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1 | TOUHOU DOOM: POST-MORTEM | |
2 | ||
3 | Holy hell, it's been three years. I started this project in 2016, as a proof of concept. | |
4 | ||
5 | And now here we are. | |
6 | ||
7 | If I do another Doom Mod (possible, but I'm definitely taking a break for now), | |
8 | I'll probably try to be a lot more open about things. I was going to stream | |
9 | the development of certain segments of this mod, but in the end I felt that | |
10 | I wanted to keep things under wraps. Certain features are best experienced blind. | |
11 | ||
12 | As a result, rather than publicly posting progress as it happened, | |
13 | I have instead detailed it within this large post-mortem. | |
14 | ||
15 | NOTE: As of V1.2, a few new things have been added. Notes on what was added during the 1.1-1.2 stretch are in there. | |
16 | If a note says "V1.2", it means somewhere in the 1.1-1.2 stretch, as I don't remember exactly what each version added. | |
17 | ||
18 | SPOILER ALERT, obviously. If you haven't beaten Touhou Doom, go do that first. | |
19 | ||
20 | This'll be split into three segments: Terminology, History, Map/Boss commentary. | |
21 | ||
22 | ///////////////////////// | |
23 | // PART 0: TERMINOLOGY // | |
24 | ///////////////////////// | |
25 | ||
26 | [ Danmaku and Touhou terminology ] | |
27 | ||
28 | Danmaku: literally 'curtain fire', it's used to describe large numbers of projectiles | |
29 | being thrown around in large patterns. Also called 'Bullet Hell'. | |
30 | ||
31 | Streaming: Dodging large numbers of bullets aimed directly at you with small tap-dodges. | |
32 | It's a very useful skill to learn, especially on higher difficulties. | |
33 | ||
34 | Spellcard: Bosses in Touhou often use very flashy named attacks. Generally speaking, | |
35 | spellcards have heavier patterns, and often utilize some form of gimmick, with some fights. | |
36 | ||
37 | Noncard: Boss phases that aren't spellcards. | |
38 | Often are generic, many bosses will have multiple noncard phases share the same attacks. | |
39 | ||
40 | Bomb: In most danmaku games, there's a 'Bomb' which is a tool that clears bullets, | |
41 | and typically makes you invincible for a short time. It's a tool to buy time if you're | |
42 | getting into trouble. | |
43 | ||
44 | EoSD: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, the 6th Touhou game. | |
45 | PCB: Perfect Cherry Blossom, the 7th Touhou game | |
46 | SWR: Scarlet Weather Rhapsody, the 10.5th Touhou game. One of the fighting games. | |
47 | SA: Subterranean Animism, the 11th Touhou game. | |
48 | ||
49 | [ ZDoom and FPS terminology ] | |
50 | ||
51 | FPS: First-Person Shooter. A style of game where you play from the perspective of the | |
52 | player character, in 3D. Or psuedo 3D, depending on the era of the FPS in question. | |
53 | ||
54 | SSG: Super Shotgun. A powerful close-range weapon from Doom, and one of the most | |
55 | iconic FPS shotguns ever made. Generally all-around awesome weapon, but it lacks range. | |
56 | ||
57 | BFG: The Big F-ing Gun 9000. It's VERY powerful, and has a very weird way of dealing damage. | |
58 | ||
59 | Console: accessible with the ` or ~, it's a console you can input commands into. | |
60 | ||
61 | CVar: Console Variable. Something you can set in the console. | |
62 | ||
63 | Slaughtermap: A style of map which consists of killing HUGE hordes of demons, | |
64 | typically with the BFG 9000. | |
65 | ||
66 | [ Touhou Doom terminology ] | |
67 | ||
68 | Danmaku Weapons: The Hakurei Amulet Rifle and the Hakkero Star Cannon. | |
69 | These weapons are both based on shot types from the actual touhou games; | |
70 | they're very versatile. Most of them function at semi-long range. | |
71 | ||
72 | System Card: Basically a generic tool for buying time. Three exist: | |
73 | -Spirit Barrier: Also known as 'Bomb'. Clears bullets around you. Buys you some time. | |
74 | -Life Regenerator: Slowly regenerates health, up to 100. | |
75 | -Spell Amplifier: For 5 seconds, any other cards you cast will be amplified, except spirit barrier. | |
76 | ||
77 | Player Spellcard: Hey, bosses aren't the only ones that can use these! | |
78 | Each of these are unique. They are VERY flashy effects that generally do LOTS of damage. | |
79 | In general, unless the target is immune to bombs, this will eliminate the phase you use it on. | |
80 | As a result of their power, they are very rare, so save them for emergency use! | |
81 | ||
82 | touhou_doomweapons: A CVar that swaps out the Danmaku Weapons for conventional Doom weapons. | |
83 | touhou_nospellcards: A CVar that removes spellcards and replaces them with extra health pickups. | |
84 | ||
85 | ///////////////////// | |
86 | // PART 1: HISTORY // | |
87 | ///////////////////// | |
88 | ||
89 | =============================== | |
90 | [ PART 1-0: How I got started ] | |
91 | =============================== | |
92 | So, the actual long story behind the entire mod is kind of funny. | |
93 | ||
94 | I'm friends with another modder that I quite respect, who goes by 'TerminusEst13'. | |
95 | He's a good modder. He also livestreams on occasion. One of these streams was | |
96 | on a particular combination of mods - his DemonSteele (a great mod, you should | |
97 | check it out if you haven't already) combined with a mapset called "Touhou Doom". | |
98 | ||
99 | Now, this probably won't come as a shock: I'm a Touhou fan. So when I saw this, | |
100 | I knew I had to watch. And, it might not be a masterpiece, but hey, maybe it'll be good. | |
101 | ||
102 | It wasn't. It was...lacking in many, *many* aspects. | |
103 | ||
104 | So lacking was it, that after I watched it end, I knew for a fact that, | |
105 | despite not being the strongest modder in any respect, I could make something better. | |
106 | ||
107 | Not being one to simply sit around and complain, I hammered out a proof of concept: | |
108 | Cirno, the first Touhou Boss. She had phases, utilizing the system that is familiar | |
109 | to fans of the Touhou games: The Spellcard System. | |
110 | ||
111 | Once I had Cirno done (a few iterations of improving the fight later, of course), | |
112 | I decided that I had enough knowledge that I wanted to try remaking Touhou Doom. | |
113 | In its entirety. At least until eventually I got bored, or it got too hard to keep it up. | |
114 | ||
115 | I wasn't expecting to get as far as I did. | |
116 | ||
117 | ====================================== | |
118 | [ PART 1-1-1: The First Episode Demo ] | |
119 | ====================================== | |
120 | When I started Touhou Doom, I wasn't expecting to get terribly far. I wasn't planning | |
121 | to make a full project out of this. What I planned to do was replace the bosses of | |
122 | the original Touhou Doom with bosses that I poured slightly more effort into. | |
123 | ||
124 | That's how we got the first three bosses: Rumia, Cirno, and Meiling. | |
125 | ||
126 | I packed up these three bosses into replacing the original ones, and I released | |
127 | the "Demo" of Episode I, to an IRC channel that wasn't public. | |
128 | ||
129 | It had 4 maps: MAP01 to MAP04. None of the maps were mine. | |
130 | ||
131 | It wasn't my project at the time, so I couldn't make it public in good faith. | |
132 | Sure, I didn't like Dusted back then (he's gotten cooler since), but I didn't | |
133 | feel right calling his work mine. | |
134 | ||
135 | =============================================== | |
136 | [ PART 1-1-2: The First Episode, Full Release ] | |
137 | =============================================== | |
138 | So, having released the demo, I thought I'd just do the same thing for the rest of | |
139 | Episode I: replace the bosses, keep the maps. They weren't very good maps, but, well, | |
140 | I didn't know how to map at all, so it was better than a literal featureless STARTAN box. | |
141 | ||
142 | This plan was foiled by MAP05. In the original Touhou Doom, it's the Scarlet Devil Mansion. | |
143 | As in, all of it. It's the entire SDM, featuring three different bosses. | |
144 | ||
145 | This became a problem, because I needed space for Patchouli. | |
146 | Her patterns are far more complex than the first three bosses put together. | |
147 | Also, I needed more space to make a stage for her. I wanted to have *something* | |
148 | to fill the space before you met her. | |
149 | ||
150 | So, realizing I was kind of screwed, I decided to make a map. | |
151 | With some encouragement of TerminusEst13, as well as practice from DUMP 1 and DUMP 2 | |
152 | (large collabs of newbie mappers, they're pretty neat, and the encouragement was nice), | |
153 | I made MAP05: Voile, the Magic Library. Oh, and I added Patchouli's fight at the end. | |
154 | ||
155 | After that, I realized I had strayed from the original path. | |
156 | This meant I had some free reign on what to do now. So I made my own stages for MAP06-MAP08. | |
157 | ||
158 | Then I made Sakuya, the process of which will be detailed later below. | |
159 | ||
160 | Then I made Remilia. That went well. | |
161 | ||
162 | Then I made Flandre, Which went, uh, less well. More on that in the boss section. | |
163 | ||
164 | =========================================== | |
165 | [ PART 1-1-3: The First Episode, Bugfixes ] | |
166 | =========================================== | |
167 | I handed the now finished Episode to my most valiant tester, dekw. | |
168 | ||
169 | He. | |
170 | ||
171 | Broke. | |
172 | ||
173 | EVERYTHING. | |
174 | ||
175 | By the time I had finished with all of the bugs he had found, | |
176 | I had NINE different versions of this first Episode to account for his shenanigans. | |
177 | Also fun fact: There's a varible in the ACS for MAP07 called "RemiliaAntiDekwTimer". | |
178 | ||
179 | He's good at what he does, and it meant that the Episode was surprisingly consistent. | |
180 | His feedback, while a pain, was very, very useful. | |
181 | ||
182 | I released Episode I on a mostly private Discord server. It was surprisingly well-liked. | |
183 | ||
184 | But with that, I took a break. | |
185 | ||
186 | ======================== | |
187 | [ PART 1-2: Episode II ] | |
188 | ======================== | |
189 | And then I came back. At this point, I realized something: | |
190 | I didn't know what to do with the second Episode. | |
191 | ||
192 | Episode I, for those unaware, follows Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil. | |
193 | The entire episode is purely bosses from that game. | |
194 | ||
195 | But I didn't have the resources to do this again. And, to be honest, | |
196 | I didn't really want to copy an entire game again for this purpose. | |
197 | ||
198 | So I came to brainstorm what I wanted to do. Originally, the plot was going to be that | |
199 | you get resurrected, and then you go to a bunch of places, then go underground. | |
200 | ||
201 | I then swapped the order and made the underground happen before the 'bunch of places' arc. | |
202 | ||
203 | Episode II went a lot faster, in comparison, because I think I knew what I was doing. | |
204 | ||
205 | Conceptually, I decided I wanted to make some new weapons. The issue with standard | |
206 | Doom weapons is that eventually the Plasma Rifle becomes the only thing you use on bosses. | |
207 | ||
208 | I didn't want this. I wanted to encourage you to switch a lot more. | |
209 | ||
210 | So I made shot types. All based on attacks from Marisa and Reimu in the actual series. | |
211 | ||
212 | Not that you'd know that if you're not a Touhou fan. | |
213 | ||
214 | The next thing was that I knew that, as much as I liked the Touhou side of things, | |
215 | I did want to do some more Doom-related stuff. I knew that, even though this was | |
216 | a Touhou-focused wad, there's no girl in Gensokyo demonic enough to warrant making | |
217 | her the plot device that opens the gates to Hell. | |
218 | ||
219 | So I invented the Danmaku Demons. | |
220 | ||
221 | Otherwise, there's not too much to say that won't be said in the boss commentary later. | |
222 | ||
223 | =========================== | |
224 | [ PART 1-3-1: Episode III ] | |
225 | =========================== | |
226 | This is where I gave up trying to follow the standard "6 stages + extra" structure. | |
227 | In a sense, this Episode is really kind of an extension of Episode II. | |
228 | ||
229 | Again, I don't have much to say that won't be covered in the boss and map commentary later. | |
230 | ||
231 | At this point, the mod had taken on enough of it's own identity that I decided that | |
232 | I should make a public ZDoom thread about it. If you're reading this, you probably | |
233 | know about this thread, since that thread is where the download link is located. | |
234 | ||
235 | =================================== | |
236 | [ PART 1-3-2: Episode 3.5 to 3.66 ] | |
237 | =================================== | |
238 | Touhou Doom was originally planned to be 4 episodes. | |
239 | ||
240 | There were a lot of little things I wanted to accomplish, but in the end of things, | |
241 | I decided not to worry about them until I was closer to finishing the project. | |
242 | ||
243 | Only one problem: I got to the end. Suddenly, all of the little things I had in my | |
244 | "do this later" list weren't on it, because that 'later' had become 'now'. | |
245 | ||
246 | So I went back to those things. Finished a bunch of them. | |
247 | ||
248 | Fininshed so many that, actually, Episode 1 to 3 was a lot better off. | |
249 | ||
250 | So I sectioned off those changes and made Episode 3.5 to 3.66. | |
251 | ||
252 | That's how we got MAP01. The new one. | |
253 | ||
254 | At this point, I took another month long break. | |
255 | ||
256 | I didn't want to face the reality of Episode IV. | |
257 | For the longest time, I always complained about being constrained by the Touhou canon. | |
258 | But as it turns out, having the freedom to make whatever you want is kind of terrifying. | |
259 | I seriously had no idea what to do. | |
260 | ||
261 | ======================== | |
262 | [ PART 1-4: Episode IV ] | |
263 | ======================== | |
264 | When I started Episode IV, I knew, to a certain extent, that it was going to be very | |
265 | different from the previous three Episodes, mostly owing to the fact that we left | |
266 | Gensokyo and have now entered actual Hell. | |
267 | ||
268 | As a result, it plays like, well, a normal set of Doom maps, | |
269 | except for the minor fact that they exclusively use Danmaku Demons. | |
270 | ||
271 | To reflect this change further, I decided that for the music, rather than using Touhou, | |
272 | I would use MAP21 to MAP26 to reference other danmaku games. I picked iconic shmups | |
273 | (and one non-shmup) that have semi-iconic to iconic songs, and used them as the stage | |
274 | music. Shmups have good soundtracks. I don't know why, they just do. | |
275 | ||
276 | The series referenced, if you don't know: | |
277 | Gradius, Raiden, Ikaruga, Mushihimesama, DoDonPachi, and Undertale | |
278 | ||
279 | As for the second half, well, I'll elaborate more on that below. | |
280 | ||
281 | The last Episode was delayed pretty massively not by any big particularly difficult thing, | |
282 | but by the mere fact that there's a lot of maps. As mentioned, I'm not a very good mapper. | |
283 | ||
284 | You'll see a lot more of what I mean in the map commentary below. | |
285 | ||
286 | There really isn't any inspirational story, any good lesson to learn here. | |
287 | It was just one map at a time, drawing the layout, adding some textures, that kinda stuff. | |
288 | ||
289 | Just focus on getting one thing done at a time. There's a reason this took 3 years. | |
290 | ||
291 | ========================= | |
292 | [ PART 1-5: Extra Story ] | |
293 | ========================= | |
294 | After finishing Episode IV, I came to the realization that, in fact, | |
295 | as crazy as the ending enough, it was missing something. It wasn't...Touhou enough. | |
296 | ||
297 | So I decided what we needed was more bosses and more Gensokyo. | |
298 | After all, the bosses are the iconic draw of this mod (IMHO, as the creator), | |
299 | and Gensokyo is the unique setting of the Touhou series. | |
300 | ||
301 | Eight bosses later, this final challenge was released. | |
302 | ||
303 | Then I sent it off to my testers, and wrote this Post-Mortem. | |
304 | ||
305 | - | Notice how you're playing V1.1 and NOT V1.0? |
305 | + | |
306 | [ PART 1-6: Post Release ] | |
307 | ========================== | |
308 | Notice how you're playing V1.2 and NOT V1.0? | |
309 | ||
310 | Yeah, there were bugs. | |
311 | - | A little lesson: Don't let the hype of releasing cloud your testing process. |
311 | + | |
312 | A lot of bugs. | |
313 | ||
314 | A little lesson: Don't let the hype of releasing cloud your testing process. That's why we have V1.1. | |
315 | ||
316 | As for V1.2, that was less 'terrible bugs' (though there were a few of those) and more along the lines of | |
317 | "Okay I should've fixed that like a year or two ago, let's actually work on that thing from way back." | |
318 | ||
319 | More details will provided as they become relevant in PART II, a.k.a. almost all of the post mortem. | |
320 | ||
321 | //////////////////////////////// | |
322 | // PART 2: MAP/BOSS BREAKDOWN // | |
323 | //////////////////////////////// | |
324 | ||
325 | +-----------+ | |
326 | < EPISODE I > | |
327 | +-----------+ | |
328 | ||
329 | ======================== | |
330 | [ MAP01: Warp Facility ] | |
331 | Music: | |
332 | "Alien Jungle", Stuart "forty-two" Rynn | |
333 | ======================== | |
334 | Despite being the first map, this was the last map finished that's not in Episode IV or V. | |
335 | ||
336 | The original version of this map was very barebones. | |
337 | As in, it was just a hallway with some enemies and an exit teleporter. | |
338 | It was left that way because I didn't care enough to make a better map. | |
339 | After all, it was just a lead-in for the real meat of the wad. | |
340 | ||
341 | I came back to make it better because I realized that if I made this a gameplay segment | |
342 | (a.k.a. a playable map), then it should at least try to be better than a single hallway. | |
