Following the recent /newstuff chronicles thread on Doomworld, in which I posted the original.
Firstly, the gameplay isn't tacked on or whatever I said it was, but is deliberate. The authors prefer a style of gameplay where you run away from the monsters. That's fair enough, not everyone likes the same thing, and I cannot begrudge them. I suppose I go into a map expecting certain things, and in this case I was wrong. The one suggestion I would make is that the FAQ could mention the intended style of gameplay. I did read this before playing and for example found it very helpful to know about the secret keys on map11 in advance.
Secondly, the bugs. Apparently Darkfyre "spent an entire week of nights at work" trying to make Hellcore compatible with the range of Boom-compatible ports. So I can't say he didn't put the effort in.
However I still believe at least half the bugs are more or less trivially fixable. For example, I thought it was fairly well-known that you can't put walk triggers in front of doors or switches, which is the reason why you can't get anywhere in map03. Similarly, it's easy to add a nonzero tag to a line special that requires it, and the same tag to the line's back sector, instead of assuming the ZDoomism that a zero tag acts like a fake manual. Other issues are more involved to fix, like map10's secret - you'd have to get the pillar out of the way, rather than just drop it into the floor, maybe stunt something up with conveyors and teleporters, I don't know - but map07's exploding doors, well, as I said, that one has me stumped.
your choice
High/Low 1
A more recent map from the guy who brought us CH_RETRO. Replaces E1M1, looks like an episode 1 wad for the most part. Wonderfully complex layout, every area seems to have several entrances and exits. Plenty of windows, glimpses of future areas. (the lack of this kind of thing was what I was complaining about in those Hellcore maps) Texturing feels a little off for a pure E1 level, it has hints of E2 as well. I think this is because it uses more stone than "star" (i.e. startan3 and so on)
Gameplay is between easy and tricky - you can lose too much health in the early stages, and never recover. I have tried to run it more aggressively and not been successful. You may also find you need to conserve ammunition, and, as ever, I think his monster teleporters could be better designed and go off a little faster. At least there aren't any broken ones.
So aside from a few small niggles this is another of the maps of the year. Go and play it.
Relive the Nightmare
There was one particular scene in highlow1 that tripped my memory. I had been here before - or rather, I had been in a very similar place in another wad. It took me a day or so to make the link between mental image and a name, Phobos - Relive the Nightmare. So I fetched it, and also all the other wads by the same author, Torment, Slugfest, and Doom City - I'd played all of them five or six years ago.
Several things all the wads have in common:
- new sound effects, probably from other games I'm not familiar with
- considerable contrast between light and dark
- non-linear layouts
- a tendency for the maps to follow on from each other, the first area of the next map being identical to the start of the previous
- and a monster distribution that appears to amount to "many zombies and imps, and at least one of every type of demon"
They are easy by today's standards and even an average player should have no trouble carrying ammunition forward through each wad; doing each map from a pistol start is a bit trickier, but possible.
Phobos, as the name suggests, is a reinterpretation of Doom's episode 1 for Doom 2. The maps all have the same names as the originals, follow on from each other, and a few have features corresponding to the name - Hangar has some kind of a landing pad, for example - but there's very little overall similarity, the maps aren't even in the same order. The best one is probably Military Base which is a large nonlinear map filled with monsters and ammunition. It can also be finished in only a few seconds if you're good at strafejumps.
Torment is 6 maps in a grey/wood/water theme. The theme is very consistent, which coupled with some of the levels following directly on, makes it feel in a way like one giant map. Map02 is the best one, being large, complex and having several ways to do it. Map01 has some impressive height variation but suffers horribly from top-heaviness.
Doom City is a small town invaded by monsters. The thing to notice is the texturing, which is realistic and highly colourful, in fact this is probably the most colourful map I've ever seen. There is a petrol station, drive-through restaurant, bank, supermarket, church, library, bar, ... all underneath a beautiful twilight sky. I have a thing about dark blue sky textures. Anyway you have to see this map.
Slugfest - 10 maps in a variety of themes. Brick and stone fortresses, bases including a remix of the start of E1M2, and a boss map consisting of a giant picture of the author's face that shouts "AH! AM NEEJIL!" and fires rockets at you.
