=========================================================================CREDITS==================================================================
Firstly, thanks to:
- Insane_gazebo for playtesting, as well as the sexy titlepic and interpic
- Taviow for playtesting, suggestions and UDBScript help

Texture credits:
- cc4-tex team for cc4-tex (Base texture pack)
- aa-tex team for aa-tex (tech textures etc.)
- ukiro for otex (lasers, lights)
- NiGHTMARE for his hellish texture pack (woods, supports, metals)
- Green brick texture from Mutiny.wad
- exitsign texture edits from Nootrac4751
- darkbase textures (gray/black pipes)
- UAC ultra (tech textures)
- HUD graphics recolored from swtw.wad
- Deus Vult II
- tiling green forcefield from hardfest 2

Additional thanks to (please let me know i forgot anything):
- Bytefyre for the DSDACR lump
- Maribo for the new COLORMAP and demos of RC1
- Stx-Vile for the stream of RC1
- Thanks to Ravendesk, Akolai, Hebonky for streaming playthroughs in the discord
- Ryrion, Maribo, Sleepyvelvet for demos
- Flyxolydian for their playthroughs on youtube
- Everyone else in the dw thread for feedback & bug reports!

====================================================================EXTRA INFO====================================================================
Title midi: Feeding Ground, Part 2 from stonekeep
Intermission: cg1.mid by ribbiks
Text screen: "Dark Sun Gwyndolin" from Dark Souls (MIDI remix by Tialys86)

About the wad:
Firefly.wad is a set of 7 orange -cl21 maps revolving around difficult, chaotic slaughter combat. The difficulty of the set starts off vaguely around early
Sunlust E3, but escalates into more extreme combat reminiscent of Sunder/Abandon. That being said, anyone who’s played those sets shouldn’t have too much trouble beating these.
While the set was primarily balanced around UV as the intended difficulty, I’ve tried to make the lower difficulties still fun for those who are having trouble with
these maps, so use them. All maps are meant to be played from pistol start, but nothing’s forcing you to do that (except for map06 lol).

This wad was concieved around june of last year as a set of pink/purple maps as a tribute to stardate 20x6, but (for reasons elaborated below) I eventually settled for
a gold/orange colour palette replacing the blues and greens respectively. A lot of the wad was experimenting with/exploring more slaughtery combat setups and making stuff
that I enjoyed at the time. I hope you enjoy them too :)

01 /// Twilight Constriction
Midi: "Sun Rider" by Greenjay (avmidi.wad)

The first map I made for the project, which got submitted to DavidN's RAMP2023. I was planning to use this submission as a starting point when I wanted to make a purple
set, but RAMP does not allow for custom palettes, so I settled for a sunlust-ish orange theme and decided to roll with it when I came back to working on the wad. I quickly
drew up a layout within a 4096*4096 box and, throughout the rest of the week, chopped and changed the map until it ended up as the map you're playing. This was also my first
foray into a bunch of mapping features I never used in mudman, like the scrolling textures, light sequences and excessive glowing lights.

I believe the original name for this was simply "Twilight", but seeing how unbelievably cramped all the fights were I added in a "Constriction" for good measure. The balancing
in the original RAMP2023 submission was absolutely horrendous with a lot of sections being nerfed hard. I was tempted to nerf the opening fight as well, but seeing TheV1perKiller's max
of the original version made me decide to keep it in.


02 /// Firefly
Midi: "Eminence" by Psyrus

I originally wanted some buildings standing in a giant volcanic caldera. The player would then traverse between the buildings on some laser platforms, but I couldn't really get
anything looking right. I then shifted to this concept of this crater on an alien moon, dotted with ruins everywhere. I drew a rocky opening area, then tried drawing the first
ruin. In the end, the ruin became more of a castle, and soon enough the castle expanded so much that I abandoned the whole crater idea entirely. For a couple months the layout was
complete, except for corridor area in the southeast of the castle. One weekend taviow just suggested to draw an L-shaped corridor. I then threw some monster closets around it, and by the end of
the week the map was done. Who knew it was that easy.

While I was designing these fights I had a weird obsession with choreography, so you'll see a bunch of cool-looking monster formations and multi-wave sequences in this map. Don't forget the plasma rifle!


03 /// Phosphor
Midi: "Gluestar" by Darkwave0000

At the start of the project knew I wanted to make some sort of cave map that went hard with the hexagon motif introduced in map01. The whole map minus the balancing (oh boy)
came together surprisingly quickly, which was probably a result of simply drawing random shapes and filling them with monsters. Due to the weirdness of some of the geometry, this map
also has some really awkward fights involving revenants and pressure monsters. I'm also quite happy with the crystalline look of the hexagon shapes with lava at the bottom, though
duplicating all of those hexagons around was starting to get annoying near the end.

The map was originally supposed to be one of the three maps that would not have a BFG, but after constructing the final area it felt like a waste to not have one. A lot of the fights were made and never tested
for a couple months until I decided to revisit it, at which point I realised how bloody hard some of the fights were. In the end this was another map that got some heavy nerfs

This map has the first few fights I would genuinely consider slaughter, and kicks up the difficulty quite a bit compared to the previous two. If you begin struggling hard here, it might
be time to bump the difficulty down a little.


