[NightFright]

I really wished for a Duke addon with the quality level of Death Wish. Duke Wish, so to speak.

[FistMarine]

It's been a while since I last posted and as there's been new posts almost every day, I should reply to everything that has been said, now that I finally finished SIGIL last Friday, as well as being halfway through UDTWID E4 and almost finished with KDIZD:

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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.

Ah, I see. I hope to enjoy the projects even with the bugs that still exist in the final version. I will also take your word on the second and third DUMP series, so I can make separate saves for those cases.

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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.

I mean, I don't always look at ratings and decide if a wad is good or bad depending of the amount of stars, just having a first impression of the wad, because people are more likely to check a wad highly rated first. As you said, there's been some decent wads getting rated 1-2 stars, while garbage like nuts is rated 5 stars by "shitposters". Heck, even high quality megawads would sometimes get rated 3-4 stars or less. Yet in some cases utter garbage like nuts, sky may be, etc are highly rated as of lately, even if they have like 3.5 stars on average. It's higher than those decent wads I've seen with an average of 3 or 2.5 stars. Not fair at all when you think about it. Idgames archive hasn't been active since a couple of years when it was closed and it's sad that the last couple of voted wads (that appear on first page since then) are some of the worst wads ever made, as well as that overrated trash Chosen TC (the awful Egyptian ZDoom TC), which gives them undeserved attention. The new reviews and votes are done through Doomworld's new downloads page, so if I wanted to review a wad (since I made a DW account last year, though never posted anything yet), I would have to use that modern system.

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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.

Agreed on the soundtracks. STRAIN would also be an interesting choice as you said but I thought that the classics (MM, MM2, REQUIEM) should definitely be added, at the very least Requiem because I'm pretty sure most (if not all?) authors are still alive, it's just probably one or two missing and it's sad they can't add one of the best 90s megawads because of these bullshit restrictions, it really pains me because MM, MM2 and REQUIEM are the holy trinity of the 90s classic megawads, probably they are all much better than TNT: Evilution. I know there's also Icarus: Alien Vanguard and Hell Revealed, as well as a couple others like Eternal DOOM, STRAIN and so on, however I think those 3 classics (MM, MM2, REQ) are the ones that deserve to be included and IMO were more influential than the other 90s ones, though I'd guess HR was also very influential, maybe not as much as Plutonia.

I also wonder the wads by The Innocent Crew (Slaughter Until Death, The Evil Unleashed, Obituary) if they can be considered, as it looks like TIC's website is still up (it was last updated in 2013 I believe, when they celebrated Doom's 20th anniversary) and the authors may still be around, they also contributed to the Memento Mori series. Really, the Doomworld community should try their best to contact old authors for their permission if these wads can be included, the old mappers do come back from time to time (as has also been the case with our Duke4.net community, when some older mappers came back and release new Duke3D maps) and now would be the perfect time to give the OK for wads to get officialized. Otherwise, we can only rely on newer wads, which while is nice, I honestly wish the next time a new addon gets added, it happens to be an older wad from 2000s or earlier.

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

In that case, I guess I will use PrBoom+ instead of Chocolate, at the very least for the first playthrough so I don't have to deal with the random crashes and similar stuff, which is why I opted for using PrBoom+ when playing Akeldama. I wouldn't have used DOS executables for most newer wads anyway due to requiring DEHACKED tools to merge the deh patch into the game (most mods just give a separate deh for loading into chocolate doom since it has built in support, rest source ports simply allow loading the dehacked lump directly from the wad, meaning in those cases simply loading the wad is enough), plus the vanilla limitations I can't stand, such as the save game limit, which I always disable in Chocolate. I only use DOSBox for original Doom IWADS, Master Levels, 90s wads and occasionally more recent releases like Wonderful Doom (Ultimate Doom megawad that imitates original levels, sort of precursor to DTWID) and Doom Zero, which includes a hacked executable to load the mod directly in DOSBox. Yeah I had Doom Zero installed since mid December and haven't got around playing it yet.

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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.

With all that said, I still hope eventually to properly play through Interception this time, I will probably do the same as with above (Akeldama, TNT Revilution, BTSX series, etc), play in PrBoom+ first because I noticed in general, the newer Doom 2 megawads often ignore the vanilla limitations and go above and beyond the restrictions like maps containing hundreds of monsters present in some levels and also not taking into account the save game limit, the latter isn't an issue in Chocolate Doom thankfully but I do find weird because if a project is labelled as vanilla compatible and it's not fully vanilla compatible, I suppose it's the same thing with projects labeled as boom compatible when in reality they are PrBoom compatible and such. In other words, it's best to use a source port that is both modern and vanilla at same time, such as Crispy or PrBoom+ to get the best experience. I feel like ZDoom family ports deviate too much from the vanilla Doom experience but that's just my opinion.

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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.

Exactly! I am amazed that Skillsaw changed a lot over the years, I used to think his maps were hard and fair, I guess judging by what I've seen on YouTube on wads Lunatic and Vanguard, before he made Valiant and Ancient Aliens. If he plans one day to make a new similarly colorful megawad that is hard as hell and has excellent design, then I will be curious how it will turn out, difficulty-wise. At the moment I'm considering to go through the wads he made so far (in Eternity Engine, as it's the recommended choice) and then I will finally be able to judge the "bullshit" difficulty of AA and similar stuff, instead of reading comments by others and watching YouTube videos. Maybe there's a chance I can handle all this stuff myself, maybe with some help of YouTube videos in some harder spots, so that those bullshit traps with teleporting into a horde of revenants will be possible to clear without too much trouble. Then again, I save game often (on at least 2-3 slots on same level) and also have above average skills when dealing with many situations, so it looks like I handle stuff just fine according to stuff I played so far. If I happen to die, I just reload the save and try again and then move on...

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Stuff about UDTWID

Interesting, thanks for letting me know. I read the message a few times before I got into the map and watched an YouTube video (I watched the playthrough by Zdenda, who has been very helpful with getting 100% in every level, he played in GLBoom+, though I personally don't like GLBoom+, the outdated OpenGL renderer of PrBoom+ is really ugly, so I only play PrBoom+ in software mode when I use it) so I can familiarize with the map before I continued since I had reached that level and needed to make sure to watch the video. I managed to eventually get past E4M4 of UDTWID, it wasn't as bad as I thought it will be, still died about 5 times but I feel proud of completing this map and I will tell some details below when I analyze each map I finished last week. I still appreciate letting me know what to expect, I just wish I wasn't so behind with all these wads, I'm sure there are lots of gems I missed and while UDTWID has been mostly okay, I actually enjoyed some levels MORE than the actual TFC episode from original Ultimate Doom! No joke!

I haven't reached E4M8 yet so I can't judge but by description it sounds it is a lot worse. If I died 5 times in E4M4, that means I will die 10 times in E4M8? Who knows?

Funny that you mentioned Dr. Sleep's levels from Ultimate Doom and Master Levels (especially Vesperas), I always thought Vesperas was bullshit because the first time I played it back in 2013, I died a lot of times as I didn't found that secret stash at beginning (the armor, soul sphere, extra ammo, etc) and I was running out of ammo and health quickly and thought the map was fucking bullshit. I still haven't played Master Levels in many years, they are sitting installed on my hard drive. I will still want to go through them in DOSBox (in previous time it was Chocolate Doom). But yeah, as a tribute map to the unreleased Lethe, that map sure sounds disappointing, I think it was made by Xaser because I kept reading that he made that map and he made a lot of interesting wads. He also made that infamous The Lost Episode - Evil Unleashed (unofficial E5) back in 2009 or so, I remember playing through it once or twice many years ago (in ZDoom and GZDoom probably) and I am going to do it in Eternity this time.

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Stuff about Ultimate Doom

Don't know what I'm doing wrong but I remember from my times playing Perfect Hatred, I seem to be low on health most of the time throughout the level and have a lot of trouble with the cacodemon swarm at start (unless I saved the rockets from E4M1, which is unlikely as I mostly had to spend them to kill those fucking barons from NIN secret), those barons everywhere, that cave room with the spectres and cacodemons, the lost souls that get unleashed halfway through map (when I'm with like 10-20% health left) and the list continues. The Cyberdemon is the least threatening funnily enough because I know to telefrag it and save my ammo, it's only everything bad until that part, after that I have enough health and BFG to deal with the remaining monsters, such as the cacodemons in the normal exit room.

I also admit I don't go into pit at start to grab soulsphere as the infinite height from cacodemons would screw me anyway (not a problem with ZDoom players, which sorry to say but it annoys me seeing players doing fine on YouTube, yet most of them are using ZDoom to play this map) but after I clean that room, I get the radiation suit and the extra shotgun shell boxes so I can have enough ammo to deal with the enemies in the next rooms. Still prefer to save the soulsphere (and the secret blue armor) so I finish with 200% both for next maps...
Oh and about the BFG grab trick, which some people do to make the map a lot easier, I don't do that either, I like to play fairly and feel like this map is too much for me without savescumming, it is truly one of the hardest Doom maps I've ever played and I always hated it, no matter what people said, I simply hate it with a passion. It's very poorly balanced. As you said, it wouldn't have been bad if it had been placed later in the episode. And whether you play continuous or pistol starting it, let me tell you what I learned about it back in 2018.

Even if you think that starting E4M2 with low health and little ammo is worse than pistol starting it, there is a slight advantage playing continuously, in that you should still have at least 60-70% green armor remaining from E4M1 and with the two medkits available at start of E4M2, meaning with around 75% health and 75% armor, you should at least have a slight protection against attacks that would screw you badly if you were to pistol start it. There are also some armor bonuses available at start but until you get the green armor halfway through map (and there are two green armors placed close to each other, for some dumb reason) or the blue armor from secret place, you will have to endure a lot of deadly enemies and their deadly attacks. Just having 100 health and little to no armor, won't save from eating a few caco and baron balls (that you couldn't dodge in the small space) unless you are very lucky to get low RNG each time.
Every time I played this map, most enemies rolled high numbers damage with their attacks (very rarely a baron fireball rolled a low 8 damage, which even then could be bad for someone at like 20% health if needed to get past a certain part with unavoidable damage), which explains why I died often and was in poor health condition throughout the whole map. It's awfully balanced it and I hated it, I know it was done in 6 hours, still it's not an excuse for such a tragic waste of map. It's a shame because I enjoyed the design and his E1 and SIGIL levels, why his E4 levels are so strangely designed (though E4M6 is better, except for the lack of armor on UV skill)

I actually had an episode 4 order myself as well a while ago (don't think I still have the text document about my preferred E4 order, I recall I sorted and put McGee's levels as first two, meaning E4M1 stays the same and E4M4 becomes E4M2, while Romero's levels were put behind boss map, meaning E4M6 moved to E4M7 and E4M2 to E4M6 slot, don't remember the order of rest levels) and yeah it's very easy to do a ZDoom mod to re-order the episode maps and to add SSG and D2 enemies into Ultimate Doom, I just prefer to not do that because no matter how I will do it and what gameplay changes I choose to do (like adding the SSG), the experience will already be different with ZDoom's various changes to vanilla Doom gameplay, as well as my preference to use mouselook, jumping and crouching in Z-family ports. I simply can't stand playing ZDoom without mouselook and without jumping/crouching, though I admit I try to minimize jumping & crouching for maps that didn't have them intended, however it is tempting to jump on damaging floors to avoid the damage, especially in a situation when I'm low on health. If the plan is only changing the level order, there is also the possibility to do an EMAPINFO for Eternity Engine which has relatively close vanilla gameplay, although for some reason it seems to start in Boom compatibility by default, which explains why I got stuck in Double Impact E1M8 and had to restart the level in vanilla mode, as well as the fact I can select the Fist when I have Chainsaw, while in vanilla Doom this isn't possible until you collect the Berserk pack.

Of course, all that talking about E4 is based on my memory and what was almost 3 years ago, I seriously need to pistol start EVERY level in Ultimate Doom and Doom 2 to judge each level fairly.

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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.

I also think DTWID (merged with UDTWID) and D2TWID should definitely be added at some point. No idea who is unreachable at the moment but if they have most people reachable, there is no reason to exclude the megawad from being added just because of a single missing author. Funnily enough, I also had The Darkening E1 & E2 in mind when I wrote the previous message but it seems like there's always an author unreachable or something. Looking at who created each map of these wads on Doomwiki.org, it is the same situation I noticed with many older popular wads, I recognize most authors and that they all should be reachable and still active in the community but it looks like there is always at least one or two unreachable authors that were involved in the said wad, preventing it from getting added, which is just bullshit in my opinion. All these classics should be added, as they all have original content and deserve to become official and make them more known to a wider audience.
D2TWID would especially be an interesting inclusion because of the Commander Keen themed secret levels and that also means another Doom 2 megawad that includes the Dopefish, the other being the recent Doom Zero which also contains Dopefish enemies.

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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.

Interesting! I've seen a bit of that video recently. I watched the "made in cardboard" series (especially the classic FPS ones) a couple years ago and it was very well made, sure there were a few inaccuracies like the status bar not changing sometimes in some scenes but it was very well made. My favorite was probably the Duke3D one based on what I remember in past. Damn, I must watch the videos again.

Since I probably reached the maximum number of quotes, I will reply to each subsequent post in a different manner:

Regarding the official addons, I understand The Watchtower doesn't like the idea but I have to agree with everyone else who supports the addons idea, I believe there are many community works that should be acknowledged and deserve to be part of the official canon. While I can't say they handled the best way possible (like the amount of time it takes to add an addon, the fact most addons are for both games instead of the intended game and the rather strict requirements of a wad to get added), their effort is still highly appreciated. No one did anything similar previously when comes to previous Doom re-releases, so it was nice to have these re-releases getting QOL improvements and these addons as bonus. I think every addon added so far was of high quality, although I haven't played through all the addons yet, I'm just judging by what I've seen on YouTube and I think every wad was of solid quality.
There wasn't any random community project being added because to be honest, most community projects are a mixed bag. I'm also not a huge fan of Master Levels and TNT: Evilution, however both were community projects that were picked up by id (yeah I know the story behind Master Levels and that they are just 20 separate wads by various authors, I still consider them community works) and they still deserve to be included. I wonder why they aren't adding Perdition's Gate and Hell to Pay. At least their demo versions that only contain like 10-15 levels.

Regarding why Duke3D doesn't have a high quality vanilla compatible mod made with vanilla assets, I am also puzzled by this and why no one made a classic Duke3D mod of such high quality. Maybe it is possible to contact the author behind Blood: Death Wish and ask him to create levels for Duke3D as well? I imagine he could make some great Duke3D levels as well!

Now it's the time to talk about the Doom stuff I played and finished. I finally 100% finished SIGIL v1.21 on UV skill in Eternity Engine 4.00.00! It was pretty good, despite some questionable design choices! I only died 3 times in total (one time it wasn't my fault at all) and I will get to explanations shortly. I admit I had to watch some YouTube videos before I played, just so I would know to get everything 100% in each level and deal with the enemies in certain rooms. I regret not playing this years ago when it first came out and because of that, I've already spoiled the experience back then as I needed to watch the reviews by various people, speedruns and whatnot. I was already familiar with most levels but the experience still felt fresh and new to me, considering it was my very first time playing. I plan to play through older versions of SIGIL as well because I remember reading about complaints and how there isn't enough health, ammo and such. To me, in SIGIL v1.21 it was enough of both. I never ran out of ammo (except bullets in first level), ammo was in general scarce but just about enough in most situations and I knew what weapon to use most of the time. I also took advantage of infighting in some situations and telefragged most Cyberdemons (the ones that could be telefragged). I didn't use the chainsaw much (except in the E5M7 maze with the lost souls, that was when the chainsaw truly shined) mostly because of the BLOCKMAP bug and didn't want risking losing precious health/armor. The berserk and chainsaw are a lot more useful in ZDoom family ports, so in those cases feel free to use them.

As I already covered the first level two months ago when I started SIGIL, I will focus on rest levels now. As a reminder, I think E5M1 was good, it worked well as an introduction level, maybe that spectre in the starting room (on UV skill) is something I could have done without, considering it was very difficult to spot in the darkness but the rest is fine.

Spoiler

E5M2 is also nice, the Cyberdemon first appears here which requires telefragging, there are 3 soulspheres present, so health shouldn't be an issue (and a much needed blue armor in a secret, best saved for end of level as with the 3 soulspheres it's easy to end with 200% health), ammo is plentiful, enemy placement is good. At the exit room, I strongly recommend making the baron infight with the cacodemons. It seems due to Eternity's default compatibility, the baron didn't immediately attack the cacos when got hit, so I had to run a bit to avoid projectiles and hope cacos hit 2-3 times the baron to start infighting. No idea what's up with the Eternity's compatibility, other than that it worked fine.
I died once here because when I tried to telefrag the cyberdemon when it showed up (I think after collecting the red skull key?), I missed and got a rocket behind me and killed me instantly (even if I had 164% health), on second attempt I missed again but he didn't attack immediately and when I ran away, the rocket he fired didn't directly hit me and I suffered only minor damage, then on next telefragging attempt, I finally got him! It felt very satisfying to telefrag the cyberdemon! Not sure why people were complaining about SIGIL having many cyberdemons, they are more like puzzles, meant to be avoided at first, few others have to be killed directly with your weapons if it's in your path.

E5M3 is a bit more challenging but wasn't very difficult. The only challenging part was navigating the blood part in the darkness because if you don't know where to go, you can lose quite a bit of health/armor. I also suggest killing the cacos and lost souls quickly and through those windows. Then use the radiation suit wisely. And grab everything before you go to red door (I think was red? or yellow?) as after you kill enemies on ledge and jump down, there is no way back. There is a single baron at end, can be easily killed with rockets.

E5M4 is the infamous map with those platforms that lower into lava and the crushers rooms! I first chose the right path with the crushers. I learned the pattern of the crushers, the safe sectors are where enemies are standing on, so I stayed where it was safe. The second path was the one that almost screwed me and this is mostly because of those lowering platforms which I run through at first, however I missed the Lost Souls I had to go back and kill them (even if they don't count for 100% kills in more vanilla/boom ports), costing me a lot of health and armor, though I survived with 60% health at end of corridor (and got very lucky with the baron only rolling low 8 damage for the projectile) and I was able to recover with the blue armor in the part with lowering bars and then a soul sphere secret in first path that I took after, which was the easiest path. Aside from those questionable design choices, the only thing I hated at this map is that at end of level, there are two small lava corridors that each contain two armor bonuses! Why? I was wondering what items I missed and many YouTube videos didn't show the location of these armor bonuses, so I really needed to get 100% everything and I did after watching the third or fourth video of this map and seeing where the bonuses were placed.

