Moustachio

Playing catch-up here, but happy to join in on the fun this month! 1 Personally, I really love this map. It's a sharply-decorated, snappy opener from @Aquila Chrysaetos, pitting you against low-tier enemies that don't provide too much of a challenge. That said, they do let you try out our new set of DeHackEd weapons, and I love them. It felt refreshingly Doom-y to have the pistol be underpowered (fancy that). It encourages you to find more guns quick, and the other two DEH guns I found in this level are instantly satisfying to use. The assault rifle and (hidden) shotgun are both responsive and effective at dispatching foes, making only slight tweaks to the vanilla weapons so far. For a vanilla community-project with a major size limitation, this is a smart way to structure the arsenal, but we'll see if this gets subverted anyhow with the super-weapons. Either way, I think I'm going to have a great time with this wad because this opening level is incredibly nice, doing a lot more with 1000 lines than I thought was possible. I haven't checked out the other 1000 lines projects yet, but I certainly will now. The DEH work is superb -- including smoking vents, the aforementioned new weapons, altered enemies, and new palettes, graphics, and textures -- it all comes together to create a fresh looking old-school Doom experience. Sounds like an oxymoron, but it's actually a demonstration of just how far vanilla Doom-modding has come when stuff like this is the norm. The advanced-port compatibility is the icing on the cake for me. Liberation demonstrates a lot of skill and care in putting together the resource pack, and Aurelius pulls through with excellent DEH/Decorate/EDF work (among other duties). OTEX -- or VOTEX -- by ukiro also shines in this wad. I seriously like the palette used here; the textures look so much grittier with it on. It's a look that suits Doom a little better in my opinion. I'm playing on Crispy Doom for anyone curious. And the plasma shotgun guys are a lot of fun too. Oh right, where was I? MAP01 is short and sweet, and introduces the new elements delicately. The level looks great, and it makes fantastic use of its terrain. The secrets were cleverly designed to be on top of buildings, and I liked hunting the switches down. Having a common theme for each secret in a level makes them easy to find; perfect for MAP01. The progression was simple, but made good use of its space and resources. And it showcases a lot of mapping skill with just 1000 lines in the vanilla Doom II engine. The midi, "Last Call For All Passengers" composed by @AD_79, is rocking and drives the tone perfectly. The pumping synths made sure to let me know that I'm departing on a pretty wild ride, and the warning on the difficulty select screen all but confirms this. The skybox with the Mars dome is pretty dang cool too. Adds a bit of plausibility to the sci-fi setting. I'm really fond of this opener, and I personally find it to be quite memorable as well. Got 100% kills, items, and secrets. 2 Since the rocket launcher didn't really come into play in MAP01, I've decided to play this wad continuously. I haven't had to save yet, but I'm not barring the possibility later on. Starting out in a long hallway, there's an immediate freedom given to the player. You can decide to go straight and take care of all the enemies in the area directly, or you can hang a left and find yourself on the upper path that lowers the purple key. I love the key colors by the way: purple, green, and blue. It's a unique combination. The purple key unlocks a small dark room with a green key shrine at its center. Approaching the green key gives out a rocket launcher and unleashed a quartet of two revenants and two hell knights. Up to this point, I had not faced too much trouble. The berserk I got earlier, plus the quick switching, helped me substantially through the level. It wasn't until I got past the green key door that the map started to throw some surprises at me. A couple of waves of zombiemen greeted me past the green key door, but that didn't catch me nearly as off guard as the huge wave of plasma troopers by the plasma rifle. On my first life, I lost a good chunk of that supercharge thanks to them. The map crescendos with an arch-vile encounter that initially caught me off guard and killed me in a panic. The second time around, I was able to run away from the archie and blast him from the canyon-wise end of the opening hallway. I still didn't feel the need to use saves, since the map was still a pretty slim endeavor, taking me just about 10 minutes to complete. I found the usage of the plasma trooper really fun in this map. They can really catch you off guard if you fail to keep track of your surroundings and get ass-blasted. One encounter in particular sees you fighting a huge swarm of these guys, although thankfully equipped with a rocket launcher and with a plasma gun sitting nearby. In both my continuous and pistol-start runs, I found myself admiring the spacious industrial architecture and outdoor cliffsides and impressed that this was done under 1000 lines. The gameplay loops around the Martian factory in a really satisfying way, having you revisit areas multiple times. Again, great use of the space provided. No room feels pointless, and they all flow into each other, guiding you towards the next path. And it's a whole lot of fun. The two big zombie hordes and the handful of mid-tier monsters provided engaging fights around each key, with smaller mooks teleporting in from far away to guide you to new areas. The soundtrack is also really starting to stick out for me here. I think this midi is awesome. "Stargaze" was composed by @Psyrus, and it's really energetic and melodic, and the synth-y sound carries over from MAP01. It fits perfectly with the Mars base setting and makes me want to do nothing but kick demon ass. The only blemish on this map for me is the lack of secrets and the rather harmless trio of cacodemons out by the soulsphere, but those are more just personal nitpicks than anything. What's here is very fun, and it's another solid entry into the wad in my opinion. Chalk one more up for @Eris and @Dragonfly. 100% kills and secrets (obviously), but only 97% items this time. Drat! 3 Wow, what a map! I mean forget it, this map takes the cake for me so far. It's got it all for me: a strong and concrete setting, catchy music, fun traps, and great use of physical space. @Liberation really knows how to make em, on top of being a talented project leader. This map takes us onto the roof of a tall Transit Hub, back down to the streets and into a UAC building. At the very bottom of the city is a grimy vat of waste that I assume is either city sewage or nukage. Looks like the UAC doesn't really care to give the residents of Mars City decent living conditions. The detail in this map is legitimately impressive given the limitations. There's so much to see! It's amazing what someone can do with 1000 lines, some clever texturing, and a few neon signs. And while the map is linear, the creative progression through the level kept me engaged right along with I consider a reasonable spike in challenge. I don't wanna spoil too much. This level really just steps on the gas from the start and doesn't let up 'til it's over. I did two runs, one in Crispy Doom coming off of my continuous run, and one in Chocolate Doom from a pistol start. Crispy crashed on me at one point, and I took about 10 deaths overall, and I still had a blast mastering this map on UV. And playing this thing in Chocolate Doom was a trip. It seriously blows my mind the modding capabilities we've discovered through DeHackEd. On one of my Choco runs, I accidentally disarmed this trap. I picked up the blue key without opening the plasma trooper closet or the revenant balcony. The midi is just awesome. Psyrus blesses our ears yet again with "Isosceles" -- it's catchy, it's atmospheric, and in keeping in line with the rest of the wad, it's techno. This is the first track that's really gotten in my head so far, though I still liked the other two tracks plenty. The various pulsating layers of melodic synths all coalesce into such a pleasing rhythm, and it puts me in the same zone as playing a ZDaemon CTF session back in the day. Lower city grime is hands down my favorite map of the set so far. Really looking forward to Liberation's other mapping contribution to the wad as well as the rest of the 33 map set.

