Endless Random /idgames WAD Adventures #004

 

Endless, what the hell is this now ?

Endless Random /idgames WAD Adventures is a small project of exploration, interaction, entertainment and reviews where we meet once every 2 weeeks to select random WADs in search of hidden treasures, lost promises or our worst nightmares! In case you didn't know, /idgames archive has a special feature where we can search for random files, of course, sometimes they are resources or unplayable stuff, so we will focus on looking for WADs!

  

So, what are we going have to do ?

1. We/I try to play at least 6 (or more if you can) random WADs on /idgames. For that, I use the Random File feature.
2. We comment/review the WADs for the duration of the event. There's no set time, but one WAD every 2 days is a good measure, or 1 every day in case there's plenty.
3. Try to take screenshots of your adventures.
4. Play however you want, on any skill-level, as long as you play the WAD as intended/in working shape.
5. Avoid shitting on people's work, try to review in a respectful manner, but of course, let's all have a good laugh in case we find something odd.

 

What kind of WADs are we looking for ?

Mostly singleplayer WADs that work in your source-port of choice. You can skip DM WADs in case you don't have anyone to play with. Heretic WADs are also allowed. I will look for at least 4 random WADs for the event and add them here. Feel free to play them with me, or if you wish, look for your own! The point of this is to encourage you to explore this vast, random world. 

 

Tips/recommendations for commenting/reviewing:

 

Endless Random /idgames WAD Adventures of this event:

1. Clockwork 70
2. Deep into the Massacre (Version 3 Music Fix) (First random megawad that is not the same room over and over :P!)
3. NICKS1ST.WAD
4. Aberration Caves.
5. Quantum4.wad
6. Ultimate Suck
7. LOCAL HERO for DOOM II

 

BONUS:

 

Also, all the Endless Random /idgames WAD Adventures are going to be selected and collected for publishing on the Doom Master Wadazine of each month! With the best comments/review being highlighted for the articles.

 

Let the fishing, begin! 

 

» Previous adventures:

Edited April 5, 2021 by Endless

28 minutes ago, Endless said:

Deep into the Massacre (Version 3 Music Fix) (First random megawad!)

 

Wait, and the previously played Chambers of Death that have 4 wads filled with all the 36 levels for each wad doesn't count as a megawad? Even if it's all the same room or corridor, i think that is still a megawad in my opinion...

 

Also, the link to the file leads back to this topic lol

17 minutes ago, Walter confetti said:

 

Wait, and the previously played Chambers of Death that have 4 wads filled with all the 36 levels for each wad doesn't count as a megawad? Even if it's all the same room or corridor, i think that is still a megawad in my opinion...

 

Also, the link to the file leads back to this topic lol

Yes, you are right. I said first megawad for the reason that the previous one is just... a repetition of bad levels over and over again lol

And link fixed! Thanks for the notice.

You're welcome. Let's start the weekly random map reviewing with...

 

Ultimate Suck - ASO3000 (Vanilla Doom, 2020, played with doom.exe on DosBox)

 

The title made me ring a bell, and it's a map i've already played some months ago, fresh of idgames upload.

Is a pretty nice first effort map for Ultimate Doom that replaces E4M1, starts in a hellish cavern / temple and ends inside a abudcted warehouse with heavy hellish influence in it, the level contains both modern and ancient mapping style, especially in techbase half of the map, gameplay is kinda challenging, especially the ammo scarcity in the hell section when you get in the big red bright room, before where the yellow key door is... overall, is a fun short map.

4 minutes ago, Walter confetti said:

You're welcome. Let's start the weekly random map reviewing with...

 

Ultimate Suck - ASO3000 (Vanilla Doom, 2020, played with doom.exe on DosBox)

  Hide contents

 

The title made me ring a bell, and it's a map i've already played some months ago, fresh of idgames upload.

Is a pretty nice first effort map for Ultimate Doom that replaces E4M1, starts in a hellish cavern / temple and ends inside a abudcted warehouse with heavy hellish influence in it, the level contains both modern and ancient mapping style, especially in techbase half of the map, gameplay is kinda challenging, especially the ammo scarcity in the hell section when you get in the big red bright room, before where the yellow key door is... overall, is a fun short map.

