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Sporku

The /newstuff Chronicles #269

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Hello there, Agent Spork here again for another edition of the /newstuff Chronicles. What surprises will this week's additions to the idgames archive bring? Will Millennium finally be released? How about Mordeth? Well, I'm sorry to say neither of those things landed in /newstuff. I just wanted to get your hopes up for no reason. There are, however, a couple of good levels, and quite a few not so good levels. Beats the hell out of Millennium any day if you ask me. Now, on with the party.

  • Armadosia the Mad Corridor - Arma Kero
    doom2.exe - Solo Play - 10159 KB - (img) (img) (img) (img) (img) (img)
    Armadosia is a megawad of 32 maps for Doom 2. The maps themselves could be considered pretty average by today's standards, as they are pretty bland in terms of both detail and gameplay. While there's a couple of maps I found wortwhile, the majority of them just weren't very much fun at all. This megawad also features a wealth of new textures, the majority of which look.. well.. strange. In addition to the bland level design and gameplay, and the strange new textures, there's also absolutely no new music to be seen, so it's 32 levels of normal Doom 2 music. What fun.

  • Barrel Bash - DarkWolf
    Legacy - Solo Play - 8 KB - (img)
    Now here's a pretty interesting concept. You're in an arena. Exploding barrels constantly spawn in the middle of said arena. There are imps looming about, which could either hit you, or blow up the barrels. We're not done yet, though! There's also a circle of spinning Imp fireballs slowly looming toward you, while also blowing up any barrels it runs across in its pursuit. Your mission is to survive as long as possible under these circumstances. DarkWolf has been known to bring about some interesting Doom Legacy maps in the past, and this is one of them.

  • CrossFire - Samuel "Kaiser" Villarreal
    Boom Compatible - Solo Play - 313 KB - (img) (img) (img)
    This map pisses me off. Why, you ask? Well, it only further proves that Kaiser obviously doesn't know how to make a bad map. It's just not possible. CrossFire is a large, outdoorsy map with very nonlinear gameplay. The map has some very mild influences from PSXDoom and some of the maps from the Master Levels collection, both of which I am quite fond of. The maps may not have super extreme detail like, say, KDiZD, but it still looks stunning nevertheless. With gameplay equally as good, the map is definitely one of the best of the week.

  • Blood Isle - Alex "Tac" Tacinelli
    doom2.exe - Solo Play - 282 KB - (img) (img)
    Unfortunately, I can't really give this map a full review, as I`m not even sure what I'm supposed to do on this map. What I saw didn't look all that bad, but it wasn't much; A single techy room with a teleporter that leads to the outside of a huge structure which I guess I'm supposed to work my way into. However, I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out what to do after that. I found myself circling around the massive structure, finding absolutely no way to get in. So... I gave up. If anyone knows what I'm supposed to do, feel free to tell me. Oh, and I might add that the choice in music is a little bit.. strange.

  • Scourge - James "Phobus" Cresswell
    ZDoom Compatible - Solo Play - 1458 KB - (img) (img) (img) (img)
    Scourge is a 23-level megawad for ZDoom by Phobus. According to the text file, it took over two years to make, which, in case you don't know, is a pretty long time. During that time, as also stated in the text file, the author's mapping abilities, and even the editor he used changed during the development of this megawad. As you would expect, it's a mixed bag. Some of the maps are fairly good looking, while others are... less so. Some maps can be pretty entertaining to play, while others can be quite dull. If you don't mind the varying levels of both detail and gameplay throughout the course of this megawad, then I'd give it a try.

  • TGRDM1b - Nicholas G.
    Skulltag - Deathmatch - 307 KB - (img) (img)
    Here we have a wad by Nicholas G., a newcomer to mapping, with a ten map deathmatch wad for Skulltag. Most of the maps included in this WAD are either completely symmetrical or suffer from what I like to call Halo syndrome (extreme copy/paste). I tested a few of the maps with a couple of bots, and didn't find them to be all that entertaining.

  • WASTED: UAC Waste Facility #253 - Rusty Slacker
    Boom Compatible - Solo Play - 185 KB - (img) (img)
    Another first time mapping attempt (or at least, a first time release), only this time from a fellow by the name of Rusty Slacker. This map is, if you cannot already tell by the map's title, a waste facility of sorts. The map looks fairly decent for a first release, and the gameplay is pretty good aside from a couple of flaws. There's only one radiation suit in the map that I could find, and I ended up dying after it ran out trying to snatch the blue key which happens to be sitting in the middle of some nukage. There are also some inescapable pits of nukage, which I found annoying.