343 | ||
344 | That was one reason, anyway. The other thing that making this map better allowed me to do | |
345 | was that I could highlight the differences in gameplay between typical Doom and Touhou. | |
346 | It goes from cramped passages against monsters with one attack direction (aimed at you), | |
347 | to, well, everything else. See: the next map. | |
348 | ||
349 | Making this was pretty hard. I didn't have experience in making tech base maps, and it shows. | |
350 | ||
351 | A neat thing about this was that making a better map allowed me to setup a neat twist later on. | |
352 | ||
353 | ====================== | |
354 | [ MAP02: A New World ] | |
355 | Music: | |
356 | "A Soul as Red as a Ground Cherry", from Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil | |
357 | ---------------------- | |
358 | In terms of when the map was made, this was the first map in the wad. | |
359 | ||
360 | The stage enemies are based off of EoSD stage 1. It's by far the most basic thing | |
361 | in the mod; As what it's meant to teach you is how to do basic streaming - how to make | |
362 | small movements that dodge multiple bullets. Or maybe not, it's easy enough as is. | |
363 | ||
364 | The layout is taken directly from the original Touhou Doom. | |
365 | I updated some textures and decoration, and switched out the sky for a night theme. | |
366 | (To be specific: trees use a better texture, and are more detailed). | |
367 | ||
368 | V1.2 Update: I actually then did a second pass during post-release, detail wise - | |
369 | the forest looks a LOT more expansive than it used to be. If I did it right, then | |
370 | the forest should look a lot better in general. | |
371 | ||
372 | --------------- | |
373 | [ BOSS: Rumia ] | |
374 | Music: | |
375 | "Apparitions Stalk the Night", from Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil | |
376 | --------------- | |
377 | Rumia's kind of a neat boss in that she's the most 'Doom-like' boss of the bunch | |
378 | in the sense that most of her attacks are relatively normal 'shoot at target' attacks. | |
379 | ||
380 | "Night Bird", while a very basic and non-noteworthy card, is a good introduction | |
381 | to the spellcard system. | |
382 | ||
383 | "Demarcation" is then a second wake-up call to the fact that some patterns are | |
384 | fairly complex and can feature dodges that aren't as straightforward. | |
385 | ||
386 | You can get some pretty good SSG hits in if you're fast. | |
387 | ||
388 | All in all, a very good introductory boss. | |
389 | ||
390 | ===================== | |
391 | [ MAP03: Misty Lake ] | |
392 | Music: | |
393 | "Lunate Elf", from Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil | |
394 | --------------------- | |
395 | Second map, in creation date. Layout is also from on the original Touhou Doom. | |
396 | And again, I updated the trees and the sky - and also made the water solid, lol. | |
397 | ||
398 | Really, this is basically just a harder version of stage 1. | |
399 | ||
400 | You get a Rocket Launcher and Plasma Rifle here, but with limited ammo. | |
401 | It's to represent the power curve of your shot type in EoSD. | |
402 | ||
403 | Daiyousei really isn't anything notable. Her patterns are stream-based. | |
404 | ||
405 | V1.2 Update: Same as in the previous map, though the fog also helps mask my lack of detail. | |
406 | ||
407 | --------------- | |
408 | [ BOSS: Cirno ] | |
409 | Music: | |
410 | "Beloved Tomboyish Girl", from Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil | |
411 | --------------- | |
412 | In terms of creation date, Cirno was the first boss I ever made. | |
413 | ||
414 | Touhou Doom, as elaborated above, started as a "is a proper multi-phase fight possible?" | |
415 | concept test. Cirno was the test boss. | |
416 | ||
417 | Then that ended up working. | |
418 | ||
419 | The next thing was to implement patterns that very by difficulty. | |
420 | That was tedious, but it ended up working out for the better. | |
421 | ||
422 | The dialogue is wholesale ripped from EoSD. | |
423 | Mostly because the "English Beef" line makes no sense and I love it. | |
424 | ||
425 | If Rumia was to introduce the concepts of Danmaku, Cirno was to introduce the concept | |
426 | of having three spatial dimensions in the ZDoom engine. | |
427 | ||
428 | Her first card, "Icicle Fall"/"Hailstorm", utilizes a lot of the third dimension, | |
429 | though arguably it's pretty harmless and is more a visual effect. | |
430 | ||
431 | Otherwise, she ain't too bad. I generally save my Plasma Rifle for her last card, | |
432 | since it's hard to close distance there. | |
433 | ||
434 | ========================= | |
435 | [ MAP04: Scarlet Border ] | |
436 | Music: | |
437 | "Shanghai Teahouse ~ Chinese Tea", from Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil | |
438 | ------------------------- | |
439 | This is where things kick up a notch. If you haven't mastered streaming, you die now. | |
440 | ||
441 | The opener is the point that really kicks this into high gear. It's not hard, because | |
442 | every attack is aimed at you, meaning that you can dodge a giant 'line' of bullets... | |
443 | by tapping strafe left or strafe right precisely once. | |
444 | ||
445 | Of course, then you get to the next portion of the stage and I throw a bunch of | |
446 | more chaotically aimed stuff at you. It's not nearly as trivial as before. | |
447 | ||
448 | Midboss Meiling is notable in that she's the first midboss to have a spellcard. | |
449 | ||
450 | After that, you have the arena. It's pretty tricky, but really, it's nothing | |
451 | that should be terribly overwhelming if you get that far. | |
452 | ||
453 | V1.2: Although the more detailed forest thing applies here as well, this map got a more notable change: | |
454 | - when you get to Meiling's arena, the Scarlet Devil Mansion is actually visible behind the gateway. | |
455 | This looks a LOT better than it did previously, even though the Mansion is still pretty horribly un-detailed. | |
456 | ||
457 | ---------------------- | |
458 | [ BOSS: Hong Meiling ] | |
459 | Music: | |
460 | "Shanghai Alice of Meiji 17", from Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil | |
461 | ---------------------- | |
462 | Hong Meiling is a good deal harder than her predecessors. | |
463 | ||
464 | If you're on Hard or Lunatic, she has FOUR spellcards, as well as three noncards - | |
465 | adding up to a total of 5/6/7/7 total phases on Easy/Normal/Hard/Lunatic. | |
466 | ||
467 | She was one of my demo bosses, and the most notable one, in my opinion. | |
468 | ||
469 | Originally, I was lazy and used rainbow-coloured bullets; however, when I released Episode IV | |
470 | (So this is V1.0), I was requested to use all of the individual colour bullets. | |
471 | That ended up being the right call; god, it looks so much nicer. | |
472 | ||
473 | =================================== | |
474 | [ MAP05: Voile, The Magic Library ] | |
475 | Music: | |
476 | - | I'm not going to lie, the books are incredibly annoying. I wanted to make it annoying, |
476 | + | |
477 | - | because the original EoSD attack book section was absolutely beyond stupid. While |
477 | + | |
478 | - | this is equally stupid, it's at least memorization stupid, instead of RNG stupid. |
478 | + | |
479 | - | Shoot the invisible books with either the SSG or the chaingun. |
479 | + | |
480 | ||
481 | When I designed this map, I knew I had to make it grand - this was the library | |
482 | that was where the original EoSD really picked up. | |
483 | ||
484 | That's why I made it as hard as it was - the difficulty spike (and the protip | |
485 | warning you that you may want to turn the difficulty down) was entirely intentional. | |
486 | ||
487 | If you run through the map and wake everything up, it will get VERY chaotic in a hurry. | |
488 | Some amount of caution is highly advised. | |
489 | ||
490 | To start off, we have the initial bookshelves, with the fairy maids in between them. | |
491 | If you take it slowly, it introduces their gimmicks pretty well. Or you can take it fast, | |
492 | but you are taking a bigger risk by doing so. | |
493 | ||
494 | After the initial bookshelves, you have the open area. This looks impossible at first, | |
495 | but there is A: sufficient cover from the previous bookselves, and B: all of the flyers | |
496 | aim directly at you. While you don't want to stream it, you can easily dodge around the | |
497 | large mass of aimed bullets. Functionally, they're pretty harmless if you keep moving. | |
498 | Of course, the non-flyers make this harder. Take them out first, or else take cover. | |
499 | ||
500 | Koakuma isn't really anything to pay attention to. | |
501 | ||
502 | The post-Koakuma section was interesting. I knew I wanted to have a segment on the | |
503 | upper level, because it helps distinguish this from a totally generic stage, but | |
504 | in the end it made falling a very tedious affair, since you would have to go back | |
505 | and go around to the teleporter. That's why I added the teleporters that take you | |
506 | back to certain areas, to make backtracking slightly less tedious. | |
507 | ||
508 | Originally, the upper levels did not have any of the walkways across the bookshelves. | |
509 | I didn't realize this at first, but I'm actually a pretty good ZDoom engine parkour-er. | |
510 | So I added the ledges to give some more leniency to maneuvering on the upper level. | |
511 | ||
512 | This map ended up being a lot longer than I intended; some may argue it drags. | |
513 | It probably does. | |
514 | ||
515 | V1.2 Update: Originally, in the V1.0 release of Touhou Doom, the books were completely stupid. | |
516 | I wanted to make it annoying, but the invisible shooters thing ended up being too much. | |
517 | So I made the books visible, though a more durable to make up for it. To quote the original Post-Mortem: | |
518 | "While this is equally stupid, it's at least memorization stupid, instead of RNG stupid. | |
519 | Shoot the invisible books with either the SSG or the chaingun." | |
520 | ||
521 | In addition to this, I also added a bunch of decorative lamps. Looks better, but still not great. | |
522 | I think I need a better texture set to really make this map shine. | |
523 | ----------------------------- | |
524 | [ BOSS: Patchouli Knowledge ] | |
525 | Music: | |
526 | "Locked Girl ~ The Girl's Secret Room", from Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil | |
527 | ----------------------------- | |
528 | Patchouli was the first boss for which I can say it was truly difficult to implement her. | |
529 | ||
530 | Her patterns were a tier of complexity far beyond previous bosses, utilizing sweeping lasers, | |
531 | element-themed spellcards, and some very pretty weird patterns, such as Silver Dragon. | |
532 | ||
533 | And that's without getting into her main gimmick, which is that | |
534 | on each playthrough she will randomly select her spellcards. | |
535 | (She has 10 total, of which she will select 2/3/4/5 on Easy/Normal/Hard/Lunatic.) | |
536 | ||
537 | Most of them weren't too individually hard to implement, but it added up quickly. | |
538 | ||
539 | ================================================== | |
540 | [ MAP06: An Elegant Servant for the Scarlet Moon ] | |
541 | Music: | |
542 | "The Maid and the Pocket Watch of Blood", from Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil | |
543 | -------------------------------------------------- | |
544 | After the absurdity of designing MAP05, I realized that I didn't want the rest of the maps | |
545 | to be that large. Sure, the occasional large map was nice, but the library also drags longer | |
546 | than I personally would like. To each their own, I suppose, but the boss fights are arguably | |
547 | the main appeal of the wad. | |
548 | ||
549 | So this was invented as a counter-measure. It's the first 'musical' stage in Touhou Doom. | |
550 | ||
551 | The level is an autoscroller, essentially, at least for the first half. | |
552 | You can tell when enemies will appear if you memorize the music cues. | |
553 | ||
554 | Otherwise, it's a semi-recreation of EoSD stage 5. | |
555 | ||
556 | The devils that shoot the long 'strings' of bullets are pretty evil because they don't fire the | |
557 | entire string at where they first aim it; meaning that if you move prematurely you still get hit. | |
558 | ||
559 | Midboss Sakuya isn't really terribly notable. | |
560 | ||
561 | The second half, while not an autoscroller, is quite crazy. There's no real tricks, | |
562 | I kind of just through a bunch of stuff semi-aimlessly. It shows. | |
563 | ||
564 | Once you're past that, all you've gotta do is take out some planned individual enemies. | |
565 | Nothing really too special. | |
566 | ||
567 | V1.2: Added some details to the walls of the large halls. Nothing big. | |
568 | ----------------------- | |
569 | [ BOSS: Sakuya Izayoi ] | |
570 | Music: | |
571 | "Lunar Clock ~ Luna Dial", from Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil | |
572 | ----------------------- | |
573 | One of the things I like about Episode I is that each boss is an introduction to a concept. | |
574 | Rumia is the introduction to danmaku. | |
575 | Cirno is the introduction to 3D visual effects. | |
576 | Meiling is the introduction to longer-length bosses. | |
577 | Patchouli is the introduction to much higher complexity patterns. | |
578 | Sakuya is the introduction to the fact that some bosses have particular...gimmicks. | |
579 | ||
580 | Heh. | |
581 | ||
582 | This gimmick. | |
583 | ||
584 | THIS gimmick. | |
585 | ||
586 | THIS FRICKIN' GIMMICK. | |
587 | ||
588 | As you may know, Sakuya has the ability to stop time. This manifests in all three | |
589 | of her spellcards (taken directly from EoSD), for which time literally stops, she | |
590 | throws a bunch of knives, and then unstops time. | |
591 | ||
592 | Getting this effect to work right was almost not worth it. | |
593 | Sakuya caused me SO much grief that it was honestly kind of funny. | |
594 | ||
595 | Problems that happened while I was making this boss include but are not limited to: | |
596 | -The Knives not freezing properly. | |
597 | -Sakuya not aiming them properly. | |
598 | -Sakuya walking into melee range and and surrounding you with knives. | |
599 | -Sakuya attacking WAY too much, resulting in spending the boss fight being stuck. | |
600 | -Sakuya not attacking enough, resulting in the fight being trivially easy. | |
601 | ||
602 | Yeah, it wasn't pretty. But it works now, and I'm so happy that it does. | |
603 | ||
604 | Admittedly the fight is still very RNG heavy. | |
605 | I can beat it consistently, but often with different amounts of life left over. | |
606 | ||
607 | Even if the gimmick is pure evil. | |
608 | ||
609 | A possibly amusing fact: The reason why the pillars lower and the candelabras disappear | |
610 | is that my tester, dekw, abused the hell out of them to avoid basically all of the difficulty. | |
611 | I got rid of them to force players to learn Sakuya's patterns more legitimately. | |
612 | ||
613 | ===================================== | |
614 | [ MAP07: Rain of Blood over Elysium ] | |
615 | Music: | |
616 | "The Young Descendant of Tepes", from Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil | |
617 | ------------------------------------- | |
618 | Basically just a recreation of EoSD stage 6. Another musical autoscroller. | |
619 | ||
620 | In the Touhou series, most stage 6's are really just a space filler. | |
621 | ||
622 | Just a not very notable stage leading to the midboss and final boss. | |
623 | ||
624 | Midboss Sakuya's kind of lulzy. Welcome to random(0, 360): the spell card. | |
625 | ||
626 | V1.2 Update: See the previous map. | |
627 | ------------------------- | |
628 | [ BOSS: Remilia Scarlet ] | |
629 | Music: | |
630 | "Septette for the Dead Princess", from Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil | |
631 | ------------------------- | |
632 | Unlike the previous five bosses, Remilia isn't the introduction to anything. | |
633 | Remilia is the test that says "Show the game what you've learned." | |
634 | ||
635 | Unless you're on Easy. Then she decides that the test is unnecessary. | |
636 | ||
637 | If you're on Lunatic, good luck. Remilia is the first truly hard fight. | |
638 | You should know there's a soulsphere behind the throne. It's required on Lunatic. | |
639 | ||
640 | Unlike previous bosses, Remilia's first two cards aren't from EoSD. | |
641 | They're from Touhou 10.5: Scarlet Weather Rhapsody, a.k.a. one of the Touhou Fighting Games. | |
642 | ||
643 | Otherwise, she's the longest and hardest boss so far, eventually ending with | |
644 | what is arguably one of the hardest cards in the game: 'Red Magic', or 'Scarlet Gensokyo'. | |
645 | ||
646 | Another fun fact: Remilia lowers the outer regions of the arena if you hide behind there | |
647 | for too long. The variable that controls when she does this is called 'RemiliaAntiDekwTimer'. | |
648 | ||
649 | ========================= | |
650 | [ MAP08: Eastern Lunatic ~ Sister of Scarlet ] | |
651 | Music: | |
652 | "The Centennial Festival for Magical Girls", from Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil | |
653 | ------------------------- | |
654 | I mean, of course there's an extra stage. | |
655 | ||
656 | It was kind of fun making you go back the way you came, except with harder enemies. | |
657 | ||
658 | The whole stage is kind of throw-back-y to earlier stages, but it stands on its own as well. | |
659 | ||
660 | Midboss Patchouli is an introduction to Extra Stage midbosses: | |
661 | Namely that they are much crazier than your standard midboss. | |
662 | ||
663 | V1.2 Update: See the previous two maps. Also, there was a softlock - | |
664 | if you played on easy mode and you had cutscenes enabled, you couldn't finish the episode. | |
665 | ||
666 | As it turns out, if you never test your cutscenes, you end up with cutscene bugs. | |
667 | ------------------------- | |
668 | [ BOSS: Flandre Scarlet ] | |
669 | Music: | |
670 | "U.N. Owen Was Her?", from Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil | |
671 | ------------------------- | |
672 | AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!! | |
673 | ||
674 | I did not have fun. | |
675 | ||
676 | Flandre's a cool fight, honestly. | |
677 | ||
678 | From Cranberry Trap's "oh god I'm surrounded" to Kagome Kagome's "oh god what is this" | |
679 | to Counter Clock's "what are these literal rotating laser wheels" to the actual friggin' | |
680 | "WAIT THERE'S A TIMEOUT CARD" moment. | |
681 | ||
682 | The fight has so many gimmicks that are weird and, nothing else in this game is like it. | |
683 | ||
684 | FOR GOOD REASON. | |
685 | ||
686 | Because good GOD coding Flandre was a giant flaming garbage fire and I hate EVERYTHING. | |
687 | ||
688 | Here's a quick list of EVERY SINGLE SPELL CARD (and she has TEN), and how 9/10 of them broke: | |
689 | Cranberry trap: First iteration kept spawning bullets out of bound. | |
690 | Lavaeteinn: Had a bug where the lasers could clip out of bounds, which lagged really badly. | |
691 | Four of a kind: This was the good one | |
692 | Kagome, Kagome: Many, MANY things, but to pick one: bullets did not despawn properly. | |
693 | Maze of Love: Flandre, in one iteration, fired stupidly fast, making this a literal wall. | |
694 | Starbow Break: This card looks cool, but past that it's kind of...lame. | |
695 | Catadioptric: WELCOME TO RNG LAND, POPULATION: ANYONE WHO GETS HERE | |
696 | Counter Clock: Oh my GOD so MANY things went wrong it's not even funny | |
697 | - | (don't ask me how double dying works.) |
697 | + | |
698 | Ripples of 495 Years: Originally you could stand on top of top of Flandre to cheese this. | |
699 | ||
700 | Oh, and there's plenty more things that went totally wrong. | |
701 | ||
702 | I would elaborate more, but I think my BURNING RAGE is enough to inform you that it was ugly. | |
703 | ||
704 | The sheer pain of how hard this was to implement would be a | |
705 | major factor in how I would script later Extra stages. | |
706 | ||
707 | ================================= | |
708 | [ MAP09: Scarlet Devil Basement ] | |
709 | --------------------------------- | |
710 | I knew, from an early draft, that I wanted to make this plot go demonic. | |
711 | ||
712 | This was the map of which to make that the introduction of the plot clear. | |
713 | ||
714 | It's another throwaway map, but it does the job. | |
715 | ||
716 | =========================== | |
717 | EPISODE I OVERALL THOUGHTS: | |
718 | In general, this Episode was basically a tech demo for the boss spellcard system. | |
719 | It's the weakest Episode by far, but it does help you get into the swing of things. | |
720 | The V1.1 to V1.2 post-release stretch added a LOT of much-needed detail to this episode. | |
721 | It could still use more IMO, but at least it doesn't looks like 90s mapping anymore. | |
722 | =========================== | |
723 | ||
724 | +------------+ | |
725 | < EPISODE II > | |
726 | +------------+ | |
727 | ||
728 | ======================= | |
729 | [ MAP10: Hakugyokurou ] | |
730 | Music: | |
731 | "Night Sakura of Dead Spirits", from Touhou 13: Ten Desires | |
732 | ----------------------- | |
733 | So this is how Episode II begins. Not with a forest, but with a giant staircase. | |
734 | ||
735 | Plot-wise, you died at the end of Episode I. So this is where you end up. | |
736 | (don't ask me how double dying works, if you're asking then you vastly overestimate the consistency of this plot.) | |
737 | ||
738 | Also plot-wise, this is our introduction to the boundary youkai. | |
739 | Originally, she was pretty annoying. I don't find her easy to write. | |
740 | ||
741 | To rectify this, I got dekw to re-write her character...to be even MORE annoying. | |
742 | Alas, canon characterization is more important to me than sanity. | |
743 | ||
744 | So NOW we have our introduction to the Danmaku Weapons, A.K.A. actual Touhou shot types. | |
745 | Also, we have introduction to player spellcards A.K.A. bombs. Use them wisely! | |
746 | ||
747 | If you don't want to use spellcards at all, input "touhou_nospellcards 1" in the console. | |
748 | ||
749 | If you'd rather use conventional weapons, input "touhou_doomweapons 1" in the console. | |
750 | As a warning, though, the game was balanced around the Danmaku Weapons. | |
751 | ||
752 | This map is kind of lame, I'll fully admit, but it's one of the most iconic structures | |
753 | in Touhou canon - the grand staircase of Hakugyokurou, the Netherworld. | |
754 | ||
755 | The stage enemies are based off of Ten Desires' stage 1. | |
756 | -------------------------- | |
757 | [ BOSS: Youmu and Yuyuko ] | |
758 | Music: | |
759 | "Hiroari Shoots a Strange Bird ~ Till When?", from Touhou 7: Perfect Cherry Blossom | |
760 | "Bloom Nobly, Ink-Black Cherry Blossom ~ Border of Life", from Touhou 10.5: Scarlet Weather Rhapsody | |
761 | -------------------------- | |
762 | Youmu and Yuyuko are the two bosses of Stage 1. You get a megasphere for both of them. | |
763 | ||
764 | So, being a stage 1 boss, both of these are an introduction to a concept. | |
765 | ||
766 | The first concept is that some bosses will move around a lot more than usual. | |
767 | The second concept is that Episode II will not wait as long to ramp up in difficulty. | |
768 | ||
769 | Otherwise, I just enjoyed being able to make two iconic bosses of the series. | |
770 | ||
771 | Plot-wise, I didn't plan on keeping you dead. You're needed in the world of the living. | |
772 | ||
773 | ====================== | |
774 | [ MAP11: Sanzu River ] | |
775 | Music: | |
776 | "Higan Retour ~ Riverside View", from Touhou 10.5: Scarlet Weather Rhapsody | |
777 | ---------------------- | |
778 | I hadn't referenced Touhou 9. I wanted to rectify that. | |
779 | ||
780 | Otherwise, there's not much notable about this stage. | |
781 | It's the most generic thing I've made totally from scratch. | |
782 | ------------------------- | |
783 | - | Alas, Yuugi having no easy options (her cards are both hard to design AND I had no sprites), |
783 | + | |
784 | Music: | |
785 | "Higan Retour ~ Riverside View", from Touhou 9: Phantasmagoria of Flower View | |
786 | ------------------------- | |
787 | Komachi was kind of a filler boss. Mostly added because, hey, you're crossing over the Sanzu. | |
788 | ||
789 | The living aren't supposed to be on this side of the river, so it's her duty to stop you. | |
790 | ||
791 | Her fight works well enough, though. | |
792 | ||
793 | Her anti-cheese mechanism is funny, though. Don't try to run away; face her like a BOSS. | |
794 | ||
795 | Fun fact: As of V1.2, dunking Komachi into the Sanzu River will actually defeat and eventually end her boss fight. | |
796 | =================================== | |
797 | [ MAP12: Streets of a Former Hell ] | |
798 | Music: | |
799 | "Walking the Streets of a Former Hell", from Touhou 11: Subterranean Animism | |
800 | ----------------------------------- | |
801 | The original Touhou Doom goes into the underground, so I figured, | |
802 | "Hey, I should use the resources I have laying around the archive." | |
803 | ||
804 | This was the first truly difficult stage to design, because the underground city of the Oni | |
805 | is not a simple single structure, unlike previous maps. | |
806 | ||
807 | In the end, it took a lot of slopes and 3d floors working together to produce a somewhat | |
808 | passable version of the style of architecture that I wanted to evoke. This engine is, uh, | |
809 | not really meant for curved surfaces, so I had to make do and try faking it. | |
810 | ||
811 | I consider this map semi-decent; there's more I could've done, but it does the job well. | |
812 | ||
813 | The stage itself is based off of (S)ubterranean (A)nimism's stage 1 and stage 3. | |
814 | Hooray for sine wave fairies! | |
815 | --------------------- | |
816 | [ BOSS: Suika Ibuki ] | |
817 | Music: | |
818 | "Oni's Island in the Fairyland ~ Missing Power", from Touhou 7.5: Immaterial and Missing Power | |
819 | --------------------- | |
820 | The original Touhou Doom went all the way to reference SA, and then: | |
821 | A: Had no city, while *lampshading* the lack of city that should've been there, and | |
822 | B: Had no Yuugi. | |
823 | ||
824 | Alas, Yuugi having no easy options (her cards are all TERRIBLE to design AND I had no sprites), | |
825 | I settled on another high tier Oni: Suika Ibuki. | |
826 | ||
827 | At the time of implementing Suika, she had the highest number of frames of animation | |
828 | of any boss in Touhou Doom, and would not be outdone until Episode III came along. | |
829 | ||
830 | The hardest part in making this fight is something many players might not notice: | |
831 | If you try to run away from Suika, she'll disperse into very fast moving mist, | |
832 | which will follow you throughout the city. Working the Path Nodes to make her | |
833 | capable of doing this took quite a while, and it's a pretty bad mess of ACS. | |
834 | ||
835 | Otherwise, I simply took three relatively easy to implement spellcards from her canon, | |
836 | and made them into spellcards for the fight. | |
837 | ||
838 | =============================== | |
839 | - | Also, Satori informing the player that they have the wrong Hell |
839 | + | |
840 | - | is one of my favourite lines in the entire story. |
840 | + | |
841 | "Heartfelt Fancy", from Touhou 11: Subterranean Animism | |
842 | ------------------------------- | |
843 | So now we REALLY turn into SA. | |
844 | ||
845 | This is ANOTHER musical autoscrolling stage, set up to be similar to SA stage 4. | |
846 | ||
847 | The fairies' amulet fans are a surprisingly complex pattern for a stage enemy. | |
848 | It can be quite surprising if you're used to stage enemies being incredibly generic. | |
849 | ||
850 | The Window textures are taken directly from SA. I can't believe how cool they look here, | |
851 | given we're in a completely different engine that's not designed for the FPS perspective. | |
852 | ||
853 | It's really silly. Despite how simple this map is geometrically, it feels like a good map, | |
854 | even though it's objectively a terrible map. It's literally just a few connected boxes. | |
855 | ------------------------ | |
856 | [ BOSS: Satori Komeiji ] | |
857 | Music: | |
858 | "Satori Maiden ~ 3rd eye", from Touhou 11: Subterranean Animism | |
859 | ------------------------ | |
860 | TIME FOR GIMMICK BOSS NUMBER 2! | |
861 | ||
862 | Granted, Satori's gimmick was a lot easier to implement than Sakuya's. | |
863 | ||
864 | Namely, because Satori's gimmick is that she just re-uses a bunch of cards from Episode I. | |
865 | ||
866 | So, with that aside, the three picks, and why I chose them: | |
867 | - | Only took 13 or 14 maps to get one that I don't think looks like garbage. |
867 | + | |
868 | I chose this one because it's one of the first real dodge cards... | |
869 | unless you cheesed it by abusing terrain in Meiling's fight. | |
870 | If you DID do that, then you better learn to do it legit now. | |
871 | "Luna Clock" / "The World" | |
872 | I chose this one because Sakuya's Time Freeze gimmick really needed to be used again. | |
873 | Which is to say, most people, on seeing this, will go "NOOOO!", which is intentional. | |
874 | Satori's trying to scare you, so this is a good pick for that purpose. | |
875 | "Curse of Vlad Tepes" / "Vampire Illusion" | |
876 | I chose this one because Remilia's "I spawn bullets that then move after the fact" | |
877 | is one of hell of gimmick that many players find quite hard. I wanted to copy | |
878 | Remilia's last card, but that would've been too much to reference in this fight. | |
879 | ||
880 | Also, Satori informing the player that they have the wrong Hell is one of my favourite lines in the entire story. | |
881 | ||
882 | ================================= | |
883 | [ MAP14: Hellfire of Times Past ] | |
884 | Music: | |
885 | "Lullaby of a Deserted Hell", from Touhou 11: Subterranean Animism | |
886 | --------------------------------- | |
887 | Now THIS was a stage gimmick I was building up towards. | |
888 | ||
889 | - | Much like in Episode I, this is kind of generic filler. |
889 | + | |
890 | but it does lead nicely into this stage. | |
891 | ||
892 | The 'Danmaku Demons' were an interesting design problem, as I knew that generic demons | |
893 | wouldn't be, well, 'Touhou' enough for my tastes. I wanted something MORE. | |
894 | ||
895 | But at the same time, I knew that THESE danmaku demons would be re-used. | |
896 | - | But really, this map is just an arena for the boss, Utsuho. |
896 | + | |
897 | What does that mean? It means they can't be generically forgettable, | |
898 | while they also need to feel 'Doom like', to avoid being totally pointless. | |
899 | ||
900 | With that in mind, I had a lot of fun designing these monsters. | |
901 | ||
902 | In terms of the actual map, this is the first map in the wad I'm truly happy with. | |
903 | Unlike other maps, that basically only stand in as an excuse for the fight that uses it, | |
904 | this map stands on its own relatively decently. I learned the tricks for detailing the | |
905 | map from the Doom wad Community Chest 4. It's a good wad and a great texture set. | |
906 | ||
907 | Only took 13 or 14 maps to get one that I don't think looks like garbage. | |
908 | Ah well, I've gotta start somewhere. I only get better by making more. | |
909 | ||
910 | I didn't really intend it to be this way, but I was surprised by how *hard* this map ended up being. | |
911 | It's probably the hardest stage in the game to survive, up until now. At least I find it to be. | |
912 | ||
913 | Then again, SA stage 5 was legitimately that bad, so I guess I shouldn't feel *too* bad about it. | |
914 | ----------------------------- | |
915 | [ BOSS: Rin "Orin" Kaenbyou ] | |
916 | Music: | |
917 | "Corpse Voyage ~ Be of good cheer!", from Touhou 11: Subterranean Animism | |
918 | ----------------------------- | |
919 | Everyone hated Orin in SA. | |
920 | ||
921 | So of course, what could I do but implement the most infuriating boss of all time? | |
922 | ||
923 | To be honest, Orin's a bit of a mixed bag. Some her stuff is cool gimmicks. | |
924 | ||
925 | Some of it is 'Blazing Wheel'. I'm sorry for that. Kind of. | |
926 | ||
927 | You take the good with the bad. | |
928 | ||
929 | ============================ | |
930 | [ MAP15: Dazzling Hellfire ] | |
931 | Music: | |
932 | "Hellfire Mantle", from Touhou 11: Subterranean Animism | |
933 | ---------------------------- | |
934 | Much like the final stage of Episode I, this is kind of generic filler. | |
935 | ||
936 | However, I decided to make it less generic by making it so monster infighting is common. | |
937 | It's one of the ways that Danmaku Demons differ from fairies. | |
938 | ||
939 | Or, to quote: "Protip: Unlike fairies, demons can infight." | |
940 | ||
941 | But really, this map is really just an arena for the boss, Utsuho. | |
942 | ----------------------- | |
943 | [ BOSS: Utsuho Reiuji ] | |
944 | Music: | |
945 | "Solar Sect of Mystic Wisdom ~ Nuclear Fusion", from Touhou 11: Subterranean Animism | |
946 | ----------------------- | |
947 | <!> WARNING <!> WARNING <!> WARNING <!> | |
948 | ||
949 | Utsuho is, from a gameplay perspective, honestly my least favourite final boss. | |
950 | ||
951 | She stands in dead contrast to many boss fight design principles I like. | |
952 | ||
953 | First of all, RNG's a pain in this fight. If Utsuho doesn't like your run, it's done. | |
954 | ||
955 | Second of all, there's a lot of oneshots; if you get hit with a sun, that's usually lethal. | |
956 | ||
957 | Third of all, there's a lot of "oh yeah you just die if you don't know this." | |
958 | While knowledge of patterns is important, Utsuho has a lot of "you die if you don't know this." | |
959 | Which I don't consider good design - you should be able to substitute pattern knowledge | |
960 | for pure reading-on-the-fly dodging skill. | |
961 | ||
962 | Then again, you can use your bombs. That's a thing you could do. | |
963 | ||
964 | However, I'll grant Utsuho this: She's a very *impressive* boss. The Visual Spectacle | |
965 | *almost* makes up for the gameplay flaws she does have, at least in my opinion as her designer. | |
966 | ||
967 | Still, she's the final boss, so some over-the-topness is to be expected. | |
968 | ||
969 | - | In his first playthrough of the original Touhou Doom, TerminusEst13 cheesed the Koishi fight |
969 | + | V1.2 Update: So it turns out if you use touhou_doomweapons in V1.0, I forgot to give you a rocket launcher. |
970 | - | via fully charging his melee attack to a completely absurd degree and killing Koishi close |
970 | + | Not that it matters that much (you'll be using the Plasma Rifle on this map, mostly), but my mistake! |
971 | - | to instantly. When the original updated, Koishi had a new attack. An instant, one-shot, |
971 | + | |
972 | - | 9999999 damage attack that immediately killed term through Demonsteele's invulnerability. |
972 | + | |
973 | - | It's only used in melee. I kept the attack as is, because Koishi: Heavyweight Boxing Champion. |
973 | + | |
974 | ======================================= | |
975 | [ MAP16: The Lovely Visitor From Hell ] | |
976 | - | The original Touhou Doom stole a map from Free Doom. Straight up ripped it from the wad. |
976 | + | |
977 | - | Later, when Sgt Shivers was screwing around, he replaced the stolen map...with E1M1. |
977 | + | |
978 | - | I then ripped E1M1 again (replacing normal demons with danmaku ones), and put it here. |
978 | + | |
979 | TIME FOR EXTRA STAGE NUMBER 2 | |
980 | ||
981 | - | Dekw, my most valiant tester, is very good at finding bugs. He's so good at doing it |
981 | + | |
982 | - | that I keep having to remove things because he finds ways to break the game with them. |
982 | + | |
983 | - | Things I had to do because of him include but are not limited to: removing decorative objects, |
983 | + | |
984 | - | Putting invisible walls everywhere you're not supposed to go, limiting the time you can spend |
984 | + | |
985 | - | around certain pillars, and making every arena in Episode 2 onwards as boring as possible. |
985 | + | |
986 | - | To spite him I made a card that is a featureless box, throwing basic rings that you must |
