Steve D

About time I bumped an old thread. Michael Krause. Funny thing is that every time I mention Krause as one of my all-time fave mappers, I have to brag that I used to playtest some of his maps back in the '90s. Yeah, I jump up and down, waving my arms and screaming, "I used to playtest for Michael-fucking-Krause!!!!!!" Krause had a big influence on me, even though I never made maps in his style . . . yet! Glen Payne and Marshall Bostwick. I've always been obsessed with Osiris. A TC that wasn't really a full TC but a very extensive mod, dripping with atmosphere, fun level design and great style. Would love to see them go crazy with our modern tools. Sean Birkel. Just because Fava Beans is so great. Viggles. Among modern mappers, almost all of my faves are still active, and for all I know -- and hope! -- Viggles is, too, and a new masterpiece is already underway.

Who knows what might happen? Amiga IP still has a certain cache, which, however unlikely, might tempt some corporation at some point in time in a universe far, far away; and they still make a run of new, modern Amigas every now and then. It's The Survivor, after all. ;)

It all sounds rather like Hollywood; lack of originality, sequelitis, and so on. Not that the sequalization of film is always bad. I very much enjoy the Jurassic Park/World series, even though I realize they are money-making products rather than great films. That said . . . I have never been excited about AAA games. That's because I'm a Doomer, not a gamer per se. Further, I'm a mapper rather than a player, though as I near retirement I plan to do a lot more playing than before. Still, you can't map for AAA games, thus my lack of interest. And to go one step further, I'm an Amiga guy, not a PC guy, so I have a lot of interest in Amiga FPS games from the '90s, and in wonderful TCs like Project Osiris by @Arcturus, a fellow I've seen on AmigaBill twitchstreams a few times. I played Project Osiris over the past week, and it was a magical experience for me. Top-tier work from beginning to end. Would a AAA game give me such a thrill? That said, I plan to buy DoomQuake, The Dark Ages of Conan at The Hexen Bar & Grill, because it showcases what we love about AAA games -- awesome visuals, wonderful gibs, incredible animations -- alla dat. And this time I might buy an Xbox to play it on. I do appreciate the troubles of the game industry and its employees that you write about so eloquently. At some point, there will be a shake-out and a new equilibrium will be found -- one hopes. Until then, I'll keep hoping that someone does a TC of the Amiga FPS Breathless, my personal fave, and I'll mess around with my A500 Mini. :)

You've just described every scene ever. Literally. Every. Fucking. Scene. And like all the other scenesters, I will have my say. Personally, I'm not heavily into any game I can't map for, which basically describes every game since 2004 or so. As for Doom, its story and concept has always been incoherent. The mix of sci-fi elements with Hell and goat-footed demons was an open invitation to absurd story elements such as all the ridiculous lore attached to the game since 2016, especially since Doom Eternal. Quake is the same way. It mixes Ogres, futuristic soldiers and even sword-wielding knights in ways that make little or no sense. Then you have Quake 2 which is more of a sci-fi Doom game and has literally nothing to do with the original Quake, and Quake 4 followed in that direction. And tell me that big turreted 4-barrel gun in the Dark Ages trailer doesn't remind you of Quake 4. IOW, the Doom and Quake franchises are tied together in strange ways, with maybe a Hexen wrapper. So I reckon Dark Ages represents the ultimate melding of Doom with Quake 1, and we should just accept that's the way it is. I plan to buy it myself. Btw, if you look at the Quake mapping community, it's basically 100% Quake 1. There is no love for Quake 2 or 4. They like the original medieval mosh pit with a sprinkling of futuristic soldiers and the occasional robot. No Doom masquerading as Quake over there! ;D Last note: I unironically enjoyed Doom 3. It was IMO an excellent take on the creepier side of Doom as was exemplified in E2 of Doom 1. Oozing atmosphere more than action, turning Doom into survival horror, was just fine in my book.

