UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY
Almost the entire idiot brigade are having a dirty weekend of drama and faggotry in a disused windmill right now so if anybody wants to, uh, "take care" of them in one fell swoop, now's your chance!
QUOTE OF THE WEEK <Errant> "you can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think"
MAPS PREVIEW
I am halfway through a lot of WADs right now and haven't finished them so can't review them properly. Here are some of them:
- Community Chest Yeah I thought I'd better play the first one before the second one comes out(!) I'm currently stuck somewhere in map06 (which I seem to recall was about as far as I got last time) with a whole load of cacodemons and no ammunition, in spite of having used savegames to get that far from a scratch start. Not really surprising as map06 is one of the late Magikal's maps which I never could manage (cf Industrial, link)
- Alien Vendetta each map from scratch - on skill 2 and with lots of savegames, obviously. I might do the whole lot as a mission in UV like I've done with Hell Revealed but don't hold your breath. The bits after you've got the keys and gone down the lift in map18 are huge, dark and beautiful, and map 31 has to be seen to be believed.
- Requiem Old classic I still haven't actually finished. Currently held up by map 14 because it's annoyingly low on health and ammunition (am I allowed to say that after elixir?) and 15 for some reason I can't remember offhand
Golgotha is one thing I finished. One map, runs on E1M1, made years and years ago with an obviously buggy BSP nodes builder. Easy, looks awful, no real theme, texture misalignments, the lot. It's kind of cramped and the secrets are crap. Passed fifteen minutes though, I guess. Get it if you're really bored.
EDIT Oh, yeah, Community Chest 2, that's supposed to be out today, I forgot. Well, it's not ready yet. See if they'd only got 10 maps it would have been released but they're only 9 maps or so short so they want to hold off for a bit. It's a bit annoying for everybody who worked hard to get their map done on time but I guess it's better in the long run.
HALLOWEEN
Once again I quite failed to go listen to the wind at a crossroads or do anything else stupid but I found these links on slashdot of a pumpkin cut into a cacodemon and another cacodemon and a spiderdemon. The former looks better but was photoshopped apparently. It's still pretty good and at least better than last year's halloween update which just had a link to goatse.cx
haaaaardcore? you sure? we got loads of haaaardcore! we got reinfowced records, movin' shadah records, strictly undergrahnd records... what d'you want mate? hardcore... what d'you want?
have you got trip to trumpton? or smart e's?
sweet blue stuff in a tiny little bottle
Elixir is, as I said, done. The best comment I've had yet is "It's a good level, but it's stupidly hard" Thanks to everybody who helped out with beta testing it, even though the last day of testing felt like an assignment deadline!
Dumb storyline, links to screenshots, yadda yadda*
Actually I'm going to link to every screenshot I made. Don't expect these links to last forever though. Sooner or later you can just download the map, not that anyone reading this and has Doom hasn't seen it already. In chronological order, and I can't be bothered to write descriptions:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
See also: my ancient post which I really should update, on WIP; and Stik's hilarious screenshot of the machine room in jDoom
Oh well. Next thing I have to look forward to is when the reviews come in...
* Those of you who are wondering, yes, I got my old account back. I had to register a new one to get it though. I registered the stupidest name I possibly could** It seemed to get the attention of the administration, anyway. One of the admins popped up in the original thread I posted and said something about doomworld's host's mail server being on a load of blacklists so their email never works, hence the password recovery form doesn't either. I wasn't aware ntl has any sort of spam blocking at all in their email system, but there you go.
** "RjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjY"
Now that's done I can play other people's maps again!
Andy's WAD (UPDATE (2006-03-15): /idgames link) Okay this is just mental. The author of this little thing made some 13 maps that are just plain weird. He's certainly got some imagination but still. Let's just look at the maps here:
- A maze, with fake walls in a confusing layout, with ugly texturing and way too much ammunition. I got bored and skipped it.
