Shovelware Society #13 - WAD.WAD Week

[adamastor]

The results are in, folks.

 

This week's winner was OFFICE.WAD for DOOM II (slotted in MAP01), with four votes. Get it here: OFFICE.7z.

 

We now have until Friday to play it and share some opinions, reviews, demos and videos of it here, as per usual.

 

Additionally, we're also going to include ENDOOMED.WAD to this week's playthrough, in honour of our bud @Endless, who's going away from Doomworld, at least for a while, due to personal issues. May he heal his wounds and return stronger still!

As to the WAD, which is also for DOOM II (MAP01), you can get it here: endoomed.7z.

 

And that's all. Go 2 It!

Edited February 28, 2022 by Mr. Kong
Replaced OFFICE.WAD with Gibbon's fixed version

[Dusty_Rhodes]

NOCHEAT has to be great

 

[adamastor]

4 hours ago, Dusty_Rhodes said:

NOCHEAT has to be great

 

Maybe next time, Dusty.

 

 

In other news, OFFICE.WAD has won this week's election! Get it on my comment above.

 

We've also included ENDOOMED.WAD as a bonus, for whoever wants to add that to this week's playthrough.

[adamastor]

I just checked and it looks like OFFICE.WAD doesn't run on vanilla due to some texture related problems so @Dusty_Rhodes or @Gibbon, if you could take a look at it to make it actually playable, It'd be much appreciated.

[Gibbon]

7 minutes ago, Mr. Kong said:

I just checked and it looks like OFFICE.WAD doesn't run on vanilla due to some texture related problems so @Dusty_Rhodes or @Gibbon, if you could take a look at it to make it actually playable, It'd be much appreciated.

Hold my beer

OFFICE.zip

 

I did my demos today in Doom Retro so I never noticed.  I guess that is why there was a bunch of white missing stuff in my playthrough :)

 

Could this be another case of "are we the first to play it?"

Edited February 28, 2022 by Gibbon

[adamastor]

27 minutes ago, Gibbon said:

Hold my beer

OFFICE.zip

 

I did my demos today in Doom Retro so I never noticed.  I guess that is why there was a bunch of white missing stuff in my playthrough :)

 

Could this be another case of "are we the first to play it?"

Thanks a lot, Gibs. It now seems to play just fine in vanilla.

And yes, I think this might be another cool instance where we'll be the first to actually play it properly.

 

 

On a different note, do you mean that DOOM Retro now has the ability to record demos?

[Gibbon]

23 minutes ago, Mr. Kong said:

Thanks a lot, Gibs. It now seems to play just fine in vanilla.

And yes, I think this might be another cool instance where we'll be the first to actually play it properly.

 

 

On a different note, do you mean that DOOM Retro now has the ability to record demos?

No, I recorded it via Xbox Game Bar.  Hey, it is still a demo, just not a lump :P

 

Which brings me to...  without further delay...

 

OFFICE.WAD!

Spoiler

 

Ahh..  office.wad, the telltale sign of quality!

 

Well, I am for one, amazed that someone had teleporters in their office..  I always thought the 90's was the age of technological innovation.

So, you start out in a slightly malformed triangle which resembles more of a spaceship than an office.  Two doors, choose whichever apparently and both will zap you straight to reception!

 

Once you're there..  well, where are all the monsters?  Your mission *should you choose to accept it* is to collect all the keys and run around like a headless goat trying to find where to go next.  Well, the trick is, to cross a few linedefs which will eventually spawn all the mobs (which actually gave me a near heart attack when I saw that).  I suppose the author didn't think highly of their colleagues, working in such a cramped environment from whatever teleporter trap they came from.

 

The exit...   oh the exit!  You need to time the linedef trigger perfectly, to get zapped, then get zapped again, turn around and just about make it before the door shuts.

 

I did this on Doom Retro and for me, some textures were white, which was damn confusing!

 

Oh office..  you didn't let us down!

 

ENDOOMED.WAD

Spoiler

 

Well I thought this was initially a joke wad because that central trap is just a deathwish.

 

I finally figured out the authors' tricks and made my way past crushers, hellknights, more traps with hellknights, more imps, a pinky and some poor zombiemen just waiting to die (again).

 

Then what I thought was the end..  the spidey!  Well, once she was down, I was like YES!  That teleporter is the exit..  oh, how wrong I was.  That brings you to a room with a Cyberdemon!

 

After that, another room with multiple Cyberdemons..

 

This is where I died.  This is where I gave up.. the mere sight of such toned buttocks just killed me immediately.  The author is cruel, sadistic and well..  it isn't a bad map for the 90's but my patience and time is thin for such wads :)

 

 

Both videos were on Doom Retro as I know Endless uses that port quite a lot.