Note that this map was changed a lot since initial SIGIL release (yes I plan to play through SIGIL versions 1.0, 1.1 and 1.2 as well) and the final room is a lot different, though one important thing to note is in initial release, this map (maybe few others as well?) had impossible to get 100% items due to some items not flagged as multiplayer, so they would appear in SP in the DM only areas. I'm not sure exactly which maps are affected by this but I will have to investigate, so I know which is maximum to get in v1.0 (and maybe v1.1?) and which levels. I can safely say in v1.21 all levels are possible to 100%, even the last level. I also heard that the version included in Unity Classic Doom port is a more updated id only SIGIL v1.22 patch, which fixes some bugs/glitches that were present in vanilla ports and also affected unity port. I don't know if there are differences in enemy/item placement or whatever but I can confirm that Double Impact DID have some minor changes to item placement in few maps.

E5M5 has two cyberdemons, thankfully they can be telefragged, so the map isn't too difficult overall. There was an odd glitch in Eternity where the enemy corpses (and even a medkit) that were on top of those cracks, started sliding around. Not sure what's with this glitch but it was amusing, as if they were moving themselves. At one point in same room, I thought I got stuck but then I realized I had to step on that inactive teleporter pad and lower a nearby timed door. I almost thought Eternity got me stuck again but thankfully that wasn't the case. It would have been ridiculous if that happened and don't worry, I plan to complete SIGIL in Crispy and PrBoom+ as well in next time I play SIGIL. And maybe even play in GZDoom, just to see how easy is going to be with jumping, crouching and mouselook.

E5M6 was interesting, although that part at beginning (when two cacos get unleashed) was one of the times I felt it was a bit too dark. I had Plasma in hand and got rid of them quickly. Even though I play on Gamma Correction Level 2 in most source ports (and in ZDoom & GZDoom I have Gamma set to 1.50 or 2.00), it was still pretty dark. At least it wasn't as dark as in case of many people using GZDoom. Which is also why I avoided using GZDoom. It would have sucked to not see anything in most levels. As for the level, there was a Cyberdemon in that maze I got lucky I used and timed the BFG around corners so I killed him in two shots while taking minimal damage (as in rockets hitting corners of walls and taking like 40 or so damage) and so I was able to get rid of it quickly, much better than I expected. I figured how to access the secret exit based on the video I watched, the eye crack is rather well hidden and took me a while to find. I made the choice to replace my remaining blue armor (that was around 70% I think) with the green armor before exiting and it turned out rather well, considering I had 200% health with the soulsphere I saved for the end of level, which is found in that cage at end.

E5M9 secret level was also pretty interesting overall, it felt easier most of the time and those mini crushing pillars weren't too bad, I took it slowly. At a later part, I did take some damage and managed to kill the cyberdemon from far away using a combination of shotgun, chaingun, rockets and plasma instead of relying on a single weapon. As in I had quite a bit of ammo for each and instead of wasting all plasma for example, I went with making use of each weapon so I don't run short of a type of ammo. I didn't bother getting in that room to try to BFG him, so I sniped from the safe platform while dodging rockets. Unfortunately I died once and in a very stupid way, I got to the last door (the yellow skull door), was carefully shooting imps and lost souls in front of door, a shotgunner comes as soon as I'm reloading my shotgun, he shoots me and pushes me off ledge into inescapable small lava platform and trapped with no way out. I had to wait slowly and painfully for my health/armor to run out before I die and reload. I didn't bother jumping to get out (I don't think I have jumping bound in Eternity at the moment) because it would be cheating and I'm sure I wouldn't jump high enough to escape. Pressing space on anything didn't help, I was trapped with no way out. At last 12% health, I got killed by a Lost Soul's infinite height and then I reloaded my last save in disappointment. That death caused by the shotgunner (sort of) was complete bullshit and wasn't my fault at all. I know I could have used IDCLIP to get out of that situation but the question is why? I don't like cheating at all, no matter what. Most people do minor cheating like that, however I don't do that, I like to play fairly. I only save often which I admit takes some excitement away (however note my time is limited and I'd rather finish as many wads as possible, thus relying on saves), other than that I try to play carefully and complete each level 100%. So yeah, after that happened, I reloaded the save and cleared the last room without problems, finish the level 100% and go to next one.

E5M7 was the infamous level with those catwalks and low ledges that I had to be careful to not fall, especially at that ledges parts with vines. It seems there were some parts that did a good damage on me, like when you drop down and get attacked by imps behind fake walls, then lost souls attack while I was busy killing one or two cacodemons, then at later time there was that invulnerability secret I had to get to fight the Cyberdemon and barons that spawned upon grabbing the red skull key. Too bad invulnerability expired as soon as I reached that secret cave (I knew to first get there and make the walls lower while I'm fighting monsters) and had to burn through the secret soulsphere while going back. At least the later parts of the map weren't causing me a lot of damage, so I still had like 132% blue armor (which I collected halfway through level) when I finished the map and helped me greatly in last level. There isn't much to tell other than I screwed up at end when I was getting yellow skull key, there was ANOTHER cacodemon down there in pit (after I already killed one), I bumped into it (infinite height) and then fell down without way to escape and died from damaging blood before the caco fired its projectile. Fortunately, as I save often, I didn't lose too much progress but it's another level I could have done without dying, after all I went through. Well I do admit watching YouTube videos prior to playing the levels and it already feels a bit cheating and I would have died a lot of times if I went in blind (kinda impossible after reading and seeing many people playing it, due to how hyped SIGIL was) but other than that, I didn't cheat at all since I don't like cheating of any form. I'm fine with saving often and watching some videos in advance just to see where secrets are.

Oh and in final room, after opening the door, there was only a baron? Shouldn't have been two barons behind the last door? I remember a certain YouTuber (GmanLives) getting killed by two barons behind that door in his disappointing review.

E5M8 is the last level and not much to tell other than it was interesting, though a bit disappointing. I know that the eye at the exit used to be an invulnerability sphere in old versions (One of the many differences between versions). Oh also there was apparently a Cyberdemon added in one of the levels in latest version, not sure exactly which. If someone knows better, let me know. Back to E5M8, it was fine, not too difficult, I rarely took damage until I activated the spider a bit earlier it seems and when I tried to BFG its face when platform lowered, I took a ton of bullets to face but I survived with like 80% health. That soulsphere I picked up earlier and the remaining blue armor from previous level surely helped a LOT! The spider needed two BFG close hits to die, while I'm sure in ZDoom family ports you can kill the Spider in one hit, which is another advantage of ZDoom ports and a disadvantage to me. I am disappointed I didn't get to make Spider and Cyber infight as in other people's videos, I took them by myself and then the last couple of enemies that were put there in the final room. Then step into the "portal" marked by the evil eye and you get the ending.

Overall, SIGIL was pretty good, it felt like a commercial quality product, I liked it much BETTER than Thy Flesh Consumed (especially much better than the Romero's E4M2 & E4M6), it's also much better designed than E2 & E3 of Doom, it's what E3 (or rather E4 in my opinion) should have been. I mean as in it is more Hellish than E3 but I think SIGIL is a much better E4 IMO, because I absolutely hate TFC, despite some good levels, I'm still annoyed at its balance and level ordering could have been way better, though I liked the E4 orange sky at least, it gave an interesting unique look.

As for SIGIL, I think it should have won a Cacoward back in 2019. Or maybe a separate Cacoward like in 2016 with Romero getting an 11th Cacoward with Tech Gone Bad. That reminds me, I should go and play Romero's E1M8b and E1M4b.

As for UDTWID, I am currently at E4M5. The first couple of levels were ok, I died once in first level at Cyberdemon part because I tried to run away and got stuck in a wall while a rocket hit me in the back but after that, I still handled it just fine even though I only had 22% health left and managed to kill it with my last rocket and while radiation suit was expiring. And then crossed that part without taking damage since I retreated into the cave while fighting. Then got the berserk secret and recover my health, so I have a chance in the next level.

In E4M2 I also died once as soon as I retreated from a trap and fell into lava by accident, mostly because I simply stepped backwards. The trap in question is the one that when you open the door, you are greeted by two cacodemons, while another door opens behind with about 2-3 imps. And when I fell into lava, as soon as I found the lift to get back up, I died. Other than that, this map wasn't too bad, a few annoying traps (mostly involving the cacos in close quarters) but the map is alright.

E4M9 (secret level) was probably my favorite and fairly straightforward, it nailed the secret map feeling from original TFC. It was different, yet unique.

E4M3 was decent, there was a chainsaw secret at start that required straferunning. Funnily enough, I just saved before pressing the switch to lower the lift and if I didn't reach it, I just reloaded, to save time instead of wasting time always activating the lift and going up. In the YouTube playthrough by Zdenda, he cheated with noclip to get that secret! I'm honestly surprised. Just like what I said above, most people ALWAYS seem to cheat even as little as possible. I don't understand why do so many people have to cheat at one point with noclip at many Doom (and other games) playthroughs I watch. There are some great YouTubers I watch and they always cheat for some stupid reason at one point in their playthrough.
As for the rest level, it's good I watched that video so I knew what to do as it's quite tricky (those barons are to be telefragged for example, saving you a lot of ammo), there is no way back and I ended up 100%'ing the level without too much trouble. I had 102% health and 110% armor when I reached the exit, as I knew the next level would be the infamous one...

As for E4M4, yeah it was pretty bad and chaotic at times, although I didn't hate it as much as I thought I will. Sure I carefully watched an YouTube video to see what to do and where to go, I died 5 times in total (3 times from monsters and 2 times running out of health on damaging blood just as I was going to reach soul sphere/blue armor at part with spider) and when I reached the exit I had initially missed an armor bonus somewhere as I had 96% items (heh) and loaded a slightly earlier save (before grabbing the last radsuit) so I don't burn through precious health/armor to reach that armor bonus I forgot somewhere. But yeah, otherwise it wasn't as bad as I thought it will be and I ended up with 100% health and 48% armor (blue) at end of level. Still think this map takes the worst parts of TFC and amplifies it greatly (felt like E4M2 & E4M6 on steroids or something like that), although somehow it didn't cause me as much trouble as the original E4M2 by Romero. I also think this map (UDTWID E4M4) shouldn't have been placed on this slot, maybe placed on E4M7 before the final level or maybe that wouldn't be a good idea since E4M8 is the other infamous level and it probably starts you already under attack? I am not sure how UDTWID E4M8 looks as I haven't reached it yet. I also understand the UDTWID level order is also a reference to original TFC level order, so it's understandable to have a random order. I just don't understand why wasn't DTWID & UDTWID merged into a single wad? Ultimate Doom is same DOOM.WAD file, why couldn't they patch DTWID with the UDTWID E4 into it? As it stands I'm just playing UDTWID as a separate wad.

Anyway, I hope the rest levels will be just as good (except E4M8 which I expect to suck). Most levels seemed more fun than the original TFC levels, not sure why but I thought the first two levels for example, were way better than original E4M2. Seriously, why was original E4M2 so difficult to begin with? These UDTWID levels felt a lot more fair (except E4M4 which was a clusterfuck, even then it wasn't too bad playing continously and after watching the YouTube video a couple of times to memorize where I'm supposed to go). I guess next time I play through DTWID series (such as pistol starting each level), I could optimize some routes and go to most important parts first and leave certain parts for later instead of doing like Zdenda did in his videos.

And as for KDIZD, I finally got into the super secret level! I remember always having to warp to it to play it, now I reached it (with max health, armor, ammo) as I had at least cumulative 90% kills/items/secrets (the requirement to access it), actually this time I had everything 100% collected in every level so far and I may be one of the few people who completes KDIZD with a perfect 100% rating overall. Of all playthroughs I watched on youtube, everyone seems to miss a few items in some maps, as there seem to be some health/armor bonuses in not-so obvious locations, some armor bonuses were inside acid and easily missable. Then again, I remember an armor bonus in original Doom E1M7 inside acid area, not sure why it was placed there in first place but now that I memorized its location, I always grab it. I remember back in 2018 when I was searching the whole level for that last item and found out it was in that acid area after having to watch an YouTube video as I just couldn't tell where it was.

Oh yeah and about Z1M7, it was pretty good overall. Only one part annoyed me: as soon as I grabbed the red key (or was it green key? forgot which key it was) and a forcefield reactivated as soon as I went back and I was instantly killed. Was it intentional or a map bug? I was forced to leave through swimming in acid (though there was a ratiation suit nearby and a megasphere secret) and later I pressed that switch again and THEN the forcefield got deactivated permanently, so I have no idea what was up with that! I mean it's not too bad as I only died 2 times overall but it's that feeling that you could have avoided that, I have no idea who decided to have the red forcefield reactivate as soon as you grab the key. And thing is it wasn't even visible until I stepped into sector and died, then it showed up...
Also when I went swimming into acid without radiation suit (don't worry, I had almost 200 health and armor, plus a saved soulsphere and a blue armor in a secret I didn't find yet), I noticed the sector where megasphere stayed in, somehow still damaged me. I guess it's another bug that wasn't reported. Outside of these minor complaints, the map was fine and I liked the secret with the prototype weapon and the message saying that it should be finished soon. That gave me a laugh.

Sorry for the long post. I will put some parts of message in spoilers, so that the post doesn't clutter the topic. And I will also no longer post many screenshots as before, I decided to upload many of them to Doomwiki.org to contribute to the wiki and for articles that didn't have any screenshots. I will still post a SIGIL screenshot at end of E5M8 (with the Boom HUD enabled to show the stats for the level as otherwise there is no way to view stats in Eternity and finishing the last level of an episode doesn't show stats), an UDTWID screenshot and some KDIZD screenshots. Enjoy!

[NNC]

Honestly, when Sigil was released, it immediately made the other Doom 1 wads obsolete to me, including the original content. At least all the non-techbase related wads. the ones with infernal thematics and abstract places. E1M4b and E1M8b also more or less made me forget the techbase content made for this game, but Romero still owe us a complete revision of episode 1 to truly forget the original thing as they are just two levels, not a complete, well rounded episode. In other words: if Romero recreates a 9 level episode of KDITD in the style of E1M4b and E1M8b, and pair it with Sigil as a two episode experience, I think my Doom 1 experience will be complete with it. Or at least I percieve that way. Now I don't have that perception, and never had. I always starved for it since 1995, when I played the original episodes, and clearly didn't overwhelmingly like them beyond the first one, save for a few scattered things here and there (well, I enjoyed the game, don't get me wrong, but not on the level I should have enjoyed, you know, something was left on the table). I think I have that feel because the game assets (enemies, weapons, movement, texturing, palette, etc. all clicked well with me, but level design didn't. If the game was entirely built by Romero, with only a few scattered gimmicky levels by Petersen, it might have been a different perception.

I know some people dislike Romero as he is a braggart asshole, and his failure with Daikatana after all the hype made him look like a joke, but as I see it, he is the one who truly understands how this game works, how a game level should look like. And strong emphasis on Doom 1... Doom 2 has lots of differences, new enemies have different aesthetics (and created by a different person), new art add different feel, and honestly, Romero is not that great with Doom 2. While I like his levels better than the others, I still think the duo of Russell Meakim and Arya Iwakura are the ones who nailed the Doom 2 style at best in No Rest for the Living (and I love Meakim's obscure and criminally underrated map from 2017).

But back to Doom 1, it was Romero, and always Romero (for me at least). He just made me believe that the cacodemons spawned in his levels are for real, not the phony out of place tomatoes, what I feel in practically every Doom 1 map not made by him. His levels feel canonic. The artwork on his Sigil levels feels legit, they are used how Carmack wanted them to be used when he created them. Sigil had his small errors, it genuinely missed an epic final boss, some early levels had shotgunning barons, which was a little repetitive etc., but it was just the episode what I always thought Inferno should look like when I played the shareware version back in 1995.

[NightFright]

I think the only thing we can still hope for from Romero is some expansion for Doom 2. However, he hasn't made any recent statement regarding that, either, so I am not too optimistic.

[NNC]

I wouldn't be surprised how Doomw*rld handled Sigil.

[Ninety-Six]

RunningDuke, on 22 February 2021 - 02:41 AM, said:

MM, MM2 and REQUIEM are the holy trinity of the 90s classic megawads, probably they are all much better than TNT: Evilution.

Eh, agree to disagree. MM1 is decent, but the level design kinda falls apart at the end, and overall feels a bit too claustrophobic for my liking. I still like it fine but I do think TNT is better. MM2 is interesting because when it's good it's better than MM1 at its best (the first four levels of MM2 are among my all-time favorites), but when it's bad it's worse than MM1's worst. It does look better though (and of the "Trilogy" has my favorite soundtrack. Klem's "Give In" is one of my favorite songs period).

Requiem... honestly I probably need to replay it before giving a judgement.

RunningDuke, on 22 February 2021 - 02:41 AM, said:

and the authors may still be around, they also contributed to the Memento Mori series.

Weren't they the ones who kickstarted both entries? And Requiem too, IIRC...

RunningDuke, on 22 February 2021 - 02:41 AM, said:

Yeah I had Doom Zero installed since mid December and haven't got around playing it yet.

I've said it before, but it is a favorite of mine. I won't go into further detail because A.) I already have, and B.) I don't want to accidentally cause hype backlash. Just know that it passed my bullshit detector and take that for what it's worth.

RunningDuke, on 22 February 2021 - 02:41 AM, said:

Then again, I save game often (on at least 2-3 slots on same level) and also have above average skills when dealing with many situations, so it looks like I handle stuff just fine according to stuff I played so far. If I happen to die, I just reload the save and try again and then move on...

Sad thing is I think AA was made with that in mind, which is just terrible game design, IMO. Just like you find it irritating that vanilla wads aren't always truly vanilla-compatibile, I'm irritated that well-thought out encounters are ejected in favor of repeated "gotcha" traps to try and compensate instead of just earning its difficulty legitimately. The difficulty doesn't go down just because someone can save the game; they still have to work through it. Meanwhile, gotcha traps will always ruin those who play saveless, and barely affect those who do save so what it does accomplish other than pissing off the people like me?

RunningDuke, on 22 February 2021 - 02:41 AM, said:

I died a lot of times as I didn't found that secret stash at beginning (the armor, soul sphere, extra ammo, etc) and I was running out of ammo and health quickly and thought the map was fucking bullshit.

