Evil Egypt

I'll do a map-by-map breakdown here as I beat them and chuck a general sentiment on Doomworld to help with visibility once I've beaten the set.

MAP01 Holy shit 40oz! That's such a transformation on thegrb's map. I'm surprised you din't put yourself in as joint credit. It's a lot more playable now, less obtuse and yet, somehow, still rather difficult. Looks really good for the most part, too. I really like how you can stand your ground against the Hell Knights in front of the exit teleporter with the SSG and beat them, thereby skipping the whole dark temple part of the map and finishing it that way. Obviously that's not the intended way of doing it, but it's viable and took some grit on my part. The effects applied for the secrets and the hell temple at the end were very nice. Rather tough for a MAP01, but the whole set seems a bit harder than I was expecting, so a nice puzzle-y opener with a relatively low monster count (and some jump scares!) was a good choice. The SUPPORT3 pillars in the 64-unit corridor leading from the big room with crushers to the dark temple (via multiple flights of stairs) looks a bit under cooked compared to the rest of the map and you can see the monster closets on the automap once you pick up the computer map, but that's alright.

MAP02 naza This seems the same as last time, although I noticed the pyramid start to burn before teleporting inside this time, which was nice. I killed every enemy, so whatever happened last time was either a fluke or has been fixed. I did notice a solid black texture near the exit this time that I didn't last time (screenshot below) but it's not important to fix it. Nice map that plays roughly the same continuous from MAP01, with foreknowledge (although with more breathing room, which is nice). Presents a nice contrast in style with the last map in terms of playing experience. Weirdly retreads the theme of "things getting more evil as I progress", but that's probably going to be frequent in this set.




MAP03 Nice polish job here as well 40oz, although it's not far removed from the original version I played. This feels way more like a MAP01 than TheGRB's map, even if it ends up with a lot of Revenants and has the first Cyberdemon of the set. Thematically there's a lot less "evil", and walking in over scenic waterfalls is probably the most "pure" start we've got.

MAP04 This felt very similar to when I last played it, but is a little more colourful than I remember. Still a very nice map with great architecture. There's a line that is a teleporter on top of the wall that you can see in the GZDoom automap (I'm pretty sure it's only for monsters, though) but otherwise it's all good! Forgot where the secrets were, but didn't need them as I'm playing continuous. I kept expecting this to feel like a breather map, but I ended up having my megasphere from the previous map whittled away by clever usage of lighter opposition. This remains a very good map @mantistoboggan

MAP05 Probably the only in-development map I played multiple versions of, this one still had changed a fair bit for this release. The final battle is now way more chaotic, with all of the enemies teleporting up top. I worked out all of the secrets this time (including my first Tomato of the set!) The ending room is a bit rougher than I remember, but suitably "evil". There's ample supplies now - I could afford to have an accident with a rocket and refill my health after, which wouldn't have been doable in a lot of the early versions. The Lost Souls seem to struggle a bit with the teleporting. I think it's because the line at the end is as wide as they are, so they don't move side-to-side enough to cross any lines in there. As a result, I left with one kill short of the full complement (in GZDoom). Nice work @doomro - you drew first blood with that final battle here.


I'll have to take a break for now, but I'll be back for MAP06 and beyond when I can be.

I already found a bleeding flat in my own map (observable from the bridge, when you are in sector 96) that was introduced after 40oz shared his changes, I will post an updated version soon. Took a while to find out what flat is bleeding and how I can fix it. This will probably desync the demos recorded against released version.

UPD: The bug is not seen in GzDoom (hardware) and GlBoom+. It is seen in PrBoom+ (software) and Crispy-Doom and I provided the fix in development thread which appears not to affect demo sync.

MAP06 looks a lot better than it used to, but the things I didn't enjoy about early game play are still very much in evidence. Having muscled through it with my continuous playing bonuses, I discovered that there's some clever stuff with items appearing when you return to areas (nice) and a big, easy fight after you pick up the red skull (not bad) that's basically just watched over by an ineffective Arch-Vile (hmm...). The cybers at the end weren't too dangerous, so it's an odd map overall. It also is built suspiciously like a European fortress, even with the Egyptian texturing theme. Plus points for the crying eye at the end of the map - a nice visual.

MAP07 is a nice-looking sequence of slaughter/invasion arenas. Not my preference, so I chose not to engage. Turns out that's remarkably easy to do, as infighting thins the numbers in the first main arena quite easily if you run laps waiting for the gate to lower. The next arena with the Cyberdemons is a little riskier, but still very easy to get the Cybers to chew through the Hell Knights (HKs won for me) before unleashing and baiting the Revenants into the melee and finally getting the Baron of Hell (filling in the role of "Door with health") out of the way and fleeing. I like that it's all nicely balanced and timed to allow for that.

MAP08 Seems similar to the version I tested, but with the pillars bug fixed and a cheeky alteration to the Tomato secret. Still a nice map, colourful and fun!

MAP09 This one only changed subtly since I last tried it, by the looks of things. A little easier earlier on and some minor texture changes are all I picked up. That wave of Revenants at the end is intimidating, but surprisingly easy to take down with rockets and plenty of space to dodge in.

