CANNIBAL - A 7-level vanilla episode for Doom II - RC3!

[ZeMystic]

 

Cannibal is an episode designed for Vanilla. It was inspired by Thy Flesh Consumed and Plutonia. Every map was required to include a section with a mandatory damaging floor,

so bring your toughest boots! It was tested in Chocolate Doom and DSDA-Doom (complevel 2). Mouselook, jumping, and crouching should be disabled if you're playing on a port

with those features. If you are playing on Chocolate Doom, you can load the DeHacked normally, or use the "-dehlump" command to load it directly from inside the WAD.

 

FAIR WARNING!

Spoiler

Fair warning! MAP07 is a tough one! We recommend lowering the difficulty for casual play. If you're up for a challenge, feel free to watch the UV-MAX demo included, recorded by

the map author himself!

 

MAPLIST

Spoiler

MAP01: Hot Socks - @ZeMystic

MAP02: I Ejaculate Fire - @myolden

MAP03: Caldera - @ZeMystic

MAP04: The Fortress of Forgotten Flame - @T.Will

MAP05: Ritual Annihilation - @myolden

MAP06: Verdant Palace - @Skronkidonk

MAP07: With a Dash of Pepper - @Aurelius

MAP08: Credits - @Ludi

 

DOWNLOAD RC3 HERE!

Edited June 4 by ZeMystic

[Ludi]

I'm really stoked about all the graphics I did for this project, I think it's some of my best work.

 

Congrats on another release!

[Zesiir]

A good few maps, graphic design looks good and level design interesting. Combat leans towards the difficult a lot, so this is not something for casuals.

 

Unfortunately the damaging floor gimmick gets old really quickly. Having to constantly beeline for the nearest health item while dodging enemy projectiles

and hitscanners is not very fun. And sometimes you end up going into the next map with health below 50%. Some combat encounters are flat-out unfair.

 

I made it to MAP04; a very annoying platforming puzzle that forces you to run across tiny wooden poles over damaging floor (with a middle section that required straferunning) completely stopped gameplay flow. Followed by that, a Cyberdemon with no real space to fight him, and after that you drop into a tight room with no space to maneuver, where you are supposed to flip four switches while being bombarded by Barons and 4 Arch-Viles... And it was too frustrating to me.

 

It's a shame I couldn't finish it, because it looks like a lot of work went into this wad.

[bioshockfan90]

On MAP06 with a LOOOOOT of rewind abuse. MAPS 01-03 are doable single-segment blind, I'd say this set in general is not blind-friendly, probably DSDAheads would love this one, but for the most part I had no problems with these maps. 04 is when shit starts to go turbo overdrive. I agree with Zesiir that the platforming in 04 could probably stand to be nerfed on lower difficulties (I have no idea how that would look, I'm not a vanilla expert) or made a bit easier by not requiring SR. That was actually the hardest part of the map, the AV ambush at least I could rewind-cheese.

 

05, oh man. I love the idea of picking how much poison you wanna ingest, so I completely understand the lack of radsuits but it's so easy to put yourself in a corner if you're trying to max kills... another reason why I think this benefits from repeat playings - blind not so much.

 

Layouts are fantastic, I love the look of it, hurtfloor traversal in general I'd say is an underexplored gimmick yet alone mandatory, MAP03 felt the most traditional with it and like MAP01 was definitely a nod to E4M1 with all the shotgunners and whatnot, yeah this is incredible but for sure out of my skill league.

 

Thankfully I have no bug reports, balance reports are entirely subjective and from this HNTR player's eyes I could go for a few more stimpacks in the cauldron on MAP05 and maybe some easier platforming on 04 but I don't want to sacrifice the idea that this is a challenge mapset at the end of the day, people can cheat if they want (which is basically what I did - rewind feature in DSDA god bless) so yeah cool stuff.

 

Also it has Myolden maps I have to play it. :p

[taviow]

Stoked to play this and was looking forward to it. Will let you guys know how it goes :D

[bioshockfan90]

Okidoki. Just beat the set.

