[NNC]

I still believe Dead Simple and Gotcha are the game's most iconic levels.

[HulkNukem]

For Doom 2?
You might be right, however Entryway is also iconic with it being the first level.

[NNC]

Anyone tried Arcadia Demade? It's based on a Bioshock level and made by the actual creator, Paul LeBreton.

Here is a playthrough with Romero:

I think it's pretty good despite the somewhat confusing design. Miraculously, I've never really got lost despite many times I didn't know where am I. The ending has a critical bug when blue bars drop after you unlocked them with the key. Other than that, I enjoyed it a lot.

[Malgon]

[Cage]

Working hard or hardly working? Minigun turret in Supplice total conversion for Doom


(Video Clip 720p)

If you want to help this project, please ReTweet:
https://twitter.com/...593991672012800
Thank you!

[MajorTom 2417]

Not even a week after emerging from SNES DooM, I head back into the demon-infested world of DooM to tackle a remade map from the shareware campaign, done by someone you may have heard of.....

[MajorTom 2417]

Not even a week after emerging from SNES DooM, I head back into the demon-infested world of DooM to tackle a remade map from the shareware campaign, done by someone you may have heard of.....

[Mr. Tibbs]

[axl]

This could be old news, but it seems that the latest Gzdoom releases have some new renderers... I especially like this "Softpoly Renderer"... This features true 3D (instead of 2.5d - and thus the capability of full look up and down) but simultaneously provides this "software look" with the shading. Quite amazing.

[MusicallyInspired]

That is cool!

[Hendricks266]

Is that the renderer from QZDoom, now merged into GZDoom?

[Ninety-Six]

Hendricks266, on 25 September 2018 - 10:29 AM, said:

Is that the renderer from QZDoom, now merged into GZDoom?

Wasn't it already?

[NightFright]

Considering that the last "experimental" QZDoom release is from 2017, it's save to assume it's already fully implemented into recent GZDoom builds by now. In general QZD was more like a playground to test new features before they would find their way into GZD. Since GZDoom added the 32-bit software renderer, the primary reason for using QZD is basically gone, too.

[Zaxx]

What I noticed when I used that mode is that compared to other renderers it's sloooow. It's certainly nowhere near unplayable since it's still smooth but I think that it needs a bit of optimization because more taxing megawads will cause problems.

Btw. when you compare software with OpenGL it's surprising to see how big of a difference there is, EDuke32's Polymost is a lot more accurate in recreating the original visuals.

[Ninety-Six]

Zaxx, on 29 September 2018 - 12:26 PM, said:

What I noticed when I used that mode is that compared to other renderers it's sloooow. It's certainly nowhere near unplayable since it's still smooth but I think that it needs a bit of optimization because more taxing megawads will cause problems.

Btw. when you compare software with OpenGL it's surprising to see how big of a difference there is, EDuke32's Polymost is a lot more accurate in recreating the original visuals.

How so?

[Zaxx]

Ninety-Six, on 29 September 2018 - 02:53 PM, said:

How so?

I don't really know the technicalities (guess it's because of that color option you can't even turn off by default now because it's just better and more awesome) but in EDuke32 I no longer feel the need to use the software renderer because to me OpenGL looks basically the same, it only runs better with nice 3D mouse look.

In GZDoom OpenGL's colors are not accurate at all so when I got the itch to play unaltered classic Doom I always used the Doom Retro source port (it's a real nice one based on Chocolate Doom so it has a few extra features to make it smooth and a bit more modern but overall it's pure classic Doom). Now I guess I'll use softpoly.

Overall though I can't decide which is the better source port: GZDoom's inaccurate OpenGL renderer always bothered me while in EDuke32 I don't like that even if you have crazy high fps you still get very noticeable screen tearing (because of the fixed tickrate I guess).

[Zaxx]

Anyway I messed around with GZDoom's softpoly a bit and found a pretty good "retro modern setup" that I think does wonders to the game's atmosphere, especially when it comes to Doom 2 because those levels look like shit in OpenGL. Basically this is what I did:

- Softpoly renderer
- Turned resolution scale down a notch to 0.75 because honestly HD resolutions do not do Doom any favors. You need a bit of chunkiness and when it comes to softpoly this of course helps performance a lot too.
- Installed the Smooth Doom mod because its subtle lighting effects work amazingly well with any kind of software rendering.
- Installed HXRTC HUD 7.0 because it's awesome.