Love your screenshots! Btw, this time around, the event is going to last for 14 days (2 weeks) to see how it fits into the tour system :D

Right, guess I'll start with the first map, which took me 11 minutes with 100% kills, not counting the time spent beating half the map in Crispy before realising I was meant to use a Boom-compatible sourceport

 

Overall, not a bad map, main positive attribute is how as you get more keys, the entirety of the map begins to open up, which I thought was a cool feature, and it would correspond well with increasing numbers of enemies, thereby requiring the player to have more space to retreat to, but apart from one section involves two mancubi on a ledge you have to teleport to, I always felt like I had more than enough space to maneuver with, the author said they were inspired by Quake, which I certainly see, if all this map's hell knights (a lot) were replaced with the knights from quake, then it would certainly feel like so much of the map wasn't just empty space I never really needed. 

Also, died once because this wall wasn't actually a wall, but a good map, short, basic, could probably have done with some more weapon and enemy variety, if nothing else they certainly nailed the Quake 1 castle aesthetic.

Cool, but what map is this?

4 minutes ago, Walter confetti said:

Cool, but what map is this?

Clockwork 70.

DAY 1 | Clockwork 70 | @pcorf | 2017 | Played on LZDoom + UV

 

 

As we usually say when we like something: short and sweet. This map, inspired by the brown style of Quake, delivers an adventure through a castle-like structure guarded by a multitude of enemies. With an incredibly smooth layout, the gameplay flows in an unconscious way as we go through the combat with a good show of weapons. The visuals make basic use of the stock textures, creating a vanilla feel that manages to look across the established boundaries, but also does a few extra tricks to create that heavy atmosphere that can be found in Quake. With a well-established simplicity, balanced gameplay and a great layout, this is a short but solid map in every aspect that is well worth your time. Gotta highlight that I love when maps make their progress/flow in ''circuit'' style, making gameplay flow non-stop.

Day 2, Deep Into The Massacre, map 2, or at least WAD 2, somehow they made an entire 30 level megaWAD out of this

First thing I thought when I booted this up was "I've definitely played this before", or at least the title screen was very familiar to me, once I actually started playing I didn't recognise any of the layout, but I don't blame my earlier self for giving up on it as early as I did

 

The first thing you'll notice about this map is its excessive number of shotgunners, who must make up at least 60% of the enemy count, deployed in huge pike and shot formations, meaning you're going to be spending a lot of time just sitting back, having to take out one or two at a time. With such a high number of hitscanners, and very little health around the map, there isn't any room for taking risks, and there also isn't any room for taking risks because the areas are pretty compact to begin with (once you get out that opening series of hallways both my screenshots happened to be in at least). As for weapon distribution, on map 1, you get a total of 10 rockets, and Barons take 5 rockets each, which leaves you with 4 or 5 Barons that you're going to have to shotgun. They do give you the super shotgun in map 2, but not long into map 2 is where I died, in a narrow corridor with no room to maneuver, and in which four Barons followed me inside. And, given the rather plain 90s architecture, I didn't feel particularly compelled to try after that point. The whole thing reminds me of TNT, and I'd rather never be reminded of TNT again.

NICKS1ST.WAD - Nick Aidar (Vanilla Doom 2, 1995, played on doom2.exe with DosBox)

 

A not really good map, even if its a first effort map and the year it was done, a really square techbase structure with some weird choices on texture, like the SP_HOT1 door for the red door, the monsters are pretty sparse and the level feels kinda empty, but the gameplay is kinda challenging somehow. Ending room with the portal-like wall and some of the lighting is cool, but over this nothing really impressive.

Day 13

 

I play until I die or intentionally stop. I don't comment the wad where I die/stop.

