[ReaperAA]

Ninety-Six, on 23 January 2021 - 04:55 PM, said:

Playing AD was also when I kind of realized jut how sorry the modern state of doom modding is. Even past the bullshit death traps, I realized most mappers these days are so solely focused on making pretty sector art. They only want spectacle but after so much "spectacle" it all starts to run together because that's the only thing they give out.

I disagree with your assessment that modern wads are worse than the older wads. You are probably just looking at the wrong place. Most of the standard non-ZDoom stuff focus more on the combat and less on atmosphere (and things have kinda been like this since the beginning). If you want more atmospheric stuff, you are better off looking at ZDoom maps/TC's.

[Ninety-Six]

More on sector art*, more like. But regardless, I'm already aware of that particular divide. Problem is there isn't all that much of that, either. Like 65% of all Z-family mods are some type of randomizer for some bizarre reason. Actual maps for those ports aren't common and when they show up it's usually for a few extra features that last a single map, maybe three, but not much more.

The TCs do have a much stronger track record I'll admit. Still it's not like such things can't be done even within vanilla limitations of classic doom. The original game did that quite well, for instance. The sequel, not so much, but I'd argue TNT actually did a decent job, particularly in the second episode. Say what you will of the actual level design itself, but there was some successful attempts at creating an atmosphere, particularly in the night time levels. TNT:R also did a decent job of it, MAP12 being a standout.



But even more to the point, it's not just the lack of atmosphere I lament; it's the lack of any attempt to get the player to feel anything other than "wow look at the pretty walls" and "wow look at how many rockets can fit in my ass". Maybe that can also be argued to be atmosphere, but I see it as a more background, ambient thing. What I'm talking about is a bit more upfront, though make no mistake that atmosphere is absolutely a part of it.


To use Sigil as an example (I don't mean to keep praising it as I do have some issues with it here and there, but it is the perfect demonstration of what I'm getting at), the first map throws you into the thick of it. You start off swarmed by enemies, the walls are all red, and the music is thundering in your ears, in both versions of the soundtrack. The level itself is also very fast paced, with a short length and enemies packed together in tight groups for easy disposal with the shotgun. It presents this aura of rage, after all you are literally seeing red, and the bodies drop quickly.

The second map is similarly claustrophobic, but now it's turned against you. You're on some bright island in the middle of a black abyss. The music is still rocking but there's a more trepid sound to it, as you face against much tougher monsters on these narrow catwalks.


In both examples, there's a very similar ambience to both, but the level designs are done in such a way as to elicit slightly different feelings on the same backdrop. From empowerment to escape, but still encouraging you to blast forward. It's a much more active presence in how the very level itself is designed around bringing out these similar yet different feelings. The ambience just adds on top of it, or more accurately brings in a backdrop that suits that goal.

The third map breaks away and is probably one of the most atmospheric in the set, relying on it more. It's darker, it's quieter, the monsters are less frequent and are spread out more, the level design is still narrow but not as much, and it's the first and last time you see the sky for a while. It even holds onto the reveal of the sky for a while, so that you pay special attention to it when it shows up. It's all to give you the sense of being in a dark place where you're not supposed to be, like you're in the "back alleys" of Hell, about as far from home and safety as you could ever be.



I could go on (and would happily do so if asked), but you get the idea. Of course expecting such a thing from modders, especially in a pack designed by multiple different mappers, is a tall order. I recognize that. However. There is a great irony to all this.

See, AD is not something I would define as professional in quality. It's a fun time but it's definitely a mod. Likewise, the atmosphere it creates is indeed much simpler in style. But the thing is, it still had those moments. Tension and release. It wasn't as fine a point as it was with Romero, but it wasn't supposed to be. It was instead the naievete of the modder going with what seemed to make sense. "Science labs after a disaster should be creepy, so when they get to the lab I'll play some creepy music and not have them fight that much." "Hell is supposed to be full of blood and fire and brimstone so here's a river of corpses that dump into lava."

It's very simplistic logic, again it demonstrates naievete since they're just more like setpieces than fully going the mile with it. They're based more on what makes sense of the location they wanted to make rather than going as in-depth as Romero did to basically completely orchestrate every tiny aspect of the entire stage. But at the end of the day, the result is a different feeling based on how far into the game you are.


These days the doom community is so "professional," clean and sterilized that they outgrew that naievete. The problem is they never replaced it with better knowledge. They got so bloody obsessed with "look how pretty my map is" that everything else became secondary. The gameplay, the atmosphere, and as was the point of this particular rant, the ability or care to make a player actually have some sort of journey.


Not every map has to of course, but what we have is certainly no alternative. Where every map is just visual spectacle after visual spectacle and it just all runs together after a while. There's nothing new other than yet another fancy moving floor or just a prettyful texture pack. The combat certainly got stale after the 1500th archvile came out from behind a wall of cyberdemons that you couldn't touch.

[NNC]

I actually ask you to go on with the Sigil level analysis. I also love how every map has a different feel to them, how the different visual narratives alter your mood and playstyle, and how that's a textbook example of professional mapping.

[Ninety-Six]

The Watchtower, on 26 January 2021 - 06:42 AM, said:

I actually ask you to go on with the Sigil level analysis. I also love how every map has a different feel to them, how the different visual narratives alter your mood and playstyle, and how that's a textbook example of professional mapping.

Well carrying on from where I left off, Paths of Wretchedness is simultaneously a continuation and a break from established patterns. While the first three levels were on a downwards trend in terms of moment-to-moment intensity as well as mood and theme, this level acts as a tonal pacebreaker. It takes the player back to a tone somewhere between the second and third levels, with brighter visuals, faster music, but clamps down on how much of the sky you get to see. It's possible that this level originally came earlier before being deemed too difficult to be level 3, but I tend to think it's intentional. A breather between the gloomy E5M3 and the much more intense and dark middle sections.

In terms of how it actually plays, it continues the trend of using tight walkspaces against you. In fact the entire level is built around this concept, and I'd argue is when the concept is at its hardest, especially seeing as your weapon options, whether you are playing continuous or from a pistol start, are still quite limited. Sigil as a whole has a theme of tight spaces (carrying on from most episode 1 maps, really), but E5M4 here is when it's at the peak.


Abbadon's Void is (or at least was) probably one of if not the most difficult maps of the set, for me anyway. This map takes the concept of tight spaces and expands on it. You aren't so restricted movement-wise in terms of physical barriers, but you are definitely encouraged to essentially define the barriers, since you have two cyberdemon turrets on area denial duty for about 2/3 of the level. Fittingly, since having two growling cyberdemons no more than a backyard's distance away at any one time, the tone is basically horror. Both music tracks are on the tense unsettling side, and the "sky" here is just a black void with lava lightning in the distance. Romero wanted you scared here, and I think he succeeds.


Unspeakable Persecution lessens up on the tight spaces (though make no mistake; they are still present in spades. They're just not a focus anymore), but plays with heavy use of darkness, picking up that trend from the previous level instead. You have a gloomy skylit area (which in my opinion is the most beautifully desolate view in the entire wad; in fact I took a screenshot of it to show my friends who demanded I stream it as soon as they saw it) that goes pitch-black, right after you have a series of tunnels that are at their darkest, and then you have the minotaur maze also in low levels (with a cyberdemon acting as the minotaur). Tonally it's still just as dark as E5M5, but aims for hopelessness and desolation over horror. "Stygian pocket of evil" indeed.


Realm of Iblis, the secret level, is tonally very close to E5M7 which I'll touch on in a minute. Courtesy of a recent replay however, I'll have to disagree with you, Watchtower, on this not having a distinct visual theme. In fact, I think it has the most concrete theme of Sigil. Something that always jumped out to me about this level were those very oddly cubic and small crushers that dot an entire area of the map. And on this last playthrough, when I went to refresh myself to write this all up, something else stood out to me. Right from the beginning, literally when you start the level, the first thing you see are metal platforms and cages in a lake of lava. Further in is the aforementioned crusher area, also with plenty of metal to spare. And the fort? Its ramparts are metallic. In fact this is the only time a lot of those circuitry textures show up in Sigil, and certainly the only time so much of it is on display. It even comes with that tech tower thing, which is unheard of in Hell levels.

All put together, and the level paints an image of what I think is intended to be a demonic metalworks factory. The metal over fire, the odd crushers that look like they belong on an assembly line, and what's in the metal fort but a cyberdemon. I think I understand now why the level was a bit of an oddball and thus made a secret level: it was the only one where Romero tried to build something that almost made sense. Obviously didn't go the full mile with it, but with this in mind it does nicely explain the level's odd quirks and why the cyberdemon fight was so...off.

I am not going to dwell on the music for this level, but I do want to take a moment to reiterate how much I love the level's Midi track, Adrenaline in the Blood. The second half of that song is legitimately beautiful and I am sad you never see remixes of the song ever. I could honestly do a breakdown and analysis of the song like I did the levels here, but I won't.


Nightmare Underworld, which wins the award for having the most opposite title, is probably the "happiest" level of the set. I use the term relatively, of course, but nonetheless. Despite its name, you have a clear view of the sky at almost all times, and the darkness that was so prominent in the previous two levels (secret level notwithstanding) is now used situationally instead. The level is much brighter, and it suits the tone. Even the music is more optimistic than the others, especially in comparison to the last few. It, along with E5M9, both signal you're nearing the end. The minimal use of sky until this point was very deliberate. It gives the vibe of crawling your way out of the blackest pits to see the light again. From no sky, to minimal sky, to absolute darkness, and now free and on your way to the end.

In terms of play, this level is by far the longest. And I believe it's because this is the final exam level. All the level design concepts from the others previous come into play at various points in the map: claustrophobic tunnels, narrow walkways, area denial, and darkness. And often several times. It doesn't bring much new that wasn't already seen, but that clearly was the intent. Again, as the longest level, and the last "real" one (most boss maps tend to be short romps to the showdown, if not skip to the showdown entirely, and Sigil is no different), it takes everything seen before and mixes it together as the final test and gauntlet for you to overcome.


And lastly, Halls of Perdition. The darkness is back, but it's not really used in a way that affects how you play; it's more for backdrop purposes. Indeed, short of the spider and cyberdemon fights, the darkness doesn't hinder you much. And as I said, boss levels in official or semi-official Doom mapsets tend to not be much more than short adventures before you face the finale. There's nothing much to speak of as the level itself isn't very intense, outside of probably having the most barons per area in Sigil (though not most barons overall).

The music is back to being intense like the first two levels, but much more grounded to suit the final showdown. The most distinct visual theme here are the glowing cracks in the darkness. I personally loved that detail, as it creates a wonderful bookend. Both to Sigil itself via the secret vista in the first level, and to Doom 1 overall through his own take on Phobos Anomaly which also showcased the cracks as a very prominent obstacle in that level. If you play KDiTD with his two levels included (MAPINFO is a wonderful thing so that the original levels aren't replaced), it really sells the idea that this is the real end of the game. While the "boss fights" aren't much to write home about, being just a fight with another spider and cyberdemon (though he does add a nice bit of catharsis to the level in the 1.2 update where, after fighting the cyberdemon, you have a small horde of lesser demons you can just BFG away), I think we can agree it is a better finale than what Unto the Cruel had (Possibly better than Inferno if you have the BFG that can kill the spider in one hit. At least here the darkness makes it a little harder.) Though I will cut john some slack here; without adding any new monsters, there really isn't much you can do for a finale with just the Doom 1 roster.

[NNC]

Great post, Ninety-six, I agree with most parts, and you know, we should form the Alliance of Adrenaline in Blood, it's really the greatest game soundtrack since VVVVVV's Positive Force.

As for Nightmare Underworld, you should know that the map was made right after E1M8b and E1M4b by Romero, when he didn't really add up what he wants to do with this game (or not everything about it). He originally wanted the level to be between E5M3 and E5M4, but since the map was much bigger and much harder than both, it was pushed to slot #7, where it technically looks out of place, because its a much happier place (despite its difficulty) than the levels before it. Thematically E5M6 should have been the penultimate level, it even makes a decent connection with E5M8, another somewhat dark level.

Also for that matter, E5M1 and E5M8 are very well related too. The former is the outer area of the same place, you can even see the mystic cracks of E5M8 from secret places. From E5M8, you can see the red outer zone too. It's a brilliant touch IMHO.

[Malgon]

Not specifically Doom related but id Software have now turned 30!

https://twitter.com/...351303799222274

[Fantinaikos]

It might interest you relatively, but Onemandoom Blog doesn't seems to be dead as the 8 July KMX E XII message suggested, it is returned in activity. Latest review is the DOOM64 Lost Levels.

