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- 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.
- 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 V1.1 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.
- ////////////////////////////////
- // 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).
- ---------------
- [ 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.
- ---------------
- [ 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.
- ----------------------
- [ 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.
- ===================================
- [ 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.
- I'm not going to lie, the books are incredibly annoying. I wanted to make it annoying,
- because the original EoSD attack book section was absolutely beyond stupid. 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.
- 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.
- -----------------------------
- [ 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.
- -----------------------
- [ 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.
- -------------------------
- [ 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.
- -------------------------
- [ 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.
- ===========================
- +------------+
- < 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.)
- 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.
- ===================================
- [ 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 both hard 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.
- -----------------------------
- [ 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 in 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 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.
- 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.
- <!> 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.
- ============================
- +-------------+
- < 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.
- ==================================
- [ 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.
- =============================================
- [ 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 have 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)
- -----------------------
- 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 do like the 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 deliberately put together.
- =============================
- +------------+
- < 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
- ------------------
- 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.
- ----------------------------
- [ 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, 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
- -------------------
- There's a switch in the lava very close to where you start.
- I wanted a challenge with Archviles. Lots of Archviles.
- ------------------------------
- [ 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
- --------------------
- 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 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
- -------------------
- 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.
- 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
- 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 fourteen different cards;
- two of them from Episode I, six from Episode II, and another six from Episode III.
- And 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.
- =========================================
- [ 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.
- --------------------------
- [ 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.
- '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 18K 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.
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