The answer was MAP26
The question was a bit ambiguous, I suppose, more precisely it should have been "which is the only Doom 2 map that contains a solid hanging body you should be able to walk underneath" where being able to walk underneath is defined as being in a sector whose height (floor to ceiling distance) exceeds the sum of the heights of the hanging body itself and the player. The object in question is a hanging leg at (-704, 32) in sector 31; the sector height is 112, the leg height is 52 and the player height 56.
Doom doesn't contain any such objects; Ultimate Doom contains several, but only in episode 4.
The Vrack series
..are in some sense "unreviewables". They're far too complex and detailed to mention everything, and my writing a review of them won't influence anyone's decision to play them or not because anyone hanging around the Doom community online in the past few years would probably have heard of them and played them already. They are three maps set on space stations, apparently floating in a starry sky. Grey and silver and computer textures are common.
Vrack, the first, was a decent map, not too extreme in any aspects, its main distinguishing feature was that it was a space station map for Doom 2 at all, as Doom 2 especially is biased away from space stations in favour of bricks and towns. It plays very well - challenging, never dull, but not too difficult, and has a Hissy tribute (don't ask)
Vrack 2a and Vrack 2b kicked the whole thing up a notch. Larger, harder, and setting a new standard for the amount of detail in a wad. In fact if you want to blame any one map for all the idiots who refuse to play maps with normal levels of detail, it's probably this one! Also notable are the number of monsters, in particular the vast hordes of cacodemons that turn up at a few different places. It uses all six keys, has over 700 monsters, and goes on forever.
2b corrected a few bugs and added a reject table to try and speed the game up on older computers. Unfortunately it still wasn't enough for DIY on my Risc PC to cope, which is why I've only just got round to playing the map!
Vrack 3 finally appeared, quite a long time after Vrack 2 (and long enough after all the hype, including news articles on Doomworld about how the author "needs a new computer as his current one is not up to the task of editing Vrack 3", had died down) It was even bigger again, and still massively overdetailed but wasn't such a huge leap forward in that department. That's not to say it wasn't very, very impressive; just that there wasn't that much more you could do, Vrack 2 was already pushing the limits of what's possible with Boom. (I do want to mention the spinning holographic radar display though, one of the best uses of animated textures I've ever seen) Vrack 3 however suffers from annoying gameplay in a few places, there are a couple of traps which are viciously unfair and so forth. There's a maze made up by laser beams (instant death on touch) through which you are chased by a horde of revenants and archviles which teleport around making them impossible to shoot. This one needs savegames, which lowers its replay value.
2b is definitely the best one. 1 is a great map but somewhat overshadowed by others. 3, as I said, suffers from gameplay issues; I want to play it again, but I know I'll die at one of the traps and it'll just be a big frustration.
The Vrack series went on to inspire a number of homages: Europa 3, maps 18 to 20 of Scythe and a silly parody called Vrack 0 that makes fun of the gameplay.
No standing under the cadavers
A few weeks ago I came up with a hack that allows the player to walk underneath solid hanging bodies. As Doom engines with proper 3d thing movement clipping have come to prominence mappers have been more and more lax with the placement of hanging bodies that block the player, as in such engines you can just walk underneath them regardless. Examples, of which there are many, include
- a monster teleporter on the full version of Deus Vult has blocking corpses high above it, causing monsters to appear and immediately get stuck
- Armadosia map26 cannot be finished without no-clipping mode as a mass of hanging bodies block your way to linedef 2831
- lev_lost.wad map07, you actually start stuck underneath a solid body.
- Pop quiz: there's even one in Doom 2! But, where is it? Answer will be in the next update!
I ported the patch to PrBoom-Plus as a so-called "compatibility with common mapping errors"* option. Yesterday it was accepted and incorporated into svn head. So, hooray for that, it might make some people happy.
* A number of options PrBoom itself doesn't have; they exist as workarounds for maps that were built as either Doom-plus** or Boom maps but only tested with ZDoom. You know, walk triggers in front of switches, zero tags on linedefs to implicitly work on the linedefs back sector, null reject lumps as a substitute for an all-zeroed reject table, etc.
