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Nope. And it still doesn't!

All right, we've already gotten into "the people being genocided should blame themselves for their own genocide", so the thread has unfortunately already run its course. Before I close things off, though. If you had actually read history properly, you'd know that: 1) Russia invaded and illegally annexed Crimea in early 2014, before anyone in the country had even uttered the words "NATO". This annexation was not voluntary but happened at the point of a gun, as related by Igor Girkin. 2) The revolution in Ukraine happened because Russian special forces and snipers shot at unarmed protesters in the square of Kyiv. Again, nothing to do with NATO. Putin awarded these murderers with medals for their conduct by the way. 3) The immediate post-revolutionary government of Ukraine denied it had any intention of joining NATO until *after* the invasion of Crimea had already started. But even if any of this weren't true, the fact that you're essentially justifying the genocide of the Ukrainians and the war itself is sickening in its own right. Towns on the borders that have had an Ukrainian ethnic majority for literal centuries are being cleansed and colonists are being placed there. People I know personally are getting terrorized by Russian bombs literally every day in Kharkiv because those motherfuckers are sad their border no longer runs up to Berlin. Children have been separated from their families and deported to Russia where they have been given up to adoption by ethnic Russian families, Nazi-style. And here you are justifying all this by spreading conspiracy theories. Fuck off.

It looks a little barren without monsters...

You can prefer Doom 1 over 2, but I still can't get behind this logic. The levels in Doom 2 are way bigger, more experimental, daring and willing to take risks. They're the exact opposite of "lazy", the scope and ambition far surpasses Doom 1.

The viewpoint that NATO is unnecessary is inherently a propagandist lie spread by Russian neo-imperialists. Russia claims there is no reason for an anti-Russia defense pact, while simultaneously viciously attacking and slaughtering anyone who is unlucky enough to not be in that very pact. Russia also clings to revisionist wolrdview where they're still a superpower in a multilateral world split into spheres of influence - and my country joining NATO was the only way to make sure we're no longer within that suffocating, poisonous grasp. I don't care whether you are a westerner or a russian, these days you don't fully know how important NATO is unless you live in Russia's shadow, wondering if you're the next invasion target. It is important to never bow down to Russia ever again.

I understand you're angry, but these threads on Doomworld are really hurting your chances of being re-elected. The people will remember what you've said when no-nut November is here, please consider your country I beg you!