986 | + | |
987 | - | dodge through with no strategy; There's no exploiting your way out of this one. |
987 | + | |
988 | ------------------------ | |
989 | [ BOSS: Koishi Komeiji ] | |
990 | - | The original Touhou Doom was written for ZDoom 2.7.1, with a SINGLE use of A_SetScale. |
990 | + | |
991 | - | Yes, exactly one. Except there were a lot of not-using-A_SetScale actors that *should* |
991 | + | |
992 | - | have used A_SetScale. When he found out, he kinda sorta completely lost his mind. |
992 | + | |
993 | - | This spellcard has a very simple visual effect that clearly...does not use A_SetScale. |
993 | + | |
994 | - | Yep, I went out of my way to not use it on the obvious visual effect where it should be used! |
994 | + | |
995 | Okay, her merit as a legitimate extra boss is not why I chose her. | |
996 | ----------------------------------- | |
997 | - | I'm not mean enough to just mock others. I'll include myself in the list of people |
997 | + | |
998 | - | I'm making fun of. I have a bad habit of not fully playtesting my cards. I kind of make them |
998 | + | |
999 | - | theoretically work; e.g. I make a card on Lunatic, I copy it for the other three difficulties, |
999 | + | |
1000 | - | make some blind bullet reductions, and yeah, it should all work. (NARRATOR: It didn't.) |
1000 | + | |
1001 | - | I did playtest this one to make sure it didn't crash, but otherwise it's deliberately untested. |
1001 | + | |
1002 | I mean, yeah, it's pretty silly that you'd interrupt my theme in the middle of the figh-*WHACK* | |
1003 | ||
1004 | - | So, when TerminusEst13 streamed Touhou Doom, he did so with his mod, Demonsteele. |
1004 | + | |
1005 | - | Demonsteele allows you to destroy decorative candelabras. In his playthrough, |
1005 | + | |
1006 | - | he declared war on the candelabra and went out of his way in places to cut down |
1006 | + | |
1007 | - | every single one. This card revolves hiding behind candelabras, so if you, in some |
1007 | + | |
1008 | - | weird fringe case, cut them all down, you will be utterly screwing yourself over. |
1008 | + | |
1009 | ||
1010 | However, Koishi's a bit of a meme in the Touhou community, thanks to a series of custom | |
1011 | - | I needed a last card, and a joke to follow it. |
1011 | + | |
1012 | - | Credit goes to the DUMP 3 team for designing Benellus, the god of shotguns. |
1012 | + | |
1013 | - | I simply ripped the patterns. |
1013 | + | |
1014 | So I decided to make a decidedly non-canon fight. | |
1015 | ||
1016 | - | AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! |
1016 | + | |
1017 | ||
1018 | The melee attack: | |
1019 | In his first playthrough of the original Touhou Doom, TerminusEst13 cheesed the Koishi fight | |
1020 | via fully charging his melee attack to a completely absurd degree and killing Koishi close | |
1021 | to instantly. When the original updated, Koishi had a new attack. An instant, one-shot, | |
1022 | 9999999 damage attack that immediately killed term through Demonsteele's invulnerability. | |
1023 | It's only used in melee. I kept the attack as is, because Koishi: Heavyweight Boxing Champion. | |
1024 | ||
1025 | Shivers Sign "Original Map Do Not Steal": | |
1026 | The original Touhou Doom stole a map from Free Doom. Straight up ripped it from the wad. | |
1027 | Later, when Sgt Shivers was screwing around, he replaced the stolen map...with E1M1. | |
1028 | I then ripped E1M1 again (replacing normal demons with danmaku ones), and put it here. | |
1029 | ||
1030 | Dekw Sign "This is why we can't have nice things" | |
1031 | Dekw, my most valiant tester, is very good at finding bugs. He's so good at doing it | |
1032 | that I keep having to remove things because he finds ways to break the game with them. | |
1033 | Things I had to do because of him include but are not limited to: removing decorative objects, | |
1034 | Putting invisible walls everywhere you're not supposed to go, limiting the time you can spend | |
1035 | around certain pillars, and making every arena in Episode 2 onwards as boring as possible. | |
1036 | To spite him I made a card that is a featureless box, throwing basic rings that you must | |
1037 | dodge through with no strategy; There's no exploiting your way out of this one. | |
1038 | ||
1039 | Yholl Sign "THEY HAD A_SETSCALE" | |
1040 | The original Touhou Doom was written for ZDoom 2.7.1, with a SINGLE use of A_SetScale. | |
1041 | Yes, exactly one. Except there were a lot of not-using-A_SetScale actors that *should* | |
1042 | have used A_SetScale. When he found out, he kinda sorta completely lost his mind. | |
1043 | This spellcard has a very simple visual effect that clearly...does not use A_SetScale. | |
1044 | Yep, I went out of my way to not use it on the obvious visual effect where it should be used! | |
1045 | ||
1046 | Untitled Sign "I didn't playtest this at all" | |
1047 | I'm not mean enough to just mock others. I'll include myself in the list of people | |
1048 | I'm making fun of. I have a bad habit of not fully playtesting my cards. I kind of make them | |
1049 | theoretically work; e.g. I make a card on Lunatic, I copy it for the other three difficulties, | |
1050 | make some blind bullet reductions, and yeah, it should all work. (NARRATOR: It didn't.) | |
1051 | I did playtest this one to make sure it didn't crash, but otherwise it's deliberately untested. | |
1052 | ||
1053 | Terminus Sign "Philosophy of a Hated Candelabra" | |
1054 | So, when TerminusEst13 streamed Touhou Doom, he did so with his mod, Demonsteele. | |
1055 | Demonsteele allows you to destroy decorative candelabras. In his playthrough, | |
1056 | he declared war on the candelabra and went out of his way in places to cut down | |
1057 | every single one. This card revolves hiding behind candelabras, so if you, in some | |
1058 | weird fringe case, cut them all down, you will be utterly screwing yourself over. | |
1059 | ||
1060 | "PRAISE BENELLUS" | |
1061 | I needed a last card, and a joke to follow it. | |
1062 | Credit goes to the DUMP 3 team for designing Benellus, the god of shotguns. | |
1063 | I simply ripped the patterns. | |
1064 | ||
1065 | Agitation "OH F***, SKELETONS" | |
1066 | AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! | |
1067 | ||
1068 | ============================ | |
1069 | EPISODE II OVERALL THOUGHTS: | |
1070 | If Episode I was where I proved there was potential, Episode II is where | |
1071 | I went all out on making this more-Touhou like. It's more polished, far | |
1072 | less exploitable, and in general it just has more of an identity, having | |
1073 | some very unique things such as the Touhou weapons, which add a lot more | |
1074 | variety to the boss fights. The Plasma Rifle got old. | |
1075 | ||
1076 | V1.2: If you like custom weapons but also like spellcards, well now you can mix and match! | |
1077 | Before 1.2, touhou_doomweapons was linked to touhou_nospellcards, so there was no way to use | |
1078 | Doom Weapons AND use spellcards. I forget why I did this, so I decoupled the two settings. Have fun! | |
1079 | ============================ | |
1080 | ||
1081 | +-------------+ | |
1082 | < EPISODE III > | |
1083 | +-------------+ | |
1084 | ||
1085 | ============================================ | |
1086 | [ MAP17: Wind Blows on the Sacred Mountain ] | |
1087 | Music: | |
1088 | "The Primal Scene of Japan the Girl Saw", from Touhou 10: Mountain of Faith | |
1089 | -------------------------------------------- | |
1090 | So now we enter Episode III. | |
1091 | ||
1092 | The stage is based off of MoF's stage 5. It's pretty basic, IMO. | |
1093 | ||
1094 | In general, I knew that, in the end, I was limited by a variety of factors, | |
1095 | namely boss sprites, to what locations I could feasibly represent. | |
1096 | ||
1097 | By recognizing this fact, I could try to figure out a what locations I could visit | |
1098 | in the limited possibility space I had. Who are 'notable' characters, really? | |
1099 | ||
1100 | The Moriya Shrine became the obvious choice, by that metric - it's a location | |
1101 | in three different games (10, 11, and 12.3), so it's gotten some canon looks. | |
1102 | ||
1103 | It took me quite a while to make the shrine look at least vaguely the right shape. | |
1104 | I hope it looks good enough so at least you can tell what it's supposed to be. | |
1105 | ||
1106 | Story-wise, I wasn't planning on having Yukari straight-up troll you, but | |
1107 | dekw wrote that segment. It does feel Yukari-like, though it IS annoying. | |
1108 | ||
1109 | ----------------------- | |
1110 | [ BOSS: Sanae Kochiya ] | |
1111 | Music: | |
1112 | "Faith is for Transient People", from Touhou 10: Mountain of Faith | |
1113 | ----------------------- | |
1114 | So, I elaborated on why I chose the Moriya Shrine. | |
1115 | ||
1116 | This begs the question: Which boss is the most notable *character* of that location? | |
1117 | ||
1118 | Sanae was a fairly obvious choice, by that metric - she's playable in four | |
1119 | different main series games (12, 12.3, 13, and 15), and by the time I was | |
1120 | at this point, I was confident I could implement at least some of her patterns. | |
1121 | ||
1122 | The hardest part of the fight, design wise, was the big star spellcards. | |
1123 | - | Don't stand in the path of the giant beam. It kills you. |
1123 | + | |
1124 | ||
1125 | Funnily enough, despite the visuals, Sanae basically hasn't changed at all since her original beta implementation. | |
1126 | ||
1127 | ================================== | |
1128 | [ MAP31: Skies Beyond the Clouds ] | |
1129 | Music: | |
1130 | "Skies Beyond the Clouds", from Touhou 10.5: Scarlet Weather Rhapsody | |
1131 | ---------------------------------- | |
1132 | FIGHTING GAMES REPRESENT! | |
1133 | ||
1134 | So I kind of knew I wanted a MAP31 and MAP32. I decided to go with a pair of bosses. | |
1135 | ||
1136 | Why? Because really, Touhou Doom's most iconic feature is the very flashy boss fights. | |
1137 | ||
1138 | However, to help distinguish these two, I took the characters from a fighting game. | |
1139 | ||
1140 | I personally like how the silhouette of the mountain in the darkness looks. | |
1141 | It looks much bigger than it actually is. | |
1142 | ||
1143 | The map itself really isn't anything special. It's just a boss arena. | |
1144 | ------------------- | |
1145 | [ BOSS: Iku Nagae ] | |
1146 | Music: | |
1147 | "Crimson in the Black Sea ~ Legendary Fish", from Touhou 10.5: Scarlet Weather Rhapsody | |
1148 | ------------------- | |
1149 | Iku's one of the most visually impressive bosses. Thank Tormentor667 for that thunder effect, | |
1150 | it really makes the fight stand out amongst others. | |
1151 | ||
1152 | Otherwise, Iku's nothing particularly special. She's just an alternative route; | |
1153 | either you fight Iku and Tenshi or you fight Sanae. Either works. | |
1154 | ||
1155 | Well, okay, actually, you'll want to learn a route so you avoid having a lightning | |
1156 | pillar spawn on top of you during Iku's first spell card. That would be bad. | |
1157 | ||
1158 | ============================================= | |
1159 | [ MAP32: Daughter of Heaven, Heart of Human ] | |
1160 | Music: | |
1161 | "Flawless Clothing of the Celestials", from Touhou 10.5: Scarlet Weather Rhapsody | |
1162 | --------------------------------------------- | |
1163 | This arena was harder to design; Heaven was truly not meant for a Doom map. | |
1164 | ||
1165 | Otherwise, I think this is the first boss to be fought over two different arenas. | |
1166 | ------------------------- | |
1167 | [ BOSS: Tenshi Hinanawi ] | |
1168 | Music: | |
1169 | "Catastrophe in Bhava-agra ~ Wonderful Heaven", from Touhou 10.5: Scarlet Weather Rhapsody | |
1170 | "Bhava-agra As Seen Through a Child's Mind", from Touhou 10.5: Scarlet Weather Rhapsody | |
1171 | ------------------------- | |
1172 | "Tenshi, why did Untitled let you get TWO themes?" | |
1173 | ||
1174 | Because SWR did. | |
1175 | ||
1176 | This fight wins the award of "closest fight to one of the fighting games". | |
1177 | This is because Tenshi is mostly a fighting game only boss. | |
1178 | ||
1179 | Also, try not to fall off the arena. That happens if you aren't careful. | |
1180 | ||
1181 | I had a lot of fun designing the last card; though the instadeath lasers are a bit much. | |
1182 | Don't stand in the path of the giant beam. It kills you. Use the sound cues to your advantage! | |
1183 | ||
1184 | While it was fun, designing the last card was also very hard; the giant laser originally | |
1185 | came out MUCH faster. It was pretty much impossible to avoid if you weren't already in | |
1186 | motion when she started charging it. I added the delay later, to make it more feasible, | |
1187 | especially on lower difficulties (Lunatic's a special beast, to say the least). | |
1188 | ||
1189 | Which route will you choose? Sanae, or Iku + Tenshi? | |
1190 | ||
1191 | Well, Sanae's probably the easier route, so there's that. | |
1192 | ||
1193 | ====================================== | |
1194 | [ MAP18: Soil that Holds Magic Power ] | |
1195 | Music: | |
1196 | "The Doll Maker of Bucuresti", from Touhou 7: Perfect Cherry Blossom | |
1197 | -------------------------------------- | |
1198 | Back to the forest. | |
1199 | ||
1200 | To describe the map, the process was very simple: copy-paste trees. Copy-paste a LOT of trees. | |
1201 | ||
1202 | Then, way later, simplify the trees because you're causing too much lag. Ah well. | |
1203 | ||
1204 | As for the gameplay gimmick... | |
1205 | ||
1206 | Oh boy. | |
1207 | ||
1208 | I knew, that I wanted to have at least one segment where you saw Touhou enemies fight Demons. | |
1209 | ||
1210 | Then I realized that for the forest of magic we have Alice and Marisa and I could | |
1211 | knock two birds out with one stone. | |
1212 | ||
1213 | The stage itself is based around the gimmick of Alice's Dolls and the Demons fighting each other. | |
1214 | ||
1215 | AND GETTING THIS TO WORK WAS PAIN. | |
1216 | ||
1217 | SO MUCH PAIN. | |
1218 | ||
1219 | As it turns out, monster AI is rather horrifically inflexible. Getting monsters to actually | |
1220 | chaotically fight each other in the way I wanted them to was a giant pile of garbage | |
1221 | and honestly it took me way too long to get it sorted out with WAY too many Thing_Hate calls. | |
1222 | ||
1223 | The effect was worth it, IMO - the chaotic nature of the forest as so many projectiles | |
1224 | start getting flung about is very hectic, and I generally like the feel of it... | |
1225 | ||
1226 | ...unless you decide to hide and let them fight. You can do that, too. | |
1227 | -------------------------- | |
1228 | [ BOSS: Alice Margatroid ] | |
1229 | Music: | |
1230 | "Doll Judgment ~ The Girl Who Played with People's Shapes", from Touhou 7: Perfect Cherry Blossom | |
1231 | -------------------------- | |
1232 | Oh, was this fun to design. | |
1233 | ||
1234 | Alice Margatroid's main gimmick was the whole 'summoning dolls' thing. | |
1235 | ||
1236 | I'm not terribly proud of this fight. Both of her spellcards were from the fighting games. | |
1237 | ||
1238 | However, really, Alice is just a midboss. The real fight is... | |
1239 | ------------------------- | |
1240 | [ BOSS: Marisa Kirisame ] | |
1241 | Music: | |
1242 | "Love-Coloured Master Spark", from Touhou 8: Imperishable Night | |
1243 | "Magus Night", from Touhou 12.8: Fairy Wars | |
1244 | ------------------------- | |
1245 | Ahahahahahahaha. | |
1246 | ||
1247 | AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. | |
1248 | ||
1249 | AAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! | |
1250 | ||
1251 | So, I kind of knew, starting from the beginning, that I wanted to do a fight with Marisa. | |
1252 | ||
1253 | I had this fight planned out from since I started Episode II. The only issue was, well, | |
1254 | I didn't have the skills to implement it back then. That, and I liked having her fight | |
1255 | be later in the actual game - Marisa, even if she was easier (she's not), is very... | |
1256 | unique, shall we say. I definitely would want her to be a late fight. | |
1257 | ||
1258 | I really did not know which of her themes to use, as she has way too many: | |
1259 | Touhou 2, 3, 4, 7.5, 8, 9, 10.5, 12.3, 12.8, 13.5, and 14.5. | |
1260 | ||
1261 | 'Love-Colored Magic' is probably her most iconic theme, and it's remix, | |
1262 | - | But two things prevented that: Like Marisa, I wasn't good enough to design her patterns. |
1262 | + | |
1263 | However, 'Magus Night' more properly evokes the emotion of "OH GOD IT'S MARISA" | |
1264 | that I wanted to go for, emotionally, as Marisa IS a main series playable character. | |
1265 | ||
1266 | So I went with both. 'Love-Coloured Master Spark' for the more 'normal' portion, and | |
1267 | 'Magus Night' for when she decides to be Marisa Kirisame. | |
1268 | ||
1269 | Marisa was probably the most fun I've ever had writing a character. | |
1270 | Her motivation for fighting you is such a joke and I love it. | |
1271 | ||
1272 | Canonically, the Hakkero, which Marisa uses to power her giant laser, Master Spark, | |
1273 | - | And, the more I think about it, the more she kind of had to be. |
1273 | + | |
1274 | be a Marisa fight without her firing a giant laser, so I wrote the 'backup Hakkero' | |
1275 | joke. While this is a complete violation of canon, Marisa tends to violate known canon | |
1276 | on a semi-regular basis in the actual series, so it's basically canon to violate canon. | |
1277 | ||
1278 | 'Blazing Star', if you're on Hard or Lunatic, is the first non-extra timeout card, | |
1279 | because of course Marisa would just have a timeout card in a non-extra fight. | |
1280 | ||
1281 | 'Big Freaking Spark 9000' is the most ridiculous card I have ever made. I love it. | |
1282 | There's absolutely no reason for this card to exist and that's why it has to exist. | |
1283 | That last sentence basically is Marisa's general Modus Operandi. | |
1284 | It was kind of a pain to design the card, but it was so worth it. | |
1285 | ||
1286 | When I saw the first person run into this card live, he died in exactly the way I wanted him to. | |
1287 | It was so terrible, and yet, it was also so perfect. | |
