12/09/2010 @19:29:04 ^20:45:36

Nukage refinery

nukage2.wad is bejiitas_wrath's latest. As usual his architecture is instantly recognisable. As I've said before I do like the way this guy puts maps together. Unfortunately it also has his usual slapdash approach to item placement, so unless you know exactly what you're doing and where you're going you're going to get totally overwhelmed by hordes of monsters before you can get any weapons. There is of course an enormous cache of ammunition about as far away from the player start as possible - this is another hallmark of his maps.

Fortunately the final version of the wad, dated 2010-07-31, currently on /idgames, was toned down a lot from the original 2010-04-29 release. The latter was just too much, all the good weapons were far too far away from the start, and you'd have to clear out at least one enormous room of ammunition munchers before getting even a chaingun, there was so little health you couldn't hardly afford mistakes, etc. The updated version had all of its real nasties replaced by barons - in fact, for some reason the updated version only uses Doom1 monsters. In fact if there was no super shotgun I'd think it was a Doom1 map. Generally the weapons are easier to get hold of and it's just a lot more tractable. You still have to have a fair amount of foreknowledge, though. But I already had that from playing the first version...

Grind2X

Just a brief note on this wad, previously mentioned in a footnote to Grind II. Grind2X is Grind II with a lot more monsters. As such, it is a good bit more of a challenge. You can't really make any mistakes. There is extra health and ammo of course, but not a great deal, and the monsters can cut you off from it. I ended up having to play quite a bit more carefully than I wanted to.

I think though after playing it, I felt that the new item placement wasn't done with much care, the map had a feeling of just having had monsters and resources thrown around with reckless abandon. I think it was like, "Grind II was too easy" -> "make a harder version" -> "got a bit carried away". I might be wrong, but that's just the feeling I had from it.

PTULTRA.WAD

I downloaded this because it was mentioned in the text file of BLASTEM.WAD which is now in /idgames (it wasn't when I first wrote about it) It's your typical crazy '94 stuff, starting off in a spacecraft and exploring some kind of a base beyond, with air ducts, barracks and so forth. It claims to be a deathmatch level, and there is no exit, but there are 100+ monsters and I think it's probably far too cramped for a proper fight with other players. Too many lifts as well. It is quite nonlinear and has a network of teleporters for getting around.

I think probably this isn't worth bothering with. Should have an exit, at least. Shame you could never easily do "exit when the last monster in the map dies".

I managed to clear it of monsters on my first go but it's not trivial. Firstly as I said there's a lot of monsters, but moreso, one of them is a cyberdemon in quite an awkward place. Fortunately I got lucky and found an invulnerability, somehow, and ran to kill the monster before it ran out.

Knee Deep in the DEU / TinyWad

Example wads that come with DEU 5.21, the original wad editor. Well, at least, the first one you could make new maps and build nodes with. The latter is just "DEU" in map writing and some secret areas. The former is 9 maps replacing Doom episode 1. They're not bad given that they're amongst the oldest maps ever made, but they're nothing special. Corridors, mostly. A few crushing ceilings. "DOOM" in map writing... 7 was probably the most fun, a running battle with quite a horde of monsters for early 1994 in a map shaped like the spokes of a wheel.