Touhou Doom: Post-Mortem V1.2

TOUHOU DOOM: POST-MORTEM

Holy hell, it's been three years. I started this project in 2016, as a proof of concept.

And now here we are.

If I do another Doom Mod (possible, but I'm definitely taking a break for now),
I'll probably try to be a lot more open about things. I was going to stream
the development of certain segments of this mod, but in the end I felt that
I wanted to keep things under wraps. Certain features are best experienced blind.

As a result, rather than publicly posting progress as it happened,
I have instead detailed it within this large post-mortem.

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.
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.

SPOILER ALERT, obviously. If you haven't beaten Touhou Doom, go do that first.

This'll be split into three segments: Terminology, History, Map/Boss commentary.

/////////////////////////
// PART 0: TERMINOLOGY //
/////////////////////////

[ Danmaku and Touhou terminology ]

Danmaku: literally 'curtain fire', it's used to describe large numbers of projectiles
being thrown around in large patterns. Also called 'Bullet Hell'.

Streaming: Dodging large numbers of bullets aimed directly at you with small tap-dodges.
It's a very useful skill to learn, especially on higher difficulties.

Spellcard: Bosses in Touhou often use very flashy named attacks. Generally speaking,
spellcards have heavier patterns, and often utilize some form of gimmick, with some fights.

Noncard: Boss phases that aren't spellcards.
Often are generic, many bosses will have multiple noncard phases share the same attacks.

Bomb: In most danmaku games, there's a 'Bomb' which is a tool that clears bullets,
and typically makes you invincible for a short time. It's a tool to buy time if you're
getting into trouble.

EoSD: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil, the 6th Touhou game.
PCB: Perfect Cherry Blossom, the 7th Touhou game
SWR: Scarlet Weather Rhapsody, the 10.5th Touhou game. One of the fighting games.
SA: Subterranean Animism, the 11th Touhou game.

[ ZDoom and FPS terminology ]

FPS: First-Person Shooter. A style of game where you play from the perspective of the
player character, in 3D. Or psuedo 3D, depending on the era of the FPS in question.

SSG: Super Shotgun. A powerful close-range weapon from Doom, and one of the most
iconic FPS shotguns ever made. Generally all-around awesome weapon, but it lacks range.

BFG: The Big F-ing Gun 9000. It's VERY powerful, and has a very weird way of dealing damage.

Console: accessible with the ` or ~, it's a console you can input commands into.

CVar: Console Variable. Something you can set in the console.

Slaughtermap: A style of map which consists of killing HUGE hordes of demons,
typically with the BFG 9000.

[ Touhou Doom terminology ]

Danmaku Weapons: The Hakurei Amulet Rifle and the Hakkero Star Cannon.
These weapons are both based on shot types from the actual touhou games;
they're very versatile. Most of them function at semi-long range.

System Card: Basically a generic tool for buying time. Three exist:
-Spirit Barrier: Also known as 'Bomb'. Clears bullets around you. Buys you some time.
-Life Regenerator: Slowly regenerates health, up to 100.
-Spell Amplifier: For 5 seconds, any other cards you cast will be amplified, except spirit barrier.

Player Spellcard: Hey, bosses aren't the only ones that can use these!
Each of these are unique. They are VERY flashy effects that generally do LOTS of damage.
In general, unless the target is immune to bombs, this will eliminate the phase you use it on.
As a result of their power, they are very rare, so save them for emergency use!

touhou_doomweapons: A CVar that swaps out the Danmaku Weapons for conventional Doom weapons.
touhou_nospellcards: A CVar that removes spellcards and replaces them with extra health pickups.

/////////////////////
// PART 1: HISTORY //
/////////////////////

===============================
[ PART 1-0: How I got started ]
===============================
So, the actual long story behind the entire mod is kind of funny.

I'm friends with another modder that I quite respect, who goes by 'TerminusEst13'.
He's a good modder. He also livestreams on occasion. One of these streams was
on a particular combination of mods - his DemonSteele (a great mod, you should
check it out if you haven't already) combined with a mapset called "Touhou Doom".

Now, this probably won't come as a shock: I'm a Touhou fan. So when I saw this,
I knew I had to watch. And, it might not be a masterpiece, but hey, maybe it'll be good.

It wasn't. It was...lacking in many, *many* aspects.

So lacking was it, that after I watched it end, I knew for a fact that,
despite not being the strongest modder in any respect, I could make something better.

Not being one to simply sit around and complain, I hammered out a proof of concept:
Cirno, the first Touhou Boss. She had phases, utilizing the system that is familiar
to fans of the Touhou games: The Spellcard System.

Once I had Cirno done (a few iterations of improving the fight later, of course),
I decided that I had enough knowledge that I wanted to try remaking Touhou Doom.
In its entirety. At least until eventually I got bored, or it got too hard to keep it up.

I wasn't expecting to get as far as I did.

======================================
[ PART 1-1-1: The First Episode Demo ]
======================================
When I started Touhou Doom, I wasn't expecting to get terribly far. I wasn't planning
to make a full project out of this. What I planned to do was replace the bosses of
the original Touhou Doom with bosses that I poured slightly more effort into.

That's how we got the first three bosses: Rumia, Cirno, and Meiling.

I packed up these three bosses into replacing the original ones, and I released
the "Demo" of Episode I, to an IRC channel that wasn't public.

It had 4 maps: MAP01 to MAP04. None of the maps were mine.

It wasn't my project at the time, so I couldn't make it public in good faith.
Sure, I didn't like Dusted back then (he's gotten cooler since), but I didn't
feel right calling his work mine.

===============================================
[ PART 1-1-2: The First Episode, Full Release ]
===============================================
So, having released the demo, I thought I'd just do the same thing for the rest of
Episode I: replace the bosses, keep the maps. They weren't very good maps, but, well,
I didn't know how to map at all, so it was better than a literal featureless STARTAN box.

This plan was foiled by MAP05. In the original Touhou Doom, it's the Scarlet Devil Mansion.
As in, all of it. It's the entire SDM, featuring three different bosses.

This became a problem, because I needed space for Patchouli.
Her patterns are far more complex than the first three bosses put together.
Also, I needed more space to make a stage for her. I wanted to have *something*
to fill the space before you met her.

So, realizing I was kind of screwed, I decided to make a map.
With some encouragement of TerminusEst13, as well as practice from DUMP 1 and DUMP 2
(large collabs of newbie mappers, they're pretty neat, and the encouragement was nice),
I made MAP05: Voile, the Magic Library. Oh, and I added Patchouli's fight at the end.

After that, I realized I had strayed from the original path.
This meant I had some free reign on what to do now. So I made my own stages for MAP06-MAP08.

Then I made Sakuya, the process of which will be detailed later below.

Then I made Remilia. That went well.

Then I made Flandre, Which went, uh, less well. More on that in the boss section.

===========================================
[ PART 1-1-3: The First Episode, Bugfixes ]
===========================================
I handed the now finished Episode to my most valiant tester, dekw.

He.

Broke.

EVERYTHING.

By the time I had finished with all of the bugs he had found,
I had NINE different versions of this first Episode to account for his shenanigans.
Also fun fact: There's a varible in the ACS for MAP07 called "RemiliaAntiDekwTimer".

He's good at what he does, and it meant that the Episode was surprisingly consistent.
His feedback, while a pain, was very, very useful.

I released Episode I on a mostly private Discord server. It was surprisingly well-liked.

But with that, I took a break.

========================
[ PART 1-2: Episode II ]
========================
And then I came back. At this point, I realized something:
I didn't know what to do with the second Episode.

Episode I, for those unaware, follows Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil.
The entire episode is purely bosses from that game.

But I didn't have the resources to do this again. And, to be honest,
I didn't really want to copy an entire game again for this purpose.

So I came to brainstorm what I wanted to do. Originally, the plot was going to be that
you get resurrected, and then you go to a bunch of places, then go underground.

I then swapped the order and made the underground happen before the 'bunch of places' arc.

Episode II went a lot faster, in comparison, because I think I knew what I was doing.

Conceptually, I decided I wanted to make some new weapons. The issue with standard
Doom weapons is that eventually the Plasma Rifle becomes the only thing you use on bosses.

I didn't want this. I wanted to encourage you to switch a lot more.

So I made shot types. All based on attacks from Marisa and Reimu in the actual series.

Not that you'd know that if you're not a Touhou fan.

The next thing was that I knew that, as much as I liked the Touhou side of things,
I did want to do some more Doom-related stuff. I knew that, even though this was
a Touhou-focused wad, there's no girl in Gensokyo demonic enough to warrant making
her the plot device that opens the gates to Hell.

So I invented the Danmaku Demons.

Otherwise, there's not too much to say that won't be said in the boss commentary later.

===========================
[ PART 1-3-1: Episode III ]
===========================
This is where I gave up trying to follow the standard "6 stages + extra" structure.
In a sense, this Episode is really kind of an extension of Episode II.

Again, I don't have much to say that won't be covered in the boss and map commentary later.

At this point, the mod had taken on enough of it's own identity that I decided that
I should make a public ZDoom thread about it. If you're reading this, you probably
know about this thread, since that thread is where the download link is located.

===================================
[ PART 1-3-2: Episode 3.5 to 3.66 ]
===================================
Touhou Doom was originally planned to be 4 episodes.

There were a lot of little things I wanted to accomplish, but in the end of things,
I decided not to worry about them until I was closer to finishing the project.

Only one problem: I got to the end. Suddenly, all of the little things I had in my
"do this later" list weren't on it, because that 'later' had become 'now'.

So I went back to those things. Finished a bunch of them.

Fininshed so many that, actually, Episode 1 to 3 was a lot better off.

So I sectioned off those changes and made Episode 3.5 to 3.66.

That's how we got MAP01. The new one.

At this point, I took another month long break.

I didn't want to face the reality of Episode IV.
For the longest time, I always complained about being constrained by the Touhou canon.
But as it turns out, having the freedom to make whatever you want is kind of terrifying.
I seriously had no idea what to do.

========================
[ PART 1-4: Episode IV ]
========================
When I started Episode IV, I knew, to a certain extent, that it was going to be very
different from the previous three Episodes, mostly owing to the fact that we left
Gensokyo and have now entered actual Hell.

As a result, it plays like, well, a normal set of Doom maps,
except for the minor fact that they exclusively use Danmaku Demons.

To reflect this change further, I decided that for the music, rather than using Touhou,
I would use MAP21 to MAP26 to reference other danmaku games. I picked iconic shmups
(and one non-shmup) that have semi-iconic to iconic songs, and used them as the stage
music. Shmups have good soundtracks. I don't know why, they just do.

The series referenced, if you don't know:
Gradius, Raiden, Ikaruga, Mushihimesama, DoDonPachi, and Undertale

As for the second half, well, I'll elaborate more on that below.

The last Episode was delayed pretty massively not by any big particularly difficult thing,
but by the mere fact that there's a lot of maps. As mentioned, I'm not a very good mapper.

You'll see a lot more of what I mean in the map commentary below.

There really isn't any inspirational story, any good lesson to learn here.
It was just one map at a time, drawing the layout, adding some textures, that kinda stuff.

Just focus on getting one thing done at a time. There's a reason this took 3 years.

=========================
[ PART 1-5: Extra Story ]
=========================
After finishing Episode IV, I came to the realization that, in fact,
as crazy as the ending enough, it was missing something. It wasn't...Touhou enough.

So I decided what we needed was more bosses and more Gensokyo.
After all, the bosses are the iconic draw of this mod (IMHO, as the creator),
and Gensokyo is the unique setting of the Touhou series.

Eight bosses later, this final challenge was released.

Then I sent it off to my testers, and wrote this Post-Mortem.

==========================
[ PART 1-6: Post Release ]
==========================
Notice how you're playing V1.2 and NOT V1.0?

Yeah, there were bugs.

A lot of bugs.

A little lesson: Don't let the hype of releasing cloud your testing process. That's why we have V1.1.

As for V1.2, that was less 'terrible bugs' (though there were a few of those) and more along the lines of
"Okay I should've fixed that like a year or two ago, let's actually work on that thing from way back."

More details will provided as they become relevant in PART II, a.k.a. almost all of the post mortem.

////////////////////////////////
// PART 2: MAP/BOSS BREAKDOWN //
////////////////////////////////

+-----------+
< EPISODE I >
+-----------+

========================
[ MAP01: Warp Facility ]
Music:
"Alien Jungle", Stuart "forty-two" Rynn
========================
Despite being the first map, this was the last map finished that's not in Episode IV or V.

The original version of this map was very barebones.
As in, it was just a hallway with some enemies and an exit teleporter.
It was left that way because I didn't care enough to make a better map.
After all, it was just a lead-in for the real meat of the wad.

I came back to make it better because I realized that if I made this a gameplay segment
(a.k.a. a playable map), then it should at least try to be better than a single hallway.

That was one reason, anyway. The other thing that making this map better allowed me to do
was that I could highlight the differences in gameplay between typical Doom and Touhou.
It goes from cramped passages against monsters with one attack direction (aimed at you),
to, well, everything else. See: the next map.

Making this was pretty hard. I didn't have experience in making tech base maps, and it shows.

