[Community Project, limit-removing/-cl3+UMAPINFO] Death By 1000 Lines - Ultimate Doom community project - RC3

E1M1 - made blue door switch a bit more obvious
E1M8 - added an off-map baron in a crusher w/ barrels to prevent softlock + added some weapons and a bit of ammo
E2M4 - fixed switch not animating
E3M3 - fixed sector that wasn't lowering
E3M4 - unpegged exit teleporter textures - pillar now appears to be lowering
E3M7/E3M9 have now swapped places
E3M9 - WILV graphic typo fixed
E4M1 - fixed a pillar that wasn't displaying texture properly
E4M9 - updated by author

I downloaded the latest copy of E1M7 that the mapper released in the development thread and played that one. In that version of the map there are some very VERY tiny invisible walls here where you see me standing, which are also very hard to notice even if I intentionally walk around that spot. Issues with nodes I'd say. 

 

E2M3: Super irrelevant but the sides to this door opening could be lower unpegged (as well as 1 pixel raised). I will add that, imo, the black sectors should be hidden in the map. 

 

E2M4: Somehow this imp was on the edge of the lift. That's how I found it.

 

E2M9: The monster closets in the YSK/BFG section wouldn't lower to the ground for me, thus the only way to grab the YSK is via noclip currently (or, playing in cl9). The culprit I believe, or culprits, were the lost souls behind the YSK door, as some of them hitboxes are barely overlapping the walls, and stuff like that can actually affect sectors elsewhere in vanilla/limit-removing, so in this case the various monster closets. Easy fix is to expand that little room about enough for the lost souls to stop causing problems.

 

Strangely the final text shown for me was the original instead of the new one in the dehacked. Not sure why though, it should be well set but who knows...

E3M1: All I'll say is that I would have liked to see more of that first mini-thing with hexagons (map's alright though).

 

E3M5: Please offer armor on UV. At the first dimension you teleport (wood), I almost got shredded by shotgunners in the centre while I couldn't do anything about that, if they weren't killed by infight which fortunately happened quickly. One of those cyb doors had dozens of shotgunners coming out in pairs and chipping my health away in the open, died twice... more reason to give armor...

 

Additionally, at the second dimension (red), you can just easily navigate in and out without ever shooting and thus never waking up the monsters that are supposed to teleport in. Not sure if intentional.

 

E3M6: Is it safe to assume in order to reach the secret exit I have to... jump to that ledge, continue walking on it until you can land on the hidden path? If so, that's what I did. I guess that is the only way judging by the switch that's on the hidden side of the wall. 

 

There're two chainsaws but since you can only grab one, the other stays there. Intentional?

 

E3M9: I didn't beat this one on UV, HMP, or even monsterless, but did on HNTR cause it's completely straightforward, which is fair judgement of skill differences I suppose. Reminds me of map 32 in 1K2 in its jarring difficulty and particularly gimmicky next to the set, but I fear this one comes off as more difficult for difficult's sake than the 1K2 map, and that's saying quite when the other map has you figuring out the quirks of a revenant projectile. I know people completed that map on UV before, and so far we don't have feedback from someone who legit beat this one yet.. My critiques:

 

Top-left wing: it took a lot of falling off, sometimes unexpectedly, to understand that the platforms are so thinner than what the blood splats suggest, specially at the pointy ends. But fine. The only real complain is that you can get splashed (even pushed off) inevitably on the last platform if the cyb happened to shoot near exactly on the last turn. The wall should be farther away imo. 

 

Top-right wing I get that you can sort of identify the chasm-thin bridges if you walk through the middle of each triangle, and some trees marking exactly the ends of each platform, though mostly I saw no way to discern paths where you can tell when there's a bridge or not, outside of trial and error, since the view is confusing and most is invisible. Find the paths after dozens and dozens of attempts and then it's memorizing angles and stuff, but I'd only do this part monsterless since the cyb is annoying all the time, so initially it does feel like guesswork for the most part. The cyb can also kill or push you off while you take the first lifts, no escape from the rng there regardless of your timing. 

 

Here's a suggestion for HMP: put a blood splat on the centre of each bridge, this would hint players where to go by reducing the guessing factor to a minimum. 

