Endless Random /idgames WAD Adventures #066

[LadyMistDragon]

Die Young (1995) by Joe King (Eternity)

 

This is literally the third wad I've come across which has Die Young as the name in some capacity. There are some scant monsters in single-player but it's clearly a deathmatch map, not really too much to say beyond it's essentially squarish and takes care to avoid an entirely symmetrical layouts. I did like the layout of the carpet in the central courtyard, although there's a certain lift I would not advise riding down because it's quite slow. Seems like it would be fun, although one could probably point out some of the structures don't really benefit the gameplay too much 5/10

 

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

[GL] Deathmatch (2012) by the GL Team (GZ Doom)

 

I didn't really feel like trying it out with bots, but that's fine. 14 very workable deathmatch maps, some not standing out so much in the visual sense but all with concise and open layouts that either would work best for 1 v 1 or 1v1v1 and such. It's mostly standard techbase deathmatch, although there is an outdoor temple that's probably a little too open not to get boring, a hellish cave, and a moon. 6/10

 

 

 

 

[brick]

Brick | 1 wad | 2 maps

Adventure | 8 wads | 12 maps

 

Urban Brawl: Dead of Winter (2014) by "Scuba" Stephen Browning. 2 SP maps for ZDoom, requires Action Doom 2.

This is an expansion pack for Action Doom 2 that adds two winter-themed maps. I'm going to leave my opinion on the main game for a more appropriate place and time. Unfortunately the expansion is frankly not very good. The level design is maddeningly linear, even though the first map takes place out on the streets the path you can follow is extremely restricted, and trying to go in any different way than where the game wants you to runs you into all sorts of invisible impassable linedefs. Progression is controlled by totalitarian scripts, doors will not open and triggers will not activate until you've done what's expected of you (usually killing everything in sight). There's a plethora of melee weapons with great originality in looks, but ultimately they all serve the same purpose and work in the same way, the variety is pure fluff. I found combat pretty boring, you don't want to take on any foe toe to toe so you just swing at them, run back when they swing, rinse and repeat. When you have ammo for one of the firearms you use them exclusively because why would you use anything else. The graphical style is very nice, I really liked the cel shading aesthetic, most of the assets are lifted from the main game but the winter additions looks great. The wad is very short, the whole thing can be done in under 10 minutes and it feels like it ends abruptly. I can understand the original getting a Cacoward but I don't think this deserved another one, there's very little to it and the gameplay is just not engaging.

Spoiler

 

[Roofi]

Year 2 Month 06 Day 29

 

I play until I die or intentionally stop. I don't comment the wad where I died/stopped.

 

[1] GAOL.WAD by Ben Buxton (1995)

 

Quote

 

 

Quote

A well laid out single / multiplayer level for DOOM][, with loads of passages, dudes, etc. Set in a gaol (Jail in Yank) style building with extra attention paid to textures, alignment and other small details missed out in many other levels. A good time for triple 100% is about 10 minutes.

 

A jail-themed level in which your goal simply consists all your angry cellmates. You have to navigate among blocky and sometimes cramped corridors and explore cells as well. GAOL.WAD does a good combo between giving the player powerful power-ups at the beginning of the map (soulsphere, blue armor, megasphere) and populating the level with lot of low-tiers ennemies which are satisfying to burst into pieces with the super shotgun. Several mid-tiers monsters appear near the end of the map but don't make a difference at all.

 

The progression is rather confusing but not unbearable since it sometimes turns into an unecessary switch-hunt. Besides that, there's no place worthy enough to be visited. I confess there is some care brought about the lighting but a real-life prison remains more homely than the one in gaol.wad.

 

Grade : C-   (8/20)

 

[2] I Give Up On Trying to Map 1 by @MegaZzZeux (2007)

 

For unknown reasons , Crispy Doom refused to register my screenshots... Hum...

 

Quote

First map I’ve finished in the last 3 years. It is also a very short level.

 

Well, it's the not the best name to encourage people to play your wad but "I give up on trying to map 1" could be described as an accurate portrait of the average us-er map built in the middle of the 00's. It takes place in a tech-base which uses the midi from Doom's E1M3 and shares a similar texturing but it also gathers the tropes, to not say the flaws of the early 2000's level design. Crampy rooms, lot of doors, detailing which mostly consists to needless trims and borders , orthogonal layout, repetitive architecture and texturing, this is what you have to expect if you want to play this wad. At the end it doesn't look horrible but it feels terribly dated and even unimaginative compared to what Doom features, while limited , can offer.

