[ck3D]

William Beavis, on 25 April 2021 - 10:26 AM, said:

So it's less 3D than a sidescroller?

If that's his vision, then it explains a lot about The Chasm.

[William Beavis]

ck3D, on 26 April 2021 - 03:49 AM, said:

If that's his vision, then it explains a lot about The Chasm.

Thought Chasm was underrated.

[Ninety-Six]

I've never been able to settle on an opinion on the chasm, myself. On the one hand, the catwalking is infuriating with the way you skate around in vanilla DOS Doom, but modern source ports, including the official rereleases, and even the novert program make that much less of a hair-pulling experience, but it's still not great design to begin with, and not even source ports can fix having to take on a knight and a wall of chaingunners in the pitch black, nor potentially getting knocked off the final catwalk by lost souls into an inescapable slime pit, but at the same time the slime wall maze building is kinda cool, as is the secret area with the pinkies and the knight in that +-shaped walkway, and the blue room with the red key and the pinky swarm is kinda fun to punch 'em out in, and it's fun to mow down the imps in the area with the radsuits, but then the later parts of the level even when it's not annoying can turn into kind of a slog...

Depending on what day it is I probably have a different opinion on the chasm. I seem to flip-flop constantly. It's definitely probably on the lower end on my list of favorite id-made doom 2 levels, but it's by no means at the bottom (that spot is permanently reserved for Gotcha).

[ck3D]

Ninety-Six, on 26 April 2021 - 07:36 AM, said:

I've never been able to settle on an opinion on the chasm, myself. On the one hand, the catwalking is infuriating with the way you skate around in vanilla DOS Doom, but modern source ports, including the official rereleases, and even the novert program make that much less of a hair-pulling experience, but it's still not great design to begin with, and not even source ports can fix having to take on a knight and a wall of chaingunners in the pitch black, nor potentially getting knocked off the final catwalk by lost souls into an inescapable slime pit, but at the same time the slime wall maze building is kinda cool, as is the secret area with the pinkies and the knight in that +-shaped walkway, and the blue room with the red key and the pinky swarm is kinda fun to punch 'em out in, and it's fun to mow down the imps in the area with the radsuits, but then the later parts of the level even when it's not annoying can turn into kind of a slog...

Depending on what day it is I probably have a different opinion on the chasm. I seem to flip-flop constantly. It's definitely probably on the lower end on my list of favorite id-made doom 2 levels, but it's by no means at the bottom (that spot is permanently reserved for Gotcha).

Personally I always really liked Sandy Petersen's approach to mapping. It's almost naive and yet it works because he used the bare mechanics of the game (sometimes as obstacles, such as Doomguy's speed in your example) to come up with fresh challenges, instead of losing himself into intricate design and essentially repeating himself over and over in one style (which is a common creative trap). Say, I totally get why Barrels O'Fun gets people talking, it's just different from everything else you've seen and you see in general in the game and yet there really is no reason why that explosive barrel object couldn't be used that way to begin with, when it's already there. They sort of are their own mini games, or more exactly games within the game, playing with the set physics (and their limitations) before any other consideration. I find them reminiscent of that game where you need to conduct a ring through a maze of wires without the ring ever touching a wire, it's rudimentary challenge that mostly tests your patience, not necessarily everyone's favorite kind but still challenge. Funnily enough, those maps are usually the peak in tension during speed runs still, decades later, because of the spike in margin for error. The approach itself is far from the one of an amateur and yet the execution doesn't adhere to any traditional level design codes (as though they would have given a computer to a guy with zero experience in video games and told him to come up with his interpretation of something fun), I actually love seeing that in art in general and when it comes to maps I actually find myself playing with the thought of introducing more Barrels O'Fun-styled sections in my own Duke 3D levels quite a bit lately. Which is something of the sort I feel like a lot of people were doing in the early days of Duke 3D mapping, back when Sandy's ideas were still fresh, and have been progressively ditching since in favor of attempted photorealism but really still (timelessly) works when implemented wisely. Aye, I just now remembered how people didn't like all the narrow platforming on top of those wall-aligned sprites in Poison Heart and made the mental connection with past trauma from The Chasm for the first time, haha. My only complaint about Sandy's mapping may be how unfair if not straight up mean it could get at times. Toxic pits with no exits and the like. I guess that's a choice too but still a bold one.

[Ninety-Six]

ck3D, on 26 April 2021 - 11:07 AM, said:

Personally I always really liked Sandy Petersen's approach to mapping. It's almost naive and yet it works because he used the bare mechanics of the game (sometimes as obstacles, such as Doomguy's speed in your example) to come up with fresh challenges, instead of losing himself into intricate design and essentially repeating himself over and over in one style (which is a common creative trap). Say, I totally get why Barrels O'Fun gets people talking, it's just different from everything else you've seen and you see in general in the game and yet there really is no reason why that explosive barrel object couldn't be used that way to begin with, when it's already there. They sort of are their own mini games, or more exactly games within the game, playing with the set physics (and their limitations) before any other consideration. I find them reminiscent of that game where you need to conduct a ring through a maze of wires without the ring ever touching a wire, it's rudimentary challenge that mostly tests your patience, not necessarily everyone's favorite kind but still challenge. Funnily enough, those maps are usually the peak in tension during speed runs still, decades later, because of the spike in margin for error. The approach itself is far from the one of an amateur and yet the execution doesn't adhere to any traditional level design codes (as though they would have given a computer to a guy with zero experience in video games and told him to come up with his interpretation of something fun), I actually love seeing that in art in general and when it comes to maps I actually find myself playing with the thought of introducing more Barrels O'Fun-styled sections in my own Duke 3D levels quite a bit lately. Which is something of the sort I feel like a lot of people were doing in the early days of Duke 3D mapping, back when Sandy's ideas were still fresh, and have been progressively ditching since in favor of attempted photorealism but really still (timelessly) works when implemented wisely. Aye, I just now remembered how people didn't like all the narrow platforming on top of those wall-aligned sprites in Poison Heart and made the mental connection with past trauma from The Chasm for the first time, haha. My only complaint about Sandy's mapping may be how unfair if not straight up mean it could get at times. Toxic pits with no exits and the like. I guess that's a choice too but still a bold one.