 

Wad 1) SoftChoice goes to hell!!! by Christian Antkow (1994)

 

 

An old UD map from 1994 that replaces the E2M1 map in order to use the punchy music of this slot. It is a singleplayer map which has the appearance of a DM map, notably by its very interconnected layout, its items scattered everywhere in an anarchic manner and the total absence of linearity in the progression. However, softhell offers large spaces to walk around in to contrast the countless rooms separated by doors.

 

I liked this map, you kill a lot of enemies attacking from all sides with too much health and ammo at your disposal so that they are no longer threat. Just beware of the cyber in the crate room (and kill it with your BFG !)

 

Wad 2 ) STYX7.WAD "Sanctuary" (This level is also part of the DMC level pack #2) by Richard Jaspars 'Styx' (1997)

 

 

A small DM speedmap made in 4 hours for Doom 2. It is a kind of arena centred around a watering hole. Weapons are placed on teleporters so that retrieving one moves the player to another point on the map.

 

I must say that the level is particularly beautiful compared to the time spent to create it. Moreover, the level has a little originality by using the E1M1 music from ultimate Doom and the sky from the first episode of this iwad.

 

Wad 3) The Inner Gateway (V1.2, 24-2-98) by Ben Davies (1998)

 

 

An excellent find. Inner Gateway will satisfy all fans of Ultimate Doom Episode 4 with its marbled castle and orange sky. The author wanted to give the same feeling as an Ultimate Doom map while adding the SSG of Doom 2 and some mid-tier monsters such as the revenant or the pain elemental.

 

I must say that this map has in my opinion very "Alien Vendettaesque" aspects with the numerous lighting effects, the detailed architecture. The only thing missing is some atmospheric music to make it look like a map made for this project. Instead , we have the regular D_runnin music.

 

Wad 4) Dreadwood Inn by Daniel Kallison  (2018)

 

Dreadwood Inn is a lost 1996 Hexen level which was uploaded on idgames by ETTiNGRiNDER in 2018.  This map is just bad. Whereas the begininng of the map is pretty fun with a lot monsters infighting in the inn, the rest is just a huge corridor with a very easily skippable Heresiarch at the end. I have a very few knowledge about Hexen but I know it's a very undercooked map.

 

Wad 4) pillars.wad by Chad Raeside (1996)

 

 

 

A small quirky level where things like tech or marble pillars and torches are particularly used to decorate or block the player. Although released in 1996, the map has all the aspects of a 1994 map with random corridors, random tp and a meaningless progression. However I rather liked this map which is not complicated despite everything.

 

Wad 5) DETH v4.16b by TeamTNT (1998)

 

Not a wad but a zip containing a lot of files which were maybe useful 20 years ago but totally useless nowadays.

 

 

 

 

I stop here , the next wad is Bloody Rust but I don't feel to play it. Also , I already played months ago for the ironman challenge.

 

NICKS1ST.WAD, which is a map from 1995, and the author's first, and when taking that into consideration, it held no surprises. A map that is way too big and open relative to the enemy count, the enemy variety is actually quite good, but held back by the fact they're all separated in these small rooms, and even back in 1995 I don't think people would have felt too scared when the toughest enemies they have to deal with are two barons, who you can just run past if you want, they're so slow that they'll never catch up to you. The map design is very boxy as well, I don't think there were any parts that weren't perfectly rectangular, this single teleporter is arguably the only part of the whole map with anything noteworthy. And, with the fact the areas are mostly separated by doors, the enemies usually don't have time to react to me being there before they're dead, makes me feel like a cattle rustler more than a space marine.

 

If it was condensed a bit, and not so dark, it'd probably make for a pretty decent deathmatch map. But it was about as barebones as I was anticipating when I saw the date and file size.

Day 14

 

I play until I die or intentionally stop. I don't comment the wad where I die/stop.

 

File 1) The Internet DOOM Client/Server System v0.12 by a.oliver (1994)

 

Very old client software which allow you to play online. I copy-paste the description for more informations but it's probably totally useless nowadays.

 

Quote

The DOOM* Client/Server System is a front-end to DOOM TCP/IP network drivers. You use the client software to connect to a Frag Server. While connected to the server, you can chat with other players and bystanders and negotiate game parameters. You tell the server what parameters you want, and when all the players are ready, the server will give the client the decided game parameters plus the IP adresses of all your victims. The client software will disconnect from the server and then run a multi-player DOOM game (iDOOM* or linuxxdoom*).