Sure, Smooth Doom is pretty taxing in softpoly but it's absolutely fine in a sub 1080p resolution.

[Mark]

Due to it's long and slow developement time, has Doomsday/JDoom become yesterday's news and not used or talked about much these days? Back around 2010 or so I ran that to play Doom, Doom2, Heretic and Hexen. They all had W.I.P. high res texture and model projects and I really enjoyed running them with that port. Its still being worked on as of earlier this year. I made a model for it.

[Zaxx]

Doomsday is still fairly popular, it's Romero's favorite source port, the thing is though that all the cool shit is on the ZDoom based ports so GZDoom, Zandronum and the like will always be the most popular. ZDoom is not only a source port at this point but a huge platform for Doom mods basically.

Apart from a few unique ports like Doom Retro I always use GZDoom simply because it's amazing how much you can do with it thanks to the community. For example this is the hud of my dreams and you can't find this anywhere else:

[axl]

Zaxx, on 29 September 2018 - 12:26 PM, said:

What I noticed when I used that mode is that compared to other renderers it's sloooow. It's certainly nowhere near unplayable since it's still smooth but I think that it needs a bit of optimization because more taxing megawads will cause problems.

That's weird. Softpoly runs very smooth on my system. I tested it with some of the larger maps from Alien Vendetta and everything ran like a dream.

I must say that I really love this renderer. Way better than opengl that messes up the colours and also better than real software because of the ability to fully look up and down.

[Zaxx]

axl, on 29 September 2018 - 11:51 PM, said:

That's weird. Softpoly runs very smooth on my system. I tested it with some of the larger maps from Alien Vendetta and everything ran like a dream.

I have an old CPU (i7 2600, turned 7 years old this month!) so that is a factor for lower performance for sure but I have no idea as to what extent. In 1080p true color softpoly actually runs worse than Doom 2016. What kind of machine do you have?

I'll get an i7 9700k when it comes out (I hope the 14nm shortage won't fuck up the price though) so it will be interesting to see how that will affect the performance of these software modes.

[Zaxx]

Tried Back to Saturn X with softpoly and it has some graphical glitches which is weird becase as far as I know BtSX is supposed to be compatible even with the original Doom 2. They disappear once you switch back to classic software mode so seems like softpoly still has its fair share of issues to iron out.

[axl]

Zaxx, on 30 September 2018 - 03:48 AM, said:

I have an old CPU (i7 2600, turned 7 years old this month!) so that is a factor for lower performance for sure but I have no idea as to what extent. In 1080p true color softpoly actually runs worse than Doom 2016. What kind of machine do you have?

I'll get an i7 9700k when it comes out (I hope the 14nm shortage won't fuck up the price though) so it will be interesting to see how that will affect the performance of these software modes.

I have an i7 4770.

Mind you, I don't use SmoothDoom. Although it's a great mod, I prefer to play the game as close as possible to its origins (except for widescreen, high resolutions and the ability to look up and down ).

[FistMarine]

Today is the 24th anniversary of Doom 2. Coincidentally, recently I just finished up Doom 2 Hell on Earth on UV difficulty (100% kills/items/secrets on all levels, where applicable) in DOSBox 0.74 and last month I also finished Ultimate Doom on UV difficulty (again DOSBox 0.74, 100% kills/items/secrets on all levels, where applicable). I must say I still enjoyed the original Doom games even after all these years, Doom (along with Duke3D and a few other popular old school FPS games) have stood the test of time and they will continue to be amazing even after all these years, thanks to the communities that keep the games alive! Here is a rundown of my thoughts about both games:

Of the original Doom, Knee-Deep in the Dead is the best episode of all 4 episodes in my opinion. It's not only because it was the shareware episode and the only episode I played as kid. But also because it's the most polished of all the other episodes (nearly the whole episode was made by John Romero who knew to design levels, with exception of a level in E4 which we will get shortly) and the most iconic. The Shores of Hell and Inferno, while were cool, some of the levels were a confusing mess in my opinion and much harder to navigate, so there were situations where I was lost and had to keep looking for a certain keycard or a certain door to progress. Maybe it would have helped more if I played these episodes as kid to have them printed in my memory as opposed to experiencing them first time. Thy Flesh Consumed, while was also new to me, it was much less confusing to navigate but suffered from balance issues, which I will get to right now.