They weren't really secrets though. In fact they're not even counted as secrets. I can kinda see why they'd look that way, but I thought they were obvious, personally...

RunningDuke, on 22 February 2021 - 02:41 AM, said:

there is a slight advantage playing continuously, in that you should still have at least 60-70% green armor remaining from E4M1

I usually don't even have that much armor left. Most of it gets disintegrated by the baron party.

RunningDuke, on 22 February 2021 - 02:41 AM, said:

That reminds me, I should go and play Romero's E1M8b and E1M4b.

I personally favor M4b over TGB. I still like both but I just find Mission Control to be a bit more fun.

RunningDuke, on 22 February 2021 - 02:41 AM, said:

Sure I carefully watched an YouTube video to see what to do and where to go,

This probably helped immensely. It's an entirely different story if you go into it blind because not knowing where to go and what to do while on limited radsuit supplies is when the level crosses into bullshit territory. Like I said I needed to play through it in no monsters mode with god mode on just to learn what I was supposed to do before I could beat it for real.

Any map that requires foreknowledge like that (and to such a ridiculous extent) is just not good.

RunningDuke, on 22 February 2021 - 02:41 AM, said:

except E4M8 which I expect to suck).

If you watch a video ahead of time like you did with M4 it'll probably make it more bearable. Again the reasons both levels suck are because of the complete lack of direction you are given and being punished if you go the wrong way first. M8 just replaces the 90% damaging floor with teleporting roaming cyberdemons on narrow pathways because that's fair.

RunningDuke, on 22 February 2021 - 02:41 AM, said:

I may be one of the few people who completes KDIZD with a perfect 100% rating overall.

I'm one of 'em, too. In fact I did it twice! I did it the first time while feeling out the levels myself (finding 100% guides for mods is pretty rare so I usually assume that none exist), and landed a "Slowpoke" demerit. Then I played through it again right away, remembering the secret locations while preparing a speedrun strategy, only to get all accolades with no demerits (including on the super secret level).

Rare is the doom mod that makes me want to go through it again right afterwards. It's one of the reasons I consider KDiZD a full-on proper game instead of just a mod. It's excellent and was worth 100%ing the slow way. I even took two screenshots of the merit and empty demerit screen to hold in my virtual "trophy room." I was quite proud of that.

[ReaperAA]

The Watchtower, on 22 February 2021 - 11:00 AM, said:

I wouldn't be surprised how Doomw*rld handled Sigil.

Would you knock it off with this shit. Yes Sigil didn't get a cacoward (which is a shame I admit) but on the other hand, Romero had received an actual cacoward trophy for his E1M8b and E1M4b.

Ninety-Six, on 22 February 2021 - 11:57 AM, said:

Eh, agree to disagree. MM1 is decent, but the level design kinda falls apart at the end, and overall feels a bit too claustrophobic for my liking. I still like it fine but I do think TNT is better. MM2 is interesting because when it's good it's better than MM1 at its best (the first four levels of MM2 are among my all-time favorites), but when it's bad it's worse than MM1's worst. It does look better though (and of the "Trilogy" has my favorite soundtrack. Klem's "Give In" is one of my favorite songs period).

Requiem... honestly I probably need to replay it before giving a judgement.

Now this might be controversial, but I consider MM1 to be pretty mediocre. It is a legendary wad for being the first major Doom 2 megawad, but I don't think it has aged well. I, like you, also prefer TNT over MM1. Hell I even consider Icarus better than MM1 (and Icarus is also below TNT in my book).

I haven't played MM2 and Requiem so I can't comment on those.

Ninety-Six, on 22 February 2021 - 11:57 AM, said:

Sad thing is I think AA was made with that in mind, which is just terrible game design, IMO. Just like you find it irritating that vanilla wads aren't always truly vanilla-compatibile, I'm irritated that well-thought out encounters are ejected in favor of repeated "gotcha" traps to try and compensate instead of just earning its difficulty legitimately. The difficulty doesn't go down just because someone can save the game; they still have to work through it. Meanwhile, gotcha traps will always ruin those who play saveless, and barely affect those who do save so what it does accomplish other than pissing off the people like me?

Well yeah AA suffers from requiring foreknowledge. Now when I played this wad for the first time, I played it on HMP and I also used saves, so it didn't feel too bad. But I can clearly see why someone who likes playing on UV and saveless would be frustrated.

This is one of the main reasons why I never play saveless on my blind playthrough (except for a few wads that I knew would be not too hard like DTWID/D2TWID, Doom Zero, Deathless, Jiffy Bag etc.)

[Ninety-Six]

ReaperAA, on 22 February 2021 - 09:38 PM, said:

Now this might be controversial, but I consider MM1 to be pretty mediocre. It is a legendary wad for being the first major Doom 2 megawad, but I don't think it has aged well. I, like you, also prefer TNT over MM1. Hell I even consider Icarus better than MM1 (and Icarus is also below TNT in my book).

I can see where you're coming from. I don't even entirely disagree; that said, there are some actually genuinely good levels in there that raise it a little higher, at least in my opinion (Showdown is probably my favorite). Also agreed on Icarus. Icarus is probably all the proof needed to show that id did do some work (or at least directed work) on TNT. Despite its flaws, TNT still kinda looks and feels like it belongs within the Doom "canon" (not talking lore-wise I'm talking about visual and gameplay continuity. Not perfect at either and vanilla D2 is almost certainly better but TNT is much closer to reaching it than anything else released at the time (Plutonia is also like this)). Though I do have a bit of a soft spot for Icarus because I really dig the theming, despite its many rough patches.

ReaperAA, on 22 February 2021 - 09:38 PM, said:

Well yeah AA suffers from requiring foreknowledge. Now when I played this wad for the first time, I played it on HMP and I also used saves, so it didn't feel too bad. But I can clearly see why someone who likes playing on UV and saveless would be frustrated.

This is one of the main reasons why I never play saveless on my blind playthrough (except for a few wads that I knew would be not too hard like DTWID/D2TWID, Doom Zero, Deathless, Jiffy Bag etc.)

To be honest I'd probably be a lot less bitter if wads that aren't designed for saveless would actually announce that in the text file or something. I'd probably still be disappointed that they're still quite rare, but I more than likely would not be so consistently angry and bitter about it if I didn't have to be continually set back to start over and over before its intent became apparent.

[Ninety-Six]

jkas789, on 24 February 2021 - 07:26 AM, said:

It really is. Doom 2's gameplay is good however it is really let down by the latter half of the map pool IMO.

Replying to this in a more appropriate thread.

Y'know funny thing. I used to have the same opinion. Then after playing through it again, I ended up realizing there are a lot more maps in the second half that I really enjoy, some of which being my absolute favorites. There are definitely some stinkers in there, like The Chasm or Gotcha, but then are a lot of maps which I adore. I love Suburbs; it may not really resemble anything of the sort (but then again since does Doom ever resemble something), but the fights are really good including and especially the blue key horde. Then there's Monster Condo and Spirit World which are both appropriately climactic levels, the Living End is not as good as those two in my opinion but it's still an interesting penultimate level with its linear gauntlet design.

My absolute favorites from the second half though are probably The Courtyard and The Citadel. Courtyard is just another fun arena level that has the kind of open-ended arena design that makes for good doom battling. And then there's the Citadel, which is officially my favorite id-made classic doom level of all time. It looks a bit of an odd choice, I'll admit. It's kind of difficult to explain.

[Ninety-Six]

So I just completed STRAIN for the first time (I had played it before, a good length of it as well, but the save data was lost in a hard drive crash and it took me a long time to get around to starting over again. So this is the first time I went all the way to see the end screen). I'm kind of floored by it. Even when I revisited the earlier parts, it was just such an amazing feeling. The level design is just stellar all across the board (minus MAP21 which is total garbage, and a small section of MAP08). Apparently it was playtested extensively and it shows.

About the only bad thing about STRAIN is its general aesthetic. It definitely looks like a 90s wad. Still, it has it where it counts, and that's the rock-solid gameplay. I especially loved the new enemies. Appearance-wise they again stand out a bit, but as far as how they play they feel like a perfect fit among Doom's roster. All the new enemies are really fun to fight and mix in with the unchanged ones perfectly. It reminds me about what I said regarding Last Reaction and Water Bases for Duke, in that I loved the new enemies and felt they fit in. That applies here, with the big difference being that STRAIN has the level design to maximize their potential.

My favorite new enemy type is probably the polydrone (spawn cube with machine guns). They're just really satisfying to kill with how they explode and then their corpse actually leaves a damaging flame. For us who play Duke a lingering flame is normal, but remember this is the Doom engine. In 1997.

More importantly, it overwrites the spider mastermind. Between it and the cyberdemon replacement (smaller, fires only one rocket, much less health) I actually prefer their integration over their original forms. That's because their smaller health pool lets them intermix a lot more commonly, which adds much needed spice to certain combat encounters without suddenly having 4 ultra-tough monsters that you can barely escape. You get their offensive power, but spread across smaller targets that are reasonably able to be dispatched with everyone else. It also lets them be more numerous so you can juggle rockets from multiple angles without it being unfair.

At the end, STRAIN is a wad that's just fun to play.

The music is, of course, as always, amazing. It also has my second-favorite custom doom song of all time, "Land of Able" (MAP13) by Mark Klem. But the rest of the soundtrack is nothing to scoff at either. I'd put it up there with the Memento Mori duology and Requiem for one of the best soundtracks in 90s doom modding.



I know it'll never happen, but the idea of a STRAIN sprucing-up mod is something going onto my list of dream wads. Leave exactly all the level design the same (minus MAP21 which can be tossed out), including the way all encounters are handled, but just clean up the aesthetic some. Cleaner textures, making the rooms look a little better, etc. Again, leave the level design completely the same otherwise so that the already-perfect gameplay is never altered, but just make it look better. If that ever happens, STRAIN would probably be easily declared my favorite wad of all time.

As it stands though, I still love it. It's rare for me to finish a doom mod and actually be sad that it's over.

[ReaperAA]

Ninety-Six, on 27 February 2021 - 06:32 PM, said:

I especially loved the new enemies. Appearance-wise they again stand out a bit, but as far as how they play they feel like a perfect fit among Doom's roster. All the new enemies are really fun to fight and mix in with the unchanged ones perfectly. It reminds me about what I said regarding Last Reaction and Water Bases for Duke, in that I loved the new enemies and felt they fit in. That applies here, with the big difference being that STRAIN has the level design to maximize their potential.

My favorite new enemy type is probably the polydrone (spawn cube with machine guns). They're just really satisfying to kill with how they explode and then their corpse actually leaves a damaging flame. For us who play Duke a lingering flame is normal, but remember this is the Doom engine. In 1997.

More importantly, it overwrites the spider mastermind. Between it and the cyberdemon replacement (smaller, fires only one rocket, much less health) I actually prefer their integration over their original forms. That's because their smaller health pool lets them intermix a lot more commonly, which adds much needed spice to certain combat encounters without suddenly having 4 ultra-tough monsters that you can barely escape. You get their offensive power, but spread across smaller targets that are reasonably able to be dispatched with everyone else. It also lets them be more numerous so you can juggle rockets from multiple angles without it being unfair.

I am surprised you liked the new custom stuff because for me, it is one of the only 2 dehacked wads I have played (other being Scythe 2) where I wish it didn't have the custom stuff. Apart from the aesthetics mismatch, the changes are mixed bag for me.

When it comes to weapons, I like the changes to the fists, pistol and shotgun, but I really don't like the changes to the plasma gun and BFG. Plasma gun is more powerful, but also much less versatile due to low ammo capacity and longer cooldown. BFG is now just a more powerful rocket launcher.

When it comes to monsters, I like the changes to spider mastermind (which is a spawn cube with machine guns) and the miniaturized cyberdemons. But I either feel meh or I really despise the rest of the changes. Pinkies no longer die to a single SSG blast which is annoying. The holobots (regular and invisible) are cool, but they replace pain elementals and revenants, which are more interesting than the holobots. The new lost souls are okay. BFG troopers are.... why do they have the same skin and sound as a regular zombieman??? And my least favorite are those white barons (the one that replace mancubus). Where mancubus fireballs are fun to dodge with a good strafe Left-Right-Center movement pattern, the only reliable way to dodge white barons is to just hide behind a wall or maintain a good distance.

But different strokes for different folks I guess. Since you liked Strain, I would like to mention that there is another custom wad called "Return to Daro" that uses Strain's custom stuff. I know it is not exactly what you are asking for, but it might be worth a try (I haven't played it).

[NightFright]

I just purchased Doom 1+2 (Unity) for the Switch yesterday, 2.50 EUR each. Fantastic price for an excellent port. While I am relatively new to console gaming and still have issues getting used to using controllers in an FPS game, I have to say it's really well done, visually very accurate and uncut. Might be the next best thing besides playing on the PC.

I am still missing a friendly fire toggle in coop, but I am not alone with that, so maybe it'll still get added later.

[ReaperAA]

ReaperAA, on 28 February 2021 - 12:27 AM, said:

But different strokes for different folks I guess. Since you liked Strain, I would like to mention that there is another custom wad called "Return to Daro" that uses Strain's custom stuff. I know it is not exactly what you are asking for, but it might be worth a try (I haven't played it).

I forgot to mention that there is also "Mutiny" which takes level design inspirations from STRAIN

*(I hate that I can't edit my older comment now)

[Ninety-Six]

I admit I did miss the Revenants. Not so much the pain elementals. The holobot should have replaced the unused SS trooper so we could have the revenants too.

ReaperAA, on 28 February 2021 - 12:27 AM, said:

BFG troopers are.... why do they have the same skin and sound as a regular zombieman???

Huh. I don't actually remember running into any... I played on UV and went for 100% completion in all areas. Maybe I just killed them before they had a chance to fire...?

They do sound annoying though.

ReaperAA, on 28 February 2021 - 12:27 AM, said:

And my least favorite are those white barons (the one that replace mancubus). Where mancubus fireballs are fun to dodge with a good strafe Left-Right-Center movement pattern, the only reliable way to dodge white barons is to just hide behind a wall or maintain a good distance.

I actually quite enjoyed the demon lord. Yeah dodging isn't much of an option but in like 99% of all cases the levels build the encounters around them to facilitate taking cover. I liked that, now that the two boss demons were made into normal enemies, the demon lord's presence made almost any encounters with them revolve around them. It changed up the combat in a good way.



And thanks for the links. I'll go check them out.

[Ninety-Six]

Finished Return to Daro. I was a bit apprehensive since it was a modern wad (especially since one of the comments talked about the number of archviles), but it turned out to be just as fair as its inspiration.

Even that aside, the levels were well-constructed and had their own unique gimmicks to them to make them stand out on their own merits. Special attention must be given to the third map, Strange Visions, for basically doing the Wormhole thing better than Wormhole did.


A really good send-off to my STRAIN playthrough. Thanks for the recommendation!

[NightFright]

Wow, I just saw Tormentor's farewell to the Doom community. That's a bummer. He was a quite active community member throughout the years and with his magnum opus Blade of Agony, he reserved himself a place in the elysium of Doom mod developers.

PS: Blade of Agony will be finished regardless of this development.

[Ninety-Six]

Well there goes Shores of ZDoom for sure, now.

I hope he at least maintains the site still, for his earlier projects and the repository.

[FistMarine]

I have been quite busy with work and most of the free time I've spent on playing something, so now I must reply to what has been said so far:

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Eh, agree to disagree. MM1 is decent, but the level design kinda falls apart at the end, and overall feels a bit too claustrophobic for my liking. I still like it fine but I do think TNT is better. MM2 is interesting because when it's good it's better than MM1 at its best (the first four levels of MM2 are among my all-time favorites), but when it's bad it's worse than MM1's worst. It does look better though (and of the "Trilogy" has my favorite soundtrack. Klem's "Give In" is one of my favorite songs period).

Requiem... honestly I probably need to replay it before giving a judgement.

I admit I haven't played TNT, MM1, MM2 and REQ in years, so it will be hard to judge based on memories I had, I just assumed that TNT was inferior to MM series for example. Maybe this summer I will be going through more megawads.

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Weren't they the ones who kickstarted both entries? And Requiem too, IIRC...

Quite possibly. I don't remember the exact details but I know for sure the Innocent Crew were also involved in MM trilogy (as I like to call it now instead of repeating MM1, MM2 and REQUIEM).

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I've said it before, but it is a favorite of mine. I won't go into further detail because A.) I already have, and B.) I don't want to accidentally cause hype backlash. Just know that it passed my bullshit detector and take that for what it's worth.

No worries, I think Doom Zero is a quality megawad that nails the classic Doom feeling. I will be doing version 1.8 (which is what I installed back in December before it was added as official addon and had couple more updates that made changes to keep up with the addon version), so it will be interesting to note some changes, since version 1.8 was added back in July on Moddb. Not sure why it still wasn't released to idgames archive after all this time. Probably has to do with the install process and that it includes most Doom 2 sprites unmodified, which isn't an issue in Unity Doom ports where it is its own IWAD.

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Sad thing is I think AA was made with that in mind, which is just terrible game design, IMO. Just like you find it irritating that vanilla wads aren't always truly vanilla-compatibile, I'm irritated that well-thought out encounters are ejected in favor of repeated "gotcha" traps to try and compensate instead of just earning its difficulty legitimately. The difficulty doesn't go down just because someone can save the game; they still have to work through it. Meanwhile, gotcha traps will always ruin those who play saveless, and barely affect those who do save so what it does accomplish other than pissing off the people like me?

Yeah, I think I will have to agree that the "Gotcha!" type of traps are really annoying and overused these days. It's fine every now and then but I do find certain traps overused these days, which even affects Akeldama (still haven't finished this damn megawad, hope to finish last 10 levels this week or month, I really want to start something else in its place) and other classic wads in general. I think in general Ultimate Doom megawads seem to be more calm, with DTWID having the perfect calm experience that I'm describing right now. I have only 4 levels of UDTWID left and then I can include those too because most of E4 levels weren't that bad, I found original Perfect Hatred much harder than what is found in UDTWID so far.

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They weren't really secrets though. In fact they're not even counted as secrets. I can kinda see why they'd look that way, but I thought they were obvious, personally...

