD like Hell Revealed or Sunder is hard. I'm pretty sure there are individual rooms in Sunder that are bigger than most entire Ribbiks maps!

Lemme be clear: I'm not very good at doom. At all. The only UV I'll be running is the original IWADS--on basically anything community-made, it's either HMP or HNTR for me. I, like most casual players of Doom, usually ran continuously, but I watch so many much more highly-skilled people do pistol starts that I thought I might as well try it myself. So, I'm now trying to pistol-start HNTR Sunlust (still savescumming between fights though). I have a few main thoughts on the matter: -Pistol starting is MUCH harder on average. I've played Sunlust before and got to map 8 on HMP, playing continuously and with saves. On this pistol start HNTR run, I had to spend an afternoon on map 5 and map 6 right now is absolutely destroying me. I can't even get 30 seconds in without getting obliterated thanks to this WAD's intentionally suffocating architecture where every square inch has demons tearing me apart. -On the other hand, pistol starting is so much more freeing--I don't have to stress about saving ammo or health for the next map, since I'm always starting on a blank slate. I can burn all my resources in fights and it's certainly more engaging. Having to enage with the level from the start instead of carrying over 20 rockets and 200 plasma and just facetanking fights has made me appreciate the design of each encounter, and the level's design as a whole. Having to desperately fight to get a SSG, or rocket launcher, or plasma gun, instead of just carrying one over previous maps makes getting each one feel way more impactful. I'm gonna keep plugging away at it, and also maybe switch from GZDoom to PRBoom or some other more performant source port because damn GZDoom chugs sometimes and I heard that its RNG gives you lower damage overall than Boom's RNG. It's driving me crazy how many 3-SSG Revenants and Cacodemons I encounter when in most youtube videos you only need 2 shots to take out either of those enemies, for instance. The only problem I see with this is that I was already struggling to complete maps on HMP in most WADS like Sunlust, the Stardates, AV, Scythe, but I know many WADS don't really support HNTR so I guess I just have to grind and stop being bad at the shooter game.

The most mind-blowing thing about this is that Sunder still adheres pretty much exactly to the same map format as commercial Doom, besides obviously having way more lines/vertices/everything available. The fact that the changes Romero made from Wolf 3D to Doom (walls at any arbitrary angle, sky textures, per-sector textures, differing floor heights, etc.) allow for Sunder to be possible is just nuts.

It really is just Doom Eternal. Doom 1 and 2 have honestly pretty sloppy encounter design (because they basically started the FPS as we know it) and were designed for people playing on tiny CRT's with keyboards (yes, I know mouse was supported and Romero used one--but as far as I can tell, keyboard-only was the overwhelmingly more popular option until Quake). Playing continuously also just absolutely breaks Doom 1 and 2, whereas Eternal's entire combat design means that you have to dump all your resources and restock them multiple times per fight. There's basically no fight where carrying over ammo helps because you intentionally run out so fast. Also Eternal was made decades later when everyone had ironed out good FPS encounter design and has none of Doom 1 and 2's experimental noodling. And then of course TAG is EVEN HARDER so yeah.

There are absolutely some scary as shit parts in original Doom. The game clearly wanted to use lighting and music to accentuate this because a good portion of the songs are slower-paced moody pieces as opposed to the rip-roaring riffage of the most famous songs. You also have to remember that new players, and especially those way back on release, wouldn't play the game with the same blistering pace we do now. Early footage of Doom mostly shows players carefully walking around from room to room, not running-and-gunning. Of course, the bigger focus was on suspense and thrills. Desperately holding onto your last bits of health, being on edge every time you turn a corner or enter a room, and praying you get some more ammo before you run out completely is all over Doom, even in megawads and the like, but it usually fades quickly unless you're pistol starting. But I've definitely had plenty of "shit shit i have no health WHERE'S THE AMMO oh god is that a revenant/archvile/baron WHO IS SHOOTING ME" moments when playing Doom. In the end, it's the ability to run-and-gun that everyone decided they liked best, hence Doom 2 focusing way more on that, and nearly all megawads going for explosive action with little horror, but yeah, Doom 1 at the very least has too many intentional horror elements for me not to consider it slightly leaning in that direction. Frankly, I'd love to see more wads focus on delivering the scares--for instance, maps with forced pistol starts could definitely go in that direction since you know the player can't carry anything over to blow through the enemies. Hm, I'd honestly disagree. When you know a map in and out, yeah, there's little tension. But when you're playing a map for the first time and have no idea what traps it might spring on you or where weapons and ammo are, there definitely can be a sense of helplessness (or at least, being unprepared) and nervousness about pressing on ahead. I'd say that feeling is what makes rampaging and slaughtering enemies so satisfying in the end--surviving hordes of monsters wouldn't mean much if they weren't dangerous as hell for an unprepared player. (This is completely unrelated, but I think this has made me realize what slaughtermaps are: at least to me, they're maps that are completely devoid of that tension, since they just blatantly lay out all the encounters and go "come on")