I feel like I'm starting to sound like a broken record with my blurbs on mapping, so I'll keep them short and mash MAP22 and MAP24 into one blurb. I do have a bit of history with MAP23 as well, so I'll be talking about that some. I'll also spoiler most of this, so that this doesn't clog up the rest of the discussion. And with that all being said, those are my final contributions to the wad as a mapper. I did design the boss enemy of the wad, as we will see in MAP30, but the rest of my work went to playtesting and such. We still got quite a few maps to go until the end, and 27-29 will all be quite long and quite difficult, so get ready for those. Other than that, I do want to thank my major Episode 2 contributors: @DukeOfDoom, @DFF, @DJVCardMaster, @General Rainbow Bacon, and @JadingTsunami, as well as @stewboy and @Pegleg for their work on MAP13. I also want to thank stewboy again for his musical talents, as well as LewkForce for providing some of their first bespoke tracks in the wad for MAP20 and 21. These songs also incorporate a couple themes from Interception I, which is a fun detail that we'll see once more in MAP30's theme! Soon, we'll be seeing some of the first tracks bespoke for the wad from @Darman Macray, so keep your ears peeled for those as well. And last time I forgot to mention @galileo31dos01 as the designer of the status bar, a hugely important aspect to the wad's identity. Thank you all, there wouldn't be a wad without you!