Yeah, Sandy treated the game's assets like a toybox, a lot like early modders to any game do. Only difference was Sandy was able to ask one of the programmers to make a new toy to play with.

Sometimes I do think Sandy's levels get overhated a bit. I take his levels for what they are, since there are some of his levels I'm not a big fan of, but then plenty of levels I love. As a matter of fact a Sandy map is my favorite id-made classic doom level of all time: The Citadel. I've always rather enjoyed the irony that my favorite id level is a Sandy map and my least favorite is a Romero map (as well as the fact that they're right next to each other).

I think the best way to describe my feelings towards Sandy's maps is I don't have an overall hate for an entire level in one of his; it's always just particular sections of those maps I hate. But by contrast, the maps I love are the ones where I love all the sections. Like for Barrels O'Fun, I actually like the parts that involve the barrels. But I don't care for the awkward fight against the 5 or so pain elementals in the narrow room filled with barrels of both the explosive and non-explosive variety, or the equally awkward fight almost right after with the perched chaingunners and arch-viles.

[NNC]

My problem with Sandy is that his unique ideas aren't truly built with a coherent style behind, but they are just there as experimental ideas used in totally random, half-baked places. I think it's more impressive to see ideas work in an established presentation, like what Romero did in Sigil for example. He had some never before seen or under utlized ideas there, but the maps also felt like they are actual places in hell, it felt like a complete adventure, not just random experimental stuff and toying with the editor. While I'm not a fan of Plutonia Experiment's somewhat mean spirited and chaingunner/revenant/AV heavy gameplay and traps, it's hard to unsee its merit, the Casali brothers' own vision of Doom, and how they put their ideas in those levels. I never really felt Sandy was actually having a style, I felt he was just toying with the editor. Some of his ideas were cool, but for example Barrels o' Fun (take ck3d's example) was just some ideas, then turned into a random level after the first few run for it areas.

With that said, I like some of Sandy's levels, most notably the ones with an intuitive horror/nightmare angle, particularly E2M6 (Halls of the Damned), Map24 (The Chasm) or Map27 (Monster Condo, a truly amazing level), but I think they aren't good because Sandy executed his concepts well, but because somehow everything felt in its place. I have similar feelings about Levelord, he was also an idea man, and never truly put his own stuff into a recognisable style. For example everybody is impressed how he toyed with SOS in Tier Drops or Lunatic Fringe, but for example Allen did the same complexity into Derelict, but that map is also felt like a canonic part of the game, not just a random stuff. Levelord has also made some great levels (and not only for Duke, but for Quake Scrouge of Armagon as well), but it's an inconsistent body of work, where you don't have the impression the author really knew how he made his stuff work.

If Sandy returns with a mapset now, I expect it to be a similar, somewhat disappointing experience, as Levelord's return was in 2016. I would play that in a hardbeat, probably even running home from work instantly, but I still feel he is very far from Romero or Allen (or the Casalis, or the NRFTL authors) talentwise.

[NightFright]

Still can't forgive Petersen for the clusterfuck that is E3M7 Limbo. Admittedly, Tom Hall was also involved with this one, but these horrible teleporter puzzles stop gameplay cold. Maybe the idea was that hell tries one last time to throw you off your mission by trying to confuse you, but what happens in reality is that you want to smash your keyboard into the monitor. Even after decades I haven't memorized the teleporter sequence in this abomination of a map. Almost kept me from reaching the "Inferno" finale back in the days.

[NNC]

Limbo wasn't even the worst map in episode 3 let alone the game. I think the hand level was absolutely dreadful, that was the low point of the game, but the confusing E3M5 is pretty weak too. Btw. I always found weird that Hall was involved in Limbo. There are zero Hall remarks in that map. His style is more recognisable in E2M2, E2M4, E2M7 and E3M3.

[NightFright]

Slough of Despair was probably more about the shape of the map, much less about gameplay quality. It's something that probably should have been taken out of the episode in favor of a different map. This also applies to quite a bunch of Doom 2 levels. Anyway, consistent quality throughout an entire episode is rare. From the classic episodes, I think only KDITD pulled it off.

[Ninety-Six]

Honestly I'd argue even KDITD wasn't ultra consistent. I always found E1M5 to be the weakest level in episode 1, as I find it to be quite a slog to get through with not so great flow. I have a similar opinion on E1M6. I like the rest just fine but I consider those two among the weakest. I don't hate them by any stretch but there are quite a few levels in even the later episodes I'd take over them.

Slough of Despair I think could have worked if he didn't make the palm of the hand an obnoxious maze. The fingers are fine enough as gameplay segments, I think. Sandy's worst map in Doom 1 is Halls of the Damned in my opinion. Forced damage, bad flow, and the infamous dark maze. Sure it can be mitigated by the light goggles but it's still not really all that fun. It's still a claustrophobic maze even if you can see in it. It's not even like the crate maze in E2M2 which was made fun by being able to safely play with the berserk pack in.


I'm also in the minority as I actually like way more of Doom 2 than I do Doom 1. There are only a handful of Doom 2 levels I really don't like (Gotcha, Tenements, The Abandoned Mines, Industrial Zone), and then just a few that I find to be a mixed bag (Chasm, Barrels O'Fun, The Living End). I even like some of the more unpopular levels like Downtown.

By contrast the list of levels I don't really care for in Doom 1 is considerably longer (E1M5, E1M6, E2M3, E2M9, E2M6, E3M1, E3M2, E3M4, E3M5, E3M6, E4M1, E4M5, E4M6). Even if we substract episode 4 there's still 10 levels I don't really like, and that's not even including the levels I find to be mixed bags. And even among the levels I do like, they don't beat most of my favorites from Doom 2 or come even close. My favorite Doom 1 map is probably E2M2, but up against the likes of Citadel, Courtyard, Suburbs, Refueling Base...it doesn't really stand a chance. Though to be perfectly fair the levels I don't like in Doom 2 I like less than the ones in Doom 1. I'd take Halls of the Damned over Gotcha any day.

