15/05/2005 @18:00:51 ^22:46:46

I can't wait to get home from school, so I can get online, and talk with my boyfriend!!

ELL OH ELL OH ELL

THE ZIPS COLLECTION

These are a bunch of maps I've downloaded over the past two weeks. For some reason, I didn't put them in the usual place I put downloaded wads, but in a subdirectory of /tmp called "zips", probably because I didn't think I'd keep any of them around for long!

Fear II - The Spawn This is a classic Doom 2 metal-themed map that runs on map02. It's pretty linear and some might say dull, but I really liked it. There's plenty of atmospheric lighting, bright pools surrounded by darkness, shadows, that sort of thing. Oh and an outdoor not-so-secret area, I always like base maps with outsides you can get to. On the way to the blue key it switches theme to bricks for some reason. The gameplay like I said is nothing very special, mostly just follow your nose until you reach a free standing sky wall that's a teleporter which returns you to the middle. Opposition is mostly imps, spectres, zombies and a couple of revenants. There's an awkwardly placed mancubus and a classic token archvile in the brick section, so watch out. Anyway I enjoyed this map and recommend it to you.

WICKED.WAD This is one of those badly constructed old maps, it's quite weird really as everything is the wrong shape and all twisted and sheared. I found it quite interesting to explore but it's not great. There's bits that are sort of inspired from original Doom levels, so if you like spotting this kind of thing, have fun. Otherwise it's probably too annoying for most people to play but hey what else have you got to do?

Doomgate Training Camp Okay I think what is going on here is that some guy has come to Doom deathmatch from other more modern online games and has made a tutorial wad in which his friends, and/or visitors to his site, can practice. You can do jumping (Doom jumping, that is, running over gaps) straferunning, wallrunning and rocketjumping if you like. (I also found you can strafe50 over the rocket jumping pit. It doesn't seem that the author knows about strafe50, well, I don't blame him, I didn't work out how to do it until relatively recently... Oh yes, here is a an old update I wrote about jumps and things) There's demos to show you what to do as well, it's a complete package! It's very amusing but then my sense of humour is warped so who knows.

RH21A.WAD I don't know what the hell this is. It's meant to be one deck of a boat, or something. I guess the shape is right but as each room is textured pretty much at random it doesn't really work. It runs on E2M1. The best rooms were the storage bay with its dubious overuse of LITE textures and badly-aligned crates; and the final room at the front of the boat, which is fun if you play it aggressively and start a big monster fight. However you'll probably get frustrated looking for it as most of the doors you need to progress are invisible. There is also a roomful of gore, a science room where they are studying a whirlpool and some other bits.

The Castle from Hell!!! This is by the same author as the previous map. It runs on E2M3. At least it looks like a castle, even if it appears to be built nearly in space. To put it another way it "offers a glorious view of the surrounding mountains"; it's basically in a skybox. Jump into the moat and run all the way round to get all the weapons and lots of health. Then enter the castle, and run around and let the boss monsters kill everything else. Beware of rocket splash damage. Then you have to get inside the passages and find the exit, which is kind of hidden. There's no real sense of progression, you just find it in a dark corridor. The end.

Steel Cage Match Okay I don't know anything about wrestling but apparently fighting in a cage is something they do? I don't know. Anyway this map is meant to simulate that, it's intended for deathmatch but there's a bunch of demons as well. You start in the changing rooms with an ample weapon supply. Run out and shoot things. It's very very simple and also quite colourful. It appears to be standing room only, there's just this huge open area of blue carpet where you'd think the seating would go. There's bits and pieces dotted around it. You fight a baron in the cage and an imp is his manager(?) and the spectators are demons. It's trivial and you can beat it in very little time at all. So, it's just the sort of thing that instead of taking two minutes to play it once, I end up wasting an hour trying to minimise the time of a UV max run. I got it under a minute eventually but I suspect my strategy was all off

Shadow.wad I don't know how to describe this other than fairly standard old school map layout. You know, you clear out one room and go on to the next. There's a hub with a red key and three locked doors, you go through the red door and get the next key, come back, and so on. The thing that makes it distinctive, its gimmick if you like is that its all either very bright or very dark and uses densely alternating light and dark patterns to confuse the player. However there's plenty of ammunition and it's mostly pretty easy. In fact I thought the hardest part was fetching the red key off its pedestal without falling into the surrounding pits of poison.

stop this wads updated in 1994 Seemingly every week somebody uploads a bunch of "old classics" into the /idgames archive and every week idiots on the Doomworld forums complain about them. This is apparently a protest against those idiots, or for them, I'm not sure. This map is a Wolfenstein map. It's a flat 128 high ceiling maze of doors and hallways. The monsters with three exceptions are SS soldiers. That said it was fun to explore. Fortunately I found the hidden cache of BFG cells and megaspheres before the cyberdemon that wakes up at the start and immediately teleports away came back and found me.

Ponte And finally, we have a large, sparsely decorated map that I really want to like but I can't! You start off on a sort of porch in front of a grassy field. It's crawling with zombies. Emerging you find a bridge over a deep cacodemon-infested canyon. Scarper over this to an enormous cross shape with a key and a huge crowd of barons and hellknights on top. Get the key, then past an awkwardly placed archvile you have a plain split by a bottomless chasm. There's a ton of imps and a cage full of mancubi. Behind the mancubi is a second key which lets you onto an island in the middle of a lava lake. There's two cyberdemons and a load more cacodemons here. In the lava are four transporters; if you pick the right one you'll find yourself behind the door you started in front of. Hope you have enough health to jump into the slime pit and run to the exit.
Okay okay enough of the walkthrough, tell the people why you don't like it: It's mainly that it is way too hard, and not in a good way either - there is far too little ammunition and health and it's too easy to die accidentally. I found it pretty frustrating. This is a large map, plenty of room to run about and suchlike, and large groups of monsters. If there was tons more health and ammunition, I think it would be a lot more fun.

SUMMARY

rm -fr /tmp/zips