[Ninety-Six]

Interesting. I personally never knew what to think of that site, since he seemed to love just about everything he reviewed in some shape or form. Given my, let's be generous, "contentious" opinions of the doom community's output, the mostly-positive outlook he gave equally to even more obscure works kind of landed him in a unique spot where I simultaneously valued and devalued his opinion.


That said, I ended up checking his site for updates quite frequently for about a year before that July message came up. Looking up certain wads on the site, and he would sometimes have useful advice or perhaps even a hint about how to deal with something in his review, even if unintentionally. The site covered a massive spectrum of wads so there was a good chance there was at least a mention of it somewhere.

It also made for great idle reading during certain downtimes. I have lamented not being able to read the latest reviews while waiting on various things. While I disagree very strongly with a lot of what he praises, I can't condemn him of engaging in favoritism. That's worth something in my book, especially from the doom community.

[NNC]

Yeah, if a review site can't tell the difference between a good wad and a bad wad, it's not exactly a worthy read.

[Ninety-Six]

The Watchtower, on 05 February 2021 - 08:19 AM, said:

Yeah, if a review site can't tell the difference between a good wad and a bad wad, it's not exactly a worthy read.

Honestly, it's less that he can't tell the difference and more that he's an optimist who tries to see the best in something, and grades more on how closely he believes an author came to fulfilling their own design goals. Take Jim Flynn and his frustrating hidden switch crap. It's terrible design, but Jim seemed to know that and was intentionally going against it just to be an asshole. So Kmexii would grade it on that, since it was intentional assholery.

And to be completely transparent, that's generally how I grade things, too. And in most cases if something is intentional that I don't like, I give it credit for succeeding but admit it's not really my thing and leave it at that.

The unfairness in doom wads is something I rag on about though because I see there's kind of a disconnect between intent and result. The intent being "make a hard wad" but the result being "making a bullshit wad." The completely erroneous belief that just because you can kill a player with cheap traps doesn't actually make the level hard. The belief that that is skillful, which then leads to more of that crap spreading like a virus, so that people who love battles (like me) just keep getting shafted over and over instead of having their mid-fight skills tested. etc etc

[jkas789]

Ninety-Six, on 05 February 2021 - 03:13 PM, said:

The unfairness in doom wads is something I rag on about though because I see there's kind of a disconnect between intent and result. The intent being "make a hard wad" but the result being "making a bullshit wad." The completely erroneous belief that just because you can kill a player with cheap traps doesn't actually make the level hard. The belief that that is skillful, which then leads to more of that crap spreading like a virus, so that people who love battles (like me) just keep getting shafted over and over instead of having their mid-fight skills tested. etc etc

It is quite a chore, however to be fair I think that some traps here and there are good. Dark souls is a good example of a game that masterfully combines trap placement and enemy placement to fuck the player over without the player being angry at the game, but at themselves and their lack of ability to not git gud.

[Ninety-Six]

jkas789, on 05 February 2021 - 05:15 PM, said:

It is quite a chore, however to be fair I think that some traps here and there are good. Dark souls is a good example of a game that masterfully combines trap placement and enemy placement to fuck the player over without the player being angry at the game, but at themselves and their lack of ability to not git gud.

Yeah I'm not against traps on the whole. I'm just against cheap traps that are more or less a guaranteed kill a player's first time through, requiring them to die to it to be able to deal with it in advance. A classic example for doom would be walking over an invisible linedef and being transported right in the middle of a horde of revenants, as in smack in the middle, and you will be punched to death unless you had the plasma gun or BFG in hand before you walked into it. Because you literally don't have time to switch once the trap is sprung.

In cases like those, the only lack of skill on display is that of the mapper's. There's nothing to- well, to say "nothing to learn" isn't quite accurate. They learn two valuable things: 1. The level designer is an asshole, and 2. where the trap is. But there's nothing permanent to learn from the experience. There's nothing to learn that the player could take with them into the next level or even the next mapset. There's nothing to reflect on for them to increase their overall skill and knowledgebase at the game as a whole.


I love me a hard game. I genuinely do. And I guess I'm in the minority, but I could die 50 times to a game in a row, and not get mad a single time so long as every 50 of those deaths felt like my fault. If I could reflect on what happened, point to where I went wrong in either my decision-making or where I went wrong in my execution, I'm perfectly happy. But when it's a cheap trap like above, there's nothing to learn. Nothing to improve upon, because a player did everything that they could correctly up to that point. They did everything right and were punished for not being psychic.

Me, personally, I love gaming exactly because of that ability to constantly be tested and to constantly try to improve. It's why I love these older FPSes, as I've said. I live for battle in these games. I love being tested in the moment and having to make lightning-quick decisions to survive, with the quality of those plans and the quality of their execution being what determines my continued life. I even go so far as to play saveless just because I like having the risk of a total reset to make the decision-making process a bit more interesting. I'm about as into the "get gud" mindset as someone can, because that improvement is the main attraction for me. But that said, I'm going to paraphrase a certain youtuber for this. I'm fine with a game or a level expecting perfection from me. But in return, it's only fair to expect perfection back. And if it can't deliver, "get gud" doesn't apply anymore.


It's why these rants keep showing up. I love Doom; I genuinely do. It's not my favorite FPS or anything, but I still do enjoy it. And the excessively few times where I've been in a challenging battle that was still feasibly winnable on my first attempt (regardless if I actually won it or not), it's great. But those times are few and far between and it just keeps breaking my heart.



EDIT: I do acknowledge the exception that are "troll levels" and other IWBTG-style level designs. I even like them, since in return for the cheap kills they give the player something back in return, usually in the form of humor to make the experience far less frustrating.

[ReaperAA]

Ninety-Six, on 05 February 2021 - 08:23 PM, said:

And the excessively few times where I've been in a challenging battle that was still feasibly winnable on my first attempt (regardless if I actually won it or not), it's great. But those times are few and far between and it just keeps breaking my heart.

I know you and I may have different opinions on Doom wads, but have you tried Alien Vendetta? It's a tough and challenging wad, but it rarely has any gotcha traps (it's traps are very different from something like Ancient Aliens). So far I have completed 25 maps of AV and most of my deaths genuinely felt my own fault.

If you played Hell Revealed, then AV would seem similar, just more polished.

[Ninety-Six]

ReaperAA, on 05 February 2021 - 10:20 PM, said:

If you played Hell Revealed, then AV would seem similar, just more polished.

Okay you actually have my attention. I did play HR a couple of years ago, to see if the "original" hard wad was the beginning of that trend I most despise. I actually didn't end up hating it, though I didn't actually complete it. Never made it to the third episode so I can't comment on the quality there, but I did make it about halfway in before I stopped playing. Not because it infuriated me or was too hard, but because I honestly got kind of bored holding down the fire button against three hundred barons. And then one of the levels was seemingly nothing but that and I started dying a lot because I just completely mentally checked out. At that point I decided to stop.

That being said, when HR did want to get challenging it got there. Maps 11 and 13(I think 13? It was the one that used Goin' Down the Fast Way) were the highlights, being fairly difficult without being bullshit. Not the hardest I ever experienced but it gave me a good run for my money.


So if AV is like that, just harder and less mass killing of walking doors, I'm actually a bit interested now. I never played it for more than a few minutes just to toy with things, so besides MAP20 being everyone's favorite apparently, I'm more or less blind on it.

I suppose it couldn't hurt to fire up one of these days. Why not; worst that can happen is that I hate it like the rest. No different than the normal. Best case and it lives up to your description and I finally find myself a winner.

Worth a shot.

[ReaperAA]

Ninety-Six, on 05 February 2021 - 10:40 PM, said:

Not because it infuriated me or was too hard, but because I honestly got kind of bored holding down the fire button against three hundred barons.

The good news is that AV is far less grindy than HR. AV does have a few grindy moments, but nowhere near HR (which is overly obsessed with barons).

[Ninety-Six]

ReaperAA, on 05 February 2021 - 11:28 PM, said:

The good news is that AV is far less grindy than HR. AV does have a few grindy moments, but nowhere near HR (which is overly obsessed with barons).

That it was. So that's good news at least.

[ReaperAA]

Another wad I would recommend keeping an eye on is the currently-in-RC-phase Bourgeois Deathmatch. It is a universally compatible wad (vanilla wad that supports both SP and DM). The wad is pretty fun to play. The levels are moderately challenging and since the layouts are DM oriented, the levels in SP mode are short and each of them can be beaten in less than 5-minutes.

[FistMarine]

Wow, it looks like there's been some activity since the last time I replied, so I'm going to make a long post again, with the Dooming I've been doing for a while.

Quote

I also have a soft spot for the Realm667 bestiary. As a matter of fact it tends to scratch the itch that I was talking about for Duke and LRWB. Most of the Realm monsters are variants of the vanilla roster which I find to add extra depth to the combat and unpredictability without relying on bullshit traps that require foreknowledge to beat. Really I wish the realm monsters were just used more often to shake up the gameplay instead of relying on that crap. If you're struggling to think up of ways to surprise the player without killing them instantly, there's a whole library you can use.

I also don't know the status of Shores and kinda don't have hope we'll ever see it (and if we do I expect it would instead be Shores of GZdoom instead). Though there was a remake of Refinery made in the KDiZD style by him. And yeah I think KDiZD got unfairly criticized just because Tormentor is a controversial figure in the community. Which is an attitude I really don't like. I believe a work can exist independent of its creator. For instance, I can't stand TerminusEst13 as a person; I think he's just a straight conceited asshole (so nothing new there). But he has also made good stuff that I like. Most notably spearheading the DUMP project, and the gameplay mod that came with the third installment. He even contributed my favorite weapon to the latter, which was a hilariously oversized mallet that made a squeaky noise when it hit an enemy. I loved that weapon and wished so bad I could have it separate from the gameplay mod.

I agree about the custom Realm667 monsters and one day I hope that id Software considers on making sort of an expanded resource pack for Doom that is integrated into the unity Doom ports, like taking some of those popular Realm667 monsters (after contacting all the authors involved of course) and then allowing mappers to use those monsters directly in their maps without having to import the monsters and convert them to DEHACKED (for more vanilla ports) and it would be a new standard for mapping and opening new possibilities. The catch is that it would most likely require the Unity port in first place for the map to work and I don't know how long for source ports to add support for those extra resources in order to support them. It's all wishful thinking of course, I don't think id will do such a thing but I would hope one day for something similar to happen, after all if they fixed some vanilla bugs and added some QOL improvements, why not go further and even get rid of some more vanilla limitations too, as well as add new popular custom monsters that have been used in many projects all over the years?

Imagine having new id approved custom monsters, weapons and items that will flow nicely along the standard Doom 2 stuff, making it like a new official expansion that classic Doom games always lacked (I was always disappointed with Ultimate Doom, Master Levels and Final Doom not containing anything new except new levels and sometimes new textures or new music). Sure, NRFTL and SIGIL were all great and the new addons added over time to the Doom unity ports were nice (some of them even contain new content, like Doom Zero) but I just wish we got some official custom resources, for mappers to spice things up, because as much as I like the original Doom 2 roster, I think the game could really benefit with some of these Realm667 monsters appearing elsewhere too. Just imagine if this were a thing. Probably won't ever happen but it doesn't hurt to just imagine the possibilities it would bring.

Interesting to know about the Shores of GZDoom. Kinda wish it gets released someday, as I believe it has been worked to a certain extent in past years, right? I have similar hope for HPack (Heretic megawad for ZDoom) seeing the light of the day, I remember back in 2009 or so being worked on almost exclusively until ZDCMP2 and WolfenDoom: Blade of Agony happened. Since then, I haven't heard anything about it. I remember Refinery, played it once back in 2012 or so. I think it had a New Game+ option where the map restarted with harder enemy placement, don't remember if I replayed the map the second time. I only remember causing a bug where health wasn't reset properly (after picking up soulsphere before exiting map), because health was reset to 100 when the map restarted but the status bar wasn't updated properly, which meant that it would wrongly show 200 until you get hit I think, I don't remember much to be honest and it may have been fixed in ZDoom 2.8.1, I have to replay The Refinery after I finish KDIZD.

I also agree about how some authors get unfairly judged like in case with Tormentor, I think he made a lot of great stuff and while ZDoom is frown upon (some of criticism is legitimate, though) and I also have my arguments about it (mostly for the way it has divided the community), you can't deny about the great projects that have been made for ZDoom, some of the great ones made by Tormentor of course. Also agree about TerminusEst13, I remember talking once or twice to him on YouTube back in 2012-2013 or so when he made that Ranger class for Hexen and liking his mod and he seemed okay, he replied to my comments I made on his videos. Sometime, starting with around time he made Samsara, he started changing and started becoming a different person (like you said) and I also hate that behavior and I remember him and others ripping a competitor, who made Classic Rivalry and was similar in style to Samsara.

