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Forgot to respond earlier, I will play E1 first and when the whole trilogy (final version) gets released, then I will replay the whole mod. I'm just going to wait a bit more because I have to catch up with some older Heretic & Hexen wads first.
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Unfortunately nothing happened yesterday, as usual. I was hoping for an update after all that time but who knows, maybe soon there will be something interesting happening.
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Final time was exactly 4:56:30. Mind though that I got that time despite forgetting a secret in Z1M7 and wandering around for a second time, so it should be reasonable to achieve without speedrunning it (especially if you use saves to eliminate such search times).
Thanks, that's good news! So it turns out you must have less than 5 hours time before you get demerits. I will try my best to get a faster time next time. Problem is that I still went relatively fast as KDIZD seemed to be faster paced as in not relying on cheap traps like the usual Doom 2 wads these days and I was able to engage in combat more directly than peeking around corners half of time, though it's also easier and smoother with ZDoom's controls such as mouselook. Even then I had to backtrack at times for supplies (especially those I saved for end of level) and this costed me a lot of time as I tend to be slower in general as I must make sure to handle some encounters fine rather than rushing and risking myself killed.
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Also from what I have played a bit of the later levels by IDCLEV'ing, the levels are tough, but the traps seem more relaxed in terms of quick millisecond response as opposed to say Ancient Aliens. The traps do give a a bit of breathing. I am looking forward to give this a real shot and then review it, once I get a bit of freedom from real life stuff.
Interesting! Just saw that yesterday as well while I was looking for the Doom Unity port news (or just simply browsing Doomworld), I have been wondering exactly recently when Skillsaw will return and as I was guessing, the wad is targeted for Eternity. I will definitely check that out but not until I get around playing Lunatic, Vanguard, Valiant and Ancient Aliens (and all these 4 wads will be played using Eternity), so I guess I will save this recent wad for another time. Looks really cool though.
Anyway, for Akeldama, yesterday I finished maps 26 and 27, then today I did remaining 3 maps. Map 26 was alright, it seemed a bit Plutonia 2 inspired at times, I don't know why but that's what I had in mind when I played it. I didn't found it too bad.
Map 27 was really long and had some tricky parts because although there were 3 cyberdemons (and each were found in close locations one after another), they were in easy to kill locations and one of them (the second one) got infight with many other monsters past the barricade in the water (I couldn't see what was going on and far away, other than there were many monsters that were surrounding the Cyber that I could barely see), so I just sniped from far away with chaingun to finish him off. The last one was stationary and guarded a soul sphere. The level was really long and I found annoying some parts like when enemies get spawned behind you (one time a few pain elementals spawned behind me) and then when I grabbed the BFG pickup (in the other room), holy shit how many chaingunners, hell knights/barons and revenants started spawning because I ran away and waited outside and they kept coming for like 5 or so minutes straight. I tend to run whenever I expect a trap, so that I can safely pick monsters off from safer places. It works 90% of times at least, saving me a lot of health/armor and even ammo in certain situations. I think this map (or was it another one?) had exactly 300 monsters or was close to 500 and I'm confusing with an earlier one. Oh also forgot to mention that this map is actually shown in the third demo that plays in background (in vanilla/boom ports), so at least I knew what to expect early and that way I knew to handle some traps already and had a boost start before taking it slowly halfway through map again.
Map 28 was also a bit long, not bad difficulty wise, there are some tricky parts especially at end but the map is generous with health (2 soulspheres) and armor (2 blue armors) and even a megasphere present in a secret place. Just note that this contains yet another one time only secret. I had a slightly earlier backup save (good thing I use like 3-4 slots on same level) because when you lower that wall, while lowering, you have 1-2 seconds before stepping on wall and reaching that secret or else you can't reach that soul sphere secret anymore. I initially didn't grab because I was at nearly 200% health (I made the poor decision to grab a soul sphere that I saved from beginning of level as I managed to conserve a lot of health/armor until that part and didn't lose much, I had like 130 or so health before grabbing before stepping into a teleporter) and then I found out as much as I tried to strafe into that place, I couldn't make it. It was the time to reload a slightly earlier save and redo about 5 minutes of progress, though I was able to catch up in just 2 minutes because I knew where to go and I decided to NOT grab that soulsphere, instead grab the one from the secret place (along plasma cells) and then continue safely. The megasphere is found in a secret area and for some reason it spawns an archvile and two arachnotrons, good thing I had the blue armor and above 100% health, so I didn't have too much of a problem. If I knew about this, I could have grabbed it earlier and save a blue armor and soulsphere for later but I still ended up with 200% health and armor, as those were the last enemies.