[NightFright]

I have fond memories of the Doom shareware episode and played it many times. Still remember when I found it on the CD that came with my GUS ACE, years after I had seen one of my friends play the game on his PC. Being able to experience it on my own was such a pleasure that I cannot criticize these maps in any way. Consider me biased, if you want. Never got the same kick out of any other episode, same with Doom 2. I dunno what it is, maybe that claustrophobic feeling you get in these STARTAN-textured bases. No other maps were able to quite reproduce that experience for me.

Anyway, I can still enjoy classic Doom 1+2, with all their highs and lows. And also flaws can be enjoyed to some degree ("Ah right, now it's THAT shit again. Yay!"). From Doom 2, I remember "Downtown" the most. That's the map I would fire up for a friend when he wanted to systematically liberate a city. At least that's what it felt like back in the days. Maybe it's not the best level in D2, but for us it stood out for its "realism". It felt satisfying to move from structure to structure and clear the areas until all was secure.

[Ninety-Six]

Alas, I have no such fond memories. I didn't play Doom for the first time until 2013/2014 when we got the Doom 3 BFG edition and it still had Doom 1 and 2 as bonus games.

Well, that's not entirely true. We did have a Doom 2 CD in the house for many years, but I never got past the second level because the slippery controls and having the camera locked on the horizon took me out of the experience. By then I had already played Duke 3D hundreds of times over, and between the two one was infinitely more playable than the other since it had a very extensive setup program that let you change far more than Doom's setup did. Even today when I have much more experience even with vanilla DOS Doom, I would still say DOS Duke is far more approachable than DOS Doom since you can easily set up modern controls in the dos version and you don't have that sort of freedom in doom. You'll still have vertical mouse movement skating you about and some buttons are just off-limits.


I digress a little, but the point is it wasn't until the improved controls of the BFG Edition that I was finally able to give Doom and Doom 2 a proper chance. As a result, I played them more or less back to back so I was able to take them for what they were, with no expectations to meet or be shattered.

But even in the present, where I think even the BFG controls are a bit wank but have access to source ports with better controls and bug fixes... that doesn't really change the level design. And for me, I enjoy Doom for its combat, and it's probably the very reason I prefer Doom 2. Doom 2 has a lot more focus on its combat and the bigger battles with all the monsters. Refueling Base and Suburbs both contain probably the two biggest battles in id-made classic doom history. The SSG is also better suited to keeping the pace of the game faster instead of Doom 1's slower and more dull moments. I don't really mean the atmospheric parts, so much as I mean sections like the yellow door room in E1M5 or the ending area of E1M6 where there isn't really a strategy so much as you just hold down the trigger on the chaingun for five minutes.

NightFright, on 27 April 2021 - 12:58 PM, said:

From Doom 2, I remember "Downtown" the most. That's the map I would fire up for a friend when he wanted to systematically liberate a city. At least that's what it felt like back in the days. Maybe it's not the best level in D2, but for us it stood out for its "realism". It felt satisfying to move from structure to structure and clear the areas until all was secure.

That's actually the exact reason I like Downtown. I can understand why some people don't like it; it can be very confusing, especially for a first time player. But if you're going in to kill everything that breathes (a completionist, in other words), Downtown is a lot of fun as you clear out every building one by one, and try to survive the hellish "street" battle.

[jkas789]

NightFright, on 27 April 2021 - 12:58 PM, said:

I have fond memories of the Doom shareware episode and played it many times. Still remember when I found it on the CD that came with my GUS ACE, years after I had seen one of my friends play the game on his PC. Being able to experience it on my own was such a pleasure that I cannot criticize these maps in any way. Consider me biased, if you want. Never got the same kick out of any other episode, same with Doom 2. I dunno what it is, maybe that claustrophobic feeling you get in these STARTAN-textured bases. No other maps were able to quite reproduce that experience for me.

Anyway, I can still enjoy classic Doom 1+2, with all their highs and lows. And also flaws can be enjoyed to some degree ("Ah right, now it's THAT shit again. Yay!"). From Doom 2, I remember "Downtown" the most. That's the map I would fire up for a friend when he wanted to systematically liberate a city. At least that's what it felt like back in the days. Maybe it's not the best level in D2, but for us it stood out for its "realism". It felt satisfying to move from structure to structure and clear the areas until all was secure.

I agree with this. My first memory of playing Doom was using a share ware CD, same with Dark Forces.

[Morpheus Kitami]

I've never really gotten the hatred for Slough of Despair. Its a bit too tight with resources, sure, but I can't really say I've ever felt anything else wrong with it. I've never had too much trouble navigating that level, nor have I really thought of it as a maze. Personally, I'm a guy who tends to have issues with mazes in FPS, especially lately. Surprised there's no hate for E2M3, which was really aggressively bland.

The biggest problem with Doom's (at least D2 anyway) was American McGee's levels. Which hurts to say because he's a pretty good dude, tried a lot of cool stuff with lighting in a way nobody else did in the base game. They're sort of what gave Doom 2 its reputation, dark, ugly brown levels. Well, that's what American McGee put in and that's how it starts. Its basically all ugly sewers until Tricks and Traps changes it up. There are good bits here and there, but it always feels like his levels force you to wait for something to happen. The Crusher is especially guilty of that. Catacombs is okay though, I don't remember that being annoying.
The only level I remember having that level of annoyance back when I originally played through D2 was the Suburbs. Perhaps now so much now, when I know where all the secrets are, but back then it was just so tedious going through this level without having a monster sneaking up behind you later.

I will say that all the secret levels are disappointing one way or another. E1M9's pretty good, but its not...secret. E2M9's nothing and E3M9 is a joke, especially because of the trickery you have to do to get there. And Doom 2's method of just slapping Wolfenstein 3D levels in felt lazy to me.

[ReaperAA]

Morpheus Kitami, on 28 April 2021 - 06:00 PM, said:

I've never really gotten the hatred for Slough of Despair. Its a bit too tight with resources, sure, but I can't really say I've ever felt anything else wrong with it. I've never had too much trouble navigating that level, nor have I really thought of it as a maze. Personally, I'm a guy who tends to have issues with mazes in FPS, especially lately. Surprised there's no hate for E2M3, which was really aggressively bland.