A neat thing about this was that making a better map allowed me to setup a neat twist later on.

======================
[ MAP02: A New World ]
Music:
"A Soul as Red as a Ground Cherry", from Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil
----------------------
In terms of when the map was made, this was the first map in the wad.

The stage enemies are based off of EoSD stage 1. It's by far the most basic thing
in the mod; As what it's meant to teach you is how to do basic streaming - how to make
small movements that dodge multiple bullets. Or maybe not, it's easy enough as is.

The layout is taken directly from the original Touhou Doom.
I updated some textures and decoration, and switched out the sky for a night theme.
(To be specific: trees use a better texture, and are more detailed).

V1.2 Update: I actually then did a second pass during post-release, detail wise -
the forest looks a LOT more expansive than it used to be. If I did it right, then
the forest should look a lot better in general.

---------------
[ BOSS: Rumia ]
Music:
"Apparitions Stalk the Night", from Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil
---------------
Rumia's kind of a neat boss in that she's the most 'Doom-like' boss of the bunch
in the sense that most of her attacks are relatively normal 'shoot at target' attacks.

"Night Bird", while a very basic and non-noteworthy card, is a good introduction
to the spellcard system.

"Demarcation" is then a second wake-up call to the fact that some patterns are
fairly complex and can feature dodges that aren't as straightforward.

You can get some pretty good SSG hits in if you're fast.

All in all, a very good introductory boss.

=====================
[ MAP03: Misty Lake ]
Music:
"Lunate Elf", from Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil
---------------------
Second map, in creation date. Layout is also from on the original Touhou Doom.
And again, I updated the trees and the sky - and also made the water solid, lol.

Really, this is basically just a harder version of stage 1.

You get a Rocket Launcher and Plasma Rifle here, but with limited ammo.
It's to represent the power curve of your shot type in EoSD.

Daiyousei really isn't anything notable. Her patterns are stream-based.

V1.2 Update: Same as in the previous map, though the fog also helps mask my lack of detail.

---------------
[ BOSS: Cirno ]
Music:
"Beloved Tomboyish Girl", from Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil
---------------
In terms of creation date, Cirno was the first boss I ever made.

Touhou Doom, as elaborated above, started as a "is a proper multi-phase fight possible?"
concept test. Cirno was the test boss.

Then that ended up working.

The next thing was to implement patterns that very by difficulty.
That was tedious, but it ended up working out for the better.

The dialogue is wholesale ripped from EoSD.
Mostly because the "English Beef" line makes no sense and I love it.

If Rumia was to introduce the concepts of Danmaku, Cirno was to introduce the concept
of having three spatial dimensions in the ZDoom engine.

Her first card, "Icicle Fall"/"Hailstorm", utilizes a lot of the third dimension,
though arguably it's pretty harmless and is more a visual effect.

Otherwise, she ain't too bad. I generally save my Plasma Rifle for her last card,
since it's hard to close distance there.

=========================
[ MAP04: Scarlet Border ]
Music:
"Shanghai Teahouse ~ Chinese Tea", from Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil
-------------------------
This is where things kick up a notch. If you haven't mastered streaming, you die now.

The opener is the point that really kicks this into high gear. It's not hard, because
every attack is aimed at you, meaning that you can dodge a giant 'line' of bullets...
by tapping strafe left or strafe right precisely once.

Of course, then you get to the next portion of the stage and I throw a bunch of
more chaotically aimed stuff at you. It's not nearly as trivial as before.

Midboss Meiling is notable in that she's the first midboss to have a spellcard.

After that, you have the arena. It's pretty tricky, but really, it's nothing
that should be terribly overwhelming if you get that far.

V1.2: Although the more detailed forest thing applies here as well, this map got a more notable change:
- when you get to Meiling's arena, the Scarlet Devil Mansion is actually visible behind the gateway.
This looks a LOT better than it did previously, even though the Mansion is still pretty horribly un-detailed.

----------------------
[ BOSS: Hong Meiling ]
Music:
"Shanghai Alice of Meiji 17", from Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil
----------------------
Hong Meiling is a good deal harder than her predecessors.

If you're on Hard or Lunatic, she has FOUR spellcards, as well as three noncards -
adding up to a total of 5/6/7/7 total phases on Easy/Normal/Hard/Lunatic.

She was one of my demo bosses, and the most notable one, in my opinion.

Originally, I was lazy and used rainbow-coloured bullets; however, when I released Episode IV
(So this is V1.0), I was requested to use all of the individual colour bullets.
That ended up being the right call; god, it looks so much nicer.

===================================
[ MAP05: Voile, The Magic Library ]
Music:
"Voile, that Magic Library", from Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil
-----------------------------------
This is the first truly original map. And it shows, man was I bad at mapping.
Or at least texturing - I kind of like the Layout now.

When I designed this map, I knew I had to make it grand - this was the library
that was where the original EoSD really picked up.

That's why I made it as hard as it was - the difficulty spike (and the protip
warning you that you may want to turn the difficulty down) was entirely intentional.

If you run through the map and wake everything up, it will get VERY chaotic in a hurry.
Some amount of caution is highly advised.

To start off, we have the initial bookshelves, with the fairy maids in between them.
If you take it slowly, it introduces their gimmicks pretty well. Or you can take it fast,
but you are taking a bigger risk by doing so.

After the initial bookshelves, you have the open area. This looks impossible at first,
but there is A: sufficient cover from the previous bookselves, and B: all of the flyers
aim directly at you. While you don't want to stream it, you can easily dodge around the
large mass of aimed bullets. Functionally, they're pretty harmless if you keep moving.
Of course, the non-flyers make this harder. Take them out first, or else take cover.

Koakuma isn't really anything to pay attention to.

The post-Koakuma section was interesting. I knew I wanted to have a segment on the
upper level, because it helps distinguish this from a totally generic stage, but
in the end it made falling a very tedious affair, since you would have to go back
and go around to the teleporter. That's why I added the teleporters that take you
back to certain areas, to make backtracking slightly less tedious.

Originally, the upper levels did not have any of the walkways across the bookshelves.
I didn't realize this at first, but I'm actually a pretty good ZDoom engine parkour-er.
So I added the ledges to give some more leniency to maneuvering on the upper level.

This map ended up being a lot longer than I intended; some may argue it drags.
It probably does.

V1.2 Update: Originally, in the V1.0 release of Touhou Doom, the books were completely stupid.
I wanted to make it annoying, but the invisible shooters thing ended up being too much.
So I made the books visible, though a more durable to make up for it. To quote the original Post-Mortem:
"While this is equally stupid, it's at least memorization stupid, instead of RNG stupid.
Shoot the invisible books with either the SSG or the chaingun."

In addition to this, I also added a bunch of decorative lamps. Looks better, but still not great.
I think I need a better texture set to really make this map shine.
-----------------------------
[ BOSS: Patchouli Knowledge ]
Music:
"Locked Girl ~ The Girl's Secret Room", from Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil
-----------------------------
Patchouli was the first boss for which I can say it was truly difficult to implement her.

Her patterns were a tier of complexity far beyond previous bosses, utilizing sweeping lasers,
element-themed spellcards, and some very pretty weird patterns, such as Silver Dragon.

And that's without getting into her main gimmick, which is that
on each playthrough she will randomly select her spellcards.
(She has 10 total, of which she will select 2/3/4/5 on Easy/Normal/Hard/Lunatic.)

Most of them weren't too individually hard to implement, but it added up quickly.

==================================================
[ MAP06: An Elegant Servant for the Scarlet Moon ]
Music:
"The Maid and the Pocket Watch of Blood", from Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil
--------------------------------------------------
After the absurdity of designing MAP05, I realized that I didn't want the rest of the maps
to be that large. Sure, the occasional large map was nice, but the library also drags longer
than I personally would like. To each their own, I suppose, but the boss fights are arguably
the main appeal of the wad.

So this was invented as a counter-measure. It's the first 'musical' stage in Touhou Doom.

The level is an autoscroller, essentially, at least for the first half.
You can tell when enemies will appear if you memorize the music cues.

Otherwise, it's a semi-recreation of EoSD stage 5.

The devils that shoot the long 'strings' of bullets are pretty evil because they don't fire the
entire string at where they first aim it; meaning that if you move prematurely you still get hit.

Midboss Sakuya isn't really terribly notable.

The second half, while not an autoscroller, is quite crazy. There's no real tricks,
I kind of just through a bunch of stuff semi-aimlessly. It shows.

Once you're past that, all you've gotta do is take out some planned individual enemies.
Nothing really too special.

V1.2: Added some details to the walls of the large halls. Nothing big.
-----------------------
[ BOSS: Sakuya Izayoi ]
Music:
"Lunar Clock ~ Luna Dial", from Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil
-----------------------
One of the things I like about Episode I is that each boss is an introduction to a concept.
Rumia is the introduction to danmaku.
Cirno is the introduction to 3D visual effects.
Meiling is the introduction to longer-length bosses.
Patchouli is the introduction to much higher complexity patterns.
Sakuya is the introduction to the fact that some bosses have particular...gimmicks.

Heh.

This gimmick.

THIS gimmick.

THIS FRICKIN' GIMMICK.

As you may know, Sakuya has the ability to stop time. This manifests in all three
of her spellcards (taken directly from EoSD), for which time literally stops, she
throws a bunch of knives, and then unstops time.

Getting this effect to work right was almost not worth it.
Sakuya caused me SO much grief that it was honestly kind of funny.

Problems that happened while I was making this boss include but are not limited to:
-The Knives not freezing properly.
-Sakuya not aiming them properly.
-Sakuya walking into melee range and and surrounding you with knives.
-Sakuya attacking WAY too much, resulting in spending the boss fight being stuck.
-Sakuya not attacking enough, resulting in the fight being trivially easy.

Yeah, it wasn't pretty. But it works now, and I'm so happy that it does.

Admittedly the fight is still very RNG heavy.
I can beat it consistently, but often with different amounts of life left over.

Even if the gimmick is pure evil.

A possibly amusing fact: The reason why the pillars lower and the candelabras disappear
is that my tester, dekw, abused the hell out of them to avoid basically all of the difficulty.
I got rid of them to force players to learn Sakuya's patterns more legitimately.

=====================================
[ MAP07: Rain of Blood over Elysium ]
Music:
"The Young Descendant of Tepes", from Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil
-------------------------------------
Basically just a recreation of EoSD stage 6. Another musical autoscroller.

In the Touhou series, most stage 6's are really just a space filler.

Just a not very notable stage leading to the midboss and final boss.

Midboss Sakuya's kind of lulzy. Welcome to random(0, 360): the spell card.

V1.2 Update: See the previous map.
-------------------------
[ BOSS: Remilia Scarlet ]
Music:
"Septette for the Dead Princess", from Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil
-------------------------
Unlike the previous five bosses, Remilia isn't the introduction to anything.
Remilia is the test that says "Show the game what you've learned."

Unless you're on Easy. Then she decides that the test is unnecessary.

If you're on Lunatic, good luck. Remilia is the first truly hard fight.
You should know there's a soulsphere behind the throne. It's required on Lunatic.

Unlike previous bosses, Remilia's first two cards aren't from EoSD.
They're from Touhou 10.5: Scarlet Weather Rhapsody, a.k.a. one of the Touhou Fighting Games.

Otherwise, she's the longest and hardest boss so far, eventually ending with
what is arguably one of the hardest cards in the game: 'Red Magic', or 'Scarlet Gensokyo'.

Another fun fact: Remilia lowers the outer regions of the arena if you hide behind there
for too long. The variable that controls when she does this is called 'RemiliaAntiDekwTimer'.

=========================
[ MAP08: Eastern Lunatic ~ Sister of Scarlet ]
Music:
"The Centennial Festival for Magical Girls", from Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil
-------------------------
I mean, of course there's an extra stage.

It was kind of fun making you go back the way you came, except with harder enemies.

The whole stage is kind of throw-back-y to earlier stages, but it stands on its own as well.

Midboss Patchouli is an introduction to Extra Stage midbosses:
Namely that they are much crazier than your standard midboss.

V1.2 Update: See the previous two maps. Also, there was a softlock -
if you played on easy mode and you had cutscenes enabled, you couldn't finish the episode.

As it turns out, if you never test your cutscenes, you end up with cutscene bugs.
-------------------------
[ BOSS: Flandre Scarlet ]
Music:
"U.N. Owen Was Her?", from Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil
-------------------------
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!

I did not have fun.

Flandre's a cool fight, honestly.

From Cranberry Trap's "oh god I'm surrounded" to Kagome Kagome's "oh god what is this"
to Counter Clock's "what are these literal rotating laser wheels" to the actual friggin'
"WAIT THERE'S A TIMEOUT CARD" moment.

The fight has so many gimmicks that are weird and, nothing else in this game is like it.

FOR GOOD REASON.

Because good GOD coding Flandre was a giant flaming garbage fire and I hate EVERYTHING.