I haven't played Classic Rivarly to judge on my own and I heard it was buggy and had a lot of weird decision choices (which is probably what started that controversy, along with its author not taking criticism I think) and back to Terminus' mods, I will admit that I had a lot of fun with Samsara even back then like playing as DoomGuy in Chex Quest 3 (it's a ZDoom only mod after all, so replaying CQ3 with gameplay mods makes sense to me on subsequent playthroughs), or even as simple as playing as Corvus in Heretic and Parias in Hexen, which while things remained mostly the same and on point with the characters chosen, there were a couple of differences regarding how the mod played compared to the vanilla game and I personally think it's better to just load a gameplay mod to go along with it when playing vanilla ZDoom maps, otherwise I stick with my DOS/Chocolate/Crispy/Eternity/PrBoom+ classic Doom experience in general.

Now I think there were some flaws with Samsara that still haven't been fixed, like Duke Nukem class having a misaligned Chaingun (may be because it is meant to be seen in widescreen mode? I usually play ZDoom at 1024x768), Duke also should have had the Shrinker weapon included (seriously, why wasn't it included? Would have made the Duke class a lot more fun), the Ranger class having ugly looking Quake weapons (it's like the models were converted into sprites, which looked a bit weird), the ugly looking custom HUD when you get turned into chicken by someone that uses Corvus class (I remember testing this years ago by adding a bot from a custom bots.cfg and turning him into chicken, then pressing F12 to look through his eyes) and a couple of minor things that could have been fixed, although the mod itself is great but to be honest it is a bit overrated, like with everything TerminusEst13 makes. Just my 2 cents on that.

I haven't played the DUMP series, so I can't comment on those. I remember reading their topics years ago and planned to get into the mods, maybe I will do that as soon as I finish a couple ZDoom mods I have in progress.

Quote

Nah I don't think saving that often is necessary. There are plentiful checkpoints. I also found the difficulty quite fair (well, as long there isn't a tank around); I think it's more a matter of approaching the game with a completely different mindset. Unlike the base game where you can go in guns blazing, AD was heavily inspired by games like Contra, hence the single hit point. Unlike those games though, enemies aren't infinitely respawning, which encourages and is built around you playing with just a bit more caution. Gotta take it a little slower and be much more mindful of enemy attacks, unlike in Doom where you can safely tank some attacks.

Playing AD was also when I kind of realized jut how sorry the modern state of doom modding is. Even past the bullshit death traps, I realized most mappers these days are so solely focused on making pretty sector art. They only want spectacle but after so much "spectacle" it all starts to run together because that's the only thing they give out.

Meanwhile, in mods like AD, there are more genuine attempts to elicit other emotions than just "wow". You get the pumping action of the first level, there's a creepy atmosphere in the base, Hell has never looked more like Hell in Doom, and so on. I played this around the same time I played Sigil which was also a masterwork of eliciting and controlling how a player feels, and combined I really learned why even past the frustrating combat of modern dooming there is just nothing past the surface.

i really gotta stop making long rants about doom modding but i just have so much to say

You are right that saving wasn't always necessary, however there were some annoying parts that I felt like I wanted to save often and using multiple slots (aside from the multiple paths that lead to different areas and it's impossible to backtrack), especially since I don't like having to lose progress. My time is very limited nowadays and I want to finish as many wads as possible, same goes to Duke3D maps/mods and for other games. I just want to finish with getting 100% everything in each level, while at same time noting the good stuff I enjoyed and if by any chance I intend to replay it in the future, I will keep in mind some additional information I saved.

I can't comment much on most of the stuff that the community has made, even back then there were bullshit maps and I also have a couple of controversial opinions that some hardcore Doomers may be offended by, such as the fact nuts wads are garbage and pretty much all of that author's works are overrated, though Equinox, Grove and Mucus Flow are decent, plus I have yet to play Mucus Flow as I need to get through Community Chest series at one point, I only remember playing them many years ago with Aeons of Death mod and last year I played through all the author's works in various older versions of ZDoom (since that's what the author tested the maps with). And then there's stuff like the Deus Vult series that are often praised, I don't think they are as great as people make them out to be, based on some YouTube videos I watched. Of course they are on my to play list (and to make it fair, I will also play them in PrBoom+) and all I expect is a lot of rage from the many enemies firing from many directions and it depends how I will handle the encounters. Oh don't worry, I don't dislike ALL slaughter maps, in fact some are decent and I even finished one recently (see below) and it wasn't as bad as I thought.

I will have to get back to playing sigil past first level to have an ongoing discussion since it keeps getting brought up frequently, but first let's see the progress I made recently:

Doom the Way ID Did - Cool stuff! Finally finished DTWID! Not much to say about other than some maps were a bit harder as I expected but I still managed to 100% them and without dying, mostly thanks to watching some UV Max videos just to see to plan my routes and find all secrets/items! Cool boss fight as well and yes I did grab those items in the arena, because although Chocolate Doom doesn't show intermission at last map of each episode, I still made sure to get everything. I don't have a favorite level considering I have no nostalgia for episodes 2 and 3 of Doom (and it wouldn't be fair to just rate E1 levels), I will say in general some levels were fairly cool and resembled some Doom levels, others were more original in style like the mapper was experimenting with various ideas for his own take for how an original Doom map would look like. I will say that there were some levels in E3 that have crushers but thankfully I never got crushed as I was very careful how I navigated and watching YouTube videos in preparation to remember some deadly traps which got me years ago when I played DTWID last time. Some notes:

-There is a crusher right at start of E3M4 right above the shotgun, just simply run past it and you will be fine.
-There was that starting area of E3M6 that was tricky where you must run as fast as you can or else barrels will blow you up, which I remembered from watching an YouTube video or else it would catch me off guard and most likely kill me. I still had a barrel explode behind me while I was just dropping down, its explosion somehow reached me, probably the infinite height, survived with 142% health and still had around 100% blue armor left as I managed to conserve it for 3 or so levels with my careful slower approaching some encounters)
-Noticed two pillars didn't lower in E3M9 while in that YouTube video did (I guess that guy was using an older DTWID version? Mine was latest release from idgames, DTWID.wad dated 07/02/2012) and those pillars contained two lost souls and bullet/shell boxes. Even if these pillars glitched and didn't lower for me, I still got 100% everything, considering lost souls don't count for kills. I didn't check pillars with IDCLIP (IDSPISPOPD in Doom 1/Ultimate) to see if they contained anything because I refused to cheat at all. So maybe the map was changed in newest version? I will have to watch a different video to confirm or cheat because I finished the wad and I'm allowed now.

Knee Deep in ZDoom - Played three more maps Z1M4, Z1M5 and Z1M6. Finally died once at Z1M4 in the underground area because I got slashed by those satyrs, ran around while trying to avoid the homing missiles from the soul harvester, had 17 HP left and ran into an imp's fireball and died. Wish I picked up that blue armor earlier, I kinda saved it and the green armor earlier because I still had like 33 or so blue armor left and wanted to save it further. Oh well! Also nearly died at that last trap where I got surrounded by four Blood Demons and just managed to escape in time after killing one. I killed the two hell knights easily after that, thankfully. Gotta admit this level was the hardest so far because it had a few tricky parts and unavoidable damage but otherwise wasn't too bad, I still enjoyed the challenge it offered (although it seemed a bit dark at times? Kinda hard to spot some enemies in darkness). There is a funny Dopefish secret which gives you the Megasphere (I found late in level and saved until the end).

Z1M5 was easier than I expected, I barely took any damage in the level, the enemy placement was a bit more predictable I guess. I did get ambushed by a chaingunner that snuck behind me from the other door and reduced from 200 HP (with almost full blue armor) to 120 HP or so. A bit annoying that happened, good I had all that health and armor. I still ended up with like a spare blue armor at end of the level, so I had more than enough here. I also found the funny Tormentor's head Easter Egg, his head actually counted for the last kill (and when you kill him, you get a soul sphere).

Z1M6 was alright, however I hated that one time secret that I didn't realize once you insert the battery, the forcefield blocks the switch that DIDN'T work before inserting the battery, so you must be quick and I didn't realize it until I watched an YouTube video. I even overwrote most of these saves and I only have a backup save 10 minutes in the level, so that means about 30 minutes wasted for nothing, considering I didn't even find a secret myself (some I remembered where they are and requiring jumping over those dangerous pits, saving them for after cleaning the level) and I guess it's better that way. Very annoying having to redo most of the level. At least I'm enjoying KDIZD more than Akeldama (see below)

Akeldama - Completed a bunch of maps. Oh boy, there's a LOT to talk about them. Yes I managed to die quite a couple of times, mostly in MAP31 and in that case, lots of deaths to the same damn enemy! Here's why:
In map 31, there are various teleports you have to take. I first took the yellow teleporter (the one that is available, the other one is locked until you get the said skull key) and apparently the yellow ones were the HARDEST. I died once to that area with crushers after poorly handling the revenants that I lured to that room, thinking they should get crushed. Sadly that wasn't the case, all I did was use the chaingun while standing in front of locked door and take 3 revenant missiles until I died (I had 128 or so HP and some armor, the missiles also rolled high damage too).

After reloading and then killing them and surviving (barely) some nasty ambushes (and even killing a Cyberdemon with plasma, that I could have simply telefragged, I got the soulsphere at least which saved me in the next encounter), I then get the key and go the next room. I clean some monsters, there are some more ambushes and finally there's a goddamn Cyberdemon to handle on this small space with stairs! I tried to telefrag him once with the teleporter at bottom of stairs, didn't time correctly and it killed me. I kept trying to BFG him (and even get a nearby invisibility sphere secret) at close range and he kills me eight fucking times until I finally manage to kill him! Fuck this bullshit cyberdemon! I didn't have a patience to deal with him so I kinda save-scummed this part and the reason I died I didn't have a lot of health and armor (only 73 or so health, don't remember how much armor) and his rocket would always kill me instantly, the invisibility didn't help at all as it would make sometimes fire randomly, other times it fires a rocket right where you would dodge. There was apparently a BFG secret in same room (which I got later), however I already had a BFG from previous levels, so I just tried until it worked.

Outside of that bullshit part? The map wasn't bad at all! I did the blue and red teleports part of the map and they were a LOT easier, the ambushes weren't hard anymore, some parts were tricky but they were surviveable from first try, maybe I got lucky there, the third cyberdemon wasn't bad at all, you have a lot of space and cover to safely take with plasma. I didn't even take a single hit (or very little hits) in that blue side of the map and the red side was challenging with a spider mastermind as well, some arachnotrons and revenant snipers. The room kinda reminded me a bit of MAP28 from Doom 2.

There was a second mastermind at end of map and I managed to get lucky because as soon as it teleported on platform, it got hit by one of caco fireballs (I was fighting two or so cacodemons at that point) and it started attacking them, while I was able to BFG the spider safely from behind. There was a part with chaingunners (last few enemies left in level) that nearly screwed me and lost quite a bit of health but thankfully I killed them in time and grabbed health. At least I managed to save a blue armor earlier (the only blue armor available in level, wish I saved one of the 5 or so soulspheres) and even find the secret exit (before the normal exit), though I reloaded to pick up the blue armor before exiting, otherwise I got 100% everything.

Then as soon as I reached MAP32, I was like WTF is this? It looks like a slaughter map! What's this doing here? I know it's a secret level but why are there 700+ monsters present on a map that is part of a supposedly vanilla compatible map? It looks like they are getting inspired by Back to Saturn X, another vanilla-compatible-megawad has such a slaughtery secret map, I think in BTSX E2.
However at this rate they might as well label the megawad as limit removing because surely vanilla doesn't support maps that contain more than like 300-500 monsters present, plus the crash when attempting to SAVE! Good thing I didn't play Akeldama in Chocolate Doom, although I have the vanilla save game limit disabled in Chocolate Doom anyway, so I can always save, it's probably the sprite limit that I fear the most with the enemies starting to disappear when there's too many of them. One of the things I truly hate about vanilla Doom is the save game limit which affects some early wads and even megawads like Hell Revealed and Requiem, meaning those problematic maps are meant to be beaten in one go. I can't imagine anyone beating Hell Revealed MAP24 in one go on UV 100% on original EXE and in vanilla controls too. I guess I will be doing the first Hell Revealed on HMP skill when I get around the Hell Revealed series. This is why I play most wads since 1998-1999 in source ports, to not deal with the vanilla limits, as there's people who are actually playing modern wads in vanilla EXEs, while myself even as a purist, wouldn't go this far. And why I only use Chocolate Doom for a couple select wads, like the DTWID series. Otherwise I will favor stuff like Eternity and PrBoom+.