 

Bottom-left wing: again, platforms thinner than what the blood splats suggest, though now no margin of error on UV. I think the switch actions should be on the walls instead of the edge of the platforms, or additionally on the walls too, or change to WR - for a while I thought some of them were broken because I'd hit them and nothing would happen. On HMP, for the last two walls I relied on the teleport, cause I kept falling off, so I think the void teleports are a good addition for this skill setting.

 

Bottom-right wing: so this is where you have to go first. I didn't try hard enough but I'm not a fan of the idea itself anyways, seems like it could either take seconds or a loooooooong time to get it right even after knowing what to do, unlike the other wings (well, with the invisible bridges you can end up memorizing the path and then a rush as quick as possible). The platforming does seem not too tricky at least. I do wonder, if you pull it out within first/second rocket of a volley, whether you can get screwed by the rest of incoming rockets if you don't instantly start platforming, but that's just me thinking...

 

Critiques aside, there are no issues with the map being a bag of challenging but short gimmicks.. at the same time, there're rough edges and such that could be tweaked without compromising both the ideas and the main difficulty.

 

E3M7: HOMs on the windows in this massive pillar. Monsters that teleported on the streets appeared with very strong delays in between by the time there were less to come in. Same with the cacodemons on the blood pit. I've not checked the setup in the editor but if there are ways to fasten up these teleportations with the lines available, that would be so much better. As of now, I feel you can find ways to clear up the whole red area and have to wait a lot for all things to teleport in.

 

E3M8: Umm, is this map in the right slot? If so, it's pretty underwhelming as an episode finale (single area, lots of ammo, not quite many monsters, not one spiderdemon boss, no sense of closure like E2M8). Coming after E3M7 -and specially E3M9- the feeling was even stronger. The thing is, none of the other current maps in the episode would do for a proper finale unfortunately, E3M7 would be the closest candidate but it'd need focus on the death of one last spiderdemon imo. As it stands, this map is okay in itself but needs to be elevated to a proper final map imo.

E4M2: So the pit with the cacodemon and cyberdemon, since I was rushing to pick up the goodies I fell into the pit (luckily on the caco side) while it was raising. I'm not sure if there's a workaround to this that isn't, changing to instapop, but it wasn't a big deal anyways - I think it even fit with the map's sector weirdness.

 

E4M9: Imo the green armor in the secret should be given much much earlier. This is because at that point it's of little to no use, you're past the majority of hitscanners and monsters outside of the last secret invasion, for which you're given a blue armor. I don't know if there are lines left to use but perhaps this green armor could be in a new super simple secret at the start? (I thought one of the metal pillars could be a good place to hide one).

 

Additionally, the setup for the teleporting monsters in the secret water lake could be layered if there are more teleporting spots around the place. As of now, the spawn one by one, the latter ones with several seconds of delay in between, which renders this part awkward. When I thought there weren't more, I left this area and dealt with the other invasion in the starting area, then checked back the secret and there were a few stragglers that fortunately found their destination just in time. 

 

E4M6: This sector loses the secret property as it starts raising, thus it doesn't seem possible to register the secret itself. 

 

E4M7: In this specific spot, there were some invisible skinny walls that I'd assume are related to nodebuilder issues (no idea how else to describe them tbh). Have this demo where I show exactly where they are (crispy 6.0.0 btw).

 

This monsters sector wouldn't open. Very likely not enough space in there for the monsters to not cause this issue.

 

E4M8: The only minor thing I would suggest is, less soulspheres and, specially, blue armors. I think two or three soulspheres are about enough on UV -- two/three for exploring, a third for the spiders, since you hand a blur sphere they just can't damage you that much. Maybe I was also very lucky that the spiders didn't snipe me through every window all the time, which seems like it could be the case on different playthroughs. Good episode finale btw. 

In your E3M9, this part:

 

 

Am I on the right track by assuming you need a cyb rocket boost to land on the first triangular platform? If so, the cyb on the opposite wing would never ever want to shoot into that direction, for me. Or maybe I should have waited more? (I mean, I waited a lot). Moreover, the black wall that you can open will then close entirely and render the cyb not visible, so I don't know what's the function of that wall-door in that place. I'm not sure what I could do tbh. I have other critiques about the map which can wait until I somehow manage to finnish it first. Any tip would be appreciated!

You are on right track, all are pieces of same puzzle