Here's a quick list of EVERY SINGLE SPELL CARD (and she has TEN), and how 9/10 of them broke:
Cranberry trap: First iteration kept spawning bullets out of bound.
Lavaeteinn: Had a bug where the lasers could clip out of bounds, which lagged really badly.
Four of a kind: This was the good one
Kagome, Kagome: Many, MANY things, but to pick one: bullets did not despawn properly.
Maze of Love: Flandre, in one iteration, fired stupidly fast, making this a literal wall.
Starbow Break: This card looks cool, but past that it's kind of...lame.
Catadioptric: WELCOME TO RNG LAND, POPULATION: ANYONE WHO GETS HERE
Counter Clock: Oh my GOD so MANY things went wrong it's not even funny
And Then There Were None?: It took me WAY too many attempts to get the 2nd half to work AT ALL.
Ripples of 495 Years: Originally you could stand on top of top of Flandre to cheese this.

Oh, and there's plenty more things that went totally wrong.

I would elaborate more, but I think my BURNING RAGE is enough to inform you that it was ugly.

The sheer pain of how hard this was to implement would be a
major factor in how I would script later Extra stages.

=================================
[ MAP09: Scarlet Devil Basement ]
---------------------------------
I knew, from an early draft, that I wanted to make this plot go demonic.

This was the map of which to make that the introduction of the plot clear.

It's another throwaway map, but it does the job.

===========================
EPISODE I OVERALL THOUGHTS:
In general, this Episode was basically a tech demo for the boss spellcard system.
It's the weakest Episode by far, but it does help you get into the swing of things.
The V1.1 to V1.2 post-release stretch added a LOT of much-needed detail to this episode.
It could still use more IMO, but at least it doesn't looks like 90s mapping anymore.
===========================

+------------+
< EPISODE II >
+------------+

=======================
[ MAP10: Hakugyokurou ]
Music:
"Night Sakura of Dead Spirits", from Touhou 13: Ten Desires
-----------------------
So this is how Episode II begins. Not with a forest, but with a giant staircase.

Plot-wise, you died at the end of Episode I. So this is where you end up.
(don't ask me how double dying works, if you're asking then you vastly overestimate the consistency of this plot.)

Also plot-wise, this is our introduction to the boundary youkai.
Originally, she was pretty annoying. I don't find her easy to write.

To rectify this, I got dekw to re-write her character...to be even MORE annoying.
Alas, canon characterization is more important to me than sanity.

So NOW we have our introduction to the Danmaku Weapons, A.K.A. actual Touhou shot types.
Also, we have introduction to player spellcards A.K.A. bombs. Use them wisely!

If you don't want to use spellcards at all, input "touhou_nospellcards 1" in the console.

If you'd rather use conventional weapons, input "touhou_doomweapons 1" in the console.
As a warning, though, the game was balanced around the Danmaku Weapons.

This map is kind of lame, I'll fully admit, but it's one of the most iconic structures
in Touhou canon - the grand staircase of Hakugyokurou, the Netherworld.

The stage enemies are based off of Ten Desires' stage 1.
--------------------------
[ BOSS: Youmu and Yuyuko ]
Music:
"Hiroari Shoots a Strange Bird ~ Till When?", from Touhou 7: Perfect Cherry Blossom
"Bloom Nobly, Ink-Black Cherry Blossom ~ Border of Life", from Touhou 10.5: Scarlet Weather Rhapsody
--------------------------
Youmu and Yuyuko are the two bosses of Stage 1. You get a megasphere for both of them.

So, being a stage 1 boss, both of these are an introduction to a concept.

The first concept is that some bosses will move around a lot more than usual.
The second concept is that Episode II will not wait as long to ramp up in difficulty.

Otherwise, I just enjoyed being able to make two iconic bosses of the series.

Plot-wise, I didn't plan on keeping you dead. You're needed in the world of the living.

======================
[ MAP11: Sanzu River ]
Music:
"Higan Retour ~ Riverside View", from Touhou 10.5: Scarlet Weather Rhapsody
----------------------
I hadn't referenced Touhou 9. I wanted to rectify that.

Otherwise, there's not much notable about this stage.
It's the most generic thing I've made totally from scratch.
-------------------------
[ BOSS: Komachi Onozuka ]
Music:
"Higan Retour ~ Riverside View", from Touhou 9: Phantasmagoria of Flower View
-------------------------
Komachi was kind of a filler boss. Mostly added because, hey, you're crossing over the Sanzu.

The living aren't supposed to be on this side of the river, so it's her duty to stop you.

Her fight works well enough, though.

Her anti-cheese mechanism is funny, though. Don't try to run away; face her like a BOSS.

Fun fact: As of V1.2, dunking Komachi into the Sanzu River will actually defeat and eventually end her boss fight.
===================================
[ MAP12: Streets of a Former Hell ]
Music:
"Walking the Streets of a Former Hell", from Touhou 11: Subterranean Animism
-----------------------------------
The original Touhou Doom goes into the underground, so I figured,
"Hey, I should use the resources I have laying around the archive."

This was the first truly difficult stage to design, because the underground city of the Oni
is not a simple single structure, unlike previous maps.

In the end, it took a lot of slopes and 3d floors working together to produce a somewhat
passable version of the style of architecture that I wanted to evoke. This engine is, uh,
not really meant for curved surfaces, so I had to make do and try faking it.

I consider this map semi-decent; there's more I could've done, but it does the job well.

The stage itself is based off of (S)ubterranean (A)nimism's stage 1 and stage 3.
Hooray for sine wave fairies!
---------------------
[ BOSS: Suika Ibuki ]
Music:
"Oni's Island in the Fairyland ~ Missing Power", from Touhou 7.5: Immaterial and Missing Power
---------------------
The original Touhou Doom went all the way to reference SA, and then:
A: Had no city, while *lampshading* the lack of city that should've been there, and
B: Had no Yuugi.

Alas, Yuugi having no easy options (her cards are all TERRIBLE to design AND I had no sprites),
I settled on another high tier Oni: Suika Ibuki.

At the time of implementing Suika, she had the highest number of frames of animation
of any boss in Touhou Doom, and would not be outdone until Episode III came along.

The hardest part in making this fight is something many players might not notice:
If you try to run away from Suika, she'll disperse into very fast moving mist,
which will follow you throughout the city. Working the Path Nodes to make her
capable of doing this took quite a while, and it's a pretty bad mess of ACS.

Otherwise, I simply took three relatively easy to implement spellcards from her canon,
and made them into spellcards for the fight.

===============================
[ MAP13: The Eye Nobody Loves ]
Music:
"Heartfelt Fancy", from Touhou 11: Subterranean Animism
-------------------------------
So now we REALLY turn into SA.

This is ANOTHER musical autoscrolling stage, set up to be similar to SA stage 4.

The fairies' amulet fans are a surprisingly complex pattern for a stage enemy.
It can be quite surprising if you're used to stage enemies being incredibly generic.

The Window textures are taken directly from SA. I can't believe how cool they look here,
given we're in a completely different engine that's not designed for the FPS perspective.

It's really silly. Despite how simple this map is geometrically, it feels like a good map,
even though it's objectively a terrible map. It's literally just a few connected boxes.
------------------------
[ BOSS: Satori Komeiji ]
Music:
"Satori Maiden ~ 3rd eye", from Touhou 11: Subterranean Animism
------------------------
TIME FOR GIMMICK BOSS NUMBER 2!

Granted, Satori's gimmick was a lot easier to implement than Sakuya's.

Namely, because Satori's gimmick is that she just re-uses a bunch of cards from Episode I.

So, with that aside, the three picks, and why I chose them:
"Rainbow Wind Chime"
	I chose this one because it's one of the first real dodge cards...
	unless you cheesed it by abusing terrain in Meiling's fight.
	If you DID do that, then you better learn to do it legit now.
"Luna Clock" / "The World"
	I chose this one because Sakuya's Time Freeze gimmick really needed to be used again.
	Which is to say, most people, on seeing this, will go "NOOOO!", which is intentional.
	Satori's trying to scare you, so this is a good pick for that purpose.
"Curse of Vlad Tepes" / "Vampire Illusion"
	I chose this one because Remilia's "I spawn bullets that then move after the fact"
	is one of hell of gimmick that many players find quite hard. I wanted to copy
	Remilia's last card, but that would've been too much to reference in this fight.

Also, Satori informing the player that they have the wrong Hell is one of my favourite lines in the entire story.

=================================
[ MAP14: Hellfire of Times Past ]
Music:
"Lullaby of a Deserted Hell", from Touhou 11: Subterranean Animism
---------------------------------
Now THIS was a stage gimmick I was building up towards.

Satori's comment about "the wrong Hell" was a really funny throwaway line,
but it does lead nicely into this stage.

The 'Danmaku Demons' were an interesting design problem, as I knew that generic demons
wouldn't be, well, 'Touhou' enough for my tastes. I wanted something MORE.

But at the same time, I knew that THESE danmaku demons would be re-used.

What does that mean? It means they can't be generically forgettable,
while they also need to feel 'Doom like', to avoid being totally pointless.

With that in mind, I had a lot of fun designing these monsters.

In terms of the actual map, this is the first map in the wad I'm truly happy with.
Unlike other maps, that basically only stand in as an excuse for the fight that uses it,
this map stands on its own relatively decently. I learned the tricks for detailing the
map from the Doom wad Community Chest 4. It's a good wad and a great texture set.

Only took 13 or 14 maps to get one that I don't think looks like garbage.
Ah well, I've gotta start somewhere. I only get better by making more.

I didn't really intend it to be this way, but I was surprised by how *hard* this map ended up being.
It's probably the hardest stage in the game to survive, up until now. At least I find it to be.

Then again, SA stage 5 was legitimately that bad, so I guess I shouldn't feel *too* bad about it.
-----------------------------
[ BOSS: Rin "Orin" Kaenbyou ]
Music:
"Corpse Voyage ~ Be of good cheer!", from Touhou 11: Subterranean Animism
-----------------------------
Everyone hated Orin in SA.

So of course, what could I do but implement the most infuriating boss of all time?

To be honest, Orin's a bit of a mixed bag. Some her stuff is cool gimmicks.

Some of it is 'Blazing Wheel'. I'm sorry for that. Kind of.

You take the good with the bad.

============================
[ MAP15: Dazzling Hellfire ]
Music:
"Hellfire Mantle", from Touhou 11: Subterranean Animism
----------------------------
Much like the final stage of Episode I, this is kind of generic filler.

However, I decided to make it less generic by making it so monster infighting is common.
It's one of the ways that Danmaku Demons differ from fairies.

Or, to quote: "Protip: Unlike fairies, demons can infight."

But really, this map is really just an arena for the boss, Utsuho.
-----------------------
[ BOSS: Utsuho Reiuji ]
Music:
"Solar Sect of Mystic Wisdom ~ Nuclear Fusion", from Touhou 11: Subterranean Animism
-----------------------
<!> WARNING <!> WARNING <!> WARNING <!>

Utsuho is, from a gameplay perspective, honestly my least favourite final boss.

She stands in dead contrast to many boss fight design principles I like.

First of all, RNG's a pain in this fight. If Utsuho doesn't like your run, it's done.

Second of all, there's a lot of oneshots; if you get hit with a sun, that's usually lethal.

Third of all, there's a lot of "oh yeah you just die if you don't know this."
While knowledge of patterns is important, Utsuho has a lot of "you die if you don't know this."
Which I don't consider good design - you should be able to substitute pattern knowledge
for pure reading-on-the-fly dodging skill.

Then again, you can use your bombs. That's a thing you could do.

However, I'll grant Utsuho this: She's a very *impressive* boss. The Visual Spectacle
*almost* makes up for the gameplay flaws she does have, at least in my opinion as her designer.

Still, she's the final boss, so some over-the-topness is to be expected.

V1.2 Update: So it turns out if you use touhou_doomweapons in V1.0, I forgot to give you a rocket launcher.
Not that it matters that much (you'll be using the Plasma Rifle on this map, mostly), but my mistake!

<!> WARNING <!> WARNING <!> WARNING <!>

=======================================
[ MAP16: The Lovely Visitor From Hell ]
Music:
"Last Remote", from Touhou 11: Subterranean Animism
---------------------------------------
TIME FOR EXTRA STAGE NUMBER 2

The enemies are based off of SA's extra, while the stages are based off of a few things:
The Elevator ride is based of Touhou 12.3: Touhou Hisoutensoku, and then the outside
area is kinda sorta based on Touhou 10: Mountain of Faith. The area with the waterfall
is based on a really cool Touhou minecraft server which recreated Gensokyo on a 1:1 scale.

I do kind of like the view of the mountain from the bottom. It looks really big.
And it's supposed to look big. Maybe I should've added some clouds?
------------------------
[ BOSS: Koishi Komeiji ]
Music:
"Hartmann's Youkai Girl", from Touhou 11: Subterranean Animism
------------------------
Koishi's a bit higher up on the weirdness scale, as far as extra bosses go.

Okay, her merit as a legitimate extra boss is not why I chose her.
-----------------------------------
[ BOSS: Koishi Hell: Doom Edition ]
Music:
"Hartmann's Youkai Girl", from Touhou 11: Subterranean Animism
"At Doom's Gate", Doom's E1M1-->Wait, what?