New day. New interview. New 30 questions. --- A quick summary of the main players: Ken Silverman is the creator of Build, as well as a number of other solutions such as VOXLAP, which later became the basis for games ranging from Duke Nukem 3D (1996) and Blood (1997) to Ion Fury (2019), as well as Electric Highways (2015) and Voxelstein 3D (2008) individually. Home page - Ken Silverman's Official Home Page. --- Q. Has anything inspired you to create the Build engine? And, regarding your participation in specific games development, perhaps you can mention a few interesting facts? A. Sure - Doom. Id started releasing information and screenshots about their next game right around the time I finished Ken's Labyrinth, in early 1993. After spending almost a year copying Wolfenstein, this obviously caught my attention. Your second question is bit too general. Consider reading the rest of the interview? ;-) --- Q. @taufan99 asking: "Ever since I played Ken's Labyrinth and your other programs, I've fallen in love with the KSM format. However, I'd like to know if you may release a converter to the General MIDI format, because even though I acknowledge that AdLib is a good sound card, I'm more of a General MIDI fan myself.". A. If you're willing to do a little editing, you can use my KS2.EXE program to convert those music formats. Look for it on my utility page. You'll have to manually select the MIDI instruments, and completely redo the percussion track by using the lasso tool. With some persistence, you can get good results. And yes, KS2 hasn't been update in a while, and it flickers in modern versions of Windows. I could fix that, given sufficient motivation and time. --- Q. @vyruss asking: "During the experimentation phase of the build engine, what led to the final design decision to use portals amongst other technologies of the time? I am aware of it's benefits compared to other rendering technologies at the time, as well as the constraints of mainstream user hardware - was there a significant analysis done on different approaches to measure their strengths and weaknesses, or did the idea start in one iteration as an engine unrelated to the Build engine and then grew organically from there? I ask this because of my (hazy) memory showing different levels of capability between something like Ken's Labyrinth going to Duke Nukem 3D and other big names of the day.". A. When I came up with an idea, I would write a prototype in QuickBasic, as it was really easy to write code and test things in that environment. My earliest prototype for what was to become Build was called PICROT4.BAS, which simply raycasted into wall soup. Obviously that was going to be slow for a large map. My next idea was to use a grid, where each cell holds a list of every wall (line in 2D) that touches it. This solved 2 things: roughly sorting the walls in a front to back order, and eliminating any walls that fell outside the viewing frustum. This could have been made to work with some extra code to refine the sort, but at the time I didn't know how to do that. It was basically a dumb painter's algorithm, and it was full of visual glitches. Then in December 1993, Apogee had me telephone John Carmack. As would be expected for such a cold call, he glossed over many topics without really explaining them in much detail. He didn't have to take the call after all. For example, I remember asking him about one of the trickiest things in the Build Engine at the time - how to rasterize or fill in the ceilings and floors. He described his method as simply "floodfilling" them, which didn't make much sense to me. Floodfilling to me was always a slow algorithm, like the paint tool in Microsoft Paint. Or in BASIC, you could see it actually doing its recursive search as you watched it across many frames. Obviously, that's not how it really worked. So clearly he had a different definition of what floodfilling meant, I guess. The other thing I remember is him giving me the idea and the name for a "sector", which is a structure to hold ceiling and floor information for a list of common walls. This didn't solve my wall sorting issues, but it did make me realize how ridiculous my old grid-based engine was designed. I was storing ceiling and floor information along with each wall! Not only did this waste a lot of memory, but it opened up the engine to lots of visual glitches - such as when a wall's structure didn't match its neighbor in the same sector. To fix the wall sorting, I needed to learn some new math: 2D dot and cross products. I learned about these during my first semester math class at Brown. I was surprised they didn't teach this stuff in high school. Now with my new sorting algorithm, I had a way to sort walls without glitches. I couldn't prove it, but I couldn't find any counterexamples in my test program .. unless the walls intersected, that is.. but that was not considered a valid case anyway. As an interesting aside, many years later, I thought I could extend this idea, of perfect wall (now polygon) sorting to full 3D. I called it KENVEX - my name + convex. It turns out I was wrong - or at least it was much more difficult than I had imagined. The engine had a lot of other problems as well. I had no idea how to make a proper editor. --- Q. @DNSKILL5 asking: "Build during development of first Blood times. There is some controversial information about this period available around the web. Long story short - things seem to have gone rough with this one. Could you tell us a little about the specifics of the work at that project?". A. You're talking about GEORGE.TXT, a rant by Peter Freese that was written in June 1995. The Blood programmers were overriding my internal (intentionally undocumented) Build Engine functions with their own versions. I suppose they couldn't wait for new features. The problem with this is: whenever I changed something in the engine, it would break their code, and then they'd have to reverse engineer their hacks all over again. It's almost like hex-editing an executable. The practice of function overriding can be very counterproductive. Obviously, I needed to change stuff in the engine in order to improve it and fix bugs. I'm sure their cache system was better at the time. The problem is: I was being bombarded with lots of other high priority tasks from the other teams. You don't need a perfect, or even a good cache system to test a game during its development. If you don't have enough memory, then your hard drive runs a bit more. It's annoying, but so what. I had a rudimetary cache system at the time which simply removed the oldest thing, which could be implemented with a simple FIFO. It wasn't efficient at picking the best things to remove. Later on in 1995, I did get around to writing a better cache system. Oh, and I totally agree with Peter's comments about sprite centering - that was a mistake. As for my conversational skills on the phone - yeah. I'm not going to tell white lies and promise to do something when I've never even heard of the concept before. I should have said, "Sure, I'll look into that". But I was a shy 19 year old with not much conversational experience. I wasn't good at thinking of what to say in these instances. To this day, I still prefer doing interviews in text format ;-) BTW, when Peter and I met in person a few months later, we got along fine. --- Q. "The Legend of the Seven 3D" (1994) counts as the first commercial, Build based project. Also, in contrast to further one, it's based on an early version of the build. Still, its story itself rather remains in fog. Can you, perhaps, shed some light on this unusual project? A. All I know is the very little that Apogee told me, which is the game was released illegally. That is until 2020, when I got a random email from some guy named Mr. Lin. Apparently, he and a group of 2 other guys from Taiwan visited Scott Miller just before Christmas of 1993. He said things ended a few months later due to language difficulties. As for why they continued working without a proper contract in place, I can't tell you. --- Q. On your site I've noticed a title called "Fate" (1996), from Capstone, which is interesting, because I've never heard that they have made a bet on Build much specifically. "Corridor 8: Galactic Wars", which is supposed to be a sequel to "Corridor 7: Alien Invasion' ' (1994) uses the Doom engine at the end point. Can you tell me a bit about this title? A. All I know is this was the name of Capstone's 3rd game, after Witchaven and Tekwar, and JonoF's games site has a demo of it. --- Q. Zdoom-derived ports support the .kvx voxel format (and only that), making this ancient format from the Blood era the single, uncontested voxel standard for the doom community, which is known to be the most alive (there is, of course, DelphiDoom, which can eat .vox, but it’s exotic with a bunch of its own limitations. There are a lot of voxel formats and editors. But in order to put voxels into Doom, you need to run them through a converter editor into .kvx. There you can optionally tint and center them. Such an editor is the yours editor of SLAB6, a software from 2011, which has long been lying around. SLAB6 has a limit on voxel model sizes of 256x256x255 pixels. Mastermind, for example, could fit in. But if you upscale it, it won’t anymore, or, at least, it seems so. There are no more modern alternatives on the horizon and are not expected and in general this creates a bad syndrome when something modern is tied to ancient abandoned infrastructure. Generally speaking. It is possible to bypass the limitation through your utility, POLY2VOX. But this requires a schizophrenic voxel-model-voxel conversion scheme with dirty hacks in the 3D editor for centering. Which is also not good. Long introduction ends and this raises the question. Do you have any plans to release a more modern version of SLAB6? A. You should look at PND3D as a successor to both SLAB6 and VOXLAP. The editor is less featured since nobody really used it, but it works well as a fast viewer and format converter. Unfortunately, PND3D doesn't currently save to KVX format. I could add that, but there would be some problems, such as color quantization and size limitations. KVX was designed for the Build Engine, which used 8-bit paletted color, didn't need to support huge models, and always rendered upright (where vertical RLE makes sense). KVX has some strange things in its design, such as visibility flags that are only defined per slab, and offsets that are relative to absolute file position. Also, KVX is limited to 256 voxels high, and while you could extend the x and y beyond 256, you could run into trouble when you do so. If the sprite isn't sufficiently compressible, then various things can overflow, and so it's not a good idea. If you want large models, you should consider using KV6 instead. The only downside to KV6 is it won't compress an 8-bit paletted sprite nearly as well as KVX. Also, with POLY2VOX, have you tried the /s# option? This is intended to fix both consistent scale - and centering - in animations. --- Q. ck3D asking: "To this day Build is an oddity in the landscape of game engines that, most often, are designed with rather imminent concerns of practical application in mind. Especially modern games tend to rely on photorealism a lot more than in the general 90's for user immersion and relatability, sometimes at the expense of more creative alternative approaches to complement. Games such as Duke Nukem 3D didn't miss any of those marks and somehow managed to push credible environments all the while technically introducing reality-bending tricks: sector-over-sector (allowing for the potentially endless stacking impossible spaces on top of shared coords), and walls possibly rewriting their position at runtime are features that make it that, in addition to being a tool that was destined to serve production, Build also can be approached as its own mini-medium and generally is as such by most longtimers in the mapping communities. How much of this creative freedom was deliberate and maybe important to you when designing the engine, were you hoping (or did you even expect) those uncommon and relatively experimental features would be embraced by its users, were you aware of the punch they would eventually pack to the point where they still are influencing some niche schools of level design, or were you just having mindless fun while it lasted and still unaware of how more rigid gaming was just about to become as soon as the next couple of trends came up? Subquestion that are also related to intent. While it is common popular canon to retain "realism" as a forte of the engine, I would tend to disagree and argue it really is suggestion-based, and the apparent relatability of most Build environments really is just a surface level hook towards more abstract level designs and creative layout ideas. It relies on disguising a lot in order to put players in situations they normally wouldn't be drawn to because said situations usually are quite technical (and so, paradoxically, a lot of fun for mappers to compose). What do you think?". A. Clearly, I think on a lower level than you. I concern myself with algorithms and assembly language optimizations. I didn't worry about how the general public would see things. Many things I do are the result of evolution. I try something. If it's good, I keep it. If not, goodbye. This works well for optimizations. It also works for design changes. The problem is there are always more ideas than time. In order to decide what to work on, I would use this simple formula: coolness divided by the difficulty of implementation. Of course, I would usually end up doing what I felt like working on at the time - which was unnecessary optimization ;-). The key to the Build Engine games having this supposed "photorealism" was by having large parts of the editor working in 3D mode. AFAIK, Build was the first to do it. Being able to preview and modify the game environment directly, without having to waste time building a BSP or whatever, saved a ton of time (for the same reason, I would use QuickBasic for prototyping instead of C and today, that would be EVALDRAW instead of C). I came up with the idea of a 3D editor while working on the grid-based engine in mid to late 1993. At that time, the editor was called EDITBORD.BAS - written in QuickBasic. The 3D preview started out as a quick hack. I added a command line parameter to the 3D viewer I had in C, which would override the starting position. My QuickBasic editor could then spawn this executable from wherever the mouse cursor was hovering. Of course, spawning a program every time you want a preview was not the fastest way to run it. I knew I would have to port the editor from QuickBasic into C. Once I had a 2D mode working in C program, I realized it would be cool to be able to do some editing directly in the 3D mode. The problem was I needed a way to determine what wall/ceiling/floor/sprite the mouse cursor was hovering over. I didn't yet have a hitscan function at the time. (At that time, nobody was making games yet. They were just playing around in the early map and art editors I had.) I came up with a way to do hit detection during the rendering process - by comparing each horizontal or vertical span with the mouse cursor location as it rendered. It was ugly, but it was easy enough to implement. Once that was ready, I started moving as much stuff as I could to the 3D editor. Everything related to texture mapping worked best in 3D mode. Raising / lowering ceilings / floors worked great in the 3D editor. -- Q. How was your experience working with 3DR on Duke Nukem 3D regarding the feedback you got directly from level designers? Did you approach your task of creating the game engine purely from a coding / mathematical perspective according to what the developers needed, or did you actively look at it in a way that a level designer / player would? Did the level designers catch on quickly with how to use the editor or did you struggle to find a common ground / show them your perspective? A. The level designers from Duke that I knew best were Allen Blum and Richard Gray. A few map designers were added to complete the Atomic edition, but by that time I was spending most of my time with Frank Maddin - helping to finish Shadow Warrior. Sure, it was cool watching the map designers do their work. I don't remember specifically who asked for what, but some of the features in Build that came from the map designers were things like: Alt+S to turn a loop red, pressing 'V' once for current textures or twice for all of them (a feature which I hated BTW), tagging system, multiple kinds of copy & paste, and various rendering glitches. It didn't take long for someone to learn the Build Editor. Back then, people didn't need fancy menus or buttons. You could write a text file and more often than not, people would actually read it. If you couldn't remember everything in the text file, you would print it out. Learning the tricks of Build took longer, such as how to combine or separate sectors without redrawing them from scratch. --- Q. The flagship Build engine games had relatively protracted development cycles, with Shadow Warrior dating back to 1993-1994, and the Build engine actively evolved throughout all those years. Did you play every build of Shadow Warrior and Duke Nukem 3D, or was it up to the playtesting team? A. Actually, the first team to use Build was the Blood team, which started work in September 1993. Back then, they were known as the "Horror" team. Sure, I would play many versions of the games. Sometimes when someone needed to show me a bug, they would send me a copy by modem and I would look at it. If I was on-site, we could test over IPX or null modem. Often, we would play for fun at night. I wish I had kept copies of every version I had access to. Of course, that would have required a rather large box of floppies! --- Q. Powerslave never uses sloped surfaces in any of the official maps, and it had been thought for a long time that the Build engine version it runs on does not have this feature implemented yet. However, recently it was discovered that Powerslave actually does have full support for slopes, and a custom map pack was created to take full advantage of this feature. Since sloped surfaces would seem like a logical element in an Ancient Egypt-themed game (e.g. to create pyramids), it was speculated by the community that 3D Realms might have withheld information about certain tech specs when it sub-licensed the Build engine, to retain the competitive edge with its own products. Can you comment on this in any way? A. 3D Realms hid a lot about their dealings with minor game teams. I never saw whatever contracts they made, unless I specifically asked about them. Engine sub-licensing was not mentioned in my original contract, and they would use this fact to their advantage. Regarding features, I know that 3D Realms held back slopes from Capstone. As far as what happened with Lobotomy, I can't say. I remember Lobotomy being upset when they found out the engine supported slopes. I found that very confusing. So maybe you're right - and slopes were held back from them as well. --- Q. If you were to recreate something equivalent to the Build Engine using the knowledge you have now, would you make any design changes? A. Sure. I would with cleaning up the code. For example, more structures, fewer global variables, giving functions a return type, and not using 'long' types for nearly everything. As for optimization, I don't think I left much room for improvement. Most of my newly acquired knowledge is for modern machines, such as AVX2, multi-thread, and 64-bit assembly. These things don't exist on a 486-DX or Pentium. ;-) See the list of regrets I have in my answer to twentieth question. --- Q. At the turn of 1997-1998, computer game developers would inevitably have to switch to full-fledged 3D graphics. Were you, perhaps, planning a completely new and truly 3D engine instead of Build at that time, i.e. before 00's? Later on, it seems, Voxlap took that niche. A14. Sure. POLYTEX (1995) was my first attempt at competing with Quake. POLYTEX used a BSP to sort polygons in back to front order. The rendering was simple but it had a lot of overdraw. Then in 1998, I started KENVEX, which was to be a portal engine. I wanted it to work like Build, with its perfect hidden surface removal, but it turns out trying to achieve this holy grail of polygon rendering was never going to work. Unfortunately, both projects failed to get past the test phase. I had no idea how to make an easy-to-use editor that worked in a full 3D environment. A. Sure. POLYTEX (1995) was my first attempt at competing with Quake. POLYTEX used a BSP to sort polygons in back to front order. The rendering was simple but it had a lot of overdraw. Then in 1998, I started KENVEX, which was to be a portal engine. I wanted it to work like Build, with its perfect hidden surface removal, but it turns out trying to achieve this holy grail of polygon rendering was never going to work. Unfortunately, both projects failed to get past the test phase. I had no idea how to make an easy-to-use editor that worked in a full 3D environment. Q15. In continuation of the previous one. Looks like you are a fan of voxels, were you tempted to work more with traditional full 3D in overall, except for the POLYMOST renderer for Build? A15. Well, there's BUILD2, but that's hardly traditional and it came many years too late. No, my ambitions at trying to compete with Quake died after my attempt with KENVEX. By then it was too late - there was too much competition. --- Q. In continuation of the previous one. Looks like you are a fan of voxels, were you tempted to work more with traditional full 3D in overall, except for the POLYMOST renderer for Build? A. Well, there's BUILD2, but that's hardly traditional and it came many years too late. No, my ambitions at trying to compete with Quake died after my attempt with KENVEX. By then it was too late - there was too much competition. --- Q. drugon asking: "In the second half of the 90's, 3D graphics were actively developing and at some point it seemed that shooters using sprite monsters would sink into oblivion, giving way to shooters with 3D models. Sprite monsters themselves were obviously a technical compromise at the time, allowing the hardware of that time to somehow adequately pull out the game without sacrificing the detail of the environment, like early simulators, where simple 3D models without sprites were used. But as often happens with popular games, constrained by technical limitations, these limitations then become a stylistic guideline for future developers. Sprite objects in first-person shooters are a clear example of this and are often used in modern retro shooters (Mullet Madjack, Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun, Supplice, so on). Did Ken imagine at the turn of the 90's and 00's that such a technique would generate so many followers and would be relevant to this day?". A. Well, I'm not a fan of cardboard cutout sprites. They take a long time for an artist to draw, and if you render them from 3D models, that's a lot of extra work and unnecessary quantization. When I heard about Quake using 3D polygon models, I tried to come up with my own solution. I had never used a polygon modeling program before, and it seemed like writing my own wouldn't be easy. So I resurrected an old idea that I had - voxel sprites. I was glad to see these make it into the games, even in their limited forms. It would have been nicer to see them being used for enemies.. but I guess it wasn't fast enough for that. --- Q. drugon asking: "Well, one more specific question, if I may. Did Ken think that the Duke engine would be used to some extent decades later? And not only in the many really worthy fan free works (WG Realms, Duke Nukem Forever 2013, so on), but also in the commercial release?". A. 30 years ago, I would have been more worried about finishing games than thinking about legacy. We knew if we waited too long, something would come along (perhaps Quake) that would make our games look obsolete. --- Q. What is your opinion of ray tracing as an option? It gets a lot of attention in recent years, which also took a place in classic titles, Doom including. It's just another temporary "noise of the modern" or it's something like the "real deal" thing? A. Ray tracing works best when you have a highly parallel processor, such as on a modern GPU. Sadly, I never got much into GPU programming. Theoretically, there should be no difference in the output between the two. It comes down to a choice between using a pixel or a primitive as your outermost 'for' loop. In practice, some things are easier in one method versus the other. For example, reflections are easier with ray tracing. Rasterization is usually faster due to the primitive count being lower than the number of pixels on screen. But that can change when you have more detail, or different hardware. Beyond that, I don't have much else to say about the topic, other than to say that I've not tried general ray tracing. --- Q. If in '24 it would be required to make another engine from scratch, with software rendering, for a new 3D shooter, what would be the main differences in comparison to Build? A. A better question is: who would be crazy enough to "require" this insanity? To answer your question, my first task would be to choose between voxel, polygon, or a hybrid engine. A polygon engine could work well if there was an elegant bug-free way to do CSG operations on the fly. A voxel engine could work well if there was a way to animate sprites fluidly without having to make separate frames of animation. Obviously, I would design any new project for the PC using 64-bit mode, AVX2, and multi-threading in mind from the start. --- Q. Do you have any regrets working on Build or stuff youd wish youd have differently or no? This includes technical related aspects of Build. A. Sure. Here's a list: * Slope texture-mapping. I shouldn't have resorted to using FPU instructions to get an extra integer register. This killed frame rate on the 486-SX when a slope was on screen. * Texture-mapped slopes. It could have been a little faster if I had the time to make it do texture-mapping in the horizontal direction. * Real-centered centering: This flag in the sprite structure should have never existed. Instead, it should have been provided as a macro to the game programmer. * Height-mapped floors (aka "groudraw"'s). I never got around to fixing the divide by zero bugs. Later on, slopes made these obsolete. * Network code. I could saved everyone a lot of time if I had just gotten it right the first time. This was done in game land, not the engine, so I had to spend a lot of time coaching each game programmer how to make every little change I came up with. * Red-Blue mode. This should have been Red-Cyan mode. The green channel was wasted! Yes, very minor. * Archives. While I saved a lot of stuff from back then, I wish I had kept even more. In particular, more copies of each commercial game. Also, it would have been nice if the tape backup of my hard drive from 1995 didn't get destroyed upon rewinding. --- Q. What do you think of the potential of voxel engines like VOXLAP today? Voxelstein 3D was more of a tech demo, but it is still quite an interesting experience. Do you think games like it have a future? A. When you say "like VOXLAP", I assume you mean the goal of small voxels and not the large ones you see in Minecraft/Roblox. Voxel objects work well on a 3D display, and they're easy to generate from code (such as in EVALDRAW). They don't make much sense if you're looking for realistic scenery. Voxels scale poorly when you increase the resolution. It doesn't matter how many bits you throw at it - you still see the blocks. Sure, you could hide this using interpolation, but that can be expensive unless you use a GPU, I suppose. --- Q. @Cheello is currently working on his his massive Voxel Duke Nukem 3D project, which aims to recreate every sprite in the game. Have you seen Cheello's other work: Voxel Doom, Voxel Blood? A. Yes. It's really cool to see 2D sprites converted to voxels and manually edited to that level of accuracy. It really looks authentic to the original games. --- Q. Is there any feature that Build engine (prior to open sourcing) didn't have that you wish you had implemented? A. Sure. You should check out BUILD2. Here's a few of the biggest features I would have liked to see in Build: * True look up/down. * Native room-over-room. * Fancy lighting. * Drop-in networking. --- Q. If not a secret. Why did you decide to leave the major game industry? Commercial one kind i.e. Is there any chance of you returning to it, maybe even a Duke related thing or a Build based title, as unlikely as it is, if someone asks? A. In 1997, I could see my role as a 1-person engine team quickly being squeezed out. There was a lot of new competition. Even then, I knew that a new engine would take many years to develop.. probably not 14 years though. ;-P I didn't want to move to Texas full time, and I wasn't looking at other companies. In 2015, Gearbox asked if I could contribute in some way to a Duke 3D remake, which later became the DN3D 20th Anniversary edition. I didn't know how I could contribute in a way that would have been fair to my time. Recording sound effects may take days. Making maps or songs may takes weeks. But writing a new engine can take years. Later on, I realized what they really wanted, which was a port to a few consoles, along with a few tweaks. I've never done programming for a console, so I guess it worked out for the best. As far as a return to the game industry, I don't see that happening. Besides, making 3D displays is more fun ;-). --- Q. Did you ever envision Build 2 as anything beyond a summer camp learning project? What kind of game do you think it could work better with than, say, EDuke32? What prompted you to release Build 2 in 2018, almost 10 years after you stopped working on it? A. Well, since I put a lot of effort into it, it would have been nice to see a proper game made with it. I suppose nobody wants to use an incomplete engine that's full of unmanageable assembly code. I released it because why not. It was something cool that had no value to me anymore. I should have released it years earlier. --- Q. What's the story with the mysterious Ken's Labyrinth II? It appears that the project has been in the works since around 2007, but it has almost no publicity. Are / were you involved in any way apart from licensing the characters? Isn't it a bit disappointing that the game is using GZDoom and not Build or another engine of yours? A. I never licensed anything. All I did was say something like, "Sure, that's fine." in an email response. Ken's Labyrinth was basically a bunch of random nonsense packaged in the form of an engine demo. I find it flattering that anyone would want to make a game based on it. A while ago, the guys asked me to record a few sound effects for their game, which I did. I have no idea whether they'll actually use it. Besides that, I have nothing to do with the project. --- Q. Ken, you mention your love for cartography and maps, and there are images of the US map among the wall textures in Ken's Labyrinth. Has this hobby of yours been useful for designing maps for Ken's Labyrinth, or for any other aspects of game / engine design? A. Not really. As a child, I enjoyed drawing and transcribing (but never tracing) maps. I can still draw a pretty good map of the 50 states from memory. I don't think this has much to do with engine design, but I can say they both involve a lot of visualization, which I've always been good at (BTW, Andy Cotter designed most of the maps for Ken's Labyrinth). --- Q. Can you tell us what you are doing now, what projects you are interested in. Do you currently make any software for creating games? A. I've been with Voxon Photonics for over 10 years now. We make 3D displays. My job is mostly the low-level software, but I also do some circuit board design. I wrote the SDK which includes a bunch of simple example games. Sadly, I haven't updated my website in a while because I've been quite busy with my work at Voxon. --- Q. Have you played Ion Fury and if so what do you think of the game? Do you think it is a worthy spiritual successor to Duke Nukem 3D? Do you believe more games like Ion Fury should be coming out? A. Sure. I thought the game was great. I loved seeing all the new and very detailed maps. The voxel objects were well done. It's nice seeing my work with POLYMOST being put to use. Also, shotgun trains are fun ;-). --- Q. Any final words you would like to say to our readers? A. Sure. Game over. ---