So yeah, back to Akeldama, although I only died twice in MAP32 and my deaths were also at beginning due to chaotic nature and not knowing where to go (until you find the safe spot and then you can take it slowly and safely in most cases), compared to the 9 deaths in MAP31, this map wasn't bad at all! It wasn't as bad as I expected it to be. Sure it's annoying I didn't get the secret invulnerabilities when I should have (I had trouble finding the teleports even with the help of doomwiki.org) but the other invulnerability that was conveniently placed has really helped me.
I will admit this was a well done slaughter map and I enjoyed it, if a bit out of place of this megawad. There are many resources available and even 3 megaspheres in level (and there were multiple soul spheres and 3 blue armors as well), meaning you will end up with those saved megaspheres and soul spheres at end of level if you are a resourceful player like me. I ended up fully maxed after doing this level! Excellent!

I just wish that the maps weren't taking me 1.5+ hours to finish, as it seems maps are getting longer and having high monster counts. I will say the megawad was far easier than I expected so far, I know there were many annoying traps but I survived the majority of them and in good health too, so maybe that means I am ready to take on the harder stuff from the Doom community. As much as I dislike the slaughterfest trend of the modern Doom mapping, there is some genuine fun to be had with some maps. As long as you know to conserve supplies and to deal with the encounters, though some of the traps feel too much luck based, as based on my own experiences so far, 90% of them were fine, the rest 10% were annoying.

Reached MAP16 and stopped there for that day. Then continued next day, did maps 16 and 17 no problem (although there were some annoying traps in MAP16, one of which nearly killed me and survived with 10% or so health because an archvile attacked me as soon as it teleported and I was running away in an acid filled area, while MAP17 had predictable traps in general, not too bad), MAP18 was fine until end, because there are 2 monsters that didn't seem to teleport or something? I couldn't find them!

Guess what? After watching a single UV max video on YouTube of this map (and of course it was a GZDoom video with a gameplay mod where the guy who recorded was able to get 100% everything) and trying for 5 or so consecutive attempts in the final room to get everyone to teleport and failing (no deaths thankfully but it was annoying to keep retrying the section), I just downloaded an UV max demo recorded by blob1024 and here is what the text file said:

Quote

map and music are nice, I found a bit complicated to do quickly the cyber area, his moving and infighting arent easily manipulated. This way is the easier one to get him on the other side, but its still very dangerous with green armour. 2 monsters seems to not teleport in, so I don't bother to polish the run

So yep, the map is bugged and two monsters won't teleport no matter what, considering in both my case and that YouTube GZDoom video, there were 31 monsters left in final room. At least now I know it wasn't my fault. I smell a ZDoomism right here because if I'm guessing correctly, the two monsters are stuck inside each other in an out of bounds area/closet and in ZDoom based ports, this isn't an issue since if two monsters are placed inside each other, they will get unstuck upon hearing/seeing you, this isn't the case in vanilla themed ports. The map was most likely only tested in ZDoom based source ports or I guess no one cared about 100% completion in this map. So in other words, I ended up with 98% kills at end of that level, everything else 100%'ed.

Next day, map 19 as usual had some unfair traps that killed me twice and almost 400 enemies (and map taking me almost 2 hours to finish) and I will tell you how I died. One time I didn't see the main door opened that unleashed the two archviles after I activated the switch, so I just pressed a switch and grabbed the soul sphere secret (I was at 108% health at that time thinking I need the nice 200% health for next parts) and didn't know those two archviles saw me while the soulsphere trap spawned a lot of revenants. Ran away when that happened and later started fighting revenants that came out of door until I randomly had a revenant wandering in a blood pit and then realized it was a GHOST revenant (as its corpse was crushed by a door earlier) and I killed it with RL while taking some damage because there is no other way to get rid of a glitched ghost enemy, I don't think I ever had ghost monsters encountering before outside of few old maps that used this bug as an advantage, like The Final Gathering.

Then I went up there on a platform, knew I was screwed if I don't act fast and tried to go down there with BFG in hand but the infinite height screwed me and got punched to death by enemies down there, the screen got damn red and an archvile blast finished me off on my last 20% or so health. Oh and the ambush at end of level (with a mini slaughter and two archviles) also killed me since I was running out of health and armor and rushed to get medkits while those monsters got unleashed, didn't see there was a switch to open that door behind me, thought I was locked in, could have backtracked to get the blue armor at beginning of level that I saved (there are 2 blue armors in the level along a soulsphere and megasphere in secrets). However I got lucky on next attempt when the archviles didn't target me so I could BFG them safely and all of that done with like just 100 health and no armor.

Otherwise it was alright, it feels like Plutonia at times. I thought again two enemies are outside of level but after backtracking I found them after pressing a switch I haven't pressed, they were a chaingunner and a revenant.

Map 20 was alright, although very long, had some scarce resources in general and despite that, I'm shocked I actually managed to do this level without dying, considering all there is just 3 green armors and 3 soul spheres to help you. And I got 100% everything on it as well. Sweet! Just make sure to kill those imps at start as they can be missed since the starting area is not accessible again (I was lucky I explored around the house at beginning) and a green armor at beginning that can't be recollected later when you need it.

I will do the remaining 10 maps in next couple of days (maybe weeks), as once again I got drained of these long maps and only want to continue just to finish it already. Just curious if anyone finished Akeldama yet and what impressions that wad gave to you? Despite some negative comments, so far I'm enjoying for the most part, aside from the two unreachable monsters in MAP18 and that I also feel like some maps are long and exhausting for a vanilla-themed megawad, plus some dickish traps every now and then, forcing me to play cautiously. Surprised I managed to survive so many maps without dying, though difficulty wise I don't think it is as hard as the difficulty of modern Doom wads in general. I'm finding them just about right.

Death count: 14 (1 in MAP07, 9 in MAP31, 2 in MAP32, 2 in MAP19)

Taking a look at the death count, it can't be a coincidence that valkiriforce was behind all 4 of maps where I died, regardless of whether the map had more authors working or just him. He really loves those kind of dickish traps that are likely to kill you quickly, though there were a lot of nice/predictable traps as well that could be avoided if you are smart.

Oh and for the bad wads, still haven't finished CIF3, in fact I'm stuck with no way to progress further (it's like 5 maps before the final level), I need the red key to open a door that unlocks the blue key, those bars behind some doors don't lower, those switches in middle of map literally do nothing, they say "Nothing happens" even though I already activated a switch earlier that should have made those switches functional and finally, the objective screen says to "Wander around until something happens", I guess the objective hasn't been updated since several levels ago. The only options I have is to crouch through some windows and if I get stuck down there, to noclip? I'm sure I must have missed a switch somewhere or the mod got broken over time? It was made in 2008 for ZDoom 2.2.0 or newer and I use the latest ZDoom 2.8.1 in this case. Although the mod has worked fine so far, I haven't encountered bugs or crashes. And I don't really enjoy playing crappy wads but I had to check this wad since it was made by Kaiser.

And 96, please don't stop ranting about the Doom modding community, there's some mods that truly deserve to get ripped apart and I appreciate there's someone who takes his time to write his thoughts about certain maps and mods. In fact, you and the Watchtower have highly influenced me in also doing so, both for Doom and Duke3D maps. While I will still continue to praise stuff like DTWID, KDIZD, Akeldama, Double Impact, SIGIL, NRFTL and others (which are all purely classic Doom, yes even KDIZD is sort of classic, though in a modern ZDoom way if you get what I mean), while those crappy ZDoom maps/mods or outright troll maps will get bashed until I get tired of ranting. And yes I will also rant about slaughtermaps one day, I just need to find the time and some actual slaughter levels that are unfairly hard but I don't know which ones to choose first. The two maps that really frustrated me (don't know if to put in slaughter or troll maps category) are Nuts Lite and Pagan's Run, I felt these two maps really sucked badly and were unfair at times.

Anyway, since I have a lot of pictures from Akeldama, DTWID and KDIZD, I am not going to spam the topic anymore and I will probably upload some of them to Doomwiki.org and contribute to the wiki, for the articles that didn't have any screens, so you can see them there if they get approved. So far I made some edits to the Duke Nukem 3D page (mostly to correct some mistakes, like claiming the Hexen centaur makes the same sounds as the assault trooper when in reality it's the Hexen ettin that makes same roaming sound, not the centaur), but no one approved my edits and I'm not sure how long is until my changes will be automatically approved.

Regarding the Onemandoom blog, yeah I know that blog and even made some comments in past, thing is I think this guy's blog is pretty interesting and I enjoyed reading some reviews he made, there's just two things that are a bit off:
-He uses ZDoom for every mod reviewed, so if something breaks in a map, he will mention something that's a bit off in the review or not mention at all, so it will be confusing if something happens differently in other people's cases. As I mentioned before, I prefer to play in the intended port, with the settings depending on the source port chosen (heh)
-He praises nearly every mod out there, even the unimpressive ones. I remember complaining in his nuts and chosen reviews that these are rather bad wads and in chosen I once got a reply (by someone else) that my nitpick was weirdest he heard (I nitpicked about Chosen being a non-Doom TC that requires DOOM2.WAD instead of being standalone like it should have), it's just my opinion BTW. That TC wasn't even that good in first place (for those who don't know, it is an egyptian themed ZDoom mod) and it even won a cacoward in 2004 and that author also made the Hexen Wolfen mod I mentioned above which I found mediocre, I don't know, I admit not a fan of author's works because there are much better wads out there. And I actually liked better other Egyptian mods such as Osiris TC (I never played myself, I think I saw it once on YouTube) which is also an old vanilla wad and there's a more recent one Epic 2 which is a full vanilla megawad and I only remember playing the first 10 or so maps years ago in GZDoom and lost interest in continuing, however this time I will be doing all of it in PrBoom+ and judge it fairly, I know it gets full slaughter later on like Scythe series, just thinking at it I wonder how I will handle all of this.

I wonder if anyone wants me to play a certain wad and review it, I will gladly do that. Just wait until I finish some more wads that I have in progress and suggested wads will be added in line to be played/reviewed after finishing the ones I have first planned.

EDIT: OK fine, here's the zip file with the Doom screenshots I took while playing in the past week.

[Ninety-Six]

RunningDuke, on 08 February 2021 - 01:42 AM, said:

I will admit that I had a lot of fun with Samsara even back then like playing as DoomGuy in Chex Quest 3 (it's a ZDoom only mod after all, so replaying CQ3 with gameplay mods makes sense to me on subsequent playthroughs), or even as simple as playing as Corvus in Heretic and Parias in Hexen, which while things remained mostly the same and on point with the characters chosen, there were a couple of differences regarding how the mod played compared to the vanilla game.

I haven't played the DUMP series, so I can't comment on those. I remember reading their topics years ago and planned to get into the mods, maybe I will do that as soon as I finish a couple ZDoom mods I have in progress.

Yeah I liked Samsara. I know the characters aren't 100% accurate but there is a text file explaining their reasoning for the changes they made. Since Samsara was designed for multiplayer first, it kinda makes since why the shrinker was left out. Duke would be incredibly overpowered against the other characters since he basically carries an OHKO weapon that has a large ammo capacity. I'm also assuming ease of implementation was also a factor; they'd have to code the shrinker pretty much from scratch, meanwhile there was already freeze code from Hexen that could be used for the freezethrower, and the Devastator is just a bunch of rockets.


If you go for DUMP, let me warn you. DUMP 2 and 3's hubs are a bit bugged. I tried to 100% my way through them, and while I was able to do that with the first one no trouble, the second seemed to have some improper flags set. So levels near the boss portal are a bit broken, and completing a map might close up the platform for a different level, or re-open one, and can confuse the boss door which needs certain amount of levels to be done to open.

On the plus side, you don't have to do every level to access the boss, and every map enforces a pistol start so you can just warp to them to play them on their own.

On the third one, one of the maps has an exit flagged wrong so it doesn't actually lead back to the hub, and instead crashes the game.


So, that aside, I can at least say one of my favorite doom maps of all time comes from the second installment. It's called Valley, it's definitely a zdoom map, but it uses all the features in a correct way. Navigation is excellent, combat is spicy enough to be interesting without being bullshit, the music choice is great, and the level has a very pleasing techno-nature aesthetic. I honestly start a new game on DUMP 2 every once in a while to just play that level again.

RunningDuke, on 08 February 2021 - 01:42 AM, said:

such as the fact nuts wads are garbage

I could be wrong but I was under the impression that every NUTS entry is basically a jokewad, and isn't actually meant to be taken seriously. It's bullshit because it was intended to be stupid because they just wanted to see how many monsters they could squeeze in.

