Maximum Matt

Memento Icarus 3: TNTonia

In that last room of E1M9, the monster closet next to the exit switch opens then closes again, I'm pretty sure it's the only one in Episode 1 (if not the whole of Doom 1) that does this (not stay open). The linedef opens both the closet and a nearby door with imps, so when you attack the imps, the specters get alerted and emerge, then by the time you've killed the imps and ridden the elevator back up, the closet has closed again, making stooges like me wonder where the extra specters came from.

A prequel? Nice - explain why they went to the Congo and stuff

Plutonia 11: The Russian Sequel. Has a good ring to it, somebody get on that

Memento Mori II

Icarus. Do it.

Whaddaya call the first shotgunner in Underhalls??

...and a secret level.

But seriously, Toxin Refinery is my favourite map in Episode 1, even though most people prefer Computer Station.

That's one awkward jump to get to that secret in map06, tho

I would like a proper merger with the Mortal Kombat franchise, because let's face it, that's what Doom is becoming with 2016 and Eternal. I want all the classic characters, I want to do combos from a first-person perspective, all the cool stuff like Sub-Zero freezing abilities, Fatalities, health bar in the top-left corner, "GET OVER HERE!!!", the levels looking like the classic MK fighting arenas, the Toasty guy etc...

And Arch-vile

Chaingunners behind false walls.

TNT is the Doomcutiest IWAD of the bunch.

Yep, the only way Mr. Doomguy can actually jump is with the help of a giant yellow mutant demon monster thing.

Oracle by Jim Flynn and Scott Harper

Aw hell no.

They are still bastards tho

I agree that it's one crappy book cover, they should have gone with a pic of the dude like this -

^^Was that one with a big maze? And no exit? I love the action-packed screengrabs of the player shooting at the goddamn walls. Okay, I'm getting curious, where do I get lists of the levels in these collections?