The direction that nu-id is taking the series in SUCKS!!! The original DooM games were VERY SERIOUS GAMES for VERY SERIOUS PEOPLE!!!! They were thoroughly grounded in reality and were horror masterpieces rivaled only by the likes of Resident Evil 5 and Silent Hill Downpour, but this new FAKE DooM is over the top and stupid. It's way too edgy and cartoonish (neither of which could describe the first games, nosireedoo), and the soundtrack is simply far too metal for this franchise. Classic DooM had elevator music, not metal! Why is there metal in the new games! WHY!!!!! The worst part, however, is the lore. People always say that it doesn't matter much because it's all skippable, BUT I PLAY DOOM FOR THE STORY!!!!! DooM is known for its rich, intricate lore, and nu-DooM should be no exception that that. Yet, it is! Why!!! I went in expecting one of the greatest pieces of fiction ever told, but I came out feeling disgusted with the world. Now, with this new entry, it looks like it'll be in medieval times. BUT THERE WERE NEVER ANY CASTLES IN DOOM!!!!!! It has exclusively been techbases and hell throughout the entire series, with absolutely no deviation whatsoever. Castles were only ever in some other game id software released in 1996, but as it didn't follow my exact idea of what a game by id software should be, it was atrocious and wound up falling into obscurity. Anyways, despite how much I despise these new games, I'm gonna buy The Dark Ages when it comes out and endlessly complain about how awful I think it is. What about you guys?