- A cavern with a platform in. You jump out of an alcove, go past the platform (with cacodemons) hit the ground press a button lower the platform avoid the cyberdemon and then you can enter the exit. Thing is, the drop is about sixteen thousand units and actually makes me feel ill. The platform takes nearly four minutes to descend fully. The worst part is that the cacodemons are too high up to descend at all. I suppose this is a game bug. However it's quite interesting watching their shots hit the ground from that far up.
- Run round a small circle and press the exit switch before you cop a rocket from the army of cyberdemons chasing you from behind.
- Enormous rectangular chamber with winding path off to one side, you emerge from behind a wall into the cavern to be presented with a monster spawner. You must find the hidden teleporter to get up onto the wall and run over a spot that opens the winding passage, then run the entire length of it to find the exit. This is easier than it sounds, in spite of the monster spawner.
- You can optionally go forwards and teleport to a side chamber where there is ammunition. If not, behind you there is a ledge with some monsters on. The floor of the pit between you and them raises up when you walk out onto it. However this is another of the author's extreme drops and takes fully seven minutes to raise the twenty four and a half thousand units necessary. If you went to the ammunition room first, a monster spawner will be filling the pit as well.
(But all that is moot because prboom segfaulted when I walked out into the pit and started the floor raise)
- A spiral of brick and fire around which you meet groups of, for the most part, increasingly dangerous varieties of monsters. Unusual ordering, if he was aiming for a strictly increasing sequence I would say he missed. Predictable large boss monster finale.
(not that, given Elixir, I can call people out on that)
- This is better. It's a vaguely castle-like map with a moat and so on. There are a lot of weird texturing bugs and a door with the sky on its ceiling. I think you're meant to kill a few mancubi and press a computer on the back wall of the castle to open the exit inside it, then enter it, traverse the maze and find the exit. Unfortunately it is possible to press the exit without killing mancubi or pressing the button. There is a monster spawner on a huge tower in the centre of the castle but half its spawnspots are in a sector off the side of the map, don't ask me why.
- A symmetrical square of corridors that seems to be intended more for deathmatch purposes as there are shotguns placed at regular intervals. There are some small monsters though. There is a hidden teleporter somewhere to get you to the exit. There is something in the exit chamber which I shot out of pure instinct when I appeared out of the teleporter; unfortunately it turned out to be a voodoo doll and I died, instantly. Don't do this.
- Basically the same as 4, the differences are: no winding path, and when you teleport up onto the wall, that's where the exit is. Oh, and it's made out of blood. The monster spawners are facing the wrong way and don't wake up unless you fire. There is a clear location from which you are meant to fire, so I jumped down and launched both my rockets. Several seconds later I took two damages, the second one killing me. I realised the sneaky devil had put a voodoo doll inside the monster spawner. Killed myself in two maps in quick succession. Damn. Another odd quirk is that there is an exit line, but it's a secret exit line, which in PRBoom simply made the level restart since map09 doesn't have a secret exit usually. How odd, in regular Doom you'd go to map31 like usual, I think. It's pretty stupid either way you look at it. The blood looked effective though.
- You are given lots of ammunition, then there's two chambers full of cyberdemons. A hidden switch will crush the first chamber, then you can dodge under the crusher to reach the second, which has even more cyberdemons, and arachnotrons. If you're lucky you can manage to run past them.
- You have nothing but a rocket launcher to remove demons from a tight winding path in front of you. Close range rocket launching is harmful though. I didn't get past this one without cheating (could have used fists but not bothered enough) I found a cyberdemon, two revenants and enough rockets to remove all of them at the end, although it was easier just to run past them.
- 12 is to 5 as Doom E3M9 is to Doom E3M1. The floor raise is 20000 units shorter, but don't jump in it as it's a damage sector and you'll die before it reaches the top. (Takes 128 seconds to rise, during which time you will receive 140 5% damages. Even starting 100% health you will be dead after 20) Don't even go that way because what you thought was the exit will kill you. Go in the teleporter instead, then you will progress along a corridor which gradually gets longer as you visit side rooms and press buttons. Finally you will reach an arena which looks like a sad bald clown's face on the map, with lots of large monsters and several more fake exits. One is real, though.