1288 | ||
1289 | Everything about this fight really came together. I'm really happy with it. | |
1290 | ||
1291 | ============================== | |
1292 | [ MAP19: Legendary Dreamland ] | |
1293 | Music: | |
1294 | "Eternal Shrine Maiden", from Touhou Album: Dolls in Psuedo Paradise | |
1295 | ------------------------------ | |
1296 | The Hakurei Shrine. | |
1297 | ||
1298 | I knew we'd have to visit the Hakurei Shrine eventually. | |
1299 | ||
1300 | It's one of the most iconic locations of Gensokyo. Also, in addition to that, | |
1301 | Reimu Hakurei is THE main playable character of the series, being playable | |
1302 | in every single main danmaku game, and all of the fighting games as well. | |
1303 | ||
1304 | In the end, I was planning a quick fight where you fight off demons from the shrine. | |
1305 | ||
1306 | Then I realized this felt wrong, because Reimu is the hero of her own story. | |
1307 | She's clean up her own shrine of all the demons. | |
1308 | ||
1309 | That's why there's no stage: Reimu already beat the stage for you. | |
1310 | ||
1311 | If you look, the trees are less detailed here than in other maps with trees. | |
1312 | They used to be just as detailed, but the problem is that this map was very | |
1313 | framerate intensive, and combined with Reimu's fight, this was a serious issue. | |
1314 | Since there's no reason to focus on the trees once the fight starts, they got the axe. | |
1315 | The Shrine itself keeps the detail because it's the iconic visual of the map. | |
1316 | ----------------------- | |
1317 | [ BOSS: Reimu Hakurei ] | |
1318 | Music: | |
1319 | "Mystic Oriental Love Consultation", from Touhou 10.5: Scarlet Weather Rhapsody | |
1320 | "Dichromatic Lotus Butterfly ~ Red and White", from Touhou Album: Dolls in Psuedo Paradise | |
1321 | ----------------------- | |
1322 | So, originally, Reimu was going to be the end of Episode II boss. | |
1323 | ||
1324 | But two things prevented that: Like Marisa, I wasn't good enough to design her patterns when I first got there. | |
1325 | ||
1326 | And also like Marisa, I wanted her to be a later boss, because, well... | |
1327 | ||
1328 | This fight. | |
1329 | ||
1330 | THIS FIGHT. | |
1331 | ||
1332 | Reimu is possibly THE fight I am the most proud of, because of many, MANY different things. | |
1333 | ||
1334 | Let's start with the difficulty: Reimu is by FAR the hardest boss up until this point. | |
1335 | At least on Lunatic. And, the more I think about it, the more she kind of had to be. | |
1336 | ||
1337 | Reimu Hakurei is the main playable character of the Touhou series. | |
1338 | Giving her anything less than a brutal fight would feel wrong. | |
1339 | ||
1340 | I wanted to convey this fact: from your perspective Reimu is the boss of this level, | |
1341 | but from Reimu's perspective, YOU are the boss of *her* level. | |
1342 | ||
1343 | She's the hero of her own story. She's not just another boss. | |
1344 | ||
1345 | She's a player. And she treats YOU like you're the boss. | |
1346 | ||
1347 | This brings us to the first aspect of the fight: The noncards. | |
1348 | The noncards are very notable in that you will see the Hakurei Amulet AND Persuasion Needle | |
1349 | attacks, from their original owner. She's attacking you with the kinds of attacks that are | |
1350 | normally what the player uses. Because, in normal Touhou, the player IS Reimu. | |
1351 | ||
1352 | Also, Reimu can fly, canonically. Unlike other bosses, who don't really use this ability | |
1353 | for engine-balance reasons (the ZDoom engine is not very good at going up or down), Reimu | |
1354 | WILL often jump into the air, and continue shooting from there. | |
1355 | ||
1356 | Actually, the fact Reimu moves so much during her noncards is pretty notable, too. | |
1357 | It's like she's trying to dodge your bullets. Because you know, you're the boss to her. | |
1358 | ||
1359 | The other side, of course, is the spellcards. | |
1360 | ||
1361 | The first two spellcards are semi-typical boss material. | |
1362 | The third, not so much, as it's meant to be something more akin to a player spellcard. | |
1363 | Which, if you've experimented with the spellcards, you'll know that it IS one. | |
1364 | ||
1365 | - | Ran Yakumo should have more frames. But alas, she's not playable in any game. |
1365 | + | |
1366 | ||
1367 | 'Fantasy Seal -Concentrate-' is a hell of a card. | |
1368 | I don't think anything else in the game homes in on you like it does. | |
1369 | Because Reimu isn't trying to give you a fair fight. She wants you GONE, | |
1370 | so she's a bit more direct about it. | |
1371 | ||
1372 | If you're on Hard or Lunatic, 'Fantasy Seal -Blink-' will be one hell of a trip. | |
1373 | ||
1374 | Admittedly her last card, 'Flying Mysterious Shrine Maiden', is much more boss-like. | |
1375 | I guess it's tradition to end with something with more visual spectacle than player punch. | |
1376 | ||
1377 | I knew, after making Marisa, that I had to use two themes for this fight. | |
1378 | "Mystic Oriental Love Consultation" is a very punchy theme that fits the energy of the first half. | |
1379 | "Dichromatic Lotus Butterfly" was her extra boss theme in another game, so it's a thing here. | |
1380 | ||
1381 | As you could hopefully guess, this was very hard to design. In particular: | |
1382 | -Balacing the homing attacks so they weren't undodgeable, but still threatening, was very hard. | |
1383 | -Getting Reimu's aerial attacks to work right was hard. | |
1384 | -Oh yeah, Reimu has an entirely separate set of animation for her aerial moves. Gotta rip those. | |
1385 | -Actually, Reimu's frames in general. She broke the frame count record when I made her. | |
1386 | -Evil Sealing Circle was hard because monsters don't like moving that much. | |
1387 | -Fantasy Seal -Concentrate- was a nightmare to balance, because seekers, really. | |
1388 | -Duplex Barrier took VERY long to figure out the A_Warp parameters to make the visual effect work. | |
1389 | -Fantasy Seal -Blink- was a very complicated set of linedef setup to make the teleports work right. | |
1390 | -And other things not mentioned here. | |
1391 | ||
1392 | - | I do like the her quote at the end of the fight, where she mentions that |
1392 | + | |
1393 | ||
1394 | Reimu is the boss I am single-handedly the most proud of in the entire project. | |
1395 | She really feels like the real character, even if that's unfortunate for you. | |
1396 | As it was put by a friend of mine: "Reimu is, regrettably, still Reimu." | |
1397 | ||
1398 | That's why in the end, I decided to make the fight end with Reimu getting interrupted. | |
1399 | Because it wouldn't feel right to actually beat her. She doesn't lose if she's serious. | |
1400 | ||
1401 | ================================= | |
1402 | [ MAP20: The Border of Gensokyo ] | |
1403 | Music: | |
1404 | - | SOME sense that every single portion feels very deliberately put together. |
1404 | + | |
1405 | "Charming Domination ~ Who Done It?", from Touhou 7: Perfect Cherry Blossom | |
1406 | --------------------------------- | |
1407 | We're not done yet. Of COURSE there's an Extra Stage. | |
1408 | ||
1409 | Yukari's a bit of a wildcard in any scenario. | |
1410 | If you're annoyed at her by this point in the story, then I'll fully take responsibility... | |
1411 | ||
1412 | By admitting it was entirely intentional. In fact, I got dekw to help make her dialogue | |
1413 | even LESS useful than it was in earlier iterations. Because that's Yukari Yakumo for you. | |
1414 | ||
1415 | I knew, that despite Yukari being plot relevant, that I wanted to save the reveal of | |
1416 | what she truly is for this point of time, since most people playing this are probably | |
1417 | more Doom players than Touhou players. | |
1418 | ||
1419 | As far as the Extra Stage itself goes, I decided to try something completely different. | |
1420 | ||
1421 | It's a pretty timing-faithful recreation of PCB's extra/phantasm stage. | |
1422 | ||
1423 | Right down to not being in first person anymore. It's a literal shmup stage. | |
1424 | ||
1425 | I was surprised by how difficult people found this. I personally think it's the easiest extra. | |
1426 | But that might be because I played the Touhou games and thus know how you're supposed to do this. | |
1427 | ||
1428 | Ran Yakumo should really have some more frames. But alas, she's not playable in any game. | |
1429 | ----------------------- | |
1430 | [ BOSS: Yukari Yakumo ] | |
1431 | Music: | |
1432 | "Night Falls ~ Evening Star", from Touhou 7.5: Immaterial and Missing Power | |
1433 | "Necrofantasia", from Touhou Album: Magical Astronomy (originally from PCB) | |
1434 | ----------------------- | |
1435 | "All I am giving you is the choice. Nothing more, and nothing less." | |
1436 | ||
1437 | Oddly enough, despite how much of an enigma Yukari's character is, | |
1438 | her fight is arguably the most straight-forward Extra Boss there is. | |
1439 | It's a pretty straightforward throwdown against ten different spellcards. | |
1440 | ||
1441 | Her first six noncards are referencial to both PCB and SWR. | |
1442 | Her last two noncards are basically her using her gaps to randomly | |
1443 | teleport in other attacks from across time and space, including both | |
1444 | danmaku attacks of others AND demonic attacks, because lol gap magic. | |
1445 | ||
1446 | Out of her ten spellcards, nine of them are from PCB. | |
1447 | ||
1448 | Yukari was probably the most painless extra boss I've ever designed. | |
1449 | ||
1450 | - | SECRET CHALLENGE I |
1450 | + | |
1451 | "Oh my GOD this card is SO STUPID" moments that plagued Flandre. | |
1452 | (and Koishi too, but it was intentional there.) | |
1453 | ||
1454 | 'Border of Life and Death' is also one of my favourite spells in the entire project. | |
1455 | If someone were to ask, "Describe Touhou Doom in one attack", it would be this card. | |
1456 | ||
1457 | I REALLY like her quote at the end of the fight, where she mentions that | |
1458 | "I never said at any point you had a choice with consequences." | |
1459 | ||
1460 | Mostly because the counterpoint, "DAMMIT YUKARI!", is something of a fandom catchphrase. | |
1461 | ||
1462 | ============================= | |
1463 | EPISODE III OVERALL THOUGHTS: | |
1464 | This might still be my favourite Episode out of the five. | |
1465 | It's short, but, in general, everything felt relatively cohesive and very deliberate. | |
1466 | It's the only episode to not really have any filler sections - everything has purpose. | |
1467 | ||
1468 | Then again, given it's only three maps + two secret bosses + extra, I guess it makes | |
1469 | SOME sense that every single portion feels very more deliberately put together. | |
1470 | ||
1471 | The post-release patches barely changed anything, if at all, with this episode, | |
1472 | aside from the decoupling of Touhou_DoomWeapons and Touhou_NoSpellcards. | |
1473 | ============================= | |
1474 | ||
1475 | +------------+ | |
1476 | < EPISODE IV > | |
1477 | +------------+ | |
1478 | ||
1479 | ======================== | |
1480 | [ MAP21: Burning Heat! ] | |
1481 | Music: | |
1482 | "Burning Heat! (Full Option MIX)", from Beatmania IIDX, | |
1483 | originally from Gradius II, as the stage 1 theme. | |
1484 | ------------------------ | |
1485 | So here we are. | |
1486 | ||
1487 | I knew, going into Episode IV, that I both needed and wanted to do something | |
1488 | VERY different from previous maps. I mean, after all, we're not in Gensokyo anymore. | |
1489 | ||
1490 | I chose to reference other shmups because Touhou ain't the only shmup there. | |
1491 | The first reference was Gradius, because while it's not a danmaku game, it's | |
1492 | the first major shmup ever made. Not giving it a shout-out seems kind of wrong. | |
1493 | ||
1494 | The map name "Burning Heat!" refers to the soundtrack name. | |
1495 | ||
1496 | I don't really know where I came up with the gimmick for this stage. It just kinda happened. | |
1497 | ||
1498 | I guess it was a compromise; I wanted to go back to Doom Weapons, but I also didn't want | |
1499 | to just suddenly get rid of weapons that you were using for so much of the wad. | |
1500 | ||
1501 | So you're timed. It also means that you get to see more of the weapons at lower power, | |
1502 | since most of Episode II and all of III you're at 400 power, which is the maximum. | |
1503 | ||
1504 | Of course, since your power is draining over the course of the level, this allowed me | |
1505 | to introduce the level gimmick: Three main weapons (SSG, Chaingun, and Rocket Launcher) | |
1506 | are only available by grabbing a skull key first (Blue, Red, and Yellow, respectively), | |
1507 | which means the first thing you must do is use your limited time danmaku weapons to get | |
1508 | the doom weapons so you can fight the rest of the level. | |
1509 | ||
1510 | This level ended up being surprisingly hard. The timed aspect is actually pretty brutal. | |
1511 | ||
1512 | My advice: The intended order of the keys is Blue (SSG), Red (Chaingun), then Yellow (RL) | |
1513 | ||
1514 | Fun fact: If you use touhou_doomweapons, which removes the danmaku weapons from play, | |
1515 | - | It can be annoying, but I also like the verticality of this map. |
1515 | + | |
1516 | you get a limited ammo Plasma Rifle. | |
1517 | --------------------------------------- | |
1518 | SECRET CHALLENGE I 'The Reveal of Hell' | |
1519 | --------------------------------------- | |
1520 | Welcome to the secret challenges! | |
1521 | ||
1522 | These are optional bonus challenges, though there IS a reward for beating them...? | |
1523 | - | SECRET CHALLENGE II |
1523 | + | |
1524 | The entrance to this challenge is a reference to Hell Revealed. At the start of the level, | |
1525 | before you enter the teleporter, shoot into the dark. Immediately. The wall behind you will | |
1526 | lower. In that lowered section, there's a Shotgun, a Backpack, and an invisible switch. | |
1527 | ||
1528 | Press this switch to enter. | |
1529 | ||
1530 | The challenge explains what to do when you enter. | |
1531 | ||
1532 | The name's a reference to Hell Revealed, fairly obviously. | |
1533 | ---------------------------- | |
1534 | [ BOSS: Danmaku Cyberdemon ] | |
1535 | Music: | |
1536 | "Take Care!", from Gradius III. Boss theme. | |
1537 | originally from Gradius II. Originally a boss theme. | |
1538 | ---------------------------- | |
1539 | So, referencing non-Touhou games meant that the bosses would be less phased. | |
1540 | ||
1541 | This is an example of such. In general I avoided using the Danmaku Cyberdemon because | |
1542 | I knew I wanted to make it a boss in Episode IV. Any Doom player knows this is coming, | |
1543 | but seeing it for the first time is really something. | |
1544 | ||
1545 | It's also not THAT short, due to having no plasma rifle or full power danmaku weapon. | |
1546 | ||
1547 | This boss ALSO comes with some minions; Dark Imps are the first custom danmaku demon. | |
1548 | As in, first danmaku demon that is not based on a vanilla Doom monster. | |
1549 | ||
1550 | A generic boss, but it serves the purpose well. Hence why I chose a very short BGM. | |
1551 | ||
1552 | ================================ | |
1553 | [ MAP22: Thunder and Lightning ] | |
1554 | Music: | |
1555 | "Flap Towards the Hope", from Raiden IV. Stage 3 theme. | |
1556 | originally from Raiden II, where it was the stage 7 theme. | |
1557 | -------------------------------- | |
1558 | This map was inspired by a few different Doom maps: | |
1559 | -Valiant MAP22: 'Spiraling into Nether' and MAP23: 'Genocide Motor' | |
1560 | -TUTNT's 'The Beginning and The End' | |
1561 | Valiant's an excellent doom wad, you should check it out if you haven't already. | |
1562 | TUTNT's a bit more controversial, but if nothing else it looks AMAZING. | |
1563 | ||
1564 | I decided to reference Raiden because it's also a pretty neat shmup series. | |
1565 | Raiden's a very different kind of bullet hell, as it's more focused on fast | |
1566 | bullets than overly dense walls of bullets typical of the genre. | |
1567 | ||
1568 | Also, Raiden fangame 'Raiden X' was my first shmup ever, | |
1569 | so it holds a special place in my heart. | |
1570 | ||
1571 | The Raiden series' music is cool. Hence why I used it. | |
1572 | ||
1573 | The name "Thunder and Lightning" comes from what the kanji used in 'Raiden' translate to. | |
1574 | Despite the fact that Raiden is almost ALWAYS in standard latin alphabet characters. | |
1575 | ||
1576 | When I imported the lightning effects for Iku Nagae (MAP31), I ended up importing | |
1577 | several different lightning colors, so I decided I should find a use for the others. | |
1578 | ||
1579 | This map is pretty attrition heavy. The initial megasphere has to survive all the way to halfway. | |
1580 | At least on Lunatic. It's more forgiving on easier difficulties. | |
1581 | ||
1582 | I really didn't know what to do with this map for the longest time. | |
1583 | I've always found drawing the map layout to be the hardest part of mapping. | |
1584 | ||
1585 | It can be annoying sometimes, but I also like the verticality of this map. | |
1586 | ||
1587 | In the end, the visual effect of the lightning helps carry the fact that, really, in the end, | |
1588 | it's just a linear series of fights against Danmaku demons. I also introduce the rest of the | |
1589 | custom monsters here: The Guardian Cube, and the Suicide Bomber, and two others. | |
1590 | ||
1591 | I actually designed this map AFTER I made MAP23. | |
1592 | --------------------------------------- | |
1593 | SECRET CHALLENGE II 'Become The Hunted' | |
1594 | --------------------------------------- | |
1595 | There's a switch in the lava very close to where you start. | |
1596 | ||
1597 | I wanted a challenge with Archviles. Lots of Archviles. | |
1598 | - | -------------------- |
1598 | + | |
1599 | - | SECRET CHALLENGE III |
1599 | + | The name is taken from the soundtrack of Plutonia 2's MAP11: Arch-Violence. |
1600 | - | -------------------- |
1600 | + | |
1601 | [ BOSS: Danmaku Daedabus X 5 ] | |
1602 | Music: | |
1603 | "Go to Blazes!", from Raiden IV | |
