Duration: 0:00

56 views

7

Map name: Main Office
Map author: Dave "Mud" Swift

TBH the extra silly exit lines really salvage this max from being totally obnoxious. Out of the dreaded 26-28 stretch, this was the best combination of annoyance vs interesting-ness of a run. Yeah, the map is mostly weird and symmetric, but at least you're rocketing the entire time, the monsters are mostly predictable and make for decent rocketing, and it's not as dull as map 27. The first few times you try to come up with a route, it is quite disorienting, but after a bit of thought, this route came together pretty well, although with a map like this, it's always hard to tell if there's something better. The main thing I noted was the central pathways on the corners of the map on the bottom floor; at each corner, each of the directions on the top floor lowers one of each of the corner's barriers. Without having to pick up the keys, I figured I would lower only the two I had to (mega and RL pickup) to minimize wandering monsters, which ended up giving me a clean path through clearing out the inner circle.

Otherwise, like Veinen, it made sense to take the outer circle first, but it makes even more sense now I do not have to come back out of the center at all. If I did that on this route at the end of this run, I'd be about 14s slower, so still faster than Veinen, but having any room I end up with in the center be close to an exit is super convenient. From there, my goal is mainly to keep picking up all the rocket boxes, while clearing anything on the way as fast as possible; I think the worst part of that is the two SG guys I kill at the start of the map, they are just too annoying to go to from either the start or the end, but not going to them means not getting the 10 rockets, which are essential for the run. I do it at the start, since otherwise I would probably run out, but not sure it's the right approach.

After that, it's just methodical rocketing and hoping auto-aim works for the guys on higher floors and monsters don't dodge my rockets, plus getting nice grouping. Wandering monsters are still a concern, as four of the inner rooms have non-blocked teleporters to the outside, but while a good portion of runs miss monsters, those teleporters are not nearly as bad of a problem as I expected, although they do mean I cannot predict how many monsters will be in certain spots, which can make or break good rocket grouping. So, when I'm outside, my hope is as many monsters teleporter out as possible, and then when I'm past those teles, I hope nothing comes there later. Once I'm inside, I only see one of the teleporter destinations on my way around the map, so I can only really make sure nothing is there.

Anyway, all in all, this run ended up being way better than I expected, although it's still annoying to actually place all the rockets well, not sure if my aim is bad or what, but it took a few hundred attempts for this. I wasn't sure how good I wanted of a run, but eventually, I settled on sub-1:40 of a goal with hopefully no major mistakes; the first half of this run has some ugly-ish missed shots, but the second half was clean enough, and I got a quick line-up for the exit, so all in all, happy with this run.

That said, not sure how any single part of this map even remotely resembles an office.

Captured using DSDA-Doom v0.27.5