The DWmegawad Club plays: Ancient Aliens

[Magnusblitz]

MAP28: Floating Arena
94% kills, 0/1 secret

Yup, not too rough all things considered, as there's usually plenty of room to circle, plenty of ammo, and plenty of soul/megaspheres. The first part is rocket spam, then the latter part is BFG spam. I was feeling like the map was turning into a grind early with the two cyberdemons stuck in the blue and red towers, but eventually was able to pull both out onto their respective walkways into the line of fire by simply ignoring them and running past them. There were a couple cheeky parts I liked, such as the AV/V-sphere portion or the giant ADbot fleet, but aside from that it's pretty much just mindless strafe+BFG trigger action.

I also agree that the map is quite rough-looking in several regards. The texturing is pretty hideous, as the color and themes are all over the place... the thing that makes the last levels work so well is that the bright colors of the sunset or the UFO/alien tubes is that it's offset with simple tan stone. Here, there's tan stone, black stone, zimmer, grass, lava, silver metal... and I think there's four different liquids in the map? Either way, it definitely becomes cacophonous, and not in a good way. I also wasn't a fan of how the sky void was used, as there's a few HOMs and no teleports out... so being blasted into the void becomes the real threat of the level. So yeah, not bad, but still feels very beta-ish (even the name feels like a placeholder).

[rehelekretep]

my review of map28
video here

[Spectre01]

Map 29: The Ones Behind it All

Since nobody posted about this map yet, I'll spoiler my impressions just in case.

Spoiler

I'm not saying it was the UAC, but it was the UAC all along!

Spoiler

1

This explains some of the industrial/techbase elements that people found out of place in some of the maps' aesthetics. Looks like you were unknowingly part of a sinister science experiment where Big Brother was watching you the whole time!

Spoiler

1

The reveal was handled really well. After two arena fights you enter a large building with the UAC logo above the entrance. It's rather empty but as you flip the switch, ready for another slaughterfest, an even more bizarre scenario is revealed. I was hoping you could gib the labcoat bastards that weren't behind protective glass, but those too were immune to rocket damage. :(

Now, on to the actual gameplay. 899 starting monsters and a bridge giving you most weapons and a Megasphere? What is this, some kind of slaugh-, yeah, it's a slaughtermap. This map captures all the good points of the WAD with 3 distinct and visually iconic arena encounters. They are all quite challenging while still being fun and beatable for the non-ubermensch crowd. The first encounter, set in familiar Egyptian architecture, tests how well you can control space as the rather small area quickly fills up with timed teleporting hordes. You're not given a backpack at the start and BFG ammo is not that plentiful so you can't just hold m1 and circlestrafe the mobs to death. What I did was follow a counterclockwise direction, using the BFG to take out any potential blocking monsters while trying to maximize infighting. The main danger comes from the Archviles that teleport with the final wave, which you really need to be on point to hit with the BFG as soon as they appear. Afterwards it's all a matter of keeping on the move and using the rocket launcher to clean up the perched Revenants, Plasma Troopers and Hell Knights. The health is quite generous here, so assuming you don't get stuck, it's quite easy to recover after taking some major hits.

The second arena is full of those giant test tubes which appeared in map 25. Now, I'll be honest and say I probably didn't do this fight the intended way. There are 3 pillars, each holding 2 Archviles that eventually activate a crusher. What triggers it, I don't know, but since the left and right Archviles start toasting you instantly, I ignored everything and spammed rockets at all 4 of them. Can you even hit them without freelook? I have no idea. The rest is just a matter of firing a few BFG shots at the horde on the ground approaching you and then cleaning up with rockets. The last couple of Archviles got crushed at this point.

Before stepping into the final area teleporter, I noticed that a good 600+ monsters were still left to kill so a big fight was coming. I have mixed feelings on this encounter as my most successful attempts involved shooting as little as possible, and again running counterclockwise and maximizing Monster Infighting Simulator® 2016™. Now, I used this strategy in RC1 and it still seems to be the best way to clear this encounter right now. I'll be honest and say this is an aspect of slaughtermaps I don't enjoy. It kept me from finishing Stardate or getting past map 02 in Sunder. I prefer shooting, rather than herding hordes while watching the kill counter rise. It's what makes Valiant's Cyberwar my favourite slaughtermap, since the monsters are spread out enough that most of them won't die to infighting and you need to do the actual slaughtering.