 

Yeah, this just confirms my suspicions. 05 is just not balanced for HNTR properly. 06 and 07 were more around what I expected. Overall yeah great stuff, not much to say I didn't say in the last post. GGs

[Zesiir]

I should mention, I always play on UV. So I should expect things to be difficult. But this is brutal.

 

Damn, I won't let this wad beat me. I'm going back in!

 

So with some save-scumming I managed to get past the area that got me last time. Quicksaving each time I killed an Archvile,

and enabling mouselook so I could see what the hell I was doing. The following map was a breath of fresh air, and had a much

better tempo, even if it had some difficult fights.

 

My favourite map would have to be MAP06: Verdant Palace.

 

The gameplay, the enemy placement, the combat encounters, the varied architecture of the level itself, the visuals over all... Chef's kiss.

It's good enough to stand on it's own legs as a single map wad.

 

MAP07 kicked my ass to hell and back. I had to cheat in the end, oh well.

 

Still, overall it's a brutal and good looking set of maps. Better eat a bowl of Chili going in, so you're in the right mood.

Edited April 25 by Zesiir

[Aurelius]

Another great set from the team, congrats! Glad to have been a part of it once again.

 

The UV-Max for MAP07 is currently missing from the release. For those interested, it can be picked up here:

RC2 now includes the lump, but here's the viddump:

Spoiler

 

 

Edited April 26 by Aurelius

[Maribo]

Squonker Goes The Floor Is Lava (literally). Congrats to Skronkidonk for making my new favorite Squonker map.

cannibal-maribo.zip UV, v0.27.5

[Andrea Rovenski]

aww shit, this looks really nice. Is the other recent set finished yet? the backlog is piling up 💀 

 

Really enjoy the texture clashes in the screenshots

[VoanHead]

awesome, I love TFC and pwads that take some inspiration + the look of TFC. Do we also get to eat people in this wad since it’s called cannibal?

[Ludi]

 

The credits image accidentally wasn't included in RC1 so I'll post it here for the time being 

 

EDIT: Fixed in RC2!

Edited April 26 by Ludi

[kvothesixstring]

This is wonderful. The maps look fantastic, I love the designs. As a fan of Plutonia I approve of the rudeness. Really clever and tricky fights. I'm only on map04 currently but I have to say I am rather enjoying my time. Speaking of map04, unless I missed it, there is no way to return to the map from the final fight. I hadn't found the secrets and had to idclip back up(still trying to figure out the secrets admittedly I am bad at it). I am looking forward to finishing this set. 

[ZeMystic]

8 hours ago, Andrea Rovenski said:

aww shit, this looks really nice. Is the other recent set finished yet? the backlog is piling up 💀 

 

Really enjoy the texture clashes in the screenshots

I'll admit i've been really lazy and have not wanted to upload stuff to idgames just yet. I'll get it up there soon! 💀 

[ZeMystic]

Hotfix/RC2 is up folks!

[yuakuru]

OJ rolling in his grave

mapset was good btw

MAP04 was a lil painful though

[taviow]

Played through this set today, congratulations to everyone, it is great fun!

 

FYI, I played RC1, so I don't know if these things have changed. But I have a few small suggestions for MAP04:

• I kinda think it's a bit weird that the RSK path offers an extra radsuit on top of the one at the start but there is no equivalent radsuit in the BK path, arguably the longer of the 2 paths. IMO you kinda need a radsuit in the mancs+revs fight along this path.
• I think the shoot switch to the north along the BSK path is very, very, very difficult to see even when you know about it and look at it just the right way. Personally would make this one easier but I understand that sometimes a secret is intended to be well hidden, though I'd argue that soulsphere feels very important given the lack of radsuit along the BK path and the hard fight that comes right after.

07 ultimately didn't feel overwhelmingly hard or anything, I think it's an excellent map and very well calibrated. I had a bit of a hard time with progression here and there (lowering the RSK, seeing the steps to the BSK), in general things that would otherwise feel very trivial become much more intense under the pressure of damaging floors. But that's all good, because once you replay the map with full knowledge it becomes amazing fun.

 

Once again, congrats everyone, I had a great time.