RunningDuke, on 08 February 2021 - 01:42 AM, said:

Doom the Way ID Did - Cool stuff! Finally finished DTWID! Not much to say about other than some maps were a bit harder as I expected but I still managed to 100% them and without dying, mostly thanks to watching some UV Max videos just to see to plan my routes and find all secrets/items! Cool boss fight as well and yes I did grab those items in the arena, because although Chocolate Doom doesn't show intermission at last map of each episode, I still made sure to get everything. I don't have a favorite level considering I have no nostalgia for episodes 2 and 3 of Doom (and it wouldn't be fair to just rate E1 levels), I will say in general some levels were fairly cool and resembled some Doom levels, others were more original in style like the mapper was experimenting with various ideas for his own take for how an original Doom map would look like. I will say that there were some levels in E3 that have crushers but thankfully I never got crushed as I was very careful how I navigated and watching YouTube videos in preparation to remember some deadly traps which got me years ago when I played DTWID last time.

I just finished my own replay of DTWiD. I still hold that E2 is the weakest, but it's not as weak as I remember. That's because my most hated level, Depths, is actually an E3 level that I misremembered as being from episode 2. And having played it again, yeah, I still hate that level more than any other (outside of UDtWiD anyway). Horrible opening section with poor instruction, the most labyrinthine design far more egregious than anything in the vanilla game, inconsistent damaging floors, an absolute mess of visual theming, and generally awkward combat. How this got into the final project I have no idea. It doesn't look or play anything like an actual id level. I mean the fact that I had remembered it being in episode 2, because it looks way more like a hybrid base than actual Hell, is testament to that.

And it's funny since I've played two of its author's (Phobus) levels before: MAP20 from TNT:R, and MAP03 from DBP01. The former was pretty alright and I greatly enjoyed the latter. Not sure what happened when he did this one.

RunningDuke, on 08 February 2021 - 01:42 AM, said:

Taking a look at the death count, it can't be a coincidence that valkiriforce was behind all 4 of maps where I died, regardless of whether the map had more authors working or just him. He really loves those kind of dickish traps that are likely to kill you quickly, though there were a lot of nice/predictable traps as well that could be avoided if you are smart.

Odd. I've played quite a few of his levels, and he has a pretty good score with me. A lot of his maps, while not always my favorites, far more often than not I found to be on the challenging-but-fair side. MAP24 probably is one of my favorites out of TNT:R. I'll admit the amazing song has a bit to do with that, but I think the level stands fairly well on its own, too. Even from a pistol start I found it pretty fun to kill demons, and while there are plenty of traps, none of it ever felt insurmountable. He was also responsible for MAP31 of that campaign, which I also enjoyed. Not as much as its inspiration, Pharaoh (if you use the official patch, anyway), but still a really solid level. I also enjoyed Doom Core, which featured an actually good slaughtermap that counted more on your tactical skill than trial and error. Reverie, not as much but I could have just been burned out. Doom Core is quite long with really large levels and I tried to play Reverie right after.

There was also a single map I found from him called "An /idgames Troll Walks into a Bar" which, while having a rough start, I also found solidly designed.

While I was looking up the name of that last wad, I learned he also did a few levels for Interception, which was a contender for a rising favorite until MAP23 and MAP27 completely ruined it. Luckily, of all the maps he contributed those weren't his. I don't think his maps were my favorites but there was nothing I took particular offense to, either. For a doom megawad that's something where I take what I can get.


Maybe I just haven't played the right ones, maybe Reverie gets worse, or maybe he didn't contribute the dickery parts of Akeldama; I don't know, but in my experiences with his works, I've had him pegged as a pretty good, but not amazing, level designer.

RunningDuke, on 08 February 2021 - 01:42 AM, said:

And 96, please don't stop ranting about the Doom modding community, there's some mods that truly deserve to get ripped apart and I appreciate there's someone who takes his time to write his thoughts about certain maps and mods. In fact, you and the Watchtower have highly influenced me in also doing so, both for Doom and Duke3D maps. While I will still continue to praise stuff like DTWID, KDIZD, Akeldama, Double Impact, SIGIL, NRFTL and others (which are all purely classic Doom, yes even KDIZD is sort of classic, though in a modern ZDoom way if you get what I mean), while those crappy ZDoom maps/mods or outright troll maps will get bashed until I get tired of ranting. And yes I will also rant about slaughtermaps one day, I just need to find the time and some actual slaughter levels that are unfairly hard but I don't know which ones to choose first.

Ancient Aliens is probably the best place to start. If you want shining examples of complete asshole design, AA is the best showcase you can ever hope for. It doesn't get particularly slaughtery until near the end of the first episode, with it not being a "proper" slaughterwad until MAP15 and on. But I promise you it's still all asshole from MAP01 to the end.


But honestly, pick almost any wad that defines itself as a slaughterwad and you'll find an unfair one. It's very rare that you find one that isn't. They exist, and I'm not going to deny that (I just acknowledged one such above), but they're the exception rather than the rule.

Part of the problem is I think in the way they're built. In theory someone like me should adore slaughtermaps. Cramming a bunch of monsters into a tight space and resulting in Serious Sam levels of frantic fighting and trying to stay afloat amidst the tidal wave of bodies.

Unfortunately, most slaughtermaps are built with a super specific route you have to take in order to win. You have to go in a certain direction and grab this weapon first, then clear out this area to grab this powerup, etc. Problem is, of course, that you don't know where anything is when you first play or even that such things exist. They demand you die over and over until you learn the route the mapper had in mind, which is never obvious. You can only find it through trial-and-error, and as has been stated thousands of times, I really can't stand that sort of level design unless it's handled very delicately.


Besides Ancient Aliens, other good examples of bad slaughters are:
-50 Shades of Graytall (doesn't become such until about halfway but like AA is filled with asshole design on the whole way there)
-Scythe (episode 3 specifically; becomes bullshit for no real reason and kills the pace of the game. I'd say MAP23 and the infamous MAP30 are the worst. MAP24 is also a full-blown slaughtermap that is fairly typical and thus bullshit but not in any special way unlike 23 and 30)
-Deus Vult (halfway)
-Deus Vult II (halfway)
-Several DUMP maps from all three entries (I can't remember all of their names, but one of them was wave-based and it actually started to lag my computer because of all the corpses. Not fun.)
-BTSX E1 (MAP32 on UV only)
-BTSX E2 (several, but also MAP32 again)
-Eviternity (MAP31; hard to definitively label as a slaughtermap or not as it straddles the line, but is definitely complete bullshit either way)
-Sunlust (Later episodes and then MAP32, again)
-Swim With the Whales


And in the name of being totally fair and transparent, here are some slaughtermaps I actually thought earned their difficulty:
-Go 2 It (of all the slaughtermaps, it was fascinating to discover that the progenitor is actually quite fair)
-Showdown (MAP23 of Memento Mori; made by the same person as Go 2 It so not as shocking)
-Nexus (MAP23 of Doom Core; directly inspired by the previous)
-Going Down (GD is another borderline one that makes it hard to call if its maps are true slaughters or not, as there's not much space but most maps cram a lot of monsters into those tight spaces, and besides some dumb patches scattered around (which for a one-man megawad is acceptable), Cyriak does manage to make most fights fair and feasible to complete on your first try if and only if you're good enough)
-At the Mountains of Madness (MAP08 of 50 Shades of Graytall; about the only legitimately good level in the whole thing. Also by Cyriak and also straddles the line of being called slaughter so refer to the above as it all still applies)
-The Spirit World (Doom 2 In Name Only; by Cyriak yet again, but this time there is no question about its slaughter status. See above the above)
-Tough Skin River (MAP24 of BTSX E1, of all places)


Wads with As-of-Writing Undetermined status:
-Reverie
-Eternally Yours
-Scythe 2 (Definitely becomes slaughter though)
-The Vulcanum (MAP27 of Jenesis; confirmed slaughter but Jenesis' third episode as a whole needs a re-evaluation as I'm no longer confident in my previous opinion)
-Go 4 It (Plutonia 2)
-Have @ It (PRCP)

And thanks to ReaperAA, this list now also includes:
-Alien Vendetta

[Ninety-Six]

Ninety-Six, on 08 February 2021 - 03:17 AM, said:

I just finished my own replay of DTWiD. I still hold that E2 is the weakest, but it's not as weak as I remember. That's because my most hated level, Depths, is actually an E3 level that I misremembered as being from episode 2. And having played it again, yeah, I still hate that level more than any other (outside of UDtWiD anyway).

On that note I would like to take a moment to note just how abysmal E4M4 is. It's another contender for one of the worst doom maps I've ever played. If we're talking trial and error, no level type fits that more than one that is 90% damaging floor. It's to such a degree that I would find it incredibly difficult to believe that even people who do abuse quicksaves would not get annoyed and frustrated. We're talking a level where the first thing you have to do is jump into lava while being attacked from all sides. There are only a few places you can actually reach, radsuits are at a premium, you are given no indication of where you're actually supposed to do or what to do, which normally isn't the worst thing. Normally. When you can walk on solid ground and try and figure out how the level works.

Obviously that does not apply here. No direction, no indication of any sort on how the level and the lava landings fit together, teleporters that may as well be instant death considering it teleports you right in front of a spiderdemon, when you're presumably low on health, munitions, and taken by surprise for just stumbling into it because for some awful reason there are multiple teleporters that go to the same spot, and you will never know which one goes where.


I know there were levels like Against Thee Wickedly and Perfect Hatred in the original episode, but even in those cases the branching paths were very short so it was still at least somewhat clear what order you had to do things in. You had enough time and space to link things together with your limited radsuit. But that's not the case in this utterly atrocious, horrid, wretched, and garbage excuse for a level. Once again I must wonder how such trash made it into a project like DTWiD.


Addendum: E4M8 is even worse.

[FistMarine]

Quote

Yeah I liked Samsara. I know the characters aren't 100% accurate but there is a text file explaining their reasoning for the changes they made. Since Samsara was designed for multiplayer first, it kinda makes since why the shrinker was left out. Duke would be incredibly overpowered against the other characters since he basically carries an OHKO weapon that has a large ammo capacity. I'm also assuming ease of implementation was also a factor; they'd have to code the shrinker pretty much from scratch, meanwhile there was already freeze code from Hexen that could be used for the freezethrower, and the Devastator is just a bunch of rockets.

If you go for DUMP, let me warn you. DUMP 2 and 3's hubs are a bit bugged. I tried to 100% my way through them, and while I was able to do that with the first one no trouble, the second seemed to have some improper flags set. So levels near the boss portal are a bit broken, and completing a map might close up the platform for a different level, or re-open one, and can confuse the boss door which needs certain amount of levels to be done to open.

On the plus side, you don't have to do every level to access the boss, and every map enforces a pistol start so you can just warp to them to play them on their own.

On the third one, one of the maps has an exit flagged wrong so it doesn't actually lead back to the hub, and instead crashes the game.

So, that aside, I can at least say one of my favorite doom maps of all time comes from the second installment. It's called Valley, it's definitely a zdoom map, but it uses all the features in a correct way. Navigation is excellent, combat is spicy enough to be interesting without being bullshit, the music choice is great, and the level has a very pleasing techno-nature aesthetic. I honestly start a new game on DUMP 2 every once in a while to just play that level again.

Thanks for all the tips. I will get into DUMP series, now that I finished that terrible CIF3 wad yesterday (and I will rant a bit about it shortly) and I'm ready to start a new wad for ZDoom 2.8.1. To give a bit more info about my setups if anyone is wondering, I have a separate folder for each Doom source port with all IWADS and their respective wads (on both my PC and laptop, which I play like weekly on each) where I only have a single wad I play at a time, so I don't overwrite my saves from other wads by accident. In case of ZDoom folder, on my laptop I have the KDIZD mod and saves which I will finish next week, while on my PC I have finished that awful CIF3 wad and I will start another ZDoom wad soon in its place. I also have a clean backup cfg for ZDoom and GZDoom after I finish a mod that had its own key bindings (like CIF3 for example, which had bindings for Jetpack, Advance Dialogue, Mission Objective, etc) so to not interfere with the bindings in the wad I'm playing next and to also avoid "Unknown command" error messages. Yeah, I remember all this in past couple of years when I had a messy ZDoom installation.

You are right about Samsara and the changes they had to do for each character, even if most were rather minor. I'm aware of Duke having the Shrinker as 1-hit kill weapon and also the fact that the shrinking code is difficult to code (or used to be until newer versions), though the Shrinker could also be compared to the BFG9000 from Doom since it's also a 1-hit kill weapon if aimed correctly. I also remember someone made a Shrinker/Expander addon for Samsara and had working shrinking code for all enemies from Doom engine games (though it was rather buggy and didn't make it past WIP status), while I also remember a ZScript mod with Protector Drone (and other Duke3D enemies imported) that had shrinking code fully working (however it was weird and if someone was shrunk, its health was set to 1 in that state), I remember the latter working in newer 3.x versions of GZDoom, since ZScript was a newer addition. As for the other weapons which were easier to code like Freezethrower, yeah it uses the freezing code from Hexen, so it was easy to implement.

