[dnskill]

Romero correcting him is a good thing, but Sandy seems like he's legitimately misremembering and not trying to deliberately tell half-truths or lies. It is funny that it's happened quite a few times now.

[ck3D]

 dnskill, on 13 January 2026 - 11:49 AM, said:

Romero correcting him is a good thing, but Sandy seems like he's legitimately misremembering and not trying to deliberately tell half-truths or lies. It is funny that it's happened quite a few times now.

Makes sense there would be a fine Chasm between Sandy's recollection and the truth.

The passion he just exfoliated the whole time during that interview was great to see. Was surprised, but shouldn't have been, that he referenced Super Mario World (as an on-point example of a game where every level feels different and none like a repeat).

[NNC]

It would be such a great news to see Sandy back to mapping. I would look at his style with no strict timelines and more established mapping with less limitations.

I think it will never happen though.

I'm a big fan of Romero's modern style, yes, not always kind to players, but it looks so authentic with the vibes of the original game, something I rarely see in wads (although I missed out quite a lot).

[ck3D]

NNC, on 14 January 2026 - 07:13 AM, said:

It would be such a great news to see Sandy back to mapping. I would look at his style with no strict timelines and more established mapping with less limitations.

I think it will never happen though.

I'm a big fan of Romero's modern style, yes, not always kind to players, but it looks so authentic with the vibes of the original game, something I rarely see in wads (although I missed out quite a lot).

I agree that it would be neat and also that it most likely won't happen, interview made it sound DooM mapping was something to do at the time but he would not go back and instead of looking back seems to appreciate the possibilities of more modern engines.

But it is funny, at the same time when JesseP barely just whispered the words 'Build engine' for the first time in the interview, Sandy's reaction looked like one of disgust seeing someone spit into his cereal. Or "We don't talk about that" kind of vibe. I think it's just he never got to look at it closely enough to understand the particularities that make it interesting I figure, or maybe it seemed too technical, but I am not sure I can even start to imagine what kind of maps we would get from this guy if some kind of holy lightning ever struck him into learning SOS.

I also suspect if he ever had to make a Build engine city, that would share plenty of similarities with LameDuke L6.

[Ninety-Six]

Welp. I've just experienced one of the worst slaughtermaps I've ever seen in my entire life.

Kukui

And some genius decided it should be the regular secret level, while the super secret was an extremely chill nightclub level. Because that makes sense (if you were dropped on your head).

Regarding the level itself, allow me to paint a picture for you for those who haven't seen this.

You start the level already in the middle of a monster mosh pit, filled with chaingunners, revenants, imps, pinkies, knights, mancubi, and a handful of cacos scattered about on top of it all. Off to a bad start.

You are on a square ring that runs around the level, sheer wall on one side and a death pit on the other. The ring is wide enough to fit about two semi-trucks parked side-by-side in parallel with the wall. Monsters fill the entire width of the ring on all sides except the tiny pocket you start in. Spider- and Cyberdemons occupy the four corners of this ring.

You begin with a megasphere, a BFG, a backpack, and a full compliment of 600 cells. All well and good, except that 600 cells is nowhere NEAR enough ammunition, and 200/200 is nowhere near enough health/armor to survive all the unavoidable damage.

Good news: there are megaspheres and ammo dumps located periodically along the ring.

Bad news: You can't see jack shit. Between the heaving demonic bodies, the corpses, the demons mid-death animations, the BFG blasts, all the projectiles and the extremely red screen from the constant influx of unavoidable goddamn damage, seeing where ANY of the pickups are is a lost cause. You effectively have to stumble into them blindly the first time to even know they exist, and from then on just sorta GUESS where they're supposed to be. And with Doom's already-terrible pickup radius with things you CAN see, it's an exercise in keeping foam out of your mouth.

Even with transparent projectiles switched on, my own mini-mod that reduces Caco corpse sprites, and LZDoom's ability to scale back the intensity of the damage screen flash, I still couldn't see what the hell I was doing.

The intended strategy is to hold down the fire button on the BFG and march forward in either direction to those essential pickups. But it's a complete and total fucking crapshoot if it works, dependent pretty much entirely on luck. How much damage you take, if you can successfully guess where the next pickup is, and how much infighting decides to happen. But no I guess taking damage from all sides at all times while completely and utterly fucking blind is a skill issue on the player's part, huh?


Let me put into perspective just how bad this is.

There's a mod out there called Powergun. It's a weapon mod for classic doom that is meant to make slaughtermaps a bit less grindy and luck-based. Once I realized that no amount of savescumming was going to make this fucking dumpster fire of a level doable, I decided to switch to powergun just to see if it was even possible.

And guess what. It wasn't.

Powergun also comes with SUPER powergun. A version of powergun with almost no balancing at all. Almost kinda like Russian Overkill but without the funny.

Even with Super powergun it was only just barely possible. And it took me about 2 and a half hours. Why did I keep going? Because I needed to know if it was even remotely possible with the most broken weaponset I had.



I have never seen a more perfect example of why I despise the Doom community so much. Garbage tier grindy luck-based trial-and-error shitfests that just show up unwantedly and without warning, and often block progress to other parts of the wad. Levels that can't be beaten without hours of savescumming, and yet all the mappers are convinced that a player who dies because they're fucking blind and rolled badly on a pair of dice simply suffers from a skill issue. And by the same token, convinced that getting lucky and perfect memorization is the pinnacle of skill.

Escaping slaughtermaps is fucking impossible. They're what 80% of the Cacowards always go to, and in community projects they just fucking show up out of nowhere. You are constantly forced into playing these trash heaps. On occasion they'll be merciful enough to be optional, but as we've seen in this current example, even that's not fucking foolproof because for some godforsaken reason a much more chill level in line with the rest of the wad's lineup to that point is locked behind this dumpster fire.

[Ninety-Six]

doomworld.mov

[ck3D]

Interview by JesseP.

[Merlijn]

Ninety-Six, on 07 February 2026 - 11:29 AM, said:

Welp. I've just experienced one of the worst slaughtermaps I've ever seen in my entire life.
(...)
Escaping slaughtermaps is fucking impossible. They're what 80% of the Cacowards always go to, and in community projects they just fucking show up out of nowhere. You are constantly forced into playing these trash heaps. On occasion they'll be merciful enough to be optional, but as we've seen in this current example, even that's not fucking foolproof because for some godforsaken reason a much more chill level in line with the rest of the wad's lineup to that point is locked behind this dumpster fire.

That does sound rather miserable. I don't play Doom wads myself, but I do like watching gameplay footage on Youtube sometimes (some good fellow Dutchmen have quality playthroughs, such as Decino and Vytaan). IMO what holds a lot of wads back is the megawad structure. Most campaigns just don't stay interesting for 30 maps and 2 secret gimmicky ones in the middle. Heck, even the original Doom2 is VERY uneven when it comes to the quality of the levels. Sometimes it's just better to keep the number of maps lower instead of adding filler just to fill every slot.

Plus the icon of sin kinda sucks.

One wad that looks very interesting to me is Blues Brothers 2025, it also gets more slaughtery towards the end but at least it's in interesting ways. And the horror elements are just perfect for someone like me.

[DNS]

Ninety-Six, on 07 February 2026 - 11:29 AM, said:

Welp. I've just experienced one of the worst slaughtermaps I've ever seen in my entire life.

Kukui

And some genius decided it should be the regular secret level, while the super secret was an extremely chill nightclub level. Because that makes sense (if you were dropped on your head).

Regarding the level itself, allow me to paint a picture for you for those who haven't seen this.

