my maps (Unruly Foreskin)

Hooray!

Thought I'd give it a quick look, opened it up, and noticed it might be a bit of a commitment for one night, I'll have to try it on a day off. Looks great from the opening shot alone, love the vanilla textures used in abstract way, but differently from the abstract way vanilla doom uses them (sorry if this doesn't make any sense).

currently having fun throwing myself off random bits of map while playing pacifist, heres a slow demo.. starlitepacifist.zip
Just one small note, linedefs 545, 544, 6508 and 5625 raise 8 units above the adjacent central floor and therefore have a small HOM lip on them

I am equally scared and aroused

Yay!!!

This makes my day.

hell yeah. a lot of maps from your previous group of speedmaps have been a big inspiration for me, so I'm pumped to see more!

4 minutes ago, Tango said:

hell yeah. a lot of maps from your previous group of speedmaps have been a big inspiration for me, so I'm pumped to see more!

Thanks! This one is not quite a speedmap, but some probably will be. 

For some reason, my brain skipped a beat and the first thing that popped into my head when reading the title is "You're Maps!" Go be the best maps you can be, rd!

Made an FDA on HNTR, I was more in tourist mode til the first few enclosed fights but still nothing serious, so there's one death followed by an exit if you want to watch (prepared myself to do some jumping but nope that was it :p).  

starlite_FDAbygal.zip

Really charming and artistic stuff as is your signature mapping, with a pinch of humor here and there. Will definitely go back to it!

Visually striking and tough as nails. Awesome stuff, RD!

Well ya know, I've been sitting around thinking, "I owe rd about 85 million playtests, so it would sure be nice if rd actually uploaded a map to the forum so I can get on with it!" And now it has happened, and I'm so glad.

I took a look at your port choices -- Eternity or PrBoom+ -- and that translates to GZDoom in Steve D Land. ;) I doubt that's why I got soft-locked in Sector 874, because it will take a lot more than that little blue firestick to stop me from exploring a boat. ;D

This map is lovely to look at, with a perfect marriage of sky, lighting and textures creating a calm atmosphere in the midst of mayhem, although it seems to take forever for that mayhem to get started. Knowing your style to some extent, and aware that I'm in nowhere near your league as a player, I chose HNTR right away. But even HNTR has 620 rompin' stompin' monsters, so I figured I'd surrender north of 30 pelts and take 90 minutes to beat this thing, but lo and behold, I only died once!

No, I didn't stutter, I only died once.

I have no idea how this happened. There must be a rational explanation. Yes, I was really in that last arena fight with the army of zombieboys, the 2 Cybs, the Cacoswarm that killed both of them -- kindling some fond memories -- and that pack of Revvies guarding the switch. That's where I died the first and only time, before I realized there was an Invuln available, along with a few Megaspheres and a lot of cells. Okay, that seems to be a sensible explanation for me almost surviving this thing, and if I play it again on HNTR, I probably can survive it. I hope you realize that this threatens to collapse my entire concept of reality, but luckily, I did manage to successfully die at least once, so that's what pulled me back from the brink. 

Okay, enough joking around. The fact is, you've made a freaking gorgeous map, perfectly complimented by a wonderful midi -- title and author, please? -- and I really enjoyed my half hour of playtime. I especially loved your tasteful and artistic use of Fireblu, which is rapidly becoming my favorite Doom texture. You even had animated Fireblu as a liquid flat, and the translucent Fireblu tubes are another standout feature. Seriously, this is Fireblu Heaven for me. I also really liked the little boats with health and armor, and the path to the blue bars over the blue crackle rock was exquisite. 

The fights were super-easy, but I suspect you geared them -- on HNTR at least -- for the sheer manic joy of blasting whole hordes of Hellspawn to tiny little bits. It worked, because I had a huge grin on my face as I circle-strafed the hordes, thinking, "Okay, if you're not gonna kill me, I'm gonna blow these jagoffs to Kingdom Come!" And so I did. ;)

So please, rd, moar maps!

Okay, I played it again, and tried out HMP. You got your share of pelts off of me this time! This is especially because I figured out the YK secret, and my oh my, was I ever sorry about that! ;D I died at least 10 times to this combat puzzle. My solution was to go PE -> Imp -> Revvie, and to fight the Revvies with rockets from the PE alcove. After dying multiple times figuring this out, I pressed the switches in the wrong sequence and got Archibald way early, and I was so rattled after fighting him that I grabbed the SS and ended-up with only 129%, with leftover Medikits all over the floor. Well, I wasn't happy, so I opened a save and fought the battle all over again, dying 3 times, but this time, after victory, I hit the switches in order and dispatched Archie before he caused much trouble, and walked out of there ready for the end fight.