The biggest problem with Doom's (at least D2 anyway) was American McGee's levels. Which hurts to say because he's a pretty good dude, tried a lot of cool stuff with lighting in a way nobody else did in the base game. They're sort of what gave Doom 2 its reputation, dark, ugly brown levels. Well, that's what American McGee put in and that's how it starts. Its basically all ugly sewers until Tricks and Traps changes it up. There are good bits here and there, but it always feels like his levels force you to wait for something to happen. The Crusher is especially guilty of that. Catacombs is okay though, I don't remember that being annoying.

Different strokes for different folks I guess. I personally enjoy McGee's maps in Doom 2 more than Sandy's or even Romero's Doom 2 maps. While McGee's maps may not be aesthetically great looking, the maps (especially maps 2 to 7) are fun and have good gameplay. And Map14: The Inmost Dens is probably one of my favorite Doom 2 maps.

OTOH, I actually don't like Tricks and Traps at all.

[Ninety-Six]

I enjoy McGee's maps quite a bit myself, and I consider the first seven maps to still rank among my favorite doom levels of all time. I don't really mind the more browner aesthetics, personally.

Tricks and Traps is an interesting level for me. I love 90% of it, and it's when Doom 2 really starts to open up and have a lot more wild and varied encounters. It starts to resemble the rest of the game a lot more. But then the other 10% is just...blech. I think the most offensive part in the map is the cyberdemon vs. baron horde. It's kinda cool the first time, but on any further playthroughs it's where the pace of the game until that point just rolls over and dies. The ending of the map is also one of the most obnoxious dick moves in any of the vanilla levels.

[MrFlibble]

NightFright, on 27 April 2021 - 12:58 PM, said:

Anyway, I can still enjoy classic Doom 1+2, with all their highs and lows. And also flaws can be enjoyed to some degree ("Ah right, now it's THAT shit again. Yay!"). From Doom 2, I remember "Downtown" the most. That's the map I would fire up for a friend when he wanted to systematically liberate a city. At least that's what it felt like back in the days. Maybe it's not the best level in D2, but for us it stood out for its "realism". It felt satisfying to move from structure to structure and clear the areas until all was secure.

Ah-hah, I also remember playing Doom II levels for the first time. It was in the early 2000s. I never completed the game, although I'd install and replay from the start to somewhere around MAP16 several times, first with he original DOS binary, and later I discovered Doom Legacy (yay memories). I'd always get exhausted from playing at around that point and leave the game without the urge to play the rest.

Anyway, I have to say that the first experience is way stronger than when you get used to the game and most of the features cease to feel like a novelty, and indeed the city levels did produce a certain "feel" of a cityscape back then which today I would likely not find in them. It's not like I got spoiled by more realistic FPS games, as I was playing Duke3D and some Shadow Warrior at the same time. I have a very strong memory of playing MAP12 for the first time. I think there's a unique air about Doom II's map design that blends aspirations of depicting realistic locations with very simple means to do that, even for the underlying engine (for example, compare Doom II and HacX levels). Of course, the player has their own part in how much you actually want to see a believable world behind all the decorations. And as the novelty wears off, you come to appreciate different things.

[NNC]

Wow, Ninety-six, I didn't know you hate the Romero levels mostly in Doom 2. While they have some progression issues (Industrial Zone in particular) and some areas are mean (in Abandoned Mines), they still look and play better than the likes of The Pit or Nirvana for me. I still would love to see a fully fledged Romero episode for Doom 2. He just made those random levels, but they have no connection. Probably Tenements and Abandoned can be formed into one level, or two levels next to each other.

As for Slough of Despair, it has an eye-rapingly awful texturing to start with. But the gameplay is even worse, weird progression, totally low on ammo and health, the hardest pre-E4 level for all the wrong reasons. And it doesn't even look like hell. But that's just me.

[NightFright]

But its design is from hell, so it fits.

[Ninety-Six]

The Watchtower, on 29 April 2021 - 09:35 AM, said:

Wow, Ninety-six, I didn't know you hate the Romero levels mostly in Doom 2. While they have some progression issues (Industrial Zone in particular) and some areas are mean (in Abandoned Mines), they still look and play better than the likes of The Pit or Nirvana for me.

Honestly I didn't even realize they were all Romero maps until I read this. I knew Gotcha and Industrial Zone were his, but I didn't realize he did the others on that list.

I would disagree on them playing better. Looking better, maybe, but I strongly hate how obnoxious Industrial Zone is during the opening sections. When you're under fire from hitscanners in all directions, but especially chaingunners that are perched far above you and typically outside the range of the autoaim's hit detection, but of course they don't have that same limitation. And to kill them from down below you almost have to get close enough to essentially be firing blind and it's not easy to tell if your target has wandered off until you take even more hits. At some points he does that intentionally, so you're being shot from across the chasm in the castle ramparts, which you have no hope of reaching until midway through the level at the earliest.

It's just a pain in the ass. The secrets are also kind of annoying, and does that thing that I really hate where it puts secrets on a damaging floor so you have to race against the clock to tag them. Unless of course you don't know where they are, like any first-time player wouldn't. It's one of the main reasons I utterly despise Gotcha (on top of all the other issues being a 90% damaging floor level brings).

And this is without bringing in how even more of a pain in the ass it is from pistol start.


And then Gotcha, in addition to being an utter nightmare to go secret hunting in (and again even with knowledge of where they are you have to do a very specific sequence to get them all without taking stupid amounts of damage), also has a near-identical problem to Tricks and Traps. The spiderdemon vs. cyberdemon fight is cute on the first go around, but if you want to actually progress you just have to sit there and watch. You don't even get that great a view of the battle.

Then there's the teleporter that lowers you into a chaingunner ambush that you literally can't avoid damage from, always fun, you have the lost souls that will inevitably launch far out of your range to actually hurt and come back to bite you at the worst times... I could go on but I just really hate Gotcha.