So I was obsessing over Episode I again, thinking about it's ground-breakinglyness and how realistic in general it was back in the day, and I started pondering over the usage of drop-down lifts and how they specifically work, how they are implemented in levels, and how Lord Romero telegraphed the way to use them. As we all know, the only movement of the level architecture is sectors raising and lowering. With Doom's verticality, the ways to get a player to navigate up and down floors of different heights is either by stairs, teleporters or lifts. Romero (as well as Hall and Petersen) could have made the lifts with buttons to activate them, but instead decided to go with 'auto-lifts', that immediately lower when stepped on, which of course is more economical when making a level, and makes sense in the futuristic space station setting. When approached from a lower level, however, you can either go up to it and press use to drop it down,or have a linedef near it to make it auto-drop as you approach. You need the lift textures and flats, and shape it and the surrounding texture to make it look like a lift. It lowers to the floor, waits three seconds, the raises up - and curiously, when you step off the lift, it will drop down again. More on this later. Now if all this sounds painfully obvious to you, well I'm just trying to get my mind back to when I first played this eons ago, and how this particular environmental element is presented to the player throughout the episode. Let's go chronamalogically, shall we... The first proper encounter with drop-down lifts occurs in map 2. (Of course there's one in Hangar, but it's a secret within a secret, triggered by a walkover linedef sprinting distance away, that I'm willing to bet NOBODY ever found on their first playthrough. It's actually kinda bizarre and fascinating that he put this type of secret in the first map, actually added it in after the first registered version as an afterthought of sorts.) The opening room in Nuclear Plant has two drop-down lifts; one in the south-west corner, that has a walkover linedef that the zombie positioned there immediately triggers upon sighting you, so that you see it lower, in a very nice piece of environmental storytelling. The other one is in the central building, which lowers upon approach and rewards the player's exploration with the first non-secret shotgun of the game - at least when playing in HMP. Of course, if you're playing in UV you most likely already have it from the previous level, because of all the shotgunners, and so also in UV there's an imp up here too, that gets alerted to your presence at your first shot and does its little dance with the lift trying to get down while you're clearing out the main room. Honestly I wonder if Bromero anticipated that the imp would have difficulty getting down that lift, so it can surprise the player while he/she is fighting the zombies. These two lifts in this room familiarize the player with the lift movements - lowering, getting on, raising, getting off, the lift lowering again, the realization that falling down before waiting for it to raise again DOESN'T hurt you, even pressing on the side of it will call it down for you. Nice and neat. The other two lifts in the level showcase dropping down from a higher level, both iconic - the little nook at the top of the big staircase west of the red door that drops you down into a little cramped room with enemies in your face, that has a little window to a secret area, displaying the delicious chainsaw - this lift also has another walkover linedef so as not to confuse the player too much (maybe Romero was afraid the player may think they were stuck there). And of course, the big lift nearby that lowers into the legendary ambush room with imps on the high platforms, which according to Doom lore was the first room that truly showcased the verticality of the game engine. Unlike the previous lift, this one is very clearly displayed as one, by the path leading to it and the lift flat used. Oh yeah, and that final little drop-down lift in the exit room, that jump-scares the player with that bastard imp, can't forget about that one. Next up is the Refinery Of Toxin, my personal favorite, and I'm constantly amazed by how interconnected this level is - ALL the drop-down lifts here are in or associated with secret areas, which in turn are associated with the secret exit. The first on you see is through a window in the third room you encounter, and again Lord Romero deliberately positions enemies next to the walkover linedef, so when you enter the room you'll see it lower in the distance - very clever that. This one's textured like a regular wall, but lowers on your approach, signalling that not all is what it seems in this facility. Then you got those two ledges in the yellow keycard room that lower from a linedef in the stairway, that only the very observant will hear and know to run to, a very devious secret indeed, and the pillar that the soul sphere is on, which is more an item platform than a lift but I'm counting because everybody jumped on it and rode it up and looked triumphantly through the window as the level's geometry further clicked together in your head. Romero is a genius. And then there's that OTHER lift in the secret-within-a-secret-within-a-secret that simultaneously lowers on your approach AND opens the secret door to the room with the first lift, in a nice piece of symmetry. The final lift is in the secret exit room opposite the switch, very well hidden with no clues to its existance, unless of course the player noted the rocket box on the platform with the imp when they went outside. Very nice. Next up we got Tom Hall joint Command Control, and this one's interesting because both of the drop-down lifts have buttons to activate them, as well as linedefs that trigger them on approach. (The one in the big tech room actually has the trifecta - you can also activate it by pressing directly on it.) Is this the influence of "Mr. Realism" Hall? After all, this level WAS originally designed to be a "barracks" or something, before Bromero turned it into a Third Reich Museum. (citation needed) The big lift right after the yellow key door in Phobos Labs is what gave me inspiration to write this epic textwall. For starters, it's only the second or third time you are at the top of a lift to ride down. On HNTR and HMP this would signal to the player that you are about to