I meant as more like extra ammo/health supplies that will greatly help if you found them (which I didn't at that time in 2013). I wasn't that good at finding secrets back then and didn't care about 100% completion, I was happy to just finish the level. Of course that map was frustrating at that time due to lack of supplies and I hope to go through Master Levels again soon and this time I will be fully prepared. I expect Sverre's levels (such as TEETH) to be very painful but since I will go for 100% completion, I should be able to have a slightly easier time with the extra secrets I'm finding this time. Still won't save the beginning of that TEETH level that is probably one of the worst level starts of all time (in my opinion)

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I usually don't even have that much armor left. Most of it gets disintegrated by the baron party.

Do you mean the baron party in E4M1 or E4M2? If in E4M1, then I'm pretty sure the green armor lasts a lot longer than we both think, I know it absorbs 33% damage and if you were to take too much damage, you would eventually die, assuming armor is picked up at 100% health or close to. I would recommend grabbing those few armor bonuses at start of E4M1 after clearing shotgunners and imps and have a slight protection until you reach the armor shortly. Don't listen to the people who have posted before to save EVERY armor bonus, it's bullshit. It's much better to collect the armor as soon as possible, so it will help absorbing rather than take a full shot without armor. It is a bad idea to keep the armor for the end of level because if you start the next level nearly dead, you have no chance to survive.
To give the example from 2018 when I played, I had exactly 100% health and 100% armor when I reached the armor (after I grabbed the 9 health bonuses as I only took a bit of damage from a shotgun guy and with bonuses I was back at 100% health and that was it). When I finished the level, I remember having 26% health and around 70% armor. The armor lasts until halfway through E4M2 at least and even then it will still not be enough since health is extremely scarce, although there is a Soulsphere at start of level in lava but good luck grabbing it with the cacodemons flying around the area at first (of course not a problem for those like you who use ZDoom and who play without infinite height). I still prefer on continuous run to just savescum until reaching the end of level, then after killing everyone, grab medkits, soulsphere and blue armor, you will finish with 200% both!
I'm curious if I can do this level on pistol start, as I tried back then and it's impossible without the armor from previous level and extra shotgun ammo that I had, you will be killed over and over by the same goddamn monsters because Romero had to be Romero. I still enjoyed his E1 and SIGIL levels but I absolutely hate his E4 levels (though E4M6 seems to be much better).

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I personally favor M4b over TGB. I still like both but I just find Mission Control to be a bit more fun.

I will do them soon, I just have to decide between finishing Akeldama first or starting other smaller wads. They certainly look fun, though I imagine E1M8b will be a bit painful at first. Thankfully I will just watch an YouTube video first and after planning the routes and usual saving often, I should clear it in maximum 30 minutes or an hour.

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This probably helped immensely. It's an entirely different story if you go into it blind because not knowing where to go and what to do while on limited radsuit supplies is when the level crosses into bullshit territory. Like I said I needed to play through it in no monsters mode with god mode on just to learn what I was supposed to do before I could beat it for real.

Any map that requires foreknowledge like that (and to such a ridiculous extent) is just not good.

Exactly! I knew that I would screw it badly if I went in blind (though it is possible back in 2019 when UDTWID came out, I watched someone playing through some of UDTWID maps and I think I might have watched E4M4, I remember Lingyan203/LY203 playing through the wad since I check his Doom videos sometimes as he can be very helpful with his playthroughs of many megawads) and I decided to "cheat" a bit by watching YouTube videos before playing. Of course in case of Akeldama, it's still fully blind (which is why is taking me so long) but in many other cases I'm watching a video and memorizing item, enemy placement, etc.

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If you watch a video ahead of time like you did with M4 it'll probably make it more bearable. Again the reasons both levels suck are because of the complete lack of direction you are given and being punished if you go the wrong way first. M8 just replaces the 90% damaging floor with teleporting roaming cyberdemons on narrow pathways because that's fair.

I will definitely watch the video. I have no plans to do it blind. It will also be interesting if map can be backtracked or not, so I can get everything if I missed something. Since I play in Chocolate Doom, I have no way to tell the level stats until intermission and in case of map 8, it will just cut to story text screen upon stepping into portal. So I will probably load the save in Crispy after I finish, just to check if I got everything as I have automap stats enabled in Crispy and I will definitely start playing some wads in Crispy, such as Romero's E1M4b and E1M8b, as well as FreeDoom.

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I'm one of 'em, too. In fact I did it twice! I did it the first time while feeling out the levels myself (finding 100% guides for mods is pretty rare so I usually assume that none exist), and landed a "Slowpoke" demerit. Then I played through it again right away, remembering the secret locations while preparing a speedrun strategy, only to get all accolades with no demerits (including on the super secret level).

Rare is the doom mod that makes me want to go through it again right afterwards. It's one of the reasons I consider KDiZD a full-on proper game instead of just a mod. It's excellent and was worth 100%ing the slow way. I even took two screenshots of the merit and empty demerit screen to hold in my virtual "trophy room." I was quite proud of that.

Funnily enough, I just finished KDIZD recently (yesterday), I will talk a bit more about that immediately as soon as I finish replying to everyone.

With all the STRAIN talk, I will add STRAIN, Return to Daro and Mutiny on my to play list. STRAIN might be done in DOSBox considering it's an old 1997 DOOM 2 TC and source ports didn't exist back then, while for Return to Daro and Mutiny I will probably use PrBoom+. Just wait until I finish Akeldama (damn long maps).

Regarding Tormentor667 retiring from the Doom community, yep, saw this last week. Very sad news indeed. I am a huge fan of his projects and repository and all the cool stuff he was able to pull off in ZDoom/GZDoom projects. I know I may not be a huge fan these days of ZDoom due to its departure from the vanilla and me being more focused on playing vanilla/boom stuff using the recommended ports but damn if KDIZD and all those cool projects I played back then (and making my own randomizer with the Realm667 monsters) in 2009-2010 weren't so cool, man so many cool memories and with the ZDoom/GZDoom/Skulltag source ports at that time, good times! In fact, KDIZD is still one of the best wads I've ever played, I just loved it recently more than I did 5 years ago!

Blade of Agony will indeed be finished (reminds me I have to play through E1 & E2 as well) and I heard that HPack: Demonic Uprising (Heretic project) will also be finished sometime. I'm especially looking forward to HPack being finished, as it was in development for 12 (or more?) years, I remember following it back then.

As for Shores of ZDoom, part of me hopes it may be finished someday, though I'm not holding my breath for it. Maybe it will be done by a different development team, Torm will just not be leading it.

As for repository, I also recommend grabbing everything just in case the site gets offline one day (or gets hacked again, I remember back in 2012 or so getting hacked and I stayed away from visiting it for months as I didn't want to risk getting infected). Last week I downloaded all projects and most of repository stuff, except the Textures as my internet fell off and was working slow for some reason, with projects either getting downloaded quickly or download failing halfway for no reason. So I haven't went back and downloaded the textures, maybe someone should archive the whole Realm667 content to archive.org or something.

Now as for stuff I finished, I played some more of the Hordes of Chaos series for Heretic (I have done the first four), I remember Hordes of Chaos IV having the fourth map frustrating with a room that killed me 10 times, as there were two archviles and a minotaur, with little cover, it was difficult to cover as I would most likely dodge from an archie, only to get blasted by the other one and I didn't have enough flasks to save myself, even with the silver shield given in that room, 2 hits and I was dead. I just burned through flasks earlier on some stupid traps, like that one in previous room with cacodemons and a pain elemental that also killed me once. But the archvile room was the worst, also they couldn't be turned into chicken anymore, since HOC 3, Pain elemental, Baron and Archvile have +DONTMORPH flag added to them. And the strongest tomed weapons I had were Dragon Claw and Hellstaff with limited ammo, neither of which could take them down quickly. It was frustrating and died like 10 times. Then later died to a baron of hell which actually gibbed me (due to how in Heretic, you gib at less than -50 health compared to Doom's less than -100). And then in final map of HOC 4, at Giant D'Sparil fight, also died once when he killed me instantly with his blast as I didn't dodge in time but at least I wasn't getting frustrated since I knew I could handle it just fine and so I did on next attempt. A bit awkward to save during battle but it wasn't too bad and killing him also automatically killed all the cacodemons around the area. Overall, HOC series (until HOC X) aren't very difficult, just lots of monsters to kill and many encounters can be taken easily and carefully. You are given enough supplies in general, I just wish you were given armor pickups a bit more often since you are forced to spend with just 100 health if you manage to run out of armor. Oh and I hate how in many levels there seems to be no way to backtrack, at least temporary. There was a time I had missed 3 or so enemies and had to load an earlier save to find them (after finding them with cheats and quitting game), it was in HOC 3 on one of the levels where you fight Heresiarch from Hexen.

Oh and I really hate fighting Doom 2 monsters in Heretic, the weapons (unless tomed) aren't very strong and not particularly fun to fight against. Plus they seem to do more damage than the Heretic monsters in general and they have more health as well. The Hexen monsters (the ones that got used) seem to fit nicely among the Heretic monsters, though the Hexen monsters don't drop anything (useful) upon death. I know there is also the similarly Hexen project (Resurrection of Chaos) and it features most of Doom 2 monsters imported, as well as most Heretic monsters too. It will be interesting, considering of the Hexen class system and each of the class gets an unique Heretic weapon to use, I think Fighter gets Firemace, Cleric gets Crossbow and Mage gets Dragon Claw. It will be a while before I reach the newer Heretic & Hexen mods since there are some gems released, as rare as they are.

As for the more recent ZDoom stuff, I finished Plasmaplant (a 2014 ZDoom map by infamous Sverre) and also died a couple of times, it was frustrating halfway through it and it was reaching on my nerves from some annoying encounters with teleporting monsters but the beginning parts and in general I handled carefully. I enjoyed the design in general and the 2 new monsters that look like weird cacodemons with big teeth, they seemed to fit nicely along Doom 2 bestiary. The blue ones drop around 5 health bonuses when you kill them and the brown ones drop around 5 armor bonuses.
I managed to 100% the map in all the categories, there were some monsters that I found later, the secrets I found all by myself (there are 5 secrets to be found, behind fake walls) and there were some unreachable items that I only managed to find by using IDDT (yes I actually use IDDT when I can't find remaining stuff but only after I finish a level, then quit game and reload save to reset cheat since I kinda feel ashamed to cheat). I admit I also cheated by jumping and crouching (though I didn't crouch much, I did jump over one part and entered in a place with arachnotrons everywhere that killed me a couple of times) and realized I didn't need to jump over that barricade. I even ROCKET JUMPED because of those health bonuses were up in platforms and I couldn't reach otherwise, don't worry I did have plenty of health at that time and while going back to get everything 100%, I noticed them. Those monsters seemed to infight with hell knights earlier and I was screwed until I discovered I can reach those pillars by rocket jumping. Very annoying but at least it was possible to do without cheating (noclip, fly, etc). I still jumped but hey, it's a ZDoom map, I don't care, I will jump and crouch as much as I please.

As a bonus, I replayed the map using Aeons of Death v5.29.1 (using my own unofficial 5.30 patch to make it work on latest ZDoom 2.8.1) and I felt it was both easier and harder at times, it was easier to create monster infighting due to all those enemies being replaced and different (except the new monsters obviously), but some enemies were also frustrating and killed me quickly in just a couple of shots, requiring me to save scum at times. Of course two monsters were outside of map (in those monster closets, unable to teleport) and other two were non existent, so I was short of 4 kills, as well as a few items unreachable. I didn't care about getting 100% anyway using a gameplay mod, I knew things would get broken but I didn't care, I had some fun playing it. I don't mind using gameplay mods (after finishing the map/megawad without any mods) on ZDoom exclusive maps to spice things up. Of course I only do that on maps that don't have many things replaced that create compatibility issues with gameplay mods.

And finally, I finished KDIZD! I got 100% in every level, the last 2 levels weren't very difficult as I was expecting and unlike the YouTube video that missed some items in Z1M10, I didn't miss any. I carefully watched at times and I even laughed at that weird secret, I think it may have been used in The City of the Damned (which I played years ago) and there was a Master Key in form of a purple...thing. I won't say because some people may get offended and I rather not offend people who browse this topic.

The final level was cool as well, the final boss went down very quickly with the rifle. I had saved all that rifle ammo (and only used seriously in last 2 levels) and still had a few rifle cartiges after killing the boss, man that thing is so powerful, it killed those Bruiser Demons quickly in 10-15 shots, it absolutely destroys Barons and anything weaker, shot seems to even go through enemies if you line like 2 or so enemies in a row. It's almost like a mini BFG/railgun type of weapon, to make up for the fact there is no Plasma and BFG, though I almost never used the Grenade Launcher, it seems the grenades bounce around and it's more likely to hit you back than bounce around corners. I remember years ago killing myself with it sometimes. This time I only died twice (once in Z1M4 and in Z1M7) and I feel proud for finally doing KDIZD 100% after all these years.

I got 3 merits and a single demerit: Latent. Probably I was too slow or something. Ninety-Six, do you know how to get only Merits and no Demerits? Do you have to finish the levels faster? I admit I was a bit slow in finishing them, as overall it took 8 hours to finish the mod.

Other than that, I can only say that Doomworld has been running slow for me and on my PC I can't load Doomworld anymore, as it closes the connection and problem persists after resetting router and trying different browsers. On my laptop and mobile, I seem to load it fine without any problem. I still managed to log in last week (on my PC) once just to write a PM to sponge (the id software member behind those Unity ports) and still hasn't received a response, anyone know why he doesn't respond? All I remember writing is asking kindly about Unity ports for Heretic, Hexen and Quake, as well as fixing IWAD map bugs (so you can get 100% secrets in all levels), asking if Online Multiplayer is planned and asking if there will be more Addons? Because there still was no addon added, we have reached like 75 days since last addon, though I have hope this week we will get a new addon, if not, I will give up and enjoy what I have.

I will attach some screens with the ZDoom stuff I played.

Before I finish writing, I want to ask if anyone has played and finished Akeldama as I'm still on MAP21 and I am not decided when and if I should finish it already.
96, I advice you to check out Akeldama and let me know how it is because while I found in general good, I must say that I am starting to get annoyed at the fact I still haven't finished it after all these months, due to many levels being a lot longer than they should be and making me feel exhausted even just thinking at it.

Also found that reading the text file, the paragraph about MAP32, the map was originally MUCH easier but valkiriforce made it much harder and broke vanilla limits with all those enemies flickering (though they didn't flicker for me since I used PrBoom+) as they said, also the save game buffer overflow which is a vanilla limitation I can't stand. Why are they even making wads labelled vanilla when they aren't fully tested in vanilla executables? Not that I care since I have Chocolate Doom for modern vanilla wads anyway but even then due to those other limitations (VPOs, etc) I still prefer to use at least Limit-Removing or Boom-Compatible port. It would have been nicer if community projects managers decide to do limit removing wads instead of labelling as vanilla, since it is a bit misleading, at least that's how I consider it.

[Ninety-Six]

RunningDuke, on 02 March 2021 - 05:04 AM, said:

Still won't save the beginning of that TEETH level that is probably one of the worst level starts of all time (in my opinion)

The entirety of TEETH is one big garbage fire, really. Even past the horrendous opening, there's the bars on floor 1 that open and close every 30 seconds (and of course they start closed just to make you wait for no reason), there's one of the most frustrating archvile locations I've seen (the one that keeps resurrecting the chaingunners, including one that can shoot you through a grate in floor 3 that acts as a meatshield for the stupid thing), the mancubus room is tedious at best and bullshit at worst, fighting on the main elevator is in general a pain in the ass, there are lethal gotcha traps everywhere, and 100% completion is impossible because you have to choose between 100% kills or 100% secrets, as the two exits are mutually exclusive. My favorite.

RunningDuke, on 02 March 2021 - 05:04 AM, said:

Do you mean the baron party in E4M1 or E4M2? If in E4M1, then I'm pretty sure the green armor lasts a lot longer than we both think, I know it absorbs 33% damage and if you were to take too much damage, you would eventually die, assuming armor is picked up at 100% health or close to. I would recommend grabbing those few armor bonuses at start of E4M1 after clearing shotgunners and imps and have a slight protection until you reach the armor shortly. Don't listen to the people who have posted before to save EVERY armor bonus, it's bullshit. It's much better to collect the armor as soon as possible, so it will help absorbing rather than take a full shot without armor. It is a bad idea to keep the armor for the end of level because if you start the next level nearly dead, you have no chance to survive.
To give the example from 2018 when I played, I had exactly 100% health and 100% armor when I reached the armor (after I grabbed the 9 health bonuses as I only took a bit of damage from a shotgun guy and with bonuses I was back at 100% health and that was it). When I finished the level, I remember having 26% health and around 70% armor. The armor lasts until halfway through E4M2 at least and even then it will still not be enough since health is extremely scarce, although there is a Soulsphere at start of level in lava but good luck grabbing it with the cacodemons flying around the area at first (of course not a problem for those like you who use ZDoom and who play without infinite height).

I did mean E4M1. The NI|/| baron party is what usually takes away most of my armor. I fight them outside that room but because there is generally very little room to dodge, it's very easy to take a hit and with four of the bastards bearing down on you the damage can rack up quick. Not helping is the rocket launcher, where again the narrow paths make it hard to not take splash damage, especially with all the spectres running around. I use the BigMacDavis strategy of fighting them from behind the cage wall but even then the awkward angle and close proximity to the wall make splash damage common.


Also for the record I used to play with infinitely tall actors, since zdoom fixed the monsters' infinite attack range. However, there were still some issues, even in official levels (mostly Doom 2) where colliding with an enemy I could not possibly have known was below me would drop me into a damaging floor or drop me into a corner with no means of escape (or the opposite where I run for cover only for me to be stopped dead in my tracks as a cacodemon miles in the air plummets from the sky to chomp my face off). Much like the "you die without the plasma gun revenant trap" scenario, without knowing it advance I was dead. This also was a frequent occurrence in user maps, so ultimately I decided to just turn that off.

Since I play saveless, I just got really tired of dying to something I literally could not have seen. I'm more than happy to pay the price for dying so long as I was the one who wrote my own fate. I decided that, since I had the option to, and I pay the price for death as originally intended by id (along with the thought that id more than likely would have disabled that themselves if they could have (especially since even official levels seem to be designed with that in mind)), I figured it was fair enough. I'm already here to be challenged and punished for failures; I think it's fair game to remove something that only exists due to technical limitation when it causes unfair results.

RunningDuke, on 02 March 2021 - 05:04 AM, said:

STRAIN might be done in DOSBox considering it's an old 1997 DOOM 2 TC and source ports didn't exist back then, while for Return to Daro and Mutiny I will probably use PrBoom+.

