Favorite Megawad?

[Kid Airbag]

I'm surprised no one's mentioned Vengeance for Ultimate Doom. That's one of the most enjoyable megawads out there.

[Little Faith]

Vengeance:

Episode 1:
Somewhat meh, though definately not without it's qualities. Some of the levels have a bit too "empty" a feel to them. The new textures would be cool on their own, but they clash with the existing ones. E1M4 and E1M7 are good picks. E1M7 has an excellent feel to it and quite imaginative architecture, but the progression is somewhat unintuitive ruining gameplay. There are many "E1-too's" out there that are a lot better than this one.

Episode 2:
This episode owns and I am inclined to say that this is the best "E2-too" out there. It captures both the "tech" and "terror" aspect of the original magnifying them both. With the exception of E2M3 it is also delightfully free of the almost direct plagiarisms often found in Ultimate Doom tribute wads. Many of the levels are sufficiently open-ended and sprawling to instill the correct mood. E2M2 is a true beauty. E2M4 is very very impressive. E2M7 is an excellent tensionbuilder. The route to the secret level is clever.

Episode 3:

Episode 3 goes hellish with a bang! Expect grand scenery like some of the stuff from Lutz and Virgil though this is a bit more "down to earth" not taking advantage of any visual tricks and special effects. It still yells "E3" at you while being a lot more grander and spectacular. There are several times where the levels reminds me of the old classic "Crossing Archeron". Definately not a bad choice of inspiration. A bit of Memento Mori/Requiem sensibilities can also be observed at times, especially at E3M7.

Episode 4:

Much like E3 though this one tries to be even grander (anmd succeeds somewhat). The E4 style is firmly in place, though it is allowed to intermingle with some good solid Hellish Theme a la E3. If this episode has a problem it must be the strict linearity which often begin to feel oppressive in some of the larger maps. Solid work, but Episode 3 of this wad is better. There are some damn big castle-style maps so if you liked Requiem's Cursed Kingdom (map27) this one might also be for you.


There are many of the wads here that were originally featured in the Invasion and Invasion 2 megawads of the same authors: Examples includes E1M7, E2M3 and E4M8.

[Enjay]

Grazza said:

Do you mean that you no longer have a copy of it anywhere?

Yup, that's what I mean. I haven't had an early copy for years. I was pretty careless about keeping my files "back in the day". All I have is a pretty late version somewhere and the NJZdoom version I did really to force myself to learn ZdoomHexen style editing by simply converting all the existing levels and adding a few simple scripts and so on.

So if you do have an early version, I wouldn't mind seeing it, even if I do cringe with embarrassment when I play it. :-)


I know the releases went something like this:

NJShoresofHell - the first one I did - a Shores of Hell mission replacement. Why shores of Hell first? Simply to comply with id's wishes of not making levels playable with the shareware version. I think in the early days of mapping, most add on levels ran on E2M1 for that reason.

NJKneeDeep - The second 9 levels

NJInferno - The inferno replacement, finished in the early days of Doom2.

NJDoom - All the above in one WAD with a bit of tweaking to a few levels. This then underwent a few changes.

NJDoom2 - All the above in one wad and made up to 32 levels. As soon as I found a way to edit Doom2 stuff (a hacked DEU like I said in the other post).

There were quite a few tweaks and variations of the above. I know the very first NJDoom2 could fit on to a single 1.44MB floppy when zipped. I had tried to keep it small because I didn't have a way of spanning disks at the time (I don't think even PKZip did it then). So if I wanted to give copies to friends, it needed to be small. Once it got too big for one disk, I decided to add a few graphics and stuff seeing as how the one disk size was irrelevant anyway and I knew how to span disks.

All the above were uploaded to Compuserve, and nowhere else (AFAIK), but I am aware of at least one commercial disk that included stuff from them (because I bought it - not knowing I was buying my own levels). :-/

[Grazza]

Well, I found njdoom and njdoom2 using a Yahoo search. I won't give links because in one case the site also contains a few things that I suspect shouldn't be available for free public download, and since neither contains a text file. Anyway, it's just a simple Yahoo search.

