26/10/2004 @15:33:18 ^16:39:58

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:

  1. A maze, with fake walls in a confusing layout, with ugly texturing and way too much ammunition. I got bored and skipped it.
  2. 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.
  3. Run round a small circle and press the exit switch before you cop a rocket from the army of cyberdemons chasing you from behind.
  4. 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.
  5. 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)
  6. 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)
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. 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.
  10. 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.
  11. 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. 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.
  13. 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.