** I use "Doom-plus map" to mean "map requiring limit-removing source port" because to me it sounds tremendously awkward when people say "limit-removing or Boom-compatible map". The map itself doesn't remove any limits, it needs an engine that does. Doom-plus is an impressively hack of doom2.exe by the author of PrBoom-plus that has raised visplane limits, etc.
I am trying not to be too overly verbose and descriptive when writing these things. But how many times have I said that before?
Proxima Centauri: Town map from the start of 1995. Various buildings on a grassy plain. As usual with this type of map it helps if you know where to go first. Pretty good fun. Some of the barrels have useful stuff hidden behind them and there's places to climb up on the fountains and that. Not sure what it has to do with Earth's nearest astronomical neighbour though.
Pandora's Pox: (not sure if the name is a typo or a deliberate pun...) Gloomy techbase map. Has a plotline that gives it some atmosphere. Interesting use of the start blinking tag to simulate a power failure - this isn't often used nowadays, which is fair enough because if every wad did it it'd be annoying. But I haven't seen it in ages, so it worked quite well! Some bugs and other oddities, e.g. lack of a yellow key. Apparently this was done to make doors that can only be opened in deathmatches. Some windows have shutters with missing textures and there's a teleporter that doesn't work. Predictable, just another release the monster, snatch the key and run map, but enjoyable and I thought worth playing.
Nilla DooM
Yes it is written that way. Some people do. Some people write it all in capitals. I have no idea why, Doom looks much more natural, the Quake logo is all in capitals as well but it's always written Quake. I think maybe Doom's original press releases in 1993 or whenever wrote DOOM though. Also I mean if you're trying to imitate the game logo properly you'd end up with D°°M. Yeah, degree signs, the ultimate fanboy writing. Don't get me started on people who write Doom 2 as DooM ][.
Anyway Nilla DooM replaces MAP01-MAP07 of DooM [] no wait ][ no fuck it Doom 2 with a highly varied and tough set of maps. First thing you notice is the order you get the weapons in. There's no shotgun to begin, no, first you get a plasma gun! It then goes shotgun, super shotgun, rocket launcher, chaingun on successive maps. I think. You might be able to get a chaingun earlier than MAP05 but maybe not. There's a BFG on one map but it's hidden.
The texture theme is weird too, it mixes everything together. But it does it with some skill and never looks bad, just odd. In fact it's quite inventive. Switches and computer panels covered in vines are common, and seeing base, brick and cave textures all relatively close to each other is too.
- Plasma Springs: Part industrial base, part garden(!) This is apparently where you retired to after Hell on Earth
- Greenseas: A vaguely town-like map surrounded by a slime lake. Much of the town is below the level of the lake, with brick walls keeping the slime out. It's a disaster waiting to happen...
- Hot Shot: Red brick structures in underground lava-filled caves.
- Call of the Zombie: Two large lakes surrounded by canyons and a couple of buildings
- Unearthed: More underground caves, bricks and vines
- Chance: Industrial-style buildings in caves, both underground and open to the sky
- Tinman's Folly: Red bricks, red rocks, lava, this is like a factory in Hell or something.
On UV the gameplay is pretty nasty. The first two maps aren't so bad but the third starts to get nasty. 4 to 7 I have not been able to beat from a pistol start. For instance at the start of MAP04 you're in this wide open canyon with zombies (bullet weapons) everywhere. There's not much health or ammo. You pretty much have to carry ammunition forward for the last few maps; you could do it from scratch but you'd need so much luck you'd lose patience, I think.
But it's pretty good if you play all 7 maps in a row. Well... actually, it's pretty good if you play all 7 maps in a row once you know them. Unfortunately many of the maps basically require you to know them before you play them. For instance there are a number of single-use doors, lifts, teleporters etc. that basically lock you out of shit unless you know exactly what you're doing. I found this very irritating.
- MAP03 has a secret area accessed by jumping into a lava lake at a candle in the corner. When you run over it, you teleport. Unfortunately it's single-use and unless you know it's there and jump for it right at the start of the level a lost soul will trip it and you're locked out of the secret area.