I can't entirely agree with this. Because modern gaming PCs are exceptionally powerful, they are also quite expensive at the high end. This makes us forget that back in the day, gaming computers tended to be inexpensive models. The early IBM PCs were expensive business machines, and the top gaming computers of that era were things like the Apple II, ZX Spectrum, Atari 400 and 800, and the Commodore 64. In 1987, they would all be eclipsed by the Amiga 500, which hit the market at $699 with a set of custom chips that gave it sound and graphic capabilities well beyond those of Macs and PCs of similar and even greater price. The Amiga custom chips gave it hardware sprites that guaranteed a 50fps frame-rate in the side-scrolling shooters and platformers that dominated the scene in those days—all this with a Motorola 68000 running at 7.14Mhz. The Amiga 500 was central to the early success of Electronic Arts, which Trip Hawkins and other former Apple employees founded in 1982. So as we can see, Apple was in various ways important to the gaming industry in the early days. As for Macs themselves, it's not so much that they weren't built to play games, but that their high cost meant relatively few were sold, and with few sold, the market wasn't there to draw game developers. By the late '80s, it was clear that the top game machines of the time -- the Amiga 500 and Atari ST -- would soon be surpassed by a new generation of PCs of similar price and much greater sales volume, so game developers abandoned the Amiga and Atari in favor of PCs, and by 1990 or so the PC was the leading game computer. A big advantage of PCs was the ability to customize their configuration, so you could get a good spec for less money, especially if you could build one yourself. Doom was obviously a demanding game when it first appeared, but my PowerMac Performa 5200 handled it well enough. It was inexpensive for a Mac, and with a PowerPC 603/75Mhz, it outperformed 486 PCs. Even better was my Power Computing PowerWave 604/132, which was a PowerMac 9500 clone costing over $3,700, much too expensive for a gaming machine in the classic sense. IMO, the era of modern gaming PCs began with the first 3DFX Voodoo cards. By the time they appeared, I had already bought a PC with a Pentium 166 in order to play Quake, and I soon added a Voodoo card. Once Voodoo cards became available for the Mac and Amiga, I bought them for those platforms, too. By this time, PCs were outselling Macs by a vast margin, and Commodore, the company that manufactured Amigas, was out of business. Once Nvidia took over as the primary developer of 3D accelerators, the Mac fell even farther behind in the world of modern gaming, because for the longest time, Nvidia wasn't available on Apple products, though the ATI Rage and Radeon series was. Ultimately, it wasn't so much the spec as the price and the limited population of Macs in the wild that doomed the machine as a game platform.

Ah, that evil baby from Fears. Looks great! Big thumping heart for anything Amiga.:))))))

Here's an updated version of Map23 Changes include flagging the secret exit as a secret and adding some detail at the start.

I'm pretty sure I got that right. I copy-pasted from your post, and so far I haven't seen credits from the boss.

Map03:Hell's Brand New Juice Factory by EagerBeaver Kills-100%, Secrets-100%. Death Count:Zero This map came closest to taking out The Ancient Doomer, but my Stumbling Drunken Monkey Fu skills carried me through. I'll confess that the Plasma Gun Fight dropped me to 56% health, so I decided to replay it without making a million mistakes and sailed through without taking a hit. I shocked myself. Importantly, the remaining combat left me more or less unscathed, so I wouldn't have died even without savescumming. ;) That said, I really enjoyed this map. EagerBeaver strikes a nice balance between exploration and action, the latter of which is occasionally intense, as at the Plasma Gun Fight. I like how Eager has windows into other areas throughout the map, giving it a vivid sense of place. Eager said that Toxin Refinery is the inspiration. Good choice. That fantastic map inspires me, too. Another great choice is @Jimmy's midi Into The Furnace, which complements the map perfectly. A cool vibe throughout. As it turned out, I found the secret exit halfway through, long before the normal exit, and . . . I probably won't survive @knifeworld's Orbital Spawning Platform Omega, but I'll play it next before moving on to Map04. Back to Map03; the secrets are all easy to find, which again helps give this industrial-style, but brightly lit map its mellow vibe. At first I worried that this would be an annoying teleport puzzle and switch-hunt, but since I took what seems to be the ideal path -- yellow key first -- everything worked out great. I have no suggestions for improvement. This is a very fun, very cool map.

Map02:Sewer Hall of Some Processing by @Li'l devil Kills-100%, Secrets-No Secrets on This Map. Death Count:Zero This is a fun and fast-paced map, although once you're past the opening -- which I surprisingly survived -- it's very very easy. Combat morphs into basic corridor-clearing with no worries about being flanked by hostile Hellspawn. Just march forward with your finger on the trigger and mow 'em down. This changes at the exit fight when enemies teleport into a couple of spawning points. Amazingly, I didn't take a hit in this battle. My chaingun was smoking! ;D So why did I enjoy myself if it's so easy? Well, it was easy, but you still have to run and dodge and keep shooting almost all the time. This map has a driving action midi, Chyornyi Obelisk, by Seryi Svyatoy, that kept me pumped for inflicting endless slaughter on my hapless enemies. I just flat-out victimized them, sort of a rare thing for me since I'm not a very good player, but this map made me feel badass. :D It will be interesting to see what better players have to say about this map. One way to increase the danger is to get better action from the monsters shooting at you from the windows above. They pose almost zero threat, so I ended up taking out several just by shooting at their bald heads. Lowering the windowsill to the floor, and perhaps widening the windows, would give these snipers a better opportunity to damage the player. Looks-wise this map is fairly basic; low detail with a simple layout. That said, the textures are well-chosen and it looks alright. L'il devil said they wanted a minimalist map, and that's what they delivered. In the end, a good time was had by all.