Don't give up skeleton! Fight your way out of space purgatory. You are already dead, but everything here wants you 7 feet under. Info: Otherworldly Ossuary is a small MBF21 single map with cramped puzzle-like combat. - Completion time is about 8 minutes; - All difficulty skills implemented; - Tested in DSDA; - Map does not work correctly in GZDOOM (use it at your own risk); Dehacked Info: - Plasma rifle speed and damage slightly buffed; - Lost Souls have reduced health: 50HP; - Pain Elementals explode when killed (keep your distance) ___________________________________________________________________________________ Credits: Music: Title Screen - "Fine Example" by Velvetic Map 01 - "Scavengers" by Velvetic Intermission - "Lethargic Eyes" by Velvetic Cast sequence - "Descent" by Isotype Color Palette - "WasteLand" by me Doom Eternal plasma rifle Sprite by Sonik.o.fan: https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?p=1205754#p1205754 Sky texture by Mechadon - Doomworld Thread: Playtesting and Support: A huge thanks to the playtesters: @Matt Eldrydge @Treehouseminis @mancubian_candidate ___________________________________________________________________________________ Screenshots: ___________________________________________________________________________________ Download Link: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/mrfitdegzn8yay6nhbka5/OO.zip?rlkey=2v3568rxmh1qwunfx2p4n65np&st=mmvzt0l5&dl=0