I'd run chocolate at minimum, unless you know how to use DEHACKED. Strain was entirely built on it, and RtD was built on STRAIN (but fits within vanilla limits). I was surprised to learn DEHACKED was being used to such a degree as early as 97 too (going back to even 96), but alas it was. I can't comment on Mutiny as I haven't played it yet.

RunningDuke, on 02 March 2021 - 05:04 AM, said:

Ninety-Six, do you know how to get only Merits and no Demerits? Do you have to finish the levels faster?

That's basically what I did, yeah. 100% kills, 100% items, and 100% secrets, in all levels including the two secret ones, and doing it at a moderate pace. Since I played that pretty much right after I beat it the first time, I still remembered where most of the secrets were. The result was me only occasionally having to wander around trying to remember where one was. There's actually a surprising grace period to avoid the demerit. Just generally knowing where to go and where everything is in advance will save you from it even if you don't speedrun it.

I don't remember what my final time was for that, unfortunately. That wasn't in the screenshot.

RunningDuke, on 02 March 2021 - 05:04 AM, said:

96, I advice you to check out Akeldama and let me know how it is because while I found in general good, I must say that I am starting to get annoyed at the fact I still haven't finished it after all these months, due to many levels being a lot longer than they should be and making me feel exhausted even just thinking at it.

To be honest I'm already not very interested due to what's already been said about it (by you, no less). If someone who frequently uses saves is having issues then I generally expect it to be bullshit on the whole. Even moreso if they're all marathon levels.

If I ever get around to it, it won't be for a while. I want to give Alien Vendetta a shot first, because what Reaper said about it has me very intrigued. Difficult without relying on foreknowledge-requiring deathtraps is exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for. I keep saying it but the entire reason I love these Golden Age FPSes is because of the combat. For the moments where life and death are mere nanometers apart and one's ability to make plans in an instant and execute them is the one and only determining factor. It's why I play saveless. It gives more weight to the decisions that have to be made in that excruciatingly small gap of time. It's why I'm okay starting all over with nothing but a pistol if the failure is mine and mine alone.

If AV can provide that I will be very happy. And Akeldama sounds like it most likely won't and will instead be a fast ticket to frustration town. Not to say that I'll never get around to it; there's something to be said for morbid curiosity just to see how bad it gets. But it's definitely low priority.


In addition AV itself is probably a ways off. Between Demon Throne and beta testing another mod, I don't have a lot of room for a mega-hard Doom wad right now, fair or not. I was able to finish STRAIN but that's about it (since I went through most of it before the beta testing started), and STRAIN is not something I'd consider "mega-hard" to begin with. Plus, I want to have a few "grudge matches" before going onto AV. I lost a few saves from that first harddrive crash besides just STRAIN's.

A few of them were on the difficult side and I'd like to try and complete them to see if their quality can hold up:

Going Down is one I got pretty far in and it is pretty difficult. That said I found it mostly fair (with a few rough spots but it can be forgiven in a one-man megawad). mouldy actually has a decent track record with me, with all his maps I've played being very difficult but never cheap. He even had the one single good level I liked from 50 Shades of Graytall. I would like to try and finish it to see if it stays that way. If it does then that's another that can go into my personal hall of fame.

Skillsaw's Lunatic and Vanguard were recommended (I think by Reaper as well) as cases for hard but fair. I know from some tinkering that Vanguard is for at least a little bit. I don't know about the later levels but when I think of "brutal but fair" Doom levels 13 Angry Archviles is one of the first to come to mind. So I want to see them to completion. And maybe Valiant for a re-review. I'm pretty sure it's still bullshit but it's been a good few years and I want to give it another shot. Ancient Aliens is still crap though. If I ever play it again it will be through Final Doomer's AA class alone.

On a similar note, I also want to give Jenesis another go. I abandoned it years ago in the middle of the third episode. I loved almost all of it but there are some levels that use cheap tactics to be difficult. That said, I knew even back then there were less cheap areas than most. Some levels are just junk (MAP21), but I'm willing to give it another shake. I played that set much earlier in my Doom "career" and am much more skilled than I was back then. Bullshit will always be bullshit regardless of skill level, but for those deaths where I wasn't sure of whose fault it was, I might be able to tell more definitively now.

Dimension of the Boomed is one I actually wasn't sure about which side of the bullshit line it fell on before the data was lost. I made it to MAP03, I think? It was definitely difficult, but the deaths I received were debatable about the cause. And because they were debatable that means there's still hope and is worth another look.


I would also like to try and finish Interception as well, now that the sequel has come out. There is some hope; Interception wasn't brutally difficult in most places. MAP23 and MAP27 (where I stopped) are terrible levels, of course, but they were both made by the same person, and those were his only two contributions. Considering I liked the rest of Interception, including episode 3, it's worth trying again before playing the sequel (which had no contributions from said mapper).

Speaking of sequels, Perdition's Gate: Resurgence is supposed to come out soon and since I loved the original I need to play that. I also feel obligated to at least try the Plutonia sequels, too.

Whitemare and its sequel are two wads that appeared on my radar. Apparently Russians have a tendency to make hard-but-fair levels? It's worth a look. Them and then that one Plutonia-inspired one whose name I can't remember that was mentioned in the missed cacowards section.

Lastly I would also like to return to the Doom Core trilogy. I want to see what changes were made to the original, and also give Reverie another chance. I'll just space them out this time.


These weren't listed in any particular order, and Vendetta will probably be done sometime after Interception and Going Down, but I'll probably do all of these well before I tackle Akeldama.

[ReaperAA]

RunningDuke, on 02 March 2021 - 05:04 AM, said:

Other than that, I can only say that Doomworld has been running slow for me and on my PC I can't load Doomworld anymore, as it closes the connection and problem persists after resetting router and trying different browsers. On my laptop and mobile, I seem to load it fine without any problem. I still managed to log in last week (on my PC) once just to write a PM to sponge (the id software member behind those Unity ports) and still hasn't received a response, anyone know why he doesn't respond? All I remember writing is asking kindly about Unity ports for Heretic, Hexen and Quake, as well as fixing IWAD map bugs (so you can get 100% secrets in all levels), asking if Online Multiplayer is planned and asking if there will be more Addons? Because there still was no addon added, we have reached like 75 days since last addon, though I have hope this week we will get a new addon, if not, I will give up and enjoy what I have.

Doomworld was DDOS'ed a few weeks ago, and the site ran horribly. However that seems to be resolved and the site is running good now.

RunningDuke, on 02 March 2021 - 05:04 AM, said:

Oh and I really hate fighting Doom 2 monsters in Heretic, the weapons (unless tomed) aren't very strong and not particularly fun to fight against. Plus they seem to do more damage than the Heretic monsters in general and they have more health as well. The Hexen monsters (the ones that got used) seem to fit nicely among the Heretic monsters, though the Hexen monsters don't drop anything (useful) upon death. I know there is also the similarly Hexen project (Resurrection of Chaos) and it features most of Doom 2 monsters imported, as well as most Heretic monsters too. It will be interesting, considering of the Hexen class system and each of the class gets an unique Heretic weapon to use, I think Fighter gets Firemace, Cleric gets Crossbow and Mage gets Dragon Claw. It will be a while before I reach the newer Heretic & Hexen mods since there are some gems released, as rare as they are.

I also recommend you to try out Faithless Trilogy. It is a GZDoom Heretic magawad that has some enemies and features from Hexen. The first episode was released more than a year ago which I really loved while the next 2 episodes are in a beta stage.

Ninety-Six, on 02 March 2021 - 07:00 AM, said:

If I ever get around to it, it won't be for a while. I want to give Alien Vendetta a shot first, because what Reaper said about it has me very intrigued. Difficult without relying on foreknowledge-requiring deathtraps is exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for. I keep saying it but the entire reason I love these Golden Age FPSes is because of the combat. For the moments where life and death are mere nanometers apart and one's ability to make plans in an instant and execute them is the one and only determining factor. It's why I play saveless. It gives more weight to the decisions that have to be made in that excruciatingly small gap of time. It's why I'm okay starting all over with nothing but a pistol if the failure is mine and mine alone.

Well to be fair, I don't recommend to play AV saveless, not because of the traps but because some levels are pretty long. Most levels aren't that long (have anywhere between 100-300 monsters) but Maps 14, 25, 26, 27 are really long with like 800+ monsters each (not to mention that these maps are really challenging).

[FistMarine]

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The entirety of TEETH is one big garbage fire, really. Even past the horrendous opening, there's the bars on floor 1 that open and close every 30 seconds (and of course they start closed just to make you wait for no reason), there's one of the most frustrating archvile locations I've seen (the one that keeps resurrecting the chaingunners, including one that can shoot you through a grate in floor 3 that acts as a meatshield for the stupid thing), the mancubus room is tedious at best and bullshit at worst, fighting on the main elevator is in general a pain in the ass, there are lethal gotcha traps everywhere, and 100% completion is impossible because you have to choose between 100% kills or 100% secrets, as the two exits are mutually exclusive. My favorite.

Ah, now I remember most of the map and how annoying it was, though that archvile with resurrecting chaingunners I don't remember, I must play through the Master Levels again to refresh my memory. I remember how it was almost impossible to get 100% everything in this map but maybe there will be a way to do with saving on multiple slots just in case I will screw up (though it will be really difficult with vanilla Doom's limitations, 6 save slots and no stats until the end of level, not to mention archvile resurrecting and inflating kills past 100%, now I will never know if I got everything 100%). I think there is a way to do that while getting launched in air and kill the archvile before exitting and having everything 100% collected before as there is no way to backtrack. Maybe it will be a good idea to go through the map in PrBoom+ first (or even in ZDoom with jumping with Menu Interface mod, see below), just to get the hang of it in preparation for playing in DOSBox, although I might as well do pistol starting each IWAD map in PrBoom+ (and even go further for UV Fast), since I will be saving often, it shouldn't be a problem. Not sure if anyone has managed to do Master Levels on UV Fast or even Nightmare, I want one day to do the ultimate challenge and never play the Master Levels again. Except maybe with gameplay mods in ZDoom/GZDoom when playing with Master Levels Menu Interface (which was a neat little mod released in 2010 that could make Master Levels playable from a single menu nicely resembling DOS interface, made for ZDoom ports only and requiring manually editing TEETH.WAD and integrating into the pk3 file) or WadSmoosh that merges all official Doom games into a pk3 (GZDoom only) and in latter case it would be better to absolutely bring a gameplay mod to spice things up while playing through all official Doom content because it will be pretty boring to use GZDoom (without mods) even if I will jump and crouch and I might as well bring a gameplay mod that I'd rather not mention here. Otherwise, I usually play IWADS in DOSBox with classic controls, though I hope one day to get the Unity ports, whether on PC or Android, to experience the classic Doom games again. I will probably pick them up on Google Play because I don't feel like buying the Bethesda Launcher version or the Steam version just so I get access to the Unity ports. Though I can imagine gaming on the mobile will be annoying.

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I did mean E4M1. The NI|/| baron party is what usually takes away most of my armor. I fight them outside that room but because there is generally very little room to dodge, it's very easy to take a hit and with four of the bastards bearing down on you the damage can rack up quick. Not helping is the rocket launcher, where again the narrow paths make it hard to not take splash damage, especially with all the spectres running around. I use the BigMacDavis strategy of fighting them from behind the cage wall but even then the awkward angle and close proximity to the wall make splash damage common.

Also for the record I used to play with infinitely tall actors, since zdoom fixed the monsters' infinite attack range. However, there were still some issues, even in official levels (mostly Doom 2) where colliding with an enemy I could not possibly have known was below me would drop me into a damaging floor or drop me into a corner with no means of escape (or the opposite where I run for cover only for me to be stopped dead in my tracks as a cacodemon miles in the air plummets from the sky to chomp my face off). Much like the "you die without the plasma gun revenant trap" scenario, without knowing it advance I was dead. This also was a frequent occurrence in user maps, so ultimately I decided to just turn that off.

Since I play saveless, I just got really tired of dying to something I literally could not have seen. I'm more than happy to pay the price for dying so long as I was the one who wrote my own fate. I decided that, since I had the option to, and I pay the price for death as originally intended by id (along with the thought that id more than likely would have disabled that themselves if they could have (especially since even official levels seem to be designed with that in mind)), I figured it was fair enough. I'm already here to be challenged and punished for failures; I think it's fair game to remove something that only exists due to technical limitation when it causes unfair results.

Oh, I see now. In that case it sounds like the damage caused would more likely end you almost dead and with at least 50% armor left, now that I think about it yeah the armor may be gone halfway through E4M2 as I predicted but I'm saying that without medkits available on E4M1 on UV skill, there is no way to end up with very little armor because of its low absorption, the health will be gone before your armor would be 50% or less. I used the same strategy as in 2018 with watching BigMacDavis' videos and although lining up the barons to kill with rocket launcher wasn't too bad (though it may have taken some tries, also let me say that in ZDoom ports I noticed that rockets have a higher chance to hit around corners and make you get hurt, making it far less satisfying than in vanilla Doom), I still can't understand how do some people beat E4M1 while taking so little damage (or no damage at all in rare cases), while most of the level can be handled with a bit of skill and luck involved, the red key trap is bullshit with enemies even firing behind those walls (I didn't understand what was hitting me back then since I was looking at what could possibly hit me when there was no one around that room) and the 4-5 barons trap is just awful (that one baron that spawns at red key is enough), how the fuck did that slip into the commercial product? I understand that the first two levels were meant to be hard and may have been placed too early but even if they were placed later (which would solve some balance issues at least), how would you still have a map that contains nearly no health on higher skills? Imagine if E4M1 was coming after E4M6 where most players would end up with low health from that level and be forced to survive Hell Beneath with low health. Even with the arsenal gathered, I can imagine it will be pretty bad getting killed at every turn and having to save scum. I'm curious how Switcheroom made E4 versions of other episodes' levels, though I first have to finish UDTWID before doing D2TWID and then doing Switcheroom.

I never thought I'd talk so much about Thy Flesh Consumed but while I really enjoy the looks of the levels (they are much better designed than the forgettable E2 & E3 levels designed by Sandy Petersen), I really hate the gameplay balance and the lack of an intermission screen similar to first 3 episodes, means that it was rushed. Though I didn't complain about Doom 2 (and TNT & Plutonia) lacking an intermission and that Doom 2 level design is messy (now I finally start to realize how messy Doom 2 is), I still hate TFC with a passion due to how poorly the first 2 levels are designed. Absolutely abysmal level design choices. On HMP it may not be too bad based on what I watched on Youtube, but on the first level, less shotgunners means less shotgun shells available, though it is possible the baron trap isn't available on easier skills either (other than the single baron spawning at red key room), so the level is significantly easier (also with the 6 medkits available) and I imagine E4M2 may also be decently challenging on HMP skill, plus E4M6 has armor available on easier skills too. But then the question is why are these levels so difficult on UV skill? They are such a difficulty spike compared to first 3 episodes on UV skill (and even E4 on HMP skill may be harder than first 3 episodes on UV). At least half of the episode 4 ain't too bad but I still dislike for how rushed it is. Most people seem to shit on Doom 2 but at least it was a lot more fair and it had some really fun levels, even if some levels are ugly or confusing or even frustrating if you don't know how to deal with them, I enjoyed my time with them even as a kid and I don't remember getting stuck as often as those people (I only remember MAP19 being confusing, which also happens to be Ninety-Six's favorite).

I understand about the infinitely tall actors (I hate that and the BLOCKMAP bug as well, though I accepted them when playing vanilla/Boom wads in Chocolate/Crispy/Eternity/PrBoom+) and I do find bullshit when I bump into an enemy and fall into an inescapable pit (as it happened a while ago in SIGIL E5M7 where I was going to grab last key and bumped into a second cacodemon that I forgot it was down there), although I can't imagine why someone would use anything other than ZDoom's Default compatibility settings (yes I know we talked about that before, I still find a bit strange to play ZDoom as vanilla as possible). I find the best to leave ZDoom compatibility on Default because if I mess with compat settings for one wad, I tend to forget for the next and it might screw up if playing a vanilla wad first, then a ZDoom wad next and so on. I don't remember if it ever happened to me (I only messed with compat settings on first few years I played ZDoom back in 2007-2009 when I was messing with various options) but I remember facepalming hard when I read somewhere a comment where someone played Hexen (in ZDoom/GZDoom) and he had the Doom (strict) compat settings enabled and he couldn't get past some trees that you were supposed to destroy at start of Darkmere level because the trees were "infinitely tall". And then there was someone else that played a ZDoom/GZDoom mod where the player was flying and there were enemies that could kill from way below. These are some of the more extreme examples that I came across last year or so based on reading on some forums (don't remember if it was Doomworld or other place). Besides, ZDoom has even its own automatic compatibility that applies on problematic maps, like enabling ghost monsters and I know newer GZDoom versions (not sure since when?) also seem to fix IWAD maps and patch TNT MAP31 yellow key bug even for people who don't have the patched IWAD. I know I find this a bit weird and a bit unfair as well that GZDoom players get 100% everything in each IWAD map but that's life I guess.

Also another ZDoom inaccuracy (though it may have been fixed in latest GZDoom versions) in that the cacodemons (and flying monsters in general) have a tendency to get pushed miles away. They even get pushed vertically a lot, thus having to wait for them to come down. It is more notable when using the rocket launcher and I heard it could be related to the rocket blast radius that was changed (which may explain why using the rocket launcher in ZDoom ports behaves slightly different and feels a bit less satisfying, besides the dumb weapon centering when firing), I could be wrong about that though.

In PrBoom+ I always use the correct complevel when playing a wad and I wish Eternity would get compatibility levels because at this point I'm somewhat disappointed with its minor inaccuracies despite strong vanilla/boom/MBF compatibility and don't feel using Eternity that much except for stuff like SIGIL (which I already finished a while ago, though I will replay it with other ports), The Lost Episode (Evil Unleashed) which will be the next wad I will play, as well as DTWID: LE (for the extra E5 and E6 in menu) and NEIS (especially for the two bonus levels that exist in the wad) and for the Skillsaw wads I guess, since they were made with Eternity in mind for a more vanilla feeling (and I guess Eviternity would have been nice too, except for the fact that Eternity had some problems with some of the maps based on what I read, so I will use PrBoom+ when I get to Eviternity).