 

Edited February 28, 2022 by Gibbon

[adamastor]

2 minutes ago, Gibbon said:

No, I recorded it via Xbox Game Bar.  Hey, it is still a demo, just not a lump :P

You sneaky bastard, you.

 

 

 

2 minutes ago, Gibbon said:

Which brings me to...  without further delay...

 

OFFICE.WAD!

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Ahh..  office.wad, the telltale sign of quality!

 

Well, I am for one, amazed that someone had teleporters in their office..  I always thought the 90's was the age of technological innovation.

So, you start out in a slightly malformed triangle which resembles more of a spaceship than an office.  Two doors, choose whichever apparently and both will zap you straight to reception!

 

Once you're there..  well, where are all the monsters?  Your mission *should you choose to accept it* is to collect all the keys and run around like a headless goat trying to find where to go next.  Well, the trick is, to cross a few linedefs which will eventually spawn all the mobs (which actually gave me a near heart attack when I saw that).  I suppose the author didn't think highly of their colleagues, working in such a cramped environment from whatever teleporter trap they came from.

 

The exit...   oh the exit!  You need to time the linedef trigger perfectly, to get zapped, then get zapped again, turn around and just about make it before the door shuts.

 

I did this on Doom Retro and for me, some textures were white, which was damn confusing!

 

Oh office..  you didn't let us down!

 

ENDOOMED.WAD

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Well I thought this was initially a joke wad because that central trap is just a deathwish.

 

I finally figured out the authors' tricks and made my way past crushers, hellknights, more traps with hellknights, more imps, a pinky and some poor zombiemen just waiting to die (again).

 

Then what I thought was the end..  the spidey!  Well, once she was down, I was like YES!  That teleporter is the exit..  oh, how wrong I was.  That brings you to a room with a Cyberdemon!

 

After that, another room with multiple Cyberdemons..

 

This is where I died.  This is where I gave up..  the author is cruel, sadistic and well..  it isn't a bad map for the 90's but my patience and time is thin for such wads :)

 

 

Both videos were on Doom Retro as I know Endless uses that port quite a lot.

I'll check them out after I beat them as well, although I've already recorded my demo of ENDOOMED.WAD as well.

 

Also, using DR for that reason was cool on your part.

[adamastor]

Here's my aforementioned demo of ENDOOMED.WAD: +ENDLESS.7z.

It was recorded in DOSBox 0.74-3, in UV. I got 66/ 91 kills, and all 4/ 4 secrets. This was my third run of this map, actually, due to reasons detailed on my review below:

Spoiler

This is a 1995 map by Chris Bianchetti, which I found while searching the idgames archives for something appropriate that had some kind of title reminiscent of our friend, Endless.

Now, as to the map itself, it's pretty fun. I had a blast through most of it, although it does contain at least two major dick moves. But they eventually add to it's charm, on the long run.

The first one is right at the start, which presents you with a veritable guns and power-ups buffet, which is, in reality, a trap, that teleports you to a room that might as well be an instant death one. This is where I died for the first time.

 

Anyway, the map has some solid aesthetics throughout: I particularly enjoyed the switch embedded in a pillar which sits in a pool of toxic sludge, the Mastermind's dramatic descent on the darkened arena, the stress ( and possibly epilepsy) inducing section in which you stand on damaging floor while avoiding teleporters, taking out Spectres, and popping Megaspheres to survive, as well as the ominous room that suddenly goes dark and releases a group of Lost Souls.

The puzzle room, with another Mastermind and three Cybies, is great as well.

 

Combat-wise, the level's pretty solid and entertaining. The highlights are the shootout in the aforementioned room with the switch that releases four Knights, which are positioned as turrets in each of the rooms corners, which leads to a spicier version of circle strafing combat, the moment where you get to BFG blast a small army of Troopers with the BFG,

 

and even the duels with the map's Cybies, with the second one being reminiscent of Tower of Babel, which gives it that nice touch of nostalgia.

After that, the map ends with a final insult: a God Sphere on top of the exit teleporter. But of course. This was the problem with my second run, which was cut short as I thought I could grab the Invulnerability for the final Cybie showdown.

 

All in all, I had a great time with it, just be mindful of some nasty traps.

Good stuff.

 

 

PS: Bonus points for getting an ouch face in vanilla recorded on this run:

 

[Thelokk]

Soooo, OFFICE.WAD.

 

Spoiler

 

Must admit, been a while since I last saw a lower unpegged door.

After SCHOOL.WAD, it was inevitable that the wheel of life would take us to OFFICE.WAD. NURSINGHOME.WAD next time perhaps?