Making slow progress on Monuments.wad map03

flying arachno from the dark ages

Okay, I'm curious now. Which custom maps from 1994 would you say are better looking and flowing than the average Doom 2 level? I was also playing custom maps in the mid-90s and from what I recall it seemed incredibly rare for anything to even approach the quality of the official maps, even a few years later. Also, Doom 2 doesn't play the same as Doom 1. Nearly every monster in Doom 1 is an imp: regular imp, taller imp with more health, imp with splash damage, flying imp, etc. Doom 2 allows for vastly more complex and varied encounter design by introducing monsters that require different strategies and demand different types of time/spatial awareness from the player. The possible combinations of all those behaviors have helped make Doom 2 such an effective canvas for so many different schools of mapping to develop from over the past 30 years.

the "Lazy Dev" thing is pretty much a buzz word for "they didn't make it the way i want because they wanted to actually clock out at 5pm" Imagine making a huge chunk of Doom 2's map pool then being called Lazy by a random player.

A trick you can do for any such random counting of things is to use SLADE's Archive->Maintenance->Replace in Maps function. If you replace marine corpses by marine corpses, nothing will actually happen, but the SLADE console log (Ctrl-2 to open it) will tell you how many of such replacements it made for each level, and how many in total. In this case, in Ultimate Doom, there is a grand total of 79 dead marines (40 of type 10, 39 of type 12). E1M1: 2+2 E1M2: 9+3 E1M3: 4+2 E1M4: 5+5 E1 total: 20+12=32 E2M2: 2+3 E2M3: 2+5 E2M4: 0+2 E2M5: 3+1 E2M6: 0+2 E2M7: 4+1 E2 total: 11+14=25 E3M1: 1+1 E3M2: 1+1 E3M3: 1+1 E3M4: 0+1 E3M5: 3+3 E3M6: 1+1 E3M9: 1+1 E3 total: 8+9=17 E4M6: 1+1 E4M7: 0+3 E4 total: 1+4=5 Grand total: 40+39=79

"Doom: The Dork Ages" sounds like a coming of age story about Doomguy as an awkward schoolboy.

Clarifying the last topic, as I think it's important: I just want to reinforce what I said earlier: "I'm not advocating for Russia". If you want to know my opinion about Putin, he is a fascist and an imperialist - and I don't have any sympathies for him. However that doesn't change what I think about NATO. I don't see good sides on this at all (moreover, I was not clear enough on my post if or when I was talking about China or Russia, which are two different scenarios imo, but I digress). Anyway, I would like to sincerely apologize to you @Dynamo. Despite the point I tried to make, that doesn't make Russia right for any of it's hideous crimes in war and I'm in no way trying to trivilize the suffering of the people of Ukraine. I understand your reaction about it and I'm really sorry for it.

Gamers in 1994 didn't have a queue of dozens of megawads to check out, so spending some quality time with Doom II wasn't a slog, it was what they paid for.

Very well, as we say around my parts, mettiamoci una pietra sopra. Hopefully the suffering of all the people tormented by wars around the world comes to an end as soon as possible. It's shameful that the deliberate targeting of civilians in Ukraine, Palestine, Sudan, Myanmar and elsewhere continues unabated in 2024.

Like I'd sacrifice my own life and the emotional well-being of my family and friends for the benefit of corrupt bureaucrats. War is a Racket as we know (which is an actual book by the way). Also, of all the factions potentially involved, there isn't a single one about which I have more good things to say than bad things. But seriously, even putting all that aside, kicking off WW3 would be by far the stupidest decision we've ever made as a species, a fact of which many more people are aware than ever before.

