25/10/2007 @20:27:44 ^21:43:35

Another Bloody Chapter

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.

Horus

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.

Alsdoom

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...)