MAP18: The Golden Palace. I may have mistakenly called this MAP19 at some point. This map took me a while to finish, but a lot of it remained the same throughout development. Originally, there was a small intro where you teleport down from your spaceship, but it was even more claustrophobic than the already claustrophibic bits of the map, and it was a bit of a lackluster start. What ultimately made me remove it though was a neat skybox texture that I employed to make it look as if you were peering out over the yellow planet horizon. It looked awful in GL ports though, and I wasn't savvy enough to implement a 3D skybox at the time. I'm lucky that DukeOfDoom used the yellow liquid texture as the base for the last map because it segued perfectly into this one, which was mapped earlier. I feel as if I should have swapped the two around, since DukeOfDoom's map is a bit more difficult. The music track is one of those moments where I have to laugh at myself a little bit. I think at one point I found it to be a nice change of pace, and it's still a fine track. If it were me today though, I would either pick something a little more atmospheric or something a little more metal. The main theme of this map was to create an alien palace on a planet made of gold, and the gold is being harvested by the UAC (ever the bastards). The crazy geometry and color choices are definitely staples of my earlier work. I think it worked with MAP05 since it was in the void, but here in space, it might be a little overboard with all the non-orthogonal walls. Some of the interior is definitely a bit cramped for my playstyle now. For the second ever map I started for the project, however, I'm pretty pleased with it still. DFF's second solo map comes tomorrow, and it's one I'm looking forward to hearing the opinions on. We'll return briefly to the asteroid techbase theme, but with some twists to the formula. After that, it's JadingTsunami's MAP20, and we'll be back on Earth in no time for Episode 3. That's bizarre. I played this through on DSDA-Doom just the other day and I didn't spot any glitches like that (although I did spot a fat slime trail in the yellow slimefall room). There's only a handful of flickering lights, but not so many in the interior. I haven't seen the liquid floor glitch either. I played on Software mode though, maybe it's an OpenGL glitch. Couldn't replicate it in either mode though.

Oh my goodness, I remember that. That level was turning out to be really cool actually, with the slime lowering to provide a few interesting elevator challenges. I'd love to see you finish it up someday, somehow.

Another lengthy write up today. I did the grunt work of MAP15 and 31, and I have definitely have some comments. I first want to thank the Club as always for the wide variety of feedback. Seeing player reactions range from joy to disgust all in one night is both enjoyable and informative for me as a wad author. To start off, MAP15 took quite a while to map. I had a ton of ideas, but not the experience and stamina to put them into practice correctly. It took quite a few revisions over about a year before I was happy with it. And with that being said, I'm still happy with how this one turned out. I'm grateful for the kind words the Club has written about it as well! :) The final fight with the Cyberdemons outside was easily the most fun for me to make, followed by the platforming challenge. I do love me some big outdoor fights, as those who've played Atonement can attest to. Platforming is something I would like to revisit in the future, and we'll be seeing more of it later this month... The secret soulsphere in the northeastern corner of the map is locked away behind a lift with no tag. I assume that I had meant to do a Door Repeatable action on that line and not a Switch Repeatable. As for MAP31, let's just say I don't really play it for fun these days. While playing along with the wad club, I hit this map and immediately let out a chuckle... and then a groan. There was a time where I thought that this sort of a challenge map would make for a fun super secret level, but looking back, I certainly wouldn't go about it in this way in the future. Three Cyberdemons in a courtyard that I specifically designed to be difficult to fight them in. If you just go for the Keens and dip, it's not the worst, and I do like how I designed some of the Keens to be hard to hit at certain angles. UV-maxing it though? It's a bit of a chore if I'm being honest. I mean dang, I must have had a lot of patience back in 2019. And you probably wouldn't be surprised to learn that it didn't take very long to map. With MAP31, I experimented in a way that I really don't regret mapping, but the way I decided to publish it does slightly haunt me. It's the only secret map, and that's a bit of a let down personally. Oh well. I still learned a lot from making it, and reading that some of the Club gelled with the premise of the map was a real treat! As for why there's only one secret map? That basically came down to time and energy. The wad was already well past its various due dates and promises, and once the hype had settled down, it was hard to get more mappers to contribute. To compensate, we pulled DFF's Cargo Cult, the original MAP31, to MAP27, and moved Beamfleot to MAP31. I wish I had the time and energy back then to give it a proper secret level, but what's done is done. Focusing our energy on the main 30 levels was a smart decision overall. Additional Trivia: And with that, we're about halfway through! Hyped to see some posts about DJV's MAP16 over the next 21 and 1/2 hours, I love the atmosphere in that map.

