[Tetanus] MAP09: Circulate (UV-Max Demo)
7writing stuff in this here description box is all fun and games until you think someone who worked on the level might actually read it. but we'll do our best anyway.
anyway, this map might give the impression of being pretty chill at the start, but it's pretty hardcore most of the way through. the start is pretty flooded with hitscanners, but with a little bit of careful parkour you can grab a shotgun which makes starting a lot easier - easier than trying to kill a chaingunners with a pistol, that's for sure. there's also a conveniently explosive pile of hitscanners that can be raided for ammo. not long after that is the first stumbling block where you get pinned on a multilevel structure while two archviles get free reign to resurrect stuff on the levels below. i found it easier to work from the level above rather than jumping down even if the angles are a little tricky to work with the super shotgun as you'll always have somewhere to escape to. just watch the left side as the second archvile can cause problems sliding up in to there.
the next area is great fun. as long as you don't forget the rocket launcher first. if you forget the rocket launcher you're going to have a bad time. i found it easiest to repeatedly corral everything into the central intersection in this roughly trident shaped area. although there are a couple archviles in the mix that need headhunting. but then... it all comes to a crashing halt as you have to get this very awkward berserk pack secret in what's easily the worst part of the map. eventually i found that there's some sort of audible thunk that helps time running off the lift into the small window for the secret, but it's still hard to have any consistency with it.
the rest of the level, fortunately, is all action all the time, and the first time i went through tetanus i had a really rough time with it. fortunately i've got a much better handle on these types of encounters now. the first one pins you on a somewhat narrow platform with little cover as pinkies charge in and cacos surround it. this really requires constant fire from the rocket launcher to not run out of space along with heads-up movement to not get shredded by the cacos. it was at this point i almost ran out of ammo as well; i didn't think i was being that inefficient or the map was that tight on ammo? maybe i missed a pickup or two; i had to duck those same cacos in the next encounter just to get some ammo to finish them off. and then the actual finale is a whole wave of imps and pinkies backed by archviles. it's pretty tough to pick off the archviles in the crowd but it's essential for your health. this also uncovers tons of extra rockets which is very nice. from there there's a cyberdemon, spider mastermind, and a few more archviles guarding the exit. i had a vague plan to let the cyberdemon and spider mastermind infight but didn't actally come up with a way to force it to happen. dealing with everything the old fashioned way worked out just fine.
note about the demo: apparently if you use the pause key to pause, and not the menu key, that shows up in the demo. i cut it from the youtube video but it's still there in the actual demo. going to go unbind that real fast...
tetanus: https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/lev...
get the demo: https://s3.yrriban.net/doom/ttns_map0...
source port used: dsda-doom 0.27.5
sound font used: arachno.sf2
flags: -complevel 2