Another Corfiatis map, haven't featured one of those for a while. This one is hellish and replaces map28. There's castles and caves and red rocks and lava. There's also that tan brick theme that he used in Selfish - this could be another Selfish map, if I recall correctly he said so himself on the forums.
Gameplay isn't so hard for the most part, somehow it seems more difficult than it is, at least the first time I played it. I didn't much care for the caves though. Much as I am a fan of maps where you have to venture off into some "other place" and bring back something you need to exit, the caves here amount to one long dark twisty corridor with a small temple at the far end that's completely separate from the rest of the map. It's totally disconnected.
To sum up it won't set the world on fire but it's a decently-made map that doesn't need ZDoom so you might as well.
Something old I downloaded that replaces E2M1. It shows its age by the rather confused texture theme (or lack of it), with wood and too much startan3 under the E2 sky*. The major problem with this map is one of flow, it just seems all wrong somehow. I mean stuff like you have to find secrets to progress, but things that actually are secrets aren't marked as such, and it's all just a bit confused really. Not to mention that old chestnut, doing most of the map with the shotgun, only getting the bigger weapons when most of the monsters are dead. Probably not worth bothering with, although every map is someone's favourite map.
* Startan3 and the E2 sky together are very remiscent of old Doom maps. Back in the day id would sue you if you made pwads (or at least, a pwad editor) that worked with the shareware game, and the easiest way to ensure registered version use only was to make maps that replaced episode 2. As for startan3, its status as a default texture ensured its prominence - see also floor4_8. Old Doom pwads are very distinctive in their own way.
This replaces map01 and map02. The first is underground, part lava caves, part small town. The town is hard and cramped, the caves more open and a bit of a slaughter zone, although not much. This map's biggest problem is that resources can be a bit hard to find if you don't know where to look and just blundering around will get you overwhelmed. However you can exit the map almost as soon as you like, as the exit door looks like it needs a red key, but in fact needs a yellow one.*
Map02 starts off above ground in amongst some buildings but its major focus is a large central arena that monsters teleport into. Around the arena are four little subsections which you must fetch the keys from. In particular a stone dungeon that's a bit like the UAC area from Doom 2 map10, and a dark slime-filled cavern that I found annoying. As you open each side area monsters in it teleport out into the middle, and chase you. This is one of those maps where it's kind of a waste of time and ammunition to try to kill them. In fact the map would be better if you could just let everything out at once; as it is it's just kind of annoying.
* There are a surprising large number of maps that suffer from red and yellow key confusion. I believe the reason for this is the way the UDS, a common reference document for early mappers and editor programmers, is written. A casual glance at the UDS will yield the information that manual locked doors are numbered 26-28 and 32-34 for repeatable and single-use types respectively. What nobody notices is that one is in the order blue red yellow and the other is blue yellow red. The UDS confused everybody because it lists both groups as blue red yellow, not in numerical order. It's not wrong, it's just very misleading, and the confusion crept into various map editors (and even rboom, for at least a few days last year...)
Yet another hugely impressive wad from Eternal, author of Remain1 et al. This is a trek through 5 varied jungle/desert locations which have, typically, suffered a hell infestation. These maps are large and very open, being mostly set outdoors, and with highly realistic detail and texturing insofar as the Doom engine allows. However I feel that for their size they are quite underpopulated, especially the final map which feels rather empty. Each map in turn:
- A fool's paradise You're at some kind of dock at the edge of an island. A wood and water theme recalls TNT:Evilution's MAP32. Just an introduction, not too difficult, but plenty of nice things to look at. Boom features abound, as they do throughout the whole wad.
- Sand-storm You are briefly dragged through a teleporter which explodes around you. You find yourself inside a building in the centre of a desert warzone. Ruined buildings, sniper towers (with inevitable chaingunners), exploded tanks, it's all here. Eventually you gain access to a rather airy, rich-looking and surprisingly intact townhouse; the exit is underneath it at the end of a very long underground river.
- Arc of the Pendulum A castle or fortified temple, it contrasts with the others as it is mostly indoors. Complex and full of traps, and many secrets. If you survive, use the dynamite to open up the abandoned train line.
- The Helltrain Somewhat inevitably, you've caught the train. The illusion of a moving train here is very convincing. Obviously if you fall off the side, you're screwed. Unfortunately the map is rather cramped - necessitated by its design, but nonetheless.
- The Citadel Finally we arrive at the destination, which is so large that it causes all kinds of overflows in the renderer. I don't understand why it needs to be quite so large, the monster count is under 350 and the majority of the map feels incredibly empty. The map is dominated by the gigantic structure in the centre, and there are also interiors of pyramids and alien spaceships to visit.
There is a certain amount of evidence the wad was designed for hardware renderers; the size being the obvious thing, other signs being the large number of floating middle textures (e.g. force fields) that appear to bleed into the surrounding floor or ceiling*. Indeed I believe EPIC would have been GZDoom-specific save for the fact that Eternal is friends with entryway, the PrBoom-plus author, who made a lot of changes to his port specifically to support the extremes of this project. Not that I'm complaining - a very good wad reaches a wider audience.
Highly recommended, as if I needed to say.
* A side effect of the software renderer, when a middle texture is on a two-sided line, and the visplanes on either side of the line are merged. Something like that anyway. As I've said many times before, I'm not very sure how the renderer works. You can work round it by making the sectors on either side of the level have a difference in light level of 1; this is too small to actually render any differently, but will cause the visplanes to be split (but will increase their number of course, if you are mapping for vanilla and care about the visplane limit)
Return to Techbase 6
Techbase 6, previously only available on a site that has since disappeared off the internet, has recently been uploaded to /idgames under its other filename, Techbase 1. It's worth playing so if you haven't already, now's your chance.