 

 

 

 

 

And.... I sadly died in the fun old 1996 megawad ARMAGEDN by DON RANDALL

 

 

 

DAY 2 | Deep into the Massacre (Version 3 Music Fix) | @MPS | 2020 | Played on LZDoom + UV

 

 

There's no way I'm going to finish a megawad in one day, so I'll probably try to play this megawad as the week goes on and see how far I get. With the first few maps in and taking a quick look with noclip2 at the rest of the maps, I can tell this megawad is well packed. Slaughter style gameplay with medium to small maps with arena designs, everything seems to be made to give me a strong challenge and a few hours of suffering. Oh boy. So far I can see that the overall design of the megawad is simple, featuring stock textures and even the original Doom 2 music (a bit disappointing), which gives me a feeling that the megawad was made more with the goal of creating something numerous but still prolifically challenging. We'll see what the rest of this huge adventure is like, but for now I can say that it looks slightly solid, basic at its worst moments. I'm not a big fan of this style, but I can appreciate the effort. We'll soon see if I'll pull the rest of my hair out with this!

Day 4, Aberration Caves

 

According to the readme, this is a map you can beat on your first try, without any need for saving. But the level design didn't really seem to echo that sentiment. The enemy placement wasn't exactly on the same level of assholery as JPCP or Sigil (which are only moderately high on the asshole scale in the first place),but the number of chaingunners placed in close proximity to each other, and enemies teleporting in right in front of you certainly suggested to me that this was the kind of mapper who enjoyed seeing people suffer. And, I suppose it worked, he managed to get me twice, once with a pitfall (of which there were several), and another time when I took an elevator leading me to a homing revenant rocket.

As for the actual level architecture, the most striking feature is that the textures are taken from Quake 1, and it actually works well, this is a map that could very well have worked in Quake, it's not a superficial difference, there is a clear understanding of what makes Quake's level design work, maybe it's something other mappers could do, with how many techbase maps you see, something basic like changing the textures would certainly help make a lot of them feel different.

Good map, can't really say there's anything wrong with it, apart from this one section where the Hell Knight got stuck and was spinning in circles, but I liked it, a decent tech base that opens up near the end.

 

 

Clockwork 70, NICKS1ST and Ultimate Suck

UV | GZDoom + Dead Marine

 

Clockwork 70 was the most challenging of the three I decided to play. It was rather stingy with ammunition, expecting you to be able to tackle over a dozen Cacos, Hell Knights and Mancubi with little more than a Chaingun and SSG. Mind you, that does make the combat rather frantic, tense and exciting from beginning to end which is a plus. I had to leg it at the final battle because I simply didn't have the resources to kill everything. It's also the most visually interesting as @pcorf does a great job of pulling off the Quake castle motif he was aiming for. It's by far the strongest of the three and my favourite. Needs more ammo and clockwork though hehe.

 

NICKS1ST is a painfully-obvious myfirstwad.wad and there's not much I can say about it besides it being dark, very wide and empty half the time and very boring texture work. It's also pretty flat too with zero height variation besides one small set of steps. I 'spose one can't expect too much from a 1995 map, especially a first-time WAD but... yeah, it's pretty lame.

 

Finally, we have Ultimate Suck which, despite its name, doesn't suck. It's still pretty rough around the edges with not an awful lot of detailing going on. Then again, according to the archive, it was made in only 4 hours. It's not dreadful by any means and even shows a spark of cruelty that complements its existence as an E4 map. It starts off decently, but I noticed the map seems to get bored of the E4 idea and changes to an E1 techbase look near the end, so it's a bit inconsistent. Overall, it's not too bad.

 

 

Quantum4.wad, and while I've not played Ultimate Suck yet, if something deserves that title, it's this one

 

The first thing I have to say about this map is that the way it's put together is very amateurish, it might not be entirely composed of the STARTAN texture, but it's not that far off maps that do, the mapper knows how to make doors, but for some reason or another, their preferred method of advancing the level is by lowering a wall, with enemies inside, you kill them, and then you do that ten more times.