About the DUMP wads, I will start with first and then make notes about the second and third and those levels that can't be 100%'ed. Did you play the final release of the DUMP series? I just went to the project page at ZDoom forums and downloaded all 3 of them and only the third one is available only on Dropbox (both the main and the weapons pk3), otherwise I got the first two from idgames, although only the second DUMP was linked to idgames on that ZDoom page, while the first one was also available when I was checking idgames for wads. Additionally, since it was on same page, I grabbed two other ZDoom megawads (DST-T which I heard mostly negative things about it and Echelon, which is made by Sverre, the guy behind those difficult Master Levels) which have been on my to play list. I have a lot of stuff to play and still not sure when I will be able to play all of that.

Oh yeah and yesterday I finally finished that crappy CIF3 wad. I figured out what I was doing wrong, restarted the map by an earlier save game. I was supposed to press those switches in a certain order and THEN it unlocked the next room, then after pressing another switch and repeat until the level gets finished. I wasn't supposed to crouch through those bars, after I did that I got softlocked which is why I had to restart.

For the rest, a lot of boss battles (some were fine, others were frustrating), some lame jokes (but also some good ones as well), unbalanced gameplay with a lot of unfair/overpowered enemies that killed me so many times (I probably died like 200 or so times in the whole megawad, most of the deaths weren't even my fault) and required me to save scum because I was low on health and enemies did a shit ton of damage (and ZDoom's RNG was fucking dumb sometimes, where for example if I was at 13 HP and the next shot would ALWAYS do 40 damage every time I would reload the save game and get killed a few seconds later by same enemy, unless I collected health or used stimpack/medkit in inventory then the enemy attack would do different damage), I was also trying to avoid using my health supplies from inventory since they were limited (yes you lose your INVENTORY again after you defeat a boss, though this time you get to keep health, armor and weapons, just make sure to use the health and armor before level ends, since they aren't coming back) and if I did, I would have no more health/armor to get past a section, plus I was trying to have low health when I finish a scripted encounter because next room would contain a megasphere and if I used my health to save myself from the last enemy, I would just waste that precious health. It's funny because at beginning and halfway through the mod it's not that bad but it gets so frustrating later and just when you are having 50 or so medkits in inventory (there is no limit how many you can hold, it seems), then you lose all of them after a certain boss battle and it doesn't even explain how you lost them the second time around. Also I tried getting 100% in each level (though there are no stats screen, just automap stats, since the levels are played like a hub like Hexen and Strife), I think I got all secrets, I couldn't get all kills and items in all levels because sometimes there were enemies outside of level (only around 1-3 in certain levels, sometimes the scripted actors/marines would count as one and you can't kill them anyway) and as for items, not only a lot of stuff counts as items but also an enemy's grapple attacks inflates the item counter to thousands, I ended up in a level with around 300/88000 items collected. Yeah, it's ridiculous and reminds me how in an older version of AEOD mod, Makron (Quake 2 final boss) would fire the BFG ball that inflates the kill count to hundreds/thousands depending on the time the BFG ball stays in air.

Overall, Community is Falling 3 fucking sucked ass and it's one of the worst wads I've ever played. I don't recommend this trash. I only enjoyed the dialogue and drama between communities and maybe some ideas and how they were implemented (and level design was competent at times) but overall the gameplay and most custom sprites were awful! I would rate it 2/5 out of pity, mostly for the effort. I know it's a joke wad but I take serious offense with joke wads and their poor quality and no I don't think all joke wads are bad, I think there's decent joke wads that could make me laugh and appreciate the amount of work put into, I think the ones by Marphy Black are the best ones (the ones about the Revenant Problem, Revenant Bus, etc) because I watched them on YouTube years ago and found them actually funny.

Quote

I could be wrong but I was under the impression that every NUTS entry is basically a jokewad, and isn't actually meant to be taken seriously. It's bullshit because it was intended to be stupid because they just wanted to see how many monsters they could squeeze in.

That's true but I suppose I was a bit irritated a while ago by seeing people rating nuts wads a 5/5, while they only rate a few stars Memento Mori for example. The comparison isn't fair because MM is a full 32-level megawad (it's true it can be a mixed bag with some meh levels, though I haven't played MM in years and I was planning to do it in DOSBox this time and get the intended experience instead of the ZDoom with AEOD I did back in 2013), while nuts is a shitty poorly designed level that even crashes older ZDoom 1.22/1.23b33 (wonder why it was mentioned to run in ZDoom if it crashes the old versions that were available when the wad came out, or maybe the first nuts was meant to be played in BOOM/PrBoom?), even if intended to be a crappy joke wad, I don't find it fair to rate nuts a 5/5, I would only give it 1/5 because overall it sucks and I rate wads fairly in general. Nuts series are just lazily done overall, I will admit ONLY the third one was decent because I liked the music and the looks and it wasn't as lazily done as the previous two (plus I could complete nuts3 almost 100% with exception of those two chaingunners outside of level), though I liked the somewhat unrelated "Nuts 3 Arena" (by a different author) which is a pun on "Quake 3 Arena" and it features a giant box map with waves of monsters (zombiemen, imps and demons) teleporting in a wave that you have to defeat while you get health and ammo every couple of seconds. It requires an older version of ZDoom like up to 2.0.63a, because even 2.0.98 (and newer) the script is slightly broken and will only give you half ammo at times, making killing the demons (at third wave) very painful because you will run out of ammo and have to punch them while you wait to receive 10 bullets, 4 shells, 1 rocket and 20 cells every 30 seconds. This is why I try to use older versions of ZDoom to play older ZDoom wads and EVEN THEN when I use a version that is only a year after the wad came out, the wad is still broken. I kinda wish there was either a backwards compatibility or the authors re-releasing the wad at a later time. I know there's been a few wads getting re-released or fixed/updated once in a while but this is rare and it's best to play a wad when it gets released, so if it gets updated later, when you get to replay the wad, it will feel like a slightly different experience in a map that was changed/updated since the last time. Sadly in my case I tend to miss out on a lot when stuff gets initially released and because I keep saving stuff for later, I will miss out on the initial experience/version. This isn't always the case but I would still prefer to get the full experience, even if I playing the latest version of a project is always the best idea, maybe there are projects that had significant changes between versions or even overhauled over time.

Speaking of which, Memento Mori turned 25 today. I was waiting for a new addon to get added last week and heard nothing, it was a bit disappointing when I checked those topics at DW and saw nothing happening, so I'm guessing tomorrow is the day when the next wad gets added. Would have been nice for MM series (and Requiem) to be added as official wads or the DTWID series since they also had their anniversary these weeks (as I know Doom/Doom 2 v1.9 came in February 1995, DTWID and D2TWID both came in early 2012 and 2013 I think), though it's more likely we will see a more recent wad getting added and there's many potential candidates to be added. I wonder why they won't add more episode replacements because initially they added Double Impact (after adding Final Doom, NRFTL and SIGIL in one day in January 2020) and since then it's been only megawads getting added. Don't get me wrong, I am glad they are adding as many megawads as possible but once in a while some episodes getting added won't hurt, especially since it seems a new addon gets added once at every 1.5 or 2 months and I understand they need to contact all authors and test the wads before adding but they could have easily added a new wad monthly (instead of getting nothing in some months), mostly episode replacement or even single levels (if an author made multiple similar levels, combine them into an episode). I'm sure there's tons of cool stuff that could be added from the community and even older wads that still hold up nowadays with authors still being reachable. I don't know, I find it a bit strange. But maybe they have plans to add multiple addons sometime, we will just have to wait. I could be wrong because I'm not very good at guessing which addon gets added next and when exactly. I noticed the pattern (usually Tuesday or Thursday, at around 5-6 weeks), however when there seemed to be the perfect day to add an addon (like on Doom's anniversary on 10th December), nothing happened at all. Maybe all that wait could be because they are working on a new patch, maybe one day the Unity port will add Boom support next, opening gates for a lot more possibilities and high quality wads. Or maybe we should get Unity ports for Heretic and Hexen instead (and even one for Quake on its upcoming 25th anniversary), these games badly need an official remaster.

Quote

I just finished my own replay of DTWiD. I still hold that E2 is the weakest, but it's not as weak as I remember. That's because my most hated level, Depths, is actually an E3 level that I misremembered as being from episode 2. And having played it again, yeah, I still hate that level more than any other (outside of UDtWiD anyway). Horrible opening section with poor instruction, the most labyrinthine design far more egregious than anything in the vanilla game, inconsistent damaging floors, an absolute mess of visual theming, and generally awkward combat. How this got into the final project I have no idea. It doesn't look or play anything like an actual id level. I mean the fact that I had remembered it being in episode 2, because it looks way more like a hybrid base than actual Hell, is testament to that.

And it's funny since I've played two of its author's (Phobus) levels before: MAP20 from TNT:R, and MAP03 from DBP01. The former was pretty alright and I greatly enjoyed the latter. Not sure what happened when he did this one.

Yeah, I also found that level a bit weak and that start, as I mentioned in previous message, was expected only because when I finished watching the video for E3M5 and it autoplayed the next one (it was a playlist) and then as soon as I saw the player had to run, I was like "Ooh, I remember now!" and it made me remember how I may have died back then just for sitting at start of E3M6 (or maybe survived the explosion if I had enough health/armor, don't remember and haven't attempted doing now), probably the very definition of trial and error, that would most likely catch the players off-guard the first time. This time I made the right call of running as soon as the level started, although a barrel's explosion still managed somehow to catch me as soon as I dropped down, however since I had 200% health and like 160% or so armor when I began the level, the damage done wasn't too bad outside of seeing a red screen for a second or so and losing like 60 health & armor. I'm surprised I managed to conserve the blue armor for like 3 consecutive levels since there didn't seem one in E3M4 and E3M5. I'm a very resourceful player and like to pickup armor when I need it unless forced, however I also feel sometimes if blue armor is below 100% and I'm at end of level and there are still green armors available, I don't mind picking up one so I have 100% armor, it depends a lot of the next level but in case of Ultimate Doom E4 when I played it last time in 2018, I remember it helped me to pickup the only green armor in E4M5 because in E4M6 there is NO armor at all on UV skill and it helped last until beginning of E4M7, otherwise the remaining blue armor I still had in E4M5, would have been gone halfway in E4M6 and I would have to endure no armor damage which is very painful in both E4M6 and E4M7 (the beginning until you get supplies).

Quote

Odd. I've played quite a few of his levels, and he has a pretty good score with me. A lot of his maps, while not always my favorites, far more often than not I found to be on the challenging-but-fair side. MAP24 probably is one of my favorites out of TNT:R. I'll admit the amazing song has a bit to do with that, but I think the level stands fairly well on its own, too. Even from a pistol start I found it pretty fun to kill demons, and while there are plenty of traps, none of it ever felt insurmountable. He was also responsible for MAP31 of that campaign, which I also enjoyed. Not as much as its inspiration, Pharaoh (if you use the official patch, anyway), but still a really solid level. I also enjoyed Doom Core, which featured an actually good slaughtermap that counted more on your tactical skill than trial and error. Reverie, not as much but I could have just been burned out. Doom Core is quite long with really large levels and I tried to play Reverie right after.

There was also a single map I found from him called "An /idgames Troll Walks into a Bar" which, while having a rough start, I also found solidly designed.

While I was looking up the name of that last wad, I learned he also did a few levels for Interception, which was a contender for a rising favorite until MAP23 and MAP27 completely ruined it. Luckily, of all the maps he contributed those weren't his. I don't think his maps were my favorites but there was nothing I took particular offense to, either. For a doom megawad that's something where I take what I can get.

Maybe I just haven't played the right ones, maybe Reverie gets worse, or maybe he didn't contribute the dickery parts of Akeldama; I don't know, but in my experiences with his works, I've had him pegged as a pretty good, but not amazing, level designer.

Yeah, maybe I have been unlucky in those levels, while I managed to survive some really difficult levels (probably even harder than what valkiriforce designed). It could be that those dickish traps really got me unprepared or I have been in a bad situation or RNG rolled bad numbers for the attacks. It's difficult to say because my playthrough of Akeldama has been ALMOST 100% blind (with exception of taking a look at the doomwiki.org for level stats to see what enemies and items it contains, also for secrets even if the description didn't help me much, though PrBoom+ seems to also have secrets marked on automap by default, so certain ones were given away by the automap) and I had an occasional peak at an YouTube video to see what's ahead of me (only twice: once for end of MAP15 to see the secret exit and once for end of MAP18 because at first I wasn't sure if I could backtrack to get back the soulsphere and blue armor, yes you do backtrack in pretty much every level, I only remember two map starts not being reachable again in an earlier level and map 20).