 

The icing on the cake would have been the over-used gzdoom features to make it look cheesy, but in the end it's a decent classic level, playable and finishable without too much effort.

 

Grade : C   (10/20)

 

Tried to skip two cacodemons in a narrow room, without ammo, in the second map of CyberFun

 

Quote

[LadyMistDragon]

Mines of Death for Doom ][ (1995) by Richard Martin (Crispy Doom)

 

I almost was going to skip this like the last DM map, but figured this would be fine if it lasted at least 5 minutes. The text file for this is quite long, but it's not terribly important, just describes the secret exit access and technical nonsense I don't care to bore anyone with.. Basically, this is a modified version of an Ultimate Doom map, mainly intender for multiplayer but quickly converted to single-player. Picture a field with trees, gazing out at large and open marble caves with bits of square techbase woven throughout twisting corridors and you'll essentially know what this is about. It's actually a fairly decent example of single-player being given consideration, were it not for the weapon placement not really being adjusted to keep things from being mind-numbingly difficult for most. Not to mention the regular exit is actually quite easy to access, though the secret one (this replaces Map 15) takes more effort. It is sort of nice how the one series of corridors twists in on itself and the little bathroom-like office is nice, though the mirror enemies much less so. I guess this isn't too bad if you like dodging gauntlets and already know the map. The trouble being that there are layouts where you'll find each other much more quickly in single-player. Not like this isn't too bad in that respect, but it's not exactly the sort of map modern DMers are going to enjoy for long. 5/10, though it would be higher if weapons were less randomly-scattered in SP.

 

 

[Roofi]

Year 2 Month 06 Day 30

 

I play until I die or intentionally stop. I don't comment the wad where I died/stopped.

 

[1] entrapment by P.Westlake...aka "Marshall Flag" (2004)

 

Quote

 

 

 

Quote

A small tech based level designed for vanilla Doom2, best played on Ultra Violent setting and please disable any jump feature while using a source port.

 

For a small and vanilla compatible-room this dirty and underlit tech-base contains several large and open rooms which sometimes made me fear an unexpected VPO. The interesting thing about entrapment is the fact it gives an overview about what Ultimate Doom would look like if it had a Super Shotgun. Indeed, most of your opponents come from the bestiary of Ultimate Doom and the SSG feels satisfying to use against packs of zombies, imps and demons. It results into a straightforward level of course but the author did a good job at bringing a classic experience. For some reasons, the lone building located outside and housing the exit looks like a reference to the first level of Memento Mori 1.

 

A good level that I recommand.

 

Grade : B (14/20)

 

[2] gorefest.zip by unknown (2020)

 

Quote

 

 

Quote

A medium-sized Shores of Hell installation with some hellish bits and lively opposition. Mostly well-lit, with relatively few misalignments. Three obvious death-pits and a large crusher, no instant "haha, you're dead!" traps.

 

An Ultimate Doom made in 2020! Cool, finally something recent! Just joking, it's another 1994 map uploaded an eternity later.

 

For weird reasons, this level is limit-removing because of too much scrolling linedefs :

Quote

Will not run on Chocolate DOOM or post-v1.2 vanilla due to too many (>64) scrolling linedefs. A few stuck monsters. Three short single-sided linedefs have the double- sided flag set, no apparent ill effects. Prone to SPECHIT and INTERCEPT overflows, had both occur while testing.

 

So I launched crispy-doom but beside the excessive scrolling linedefs, it's just a standard 1994 map. That one contains lot of areas to explore which turn to be quite gory as the title of the wad suggests. Some parts has a an interesting staging because several closets just serve to reveal things or textures of corpses, as if they're here to threat you. No hard combat here but beware of the several bitchy crushers. OVerall it has some interesting ideas, but it remain a typical map made almost 30 years ago.

 

Grade : C-   (8/20)

 

I stop here for today.

 

 

[LadyMistDragon]

A Warm Place (1994) by Dave Matheson (Crispy Doom)

 

After another DM map that probably wasn't worth the time, we roll again.....to get what's about as roughly generic in the first couple of months as one could imagine! Although it seems to have been revised several times to get rid of the worst bugs. Twisting hallways full of marble and white walls, texture alignment is just a weird dream, practically zero doors are marked and weapon placement is kind of eh. Best of all is the superfluous outdoor circle area, at the end of which is a large room with tons of supplies that are completely and utterly useless. Add an exit that requires some seriously annoying backtracking, and that's pretty much everything! Ammo is strangely stingy until said outdoor area and much of the ammo there comes from the shotgunners. Curiously, one room has a shadow spelling "NIN" 4/10

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Roofi]

Year 2 Month 06 Day 31

 

I play until I die or intentionally stop. I don't comment the wad where I died/stopped.