As for Tenements and the Abandoned Mines, I dislike them for the same reason. In fact I always felt that Mines was basically a sequel to Tenements, and now knowing that Romero made both it kinda explains why. I don't hate either of them, and not in the same way that I hate Gotcha. No, I don't really find them frustrating or annoying or anything like that. I still dread them mightily, with Tenements probably being my second-least favorite level of vanilla Doom 2, and that's because I find both levels to be just such long, boring slogs with nothing to look forward to in either of them. There's no real challenge other running into a wall of surprise chaingunners at the start of Tenements, the layouts are really plain and just basic +-shaped hubs, none of the fights are interesting, Tenements has that annoying forced damage because mandatory damaging floor... They're also both really claustrophobic and not even in an interesting way like in SIGIL's maps. The limited movement comes off more as a nuisance than any real tension.

I just really don't like them at all.


But with Nirvana...I mean it's a dumb level; I won't pretend it's not. And it is kinda ugly. But there's more interesting stuff going on and the fights are mostly okay. It's not great but it's not the raging inferno I have for Gotcha, or the slogging dread for Tenements or Mines.

And I actually enjoy the Pit for the most part. The action is a lot more fast-paced, the monster counts are higher, continuing the upward trend from Tricks and Traps and will culminate in Refueling Base, there's a lot of sections that are good for catharsis... It's not all great, of course. I'm no fan of the area after the blue door; all three of the rooms are slogs. But I enjoy the rest of it. Maybe the visuals are worse than in Romero's maps but I honestly don't pay attention to the aesthetics all that much.

The Watchtower, on 29 April 2021 - 09:35 AM, said:

As for Slough of Despair, it has an eye-rapingly awful texturing to start with. But the gameplay is even worse, weird progression, totally low on ammo and health, the hardest pre-E4 level for all the wrong reasons. And it doesn't even look like hell. But that's just me.

I never found Slough to be difficult at all. Yeah ammo's tight but ammo is tight throughout all of episode 3. It takes careful management and the berserk pack will help a lot in conserving ammo. Frankly I always found House of Pain to be the worst offender of being low on supplies vs. the enemy count. Slough doesn't have that many enemies even on UV.

[Morpheus Kitami]

The Watchtower, on 29 April 2021 - 09:35 AM, said:

As for Slough of Despair, it has an eye-rapingly awful texturing to start with. But the gameplay is even worse, weird progression, totally low on ammo and health, the hardest pre-E4 level for all the wrong reasons. And it doesn't even look like hell. But that's just me.

I dunno, the difficulty appeals to me, it felt just right. I rarely see games pull limited supplies off well. Slough had just enough so you had a margin of error. Far too often, I feel like shooters might as well just have infinite ammo. Of course, E4 starts off with the wrong problem.

Ninety-Six, on 29 April 2021 - 02:14 PM, said:

And then Gotcha, in addition to being an utter nightmare to go secret hunting in (and again even with knowledge of where they are you have to do a very specific sequence to get them all without taking stupid amounts of damage), also has a near-identical problem to Tricks and Traps. The spiderdemon vs. cyberdemon fight is cute on the first go around, but if you want to actually progress you just have to sit there and watch. You don't even get that great a view of the battle.

I get why you hate Gotcha and T&T, but why not The Crusher? Its got roughly the same plot, wait for the level gimmick to take care of the big nasty monster. Even the yellow card trap mirrors your complaint about the teleporter to the chaingunners, but with the added bonus that there's a slime alleyway nearby.

[Ninety-Six]

Morpheus Kitami, on 29 April 2021 - 05:33 PM, said:

I get why you hate Gotcha and T&T, but why not The Crusher? Its got roughly the same plot, wait for the level gimmick to take care of the big nasty monster. Even the yellow card trap mirrors your complaint about the teleporter to the chaingunners, but with the added bonus that there's a slime alleyway nearby.

You raise a good point. I think part of what makes the crushing gimmick less of a pain is that does require a little more activity on your part. You still have to take cover from the spiderdemon, which, at least for me, involves using the elevator cage. By the time I come back down, she's already almost dead, and you're out of her firing range. At that point you're free to assist in expediting the kill, without worrying about untriggering infighting, or alerting an entire horde of barons that might block your access to an essential powerup.

As for the yellow key trap, yeah it's a dick move. But it's not as bad as the chaingunner trap in Gotcha because at least when it starts, you have the ability to shoot back the same moment they start firing. That's just not the case in Gotcha where you can literally do nothing but stand there and wait before the chaingunners are able to be hit by you (this is all without freelook, just ftr), while they don't have the same restriction. In Crusher, you can start attacking right when the doors open. It's still impossible to avoid damage which does suck but you have more of a fighting chance, plus it has the fact that I don't hate the entire rest of the level going for it.


And again, just to clarify: I don't actually hate T&T. I only hate that one part of T&T, and the ending. I love the rest of it.

[NNC]

Well, very there are few levels in vanilla Doom 2 that actually hold up today. I think No Rest for the Living is a much better representation of Doom 2 assets used right.

Monster Condo was the best for me by quite a margin. It's followed by Circe of Death, The Living End, The Chasm, The Spirit World (it could have been second, but that stupid switch). Dead Simple is good for what it is. Early McGee levels like The Crusher are fine too, but far from flawless.

As for Gotcha, while the big bad fight was iconic, the rest of the map is clearly the lowest point in Romero's mapping carreer.