It's a fun WAD! Just quite the difficulty spike, though the forced pistol start is certainly a major factor why :P

I am glad the Dean is leading the charge on the icon of sin hate force. Such a flaccid way to end any megawad. Also, is the Delinquent voiced by him too, because dang he's got serious range if he is, sounds nothing like his normal voice.

Okay 11 is absolutely shredding me, goddamn. It took me like 20 tries to just get to the red key cave section and THAT section is damn tough too.

Hm, that's interesting. If he stays with Boom, then I guess the maps can't get much bigger than 15-20 currently are, then? I mean, those maps are already larger than even most difficult WADs penultimate/ultimate maps are, so that's fine, but I kinda do wanna see some 20K-monster magnum opus that takes a literal day to UV-max at the end of this WAD one day XD In other news, I ran through Map16 with no monsters. It's a testament to how staggeringly huge this megawad's later maps are that running through them with no monsters still can take you like 30 minutes (longer than many popular megawad maps take to UV-Max!) if you don't know exactly where are the switches are. Granted, that runtime is slightly padded since IG likes to make you hit one switch that starts lowering an absurdly tall sector blocking another to force you to fight monsters, but still.

Most of the things I mentioned--level design, sound design, game mechanics--are pretty much identical to DOS Doom in nearly all source ports. Gameplay nuances can be different, but I don't think things like GZDoom having monsters with normal heights or slightly improved AI matter too much. In any case, even comparing DOS Doom to many shooters of the time, it stands head and shoulders above them in so many aspects. Which is nuts given that it's earlier than most of them. Like I said: we are still making and playing Doom WADs to this day that use the exact same gameplay as DOS Doom, and nearly the exact same engine (though, admittedly, most are Boom maps, but Boom's added features aren't that dramatic of a change from DOS Doom). That's crazy, especially since modern WADs are on a scale literally unheard of back then. Sunder, outside of its Boom-specific mapping tricks, is running the exact same gameplay design and engine as E1M1. Doom's design effortlessly scales up to insane levels without the slightest issue.

Some background: I was born in 1995, so both Dooms had already been out by then. I didn't get into PC gaming until like 2013 and even then didn't really play Doom at all until around..2018 or so. I've been recently playing a ton of classic Doom, though, and I absolutely love it. Since the whole era of "doom clones" was past my time, a few days ago I thought to look up some of them, just for the historical context. I picked Rise of The Triad, since it seemed to be one of the more popular ones; Doom fans must have liked it, because its music shows up in wads a lot such as Hell Revealed, and even all the way to Valiant. So I looked up some gameplay footage of it. Wow. I don't mean to be rude, but THIS came out AFTER Doom 1? Just...look at it. Incredibly flat and blocky level design. Weak sound effects. Bare enemy placement. It's incredible how much better in almost all respects E1 looks than this. Romero's level designs run rings around this Wolf-3D-esque design. And the sound effects, sheesh. Doom's SFX to this day sound great, and are designed excellently with every single enemy having unique wakeup and death sounds to instantly alert you to their presence or death. Mowing down zombiemen and shotgunners is still fun as hell because their death sounds are so satisfying. The weapons pack a meaty punch, hitting switches feels great with that loud thunk, the "KA-CHIK" of getting a new gun, I could go on and on. And of course the game design in Doom is excellent--it's wild how the vanilla gameplay of Doom 2 is so strong and can scale so well that you can go all the way to stuff like the Mucus Flow, Scythe 2, Sunder, Sunlust, etc. without the slightest change to the mechanics--no need to add a bunch of crap to support the high-octane gameplay, it just works even in scenarios far beyond anything the boys at iD ever dreamed of. Yeah, "Damn, Doom is good" is an ice-cold take, but it's actually staggering how much better it is than all of the challengers of its time. Maybe back then, the whole concept of a FPS was so mind-blowing anything was amazing, but to my younger eyes Doom is so head and shoulders above everything else, it's no wonder why it is eternal and all of the wannabes faded away.