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I'd run chocolate at minimum, unless you know how to use DEHACKED. Strain was entirely built on it, and RtD was built on STRAIN (but fits within vanilla limits). I was surprised to learn DEHACKED was being used to such a degree as early as 97 too (going back to even 96), but alas it was. I can't comment on Mutiny as I haven't played it yet.

I guess you are right, though I may succeed installing STRAIN on a plain DOOM 2 v1.9, on my PC I have Windows 7 32-bit and I may be able to manually install STRAIN without using DOSBox or at least unpack Strain, as I heard it was a pain in ass to get it running on newer OSes and I don't remember having problems running Strain back then. Problem was from the first 2-3 levels I played back in 2013 or so (in ZDoom with AEOD) and getting stuck as something didn't lower, so that was my fault using ZDoom and a gameplay mod, which is why I plan to undo my mistakes and playing through each wad as intended. And regarding Return to Daro, yep it's a vanilla wad and requires STRAIN, so I will definitely use Chocolate Doom to play it. As for Mutiny, I think it's limit-removing and works better in either Crispy or PrBoom+. I will eventually get to it, though at this rate it will take me years to get through 10 wads, it looks like. Not to mention many other games and mods awaiting me playing after all these months.

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That's basically what I did, yeah. 100% kills, 100% items, and 100% secrets, in all levels including the two secret ones, and doing it at a moderate pace. Since I played that pretty much right after I beat it the first time, I still remembered where most of the secrets were. The result was me only occasionally having to wander around trying to remember where one was. There's actually a surprising grace period to avoid the demerit. Just generally knowing where to go and where everything is in advance will save you from it even if you don't speedrun it.

I don't remember what my final time was for that, unfortunately. That wasn't in the screenshot.

I would be interested knowing even an estimated time how much it took. I'm guessing when you got Slowpoke, you took it even slower than me on your first attempt? As when I got Latent (at my time which was a bit above 8 hours), I suspected I went a bit too slow but after watching Zdenda's playthrough (where he even missed a few items and still got all 4 merits, though he was very helpful in showing most of secrets in later levels that weren't mentioned on Doomwiki.org, as it seems there aren't many 100% guides/walkthroughs online of KDIZD), I noticed he was still above par time and yet he managed to get all 4 merits and no demerit. I wonder what is the maximum time allowed before getting demerits? I'm going to guess around 5 hours, so if I cut my time in half, I could probably get all merits. Maybe next time (next summer or in a couple of years when I revisit KDIZD). I still plan to play through initial KDIZD versions (1.0 and 1.1) that were released initially, all that's available now is the latest 1.2 (dated 16/06/2013) and it would be interesting to play through the older versions just to see some differences, if there's any differences in level design, I think monsters may have been redesigned at one point as it's possible the ones like Hell Warrior initially used the old design from the Monster Resource Wad and they were later updated on both KDIZD and Realm667 repository with new sprites, etc.

Speaking of the various wads, actually in case of Akeldama, most of its levels aren't difficult at all and I'm not having problems with it even when I'm saving as I save often and use multiple slots (it's just how I play, lots of saving, I rarely reload though, only when I die I reload and when I quit and come back later, though there are a few cases I don't reload at all, such as before dying or to redo an encounter, I find this a bit cheating and a true form of savescumming, so I don't do this, I play as fair as possible), the problem is SOME of the maps are really long and have quite a few annoying traps that I was trying my best to survive (since I went completely blind with small exceptions when I was near end of few levels and wasn't sure if possible to backtrack, so I can pick up the soulsphere/blue armor that I left earlier or save it for after final encounter, depending on how much health/armor I had at that time) and I played slowly and carefully in general instead of rushing like the people you see playing on YouTube (who are most likely familiar with the maps anyway), which is why it has been taking me so long, in game time clocks at 20 hours currently. Some levels were actually pretty easy (even the recent MAP21 I finished yesterday), I tried to help you to know what to expect from the wad and I will quote this paragraph from the Cacowards 2020 Special Features:

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The hefty Akeldama is a must-play for avowed fans of classics like Memento Mori and Requiem. It had a lot of buzz on Doomworld, thanks to its reliable infusion of that oldschool energy into big, polished adventure maps packed with hundreds of enemies, all under the catchy riffs and moody jams of its community-made soundtrack. Whether through project-leader @valkiriforce's stewardship or some kinship of spirit everyone latched onto, it looks and feels the part, although some will wish the bulk was broken up by shorter pacer maps.

It just sucks that at least half of the maps are the "adventure" types that contain hundreds of monsters and take me about 40-50 minutes on average to finish a map that would take like 20-30 minutes or less to someone who knows the map. It's just there are also tricky traps involved sometimes that I don't feel like going straight into action and I prefer to just peek around corners and carefully take enemies one by one, to minimize damage and conserve the health/armor because it is so nice to conserve the precious health and armor for the harder encounters where you are forced to survive a nasty trap or be forced to endure unavoidable damage. Also the slaughter MAP32 wasn't as bad as I thought, MAP31 gave me more trouble (due to that problematic Cyber that I didn't know how to handle it other than using BFG around corners to do 2-3 BFG shots to kill him and even then it took me many tries) and I will say MAP32 is a somewhat straightforward "Hell Revealed" like Slaughter map, it is not the bullshit Ribbiks kind of slaughtermap. Still, it's a bit out of place from this megawad and I wish it didn't end up like that in this project. I feel like valkiriforce started editing some of the maps that were submitted into the project to better suit his tastes since otherwise those maps would be too boring, so I do appreciate he took some time to polish the maps, just wish it had a bit more testing and maybe released in July 2020 instead of June, as there's some maps that didn't get enough testing. And there was MAP13 I think that was more like an Alien Vendetta map (as in readme text file it says that map's inspiration came from AV), which brings me to the following point:

Regarding Alien Vendetta, I would like to warn you about it in that the last episode (especially some of its maps and even the secret levels) get full on slaughtery and I don't recommend you to go blind/saveless, don't force yourself to do that because I'm sure there are some frustrating maps, with MAP26 having a chaotic start where you are surrounded by many monsters (like archviles, cyberdemons, revenants) and must go into water and then find the route to safely kill the monsters around the area to make some space, not sure how to explain but some maps get really crazy. I will have to replay AV after all these years, like in most cases above, it was one of the many megawads I finished in ZDoom with gameplay mods back in 2013, so I hope to get through it soon in PrBoom+, just let me finish Akeldama first as I've got 9 maps left.

Going Down is on my to play list, I will tackle it sometime, maybe this summer or maybe I should do it just after Akeldama and before Alien Vendetta. I don't know when I will get around to doing this, I'm not that good with timing to be honest.

I think I may have been who recommended Lunatic and Vanguard, though I could be wrong, as I remember talking about them before and I hope to play through them in following months.

I second Jenesis, I think it was pretty good, though it was another wad I finished in ZDoom with gameplay mods at that time, so I must play through it in PrBoom+. I heard some maps were bugged even in latest release and Jimmy never got around fixing them before moving on to newer projects. I remember the wad also having earlier versions with only first and second episode, so it will be interesting if I can track those down as there may have been a map that was replaced or moved to another slot. On a similar note, I have downloaded both versions of Alien Vendetta and want to go through both of them (maybe this summer?) since the most significant change is one of the maps were replaced and moved to another slot, I'm talking about maps 24 and 25. And then there was a Black Label expansion (separate wad) that added two new maps, one of which was a reworked map that was replaced in second version.

DOTB is another wad on my to play list, I will probably tackle it before I do Eviternity, when I get around doing MBF wads as both this and Eviternity are MBF compatible and it will be interesting to do after doing some Boom compatible wads, so that means I will leave Jenesis and Going Down for after doing Akeldama and AV and maybe even Scythe. However at this rate I doubt I can finish multiple megawads in a single year but in most cases I will watch YouTube videos before I tackle a map and that would greatly help with finishing wads faster. Akeldama was pretty much a blind playthrough where 99% of time I went without having seen a video beforehand, except in the cases I mentioned above or looking at doomwiki.org for secrets and such. Though sometimes secrets are already marked on automap thanks to PrBoom+ marked secrets feature enabled by default (in ZDoom this isn't enabled by default though). Yeah, I know, PrBoom+ has some really weird settings by default, I heard the newer forks UMAPINFO and DSDA-Doom are really good, has anyone tested these forks yet? I will definitely use them to play newer wads and leave PrBoom+ 2.5.1.4 (which is what I use currently) in the dust for everything released until 2020, after that everything 2021 and newer will be played in newer PrBoom+ builds. Of course talking about Boom compatible wads (and some vanilla ones as well).

Interception, uh yeah, maybe I should add it somewhere between AV/Scythe and Going Down. OK, added in between, this spring and summer will be interesting with these megawads, though don't forget about all the other stuff I also have currently and not to mention Duke and Quake stuff as well. And various Heretic & Hexen wads...

Looking forward to the Perdition's Gate: Resurgence, I wonder if it's going to be fully vanilla project perfect for Chocolate Doom or it will be like Akeldama with some maps long and without taking vanilla limits into consideration, thus more limit removing than vanilla? I know there was also TNT: Revilution (another wad added on my to play list) which had those issues mentioned above, thus better played in PrBoom+ but I haven't followed much of Perdition's Gate: Resurgence. Also speaking of Perdition's Gate, I shamefully admit that I saw an eBay listing in past 2-3 weeks that had it in Very Good condition at an affordable price (it was 50-60 or so GBP, I think) and I was waiting for my salary to enter into account that day (wasn't sure if money have entered, pretty sure I had the money required to buy it anyway even without the salary), I waited until next day to buy it just to make sure I had the money and then I saw it was no longer available to buy it, it said Sold after finding the listing in my history (I wasn't able to find it in search results anymore), I haven't felt so disappointed in a long time. I could have FINALLY gotten an original CD copy of Perdition's gate (not sure if it had the back CD cover as the UK seller didn't have a screenshot of that, just the front case/paper or manual and the CD in very good condition) but sadly I wasn't fast enough to buy it. It's not the first time this bullshit happens with someone getting an item with just a couple of hours before I do, many times I've had an item I wanted one day and next day in morning or later same day it was gone and I guess in shame, I will go and download the demo versions of the PERDGATE and HELL2PAY that were floating around on internet, as I've only played through demos years ago with a gameplay mod and now I should do it in DOSBox and then I will be able to judge the wads based on the demos I played.

Whitemare series are also on my to play list, though I heard some maps get a little crazy. Also are you thinking about A.L.T. megawad? I heard it was overlooked when it got released and I will consider getting through it one time, as well as other wads that I barely heard before like Heroes' Tales (this may be a TNT.WAD megawad instead of usual Doom 2 ones).

I will get into Doom Core Trilogy after I do each of them separately. Since Doom Core Trilogy will be ZDoom only, I'm guessing I will have to play using ZDoom's modern controls and deal with it, although jumping and crouching may be disabled and I'm not sure if I want to use a gameplay mod, so it will be very annoying regardless of the choice I make. I wonder why no one thinks of using EMAPINFO for people who use Eternity? I know there's other projects like 2002: ADO and Whispers of Satan that suffer from similar issues where a ZDoom port is required to access the bonus/secret maps, while the regular maps are all vanilla/limit removing/boom, so a ZDoom port isn't even necessary in the first place. There's also D2TWID which has a hidden MAP33 (accessed from MAP02) in ports with MAPINFO (at least Eternity was taken into consideration here) and the map is limit-removing anyway, thus defeating the purpose of a fully vanilla megawad. Though that's an exception and I'm getting off-topic here. Bottom line is I wish wads didn't have maps that required OTHER source port than the one advertised. I'm generally not a fan of wads which have for example some maps limit removing, while others are Boom while others are ZDoom, all packed into same wad. I'm probably thinking at Doomworld Mega Project type of wads but I just find weird having to use different ports to play same wad, unless you use ZDoom/GZDoom to play ALL its maps because it's apparently the universal port that everyone uses, though I'd argue that ZDoom isn't fully Boom compatible as it is actually Mostly, according to the Doomwiki.org. Considering the fact that ZDoom wasn't based on Boom and it added Boom features even since its early 1.x versions back in late 90s.

Apologize for going into another long message that took an hour and half to write, in the end I will say I played more Akeldama (and regret writing the bad stuff yesterday about it) because I enjoyed MAP21 and it was designed by Valkiriforce and it was one of the easiest maps in the wad. I started the level with 200% health and half green armor and managed to conserve a bit of the soulsphere and do many encounters without any damage (there were only 175 monsters in total) and even got blue armor (after I had already gotten another green armor, doesn't matter anyway since I sometimes tend to pick up a green armor before picking up blue, so I can get all armors in a level that has few armor pickups) and nicely saved it for the next level while wearing it through half of the level, in other words I have 132% health and 200% armor when I reached MAP22, which will greatly help as this level doesn't have blue armor available and instead it has 3 cyberdemons (according to the Doomwiki.org stats table), so I can know what to expect from in next hours when I get back to playing. And of course the next couple of maps which will be also long...

Unfortunately there were two issues with MAP21 which I will list shortly:
-There is a secret that contains rockets but no rocket launcher (not an issue for continuous players like me, would have been nice to balance it for pistol start as well)
-There are 0 items in the level. Yep, no items at all! Other than two radiation suits that don't count as items (only counted until version 1.2 of Doom I think), that means you will end up with 0% items at the end of the level, at least in vanilla/Boom ports, in my case using PrBoom+. Sure it still counts as an "UV-Max" and it's the maximum possible and I know it's similar to those levels (even in original Doom 2) that had no secrets and scored you 0% secrets, although I believe in Boom ports a map without secrets would score you 100% secrets anyway. Oh and of course in ZDoom this isn't an issue as it says 100% for a map that has no kills/items/secrets.

This makes me believe that this is YET another map that was tested only in ZDoom. You know, I'm not surprised if Valkiriforce is only testing in ZDoom, based on most (if not all) of his YouTube videos he only plays and tests in ZDoom. Why the hell no one has tested this map in vanilla and wondered why there are no items in the map? I know that even most completionists don't care about getting 100% items but me and 96 (and a couple of others) want everything and this isn't an excuse!

So that means when I will review Akeldama at Doomworld (when I get around to finally posting and reviewing wads, coming soon I guess), I will absolutely point out the two maps where it wasn't possible to get 100% everything. MAP18 (two monsters unreachable) and MAP21 (no items) so far. I expect some more maps to have similar issues. Until then, I will focus on finishing Akeldama and UDTWID.

Oh yeah and in UDTWID I reached E4M6. Not much to say other than following Zdenda's playthrough and I made sure to get everything. Unlike him, I made sure to get 100% everything, including the items he missed. A bit surprising that I had initially missed two secrets and and an item but then remembered there was a secret that opens up in the exit room with 2 radiation suits (so I could explore what I missed) and an invisibility secret at start, that I completely forgot about it. At least I got the useful invulnerability one that helped deal with last barons in darkness (and some spectres behind). Also surprised I got through that platforming part, there were some awful parts and yet I got through them nicely, though I did lose most of my precious blue armor in some encounters, so I start yet another level with a quarter of blue armor and around 100% health. And the worst part is that E4M6 and E4M7 don't feature blue armors at all (the latter I think has no armor at all), according to Doomwiki.org stats. At least I didn't go to levels completely blind like I do with Akeldama. I will finish UDTWID this week for sure. Will I finish Akeldama? Especially with some annoying work I've got this week? Find out in next couple of days...

Also I hope tomorrow we get a new addon or even a new update for the Unity ports, I wouldn't be surprised if they planned yet another big update like the one last September (that added crosshair, DEHACKED support, widescreen graphics and other cool stuff).

EDIT: Just noticed ReaperAA replied while I was replying.

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Doomworld was DDOS'ed a few weeks ago, and the site ran horribly. However that seems to be resolved and the site is running good now.

Ah, sorry to hear that. That explains why the site ran so slow and why last week I couldn't access at all or only access temporary before getting the unavailable page in Google Chrome. Yep, it seems to run great now, at least on my laptop and mobile, haven't tried on my PC just yet.

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I also recommend you to try out Faithless Trilogy. It is a GZDoom Heretic magawad that has some enemies and features from Hexen. The first episode was released more than a year ago which I really loved while the next 2 episodes are in a beta stage.

Thanks for the recommendation. Faithless Trilogy is on my to play list, however I didn't start immediately as it would spoil all other megawads, I kinda want to go through them in order and starting with weaker ones first, such as HOC series which are decent, though some annoying parts I didn't like much (and still have to do HOC X, which I played once many years ago in 2012 or so). I have downloaded Faithless E1 a while ago, should I play it first before doing the whole trilogy? I kinda want to play through it and note the changes as it's interesting to play through the initial version first and later while playing through the updated release, note the changes between versions. I found interesting to notice changes between various versions that have been made on some projects that were re-released all over the years. I know it takes some extra time but this gives me an excuse to revisit the mod later. Though there are times where I play the latest version first and then check the older versions for curiosity.

EDIT 2: Minor spelling fixes

[ReaperAA]

RunningDuke, on 02 March 2021 - 11:37 PM, said:

Thanks for the recommendation. Faithless Trilogy is on my to play list, however I didn't start immediately as it would spoil all other megawads, I kinda want to go through them in order and starting with weaker ones first, such as HOC series which are decent, though some annoying parts I didn't like much (and still have to do HOC X, which I played once many years ago in 2012 or so). I have downloaded Faithless E1 a while ago, should I play it first before doing the whole trilogy? I kinda want to play through it and note the changes as it's interesting to play through the initial version first and later while playing through the updated release, note the changes between versions. I found interesting to notice changes between various versions that have been made on some projects that were re-released all over the years. I know it takes some extra time but this gives me an excuse to revisit the mod later. Though there are times where I play the latest version first and then check the older versions for curiosity.

From what I know, there are no changes to E1 (and no changes are planned for it) between the 2 wads as E1 was already completed. So you can use either wad. I myself am waiting for the Faithless Trilogy to be completed before I start playing E2 and E3

[Ninety-Six]

ReaperAA, on 02 March 2021 - 10:56 PM, said:

Well to be fair, I don't recommend to play AV saveless, not because of the traps but because some levels are pretty long. Most levels aren't that long (have anywhere between 100-300 monsters) but Maps 14, 25, 26, 27 are really long with like 800+ monsters each (not to mention that these maps are really challenging).

Worse comes to worse I'll drop a save around the 30 minute mark or something. It'll depend.

RunningDuke, on 02 March 2021 - 11:37 PM, said:

I think there is a way to do that while getting launched in air and kill the archvile before exitting and having everything 100% collected before as there is no way to backtrack.