[FistMarine]

Wow, it looks like an interesting discussion about Doom 2 is going on currently. I will say that I personally prefer Doom 2 over Doom (Ultimate) because of various reasons (one being that I only had shareware version of first Doom as a kid, so the rest episodes didn't impress me much when I finally got to play them) and I don't really hate most Doom 2 levels as much as most people do. I understand that 96 hates Romero's levels in Doom 2, they have some annoying bits in them, which I can agree. However, I disagree about Tenements with the damaging floors, it's got mostly acid in the central area, that only does like 5 damage (although there are two small sections that feature damaging blood and lava, if you happen to fall into them) and it is easy to cross over the acid and minimize damage. Similar stuff in map 11 (Circle of Death), it mostly contains acid, so I don't think it's too bad. Meanwhile, the lava in Romero's other maps is much worse (though I think only does 10 damage?) and seems to show up often in levels 15, 20 and 26. And the damaging blood in map 29, which does 5-10 damage, I think. Oh, there is a part in map 29 that had lava too but you are given a radiation suit before, I forgot if it does 20 damage (I think it does as the radiation suit leak may have happened before in that area, as far as I remember), I'm just glad it's not constantly 20 damage, I can imagine Romero could have made all the sectors do 20 damage and make the maps much harder than they are currently. If I'm not mistaken, in SIGIL, most levels had lava doing 10 damage as well? Yeah, it is still annoying and when requiring to traverse them (mostly for secret areas), don't get me wrong but if you have memorized the level, it shouldn't be too bad. No, I don't like levels that are filled with damaging floors either. But as long as they can be easily crossed and aren't filling the whole level with them, I'm fine for the most part. If playing in ZDoom family ports, at least you can try jumping and minimize damage taken, as a last resort I guess.

I just remembered something that people may not know. Most (if not all?) of Romero's levels in Doom 2 feature a Cyberdemon that appears only in coop mode! I know maps 20 and 29 already feature a cyberdemon (I think there may be another cyberdemon in coop mode present in the levels as well?) but I was referring to the rest maps that feature no cyberdemons in single player. There is apparently a coop only cyber appearing on some of the acid/lava pits in some parts of the levels. I have not played the levels in coop mode before (except maybe back in 2009-2010 on some Skulltag servers and I don't remember any of the extra cyberdemons) and I intend one day to play through all IWAD levels with -solo-net parameter in one of the source ports or if I find a way to make vanilla DOOM.EXE/DOOM2.EXE to enable coop mode in single player that emulates solo-net parameter in Chocolate/Crispy/Eternity/PrBoom+. Doom 2 (and especially TNT & Plutonia) feature maps with extra coop enemies. I remember reading that some Plutonia levels become much harder with those extra enemies, like the first level having an extra spider mastermind at beginning (I guess this is where BTSX got inspiration from with a coop only mastermind at beginning?) and map 22 apparently having a room almost impossible to clear even with BFG and 200 health & armor? Then there is map 32 (Go to It) that features even more Cyberdemons in coop mode! I wonder if has anybody ever attempted to complete the IWADS in coop mode before? I'm aware of some YouTubers (like Decino, I think) that played the levels in solo-net mode to get extra enemies and also the unity ports having UV+ game mode with extra multiplayer stuff spawning in levels (alongside fast monsters) but I'm curious if anyone here actually tried completing the levels that way? As I'm curious because maybe this summer when I go to replay Ultimate Doom & Doom 2, I might as well replay them with coop stuff spawning in instead of another UV 100% playthrough. Besides, I already did Doom 2 memorial wad not too long ago, so I'm not really looking forward to replay Doom 2 so soon after that. Especially as I have so much other stuff to play.

Also yeah, I saw a while back (1-2 weeks ago) they added Syringe as official addon. Not only it took them 4 months and a week to add anything to new but also as good as the wad it is (I haven't played it yet), it only had 6-7 levels for Doom 2 and I feel like there should have been more stuff added after all this time, though I'm glad they added something after all that time, was worried a bit they stopped adding since it was complete silence for 4 months. I don't like how that guy in charge never seen or responded to my messages I sent months ago on Doomworld (he only saw first one and never responded back) and some of the rules for adding the addons are kinda dumb. I understand they can't add every good wad out there, especially if the author passed away or the wad contains ripped content and I'm okay with that but there are some strange decisions to miss older high quality stuff (that have full original content and only like one or two missing authors) like the Memento Mori series, Requiem, the Darkening episodes, the Classic episodes (and author's more recent No Sleep For The Dead episode), Doom The Way Id Did series (DTWID, D2TWID, DTWID: LE and UDTWID) and so on. A lot of potential stuff to be added and they are ignoring some of the wads just because of their harsh/strict rules, especially with part of all authors being present, why not just remove their maps altogether, it would be better to get an old megawad with 25 maps than nothing at all. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy they made 10 or so wads official so far (that are of high quality, based on what I can tell) but it wouldn't have hurt to have the addon system better fleshed out and even include some more episode replacements or some older good 1-level wads that could be compiled into a "Master Levels II" or something like that and have people select from a big list of curated wads, the level they would like to play. Other than that, my only hope is that they make a Heretic & Hexen unity port for later or even a Quake one because these games are in need of a remaster/rerelease after all these years. Considering the 25th anniversary of Quake is approaching in June, it's likely we will see a Quake remaster one day. But I don't know why they haven't talked about a Heretic & Hexen remaster as well. Is it because Activision owns the rights to the series and Raven Software is busy milking the COD franchise? I would really like Heretic & Hexen to get brought back and remastered or even rebooted but I think a remaster is the first step to bring the series back. No, I don't consider fan made ports to be remasters, if someone was going to suggest the ZDoom ports or Crispy Heretic, the latter being the better "vanilla" choice at the moment.