I agree with the others here, this is a very promising first map! The purple theme is really cool, don't mind seeing it used every now and again to add some flavor to a wad. Another thing I don't mind seeing every now and again is a map author who composes their own map midis. I personally love the midis here, they're energetic! And I'm a sucker for wads with bespoke soundtracks. After UV Maxing this map, I gotta say I really like it. It's got a lot of character the way the voodoo doll scripting is used, and seeing them used in a vanilla compatible wad is a neat novelty that doesn't get used enough. Another thing that stuck out to me was the way secrets are hidden. The switches are embedded deeply into environmental details, which encourages you to pay extra attention to every detail. Reminds me of Grove, but I had a much easier time UV Maxing this map. Great job for a first map! My stats for my first run: Kills: 131/131 Items: 119/119 Secrets: 8/8 Time: 18:43

I gotta say, all the praise that @DFF has received on MAP11 is well earned. It was the primary reason I asked DFF to join me in leading the wad, and they ended up being MVP. Especially during the times I couldn't do it alone. Hats off to DFF for consistently going above and beyond in their Doom career. Same goes to the rest of the E1 team, including @Big Ol Billy for MAP06, @joe-ilya for MAP07, @DJVCardMaster for MAP02, @Misty for MAP03, and @DMPhobos for MAP04 and part of MAP03. The work they did consistently goes above and beyond what they were asked to do, and the wad wouldn't be what it is without their help. I'd also like to thank @stewboy, @Pegleg, @NuclearPotato, and @Quantum Dranger for their contributions mapping, playtesting, doing music, or otherwise helping out with E1. With that said, we still have two episodes to explore, and I have been excitedly watching the club acclimate to the new environment. Maps 12 and 13 actually share a bit of history together. The runabout at the end of MAP12 was lifted from MAP13 and was DFF's doing. I brought it into MAP12 as a way to maintain a bit of continuity. MAP12 as a whole was mostly a back-to-basics level. It was one of the last levels I did, and it replaced an earlier MAP12 that was a little less welcoming. I set out to make a good ol' fashioned Doom techbase with stock textures, hoping the breezy gameplay would provide a nice breather for the start of E2. I really enjoyed working on it though. The design unfurled very naturally, and as one of the last of many maps I did over three years, it was my personal victory lap. MAP13 was an awesome collab map to watch unfold. I started it off with one room, similar to MAP09. But this time, a clear theme started to come about using all these different elemental biomes hidden in deep space. Each member wove pieces into earlier sections, which led to some cool interconnectivity. At some point, I needed to create a section to house the yellow key. I was reading on Boom effects at the time, and I noticed that the fake floor/ceiling effect can also change the colormaps on the fly. It was the colored bloodfalls in MAP04 that first tipped me off to this effect. The colormaps could have used a better underwater palette, but it's still a really neat effect. One that became forgotten with the advent of ZDoom. The inside of the sealab was my design, and I helped design the optional crate bay. As for the rest of the map, stewboy, Pegleg, and DFF all really brought it home with some creative theming and some cool voodoo-doll scripting near the end. DFF and I went through at the end and did bugfixes and ammo balance. Gotta fuel up the runabout. Yup, just verified that this happens. I'll push out a patched file on /idgames for any softlock-type shenanigans (and any other game-breaking bugs). Thankfully, only a couple softlocks have been found so far, so it's looking to be a very minor patch. I'll wait until the month is over to push it out. I'll also throw in @galileo31dos01's MAP28 patch for the sake of completeness.

I think that was me (not trying to Doom gaslight you). I just felt like the amount of enemies that you were trapped in with before was a bit of a cheap shot considering how small that room is. That's it! Glad we didn't change the sky for E1. I tend to throw out some crazy ones from time to time lol.