Map 29 was very Plutonia inspired (the textures were definitely Plutonia), difficulty wise not too bad. The part at end was very tricky and spent a lot of ammo (was almost out of cells and rockets) because there are two cyberdemons, I managed to eat a rocket and survive (as soon as I went to take them out directly as I was running out of precious ammo because I tried to play too careful and half of time I couldn't aim at them with plasma/rockets from safe space), then I backtracked to the beginning to grab medkits and the green armor (only armor available in level except for the megasphere secret in the last area) from a secret area I discovered earlier. It still took me an hour to finish but the map was going smooth until the later parts where I had to play carefully as there were some tricky traps that I handled very nicely. Such as approaching a switch while a wall lowers nearby with like 10 demons. The map had quite a few of these traps.
Map 30 was very long. Not too difficult, however instead it has 625 monsters! And takes an hour and half to finish it. At times (especially beginning), it almost felt like a mini slaughterfest map because as soon as you open door, many revenants and chaingunners start coming towards you. I BFG'ed for a while before switch to Rocket Launcher and clean the remaining monsters that were coming towards me. Oh and there was even a Cyberdemon for some reason, that almost killed me (survived with 3% health) and grabbed the nearby megasphere. Managed to kill the cyber. There are many cybers (and even 2 spiders at the very end, there is no Icon of Sin this time!) and one cyber even acts like a turret in a tower, only managed to kill by spending almost all my 400 bullets after I cleared the whole level (and was searching for the last 2 damn items, an invulnerability and a computer area map, had to watch a video to see where they are). It was very difficult at times but even then, I somehow cleared this level without dying. I saved like crazy (as I usually do) but despite some very tricky parts (and eating yet another rocket later and surviving, as well as sometimes suffering rocket splash damage from that cyber turret and barely surviving), I'm amazed I survived this and in fact I survived last 10 (11 actually) levels without dying. I'm sure I will eventually play some wads that contain unfair maps but Akeldama wasn't as bad as I thought it will be (and maybe I was just very lucky at times) and therefore, it didn't felt unfair at times to me, I just don't recommend playing this saveless no matter what. I played blind continuous with lots of saving on multiple slots but it wasn't too difficult. It depends a lot how you handle the encounters in general. So yeah, it took me 32 hours and half to finish Akeldama. I could have finished it last summer instead of dragging it for so long. I still enjoyed it but at least half levels were far too long for my enjoyment.
Overall: Akeldama was fun and the levels in general were well designed and presented a decent challenge, I only died 14 times in total (once in MAP07, 9 times in MAP31, twice in MAP32 and twice in MAP19), so it wasn't too bad difficulty wise. The soundtrack was nice as well. I recommend playing the wad in a limit removing port at least to get the intended experience instead of limiting yourself in vanilla/chocolate. Especially if you plan to get 100% in each level with the help of automap stats feature from most other ports.
The only bad things are:
-MAP18 and MAP21 cannot be 100%'ed. Well the latter one isn't a problem as no items in the level means just 0% items at end of level but the level is still 100%'ed overall (and not many people care about collecting all items, as is the category for UV-Max in speedruns, just getting 100% kills and items). However, MAP18 has two bugged enemies that didn't teleport in last room, so that is a serious issue and prevents you from getting a full/true 100% everything
-Many levels are just too damn long and drag on forever, don't feel like vanilla compatible maps at all
-Some levels contain too many monsters each, breaking vanilla limits at times (like enemies flickering or save game buffer overflow, these issues being only present in vanilla ports, wasn't a problem for me), so if you are looking to play this megawad, I don't recommend playing this in Chocolate Doom (don't even think about vanilla Doom!) unless at the very least you disable the bullshit save game limit from chocolate doom setup. Even then, I highly recommend you to use Crispy or PrBoom+ (-complevel 2 parameter) at least!
I'm probably going to tackle Scythe next. I am not exactly sure which is the one I planned to play next but I chose Scythe for a couple of reasons: Most maps (at least first two episodes) are short and easy, with only the final episode becoming crazy hard. Since most levels should be finished quickly, I can finish the megawad in a single month at most (in the weeks I play the megawad). The first episode may be even completed in a single day, leaving the rest levels divided in a few extra days, so hopefully it shouldn't be an issue to finish it as fast as I can and moving to next megawad in line. There are a few maps I fear that are at end but I hope I will handle them fine. If I handled Akeldama (which was inspired by Plutonia and Alien Vendetta at times) just fine, then surely I can handle Scythe as well. Oh and forgot to mention that I will keep using PrBoom+ for most megawads as it has proven to be very useful so far. Before I do that, I will also finish UDTWID sometime (then prepare for D2TWID and various DTWID spinoffs), as well as start The Lost Episode (in Eternity), Romero's levels (E1M4b and E1M8b) and even FreeDoom using Crispy Doom! Coming soon in the next few weeks...
I have a bunch of screenshots reserved for Doomwiki that I will upload sometime this weekend (or next week) and I will only post the last two screenshots of last level.