I really need to play Doom Core, Reverie and Eternally Yours. There's also the whole Doom Core trilogy but that's ZDoom only for now, sadly (I wonder why no one thinks at Eternity compatibility? Eternity supports MAPINFO). I wonder if the Doom Core trilogy could be considered for being an official addon? As far as I know, they are all works by valkiriforce and contain original content (only REVERIE has original soundtrack, rest it uses from various sources). It would make history to have such a giant megawad (gigawad?) added as an addon. OK I can stop dreaming now. There also seems to be Doom Core Delta, a 10th anniversary edition of the original wad (maybe this updated version is included in the trilogy?).

I heard of that idgames troll walks into bar map, judging by title I thought it was a joke map, though I may have read its review at Onemandoom blog and considered to play it, never got around doing so. I also need to play TNT: Revilution (Chocolate Doom or PrBoom+, not decided) someday. Gotta love Pharaoh reference and how you mentioned about that patch. I wonder how they managed to have the yellow key flagged as multiplayer only in the initial release? There is the official (or unofficial? it's by TeamTNT themselves) fixed TNT31.wad which fixes two issues with the level, however there is also the officially fixed id anthology version (which I own) that has both the EXE and WAD modified for both TNT & Plutonia. That TNT MAP31 has the yellow key bug fixed but unfortunately the shotgun guy is still stuck and you can't get 100% kills, based on what I read before. I will have to play through Master Levels and Final Doom after all these years, I only remember playing through them once many years ago (when I had the Doom Collector's Edition with the unpatched iwads) in Chocolate Doom and don't remember how I got through TNT MAP31 without cheating, probably used a trick that a video showed with activating switches through those walls, when I had to look up what I was supposed to do. That means depending on your Final Doom version and whether you use the TNT31 patch or not, there are 4 possible outcomes of that level and can affect the demo playback if you recorded a demo on that level. I believe it was discovered in 2009 or so about the TNT MAP31 being fixed in certain versions and someone even created Final Doom patches to convert one version to the other, though these days I know the GOG version gives the patched versions, as well as the Unity ports and apparently newer versions of GZDoom (maybe even Doom Retro?) fix the map on the fly, so most people get the intended version with the yellow key. It was interesting years ago to watch videos of the unpatched TNT MAP31 where the yellow key was missing and one time I even watched someone playing through just the TNT31.wad in Doom 2, resulting in missing textures and the Wolfenstein music in background!

I remember Interception and how it was notoriously broken and rushed in its initial release, it had maps 19 & 29 impossible to complete without cheats or at least noclip through the problematic areas. There were two switches (that required red & blue keys) that wouldn't open the final door in MAP19, while in MAP29 there seemed to be a teleport linedef that keeps teleporting you back without being able to progress without either jumping on nearby ledge or simply noclip through that part. Since I was using ZDoom (and with AEOD mod) that time in 2013-2014 when I played through the wad, I didn't mind the game breaking bugs that much. Nowadays I take serious issue and wish it was fixed! It wasn't until late 2020 when the wad FINALLY got fixed! I will have to play Interception properly sometime in the future and then I will be able to correctly review it. I will probably still use PrBoom+ because the Doom 2 community projects, whether vanilla or not, often feature bigger maps and with higher monster counts. Like was the case with Akeldama which had some monster heavy maps and despite being vanilla compatible, almost no one considers or plays modern wads in original executable these days, likely due to the limits like the infamous save game limit. Even I who wants to get the intended experience, I would rather use Chocolate Doom or a similar classic port. I know there's various similar arguments in the Doom community, like with the term Boom compatible because it is more like PrBoom compatible (same goes to the rather ambiguous MBF compatible, more like Eternity or PrBoom+ compatible), after some people complained about not being able to run Eviternity in MBF in DOSBox or something like that. I really don't go that far to play modern wads in DOS executables (whether the vanilla exes, the BOOM 2.02 and MBF 2.03), they are reserved for the 90s wads and there is an exception every now and then like DOOM ZERO which was designed for the DOS version and even gives you the right tools included in the download. To give similar examples, I know Alien Vendetta has its own AV.EXE (a hacked DOOM2.EXE that changes the level names) even though AV has a few large levels that would crash the executable upon saving (this is something I will investigate soon and help document on the Doomwiki.org, to help those who want to play AV in DOSBox, I would one day, though on HMP skill, while reserving UV for when I play the wad in PrBoom+), meanwhile Plutonia 2 doesn't include an EXE file (and some levels would crash the executable upon saving anyway) and instead it gives instructions in readme text file for people to build their own hacked Final Doom executable. This means the wad is better played in Chocolate Doom instead, besides the fact that DEHACKED has issues with certain versions of Final Doom executables, according to what I read some time ago.

Quote

Ancient Aliens is probably the best place to start. If you want shining examples of complete asshole design, AA is the best showcase you can ever hope for. It doesn't get particularly slaughtery until near the end of the first episode, with it not being a "proper" slaughterwad until MAP15 and on. But I promise you it's still all asshole from MAP01 to the end.

But honestly, pick almost any wad that defines itself as a slaughterwad and you'll find an unfair one. It's very rare that you find one that isn't. They exist, and I'm not going to deny that (I just acknowledged one such above), but they're the exception rather than the rule.

Part of the problem is I think in the way they're built. In theory someone like me should adore slaughtermaps. Cramming a bunch of monsters into a tight space and resulting in Serious Sam levels of frantic fighting and trying to stay afloat amidst the tidal wave of bodies.

Unfortunately, most slaughtermaps are built with a super specific route you have to take in order to win. You have to go in a certain direction and grab this weapon first, then clear out this area to grab this powerup, etc. Problem is, of course, that you don't know where anything is when you first play or even that such things exist. They demand you die over and over until you learn the route the mapper had in mind, which is never obvious. You can only find it through trial-and-error, and as has been stated thousands of times, I really can't stand that sort of level design unless it's handled very delicately.

Thanks for the list, I will see when I will get into slaughtermaps. I also like the idea of killing a bunch of monsters at same time but I really dislike those slaughtermaps that are unforgiving, require a lot of luck and certain strategies to win the battles (referred as combat puzzles), those I just can't stand even if I can probably finish them without too much trouble if I get the correct strategy, I'm just not a fan of these brutal/frustrating Doom maps because the author had to be a dick about it, I believe the worst offenders are probably the maps created by Ribbiks (Stardate, SWTW, etc) which I will have to get into. Even older wads suffered from it, I know the CHORD series are guilty of this, I remember getting frustrated at two of these wads when I played years ago, they were short but very difficult. I may replay them in the following days when I get to start playing some 90s wads, mostly in DOSBox and I will see how this will go.

I don't have much time left to write my thoughts on the rest of the choices you listed (there are some good choices, though I have yet to play wads like BTSX, D2INO, Going Down, etc) and my message turned out a lot longer than what I wanted to write originally, so let me finish by commenting on the UDTWID since I will start it soon (probably next week, after I finish Akeldama) and it will be a blind playthrough:

Quote

On that note I would like to take a moment to note just how abysmal E4M4 is. It's another contender for one of the worst doom maps I've ever played. If we're talking trial and error, no level type fits that more than one that is 90% damaging floor. It's to such a degree that I would find it incredibly difficult to believe that even people who do abuse quicksaves would not get annoyed and frustrated. We're talking a level where the first thing you have to do is jump into lava while being attacked from all sides. There are only a few places you can actually reach, radsuits are at a premium, you are given no indication of where you're actually supposed to do or what to do, which normally isn't the worst thing. Normally. When you can walk on solid ground and try and figure out how the level works.

Obviously that does not apply here. No direction, no indication of any sort on how the level and the lava landings fit together, teleporters that may as well be instant death considering it teleports you right in front of a spiderdemon, when you're presumably low on health, munitions, and taken by surprise for just stumbling into it because for some awful reason there are multiple teleporters that go to the same spot, and you will never know which one goes where.

I know there were levels like Against Thee Wickedly and Perfect Hatred in the original episode, but even in those cases the branching paths were very short so it was still at least somewhat clear what order you had to do things in. You had enough time and space to link things together with your limited radsuit. But that's not the case in this utterly atrocious, horrid, wretched, and garbage excuse for a level. Once again I must wonder how such trash made it into a project like DTWiD.

Addendum: E4M8 is even worse.

Thanks for letting me know about these, looks like I will be hating E4M4 and E4M8. Though since I will be playing continuous, I suppose they will not be as bad as pistol starting them, right?

Now that I think about it, what's your opinion on Ultimate Doom E4M2 & E4M6? Do you think Romero went a bit overboard with the difficulty in these two levels or you think they are fine? Personally I always thought Perfect Hatred is overrated, I see a lot of people praising that level but for me it always gave me frustration. It also didn't help last time I played it in 2018 in DOSBox with keyboard controls only (and the laptop's controls are shitty too), it only limited me in dodging projectiles and made the level a LOT more annoying that it is, even when I KNEW what was coming at me, I just couldn't figure out to handle the encounters better, it's one dickish trap after another and too many goddamn barons and cacodemons. Then again, back in 2012 when I played it in Chocolate Doom (with mouse and keyboard at that time) for first time, it was almost a blind playthrough and was even worse, requiring me to save scum and even restart the EPISODE from beginning (after restarting with pistol, then reaching that cave with only 1% health and noticing I no longer had the chaingun because I lost it) and having to go through E4M1, although interesting how back then I don't remember E4M1 giving me so much trouble, while last time I had a lot of trouble with the red key trap and killing the barons, despite having around 90% health when I reached that part. The difference being back then I only wanted to reach the end of level, I never realized there was that bullshit NIN secret with the 4-5 barons!!!

I also remember having trouble with E4M6 and E4M7 back then, the latter is surprising because it doesn't seem a difficult level, just the cheap traps like those slow crushers which got me once in last playthrough and the zombies at start actually being a problem for a nearly dead player like it was my case back then in 2012. I could also say that I have gotten a lot better all over the years but it still doesn't explain why E4M2 is still difficult for me and requires save-scumming to pass it. I will give a proper pistol start playthrough for Ultimate Doom and Doom 2 soon and I will be able to say my thoughts about each level, because every level past the first will be a different experience than the usual starting with the stuff from previous level. In fact, I was going to go a further step and do UV -fast as level, although I would reserve the latter for PrBoom+ to accommodate for the better controls and stuff.

Outside of that, the levels themselves are very memorable and I really like their design (and it reminds me I should really do the remaining levels of SIGIL, having started it two months ago and getting to E5M2 and stopping) but I'm just not a fan of the punishing gameplay in general that some levels employ (many levels by the Doom community fall into this category), I was never a very patient person and that's also why I prefer saving often, even if most of the time I'm doing well in most levels, I don't feel like redoing the same thing over and over when I die (and in case of very difficult levels that kill me many times, I just spam SAVE/LOAD after clearing hard parts). Plus, it feels like Thy Flesh Consumed was rushed and the maps were put in a random order and some weird design choices. I always felt like it could have benefited from having a SSG and maybe some Doom 2 enemies imported instead of abusing barons, they could have used hell knights in some places. I know PSX Doom (I think?) sort of did this but I never played PSX Doom before and I could be wrong about some of the information which I read somewhere about the Doom 2 monsters and SSG being added to some Ultimate Doom levels. I still wish at the very least Ultimate Doom TFC added Doom 2 stuff into some of its levels.

[Ninety-Six]

RunningDuke, on 10 February 2021 - 02:36 AM, said:

Did you play the final release of the DUMP series? I just went to the project page at ZDoom forums and downloaded all 3 of them and only the third one is available only on Dropbox (both the main and the weapons pk3)

For all intents and purposes that is the final release of DUMP3. Terminus bailed on the project after its initial release and so the fixes never came.

RunningDuke, on 10 February 2021 - 02:36 AM, said:

That's true but I suppose I was a bit irritated a while ago by seeing people rating nuts wads a 5/5, while they only rate a few stars Memento Mori for example.

Yeah, and while that's kinda dumb, that's not really the fault of Nuts themselves. Just like with doomworld, I learned long ago to not pay any attention to the review scores on idgames. I've seen fantastic maps get rated 1 star and garbage get rated 5. Best to just not even look at the reviews and take the wads for what they are, regardless of idgames opinion.

RunningDuke, on 10 February 2021 - 02:36 AM, said:

Would have been nice for MM series (and Requiem) to be added as official wads or the DTWID series since they also had their anniversary these weeks (as I know Doom/Doom 2 v1.9 came in February 1995, DTWID and D2TWID both came in early 2012 and 2013 I think), though it's more likely we will see a more recent wad getting added

More than likely. Several people for MM and REQ are dead I believe. STRAIN would be also cool but given its age its participants are also likely either deceased or long out of contact. Though I'd even settle for the soundtracks since those are all amazing (especially Mark Klem's work. I've become a bit of a fanboy for his music after playing these four). The musicians are still around too, I believe. There was that Requiem Reimagined soundtrack a couple of years ago made by the composers themselves, and I know for a fact that Klem is still active on his youtube channel and posting comments on uploads of his older songs.