MAP10: Eldritch Apparitions I honestly wish I called this map Belly of the Beast (Pt. II) now. That aside, I have a lot to say about it. This map was the most challenging to make of the set (amongst a roster of maps that had already challenged me creatively). It was one of the last maps I finished. The boss was initially way more cryptic (and, frankly, looked awful). I had to do a complete redesign of that whole arena, and I'm really glad I did! The detailing in this map was experimental for me as well. I would take several circular chunks of levels and paste them around on top of each other. This would quickly create a set of sectors that I could then use as a base for all the masses of flesh, using height variation. Liberal use of the vertex randomizer tool kept the geometry feeling alive while I worked on it. One of the coolest a-ha! moments I've had so far as a mapper. Revisiting this theme for Skulltiverse was a lot of fun, despite having to effectively do the whole map in one day instead of five, but that was entirely on me anyhow. I can't remember exactly why I decided to change the sky to blue. It was green at one point, but I think I just liked the way the blue looked. I continue to enjoy reading all of your write-ups and interpretations. As far as MAP09 goes, I really only contributed first room and the northern room with the red key door (which can be opened without the key apparently?). Plus, I made some later gameplay edits. The exit was all DFF, and it gave me a good direction for MAP10. The whole point of MAP09 was to pass it around so that various members could add a room onto it. I set aside three maps for this particular concept, but only two of them really took off (the other being MAP13). And with that all being said, set aside plenty of time for MAP11, if you can, because it's the real beast of the episode. I'd say an hour and a half should be nice and comfortable if you really want to take it easy.

If you can believe it, both of these sections are actually mine. Pegleg's section comes in at the very end (he did the lava room after the YK door). As far as how they ended up feeling so different, I have two guesses: The eastern area was done much later on in development, so my style must have actually evolved mid-map. IIRC, I did the eastern portion after Pegleg sent back his ending room. My other guess has to do with the fact that this map was actually originally designed for Episode 3 at around MAP24. Quite a leap in map placement! Although, considering the relative difficulty and complexity, it's a no-brainer why I moved it so far towards the front. Right on the money! :) Seems like you're having a Star Trek movie curse type situation here. Fascinating. Not a whole lot more to say about MAP08 behind-the-scenes-wise (and besides, blind-takes are far, far more fun for me to read).

Would have been fitting for a shitty late 90s ska punk band.

It was a learning experience, and I do certainly share the blame myself in this aspect. However, it’s quite interesting to see different players end up with different ammo balances at the end of each map. I wonder if we can draw a correlation between first time players on UV and ammo starvation, as MtPain27 alluded to.

My contributions to MAP01 and MAP02 were less pronounced in comparison to the other mappers that worked on them, so there wasn't a whole lot for me to add on them. With the first map, a lot of the look came about from NeedHealth and DFF. Quantum_dranger provided the very first draft of MAP01, which would eventually become the base for what would become the chaingun secret. My biggest contribution to the first couple levels was a large portion of the gameplay in MAP02, particularly around the yellow key area. I did a lot of the detailing on and added a few secrets to that map as well. Across the first two maps, I also did a lot of ammo rebalancing, especially on UV. MAP03 and MAP04 went largely untouched on my end aside from being shifted around in the map order. These maps were dynamite when they came in. MAP03 in particular started opening my eyes to voodoo doll scripting, a hugely important aspect of Boom mapping. Now, with all that having been said, MAP05: Astral Castle is my first solo contribution to the wad, and it's also the first map that was finished for the wad back in 2018. I believe this predates MAP26, which General Rainbow Bacon submitted around the same time. The biggest challenge for me was getting the look of the map right and combining it with good gameplay. Trying this sort of hodge-podge aesthetic was a tall order for me, as I was much less experienced when I started my first draft. This was both my first limit-removing level and my first Boom level, and I wanted to make something that couldn't come close to running in vanilla, so I really went wild with the openness. Later on I would go back and revise the map with some serious gameplay edits, including adding the plasma gun secret among others. I still find it a little amusing that this map made it all the way to the finish. A few revisions and some luck played a part in that, I believe. One more small piece of MAP05 trivia: for the longest time, the MAP02 midi was attached to this level, which was also the first custom midi submitted for the project I believe, courtesy of stewboy. I eventually found the song to be more fitting for MAP02, and I chose a different track for MAP05.

Great write-up overall, really fun to read! I did want to comment on this point because this may be an example of some cross-port trickery going on. The Berserk secret is indeed hinted at, but with some Boom effects. The switch that opens the berserk shortcut is hidden behind some transparent lava, which is a really cool effect but it might be broken on some rendering options. I’m curious if that’s what happened here because it seems to have made an otherwise neat secret harder to find.