Now I'm going to talk strictly about Thy Flesh Consumed. To me it felt like a compilation of levels made by various authors (which is actually true, as opposed to the other episodes that made logical sense of progression to some degree) to form an episode without putting much thought into balance of the levels. For instance, the first 2 levels were the most frustrating levels (and the only ones!) of both Doom games, while the rest episode was either challenging or easy. I understand that E4 was made in mind for veterans of the game, who thought the first 3 episodes were easy. But honestly having the first 2 levels (at least on UV skill) to be that hard is unacceptable for me. The first level Hell Beneath (on UV skill at least), has ONLY 9 health bonuses and NO health pickups at all. Though it does also have a green armor but that's all you will ever get in this level. Initially I made past the first few rooms with only minimal damage (I had 91% health left, which then with bonuses I got back to 100%) since I tried to play as carefully as possible but after I picked up the red key, everything went downhill with bullshit monster spawning (including a Baron) and some enemies shooting me THROUGH the walls (not kidding here). I died a few times here and I tried to go fast past enemies (using a secret door) to access the other room, just to be able to access the NIN (Nine Inch Nails) secret to press the torch which will reveal about 5 barons (seriously???) so I can get all the enemies behind the fence and blast them with the rocket launcher that I got from another secret, so I can get all the kills without running out of ammo since ammo is very scarce in this map. This of course also took me few tries but once I got them all I managed to 100% this level (although I initially had trouble triggering the secret in NIN room, so I had to walk over that sector several times to make sure to register the secret, since there is no way to tell in original DOS EXE that you've found a secret, unless you look at stats at end of level) and start the next level with relatively low health (only 26% health and about 70% armor) and oh boy, this fucking level.

Perfect Hatred, along with Hell Beneath, are the most unbalanced levels of the both Doom games (and possibly the other classic Doom games, yes I think both levels are even harder than TNT and Plutonia levels, since at least those levels give you enough supplies to survive). This level starts you immediately under attack against several enemies (imps and cacos) with 2 shotgunners in front and 2 medkits. You will be thinking that it's not that hard but you will probably soon change your mind and rage like I did at part when at least 5 cacodemons start surrounding you at start or a bit later when you are facing against several Barons at once (so much fun!) while all you have is a shotgun (with plenty shells but it can't handle several tough enemies at once), rocket launcher with few rockets and probably plasma gun with limited ammo, with very little space to dodge and very little health. Much like the previous level, I have died like 10-15 times. The trick is to run to start (ignore these first barons for now) and then you will be fighting against more barons and lost souls and so on. This level is a huge clusterfuck and there is almost no space to dodge, you will have to CONSTANTLY save and load to be able to beat this level, much like the previous one. I'm sorry but this is not how you design levels, by putting tons of dangerous enemies and very little cover and/or supplies. And I thought Wolfenstein 3D and Spear of Destiny had some frustrating as fuck levels (at least some of the levels) but these 2 levels were really AWFUL for Doom standards! At least you get to telefrag a Cyberdemon at end which reveals a BFG and the secret exit in this episode, if you know where it is located.

The rest levels aren't too bad in terms of difficulty, they are all much easier and give you some room to breathe, although the difficulty spikes up once again in...surprise surprise, the other level designed by Romero, Against Thee Wickedly. I will give that this time the level didn't frustrate me with all those lava floors and the Cyberdemon at end and I carefully followed a walkthrough for this level on YouTube (yes I watched a walkthrough, especially to 100% the levels since I suck at discovering most of secrets by myself) and was able to complete the level without too many problems, which allowed me to start next level with decent health (around 85% health) and be able to handle the next level fine until I start finding more health/armor supplies. Sadly I have died once in E4M7: And Hell Followed due to a crusher trap I didn't see but otherwise these were all my deaths in this entire episode (and entire Ultimate Doom and Doom 2 combined, yes I did Doom 2 without dying this time, see more below). Otherwise this level wasn't too bad and the Cyberdemon was easy to kill with the invulnerability secret. E4M8: Unto the Cruel was surprisingly easy with all the supplies you get, in that the Spiderdemon at end and all those enemies are no threat to you at all. I actually finished the level with full ammo on all weapons, 200% health and 200% armor. It was a bit anticlimatic but otherwise a much better designed level. I will say I enjoyed E4 slightly more compared to E2 and E3 only because of some levels being better designed but in terms of balance, it was all over the place and first 2 levels are the perfect example of how NOT to start an episode.