RunningDuke, on 10 February 2021 - 02:36 AM, said:

I also need to play TNT: Revilution (Chocolate Doom or PrBoom+, not decided) someday.

There are several noted visplane crashes in Dos/Chocolate on certain maps if an archvile flames you in the right way.

RunningDuke, on 10 February 2021 - 02:36 AM, said:

I remember Interception and how it was notoriously broken and rushed in its initial release, it had maps 19 & 29 impossible to complete without cheats or at least noclip through the problematic areas. There were two switches (that required red & blue keys) that wouldn't open the final door in MAP19, while in MAP29 there seemed to be a teleport linedef that keeps teleporting you back without being able to progress without either jumping on nearby ledge or simply noclip through that part. Since I was using ZDoom (and with AEOD mod) that time in 2013-2014 when I played through the wad, I didn't mind the game breaking bugs that much. Nowadays I take serious issue and wish it was fixed! It wasn't until late 2020 when the wad FINALLY got fixed!

Yeah it was fixed and updated to coincide with the release of its sequel. I remember that bug and while it was annoying, the bar for megawads I don't hate is so tragically low that I just accepted it. Again, until MAP23 came along and pissed all over the experience.

RunningDuke, on 10 February 2021 - 02:36 AM, said:

Thanks for the list, I will see when I will get into slaughtermaps. I also like the idea of killing a bunch of monsters at same time but I really dislike those slaughtermaps that are unforgiving, require a lot of luck and certain strategies to win the battles (referred as combat puzzles), those I just can't stand even if I can probably finish them without too much trouble if I get the correct strategy, I'm just not a fan of these brutal/frustrating Doom maps because the author had to be a dick about it, I believe the worst offenders are probably the maps created by Ribbiks (Stardate, SWTW, etc) which I will have to get into. Even older wads suffered from it, I know the CHORD series are guilty of this, I remember getting frustrated at two of these wads when I played years ago, they were short but very difficult. I may replay them in the following days when I get to start playing some 90s wads, mostly in DOSBox and I will see how this will go.

I've heard them referred to as such before as well and I object to the use of the term puzzle because there's no real "solving" to be done. It's just ramming your head against a wall over and over until you find the one singular loose brick among thousands. And yeah Ribbiks is pretty bad at it. Though I think Skillsaw might be a bit worse. He used to be a good mapper, with hard but fair traps, but somewhere along the way he fell to the dark side and now abuses players even without the need of a slaughter setting to do it. That example of crossing a linedef into a horde of revenants that kill you unless you had the plasma gun or BFG pre-armed? That's his favorite trick.

RunningDuke, on 10 February 2021 - 02:36 AM, said:

Thanks for letting me know about these, looks like I will be hating E4M4 and E4M8. Though since I will be playing continuous, I suppose they will not be as bad as pistol starting them, right?

Not really. I forewent my pistol start enforcement rule for this, relying on zdoom's autosaves instead. And when I got to this trash pile I relied on my own quicksaves. The problem with both maps isn't even bullshit traps (though M8 certainly has its fair share). The problem is there is an exact route that needs to be followed, and any divergence intentional or not will end with you dead. M4 is mostly lava. Since radsuits are rare and their lifespan limited, you can't afford to waste them. But again, since you have no idea where you're supposed to go it is inevitable that you will waste them by going the wrong way first. There are so many options and only one of them is correct.

It was so bad I had to load up this trash heap in no monsters mode and warp to the level, just to figure out what I was supposed to actually do. I also needed to have god mode on because of the lava everywhere. I had to memorize the route before I could complete the level for real.

It shouldn't need to be said but levels that are 90% damaging floor are also horrific to go secret hunting in. I don't know if you would consider using -nomonsters for the sole sake of memorizing the level before you play it as cheating, but if not I strongly urge you to do so for both this and M8.


And yes I had to do that for M8 too. Unfortunately M8 is so awfully designed that not even that was good enough. M8 thankfully doesn't have a massive damaging floor. No instead it has cyberdemons on tight narrow walkways that you also need to be on. That also randomly teleport. Once again if you don't know exactly where to go from the start, you are going to get splattered over and over and over and over and over because you're running around not having a single solitary clue regarding what you're supposed to be doing. Also about 33% of the map takes place in near pitch-black conditions because of course it does.

If you do try using no-monsters on M8, be warned about tag 666. Like in the original E4M8, the spiderdemon's death triggers an event. Since I play in zdoom I was able to spawn one in and kill it instantly with the mdk command, so it could be triggered.

Of course, considering I still barely had any idea what I was doing even on no-monsters mode, doing all this might not even be helpful. The level is just that poorly designed.


The worst part is, the level is an aesthetic send-up to the late Dr. Sleep's maps (original E4M7, the Inferno series, etc.). And while that part is nailed, the gameplay doesn't come anywhere near close. I actually really enjoy the Inferno series, the first two entries I always play alongside his Master Levels. I totally understand why id hired him. But his levels, even when they got hard (Vesperas), rarely were bullshit, and they certainly weren't massive sprawlers that were nigh-impossible to figure out. His playstyle was always fairly simple and straightforward, but in a good way. That this dumpster fire of a map is the closest thing to Lethe we'll ever see is proof that there is no God as far as I'm concerned.


I admit that's probably a bit harsh, but I just really don't like this level. The rest of UDTWiD is mostly fine, about on par with Sigil I'd say in terms of difficulty, and the maps are usually not bullshit. Usually. There are a few rough spots here and there but what do you expect from a fan-made send-up to Thy Flesh Consumed. It's just M4 and M8 are really poorly designed and stand out like a stubbed toe. Even past the bullshit, navigation and conveyance are basically nonexistent.

RunningDuke, on 10 February 2021 - 02:36 AM, said:

Now that I think about it, what's your opinion on Ultimate Doom E4M2 & E4M6? Do you think Romero went a bit overboard with the difficulty in these two levels or you think they are fine? Personally I always thought Perfect Hatred is overrated, I see a lot of people praising that level but for me it always gave me frustration.

Funny, I usually see it touted as the worst, but then again I don't read a lot of doomers' opinions on it. Because I like staying sane.

Personally I think it's fine. Just fine. You can definitely tell it was made in six hours. I can do it saveless well enough nowadays. I have a similar opinion of E4M6.


To go into detail, I don't think there's anything in either map that's particularly worse than any of his other maps. The problems are the aforementioned difficulties in knowing what to do at first (but is mitigated by how short the non-critical paths are like I mentioned), not knowing the cyberdemon can be telefragged before you try to kill it traditionally, not knowing how the telport pad in E4M6 works at first, and then probably the worst part, coming right after Hell Beneath (for PH at least).

The first few problems are kind of common in his maps, even up to Sigil. Pistol start-wise Romero has always had a similar problem to what I said about most slaughtermaps. There's only one correct path that you just won't know at first (Difference is you can still survive the wrong choices in Romero's maps ~95% of the time. It'll just be kinda miserable).

The last one is more a problem of the whole episode itself. Neither Hell Beneath nor Perfect Hatred had any business being the first two levels. It's especially bad in regards to Hell Beneath and its total absence of healing and five barons on narrow catwalks with virtually no ammo to deal with them. Most of the time, you're going to end the level half-dead and almost out of ammo, basically worse off than if you just pistol started.

Self-plug but I did release a minimod some years back that reorders Thy Flesh Consumed into something a bit less schizophrenic. Unfortunately it only works in source ports with MAPINFO support (and with the first release only working in Z-family ports due to me not knowing the syntax for other mapinfo-compatible ports), so you probably wouldn't be interested.

[ReaperAA]

I would love to see DTWID and D2TWID added to the list of official addons. I suppose UDTWID would be okay too but I didn't like it much personally (not just because of the terrible E4M4).

When it comes to the classic 90's wads, I would like to see the Darkening E1 and E2 added. Both are very well made wads of the time.

[the_raven]

Hey guys, did you hear? A dude on youtube remade Doom2 in cardboard!
UGH! Just follow this link, I can't embed the video for some reason.

[Ninety-Six]

ReaperAA, on 11 February 2021 - 08:35 AM, said:

When it comes to the classic 90's wads, I would like to see the Darkening E1 and E2 added. Both are very well made wads of the time.

There are honestly quite a few 90s wads that, some personal gripes of mine aside, I wouldn't mind seeing resurrected in official form. They may not really look as clean as modern wads, but I'd argue a lot of the ones that are still remembered are worth playing at least once. Even Hell Revealed, as baron-happy as it is, I think is something that should be at least tried once. Of course the ROTT music would need to be switched out but using the normal Doom 2 music would work just fine. It's historically significant. And while I haven't gotten to Alien Vendetta yet to have an opinion, even I can't deny that it, too, has historical significance.


Maybe I'm looking at this too much from a historical intrigue perspective, I don't know. I respect why they are electing to not select wads that the creators aren't (or even can't, in the worst cases) be around to approve, and I probably agree with it too. That doesn't mean I can't lament this entire chapter of history being neglected, though, even if I acknowledge that there isn't much that can be done about it.

[NNC]

The more wads they add to the official list, the more their actual value (or the value of officiality) declines. I'm clearly not happy what Bethesda is doing now, IMHO very few wads deserve the status of officiality, in fact, I even argue if TNT Evilution or Master Levels deserve such status. IMHO only base Doom 1, base Doom 2, Plutonia, NRFTL and Sigil deserve the credit now. The rest are fine here and there, some of them are enjoyable, but they don't tick all the boxes of this rank. Modified palettes, weird eye-raping textures that don't belong to the game's canon, hodge podge episodes with mutliple authors and heavily fluctuationg quality, inferior redesigns of episode 1 and other remakes, no proper design narratives, stolen/ripped elements of other games... these are all big NO imho. That doesn't mean you can't play them, you clearly can, but why do they call them official? And even if you think Double Impact is commercial in its quality for example (which it clearly isn't), adding one extra wad every month to the catalog just doesn't make any sense.

[Ninety-Six]

Even if I'm really not a fan of the Master Levels outside of like 5 of them, I still think they should be included alongside TNT, if for no other reason than they were id-sanctioned commercial products and their absence would feel like a slap in the face to those who paid for it. [s](Plus I don't think TNT is that bad. It's pretty clear id did do some work on it after it was picked up)

[ReaperAA]

The Watchtower, on 17 February 2021 - 04:33 AM, said:

The more wads they add to the official list, the more their actual value (or the value of officiality) declines. I'm clearly not happy what Bethesda is doing now, IMHO very few wads deserve the status of officiality, in fact, I even argue if TNT Evilution or Master Levels deserve such status. IMHO only base Doom 1, base Doom 2, Plutonia, NRFTL and Sigil deserve the credit now. The rest are fine here and there, some of them are enjoyable, but they don't tick all the boxes of this rank. Modified palettes, weird eye-raping textures that don't belong to the game's canon, hodge podge episodes with mutliple authors and heavily fluctuationg quality, inferior redesigns of episode 1 and other remakes, no proper design narratives, stolen/ripped elements of other games... these are all big NO imho. That doesn't mean you can't play them, you clearly can, but why do they call them official? And even if you think Double Impact is commercial in its quality for example (which it clearly isn't), adding one extra wad every month to the catalog just doesn't make any sense.

To be fair, while the "value" of officiality decreases with more wads added, having more wads allow console-only players to enjoy more Doom content. So I don't see much wrong in what Bethesda / id are doing right now.

Also not including Evilution and Master Levels would be a terrible decision. Now I admit that I am personally not a huge fan of Evilution and Master Levels either, but as Ninety-Six mentioned, they were id-sanctioned commercial wads and not having them would piss off a lot of people.

It's kinda like how people were disappointed when Duke Nukem:20th Anniversary version didn't include Duke Caribbean, Duke it out in DC and Nuclear Winter.

[MrFlibble]

The Watchtower, on 17 February 2021 - 04:33 AM, said:

That doesn't mean you can't play them, you clearly can, but why do they call them official?

I believe it's more about giving official recognition to the community effort. The difference between these newly added WADs and the original third-party commercial add-ons is that the latter likely had more stringent quality control during production. It's not like an expanded catalogue of community WADs makes them all canon or something.

In fact, I think that to not recognise the Doom community WAD making phenomenon at this point would be an oversight on the part of the franchise owners.

[NNC]

I'm wondering if the same can be done with Duke content. Blood has Death Wish, a mod that is clearly superior to anything in the official release despite keeping the original art, code, gameplay, etc. intact. Duke is a bit trickier, most of our best episodes are total conversions with massive changes to the original code.