I mean, yeah, it's pretty silly that you'd interrupt my theme in the middle of the figh-*WHACK*

Koishi, no speaking in the post-mortem. That's my job.
-----------------------------------
So I knew, starting Koishi's fight, that I was absolutely not going to legitmately
implement the majority of her fight. So many cards are just that utterly impossible
to recreate with the limitations of this engine.

However, Koishi's a bit of a meme in the Touhou community, thanks to a series of custom
danmaku scripts called "Koishi Hell", "Koishi Hell 2", and "Koishi Heck", which are
hilarious meme-filled absurdity fests that are completely ridiculous.

So I decided to make a decidedly non-canon fight.

To explain the joke cards, since you may be out on these jokes:

The melee attack:
  In his first playthrough of the original Touhou Doom, TerminusEst13 cheesed the Koishi fight
  via fully charging his melee attack to a completely absurd degree and killing Koishi close
  to instantly. When the original updated, Koishi had a new attack. An instant, one-shot,
  9999999 damage attack that immediately killed term through Demonsteele's invulnerability.
  It's only used in melee. I kept the attack as is, because Koishi: Heavyweight Boxing Champion.

Shivers Sign "Original Map Do Not Steal":
  The original Touhou Doom stole a map from Free Doom. Straight up ripped it from the wad.
  Later, when Sgt Shivers was screwing around, he replaced the stolen map...with E1M1.
  I then ripped E1M1 again (replacing normal demons with danmaku ones), and put it here.

Dekw Sign "This is why we can't have nice things"
  Dekw, my most valiant tester, is very good at finding bugs. He's so good at doing it
  that I keep having to remove things because he finds ways to break the game with them.
  Things I had to do because of him include but are not limited to: removing decorative objects,
  Putting invisible walls everywhere you're not supposed to go, limiting the time you can spend
  around certain pillars, and making every arena in Episode 2 onwards as boring as possible.
  To spite him I made a card that is a featureless box, throwing basic rings that you must
  dodge through with no strategy; There's no exploiting your way out of this one.

Yholl Sign "THEY HAD A_SETSCALE"
  The original Touhou Doom was written for ZDoom 2.7.1, with a SINGLE use of A_SetScale.
  Yes, exactly one. Except there were a lot of not-using-A_SetScale actors that *should*
  have used A_SetScale. When he found out, he kinda sorta completely lost his mind.
  This spellcard has a very simple visual effect that clearly...does not use A_SetScale.
  Yep, I went out of my way to not use it on the obvious visual effect where it should be used!

Untitled Sign "I didn't playtest this at all"
  I'm not mean enough to just mock others. I'll include myself in the list of people
  I'm making fun of. I have a bad habit of not fully playtesting my cards. I kind of make them
  theoretically work; e.g. I make a card on Lunatic, I copy it for the other three difficulties,
  make some blind bullet reductions, and yeah, it should all work. (NARRATOR: It didn't.)
  I did playtest this one to make sure it didn't crash, but otherwise it's deliberately untested.

Terminus Sign "Philosophy of a Hated Candelabra"
  So, when TerminusEst13 streamed Touhou Doom, he did so with his mod, Demonsteele.
  Demonsteele allows you to destroy decorative candelabras. In his playthrough,
  he declared war on the candelabra and went out of his way in places to cut down
  every single one. This card revolves hiding behind candelabras, so if you, in some
  weird fringe case, cut them all down, you will be utterly screwing yourself over.

"PRAISE BENELLUS"
  I needed a last card, and a joke to follow it.
  Credit goes to the DUMP 3 team for designing Benellus, the god of shotguns.
  I simply ripped the patterns.

Agitation "OH F***, SKELETONS"
  AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

============================
EPISODE II OVERALL THOUGHTS:
If Episode I was where I proved there was potential, Episode II is where
I went all out on making this more-Touhou like. It's more polished, far
less exploitable, and in general it just has more of an identity, having
some very unique things such as the Touhou weapons, which add a lot more
variety to the boss fights. The Plasma Rifle got old.

V1.2: If you like custom weapons but also like spellcards, well now you can mix and match!
Before 1.2, touhou_doomweapons was linked to touhou_nospellcards, so there was no way to use
Doom Weapons AND use spellcards. I forget why I did this, so I decoupled the two settings. Have fun!
============================

+-------------+
< EPISODE III >
+-------------+

============================================
[ MAP17: Wind Blows on the Sacred Mountain ]
Music:
"The Primal Scene of Japan the Girl Saw", from Touhou 10: Mountain of Faith
--------------------------------------------
So now we enter Episode III.

The stage is based off of MoF's stage 5. It's pretty basic, IMO.

In general, I knew that, in the end, I was limited by a variety of factors,
namely boss sprites, to what locations I could feasibly represent.

By recognizing this fact, I could try to figure out a what locations I could visit
in the limited possibility space I had. Who are 'notable' characters, really?

The Moriya Shrine became the obvious choice, by that metric - it's a location
in three different games (10, 11, and 12.3), so it's gotten some canon looks.

It took me quite a while to make the shrine look at least vaguely the right shape.
I hope it looks good enough so at least you can tell what it's supposed to be.

Story-wise, I wasn't planning on having Yukari straight-up troll you, but
dekw wrote that segment. It does feel Yukari-like, though it IS annoying.

-----------------------
[ BOSS: Sanae Kochiya ]
Music:
"Faith is for Transient People", from Touhou 10: Mountain of Faith
-----------------------
So, I elaborated on why I chose the Moriya Shrine.

This begs the question: Which boss is the most notable *character* of that location?

Sanae was a fairly obvious choice, by that metric - she's playable in four
different main series games (12, 12.3, 13, and 15), and by the time I was
at this point, I was confident I could implement at least some of her patterns.

The hardest part of the fight, design wise, was the big star spellcards.
I think the visual effect was worth it, though, despite how long it took to get there.

Funnily enough, despite the visuals, Sanae basically hasn't changed at all since her original beta implementation.

==================================
[ MAP31: Skies Beyond the Clouds ]
Music:
"Skies Beyond the Clouds", from Touhou 10.5: Scarlet Weather Rhapsody
----------------------------------
FIGHTING GAMES REPRESENT!

So I kind of knew I wanted a MAP31 and MAP32. I decided to go with a pair of bosses.

Why? Because really, Touhou Doom's most iconic feature is the very flashy boss fights.

However, to help distinguish these two, I took the characters from a fighting game.

I personally like how the silhouette of the mountain in the darkness looks.
It looks much bigger than it actually is.

The map itself really isn't anything special. It's just a boss arena.
-------------------
[ BOSS: Iku Nagae ]
Music:
"Crimson in the Black Sea ~ Legendary Fish", from Touhou 10.5: Scarlet Weather Rhapsody
-------------------
Iku's one of the most visually impressive bosses. Thank Tormentor667 for that thunder effect,
it really makes the fight stand out amongst others.

Otherwise, Iku's nothing particularly special. She's just an alternative route;
either you fight Iku and Tenshi or you fight Sanae. Either works.

Well, okay, actually, you'll want to learn a route so you avoid having a lightning
pillar spawn on top of you during Iku's first spell card. That would be bad.

=============================================
[ MAP32: Daughter of Heaven, Heart of Human ]
Music:
"Flawless Clothing of the Celestials", from Touhou 10.5: Scarlet Weather Rhapsody
---------------------------------------------
This arena was harder to design; Heaven was truly not meant for a Doom map.

Otherwise, I think this is the first boss to be fought over two different arenas.
-------------------------
[ BOSS: Tenshi Hinanawi ]
Music:
"Catastrophe in Bhava-agra ~ Wonderful Heaven", from Touhou 10.5: Scarlet Weather Rhapsody
"Bhava-agra As Seen Through a Child's Mind", from Touhou 10.5: Scarlet Weather Rhapsody
-------------------------
"Tenshi, why did Untitled let you get TWO themes?"

Because SWR did.

This fight wins the award of "closest fight to one of the fighting games".
This is because Tenshi is mostly a fighting game only boss.

Also, try not to fall off the arena. That happens if you aren't careful.

I had a lot of fun designing the last card; though the instadeath lasers are a bit much.
Don't stand in the path of the giant beam. It kills you. Use the sound cues to your advantage!

While it was fun, designing the last card was also very hard; the giant laser originally
came out MUCH faster. It was pretty much impossible to avoid if you weren't already in
motion when she started charging it. I added the delay later, to make it more feasible,
especially on lower difficulties (Lunatic's a special beast, to say the least).

Which route will you choose? Sanae, or Iku + Tenshi?

Well, Sanae's probably the easier route, so there's that.

======================================
[ MAP18: Soil that Holds Magic Power ]
Music:
"The Doll Maker of Bucuresti", from Touhou 7: Perfect Cherry Blossom
--------------------------------------
Back to the forest.

To describe the map, the process was very simple: copy-paste trees. Copy-paste a LOT of trees.

Then, way later, simplify the trees because you're causing too much lag. Ah well.

As for the gameplay gimmick...

Oh boy.

I knew, that I wanted to have at least one segment where you saw Touhou enemies fight Demons.

Then I realized that for the forest of magic we have Alice and Marisa and I could
knock two birds out with one stone.

The stage itself is based around the gimmick of Alice's Dolls and the Demons fighting each other.

AND GETTING THIS TO WORK WAS PAIN.

SO MUCH PAIN.

As it turns out, monster AI is rather horrifically inflexible. Getting monsters to actually
chaotically fight each other in the way I wanted them to was a giant pile of garbage
and honestly it took me way too long to get it sorted out with WAY too many Thing_Hate calls.

The effect was worth it, IMO - the chaotic nature of the forest as so many projectiles
start getting flung about is very hectic, and I generally like the feel of it...

...unless you decide to hide and let them fight. You can do that, too.
--------------------------
[ BOSS: Alice Margatroid ]
Music:
"Doll Judgment ~ The Girl Who Played with People's Shapes", from Touhou 7: Perfect Cherry Blossom
--------------------------
Oh, was this fun to design.

Alice Margatroid's main gimmick was the whole 'summoning dolls' thing.

I'm not terribly proud of this fight. Both of her spellcards were from the fighting games.

However, really, Alice is just a midboss. The real fight is...
-------------------------
[ BOSS: Marisa Kirisame ]
Music:
"Love-Coloured Master Spark", from Touhou 8: Imperishable Night
"Magus Night", from Touhou 12.8: Fairy Wars
-------------------------
Ahahahahahahaha.

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

AAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

So, I kind of knew, starting from the beginning, that I wanted to do a fight with Marisa.

I had this fight planned out from since I started Episode II. The only issue was, well,
I didn't have the skills to implement it back then. That, and I liked having her fight
be later in the actual game - Marisa, even if she was easier (she's not), is very...
unique, shall we say. I definitely would want her to be a late fight.

I really did not know which of her themes to use, as she has way too many:
Touhou 2, 3, 4, 7.5, 8, 9, 10.5, 12.3, 12.8, 13.5, and 14.5.

'Love-Colored Magic' is probably her most iconic theme, and it's remix,
'Love-Coloured Master Spark' is a GREAT later rendition of it.
However, 'Magus Night' more properly evokes the emotion of "OH GOD IT'S MARISA"
that I wanted to go for, emotionally, as Marisa IS a main series playable character.

So I went with both. 'Love-Coloured Master Spark' for the more 'normal' portion, and
'Magus Night' for when she decides to be Marisa Kirisame.

Marisa was probably the most fun I've ever had writing a character.
Her motivation for fighting you is such a joke and I love it.

Canonically, the Hakkero, which Marisa uses to power her giant laser, Master Spark,
is one of a kind, and you have it in your hakkero gun. However, it really wouldn't
be a Marisa fight without her firing a giant laser, so I wrote the 'backup Hakkero'
joke. While this is a complete violation of canon, Marisa tends to violate known canon
on a semi-regular basis in the actual series, so it's basically canon to violate canon.

'Blazing Star', if you're on Hard or Lunatic, is the first non-extra timeout card,
because of course Marisa would just have a timeout card in a non-extra fight.

'Big Freaking Spark 9000' is the most ridiculous card I have ever made. I love it.
There's absolutely no reason for this card to exist and that's why it has to exist.
That last sentence basically is Marisa's general Modus Operandi.
It was kind of a pain to design the card, but it was so worth it.

When I saw the first person run into this card live, he died in exactly the way I wanted him to.
It was so terrible, and yet, it was also so perfect.

Everything about this fight really came together. I'm really happy with it.

==============================
[ MAP19: Legendary Dreamland ]
Music:
"Eternal Shrine Maiden", from Touhou Album: Dolls in Psuedo Paradise
------------------------------
The Hakurei Shrine.

I knew we'd have to visit the Hakurei Shrine eventually.

It's one of the most iconic locations of Gensokyo. Also, in addition to that,
Reimu Hakurei is THE main playable character of the series, being playable
in every single main danmaku game, and all of the fighting games as well.

In the end, I was planning a quick fight where you fight off demons from the shrine.

Then I realized this felt wrong, because Reimu is the hero of her own story.
She's clean up her own shrine of all the demons.

That's why there's no stage: Reimu already beat the stage for you.