Anyways, I step into the teleporter, quickly BFG fry the 2 Archviles and then I run anticlockwise. This pretty much guarantees that I take no damage in the initial phases. The Mancubi wall lowers and I'm still running. Now the outer wall lowers and I take my track and field day to the outer void circle as the middle part is now full of Cybers, Masterminds and other dangerous junk. So I keep running, firing the BFG only in the event where monsters block my way while everything else Duke3D's it out. Now, just like the first arena, you have to be ready for the Archvile warp as that will stop your marathon if you don't handle it quickly with the BFG. Once that's over, I glance over at the kill counter and see around 40 monsters remaining. Who did I kill? Well, 2 Archviles and some Revenants at the start, a horde of blocking imps and other monsters and finally the extra appearing Archviles. I shoot rockets at the remaining Revenants and Hell Knights and one-shot 2 badly damaged Cybers. Das it mane. 100% kills and the end of fighting in this WAD.

Now, don't get me wrong, this is still one of my favourite maps in AA. The music is absolutely on point, the reveal is awesome and the encounters are fun and challenging.

[Demon of the Well]

Map 29 -- The Ones Behind It All - 110% Kills / No secrets
Oh. Oh. Of course. It was right in front of us this whole time....

Interesting choice for the final map proper (uh, spoiler, I guess?), this. In gameplay terms, it's quite simple: a set of three of Skillsaw's signature invasion-style slaughter fights, where monsters are revealed in waves either through timed teleportation-bombs or unfolding arenas (or both), and the key to victory is generally as simple as doing whatever it takes to ensure that you can keep running laps or zig-zags or whatever your pattern of preference might be. If you can do that, you'll almost certainly triumph; if you get bogged down or roadblocked too early in an encounter, you'll almost certainly be torn to shreds. It's possible to tank a TON of damage in each fight and still come out fresh as a daisy, thanks to an extremely generous powerup supply (I exited the map having picked up 10 of 23 items, and a couple of those were by accident while slaloming through the various crowds)--just so long as they can't stop you from moving. I wouldn't say the fights are softballed to the point of not requiring any higher order strategy--the availability of cells to allow you to keep pulling the trigger of the BFG is very apparent as a designed issue in at least the first two fights, for instance--but this is the sort of thing that almost anyone should be able to conquer with a little bit of elbow grease and limited frustration, which as I've said before I reckon is big part of why Skillsaw's stuff is popular as it is....it makes you feel powerful without actually removing you too much from the sequence of actions which brings about victory, regardless of skill level. Of the three fights, I reckon the second is perhaps slightly trickier than the other two, courtesy of the elevated arch-vile duos with an overview over the majority of the battlefield, but provided you realize they're there early enough it's no big thang to pick a pair and rocket them away to give yourself a space from which to leverage the BFG against the groundlings (apparently the viles are automatically crushed sooner or later? I didn't even notice...).

The twist to this simple 1-2-3 fight template is that there is a bit of in-game narrative interlude between the second and third fights, which I won't spoil here. It's a little thing, really, and if you're not the type to spend much mental energy on backstory and setting it probably barely even registers, but for my part I appreciated it nonetheless--gives the endgame a little something unique to call its own. It didn't strike me until after I'd finished playing, but each of the three arenas is essentially an idealized snapshot of the overall aesthetic theme of each of the game's three episodes, a nice little touch. While the sense of escalation in intensity and tension in the combat is perhaps a bit milder here than I might've liked (a downside to the extremely user-friendly balance approach, perhaps), the final fight certainly doesn't lack for spectacle, if nothing else, and I do believe that from a purely visual standpoint it's probably the most eyepopping arena Skillsaw has crafted thus far in his mapping career. This specific fight format--an initially closed arena of overlapping concentric circles where the waves grow larger and larger as things open up--also seems to be his chosen ritual for closing out a mapset, interestingly enough.....his version of "ride the lift and pop two rockets into Baphomet's forehead", you might say.

Map 30 -- The End - Nothing to kill / 100% Secrets
Going to go ahead and write about this now, since it's not a Doom level in the traditional sense, but rather a short quasi-playable epilogue. Very pretty, and it has a genuinely clever ending, something I reckon that everyone who makes it this far will probably remember on down the road. On that point, even if you're the sort of player who detests looking for secrets, suck it up and look for the secret. It's not at all hard, and you'll be glad you did.