[ArchLiver]

i havent played through it fully yet, but i would like to say that so far, its extremely challenging and i like it, the level design so far is awesome, but i do think the whole damaging floor part is very harsh, but overall, its good so far.

[plums]

Fun maps. I liked map 6 but felt it was a bit too long for this set. Also I found map 4 harder than map 7, 7 was just shoot things quickly so you don't die to the floor (though I just barely squeezed into the exit before I died, I would have been fine if I had to reload), while map 4's AV trap when you get the red key took me a while to be able to work out since a lot comes at you at once. Probably I would be able to manage supplies better if I did it again.

 

In map06, sector 200 and the one beside it cause HOM in dsda-doom OpenGL. It looks like it's supposed to be flat bleeding over the ceiling but for whatever reason dsda doesn't like it. Maybe this is a dsda bug since PrB+ and GZDoom both look fine there with hardware acceleration.

https://i.imgur.com/TUYJg7Y.png

 

Anyhow FDAs for RC2 if you want them, needs dsda-doom and uses saves

https://user.fm/files/v2-fa6f71ea712de5f7e4f7b7e488a51109/cnbl-rc2-fdas-plums.zip

 

btw can you link RC1 so I can watch @Maribo's demos?

 

 

Edited April 26 by plums

[SleepyVelvet]

Here's some demons.  I mean demos.  My mouse was having some demons towards the end, just when the maps were getting harder too.

 

Demons: noisy_CNBL_RC2_hntr_fdas.zip

 

edit: oh yah, a big fan of the Gotcha archtype style map.  map03 i think.

[Searcher]

On 4/25/2024 at 11:51 PM, plums said:

btw can you link RC1 so I can watch @Maribo's demos?

 

I have it handy.  @Maribo did a great job on these.

I really like the mapset and a couple of them are quite hard.

Cannibal_RC1.zip

[plums]

7 minutes ago, Searcher said:

 

I have it handy.  @Maribo did a great job on these.

I really like the mapset and a couple of them are quite hard.

Cannibal_RC1.zip

Thanks! I always find it fun to watch highly-skilled players' FDAs of hard maps. Maribo's playing is always so fast! I can do pretty well these days but I'm usually sloooooow and cautious when playing something for the first time.

[Zahid]

decent maps fight and design feels similar after playing it some times....secrets are simple but helps a lot gameplay is hard if tried blindly but bit tame once one realize the dynamics or probably hard to explore due to lava....

my prboom cl9 uv fda of first four maps

1-4.zip

[DreadWanderer]

Played a few maps of this Squonker joint and it's great but tough as nails. I took the probably foolish decision to UV max it, having completed 2 maps so far. God help me.

Btw noticed a little oversight: MAP02's name on the automap is 'Satellites Lunch', but according to the text file that's actually the name of the MIDI. Or was this on purpose?

 

Edit: back with a couple of slightly more serious bug reports, both in map 4:

 

1. The platform/teleporter which contains the blue skull key can sometimes teleport you back to the starting area without you actually picking up the key. Kind of a big issue with all the lava and the limited rad suits available.

 

2. In the last fight with the 4 archies and the barons, it's possible for the arch-vile blast to inadvertently jump you out of the arena and make you fall below. I couldn't find a way out so I guess it's a softlock. This happened a couple of times when I was hugging the back area with the extra cell packs but I was also pushed over when I was close to the railings. Perhaps an impassable line would be the solution?

 

Edited April 29 by DreadWanderer

[DreadWanderer]

Another little addendum: in the current text file (RC2), the names of the midis for maps 2 and 5 are swapped. MAP02's MIDI is actually Doomkid's "Dissent" while MAP05's soundtrack is AD_79's "Satellites for Lunch". Thank you to @Yugiboy85 for this observation.

[cannonball]

Thought I would play through this;

 

Map01 - Yeah I don't have any problems with a set up like this being thrown straight away. I'm guess damaging floor is going to be very prevalent. As such the start is probably the hardest part of the map because the hitscanners can really nail you. The pressure eases to something more akin to a early map for the rest of the duration, even if you do get an archvile thrown in at the end. This was really solid.