The file sizes and dates are:
njdoom: (redated 2 September 2002); 3804458 (would fit on a floppy when zipped)
njdoom2: 28 December 1994; 4825374 bytes (wouldn't fit on a floppy when zipped). If that date is correct, then it is a week older than BF_THUD!.

I replayed a few maps of njdoom2. The Long Run (map13) was a particular favourite of mine, but I thought there were plenty of good ones. The use of textures looks pretty good by 1994 standards :) Anyway, why not repackage these (with a text file) and upload them to the archives?

If you have problems finding them for some reason, PM me.

[myk]

Enjay said:

[...] but I am aware of at least one commercial disk that included stuff from them (because I bought it - not knowing I was buying my own levels). :-/

heh

[Enjay]

Hmmm, after a bit of searching I discovered that I must have finished NJ Shores of Hell around about July 94 (or as the text file has it Jully - Doh!). Can't find a date for the first level released but it must have been in the first half of 94 because I did it, released it and then went on to do the whole episode replacement.

I also discovered that I was being plagued by what I described as "invisible walls" that I now know were caused by a problem with BSP 1.1.

I could only find the text file though, not the wad.

I did find a version of NJDoom on the "Sparky Database" on NewDoom that has a replacement titlepic, skies and some other stuff, but there is something very screwy going on with the file. All the textures are messed up. Even after 8 years I know I didn't make them look like that. In fact the titlepic, which is based on a screenshot proves it. It's like someone has run a conversion program that substitutes all the textures with alternatives. The levels may be pretty plain and "first wad-ish", but I know they weren't quite that bad. Strange!

[Edit:] Looking at the downloaded version again, it's even stranger than I thought. A lot of the items are in the wrong place too. There are far more Barons of Hell than originally, there are power ups in odd places (eg Rad Suits nowhere near damaging sectors, or powerups in unreachable places) lamps have been changed for torches.

I'm more convinced now that it has been run through a conversion program of some sort, because walls that had switch textures still have switches, just the wrong ones, the Bigdoor textures are always replaced with marble faces, the light source things are replaced with other light source things... Sounds like the kind of thing a conversion, or maybe a randomisation program would do to keep the levels playable.

[Grazza]

I've PMed you the location of njdoom2. This one does look like the real thing; I've just replayed a number of the maps, and found them quite familiar - and fun too. It is definitely worth re-releasing.

[Quast]

yeh, Enjay, your njzd2001.wad is sweet. I like the design. It starts off kind of simplistic (in layout)and easy, yet having loads of advanced features for zdoom done quite well(slopes, colored lighting, bridges, ect.). And then it slowly gets harder and harder and the layout more and more complex. I love map28 btw.

[Enjay]

Thanks for the kind comments guys.

Quast said:

I love map28 btw.

You may be interested to know that map 28 was about the 3rd or 4th level I ever did - back in '94.

It was originally my interpretation of a Wolfenstein level (I forget which one - level 2 or 3 of the SW episode maybe?). It was never supposed to be a Wolf copy, but had the same basic layout and logic. Of course, I mentioned this in the text file, and compuserve refused to upload it in case id got upset about me ripping their games. So, I changed the logic of the map around totally, and made it a lot less Wolfy generally and released it. I just realised. That may have been one of the first Wolfenstein inspired maps for Doom. :-)

Map 17 was a similar situation. Done about the same time, but based on map 1 of "Eye of the Beholder"; an SSI first person AD&D game. The original version was a fairly close copy, with red brick walls and a slimy floor just like the original. I just gave it a bit of height variation (EOB levels were flat). Again compuserve objected, and the thing was totally reworked.

[Wobbo]

Alien VEndetta is my favorite

some other ones worth mentioning:
mm2.wad - no explanation needed
heroes2.wad - a complication of extremeley well dont single player maps

[Captain Red]

Weeee! I just finished ConsoleDoom.wad! and it's the only user made mega wad I've ever finished.

[Afterglow]

Requiem, although quality was a bit sketchy... that wad taught me to stay away from Adam Windsor's levels. But the Fingers and Adelusion maps are top-notch.