- After all that the final level is a terrible anticlimax, you run through a long brickwork corridor waking up demons as you go. Don't fire else they'll wake up too early and block your path. You may need to fire to clear them out of the way in the final room, but don't fire at all until you get there.
Oh man, why the hell did I write all that about a bunch of extremely retarded maps that border on the "joke WAD" category? sheesh
DARKHELL.WAD (apparently a reupload of dkhellv2, the only difference being a new text file, it would seem; it is a Doom 1 episode, with a Doom 2 conversion which I haven't actually tried) I've been looking for this for ages, and found it again quite by accident, by finding an old version on somebody's homepage on Doomworld. The reason I was looking for it was mainly because I've been haunted by vision of map 3 from the set. Gods know why. Now I've found it I can't remember why I was looking for it. It does look a bit like a sandbox though, that's probably it.
Anyway the only reason I mention it is because of the setpiece at the beginning; you lower yourself down on a platform into a huge open circle. Stay on the platform and don't fire until you hear the cacodemons at the bottom wake up. The plain has all monsters around the edge of it, who will all shoot up at you. When you reach the bottom, run off the platform and look back up at it. You will be treated to quite an amazing fireworks display.
The other maps are all right if you like old school stuff, I guess. I should review them properly, but oh well.
REACTOR1.WAD 1994 map that appeared in The Newstuff Chronicles this week. It's pretty good. It was the only thing worth downloading this week anyway, everything else was either deathmatch or for ZDoom or something. Probably one of the earliest maps to use monster teleports, although they're not disconnected control sectors like mine are (heh) Scary boss monster ending was somewhat mitigated by huge amounts of ammo and an invulnerability in a secret area. Sadly I find I rather liked the arches and the fake exit, what the reviewer calls gimmicky, but hey.
CHRISTMAS CAROLS FOR INSTANT MESSAGE FREAKS
Away in a MSNger
no crib for a bed
our little lord Jesus
was groomed by paedophiles in a chatroom
Content!
Yeah I've been mainly working on Elixir and not had time to been arsed to write site updates. It's finished though so if you want to beta test it drop me a line. HOWEVER:
Comics!
This won't make much sense if you haven't read Errant's The Unfortunate Demise Of Urchin #n series, which you should go and do now because it's very funny (not to mention well-drawn, because coming from her you'd expect it to be)
Anyway I had thought up my own storyline and, having starred - and been eaten (!) - in #4 I decided I should do something about it. It's way too similar to #1 to be a sequel so I thought I should make it myself rather than pitch it as an idea for #6 or #7 or whatever (besides, half the point is that it is hash-420.) Here:
The Unfortunate Demise Of Urchin #420
I think she liked it anyway.
Music!
This wasn't planned to be the next record that I released but fate has forced my hand.
Last week I got an email about one of my records. Again. This time it was regarding FireCarols99, the so-called "remix and remix of remix" record I did over five years ago. But it was from the guy who made the originals! Sheesh!
Anyway he wanted to hear what I'd done to his record so he says "Are there any DSym players for Linux" (he's obviously moved on from RISC OS, I can't blame him really) to which the only response can be "Don't get me started!" He goes on to say "or do you have an MP3" which I do so here:
FireCarols99 (text)
Don't read the text though, it was written by a faggot. All you need to know is that in 1994 I got this comedy Christmas record off a magazine cover disc. It was a bit stupid but had a load of really good samples, including one of the best pianos I've ever heard. It was a reworking of a track the same guy had done earlier in the year. Fast forward five years to 1999 when I finally found said original track, named "Burning Like Fire", on the internet. It was way better than I could have imagined, and I was compelled to remix both of them, again. (I've used bit of Carols 94 in various ancient tracks and probably unreleaseable tracks)
It's another record made to my formula, 15 minutes long, heavily breakbeat happy hardcore. Perhaps a bit more old school than usual, I don't know, that's just what somebody said to me once. It was made before I started including garage into the formula, anyway. There's a lot of 1994 jungle about it. Horrible abuse of stereo positioning.