 

[1] Hallween by Jonathan Graves & Cliff Harder (1996)

 

Quote

 

Quote

This is a 4 level collection from Doomer's House of Carnage. They are octoplex.wad, nyosix.wad, nyoface.wad, and peer.wad I've added some tunes from John Carpenter's movie "Halloween", "BeetleJuice", & "The Addams Family", as well as some sounds I grabbed from Quake. It was put together to reap some Halloween Havoc.

 

This is the wad you need (or not) for october. Most of the maps take place in abstract wooden basements which feel like haunted house combined with the soundtrack taken from halloween-themed movies and the mysterious starry sky.  This wad aslo inintionally proves that Quake sounds work well with Doom.

 

I stop here for today.

[LadyMistDragon]

AN EXPERIMENT GONE WRONG (1995) by Ricky Justis (Zandronum and Crispy)

 

A six-map set of some essentially workable but generally speaking, rather lazy deathmatch maps. Other than Map 02, there are generally enough obstacles that it's somewhat interesting to frag, but other than Map 03, with its vined-walls, lava triangle platforms and red floors, aren't really all that attractive. In this pack is also 3 slightly reworked DWANGO maps, although I recognized maybe 2 of them because I don't make a DWANGO habit, I just have seen them show up in other wads occasionally. The last map is something I'd like to screenshot, there's this neat combination of darkness and lit-up red floors, but it unfortunately doesn't run in Crispy, probably due to the presence of numerous sharp angles and seemingly non-existent walls in certain locations. Add in some goodfy SFX and a yellowized version of the Starfleet logo for the menu select icon and that's the wad 4/10

 

 

Spoiler

 

[DerBlanca]

Mind if I join you all for a round or two?

 

ABYSSAL SPEEDMAPPING SESSION 13 (Obsidian Jimmy Unholypimpin Scifista42 TheMionicDonut Capellan MTrop ClonedPickle JMickle Gifty Slas)

 

12 maps from the ASS sessions, each following one or more of the following constraints: E4-style map / Abbattoir-style map / Romero-style map (which is a bit vague of a prompt imo but meh, I imagine it meant no solid blocks of FIREBLU as buildings)

It's a lot of maps to chew through so I'll comment only my favorite maps. Played through latest DSDA on HMP. 

 

MAP02: 'Kickass Classic' by @scifista42

Ahh, so this is what they meant by Romero style - that green STARTANish texture all over the place and hordes upon hordes of imps / shotgunners. No armor in hitscan hell should be a punishable offense, but the map captures pretty well, in a speedy and slightly trolly sort of way, the E1 aesthetics. Fun stuff, but please give armor.

 

MAP11: 'Meat Lover's Paradise' by @Unholypimpin

Until MARBLE shows up a few rooms in, I really didn't catch on the E4 riff - map reminded me more of a Krauser, or some of the better looking TNT maps. Lots of fun, definitely felt like one of the most fleshed-out maps in the set. A later behind-bars section really screams SIGIL more than anything else, which would make Romero-style in general be the actual gimmick? not sure. Still good stuff. 

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

Edited September 4, 2023 by DerBlanca

[Roofi]

Year 2 Month 07 Day 01

 

I play until I die or intentionally stop. I don't comment the wad where I died/stopped.

 

[1] Rage by Paul Fleschute (1998)

 

Quote

 

Quote

Well done level to show some off the great features of BOOM.

 

An early technical showcase demonstrating all the boom's wizardry. That one sends you in a classic and rather bare-looking base made of brown and grey assets. If you play only with modern ports such gzdoom , you'll don't notice some features such as the textures which can now scroll in both directions or the easy-to-make multi-floors elevators, or even the stairs which can go up and down. Its author design the map to make the different features blatant. For instance, he designed a puzzle involving "switch-teleporters". Also, beside all those effects, some areas prove to be more detailed than what vanilla-compatibilty can bear.

 

About the gameplay and the map itself, the whole thing is so monotonous that I think all the modern masterpieces out today do a much better job of showing off all these features. Paul Fleschute did a nice job, but he didn't know how far the Doom community would evolve. Play Speed of Doom, Ancient Aliens, Sunlust... and you'll see what Boom can do.

 

Grade : B-    (12/20)

 

I got crushed at the very beginning of Low Memory, version 1.2... (forgot to take a screen)

[ICID]

Thanks for playing, all! Here's the new thread: