Cammy

First of all, thank you for the shoutout, @StarSpun5000! Rest assured it is well within my power to commit some truly heinous crimes against music. You should have heard some of the garbage I was uploading to Newgrounds when I was 12... I shudder to think of it. Despite knowing from the start of the AV pack's production that I wanted to compose a track for Valley of Echoes so as to leave no stone unturned, I'll admit it: I've never played it. I watched tatsurd-cacocaco's run a couple times to familiarize myself with its gameplay and aesthetics, and I seem to recall running around with idclip and iddqd, but I've never sat down and actually played the map. To be honest it's actually almost rare that I play all the way through the maps I score these days. I think I might have OD'd on the practice early on in my Doom-composing career, in which I would exhaustively play and notate maps before, during, and after the musical process, often watching playthroughs both casual and speed-focused and seeing if everything felt like it was lining up... There are few faster ways to suck the fun out of composing than to trick yourself into thinking any of that is necessary. A casual romp through the level - and preferably a quick chat with the mapper - will suffice to get you on the right track 99 times out of 100. At least, it does for me. In VoE's case, that translates to me still not having gotten around to playing it. But hopefully some day!

In my opinion, one of the best things about TNT: Evilution was the lack of clear adherence to any particular overarching design tenets. Like, in the first ten maps alone, can it really be said that Human BBQ, Power Control, Wormhole, Prison, and Stronghold have pretty much anything in common with each other - in gameplay or in aesthetic - aside from a general tech vibe and some shared custom textures? Most people who like TNT are probably drawn to different aspects of it because of its sheer variety, so in my opinion, it is most in the spirit of a TNT followup project to embrace that variety and team spirit. I think TNT:R did a great job of that overall, having a nice blend of distinct mapping and musical styles with a greater level of polish than the original. Can't wait to finally be free enough to sit down and play TNT:D so I can see how it carries on that legacy!

Hey guys, hope you're all good - sorry to say I'm going to have to relinquish my claim of the MAP21 slot, just got too much going on right now to comfortably make it. Still planning on finishing up a text screen MIDI for this when I can, though! Good luck, everybody!

Absolutely love the look of the weapons you modeled. The perfect blend of recognizable designs with additional bells and whistles to add some of your own flavor, and the mid-poly aesthetic is a godlike fit for Doom and gives me all sorts of nostalgia for games of the early 2000s. I hope you plan on giving us a weapon sprite replacement wad at some point so I can inject your take on the SSG directly into my veins. Good luck with the demons and other living creatures - regardless of medium, they're always way harder to handle. So many more moving parts to worry about. Keep going!

Congrats on beating Fire and Ice! Again, can't stress enough that that is a serious accomplishment. I wouldn't dare keep you from Ancient Aliens any longer (get ready for a damn good time), but as for further down the line, here are some WAD recommendations not on that list. Defaulting to my favorite megawad: Struggle - Antaresian Legacy. If you end up enjoying Valiant, Struggle should be right up your alley. Both wads feature extensive edits to the core gameplay of Doom, but Struggle takes it even further. It's huge, fast, aggressive, beautiful, and so, so much fun. I'd recommend playing Valiant first though, because Valiant is both easier and closer to vanilla, so it makes for a good taste-test. Don't get it confused though, Valiant is an absolutely incredible megawad in its own right - by no means is it 'Struggle but less'. It's an essential Doom experience. Probably the most famous megawad not on the list is Eviternity, which I'm sure you've at least heard about. If you want to marvel at sights and sounds the likes of which you've never seen in Doom before, blasting through one of the smoothest and fairest difficulty curves ever to the tune of a borderline-peerless soundtrack, Eviternity is for you. It's around the same difficulty as Valiant and Ancient Aliens, and it's a goddamn blast. I hope you enjoy Alien Vendetta when you come around to it, as well! That's another one of my favorites (hence the existence of a certain music pack for it, wink wink), full of very impressive and fun maps, but I'm of the opinion it's considered harder than it really is. Parts of it are pretty intense, but most of its challenge comes from overcoming long and strict maps. If you're careful about ammo and playing with saves, then only a couple AV maps should really give you trouble.