1604 | - | This challenge is a reference to a secret map from DUMP 3, called "The Best Map", by |
1604 | + | |
1605 | ------------------------------ | |
1606 | Not a terribly special fight, but it's an introduction to a new monster. | |
1607 | ||
1608 | Really nothing special. | |
1609 | ----------------------------------- | |
1610 | [ BOSS: Danmaku Bruiser Demon X 3 ] | |
1611 | Music: | |
1612 | "Metal Storm", from Raiden IV | |
1613 | originally from Raiden II. Boss theme. | |
1614 | ----------------------------------- | |
1615 | This thing is a bit more special. The Bruiser Demon is a custom boss monster | |
1616 | that's been featured in a few different wads. Since I knew I needed some custom | |
1617 | monsters, I wanted to, in the vein of the vanilla danmaku demons, make custom | |
1618 | danmaku demons that were based off known custom monsters. The bruiser demon was, | |
1619 | in retrospect, a fairly obvious choice, because it's flashy as hell to start with, | |
1620 | and I could REALLY go places with the thing. Which I did. | |
1621 | ||
1622 | Also, I really like Metal Storm. It's a cool theme. | |
1623 | ||
1624 | ======================================= | |
1625 | [ MAP23: Trial of the Masked Hawfinch ] | |
1626 | Music: | |
1627 | "Faith", from Ikaruga. Stage 3 theme. | |
1628 | --------------------------------------- | |
1629 | There's a mouthful of a name. | |
1630 | ||
1631 | For those out of the loop, 'Ikaruga' is the name for the Japanese grosbeak, a species of bird. | |
1632 | The Japanese grosbeak is, by another name, called the "Masked Hawfinch". | |
1633 | ||
1634 | Ikaruga is a very notable and pretty well known bullet hell game, so yeah. | |
1635 | ||
1636 | As for the Doom side, this map was inspired by three different maps: | |
1637 | -Speed of Doom MAP27: Hais Temple | |
1638 | -Deus Vult II's MAP12: Minas Morgul | |
1639 | -And a third map I'll reveal later. | |
1640 | Both of the first two are excellent wads, which is why I drew inspiration from them. | |
1641 | ||
1642 | I actually referenced Ikaruga itself through the map - the map is VERY visually distinct, | |
1643 | with it being split down the middle into a red half and blue half. The map itself is, uh, | |
1644 | - | SECRET CHALLENGE IV |
1644 | + | |
1645 | level works FOR it rather than against it. It's one of the ways I got better at mapping: | |
1646 | I learned to analyze my weaknesses and make scenarios where they aren't weaknesses. | |
1647 | ||
1648 | The big hallway fight is a reference to Deus Vult II's MAP12, as mentioned above. | |
1649 | It's not really that hard. Just keep pumping rockets into the horde and eventually | |
1650 | all of the monsters will die. | |
1651 | ||
1652 | The Archvile trap at the end of the hallway is one of my favourite moments in this map. | |
1653 | The thing is, with vanilla monsters, this would be instant death - you can't dodge viles. | |
1654 | But with danmaku demons, you can run backwards and survive - though, watch for resurrections. | |
1655 | ||
1656 | The layout itself is more Speed of Doom's MAP27, with the key split. | |
1657 | ||
1658 | As you could guess, you need to grab two keys: Red and Blue keys. | |
1659 | After you grab the first one, the Cyberdemon appears in the center connecting room. | |
1660 | I did this because I wanted to let the player know that the former boss monsters are | |
1661 | now entirely fair game for me to use. In fact, there's two bruiser demons and a couple | |
1662 | daedabi - monsters that were literally boss monsters one map ago! The second cyberdemon, | |
1663 | of course, is easier than the first, owing to the fact that you have a plasma rifle. | |
1664 | There's also 20 lost souls accompanying it, referencing Doom's E2M8: Tower of Babel. | |
1665 | ||
1666 | This is one of my personal favourite maps from the Episode. It works really nicely. | |
1667 | ||
1668 | After activating both key switches, you'll get into a fight with 12 Danmaku Barons. | |
1669 | If you know the third reference map, then you'll guess what the boss is. | |
1670 | ----------------------------------------- | |
1671 | SECRET CHALLENGE III 'The Best Challenge' | |
1672 | ----------------------------------------- | |
1673 | At the very start of the level, turn around. The wall behind you is a door. Open it. | |
1674 | There's a teleporter inside the room behind you. Enter it to begin the challenge. | |
1675 | ||
1676 | This challenge (and the name) is a reference to a secret map from DUMP 3, called "The Best Map", by | |
1677 | TerminusEst13. It's a bunch of zombiemen shooting at you while you go back and forth | |
1678 | pressing switches. So that's what this is, but instead it's now danmaku zombiemen. | |
1679 | --------------------------------------- | |
1680 | [ BOSS: Danmaku Spider Mastermind X 2 ] | |
1681 | Music: | |
1682 | "Butsutekkai", from Ikaruga. Boss theme. | |
1683 | --------------------------------------- | |
1684 | The big enemy is approaching at full throttle. | |
1685 | According to the data, it is known as "SPIDER MASTERMIND" | |
1686 | NO REFUGE | |
1687 | ||
1688 | If the danmaku cyberdemon was a thing, of COURSE this will also be a thing. | |
1689 | ||
1690 | The third reference map was PSX Doom's Redemption Denied, where you fight 12 Barons, | |
1691 | followed by fighting TWO Spider Masterminds at once. Replicating that here, you must | |
1692 | fight two danmaku masterminds at once as their introduction. Except, unlike vanilla | |
1693 | masterminds, these things don't infight. Have fun! | |
1694 | ||
1695 | The main reason I used the Masterminds in this map and not MAP22 is that they actually | |
1696 | FIT in this map. Those things are giant and they get stuck EVERYWHERE. It's a pain, really. | |
1697 | ||
1698 | ===================== | |
1699 | [ MAP24: Levi Sense ] | |
1700 | --------------------- | |
1701 | Choose, and choose wisely. | |
1702 | ||
1703 | Both of next maps are gimmick maps, so I decided to be nice and let the player | |
1704 | decide which challenge to tackle. One of the things I did was that I made the | |
1705 | path to each teleporter give a short preview of what the map behind it will be like. | |
1706 | ||
1707 | The Red teleporter gives you a chainsaw and berserk to take out some weaker demons. | |
1708 | ||
1709 | The Blue teleporter surrounds you with a trap that requires some quick reflexes to get out of. | |
1710 | ||
1711 | Both this map and the two maps they lead to are references to Mushihimesama, a legendarily | |
1712 | difficult shmup, and also where the name "Ultra" comes from in the difficulty select screen. | |
1713 | ||
1714 | The name is from Mushihimesama's OST. It's the boss theme, though it's not used in this map. | |
1715 | -------------------------------------- | |
1716 | SECRET CHALLENGE IV 'Cybernetic Dream' | |
1717 | -------------------------------------- | |
1718 | I didn't want to put secret challenge 4 in both maps, so it's here instead. | |
1719 | ||
1720 | To get to it, just walk backwards off the platform. There's a teleporter there. | |
1721 | If you land on it, you get teleported to a chamber with 12 cyberdemons in it. | |
1722 | ||
1723 | This challenge is a reference to an old wad called cyberdreams, which is about | |
1724 | dodging large numbers of cyberdemons at the player while killing them in ways | |
1725 | that don't involve shooting them. It gets pretty crazy at times. | |
1726 | ||
1727 | 'Cyberdreams' is also where the name comes from. | |
1728 | ||
1729 | This is the first challenge to truly require some luck to survive, though, | |
1730 | you can come up with some strategies to make it a lot more consistent. | |
1731 | If the AI's out for you, though, you ain't getting this. | |
1732 | ||
1733 | Thankfully, it's short, so repeated attempts don't take much time. | |
1734 | ||
1735 | ======================================= | |
1736 | [ MAP33: Walking on the Land of Flame ] | |
1737 | Music: | |
1738 | "Walking on the Land of Flame", Mushihimesama. Stage 3 theme. | |
1739 | --------------------------------------- | |
1740 | "WHY IS THERE A TYSON MAP IN THIS?!" - most Doom wad veterans, probably. | |
1741 | ||
1742 | A number of doom wads like to have ONE obligatory map that revolves around punching things. | |
1743 | ||
1744 | I decided to make one. It's a simple series of fights, but getting close to danmaku demons | |
1745 | is, uh, slightly difficult under most circumstances. It's pretty nuts, and I ended up toning | |
1746 | this down several times. 75 monsters, and it might STILL be one of the hardest maps in the wad. | |
1747 | Monster count is absolutely not everything here! | |
1748 | ||
1749 | Tip of advice: You do not need to clear out the monsters on the long black and white platform. | |
1750 | For many (arguably most) players, killing the hell nobles is more trouble than it's worth. | |
1751 | ||
1752 | After getting past the tyson section, it then abruptly transitions to a high-tier weapons. | |
1753 | You even get the BFG 9000, and then fight two cyberdemons at once, because yeah. | |
1754 | ------------------------------- | |
1755 | [ BOSS: Danmaku Cybruiser X 4 ] | |
1756 | Music: | |
1757 | "Levi Sense", from Mushihimesama. Boss theme. | |
1758 | ------------------------------- | |
1759 | Basically a weaker version of the Danmaku Cyberdemon. | |
1760 | ||
1761 | These things are very versatile monsters. They have a LOT of different attacks, and often enough | |
1762 | these things get placed in groups of up to four, making them a pretty fearsome opponent if you | |
1763 | aren't being careful, since you can find yourself taking a lot of damage if you get careless. | |
1764 | ||
1765 | Even with a BFG, these things have enough health that it's hard to kill them fast enough | |
1766 | to avoid having to take cover. There's not a lot of space to dodge all four of them. | |
1767 | ||
1768 | ======================================== | |
1769 | [ MAP34: Like a Night of Falling Stars ] | |
1770 | Music: | |
1771 | "Like a Night of Falling Stars", from Mushihimesama. Stage 4 theme. | |
1772 | ---------------------------------------- | |
1773 | "It was lazy design this time." - Untitled (a.k.a. me, the designer of Touhou Doom) | |
1774 | ||
1775 | I mentioned in Koishi's boss fight that the original Touhou Doom copied a map from Free Doom. | |
1776 | ||
1777 | This was my way of mocking it while also turning that joke into something very different. | |
1778 | ||
1779 | What do I mean? Well, this map is only *sort of* original. It's, of course, my map, but... | |
1780 | It's my map from another project. The original map is called 'Dimensional Accelerator', | |
1781 | and it's featured in the 3rd Doom Upstart Mapping Project, a.k.a. DUMP 3. | |
1782 | I consider the original to be one of my best standard Doom maps I've ever made. | |
1783 | Then again, I haven't made very many. | |
1784 | ||
1785 | The "It was lazy design this time" is making fun of my map quote from DUMP 3, | |
1786 | which states: "Creative idea or lazy design? You decide!" | |
1787 | ||
1788 | Since I copied the map from DUMP 3, so obviously it was lazy design in this case. | |
1789 | ||
1790 | The Spider Mastermind in this map is the only solo mastermind in the entire wad. | |
1791 | - | SECRET CHALLENGE V |
1791 | + | |
1792 | Of course, to add a twist to things, I made three major changes to the map. | |
1793 | ||
1794 | The first is that I replaced all the standard demons with danmaku demons. | |
1795 | The second is that you get Touhou Weapons for this. Hakkero Fire is finally useful! | |
1796 | The third is that the last fight is, well... | |
1797 | ------------------------------- | |
1798 | [ BOSS: Danmaku Cybruiser X 4 ] | |
1799 | Music: | |
1800 | "Levi Sense", from Mushihimesama. Boss theme. | |
1801 | ------------------------------- | |
1802 | Yep, it's the same boss monster. | |
1803 | ||
1804 | Only this time there's no BFG. | |
1805 | ||
1806 | Good luck. | |
1807 | ||
1808 | ================================ | |
1809 | [ MAP25: A Most Blissful Death ] | |
1810 | Music: | |
1811 | "Taidou (Grieving Womb)", from DoDonPachi DaiOuJou. Stage 5 theme. | |
1812 | -------------------------------- | |
1813 | The name comes from the translation of "DaiOuJou". A fitting name, I feel. Also, because | |
1814 | I had to refernce DoDonPachi. It might be the most legendary Bullet Hell series of all time. | |
1815 | DoDonPachi is arguably the reason that the genre of danmaku games even exists. | |
1816 | ||
1817 | This is inspired by the following Doom maps: | |
1818 | -DTS-T MAP29: Seven | |
1819 | -Scythe II MAP28: Nightmare | |
1820 | -Deus Vult II MAP23: Hell's Vendetta | |
1821 | -Survive in Hell MAP30: Crowning Glory | |
1822 | -A few limit slaughtermaps from Stronghold | |
1823 | ||
1824 | If you look at the list of inspirations, four out of the five of those were slaughtermaps. | |
1825 | That, combined with the initial monster count being well over a thousand, should tell you | |
1826 | what kind of map you're about to play. It's a danmaku slaughtermap. And it is glorious. | |
1827 | Besides, the BFG 9000 could really use a featured moment. It's an awesome weapon, and it | |
1828 | really should see at least ONE moment where it's the important weapon in your arsenal. | |
1829 | ||
1830 | The layout is pretty simple; you need six keys to progress; 2 blue, 2 red, and 2 yellow. | |
1831 | ||
1832 | The keycards are all based on boss fights: | |
1833 | ||
1834 | Yellow Keycard: 4 Cyberdemons | |
1835 | The cyberdemon, in ordinary circumstances, is a boss monster that is generally rare. | |
1836 | So when a wad throws multiple cyberdemons at once, it's a clear sign that, in fact, | |
1837 | you are in a slaughtermap. It's not too hard though. | |
1838 | Blue Keycard: 4 Bruiser Demons + 4 Cybruisers | |
1839 | This is where the BFG can REALLY shine. The enemies spawn one at a time here, so | |
1840 | if you're fast, you can kill every enemy before the next one spawns. | |
1841 | This is the intended strategy, so good luck if you let them all spawn at once. | |
1842 | Red Keycard: 4 Spider Masterminds | |
1843 | I didn't really have a plan for this one. I just knew I wanted a battle with | |
1844 | four spider masterminds, because of the previous two keycard fights. | |
1845 | ||
1846 | The skull keys are based on various slaughter fights. | |
1847 | ||
1848 | Yellow Skull: Chaingunners + Revenants + Pain Elementals, referencing DTS-T MAP29's 'Wrath'. | |
1849 | I like this one, because the normal versions of those monsters are incredibly | |
1850 | ANNOYING things that drive players nuts. However, the danmaku versions, while | |
1851 | throwing more firepower around, are not as annoying. They're consistent. | |
1852 | Blue Skull: Based on Deus Vult II MAP23's blue skull key room. | |
1853 | Like most of the skull key fights, you'll want to switch from Rocket Launcher to BFG. | |
1854 | I don't have much to say about this, it's just a long teleporter trap that really | |
1855 | showcases a lot of the danmaku demons. | |
1856 | Red Skull: Based on Stronghold's love of occasional mass suicide bomber waves. | |
1857 | I had to do it. I mean, I had to. I can't have screaming suicide bombers and then | |
1858 | not use them in a giant mass at least once. Here, I'll summarize the experience: | |
1859 | AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! | |
1860 | ||
1861 | I really wanted a proper slaughtermap for the wad. | |
1862 | ||
1863 | The slaughter helps distract from the segments that aren't as detailed. | |
1864 | ---------------------------- | |
1865 | SECRET CHALLENGE V 'Kamilia' | |
1866 | Music: | |
1867 | "Toa (East Asia)", from DoDonPachi DaiOuJou. Stage 1 theme. Used for all secret challenges. | |
1868 | ---------------------------- | |
1869 | To access: At the very beginning of the map, enter the gate from the other side. | |
1870 | ||
1871 | This challenge is a reference to an entirely different genre of absurdly hardcore games: | |
1872 | I Wanna Be The Guy Fangames. One of these, I Wanna Kill The Kamilia 3 (abbreviated to KK3), | |
1873 | had secret challenges. That game is what inspired me to do these secret challenges. | |
1874 | ||
1875 | This is a giant reference to the infamous incredibly stupidly difficult Secret 5 from KK3. | |
1876 | ||
1877 | It's kind of absurd, really. I can only promise you that it IS actually possible on Lunatic. | |
1878 | On average it takes me a couple dozen attempts before I get a successful run of it. | |
1879 | ||
1880 | Also, KK3 is why I used 'Toa' as the secret challenge theme. It used it there, too, so actually, | |
1881 | KK3 veterans might suspect I was going to pull a Secret 5 even before seeing, well, Secret 5. | |
1882 | ||
1883 | However, this map is where you can discover the rewards for doing the secret challenges: | |
1884 | When you start the map for real, the map opens with you getting ten system cards: | |
1885 | Eight Spirit Barriers and Two Life Regenerators. | |
1886 | ||
1887 | However, for each secret challenge you complete, two of those system cards are replaced | |
1888 | with full-blown powerful spellcards that wipe out tons of demons with one cast. | |
1889 | ||
1890 | Complete all five challenges? You get TEN different full-blown spellcards. | |
1891 | ||
1892 | You may need them, though: | |
1893 | ------------------ | |
1894 | [ BOSS: The Core ] | |
1895 | Music: | |
1896 | "Ouryuu (Yellow Stream)", from DoDonPachi DaiOuJou. Normal Final boss theme. | |
1897 | ------------------ | |
1898 | I knew, when I pulled that twist in MAP19, at the end of Reimu's fight, that eventually | |
1899 | Reimu was going to come back. Only this time, she'd come back as a friend instead of a foe. | |
1900 | ||
1901 | If you thought enemy Reimu was crazy, you should meet ally Reimu. She's even more powerful. | |
1902 | ||
1903 | I really hate it when games allow a former enemy to be on the player's side...but then make | |
1904 | said former enemy WAY weaker than they were as an enemy. Reimu is a player character, dammit! | |
1905 | ||
1906 | So I made her VERY powerful. The only reason why she can't solo the fight is that it's, well... | |
1907 | ||
1908 | The Core is an Icon of Sin fight. That means that it spawns monsters infinitely until you kill it. | |
