The DWmegawad Club plays: Fragport

[Azure_Horror]

MAP 30   Escape!

 

A timed escape sequence with some strong demons and all the powerful weapons leads to fun action!

And the doomcute elements are memorable too. Not often you see a ceiling collapse done in vanilla. And the wonderful doomcute space-car from map 23 22 returns to take Doomguy away from collapsing Tech Moon station. Demon invasion stopped, and for once, there is chance for some peace.

 

Oh, and there is also a trio of Wolfenstein Guards at one point. Easter Egg or not, their bright blue feel somewhat normal on the tech moon. And thematically, they do work as some especially weird form of possessed humans, or as a some strange hellish mockery. They could have been used as "real enemies" either at map 24 (because chaos, and corrupted reality), or at arena trilogy (map 26 in particular could have used some non-harmless hitscanners, which nevertheless cannot drop weapons).

 

But I digress. In the end, Escape! provides a fun ending to the Fragport megawad.

 

 

My overall impression about Fragport:

 

To be completely honest, March 2023 is the least fun DWMC session I played in while. Nevertheless, Fragport WAD proved to be notably better than I feared.

 

Sure, there are not many levels that I really like, but the levels were not obnoxious. Not more than 120-180 monsters feels like a sweet spot for basic Doom fights being fun, and most levels in Fragport keep within those limits.

 

Of all the maps, I want to acknowledge the following 6:

- Map 15 - For me, this is the only map with truly memorable and fun gameplay loop. It also has a wonderful implementation of a secret exit.

- Map 06 - An extremely cool Doomcute ship, and a very solid Evilution-Style level.

- Map 30 - Escape Sequence in Doom! In Vanilla Doom, even!

- Map 25 - A proto-modern combat encounter, and also a wonderful short break after exhausting maps 23 and 24.

- Map 19 - Fun combat, relatively unusual weapon placement, very diverse enemy roster, and a little doomcute ship to top things off.

- Map 29 - An extremely solid attempt to create a Icon of Sin without the usual jank. It is very sad, that the map is cursed with extreme bugs...

 

Over levels feel considerably less special to me. Nevertheless, there are still many things to like in Fragport:

- Doomcute everywhere.

- A proto-Overboard saga of maps 05-08.

- The Tech Moon visuals.

- The hell incursion sequence at the very end of map 23.

- A spider mastermind from map 22, which rather organically pushes the player towards the big guns.

- The flooding mines from map 03.

- The trains and vehicles.

- The mine shafts from map 02, which are surprisingly conductive for fun Revernant punching, or realtively casual archvile fights.

- How the secret maps were set up.

 

In the end - Fragport is far from being a WAD I seriously like, but I don't hate it either. And some parts of the mapset still felt pretty cool.

 

Edited April 2, 2023 by Azure_Horror

[TJG1289]