04 /// Derelict
Midi: "Kraken Theme" from Earthbound

The second map I *started* for the project. It was started right after finishing mudman and when I was still in a 20x6 phase, and it kinda shows with some of the early combat. This was initially
concieved as some space base with many different routes to go throughout the map, but I started drawing giant voidspaces and decided to make much of the map revolve around fighting in the buildings
surrounding a central fight in the void. This map would have used that gray metal throughout the whole map until I discovered the wood textures used in magnolia, at which point I decided to make
the northern area almost completely out of wood. The name "Derelict" come from the idea that the gray metal area in the south is the dilapidated part of the mysterious facility, being replaced by
the newer wooden area at the north.

The void fight took quite a while to come up with. I tried a few gimmicks involving archviles, including a wacky one where the player would dash across the arena to hit switches to stop
an absurd amount of archviles from flooding the arena, but without the BFG it was absolutely miserable. After RC2 I found out that people weren't really interacting with the gimmick very much and so
it would require quite a bit of rework (which at the time I had no motivation to do), which is the one of the many reasons why RC3 took so long. Hopefully now it doesn't play too badly.
The visuals of the current version of the fight were heavily inspired by that of Fractured Worlds, and I eventually made orange recolors of bricks to completely coat the arena in orange.


05 /// Voidspace Ballet
Midi: "Influxuation" by Mark Klem

This map took forever to make, mostly due to me simply procrastinating hard on it. I initially wanted to continue the wood and void theme from map04, with a giant platform in the void before teleporting to a big
wooden cathedral thing. After running out of ideas and struggling to make it look any good, I decided to shelf it while I worked on other stuff. By the time I came back to it, I had finished maps 02 and 04 and had
gotten sick of making stuff out of the wood textures, so I deleted everything except for the wood cathedral, which was first thing I made for the original map. I must have had some insane creative burst at the time,
since most of the randomly drawn rooms were actually playing quite well. After one and a half weeks, the whole thing got hammered out. The central "core" thing was super fun to make, along with making the silly light
sequences in and around it.

Since you get the BFG relatively early in the level, I used it as an excuse to put more extreme, BFG spammy fights throughout the second half and as such, some fights are some of the larger volume ones in the mapset so far.
The finale can get extremely difficult depending on your strategy and ability to shove your way through groups of monsters with the BFG. The original version had like 20 or so baby cyberdemons behind that wall. I only ever
beat it once.


06 /// Atrophy
Midi: "Ebon Keep Castle A" from Secret of Evermore, composed by Jeremy Soule and sequenced by Jorge D. Fuentes (haste map10)

I always wished more "challenge/slaughter" mapsets had maps that broke up the pace a little and gave the player a bit of a breather before they throw everything at them again. This was my attempt at making something like that,
though the monster count is still rather high. I wanted to put more focus on exploration and secret hunting through the entire map instead of just combat. The map ended up being heavily inspired as magnolia map01 in its strange
non-orthogonality and open-ish layout. Obtaining either the orange or yellow skull makes the other route much easier, so choose wisely! If someone notices some silly ledge you can get on, post it on the thread! I might make it a secret.


07 /// Syzygy
Midi: "Europa Mining Colony" from Descent

Just a heads-up: this map is very difficult and could take over an hour to beat! 

The idea for a massive slaughtermap to close out the set was something decided near the start of the project, with the midi and name also being decided around the same time. Many of the fights were made from the ol' reliable "draw random shapes
and fill them in" method. The giant BFG fight was a classic case of me messing with the stairbuilder until I got an interesting looking space. Admittedly it's quite easy, even without the invulnerability. It does look pretty cool to see all that stuff
running at you though. My favourite fight in the map is probably the super cramped room with wood floors and like 60 chaingunners. Originally, cyberdemons were able to get inside the tiny room in the middle which was quite funny. However, seeing how
they would constantly block and instantly kill the player while they tried to grab a megasphere (combined with the fact they would usually never get out) made me put an invisible block to stop the cybers from getting in.

I wanted the finale to take place around some spire-thing, representing the machine that was harnessing the power of the sun. It eventually evolved into the hexagon-fest that it is now. Props once again to taviow for handing me scripts for 242s and
merging identical sectors. I would have never thought of making stuff like this without it. The fight itself is a massive monster brawl that's quite chokeable if you can't get to the invuln switch. Once those final archviles, baby cybers and pain
elementals die, head over and give the romero head a rocket. Good luck!


08 /// The Boundless Burning Sea
Midi: "he_temp2.mid" by ribbiks

"As the star-devouring superstructure grinds to a halt and crumbles, the alien moon is enveloped in an orange mist. You've done it! Your home planet has been saved once again. You find a lonely set of islands within the lava ocean and decide to wait
for your comrades to pick you up, gazing into the boundless burning sea under the watch of infinite stars above."

Gazebo suggested adding a crate of oranges to this map. Unfortunately you can't eat them :(

Thanks for playing! :D