Well, anyway it's time to say my progress. Weeks ago, I played older stuff like Vrack and Vrack2/Vrack2b, in PrBoom-Plus. I did first one without dying and died 6 times in V2 (mostly near the end because of false information I found at Doomwiki that invulnerability required archvile jump when it didn't actually require, so I tried that and died miserably even with 200 health & armor, then found it can be easily jumped into that area by hopping off stairs, so then I edited that wrong information personally on doomwiki) and then dying once in V2b when replaying map and got bad luck at one of the traps with revenant fireball rolling high damage and killing me (even if my health was close to 40 and had like 30 or so blue armor left). Recently, I got access to my laptop that can access Doomworld just fine and finally joined the Megawad club before the month was over. They were playing Heretic this month and gave it a go, finishing each episode daily and catching up quickly! I finished Heretic once again (no deaths), this time playing the initial 1.0 release on 4th difficulty (UV equivalent) in DOSBox and I know it is an unpopular opinion but I like Heretic's level design much more than episodes 2 & 3 of Doom. The levels are far more varied and interesting than at least half of those registered Doom levels. And the Heretic secret levels are far better than shit like E2M9 (Fortress of Mystery) from Doom. I know the combat may not be as good as the combat in Doom (mostly that the unpowered Heretic weapons are weaker than the Doom ones) but I feel like some setups were a bit more interesting than Doom ones as well. I only didn't like that the game spams iron liches later in game mostly in the exit rooms (though they are usually easy to take them out with the unpowered Phoenix Rod), and even Maulotaurs started to reappear towards the last few E3 levels as well, which are a bit of chore to take them down and I think this is the result of the small lack of monster variety when compared to Doom 2. I know Heretic has much better monster variety than FIRST Doom but not so much when compared to the Doom 2 bestiary. I guess I've been spoiled a bit by the Doom 2 monsters (Heretic came shortly after Doom 2) but even then I feel like the original Doom 2 cast runs a bit dry these days (even if it stands strong against most of the 90s FPS games), so having some custom monsters in a new megawad once in a while is much needed variety and give some more interesting encounters than the same ones we've been seeing for over 25 years.

Besides finishing Heretic once more (and I hope they choose Hexen for next month, since it's another game I enjoy and want to finish again, despite the majority's opinion), I've been continuing UDTWID (I finished E4M6 & E4M7 and I'm on E4M8, hopefully it will not be as hard as I expect it to be, also yeah I 100%'ed the previous two levels) and started two new wads: The Lost Episode (E5 by Xaser, years before SIGIL came as a semi-official E5) using Eternity source port and Doom Core (Doom 2 megawad by Valkiriforce) using PrBoom-Plus. I've finished their first map at the moment (on lost episode, had to watch an YouTube video to get 100% because I was really confused most of the time because secrets were well hidden) and hope to continue soon because these days I'm mostly preparing for Easter and spending time with my family.

Some screenshots of the various things I've been playing (HERETIC, UDTWID, DCV, lostepis).

EDIT: Was thinking, I wonder what would have been like if someone were to take Romero's D2 levels and compile them into an episode or even a single map? I know the memorial wad combined all D2 maps into one but I think it would have been interesting if someone were to combine each author's maps (from Doom 2) into a single map or episode. All Sandy Petersen's maps into an episode/map, all American McGee's maps into an episode/map and all John Romero's maps into an episode/map. Would the game flow better that way?

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[jkas789]

Probably preaching to the choir here but I also can thoroughly enjoy Doom 1/2 this days. I know nothing in terms of Doom level design and I have shit taste however there is such a joy and simplicity in the gameplay and level design that IMO contribute to the replayablity of the game. And if I ever want to change things up I can always play with Brutal Doom, Project brutality or SmoothDoom.

Also, the old Doom games don't tire me as much as the new Doom (2016/Eternal) games which IMO feel more like Quake games with a Doom paint job. I like the games in theory, but in practice there is so much shit to juggle on the gameplay side and everything looks a RGB shitshow that I honestly get tired of it. I played the games once then noped out. I actually watched a playthrough of the DLCs of Doom Eternal instead of playing them.

[Morpheus Kitami]

Ninety-Six, on 29 April 2021 - 07:30 PM, said:

You raise a good point. I think part of what makes the crushing gimmick less of a pain is that does require a little more activity on your part. You still have to take cover from the spiderdemon, which, at least for me, involves using the elevator cage. By the time I come back down, she's already almost dead, and you're out of her firing range. At that point you're free to assist in expediting the kill, without worrying about untriggering infighting, or alerting an entire horde of barons that might block your access to an essential powerup.As for the yellow key trap, yeah it's a dick move. But it's not as bad as the chaingunner trap in Gotcha because at least when it starts, you have the ability to shoot back the same moment they start firing. That's just not the case in Gotcha where you can literally do nothing but stand there and wait before the chaingunners are able to be hit by you (this is all without freelook, just ftr), while they don't have the same restriction. In Crusher, you can start attacking right when the doors open. It's still impossible to avoid damage which does suck but you have more of a fighting chance, plus it has the fact that I don't hate the entire rest of the level going for it.And again, just to clarify: I don't actually hate T&T. I only hate that one part of T&T, and the ending. I love the rest of it.

Fair enough, I don't really remember Gotcha beyond the point of the Cyberdemon vs Spiderdemon fight. Its got some towers on top of lava, that fight, and then the rest of it. I don't care for most Spiderdemon encounters in the base game for some reason, and I think my unconcern for that is the Cyberdemon softening him up for me, if not completely killing him. I dislike The Spirit World out of the last ten maps for that very same reason.

FistMarine, on 29 April 2021 - 11:13 PM, said:

Other than that, my only hope is that they make a Heretic & Hexen unity port for later or even a Quake one because these games are in need of a remaster/rerelease after all these years. Considering the 25th anniversary of Quake is approaching in June, it's likely we will see a Quake remaster one day. But I don't know why they haven't talked about a Heretic & Hexen remaster as well. Is it because Activision owns the rights to the series and Raven Software is busy milking the COD franchise? I would really like Heretic & Hexen to get brought back and remastered or even rebooted but I think a remaster is the first step to bring the series back. No, I don't consider fan made ports to be remasters, if someone was going to suggest the ZDoom ports or Crispy Heretic, the latter being the better "vanilla" choice at the moment.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was Activision. Probably just wanted too much cash for it. Perhaps its just me, but it barely ever registers that they're doing anything other than Call of Duty that's going well. I was just reading that Toys for Bob, the Star Control guys, in addition to being owned by Activision, were suffering layoffs, had their planned Star Control game cancelled, and were going to work on CoD Warzone. That could mean they're freeing up Raven to work on something for Heretic...and I see a flock of pigs flying in from the south.
Course, that said, I don't really get consoles to play retro games, so I've never seen the point of Doom Classic over Zdoom and the ilk.

