DreadWanderer

Great stuff, has dark vibes while still being melodic and engaging!

Those are some amazing screens and the premise is intriguing!

@Jayextee I understand the arguments made here about not labelling secrets, but my take is a bit more nuanced. First of all, stewboy's claim about completionists feeling a sense of obligation to find secrets is highly contentious and way too general. I don't think that the distinction between those who do it out of a genuine drive to explore and those who are focused on getting 100% across the board is that clear cut. The most convincing argument might be the fact that UV maxing has been accepted as a standard at a collective level, and thus players have internalized that necessity of finding everything. I won't deny the fact that I am more sympathetic towards the completionist camp, but the suggestion that we're somehow a different breed of player who is having less fun than some ideal explorer type is really controversial in my opinion. Second, let's assume that this is the case - that "completionists" and "genuine explorers" are two distinct populations of players with no overlap. I don't really see how unlabelling secrets solves the problem in circumstances where turning off the stats and/or the visibility of secrets on the automap is a simpler, more modular solution which does not imply a total loss of information and does not push one category of player closer to the other. Are you a "geniune explorer"? Use the menus to emulate that really "blind" experience. Are you a completionist? Pick which types of information you want. Last thing, perhaps not that important - a lot of people, including myself, record playthroughs. As far as I can tell, audience interest is higher when it comes to completionist/max runs, whether they are blind or practiced. Having maps where there are secrets but none of them are marked in any way results in more complicated exercises of memorization and long runs. I guess this isn't a problem if the maps themselves are short and the unofficial secrets aren't that hard to find, but if you apply the same logic to really big maps with 10+ secrets, things change. This isn't just me complaining about getting out of my comfort zone if I want to record something, it also matters for mappers because I assume that (almost) any mapper wants their creations to be played and enjoyed by as many people as possible, with many of them not necessarily being forum regulars.

Welp, seems I was a bit sloppy when I playtested this because I didn't encounter the soft lock mentioned above.

Sorry for necroing this thread but I wanted to share my UV max playthrough. I've been on a roll with A2Rob's work and what better place to start with than this one? Anyway here it is:

Thank you for the detailed response, I really appreciate your own thoughts on the wad. I can't comment much on the parallels with Avactor and Lost Civilization since I haven't played either of them. I am only broadly familiar with Lost Civilization thanks to MtPain27 reviewing it. That being said, while I understand why some players were turned off by the custom monsters and the unorthodox approach to combat and difficulty, I still feel like they missed out on so many interesting aspects like the narrative and the unique aesthetics. I had my fair share of troubles with the Oracle fight and the Enchantress, but it's something that never affected the whole experience, as I mention in some of the notes I wrote. This deserves way more attention and I'm hoping that my playthroughs will motivate other Doomers to start exploring your work. I haven't forgotten about Ozonia, I just don't know when exactly I'm going to tackle it!

This I think is a very important point which I did not mention in my post. It was the inevitable result of a process beginning in the early to mid 2000s through which small developers and dedicated teams were devoured by huge publishers with terrible practices and zero ethics like EA and Activision. Everything turned into a spectacle that was mediated by big money, the gaming equivalent of TED talks. There wasn't any real place for indie developers and creativity, only empty and performative celebrations curated by conglomerates with a vested financial interest in selling promises and half-baked products. Say what you will about Steam, at least it's giving indie developers the chance to make themselves visible, alongside other platforms like Itch.io. We're in a much better spot now.

Bioshock, especially Bioshock Infinite.

Something promising that soon turned into a flex contest for only the biggest and greediest in the gaming industry. You know, once corporate entities realized that games are potentially a huge source of profit, to the detriment of actually creating meaningful products. Occasionally decent games among a basket of lies, smoke and mirrors marketing, and shameless cash grabs. I don't think I'll be shedding any tears today.

Thank you for the info, but I got through that one eventually without the secret. I'm really not very fond of the idea of having one shot secrets on a timer, it's basically 100% blind unfriendly. Probably doable to UV max with quite a bit of practice, but sadly I'm not in the mood with this mapset.

I was disappointed too given that it's such a unique project with unique vibes. All limit-removing. Oh well, perhaps next year we'll get a DBP, at least as a runner-up.

Would it be accurate to say that UV-maxing these levels single seg amounts to masochism? I'm trying to enjoy them but I'll be damned if Romero isn't cruel in this set. Guess I'll simply have to get used to ammo and health starvation, 20% damaging floors everywhere, and surprise cyber rockets to the face.

I first had contact with your work through various DBPs and always liked it. I began playing this last night, it's the first exposure to a unified, thematic set that you made. I'm currently on MAP14 and I can say it's excellent, really excellent. Beautiful and varied aesthetics, very creative and original combat scenarios, and so much detail. Most importantly, it reaches a balance between light-heartedness and some very relevant and poignant socio-political commentary, something I rarely see in a Doom wad. I missed one or two secrets in a couple of maps, but I'm sure that's just my fault. A very minor nitpick while scrolling through the maps in DSDA: 'We're Closed' is labelled as Level 15, when in fact it's Level 16. Would be nice if it directly followed 'Out for Lunch' instead of going to Doom II's original secret maps, but that's easy to do in UMAPINFO. P.S. Is that a stab at Thunderf00t in MAP12's plasma gun secret? It's absolutely hilarious!

Hey everyone, back with more stuff. Here's my UV max playlist of Exomoon: I loved it, it's challenging in a very different way from Moonblood. Not too hot on the last couple of levels, but in general it's stellar work. Music is gorgeous as usual and I felt like the aesthetics have a much stronger role than they did in Moonblood. I was also very fond of the subtle narrative development through inscriptions, plus the very nice intermission texts that make the story more substantive. Thank you @Deadwing!

That's fair, but there is also the option of playing with a custom palette of your liking on top of the ones already provided by DBPs. Check out Nihal's thread in Mods & Resources here, or Cryonaut's compendium of palettes on moddb: https://www.moddb.com/mods/the-code-based-visual-fx-suite-for-gzdoom-aka-codefx/addons/cryonauts-colors-the-ultimate-color-palette-collection-for-doom Or you could go creative in SLADE and experiment with your own.