As we started this, I had wondered how exactly this had held up. I knew it was going to be big and brown, so it wasn't going to be the most visually distinct WAD, but I wasn't sure about the gameplay. After finishing the WAD for this and seeing everyone's write-ups, I've come to the conclusion that this has aged a bit, but it's still not bad. The tact and thoughtfulness that modern mappers have for combat design wasn't really a thing 20 years ago, and you can kinda see that with TUD's ambushes. We got a lot of closets filled with mid-tiers that just get thrown into the fray that can feel a little grindy. There's a lot of similar ambushes throughout this one too. I mean, how many maps did we see that had an arch-vile or 2 waiting at the end for us? They definitely could use some more variety in that department. The normal incidental combat works pretty well though. When it comes to the visual design, I was right. This was very brown. And some maps were indeed very big, with not a lot of enemies in them (looks at map 4). I guess thematically that makes sense since the first 2 episodes take place in the same environment. But we could use some different wall textures for these map. The city levels in the original Doom 2 look better in that aspect. But the actual map design I think still works pretty well. Each map has a distinct feel to them, and usually represents whatever it's supposed to be. The detailing is usually good enough where you can tell what exactly this map is supposed to be. Like the Darth Mall in map 16! The detailing and Doomcute in that works very well, and gives the mall a great sense of place and identity. A lot of the city maps do this well, and others prior to it like maps 5 and 6. The continuous nature of this WAD is its best aspect. With most of the maps starting right where the previous map ended, you get a real sense of progression in this. It really feels like 1 giant adventure, and this was something that wasn't that common back then. I do see that more often in WADs now, but it's something that's still not that common. The continuous nature of this does bleed into the gameplay design, as it appears the pistol-starters playing this had a little bit of a rough time. But that wasn't how this WAD was designed, as apparent by the fact that map 29 originally had no ammo in it. I can't really knock any points off the WAD for that, since it was designed that way, so playing it a way it wasn't designed for could cause issues. Maybe the txt file should have said that tho. The WAD also gets bonus points for the creativity that map 32 shows. Replicating an actual game show in vanilla is pretty cool. Laser Quest was a pretty cool map too. It does seem like the WAD could use some more creativity when it comes to combat and texturing, but at least the maps all felt unique enough (except for the 3-map arena series). This being a one-man Megawad early in TUD's career, I give him a lot pf props for being able to make this, especially with early map making tools. And for being the first big project he released, this is impressive. It's not as enjoyable for me anymore, just cause there's a lot better WADs out there, but it was nice to revisit it. It's still a fine set. I'll give it a 3.5/5. Just play it in a modern sourceport to avoid the bugs in map 10 and 29.

 

So if you played this and thought it was "meh" or worse, why would you want to play anything else by TUD? Simple! Cause Super Sonic Doom is way, WAY better. I'm probably incredibly biased given it was the WAD that got me into custom Doom content in the first place, but I do feel SSD fixes some complaints people have from Fragport. Now granted, it's been a few years since I've played this, so it's not as fresh in my mind, so I could be wrong about a few things. But I don't recall SSD having any grindy ambushes. Everything seems more "normal" I guess. More refined at least. The visual variety is much better too. I would definitely not consider SSD to be "big and brown", like I would consider 2/3 of Fragport. SSD is split into 15, 2-act zones. Each zone has a distinct environment and look/feel to the map. We've got environments like an active volcano, a giant palace, water mines (think Fragport maps 2 and 3), small fortresses, sky cities, and more! The detailing has also gotten better too, with more accented details abound. So that's 2 things improved! But the biggest thing TUD improved in SSD is creativity. Making SSD a ZDoom mapset proved to be a good choice for him, since it allowed him to implement a lot of new and unique features. Such as...

• Sonic elements! This includes rings for health, monitors, springs, a point system, jumping, MIDIs of Sonic tunes, and sound effects. Plus the Act and Zone structure of those games
• Bosses: Like how Sonic 3 had a boss at the end of each act, SSD has something similar. Act 1s are monster based (the first one of these is a caco cloud, and as the mod goes on, they get a lot harder), and Act 2s get a target based one. Avoid the death trap's attacks until a target appears that you can shoot. Do this 8 times to defeat it.
• The Quake 2 rialgun! Cause why not?
• Build-engine-like stuff, such as breakable consoles and security cameras.
• Projectile launchers and other new hazzards. Plus there's a few turret guns you can use yourself.
• Tons of new enemies. And I mean it. There's like 50 enemies altogether now. From enhanced versions of each demon such as a Railgun Elemental to the Stealth-Vile, to mercenaries that have your weapons, to invisible (until they attack) versions of baddies. There's a big variety here and I really enjoy that aspect
• Special fights. These are story-based character fights with health bars and unique attacks. These guys move just as fast as you, and each have their own weapons. Kinda cool.
• Cutscenes. Cause TUD could with ZDoom. 
• Bonus levels! Every 5th map has a portal to a bonus map where you can get goodies. For example, the first bonus map is the Sonic 2 halfpipe special stage, and collecting enough rings in that gets you an early plasma rifle. Exiting the map takes you back to the portal entrance in the map you entered it from. These are maps 31-35, so there's no traditional secret maps
• ZDoomisms. From scripting, to room-over-room, and more! 