I'm not sure how, but I broke MAP10 in GZDoom bigolbilly I walked up to the exit and it rose back up. I then couldn't get out of the main arena to try and re-trigger everything and nothing I found or pressed would get the exit back down. Hopefully that was a fluke, or we may soon see some bug reports on Doomworld!

aight cracked it.

map01: Nice atmo builder/puzzle map. I gather from the early feeds this has been improved immensely from it's earliest iterations so gratz to all involved, I enjoyed this one quite a bit.

map02: agreed with vigilant that the reworked opening fight w/ the vile kinda sucks compared to the older one, but other than that a nice little map, esp. considering that it was like 2 days work.

map03: Not too different from the version I accidentally played before lolololol. The cyber fight still kinda sucks, an opportunity to telefrag him would have been appreciated.

map04: I didn't even realise Scrang had put out a map for this project so this was a nice surprise! Similar kinda atmo to Scrang's DBP20 effort I think, the visuals were awesome (when I first went out into the area with the radial aqueducts(?) I had to do a bit of a doubletake since I honestly thought that they were sloped sectors) but finished a bit earlier than I might have liked.

map05: Continuous: the only way to play this map amirite @doomro ??????????? The final ambush is much improved generally (and requires a more fun strategy to beat) and there's actually enough ammo now, but I'm not sure there's enough lost souls, try adding about 1000000 more so I can sit there for even longer after everything else is dead holding down the fire button. Anyway olololol jokes aside this map is pretty durn good now but I think that you'd benefit from checking whether things are fun as they are rather than trying to design the map in such a way as to get the player to do what you want them to.

map06: Not much to add, I think the feedback I gave for v7 still very much applies here, esp. about the rather weak red key fight.

map07: fuck this map was hard, in particular I really could have done without the pillars in the blood that mostly seem to be there to block my rockets and trick me into blowing myself up. Also suffers from the first slaughter area being very hard and the final hell knight/cyber fight being much, much easier. Thanks for resisting the urge to spam me with chaingunners but I didn't like this one very much.

map08: shit

map09: I liked the gameplay here but I think this reveals the weakness of 40's monotexturing approach in that it made this harder to navigate than strictly necessary, I was never quite sure where I was relative to anything else. Embrace the funfetti!!!!!!!!!1

map10: Not changed much so far as I can see so my feeds from earlier still kinda apply, ie. it's dope but a little ez, don't change your approach billy. As an aside I reread the eponymous Tantan (as my mate with a French mum tells me the frogs pronounce it) because of this map and the the thing about early Tintin is, it's really stupid! Like he takes off from an airfield in a made-up country presumably quite close to Egypt, evades some fighter planes dispatched to bring him down, and then crash lands in India! You couldn't get away with that today (although in a 2020 comic, instead of just putting his plane into a spin and disappearing into a cloud to get away, he'd jump out of his plane, land on the wing of the enemy fighter, jump into the cockpit, throw the pilot out with one hand while using the other to machine gun the second fighter into oblivion, and then catch Snowy just as his old plane explodes into wreckage so overall despite the geographical infelicities I think it's fair to say old dumb comics are much better than new dumb comics. As a corollary, fuck me that Tintin movie sucks the big dick). Also: Rastapopulous in his first appearance, and the Thompsons are actually kinda good at their job for once, which is pretty jarring. Blah blah, Tintin rules, great map, great choice of theme.

map11: Pretty cool exploratory joemap, reminded me a lot of the final DBP10 map but much better in pretty much every way, although the progression was a bit obscure and the invuln secret was without a doubt the most useless I've ever encountered. Don't know how it stacks up to the AV map of the same name because I haven't played that shit since like 2005 or something. The crosses on the ceiling should have been ankhs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ankh) though, come on dude.

map12: Phobus shows you a thing or two here Glen! Awesome map overall that caused me to say many swear words while I was playing it due to my insistence on catching every stray shot right in the dick. Since I can always think of something negative to say, there should have been a final oh-shit moment on the boat, but meh, the praise Phobes is getting for this is well deserved.

Geez Gaspe, more rockets at the RK?! You ended up with 25 after the fight! Heh well anyway cheers for the demo mate, I was a little shocked you didn't find the SSG secret at the start, you mounted the tiny ledges and everything.

Actually 40oz (or anyone else who might know) if you watch that demo you'll note that there's a surviving imp after Gaspe's RK rampage that you can hear but not see. This actually happened to me once in testing -- I think what's happening is the imp is falling into the invisible trenches I put there to keep him in his place (without blocking the caco movement, so monster block lines aren't really an option). I moved the geom a little and it didn't happen again so I thought I'd solved it, so if anyone might know what's causing this so it can be fixed I'd appreciate your insight. Ta.

Monsters getting knocked off things is Boom behaviour though, isn't it? It's happening in vanilla ports here (Gaspe presumably recorded in prboom and I used Crispy to test).

I don't like how releasing (an unofficial?) v2 was handled. The only mention of it was on Doomworld, and you have not bothered to include an updated version of my map (v9 I managed to post in development thread before it was closed), even though it doesn't cause demo desync to demos that were recorded with original version.

I thought about asking about v2 prior to its release here, but I was afraid I would look like an attention seeker by reminding about a fix in my map, since I already posted it and others, obviously, want their maps fixed as well and no one really has a priority over anyone. Now I wish I actually did tell about bugfix version more.

The v9 version is here doomshack.org/uploads/DBP23_fear_has_big_eyes_v9.wad so you don't have to look. Except it has map in MAP01 slot, and it needs to be put in MAP06 slot in the release.

Guys we gotta figure out how to get ahead of these gameplay mods.



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what cups said

if people wanna ruin their dooming fun then that's it's own punishment and we shouldn't try to stop them (what's that mod that causes millions of revenants to spawn if you try and play it with brutal doom? that shit was stupid)