Damn, this is a great year for megawads! Excited to give this one a whirl. Depending on how my schedule goes, I might be able to throw some midis at you guys in a couple months.

Thanks for sharing all your experiences with us, Jokin - this is a pretty awesome thread in both paper and practice! Congratulations on beating Plutonia. It's not an easy wad to take down your first time, but I've always been of the opinion that once you beat Plutonia you've built a solid enough baseline of skill to be able to play and enjoy just about any popular mapset that isn't super-slaughtery. The Doom world is your oyster now! That said, I'm pretty surprised Scythe is next up on the difficulty progression. If you handled Plutonia then you're going to smack the first 20 maps of Scythe around with little to no issue, but do not let that fool you into thinking the ending will be the same. Most of Scythe's last ten maps are absolutely vicious, and MAP30 in particular is on a level far beyond anything you're likely to have played by this point (assuming this thread documents all, and not just most, of your Doom-playing). Even for the pros, it is tough. Consider yourself warned. That said, Ancient Aliens and Valiant are on the horizon, so if you can push through, you'll be diving headlong into two of the greatest megawads ever made. Stick with it!

AUGER;ZENITH is pretty wild.

Congrats on the release, VF! Gonna have to give this one a play for sure, screenshots look great.

God dammit, why do I have to be the fourth person to reply to this legendary thread? This sucks. I'm not honored at all. Mom, please come pick me up.

Thanks so much! The screenshot you're describing is MAP19: Port Fury. The architecture and geometry is almost identical between the original and the remaster, but the color coordination and lighting are significantly reworked, leading to those deep dark blues you're describing. Glad you enjoy it, hopefully the full wad lives up to your expectations! As far as a sneak peek is concerned, I have been entertaining the idea of releasing a demo version containing the first five maps, just to whet people's appetites and show off what to expect from the remaster. I could potentially get that arranged within a day or two if people would like to see it!

For the most part, the changes to the amounts and placement of the monsters actually aren't as significant as they look - just a matter of the monsters deciding to wander in different directions while I got in position to take my screencaps. There are definitely sections of the wad where monster placements and items are switched around, though - including some fights which are either reworked completely or outright new - but I've done my best to keep it so that it's done in service of making the strengths of each map and its respective combat scenarios more prevalent.

Finally, some good news! RoC25 is at last nearing the end of its development. All 32 maps are now remastered and complete, only awaiting a couple rounds of testing and a completed soundtrack before it should be ready for release. I've updated the OP to reflect this, and I've got a few more before-and-after screenies to share with you all. Just like before, originals on the left, remasters on the right!

It's the end of an era, folks.

I played Community Chest last month, not this one - but as the clock ticks over to the 29th, I feel the need to share the screenshot I took of this intermission screen in particular, which should speak to the monstrous map that Mr. Reay created. At once the most grueling, satisfying, despairing, fulfilling, dreadful and wonderful map I've ever grit my teeth and fought through to its bitter end. Not for the faint of heart, not a map every person will love - likely not even a map most people will love - but it is a magnum opus in the most true sense. Never was there a mightier final challenge, nor was there ever so truly Hellish a Doom-sculpted Hell. It's a one-man war to be remembered for the ages. Rest in peace, Magikal.