I honestly think all these additions make Super Sonic Doom really unique and fun! Definitely a lot of creative additions that help make this set a lot less stale But there are a few things I should mention that could be negatives.

• Platforming. This is a Sonic-based mod. There's going to be platforming. It doesn't help that the moving platforms in this don't move you with them, so you'll have to physically move with the platform. I guess that's just how it had to be done back then, since I know I've played UDMF maps with moving platforms that I didn't have to move with them. Basically, save every time a platforming section shows up.
• This is designed for continuous play as well. In fact, there's a good chance this WAD is worse for pistol-starters at times. There are several maps where you lose all your weapons though (and I mean ALL, including your pistol), so those ones are more lenient. But for the most part, just like Fragport, this is one giant adventure. I like the ZDoomness of losing the weapons tho, from losing them every time you hit a ledge during a great fall, to having them burn in lava.
• The cutscenes are incredibly cheesy with bad dialogue. It's trying to be a Bond film (like all of TUD's Doom WADs), but it's admittedly lame. There's also a very inexplicable cutscene in Ocean City Zone Act 1 that takes your player character, "DamaGe" onto the set of his favorite pirate TV station, which happens to be a representation of the Doomworld forums. I have a feeling this whole thing references something that happened on the forum around the time of SSD's development, but man is it the most confusing and dated thing ever.
• It's a ZDoom set, so it only works for that and GZDoom. Now. At first, SSD only worked for one specific version of ZDoom, and would break using any other version. It has since been updated to work with any version of ZDoom 2.6 and up and GZDoom 1.6 and up. Because of this though, I have always had literal game-breaking bugs. The first time I played it in like '04-'05, a multi-story parking garage in Ocean City Zone Act 2 broke, and I had to noclip to proceed. I also had a bunch of HOMs back then. The last time I played it a couple of years ago with GZDoom, several silent teleports did not work for me, including ones at the beginnings of Industrial Zone and Sky City Zone that kept me in their opening teleport tubes forever. Note I was also using the Quake Champions mod for this playthrough, and I think it really broke it. I did just redownload SSD on my new computer and warped to those maps, and they did work! Just be weary. This is why I'm not pushing to do this WAD for the DWMC, as much as I would love to. 

It's interesting to see just how much better The Ultimate Doomer got in the 3 years between Fragport and Super Sonic Doom. Replaying Fragport makes me appreciate that a lot more, since it's a very humble one-man megawad, that while it has flaws, it has a lot of charm. I'm happy this got picked, and I'm glad I got to talk about it a bit and see everyone else's takes on it. I do hope some people try out Super Sonic Doom as it is a marked improvement over Fragport and still one of my all-time fav WADs, even if this WAD wasn't your cup of tea. Just don't pistol-start it.

Edited March 31, 2023 by TJG1289

[Book Lord]

12 hours ago, RonLivingston said:

I thought it was Operation: Lightning

I was not here to know what happened at the time, but Doomwiki is correct. The completion date of Operation Lightning was 24th August 2000, but the first release on idgames was 2002, after Fragport.

 

Btw, thanks everyone for the fantastic insight and experience put in the write-ups, see you next month for the selected PUSS IX...

Edited April 1, 2023 by Book Lord

[Veeda Vidlak]

Sorry this is a little late. I did want to get final thoughts in this time.

 

Map30 “Escape”

 

The Death Star is going to blow! We have to get out of here!

 

Alright so we have ten minutes to reach the exit or we die. We have to (again) traverse the dismal maze and this is the only time in the wad it doesn’t bother me that much. It just fits the theme of the level. Eventually we reach a teleporter (probably intended to work like the lower floor one in Ironclad) which takes us back to the circular hub of map28. We can’t get very far along the perimeter, the ceiling collapses and blocks any of those routes. We have to go north and find another way out.