 

 

To make matters worse, the levels themselves seem to be designed to be as convoluted as possible. To name just a few problems, in map 1 the door won't open by a switch or by using it, instead you have to stand on a teleporter for several seconds, which is just something I cannot conceive the purpose of, the enemy count is low enough that it's not like I'd have to think about the consequences of me standing on that teleporter, it's just adding extra steps when they don't need to. Other problems include having to walk through fake walls in order to advance, doors that are marked with keys that you don't actually need keys to open, and in general, miscellaneous garbage that forces you to run around and waste your time because the game broke its own rules. As a random anecdote, in Half Life Blue Shift, there's a puzzle where you have to shoot some explosive barrels hidden behind a fence in order to advance, and while normally you can shoot through fences just fine, the game revokes this established principle to force you to find a way to get a high angle so you can shoot them. And that's what this WAD does, there's nothing particularly fun about having to open a series of doors, each with a shotgunner behind them, and rather than just press space, you have to circle around the map, there's nothing challenging, interesting or intuitive about it, just makes me feel like I'm wasting my time.

At map 1, there's some narrow poles you have to walk over, and if you fall off, then you're softlocked, and towards the end of map 2, a floor lowers, which I proceeded to go inside of, and then I get stuck under the level, and letting the player get softlocked that easily even once is enough to convince me to write it off as a bad mapset, but when 2/2 of the maps I played had it, I think that shows the mapper was either negligent or malignant.

 

 

 

 

Edited April 9, 2021 by Sena

After watching @Biodegradable video of clockwork 70, i've realized that i've played already this map long time ago, yeah it's a really good and fun map indeed.

 

Abberation Caves. by KennyJC (zdoom, 2008, played with gzdoom 4.5.0)

Pretty though map in the style of Quake that mixes techbase and other dimension places inside this big cave places, you can run out of ammo easily at the start and being slaughtered by monsters, the layout is pretty competent but i'd expected to find sliding doors instead of the ordinary ones, also the way to open the blue skull key door is pretty hard to understand, if in that time i couldn't see the automap and seeing a pllar with a blue key line action, i will never get out to pass that section and thinking that the door was broken. Gameplay mostly consist of fights of little hordes of monsters of random difficulty, from easy challenge to a pretty hard one, with a final encounter against a cyberdemon that tries to emulate the style of Quake episode 1 boss map.

 

Overall, pretty good map!

 

Anyway, played now a pair of small random files from the archives and i've got:

 

Fired by anonymous (Vanilla Doom 2, 1996, played on doom2.exe with DosBox)

Pretty nice deathmatch arena heavily inspired by DWANGO maps and MAP01, no monsters but a good layout (didn't tried with bots yet, just take a look on SP), the level itself is some sort of joke / rant wad against Aikman, a big name in the DWANGO series (and also been one of the wad compilers) and deathmatch community back in that days, also been the creator of deathtag gameplay style according to wiki (discovered after a little research on google), with this map as been some sort of backlash for some reason (maybe this map wasn't choosen for the official Dwango and the author of this map has benn fired from the team)... for some reason this map didn't received any review on Idgames, weird...

 

porno7.wad by k. a. Phm (Vanilla Doom 2, 1995, played on doom2.exe with DosBox)

(Pictures are NSFW, so watch out before open the spoilers)

A blatant rip-off of MAP07 with only a new room changed that adds giant slighty erotic / straight out porno pictures in all their GIF converted to Doom palette glory, kinda fun but just because is Dead Simple. Ah yes, where it was the SW1SKIN texture at the exit sector, there is a "secret" teleport and a ugly, badly compressed picture of a vagina that activates a "secret" teleport that leads to a hallway with a megasphere.

