MAP01: Pink Horde (The Abyss)

MAP01: Pink Horde is the first level of The Abyss. It was designed by H2SO4. The level in single player is designed around the berserk powerup. While playable alone, the level is largely centered around "melee" deathmatch.

Essentials
The main goal is to use the berserk pack to punch the Demons that appear upon sight and through trap doors that open throughout the tunnels. Lost souls and Imps also make an appearance. In the exit room, a cacodemon "boss" guards the exit switch. It may be best to avoid it, as it can bite you.

Deathmatch
Pink Horde is primarily a deathmatch arena, complete with trap doors for ambushes, although it may be too large for duels. Players must rely on berserk packs and chainsaws, resulting in frantic hallway chases. Four players is the sweet spot, allowing for several territorial areas in which players can fight for control. While there are no obvious chokepoints other than the center room (the berserk packs reside there), the west-most side can be rife for "mini-duel" skirmishes over the Megasphere, as well as the southern-most "museum" room, which also contains a Megasphere.

The best strategy for an inexperienced player is to use one of the many ambush doors and wait for the door to open. Listen for the direction of the other trap doors opening and plan accordingly when your room door opens. If the inexperienced player has a berserk pack, it is possible to frag a player before he manages to grab the Megasphere.

Unless players are competing in a source port that allows powerups to respawn, the level may grow stale for some as the players must resort to chainsaws for the rest of the session.

Other points of interest
The museum, located at the southern-most part of the map, contains an array of weapons that appear as if they cannot be picked up. The text file reads: "Don't try getting the weapons: you're not supposed to get them anyway."

Secrets
There are ten official secret areas, and four unmarked secret areas, although it could be debated as to whether a majority of the marked secret areas are actually "secret".

The museum room has two secrets:


 * Go to the switch on the distant wall. When activated, a door opens along the large indentation between the two exhibits on the museum floor. There you will find a light amplification visor, a stimpack, and some green armor.


 * Nearby the last secret door, is a chainsaw wall exhibit that may blink differently than the rest. You can walk into it and grab the chainsaw. Doing so opens another door containing spectres, demons and lost souls. This does not count as a secret unless you enter the room beyond the door.

The start room has one unofficial secret:


 * Upon starting the level, the wall located "7 o'clock" from your starting position is a small lift that can be activated. It is marked by a misaligned texture. There is nothing of note other than two demons and a spectre, hiding from the player. In deathmatch, this room contains a Megasphere.

Routes and tricks
For speedrunning, the exit room is within reach mere moments after entering the level by taking the left door in the start room, taking the first right, then the next left.

Bugs

 * Some of the ambush rooms are not labeled as secret areas, as well as a hidden lift directly north of the player start which should most likely be labeled as such. the linedef numbering implies that these regions were added in later for deathmatch and coop, and the mapper simply forgot to label these sectors.

Trivia

 * The museum room's exhibit areas have the sector type of 11, which drains health and ends the level. Since the areas cannot be reached by any means, these sectors will never affect the player. It is likely the mapper used them for their aesthetic blinking properties, as one of the exhibit sectors that triggers a secret door features type 3 (Blink 1 Hz) instead. This is further evidenced by the sector numbering, which shows the type 3 sector as #80, while the others are in the 40-50 range. This was most likely a wall switch during development, before being converted into the current, secret walkover line.


 * Some doors in the tunnels were added later in development, as their sector numbers are much higher than their surrounding sectors.


 * The "trap doors" were added later in development, yet the segmented sectors in the tunnels were not. Since the mappers used DEU, the mapper likely connected simple boxes together and moved vertices around with snapping set to 8.