 

The rest of the level takes place through a number of hallways, side rooms, and stairways leading upward. Most of the combat is incidental, with the number of recovery items (megaspheres) high enough to make the attrition forgiving. The time limit likely won’t come into play, though if you’re going for 100% kills be aware that some of the monsters teleport in incrementally meaning you might have to backtrack to search the hallways. Eventually we come upon a large group of archviles with revenants you’d better have saved cells for (and should see coming given the number of maps in the 20s that do this). Head outside and hijack the space car to get the hell out of here.

 

Overall, Escape is a good map that conveys the action adventure ending Stephen intended it to do. It really is a fine finish.

fragport30_fast.zip

 

Final Thoughts

 

Before I played this month’s outing, my only exposure to Stephen Clark’s body of work was City Heat and Void Base. Both of these are fine maps, but the sample size was too small to have a real grasp of Stephen’s mapping inclinations. With Fragport I got a better read on his overall style, within the context of this being his first mapset meaning its going to be a little rough around the edges.

 

Indeed, Fragport is a product of someone ambitious, talented, and inexperienced. Right from map01 the signature doomcute is on display and the sense of place (a desert encampment) is clearly identifiable. The use of letters/numbers to label buildings or display progress is something I liked about City Heat and after playing this wad is a feature I definitively associate with The Ultimate Doomer. I don’t really see it much outside of his works. Add in amusing implications like the prison guards being clueless or the executed imps and we had a pacesetting opener. Fragport’s strengths, narrative, realism, and humor, remained convincing throughout the megawad and I would consider them to be the levelset’s defining feature.

 

However, playing on, I quickly identified Fragport’s Achilles heel, its gameplay. There are some levels with good action, but the majority range from boring to ok. There are a ton of maps, concentrated in the middle, with wide open areas that are constantly refilled with hit point sponges. Cacodemon swarms everywhere, not one of which is engaged in an area that puts the player in a panic. An overreliance at the back end on final fights with revs and archviles, all of which can be dealt with by hoarding cells. Add in the medium of incremental combat and the lack of a difficulty curve and we have a lot of dull moments. It doesn’t help that Fragport has not aged well, but I don't hold that against Stephen. We shouldn't judge wads with presentism.

 

One thing I noticed about Fragport as a whole product is the large standard deviation in map effort. As the megawad goes on, it becomes increasingly clear that Stephen was dealing with mapper’s block... the number of filler levels, the repetition of ideas, the overwhelming brown detailing. It is an exemplar of one of the major hazards of one-man megawads, which is running out of ideas, energy, or inspiration to get to 32 proper levels. The thing is, Fragport has some great, memorable maps. Ironclad, Freight Depot, Volcano Valley, Laser Quest, Monad. And of course, Crystal Maze, which is if nothing else the very definition of what a super-secret map should be. There’s also the creativity shown in otherwise unremarkable levels, like the rising water in Durncrag Mines. When Stephen was feeling it he delivered excellent results, it’s just so hard to get to 32 entire levels.

 

My final opinion of Fragport is that it would have been better as a shorter wad. It plays to its strengths well, but like Celestin said, it overstays its welcome. There are too many filler levels and the second half is noticeably weaker than the first, especially with the arena maps. It was too ambitious of Stephen to tackle a 32-map megawad as his first project and would have worked better at 20 or so maps. That said, it’s still a tremendous accomplishment to actually finish a megawad and even more so to do it without prior experience. I probably won’t play Fragport again, but I am glad the club chose it, as it showcases originality I love seeing in this old game.

 

My favorite 5 maps in no particular order

 

1.     Ironclad

2.     Military Bunker

3.     Monad

4.     Freight Depot

5.     Crystal Maze

 

Least Favorite Maps

 

1.     Reactor Core

2.     Balanced Chaos

3.     Mining Colony

 

Fast Monsters: I feel obligated to briefly mention how this wad played with the fast parameter. In short, fast monsters are fast monsters. The difficulty increase helps compensate for the flat gameplay in most levels and some maps (like map14) play much better. Other levels simply become frustrating, with many of the space maps just being a royal pain thanks to resource deprivation. It kept me from being bored, but doesn't really add much to the megawad as a whole.