MATHEMATICS IN MIDDLE EARTH
Parabolas: Conic sections forming part of Legolas's extended family
Phobos
I don't know why they decided to set Doom on Phobos. Perhaps they hadn't researched properly and thought there really could be a mountainous bright white sky on a tiny rock too small to really have any gravity. It's more likely that it was because the game was originally set on the fictitious moon of Tei Tenga This was obviously scrapped in the final release but not all traces of the original plot were removed. Take a close look at the computer textures COMPSTA*.
There are many people who have made their own wads. Very few of them have an instantly recognisable style so distinctive that I can call the map's author by name* One of those who does is Roger Ritenour; I found earth.wad quite early on and it was so good I had to play as many of his others as I could find at the time (this was well before Doomworld's idgames archive front end existed so I couldn't make links like this)
Earth, 10 maps of ruins, amazingly well animated coastlines, ridiculously dark underground tunnels (my dark ashwall tunnels in elixir are inspired directly from Earth), caverns lit with flickering lava, and the occasional building or abandoned techbase really deserves a proper review in its own right. I want to talk about a wad which is arguably even better: Phobos, which I downloaded a couple of weeks ago to see how some of its extreme fake 3d trickery had been pulled off. I decided to replay it. You need to play this thing too, seriously.
The premise is simple. Take the names of the first four maps of Doom episode 1 ("Hangar", "Nuclear Plant", "Toxin Refinery", "Command Control") Make maps that are as realistically possible deserving of those titles.
- Map 1, Hangar is... an airport. There's kiosks, ticket desks, toilets, you name it. You rescue a key out of the back office and it takes you to a town in ruins. The road back to the airport has been destroyed, but you find an old cave that gets you back via a treacherous climb along the side of a sheer cliff face. Finally you run for the spaceship on the landing pad, but it lifts off without you. Fortunately you can find a teleporter and transport onto the craft and get away... The special effects are amazing.
- Map 2, Nuclear Plant, sees you exploring a nuclear power station. The sheer scale of the thing is ridiculous. You find control rooms full of computers, turbines, pylons and a key on a thin metal gantry high above the reactor itself. If you don't fall in, but still want a taste of radioactivity, you can look for the used fuel dump.
- Map 3, Toxin Refinery, starts off in a town square. A loose fence panel brings you to the plant entrance (complete with security guard operated gate) The front yard of towers burning waste chemicals gives way to the building itself, with warehouse areas and deep pits full of poisonous chemicals. Watch out for the exhaust fans and the air ventilation system that you can crawl around (this breaks in source ports but I found if you do the map in the right order it's fine) Finally you will reach the back yard with its massive cooling towers and another gatehouse and spacecraft.
- Map 4, Command Control, starts with the most impressive sighting of a key ever. You find a long dark tunnel where some evil force has burrowed its way into the computer core of a secret base. The power is still working and the holographic radar system is still operational... Then it's time to go spelunking and explore some caves to find the key for the office (and the office bathrooms, which were clearly and hilariously designed by perverts) Then it's through some more ancient temple-like structures to finally find a teleporter deep underground, which is the exit.
So, what you have is 4 of the most absurdly realistic and good-looking maps ever. As far as gameplay goes it's a mixed bag; another characteristic of Ritenour's maps is that all the monsters are in one big control sector, with many teleporter lines. It's a trick to supposedly improve replayability by randomising monster placement. In practice it doesn't work so well, you get big monsters before you feel well-equipped enough to deal with them, you never know if you've cleared out an area or not because something could still teleport into it well after you're done, and most of the point of replaying levels for me is that now knowing the map and monster layout I want to see how much I can improve on the first run. Too much luck enters into the factors for a successful demo run. Thus, these aren't really maps I can play several times in the same day, or year for that matter.
However, they are the sort of thing you have to play once. Go and be amazed.
* as opposed to playing a map, going "hey this is really good" then discovering it's by "the guy who made blah blah blah dot wad" that you played a year or two ago and really enjoyed
