19/04/2011 @23:25:44 ^23:58:20

Three wads containing examples of the new generation of slaughter mapping, that goes even further beyond stuff like HR, AV etc. I played them all a lot at the end of last year and they've all kind of merged together in my head.

Newgothic - movement 1

This one is the only one so far that's been considered finished enough to upload to /idgames. It's by the same guy who did Shai'tan's Luck, although except for one map you'd hardly know it. The first dozen or so maps use the gothic textures, then he starts using the UAC Ultra textures. I don't think the whole thing is great but three stand out:

These are all enormous maps stuffed with thousands of monsters and I had so much fun running round them (although I can't play them properly, I use various handicaps)

Disclaimer: I had some hand in testing this wad during its many beta releases and so forth. I actually wrote ZDBSP extended nodes format support into rboom just so I could play map21. Also, I kind of miss the original map13, but oh well.

Phmlspd

A similar set of maps. Some huge slaughter maps, some smaller ones, but they all have extremely high difficulty in common. The ones here that I keep replaying are maps 12 and 13. Some of the others are good but for whatever reason I didn't take to them quite so much.

Map13 is obviously inspired by the design of the final of these three wads:

Sunder

Sunder has a unique architectural style driven by its author's belief that there are no really beautiful slaughter maps. It is best characterised by huge rooms and areas, really high sectors and height differences, a consistent colour theme (usually brown/red or brown/orange, although the first map is bright green, of all things) and a mass of detail that frankly can be rather repetitive.

I feel Map13 of Phmlspd and map06 of NGmvmnt1 are obviously homages to Sunder-style architecture.