[NNC]

Honestly, KDITD, NRFTL and Sigil aside, none of the "official" contents are well designed.

Shores of Hell is somewhat fun, at least some of its levels, particularly E2M2, E2M4 and E2M6 are kinda interesting. But overall it feels like a funky Wolfenstein to me, Tom Hall notoriously didn't use height variations in his levels, they felt very claustrophobic and labyrinthine to me. The funkyness is coming from Sandy's odd texture choices. Inferno is just more of the same, in fact you can even wonder if the two episodes should have been merged into one with only the strong content remaining. Unfortunately Inferno is infinitely more boring than Shores...., can't point out the reason, but it just gets old very fast. The real inferno is Sigil IMHO.

TFC is just a typical multi-authored mess, with imbalanced progression, uneven quality, lack of cohesion. I love E4M6 despite its tricky progression, but I hate E4M2 (Romero's worst level), and doesn't care about anything else (E4M1 is horrible with its shotgunners).

Doom 2 is somewhat fun for its starting levels by McGee, but gets out of shape around Map08, when gimmicks and ugliness start dominating the entire wad. The city levels are just bad, and after map20, most levels felt like fillers. There are some legitimately good levels in Doom2, particularly Map11, Map17 or Map27-29 (Monster Condo and Spirit World are really the best Sandy maps), but the overall progression and experience wasn't really good.

TNT or Master Levels felt like fanworks to me. There were a few interesting maps scattered in them (ie. the first secret map in TNT with the bugged yellow key was interesting), but again, nothing truly noteworthy. Plutonia at least brought a cohesive design and spin-off type of gameplay, but overall it's very annoying to play with all those chaingunners and revenants being everywhere. Plutonia also had a bad influence on the Doom community with many wads clearly felt like based on it (and it's annoying Go 2 it secret map).

No Rest for the Living 16 years after Doom's release showed what great level design is. Meakim and Iwakura simply showed a class of their own, every level in the set is at least good, some of them are great. I especially like the sense of place in them, and how the layouts and constructed (with consistent linear movement around the interconnected areas). They are also very fun to play with a bigger focus on standard projectile enemies instead of an abuse of hitscanners and revenants. The whole episode felt like a Build Engine work to me, it was very close to a Duke Nukem experience, which might be a reason why I love it so much. I love Meakim's standalone wad too released much later, it's very underrated.

And then Romero came with his maps, E1M4b and E1M8b first, then Sigil. He just showed how to design amazing Doom levels. While NRFTL felt like an experience of a Build Engine game, Romero's new levels were truly Doomish, their texturing, their atmosphere, their gameplay balance. Sigil's E5M6, and particularly the blackout session with the cacos was the biggest highlight to me. Felt like a genuine movie experience.

[Ninety-Six]

ReaperAA, on 11 November 2021 - 11:09 PM, said:

and once he is done, he is going to play the original Plutonia while also commenting on the thought process of designing those maps.

I wonder if he'll bring in his brother for that, too? It would be interesting to see them both commentate over their work.

[ReaperAA]

Ninety-Six, on 12 November 2021 - 01:41 AM, said:

I wonder if he'll bring in his brother for that, too? It would be interesting to see them both commentate over their work.

We can hope. But I doubt it. The last I read about Milo is that he works for Ubisoft now.

[ReaperAA]

The 2021 Cacowards are here:
https://www.doomworl...cacowards/2021/
I know some people on Duke4 don't care about this, but I still feel it worth mentioning.

[Ninety-Six]

Well Not Jabba's off the panel. That's a start.

[Player Lin]

Haven't even open Doomworld for months after that shitfest.

But I still cared about Cacowards no matter what.

[NightFright]

If only it was actually a democratic voting process, with those winning that actually get the most votes. However, the way it's done (votes are just an indicator for a selected few to consider candidates) I just cannot accept it. As if only the jury knew what's really good.

[Phredreeke]

It's easier for the writers that way. It wouldn't surprise me if they had already written the award for Heartland back in March or April (this is not me saying it didn't deserve it)

[Ninety-Six]

New record. 2nd level in and I already hated everything.

Tried out The Long Trek Back. Basically Doom 2 in reverse, set after the events of the original. Sounded like a cool concept.

And then there was just damaging floors everywhere. Everywhere. Living End? Okay makes some sense but you know what doesn't? Not being able to have a complete view of the area so I keep going in the same damn teleporters over and over and over again because I can't tell which ones I haven't been in and the way the damn blood pit funnels you down specific avenues so even if you come down from a different place you go in the same damn teleporter again.

I wouldn't exactly call the original high art but it certainly wasn't frustrating to navigate. Your entire view was always focused on that lone monolithic island in the center, and your path to it encircled the entire cavern. What should have been an equally linear trek back became a nightmare to move through with your objectives always foggy, as well as the means to even reach those objectives because of the teleporters hidden in the blood.

And no radsuit, because screw you.