There's an argument to be made over whether it counts as having "come out" in the last four years, but I'm going to take the opportunity to shout out Sunder MAP15: Babylon's Chimera and the 7 brothers-in-arms it has been joined by since its release. When it hit 14 maps in 2010, Insane_Gazebo left the community while his masterwork spent most of its languid near-decade gradually building a lofty title as the most influential slaughter wad of all time (hell, the 2015 Cacowards start off their write-up on the equally-legendary Sunlust by comparing it to Sunder), one of the presiding forefathers of architectural finesse and atmospheric dread, and the most heartbreaking unfulfilled promise this side of Scythe X. And then, one day, someone noticed Insane_Gazebo offhandedly mentioned Sunder on his Twitch channel. And then Insane_Gazebo posted this image to the tune of what is now a staggering 153 likes (very nearly as many as Dario Casali's first post here last year, for reference), and one of the great Doom pipe dreams came true out of nowhere. I can only wish I'd gotten into this game a tiny bit sooner to see it all happen live. The raw cool factor of a legendary mapper coming back to finish the magnum opus he started ten years ago is already plenty worthy of being etched into the annals of Doom history. But he didn't just continue Sunder - he continued its legend, and evolved both to dizzying new heights. The first 14 maps of Sunder have a striking sense of place - each one is a great and terrible nightmare, as intimidating in its raw spectacle as it is in difficulty, bathed in an ambient level of raw and evil power such that you feel unsafe and insignificant even when you're the only thing left with a pulse. They were influential for a reason. And yet somehow Insane_Gazebo still leapt straight over the sky-high expectations ahead of him, doubling down on his characteristic macro-architecture with gorgeous new textures, masterful color coordination, an even greater sense of scale, and an even finer touch of ornate detailing, and the combat is bloodier, grander, and more creative than ever before. Incredibly, every new map since then has looked even better than the last, and every one of them boldly and unmistakably belongs in the wad. Not only that, but I_G shows no signs of stopping, and with only 10 maps left to develop, Sunder's legend will only continue to surpass. We're already seeing its influence crop up in newer slaughter sets like Abandon, the Micro-Slaughter CP, and Haste (yes, even the Haste maps I_G didn't make). It's my hope that when this monumental treasure of a mapset is finally complete, it will get the Caco (and Mordeth) awards that it so unequivocally deserves. Long live Sunder!

This is really cool, love the style! Nails the feeling that it may have once been handled by some twitching and fearful arcane bishop, with all those tears and stains and shuddering smudged lines. Did you draw this?

Right? I wouldn't say I love Fortress of Mystery in the way this thread is asking of me, but it's a fun bit of early combat experimentation which is short enough not to overstay its welcome, and if you still really can't stand it, you can just skip it. It's a secret map, after all. I definitely wouldn't call it Doom 1's worst map as I've seen many people say - surely that title would have to go to something which is unfun, required to beat the game, and goes on for way too long, like Unholy Cathedral or Limbo.

Nope - Hey There, Moonbeam is actually an extended improvement to a non-MIDI track I wrote like 5 or 6 years ago, which sat on my hard drive gathering dust that entire time before I realized it would slot nicely into Nukage Processing. Since it was so old (and, at the time, short) I had no idea how to rework it so I sent it over to Lippeth and he supplied some much-needed help. If I remember correctly (and listening to it now, I'm quite confident I do), it was originally inspired by Decapre's theme from Ultra Street Fighter 4. It was more obvious in the older, non-MIDI build of the song, but the inspiration is still pretty clear in a few places.

@Gez Oh wow, excellent findings! I should have checked more thoroughly, it seems. I recall the spider web being used in at least one of THT: Threnody's maps, at least. I'm gonna have to ask somebody to use that saw in a map at some point, I've never seen it in action before and it's just too good to miss.

Not only are they not used in any of the maps, they're not even defined in any texture patches. Check TNT's TEXTURE1 lump and you won't find these textures anywhere, so they can't actually be used in the wad without modifying it. It's a shame we didn't get to see that saw be used anywhere - it's got that wonderful '90s crunchiness that I love so much about TNT.

Epic 2 is a full, vanilla-compat megawad like this - tons of atmosphere and exploration, encompassing ruins, caverns, and keeps of all sorts! There are a few pretty big maps towards the end, and a few which prioritize combat over exploration, but most of this wad is fairly quick and atmosphere-heavy.

Congratulations to @Bauul and the whole Elementalism team! You guys deserve all the praise you can get and more for the stunning work you've put in, so pat yourselves on the back for a job well done. I'm stoked to give it a shot!

I watched the first 30 minutes of Wayne's World, stopped, walked a mile in the rain on a pitch-black night, and bought a bottle of red wine which I then took home and drank in its entirety to make watching the remaining hour of Wayne's World bearable.