Edited April 9, 2021 by Walter confetti

@Walter confetti You seem to have fallen deep down the rabbit hole. Where else will these adventures take you? :P

DAY 3 | NICKS1ST.WAD | Nick Adair | 1995 | Played on LZDoom + UV

 

 

A tiny little debut map from 1995 created during the boom of the community maps. It has a fairly simple and square layout that makes us explore a bit until we find the right path, leading us through long roads that are mostly empty or, on the contrary, full of invisible traps where enemies are waiting to attack us. As you might expect, it's no big deal. It comes with an extremely simple design, rough and ungraceful use of textures (the doors aren't even identified), lightning is pretty flat and dark most of the time and the gameplay is mediocre at its best. Still, it's not terrible, it doesn't punish us as much as other WADs of the time and, in one way or another, it's still better than what we'd find in something like Maximum Doom.

This WAD, Ultimate Suck, is pretty small, one level with about 50 enemies in it, replacing E4M1, and I have to say, it actually complements the overall look and feel of E4 quite well, it could legitimately have replaced E4M1, maybe some people will point out that this room here has structures that are a bit too ambitious for any official map, but apart from that minor detail, it fits right in. With that said, playing a single map does make you realise how far mapping's come since then, these days I usually expect to see maps with at least 120 enemies. But I can't really point to any faults in the design, flows well, simple but effective combat arenas, nothing too fancy, may be short, may be simple, but it gets the job done, and it flows well into the rest of Thy Flesh Consumed, only problem is I hate nearly every map of Thy Flesh Consumed.

 

 

Last WAD on the list, Local Hero for Doom II

 

Well, I have to say, this one deceived me quite a bit. First of all, it said it was "quite short" in the readme, and it was published in 1999, but apparently 230 monsters counts as quite short. Second of all, the readme mentioned it being a city level, and as soon as I spawned in this very nice looking house, which was accompanied by one or two other nice houses nearby, I thought I was in for something good, but it wasn't really that great.

 

The first issue is the way the map looks, I understand that with Doom's default textures you're pretty limited to making a vaguely convincing city, but this one looks like a city from the middle ages, I'm not expecting to see a Coca-Cola vending machine, but I think there's more wood and stone (brown and grey, pretty much the only colours you'll see) in this map than in the Quake map I played a few days ago. As for how the level is constructed, apart from the aforementioned very good houses, it doesn't feel like a city at all, it's got those cheap government housing blocks from the Battle of Stalingrad (if you use your imagination, it's just tall brown rectangles), and that's about as city-like as it gets, probably the most basic interpretation of a city level as you could possibly have, Marine Doom had a better idea of what a city looks like, actual space for you to move around, while still having to be cautious of being attacked from the many possible angles. There is one point where a monster closet spawned from behind me, and that was the only time the combat really did anything noteworthy. Of the 230 enemies, I think at least 180 of them were hitscanners, and the levels are designed in such a way that the only thing you can do is funnel them through the one narrow pathway, and repeatedly shoot, get in cover to reload, shoot again, and they're packed in so tightly you're going to be doing that for a long time. Other enemies include one room of at least 20 imps, who apart from one or two that are positioned in such a way you're guaranteed to get clawed unless you use mouselook (which the author said messed with the sky texture anyway) and two mancubi on ledges who repeatedly teleport in as you kill a new one, and they do that at least ten times, there's nothing to write home about. When all's said and done, I feel like this map was designed as if they were accounting for the fact your main weapon was a shotgun, but a shotgun with the effective range of most video game shotguns, the level gets more claustrophobic as you go on, which does not coincide with it getting any harder, the most difficult part was shooting these two revenants who were -just- high up enough that it'll take a couple of tries for your rocket autoaim to work, but they're also so high up that they can't hit you either.

And, to make matters worse, the map involves plenty of key hunting, but the map is designed in such a way that it incorporates a ton of dead ends, meaning you're probably going to spend more time just walking through areas you've already been in than you will actually doing something. It's nothing heinous, but it is pretty boring, extremely linear and unengaging even for a map from the '90s. Maybe if he made a sequel where the UAC air force bombs the shit out of this place, so I can actually navigate without having to walk up three flights of stairs on two separate buildings, might make things a little more interesting.