And then Spirit World, which had damaging floors in one small section, got damaging floors all over the damn place, and more blood funnel teleporters i love it

And then Monster Condo. That was my breaking point. Water. Blue-ass water. That's a damaging floor here. It wasn't anywhere in the original level, but the water is here now, and of course it damages you. Doom 1 did that like once, and it was a pit of no return. This is a damn river in the middle of the floor. Because who wants to actually explore the level

[ReaperAA]

Ninety-Six, on 26 December 2021 - 08:57 AM, said:

Tried out The Long Trek Back...

A shame. While it ain't a cacoward winner level, I had heard good things about the wad which almost made me consider playing playing it. Now I might just hold out on it.


Anyway, I just recently played 1000 Lines 3 CP (and going through it again alongside the DW Megawad Club) and I really enjoyed it. The wad is vanilla compatible and all of the maps make use at most only 1000 linedefs, which means that most of the maps are fairly short (around 5 to 10 minutes) and thus preventing them from becoming slogs. The maps have fun and fast paced gameplay, but without being stupidly hard. Ok, well there are some hard maps like Maps 11, 20, 32, 29 and 30, but even then that is only on UV difficulty).

The wad does come with some dehacked changes like faster weapon switching, 3 custom enemies (1 custom enemy type used per episode) and changes to weapons like pistol (faster firing + more accurate), shotgun (very slightly faster firing) and chaingun (which is now an assault rifle with near 100% accuracy). But I didn't mind these changes (in fact I absolutely loved the faster weapon switching and I wish more mapsets used this).

The wad is still in RC stage, so you might want to hold until the final version is released.

[Ninety-Six]

"my harddrive might be going under already and I'm bored so fuck it haha you know what would be funny if I spun up a slaughtermap by my archnemesis on ultra-violence plus just to see how painful it is"



"WHAT"

[ReaperAA]

Ninety-Six, on 03 January 2022 - 03:07 AM, said:

"WHAT"

It appears that ''The Hard Way" has a "Not-so Hard Way" of beating it. Honestly, most of Skillsaw's maps, other than those in Valiant and Ancient Aliens, are not that nasty. Valiant and especially Ancient Aliens is where he employed more rug-pull encounters.

Even Heartland (his latest wad which I absolutely recommend folks to play) doesn't have many rug-pull moments. Ok, it has a few of those, but not to the extent that Valiant/AA have.

[Ninety-Six]

ReaperAA, on 03 January 2022 - 10:58 PM, said:

It appears that ''The Hard Way" has a "Not-so Hard Way" of beating it. Honestly, most of Skillsaw's maps, other than those in Valiant and Ancient Aliens, are not that nasty. Valiant and especially Ancient Aliens is where he employed more rug-pull encounters.

I did check the date and yeah this was 2012. This was 13 Angry Archviles skillsaw, and not AA Skillsaw.

That said,

ReaperAA, on 03 January 2022 - 10:58 PM, said:

Honestly, most of Skillsaw's maps, other than those in Valiant and Ancient Aliens, are not that nasty.

Imperator was pretty bad.

[ReaperAA]

Ninety-Six, on 03 January 2022 - 11:10 PM, said:

Imperator was pretty bad.

Well I did use the word "most". Also Imperator wasn't that nasty. Certainly not AA level nasty

[Ninety-Six]

ReaperAA, on 03 January 2022 - 11:35 PM, said:

Well I did use the word "most". Also Imperator wasn't that nasty. Certainly not AA level nasty

It still had his favorite "linedef that teleports a trap that kills you if you didn't have the plasma gun or BFG armed ahead of time" shtick.

[ReaperAA]

Ninety-Six, on 04 January 2022 - 01:33 AM, said:

It still had his favorite "linedef that teleports a trap that kills you if you didn't have the plasma gun or BFG armed ahead of time" shtick.

I think I know which part of the map you are talking about, as there is only one such part on that map that is like that afaik. Regardless, I do agree that its annoying when you get so much penalized for having to change from wrong weapon to right one at the start of a fight. A good idea for mappers would be to place ammo of appropriate weapon before a switch/linedef/teleporter to indicate the player of which weapon to arm. I have seen many mappers actually do this, but sometimes they don't.

Its also why I wish Doom had faster weapon switching, so even if wrong weapon is selected, you can quickly change to right one without penalty. One of the things I really liked about the 1000 Lines 3 CP wad is that it makes weapon switching near-instant which not only makes such situations less problematic, but also allows for cool weapon combos. I would love to see more wads implement fast or near-instant weapon switching.

[Ninety-Six]

Yeah, that would lessen the blow some.

I don't actually have that much of a problem with it in vanilla. It's supposed to encourage you to stick to your decision for a fight, to encourage you to skilfully analyze the situation and quickly decide the right tool for the job. And in vanilla (and more fairly-oriented user maps) it works well for that. It adds an extra layer of depth to the combat to decide which gun suits the situation best overall instead of individual parts thereof. Keeps the combat more fresh.