The most memorable levels for me (in a good way) were the entire E1 (except the secret level since I didn't find it as kid), E2M8 (Cyberdemon battle), E3M8 (Spiderdemon battle) and E4M8 (final level). The memorable levels (in a bad way) were E4M1 and E4M2 only for being poorly balanced, the former could have benefited for having a bit more health (making the same amount of health on all skills instead of making all medkits not appear at all on UV skill) and a bit more ammo added, the latter could have benefited for having way LESS enemies (less cacos and barons) attacking you at once and probably a bit more health added.

Now speaking of Doom 2, I know this might be an unpopular opinion but I overall preferred Doom 2 over Doom (ultimate) simply because of the new additions and superior level design, in my opinion. The levels weren't that confusing anymore (except Level 19: The Citadel, that is the ONLY level that I get confused every time I play Doom 2) and were more open ended and more memorable than a simple maze from episodes 2 and 3 (and episode 1 to some extent but those levels were much more memorable). Now I know that some people say that some levels in Doom 2 don't reflect their title (example MAP12 not resembling a factory or MAP13 not resembling downtown). I think with the resources they had at their time, they did a good job. But nothing beats the city levels from Duke3D which actually resemble a real place.

The Super Shotgun, Megasphere and the new enemies added into Doom 2 are a welcome addition (even if I admit chaingunners, pain elementals and archviles can be really annoying) and they increase the game's replay value, which is also one of main reasons why most mods are made for Doom 2. Plus it was annoying how in first Doom (at least in E4) you had to fight several BARONS at once (often with minimal resources), while right now not only we get the weaker Hell Knight variant (so you can use multiple Hell Knights without being cheap at times) but also the Super Shotgun that is strong against pretty much any monster. So we no longer have to fight stronger monsters with just the single barrel shotgun, except in rare cases and maybe in custom maps/wads.

I have said above that I have beaten entire Doom 2 without dying. Yes this is true, although I admit I did reload saved game few times in the final level Icon of Sin, when I was getting hurt/surrounded by many monsters or the rocket missing the brain, as I didn't want to die right at the end.

The most memorable levels for me were Entryway, The Crusher, Dead Simple, Tricks and Traps, Circle of Death (it's in the opening demo after all, though I wish they didn't re-record the demo in v1.9 and kept the same demo from v1.666 which was longer and player played better), Downtown, The Inmost Dens, The Industrial Zone, Gotcha!, Barrels o' Fun and Icon of Sin. Still I enjoyed pretty much any level in Doom 2 (yes I enjoyed even The Chasm, which most people hate, although I also disliked that part with the thin ledge which I had to carefully walk to not fall, while fighting cacos and lost souls) as opposed to only E1 and a few of each other episode in Ultimate Doom, therefore I enjoyed Doom 2 a lot more, despite the trickier level design of some levels.

If you are wondering about the maps where you can't get 100%, here they are:

In Ultimate Doom, only in E4M3 and E4M7 you can't get all secrets. In former you can get 90% secrets, in latter 50% secrets.

In Doom 2, maps 14, 21, 29 and 30 don't have any secrets at all, so they will display as 0% secrets at end of the level (at least in original DOS executable, in source ports like ZDoom based ports it will display 100% secrets instead).
Maps 15 and 27 have a teleporter tagged as a secret but it's impossible to tag the secret when crossing a teleporter, so you can't reach the secret unless you use IDCLIP (which I didn't, since I didn't want to use any cheats, even if it's just for getting an inaccessible secret), so the maximum secrets you can get is 90% in map 15 and 87% in map 27. However a while ago it was found that you can somehow tag the secret in map 27 using some linedef skip method and recently (just the last month I believe) it was found that you can get the inaccessible in map 15 using a pain elemental to push you into the secret (by lowering you into the secret sector) or something like that.
Map 27 also has a problem (at least in the original DOS exe) where there are 2 automaps present in the level and once you picked up the first one, it's impossible to pick up the second one. So you can only get 98% items in this level. Source ports like ZDoom based ports allow picking up multiple automaps, so you can get all items.

I'd also like to thank very much for Youtuber known as BigMacDavis for his wonderful 100% walkthroughs of Doom games. You can check his channel here, in case you also need to complete a Doom level 100%: https://www.youtube....acDavis1/videos
Interestingly he is doing a Duke Nukem 3D 100% walkthrough currently, using the 20th anniversary World Tour edition, so it's worth checking out!

Soon I will be playing Master Levels, Final Doom and No Rest For The Living, when I get around playing them. I was thinking to also play The Lost Episodes of Doom, Perdition's Gate and Hell to Pay since they were semi-officially released (at least in that they were commercial wads) and they seem interesting.