1909 | In this iteration, it spawns monsters VERY fast. Especially on Lunatic mode. However, Reimu will | |
1910 | kill those monsters pretty fast as well. It gets very chaotic because of the nature of this. | |
1911 | ||
1912 | The 5 switches ensure that the player has to move around a fair bit. Reimu won't hit those for you. | |
1913 | ||
1914 | After activating the switches, the core is left vulnerable. It's technically not a monster, | |
1915 | so Reimu will never target it for you. You gotta do that yourself. However, it's exposed | |
1916 | to the open, which means you can BFG it in melee range to kill it fairly quickly. | |
1917 | ||
1918 | What happens next depends on how many secret challenges you've completed: | |
1919 | 2 or less: The map ends here. | |
1920 | 3 or more: | |
1921 | ------------------------------ | |
1922 | [ BOSS: Danmaku Arachnophyte ] | |
1923 | Music: | |
1924 | "Death Label 95-97-02", by (mostly Touhou) doujin circle COOL&CREATE. | |
1925 | Original tracks are from Donpachi, Dodonpachi, and Dondonpachi Daioujou. All Boss themes. | |
1926 | - | The boss will randomly pick the first two cards out of a bag of fourteen different cards; |
1926 | + | |
1927 | - | two of them from Episode I, six from Episode II, and another six from Episode III. |
1927 | + | |
1928 | - | And there's a 100% that you've seen the cards before. No optional ones were included. |
1928 | + | |
1929 | This thing is a flying version of the danmaku spider mastermind. | |
1930 | ||
1931 | Except it has some deadlier attacks, and can't be interrupted mid-attack at all. | |
1932 | ||
1933 | Also, this variant is scripted to Teleport, with the frequency increasing | |
1934 | depending on how much health it has left. Oh, and it's much more aggressive, | |
1935 | moving faster and attacking near-constantly, because why the hell not. It's a bonus boss. | |
1936 | ||
1937 | What happens after this boss depends on how many secret challenges you've completed: | |
1938 | 3: The map ends here. | |
1939 | 4 or more: | |
1940 | ------------------------------ | |
1941 | [ BOSS: Danmaku Annihilator* ] | |
1942 | *: There are two of them if you have completed all 5 challenges. | |
1943 | ------------------------------ | |
1944 | The Danmaku Cyberdemon needed a second arm cannon. | |
1945 | ||
1946 | "No, it didn't!", you might say. | |
1947 | ||
1948 | You'd be right, in a sane world. | |
1949 | ||
1950 | This is not a sane world. | |
1951 | ||
1952 | ===================================== | |
1953 | [ MAP26: Truth of the Warp Facility ] | |
1954 | Music: | |
1955 | "Here we are!", Undertale. | |
1956 | "Core", Undertale. | |
1957 | ------------------------------------- | |
1958 | And now for something completely different. Again. | |
1959 | ||
1960 | Quote from the MAP01 description: | |
1961 | "The other thing was that making the map better allowed me to setup a neat twist later on." | |
1962 | ||
1963 | This was the later twist. MAP26's twist was to replay this map all over again, but... | |
1964 | ||
1965 | The Fairy specimens would refuse their capture. The demons don't stand a chance. | |
1966 | ||
1967 | Designing this map was very hard, because it represented the first time that I needed | |
1968 | to scale back and make something more typically Doom-like: A Tech-base level. Unfortunately, | |
1969 | I have no experience in making techbases, and I think it unfortunately shows. With that in mind, | |
1970 | the more you map, the better you get at mapping, so any aspiring map makers reading this: | |
1971 | Don't give up! Keep trying, and you'll make something fun. | |
1972 | ||
1973 | This map is interesting in that it really shows why so many maps in Touhou Doom are | |
1974 | made to be incredibly wide-open; this map is a lot of tight corridors found, in, well, | |
1975 | more actually typical Doom wads. But the fairies are Danmaku enemies through and through - | |
1976 | thus the contrast, as you have to dodge very dense attacks with VERY little room. | |
1977 | ||
1978 | As a result, it's arguably one of the hardest maps in the wad. | |
1979 | ||
1980 | And that's just getting started. Halfway through, you get the Danmaku Weapons back. | |
1981 | ||
1982 | The 2nd half is where things get crazy. I didn't even pretend to be fair about this. | |
1983 | The fight immediately after the music change is designed to be near unwinnable. | |
1984 | You really should just run away from it, because you'll just get yourself killed otherwise. | |
1985 | ||
1986 | If you want to UV-Max this (er, Lunatic Max), good luck, you WILL need it. | |
1987 | Or have unbelievably good tactics for dealing with the fairies. Either works. | |
1988 | ||
1989 | Because it's time to fight another Danmaku boss. | |
1990 | ------------- | |
1991 | [ BOSS: ??? ] | |
1992 | Music: | |
1993 | "Battle Against a True Hero!", Undertale | |
1994 | ------------- | |
1995 | This song was the reason I chose to reference Undertale. It's basically already a Touhou song. | |
1996 | In addition to that, the map IS actually a large underground lab, like the True lab from Undertale. | |
1997 | But mostly, it was this song. | |
1998 | ||
1999 | The boss in question is basically "What if Patchouli's Gimmick met Satori's gimmick?" | |
2000 | The boss will randomly pick the first two cards out of a bag of sixteen different cards; | |
2001 | eight from Episode II, and another eight from Episode III. | |
2002 | ||
2003 | There's a 100% that you've seen the cards before. No optional ones were included. | |
2004 | ||
2005 | Of course, that's the spellcards. The boss has noncards, too. Unfortunately for you, | |
2006 | said noncards are a reference to Scythe II's evil marines. Welcome to Danmaku Deathmatch. | |
2007 | ||
2008 | This lasts until you beat the second card; the boss then reveals itself more truly. | |
2009 | ||
2010 | The third spellcard is a random pick from one of four patterns. | |
2011 | The fourth spellcard is also a random pick from one of four patterns. | |
2012 | ||
2013 | If you are on any difficulty aside from Easy, the last card is a timeout. | |
2014 | Unlike the others, it is not a random pick from one of multiple patterns. | |
2015 | ||
2016 | Designing this boss was an interesting experience, because it was the first truly original | |
2017 | Boss I had made for Touhou Doom. I had to really think about what I wanted to accomplish with | |
2018 | this boss slot, especially given it's the second last true boss, before the final boss fight. | |
2019 | ||
2020 | It was honestly quite challenging. I had a lot of issues balancing this thing. | |
2021 | Ah, well, such is the nature of RNG; it can be a real pain sometimes. | |
2022 | ||
2023 | V1.2 Update: So originally the first two cards were picked from a bag of fourteen cards: | |
2024 | two from Episode I, six from Episode II, and another six from Episode III. But I realized that | |
2025 | Satori already re-collected Episode I cards, so the gimmick would be less effective. | |
2026 | So, as of now, the first card is a recollection of a card from Episode II, | |
2027 | and now the second card is a recollection of a card from Episode III. | |
2028 | ||
2029 | ========================================= | |
2030 | [ MAP27: Western Apocalypse in the East ] | |
2031 | ----------------------------------------- | |
2032 | Just when I thought MAP18 and MAP25 were crazy. We've seen nothing yet. | |
2033 | ||
2034 | In the end, I knew that I wanted to make an All-out Gensokyo VS. Hell showdown. | |
2035 | ||
2036 | And then I went ahead and did exactly that. Sort of. | |
2037 | ||
2038 | So, originally I wanted all five segments of MAP27 to be one map. | |
2039 | ||
2040 | However, it inevitably became unplayably laggy, even on my personal computer, | |
2041 | (which is very strong by community standards), so that wasn't going to happen. | |
2042 | ------------------------------------------ | |
2043 | [ MAP27A: Western Apocalypse in the East ] | |
2044 | Music: | |
2045 | "Septette for the Dead Princess", from Touhou 10.5: Scarlet Weather Rhapsody. | |
2046 | ------------------------------------------ | |
2047 | Welcome back to the Scarlet Devil Mansion! | |
2048 | ||
2049 | Helping you clear out the mess are former bosses Patchouli, Sakuya, and Remilia. | |
2050 | ||
2051 | Much like with Reimu, I wanted to show off that they aren't just bosses. | |
2052 | As a result, they're still pretty lethal. And they can use spellcards. | |
2053 | Hey, at least Sakuya doesn't freeze time when she's your ally. | |
2054 | ||
2055 | While the monster density is very high, your allies kill very fast. | |
2056 | ||
2057 | And so do you, to be honest. | |
2058 | ||
2059 | Oh, and there's a Danmaku Annihilator. It shouldn't be an issue. | |
2060 | ------------------------------------------ | |
2061 | [ MAP27B: Western Apocalypse in the East ] | |
2062 | Music: | |
2063 | "Faith is for Transient People", from Touhou 10: Mountain of Faith | |
2064 | ------------------------------------------ | |
2065 | And now we're back to the Moriya Shrine. | |
2066 | ||
2067 | Aiding you at this location is Sanae, Iku, and Tenshi. | |
2068 | ||
2069 | Weirdly enough, when you think about it, if you've only played through Episode III once, | |
2070 | then either one or two of the bosses here are characters you haven't seen before. | |
2071 | Which is kind of neat, IMO, it really notes that most characters aren't villains. | |
2072 | Even if Tenshi is helping you out more out pure boredom than benevolence. | |
2073 | ||
2074 | The scene where all of the Cacodemons fly up from below the clouds was a scene I had planned | |
2075 | from a long time ago. I knew, when I was working on the concept of the Gensokyo VS. Hell map, | |
2076 | that I really wanted to have this visual effect of seeing the cacodemons suddenly fly up from | |
2077 | all around the mountain. It's pretty crazy. | |
2078 | ||
2079 | Amongst the flyers is a Danmaku Arachnophyte. Kill it to proceed. | |
2080 | ------------------------------------------ | |
2081 | [ MAP27C: Western Apocalypse in the East ] | |
2082 | Music: | |
2083 | "Magus Night", from Touhou 12.8: Fairy Wars | |
2084 | ------------------------------------------ | |
2085 | Forest of Magic, round two. Only this time there's way more demons... | |
2086 | ||
2087 | And way more powerful allies. Youmu, Yuyuko, Alice, and Marisa all join in the fun. | |
2088 | ||
2089 | Alice continually summons more dolls, and Marisa packs kind of absurd firepower. | |
2090 | Master Spark is no joke. Also, fun fact: If you stand directly in the path of | |
2091 | Marisa's giant laser when it fires, that actually kills you, even though you're | |
2092 | mostly immune to ally fire of all sorts. | |
2093 | ||
2094 | The forest is a very large map, which is why I through a LOT more monsters here. | |
2095 | MAP25 is absolutely put to shame by this. I throw, what, twenty cyberdemons here? | |
2096 | It's absolutely nuts. Kill them all to proceed. | |
2097 | ------------------------------------------ | |
2098 | [ MAP27D: Western Apocalypse in the East ] | |
2099 | Music: | |
2100 | "Mystic Oriental Love Consultation", from Touhou 10.5: Scarlet Weather Rhapsody | |
2101 | ------------------------------------------ | |
2102 | And now, we finally loop back around to the Hakurei Shrine. Because of course we do. | |
2103 | ||
2104 | The Hakurei Shrine battle has Suika, and, of course, Reimu, for your allies. | |
2105 | ||
2106 | To iterate again on how powerful ally Reimu is: It takes concentrated hell nobles, | |
2107 | and some advanced ones at that, to keep her from slaughtering them all trivially. | |
2108 | Also, fun fact: This is the only map to use Danmaku Belphegors...which are literally | |
2109 | just recolored Barons. They aren't anything special at all. | |
2110 | ||
2111 | The segment where every previous ally character comes back is completely free. | |
2112 | Which is good, because I'm not convinced that runs at a playable framerate most people. | |
2113 | ||
2114 | This was going to be much crazier, but framerate drops were sadly common, so | |
2115 | I took out a lot of monsters from this to make it barely playable for people. | |
2116 | ||
2117 | And after that, the final invasion has been foiled very spectacularly. | |
2118 | ------------------------- | |
2119 | [ MAP27 General Remarks ] | |
2120 | ------------------------- | |
2121 | In general, this was one of the easier maps (well, 5 maps) to make, | |
2122 | but mostly for the obvious reason that I got to reuse a LOT of map geometry. | |
2123 | ||
2124 | ====================================== | |
2125 | [ MAP28: The One who Opens the Gates ] | |
2126 | Music: | |
2127 | "Into Backdoor", from Touhou 16: Into Backdoor | |
2128 | -------------------------------------- | |
2129 | Whoa, back into shmup land. | |
2130 | ||
2131 | I kind of wanted a throwaway stage akin to the first two Episodes, but at the same time, | |
2132 | I didn't want the last proper stage segment to be completely forgettable. So I decided | |
2133 | to bring back a gimmick some people may have missed from Episode III; namely because said | |
2134 | gimmick was an extra stage exclusive. The stage is thankfully short, though, so if you | |
2135 | don't like it, you only have to survive a minute or so. | |
2136 | ||
2137 | Abstract space maps are fun because you don't have to detail as much for it to look nice. | |
2138 | ||
2139 | With that out of the way: | |
2140 | ------------------------ | |
2141 | [ BOSS: Mephistopheles ] | |
2142 | Music: | |
2143 | "Unknown X ~ Unfound Adventure", from Touhou 12.3: Touhou Hisoutensoku | |
2144 | "X, the Floating Objects in the Sky", from Touhou 12.3: Touhou Hisoutensoku | |
2145 | ------------------------ | |
2146 | So here we are, at the final boss. Man, was this one HELL of a journey (sorry). | |
2147 | ||
2148 | Mephistopheles has actually been in another project, formerly of mine: SamsaraHold. | |
2149 | Though, his boss fight there is VERY different. Also, the project is very different. | |
2150 | ||
2151 | Like Reimu, I wanted his nonspells to depict something atypical of a Touhou-style boss. | |
2152 | However, unlike Reimu, who's trying to be a player character, Mephistopheles is trying | |
2153 | to be a VERY advanced Doom monster. So his abilities are ones typical of custom doom bosses: | |
2154 | Teleportation and summoning large numbers of monsters. While also having extra danmaku. | |
2155 | The whole 'teleporting' schtick was basically entirely from SamsaraHold, though in here | |
2156 | it's arguably much more deadly. No running away from Mephistopheles. | |
2157 | ||
2158 | So, if you aren't really into Touhou, you might not know this, but Touhou spellcards are | |
2159 | generally VERY versed into various forms of mythology. Most of it is East Asian mythology, | |
2160 | but if you look most spellcard lists on the Touhou wiki (en.touhouwiki.net), you'll see a | |
2161 | LOT of footnotes on spellcards, because there's a lot of references to be made. | |
2162 | ||
2163 | The thematic being based on the Four horsemen of the apocalypse was planned for a while. | |
2164 | I knew, because I was going to make my own boss for this, I wanted to reference some actual | |
2165 | mythology instead of just doing abstract fire based spells. I had a lot of fun designing this. | |
2166 | ||
2167 | His first four spellcards are based on the four horsemen of the apocalypse. | |
2168 | The Fifth and Sixth are a mix of all four of them, but in different ways. | |
2169 | ||
2170 | The fight is also somewhat a reference to Touhou 12.3's Sanae vs. Suwako story battle. | |
2171 | Namely, in that it ends with a timed segment where you have between 60 and 90 seconds | |
2172 | (90/80/70/60 seconds on Easy/Normal/Hard/Lunatic) to defeat it. It even uses the same music. | |
2173 | If you fail, then you die because the arena smashes into the ground with you still on it. | |
2174 | ||
2175 | We're almost done here... | |
2176 | ||
2177 | ================================= | |
2178 | [ MAP29: Decisive Determination ] | |
2179 | --------------------------------- | |
2180 | Title is a reference to Ketsui, another legendary shmup by CAVE, who | |
2181 | also made Mushihimesama and DoDonPachi. That company is a legend to shmup fans. | |
2182 | ||
2183 | I knew that I wanted THIS extra boss to be very different from previous bosses. | |
2184 | Mostly because all four extra bosses all occupy their own style. | |
2185 | They're unique, and I actually like keeping it that way. | |
2186 | ||
2187 | I spent a month, I think, stuck on this one map, because I knew what I wanted to do: | |
2188 | Make a "Nine layers of Hell" themed boss. Since an Extra boss needs 10 spellcards, that's | |
2189 | 90% of the fight there if I could design it that way. And it was, but designing it was hard. | |
2190 | ------------------------ | |
2191 | [ BOSS: Mephistopheles ] | |
2192 | Music: | |
2193 | "Pandemonic Planet", from Touhou 15: Legacy of Lunatic Kindgom | |
2194 | ------------------------ | |
2195 | Touhou 15's OST needed more love. It's good. | |
2196 | ||
2197 | Extra Mephistopheles is based off the Pyrodemon, another known custom monster. | |
2198 | He's a bit hotter this time around than he was the last fight. | |
2199 | ||
2200 | This boss in unique in that the arena is part of the fight itself, | |
2201 | for every single segment of the fight. This is very intentional, | |
2202 | as the first nine spellcards are all refences to Dante's inferno | |
2203 | and the nine layers of Hell involved. It's seriously crazy that I finished this. | |
2204 | ||
2205 | Limbo is a bit weird, but I wanted to depict the 'being lost' as best I could, | |
2206 | while still making an arena you'd have to fight Mephistopheles in. | |
2207 | ||
2208 | Lust is lulzy, but I wanted to depict the endless storm of which souls are blown around in. | |
2209 | ||
2210 | Gluttony, similarly, though DTS-T MAP29 helped come up with the gimmick for the gameplay: | |
2211 | BOMB, BOMB LIKE THERE'S NO TOMORROW!!!!! | |
2212 | ||
2213 | The spell category 'Death Circle' (as opposed to fourth circle) is a common Japanese joke. | |