lower into the unknown, and is suitably ominous. On UV, however, this thing's got enemies on it, which of course come straight at you and trigger the lift to lower, and of course gives the player possibly their first proper glimpse of the bugged enemy behaviour: getting hung up on the edges of lowered lifts. Seriously, 95% of the time you're gonna see at least one of them stuck there helpless for a few seconds in that doorway while the lift is down, giving you a free shot at them. More bizarrely, the other two lifts behind this door (the imp nooks) get triggered by linedefs right next to a pair of pinkys that come running for you as soon as they hear you (on UV), which of course lets the imps down to come after you as well and further trigger the main lift even more, so that when you have taken them all out, that particular ambush has been nullified before you've even gotten to it. Not sure what the Bromero was thinking with that one... Ahh well, at least one of those nooks leads to one of the most interesting secret areas of Episode 1. And I suppose I'll count those pillars in the centre of this room 'drop-down' lifts as well, coz that's what they do when you go over and hit that switch in the nukage (quick side note: this level has more mandatory running through nukage than the rest in this episode). We all know their behaviour now, but again, think back to when you first encountered these: disguised as regular pillars, they drop down suddenly for a nasty ambush while your back is turned; then when you get on them, they'll slowly rise back up - if you chicken out and jump off early, you'll observe them reset, and you have to work out where the trip point is; ride them all the way up, you'll realize you WON'T get squished and there's a helpful button to get you back down. Add to this the jumps to the tantalizing items on the ledges, and the glimpse of the soul-sphere outside to the vigilant observer, and this particular brand of liftige is yet another pioneering moment of Romeronicity. The Processing of Central ain't that much to write home about, lift-wise; you got the one in the nukage basin through the red door that leads to a tasty soul-sphere (again encouraging the exploration of nukage areas); this one is only triggered by a linedef at the front of the tunnel and cannot be lowered manually. You got the one just before the central yellow door, and I tell ya, it's fun watching that spectre try to ride it down (I seriously just watched it for like three minutes getting constantly hung up on that damn lift). Like all the other issues regarding monster properties and behaviour (getting hung up in doorways, infinite heights etc) I always have to ask myself if the creators of Doom wanted to fix these glaring errors and didn't have time to, or simply didn't care enough. Anyway... You've also got that lowering wall trap thingy near the blue key door, which I just realized is a re-hash of the one in E1M1, right down to the wall texturing - I guess I should have mentioned it then. This trap contains the classic Romero error (or Romerror) of having demons or spectres stuck together, actually a reoccurant theme in his maps. And then of course you have another soul-sphere pillar, linedef activated, at the end of the long sewer passage secret, which of course is visible from inside the northern-most end of the structure, another brilliant piece of level design. Computer Station has some iconic drop-down lifts, like the one that leads to the yellow key, the one in the room after the yellow key doors (that weird structure with the rocket launcher you ride up into with a foot-level window ringing it), another example of the classic "drop-down ambush pillar" that can be ridden up and jumped off of for access to secret areas, the one IN one of these secret areas that allows access back to the normal play area (that is the first example of the ol' "bonk yer head on the ceiling"-type lifts), and a couple more on the western side of the map (for the tech-ass chainsaw room and the red key vantage point, respectively) that are also thoughtfully linedef- and touch-activated, and yeah, when considered alongside all the other awesome things about this level (like the interconnectivity, the windows to various other areas, its' non-linearity, the monster closets, creative secrets etc etc) makes you realize that this is TRULY Romero's masterpiece of Doom I and fully deserving of this unwieldly run-on sentance that I should probably end pretty soon, all hail Bromero and that. Then there's Sir Petersen's Phobos Anomaly, which of course only has the one drop-down lift to access the iconic Bruiser Brothers (tm) star-chamber, which gets it's own dramatic build-up via one long-assed hallway, and, in the only other piece of level geometry tampering in version 1.666 other than E1M1, has a non-secret secret button in one of the baron 'tombs' that can re-lower it, should one want to backtrack for whatever reason. (And just out of morbid curiosity, how many people have lured the barons back into the starting room to fight them? It just seems like something to do, really.) And finally, you've got Milhouse Base, which I just now realise I should have analysed after E1M3 for continuity's sake, but it's too late now, screw it. You got that room on the east side of the map, directly ahead fo where you start, with some enemies standing on the damn platform so you can see it lower as you approach. There's the iconic "imp pillars" that lower when you skip over the nukage to get to the goodies. I'm not sure if that was particularly scary to people back in the day, but I do remember it as a standout set-piece of the level... You got those inconspicuous drop-down lifts in the corners of those rooms that leads to the sweet nukage secret in the south-east part of the map; you got the one in the nukage trench in the exit room (and I'm just realising how much mandatory nukage-trudging you gotta go through on this one, and even before E1M5!), and this one does NOT have a helpful linedef before it so it lowers on your approach, even though your feet are burning as you run toward it; and of course there's the secret room with little "jump across all the platforms and try to snag all the items" game, which I'm sure frustrated the hell out of people back in the day (it certainly did to me), but at least it wasn't anything mandatory *coughChasmcough*. This right here, more than any other lift I