You start the level already in the middle of a monster mosh pit, filled with chaingunners, revenants, imps, pinkies, knights, mancubi, and a handful of cacos scattered about on top of it all. Off to a bad start.

You are on a square ring that runs around the level, sheer wall on one side and a death pit on the other. The ring is wide enough to fit about two semi-trucks parked side-by-side in parallel with the wall. Monsters fill the entire width of the ring on all sides except the tiny pocket you start in. Spider- and Cyberdemons occupy the four corners of this ring.

You begin with a megasphere, a BFG, a backpack, and a full compliment of 600 cells. All well and good, except that 600 cells is nowhere NEAR enough ammunition, and 200/200 is nowhere near enough health/armor to survive all the unavoidable damage.

Good news: there are megaspheres and ammo dumps located periodically along the ring.

Bad news: You can't see jack shit. Between the heaving demonic bodies, the corpses, the demons mid-death animations, the BFG blasts, all the projectiles and the extremely red screen from the constant influx of unavoidable goddamn damage, seeing where ANY of the pickups are is a lost cause. You effectively have to stumble into them blindly the first time to even know they exist, and from then on just sorta GUESS where they're supposed to be. And with Doom's already-terrible pickup radius with things you CAN see, it's an exercise in keeping foam out of your mouth.

Even with transparent projectiles switched on, my own mini-mod that reduces Caco corpse sprites, and LZDoom's ability to scale back the intensity of the damage screen flash, I still couldn't see what the hell I was doing.

The intended strategy is to hold down the fire button on the BFG and march forward in either direction to those essential pickups. But it's a complete and total fucking crapshoot if it works, dependent pretty much entirely on luck. How much damage you take, if you can successfully guess where the next pickup is, and how much infighting decides to happen. But no I guess taking damage from all sides at all times while completely and utterly fucking blind is a skill issue on the player's part, huh?


Let me put into perspective just how bad this is.

There's a mod out there called Powergun. It's a weapon mod for classic doom that is meant to make slaughtermaps a bit less grindy and luck-based. Once I realized that no amount of savescumming was going to make this fucking dumpster fire of a level doable, I decided to switch to powergun just to see if it was even possible.

And guess what. It wasn't.

Powergun also comes with SUPER powergun. A version of powergun with almost no balancing at all. Almost kinda like Russian Overkill but without the funny.

Even with Super powergun it was only just barely possible. And it took me about 2 and a half hours. Why did I keep going? Because I needed to know if it was even remotely possible with the most broken weaponset I had.



I have never seen a more perfect example of why I despise the Doom community so much. Garbage tier grindy luck-based trial-and-error shitfests that just show up unwantedly and without warning, and often block progress to other parts of the wad. Levels that can't be beaten without hours of savescumming, and yet all the mappers are convinced that a player who dies because they're fucking blind and rolled badly on a pair of dice simply suffers from a skill issue. And by the same token, convinced that getting lucky and perfect memorization is the pinnacle of skill.

Escaping slaughtermaps is fucking impossible. They're what 80% of the Cacowards always go to, and in community projects they just fucking show up out of nowhere. You are constantly forced into playing these trash heaps. On occasion they'll be merciful enough to be optional, but as we've seen in this current example, even that's not fucking foolproof because for some godforsaken reason a much more chill level in line with the rest of the wad's lineup to that point is locked behind this dumpster fire.

As much as the doom "community" is a woke dumpster fire, I disagree with the cacowards being almost all exclusively given to slaughter map wads. I personally don't mind the odd one tossed into a megawad from time to time but do try my best to avoid slaughter maps because I don't really find ultra tedius gameplay where you run around in circles until the majority of the monsters kill each other from infighting and then spamming the plasma rifle/BFG to kill the remaining cyberdemons fun.

I find the best way to avoid garbage like this is to stick to playing the highly rated megawads, (few consist of majority slaughter maps) actually read the readme/comments on the id games archive before downloading if it's something more obscure because it usually mentions the gameplay style some where and then avoid hard deadline or gimmick based community compilations because the mappers often substitute slaughter for creativity due to such constraints.

Either way, I'm not sure how "hardcore" a doom player you are but there are dozens of great megawads out there. If you're looking for new maps, list what you've completed thus far and I'm sure that I can recommend many more.

Or you could always look up a tutorial on youtube since you've clearly already cheated trying to beat the map on your own...

[Ninety-Six]

Merlijn, on 08 February 2026 - 07:58 AM, said:

IMO what holds a lot of wads back is the megawad structure. Most campaigns just don't stay interesting for 30 maps and 2 secret gimmicky ones in the middle. Heck, even the original Doom2 is VERY uneven when it comes to the quality of the levels. Sometimes it's just better to keep the number of maps lower instead of adding filler just to fill every slot.

Funny you say that since the wad in question has a whopping 48.

Merlijn, on 08 February 2026 - 07:58 AM, said:

One wad that looks very interesting to me is Blues Brothers 2025, it also gets more slaughtery towards the end but at least it's in interesting ways. And the horror elements are just perfect for someone like me.

I've seen that and while it did pique my interest, I'm wary about it just because it's a new megawad and my luck at not finding bullshit traps is not great.

DNS, on 09 February 2026 - 08:30 AM, said:

I find the best way to avoid garbage like this is to stick to playing the highly rated megawads, (few consist of majority slaughter maps) actually read the readme/comments on the id games archive before downloading if it's something more obscure because it usually mentions the gameplay style some where and then avoid hard deadline or gimmick based community compilations because the mappers often substitute slaughter for creativity due to such constraints.

I also try my best to avoid it but most of the time it's what I find. I've almost entirely written off the cacowards because they either recommend slaughter or utter trial-and-error garbage like Ancient Aliens. The only real hope are in the runners-up/honorable mentions, though even that's a crapshoot at times.

Hell, this mapset came at the recommendation of Impie. But because it's a community project, there is no warning whatsoever when bullshit appears. It just simply wills itself into existence.

DNS, on 09 February 2026 - 08:30 AM, said:

Either way, I'm not sure how "hardcore" a doom player you are but there are dozens of great megawads out there. If you're looking for new maps, list what you've completed thus far and I'm sure that I can recommend many more.

I like a challenge as long as it's fair. Unfortunately the majority of the doom community's output isn't even close. They love their trial-and-error bullshit, either in the form of enemy spam slaughtermaps that you need to be smoking the exact blend of weed the mapper was in order to get to the end (just like classic adventure games!), or in the form of walking over an invisible linedef and getting immediately buttfucked by every Revenant this half of the galaxy because god forbid you didn't have the BFG out and pre-fired ahead of time. Like every single motherfucking player wouldn't the first time.

I can handle hard. What I can't fucking stand is unfair beginner's traps that WILL kill you the first time through. I don't find savescumming every five seconds to be fun or an expression of skill. It's JUST a waste of fucking time, and this shit is EVERYWHERE.

Good example of hard-but-fair would be anything by cyriak/mouldy (Going Down, Overboard, etc).

DNS, on 09 February 2026 - 08:30 AM, said:

Or you could always look up a tutorial on youtube since you've clearly already cheated trying to beat the map on your own...

The strategy in this case is the bloody same and it all comes down exclusively to luck. It's garbage.

But even if there was some hidden strategy, it's not fucking worth it. It shouldn't be in the megawad. Nor should it and its army of clones be as widespread as it is throughout that rotten community.

For a bunch of elitist pricks that get mad when they're called "mappers" and not "level designers" they sure do suck balls at designing levels.

[DNS]

 Ninety-Six, on 09 February 2026 - 05:37 PM, said:

Funny you say that since the wad in question has a whopping 48.