2214 | Because 'shi' is the pronounciation for both 'four' and 'death'. Even though this mod is not, | |
2215 | in fact, in Japanese, in any way, shape, or form, and probably never will be. | |
2216 | ||
2217 | Greed is also somewhat referencial to DTS-T's greed segment, where the pickups kill you. | |
2218 | The killer megasphere is a reference to a Touhou fan project called "Unreasonable Mechanism", | |
2219 | which had a evil killer seeking 1-up. This megasphere's out for your blood, so run away! | |
2220 | ||
2221 | Anger, also known as Wrath, was pretty easy: just a chaotic slaughter mess. | |
2222 | Revenants are loud, so they're good. So are suicide bombers. Add Archviles for flavour. | |
2223 | ---------------------------------- | |
2224 | [ MAP29A: Decisive Determination ] | |
2225 | [ BOSS: Mephistopheles ] | |
2226 | Music: | |
2227 | "Hidden Star in All Seasons", from Touhou 16: Hidden Star in Four Seasons | |
2228 | ---------------------------------- | |
2229 | Touhou 16's OST also needed more love. I really like it. | |
2230 | ||
2231 | I ended up having to ALSO split MAP29 because it did not like my framerate. | |
2232 | I don't really know why, I always would just start lagging when I got to Heresy. | |
2233 | ||
2234 | Heresy within Dis: This one isn't a Dante's inferno reference as much as it's me | |
2235 | ripping E3M8 directly from the original Doom, as the city of Dis was the sixth circle. | |
2236 | Then I referenced Hell Revealed 2 and made you fight four masterminds instead of one. | |
2237 | Because of course I did that. I really stopped being nice a while ago. | |
2238 | ||
2239 | The 7th and 8th circles were by FAR the hardest things to design. | |
2240 | Violence is a pretty typical chaotic slaughtermap, but otherwise, it's just... | |
2241 | kind of lacking? There's really nothing that sets that circle apart. | |
2242 | ||
2243 | Malebolge, the 8th circle, and Hell of the fraudulent, suffers from the opposite problem: | |
2244 | It's gimmick is way too overbearing, and it's VERY non-intuitive. Really, who thinks to | |
2245 | jump down into the dark, lethal looking pit? Especially since most pits in my maps are, uh, | |
2246 | instantly lethal. Though, I guess the pits being occupied with spectres helps make that clearer. | |
2247 | In general, I tried arguably too hard to make the circle actually have the design of Malebolge, | |
2248 | with the trenches and the demons inside of them. You can get out of the trenches, of course. | |
2249 | ||
2250 | Cocytus, the 9th circle, and the circle of traitors, is, like always, a timeout card. | |
2251 | I wanted to depict Treason by having your allies come back to haunt you. You can kill them. | |
2252 | And you should, because the card can get very messy very quickly if you don't handle it right. | |
2253 | ||
2254 | I knew that I wanted to have the ice shatter when Mephistopheles re-appeared for the finale. | |
2255 | I actually looked up online what it looks like when ice cracks from a sharp impact to make | |
2256 | the patterns that open up look more authentic, because I'm a nerd in very weird ways, apparently. | |
2257 | The last card is a re-make of another from Touhou 15, called "A Pristine Danmaku Hell". | |
2258 | I renamed it to "INFERNO!", which is the name of Doom's Episode 3. It's a pretty basic | |
2259 | read-and-dodge-everything card, with no real tricks. Hopefully you have enough health left. | |
2260 | Or enough spellcards. Either one works. | |
2261 | ||
2262 | Now, remember the secret challenge thing from MAP21 to MAP25? That comes back again. | |
2263 | If you've collected all five, something weird happens: The last teleporter, rather than | |
2264 | ending the level, takes you to another room, with a blue and red teleporter. | |
2265 | ||
2266 | There's one more optional fight. Take the red teleporter to face... | |
2267 | -------------- | |
2268 | [ BOSS: DOOM ] | |
2269 | Music: | |
2270 | "No Remorse", from Ketsui. True Final Boss theme. | |
2271 | -------------- | |
2272 | ...Your DOOM! | |
2273 | ||
2274 | (I am not sorry.) | |
2275 | ||
2276 | It's common in non-Touhou Danmaku games to have a stupidly difficult secret final boss | |
2277 | if you have met some obscene set of requirements up until that point of the game. | |
2278 | ||
2279 | Ketsui's true final boss, DOOM, requires you beat the entire first loop of the game | |
2280 | with no bombs and no deaths. It's hilarious, really. | |
2281 | ||
2282 | So, I decided that, because it's literally named DOOM, I had to implement it, | |
2283 | hidden behind a similarly ridiculous mechanic that makes it impossible to see it. | |
2284 | ||
2285 | DOOM's last phase is completely a joke. You better have enough bombs. | |
2286 | You ain't dodging it legit. I can't dodge it, and I implemented the pattern! | |
2287 | ||
2288 | Literally, this boss is ripped, attack for attack, from Ketsui. | |
2289 | And yes, it was one of those ridiculous true final bosses, from | |
2290 | what was already one of the hardest danmaku games ever made. | |
2291 | ||
2292 | ============================ | |
2293 | EPISODE IV OVERALL THOUGHTS: | |
2294 | On a mapping front, this is probably objectively the best Episode in the wad. | |
2295 | On a Touhou front, this is probably objectively the worst Episode in the wad. | |
2296 | It's so completely different from its predecessors that I was half-tempted to | |
2297 | just end Touhou Doom at Episode III. But I decided to finish it anyway. | |
2298 | ||
2299 | Besides, if you were disappointed that there wasn't enough Touhou in the end... | |
2300 | ============================ | |
2301 | ||
2302 | +------------------------+ | |
2303 | < EPISODE V: EXTRA STORY > | |
2304 | +------------------------+ | |
2305 | ||
2306 | -------------------------------------------- | |
2307 | [ MAP30: Extra Story: Hakurei Shrine Party ] | |
2308 | -------------------------------------------- | |
2309 | ...Then you've got this thing. | |
2310 | ||
2311 | The map itself is nothing special. | |
2312 | It's just the same Hakurei Shrine you've seen three times before. | |
2313 | ||
2314 | But I decided I wanted to make some more Touhou-themed bosses. | |
2315 | ||
2316 | Some more extra-difficult Touhou themed bosses. | |
2317 | ||
2318 | Why? Because I had fun making them. I made them mostly for myself, | |
2319 | so they may be slightly completely unreasonably difficult. | |
2320 | ||
2321 | V1.2: So you don't get essentially infinite bombs anymore unless you're on Easy Mode. | |
2322 | -------------------------- | |
2323 | [ BOSS: Yuyuko Saigyouji ] | |
2324 | Music: | |
2325 | "Bloom Nobly, Ink-Black Cherry Blossom ~ Border of Life", from Touhou 10.5: Scarlet Weather Rhapsody | |
2326 | -------------------------- | |
2327 | First boss. Yuyuko's pretty easy, but she's way harder than most Stage 1 bosses. | |
2328 | Consider this your warning as for how the rest of the map will go. It does not get easier. | |
2329 | ||
2330 | I felt kind of bad about the MAP10 fight in that Yuyuko really didn't get much feature there. | |
2331 | So I semi-corrected that by featuring two spellcards from her Final Boss battle from Touhou 7. | |
2332 | ||
2333 | She's the first boss because she likes to show up before the plot actually starts properly. | |
2334 | --------------------- | |
2335 | [ BOSS: Suika Ibuki ] | |
2336 | Music: | |
2337 | "Oni's Island in the Fairyland ~ Missing Power", from Touhou 7.5: Immaterial and Missing Power | |
2338 | --------------------- | |
2339 | Really, this is just a shorter but crazier version of her normal fight. | |
2340 | ||
2341 | It's mostly here because Suika starts the plot. | |
2342 | ----------------------- | |
2343 | [ BOSS: Sanae Kochiya ] | |
2344 | Music: | |
2345 | "Faith is for Transient People", from Touhou 10: Mountain of Faith | |
2346 | ----------------------- | |
2347 | Sanae's fight from Episode III was mostly a remake of spells from her Touhou 10 fight. | |
2348 | ||
2349 | This is mostly a remake of spells from her Touhou 11 fight. Where she's the Extra Stage Midboss. | |
2350 | ||
2351 | 'Nine Syllable Stabs', her first card, was originally way worse. I toned it down significantly. | |
2352 | It's still hard to read, sometimes. It can be lethal due to the nature of the beams. | |
2353 | ----------------------- | |
2354 | [ BOSS: Sakuya Izayoi ] | |
2355 | Music: | |
2356 | "Flowering Night", from Touhou 10.5: Scarlet Weather Rhapsody | |
2357 | ----------------------- | |
2358 | So a little fun fact: If you spend enough time not dealing with a problem that | |
2359 | you dealt with earlier, you can forget how hard the problem was the first time. | |
2360 | ||
2361 | Because, no, the time freeze gimmicks were not really that much easier this time around. | |
2362 | ||
2363 | I just was more used to it, but even still, Sakuya is annoying as all Hell in implementation. | |
2364 | ||
2365 | I chose Sakuya as a returning boss mostly because the time freeze gimmicks have a LOT of | |
2366 | different gimmicks you can accomplish with them. You can get very creative. | |
2367 | It's pretty wild, and I like both of the new time stop cards. | |
2368 | ----------------------- | |
2369 | [ BOSS: Youmu Konpaku ] | |
2370 | Music: | |
2371 | "Hiroari Shoots a Strange Bird ~ Till When?", from Touhou 7: Perfect Cherry Blossom | |
2372 | ----------------------- | |
2373 | Wanna know who got shafted even harder than Yuyuko did? Youmu Konpaku. | |
2374 | She went from Stage 5 boss to stage 1 midboss. I knew that I wanted to rectify this. | |
2375 | ||
2376 | This is the first seriously hard fight in the extra story, both to play AND to design. | |
2377 | ||
2378 | The notable gimmick is that Youmu slows down time before attacks. | |
2379 | ||
2380 | This engine is not good at that, so instead I chose to just simultaneously | |
2381 | slow the player down and slow Youmu's bullets down, while making the screen go greyscale. | |
2382 | It's a pretty effective visual gimmick. | |
2383 | ||
2384 | Youmu really showed me how far I've come since I started. Back when I did Episode II, | |
2385 | I wouldn't have been able to think up a solution for Youmu's gimmick at all. | |
2386 | ||
2387 | And then I implemented her fight in like, two days. It was crazy. | |
2388 | ||
2389 | It gets harder, though... | |
2390 | ----------------------- | |
2391 | [ BOSS: Yukari Yakumo ] | |
2392 | Music: | |
2393 | "Night Falls ~ Evening Star", from Touhou 7.5: Immaterial and Missing Power | |
2394 | ----------------------- | |
2395 | Here we go again. | |
2396 | ||
2397 | Yukari *already* being an extra boss meant that I didn't really do that much for her. | |
2398 | 3/4 cards are basically reused from her Extra Stage boss fight, one of them upgraded. | |
2399 | ||
2400 | 'Chen and Ran Yakumo' was kind of funny, throwing out both at once with little warning. | |
2401 | Despite how it looks, there is a strategy to it - you do have to have faith in being able | |
2402 | to dodge both of them when you can't see one, because often they'll be on opposite sides. | |
2403 | ||
2404 | 'Yakumo's Nest' is basically super nine syllable stabs. | |
2405 | I still have many difficulties with it, and it feels quite hard to me, | |
2406 | though admittedly I don't die that often to it. Or to Yukari in general. | |
2407 | ||
2408 | Knowing the patterns (because I designed them) often helps me dodge them better, | |
2409 | so I'm not sure I'm an unbiased source when I say I don't die often to these cards. | |
2410 | ------------------------- | |
2411 | [ BOSS: Marisa Kirisame ] | |
2412 | Music: | |
2413 | "Magus Night", from Touhou 12.8: Fairy Wars | |
2414 | ------------------------- | |
2415 | Oh god, it's her again. | |
2416 | ||
2417 | OH GOD, IT'S HER AGAIN. | |
2418 | ||
2419 | I mean, of frickin' course we fight Marisa a second time. Only it's even MORE ridiculous! | |
2420 | ||
2421 | Fun fact: only one spellcard in this fight is from Touhou canon. | |
2422 | - | Wow, this Post-Mortem is over 18K words. No wonder this took so long to finish. |
2422 | + | |
2423 | Her first card, 'Andromeda', is making fun of 'Milky Way'. It's faster. A lot faster. | |
2424 | ||
2425 | Her second card, 'Galactic Cannibalism', is basically two different patterns at once, | |
2426 | hence the name. It's a very simple spellcard, but it manages to be surprisingly difficult. | |
2427 | I had fun designing that one. | |
2428 | ||
2429 | Her third card, 'Double Spark', is where things get comedic. Why limit yourself to one | |
2430 | backup Hakkero at once? What's better than one master spark? How about TWO? | |
2431 | Weirdly enough, despite the simplicity, this might be the hardest card in the fight. | |
2432 | It's very easy to get caught off guard and walk into another spark you didn't know she had | |
2433 | aimed in that position, since only one of the sparks is aimed directly at you. | |
2434 | ||
2435 | Then we jump off the deep end with 'Chaingun Spark', which looks crazy, but you can circle it. | |
2436 | Don't EVER stop moving against it, though - Marisa fires it every single second you're in line of sight. | |
2437 | ||
2438 | 'Super Shotgun Spark' self-destructs, which finally closes that joke about 'stability issues' | |
2439 | that she makes in MAP27C. Which is good, because 20 master sparks at once is kind of silly. | |
2440 | I kind of wanted to make Marisa have one last attack after you've beaten her, but instead | |
2441 | I made the opposite: Her last attack prematurely self destructs and ends the fight early. | |
2442 | ||
2443 | However, despite everything, even Marisa gets the hell outta dodge when... | |
2444 | ----------------------- | |
2445 | [ BOSS: Reimu Hakurei ] | |
2446 | Music: | |
2447 | "Dream Express ~ Red and White", from Touhou Fangame Concealed the Conclusion. | |
2448 | It is remixed from: | |
2449 | "Dream Express", from Touhou 5: Mystic Square | |
2450 | "Witching Dream", from Touhou 4: Lotus Land Story | |
2451 | "Dichromatic Lotus Butterfly ~ Red and White", from Touhou Album Dolls in Pseudo Paradise, | |
2452 | which itself is a remix of: | |
2453 | "Dichromatic Lotus Butterfly ~ Ancients", from Seihou. | |
2454 | ----------------------- | |
2455 | ...Reimu shows up. | |
2456 | ||
2457 | The reason I chose a fan theme for this fight because: | |
2458 | A: It's an awesome remix. It's from a seriously amazing fangame. | |
2459 | B: It's the theme for an even-harder-than-extra Reimu from that game. | |
2460 | C: Using this remix allows me to reference multiple themes at once. | |
2461 | D: It's an awesome remix. | |
2462 | ||
2463 | As for the fight itself... | |
2464 | ||
2465 | Remember how you didn't actually beat Reimu in MAP19? | |
2466 | ||
2467 | She's back. And she's even harder this time. | |
2468 | ||
2469 | Her noncards are basically the same, so that was easy. | |
2470 | Four of her cards are simply re-hashes of cards from her first fight, so those were easy. | |
2471 | The other four, in order: | |
2472 | ||
2473 | 'Exorcism'/'Disaster-Repelling Prayer' was pretty fast to create. It's simple, but it's elegant. | |
2474 | ||
2475 | 'Divine Spirit Orbs': This was not simple or elegant. Worth the effort though, it's pretty. | |
2476 | ||
2477 | 'Fantasy Seal -Circle': Why limit yourself to /one/ variant of Fantasy Seal at once? | |
2478 | ||
2479 | 'Hakurei Gravity Release Barrier': People in Touhou can canonically fly. I knew, for quite a while, | |
2480 | that I wanted a flight based spellcard. Hence the creation of this spellcard. | |
2481 | ||
2482 | 'Fantasy Nature': YOU ARE ALREADY DEA-Oh wait, it's not that version of the spellcard. | |
2483 | This card took A LOT of thinking like a programmer. There's a lot of jump trickery to avoid | |
2484 | absurd amount of unnecessary states. It was clever. I really like the visual effect; | |
2485 | admittedly it looks a lot scarier than it actually is. Make sure you keep moving. | |
2486 | ||
2487 | 'The Universe': From the same fangame that the theme used in this fight is from. | |
2488 | Welcome to what is probably the densest card in the entire game. It's pure amulet spam, | |
2489 | going from just red to eventually covering seven different colours. | |
2490 | ||
2491 | The last spellcard is a complete joke. It's Reimu realizing that as a player, she can do | |
2492 | what you, as the player, should do at this point: BOMB SPAM. | |
2493 | ||
2494 | Literally, it's Reimu bomb-spamming because she realizes you're beating her. | |
2495 | ||
2496 | Survive this last Hell of a card, and you win! | |
2497 | ============================= | |
2498 | EXTRA STORY OVERALL THOUGHTS: | |
2499 | This was fun. I did this mostly for myself, and it shows. | |
2500 | ============================= | |
2501 | ||
2502 | /////////////// | |
2503 | // AFTERWORD // | |
2504 | /////////////// | |
2505 | ||
2506 | Wow, this Post-Mortem is over 19K words. No wonder this took so long to finish. | |
2507 | ||
2508 | I think that the post-mortem being this long is important, though. | |
2509 | Because a lot of projects do drop out of the blue after years of waiting. | |
2510 | The thing is, those years aren't meaningless. It takes time for projects like this to happen. | |
2511 | ||
2512 | I do not want people thinking that what I have done is magic. Well, in-story magic, sure, | |
2513 | but what I do not possess is magical wizard skills that allowed me to make this project. | |
2514 | Just some DECORATE, ACS, GZDoom Builder, and an absolutely stubborn refusal to give up. | |
2515 | ||
2516 | The important thing about this Post-Mortem, above all, is to realize that | |
2517 | a LOT of effort goes into making these things. Years, in some cases. | |
2518 | ||
2519 | Touhou Doom was as much a experimental learning experience as it was a polished project. | |
2520 | ||
2521 | SPECIAL THANKS TO: | |
2522 | -dekw, my most valiant tester, and frequent annoyance in bugfixing | |
2523 | -TerminusEst13, super cool dude who was very inspirational to me | |
2524 | -the Touhou fandom for being insane in ways that were also inspirational to me | |
2525 | -ZUN, for making the Touhou project | |
2526 | -id software, for making Doom | |
2527 | -And to you, who has read all the way to the bottom of this Post-Mortem. |