  

Quantum4.wad by Nick Anderson (Vanilla Doom 2, 1996 but uploaded on the archives at 2003, played on doom2.exe with dosbox)

A small mini episode of 4 abstract techbases that take me 30 minutes to be completed, layout is interesting and i admire the intentions of it, but execution pretty lacks of anything that could be memorable. Some parts like the stairs that lights up with the corpses on MAP02 and the teleports progression on MAP04 is pretty interesting, but for the rest is a huge mess where you don't understand where to go and when you understand it, is too late.

 

Gameplay is pretty standard, medium difficulty battles with even 2 fights with cyberdemon and invlnerability sphere...

 

Again, it could be cool if only will be more undertandable of what to do in this place. Nothing really special, even tedious.

I wish they would fix and re-enable the rating system. And then we could vote on the wads when they get featured in threads like this

Day 7, Otakon Doom: https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/m-o/otakondm

 

I have to say, I don't know why Batman or Simpsons Doom got all the fame when it comes to early custom weapon/enemy packs, because this blows them both out of the water, I suppose being based on a multi-million dollar intellectual property helps, if it wasn't for Metal Gear this would've been my first time hearing the words Otaku Convention, a type of anime convention where they sell anime and anime accessories, probably, I only had a vague idea of what they were, and this WAD wasn't very educational, but it was good.

 

So, alongside a new map, of about 170 enemies, the WAD features retextures for the zombiemen and shotgunners, replaced with angry convention-goers, and every single weapon in the game (except for the super shotgun, which is absent) has a new sound and sprite, and some of them feature stat changes, most notably the chaingun, which has its ammo reserve rate doubled, and its rate of fire probably quintupled, I guess they wanted a chaingun that had an ROF comparable to one in real life. And, it's a welcome change, completely shutting down cacos and pain elementals has never been better, other changes include a small increase in delay upon firing the rocket launcher, which a large number of players probably wouldn't notice, but I did, and it's just jarring enough to bother me. As for the weapons themselves, they're mostly just you firing stuff off your hand because you seem to be some cyborg, which wouldn't normally warrant much commentary, but the chaingun doesn't appear onscreen unless you're firing it for some reason, and because the rocket launcher is a plain-looking hand, if you're not careful, when you first pick it up you might not realise you have, possibly leading to you getting yourself killed. The plasma rifle and BFG look great though, they look like something straight out of Robocop, and they even have crosshairs that correspond to light. The only problem is, because of how aiming in Doom works, the crosshairs are going to be wrong a lot of the time.

 

As for the level design itself, it's nothing spectacular, a good bit of height variation, an opening courtyard, and all things considered, they commit about as strongly to the idea of 'anime convention' as id committed to the idea of 'Earth' in their maps. First half of the map seems to have a decent collection of rooms and such, and the second half features Hell architecture that features the only decent usage of the Icon of Sin I can think of.

And, the screenshot I captured of it was a bit late, but the level ends with you blowing the place up, which is a great feature, and one that you surprisingly don't see more of. And, it features an absolutely bombastic .midi rendition of the Sailor Moon theme, which probably ranks among the better .midi renditions of pre-existing music that I've heard in Doom.

 

All in all, great WAD, and it's held up very well. I can tell you right now that Homer saying "where's the beef?" every single time you gib someone in Simpsons Doom is not something that aged well.

  

A bit difficult to see, but here's a demonstration of the crosshair 'in action', with my plasma bolts shooting directly below it 

Strangely, for a supposed anime convention, this one cinema is the only place you'll find anything anime-related. But, you can turn the lights on, like in Duke 3D, which is neat. At least they're showing Yamato, none of that isekai or idol shite.

 

Edited April 12, 2021 by Sena

Yeah, Otakon Doom is pretty rad.

 

Anyway, the "cyborg" character that replaces the good old doomguy is Priss Asagiri from Bubblegum Crisis, a late 80s OAV based upon the stories of this girls team that fights these cyborgs called boomers (not joking) with the help of a combat suit, iirc the 4 girls in team have their special weaponry assets for each one of them.