If you look, the trees are less detailed here than in other maps with trees.
They used to be just as detailed, but the problem is that this map was very
framerate intensive, and combined with Reimu's fight, this was a serious issue.
Since there's no reason to focus on the trees once the fight starts, they got the axe.
The Shrine itself keeps the detail because it's the iconic visual of the map.
-----------------------
[ BOSS: Reimu Hakurei ]
Music:
"Mystic Oriental Love Consultation", from Touhou 10.5: Scarlet Weather Rhapsody
"Dichromatic Lotus Butterfly ~ Red and White", from Touhou Album: Dolls in Psuedo Paradise
-----------------------
So, originally, Reimu was going to be the end of Episode II boss.

But two things prevented that: Like Marisa, I wasn't good enough to design her patterns when I first got there.

And also like Marisa, I wanted her to be a later boss, because, well...

This fight.

THIS FIGHT.

Reimu is possibly THE fight I am the most proud of, because of many, MANY different things.

Let's start with the difficulty: Reimu is by FAR the hardest boss up until this point.
At least on Lunatic. And, the more I think about it, the more she kind of had to be.

Reimu Hakurei is the main playable character of the Touhou series.
Giving her anything less than a brutal fight would feel wrong.

I wanted to convey this fact: from your perspective Reimu is the boss of this level,
but from Reimu's perspective, YOU are the boss of *her* level.

She's the hero of her own story. She's not just another boss.

She's a player. And she treats YOU like you're the boss.

This brings us to the first aspect of the fight: The noncards.
The noncards are very notable in that you will see the Hakurei Amulet AND Persuasion Needle
attacks, from their original owner. She's attacking you with the kinds of attacks that are
normally what the player uses. Because, in normal Touhou, the player IS Reimu.

Also, Reimu can fly, canonically. Unlike other bosses, who don't really use this ability
for engine-balance reasons (the ZDoom engine is not very good at going up or down), Reimu
WILL often jump into the air, and continue shooting from there.

Actually, the fact Reimu moves so much during her noncards is pretty notable, too.
It's like she's trying to dodge your bullets. Because you know, you're the boss to her.

The other side, of course, is the spellcards.

The first two spellcards are semi-typical boss material.
The third, not so much, as it's meant to be something more akin to a player spellcard.
Which, if you've experimented with the spellcards, you'll know that it IS one.

But then you get to her fourth card and it REALLY kicks into high gear.

'Fantasy Seal -Concentrate-' is a hell of a card.
I don't think anything else in the game homes in on you like it does.
Because Reimu isn't trying to give you a fair fight. She wants you GONE,
so she's a bit more direct about it.

If you're on Hard or Lunatic, 'Fantasy Seal -Blink-' will be one hell of a trip.

Admittedly her last card, 'Flying Mysterious Shrine Maiden', is much more boss-like.
I guess it's tradition to end with something with more visual spectacle than player punch.

I knew, after making Marisa, that I had to use two themes for this fight.
"Mystic Oriental Love Consultation" is a very punchy theme that fits the energy of the first half.
"Dichromatic Lotus Butterfly" was her extra boss theme in another game, so it's a thing here.

As you could hopefully guess, this was very hard to design. In particular:
-Balacing the homing attacks so they weren't undodgeable, but still threatening, was very hard.
-Getting Reimu's aerial attacks to work right was hard.
-Oh yeah, Reimu has an entirely separate set of animation for her aerial moves. Gotta rip those.
-Actually, Reimu's frames in general. She broke the frame count record when I made her.
-Evil Sealing Circle was hard because monsters don't like moving that much.
-Fantasy Seal -Concentrate- was a nightmare to balance, because seekers, really.
-Duplex Barrier took VERY long to figure out the A_Warp parameters to make the visual effect work.
-Fantasy Seal -Blink- was a very complicated set of linedef setup to make the teleports work right.
-And other things not mentioned here.

The result, however, was absolutely worth it in my eyes.

Reimu is the boss I am single-handedly the most proud of in the entire project.
She really feels like the real character, even if that's unfortunate for you.
As it was put by a friend of mine: "Reimu is, regrettably, still Reimu."

That's why in the end, I decided to make the fight end with Reimu getting interrupted.
Because it wouldn't feel right to actually beat her. She doesn't lose if she's serious.

=================================
[ MAP20: The Border of Gensokyo ]
Music:
"Charming Domination", from Touhou 7: Perfect Cherry Blossom
"Charming Domination ~ Who Done It?", from Touhou 7: Perfect Cherry Blossom
---------------------------------
We're not done yet. Of COURSE there's an Extra Stage.

Yukari's a bit of a wildcard in any scenario.
If you're annoyed at her by this point in the story, then I'll fully take responsibility...

By admitting it was entirely intentional. In fact, I got dekw to help make her dialogue
even LESS useful than it was in earlier iterations. Because that's Yukari Yakumo for you.

I knew, that despite Yukari being plot relevant, that I wanted to save the reveal of
what she truly is for this point of time, since most people playing this are probably
more Doom players than Touhou players.

As far as the Extra Stage itself goes, I decided to try something completely different.

It's a pretty timing-faithful recreation of PCB's extra/phantasm stage.

Right down to not being in first person anymore. It's a literal shmup stage.

I was surprised by how difficult people found this. I personally think it's the easiest extra.
But that might be because I played the Touhou games and thus know how you're supposed to do this.

Ran Yakumo should really have some more frames. But alas, she's not playable in any game.
-----------------------
[ BOSS: Yukari Yakumo ]
Music:
"Night Falls ~ Evening Star", from Touhou 7.5: Immaterial and Missing Power
"Necrofantasia", from Touhou Album: Magical Astronomy (originally from PCB)
-----------------------
"All I am giving you is the choice. Nothing more, and nothing less."

Oddly enough, despite how much of an enigma Yukari's character is,
her fight is arguably the most straight-forward Extra Boss there is.
It's a pretty straightforward throwdown against ten different spellcards.

Her first six noncards are referencial to both PCB and SWR.
Her last two noncards are basically her using her gaps to randomly
teleport in other attacks from across time and space, including both
danmaku attacks of others AND demonic attacks, because lol gap magic.

Out of her ten spellcards, nine of them are from PCB.

Yukari was probably the most painless extra boss I've ever designed.

Which is to say, still a massive pain that took forever, but there wasn't any extra
"Oh my GOD this card is SO STUPID" moments that plagued Flandre.
(and Koishi too, but it was intentional there.)

'Border of Life and Death' is also one of my favourite spells in the entire project.
If someone were to ask, "Describe Touhou Doom in one attack", it would be this card.

I REALLY like her quote at the end of the fight, where she mentions that
"I never said at any point you had a choice with consequences."

Mostly because the counterpoint, "DAMMIT YUKARI!", is something of a fandom catchphrase.

=============================
EPISODE III OVERALL THOUGHTS:
This might still be my favourite Episode out of the five.
It's short, but, in general, everything felt relatively cohesive and very deliberate.
It's the only episode to not really have any filler sections - everything has purpose.

Then again, given it's only three maps + two secret bosses + extra, I guess it makes
SOME sense that every single portion feels very more deliberately put together.

The post-release patches barely changed anything, if at all, with this episode,
aside from the decoupling of Touhou_DoomWeapons and Touhou_NoSpellcards.
=============================

+------------+
< EPISODE IV >
+------------+

========================
[ MAP21: Burning Heat! ]
Music:
"Burning Heat! (Full Option MIX)", from Beatmania IIDX,
originally from Gradius II, as the stage 1 theme.
------------------------
So here we are.

I knew, going into Episode IV, that I both needed and wanted to do something
VERY different from previous maps. I mean, after all, we're not in Gensokyo anymore.

I chose to reference other shmups because Touhou ain't the only shmup there.
The first reference was Gradius, because while it's not a danmaku game, it's
the first major shmup ever made. Not giving it a shout-out seems kind of wrong.

The map name "Burning Heat!" refers to the soundtrack name.

I don't really know where I came up with the gimmick for this stage. It just kinda happened.

I guess it was a compromise; I wanted to go back to Doom Weapons, but I also didn't want
to just suddenly get rid of weapons that you were using for so much of the wad.

So you're timed. It also means that you get to see more of the weapons at lower power,
since most of Episode II and all of III you're at 400 power, which is the maximum.

Of course, since your power is draining over the course of the level, this allowed me
to introduce the level gimmick: Three main weapons (SSG, Chaingun, and Rocket Launcher)
are only available by grabbing a skull key first (Blue, Red, and Yellow, respectively),
which means the first thing you must do is use your limited time danmaku weapons to get
the doom weapons so you can fight the rest of the level.

This level ended up being surprisingly hard. The timed aspect is actually pretty brutal.

My advice: The intended order of the keys is Blue (SSG), Red (Chaingun), then Yellow (RL)

Fun fact: If you use touhou_doomweapons, which removes the danmaku weapons from play,
the level gimmick is completely different. Instead of a timed use of danmaku weapons,
you get a limited ammo Plasma Rifle.
---------------------------------------
SECRET CHALLENGE I 'The Reveal of Hell'
---------------------------------------
Welcome to the secret challenges!

These are optional bonus challenges, though there IS a reward for beating them...?

The entrance to this challenge is a reference to Hell Revealed. At the start of the level,
before you enter the teleporter, shoot into the dark. Immediately. The wall behind you will
lower. In that lowered section, there's a Shotgun, a Backpack, and an invisible switch.

Press this switch to enter.

The challenge explains what to do when you enter.

The name's a reference to Hell Revealed, fairly obviously.
----------------------------
[ BOSS: Danmaku Cyberdemon ]
Music:
"Take Care!", from Gradius III. Boss theme.
originally from Gradius II. Originally a boss theme.
----------------------------
So, referencing non-Touhou games meant that the bosses would be less phased.

This is an example of such. In general I avoided using the Danmaku Cyberdemon because
I knew I wanted to make it a boss in Episode IV. Any Doom player knows this is coming,
but seeing it for the first time is really something.

It's also not THAT short, due to having no plasma rifle or full power danmaku weapon.

This boss ALSO comes with some minions; Dark Imps are the first custom danmaku demon.
As in, first danmaku demon that is not based on a vanilla Doom monster.

A generic boss, but it serves the purpose well. Hence why I chose a very short BGM.

================================
[ MAP22: Thunder and Lightning ]
Music:
"Flap Towards the Hope", from Raiden IV. Stage 3 theme.
originally from Raiden II, where it was the stage 7 theme.
--------------------------------
This map was inspired by a few different Doom maps:
-Valiant MAP22: 'Spiraling into Nether' and MAP23: 'Genocide Motor'
-TUTNT's 'The Beginning and The End'
Valiant's an excellent doom wad, you should check it out if you haven't already.
TUTNT's a bit more controversial, but if nothing else it looks AMAZING.

I decided to reference Raiden because it's also a pretty neat shmup series.
Raiden's a very different kind of bullet hell, as it's more focused on fast
bullets than overly dense walls of bullets typical of the genre.

Also, Raiden fangame 'Raiden X' was my first shmup ever,
so it holds a special place in my heart.

The Raiden series' music is cool. Hence why I used it.

The name "Thunder and Lightning" comes from what the kanji used in 'Raiden' translate to.
Despite the fact that Raiden is almost ALWAYS in standard latin alphabet characters.

When I imported the lightning effects for Iku Nagae (MAP31), I ended up importing
several different lightning colors, so I decided I should find a use for the others.

This map is pretty attrition heavy. The initial megasphere has to survive all the way to halfway.
At least on Lunatic. It's more forgiving on easier difficulties.

I really didn't know what to do with this map for the longest time.
I've always found drawing the map layout to be the hardest part of mapping.

It can be annoying sometimes, but I also like the verticality of this map.

In the end, the visual effect of the lightning helps carry the fact that, really, in the end,
it's just a linear series of fights against Danmaku demons. I also introduce the rest of the
custom monsters here: The Guardian Cube, and the Suicide Bomber, and two others.

I actually designed this map AFTER I made MAP23.
---------------------------------------
SECRET CHALLENGE II 'Become The Hunted'
---------------------------------------
There's a switch in the lava very close to where you start.

I wanted a challenge with Archviles. Lots of Archviles.

The name is taken from the soundtrack of Plutonia 2's MAP11: Arch-Violence.
------------------------------
[ BOSS: Danmaku Daedabus X 5 ]
Music:
"Go to Blazes!", from Raiden IV
originally from Raiden I. Boss Theme.
------------------------------
Not a terribly special fight, but it's an introduction to a new monster.

Really nothing special.
-----------------------------------
[ BOSS: Danmaku Bruiser Demon X 3 ]
Music:
"Metal Storm", from Raiden IV
originally from Raiden II. Boss theme.
-----------------------------------
This thing is a bit more special. The Bruiser Demon is a custom boss monster
that's been featured in a few different wads. Since I knew I needed some custom
monsters, I wanted to, in the vein of the vanilla danmaku demons, make custom
danmaku demons that were based off known custom monsters. The bruiser demon was,
in retrospect, a fairly obvious choice, because it's flashy as hell to start with,
and I could REALLY go places with the thing. Which I did.

Also, I really like Metal Storm. It's a cool theme.

