StevenC21

I'll be honest, I made this thread in part to see if I should go back and play through them again haha. I did a partial playthrough once, but it was quite a long time ago and I don't remember much. 

So far it looks like I'll be passing.

This forum is getting overrun with radical oldschoolophobes, with their "GZDooms" and their "OpenGL widescreen support". Admins need to crack down on these hateful attitudes!

The Arch-vile.

I've known about these for a long time, and the idea was always somewhat interesting. It's not a perfectly accurate description, but to me they always seemed like a bizarrely implemented proto-expansion.

For those who don't know, The Master Levels was a collection of WADs officially released by id in response to D!Zone and the likes - basically, id didn't like the shovelware wads that were getting very popular, so they... did the same thing and released it.

Unlike most level collections, The Master Levels were actually released as a folder of individual wads. Yes, that's right. That means forced pistol start on every level, having to quit the game and restart to get to the next level, and even then it was just jarring due to poorly named WADs that made you work to find the next level! The worst bit was, the longest "string" of levels was only 5 maps long. By "string" I mean levels that were connected/related to each other. Most of the levels in the pack were just random wads thrown in to fill it out the collection.

Despite this, there were a few gems. One level, known as 'The Black Tower', was relatively well received - even if certain other levels *cough* Mephisto *cough* were ridiculed. Even still, a few gems in a heap of trash won't save it, and for the most part the levels faded into obscurity. If you want to check them out for yourself, they are available on Steam for $5.

A real shame how it all turned out, honestly - as I said before, I do think it's an interesting idea. But what do you guys think? Do ya like em, hate em, or something in between?

Hey now, calling him out like that is dangerously close to discrimination!

I just am trying to make a map. The thing is, I know the mechanical aspects to map building, I don't really need instruction on that. I just can't leverage any of that knowledge to make something that doesn't look like ass. 

My current goal is to make an outside area that has the entrance to a castle in front of it. I want it to look good, so I can't make the sky texture be obviously next to the wall. I tried finding some WADs where they did similar things, and I tried to copy it. Not because I like ripping from others, but as a sort of learning experience so I could see how they did it and eventually be able to understand the ways they use the different map geometry elements to make something that looks good.

But even then! I couldn't even manage to copy. I looked at it in the 3d view of SLADE while I worked on my own map in Ultimate Doom Builder, but I couldn't figure out which sector went to what, which lines were one sided, anything. I could see how everything they did actually worked, but I couldn't manage to retain any of the information at all when I tried to recreate it. Even when I tried to go changing 1 sector at a time. I'm going to attach what is currently my best effort at making a castle-like thing. Please forgive the texture choice, I know it looks kind of garish: This is just to get the geometry down before I go looking at how to make it pretty to look at.

All in all, I would appreciate it if a few of you would please download this WAD, look at it a little bit, and then provide some criticism as to what I can do to make it better.

test.zip

This is amazing! Seriously, good job. And at 62? That just makes it all the more impressive. 

I came for an interesting discussion of Doomkid, but I stayed for the batshit insane conspiracy theories.

Still, props to Doomkid. Good video.

@Can't play on Nightmare

Go to https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/

Click "Search" at the top right. For example, lets type in "scythe2" without the quotation signs, and then hit the enter key without clicking anything else first.

You should now be here:

Just click on one of the "download mirrors" and wait until the file is done downloading.

Once the file has finished downloading, you need to open it. It should look something like this (I closed my web browser after downloading the file).

My desktop has a lot of stuff on it (my apologies), but there are two main things to see here. In the black window, there is a file called "scythe2.wad", and on the desktop there is a blue circle titled "GZDoom".

You want to hover your cursor over scythe2.wad, click, and (while holding the click) drag it over to somewhere on the desktop.

Now it should appear on your desktop somewhere. After that, you need to drag scythe2.wad onto the GZDoom icon. It should say something like "open with GZDoom". You can release the mouse now and it should open the .wad file.

Let me know if you have any questions!

I also would have preferred Doom: The Absolution.

And for the record, I think that the "real" Doom 3 is a travesty that should never have existed. But yeah, I grudgingly admit it is the real Doom 3.

Is it open source?

Thank you @Kappes Buur. Your solution fixed the issue!

There are no old versions available - including, frustratingly, from DRDTeam's "old" dev build R3012, which they link to as the last version to use .NET 3.5 (the link 404s).

Any other ideas?

I am running Windows 10 Home, and I am sure that I have installed all prerequisites, including .NET 4.6.1 and DirectX 9.0c. Strangely, GZDoom Builder runs. Only the newer version fails. There is no error message, when running from a GUI or a commandline - the program simply never opens a window in the first place.

Does anyone have any insight into this odd behavior?

Hey guys. I was the original project owner, if anyone still remembers. I am so, so sorry for not being responsible enough or having enough time to handle a project of this size. I thought I would be able to do it, but alas, I was unable. 

I would like to thank everyone who took up the torch and managed this project without me. Thank you, really. I'm so sorry I wasn't good enough. I hope that you all would be able to forgive me, in time. 

I am very happy to see that the project ultimately was released. I will take some small amount of solace in the fact that I, at the very least, managed to get it up and running. Even still, I am sorry that I was unable to see it through. I don't see any way I can truly pay reparations for this irresponsibility, but if possible, I would like to.

@hardcore_gamer I'll hand over the MAP01 slot right now.

Hey, sorry. I just got back on. Thanks for the heads up @kyolung, I'll go grab that now.

@GoatLord Do you want to test it? I have limited test capabilities.

I just discovered that D64EX for Linux doesn't support loading of external PWAD files... the Windows version doesn't have this issue, however.

I would definitely be willing to see more maps!

Could you please add the link? Its quite a chore to go search through the entire 27 page thread.

@Thedoctor989 Hey, I'll get to adding your map to the list later today. I think at this point I'm going to start compiling the maps into a wad, if nobody else is able to give theirs.

@Nevander Would you be able to at least upload what you have completed thusfar? It would be a shame to have all the work go to waste.

@Bob9001 Would you mind repasting the link here? Its getting hard to find the really old links, to be frank.

I do not understand this most ancient lore... I will study the keeping tomes and return...

I'm very glad to hear that your maps are coming along nicely, @GoatLord!