believe, hammered home the concept of the 'invisible lines' that activate such lifts. So yeah, that's Episode One (no, not THAT) for ya. Did John Romero invent and perfect the concept of drop-down lifts? Certainly, Sandy Petersen, mastermind of Episode 2 and 3, was a little hesitant to use them compared to JR - his first proper usage of them doesn't occur until E2M4, and hardly any more in his levels (he seems much more enamoured with stairs, stair-builders and teleporters). I mean, you got that "collapsing bridge" in E3M1, you got that bunch of shotgunner nooks in E3M2, and you've got that big-assed red wall in E3M7, but none of these truly count as drop-down lifts in the traditional sense (and Gate To Limbo can go fuck itself anyway). It just seems ol' Sand-man wasn't really comfortable incorporating them in Doom I. And of course, we gotta talk about mongrel-ass Episode 4, with ol' Mr. McGee liking himself a drop-down platform or two, including that on in Hell Beneath that you can trigger from the top without dropping into the nukage, if you're badass enough, and the whole mess of lifts in the otherwise unremarkable Unruly Evil. Lord Romero casually decides to reinvent the concept of teleporters with the one in the middle of Against Thee Wickedly, a true pro-level map, which transports you to different parts of the map dependant on which SIDE you take it, accessed only through drop down lifts in nukage. Mr. Shawn Green (who apparently has the shotgun) has quite a few neat ones in Sever The Wicked, despite the level itself being a bit weird (see: staircase secrets, torch secrets), and Unto The Cruel has those lowerable pillars in the water that gives you way too many powerups. They Will Repent likewise has a bunch of neat lifts, and a very cool non-secret lowerable pillar for a box of rockets, thankyou Mr. Willits (or should I thank Ms. Chasar for that?). And of course Dr. Sleep invented insta-doors. They're not lifts or anything, but I just like to mention that. Doom II, of course, is another paragraph entirely. I'm not gonna detail all the drop-down lifts in this monstrosity, in fact I'll go into bullet points for the most noteworthy ones (because that's how good I am) - * The ones in Entryway that have buttons on their sides to lower them, and was probably the way most people learned of the "infinite z-height switch" thingy; * The lowering crate in The Focus - seriously, crates don't do that in real life, learn your damn crateroom lore, McGee; * the classic imp traps at the start of The Waste Tunnels - I bet that scared the shit outta you the first time; * The beyond-classic giant lift with the protective bars in The Crusher, a true 'lift' if I ever saw one; * Ol' Sandy making up for his previous deficiency in the drop-down lift department by being obnoxious with them in The Pit; * Those super-long ones at the end of "O" For Romero; * The one near the end of Downtown that seems to be of the same model as the ones in E1M5 and 7 (and apparently can softlock the player under certain conditions); * All the cute little turrety things inn the Innmost Dens with the chaingunners onn themm; * That lowering/raising crossroads lift thing near the end of Industrial Zone, which for ages convinced me that level-over-level WAS possible in Doom in some way; * Those big giant box ones at the end of Suburbs; * The ol' "secret passageway halfway up an elevator" trick in Temenemts; * The lowerable rocky platform things in the nukage of Nirvana; * The really cool one with bars at the start of Catacombs; * That one behind the blue door in Bloodfalls, that makes you wait for the lift while a hell knight comes walking up, and more often than not is in yo face when you ride to the top (always seems to get me!!); * The fact that the whole first room in The Abandoned Mines is a drop down lift (!?!); * Well there's that whole area that sinks into the ground in that demonic room near the end of Monster Condo; * That one little bloodfall lift in Spirit World; * And of course, the giant pillar in Icon Of Sin. And you bet your ass I ain't gonna be detailing the lifts in Final Doom. So what's my friggin' point, you might be asking? To circle around to the start, simply the idea that like so much else in Doom during the development process that got eventually dropped (RPG elements, interactive computer walls, decorative sprites like chairs, realistic building geometry, NPCs, the points system etc), the concept of elevators got simplified for the sake of streamlining the game, to make the whole experience faster and more intuitive. The whole idea of implementing lift doors, buttons, level numbers etc was just tossed in favour of "see this texture here, press it and it might lower". And then you've got the amateur mappers who abuse this - like not putting any different textures on the lift, so it just looks like any regular ol' wall (which demands a customary wallhump), or the classic of not pegging the textures so it looks like a friggin' curtain is coming down or something. A LACK of detail in your lifts can be a major headache too. So yeah, I just think that, for a level mechanic that serves the game's (at the time) revolutionary verticality, the good ol' drop-down lifts, or plats, or down-wait-up-stay sectors, are quite interesting when you think about them (and are also a massive Doom tragic). Would the game had've been the same if it was totally constructed of just stairs and teleporters to get you up and down the levels? Aw HELL no man c'mon, that would look totally stupid. All hail Romero, Hall and Petersen. Stay tuned for my next long-ass thesis, where I go on extended drunken rant about stair-builders.

There's actually nearly 3,500 levels. And yes, those two levels are lit. So is DANTE (the other main one by John "Dr. Sleep" Andersen), ORACLE (by Jim Flynn), the RAVEN series (by Tim Willits) and NJDOOM, possibly the earliest fan-made megawad, predating Memento Mori

I may as well go on a quick rant right here about how much better Doom II would've been if it had carried over the episodic structure from Doom I - it would've forced pistol starts at least three times in the game, and c'mon, who wouldn't like starting from scratch and fighting to get back all your weapons again multiple times??

It's not, but most of the levels are from Max Doom, some with alterations to make them more playable/less crap - https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Heroes_2