Edited April 1, 2023 by Veeda Vidlak

[LadyMistDragon]

hmmm.....guess it's a little late, however.....

 

Final Thoughts

 

In 2001, two megawads were released by newcomers to the Doom community. Both of them managed to preclude a trend exemplified by the increased usage of ZDoom scripts to create more and more elaborate and detailed maps. One of them, Revolution!, probably had less filler maps but were shorter and easier and the one we're talking about today, Fragport, retains a fun action movie feel but perhaps has aged a little worst at the end of the day. Is it because Stephen Clark didn't have such a good grip on combat? Was it 2001-isms? Not sure, but honestly, we don't have tons of time to cover it.

 

Basically, the charm of the Doomcute and custom status bar is ultimately undeniable, along with some of the settings. The prison map is a great opener, concise combat that tells you instantly what Stephen's goals for the megawad are! Distinct locations and humorous monster placement which help to flesh out the atmosphere quite excellent at its best (Ironclad and City Center are probably the best examples of this). 

 

But while Fragport hardly can be called terrible at its worst beyond the stupid arena maps, there are some rather annoying combat tendencies. Some of it is just rooted in a tendency for combat at the time to group enemies in a rather repetitive fashion and in certain groupings. But the rest might be that many of these maps were probably Stephen's first serious efforts after mucking about with an editor and he had not quite figured out efficient means of combat. It basically ends up to where he ends up falling back on certain combat setups usually involving Revenants and Arch-viles appearing in certain locations. While Technopolis was longer and thereby more difficult than it needed to be, the combat had more variety to it. Here, hardly a perfectly concise map exists and it feels like combat is often padded out for the sake of it, the most infamous example being the various closing Caco clouds in certain maps. And in general, the setups lacked a certain polish that were even seen in older maps (Plutonia, for instance, but comparing anything to that is unfair). I've seen a couple of people like Roofi call some of it "Hell Revealed-lite" but in all honesty, Hell Revealed was far from the first megawad to clumsily throw in hordes of monsters and I don't really think TUD really wanted to overwhelm people in that aspect. Even when one plays continously as was intended though, there are definitely quite a few bits of grindy combat hard to avoid.

 

But did I enjoy my time for the most part? Yes, as much as I could while still pistol-starting anyways. Honestly, I would've done it by Map 14 but due to a certain interest in potentially speed-running. I just saw fit to PS all them. Granted, the excess of brown got quite annoying and there were certain maps (Northgate) that were quite obviously screaming of their lack of inspiration, but no matter.

 

Favorite maps

 

24 (don't remember the name) Honestly, I had strangely few issues with the combat. Maybe the post BK ambush leaves little room to dodge, but that was the only sore spot, especially when you take into account the action-movie ending. 

 

Laser Quest - This map had such a mixed reception. But many of the problems won't matter as much if the lights are at the proper level. And the sense of place here is just unbelievable!

 

Ironclad - C'mon, we all know the Goldeneye map. Although I don't think there's a huge resemblance in anything but the helipad and perhaps control room. But the Doomcute is beyond adorable. And Revenant dancers will never not be funny! 

 

Freight Depot - Possibly one of the only maps where the combat basically never has a bum note. Then sense of place can't be argued with either!

 

 

City Center - The most Doomcute map and perhaps the hardest in the set?? Oh yeah, can't resist that! And the "Darth Mall" (lol) is just excellent in detailing and decent progression. Although trap placement is quite a bit chaotic.

 

Sub Level 6 - More Goldeneye ripoffs near the end. Like, yes.

 

Prison Escape - The first map but definitely one of the ones I can enjoy guilt-free! I still want to know what the demons did to get locked up!

 

Monad- Things were a little too spread out for their own good, but still decent locale variety

 

Spaceport - look, there's still too much brown but I really like it. Final Countdown is cool, secrets are cool, maybe a little stiff in certain ways but still, this is so cool

 

Map 07 - Played Pirate Doom recently so even the slightest reminder made me feel quite good.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 2, 2023 by LadyMistDragon

[KickAss]

I know it is already april but I am still having fun playing fragport.