I've seen that and while it did pique my interest, I'm wary about it just because it's a new megawad and my luck at not finding bullshit traps is not great.



I also try my best to avoid it but most of the time it's what I find. I've almost entirely written off the cacowards because they either recommend slaughter or utter trial-and-error garbage like Ancient Aliens. The only real hope are in the runners-up/honorable mentions, though even that's a crapshoot at times.

Hell, this mapset came at the recommendation of Impie. But because it's a community project, there is no warning whatsoever when bullshit appears. It just simply wills itself into existence.




I like a challenge as long as it's fair. Unfortunately the majority of the doom community's output isn't even close. They love their trial-and-error bullshit, either in the form of enemy spam slaughtermaps that you need to be smoking the exact blend of weed the mapper was in order to get to the end (just like classic adventure games!), or in the form of walking over an invisible linedef and getting immediately buttfucked by every Revenant this half of the galaxy because god forbid you didn't have the BFG out and pre-fired ahead of time. Like every single motherfucking player wouldn't the first time.

I can handle hard. What I can't fucking stand is unfair beginner's traps that WILL kill you the first time through. I don't find savescumming every five seconds to be fun or an expression of skill. It's JUST a waste of fucking time, and this shit is EVERYWHERE.

Good example of hard-but-fair would be anything by cyriak/mouldy (Going Down, Overboard, etc).



The strategy in this case is the bloody same and it all comes down exclusively to luck. It's garbage.

But even if there was some hidden strategy, it's not fucking worth it. It shouldn't be in the megawad. Nor should it and its army of clones be as widespread as it is throughout that rotten community.

For a bunch of elitist pricks that get mad when they're called "mappers" and not "level designers" they sure do suck balls at designing levels.

Well if you're going to also include linedef/item trigger monster closet ambushes as well then you'll have to stick to older maps unfortunately. This is a very popular gameplay element most modern mappers utilize to increase difficulty. Hell, even Romero heavily relied on this tactic for the Sigil episode expansions as well as other cheap shit like putting a couple of hidden Barons behind a door that you have to open from a tiny ledge with a death pit behind if you fall or a hidden switch to crush a cyberdemon because you otherwise don't have enough ammo in the level to kill it. All shit that you have no idea about in a first time play through.

Also, did you ever find a way to play Doom 64 without the blockmap fix? I remember a project from a while back called "DZDoom" that was a modified version of GZDoom with additional features to maintain the Playstation and Doom 64 easthetics more accurately. If I remember correctly it ran PK3's/sound fonts converted from dumped roms of the original console cartridge/discs but I haven't played it in probably a decade so I can't remember if it had vanilla behavior in that regard or not. Might be worth tracking down of you're still searching for a Doom 64 solution.

[Ninety-Six]

 DNS, on 09 February 2026 - 11:27 PM, said:

Well if you're going to also include linedef/item trigger monster closet ambushes as well then you'll have to stick to older maps unfortunately. This is a very popular gameplay element most modern mappers utilize to increase difficulty. Hell, even Romero heavily relied on this tactic for the Sigil episode expansions as well as other cheap shit like putting a couple of hidden Barons behind a door that you have to open from a tiny ledge with a death pit behind if you fall or a hidden switch to crush a cyberdemon because you otherwise don't have enough ammo in the level to kill it. All shit that you have no idea about in a first time play through.

Yeah I'm aware mostly older stuff are safe, plus the occasional new thing by trusted mappers (like valkiriforce, the aforementioned mouldy, RMG, and a handful of others).

It's not even the concept of linedef ambushes that piss me off, as it is the ones that no human can possibly react to in time. Traps that require foreknowledge of them to overcome, in other words. Those are what light my ass on fire.


I actually used to play saveless and I still prefer that style, but I had to give that up ages ago because of that crap. I have no problems restarting all over (and without my guns) if I am the one who screwed up. I made a bad call, or failed to execute a good call correctly. That's totally fine because it's on me. Dying, however, because I got blindsided by something I couldn't possibly have known was there, or a personal favorite, encountering a fight that REQUIRES a certain secret, no, that's when I get angry.

(Seriously, everyone including the Doom community accepts that hiding keys behind secrets is bad, but it's totally okay when a fight is balanced around a specific hidden powerup or gun? Fuck that community)

 DNS, on 09 February 2026 - 11:27 PM, said:

Also, did you ever find a way to play Doom 64 without the blockmap fix? I remember a project from a while back called "DZDoom" that was a modified version of GZDoom with additional features to maintain the Playstation and Doom 64 easthetics more accurately. If I remember correctly it ran PK3's/sound fonts converted from dumped roms of the original console cartridge/discs but I haven't played it in probably a decade so I can't remember if it had vanilla behavior in that regard or not. Might be worth tracking down of you're still searching for a Doom 64 solution.

I was pointed to Doom 64 CE which is essentially a full port of it to GZDoom. I don't much care for GZ but it works and I have a machine that can run it now so I'll take it.

Plus it not only lets you play the official Lost Levels expansion, it also includes Kaiser's original level set from the Absolution TC (as well as the ability to toggle Absolution's changes to the base campaign), and one other campaign I'm not sure where it comes from but it's there and I suppose it can be seen as a consolation prize since I'm effectively locked out of any other D64 mods because they require shitty ports with the broken blockmap.


Thanks anyway, though. I appreciate it.

[DNS]

 Ninety-Six, on 10 February 2026 - 09:02 AM, said:

I was pointed to Doom 64 CE which is essentially a full port of it to GZDoom. I don't much care for GZ but it works and I have a machine that can run it now so I'll take it.

Plus it not only lets you play the official Lost Levels expansion, it also includes Kaiser's original level set from the Absolution TC (as well as the ability to toggle Absolution's changes to the base campaign), and one other campaign I'm not sure where it comes from but it's there and I suppose it can be seen as a consolation prize since I'm effectively locked out of any other D64 mods because they require shitty ports with the broken blockmap.


Thanks anyway, though. I appreciate it.

Okay if you're happy with CE. I know a lot of purists aren't because it's an approximation port of the console levels rather than direct rom dumps and came packaged with a bunch of additional PC levels not originally present/mods configured by default (at least the last time that I looked at it).

[Ninety-Six]

 DNS, on 10 February 2026 - 03:00 PM, said:

Okay if you're happy with CE. I know a lot of purists aren't because it's an approximation port of the console levels rather than direct rom dumps and came packaged with a bunch of additional PC levels not originally present/mods configured by default (at least the last time that I looked at it).

Said levels are locked away in their own campaigns, and when you first start it up you can select how faithful you want the experience to be. This also applies to the PSXDoom/Final Doom set from the same author(s). They even recreated the movement of the console editions and give you the option to select which movement style you want. It's very customizable.

As for map accuracy, everything looks the same to my admittedly untrained eye. If they're recreations they are damn good ones.


EDIT: I decided to check the ModDB page for it again to make sure I wasn't talking out of my ass, and it turns out CE is in fact based on DZDoom code, as well as the old PSXDoom TC (but made much more accurate via ZScript and other such).

Regarding the maps, this is what is said:

"The Absolution/DOOM 64: The original campaign.

The Lost Levels: These maps are exclusive to Doom 64's 2020 remaster by Nightdive. They are only available if the included installer finds a valid installation of the 2020 release.

The Doomsday Levels: Maps that were exclusive to Kaiser's 2003's Absolution TC and its Outcast Levels expansion, merged into a single episode. (Note: the artifact in Crisis has been replaced with a Megasphere because a similar artifact is already present in a later level). The maps included here are based on conversions made by Nevander for Doom 64: Retribution.