There's a baron locked away by the normal exit.

Also decino is in the middle of a UV-Fast playthrough of the Master Levels right now.

RunningDuke, on 02 March 2021 - 11:37 PM, said:

although I can't imagine why someone would use anything other than ZDoom's Default compatibility settings (yes I know we talked about that before, I still find a bit strange to play ZDoom as vanilla as possible).

Well part of it is to have as close to vanilla compatibility as possible. For instance there's a somewhat annoying bug that makes some walls raise higher than they're supposed to go that doesn't have a clear compatibility flag that alters that. As a result having most things set to "Doom (strict)" covers all my bases.

But even beyond that, the main reason is that I want to play the game as close to vanilla as possible while having gameplay-interfering bugs disabled, to reach more how the game was designed and intended rather than release. zDoom is about the only one that offers the full scope of bug fixes. It's also customizable enough for me to add small Quality of Life improvements such as blood color corrections, SC-55 music, the enhanced vanilla sound effects by perikistan, and re-timed weapon firing animations imported from Doom Zero.

It also affords me stat tracking and the ability to temporarily switch to a HUD that lets me know if I have a berserk or a blue armor. Important tactical information that for whatever reason doesn't show up on the normal HUD.


In short, ZDoom is the only engine I know of to allow me the full experience of enhancing the vanilla game without breaking it.

Moreover, I recently learned that full control customization is something that's more rare than it should be. I tried Crispy not too long ago and didn't get past the options menu because I learned it doesn't recognize the numpad keys. That's a big problem for me as I have very bad wrists. In order to play these games I have to put my hand on the right side of the keyboard and use the cursor keys over WASD. This means weapon selection should be on the numpad keys (as well as having all other important functions near it). And if I can't use the numpad, then I can't play.


And then for Boom-compatible or later engines, I just have a special directory for each level containing its own set of compatibility flags.

RunningDuke, on 02 March 2021 - 11:37 PM, said:

I'm guessing when you got Slowpoke, you took it even slower than me on your first attempt? As when I got Latent (at my time which was a bit above 8 hours), I suspected I went a bit too slow but after watching Zdenda's playthrough (where he even missed a few items and still got all 4 merits, though he was very helpful in showing most of secrets in later levels that weren't mentioned on Doomwiki.org, as it seems there aren't many 100% guides/walkthroughs online of KDIZD), I noticed he was still above par time and yet he managed to get all 4 merits and no demerit. I wonder what is the maximum time allowed before getting demerits? I'm going to guess around 5 hours, so if I cut my time in half, I could probably get all merits.

Thereabouts, yeah. I remember that much. 5-6 hours is my estimate.

My first attempt was probably closer to 10 hours. Since I went in blind, not watching a video or anything, I spent a long time humping walls in each level. The worst was Z1M7 which probably contributed a whole fourth of that time on its own.

RunningDuke, on 02 March 2021 - 11:37 PM, said:

Regarding Alien Vendetta, I would like to warn you about it in that the last episode (especially some of its maps and even the secret levels) get full on slaughtery and I don't recommend you to go blind/saveless,

We'll see what happens. I might go saveless as far as just relying on the autosave so I keep my weapons and forego the pistol start. I have to have a line drawn in the sand somewhere though, because I'm just not interested if there isn't some risk of being set back.

RunningDuke, on 02 March 2021 - 11:37 PM, said:

I will probably tackle it before I do Eviternity

Oh right that was another one whose data got lost. That's also on my list of grudge matches.

RunningDuke, on 02 March 2021 - 11:37 PM, said:

Looking forward to the Perdition's Gate: Resurgence, I wonder if it's going to be fully vanilla project perfect for Chocolate Doom or it will be like Akeldama with some maps long and without taking vanilla limits into consideration, thus more limit removing than vanilla? I know there was also TNT: Revilution (another wad added on my to play list) which had those issues mentioned above, thus better played in PrBoom+ but I haven't followed much of Perdition's Gate: Resurgence.

I've been following PG:R's development for a few years. I can tell you that they're at least intending for it to be vanilla-compatible. It is being spearheaded by the same guy who brought TNT:R to the finish line, so take that for what it's worth.

That said, at least in TNT:R the visplane crashes were if an archie jumped you in the wrong spot, rather than the map breaking limits.

RunningDuke, on 02 March 2021 - 11:37 PM, said:

Also are you thinking about A.L.T. megawad?

Somewhat. After decino's playthrough of one of its maps it has me interested.

RunningDuke, on 02 March 2021 - 11:37 PM, said:

Since Doom Core Trilogy will be ZDoom only, I'm guessing I will have to play using ZDoom's modern controls and deal with it

You do know that you can perfectly emulate DOS controls with zdoom, right? The only reason Doom Core Trilogy is a zdoom wad is for the episode selection. The maps themselves are still vanilla-compatible.

[FistMarine]

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There's a baron locked away by the normal exit.

Also decino is in the middle of a UV-Fast playthrough of the Master Levels right now.

I'm pretty sure I've seen people maxing this map before (a few years ago) and still reaching the secret exit with 100% everything. I believe one of the people was AltimaMantoid. So I'm sure it is doable. When I played Master Levels in 2013 for first time, I didn't care about 100% completion so I performed the archvile jump and killed the archvile after I reached and I had the keys too. Perhaps BigMacDavis has reached the secret exit too with 100% completion, although he uses GZDoom. I will check Decino's videos soon after I'm done with Akeldama and UDTWID. I'm getting closer to finish them anyway.

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Well part of it is to have as close to vanilla compatibility as possible. For instance there's a somewhat annoying bug that makes some walls raise higher than they're supposed to go that doesn't have a clear compatibility flag that alters that. As a result having most things set to "Doom (strict)" covers all my bases.

But even beyond that, the main reason is that I want to play the game as close to vanilla as possible while having gameplay-interfering bugs disabled, to reach more how the game was designed and intended rather than release. zDoom is about the only one that offers the full scope of bug fixes. It's also customizable enough for me to add small Quality of Life improvements such as blood color corrections, SC-55 music, the enhanced vanilla sound effects by perikistan, and re-timed weapon firing animations imported from Doom Zero.

It also affords me stat tracking and the ability to temporarily switch to a HUD that lets me know if I have a berserk or a blue armor. Important tactical information that for whatever reason doesn't show up on the normal HUD.


In short, ZDoom is the only engine I know of to allow me the full experience of enhancing the vanilla game without breaking it.

Moreover, I recently learned that full control customization is something that's more rare than it should be. I tried Crispy not too long ago and didn't get past the options menu because I learned it doesn't recognize the numpad keys. That's a big problem for me as I have very bad wrists. In order to play these games I have to put my hand on the right side of the keyboard and use the cursor keys over WASD. This means weapon selection should be on the numpad keys (as well as having all other important functions near it). And if I can't use the numpad, then I can't play.


And then for Boom-compatible or later engines, I just have a special directory for each level containing its own set of compatibility flags.

I may be wrong but I'm pretty sure even ZDoom's Doom (strict) mode doesn't give you full vanilla compatibility to all vanilla levels out there, I'm sure there are still levels that don't function correctly and I especially remember reading about some maps that use conveyor belts (in other words, Boom actions) that perform differently in ZDoom ports in first place, thus implying ZDoom's Boom compatibility isn't fully accurate either and wasn't available since the beginning as some people thought out before. I remember years ago when ZDoom was thought out to be based off Boom, turns out it was just based off Doom source code and then incorporated most Boom features even in its early versions.

The enhancements you mention are interesting to have, part of me wishes stuff like Smooth Doom animations and Minor Sprite Fixing Project gets merged into the official Unity port if they go that route to give further QOL improvements. I admit that I'm all in for enhancements but at the same time I'm fine with having a close vanilla experience, so it is debatable which feature is much needed and useful. The ones that made to official port are all good that should have been fixed since Doom v1.9 back then or something. Stuff like the ouch face, medkit message when less than 25% health and so on. As well as automap stats and other improvements. I'm glad they went that route and I'm happy that most of source ports I play have the very useful level stats to show how many kills, items and secrets.

However the problem I have with ZDoom is that it changes core stuff about Doom and some of the features (like physics and weapon centering) can't be turned off at all even with changing every setting out there, not to mention the lack of vanilla demo compatibility and many others. I understand ZDoom wasn't made to be accurate to vanilla Doom, even in its version 1.22 (haven't tried other versions than 1.11 that seems really buggy) there are some weird things out there, no demo playing in background (demos used to play in 1.11, though they desync'd) and various other weird bugs but the experience should be still relatively close to vanilla and it feels nostalgic to play those old 1999 ZDoom wads in version 1.22, despite the fact I first discovered ZDoom in 2007 and it was the unofficial 2.0.96x community build, not even an official ZDoom version. I will say that I discovered a few years ago Odamex, the classic multiplayer ZDoom port, is based off 1.22 and seems to have restored vanilla demos and gameplay-wise I think is close to vanilla Doom than old ZDoom. I think it can play old ZDoom wads without any problem, not sure about newer wads like ones that require ZDoom 1.23b33 at least...

Anyway, my point is, I don't like using ZDoom for vanilla accuracy and I prefer to go full modern gameplay, with mouselook, jumping and crouching whenever I play something in ZDoom. Jumping and mouselook may have been since beginning (while crouching was added later, in 2.1.7 I think) and I don't see any reason to ignore these, considering even early ZDoom wads required jumping and I think mouselook is useful in most cases. I guess I have been spoiled by these features but at least when using other source ports I don't need them. I occasionally see a map that seems to have been made with ZDoom in mind, where there may be some enemies down there that I can't see yet and part of me wishes that I would have used ZDoom so I could look down or look up and aim at an enemy from far away that was sniping me. Trust me, I have meet some cases (even recently) in Akeldama where there were enemies placed far away and chaingun's autoaim doesn't reach them from that range, while the chaingunners had no problem sniping me from far away. Monsters can aim from miles away but not the player. This is something debatable whether using mouselook is cheating or not (as has been proven by the many similar topics that show up on Doomworld, even recently there is a topic about that), in general you aren't supposed to look up/down as Doom never had that feature in first place and while I know Crispy and Eternity (and maybe even PrBoom+ ?) do indeed have mouselook, in those cases I don't enable because these ports are vanilla compatible and wads created for them don't require mouselook or jumping to complete them or reach secret areas. I don't know how to explain but to me I find a lot nicer to play with classic controls (as in WASD + Mouse) rather than the modern ZDoom/GZDoom/Skulltag/Zandronum modern setup I use, that I mentioned above with modern features enabled.

I don't like getting into arguments like these but I will say that there are both advantages and disadvantages to each setup. Trust me, I am also annoyed by blockmap bug and the infinite height (and other limitations) when I play in classic ports, these limitations shouldn't have existed in first place and I am glad ZDoom fixes them. But ZDoom also makes gameplay in general easier (except the RNG where the next shot will always deal the same damage, so if you are low on health and saved, you are screwed until you manage to get out of that situation). Aside from those features like mouselook, jumping and crouching, you can also punch monsters farther away (making Berserk and Chainsaw a LOT more useful), all bullets connect with targets, the invisibility makes enemies harder to notice you instead of seeing you immediately and so on. So the map difficulty changes drastically whichever port you use. That's my 2 cents, don't take it as an attack. I have no problem with you using ZDoom, I just never understood in general the people on Doomworld, YouTube, etc when they play ZDoom/GZDoom in vanilla mode (example the Vanilla Essence mod for GZDoom) and even go further to use a low resolution and so on. I may be a purist but I never got that far to force myself with classic controls and low resolution. As much as I like the pixelation when playing in DOSBox and Chocolate Doom, I'm glad to have a higher resolution in rest ports and see the targets far away that would be difficult to see and hit with low resolution. Also the crosshair in the ZDoom source ports (until Unity port also added its crosshair) is also extremely useful, especially being able to snipe with pistol/chaingun from far away and hit targets perfectly (especially zombies) and save ammo.

About the armor and berserk icon, I think the berserk icon was added in latest ZDoom 2.8.x series because it wasn't there before and I agree it is very useful to know when you have berserk, as it lasts the entire level. I always use the Alternate HUD (as I enjoy having all those extra stats) and it's nice to keep track of which armor type you have and if you have berserk or not. I don't use the classic HUD in ZDoom based ports as I'm more comfortable with the Alternate HUD and in older ZDoom versions (except 1.22 where I use the classic HUD scaled down), I use the mini HUD that I used to dislike years ago because it didn't show enough information (and same applies to Skulltag HUD which I used to dislike and played with classic HUD scaled down, though in Zandronum I use the Alternate HUD since it is based off newer ZDoom which has it). Many years ago I used to play ZDoom with the classic status bar (even at full size, which looked a bit bigger in ZDoom or in Skulltag, I don't remember) but I didn't like how the DoomGuy's face behaved, it was a bit glitchy like the ouch face lasts a lot longer than it should (and it shows up a lot more often than in other ports, I know it shows up when taking more than 20 damage but it shouldn't last 5 seconds) and if you manage to pick up a new weapon after ouch face shows up, then DoomGuy shows up the evil grin for a split second before showing a hurt face and if you manage to pick up items continuously before the face "resets", the face keeps changing before grin and hurt (center/left/right), I don't know, it was a bit weird and yet another case of ZDoom inaccuracy.

Of course in all source port cases, I'm glad each has its own mini HUD because vanilla Doom had no mini HUD at all and I can't imagine playing without any HUD (though I believe the HUD will show up on automap anyway, regardless of setting). In general, I will say when playing original DOS versions of most games (Doom, Duke3D, Heretic, Hexen, Quake, etc), I play with classic status bar enabled and in many source ports, I play either with classic (normal or scaled down) or with port's own HUD, depending on the source port used. Of course in case of Doom mods, there are times where the status bar gets changed and although I use the classic HUD in most vanilla ports which lets me see the nice new status bars, I will certainly miss the custom status bar for ZDoom mods, such as the one in ZPack - Random Maps for ZDoom which I will have to play after not playing it in years. I don't know if I talked about it before but I know Tormentor667 was behind the project (I think) and he contributed a time-limit type of map. I'm generally not a fan of time limit maps and I hope to 100% it this time before time runs out.

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Thereabouts, yeah. I remember that much. 5-6 hours is my estimate.

My first attempt was probably closer to 10 hours. Since I went in blind, not watching a video or anything, I spent a long time humping walls in each level. The worst was Z1M7 which probably contributed a whole fourth of that time on its own.

That explains it. I will try to finish in under 5 hours next time, considering now I will be a lot more familiar with the maps. It sucks that I still have to backtrack and make sure to finish most levels with as much ammo, health and armor as possible. I tend to save stuff for later when I need it. I should plan my routes on my next playthrough. Even if I manage to score 6 hours total time, it will still be an improvement and then I will see if I still gets the demerit or not. I just hope to find the initial/older version of the mod so I have an excuse to go through it again, otherwise I don't see myself going through KDIZD anytime soon again. I'd rather move on to wads I haven't played before (bonus points if it's a wad I never played before.

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I've been following PG:R's development for a few years. I can tell you that they're at least intending for it to be vanilla-compatible. It is being spearheaded by the same guy who brought TNT:R to the finish line, so take that for what it's worth.

That said, at least in TNT:R the visplane crashes were if an archie jumped you in the wrong spot, rather than the map breaking limits.

I will keep that in mind. I tend to use PrBoom+ for vanilla Doom 2 megawads rather than Chocolate Doom because in these cases (compared to vanilla Ultimate Doom megawads), they seem to often go above the vanilla limits with their monster count, even though I have save game limit disabled in Chocolate Doom, I can't risk any other random crashes or limitations and I find PrBoom+ QOL necessary, like automap stats which are much needed, instead of relying on the stats at end of level. I can't recall if vanilla Doom 2 maps (or TNT & Plutonia) had maps with more than 200-300 enemies. I only recall a TNT map having a lot of enemies (and that map was also one of the hardest) but in general I think monster count doesn't exceed 200. Meanwhile, vanilla compatible megawads, such as Akeldama, had maps that featured hundreds of monsters. Ignoring the MAP32 with 800 (I think?) monsters, there were some maps that featured 400+ and even a recent one I finished yesterday had nearly 500. Considering that Double Impact wad for Ultimate Doom had maps with hundreds of monsters and it was labeled limit-removing, I still have no idea why are they trying to make vanilla compatible megawads if almost no one uses original executables or Chocolate Doom to test and play them? Just label it as limit-removing and let people use Crispy Doom at least. I'm all in for vanilla projects but even I feel like vanilla limits are too strict sometimes.

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You do know that you can perfectly emulate DOS controls with zdoom, right? The only reason Doom Core Trilogy is a zdoom wad is for the episode selection. The maps themselves are still vanilla-compatible.

Uh, yeah, I know that and I don't understand the point, as I mentioned above. Why would I emulate DOS controls in ZDoom when it's not the same thing in first place? Either go with classic vanilla controls (DOSBox, Chocolate Doom), limit-removing/Boom (Crispy, Eternity, PrBoom+) or full-on modern controls (ZDoom family ports). I guess I've been spoiled with modern controls in ZDoom, it is impossible to go back. That makes me wonder why didn't ZDoom have WASD controls setup and mouselook enabled by default? Many people have complained that ZDoom (or at least GZDoom) has terrible defaults, like the ugly texture filtering in GZDoom which I disable. It's no problem for me to change the controls/settings to my liking in ZDoom and GZDoom. It's just that it is painful to watch YouTube videos of using ZDoom based ports and not using mouselook or jumping/crouching, though regardless of settings, using ZDoom to play the Doom games is just not the same thing as playing them with a more vanilla port and I'm sure you have seen the many differences between ZDoom and vanilla Doom. I also find stupid how some people enable Doom (strict) compatibility, yet they use mouselook. There are those monthly Doom competitions about IronMan runs at Doomworld and apparently they are allowed to use freelook in the ZDoom ports, yet the compatibility must be strict. Why not disable ZDoom ports entirely from that competition and only allow people use strict vanilla compatible ports?

