03/07/2006 @23:36:13 ^01:03:54

/idgames is playing up

For some reason trying to load any page on Doomworld, including its /idgames frontend results in an attempt to connect to the IP 208.184.36.73. Presumably this is an advert server. The problem is, the requests don't get a response and it takes a minute for it to time out. Unfortunately until this request does time out Firefox refuses to render the page. I don't know if this problem is my firefox configuration or NTL's webcaches or something else. So, I apologise if any of the links in the following sections appear to fail to load. Give it time or use w3m. Fortunately the forums still render promptly.

4 levels that got lost

The pcorf community project that ran on Doomworld for a while, until he got bored of it and released the 4 maps that were done. It starts with MAP05 for some reason.

  1. A tiny introduction, two brick/tech buildings connected by a garden. It is a bit like map01 of Scythe, but is very easy, I just did a 100% run in 46 seconds and I wasn't really trying.
  2. Smallish techbase map centred around a pool of nukage. Lots of detail, perhaps even too much. Lacks enjoyment due to being devoid of health and ammunition. I had to play it so carefully it was frustrating.
  3. This one made me laugh. Your start position is underneath a solid hanging body. The result being, you can't move, only spin round on the spot. Obviously it was only tested in source ports with proper thing height clipping. So I only saw one room, which was brick, and had four wooden doors leading away.
  4. Easily the best map of the four and worth the download. It's a complex well-interconnected base with just enough detail to look nice. Not too hard, except for being slightly top-heavy (the start is tricky with low ammo/weapons) Couple of well-hidden secrets. Oddly all the things in the map have bad flags, but PrBoom seemed to manage to correct them.

Binary ripple counter

"This is a 4-bit binary ripple counter implemented using voodoo dolls and conveyor belts. A simple example of how logic circuits can be constructed inside Doom levels using the Boom extensions."

Basically you've got these four squares with conveyor floors, with voodoo dolls on them. You press the button and some doors open and the dolls get pushed round the floors, tripping various linedefs as they go. This causes a binary counter on the wall to count up from 0000 to 1111.

It's very clever and if you're a big nerd you'll probably find it interesting. I did. I would never have thought of doing this in a million years. Especially since, having not been trained as a computer scientist, I have never heard the term "ripple counter"!

Europa Series

Some more of Erik Alm's earlier released maps. The first two share a common theme of a small room with six teleporters at the start. You pick one, and thus can start the map in six different places. Otherwise then you've got a very large, nonlinear map to explore. It will be stuffed with monsters and be very hard.

Eaeuro01 is just a Doom 2 styled map. There are lots of different themes used, lakes of nukage and lava, factory/industrial areas, and so forth. There are nine keys, three of each colour. You have to get one of each, but if you get all nine you get a bunch of secrets in the exit room, which is a small library in which a cyberdemon chases you. You don't really need the secrets though as its quite easy to kill it using the cover and the super shotgun. I don't think some of the keys are accessible to normal players anyway, one of the yellow ones is on a lift and requires a very tricky strafejump and you only get one chance as the switch doesn't work twice.

Eaeuro02 Same thing, only it looks better, uses the Gothic Textures, and plays better too. Only six keys this time, but uses Boom linedefs so they're all different. This is a large complex level and you may very well get lost. Once you know it, though, it's great. It's not very fun for 100% kills due to numbers of cacodemons in the large sea outside the map, but I found speedrunning on skill 2 to be good fun. Two of the secrets require archvile jumps or at least extremely tricky strafejumps that I managed once out of about 200 attempts. You can jump into the aforementioned sea from one point but it's no use as you can't get back out. Aside from a few little niggles this was a fine map to run around in and in my opinion is probably the best one.

There is also an Eaeuro03 which is based on the style of Vrack but I didn't play it. It often slows to a crawl due to detail. I might come back to it later.