To be honest, for my part I reckon I'd rather have had one more fight instead, but I guess this works too, given that there are probably only like 4 or 5 other players in the whole cosmos who would've rather battled it out with a Giorgio-faced IoS or something. ;)

********************

Wrap-up here will be pretty short, I think. Ancient Aliens is another quality mapset from one of the community's most beloved authors, certainly; I imagine it will inevitably be compared to (and pitted against) Valiant in future discussions, will be interesting to see which of the two ends up being remembered as "the Good Son", though of course both are worthy ventures in their own right. Aliens distinguishes itself mainly through its vibrant resource pack, which for the time being stands alone and apart from that in all other mapsets as something quite unique, and through the creative decision to employ the talents of a number of guest mappers. This latter quality is the most fundamental thing distinguishing it from Skillsaw's other mapsets, I think.....I reckon it's fair to say that Skillsaw's personal mapping style seems to have become pretty "settled" at this point, and so in that sense while his best levels in this set are just as sharp and compelling as anything he's ever done, in truth there is not a whole lot here from the man himself which is truly unexpected, save perhaps the map 30 epilogue, and that's a pretty minor deviation all things considered. Using guest mappers is an interesting way of changing things up and avoiding some of the drawbacks of the one-man megaWAD format (even if the styles of the guests have some significant degree of artistic kinship with the 'main' author's own, or if they actively attempt to temporarily 'marry' their styles to his/hers), and the decision to weight these contributions heavily into a given part of the game is a bold one, perhaps risky....but I think it was the right choice, as the guest maps provided sustained mutability in terms of both stock-bestiary fight designs and the aesthetic potential of the unique resource pack, something which was handled in Valiant through the Scythe II-style multi-episodic format and the gradual unveiling of new monsters and the like until quite deep into the game. If anything, I'd say that the main weak point of Ancient Aliens is that it seems to take a while to hit its stride, something which might have been ameliorated by having a handful of additional guest slots in E1 in place of some of those early-game turret-workshop concept pieces. ;) On that point, be it by Skillsaw's own hand or that of someone else, I really, really hope to see more maps (or sets!) emerge in the future which use this resource pack--it's too good not to use!

As is customary, my top 5 maps of the set, in no particular order:

Map 17 -- Daylight Under a Dark Sol
Map 18 -- Illuminati Revealed
Map 22 -- Acerola-Orion
Map 10 -- Gift of Denial
Map 26 -- Egyptian Metaphysics

[baja blast rd.]

map29

skillsaw is basically the best at this type of arena map. <3 Lots of powerups but still manages to be exciting. In the third fight, things only really heat up when the AD heads and other hordes start coming out, and the transition from "Okay I can just waltz around and let things infight" to "Holy shit I better spam my BFG!" is very quick.

The scientist thing was amazing. Hah, you don't see that sort of thing in most maps, which automatically makes it great.

Anyway, since map30 is a decoration map, my favorites are:

map08
map10
map17
map22
map26
map29

Those might change as I replay more and more maps from the set, but these are my favorites as they currently stand.

I'll probably post a more detailed write-up later.

given that there are probably only like 4 or 5 other players in the whole cosmos who would've rather battled it out with a Giorgio-faced IoS or something. ;)

LOL

[Spectre01]

Map 30

Might as well wrap this up with some final thoughts. Now for some strange reason, this map ran horribly in Zandro/GZDoom with and without any mods for me. I was literally sitting at less than 1 FPS here, and not the usual 30 or so for bad running maps with ridiculous numbers of sectors:

Spoiler

1

No issues in ZDoom though. :S

Also, it would've been cool if the final boss was a two-headed dog with six legs just as you emerge from the Giorgio warp. A missed opportunity no doubt.

Spoiler

Final Thoughts: Valiant is my favourite megawad so my expectations for a new Skillsaw release were extremely high. Someone said that AA is in fact superior but I would have to disagree. After two thorough playthroughs, and especially this one which gave me more time to focus on each map, I still prefer Valiant. I'm kind of left to wonder what AA would be like if it used the Valiant bestiary and whether going back to 90% vanilla monsters was the right move.

Now, on a more positive note, this is definitely a unique megawad with it's own brand of visual aesthetic and atmosphere not seen anywhere else. It doesn't feel like you're playing Plutonia/AV/Scythe 3.0 which a lot of other wads draw heavily from. The difficulty is tuned quite well in the first 2 episodes and several parts are nasty enough to hit "not quite Sunlust" levels. Episode 3 is quite a mixed bag, which I don't feel progresses smoothly enough, difficulty wise. I found maps 20 and 22 to just be straight up harder than anything else. I was slightly apprehensive at first about the number of guest maps, but they were mostly enjoyable and provided a new aesthetic. Once some of the bugs get ironed out, it's an easy 5/5 on idgames.

Favourite/Most Memorable Maps: 08, 10, 15, 31, 16, 17, 18, 22, 23 (Yeah, come at me!), 24, 27, 29.

Also, did the club die out or something? The activity dropped quite drastically into E3, or is this how it usually goes? First time making it all the way to the end of a playthrough.

