[Doom 2] Sunlust - Map 30 "God Machine" UV-Max

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Comments: A long, exhausting map. Individually most of the arenas are not too challenging but they're all very high risk and when strung together become increasingly stressful to work through. This is my first successful exit on this map and the second time I managed to get to the main arena. Because of this I was playing purely for survival, not speed. A better player should be able to strip at least ten minutes off this time with a more efficient route, better resource usage in the second half and pure aggression.

The architecture in this map is truly epic and vast in scale and yet most encounter feel very cramped and claustrophobic. Most of my attempts failed because I was unable to kill the vile in the very first arena without wasting rockets too many rockets and i'd get myself killed in the area with the arachnotrons and viles.

The BFG fight is awkward and cramped, though quite generous with health. The trick is to get the barons and hell knights to attempt to in-fight with the cyberdemons on pillars while clearing the revenants guarding the secret area. This means you have to be careful not distract them with errant bfg shots or they'll get in the way and bleed away all of your cells...

The secret with the cyberdemons and telefragging square was an absolute bastard. Sometimes the cyberdemons gladly walk in to the sacrifice zone but most of the time they'll awkwardly zig-zag around it, giving you no opportunity to dispatch them before their brothers wake up. Hitting the switches successfully is also a dicey proposition and they're perfect for generating splash damage.

The second half of the map in the gigantic pyramid arena is not as hard as it first seems once you have a proper strategy worked out for all of the fights. The hardest thing for me was figuring out how to get things started. It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out the range at which those distant archviles could target me. Once that's taken care of it's a war of attrition and a matter of not taking too much stupid damage. I played a very patient game, letting the mancubuses and revenants in-fight and chipping down the two clusters of viles with distant rocket spam. A great deal of time could probably be saved by a more aggressive player. By far the hardest part is managing cells and rockets, which are quite scarce, especially when attempting a maxdemo. I found it's safest to stick to rockets and to save the cells for the doors/wings.

The baron wing is a big ammo drain but a relatively simple encounter so long as you keep your head about you. Having some emergency cells to prevent getting boxed in for the first few passes is vital. The caged revenant wing was also quite easy to dispatch, but sometimes when practising I'd get unlucky with the amount of homing rockets generated and take a volley of unavoidable damage.

I opted to make sure every single mancubus was dead before opening the arch vile door to the south because it can quickly get out of hand if you aren't careful. I took a lot of stupid damage by being unnecessarily protective of my cell stack.

The final horde battle was by far the most stressful part of this run. It's very easy to get tagged by an errant cyberdemon rockets and the archviles on the ground end up embedded deep in the hordes, yet still manage to target you seemingly at random. The main priority is pressing the switch, which finally crushes those damned viles on their perches and gives you a some much needed breathing room. Then you can grab the cells and use them to thin out the massive cloud of souls and pain elementals while targeting any viles that work themselves out toward the edges of the swarm

The final battle inside the pyramid thing is tense but relatively straightforward. If you slip up and let a vile survive it can turn ugly fast. If you noticed me jittering on the spot at the start, this is because I was trying to figure out which direction I was facing using the automap so I could orient myself towards the first closet.

I'm rather pleased with this demo, warts and all and think it's an important milestone in my development as a player. I've never been comfortable with longer maps and suffer from bad nerves when the stakes are high. Beating both this map and map31 of btsx ep2 in the last few days have been wonderful learning experiences. I'd strongly urge any seasoned doom players to push themselves out of their comfort zones and attack this kind of map without saves. A baptism by fire, but it'll make you much stronger and most importantly: it's great fun.

Recorded with prboom+ 2.5.1.3, -complevel 9
Download Sunlust here: http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/leve...