And of course it's that Slugfest, the one with map09, the brightly lit pathway, surrounded by pillars, suspended in the giant black cavern, that inspired my first attempt at making a proper map with an editor. I never did finish it; it became too large, causing problems with node building.
26 maps, all very much worth playing.
HELLCORE
First, a little backstory. Hellcore was apparently begun in 1995. In 2004 the project released a 32-map megawad which was highly variable in quality, not to mention, essentially broken - the first level was large and beautifully detailed, the next looked like it hadn't been updated since the mid nineties. Furthermore there was no single source port that would play all 32 maps correctly and I gave up with it after only a few maps.
The authors carried on with their magnum opus, chopped out a lot of the maps they felt were too poor, and for Halloween this year released Hellcore 2.0. 12 maps are in it, some new, some updated from the previous version, and one credits map that is described as being pasted together from pieces of unused previous levels.
One-line* summary of each level
- On Hell's Horizon Break out of military prison, clear out the base, visit the harbour complete with massive lighthouse, then escape on a cargo vessel. This is the one map I remember from the original release, I remember getting pretty excited about it.
- Baron Streets Enormous city map set at night. Massive amounts of detail. A lot of running. Not many of the doors actually open - look at the automap, it tells you where to go. Largely devoid of monsters and completely empty of ammunition. 100% kills requires at least 80% infighting and is probably not achievable.
- Parasite Dawn Inside one of the town buildings, except it's mostly just corridors. Detailed corridors, but corridors nonetheless. There is a car park outside.
- Defying the Odds Inside some kind of hi-tech research facility. Offices, canteens etc. Huge monster count, broken teleporter traps.
- Vestibule of Plague Another building interior. More corporate reception areas, a locker room, what looks like a nuclear reactor... Too many air-conditioning duct mazes. Has the best map name ever!
- Limbo Little more than a cutscene, you run through the hell portal along with some monsters.
- Tribulation Hell has properly subverted the environment now and completely destroyed this building you're in.
- Tryx 'n Traps More hellish hi-tech buildings, mazes and having to run around with no health through poison. There is a huge 64-wide maze here, shows its age.
- Hobb's End Horror Possibly the creepiest map ever. It's an abandoned town, with horror movie cliches everywhere. Secrets accessed by pushing books into bookcases, that sort of thing. It fills up with a massive crowd of monsters once you get the key out of the hotel. This is a lot less fun than it sounds.
- Nightmare's Requiem Some kind of desecrated cathedral. Underneath is a crypt, with coffins everywhere, but it's really just more hyperdetailed corridors. Ends up passing through some kind of stepping stones floating in space deal.
- Hellcore Final boss map. Lots of red rocks, hell magic, etc. Many large monsters. Difficult and frustrating. Interesting "secret keys" gimmick - there are three secret areas to find but to work them properly you must also have "picked up" three "keys" (they're made out of linedefs and disappear when you press on them)
- Credits Bits of other unused maps stitched together. Theme varies from dark tech to dungeons and cathedrals. Contains new enemy marine monster - obvious comparison with Scythe 2 will be drawn. Thank goodness this one is slower, but can fire rockets as well as plasma, so watch out. Isn't just a recoloured player but looks like a trooper with a helmet on.
* Recall that old mathematician's joke: "It's a one-line proof - if you start sufficiently far to the left"
Opinion
You have to say this wad is a work of art. Nearly every part of every map is visually stunning, highly realistic (in the case of real-world structures) and finely detailed. The two town maps, 2 and 9, are exquisite, in fact except for areas of 5 and 8 that are a bit dull, it's all beautifully made and textured. Most of the textures are new. Various ambient sounds increase the atmosphere; fire burning, machines humming, water dripping.
However, the gameplay is at best dull and at worst highly frustrating. Monsters seem to come in packs. You can go for ages without seeing anything, then a whole load appear from nowhere. Also you either have no ammunition or far too much. It's pretty clear the maps aren't designed for 100% kills - I recall in map10 a cyberdemon appears and teleports to a platform in empty space, and killing it required me to pelt it with a shotgun from a couple of thousand units away. I should have just left it. On map09, once the key is collected and you leave the hotel, you can largely avoid the creepily dark and ghostly teleporting horde, and just run to the train station.