 

A weapon mod has been made back in the day called Priss Doom, used as a base for this wad too

Edited April 12, 2021 by Walter confetti

DAY 4 | Aberration Caves. | Kenny "KennyJC" Coughlan | 2008 | Played on LZDoom + UV

 

 

An interesting clash of worlds. The proposition of bringing Quake life to the world of Doom is one that has been done a long time ago and has nothing extremely new about it at present, however, I can assume that this 2008 WAD is probably one of the first among the list of Quake-themed WADs. Aberration Caves is a medium-sized map that, as the title suggests, is set among a cavern system, adorned with the detail of Quake's brown, detailed textures and accompanied by Doom's near-perfect glossary of demons. Map development concentrates on small, linear paths with little exploration, but presents an attractive and solid detail under an understandable layout. It is impossible to get lost in this map. Its short size and intense combat give it a good flow that keeps on giving throughout. The beginning can be a bit fatal for blind players, but the further we progress the opportunities expand and the fight swings. The ending seemed a bit wasted and presents a boss battle a bit annoying or at least boring. It doesn't have much impact in its ending but the simple presentation and fun map layout gives it enough juice to give us a solid 10 minutes of fun. Entertaining, decent and a worthwhile one, honestly.

 

Quantum4.wad | Nick Anderson | 2003 (1996 original date, I believe) | Played on LZDoom + UV

 

 

One of the comments on /idgames says that this WAD dates from October 1996, which seems quite possible. On the other hand, the submission date in the /idgames archive is 2003, so I'll go with that. First of all, this WAD self-describes itself as a puzzle adventure, which in its own way I can see was what the creator was aiming for. On the other hand, oh the 90s, this was an era where ''puzzle'' meant creating confusing layouts, hiding buttons and a cryptic progress system. In other words: lost. The WAD has some potential as its design is quite avant-garde and at times somewhat admirable under the circumstances considered, however, it suffers from quite a few glaring errors that make it a mediocre experience at its best. Poorly used textures, doors that vanish into thin air, buttons that sometimes don't even work properly and the so-called "puzzles" are more of a wall-humping party. All 4 maps suffer from this fate, but at least the last two offer some interesting layouts and more daring combat, but even so they are not saved. I wouldn't recommend this WAD, honestly. It's not fun but for historical purposes it might work as an interesting perspective on how we've progressed. Despite only being 4 maps it took me about 50 minutes to complete, so take that into account.

23 hours ago, Sena said:

Day 7, Otakon Doom: https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/m-o/otakondm

 

At last, more non-gzdoom mod discoveries.

Day 8, ACE-1: https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/a-c/ace-1

 

A WAD that's only 9 days old, totalling 8 maps, which average about 70-150 enemies each.

 

At its core, this is a rather basic WAD, the author describes it as a compilation, not an episode, so it's not like you slowly descend from Deimos to Hell and see the level design change, you just kind of jump between the two at random, albeit it'd be more accurate to say you jump between 'partially Hell' and 'very Hell'.

The level design is mostly good, nothing that really stood out to me, there were one or two points on the map where it was easy to get stuck on, and some of the stairs were a bit narrow to comfortably navigate, but more often than not, they were good combat arenas, with enough variation to keep things interesting. As for the enemy placement, I'd summarise by saying it's a bit heavy on chaingunners, and the mapper has a professional understanding of how to make pain elementals and archviles as annoying as possible, which is distinct from making them as powerful as possible, but the psychological damage probably balances it out. Speaking of archviles, they appear at the very end of almost every map, which is a trick that doesn't really work more than twice, at most. Because of the time it takes for an archvile to actually hit you, most of the time you can safely run to the exit as if it's not even there. And speaking of enemies easy to deal with, the monster closets are very obvious, not every last one, but when I find a huge hallway that has only one enemy in it, I can guess what's going to happen when I take the medkit at the end of it.

All in all, it's not a bad mapset, for aforementioned reasons, the maps don't have particularly great synergy, but they don't try to either, and even if they might not 'flow' well together, there is a surprisingly good variation of indoor and outdoor areas.