koren

Really looking forward to it, my friend.

I had a great time with this set of levels! They looked really good and played even better. In particular I really liked the way map16 worked with the different floors and the floating islands of map29. The two new enemies are appropriately unpredictable and dangerous both individually or as part of a bigger mob. The Hellions in particular can be lethal if they get too close and start warping around after a missed SSG shot. I don't think I ever felt comfortable with any of the fights where a swarm was released or when a couple were still right in the middle of a larger blob of revenants or other mid tiers because of their really excellent ability to ruin crowdshaping/space management in an instant. It's interesting that the Hierophants were supposed to have a melee attack, I wonder if that makes the big hordes of them in map29 easier or tricker to deal with. Will definitely have to give this another go when the final version has come out. Here's a set of demos I recorded over the last couple of days. The levels were the perfect length to dip in and out of around all the chaos of christmas, as time permitted: https://cyberdemon.co.uk/stuff/ozonia2.29rc1-fdas-koren.zip

Congratulations on the release, i've been looking forward to this for years!

Throwing out some support for: Down the Drain Cydonia Judgment Delirium 🙏

Played through all of these levels this weekend and had a blast. A good mix of oldschool, hell revealed style maps mixed with some more exotic and challenging encounter ideas. I could feel the strong influence of gggmork and ToD at places. I liked the aggressive use of hurtfloors, ghost monsters and extreme height variation. Cleared everything save for map31, where I kept dying 25+ minutes in because a set of archviles would decide to run away from me and open a door to wake up the barons/cyberdemons or vice versa. I'll keep trying at it because it's a very ToD-esque, zen experience. Stand-outs for me were maps 06, 10, 18, 19, 20, 23 and 26. In terms of difficulty, map17 and map23 were thee hardest in the set for me by quite a margin. The lack of ammo at the start of 17 and the big vile cage made things slow to get off the ground and collecting the bfg and maintaining the cell stack to clear the cybies was not particularly FDA friendly (I took a peek in doombuilder to figure out what was going on after a few failed attempts, the only time I felt I had to in the entire set). Map23 was tricky because I really, really wanted the blue skull key to help deal with the cyberdemon reveal and my movement is absolutely terrible. I can't think of any bugs or issues that arose during my playthrough with dsdadoom & software lighting. Fantastic job overall. Easily in my top 5 for this extremely competitive year.

So far these are all excellent maps so far. I'm a big fan of map11 and its rocket spamming gimmick. The new and improved pain elemental is a lot of fun to deal and are threatening due to how much chaos they can cause, even in low numbers. The archon reveal was surprising, to say the least and the attacks were even more so. Seeing all the little things mbf21 is capable of doing while retaining the feel of doom & demo compatibility is an exciting prospect.

What a pleasant surprise. Lovely looking screenshots, can't wait to dive in.

This is a fantastic set of levels! It really nails the plutonia design philosophy. Some high intensity fights in a concise package. There's something to be said for sets where each map is short, but has a strong individual identity. After playing lots of longer adventure maps or epic slaughtermaps, it's nice to have something that can be played through in more relaxed short bursts. MAP19 stood out to me as being really great, but I didn't find the plasma rifle for quite a long time. In fact, I only found it by accident when I walked into the pit. After being trained to avoid falling into pits, it always trips me up when the more nondescript ones contain key resources. Not that there's anything wrong with that, mind. MAP31 is another map that was a lot of fun to figure out. A lot of trial and error through accidental softlocks, but it's really rewarding when the pieces fall into place. Great stuff throughout, looking forward to MAP32.

These are absolutely fantastic maps. Right up my alley and vaguely reminiscent of resurge/scythe 2 style combat. The sheer variety of themes and inventiveness with OTEX is great too. Want to echo the love for map14 and really, the whole map12-15 run. The gimmick for map12 and the secret arena required to flush all the monsters out permanently was really magical and unique. Didn't notice any major bugs or gameplay issues, far as I can remember. Easily one of the best releases this year. Can't wait to see it finished.

Only when I can control the rate at which I lose.

It'd be nice if there was some sort of better visual distinction between the normal arachnotron and the chaingunner arachnotron. I'm up to E3M5 and distant chaingun wielding spiders end up shredding me for half my health before I can figure out what's happening. The map mixes both kinds and they are usually positioned at a distance in chaotic crossfire situations, so the difference in their gun barrel is very easy to miss and it makes threat prioritisation very awkward! The spectres in this map are nearly completely invisible in the cave sections and against the rock walls on eternity, regardless of any gamma and contrast settings. Ordinarily that would be manageable, but the increased aggression of demons means they bite you immediately after bumping against them with no chance to react. Given the high density of spectres on this map, it's gets very frustrating and led me to waste a great deal of ammo when I wasn't sitting in a corner spamming the kick wildly for 60 seconds. There's some really interesting and rewarding stuff in this set mixed in with some of the more abrasive design concepts. I'd also like to echo many of the other remarks here and state these maps are gorgeous and layouts very satisfying to traverse. I'll write up my thoughts in full when i'm done playing!

I can't stand spectres any more. It might be because i've swapped over to software rendering (at a higher resolution where the fuzz effect is very fine) in the last year or maybe because i'm getting older, but I physically can't see them even when I know roughly where they are there in most situations. The cruel impulse to mix even a couple of them in into rocket-heavy encounters pressures me to play extremely passively and swap to a weaker weapon because I can't trust my eyesight. To balance it out with a more positive opinion: I love to fight multiple pain elementals with a rocket launcher, even in more enclosed spaces.

Great fun. I really enjoyed the original sucker punch and this set scratched the same itch. Particular fan of map03 and the frantic chaingun start. Only noticed two bugs - there's a hom in the secret rocket launcher closet on map04 and the aforementioned mancubus getting stuck on map06. Played with dsdadoom cl9 0.18.0, software renderer. sckrpnch2-rc1-fdas-krn.zip

Sounds lovely, will keep an eye out for this one.

Hey I played through these this evening. I had some very vague memories of TTTM and a couple of the encounters but MOTM may well have been my first play-through of any version, far as I can remember. Both were really fun adventures to blast through. I preferred man on the moon with it's slightly more aggressive encounter design - Lots of changes to the arenas and waves being introduced just a tad faster than I found comfortable, leading to some exciting moments of improvisation. Here's an FDA for RC2 of each map recorded with dsdadoom 0.18. I died a couple of times with trip to the moon, killed the demo, took a quick break and restarted each time, which strictly means my exit isn't an FDA, but y'know. moonseries-rc2-fda-koren.zip