Map02 deserves special mention. As I said, it is almost entirely devoid of resources; your only weapon is a shotgun. The map's wadspy ratio* is over 3. Also, it might be beautifully realised and detailed, but, topologically, it is only a long corridor, with a few rooms leading off of it. Starting in the middle, you must go to one end of the corridor, picking up a key along the way, press a button that opens up the other end of the corridor, follow that round and go to the exit. Many of the maps suffer from this type of thing - they might look beautiful but if you mentally strip away all the architecture that's irrelevant to gameplay the layouts themselves are flat, linear and dull.
And then, having said all that, we haven't even got to the bugs yet. The text file says "ZDoom/GZDoom required - other Boom ports may work as they become more forgiving" How sick is that? There's no actual ZDoom features used. I mean, come on, this is an old wad, it's not designed for ZDoom. But it relies on all your typical ZDoom changes to work - fake manuals, implicit passthrough - and other, rarer types, like the pillar on map10 that lowers and you have to walk over (requires full 3d thing clipping, my hanging bodies hack isn't enough) and the exploding doors at the start of map07, I'm not even sure how they're meant to operate. And that's not mentioning all the hundreds of middle textures on two-sided lines (railings, animated fire, etc.) that hang several feet above ground level for no good reason. The fact is, it annoys me that people make maps that end up relying on ZDoom changes to existing Doom/Boom code. It must be laziness, if these authors have been mapping since 1995 it can't be ignorance.
Okay, enough of the ranting. I really want to like Hellcore, it's had so much effort put into it. Like Equinox it has a whole self-suggesting plotline; here, a near-future Earth is being dragged into Hell. But I think the problem is that the designers were intent on perfecting the realism, then ended up adding the gameplay almost as an afterthought. This is exactly the wrong way round to do it - do the gameplay first, then realise and beautify it later. To any would-be players I say have a look - it deserves to be seen, like a tourist attraction - but trying to actually play it properly might not be worth the bother.
* Wadspy is a map summariser program that can among other things calculate the ratio of total monster hitpoints on a map to the total amount of damage dealable by the ammunition on the map. It doesn't take a lot of other relevant variables into account, but works as a very rough guide to difficulty. Its value is usually between one half and three quarters for a typical map. Anything too high is likely going to be frustrating, unless there's some other factor to consider. Elixir's ratio was just above one, which just goes to show.
I am in a slump. Here's some maps.
Containment Area - a Doom 2 tribute to Doom's E2M2. One of the great early Boom maps, this is enormous, very hard, and extremely detailed - indeed when I first saw it when it came out in 1999 (coincidentally at exactly the time DIY gained Boom map support) I thought it was the most detailed map ever, but it has been surpassed now. It uses all six keys and has exactly 666 monsters, which can't be a coincidence. However it takes a long time to play; the limited health and ammo, traps and ambushes require a cautious style of gameplay.
One irritation is the placement of the BFG, to access it you basically need to clear out the entire level, in particular, three of the four cyberdemons. I don't see the point in only getting to weapons or large powerups right at the end of a map when there's no purpose for them. However back in the day this wad taught me I could play cat and mouse with cyberdemons and kill them only with shotguns, so whatever. This is a true classic that everyone should play, especially if you like E2M2.
Insertion - 11 maps for Doom 2, very good old school style, medium to large. I played this in 2002 and can remember going on excitedly at people about it. It can be rather repetitive due to co-op-friendly design (e.g. having two different versions of the same area) Map10 "Hanford Disaster" is a great map except being annoying to play, with all those lifts. Map08 is fantastic too, watch the teleporter lighting and the supposedly empty plain! However, Map11, the ending is awful, a big grid of fast crusher puzzles is not fun - I probably could survive the whole thing if it weren't for this. Overall it's a decent wad if you like mid to late nineties large Doom 2 maps.
The Great Boss Battle Contest - Some contest on Newdoom. It produced seven maps. If you can get hold of it, play the winner, xbossmap.wad. It's one of those "let everything out at once and run round like a maniac" maps, great fun to play. Some of the others were pretty good too.