["JL" was too short]

MAP29

Another slaughter map, both more slaughter-y and much more attractively done than its immediate forerunner. The twist that many folks have alluded to took me a little bit by surprise, I have to say, but it certainly fits in with the Doom mythos and helps reconcile AA as a whole. There's not that much else to say about this map, and it's weird how little I really noticed or cared about the actual gameplay here. It could have been a monster-less plot map just like MAP30 and I wouldn't really have enjoyed it any less.

On which note, since everyone else is already sort of talking about it, I'll just go ahead and say that I loved MAP30 as much as the rest of you, and for all the same reasons. Well done.

I'll probably write up my thoughts on AA as a whole sometime in the next few days.

[SoundofDoomDoors]

Ah so I'm not the only one that took on the last two maps together. I'll just leave this here, then. All 73 maps of DUMP 3 await. That means I probably won't feel like playing Bloodstain, which is too bad. I tried the first level and liked it. Here are the last few notes from me.

MAP29: The Ones Behind It All
100% Kills 100% (0/0) Secrets

That was easier than the last map. I got blown up once by archviles in the second arena. Then I circlestrafed the remaining 600 monsters to death, excluding a few archviles and cyberdemons I got rid of personally. I wonder, did a timer trigger the archvile crushers in the second area? I just used rockets to take them out. At the end, I noticed the ceilings moving after I'd cleaned up the trash on the lower level. The reveal here was great too. It just got overshadowed by MAP30's hilarity when I first played it. I kept waiting for a mob in the room with the scientists, but I had to teleport away from them to reach the final wave.
---
MAP30: The End
100% (0/0) Kills 100% Secrets

Before playing: Oh is this a Going Down inspired MAP30? Sure looks like it with the one secret and lack of enemies.

After: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! I love it! The narration. The creeps in lab coats. The X-Files quotes in the final intermission. Was it all a dream? I don't know or care. It's the perfect ending to one of the most surreal wads I've ever played. I love Going Down's MAP30. I love this even more.
---
Overall: This is one of the standout releases of the year. It gets a cacoward for sure. I had a blast playing it too. It's kind of difficult to compare it to Valiant, its most obvious contemporary, due to each wad having gameplay changes of its own. Suffice to say I love them both.

My picks:
Most memorable Levels: MAP06, MAP29, MAP30.
Most Creative Level Design: MAP26's double-edged use of the blursphere.
Nonlinearity Awards: MAP27, MAP20.
Most Beautiful Level: MAP24.
Holy Shit That's a Lot of Skeletons: MAP28's finale.
Most Quotable Blurb: "Run. Hide. The spiders never stop."
You Got Your Duke in My Doom: MAP31.

[baja blast rd.]

I could have spent >20 minutes on this post but I didn't want it to be longer than it already is. :D

Custom Monsters

In Doom, one of the things that quickly becomes apparent as maps become packed with mid-tiers is the clear demarcation between the single shotgun & chaingun and the SSG & rocket launcher in terms of heavy lifting power. But the plasma troopers and ADs have so little HP that you could probably make a single-shotgun-centric SLAUGHTERMAP with a healthy dose of them. This is the magic of extreme glass cannons: they are dangerous in small numbers with weak weaponry, and dangerous in high numbers with strong weaponry, and basically every permutation of monster count and weapon load-out is possible. The chaingun becomes the weapon of choice (!) in setups with those partially invisible buggers running all around, at least when the plasma rifle isn't available; risking splash damage with the RL is often unappealing, and the SSG is just plain slow.

Both monsters also force you to do things other than act out the typical dodging patterns. What I noticed is that the plasma troopers' raw speed subverted the usual dodging technique one might use against arachnotrons. They move in erratic zigzags and you have to maneuver more sophisticatedly in turn, lest you get spammed in the face. And let's not even get into the implications of using the ADs' explosive death: imagine a set piece where the optimal strategy is to leverage it to kill, like, archies or something, armed with nothing stronger than a chaingun.

I'm not sure if the use of AA's custom monsters will be blessed in the same way as the assets, but it would be really interesting to see what the community can make of them. (I've felt this way about Valiant's bestiary too!) AA has probably the strongest two-monster replacement ever.

Composition of the Mapset

The first few levels still feel quite odd, tbh. map04 could really use a replacement, or a guest slot. It's not a weak level by any means, but as I predicted in the individual write-ups, the whole turret concept doesn't really fit that well. The somewhat frequent animal warps also seem to have disappeared, apart from a short reprisal in map18.

map06 is the first somewhat substantive level, and the mapset really kicks into gear with map08, and for the most part it's a gear it never leaves for too long. Early on I was thinking that AA would share Valiant's only real flaw, namely the addition of filler maps designed solely to extend the mapset to 32. I can't say any of these are filler maps, however. Even the smallest maps seem to have been created with some sort of concept in mind. And the guest maps. This is how you fill a slot, not with *puts up nose like an elitist bigshot* """speedmaps""". It's not at all surprising that a slightly higher proportion of guest maps are highlights -- they had a lot of time to work on one or two maps, and skillsaw had to work on a million of them.