[axl]

Interesting reading material RunningDuke !

It's difficult to say which Doom game is the best. And for most, it will probably be the game they grew up with. I grew up with Doom back in 1993, so I have very fond memories of that game.

Doom: better level design (especially the very first episode), better variation of levels and themes, better structure of the game (devided into episodes);
Doom 2: better gameplay due to the addition of the supershotgun, better enemy variety.

In the end : I prefer Doom 1 over Doom 2. Doom 2's level design is just not that good and is quite boring. Some levels are even terrible in my opinion: Factory, Downtown, Citadel, Chasm, ...

[Zaxx]

@RunningDuke: Oh yeah, I definitely agree with your opinion when it comes to Thy Flesh Consumed though to be fair its bullshit is what keeps subsequent playthroughs of Doom 1 interesting to me. As for Doom 1 in itself yes, on some levels you can really feel that id wasn't that far from Wolf 3D's boring and confusing mazes. E1 is amazing, it flows so well that it's absolutely the best of the original episodes but that's it.

Overall I prefer Doom 2 too simply because the first game is just way too easy with the exception of Thy Flesh consumed while E2 and E3 being simply pretty uninteresting. Doom 2's difficulty is just right to the point where it can always pose a challenge, even if you know the maps really well and while it's true that some of the maps are a bit boring overall it's just a more crazy version of Doom. Uniquely crazy maps like Dead Simple, Tricks and Traps and Barrels of Fun come from a carefree attitude that I love and you don't get any of that from the first game. It's like they didn't give a shit (and seeing how little Romero contributed to D2 he certainly didn't give a flying fuck ) at some points but it works so wonderfully that you know for a fact they did. Doom 1 is a bit too conventional and I know that sounds weird since there was no convention when that game shipped but still, E2 and E3 certainly got old.

[Ninety-Six]

RunningDuke, on 30 September 2018 - 10:11 AM, said:

Soon I will be playing Master Levels

Word of advice. Save Black Tower, Bloodsea Keep, The Express Elevator to Hell, and Mephisto's Mausoleum for the end. And make sure your quicksave key is in good shape for the abuse it will start taking. I've played a lot of BS doom levels but those four (especially elevator and mephisto) are some of the single most BS levels ever released, and definitely the worst of the official levels. I'd rather play Hell Beneath and Perfect Hatred (from pistol start!) 18 times over before I ever dare touch Elevator again.

[Malgon]

I've been on a bit of a Doom binge lately, which started with a UV playthrough of the Dark World levels, which is a replacement for the first 11 levels of Doom 2. The balance was quite fair for the most part, with the exception of the end of The Crusher having a huge difficulty spike and just being flat-out unfair to play. All the levels were very nice to look at with the different texture themes, and familiar areas had some good surprises with the new enemy placements. It was quite enjoyable and I would definitely play it again.
After I finished that I did a full playthrough of Doom 2 with the Project Brutality mod on the highest difficulty, which was a lot of fun throughout. The balance was tough with a few harsh spots (the start of The Pit comes to mind), due to the new/altered enemies and their behaviours, but is alleviated somewhat with the options provided by the new weapons. Once you get your hands on more of the weapons lots of options begin to open up on how to tackle encounters and it becomes a bit easier. All of the changes obviously contribute to providing quite a different experience to the original game, so definitely not for people who prefer a more vanilla form of play.
The most recent WAD I played was Winter's Fury, which was a Cacoward winner in 2012, and it most definitely deserves the recognition. Elaborate levels with beautiful aesthetics (the automaps are works of art), cool (pardon the pun) atmosphere, and a challenge that keeps you on your toes with tighter health and ammo pickups. The levels are interspersed with boss fights that have waves of enemy spawns, which aren't too hard as health and ammo spawns as well. The final boss fight could prove to be too difficult for some due to the relentless nature of it (I believe it was tweaked so it's not as hard as the first release), but run around and grab as many pickups as you can and you should be fine. One thing to watch out for if you do decide to play this is that the largest areas have some framerate drops, so take that into consideration if you're specs aren't too high. Overall this is very polished throughout (the weapon sprites replacements being the only thing not up to the same quality as everywhere else), but it is highly recommended and worth checking out.