Redemption Denied: A 2005 mapset by Steven Searle and AgentSpork for the Absolution TC. The maps included here are based on conversions made by Nevander for Doom 64: Retribution.

The Reckoning: A 2008 mapset by Steven Searle for the Absolution TC. These maps included here are based on conversions made by thexgiddoomerx for Doom 64 EX.

Bonus maps: Waste Processing and Mining Front by Maverick and Temple Ruins and Temple Grounds by Henri Leto, standalone maps made for the Absolution TC, are included. They are based on conversions made by thexgiddoomerx for Doom 64 EX."

By all accounts it seems to be about as accurate as it could be short of actually running off of data dumps. If a more faithful port comes along that fixes the shitty blockmap bug, great, I'll make the switch (and that will probably let me play mods made for the more faithful ports). Until then though, this seems to more than do the job. It still looks and feels like Doom 64, and if you put them side-by-side (and lower the resolution) I don't think I'd be able to tell the difference.

I confess I never grew up with Doom 64. Most of my prior experience before now comes from Kaiser's Doom 64EX. I still love that port, but it does not run well on Windows 10 and doesn't have the ability to play the new official levels. Unfortunately both of its successors nuked the blockmap fix. But with that experience in mind, I can't tell the difference between EX and CE (with CE set to faithful, I mean).

I've never been much of a purist anyway. Honestly, if I were, the blockmap bug wouldn't be the bane of my existence. I will happily take a 99% accurate recreation over a true genuine original if it plays better, and CE does (at least compared to EX+ or the Nightdive version).



Speaking of the PSX TC, that actually reminds me. If there's anyone else out there that remembers the old PSXDoom TC and its Lost Levels expansion, while this is included in the download for CE (but can be disabled), the only way to play the Lost Levels in this version is via the integrated style, meaning it mimics the PC level ordering. Which is fine, but one of the reasons I enjoy playing console-ported versions of these games is for the different experience they provide. As such, I actually prefer the original Lost Levels standalone campaign as it was presented back then. I went out of my way to make a mini-mod that restores that old mod on this edition of the game.

I can't upload it here because of filesize restrictions but if anyone's interested, let me know and I'll try to figure something out. Or you could do it yourself, as opening up the files in SLADE, you can still see the remnants of the standalone campaign it once was.



EDIT2: As it turns out, some very nice people took the time to convert a handful of 64EX+/ND mods and port them to CE. This just keeps getting better.

[Player Lin]

My own way to deal with ANY slaughter-based maps in DooM (ZDooM-based engine only): sv_fastweapons 1

I rarely to actually play any of such maps because I just don't have time to do that "properly" - I tried, but it get boring very fast, if I'm not keep dying... - and it's not related the "slaughter trend" recent years in DooM community...such maps from TimeOfDeath and few authors already made me sick of slaughter-based maps since 2010s, because I never liked such "challenges".


IoS from original DooM 2 also annoying too. At least some of map authors knew that and tried changing to something else...just a normal boss monster in final map, or changed to made with better puzzle designs...or just omit it at all...

[Ninety-Six]

 Player Lin, on 21 February 2026 - 03:06 AM, said:

My own way to deal with ANY slaughter-based maps in DooM (ZDooM-based engine only): sv_fastweapons 1

I'm not actually familiar with this command.

[Player Lin]

Ninety-Six, on 21 February 2026 - 06:15 PM, said:

I'm not actually familiar with this command.

Taken from ZDooM wiki:
https://zdoom.org/w/...#sv_fastweapons

    sv_fastweapons (integer)

    Default: 0
    Increases the speed of your weapons. Setting this to 2 makes weapons even faster. 
    Note: Keep in mind that some custom weapons use special state handling (such as reloading) and using this may cause the game to crash.

Simply said, it made the weapon shooting much faster.
I always use 1 because 2 will caused problems for custom weapons.

[Ninety-Six]

First episode of TNT: Exolution is out. I have some thoughts.


I liked Revilution. I'm less enthusiastic about Devilution. But neither really looked or felt like the original TNT. As one of the few weirdoes who likes TNT (most of it, anyway), it matters to me that the sequel feel like an extension of the first in some way. Revilution didn't really look the part or feel like it, but it at least did have some sequel maps to the originals. Devilution didn't really even have that much, and in general seemed to mostly have been made by people who actively dislike TNT. The end result is a project that is a sequel really in name only.

I look over at Perdition's Gate Resurgence which was so authentic as to try and recreate mapping styles of the original PG and feel envy, even if I am not expecting that level of dedication for what's ultimately still a controversial Iwad.


Exolution gets off to an interesting start, as it certainly looks more like something that could be an extension of TNT. D and R were committed to only using their new textures (outside of some computers and doors and stuff), which looks jarring next to the original TNT, since that mostly ran on stock Doom 2 assets with a few custom additions. Exolution freewheels and mixes old D2 textures with the sequel texture pack, not really giving a damn about the consistency. I could ultimately live with just the new pack, but that Exolution decides to go in this direction is notable since the other two sequels don't.

I still don't know if I'd say the level design and atmosphere on the whole are a match yet, but I can at least say that Levels 4 and 5 of Exolution were the first time playing any of the TNT sequels that I felt like I was actually playing a sequel.

Level 4, Sand, is a level that reminds me mostly of the original TNT's Stronghold, mixed in with just a tiny bit of its Metal as well. I mentioned before that Stronghold was one of my favorite levels from TNT, and I enjoyed Sand in much the same way. Level 5, Graytech Harrow, also felt like Stronghold mixed in with some of the better parts of Administration Center, a level I normally consider the worst but with a few good rooms here and there.

Sand wasn't much of a looker while Graytech Harrow went fully fancy, yet in both cases I could actually feel the TNT inside. Both maps were solo creations of Kyka, and I guess as the former head of the Revilution project (the more Pro-TNT of the two sequels) that sorta checks out.



I haven't finished the demo yet, but I am certainly hoping things continue as they started.

[Ninety-Six]

dont do this dont give me hope



Also the music is great, but that's hardly surprising anymore. Actually I think its OST is better than Devilution's, despite only being one episode (especially given the repeated songs and that in the final release Devilution axed its best song for some reason???). It has a higher home run rate with me.

Better than Revilution's, that I can't say yet.

[Ninety-Six]

Here I go again. Another wad that pissed me off because I made the mistake of playing it. You'd think I'd learn my lesson. But this time I have a different point to bring up, and it's a point I don't think I've addressed much before.

First, the backstory.

I found myself in the mood for some Doom, but wasn't really sure what I was after. Not official content; had to be something new. I knew I definitely wanted something different from the norm, but with the absolute minefield that is wad selection, that was a tall order. Then I stumbled on a wad called The Cold Winds of Dis. It seemed fairly interesting, the screenshots looked utterly horrific, and the dark, bleak tone of it seemed to sorta be the answer to what I was looking for. I'd never played any of the PUSS wads before, but figured they'd be in the same realm as MAYhem where difficulty is a mobius strip. Still, there was some hope since the .txt file said one of the constrictions mappers had to deal with was moving away from big horde fights. That meant presumably no slaughter nonsense. There are other ways to screw over the player besides slaughtermaps, but decided to take the chance. It also said resource starvation was a major element, which ironically also gave me some hope.


So I spun it up. The titlemap was incredibly ominous and just awful to look at (in the same way the monster redesigns did, i.e. they were supposed to). First two levels were quite difficult actually, but I managed to pull through and begin my journey in the realm below Hell. For the entire first episode, it was tough but fair, and the bleak, soul-draining atmosphere left me feeling a way that is hard to put to words, only reinforced through the text screens (that were slightly more frequent than is usual). My friend, whom I streamed some of it to, said that it wasn't terror, yet the whole wad was still terrifying. Which, as oxymoronic as that seemed, felt apt.