I was quite excited when I saw this one just appear in /newstuff one morning. Imagine, someone's remade all four episodes of The Ultimate Doom. There's no hype, it's just here, and ready to play. And I really like remakes of IWAD maps and other well-known ones.
To begin with it lived up to expectations. Episode 1 remakes are always welcome and this is no exception. The maps are similar enough to Doom to be instantly recognisable but different enough to be fresh. It's very easy, but they all are. E1M8 and E1M9 were trickier though. The former in particular had a really nasty start.
After episode 1 the trend for extremely top-heavy maps continues. From a pistol start, I found many to require a significant amount of luck to get going, but if you can get past the initial fights and build up resources, the ends of the maps are easy. E4M6 was a good example. Perhaps they are intended to be played as a mission run with ammunition carried forward, rather than from scratch.
Furthermore, later episodes just weren't quite as inventive; the maps become just a bit too similar to the originals. I suppose when you've made 20 maps you might start running out of ideas. Still, it captures the mood well, in particular its E2M6 replacement was just as tense as I remember the original being. I also really liked the concept of E3M9 - just what you'd expect, but then again, not...
It's natural to compare any remake with its inspiration; here there are definitely one or two maps that might even be slightly better, but for most I'll just prefer the IWAD. Many would argue that the originals are better just because they're the originals, of course. One more thing, there were a couple of minor ZDoomisms; however, none prevented the maps from being conquered (in fact if I recall correctly they were all type 46 gun doors that lacked tags)
Still, I can highly recommend playing this wad. It's not every day a project of this magnitude arrives, especially these days, so I must give it plaudits.
I found this one while looking through the archive and recognising the filename; I ran it and the start looked vaguely familiar. Turns out I had started it in early 2004 but evidently never finished it.
It's a small techbase style map, not particularly E1-themed despite the title. Indeed it is pretty much entirely divided into separate rooms, although these are not underdetailed, and the route you take through them is affords the right amount of height differences, backtracking, and area reuse.
The gameplay isn't bad. The difficulty level is tricky but doable. The trap at the end is really obvious but there are some earlier places that may catch you out. I quite liked the plasma gun secret because you can see it from the start. Worth a play.
Strange. 10 levels in varied circumstances. The first is your house, and several of its neighbours, overrun by demons. Others have a more military, urban, or even old west setting.
Some of the sounds have been replaced. The pistol/chaingun is excessively loud compared to others, and jars after a while. The author appears obsessed with his own image, and pints of beer; there are many sprites replaced with images of him goofing around in various ways, along with motorbikes, spades, and wheelbarrows. Other than that though it's a serious wad; indeed I can't decide if it's meant to be a joke wad, or not.
The gameplay is tough and borders on frustrating; although there is a massive overabundance of ammunition, the monster density can be extremely high, and the first level in particular is one of those where you can't stop taking damage from unseen monsters. The difficulty can vary wildly and the whole experience was irritating. Also I suspect it was designed for an engine with freelook and proper 3d thing clipping due to some of the more excessive height differences; the city map where you can't move because of cacodemons high above you springs to mind.
Napalm A single map for TNT:Evilution (that is, run it with -iwad tnt) by the author of Generator of Evil and Remain1. It's a bit messy, for instance it uses too many different texture themes (but I'm not so sure that's not just a symptom of its underlying IWAD - TNT is also rather messy) It's not too hard if you're careful but you will have to explore; progression is only made via routes which in other wads might be considered secret areas. That said it has some clever tricks, like a fireable cannon, lots of actual secrets, and plenty of windows and future glimpses to draw you into playing it all the way through. Pretty good and worth playing, I think.
E1 The Test When I saw the 80 shells in the first room I thought this one is going to be easy. Far from it. It took 3 attempts and in the end I ran for the exit without killing all the monsters. It's a small techbase which replaces E1M1, but doesn't have much in common with episode 1, just being made up of three entirely unconnected branches. It's very frustrating because you think it should be easy but it's just slightly too cramped. Apparently inspired Doom Incarnate, which is much better.
Lemmings Doom This is a partial graphics conversion, some of the monsters and weapons are replaced. It's not bad, the lemmings seem rather large, but they're the size of Doom monsters so what do you expect. There are also sound replacements, all lifted directly from the game, so they all sounded insanely familiar to me (especially the ones I used in records) It works with any IWAD but mostly replaces Doom stuff rather than Doom 2.
Dead Zone All 9 levels of episode 2 are replaced. It's all a bit simple and mid-90s-esque, not that that's a problem, but the gameplay is rather lacklustre. I actually got bored of shooting the monsters, which seem to be in big groups of the same type, which queue up to be slowly ploughed through. The light level doesn't help either, the author doesn't do himself any favours using mass lights-off effects*. Having said all that E2M3 is pretty interesting for speedrunning purposes and E2M7 would be good if it weren't for the aforementioned lighting.
* He doesn't do himself any favours using DoomCAD either, and I think that's the real problem - DoomCAD is one of the few map editors I've actually used, and, well, put it like this - it makes Yadex look good! It certainly explains the lack of variety in monster placement, as I definitely recall DoomCAD being a right arse when you want to change the type of thing being placed - it lends itself naturally to placing lots of the same.