It's hard to make magic weapons feel as nice to shoot and fire as guns, really. I own a game on Steam called Amid Evil that's an old-school shooter in the vein of Doom and Quake, and it's great fun...but the weapons just don't feel as satisfying as even Doom 2's because they're all magic based. The shotgun equivalent is a sword that fires a sweeping crescent beam and it cuts through enemies like butter...but the bang of Doom shotgun still beats it in my book. And this is a game from 2018!

Map09's secret completely evades me, even after several minutes of searching. I'm really bad at secrets in general though so I don't consider it a knock against the map.

One other thing...Sunder is planned as a 32 map megawad, but according to IG a lot of the later current maps are hitting the limits of his editor. So I wonder if maps 21-30 will be about the same size as 15-20 currently, or if he'll be able to make bigger ones somehow (a new editor, etc.). I tremble in fear of what a Sunder Map29 will look like if he isn't constrained by line/thing limits... (I assume 30 will be a relatively-small boss map, but if it's more along the lines of God Machine from Sunlust or Fire and Ice from Scythe...good god) In any case, I adore the architecture of this megawad. My favorite map aesthetically is 31 because green is my favorite color, and judging from the screenshots 20 would also be up there thanks to its strong use of green as well. Despite the complete lack of even a cursory story paragraph in the text, I've never seen a WAD tickle my imagination as much as Sunder: the surreal vistas and oppressive scale make me wonder just what these places are outside of their context as Doom maps.

Map01 and 02 of this set on ITYTD are still the hardest things I've ever done in Doom. But boy, I can feel my skills at dodging enemies and managing big groups improving rapidly. Nothing to get out of the noob phase like a trial by fire, huh? The later maps of this barely run at all with my setup (blame Beautiful Doom and GZDoom being a bit of a resource hog), but not like I could beat them even with saves anyway, lol

Played through the first five maps on HNTR. Quite fun megawad, tough for me (I'm a noob, admittedly), though the BFG encounter near the end of map 5 was hard as hell to put it lightly. I might just suck at properly using the BFG though.

Sunlust isn't a slaughterwad except for a few maps at the end and I'd say the best looking map (Emerald Spire) isn't very slaughter. Also, HMP and HNTR aren't THAT difficult--definitely challenging, but Ribbiks is consistent in his belief that UV should be for super players and the lower two are for us mere mortals. Anyway, when it comes to Sunder and Abandon, both those wads are focused on extremely massive sweeping architecture--they NEED to be slaughter just to not being boring running between massive structures and fields. You couldn't make a Sunder-style map with 100-500 enemies. Huge grandiose architecture looks impressive, and demands high monster count.

I don't like to pistol-start, and much prefer continuous play, for a very simple reason: I am very bad at Doom, lol. I'm struggling through wads like Sunlust and Vigor on HNTR right now and even then they are kicking my ass. However, I still think maps should be designed for pistol start regardless, and don't begrudge map authors for making them that way. Then the map is both fair and can be made easier through continuous play. If I ever made maps, I'd design them for pistol start too, but wouldn't begrudge people playing them continuously. If you're good, then yeah, perhaps. But as a beginning player it's very easy for me to get swarmed by a big group of enemies and I haven't found continuous play to really trivialize any map I've done as of now.