=======================================
[ MAP23: Trial of the Masked Hawfinch ]
Music:
"Faith", from Ikaruga. Stage 3 theme.
---------------------------------------
There's a mouthful of a name.

For those out of the loop, 'Ikaruga' is the name for the Japanese grosbeak, a species of bird.
The Japanese grosbeak is, by another name, called the "Masked Hawfinch".

Ikaruga is a very notable and pretty well known bullet hell game, so yeah.

As for the Doom side, this map was inspired by three different maps:
-Speed of Doom MAP27: Hais Temple
-Deus Vult II's MAP12: Minas Morgul
-And a third map I'll reveal later.
Both of the first two are excellent wads, which is why I drew inspiration from them.

I actually referenced Ikaruga itself through the map - the map is VERY visually distinct,
with it being split down the middle into a red half and blue half. The map itself is, uh,
not very detailed, but the unique Red/Blue aesthetic means that the more barebone detail
level works FOR it rather than against it. It's one of the ways I got better at mapping:
I learned to analyze my weaknesses and make scenarios where they aren't weaknesses.

The big hallway fight is a reference to Deus Vult II's MAP12, as mentioned above.
It's not really that hard. Just keep pumping rockets into the horde and eventually
all of the monsters will die.

The Archvile trap at the end of the hallway is one of my favourite moments in this map.
The thing is, with vanilla monsters, this would be instant death - you can't dodge viles.
But with danmaku demons, you can run backwards and survive - though, watch for resurrections.

The layout itself is more Speed of Doom's MAP27, with the key split.

As you could guess, you need to grab two keys: Red and Blue keys.
After you grab the first one, the Cyberdemon appears in the center connecting room.
I did this because I wanted to let the player know that the former boss monsters are
now entirely fair game for me to use. In fact, there's two bruiser demons and a couple
daedabi - monsters that were literally boss monsters one map ago! The second cyberdemon,
of course, is easier than the first, owing to the fact that you have a plasma rifle.
There's also 20 lost souls accompanying it, referencing Doom's E2M8: Tower of Babel.

This is one of my personal favourite maps from the Episode. It works really nicely.

After activating both key switches, you'll get into a fight with 12 Danmaku Barons.
If you know the third reference map, then you'll guess what the boss is.
-----------------------------------------
SECRET CHALLENGE III 'The Best Challenge'
-----------------------------------------
At the very start of the level, turn around. The wall behind you is a door. Open it.
There's a teleporter inside the room behind you. Enter it to begin the challenge.

This challenge (and the name) is a reference to a secret map from DUMP 3, called "The Best Map", by
TerminusEst13. It's a bunch of zombiemen shooting at you while you go back and forth
pressing switches. So that's what this is, but instead it's now danmaku zombiemen.
---------------------------------------
[ BOSS: Danmaku Spider Mastermind X 2 ]
Music:
"Butsutekkai", from Ikaruga. Boss theme.
---------------------------------------
The big enemy is approaching at full throttle.
According to the data, it is known as "SPIDER MASTERMIND"
NO REFUGE

If the danmaku cyberdemon was a thing, of COURSE this will also be a thing.

The third reference map was PSX Doom's Redemption Denied, where you fight 12 Barons,
followed by fighting TWO Spider Masterminds at once. Replicating that here, you must
fight two danmaku masterminds at once as their introduction. Except, unlike vanilla
masterminds, these things don't infight. Have fun!

The main reason I used the Masterminds in this map and not MAP22 is that they actually
FIT in this map. Those things are giant and they get stuck EVERYWHERE. It's a pain, really.

=====================
[ MAP24: Levi Sense ]
---------------------
Choose, and choose wisely.

Both of next maps are gimmick maps, so I decided to be nice and let the player
decide which challenge to tackle. One of the things I did was that I made the
path to each teleporter give a short preview of what the map behind it will be like.

The Red teleporter gives you a chainsaw and berserk to take out some weaker demons.

The Blue teleporter surrounds you with a trap that requires some quick reflexes to get out of.

Both this map and the two maps they lead to are references to Mushihimesama, a legendarily
difficult shmup, and also where the name "Ultra" comes from in the difficulty select screen.

The name is from Mushihimesama's OST. It's the boss theme, though it's not used in this map.
--------------------------------------
SECRET CHALLENGE IV 'Cybernetic Dream'
--------------------------------------
I didn't want to put secret challenge 4 in both maps, so it's here instead.

To get to it, just walk backwards off the platform. There's a teleporter there.
If you land on it, you get teleported to a chamber with 12 cyberdemons in it.

This challenge is a reference to an old wad called cyberdreams, which is about
dodging large numbers of cyberdemons at the player while killing them in ways
that don't involve shooting them. It gets pretty crazy at times.

'Cyberdreams' is also where the name comes from.

This is the first challenge to truly require some luck to survive, though,
you can come up with some strategies to make it a lot more consistent.
If the AI's out for you, though, you ain't getting this.

Thankfully, it's short, so repeated attempts don't take much time.

=======================================
[ MAP33: Walking on the Land of Flame ]
Music:
"Walking on the Land of Flame", Mushihimesama. Stage 3 theme.
---------------------------------------
"WHY IS THERE A TYSON MAP IN THIS?!" - most Doom wad veterans, probably.

A number of doom wads like to have ONE obligatory map that revolves around punching things.

I decided to make one. It's a simple series of fights, but getting close to danmaku demons
is, uh, slightly difficult under most circumstances. It's pretty nuts, and I ended up toning
this down several times. 75 monsters, and it might STILL be one of the hardest maps in the wad.
Monster count is absolutely not everything here!

Tip of advice: You do not need to clear out the monsters on the long black and white platform.
For many (arguably most) players, killing the hell nobles is more trouble than it's worth.

After getting past the tyson section, it then abruptly transitions to a high-tier weapons.
You even get the BFG 9000, and then fight two cyberdemons at once, because yeah.
-------------------------------
[ BOSS: Danmaku Cybruiser X 4 ]
Music:
"Levi Sense", from Mushihimesama. Boss theme.
-------------------------------
Basically a weaker version of the Danmaku Cyberdemon.

These things are very versatile monsters. They have a LOT of different attacks, and often enough
these things get placed in groups of up to four, making them a pretty fearsome opponent if you
aren't being careful, since you can find yourself taking a lot of damage if you get careless.

Even with a BFG, these things have enough health that it's hard to kill them fast enough
to avoid having to take cover. There's not a lot of space to dodge all four of them.

========================================
[ MAP34: Like a Night of Falling Stars ]
Music:
"Like a Night of Falling Stars", from Mushihimesama. Stage 4 theme.
----------------------------------------
"It was lazy design this time." - Untitled (a.k.a. me, the designer of Touhou Doom)

I mentioned in Koishi's boss fight that the original Touhou Doom copied a map from Free Doom.

This was my way of mocking it while also turning that joke into something very different.

What do I mean? Well, this map is only *sort of* original. It's, of course, my map, but...
It's my map from another project. The original map is called 'Dimensional Accelerator',
and it's featured in the 3rd Doom Upstart Mapping Project, a.k.a. DUMP 3.
I consider the original to be one of my best standard Doom maps I've ever made.
Then again, I haven't made very many.

The "It was lazy design this time" is making fun of my map quote from DUMP 3,
which states: "Creative idea or lazy design? You decide!"

Since I copied the map from DUMP 3, so obviously it was lazy design in this case.

The Spider Mastermind in this map is the only solo mastermind in the entire wad.

Of course, to add a twist to things, I made three major changes to the map.

The first is that I replaced all the standard demons with danmaku demons.
The second is that you get Touhou Weapons for this. Hakkero Fire is finally useful!
The third is that the last fight is, well...
-------------------------------
[ BOSS: Danmaku Cybruiser X 4 ]
Music:
"Levi Sense", from Mushihimesama. Boss theme.
-------------------------------
Yep, it's the same boss monster.

Only this time there's no BFG.

Good luck.

================================
[ MAP25: A Most Blissful Death ]
Music:
"Taidou (Grieving Womb)", from DoDonPachi DaiOuJou. Stage 5 theme.
--------------------------------
The name comes from the translation of "DaiOuJou". A fitting name, I feel. Also, because
I had to refernce DoDonPachi. It might be the most legendary Bullet Hell series of all time.
DoDonPachi is arguably the reason that the genre of danmaku games even exists.

This is inspired by the following Doom maps:
-DTS-T MAP29: Seven
-Scythe II MAP28: Nightmare
-Deus Vult II MAP23: Hell's Vendetta
-Survive in Hell MAP30: Crowning Glory
-A few limit slaughtermaps from Stronghold

If you look at the list of inspirations, four out of the five of those were slaughtermaps.
That, combined with the initial monster count being well over a thousand, should tell you
what kind of map you're about to play. It's a danmaku slaughtermap. And it is glorious.
Besides, the BFG 9000 could really use a featured moment. It's an awesome weapon, and it
really should see at least ONE moment where it's the important weapon in your arsenal.

The layout is pretty simple; you need six keys to progress; 2 blue, 2 red, and 2 yellow.

The keycards are all based on boss fights:

Yellow Keycard: 4 Cyberdemons
	The cyberdemon, in ordinary circumstances, is a boss monster that is generally rare.
	So when a wad throws multiple cyberdemons at once, it's a clear sign that, in fact,
	you are in a slaughtermap. It's not too hard though.
Blue Keycard: 4 Bruiser Demons + 4 Cybruisers
	This is where the BFG can REALLY shine. The enemies spawn one at a time here, so
	if you're fast, you can kill every enemy before the next one spawns.
	This is the intended strategy, so good luck if you let them all spawn at once.
Red Keycard: 4 Spider Masterminds
	I didn't really have a plan for this one. I just knew I wanted a battle with
	four spider masterminds, because of the previous two keycard fights.

The skull keys are based on various slaughter fights.

Yellow Skull: Chaingunners + Revenants + Pain Elementals, referencing DTS-T MAP29's 'Wrath'.
	I like this one, because the normal versions of those monsters are incredibly
	ANNOYING things that drive players nuts. However, the danmaku versions, while
	throwing more firepower around, are not as annoying. They're consistent.
Blue Skull: Based on Deus Vult II MAP23's blue skull key room.
	Like most of the skull key fights, you'll want to switch from Rocket Launcher to BFG.
	I don't have much to say about this, it's just a long teleporter trap that really
	showcases a lot of the danmaku demons.
Red Skull: Based on Stronghold's love of occasional mass suicide bomber waves.
	I had to do it. I mean, I had to. I can't have screaming suicide bombers and then
	not use them in a giant mass at least once. Here, I'll summarize the experience:
	AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

I really wanted a proper slaughtermap for the wad.

The slaughter helps distract from the segments that aren't as detailed.
----------------------------
SECRET CHALLENGE V 'Kamilia'
Music:
"Toa (East Asia)", from DoDonPachi DaiOuJou. Stage 1 theme. Used for all secret challenges.
----------------------------
To access: At the very beginning of the map, enter the gate from the other side.

This challenge is a reference to an entirely different genre of absurdly hardcore games:
I Wanna Be The Guy Fangames. One of these, I Wanna Kill The Kamilia 3 (abbreviated to KK3),
had secret challenges. That game is what inspired me to do these secret challenges.

This is a giant reference to the infamous incredibly stupidly difficult Secret 5 from KK3.

It's kind of absurd, really. I can only promise you that it IS actually possible on Lunatic.
On average it takes me a couple dozen attempts before I get a successful run of it.

Also, KK3 is why I used 'Toa' as the secret challenge theme. It used it there, too, so actually,
KK3 veterans might suspect I was going to pull a Secret 5 even before seeing, well, Secret 5.

However, this map is where you can discover the rewards for doing the secret challenges:
When you start the map for real, the map opens with you getting ten system cards:
Eight Spirit Barriers and Two Life Regenerators.

However, for each secret challenge you complete, two of those system cards are replaced
with full-blown powerful spellcards that wipe out tons of demons with one cast.

Complete all five challenges? You get TEN different full-blown spellcards.

You may need them, though:
------------------
[ BOSS: The Core ]
Music:
"Ouryuu (Yellow Stream)", from DoDonPachi DaiOuJou. Normal Final boss theme.
------------------
I knew, when I pulled that twist in MAP19, at the end of Reimu's fight, that eventually
Reimu was going to come back. Only this time, she'd come back as a friend instead of a foe.

If you thought enemy Reimu was crazy, you should meet ally Reimu. She's even more powerful.

I really hate it when games allow a former enemy to be on the player's side...but then make
said former enemy WAY weaker than they were as an enemy. Reimu is a player character, dammit!

So I made her VERY powerful. The only reason why she can't solo the fight is that it's, well...

The Core is an Icon of Sin fight. That means that it spawns monsters infinitely until you kill it.
In this iteration, it spawns monsters VERY fast. Especially on Lunatic mode. However, Reimu will
kill those monsters pretty fast as well. It gets very chaotic because of the nature of this.

The 5 switches ensure that the player has to move around a fair bit. Reimu won't hit those for you.

After activating the switches, the core is left vulnerable. It's technically not a monster,
so Reimu will never target it for you. You gotta do that yourself. However, it's exposed
to the open, which means you can BFG it in melee range to kill it fairly quickly.

