Doom II Master Levels

[princetontiger]

Does anyone know why some of the WADs are not MAP01, but other later maps? What is the logic for this?

 

Thanks

[Dusty_Rhodes]

I'm not really sure, it could've been for the midi, but I feel like all but two or three used D_RUNNIN anyway. 

[Thelokk]

Some were parts of series iirc, so probably the makers didn't bother changing the slot.

[princetontiger]

2 hours ago, Thelokk said:

Some were parts of series iirc, so probably the makers didn't bother changing the slot.

This is right. Just researched Dr. Sleep's Inferno series (these maps became parts of other projects, like Ultimate Doom and Master Levels).

[nerdybunny]

5 hours ago, Thelokk said:

Some were parts of series iirc, so probably the makers didn't bother changing the slot.

 

Also some of the maps need map-specific tags like Mephisto's Mausoleum.  

[brick]

John Anderson's and Sverre Kvernmo's maps were both part of their respective planned series. Anderson had already released the first 2 maps of his Inferno series, all the others ended up here except for Chiron which ended up in Ultimate Doom. Kvernmo was working on his planned Cabal megawad, only 4 of the maps got accepted, but if you look at the others (he released them on Compuserve at the time) you can see they also have different map numbers assigned depending on where they were supposed to fit in the megawad (the only one that doesn't fit is Bloodsea Keep, which shares a MAP07 slot with another level and was clearly supposed to be MAP01 in the final megawad).

 

Everything else isn't part of a continuity and so ended up being MAP01. Even though Jim Flynn had released some of his Titan series maps (and finished it IIRC after Master Levels came out), the 4 free maps follow from each other story-wise (still all MAP01) but they don't reference and are not reference by the two Master Levels maps, which don't reference each other either.

[Gibbon]

Despite being paid for their efforts, the ones that were part of a series for some reason or another, the author(s) couldn't be bothered to re-slot the map to 01.  I mean, it takes a few minutes in DEU/DETH.

[kwc]

My guess is that they were requested to submit their levels as-is, with no further changes.

[NightFright]

Changing map slots also wasn't required since there was a DOS launcher (DOOM-IT) for all this, anyway. Users simply didn't have to bother with launching those maps properly on their own.

[Gibbon]

10 minutes ago, NightFright said:

Changing map slots also wasn't required since there was a DOS launcher (DOOM-IT) for all this, anyway. Users simply didn't have to bother with launching those maps properly on their own.

I guess a 7 year old me was more advanced than most, I still did it manually using the DOS command line :D