Wow, didn’t expect to see this thread! As I’m reading through the comments, I’m getting a feel for who’s into it and who’s not so hot on it. It’s very interesting to read so far! I’ll do my absolute best to keep up with the thread and provide any insights on how things went behind the scenes, similar to what @DFF is doing (and beating me to the punch at!). DFF made a great point earlier as well. There are longer maps on average in here, but I still recommend checking them out. There are great maps tucked into the back half that merit not being overlooked.

Happy to see this released, this is a dynamite mapset! It was a tremendous amount of fun to contribute to this project. The dehacked weapons and enemies are some of the finest around, so much so that this almost feels like a different game. Playing through the final version is going to be a real treat this Halloween.

Here's what will likely be the final version of MAP09: Temple del Sol. I changed a few things, nothing major unless you're playing on UV. Even on UV, the map should play mainly the same. I've just reduced the ammo count and added a couple boss monsters, but it's still quite a breezy map. Changelog: And what happens to Ray's sunglasses when he goes God mode anyway?

@galileo31dos01 That's an MBF21 feature, that moonwalking. I thought it was amusing and made it harder to mow down enemies en masse with the chainsaw, so I left it in.

Wow, I certainly picked a bad time to go AWOL. Glad to see Interception II getting some love!

Here's a short techbase map set in Herschel Crater, on Saturn's moon, Mimas. The UAC has set up a space colony overrun by demons. What could the UAC have hidden under the Miman soil to warrant such an invasion? I added a few new monsters through Extended DeHackEd and MBF21 extensions. Tested with DSDA-Doom 0.24.3. Uses a UMAPINFO lump to show a text screen once you finish. I used the Rowdy Rudy II assault rifle, shotgun, and plasma rifle as references. The chaingun is new; it is incredibly powerful, but has a long wind down. The fist is 5x more powerful, and the chainsaw is 3x more powerful. This is quite a hard map on UV, but difficulty settings are implemented. The custom monsters might catch you off guard first time, but after getting used to them, it should feel like a fair challenge. Takes about 10 minutes to UV-Max. I made this map as sort of a pilot to gauge interest for a new community project using these resources. Many of the resources are from Realm667 or from users on Doomworld. Full credits are included in the text file, rescreds.txt. The MIDI is "Dreadnaught" by Mark Klem. Download: idgames Achive Google Drive Mirror Screenshots:

Speaking of updates, here's one more update for Temple del Sol. Changelog:

Ending my relationship with Vanilla, starting a whole new one with MBF21 + Extended DeHackEd. EDIT: More BEX Goodness:

Cookin' up something real special...

Crispy Doom: 4 points DSDA-Doom: 3 points LZDoom: 2 point Some commentary: Crispy is my favorite overall. I love the vanilla look and feel at 480p, and all of the quality of life features are super excellent! Runs smoother than melted butter as well. As for the others, DSDA-Doom is by far the most compatible source port, and pretty much knocks PrBoom+ out of the water in terms of QoL. I use LZDoom for highly compatible split screen co-op. It’s messy to set up, but it is so much fun after you do. Being able to do some gameplay mod couch co-op with friends is a real treat. The id Unity Port I appreciate for more symbolic reasons. I arguably don’t use it too often, but when I boot it up, it retains that classic feel. It’s great to know that id is still supporting Doom as a game and supporting the community by featuring custom wads and even DEH support. k8vavoom is simply the most technically impressive source port I’ve ever used. Doom 3 style stencil shading on the dynamic lights (which means floor and ceiling height differences cast a shadow now, unlike GZDoom’s shadow maps). There are some bugs to iron out, and the options menu is super overwhelming, but it’s so cool to try out different mods with the new lighting system. It feels modern and immersive. EDIT: I cannot believe I haven’t even mentioned Chocolate Doom despite vanilla being kinda my forte right now. Chocolate Doom is a beautiful source port. It’s just Doom, no bells and whistles, and it’s magical playing wads in vanilla. By stripping away all the advanced features of other ports, you’re really forced to see Doom for what it is — a 1993 DOS game. For better or worse I suppose, but I would argue that Doom from 93 is still very playable and fun, even in the modern age.