 

 

I don't know if this is a bug on map15 but I couldn't pass upstairs through to the red door after I have shoot down the imp behind the first door with the corpse of the imp on the stairs behind the first door. I had to reload the map and to kill the imp before the first door so that there is no corpse on the stairs up to the red door.

 

I still haven't found the exit to the secret level(s) yet.

 

There is a Midi Pack for Fragport. I don't know if it is a official midi pack but it has some interesting tracks.

 

Edited April 22, 2023 by KickAss
forgotten a letter

[Devalaous]

Finally got off my ass and finished Crystal Maze after dreading it for weeks. Softlocked myself in the castle siege because I had no clue what all the numbers everywhere were for, had to re-read the text file to know I had wandered into one of the challenges and took too long. Turns out you can cheese some of them by just running back to the entrance after doing half of it, handy for 100%ers that might panic over killing all the monsters in one of the challenges. Had to come back to this thread to figure out the 'use the coloured bars' combat challenge one though.

 

It was a frustrating map, and nigh impossible without reading the included file. Might play the GZDoom remake someday though.

[Devalaous]

Completed Fragport yesterday night, unlike CC2 (which is at Map 18, several months later) and I can echo the general thought process that like so many other wads of the early periods of Doom, that it loses its stem in Episode 3. Thankfully not to the degrees of something like the Wraith duo, but yeah, those arena maps would ideally have been one map, with two extra 'hell' maps taking 11 and 16's place to make Map 24 seem less random. I get the feeling that 24 was meant to be a glimpse into the demonic corruption infesting that moon base, like a festering layer under the surface, but because its a one-off it just feels out of place.

 

I loved Map 16 and 17, the little mall was great, and the Laser Quest map? Here in New Zealand there is at least one laser tag place with a near identical layout to the one in Map 17; my brother was watching and he accurately pointed out the layout of this random map from his experiences playing real laser tag ('go around the corner, is there a ramp there? holy shit, yes there is!' for example. Not to mention the sniping cubby holes, and even the *barrel placement*. Even the party room with the lineup of health bonuses is something he remembers having a real world equivalent)

 

The moon episode felt a bit less cohesive, with only really three maps letting us explore the moon properly, the rest was arena filler, a hell map, a ride TO the base, and the boss battle and the following escape. Fun fact about the boss map: You can do it pacifist easily. There is a lost soul plugging the exit tube so that you shoot it to wake up the IoS, but if you slam into its ass and wake it up via proximity, it will likely move forward and out of the way, allowing you to drop down into the 'arena' with no monster spawner action. From there I danced around pushing all the switches while dodging archvile flames until only the ones the viles were guarding were left, then I weaved in and pressed those while eating a few blasts, used up the megaspheres and completed the level with 0% kills, 100% items, 100% secrets. The escape was more generous than I expected with its time limit, I rushed and played reckless and nearly didn't have enough cells for the final fuck you of the revenantvile wall. Just barely managed to get through that (as my brother was watching; he was all 'holy shit, I keep forgetting your actually GOOD at Doom' while im like '???', knowing *anyone* could have done that better), and I still had three minutes left, so I went back and killed a group of imps that had evaded my speedrampage, and still escaped with time to spare

 

Episode 1 of Fragport is definitely the strongest part, the journey to reach the city of Fragport was an amazing eventful chain of encounters, with lots of cool moments and memorable maps, Episode 2 quickly gets stale with too many samey maps, and 3 just tried to cram too much into it with not enough mapslots to really portray the moon base well.

[KickAss]

On 3/14/2023 at 11:57 PM, TJG1289 said:

Heads up, since we're about to get to the secret levels. Make sure you read the Crmaxe txt file to understand what map 32 is doing.

Yes good hint. You have to read the Crmaze.txt file included in the fragport archive before you can play map32.

Edited April 30, 2023 by KickAss