What happens next depends on how many secret challenges you've completed:
2 or less: The map ends here.
3 or more:
------------------------------
[ BOSS: Danmaku Arachnophyte ]
Music:
"Death Label 95-97-02", by (mostly Touhou) doujin circle COOL&CREATE.
Original tracks are from Donpachi, Dodonpachi, and Dondonpachi Daioujou. All Boss themes.
------------------------------
Approach the target and attack. Your mission starts now!

This thing is a flying version of the danmaku spider mastermind.

Except it has some deadlier attacks, and can't be interrupted mid-attack at all.

Also, this variant is scripted to Teleport, with the frequency increasing
depending on how much health it has left. Oh, and it's much more aggressive,
moving faster and attacking near-constantly, because why the hell not. It's a bonus boss.

What happens after this boss depends on how many secret challenges you've completed:
3: The map ends here.
4 or more:
------------------------------
[ BOSS: Danmaku Annihilator* ]
*: There are two of them if you have completed all 5 challenges.
------------------------------
The Danmaku Cyberdemon needed a second arm cannon.

"No, it didn't!", you might say.

You'd be right, in a sane world.

This is not a sane world.

=====================================
[ MAP26: Truth of the Warp Facility ]
Music:
"Here we are!", Undertale.
"Core", Undertale.
-------------------------------------
And now for something completely different. Again.

Quote from the MAP01 description:
"The other thing was that making the map better allowed me to setup a neat twist later on."

This was the later twist. MAP26's twist was to replay this map all over again, but...

The Fairy specimens would refuse their capture. The demons don't stand a chance.

Designing this map was very hard, because it represented the first time that I needed
to scale back and make something more typically Doom-like: A Tech-base level. Unfortunately,
I have no experience in making techbases, and I think it unfortunately shows. With that in mind,
the more you map, the better you get at mapping, so any aspiring map makers reading this:
Don't give up! Keep trying, and you'll make something fun.

This map is interesting in that it really shows why so many maps in Touhou Doom are
made to be incredibly wide-open; this map is a lot of tight corridors found, in, well,
more actually typical Doom wads. But the fairies are Danmaku enemies through and through -
thus the contrast, as you have to dodge very dense attacks with VERY little room.

As a result, it's arguably one of the hardest maps in the wad.

And that's just getting started. Halfway through, you get the Danmaku Weapons back.

The 2nd half is where things get crazy. I didn't even pretend to be fair about this.
The fight immediately after the music change is designed to be near unwinnable.
You really should just run away from it, because you'll just get yourself killed otherwise.

If you want to UV-Max this (er, Lunatic Max), good luck, you WILL need it.
Or have unbelievably good tactics for dealing with the fairies. Either works.

Because it's time to fight another Danmaku boss.
-------------
[ BOSS: ??? ]
Music:
"Battle Against a True Hero!", Undertale
-------------
This song was the reason I chose to reference Undertale. It's basically already a Touhou song.
In addition to that, the map IS actually a large underground lab, like the True lab from Undertale.
But mostly, it was this song.

The boss in question is basically "What if Patchouli's Gimmick met Satori's gimmick?"
The boss will randomly pick the first two cards out of a bag of sixteen different cards;
eight from Episode II, and another eight from Episode III.

There's a 100% that you've seen the cards before. No optional ones were included.

Of course, that's the spellcards. The boss has noncards, too. Unfortunately for you,
said noncards are a reference to Scythe II's evil marines. Welcome to Danmaku Deathmatch.

This lasts until you beat the second card; the boss then reveals itself more truly.

The third spellcard is a random pick from one of four patterns.
The fourth spellcard is also a random pick from one of four patterns.

If you are on any difficulty aside from Easy, the last card is a timeout.
Unlike the others, it is not a random pick from one of multiple patterns.

Designing this boss was an interesting experience, because it was the first truly original
Boss I had made for Touhou Doom. I had to really think about what I wanted to accomplish with
this boss slot, especially given it's the second last true boss, before the final boss fight.

It was honestly quite challenging. I had a lot of issues balancing this thing.
Ah, well, such is the nature of RNG; it can be a real pain sometimes.

V1.2 Update: So originally the first two cards were picked from a bag of fourteen cards:
two from Episode I, six from Episode II, and another six from Episode III. But I realized that
Satori already re-collected Episode I cards, so the gimmick would be less effective.
So, as of now, the first card is a recollection of a card from Episode II,
and now the second card is a recollection of a card from Episode III.

=========================================
[ MAP27: Western Apocalypse in the East ]
-----------------------------------------
Just when I thought MAP18 and MAP25 were crazy. We've seen nothing yet.

In the end, I knew that I wanted to make an All-out Gensokyo VS. Hell showdown.

And then I went ahead and did exactly that. Sort of.

So, originally I wanted all five segments of MAP27 to be one map.

However, it inevitably became unplayably laggy, even on my personal computer,
(which is very strong by community standards), so that wasn't going to happen.
------------------------------------------
[ MAP27A: Western Apocalypse in the East ]
Music:
"Septette for the Dead Princess", from Touhou 10.5: Scarlet Weather Rhapsody.
------------------------------------------
Welcome back to the Scarlet Devil Mansion!

Helping you clear out the mess are former bosses Patchouli, Sakuya, and Remilia.

Much like with Reimu, I wanted to show off that they aren't just bosses.
As a result, they're still pretty lethal. And they can use spellcards.
Hey, at least Sakuya doesn't freeze time when she's your ally.

While the monster density is very high, your allies kill very fast.

And so do you, to be honest.

Oh, and there's a Danmaku Annihilator. It shouldn't be an issue.
------------------------------------------
[ MAP27B: Western Apocalypse in the East ]
Music:
"Faith is for Transient People", from Touhou 10: Mountain of Faith
------------------------------------------
And now we're back to the Moriya Shrine.

Aiding you at this location is Sanae, Iku, and Tenshi.

Weirdly enough, when you think about it, if you've only played through Episode III once,
then either one or two of the bosses here are characters you haven't seen before.
Which is kind of neat, IMO, it really notes that most characters aren't villains.
Even if Tenshi is helping you out more out pure boredom than benevolence.

The scene where all of the Cacodemons fly up from below the clouds was a scene I had planned
from a long time ago. I knew, when I was working on the concept of the Gensokyo VS. Hell map,
that I really wanted to have this visual effect of seeing the cacodemons suddenly fly up from
all around the mountain. It's pretty crazy.

Amongst the flyers is a Danmaku Arachnophyte. Kill it to proceed.
------------------------------------------
[ MAP27C: Western Apocalypse in the East ]
Music:
"Magus Night", from Touhou 12.8: Fairy Wars
------------------------------------------
Forest of Magic, round two. Only this time there's way more demons...

And way more powerful allies. Youmu, Yuyuko, Alice, and Marisa all join in the fun.

Alice continually summons more dolls, and Marisa packs kind of absurd firepower.
Master Spark is no joke. Also, fun fact: If you stand directly in the path of
Marisa's giant laser when it fires, that actually kills you, even though you're
mostly immune to ally fire of all sorts.

The forest is a very large map, which is why I through a LOT more monsters here.
MAP25 is absolutely put to shame by this. I throw, what, twenty cyberdemons here?
It's absolutely nuts. Kill them all to proceed.
------------------------------------------
[ MAP27D: Western Apocalypse in the East ]
Music:
"Mystic Oriental Love Consultation", from Touhou 10.5: Scarlet Weather Rhapsody
------------------------------------------
And now, we finally loop back around to the Hakurei Shrine. Because of course we do.

The Hakurei Shrine battle has Suika, and, of course, Reimu, for your allies.

To iterate again on how powerful ally Reimu is: It takes concentrated hell nobles,
and some advanced ones at that, to keep her from slaughtering them all trivially.
Also, fun fact: This is the only map to use Danmaku Belphegors...which are literally
just recolored Barons. They aren't anything special at all.

The segment where every previous ally character comes back is completely free.
Which is good, because I'm not convinced that runs at a playable framerate most people.

This was going to be much crazier, but framerate drops were sadly common, so
I took out a lot of monsters from this to make it barely playable for people.

And after that, the final invasion has been foiled very spectacularly.
-------------------------
[ MAP27 General Remarks ]
-------------------------
In general, this was one of the easier maps (well, 5 maps) to make,
but mostly for the obvious reason that I got to reuse a LOT of map geometry.

======================================
[ MAP28: The One who Opens the Gates ]
Music:
"Into Backdoor", from Touhou 16: Into Backdoor
--------------------------------------
Whoa, back into shmup land.

I kind of wanted a throwaway stage akin to the first two Episodes, but at the same time,
I didn't want the last proper stage segment to be completely forgettable. So I decided
to bring back a gimmick some people may have missed from Episode III; namely because said
gimmick was an extra stage exclusive. The stage is thankfully short, though, so if you
don't like it, you only have to survive a minute or so.

Abstract space maps are fun because you don't have to detail as much for it to look nice.

With that out of the way:
------------------------
[ BOSS: Mephistopheles ]
Music:
"Unknown X ~ Unfound Adventure", from Touhou 12.3: Touhou Hisoutensoku
"X, the Floating Objects in the Sky", from Touhou 12.3: Touhou Hisoutensoku
------------------------
So here we are, at the final boss. Man, was this one HELL of a journey (sorry).

Mephistopheles has actually been in another project, formerly of mine: SamsaraHold.
Though, his boss fight there is VERY different. Also, the project is very different.

Like Reimu, I wanted his nonspells to depict something atypical of a Touhou-style boss.
However, unlike Reimu, who's trying to be a player character, Mephistopheles is trying
to be a VERY advanced Doom monster. So his abilities are ones typical of custom doom bosses:
Teleportation and summoning large numbers of monsters. While also having extra danmaku.
The whole 'teleporting' schtick was basically entirely from SamsaraHold, though in here
it's arguably much more deadly. No running away from Mephistopheles.

So, if you aren't really into Touhou, you might not know this, but Touhou spellcards are
generally VERY versed into various forms of mythology. Most of it is East Asian mythology,
but if you look most spellcard lists on the Touhou wiki (en.touhouwiki.net), you'll see a
LOT of footnotes on spellcards, because there's a lot of references to be made.

The thematic being based on the Four horsemen of the apocalypse was planned for a while.
I knew, because I was going to make my own boss for this, I wanted to reference some actual
mythology instead of just doing abstract fire based spells. I had a lot of fun designing this.

His first four spellcards are based on the four horsemen of the apocalypse.
The Fifth and Sixth are a mix of all four of them, but in different ways.

The fight is also somewhat a reference to Touhou 12.3's Sanae vs. Suwako story battle.
Namely, in that it ends with a timed segment where you have between 60 and 90 seconds
(90/80/70/60 seconds on Easy/Normal/Hard/Lunatic) to defeat it. It even uses the same music.
If you fail, then you die because the arena smashes into the ground with you still on it.

We're almost done here...

=================================
[ MAP29: Decisive Determination ]
---------------------------------
Title is a reference to Ketsui, another legendary shmup by CAVE, who
also made Mushihimesama and DoDonPachi. That company is a legend to shmup fans.

I knew that I wanted THIS extra boss to be very different from previous bosses.
Mostly because all four extra bosses all occupy their own style.
They're unique, and I actually like keeping it that way.

I spent a month, I think, stuck on this one map, because I knew what I wanted to do:
Make a "Nine layers of Hell" themed boss. Since an Extra boss needs 10 spellcards, that's
90% of the fight there if I could design it that way. And it was, but designing it was hard.
------------------------
[ BOSS: Mephistopheles ]
Music:
"Pandemonic Planet", from Touhou 15: Legacy of Lunatic Kindgom
------------------------
Touhou 15's OST needed more love. It's good.

Extra Mephistopheles is based off the Pyrodemon, another known custom monster.
He's a bit hotter this time around than he was the last fight.

This boss in unique in that the arena is part of the fight itself,
for every single segment of the fight. This is very intentional,
as the first nine spellcards are all refences to Dante's inferno
and the nine layers of Hell involved. It's seriously crazy that I finished this.

Limbo is a bit weird, but I wanted to depict the 'being lost' as best I could,
while still making an arena you'd have to fight Mephistopheles in.

Lust is lulzy, but I wanted to depict the endless storm of which souls are blown around in.

Gluttony, similarly, though DTS-T MAP29 helped come up with the gimmick for the gameplay:
BOMB, BOMB LIKE THERE'S NO TOMORROW!!!!!

The spell category 'Death Circle' (as opposed to fourth circle) is a common Japanese joke.
Because 'shi' is the pronounciation for both 'four' and 'death'. Even though this mod is not,
in fact, in Japanese, in any way, shape, or form, and probably never will be.

Greed is also somewhat referencial to DTS-T's greed segment, where the pickups kill you.
The killer megasphere is a reference to a Touhou fan project called "Unreasonable Mechanism",
which had a evil killer seeking 1-up. This megasphere's out for your blood, so run away!