Links:

Dark World: https://forum.zdoom....hp?f=42&t=59041
Project Brutality: https://www.moddb.co...oject-brutality
Winter's Fury: https://www.doomworl...6-winters-fury/

Edit: Forgot to post this:

[axl]

Ninety-Six, on 30 September 2018 - 04:53 PM, said:

Word of advice. Save Black Tower, Bloodsea Keep, The Express Elevator to Hell, and Mephisto's Mausoleum for the end. And make sure your quicksave key is in good shape for the abuse it will start taking. I've played a lot of BS doom levels but those four (especially elevator and mephisto) are some of the single most BS levels ever released, and definitely the worst of the official levels. I'd rather play Hell Beneath and Perfect Hatred (from pistol start!) 18 times over before I ever dare touch Elevator again.

Haha yes indeed. Those 4 levels are really bad. TNT also has some serious BS levels: Central Processing, Administration, Habitat, Mount Pain, ...

Seriously: i don't get the negative thoughts on Hell Beneath and Perfect Hatred. They are really well designed in my opinion. As for the difficuly: they are meant to be very hard and for Doom veterans. Since the first 3 episodes are way too easy on UV, the 4th episode was really welcome at that time. It offers a nice challenge and you really feel like you've overcome hell when you finish that second level. I do agree on the fact that the whole episode has balance issues.

[FistMarine]

Thanks guys for advices! I was thinking that my post was a bit too long and uninteresting at times but I'm glad it was worth reading.

@axl Don't worry I respect your opinion, I also think that some of the levels in Doom 2 could have been a bit better designed. And yeah forgot to say I also liked the intermission screens in first 3 episodes, that was another unique thing in first Doom game that's not present in E4 or other Doom games. That's why I also wish E4 was more in line with the first 3 episodes, like featuring an intermission screen.

@Zaxx Yeah I also wanted to mention how much I hated those confusing mess of levels in Wolf3D where I keep getting lost a lot of times and there were some very maze-like levels that just made me annoyed and bored. I admit a few months ago I finished first the ZDoom Wolf3D TC (to get familiarized with levels and to complete them 100% where possible) and then the original DOS version (of both Wolf3D and SOD) in DOSBox, only trying to get 100% kills in all levels, since I just didn't bother finding every secret/treasure since the original version lacks automap and it's so easy to get lost in mazes and it's not that fun but I forced myself to finish it anyway. And I only played on the default Bring 'em On difficulty and even then it was still hard at times. I'm just glad I didn't play on I am Death Incarnate because some of the later levels in SOD were already bullshit hard with so many nazis attacking at once, including those annoying mutants! I didn't start yet playing the SOD mission packs but I heard they are horribly designed.
In comparison the Doom levels in E2 and E3 weren't as maze-y as those from Wolf3D but they felt like they didn't try to have more height variation at first. I also forgot to mention E3M5 to me, was so confusing at times that it took me a while to understand that teleporting maze and even then I still wasn't sure which is the correct teleporter to take to open all 4 walls (so I can get everything 100%) and it took me like 30 minutes to finish the level because often I'd take the same teleporter and not open anything, so I needed to try almost every combination.

@Ninety-Six Thanks for advice. I also remember from a couple of years ago when I played Master Levels and Final Doom for first time, I definitely remember The Express Elevator to Hell to have a very difficult beginning which took me a few tries to get past it. I don't remember the other levels being too bad, however I remember some level giving me a lot of trouble at first but can't remember which one was...ok I looked on YouTube to see the level and it was probably Vesperas because first time I played it I missed those secret items at beginning of level and remember running out of health and ammo quickly. Was a very difficult level in my opinion.

@Malgon I also played Winter's Fury back in early 2016 and I found it to be one of best wads I've ever played. May I suggest a similar "winter" themed wad that I also played at around that time? It was called Cold as Hell and I enjoyed it but found it a bit annoying/frustrating at times with the enemies dealing a lot of damage and killing you quickly, plus the bleeding system where sometimes you would start bleeding when a shot dealt enough damage. Plus I believe there are no armor pickups or health bonuses/soulspheres, I could be wrong about that, probably green armors are still available but no way to get more than 100 health.

EDIT: Oh yeah I definitely remember some bullshit hard levels in TNT such as MAP09: Stronghold and MAP27: Mount Pain, these were ones that gave me lots of trouble. Habitat was probably the worst designed level, besides the poor level design, it had serious issues that managed to crash the game sometimes. I don't particularly remember what annoyed me in Plutonia since most levels were already challenging but I can't remember any that gave me lots of trouble.