Wad:       Dance on the water
Map:       Map03
Skill:     4
Category:  UV-Max
Exe:       dsda-doom 0.28.3
Time:      2:01:05.09
-complevel 9

Author:	   Ancalagon

Instead of talking about the demo let's first talk about why, some time ago this year I noticed I wasn't being taken seriously and for good reason, I haven't done any big demo in a while, and that's when last month I decided that I should do a #1 demo for the index, but poog31 is out of question cause that's already been done and no one cares about second places, making it so the only chose was to look into what people said could be #1 and between a bunch of platforming hell maps there was this one. If it'll end up in #1 after revealing these strategies we shall see.

This map is REALLY good, even if I usually diss inferno maps cause he ruins what could be good maps with platforming, in this one he controlled himself and instead focussed on good fights, and I have no idea how you can design fights as tight as these and make sure they are possible, specially with the intended strategies :)

About the demo, the gameplay mostly speaks by itself, there's a clear distinction between the first and second half of the demo, as the map allows you to semi choose the order of fights I left most fights I could cheese for the second half while the first half is doing everything straight up.

Up until the big lake fight with the hk army most fights went just as planned, but then comes a section where I was almost messing up every fight. Somehow survived the vile horde in the lake fight with only 18hp, when here I usually have 150+, had to use both megas in the condo fight when this one is usually one. The pinky/vile fight usually takes only 2-3 bfg shots total, but this fight is very snowbally so I told myself that if at any point I felt I was lossing control to just shoot bfg, even if looking back at it many shots were unnecesary. After this I locked in and the red key and the fight after went very smoothly to the point I could spare a mega that I ended up never using. The fight after that I dont know how to name (its called shitfight in my saves) where I spam some bfg at the viles at the start went kinda bad, I usually dont take any damage or at most 1 hit from the viles, but I had hp to spare to take a few and in practice this strat never failed so I was still confident in it.

After that fight I never died on any attempt, if you're questioning how I died to that fight in a run it was before I rerouted it and the previous fight to start it by spamming bfg. About the route the map went through at least 3 reroutes as I discovered new strategies and had to redo all my saves xd. Anyways after that point the demo was mostly smooth sailing, there's some awful platforming at some points, the caco canyon fight gets cheesed, the pacifist viles room gets cheesed, the ending apparently what I did was not intended but really infinite bfg is calling for camp spots and even before I found out that the floor on the spawn points wasn't damaging I had other camp spots in the route.

Big thanks to Crusador for being there to comment strategies and to Alekey (you dont know him, not a doom player) for making the grind more bearable by being in a discord call while grinding, if at some points in the demo at look in certain directions weirdly its cause I was explaining the strat to him and weirdly having to talk about the strat I was doing sort of made me focus more on it, I would say it was helpful.