Map 12: Military Center When all you have are three keys, every map starts to look like Tricks and Traps. I wasn’t entirely convinced on the comparisons made in this thread for Terror Core, but abstracting the two out enough does put them in a similar field. Again, three keys, three stretches of privately maintained mess hall + 1 exit bout, and a bunch of revisiting a central structure to pick up the arbitrary points of continue. It’s Wheelhouse design. The best strength this map has going for it is the Plasma Rifle, filled with just enough ammo to burn through anything, if you include the supply in the secrets. It’s actually pretty funny that Horus mentioned Hanger for Map 06, because I was getting the same feeling navigating the southeast outpost, being pretty close to that Evilution map’s Yellow Key run. It’s a shame that the ice theme was so quickly discarded, seeing a frozen over outpost would’ve likely made this one stick a little better.

The way we discuss level design or rather game design in general in modern times was absolutely way different back then. What would be considered "shitty" or a "slog" had no real comparison. If a level was "bad" it was given a pass for being a first timer or not even really looked upon in first place. You could probably find discussions on old Usenet posts about what people considered as the worst levels (A good example could be the reaction to "Colony Ship For Sale, Cheap" from Marathon which one of the designers made a small apology note about it in the sequel.) but in my studies reading gaming magazines I've found that most reviewers and non-hardcore players didn't care too much about level design until years later.

Working on my RAMP 2024 map. Decent progress so far, with the main challenge coming from making my map in the 10x10 style, evoking Sunder's scale and using more light wherever possible. Only two fights are done at the moment, kinda shooting for a fun, slaughterlite kinda thing. Also challenged myself to use a midi by Ribbiks, since that felt really hard for me to justify - but I think I'm capable of living up to the choice.

================================================================== DOWNLOAD ================================================================== Idgames.txt Be sure to check the help screens for each individual map in ZDoom ports!

The fact that Russia illegally and brutally invaded countries that never had anything to do with NATO (Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Chechnya, Syria) is exactly why NATO is relevant nowadays. Or are you trying to suggest that Ukrainians should blame themselves for their own genocide just because they wanted to exist as a free and sovereign nation? The only reason NATO exists is because Russia is a brutal fascist state whose government should be destroyed as soon as possible, before they kill more dozens of thousands of people in their insane imperial pursuits.

The genocide in Gaza could absolutely be a precursor for a major war, but I would argue that "WWIII" is too nebulous of a term to mean anything. By standards of The Great War or World War II, a third world war could technically have already happened or is already happening, but it doesn't really mean much because there's no real definition. With the middle east becoming uninhabitable within the next 3 or 4 decades due to climate change and the holy wars currently going on there, it could be really bad, especially if fascist dictatorships like Israel remain in power and continue to be funded by europe and the united states. That's far more concerning than anything in eastern europe to me, although that is another big deal, it is a tad euro-centric to imply a third world war needs to be involving european powers.

doom 2 being the first game to be sold in stores kind of makes a lot of this argument moot. a ton of people started with doom 2 instead of doom 1 (myself included) for that major reason

i think you guys are missing the part where he says that's what he thought in 1994 when he was 14 lol

Oh, they're type 15. Forgot there's a third type of dead marines. In this case, that's 52 more. E1M1: +4 E1M2: +8 E1M3: +5 E1M4: +4 E1 total: +21 E2M2: +4 E2M3: +2 E2M4: +2 E2M5: +2 E2M6: +1 E2M7: +1 E2 total: +12 E3M2: +2 E3M4: +1 E3M5: +5 E3 total: +8 E4M5: +1 E4M6: +8 E4M7: +1 E4M9: +1 E4 total: +11 That cybie room in E4M6 also has three pools of blood (aka crushed corpses), one hanging body, one hanging body missing a leg, and one hanging leg missing a body. So yoou could say 15 corpses in total.

Hello! I am still working on 29. I had some computer problems before...and then some motivation problems... Getting all the things properly spawning in at the right times / wall movement working consistently has ended up being harder and more confusing than I expected. Anyway, just wanted to show some proof of life.

Map12: Military Center This one follows the basic formula of map02: a central hub with four teleporters leading to three areas with keys and one exit area. It's bigger and more complicated. But honestly, Terror Core is more fun for me. There's something about the regular shotgun vs. imps and zombies that is consistently entertaining, and it probably has to do with rate of fire. It's satisfying to kill an enemy with one well-placed shot every second. Terror Core mostly consists of that, with minimal interruption. Military Center is more complicated, but it feels bloated compared to the other map, partly because of the bizarre decision to make the player backtrack to the center of the map for every key. You can't even do all three key areas before returning, as one of them requires the other two keys, meaning you must ride the elevator back up to the central hub twice at a minimum. I don't mean that it's tedious or anything, but it's only been a few days since I recorded my run, and I wouldn't remember what the combat is like if I didn't check.

Ahaha I love this argument because it's a dead giveaway for admitting to having a sense that something is wrong with the current system but not having the guts to call it by name so they reach for a whole other word for it so as to not suffer from cognitive dissonance. No, babes, it's capitalism. "Corporatism" doesn't even mean what you think it means. A farmer's market is simply that -- a marketplace for trade, and trading goods or services has existed in one form or another for thousands of years. Capitalism is private ownership of capital (hence the name) and the means of production with a drive towards infinitely increasing wealth, whatever the cost. It’s the foundation of five hundred years of colonialism and slavery, and is at the root of many of our modern-day social ills. It's also only a few hundred years old, and neoliberalism -- the ideology that justifies it -- is even newer. Sorry not sorry to ruin your carefully constructed worldview in which capitalism means buying stuff!

Damn thanks for reminding me that this thread still exists. Anyway the project is still being worked on, albeit a bit slowed down since I have other projects too. There will be 2 more maps in the final version and one of which is finished. I don't recommend using the download links in the thread at all since I've made some significant changes to the previous 4 maps and I doubt they will be good without them. But go on if you insist.

"Doom 2 is terrible" seems to be some kind of increasingly self-perpetuating meme argument that is trying to Mandela everyone into thinking it's always been around.

Maybe, but I don't think he would save you from bad threads.

MAP11: Frozen Terror 100% kills, 2/2 secrets A lot like last map, the aesthetic theme is the main thing going for it, and the actual gameplay is pretty subpar. Still, it's an improvement, since I don't have to pistol 20 imps this time before getting a shotgun, and there are a couple of interesting fights (though most of the danger comes from chaingunner ambushes coupled with a lack of armor). I'm not sure the second secret, trading a baron's worth of ammo for a chainsaw, is quite worth it, though I did use the chainsaw on the arachnatrons at the end. Speaking of, that elevator ambush seemed like it was gonna be interesting, but it really peters out at the end with the penultimate fight being 3 imps and the last warp-in being one 'tron. I might have been primed by the textures but the red key room reminded me of the "four swords" room in Guardian of Ice from Hexen. Oh yeah, and obligatory fuck that one lift.