Before discussing that, I want to say that I really love how everything is timed in the first Cyb fight. Also, that YK secret pathing is super-clever. However, I found another soft-lock. After getting the YK, I walked along the Sector 120 ledge to see if I could find  some goodies. I then jumped onto the Sector 138 ledge, followed it around, and then fell into the gap when I tried jumping into Sector 337, where I got stuck. 

The end-fight was much more exhilarating without the Invuln. I died twice this time, both to roaming Archies, so it wasn't a ton more difficult. I got good angles on the Archies rezzing Revvies by the switch. I'm pretty sure I killed 2 with a trio of BFG blasts. After that, all the roaming Archies were killed by Cybs, who were then killed by Cacos. IOW, once the Archies were dead, the fight was over. I would have liked more rockets to wipe out the Caco cloud, because it was fun watching them rain from the sky in 4s and 5s. ;) It wasn't quite the same knocking them down with plasma weapons, because the blast obscured the view.

I ended up with 755 kills, with only 4 monsters surviving. 2 of those were a HK and Arachnotron I left infighting. Only 1 secret found.

Once again, fantastic map. One last thing, I advise a border texture where Linedef 2994 meets Linedef 260.

Thanks for all the playthroughs and feedback! 

Biodegradable you asked "what the hell was that" at some point early on. Your intuition was well founded:

Steved, thanks for all the feedback and catching all those errors. Yeah, the secret YK area is arguably the toughest in the map. The approach I go with (and on UV too) is to rocket the imps, grab the cells in front of them, and then quickly fire out a few BFG shots at pain elementals, and then turn back to the revenants again. When I get around to implementing these minor fixes, I'll add some extra rockets to the last fight, possibly in the small cubby that has revenants. The MIDI is from Lost Civilization map11, but to my knowledge, it's not listed by name or author in the text file. Next post has it. 

Re the map as a whole, it was the most fun I've had mapping in ages. One of my main goals was to weave a little story through the map, because I find that thing really fun to do and historically I haven't done it quite enough yet -- "yet" means I'll do it more ;). A brief description of the overarching concept: 

9 hours ago, Steve D said:

wonderful midi -- title and author

Hall of Faces by Jimmy.

https://www.wad-archive.com/wad/5d83fca24089aa4ae9dfc342fe12ff5bcc33d64f

i found a stucky spot noisy_starlite_itytd_2021-03-07.zip

edit: @rd. here's a hntr demo too noisy_starlite_hntr_2021-03-07.zip

2 hours ago, rd. said:

Steved, thanks for all the feedback and catching all those errors. Yeah, the secret YK area is arguably the toughest in the map. The approach I go with (and on UV too) is to rocket the imps, grab the cells in front of them, and then quickly fire out a few BFG shots at pain elementals, and then turn back to the revenants again. When I get around to implementing these minor fixes, I'll add some extra rockets to the last fight, possibly in the small cubby that has revenants. The MIDI is from Lost Civilization map11, but to my knowledge, it's not listed by name or author in the text file. Next post has it. 

It's nice to see how someone with skillz approaches the YK fight. If I try that -- and I will -- I'll probably end up out in the open, surrounded by angry Revvies, dying like a dog. Here's how I first approached this battle; I saw the 2 cell charge packs in among that first batch of Imps. Given that I had a well-stocked BFG, I decided I could bull-rush the whole thing, as if this was a gimme battle. I'd just blow away the Imps, then charge forward, grab the packs, and keep going as I melted that mini-horde of boneheads. And it worked. Sort of. On my 3rd or 4th try, I made it to the switch-wall, turned around, and ate a cloud of rockets and fists, but I thought I was on to something and did it again. And again. And thanks to my legendary powers of observation, I was on my 5th or 6th death before I asked myself, "Where are these Lost Souls coming from?" On my next try, I looked to my right for the first time and said to myself, "Holy fucking shit, I'm in trouble now!" That little pack of PEs blended perfectly in the darkness. Sneaky work, rd. ;) How ironic that those PEs, by becoming my priority target, were the key to ultimate victory.

I'd like to mention what must have been some Voodoo Doll trickery -- the magical and welcome appearance of an SS and Blue Armor when I hit one of the switches. It was as if they silently teleported in. In fact, I was able to leave the initial SS up on its ledge before heading off to the end-fight. Earlier in the map, at the RL area, I was able to climb onto the table there, hit a switch, and get a sequence of funny sounds plus a Zerk which I never saw, but which must have momentarily existed because my screen went red and my fist came up. It's playful touches like these which make this map so fun and memorable. I also like your story concept. There I was, at the very fountains of Fireblu!

At some point in the not-so-distant future, I will gather my courage and at least take a look at UV. We'll see how far I get before I quit in despair. ;D 

@Diabolución Thank you so much! I've been going through my collection of Jimmy midis, looking for a specific action tune, and I listened to Hall of Faces probably a couple weeks ago, but I wasn't able to recall it. After all, there's a lot of awesomeness in that collection. I'm going to go through it all again and write down the titles of the ones I like best and separate them into types to make life easier on myself.

Fun map.

Ended up just addressing the aforementioned softlocks and also added a return teleporter so that you can leave the last area and go hunting for secrets if you're done. 

Very beautiful map. Can't beat it on UV... yet. I will work on strategies.

I did it!!! I have beaten this epic map on UV. I have found only one secret - with yellow key (battle in that room was insane!). Also found hidden soul sphere near start and "drank coffee lmao". Battle in final area was near impossible because of Arch Viles. I ran out of rockets and plasma when only Cyberdemons were still alive, but area had infinite amount of ammo for Chaingun lol. It was hard, but very fun map and i will play it many times. Played on Eternity Engine without freelook, jumping etc.

Felt like making a speedmap. This one is named "Soda Goes Extinct Except in Hell, Because the Demons Drank Everything (Misri Halek 5)." 

Build time is 5 hours. Basic info and download link in the OP. UV is intense, but most of the high monster count is lower-tier monsters, so it's not a long map. Constraint was no true lock-in fights. 

I just finished SGEEiH (lol), and had a wail of a time! I'm surprised by how well the encounters flow considering the short build time, and am impressed by the scale of the architecture despite its simplicity. This is certainly one of the best speedmaps I've played! The combat reminded me a little of Zone 400, though that could just be a byproduct of the build-time, while the general mood reminded me of Arrival, probably due to the AD_79 midi (which is excellent btw) and the sheer volume of the playspace. The ammo/health balance is pretty good: I never found myself running short yet the threat of ammo depletion was a background constant, neccessitating a degree of precision in my usage of the BFG / RL.

I did discover a couple of bugs however:

1) for some reason, a rev and a couple of imps got stuck in the floor somehow, north of sector 147.

2) I presume sector 79 is supposed to be damaging?

The playthrough was conducted with Crispy Doom, on UV, if that helps.

Overall, this is a very good speedmap, one I can see myself replaying in the future!

^{Confession: I did drop a couple of saves before major fights, so this wasn't a 'pure' playthrough. Don't judge me, I'm savescum!}

I'm glad I ran into this topic, I'm excited to play your maps!

They seem very difficult and visually neat. I'll try to UV-max them... I wonder if anyone has accomplished that yet (single segment).

Anyway, I'll come back with some feedback later!

SGE_xyzfda.zip - get it while it's hot!
Hopefully it is at least somewhat entertaining for watch!
Be sure to have smooth turns on demo playback to reduce the sight of my awkward keyboardiness :P I couldn't resist the bepis and exited too early, shieeeeeeeeet. Out of the literal dozens of them, this is easily one of your best speedmaps yet! There's two demos only because the "Your battery is running low" message popped up on my laptop, heh.

Here's a casual UV-Max of SGEEiH. Really fun map, the final fight is pretty amusing because so little effort is required by the player relative to the number of monsters. Of course, there's plenty of challenge elsewhere in the map, and I died several times attempting to record this. Haven't played Starlight Processing yet.

sge-915.zip

Played this new map first on HMP using crispy doom, later on UV with dsda cl-9

Classic rd slaughter formula simply can't go bad, so I enjoyed this big boiling soup quite a lot as expected, although I admit I had the better experience with dsda's higher definition, since projectile hell in crispy is harder to keep track. The map's trickiest task for me was getting a foothold, logically with all the barrels around and early tight ammo, though after going north to the RL place things went smoother in general. I also liked the secrets too, the BFG setup goes very different when you have it already, but without it you can't count on preemptive shots, which makes things exciting.

If there's one small critique, it would be the sniper arachnotron at the zombie party seemed too high to hit with rockets or BFG, or maybe I just had to find the right spot for autoaim to detect it? Anyways, nothing to worry about... well, I wasn't sure about the revs/imps that spawned far away from the "rocket gallery" fight - some three or four revs managed to find me in other attempts (before recording), though you can see in the demo they were "stuck" at the start point the whole time I dealt with the fight, but I wouldn't think too much of it considering my demo isn't "optimized" or speedy...

Also, (!)important note(!), while playing in crispy I hit the intercept overflow at the final area, just as I was melting zombies, and by the looks of it there's no easy escape from that happening again, so maybe there should be a warning in the OP about it.

Here's my casual UV max in 6-7 minutes, dsda-doom cl-9 as I said before. Apparently dsda keeps a record of your attempts, heh.

SGE_maxbygal.zip

So, please make more!

Hey @rd., I liked this map very much!