- MAP05 has a secret area containing a soulsphere that you access by pressing a button that only works once. It causes a platform to lower briefly. Unless you a) know it's there b) have cleared the crowd of hellknights off the top of it you're not going to get the secret.
- MAP06: there is a berserk box at the start on a lift that only lowers once when you first walk out of the alcove you start in. Unfortunately the entire area is crawling with monsters so you're not going to want to charge out. If you try to let the monsters come to you, well, monsters can trip lift triggers and you've lost your opportunity.
- MAP07: perhaps worst of all, on the final map, in order to lower the pillar with the red key on it you have to press a switch. The route to this switch goes via a ledge which rises out of a lava river. In order to raise this ledge the player has to run over a candle stuck on the bank of the river. Now I don't know about you but I don't go running around over candles just to see if they do something - basically I don't see how anybody's going to work that out without resorting to using a map editor.
Those are all, for me, major annoyances. I hate single-use lifts, teleporters etc. I hate crushing ceilings as well, check out the chaingunner/revenant crossfire behind a crusher on MAP06 (the crusher means you can't just dodge back out of the room and use the doorway as cover), check out those stupid barriers on MAP07 that you have to stand around waiting for, for ages, and all the running through lava, shootable switches that were really easy to miss...
Basically you need to know the maps before you've played them and I can't see into the future. Bottom line, this wad tries to be imaginatively different and sort of succeeds but has a bunch of flaws that make it just a bit too annoying.
YESTERDAY...
was when I wrote most of this update (hence the weirdly short time interval)
Ogre Labs - yeah, this again. It finally got reviewed, and reviewed positively. Basically you should have already played this as it's really good. Not much else to say, I've covered it twice before already. I've no idea why the /idgames frontend doesn't include its text file though. That thing is so broken and nobody seems to care...
Maze of Frustration - a 4x4 grid of square rooms with teleporters in the corners, hence 16x16 teleporters. They all teleport to different squares. You have to find the square with the blue key then the square with the exit. How very annoying!
Well, that's what you're meant to think - a third square has a switch in it that lowers the walls between all the grid squares, and suddenly the map becomes a great deal more exciting! I shall spoil the route
- You start in the top-left square. Run forwards to pick up the super shotgun, then left in the direction of the arrow. On the automap, south, then southeast.
- You should now be in the square with the exit door, one row down and all four across from the start. This time ignore the arrow, and run forwards and left (north on the automap)
- You should now be in the square to the immediate west of the previous one. Run forwards and to the right (west on the automap)
- Hopefully, you've gone one more square west and two squares south, to the bottom row. To your left is an arrow pointing at a switch. This lowers the walls and now you can go to town!
- To exit the map, having pressed the button run two squares north where you should find a blue key. Two squares east of this square is the exit door which you've already seen.
Alternatively you can go straight to the blue key square without lowering the walls.
- Follow steps 1 and 2 above to get to the square immediately to the west of the exit door square.
- This time run straight across the square to the opposite corner (southwest on the automap)
- You should be two squares to the west of the exit door square; the starting square is immediately to the northwest of your current position. You should also see the blue key in front of you. Pick it up.
- There are only two functioning (red) teleporters in this square. Choose the other one, the one you didn't come in by. This is to the southwest of the blue key and is also pointed to by an arrow. Although don't pay too much attention to the arrows in general, they're mostly just random.
- You should be back in the exit door square so just go for it.
Of course this is much easier if you actually see someone do it, than it is to follow my instructions, but still. There's only four or five squares you actually have to visit, and one of those you start in. I enjoyed this level. It seemed to prove its point, which was that the /newstuff guys are easy to annoy or something. I'm not sure... There's this whole thing with /newstuff, people hate getting bad reviews, the reviewers revel in being, uh, "honest", people release wads that try to troll them (all started by the andrewb series, if I recall correctly), it's all stupid. There's too much celebrity, people just release wads to get them reviewed, it's become a whole institution and in some ways ruined things. Just play the damn wads and stop complaining about everything and letting random people off the internet colour your opinions. All I personally need to know is if the wad will run with rboom/PrBoom and what maps it replaces. Ugh...