Starting my playthrough. Playstyle is UV pistol starts, keyboard only, GZDoom 4.11.3 Map01:Re-Zero by @fai1025 Kills-100%, Secrets-100%, Death Count:Zero A surprising start for a megawad based on fast, frantic action. You can play it that way, but this map's nature is slow and creepy, a feeling fortified by @Alfonzo's fantastic midi Wheezer. This is a beautiful little gritty, grimy, industrial techbase with outstanding texture flow, great atmosphere, and an overall sense of menace. There's some nice bits of Doomcute, with outdoor benches and even a trash bin near the exit. The action is good with a nice mix of monsters, though the sting comes from the hitscanners. One note is that the exit is a bit odd since you have to go back upstairs to find the switch that lifts the bar in front of the exit door, One of the reasons this map is a little slow is because of . . . . . . Dat Rocket Launcher secret! I saw the rockets, so I knew it was there, and I wasn't leaving these premises without it, but dang was it hard to figure out. I saw the first obvious secret switch, and I expected that one to open up the secret, which I was certain was in the alcove by the lift near the Blue Key. Instead, that switch revealed another secret switch, which I was again certain would open up the alcove by the lift near the Blue Key. But no! Instead, it revealed a shootable switch that I didn't see for another minute or so. I shot the switch and heard a sector move. I was again certain it would be in the alcove by the lift near the Blue Key, but no, it wasn't! Where the heck is it? I wondered. Well, I found it, and then the other secret, which was a nice little gimme after the RL. I found a softlock near the exit. If you continue up to the small outside area -- Sector 393 -- you can't get back in without crouching. All in all an excellent opening map.

Woo Hoo!!!!! Congratulations, Cammy! You have got the job done and done fabulously well. All the work, toil, and even ennui of putting out a megawad is behind you now, and for the rest of us, funtime begins! :))))) We will all profit from your hard work, and based on what @Jayextee has said, it will be a grand profit indeed. Top Ten of all time? Dayum! I knew long ago when I played the first full version that this project was coming along great, but thanks to your testers, it was improved still further. I look forward to playing it and thankfully, I have time to do it now since I'll be off work probably 2 months or more -- diabetic ulcer on my left foot and possibly a ruptured Achilles tendon on my right leg -- and after that, retirement is in my future, I'm guessing this time next year if not sooner. So many maps to play, so many to make! Muhaha. :D I'll start the playthrough by next Monday if not sooner.

Map09 Played this again and there's not much to say except that I'm still very pleased with this collaboration. I didn't notice any major changes, which is fine because I was thrilled with the previous version. Perhaps there were some detail changes, but the all-important gameplay seems much the same as before, and remains a lot of fun, especially the big, bad Wolfie fight. Dead Radio next!

Hey Cammy, I want to chime in on my maps at least before you upload to idgames. Wish I had time for more! But first, I want to wish @Devalaous a full and rapid recovery from all your injuries. I'm amazed that you still provide so much help for this project. Thank you! :) @Cammy: I played Map06 today and loved all your changes. That includes the creepy new BGM which IMO fits the map like a glove. Of course, I still love the first midi you made for this map. I like the windows you added that look towards the outside secret area at the start. I considered something similar back in the day, but decided against it because I had so many monsters out there. ;D Showing players that big outdoor area is a great way to get them wanting to find the secret path, Of course, I found it, because you had the same Blue Door mechanic from the last version, and while the secret fight is still easy, it's a more fun easy. I really like the blue screen effect in that battle, too. In the main, apart from a few improvements that made some battles spicier, the map was much the same as before until you go down into the southeast nukage pools. I like the added stairway that allows for another way to attack this area, along with a cool new path to a couple secrets, as well as an easier way to see the switch that opens the Plasma Gun path. The real highlight, tho, is the final battles, which really brought the pain. I suffered most of my 6 deaths here, and had a blast dying my way to victory. I love the way you cunningly changed these end battles and tightened the map. Very good engineering on your part! I should mention that I attacked this map almost entirely backwards from the way I normally do it, and happily found it more challenging. A big win all the way around. Machine Gun Etiquette next!

Thanks for the info, @stochastic, and cheers to @Pottus for their great work! I look forward to playing it because I sense some cool atmosphere. Here's hoping you get a much better time in my map than I did. ;)