The map is a mess. And I mean, really really a mess. Triangular shapes might save kilobytes, but they sure don't make for the most navigable environments. Is the thing above me a sky, or a hall of mirrors? where is the other side of this... is it even a fence? and why am I jumped on by a gazillion enemies for no apparent reason? At some point I decided I simply didn't care anymore and did something that can turn the most homely map into true adventure - I noclipped past its boundaries. I have to say, the monster closet was actually more interesting than the map itself, and I did get to see a few barons make minced meat of small fry before making mince meat out of me. 

I give it a productivity bonus /10.

me getting toasted in all of its technicolor glory

All I got time for now, will try and play the other map later in the week!

Edited February 28, 2022 by Thelokk

[Dusty_Rhodes]

@Gibbon Damn these confounded time zones! I wanted to fix the wad!

 

Jokes aside, I'll have sufficient free time today to play and record both. Looking forward to getting to it.

[adamastor]

Just finished my shift on the OFFICE.WAD. Here's my demo: OFFICE_KONG.7z

I played it in DOSBox 0.74-3, skill 4, got a measly 18/ 191 kills, and 1/ 1 secrets.

Spoiler

Not too much to say about this one except that, once again, we might have been the first to get it working in vanilla properly, thanks to Gibbon.

As for the map itself, it's got it's keys spread out, and an impressive monster closet which, unfortunately, you can't get to work properly, at least without cheating. As I recorded my playthrough as a demo, I didn't IDCLIP, so I only got to fight about 9% of the monsters.

 

 

This might work better as a DM map, however.

The map's sole secret is it's exit, which you have to unlock in a very specific way. Just like at the office.

 

 

And that's all. Tough shit.

 

Edited February 28, 2022 by Mr. Kong

[LadyMistDragon]

23 hours ago, Dusty_Rhodes said:

NOCHEAT has to be great

 

please no. It's probably complete bullshit. I actually think bnbeyond might have been the best, but people just wanna play office wads, school wads, window wads, square room wads, and all wads inbetween!

[Gibbon]

17 hours ago, Dusty_Rhodes said:

@Gibbon Damn these confounded time zones! I wanted to fix the wad!

 

Jokes aside, I'll have sufficient free time today to play and record both. Looking forward to getting to it.

Next time we will wait the 15 hours for you to do it :D

Edited March 1, 2022 by Gibbon

[Widosm]

I did record 2 demos of OFFICE.WAD, but I couldn't actually find them (first time playing doom on linux), so I'll just go ahead and say my thoughts. It's a very empty, basic map with only one monster encounter(that I know of), which is also pretty easy. The elevator was pretty cool in concept. Half the playtime was me running around not realising I had grabbed the blue key. Interesting experience, not much to see here though.

Edited March 1, 2022 by Widosm
extra words

[adamastor]

8 minutes ago, Widosm said:

I did record 2 demos of OFFICE.WAD, but I couldn't actually find them (first time playing doom on linux), so I'll just go ahead and say my thoughts. It's a very empty, basic map with only one monster encounter(that I know of), which is also pretty easy. The elevator was pretty cool in concept. Half the playtime was me running around not realising I had grabbed the blue key. Interesting experience, not much to see here though.

Glad to see you join us here, Widosm.

And yup, that about sums it up about OFFICE.WAD. If the monster closet worked differently, it might have been a more fun experience overall.

That being said, however, there's always next week. Also, try out ENDOOMED.WAD if you're interested. That one's really good stuff, bud.

[Dusty_Rhodes]

Here's my playthrough of Endoomed.wad. I failed, but it was pretty fun and I enjoyed the spider encounter. It was a little easy, but most shovelware is. I'll get my Office playthrough uploaded today, I have more to say about that one.

[Naarok0fkor]

[adamastor]

56 minutes ago, Dusty_Rhodes said:

Here's my playthrough of Endoomed.wad. I failed, but it was pretty fun and I enjoyed the spider encounter. It was a little easy, but most shovelware is. I'll get my Office playthrough uploaded today, I have more to say about that one.

Glad you thought so too. Although it does get a little more challenging further down the line.

 

 

 

 

41 minutes ago, Naarok0fkor said:

I don't exactly see how this fits in with the WADs we're playing, but that does look nice, Naarok.

[LadyMistDragon]

Endoomed

by Chreis Bianchetti

 

Wow! Over 200 KB! Very large and intricate, I'm sure. Definitely no oddball design decisions to see here. No long dark hallways of blood filled with crusher, spectres, and Megaspheres that seemingly exist for no other reason than to try your patience. I do chuckle at the open teleporter  at the beginning and the bit where you BFG some zombies. Killing an Arch-vile with a Baron was also quite nice. That one dark room near the end with Mastermind/Cybers) makes no sense though and I have no idea how I was able to escape. And placing 3 out of 4 secrets right next to each other was such an archtypical shoverlware move. Can't help it, this was quite funny. Though I will say the central building at the end makes a nice exit if nothing else. My gameplay kind of sucked (evidenced by how I practically ran out against the Mastemind after failing to hit her with a third bfg shot) but everything here (the hell knight corner room I can't remember too well) was a bit like the mapping equivalent of a Neil Breen film. Was it really that unintentional?