Batma - a long run through an S-shaped tunnel. Pretty dull. Each down-piece is a 10% damage slime pool so you have to balance the health hits with the occasional stimpak you get. Then right at the end just when you're not expecting it a load of cacodemons come out of the walls and scare you with their noise! I didn't manage to get 100% kills, the cyberdemon kills the cacodemons but I messed up fighting the cyberdemon. I did notice that it had quite good lighting and was generally detailed more than you'd expect a map like this would be, but really it's only interesting for speedrunning.
3x-play and 99ways
I was looking for something in an old wad that I couldn't remember the name of, so I went through looking for names of old wads I played. Apparently I played these at the end of 1999 but apart from a couple of bits of 99ways I have no memory of them. This is very unusual and unsettling. The one thing I definitely do remember is that 99ways map03 was the first time I saw DIY's infamous collection bug, as the red key is thing #0. I played the map just after DIY was Boom-enabled, and it took nearly a year and a half before I fixed the damn thing (and only a week later there was a release of DIY that also fixed it - how frustrating)
Triple Play is a single map for Doom 2. Being from 1995 it is quite simply constructed without great amounts of detail, but that's okay, it's not at all bad. It could use some theme consistency though, there's base-to-wood transitions and libraries all in the same map.
It's quite compact but makes you backtrack a lot. You get the blue key from by the yellow door, then go all the way round to get the yellow key, then back again. Then you get the red key and back all the way round once more. When you do this it repopulates the map with various monsters, including two archviles which turned into some of the most efficient resurrectors I've known (I finished the map with as many as 120% kills - it's not often you see above 110%)
So it's pretty tough, especially for a map made in 1995. However having said that there are a lot of secrets, nearly all of which I missed. Obviously that would have made it easier.
In fact I went back and played it again, having knowledge of the map. Knowing where the secrets are helps a lot, there's absolute piles of ammunition, you get the guns earlier, and the yellow key and door can be pretty much omitted (unless you want maximum kills) Oh and this time the resurrections went up to 267/217 (123%)
99 Ways to Die gives you three castle-styled maps, again for Doom 2. They are easier to play in a row, but you can do them from pistol starts if you want, you just need to employ more strategy. The text file proclaims that "the appearence of the levels (texture selection, alignment, lighting, etc...)" and indeed these maps were known for their lighting back in the day apparently. I find this rather amusing, as while it is true that there is a great deal of extra sectors employed for graded lighting purposes than you might expect from a wad from 1996, the texture alignment in those places is by and large all zero. As a result, the brick walls look awful. Also don't use 255 everywhere in outdoor sectors as it looks flat and dull.
But looks don't matter so much as how it plays. Well, as I said it's pretty trivial in that regard. There are a couple of situations that can be slightly tricky if you run in all guns blazing but mostly it's fine. Doing a run of all three maps is trivial, I found myself rarely dropping below 100% health and armour. Pistol starts are slightly harder in a couple of places but with a tiny amount of care and knowledge of the map it's still easy.
Much of the maps are optional. The first two have yellow-locked areas that don't even need to be entered, although if you do you get more ammunition and health. This contrasts with an almost total lack of secret areas - although all three maps start you off in a secret area, I suppose just so that doom2.exe doesn't say "0% secrets" - the only genuine secret is on map03 and it's too thin to walk onto without going up the next step (cf Doom2 MAP15, etc.)
Unfortunately it doesn't stop there, all of the previous problems I've mentioned don't stop you from playing the wad but this one might. On map03 the teleporter that takes you to the exit area doesn't work as the exit point's flags prevent it from spawning on skill 4. This might put you off playing more than dubious claims about texture alignment. The easiest way to fix this is with a hex editor, unless your wad editor isn't so damn stupid that it can't save a map back into the original wad and insists on saving a "patch wad". Anyway, go to 0x593E1 which is the file offset of thing #45 in map03, where you should find 5 16-bit integers in signed little-endian format:
18 F5 18 05 2D 00 0E 00 03 00
This is a teleporter exit (0x0E, 14) at position (0xF518,0x0518) [(-2792,1304)] facing northeast (angle 0x2D, 45) Change the 0x03 (flags hmp, hntr) to 0x07 (flags uv, hmp, hntr) Dead easy!