MAP10: Dark Woods By the time you get to Map 10, I feel like it should be standard practice to give you a shotgun within the first five seconds of the level. They don't do that here, so you'll just have to salvage it out off a dead shotgunner guerrilla style instead. Detailing is minimal in this map and the texture work is very bland. It's basically pick one texture for the floor, one texture for the walls, slap them across every surface you can and change it up every few areas. The brown valley at the beginning is like one of those optical illusions. Where does the ground end and the walls begin? At least it's not a chore to get through. MAP11: Frozen Terror The ice level, number 7 in the standard video game level set but one rarely explored in Doom. A little bit of platforming here if you want to call it that. The setting seemed like the perfect time to open up the maps a little bit, but even the outdoor areas are still close quarters engagements. Remember the Bruiser Brothers from E1M8? Turns out they spent the last 5 or so years hiding out and training in these mountains after getting there assed kicked by the Doom Guy. Did it do them any favors? Probably not. Having the Plasma gun and Super Shotgun at your disposal this time certainly doesn't help them any. MAP12: Military Center Already another one of those hub maps, this time with a bit of backtracking and keys that appear in the starting area after you do... things. Can't say I understand the science behind that one. I was hoping the wad would start to step it up at this point, but they're still taking it easy on us. Health isn't exactly in short supply and ammo of all kinds is plentiful. I had so much plasma I was just using it for fun half of the time. Now that's a luxury you're rarely afforded. bio10-12.zip

Biowar - MAP11: Frozen Terror This. This is the one. Even looking back and reflecting on some of my bizarre commentary, MAP11? This one's my favorite. Ice caves with a ton of verticality and narrow ledges to run on, perfect music for an ice level, you blow up a huge ice wall to progress and get caught in an avalanche at a certain point. Love it. Top to bottom. Even the "go this way" arrow to the yellow key can't detract from this one for me. 5/5, easy.

I'm getting ready to drop RC1 of a vanilla Heretic level set titled Your Journey Begins. Here is the picture preview:

BLIGHT is an original DOOM episode, set as Episode 7, meant to take place after the SIGIL series and right before DOOM II: Hell on Earth. Initially, my goal was to commemorate DOOM's 30th anniversary, but the release took nearly six months longer than planned. Watching John Romero stream his SIGIL II map-building inspired me to try my hand at creating my own maps. This is my first released WAD, and I haven't played many releases from DoomWorld. I don't know if that earns me brownie points, or if I lose all my gold stars for already having to create a v1.1. So, while I strive to include unique elements in each map, it doesn't mean my ideas are unique to the entire community. I definitely drew inspiration from Romero's SIGIL II, incorporating those special secrets he loves. Each map includes the infamous FIREBLU secret, a 30-second room (though not marked as a secret), and my own unique take on his "Baphomet Eyes" with designs like "Blood Sacrifices" and "Death Idols." I realize opinions on SIGIL seem as divisive as those on Eternal (perhaps I'm wrong), but I'm not Romero—I don't have his rock star hair, his extensive knowledge of coding languages, or have I made anyone my ... well we all remember the ad. After almost ten months, it's finally done. So modeled after the SIGIL series, my maps are intended to be more challenging than typical ones. It's perfectly fine to play on HNTR or HMP. I appreciate good architecture and finding ways to use it against enemies. Enjoy, fellow Doomers! Several players have asked about the design choices for specific maps. Here’s some trivia to shed light on that. These maps are loosely based on university campus buildings. What began as a simple project turned into a fun challenge after my colleagues jokingly suggested I model the maps after work. I walked around the campus, selected buildings I wanted to include, and based the maps on them. I've obviously had to modify the buildings since DOOM doesn't natively support multi-floor structures, but it was exciting to create maps inspired by buildings with 2-3 floors. As a result, all the maps form a single, continuous series, where the end of one map is the beginning of the next. Below is a list of the buildings that inspired each map: E7M1 - Art and Woodworking Center E7M2 - Facility Garage and Workshop E7M3 - Library E7M4 - Lunch and Student Activity Lounge E7M5 - Basement Storage E7M6 - Science Hall E7M7 - Administration Hall E7M8 - Chapel E7M9 - Gymnasium and Athletic Administration Known Issues: I had some issues in Software Rendering modes, where certain required switches had their THINGs rendered below the floor making it impossible to see them, so you may want to try OpenGL or Vulkan. ====================================== Primary purpose : Single play, Deathmatch Advanced engine needed : Limit-removing, Boom Compatible ====================================== Description: As you step through the portal, it feels as if your body is being ripped in two. Like a two-edged sword, ‘piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow’. But the pain of Baphomet’s sigil is fleeting, and having narrowly slipped through his clutches and arriving through the portal back to Earth, you find your respite is short-lived as the military commandeers your fate. Aboard the chopper, the scorched tapestry of a once-thriving metropolis unfolds beneath you—flames ravage, smoke chokes the heavens, and the remnants of humanity crumble. The demonic deceit was masterful; while you battled in the bowels of hell, they invaded. Now, hellish spires, totems crowned with the skulls of the demons’ victims, puncture the Earth, channeling argent energy skywards, knitting a portal for Baphomet’s earthbound ascendancy. As Earth’s solitary sentinel who has weathered the infernal storm, you are cast once again into the heart of darkness to shatter these pillars and thwart the coming of the beast. ====================================== * What is included * New levels: 18 (Single-player and Deathmatch areas in each level WAD) Sounds: No Music: Yes Graphics: Yes Dehacked/BEX Patch: No Demos: No Other: No Other files required: None * Play Information * Game: DOOM Map #: E7M1-E7M9 Single Player: Yes Cooperative 2-4 Player: No Deathmatch 2-4 Player: Yes Other game styles: None Difficulty Settings: Yes Requirements: OpenGL or non-Software renderer Editor(s) used: Ultimate Doom Builder / Slade 3 Known Bugs : There are known sector leaks and incorrectly rendered exit rooms in SOFTWARE rendering May Not Run With: N/A Tested With: GZDOOM / PrBOOM+ / DSDA DOOM DOWNLOAD - BLIGHT v1.0 - 05/31/24 DOWNLOAD - BLIGHT v1.2 - 06/13/24 (HOTFIX)

MAP13 - “UAC Prison” by John Bishop Well well well what’s this, a 364 monster map in Biowar!? This was what I needed after the last map, and whilst I didn’t know it at the time of playing, having checked afterwards I’m not surprised that this John Bishop’s second map in the wad. Despite this however, it shows visual continuity as the start of this map matches with the end of the last map, which is pretty unusual considering in most of the maps the ending has nothing to do the start of the next map. Aside from that, this does have a lot of parallels with John’s last map, Last Call. There are a lot of thin hallways and corridors, although this time rather than opening up bit by bit, they are separated by height differences or keyed doors. Additionally, this map makes very heavy use of teleporting monsters to repopulate formerly explored areas. Carelessness is also punished, as a found out to my detriment, as I died in the main prison area about half a dozen times, mainly thanks to not being cautious enough with the prevalence of hitscan in this map. Ultimately, whilst the hitscan-use may be a bit egregious, I found it an engaging map to play with a catchy midi to boot, and it was refreshing to have a combat-focused map in this set for a change. John Bishop has both of my favourite maps in this set so far.