Map Design

These maps have more support than a fat lady's bra. But seriously, one of the first things I noticed was the ubiquity of support textures, usually enclosing another column-like texture to form a super pillar that would basically be spammed everywhere. Every theme is defined first and foremost by its set of support templates. Then the detailing templates come next: multi-tier floor and ceiling holes, often colorful; wall indentations, once again, often colorful, bordered by some sort of light strips.

But despite that sort of regularity, AA does go places Vanguard and Lunatic and Valiant didn't. The representational detail more often associated with old school design is everywhere, from that table with drugs in the start area of map01, to the tablets and the UFOs, all the way to map29's UFO lab and map30's scientist-slash-fish-monger (that's my interpretation! :D). And the shapes! Gone is the almost exclusive reliance on 90- and 45-degree angles for buildings and "man-made" structures and the like, often simple to a fault (imo) structures. In are some pretty cool shapes, especially in e2's spaceships, which to me look sexier on the automap than in-game. (These shapes are something that AD_79 used BEFORE skillsaw, btw. The two-medkit exit areas also are a 50 Monsters trademark. So the influence isn't strictly unidirectional!)

So yeah, I think as far as map design goes, AA is definitely a clear showcase of the lead author's evolution. What's next? A 1994-ish mapset with modern visuals, full of boats and hospitals and sector objects with hallways awkwardly crammed with infinite barons and floors covered in invuls and megaspheres? One can only hope. :D

Assets

The assets, man. I opened it up in SLADE early on, and the list was HUGE. There are tons of recolors and all sorts of cool animated textures. The enchanting spinning tubes in map25 require a rotation for EACH segment of the curve! I think skillsaw or someone in the AA crew modified those themselves from the original sources (but I'm not sure). The UFO animation cycles are simple, graphically, but still, it's a lot of work! There are custom props, repalettized monsters . . . I'm not sure how many hours were put into remapping the sprites, or if that was a high number at all (I tend to overestimate these things), but the whole thing exudes care and effort.

Okay, there's some ugly stuff too :D. I'm not a fan of the gray-black rock, apart from its appearance in map32, where it fits. The techbase textures in general lean against my preference for grittiness -- think Ribbiks's techy stuff -- and are more sleek and cartoony than I'd like. (<3 Incidentally <3, part of why I like the scheme of map22 so much. The tech representation is skewed towards the grittier black stuff, and the indigoes have a certain depressing quality to them, and the sky is at once dour and gorgeous.)

I predict a LOT of hot messes when the texture pack comes out -- outside of the Egyptian and Incan stuff, these assets, e2's in particular, don't seem that easy to use well -- but the successes should be quite magical.

Better Than Valiant?

It is somewhat clear that skillsaw has gotten even better since Valiant was in production, in terms of fight design and aesthetics. But it's also somewhat clear that most Valiant levels simply had a lot more work put into them, outside of the occasionally unimpressive e1. Nothing in AA really compares to behemoths like map13 and map17 and map24, just to name a few. AA has a more unified theme, but it does get repetitive at times; aesthetically I was hoping for more variety, maybe additional sub-themes within each episode block: e1, for example, could have played a bit more with all-natural settings as in the start area of map10; e3, for example, could have had a floating-city-in-the-clouds block patterned after Kassman's gorgeous map. But that's more of a testament to the quality of Valiant than to any serious deficiencies within AA. It's a strong mapset, and one that I'm really really glad exists!

The Pun "On the Origin of Spacies": Funny or Incredibly Groanworthy?

So incredibly groanworthy it's funny.

Wrap-up

So, yeah, unless another surprise megawad falls out from under a UFO, this is probably going to be my personal vote for Megawad of 2016. It's not perfect, no, but it's really good, and thank you to everyone involved: skillsaw for the fun maps and overall concept, stewboy for the SEXY MUSIC, and all of the guest mappers (yes, even the ones whose maps I wasn't huge on -- eventual follow-up playthroughs can easily change my opinions, and of course the maps aren't on /idgames yet, so they are hardly fixed in stone *wink wink*). I also had fun posting alongside the other DWMegawadclub participants -- you guys notice a wide variety of things I overlook. :) Thanks DotW for long insightful posts as usual, and Rehelek Retep for the videos.

[esselfortium]

Thanks everyone for the responses to MAP22 (Acerola-Orion), the positive reactions were a pleasant surprise! I had a few false starts and came pretty close to not making it in time with this one, but I'm pretty pleased with the end result and glad it's been so well-received!

For this map, I used the mapping method of sketching out a rough layout with Doom II textures first, to get the layout flow figured out before 'locking in' the structures. If anyone is interested in seeing what that looked like, as a development curiosity thing, here's a version of the map from before I started detailing it and figuring out how it was going to look. There's basically no monster placement in this version and certain segments were later embellished (also the blue key trap's triggers are broken here because they were such a nuisance to set up that I put them off for as long as possible), but the skeleton (err...) of the map is basically all there.

Download: Ancient Aliens MAP22: Acerola-Orion - Layout Draft

I had planned on posting this a week or so ago, around the time you guys were actually playing MAP22, but I forgot to get around to it.

[baja blast rd.]

lol'd at the arachnotron. "Yeah projectile spam is definitely coming from over here, that much I'm sure of!" How long do layouts like that take?

Also do you do something similar when you compose music?

[stewboy]

@rdwpa: Well, I can't answer for Essel, but for the most part when writing the music for this (and in general) I just went from start to finish, having no real idea what the final structure will be. I start off with some simple idea (usually the opening melody/instrument/bar of the track) and build off of it.
If anyone's interested, 'Imaginarium', '20 GOTO 10', and 'Concentration' (Kass's map, AD_79's map, and the intermission track respectively) were extended from tracks I wrote for a weekly one-hour competition (1 2 3), basically because AA was nearing completion and I didn't seem to have enough creative juices left to think up of whole new material. If you liked those tracks, check out the originals :)
'Moonwalk' (MAP14), incidentally, was written in its entirety in under an hour.
Also check out 'Night Owl', the track I wrote which was too experimental even for AA!

[esselfortium]

rdwpa said:

lol'd at the arachnotron. "Yeah projectile spam is definitely coming from over here, that much I'm sure of!" How long do layouts like that take?

Hahaha. I was intending to do more monster setup early on, but the layout progress got so drawn-out that I didn't really have time to, so the lone arachnotron didn't get any friends :p

I don't recall exactly but this layout took probably a month of on-and-off work, at least. It would've been a lot quicker if I had been able to work continuously on it, but I have a hard time activating the speedmapping impulses and just letting things happen, so there's usually a lot of time spent overthinking and trying to figure out where to go next.

Also do you do something similar when you compose music?

I've occasionally tried a similar skeletal approach with music, but more often than not I let composing be more of a stream-of-consciousness approach. Like stewboy, I don't usually know what the final structure of the song is going to be like until I'm close to done with it.

I actually took the skeletal approach with BTSX e1m17's song "Dirt", but the resulting song was such a screechy mess IMO that I've since completely rewritten most of it for the eternally-pending-a-release idgames version. I'm sure it's a problem with my execution of it rather than the composition technique itself, so I might give it a try again sometime. It's been a few years, anyway, and changing things up is fun.

[KBlaney]

Map 29: Get in, check the monster count. 500+? Oh, another slaughter level. Okay, lets do this. Somehow, in all the running around, this level ended up significantly easier than 28 which, I have to say, was a little disappointing. The neat scene to me was hitting a switch which, I though, was going to see me ambushed by a ton of enemies actually reveals a whole bunch of red eyed evil scientists studying various corpses and the like. One last spaceship ride and we are back to Earth.

Map 30: This is really just a cool down “see this was all a big joke” sort of map. It plays some absolutely crazy audio from the TV show that inspired the WAD and then ends, of all things, with an X-Files reference. Cute, but I was really expecting a horrid boss monster to fight like with Valiant. (Frankly, I still can't believe I actually beat that boss because he's so damn over powered.) All in all I think Ancient Aliens ended up a tad on the easy side in comparison to what I was expecting (or maybe I'm getting better). Ended up finishing really early which says to me I should have considered playing on HMP instead. The highlights, I think, were the slow build of the animal buddies in E1 which came together to help you kill 4 cyberdemons (sorry Xenus), the super fun running around in Map 28 and the good take on the Icon of Sin type of level in 18.

[NuMetalManiak]

MAP29 The Ones Behind It All

Amidst the floating blocks at the start is skillsaw's slaughterfest take. For real this time. That first arena isn't too bad, and then the sniping revenants in the second arena just piss me off. And then, it is revealed. Too bad you can't kill these little faggots. And they watch you at the final arena, with quite a few other annoyances around as the arena expands, then it comes back to the center, with the red key and a bunch of outcasts from all around. It's quite a fitting end for the map, very scripted but imaginatively fun.

MAP30 The End

Where have I heard that end scream before? I swear I heard it from somewhere.

[Magnusblitz]

MAP29: The Ones Behind It All
100% kills

Man, gotta love those floating blocks at the start. That opening shot is really quite amazing. Anyways, three large battles here, with a nice story interlude between the second and third which is very artfully done. A couple people have said this is easier than MAP28 and I'd have to disagree, at least on UV (maybe other difficulties are much easier?) Perhaps it comes down to tactics, but my usual tactic of getting the 'racetrack' going and slowly whittling down the snipers backfired on me here multiple times, as the second or third warp-in would suddenly flood the area with monsters and get me trapped. The AVs in the second area also were quite happy to just start blasting me multiple times, had to finally settle for a save where they didn't take interest in me right away. It's all adds up to a very good ending map.

MAP30: The End

So pretty. And, a Skillsaw secret behind a waterfall? Well I never.

[mouldy]

MAP29 - "The Ones Behind It All" by skillsaw

Time for some arena slaughter. The first couple of zones didn't run very well in zdoom, but I soldiered through it. I'm assuming thats down to the scenery, and lovely it is too, but even glboom didn't seem to be happy (although that runs like shit on my computer anyway for some reason). So yes, the first arena is a donut of death with timed warp-ins, I found this one took a bit of ammo management to keep the BFG stocked up while I ran around in circles. Once the archviles are zapped its time to mop up with rockets and then on to the next one.

The second arena is weird, there is a slow tidal wave of meat crawling towards you and archviles that demand immediate extermination. Somehow you are able to rocket the viles to death before the crowd reaches you, think the infighting is slowing them down maybe. Into the next area where we discover the truth behind it all, I love to see that kind of stuff.

Final arena is another timed donut affair, and this one killed me to death trying to deal with it all. In the end I managed to discover the red key and the switch to escape and just left them all to it, exiting with only 60% kills. Shameful, but somebody has to return to earth and warn them. Cool map that throws a lot of shit at you without overstaying its welcome, just a shame the first areas were a bit laggy for me.

MAP30 - "The End" by skillsaw

Turns out map29 was the final battle, and now I get to chill out on a desert island, or do i..? Bloody hilarious end to the adventure, ten out of ten. I guess I should use this space to give my overall thoughts on this megawad. Its such a well crafted piece of design its difficult to find any fault with it, every aspect from the textures to the architecture and gameplay exudes effort and experience. I loved the little nuggets of story along the way, in fact I wish there was more of that. I think I would have preferred it as a shorter collection perhaps, missing out some of the maps that felt a bit similar to each other and didn't add any narrative, so that the pace of the overall story matches the fast gameplay. Or maybe I just wanted to fast forward to the ending to find out the truth about the aliens..

Anyway, a work of art, truly envious of the mapping skills.

[rehelekretep]

MAP26 - "Egyptian Metaphysics" by Tarnsman demo here

enjoyed this map quite a bit.

+ i liked the architecture, even if i couldnt work out how it all fit together at times (got lost a bit :( )
+ thoroughly enjoyed the start of the map. my chosen tactic was to run around collecting the blue armour, RL, and SSG while letting everyone else run rampant, then clearing up afterwards. great fun.
+ loved the MIDI

- not a big fan of the ending with the 4 archviles. without the BFG it felt like i had to try and cheese them by hopping on and off the teleporter (didnt work though). a lot more fun with the BFG - which perhaps shouldnt be a secret? is it given to the player on lower difficulties?
- at a few points it felt like i was really pushing the range of the autoaim, which is always annoying as it feels very game-y and tends to draw me out of the map/game. luckily these are quite isolated.
- whats going on with that YK lol. i know Tarnsman already explained it but i guess that's going to go before idgames upload?

[Tarnsman]

rehelekretep said:

- whats going on with that YK lol. i know Tarnsman already explained it but i guess that's going to go before idgames upload?

That's staying or I riot

P.S. wow opengl really messes up a lot of the stuff in that map

[esselfortium]

IMO add more yellow keys around the rest of the map

[AD_79]

I personally think the yellow key placement is hilarious and should absolutely stay in.

[SoundofDoomDoors]

Seconded on leaving it. I laughed when I opened the blue door on that map. And I think Essel's idea is even better. Play up the joke.

[rehelekretep]

MAP27 - "Kingdom of the Crystal Skulls" by skillsaw demo here

my navigational skills are shown up in this map. also almost rocket myself to death just moments before exiting the map!

+ great MIDI
+ i liked the colours in this map
+ fun enemy encounters - i liked the berserk-fest in the saucer

- i was frequently lost as i couldnt match the teleporters in the ufo with where they ended up on the ground. would colour coding help here? not sure
- a lot of the encounters were quite easy to escape. completely by accident i totally cheesed the final fight once i opened all 3 doors. this is a matter of preference but it made some of the map reasonably easy. as others said, it felt like a 'breather' map (yeah take a deep breath for whats next...)

[rehelekretep]

Tarnsman said:

That's staying or I riot

P.S. wow opengl really messes up a lot of the stuff in that map

lupix-kassman said something along those lines also - does no one play-test in GlBoom/GZDoom at all?!

[rehelekretep]

MAP28 - "Floating Arena" by Joshy demo here

oh god. this map made me hate myself. i think i sunk the most amount of time into this out of all the maps, and unfortunately i wasnt particularly happy when i finished it. for me, it was a massive step-up in difficulty; theres just so many threats at multiple points in the map so you have to keep an eye on everything

+ at least it gave me a lot of slaughter map training
+ i really enjoyed the archvile invulnerable bouncy castle bit. boing boing!

- this map is so hard, and there's a lot of RNG in the start which can be quite rage-inducing if the archviles decide to target you, or the cyberdemons decide to rocket you in the arse, or the HK decide to block the megasphere/blue armour, or an archvile boost shows your exposed rump to the revenants at the RK and they decide to join the party. eugh
- 'hey, lets put obnoxious up/down platforming near the end of a really hard slaughtermap' said no one, ever
- as others have said, the textures were all over the place. i think the maps that really stood out were the Egyptian theme, or the purple rock theme, or the silver techbase theme. with the viewing platform in the distance i think this could have worked really well with either the tech theme (purpose-built arena) or the purple rock (observing the natives) but this doesnt do any of that
- the end was really weird. i managed to escape to the platforming bit, so i could watch everything infight, then i couldnt work out the trigger for the 2nd invulnerability, then i popped past the spidermastermind platform and saw a massive archvile dance-party that i then pumped some rockets into. OK?
- the lava along the base of the floating arena & the lack of walls to the outside is 1) very ugly, and 2) obnoxious when an archvile flings you into hit to die

so i think this has potential but there a lot of things that would need to change to make me like it more :( sorry Joshy (i did really like map09 tho :D )

[Tarnsman]

rehelekretep said:

lupix-kassman said something along those lines also - does no one play-test in GlBoom/GZDoom at all?!

No because a lot of tricks only work in software mode and so if GL is going to break them, it's going to break them.

[rehelekretep]

rdwpa said:

map28


3) While I was making the BFG revenant horde and cyberdemon infight (this is another encounter where I didn't have to fire more than one or two shots) I was randomly attacked by a couple of archviles. I'm not even sure how or when or where the archviles were released -- I was attacked at a spot where I had gone many times while waiting for the cyber to thin out the revs, and it happened like a couple of minutes into the infighting. I didn't hear an alert sound or anything. Luckily I was close enough to a power-up.

they come in from the entrance to the platform section; a section of wall lowers, releasing them. i guess its on a timer of some sort?

[esselfortium]

rehelekretep said:

lupix-kassman said something along those lines also - does no one play-test in GlBoom/GZDoom at all?!

GLBoom breaks a lot software-renderer effects. Mordeth bridges of any kind just plain don't work with it. There's no way around it other than either not using those effects (which would be a shame), or just expecting players to use a more compatible port.

[rehelekretep]

MAP29 - "The Ones Behind It All" by skillsaw demo here

its over with a massive slaughter!

+ really liked all three arenas. im surprised at the number of people who shot at the archvile turrets; i tried that and they just respawned so i gave up and hugged the centre of the court. the enemy waves were over surprisingly quickly and then the archviles got crushed!
+ the final arena is a blast. beautiful design, and just enough obstructions so that the cyberdemons et al. are menacing rather than unfair. the only downside is this was easier than 28, and so feels like a step-down, rather than a finale.
+ the scientist reveal was fantastic. all the ammo made me fearful for another warp-in so it was very unexpected!

MAP30 - "The End" by skillsaw demo here

haha this is brilliant! genuinely lols at the warp and the scientists at the door.

----------------------------

i would generally rate this as a 4.5/5 - with only a few mis-steps along the way. thoroughly enjoyed playing through and experiencing this WAD with everyone, reading their thoughts and watching FDAs (although less this month, i guess due to people using GZDoom? put them up guys i like watching other people play :( )

[rehelekretep]

esselfortium said:

GLBoom breaks a lot software-renderer effects. Mordeth bridges of any kind just plain don't work with it. There's no way around it other than either not using those effects (which would be a shame), or just expecting players to use a more compatible port.

oh no :( i wish i had known; ive only recently set-up ZDoom just how i like it as well.

maybe next time :)