Dance on the Water is a collection of 9 boom-compatible maps featuring challenging

combat and platforming. Most of the maps are short to medium in length, except map
3 which might take more than 10 hours to beat on UV.

Maps are very difficult. Consider switching to HMP if you’re not having a good time
dying over and over in a single fight. The harder parts and many platforming
sections are toned down compared to UV. HNTR and ITYTD are bonus difficulties with
an entirely different monster placement, I don’t recommend them for first
playthroughs. Most of the maps are “-nomonsters”-friendly. The mapset can be played
both from pistol starts and continuously, the latter will make your life slightly
easier.

Format: complevel 9 + umapinfo support, tested on dsda-doom. Gzdoom ports aren’t

recommended due to performance issues on some maps and an incorrect behavior of
dehacked code on maps 3, 6.

Playtesting:
Arbys550
David Asaad
KineticBeverage
Lucky_Edie
MrZzul
Plats
PrBoomerJuice

Special thanks to:

Ukiro for the OTEX texture pack
Insane_Gazebo for Titlepic and M_DOOM
David Asaad for map33 fight design
KineticBeverage for map32

Map list

Map01 Dance on the Water

Midi: “Dance of the Water” by Kalmah
Comment: HMP difficulty simplifies platforming sections and allows to cheese most
of the fights. Just keep in mind that you aren’t going to have such an opportunity
on UV :)
I started working on this map in August 2020 right after the release of Hyperload.
The mapping went very slowly and the map was only released by February 2021. It was
initially planned as a standalone map release but then it slowly grew into a
mapset.

Map02 Another Red Nightmare

Midi: “A Fool’s Paradise” by Symphony X
Comment: Initial layout and basic fight idea was done in 2 days in May 2021.
Followed by many months of fine tuning the combat and visuals.

Map03 Watershed
Midi: “Hessian Peel” by Opeth
Comment: This map is extremely long and difficult. Started working on the map in
April 2021, first playable version finished in January 2022. This is undoubtedly
the most ambitious map I ever made.

Map04 Among the Seas

Midi: “The Sea of Mystery” by Tristan Clark
Comment: The map contains 1 difficult fight and 4 platforming sections, you can
choose to either do the combat or the platforming, but not both. Completing the
fight leads to map05, platforming leads to map06. 36 monsters are unkillable and
not required for max.

Map05 Sojourn in Aether

Midi: “The Seventh Sojourn” by Opeth
Comment: Platforming map, some of the harder jumps are simplified on HMP.
Reimagination of a certain iwad map :)

Map06 Caves and Embers

Midi: “Hope Leaves” by Opeth
Comment: An exploration and platforming map, HMP has additional hints on
progression and some of the harder jumps are simplified. Second map made for the
set, initially intended as an epilogue map after the current map01 but then I kept
adding to it and it turned into its own thing.

Map07 -
Midi: "Dungeon Theme 9" from Dungeon Master 2
Comment: Initially planned to be an empty ending map. Zzul thought it’d be
interesting to have a fight in this giant arena so I tried to make something with
what I had. The map used to exceed the blockmap size limit but I had to cut it down
a bit to make it suitable for combat.

Map31 Faithfully Flat Descent

Midi: “Moon Above, Sun Below” by Opeth
Comment: Requires software rendering. I learned about the gimmick used in this map
from ViolentBeatle which they accidentally discovered during the development of
Skulltiverse.

Map32 No Shot, by KineticBeverage

Midi: “Lethal Dose” from Breath of Fire II

Map33 Balls of Steel Dancing

Midi: “Heart of Fire” from Castlevania Aria of Sorrow
Comment: The layout is copied from map01 and the monster placement is done by David
Asaad.
David suggested that it’d be sick to do the final fight of map01 while staying down
on the damaging floor all the time.I didn’t want to make the finale of map01 harder
so I suggested David to create his version of that fight in a separate map. Now you
know who got David into mapping :P

Title screen: Requiem by Opeth

Intermission screen: The Apostle in Triumph by Opeth