I am once against indulging my green/brown/orange/blue fetish.

Operation: BIOWAR MAP10: Dark Woods (unfortunately not of the Serpent) Ultra-Violence / Pistol Start / Nugget Doom / Vanilla compatibility K: 83/83 I: 20/20 S: 1/1 T: 11:54 Wow that's kind of a tedious start with that dinky little pistol again. You're plummeted into a dark forest-type area but like all things in this PWAD it's bite-sized and won't outstay its welcome, which can be both a good and a bad thing if you want more of something you like. For me it's just OK. You'll definitely want that SSG as pointed out so be sure to scan around until you get it; shortly before you go further outdoors, as the Baron will make a mockery of your lame pump-action. The one secret is easy to get and comes too late, providing a backpack and blue armor. There's a couple Mancubi near the end who would certainly be trouble without the SSG. The impaled corpses from Hexen is a nice scene. The final resistance is a chaingunner and an Imp. Scary! Operation: BIOWAR MAP11: Frozen Terror (I like chilly horror myself) Ultra-Violence / Pistol Start / Nugget Doom / Vanilla compatibility K: 65/65 I: 60/62 S: 1/2 T: 9:07 Ah, classic Midnight Call, this is where I first heard it, for newer players they would've heard it on MAP01 of Eviternity where it was also put to pretty good use. There's a nice sense of verticality in this one, and I love snowy levels in video games so this is right up my alley. A decent fight can be had in a cave with the blue key. There's a secret chainsaw that will probably be of no use to anyone, but watch out for the Baron as he could flank you when you teleport in. The finale reminds me of the elevator battle at the end of Quake's second episode, where the first proper fight in the WAD can be had IMO. The Berserk should be reserved for healing if you find yourself in trouble at all but I didn't need it. Unfortunately this is a one-way path and I missed a secret and two items and I have no clue where they could be, at least not in this playthrough. All in all, a pleasant enough venture. Operation: BIOWAR MAP12: Military Center (apparently) Ultra-Violence / Pistol Start / Nugget Doom / Vanilla compatibility K: 82/82 I: 66/66 S: 2/2 T: 9:17 Honestly a really lame introduction to the second (and final) half of the WAD, sure it's an evolution of MAP02: Terror Core but it's still a fkn play-by-the-numbers key fetch in a somewhat awkward order that doesn't really promote choosing your path so you'll inevitably pick the wrong teleporters on your first try. The starting room is cool though, as is the outdoor section really, easily the highlight of the level. You'll be pulling switches in the other small areas and returning to the...center, of the military place, to get keys and really underwhelming monster closets. No major items on this level, just health and armor bonuses. You will eventually be flooded with cell ammo so go nuts with the plasma gun I guess. That be it, there's not much else to honestly say.

Nope, no risk of WW3 for the time being. That's a risk only in the future, if Russia wins in Ukraine. Then they'll get to the next item on their list and that's where a more involved conflict may happen. BRICS states are everything except a power bloc. Good luck getting India and China to agree on anything meaningful, lol. Did you know South Africa did get nukes back in the days? They got rid of them though, just before the end of the Apartheid regime, because they didn't want black people to have a nuke wanted to become members in good standing of the international community. As for Brazil, it doesn't really need them because it's unlikely to be threatened by anyone in its vicinity.

Operation: Biowar MAP12: Military Center (UV, pistol start, K: 100% / S: 100%, DSDA-Doom, complevel 2) Another teleport hub design reminiscent of MAP02, but with a more rigid progression scheme and mandatory detours through the starting room to pick up keys and clear out monster closets. I like the look of the open area outside the start building, but the rest of the map is again comprised of small tech-basey rooms, and the combat has no spice at all. You could sleepwalk through this one and exit with hundreds of cells left over - I only used some on the exit room revenants because it felt like a shame to just leave all of 'em. Apologies for the negativity these past few days, folks, but I'll be honest: Biowar is kind of starting to lose me with this and the preceding two maps. Hopefully the following maps will pick up the slack. If not... I think Equinox will.

No, not really, and it still doesn't. I'm a little surprised you are picking on Gotcha, a fairly straightforward map IMO. Most people complain about the more sprawling maps like The Chasm or Industrial Zone. The par times add up to 94 minutes (quick tally, could be off). So a fast player should be able to get through the entire game in 1.5 hours. If you are a beginner and playing on UV, you simply can't expect to beat it that fast. One thing that might skew people's perspective is that back in the 90s, we actually chose the difficulty setting that seemed right for us. We also played with our friends and helped each other and read strategy guides and walkthroughs. If really stuck we might have even used a cheat code here and there because we weren't always obsessive about completion. So, no, it wasn't a slog at all. It was a lot of maps to play and that was a good thing. If you were a beginner you could pick beginner difficulty and enjoy the game as a beginner should. If you were a veteran you could challenge yourself. If you were a speedrunner you could beat the game in under 30 minutes. You want slog? Go play through all six episodes of Wolfenstein 3D. Or try Hexen without a walkthrough. You'll be crawling back to mommy Doom2 within an hour.

i love almost every map in doom2.wad but I think megawad structure itself is a slog. honestly need a port which saves and quits when you beat a map and doesn't let you open it again until tomorrow

Map 12: Military Center This one is back to doing exactly what Doom does best. Tech-base with a hub and multiple key paths. The combat is pretty simplistic but at least some thought was put into it and the layout is pretty simplistic but at least some thought was put into it as well. I cant dislike this map, this is what made me fall in love with Doom in the first place. Yes its the standard formula but anyone and everyone can and has given us thier own versions and there will never be an end to it. 😀

It's gonna be so bad, it's gonna make us wish we were playing 3DO Doom instead!!! Wait, I mean, uh, yes, uhm, nothing to see here, move along...

MAP12: Military Center. Played on UV, pistol start. DSDA v0.27.4. K: 82/82, S: 2/2, I: 66/66. Comp. time 9:50 This is structurally like an immensely improved version of MAP02, Terror Core in that we take teleports to different locations to gain access to keys. Blue one is needed for the exit. While the visual outlook is not exactly up to modern standards, I feel that especially the outdoor area looks nice, and the rest looks okay for such an old wad. My only complaint here is that it took me a long time to realize where the keycards were. For a moment I thought the map had bugged out somehow. Good thing that I thought of going back... not remembering that even in MAP02 the keycards somehow appeared in previously visited room.

MAP12: Military Center The last few maps have felt like prototypes, but this one feels more fleshed out. The central progression gimmick is a little stilted, but it gives the map more of a 'point' than previous ones. Combat feels tighter here too, though only a mite more threatening - I keep getting handed a plasma gun I don't need in this WAD. Hopefully future maps head more in this direction.