I was also enjoying the challenge, playing on UV of course (the equivalent anyway as the difficulties were renamed). I'm usually pretty conservative on ammo normally, so I adapted to the scarcity of ammo pretty easily. Just had to switch up what I killed the basic zombies with between the shotgun and the chaingun (didn't get a chainsaw until like Map 9). I was also playing continuous as I usually do, as I don't really enjoy shotgunning barons to death all the time.

My first death happened on Map10. It was seemingly my fault. So I did something I hadn't done in years by this point: I restarted the level with only a pistol, as per Doom's original rules. That's normally how I like to play Doom (and other old shooters for that matter, including Duke). I don't mind being harshly punished as long as I'm the one who messed up. Shotgunning a baron instead of using the SSG or a rocket launcher is the price to pay for making a bad call or failing to execute. Of course, with the doom community being what it unfortunately is, this practice had to become abandoned because of how often the level design preferred to be cheap about their difficulty, springing traps that will almost certainly kill a first-time player, but by contrast are usually pretty easy to deal with once you know it's there (and already died to it). That's simply not fair; it's bad design and if I pistol started after every cheap death I would be pistol starting every single level. There would be no difference.

This wad had been solidly fair up until this point. I decided I would trust the wad enough to play fair in turn, and take my punishment.


Unfortunately, I'm making a negative post in the Doom Corner thread again, so you know where this is going. Cracks first showed in Map13, the second level of episode 2. First there was this nasty fight in a small caged room with two archviles and sniping revenants, that were usually visibly blocked by the cage texture so it was really hard to see them or their projectiles, further not helped by the archvile's new flame graphic which is somehow even more obscuring than it is in vanilla. Setting the enemy attack transparency to "on" didn't really help in this case. But the end of the level was where it really began to fall, with a very nasty trap where you're on a narrow catwalk over a damaging floor with barons in front of you, and cacodemons spawning above you. The latter was the real problem, because between their spawn height and infinitely tall collision detection, it was impossible to dodge the Barons' or other cacos' attacks because I got walled and couldn't see it. The cacos spawned way too high up so they were impossible to see, almost as if this level had been designed with freelook in mind. But there was no sign that the whole wad had that in mind.

(There were some other, similar issues throughout the wad. For instance, there were two rooms that tanked my performance because the Doom engine can't do slopes, so they faked it with hundreds of tiny steps to make big chambers with. I like playing in software so of course that destroyed my frame rate. If the wad was built for hardware rendering and freelook it should say that somewhere, not that that will fix the other level design problems).

The very next level had a dickbag of a trap right at the end, being one of those "if you don't know it's coming you're going to die" ambushes I loathe so much. Even once I knew it was coming though, there was so little space to fight in and the only weapon I could make use of at the time was the rocket launcher. There wasn't enough plasma to deal with the threat, and the SSG did not have the DPS necessary.

That same problem was magnified in the very next level, Map15, where everything went to shit. It's a gimmick level, firstly, and a really annoying one at that. See, the explosive barrels have been turned into living enemies in this wad. They're very slow moving, however, but if they get within melee range they will self-detonate (they also don't make a sound so they can and will sneak up on you if you aren't careful). There was about 200 of them behind where you begin the level at, and they're wired up to voodoo dolls of you. If you detonate them even from the other end of the level, you will still die. So you have to constantly move forward and not ever let the living barrels detonate.

As annoying as that is, that's not where it fell apart. That happened like 2 rooms in, where you fight a cyberdemon (none of these terms technically apply since all the enemies have new names and designs, but I'm still calling them by their functional equivalents for convenience. Most enemies literally are just their normal counterparts but reskinned). The problem is, the level wants you to rocket-duel the cyberdemon, in a tiny cavern, on an even tinier island within that cavern surrounded by a pond of damaging floor.

Even with savescumming, that fight took me 15-20 minutes. I had no plasma to work with, and even if I did the BFG debuts in this level and much further in. It was rockets only. That basically turned this encounter into a massive luckfest, dependent entirely on how often the cyber moved and where he went. If he reached the center of the arena, then that put you in self-damage range of the rockets. Not even standing on the damaging floor was an option, because that also puts you next to the cavern walls so you'd still die from splash damage. Basically, the only way to win this fight was for the cyber to decide to focus more on shooting than moving at the beginning of the fight, allowing you to get in solid damage, and then once he inevitably reached the center of the island, he had to choose to move away from it instead of shoot. Your ability to survive is entirely dependent on the RNG of the cyberdemon, making it a miserable slot machine of a fight. Again, I spent 15-20 minutes on that part alone. A quarter to a third of an hour. On that one, single, completely unbalanced part.

(Yes, there is plasma ammo behind him, but:
1.) The area behind him is so dark that there's no way to see it until you're already next to it
2.) It's nowhere near enough to kill him with alone
3.) It opens the walls to let the living barrels enter the arena from his side as well instead of just your own, which will block your progress further into the level
4.) It spawns an archvile because fuck you

I am pretty sure that it's not the intended strategy, nor is it a helpful one.)

Side note. Being Map15, it is also the level with the secret exit. I didn't play the secret levels because they were legitimately actual slaughter (I checked ahead of time), but I still wanted the completionist credit for 100% secrets. And this level has one of the most absurd, obtuse secret exits I've ever seen. You have to look at a hole in the wall that's filled with frozen people decorations that look very similar to the living barrels but aren't, find one that actually IS a living barrel, and then go against everything the level taught you and shoot it. Then, somewhere else in the level an invulnerability will be spat out of the wall, and if you don't get to it in time it will be swallowed by an inescapable death pit. Once you grab it, you then safely detonate the horde, go into the tunnel they came from, and there you go there's your secret slaughter level.

If you aren't looking in the right direction when you shoot the living barrel (like I wasn't), you can completely miss it, running around the ever-shrinking level unaware that anything even happened. I genuinely have no idea how they expected people to figure any this crap out. I had to dissect the map with Slade, and even then I didn't even realize I was on the trail of the secret level. I saw the invuln in the wall in the level editor (and mind you this is the first invulnerability in the entire wad and it too has a new sprite so I didn't even KNOW it was an invuln), and had tried to figure out what it was for and how to even get it. I found a convoluted sequence of actions and out-of-bounds teleports to release it. Then I picked it up, learned what it was and figured what it was for.

Utterly insane.


And then, after that chain of misery, everything went right back to the way it was in the first half of the wad. Next few levels were back to the tough-but-fair design I'd been enjoying. For the next several levels in a row, everything was cool and fine. There were somewhat questionable encounters in both Map20 and Map23 (which, incidentally, marks the end of episode 2), but given standard doomworld level design even "questionable" is above-par.

Enter Level 26, the third level of episode 3, and the suffering begins anew. Apparently "discourage big horde fights" means "throw in big horde fights but just make them take place in tiny-ass arenas" because now began the bullshit slaughter segment. The next 3 levels after that (besides 28 breaking up the sequence which was alright) were the same kind of suffering. Terribly unbalanced fights in cramped spaces that never felt like I actually overcame them, I just got lucky or savescummed enough times. I fucking quit the wad halfway through 29 because I couldn't take it anymore (and also the level was abusing sniping arachnotrons being out of vertical autoaim range). I was lied to about what the wad would consist of, because doomworld just can't fucking help itself and insert slaughter bullcrap where it isn't wanted. Yeah, okay, sure, the enemy count wasn't in the thousands, but the design principles between the encounters were the same as slaughter, just in smaller scale and terrible arenas. Huge, overwhelming numbers of enemies spawning in waves fought in places you can't handle unless you know exactly what the waves will spawn and when they will spawn it, with a little side helping of needing good RNG between enemy movements and infighting (and, actually, without the space to intentionally trigger infighting the typical slaughter arena allows).


This is exactly the kind of thing I was referring to when I bitched about Kukui. You cannot escape this shit. Any and all community projects will devolve into this crap if given enough time. Balance and playtesting are low-priority next to texture alignment and source port compatibility (and in this case, not even the latter).

And this is the perfect wad to explain how and why lowering the difficulty doesn't work. Setting aside how, typically speaking, ITYTD is insulting easy and HMP is either that with an extra Hell Knight or as bad as UV minus an imp, lowering down from UV means I lose out on the actually GOOD challenging parts.

How, at the start, the level design was tough but fair. I was enjoying myself there. Again, I actually pistol-started when I died, because I felt it was a justified loss and the wad didn't seem interested in breaking my balls. Come episode 2 and 3 however, and it goes straight to ball-busting with a friggin' sniper scope. "Well of course it gets harder as it goes, lower the difficulty for the later episodes!" That, again, ignores the parts that WEREN'T unbalanced pieces of shit encounters. Level 12, the string of levels after 15 where it was only questionable at worst. Still, usually a fair challenge. I'd miss out on those by lowering the difficulty.


That's the reality of it all and the true scope of how bad doomworld level design and compilation is. There simply is no winning move. I like a real challenge. Actually no, I straight-up crave a meaty challenge. But that's why all this fake difficulty pisses me off to no end. I want tough-fought victories won by the skin of my teeth. I want to be able to accept punishment when I am the one who fucks up.

But doomworld doesn't understand difficult level design. As I've said in many threads and posts by this point, they usually are no better than the 10-year old Mario Maker creators making "teh hurdest lvl evr" by just spamming shit everywhere and calling it a day. If the player dies, that means it's hard, right? That's all it takes? It doesn't matter if nobody on the face of the earth would survive the encounters the first time, or need to reload the same fight for 20 minutes just hoping the game will decide they can win. It doesn't matter if the player is literally unable to see, player death is player death. That means you, the mapper, win. Because...that's what hard level design is about? The mapper getting one over on the player? Again and again?


The sad reality is that despite their arrogance, their irritation at being called simple mappers and not "level designers," they have no concept that when players die from things outside their control, that's not actually difficulty. That's not a challenge to be overcome. That's simply being an asshole. Real challenge puts the pressure on the players exclusively. It removes safety nets. It demands more of the player, more complex actions or strategies, but without relying on a slot machine. Slot machines are not "hard" to win, because all you do is pull an arm. The same simple basic action, different results, time and time again. Hammering the F6 and F9 keys every few seconds is not a skillful action. Waiting for a cyberdemon to let you win is not accomplishment through skill. Blindsiding a player only for them to come back and one-shot the ambush because they know what to do is not overcoming a challenge. Yet this culture of terrible asshole design not only permeates throughout all of doomworld's creations, it is heavily encouraged to newcomers while fair and balanced design is actively discouraged. It's called boring. It's ignored.

They are constantly rewarded for making these terrible unbalanced messes without real playtesting, compiled together with no real care paid towards difficulty curves or if some maps even belong at all, and when players are constantly killed it's called a skill issue. "lower the difficulty" is the common response to complaints about how fucked up the balance is, even though all that serves to do is rob challenge-seekers of having a real challenge as opposed to having bullshit shoveled into their face constantly. And that, of course, assumes lower difficulties even exist, or if the mapper really made those settings with any real care, which most don't.


The entire situation is both extremely sad and beyond frustrating. There is no avoiding this crap. Either you play a wad that inevitably devolves into unfair bullshit, or you play pathetically easy levels that don't even function properly because ITYTD is the afterthought of an afterthought. Instead of these "professional level designers" actually making genuine levels with genuine challenge, they just fart poorly-balanced encounters out and pat themselves on the back because their texture alignment is really good and that sector art looks abstract and neat.

For a community that says Build mappers care more about visuals than gameplay, they sure suck at gameplay.

[NNC]

Mikko's first Doom map, named "Satan's Library" is a fantastic work of art, and if he can create more stuff like this (even if it just 5 maps for example), it can deserve a cacoward. It has very similar vibes to No Rest for the Living (and the author's semi-sequel, Redemption of the Slain, which even had a somewhat comparable library), with it's linear, yet, constantly circling progression. It also lacks the generic buildup as you are surprised by an early archvile. The map is actually pretty great at teaching you how to handle multiple archviles and take retreats. Some more enemies (particularly after getting the yellow key) could have worked, but honestly, I'm happy not to see stupid monster spams which I always hated. The map is clearly rooted at the original game, and not at the community style I'm not a huge fan of TBH.

Anyone more knowledgable: are there any Doom maps in this style? I mean classic vibes with more details, not too difficult, and have some style variations. Like NRFTL or this.

[NNC]

Ninety-Six, on 01 May 2026 - 11:17 AM, said:

Here I go again. Another wad that pissed me off because I made the mistake of playing it. You'd think I'd learn my lesson. But this time I have a different point to bring up, and it's a point I don't think I've addressed much before.

First, the backstory.

I found myself in the mood for some Doom, but wasn't really sure what I was after. Not official content; had to be something new. I knew I definitely wanted something different from the norm, but with the absolute minefield that is wad selection, that was a tall order. Then I stumbled on a wad called The Cold Winds of Dis. It seemed fairly interesting, the screenshots looked utterly horrific, and the dark, bleak tone of it seemed to sorta be the answer to what I was looking for. I'd never played any of the PUSS wads before, but figured they'd be in the same realm as MAYhem where difficulty is a mobius strip. Still, there was some hope since the .txt file said one of the constrictions mappers had to deal with was moving away from big horde fights. That meant presumably no slaughter nonsense. There are other ways to screw over the player besides slaughtermaps, but decided to take the chance. It also said resource starvation was a major element, which ironically also gave me some hope.


So I spun it up. The titlemap was incredibly ominous and just awful to look at (in the same way the monster redesigns did, i.e. they were supposed to). First two levels were quite difficult actually, but I managed to pull through and begin my journey in the realm below Hell. For the entire first episode, it was tough but fair, and the bleak, soul-draining atmosphere left me feeling a way that is hard to put to words, only reinforced through the text screens (that were slightly more frequent than is usual). My friend, whom I streamed some of it to, said that it wasn't terror, yet the whole wad was still terrifying. Which, as oxymoronic as that seemed, felt apt.

I was also enjoying the challenge, playing on UV of course (the equivalent anyway as the difficulties were renamed). I'm usually pretty conservative on ammo normally, so I adapted to the scarcity of ammo pretty easily. Just had to switch up what I killed the basic zombies with between the shotgun and the chaingun (didn't get a chainsaw until like Map 9). I was also playing continuous as I usually do, as I don't really enjoy shotgunning barons to death all the time.

My first death happened on Map10. It was seemingly my fault. So I did something I hadn't done in years by this point: I restarted the level with only a pistol, as per Doom's original rules. That's normally how I like to play Doom (and other old shooters for that matter, including Duke). I don't mind being harshly punished as long as I'm the one who messed up. Shotgunning a baron instead of using the SSG or a rocket launcher is the price to pay for making a bad call or failing to execute. Of course, with the doom community being what it unfortunately is, this practice had to become abandoned because of how often the level design preferred to be cheap about their difficulty, springing traps that will almost certainly kill a first-time player, but by contrast are usually pretty easy to deal with once you know it's there (and already died to it). That's simply not fair; it's bad design and if I pistol started after every cheap death I would be pistol starting every single level. There would be no difference.

This wad had been solidly fair up until this point. I decided I would trust the wad enough to play fair in turn, and take my punishment.


Unfortunately, I'm making a negative post in the Doom Corner thread again, so you know where this is going. Cracks first showed in Map13, the second level of episode 2. First there was this nasty fight in a small caged room with two archviles and sniping revenants, that were usually visibly blocked by the cage texture so it was really hard to see them or their projectiles, further not helped by the archvile's new flame graphic which is somehow even more obscuring than it is in vanilla. Setting the enemy attack transparency to "on" didn't really help in this case. But the end of the level was where it really began to fall, with a very nasty trap where you're on a narrow catwalk over a damaging floor with barons in front of you, and cacodemons spawning above you. The latter was the real problem, because between their spawn height and infinitely tall collision detection, it was impossible to dodge the Barons' or other cacos' attacks because I got walled and couldn't see it. The cacos spawned way too high up so they were impossible to see, almost as if this level had been designed with freelook in mind. But there was no sign that the whole wad had that in mind.

(There were some other, similar issues throughout the wad. For instance, there were two rooms that tanked my performance because the Doom engine can't do slopes, so they faked it with hundreds of tiny steps to make big chambers with. I like playing in software so of course that destroyed my frame rate. If the wad was built for hardware rendering and freelook it should say that somewhere, not that that will fix the other level design problems).

The very next level had a dickbag of a trap right at the end, being one of those "if you don't know it's coming you're going to die" ambushes I loathe so much. Even once I knew it was coming though, there was so little space to fight in and the only weapon I could make use of at the time was the rocket launcher. There wasn't enough plasma to deal with the threat, and the SSG did not have the DPS necessary.

That same problem was magnified in the very next level, Map15, where everything went to shit. It's a gimmick level, firstly, and a really annoying one at that. See, the explosive barrels have been turned into living enemies in this wad. They're very slow moving, however, but if they get within melee range they will self-detonate (they also don't make a sound so they can and will sneak up on you if you aren't careful). There was about 200 of them behind where you begin the level at, and they're wired up to voodoo dolls of you. If you detonate them even from the other end of the level, you will still die. So you have to constantly move forward and not ever let the living barrels detonate.

As annoying as that is, that's not where it fell apart. That happened like 2 rooms in, where you fight a cyberdemon (none of these terms technically apply since all the enemies have new names and designs, but I'm still calling them by their functional equivalents for convenience. Most enemies literally are just their normal counterparts but reskinned). The problem is, the level wants you to rocket-duel the cyberdemon, in a tiny cavern, on an even tinier island within that cavern surrounded by a pond of damaging floor.

Even with savescumming, that fight took me 15-20 minutes. I had no plasma to work with, and even if I did the BFG debuts in this level and much further in. It was rockets only. That basically turned this encounter into a massive luckfest, dependent entirely on how often the cyber moved and where he went. If he reached the center of the arena, then that put you in self-damage range of the rockets. Not even standing on the damaging floor was an option, because that also puts you next to the cavern walls so you'd still die from splash damage. Basically, the only way to win this fight was for the cyber to decide to focus more on shooting than moving at the beginning of the fight, allowing you to get in solid damage, and then once he inevitably reached the center of the island, he had to choose to move away from it instead of shoot. Your ability to survive is entirely dependent on the RNG of the cyberdemon, making it a miserable slot machine of a fight. Again, I spent 15-20 minutes on that part alone. A quarter to a third of an hour. On that one, single, completely unbalanced part.

(Yes, there is plasma ammo behind him, but:
1.) The area behind him is so dark that there's no way to see it until you're already next to it
2.) It's nowhere near enough to kill him with alone
3.) It opens the walls to let the living barrels enter the arena from his side as well instead of just your own, which will block your progress further into the level
4.) It spawns an archvile because fuck you

I am pretty sure that it's not the intended strategy, nor is it a helpful one.)

Side note. Being Map15, it is also the level with the secret exit. I didn't play the secret levels because they were legitimately actual slaughter (I checked ahead of time), but I still wanted the completionist credit for 100% secrets. And this level has one of the most absurd, obtuse secret exits I've ever seen. You have to look at a hole in the wall that's filled with frozen people decorations that look very similar to the living barrels but aren't, find one that actually IS a living barrel, and then go against everything the level taught you and shoot it. Then, somewhere else in the level an invulnerability will be spat out of the wall, and if you don't get to it in time it will be swallowed by an inescapable death pit. Once you grab it, you then safely detonate the horde, go into the tunnel they came from, and there you go there's your secret slaughter level.

If you aren't looking in the right direction when you shoot the living barrel (like I wasn't), you can completely miss it, running around the ever-shrinking level unaware that anything even happened. I genuinely have no idea how they expected people to figure any this crap out. I had to dissect the map with Slade, and even then I didn't even realize I was on the trail of the secret level. I saw the invuln in the wall in the level editor (and mind you this is the first invulnerability in the entire wad and it too has a new sprite so I didn't even KNOW it was an invuln), and had tried to figure out what it was for and how to even get it. I found a convoluted sequence of actions and out-of-bounds teleports to release it. Then I picked it up, learned what it was and figured what it was for.

Utterly insane.


And then, after that chain of misery, everything went right back to the way it was in the first half of the wad. Next few levels were back to the tough-but-fair design I'd been enjoying. For the next several levels in a row, everything was cool and fine. There were somewhat questionable encounters in both Map20 and Map23 (which, incidentally, marks the end of episode 2), but given standard doomworld level design even "questionable" is above-par.

Enter Level 26, the third level of episode 3, and the suffering begins anew. Apparently "discourage big horde fights" means "throw in big horde fights but just make them take place in tiny-ass arenas" because now began the bullshit slaughter segment. The next 3 levels after that (besides 28 breaking up the sequence which was alright) were the same kind of suffering. Terribly unbalanced fights in cramped spaces that never felt like I actually overcame them, I just got lucky or savescummed enough times. I fucking quit the wad halfway through 29 because I couldn't take it anymore (and also the level was abusing sniping arachnotrons being out of vertical autoaim range). I was lied to about what the wad would consist of, because doomworld just can't fucking help itself and insert slaughter bullcrap where it isn't wanted. Yeah, okay, sure, the enemy count wasn't in the thousands, but the design principles between the encounters were the same as slaughter, just in smaller scale and terrible arenas. Huge, overwhelming numbers of enemies spawning in waves fought in places you can't handle unless you know exactly what the waves will spawn and when they will spawn it, with a little side helping of needing good RNG between enemy movements and infighting (and, actually, without the space to intentionally trigger infighting the typical slaughter arena allows).


This is exactly the kind of thing I was referring to when I bitched about Kukui. You cannot escape this shit. Any and all community projects will devolve into this crap if given enough time. Balance and playtesting are low-priority next to texture alignment and source port compatibility (and in this case, not even the latter).

And this is the perfect wad to explain how and why lowering the difficulty doesn't work. Setting aside how, typically speaking, ITYTD is insulting easy and HMP is either that with an extra Hell Knight or as bad as UV minus an imp, lowering down from UV means I lose out on the actually GOOD challenging parts.

How, at the start, the level design was tough but fair. I was enjoying myself there. Again, I actually pistol-started when I died, because I felt it was a justified loss and the wad didn't seem interested in breaking my balls. Come episode 2 and 3 however, and it goes straight to ball-busting with a friggin' sniper scope. "Well of course it gets harder as it goes, lower the difficulty for the later episodes!" That, again, ignores the parts that WEREN'T unbalanced pieces of shit encounters. Level 12, the string of levels after 15 where it was only questionable at worst. Still, usually a fair challenge. I'd miss out on those by lowering the difficulty.


That's the reality of it all and the true scope of how bad doomworld level design and compilation is. There simply is no winning move. I like a real challenge. Actually no, I straight-up crave a meaty challenge. But that's why all this fake difficulty pisses me off to no end. I want tough-fought victories won by the skin of my teeth. I want to be able to accept punishment when I am the one who fucks up.

But doomworld doesn't understand difficult level design. As I've said in many threads and posts by this point, they usually are no better than the 10-year old Mario Maker creators making "teh hurdest lvl evr" by just spamming shit everywhere and calling it a day. If the player dies, that means it's hard, right? That's all it takes? It doesn't matter if nobody on the face of the earth would survive the encounters the first time, or need to reload the same fight for 20 minutes just hoping the game will decide they can win. It doesn't matter if the player is literally unable to see, player death is player death. That means you, the mapper, win. Because...that's what hard level design is about? The mapper getting one over on the player? Again and again?


The sad reality is that despite their arrogance, their irritation at being called simple mappers and not "level designers," they have no concept that when players die from things outside their control, that's not actually difficulty. That's not a challenge to be overcome. That's simply being an asshole. Real challenge puts the pressure on the players exclusively. It removes safety nets. It demands more of the player, more complex actions or strategies, but without relying on a slot machine. Slot machines are not "hard" to win, because all you do is pull an arm. The same simple basic action, different results, time and time again. Hammering the F6 and F9 keys every few seconds is not a skillful action. Waiting for a cyberdemon to let you win is not accomplishment through skill. Blindsiding a player only for them to come back and one-shot the ambush because they know what to do is not overcoming a challenge. Yet this culture of terrible asshole design not only permeates throughout all of doomworld's creations, it is heavily encouraged to newcomers while fair and balanced design is actively discouraged. It's called boring. It's ignored.

They are constantly rewarded for making these terrible unbalanced messes without real playtesting, compiled together with no real care paid towards difficulty curves or if some maps even belong at all, and when players are constantly killed it's called a skill issue. "lower the difficulty" is the common response to complaints about how fucked up the balance is, even though all that serves to do is rob challenge-seekers of having a real challenge as opposed to having bullshit shoveled into their face constantly. And that, of course, assumes lower difficulties even exist, or if the mapper really made those settings with any real care, which most don't.


The entire situation is both extremely sad and beyond frustrating. There is no avoiding this crap. Either you play a wad that inevitably devolves into unfair bullshit, or you play pathetically easy levels that don't even function properly because ITYTD is the afterthought of an afterthought. Instead of these "professional level designers" actually making genuine levels with genuine challenge, they just fart poorly-balanced encounters out and pat themselves on the back because their texture alignment is really good and that sector art looks abstract and neat.

For a community that says Build mappers care more about visuals than gameplay, they sure suck at gameplay.

Didn't read your post before mine and I understand your frustration. Most maps are either horde fighting (sometimes they aren't terribly difficult, but just damn boring), or something that makes generic stuff of E1 remakes. Very few if any could survive a test of any company level design with self respect. Sad thing even Legacy of Rust ended in this, as early as the middle of map2 is just spam nonsense. It had some fine levels later on, but at the second half of episode 2, it became awful.

NRFTL is something nobody seem to capable of replicating. Maybe our Mikko (who showed Build mappers have much higher ceilings in design, despite our own ominous issues).

[Ninety-Six]

NNC, on 01 May 2026 - 01:06 PM, said:

Sad thing even Legacy of Rust ended in this, as early as the middle of map2 is just spam nonsense. It had some fine levels later on, but at the second half of episode 2, it became awful.

Yeah. Which is one of the reasons that prompted me to say that Nightdive needs to ditch Xazer and Not Jabba (the other reason was the Heretic + Hexen rerelease).

NNC, on 01 May 2026 - 01:06 PM, said:

NRFTL is something nobody seem to capable of replicating. Maybe our Mikko (who showed Build mappers have much higher ceilings in design, despite our own ominous issues).

Seemingly not. Hell Mountain remains my favorite Doom level ever made, official or otherwise.

[ImpieTheThird]

Ninety-Six, on 01 May 2026 - 11:17 AM, said:

(TL;DR: Basically hit the nail on the head about The Cold Winds of Dis and Doomworld map design in general.)

Glad it's not just me who's sick of this shit.

[NNC]

Hell Mountain is indeed great, in fact I love most levels in No Rest for the Living. Vivisection is a bit closer to the community style enemy spam, but I like how the level opens itself up. The secret level, March of the Demons is also an underrated classic. Only the boss level is something I didn't care about, but it was still acceptable.

Recommend you to try Redemption of the Slain, if you play GZDoom (not sure, maybe I already recommended it here), especially the updated variant with the vanilla weapon compatibility. That was made by Meakim, author of NRFTL.

Also try Mikko's first map, for real.

Out of the many Doomworld mappers, I think Bauul is the most interesting one, he made some really strong maps, like Foursite back then. I also kinda enjoyed Dimension of the Boomed, the Quake inspired mapset by Urthar.

[ImpieTheThird]

NNC, on 02 May 2026 - 03:26 AM, said:

I also kinda enjoyed Dimension of the Boomed, the Quake inspired mapset by Urthar.

That one was pretty good and reminded me of the original Project Slipgate, one of my favorites. I found out recently that they released a new overhauled version of Slipgate that seems to do what's been discussed already: favoring shiny polish over gameplay. The new version looks nice but doesn't hold a candle to the original version and I have to wonder why they insisted on "remastering" it in the first place.

There's also a two-map set I used to love that was Shores themed, that was eventually expanded into a full episode, but I'll be damned if I can remember the name of it anymore. Lost it when my hard drive died, but it was a good example of how maps used to be designed before all the slaughter and bullshit booby trap nonsense began.

[ImpieTheThird]

 ImpieTheThird, on 02 May 2026 - 10:24 AM, said:

There's also a two-map set I used to love that was Shores themed, that was eventually expanded into a full episode...

It was Monument. The original 2-map set was Rip It Tear It Smash It, which was on the Top 100 Wads of All Time, so I feel silly for not remembering it...

[Ninety-Six]

Thoughts?

[ck3D]

Ninety-Six, on 23 June 2026 - 05:48 PM, said:

Thoughts?

As cool as it is to catch this (the recurring motif), I don't see why that ethically would be a slight to BP's work, unless one really insists that it has to be a problem, which would just reflect the person's poor understanding of art. All artists, regardless of practice, develop patterns and motifs that they keep referencing within their own body of work, and it is a big part of how style works. Within the same game series especially feels coherent too, to me just seems like BP stumbled upon one composition he thought really worked well with the game, and then structured more themes around it, which is something someone who is actually good at what they do would do.

Now I have thoughts that are more general and darker I am not sure belong here, but since you asked, that is a window for me to vent that I think passing away altogether in this day and age really must fucking suck. More visibly than ever now just means third parties get to use your name and legacy to market whatever you can't control, usually products or visibility of theirs. A lot of pillaging under the disguise of honor, the stolen valor, the tweaked recuperation as soon as you're gone, it's disgusting. Big reason why no one should inspire to popularity for the sake of it. People no longer turn into dust, they turn into numbers.