Anger, also known as Wrath, was pretty easy: just a chaotic slaughter mess.
Revenants are loud, so they're good. So are suicide bombers. Add Archviles for flavour.
----------------------------------
[ MAP29A: Decisive Determination ]
[ BOSS: Mephistopheles ]
Music:
"Hidden Star in All Seasons", from Touhou 16: Hidden Star in Four Seasons
----------------------------------
Touhou 16's OST also needed more love. I really like it.

I ended up having to ALSO split MAP29 because it did not like my framerate.
I don't really know why, I always would just start lagging when I got to Heresy.

Heresy within Dis: This one isn't a Dante's inferno reference as much as it's me
ripping E3M8 directly from the original Doom, as the city of Dis was the sixth circle.
Then I referenced Hell Revealed 2 and made you fight four masterminds instead of one.
Because of course I did that. I really stopped being nice a while ago.

The 7th and 8th circles were by FAR the hardest things to design.
Violence is a pretty typical chaotic slaughtermap, but otherwise, it's just...
kind of lacking? There's really nothing that sets that circle apart.

Malebolge, the 8th circle, and Hell of the fraudulent, suffers from the opposite problem:
It's gimmick is way too overbearing, and it's VERY non-intuitive. Really, who thinks to
jump down into the dark, lethal looking pit? Especially since most pits in my maps are, uh,
instantly lethal. Though, I guess the pits being occupied with spectres helps make that clearer.
In general, I tried arguably too hard to make the circle actually have the design of Malebolge,
with the trenches and the demons inside of them. You can get out of the trenches, of course.

Cocytus, the 9th circle, and the circle of traitors, is, like always, a timeout card.
I wanted to depict Treason by having your allies come back to haunt you. You can kill them.
And you should, because the card can get very messy very quickly if you don't handle it right.

I knew that I wanted to have the ice shatter when Mephistopheles re-appeared for the finale.
I actually looked up online what it looks like when ice cracks from a sharp impact to make
the patterns that open up look more authentic, because I'm a nerd in very weird ways, apparently.
The last card is a re-make of another from Touhou 15, called "A Pristine Danmaku Hell".
I renamed it to "INFERNO!", which is the name of Doom's Episode 3. It's a pretty basic
read-and-dodge-everything card, with no real tricks. Hopefully you have enough health left.
Or enough spellcards. Either one works.

Now, remember the secret challenge thing from MAP21 to MAP25? That comes back again.
If you've collected all five, something weird happens: The last teleporter, rather than
ending the level, takes you to another room, with a blue and red teleporter.

There's one more optional fight. Take the red teleporter to face...
--------------
[ BOSS: DOOM ]
Music:
"No Remorse", from Ketsui. True Final Boss theme.
--------------
...Your DOOM!

(I am not sorry.)

It's common in non-Touhou Danmaku games to have a stupidly difficult secret final boss
if you have met some obscene set of requirements up until that point of the game.

Ketsui's true final boss, DOOM, requires you beat the entire first loop of the game
with no bombs and no deaths. It's hilarious, really.

So, I decided that, because it's literally named DOOM, I had to implement it,
hidden behind a similarly ridiculous mechanic that makes it impossible to see it.

DOOM's last phase is completely a joke. You better have enough bombs.
You ain't dodging it legit. I can't dodge it, and I implemented the pattern!

Literally, this boss is ripped, attack for attack, from Ketsui.
And yes, it was one of those ridiculous true final bosses, from
what was already one of the hardest danmaku games ever made.

============================
EPISODE IV OVERALL THOUGHTS:
On a mapping front, this is probably objectively the best Episode in the wad.
On a Touhou front, this is probably objectively the worst Episode in the wad.
It's so completely different from its predecessors that I was half-tempted to
just end Touhou Doom at Episode III. But I decided to finish it anyway.

Besides, if you were disappointed that there wasn't enough Touhou in the end...
============================

+------------------------+
< EPISODE V: EXTRA STORY >
+------------------------+

--------------------------------------------
[ MAP30: Extra Story: Hakurei Shrine Party ]
--------------------------------------------
...Then you've got this thing.

The map itself is nothing special.
It's just the same Hakurei Shrine you've seen three times before.

But I decided I wanted to make some more Touhou-themed bosses.

Some more extra-difficult Touhou themed bosses.

Why? Because I had fun making them. I made them mostly for myself,
so they may be slightly completely unreasonably difficult.

V1.2: So you don't get essentially infinite bombs anymore unless you're on Easy Mode.
--------------------------
[ BOSS: Yuyuko Saigyouji ]
Music:
"Bloom Nobly, Ink-Black Cherry Blossom ~ Border of Life", from Touhou 10.5: Scarlet Weather Rhapsody
--------------------------
First boss. Yuyuko's pretty easy, but she's way harder than most Stage 1 bosses.
Consider this your warning as for how the rest of the map will go. It does not get easier.

I felt kind of bad about the MAP10 fight in that Yuyuko really didn't get much feature there.
So I semi-corrected that by featuring two spellcards from her Final Boss battle from Touhou 7.

She's the first boss because she likes to show up before the plot actually starts properly.
---------------------
[ BOSS: Suika Ibuki ]
Music:
"Oni's Island in the Fairyland ~ Missing Power", from Touhou 7.5: Immaterial and Missing Power
---------------------
Really, this is just a shorter but crazier version of her normal fight.

It's mostly here because Suika starts the plot.
-----------------------
[ BOSS: Sanae Kochiya ]
Music:
"Faith is for Transient People", from Touhou 10: Mountain of Faith
-----------------------
Sanae's fight from Episode III was mostly a remake of spells from her Touhou 10 fight.

This is mostly a remake of spells from her Touhou 11 fight. Where she's the Extra Stage Midboss.

'Nine Syllable Stabs', her first card, was originally way worse. I toned it down significantly.
It's still hard to read, sometimes. It can be lethal due to the nature of the beams.
-----------------------
[ BOSS: Sakuya Izayoi ]
Music:
"Flowering Night", from Touhou 10.5: Scarlet Weather Rhapsody
-----------------------
So a little fun fact: If you spend enough time not dealing with a problem that
you dealt with earlier, you can forget how hard the problem was the first time.

Because, no, the time freeze gimmicks were not really that much easier this time around.

I just was more used to it, but even still, Sakuya is annoying as all Hell in implementation.

I chose Sakuya as a returning boss mostly because the time freeze gimmicks have a LOT of
different gimmicks you can accomplish with them. You can get very creative.
It's pretty wild, and I like both of the new time stop cards.
-----------------------
[ BOSS: Youmu Konpaku ]
Music:
"Hiroari Shoots a Strange Bird ~ Till When?", from Touhou 7: Perfect Cherry Blossom
-----------------------
Wanna know who got shafted even harder than Yuyuko did? Youmu Konpaku.
She went from Stage 5 boss to stage 1 midboss. I knew that I wanted to rectify this.

This is the first seriously hard fight in the extra story, both to play AND to design.

The notable gimmick is that Youmu slows down time before attacks.

This engine is not good at that, so instead I chose to just simultaneously
slow the player down and slow Youmu's bullets down, while making the screen go greyscale.
It's a pretty effective visual gimmick.

Youmu really showed me how far I've come since I started. Back when I did Episode II,
I wouldn't have been able to think up a solution for Youmu's gimmick at all.

And then I implemented her fight in like, two days. It was crazy.

It gets harder, though...
-----------------------
[ BOSS: Yukari Yakumo ]
Music:
"Night Falls ~ Evening Star", from Touhou 7.5: Immaterial and Missing Power
-----------------------
Here we go again.

Yukari *already* being an extra boss meant that I didn't really do that much for her.
3/4 cards are basically reused from her Extra Stage boss fight, one of them upgraded.

'Chen and Ran Yakumo' was kind of funny, throwing out both at once with little warning.
Despite how it looks, there is a strategy to it - you do have to have faith in being able
to dodge both of them when you can't see one, because often they'll be on opposite sides.

'Yakumo's Nest' is basically super nine syllable stabs.
I still have many difficulties with it, and it feels quite hard to me,
though admittedly I don't die that often to it. Or to Yukari in general.

Knowing the patterns (because I designed them) often helps me dodge them better,
so I'm not sure I'm an unbiased source when I say I don't die often to these cards.
-------------------------
[ BOSS: Marisa Kirisame ]
Music:
"Magus Night", from Touhou 12.8: Fairy Wars
-------------------------
Oh god, it's her again.

OH GOD, IT'S HER AGAIN.

I mean, of frickin' course we fight Marisa a second time. Only it's even MORE ridiculous!

Fun fact: only one spellcard in this fight is from Touhou canon.

Her first card, 'Andromeda', is making fun of 'Milky Way'. It's faster. A lot faster.

Her second card, 'Galactic Cannibalism', is basically two different patterns at once,
hence the name. It's a very simple spellcard, but it manages to be surprisingly difficult.
I had fun designing that one.

Her third card, 'Double Spark', is where things get comedic. Why limit yourself to one
backup Hakkero at once? What's better than one master spark? How about TWO?
Weirdly enough, despite the simplicity, this might be the hardest card in the fight.
It's very easy to get caught off guard and walk into another spark you didn't know she had
aimed in that position, since only one of the sparks is aimed directly at you.

Then we jump off the deep end with 'Chaingun Spark', which looks crazy, but you can circle it.
Don't EVER stop moving against it, though - Marisa fires it every single second you're in line of sight.

'Super Shotgun Spark' self-destructs, which finally closes that joke about 'stability issues'
that she makes in MAP27C. Which is good, because 20 master sparks at once is kind of silly.
I kind of wanted to make Marisa have one last attack after you've beaten her, but instead
I made the opposite: Her last attack prematurely self destructs and ends the fight early.

However, despite everything, even Marisa gets the hell outta dodge when...
-----------------------
[ BOSS: Reimu Hakurei ]
Music:
"Dream Express ~ Red and White", from Touhou Fangame Concealed the Conclusion.
It is remixed from:
"Dream Express", from Touhou 5: Mystic Square
"Witching Dream", from Touhou 4: Lotus Land Story
"Dichromatic Lotus Butterfly ~ Red and White", from Touhou Album Dolls in Pseudo Paradise,
which itself is a remix of:
"Dichromatic Lotus Butterfly ~ Ancients", from Seihou.
-----------------------
...Reimu shows up.

The reason I chose a fan theme for this fight because:
	A: It's an awesome remix. It's from a seriously amazing fangame.
	B: It's the theme for an even-harder-than-extra Reimu from that game.
	C: Using this remix allows me to reference multiple themes at once.
	D: It's an awesome remix.

As for the fight itself...

Remember how you didn't actually beat Reimu in MAP19?

She's back. And she's even harder this time.

Her noncards are basically the same, so that was easy.
Four of her cards are simply re-hashes of cards from her first fight, so those were easy.
The other four, in order:

'Exorcism'/'Disaster-Repelling Prayer' was pretty fast to create. It's simple, but it's elegant.

'Divine Spirit Orbs': This was not simple or elegant. Worth the effort though, it's pretty.

'Fantasy Seal -Circle': Why limit yourself to /one/ variant of Fantasy Seal at once?

'Hakurei Gravity Release Barrier': People in Touhou can canonically fly. I knew, for quite a while,
that I wanted a flight based spellcard. Hence the creation of this spellcard.

'Fantasy Nature': YOU ARE ALREADY DEA-Oh wait, it's not that version of the spellcard.
This card took A LOT of thinking like a programmer. There's a lot of jump trickery to avoid
absurd amount of unnecessary states. It was clever. I really like the visual effect;
admittedly it looks a lot scarier than it actually is. Make sure you keep moving.

'The Universe': From the same fangame that the theme used in this fight is from.
Welcome to what is probably the densest card in the entire game. It's pure amulet spam,
going from just red to eventually covering seven different colours.

The last spellcard is a complete joke. It's Reimu realizing that as a player, she can do
what you, as the player, should do at this point: BOMB SPAM.

Literally, it's Reimu bomb-spamming because she realizes you're beating her.

Survive this last Hell of a card, and you win!
=============================
EXTRA STORY OVERALL THOUGHTS:
This was fun. I did this mostly for myself, and it shows.
=============================

///////////////
// AFTERWORD //
///////////////

Wow, this Post-Mortem is over 19K words. No wonder this took so long to finish.

I think that the post-mortem being this long is important, though.
Because a lot of projects do drop out of the blue after years of waiting.
The thing is, those years aren't meaningless. It takes time for projects like this to happen.

I do not want people thinking that what I have done is magic. Well, in-story magic, sure,
but what I do not possess is magical wizard skills that allowed me to make this project.
Just some DECORATE, ACS, GZDoom Builder, and an absolutely stubborn refusal to give up.

The important thing about this Post-Mortem, above all, is to realize that
a LOT of effort goes into making these things. Years, in some cases.

Touhou Doom was as much a experimental learning experience as it was a polished project.

SPECIAL THANKS TO:
-dekw, my most valiant tester, and frequent annoyance in bugfixing
-TerminusEst13, super cool dude who was very inspirational to me
-the Touhou fandom for being insane in ways that were also inspirational to me
-ZUN, for making the Touhou project
-id software, for making Doom
-And to you, who has read all the way to the bottom of this Post-Mortem.