 

endoomed_pandora.zip

Edited March 1, 2022 by LadyMistDragon

[adamastor]

Good review, @LadyMistDragon. Bonus points for that Neil Breen reference, too, even though I'm more of a The Room kind of guy myself.

[Dusty_Rhodes]

3 hours ago, Mr. Kong said:

even though I'm more of a The Room kind of guy myself.

I'm so happy to have Lisa and you Mark as my best friend

[LadyMistDragon]

17 hours ago, Dusty_Rhodes said:

I'm so happy to have Lisa and you Mark as my best friend

Cheap, Mark! Cheap, cheap cheap!

[adamastor]

Now we just have to wait for a The Room inspired Skymaybe-like WAD.

[LadyMistDragon]

Office. wad - Unknown

 

Now this plays like something blatantly taken off the Internet and copied to a disk! Shaped like a triangle, but that seems intentional somehow.Combat is a complete and total joke with practically every thing scattered ridiculously far apart. Much of the map feels much closer to a parking garage than an office if we're going to be completely honest. Key placement is next to thoughtless. And the HOMs in the center of the map....oh, the HOMs. idk if any review was done by the author, but there's even one case where there's a HOM blocking what turns out to be a mandatory secret wall. And the method of activation (a push plate in a nearby doorway) is progression never required in any non-cryptic map ever. In an amusing twist, 3/4 of the available enemy count is located here, guarding a now-useless plasma rifle. And the cremw on top? Practically all of the monsters here are located in some teleport closets that don't even work. I must have some serious problems when I know we're playing maps like these.

officedemo_lmd.zip

[Thelokk]

10 minutes ago, LadyMistDragon said:

I must have some serious problems when I know we're playing maps like these.

 

A touch of madness is a requirement to withstand the Shovelware Society.

Though we did get kind of unlucky the last couple of weeks, let's hope for next one!

[adamastor]

The voting booths have closed, Doomers.

 

This week we have another tie on our hands: both BEATLE.WAD  for DOOM II (slotted in MAP01), as well as DDS1.WAD for the original DOOM (slotted in E2M1) have won with three votes each. You can get them here: BEATLE.7z, DDS1.7z.

We now have until Friday to play through them and share our reviews, demos and videos of them here on this thread.

 

Additionally, we're including Romero's brande-new map One Humanity, which you can buy on his site, so that the money reverts to the Red Cross and the UN Central Emergency Response Fund, to aid the ongoing Ukrainian crisis.

 

If, for some reason, you really don't have that possibility, you can also get it here: one-humanity.7z, as Romero himself mentions that his WAD can be freely shared, but asks that you consider donating to this noble cause.

 

And, without further ado, let's get dooming!

Edited March 7, 2022 by Mr. Kong

[Endless]

Just now, Mr. Kong said:

It's voting day, folks.

This time, @Dusty_Rhodes bravely plunged into the eldritch dimension of shovelware and retrieved these four candidates:

 

ALAIN2.WAD (DOOM2)             -            Supercharge

 

ARENA.WAD (DOOM)               -            Partial Invisibility

 

BEATLE.WAD (DOOM2)            -            Megasphere

 

DDS1.WAD (DOOM)                -            Invulnerability

 

Choose wisely, naive Doomer, and get voting.

Just the name arena softly whispers: ''¹⁰⁰ ᶜʸᵇᶦᵉˢ ᶦⁿ ᵃ ˢᑫᵘᵃʳᵉ ᵇᵒˣ...''

[adamastor]

Probably so, Endless.

 

And it's good to see you around here again too, bud.

[Thelokk]

7 minutes ago, Mr. Kong said:

It's voting day, folks.

This time, @Dusty_Rhodes bravely plunged into the eldritch dimension of shovelware and retrieved these four candidates:

 

ALAIN2.WAD (DOOM2)             -            Supercharge

 

ARENA.WAD (DOOM)               -            Partial Invisibility

 

BEATLE.WAD (DOOM2)            -            Megasphere

 

DDS1.WAD (DOOM)                -            Invulnerability

 

Choose wisely, naive Doomer, and get voting.

 

And good news everyone! @Gibbon went ahead and started the shovelware crack-fiends Pandora CP! Check it out here [Community Project] Pandora (Shovelware MegaWad).

 

Gonna lay down my trolly self for once and vote for ARENA.WAD. Though BEATLE.WAD sounds groovy.