But in maps like that, it's abused against the player, and for that yeah quicker switching would be almost a necessary addition. Or, short of that, as you said some kind of big pickup in the area to notify the player about what gun to have ready. Which, as I recall, Imperator also didn't do.

[ReaperAA]

Not really new news, but if anyone hasn't played DBP37: Auger Zenith (21 map wad by the Doomer Boards crew), I would highly recommend to give it a shot, especially if you are an Ion Fury fan. I can safely say that this is the most "cyberpunk" wad ever made for Doom as of this date.

So far, I am only on Map03, but I am really adoring the doomcute stuff present in this.

[Ninety-Six]

I'm confused. Can someone explain what's going on?





Take a look at these screenshots (Hell 2 Pay and BTSX respectively).

I didn't notice it until I was playing without the crosshair, but a nice thing the z family does is center the weapon sprites, so that they can perform their intended function of being your aiming reticule, as opposed to being completely wrong.

And yet, in BTSX for some reason, and only BTSX as far as I can tell, the weapon centering is back to its screwy vanilla defaults. There's nothing in the command line I'm using that's any different (minus dsda-sbar.wad but this happens regardless of its presence), so I'm very confused here.

[Marphy Black]

Ninety-Six, on 09 January 2022 - 12:04 AM, said:

I didn't notice it until I was playing without the crosshair, but a nice thing the z family does is center the weapon sprites, so that they can perform their intended function of being your aiming reticule, as opposed to being completely wrong.

GZDoom and such do not center the weapons. By the looks of your screenshots, you have my sprite fixes loaded which do accurately center the weapon sprites, presumably part of your autoload setup so it automatically takes effect. However, BTSX E2 is unique because it overrides all graphics in the game (including anything that's part of the autoload, aka lower priority in the file loading hierarchy) due to the WAD having its own color palette, thus it needs to provide its own complete set of palette-converted graphics. These palette conversions are based on the original Doom 2 graphics, so weapons like the SSG will revert to their visually off-center default offsets. This is why I created a dedicated BTSX compatibility patch of my sprite fixes that needs to be loaded after BTSX E2.

Note that BTSX E1 already incorporates the sprite fixes by default. BTSX E2 lacks them, hence the continuing need for the compatibility patch.

[Ninety-Six]

Oh, so that's what was happening. Thanks for clearing that up.

[ReaperAA]

ReaperAA, on 06 January 2022 - 09:44 PM, said:

Not really new news, but if anyone hasn't played DBP37: Auger Zenith (21 map wad by the Doomer Boards crew), I would highly recommend to give it a shot, especially if you are an Ion Fury fan. I can safely say that this is the most "cyberpunk" wad ever made for Doom as of this date.

So far, I am only on Map03, but I am really adoring the doomcute stuff present in this.

Ok so I am more than halfway through the wad now (on Map 14) and while I am enjoying it, the presence of some filler style maps (especially Map12 being deliberately designed to be a drug trip) have somewhat lowered my opinion on the wad. The difficulty curve also seems to be random and all over the place. By that, I mean that there are maps that have some hard traps (though not as nasty as some other modern maps) in between maps that are laughably easy.

Still worth playing.

[Ninety-Six]

ReaperAA, on 09 January 2022 - 09:51 PM, said:

By that, I mean that there are maps that have some hard traps (though not as nasty as some other modern maps) in between maps that are laughably easy.

From what I've read, that seems to be par for the course for DBPs.

[ReaperAA]

Ninety-Six, on 10 January 2022 - 12:37 AM, said:

From what I've read, that seems to be par for the course for DBPs.

You may be right. I am not very experienced with DBPs. The only others I have played are DBP 13 (the Alien Carnage themed), 21 (the Nazi/Wolf3D themed) and 22. All three of those had overall more consistent difficulty climb. But then again, they were also shorter with having 8 or 9 maps each, while this one is a megawad with 21 maps.

[Ninety-Six]

Alright.



This? This is hilarious.

[Ninety-Six]

I'll say one thing that irks me about AZ's level order. There's almost continuity. Many levels begin and end at various setpiece sort of places. But they're not exactly...connected. For example, some levels begin and end with a flying car, but then in the next level you're in a subway. Some end inside a subway train, so naturally you begin the next level not in a subway.

I know vanilla Doom didn't have any level continuity, but to be honest I'd prefer if AZ did that over this almost continuity.


It probably bothers me more than it should, but then again I breathe Duke 3D which had this as a feature so maybe I'm just a bit spoiled.

[MrFlibble]

Lovely, somehow the "Sharing is caring" quote sprung up in my mind out of nowhere earlier today

[NightFright]

Looks like turning enemies into voxels CAN look cool if you know what you are doing (and if you don't mind to have tons of work):

Imp
Sergeant
Zombie

[Ninety-Six]

to be honest I thought the entire reason it was skipped was due to some technical problem.

Never realized there was a stigma of voxellized enemies looking bad.

[Jimmy]

The chief problem is animation, it doesn't tend to look great.