 

Map02 - This is even more cramped than the first map, some seriously efficient use of monsters, particularly archviles that can cause some real trouble. The only real complaint is the fact that you have to ride the same lift a couple of times that slows things down. Another solid map.

 

Map03 - Deceived by the monster count, devious indeed.

Yeah that map is full of lost souls that can cause some real aggravation. I actually like that the beefier monsters don't actually have to be dealt with and if you want to deal with them you can simply find the secrets. I like this one, the more open plan layout works well against the more constricted Map01/02 without sacrificing the core themes in those maps. 

 

Map04 - Well just as in Daylight District, T Will produces a map that can rub you up the wrong way. The mandatory damage sections are a lot more stressful than previous maps. That said the only bit that bothered me was the platforming to the red key and even then it was mainly the first jump where you can easily bump the bordering wall. I really like the final fight by the way, that was panic inducing but actually quite beatable. Good job.

 

Map05 - Not as hard as the previous map, but probably the one I enjoyed the most so far. I like how you slowly construct the blue key area ready for the big showdown that occurs here. No issues with this one, a good map.

 

Map06 - Right straight off, the teleporter in the final room that allows you to go back to the rest of the map needs to be moved (Potentially to behind the exit door). When playing through this I accidentally took the teleporter, this isn't help by the fact that the flat used is the one used in other areas of the map where it isn't a teleporter. I make this point because if you do hat I did and there are still 20 or so monsters left then you might as well restart the map because they bottleneck at the entrance point to the final room.

I think this is probably the weakest map so far, it is a little too cramped and slow and some of the fights are quite grindy. The rocket launcher fight is a real shock because it is very unlike the rest of the map, I had to break through the lines and used the rocks as cover, which seemed to work. The final fight is messy and quite fun, but again I will reiterate that the teleporter out of there needs to be move to somewhere where accident prone souls like myself will take it and effectively make finishing the map impossible.

 

Map07 - I don't know about this one, this is one of those really unfriendly maps to play first time, you really need to act fast to get through this one because of the radsuit situation. I also cannot help but feel that adding more radsuits would be a good move for lower difficulties (I accept that UV is what it is and was surprised to see that most items are the same on all skill settings). 

 

Overall I really like this one, most of the maps felt concise and the fights tended to not outstay their welcome. Map07 was beyond me tonight, but I accept that I will need to give this another try at some point in the future. My favourite map was probably Map05, but there wasn't any map that I particularly disliked. I will note that there were quite a few occasions where I experienced episodes where projectiles went through walls (Either my own or amusing monsters, the highlight being killed by a revenant rocket on map06 that went straight through a solid waterfall. I am not sure what caused it).

Anyway, thanks for making this and keep squonking.

 

[DreadWanderer]

Don't know how it happened but the UV max happened:

 

 

Possibly the toughest Squonker set so far, I was really pushed to the limit. A lot of pressure from the damaging floors but overall very enjoyable and well constructed. Maybe the only map that I didn't vibe with a lot was map 7 but I respect it. Congrats on this release!

[Esperpento]

Just finished this masterpiece! I really liked the concept, theme and execution! What a ride!! It's hard to pick a favourite, they are all really good, but map04 really struck me visually (died countless times to the last fight, had to find the secret bfg).

 

Last map is brutal, had to use idclip to learn the map and plan a route as time is really tight and the circular design combined with the fact that the texturing is so uniform had me lost most of the time. I ended up saving before the last fight, and after many tries when I finally thought "I got this" I discovered the HK tunnel (died to it haha). Managed to beat it with 96% kills and thats fine with me, I'm no completionist. Just an idea, it would be nice to have some more notations on the automap (as with the exit), maybe the yellow key placement (in the heat of the fight I didn't noticed it). Overall I liked the map, it's a great ending.

 

map03 was really nice also, after beating it I replayed it for the secret.

 

PD: nice CC reference ;)

 

[ZeMystic]

okay my lazy ass finally updated to RC3! also hopefully daylight district up on idgames soon.