And regarding Doom Core Trilogy using ZDoom ONLY for being able to select the episodes in game, that is really dumb, as I mentioned above in other similar cases with other wads requiring ZDoom just for a few extra/secret maps not accessible in normal gameplay. Why no one considers to also use EMAPINFO for Eternity as well? At least Eternity is more vanilla accurate than ZDoom, so I could see playing with the more classic controls like how I play Crispy, Eternity and PrBoom+. But if it's ZDoom only, then sorry I use whatever controls I want in ZDoom. I would even jump and crouch to make my life easier in some cases, though I wouldn't abuse them and they are most likely disabled anyway, meaning the experience will be limited to just using mouselook. Still, don't forget that I have to first play the original versions of each wad (and even Doom Core Delta, the updated version of the wad). So I will first experience the wads as intended, then playing the whole thing in ZDoom when I'm already familiar with the levels, will not be too bad. Sorry if I sounded negative, I'm not saying that ZDoom is the worst thing to come out of the Doom community, I like ZDoom when playing KDIZD and other cool ZDoom wads. But it's not the same thing when using ZDoom to play a classic wad and to be honest I've had it enough with wads only being tested in ZDoom and being broken in other source ports, which my point is Lunar Catastrophe megawad released in 2018-2019, that I will be playing in following days/weeks (after doing UDTWID). Look at this topic:
https://www.doomworl...eleased/?page=8
Scroll down to the comment saying that this should have been tested in a more vanilla port and look at the responses he has received (ignore the rude responses that someone else received for saying that LC should have won a cacoward).
Also look at this video that shows an example of a random level being unbeatable in ZDoom based ports even with vanilla settings enabled:

Sure, the guy who made the video used GZDoom and seems to have various enhancements enabled, including recorded his own demos (if you wonder why an E1M5 demo suddenly plays in background of GZDoom) and made his own example map (which I don't think is available to download anywhere) to demonstrate this but I think my point still stands that maps should be tested in the correct port. Probably that was one of the reasons why Lunar Catastrophe was a runner-up and not a cacoward winner, though it is possible the people weren't impressed with yet another Ultimate Doom megawad that recreates the original levels with the author's own ideas. Based on the comments I've read about LC, it sounds like it's even better than DTWID. But it's a shame that is playable only in ZDoom ports. This is the last time I will complain about ZDoom ports, I'm glad ZDoom exists and that it has made Doom modding more possible (though I'm also looking forward to that Doom ACE thing that will make vanilla modding possible in same way as ZDoom ports) but I won't deny that ZDoom has also divided the fanbase and that it has also allowed mountains of shit to exist, like the crappy jokewads, terrywads and so on.

Anyway to talk about my progress, I finished 3 Akeldama maps yesterday. MAP22 was shorter than I expected (about as short as MAP21) but it had some tricky traps, one time I ate a cyber's rocket to face and still survived with 10% health (blue armor saved me), retreated to heal up and finished the job later. Second cyberdemon can be telefragged with the secret portal, thankfully he just stays and watches you from the central area, he doesn't seem to activate, so if you find the portal you can telefrag it. At end there were enemies facing with back with a cyberdemon in front of an exit portal (that was closed), I had the great idea to try to run up to it and make it blast some of those enemies and BFG it from behind while he is busy dealing with those mancubi. Sucks that I still managed to get blasted by an archvile and eat a revenant's homing rocket that somehow followed me around corners and did a lot of damage, I still managed to survive, though the green armor was almost gone. A short and a bit brutal map but not very difficult, just tricky at times. It seemed alright.

MAP23 was quite long and tricky at times (with nearly 500 enemies) and it took me nearly 2 hours to complete. But it wasn't too bad at least. I mostly dragged enemies around corners as I usually do in most levels. Good thing I found a secret megasphere after killing the first 100 or so monsters. There was a cheap trap that almost killed me where I got stuck in a small space/doorway and cornered by revenants and whatever others were coming, I spammed BFG and I survived. Other nasty traps I survived nicely only by luck because the monsters didn't even manage to hit me or did low damage. Other trap (at blue skull key) got activated earlier because while I didn't pick it up, I managed to trigger the monster closet. Thankfully there were 3 soul spheres (and also a blue armor) available in the level. I had to look on YouTube to see how to access one of soul sphere secrets as I didn't see the hidden switch and wanted to get it to make sure I survive whatever encounters were remaining that I had to deal with, so I don't get surprised and killed at 100% health, not to mention there are like 5 green armors in the level and aside from megasphere blue armor which was eventually used, I saved the single blue armor for end (and the secret soulsphere before ending portal). I kinda spoiled a bit with that UV max video but I was nearly at end of level anyway. Despite an archvile resurrecting an enemy or two, I still had 100% kills at end and not 101% like how I expected, probably because of the high monster count, as in previous map I had like 106% kills and yes I got all kills in each level (except MAP18 as mentioned in earlier posts) based on automap stats and it seems the Smart Totals feature is enabled, so if you got like 200/200 monsters killed, you got everything. Not the 201/200 like you see on other vanilla ports (I think the Unity port does that?). Overall, not bad, just really long and exhausting. It was made by our friend Valkiriforce, he really likes the long maps sometimes!

MAP24 was interesting, library themed and I did nicely as well at times. Most traps involve just a bunch of imps, though there are some tricky ones like when an archvile and some revenants get revealed upon picking up the red key. At the end, there was a cyberdemon and some imps in the final area, there was a message saying "Keep quiet!" (or something similar) so I knew I had to not fire a gun and tried to make some imps infight with cyberdemon while I was running around the area (there is no way to backtrack, so I made the right call to grab everything before entering, as I had an earlier berserk pack which I went to collect before dropping down), I managed to kill the Cyber with 2 BFG hits while he was busy killing the last 1-2 imps but I still ate a rocket before delivering the final blow and survived (84% health and almost no armor left), the blue armor saved my life again. Then grabbed the megasphere and continued to look for switches to activate, kill the 2 waves of revenants with rocket launcher without taking any damage (and preserved my 200% health and armor intact) and finished 100% everything with maxed out inventory as well. Sweet!

I reached MAP25 and I will continue later today. I have a feeling some of these maps will get very long and tiring. I feel like I'm trying my best to finish Akeldama this week and until tomorrow I should do it, as I want next week to play something else than Doom wads I still haven't finished after all this time, because I'm not that good at planning and timing. I will also try to figure out the remaining UDTWID levels because from what I watched on YouTube yesterday, doesn't seem something that will be finished easily. It will take me a while to learn what to do in maps E4M6 and E4M7, before leaving the infamous E4M8 for tomorrow (which I haven't watched yet past the first minute or so). This should be fun!

[Ninety-Six]

True, it's not 100% compatible with everything, but it is for 99% of it. That's good enough. Especially since there are cases where something that used to work in DOS no longer does, such as UAC_DEAD. I can live with the odd forgotten map from nowhere not functioning because it exploited some insane bug.


Ultimately, until a source port comes along that provides the same flexibility that zdoom brings while keeping the core gameplay the same, with bug fixes, then zdoom will remain my port of choice. It has 99% compatibility (which not even pure vanilla has because of boom features, and of course boom isn't compatible with everything, etc etc), allows for those QoL improvements, doesn't require any sort of convoluted setup to get running, has a more detailed MAPINFO that gives authors a lot of power, more than just setting map exits...

For me, I value the ability to jump in and jump out. Playing true vanilla would mean tangling with slippery controls, bad hit detection, unfair monster heights, crash risks, ineffective cover, and a bunch of other aspects that are just frustrating rather than fun. Once in a while I might load up DOSBOX just for kicks, but if I intend to play seriously I prefer not having unnecessary frustrations.

That's why there are people like me that intentionally turn off a lot of G/Zdoom's features to play it more like vanilla. Because until a source port with the same flexibility, convenience, and repairs to the source code comes along, it's the closest we have.

I know it's not an attack, I'm just explaining why there are "faux-purists" like me out there. We like the vanilla experience but without the frustrating trappings that come with Dos, Chocolate, and PrBoom.

[FistMarine]

You are right, I can now see why you prefer ZDoom over pretty much everything. Though I'm curious if Doomsday, Vavoom or other ports have managed to fix BLOCKMAP bug or it's only ZDoom ports doing so? Even then, I imagine ZDoom (even with its inaccuracies) has a software renderer with visuals closer to vanilla Doom compared to something like Doomsday and Vavoom, both of which use OpenGL renderer I think.

Regarding UAC_DEAD.WAD, yeah that one is broken even in Ultimate Doom in DOSBox (and it was broken in Eternity too when I played it back in 2015), while ZDoom seems to automatically apply a flag for it, so it can be finished normally. I know Chocolate/Crispy and PrBoom+ allow complevel commands in order to force the vanilla 1.9 compatibility so the map plays as intended.

Yep that's true, there are some vanilla aspects I don't like either and the ineffective cover thing, I just reminded of a very annoying vanilla Doom 2 bug: the fact that the Mancubus projectile sometimes go through the wall! This has happened to me in Akeldama as well a while ago (though not recently this week) and I even remember as a kid when playing Doom 2 1.666 (pirated, I know) back in early 2000s and how in MAP07, the projectiles sometimes went through walls and badly hurt or killed me and I had no idea what was happening. There is also the infamous ledge bug where if you save on ledge and reload, you can get trapped and I learned to never save on ledges except on a "backup" slot. Bugs like these are what annoy me about vanilla as well but when comes to original levels, I don't find too bad to replay them in DOSBox. It's mostly the community wads since late 90s that I play using various source ports, so half of these issues shouldn't happen.

I wish these issues were fixed back when id Software was still updating Doom, then we would have a more stable vanilla 1.9.

I wrote that it's not an attack so it doesn't get misunderstood, as English is not my native language, I admit. I appreciate that you understood what I meant, as I've had cases in past (not sure if on this forum or other ones I was a member in past) where I have been misunderstood due to my wording being a bit weird at times. Even though I can speak English very well, sometimes I don't have the right choice of words and I try my best to explain.

I also appreciated that we could talk in a nice manner. I admit it's fun to play a ZDoom wad once in a while and I will agree that the controls are smooth and the modern experience it offers (especially with freelook, jumping and crouching) makes it far better than dealing with vanilla limitations. But there's that nostalgic part of me that misses the vanilla feeling. I got reminded back in 2010-2011 after a few years of playing ZDoom, Skulltag and the likes, I started missing the original vanilla feeling of Doom/Doom 2, Heretic and Hexen. At that time I haven't discovered DOSBox yet and I wasn't happy with other source ports I tried back then in those years (DelphiDoom, Doomsday, Eternity, EDGE) because they all felt a bit weird or buggy/glitchy, though maybe my old Windows XP PC wasn't that good either and it could explain why I didn't have a good experience with those ports and I stuck with ZDoom family until early 2010s when I finally decided to try Chocolate Doom and trying to find a good Boom compatible port for years before settling with Eternity and PrBoom+ (the latter I had my own gripes with it too).

Anyway, going to continue Akeldama. There is something I must announce right now about MAP25 as I was just reading Doomwiki.org for secrets and absolutely need to point this out for completionists because you may be interested:

Quote

Before moving anywhere, shoot the switch to the east. Afterwards, hug the east wall as you go clockwise and up to where the switch was (this will close by the time you get there, which is why you need to shoot it before reaching this area otherwise the secret will permanently close off). Head south until you reach the room with the chainsaw, then hop to the green rocks to the west and take the rocks up to reach a stimpack, a medikit, a plasma gun, and energy cells. (sector 95)

If I hadn't read this before playing, I would have mostly wasted a whole 1-2 hour for playing through the map, only to realize that a secret will be unreachable, unless by some chance I noticed the switch and shot at.

I guess I'm going to spoil myself just a bit for watching an YouTube video (if there is an UV max video of this map) and try to see the exact switch and where is secret, so I know what to do. I hope to finish Akeldama as soon as possible, the megawad has really gotten on my nerves as of lately. Didn't expect to be so long and having these tricks. And this map seems to have 9 secrets as well (even worse is I don't have the secret notification option turned on, so I only know I find a secret from looking at automap stats). Regardless of what happens, I hope to complete the map (and remaining ones) 100%, so I will probably never play through it again. Unless I want to do each level pistol start (when I revisit the wad in next years), as at least I should be familiar with the maps. Or if the wad gets updated at a later time (like an updated 10th anniversary edition or something), so I have an excuse to revisit it. Otherwise, I will just move on to another wad.

[Ninety-Six]

RunningDuke, on 04 March 2021 - 01:25 AM, said:

I imagine ZDoom (even with its inaccuracies) has a software renderer with visuals closer to vanilla Doom compared to something like Doomsday and Vavoom, both of which use OpenGL renderer I think.

I believe so, and it's one of the reasons I avoided them. I prefer software rendering in most cases. It's less taxing on the machine, you get accurate dark fog, no weird visual artifacts... Of course I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that GL renderers have improved a lot (albeit not in performance), but especially for older games like Doom I prefer to stick to software whenever possible.

RunningDuke, on 04 March 2021 - 01:25 AM, said:

and the ineffective cover thing, I just reminded of a very annoying vanilla Doom 2 bug: the fact that the Mancubus projectile sometimes go through the wall!

That's exactly what I was talking about. It affects more than mancubi, too. If a wall's thin enough a cyberdemon rocket can sometimes go through as well, which is a real problem.

RunningDuke, on 04 March 2021 - 01:25 AM, said:

I was just reading Doomwiki.org for secrets and absolutely need to point this out for completionists because you may be interested:

The one thing I hate almost as much as gotcha traps are o-...actually having a level that's 90% damaging floor or sticking secrets on a damaging floor. But the other thing I almost hate as much is one-chance secrets. There's really no justifying that sort of thing. There really isn't. Pretty much nobody is going to find it on their first try, and after that the one and only thing you accomplish is just annoying completionists and nothing else.

Not even id is clean of that particular sin. Screw that one secret in Monster Condo. That's just being a dick for no reason.

[FistMarine]

Quote

I believe so, and it's one of the reasons I avoided them. I prefer software rendering in most cases. It's less taxing on the machine, you get accurate dark fog, no weird visual artifacts... Of course I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that GL renderers have improved a lot (albeit not in performance), but especially for older games like Doom I prefer to stick to software whenever possible.

I also prefer software rendering in general, in fact when comes to using PrBoom+, I only play in software mode (the main executable prboom-plus), not the glboom-plus one, I always thought that one is ugly and it's what I often see used on YouTube, which is what made me refrain from using PrBoom+ in first place many years ago. As well as the default settings not being the ones to my liking, so I had to do a bit of setting up before I got it to look relatively good. And the glboom-plus one uses an ancient OpenGL renderer anyway, at least the newer GZDoom versions look pretty good, though I still disable that awful texture filtering.

Quote

That's exactly what I was talking about. It affects more than mancubi, too. If a wall's thin enough a cyberdemon rocket can sometimes go through as well, which is a real problem.

Ah yeah, that one is annoying as well. I don't remember how often it happened to me before, as I am usually careful with handling cybers in general. I always take cover as much as I can (when I have the chance) because if you get hit directly, the rockets can kill you in 1-2 hits depending on the amount of health and armor you have. When you survive a rocket, all you see is a red screen for like 2 seconds, though in ZDoom ports the screen doesn't fully turn red as with vanilla and Boom ports.

Quote

The one thing I hate almost as much as gotcha traps are o-...actually having a level that's 90% damaging floor or sticking secrets on a damaging floor. But the other thing I almost hate as much is one-chance secrets. There's really no justifying that sort of thing. There really isn't. Pretty much nobody is going to find it on their first try, and after that the one and only thing you accomplish is just annoying completionists and nothing else.

Not even id is clean of that particular sin. Screw that one secret in Monster Condo. That's just being a dick for no reason.

I also hate the levels that are full of damaging floors, making navigation a lot more painful until figuring out the right path. Oh yeah speaking of one time secrets, I agree with that and in case of MAP27 of Doom 2, it's not only that secret that is open for 30 seconds since the start of the level and then becomes inaccessible but also an impossible to register teleporter secret that exists in same level. The latter one I know it wasn't intentional but that one time secret is bullshit as in my early years of playing Doom 2, I didn't even know that secret existed in first place! Only read about it on forums or seen YouTube videos back in 2010 or so. Until then, that secret was a mystery to me. Then again, I didn't find every secret as a kid.

Now speaking of Akeldama MAP25, ok it wasn't too bad, I 100%'ed it eventually, though I had to backtrack a bit at end for some supplies and watch a bit of that YouTube video (the beginning and some parts after I reached level exit). The switch is seen at beginning with an imp past the small cage, kill the imp, shoot the switch with pistol and then you can move. The secret stays open until the rest of map. There are 2 cyberdemons (one is halfway and I killed it with the invulnerability sphere I saved, the other is literally in front of exit). The level is generous with supplies and there are even 3 megaspheres (!) present in the level, as well as a blue armor which I didn't need at all. I avoided most of damage anyway, the level wasn't as difficult as I thought, although I had to take small breaks and got interrupted with some phone calls while searching for the rest secrets and finding last couple of enemies. Still took around an hour and 20 minutes to finish but that's mostly because I'm rather slow, as the map should be completed in around 30 or so minutes on first attempt. That's why I am taking so long with Akeldama, it's almost fully blind and experiencing the maps for first time, so I have to be careful and minimize deaths too, which I have been successful for most part. Unlike say DTWID series which I played before (except UDTWID which is first playthrough) and watching YouTube videos before attempting, significantly shortens the time to beat the map, as I will know exactly where to go most of the time, though sometimes I may miss an item or a secret somewhere, so I have to backtrack.

I guess I will do maps 26 and 27 at a later time. Not sure if I will do UDTWID E4M6 and E4M7 today, I feel like Akeldama maps are enough for a day.

Also hopefully, later today there will be news regarding the classic Doom Unity ports.

[Ninety-Six]

I have useful news for you, RD. Turns out I did take a screenshot of the cumulative stats for KDiZD.

Final time was exactly 4:56:30. Mind though that I got that time despite forgetting a secret in Z1M7 and wandering around for a second time, so it should be reasonable to achieve without speedrunning it (especially if you use saves to eliminate such search times).

[ReaperAA]

So this was just released yesterday.

Heartland - an episode for the Eternity Engine - WADs & Mods - Doomworld






It is an Eternity Engine exclusive 7-level wad developed by Skillsaw. The levels are set in some sort of industrial+constrution site areas. From little of what I played, the levels have a bit of Build Engine style to them, with the very start of the wad is inside a moving train, windows/glass being breakable, slightly realistic looking areas and bridges that are made by using portal trickery.

Also from what I have played a bit of the later levels by IDCLEV'ing, the levels are tough, but the traps seem more relaxed in terms of quick millisecond response as opposed to say Ancient Aliens. The traps do give a a bit of breathing. I am looking forward to give this a real shot and then review it, once I get a bit of freedom from real life stuff.