MACHETE - 32 Map Boom Compatible Megawad [Now on idgames]

This looks awesome, congrats on completing a megawad. Can't wait to play this!

It looks very cool! Love the sharp green color. Will give this a whirl whenever a final version is up :) 

This is a certified Scythe moment!

Looks excellent, I'll need to check this out!

OOOO, another A2Rob mapset. I'm sure it's gold like all your stuff.

omfg

more a2rob mapsets are always welcome!

Neat, looking forward to playing this in the new year.

12 maps in and this is fantastic! Early levels remind a lot of scythe, but it gets its own pace quickly and the creativity of the fights is awesome. Will upload the playthrough soon 

Incredibly fun mapset!

Made a recording of the first Doom map I played this year. I'm really enjoying this wad so far, it seems ideal for 2 player co-op as well.

Just finished my playthrough, this is an amazing wad!

Alright, let's get going!

Map 1: Mapper gives shotgun in the first level, bad Scythe tribute, 0/10 would not recommend

Map 14: The middle platform in the red key pit is damaging. Intentional?

Map 31: why u do dis

Jokes aside, these are super fun so far! Will edit this post if I run into any bugs.

Playthrough map 18 to 22:

Things are starting to get tougher. First two maps of the last episode are hard and the new enemies are definitely challenging.
Enjoying a lot!

Done! Very very good mapset, and very polished too! Got no more bugs to report. 

Magnum opus megawad next? *wink wink*

Map30 - Given especially what this is intended to be an homage to, I'd recommend potentially considering dropping some more Megaspheres to Supercharges on UV. I haven't played the map, but felt the finale of Running Late 2 Map12 was considerably too easy with all the powerful orbs around and suspect the same may be going on here.

1 hour ago, Firedust said:

Magnum opus megawad next? *wink wink*

No promises :^)

1 hour ago, FrancisT218 said:

Map30 - Given especially what this is intended to be an homage to

I intentionally made Map30 less difficult compared to it's inspiration.

I'd have to play the map, as less difficult is cool but taking a glance it could easily be a bit carried away on the Megaspheres. From inspection it seems it might have the same overcompensation problem I had as the last fight in Map12 of Running Late 2 (for reference, that fight IMO should have had the Megasphere and Invulnerability but NOT the four Supercharges; or the Megasphere and two Supercharges but no Invulnerability).

It could be better balanced than that fight already, hard to know without testing it, but I wanted to point out the risk given how RL2 ended.

Maps 22 to 29: A lot of slaughter (lite) setups, but really challenging and engaging. Also, lots of really creative ideas here, from fights to landscapes. The big fight in map 25 is one of my favorites leading to lots of deaths from myself! 29 worked fantastic for me too, great narrative, the MIDI selection also helps a lot to enhance the mood (especially the creepy atmosphere from 29, but also for the whole mapset and especially the last episode). Islands (I think 28?) was another highlight for me too, with 3 main fights setups + otherworldly MIDI

@Deadwing

Preciate the vids mate, although the audio sounds like it's being run through a woodchipper during certain segments in most of these. 

Awesome wad, I didn't play any Doom for a few months then picked this randomly and played through the whole thing in about 2 sittings because for me it was the exact kind of length and difficulty for just bingeing through carelessly. Honestly the mapping style didn't remind me that much of Scythe other than stylistic cues and references, but I'm kind of glad about it because I was kind of expecting the last episodes to suddenly turn into the grindy/petty type of Erik Alm difficulty because that's what everyone else seems to do when they make Scythe tributes and I was happy when it didn't. I'm not a huge fan of the design of evil marines or afrits but the hp nerfs made them feel much more interesting and fair to fight here.

I recorded casual blind demos of every map with saves/loads, they use the dsdademo format so I'm pretty sure they only play back in dsda-doom. I don't know if they're interesting or useful for anything except showing I played the maps and had fun, but they exist: machete-lmps-bx.zip (RC1). I didn't softlock or break anything. A couple of maps are split into two files where I accidentally hit the new attempt hotkey after dying instead of reloading. Thanks for making this.

Got time to test out Map30 for myself!

Yeah I have the feeling at least the first two thirds are weighted a bit heavy on 'more bark than bite', maybe reduce to nine orbs on UV (or knock a few Megas to Supers). Just one or two fights late that got me a few times. There's also enough Plasma to BFG spam virtually the whole thing and use hardly any rockets; I'm not sure if you intended it to be this generous or not. Lastly, the final fight can definite be cheesed a bit too easily, as I did in the recording. My idea would be to either have a short lock-in before it's possible to open the last blue door, or make it not a blue door at all and have it open as soon as passing the first blue door (as that would have the monsters behind it roaming the area and harder to just blast past).

In any case, I recorded my blind playthrough, so you can check to see how the difficulty and balance aligns with what you were ultimately intending. It's a good ending map in any case! Just think it's a bit generous and low on the 'bite' and even beefing up difficulty slightly would still be much easier than its inspiration. (My estimate of a good difficulty target is probably Running Late Map32 about, IMO.)
 

Damn, no idea why the sound is glitching like this >.<

Gotta find a way to fix this.

Here's maps 30-32:

Played through the first two episodes last night, plus the first map of the third, and I'm really impressed.  Fun, short, levels, with a nice gradually increasing challenge.  Played blind UV pistol start, and found it all felt really reasonable and fair.  Really dig the Scythe references, just super fun, classic feeling Doom.  I'm looking forward to finishing it.

Release candidate 2 is now available.

Includes some visual bug fixes.

Widescreen statusbar done by request.

machete_wide.zip

Update implementing widescreen status bar, courtesy of @NightFright.

Assuming there aren't any more major bugs found, the idgames release should be coming soon(ish).

Hello,

we're going to play the first half of the wad for Thursday Night Survival today.
The session starts 6 hours from the time of this reply and you can expect it to be fairly active for 4+ hours.

ZDaemon doesn't support wide screen status bar and the second ANIMDEFS lump causes it to crash so we will play with a RC2-based standalone wad that includes multiplayer fixes but I'll report all about this later.
 

Howdy @A2Rob I am loving these maps! I've got a bug to show ya in map 18. Got a texture called "---" on linedef 544.

Cheers :)

Now available on idgames.