[NNC]

Strange, Spirit World was the only map where I cared about the spiderdemon. Somehow it looks interesting there with the arachnotrons. OTOH I feel the same about it. It looks like an enemy in the wrong game because it looks more like an alien robot/brain than an actual demon. It would be a better fit to Duke honestly, probably because it's somewhat relatable to the octabrains.

[William Beavis]

I saw Doom 2 as somewhat of a series pinnacle.

[FistMarine]

Morpheus Kitami, on 30 April 2021 - 08:27 PM, said:

I wouldn't be surprised if it was Activision. Probably just wanted too much cash for it. Perhaps its just me, but it barely ever registers that they're doing anything other than Call of Duty that's going well. I was just reading that Toys for Bob, the Star Control guys, in addition to being owned by Activision, were suffering layoffs, had their planned Star Control game cancelled, and were going to work on CoD Warzone. That could mean they're freeing up Raven to work on something for Heretic...and I see a flock of pigs flying in from the south.
Course, that said, I don't really get consoles to play retro games, so I've never seen the point of Doom Classic over Zdoom and the ilk.

Interesting. I have hopes one day we will see something in regards to the Heretic & Hexen series. I don't expect a reboot just yet but I think a proper remaster would be nice for the modern audience. I don't own a console, so it's not about consoles for me, it's more about making the games more accessible to the general public rather than just those lazy digital releases that run in DOSBox wrapper and are often poorly configured (mostly in case of Steam with missing setup executables and using an old version of DOSBox, while GOG attempts to better configure them and include all the necessary files). I also use various source ports to play the Doom/Heretic/Hexen games, though when it comes to the original levels, I prefer sticking to DOSBox.

William Beavis, on 01 May 2021 - 05:26 AM, said:

I saw Doom 2 as somewhat of a series pinnacle.

I agree, especially when it comes to classic Doom. I always enjoyed the new additions that Doom 2 introduced (SSG, megasphere and those new monsters) that became standard for the series. Whenever I go back to Ultimate Doom or to UD wads, I sometimes miss the SSG and the extra D2 enemies because they can provide a lot of interesting encounters. UD is in general easy (except for first two levels of E4) and the encounters aren't as tense as those provided by Doom 2 (and custom wads) in general. There are still interesting wads that get created for Ultimate Doom but there are times I just miss having the SSG. Also it makes me wish id software did a classic Doom 3 in style of Doom 2 instead of Final Doom and Master Levels, both of which were lazy cashgrabs (although Plutonia had the best levels from these so-called expansions). It would have been nice to get another classic Doom game with further improvements to the engine and even more additions.

Also I may be the only one who isn't bothered by the existence of Doom 3. I know it didn't really feel like a Doom game, instead it was more like a horror game and it is seen as the "black sheep" of the series. It's also infamous for having a crappy shotgun. It's easy to make fun of it especially after the recent Doom reboots but to me it's just a Doom game like any other, I don't see what's the problem with its existence, it can just be ignored if people don't like it, no one is forced to play Doom 3. To me it was decent, just not really a Doom game, more like a horror game. There is also Doom 64, which I heard it was good and I never played before (only played D64 inspired wads) and I'm not very interested in it at the moment, though I have the Doom 64 for Doom 2 wad already downloaded and I will play it sometime.

In other news, I finished UDTWID E4M8 after I wrote previous message, when I went back to edit my post, it was gone and didn't feel like double posting. Now I will say it wasn't as hard as I thought it will be (still had to carefully watch an YouTube video) and I died 4 times in total, all deaths caused by two different Cyberdemons. The first teleporting one caused me 3 deaths but after that was done with spamming the BFG and getting lucky, progression wasn't too bad. Still got another death from one of last cybers (in the last room) that turned around the corners only to blast me with a rocket and I wasn't fast enough to avoid it. Gotta admit this level was quite tricky and throughout the level I took quite a bit of damage at many encounters but still survived most of times, just not the cyber rockets of course which meant instant death. Saving often on multiple slots saves the day, as usual. Oh yeah and to deal with the last room (after making the two spider masterminds infight), when platform lowers, I rushed to get the invulnerability and try killing the cybers as fast as I could with my BFG, I killed 2/3 and last one was a bit painful to take down with shotgun/chaingun/rockets while I was also trying to avoid whatever remaining hordes were chasing me. It is difficult to make them infight with 3 cybers around, so I thought it was better to try killing two as fast as I could. It didn't work too bad. Then I noticed there were 3 cell packs AFTER I already painfully killed the last cyber with the shotgun. At least I got 100%, despite Chocolate Doom not showing the level stats at end of episode, to double check I loaded my save in Crispy Doom with automap stats enabled and it showed I had killed all monsters, got all items and secrets! Sweet! I may do a later time a pistol start each level playthrough in PrBoom+ just to see how I can handle each level (I might as well include first 3 episodes of DTWID into this) but only after I will do D2TWID, which is what I'm doing next!

For the other news, it seems Blade of Agony Chapter 3 has been released a few days ago! I only noticed yesterday while browsing Doomworld on my mobile.
I would advice you to grab the mod as soon as possible, because there was someone at Doomworld who complained about the name of one of the difficulty settings being called "Master Race" and this caused a bit of a stir (but not as much as in other cases which had multiple pages of controversies) and because people started complaining (even Scuba Steve of all people!), then Tormentor667 said he will change the name/joke in the next update. Sucks that there's always some idiot who has to ruin the fun for everyone (I didn't even see what was offensive in that joke in first place) but that's how sensible people are nowadays. Just look at the last page of the Blade of Agony topic at Doomworld (can't link it now as I'm on my PC which still can't access the website saying "This site can't be reached", last week I was on my laptop and that's how I was able to participate at the megawad club, I will play Doom Zero next week when getting back to my laptop).

So until the next update drops, please download it now!
https://www.moddb.co...-v30-standalone

EDIT: Chapter 3 trailer in case you missed it

[NightFright]

The mod doesn't get worse just because two words get changed. It's nothing compared to the brutal and ruthless censorship the Wolfenstein games were exposed to in the German Steam releases. We live in the time of cancel culture. Anybody can feel offended by anything and constant nagging will make more people join the whining until there is no other way besides giving in to the demands. We have had better trends than that.