  • OMG!!!! WHY is PuMpKiNsMaShEr still Mapping? - PumpkinSmasher
    Boom Compatible - Solo Play - 390 KB - (img) (img)
    "Why IS PumpkinSmasher still mapping?" is the first thing I thought of when I looked at the title of this map. Actually no, I'm joking. OMG!!!! WHY is PuMpKiNsMaShEr still Mapping? is a map by some guy whose name I can't remember (it's not like his name is in the title or anything). The map has a varying theme, with some areas using techbase style textures, and others with obvious hellish influence (mostly the latter). Overall it's a good map, with decent detail and good gameplay to boot. Definitely an improvement over some of the other maps I've seen from him in the past.

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FP!

For Blood Isle, there is a teleporter marked by a partially submerged torch in the blood sea to the Northwest of the structure.

It doesn't get very good once you get inside, however. The texturing is ugly, the place is cramped, and it turns into a massive switch hunt.

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Armadosia is an oddball of a megawad. It shows immense promise at times, and is generally fun, but at others it just doesn't work. This happens even within the same level. One part is great fun, the next you're slogging through mediocre gameplay. It reminds me of Extremal Doom, another love/hate wad.

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Snarboo said:

Armadosia is an oddball of a megawad. It shows immense promise at times, and is generally fun, but at others it just doesn't work. This happens even within the same level. One part is great fun, the next you're slogging through mediocre gameplay. It reminds me of Extremal Doom, another love/hate wad.

!TVR was better.

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suffer from what I like to call Halo syndrome (extreme copy/paste).


Judging from the screenshots, there wasn't anything really to copy/paste.

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kristus said:

Judging from the screenshots, there wasn't anything really to copy/paste.

Well, there's quite a few maps that have entire rooms copied and pasted numerous times.

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hmm, why the critisism of the lack of music in Armadosia?

my 20 map megawad wont haev any new music because:

a) i play with music off
b) i'm not about to rip some
c) i'm not going to stuff any old tracks in just so it has music
d) i dont have time or the artistic ability to compose my own

so is my wad (when it eventually gets done) be totally slated because i recommend playing with music off?

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cycloid said:

hmm, why the critisism of the lack of music in Armadosia?

I don't get this either. There are plenty of good music wads (mmmus.wad, mm2mus.wad, reqmus.wad, etc.), and it is easy enough to make your own by extracting the music from some other wad if you like it (I've done this with most of the major megawads that have new music within their main wad).

I agree that it is better to have no music, and leave the choice to the user, than to rip stuff off (this "cheapens" the wad) or to add your own music if you're not a competent composer (this worsens the wad). Personally, I have a music wad as a preloaded file, so if a pwad contains no music of its own, I'll just hear my preferred default music (which I'll vary every so often). On the other hand, if the pwad contains bad music, I'll need to add another music wad to the command line.

BTW, one thing you could do is to change the musical selection via dehacked (that way you're not ripping anything). That's assuming that there is some music in the iwad that you actually like, of course...

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I criticize it for its lack of music because:

A) I play with the music turned on.
B) I shouldn't have to compile a set of music I think suits the levels myself.
C) Doom 2 music sucks.

That's pretty much all I can think of off the top of my head.

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cycloid said:

so is my wad (when it eventually gets done) be totally slated because i recommend playing with music off?


I don't know what you are meaning by being "slated" here, but the newstuff chronicles reviews are nothing more than that: just reviews of stuff that has gone in the archive. These reviews do not and should not make or break what or how you release anything. Do what you want and let the critics speak what they will.

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Besides, the music was only one of the things I had to complain about when it comes to Armadosia. Perhaps if the maps were actually pretty fun to play, then maybe I wouldn't be bothered quite as much by the lousy music.

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AgentSpork said:
C) Doom 2 music sucks.

what

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My ass it sucks, but the point is that that (point C) is not a valid justification for anything. AgentSpork's review is as worthy as any from whoever knows the DOOM games well; it's fine if one doesn't like how a wad is designed or how it plays, but since DOOM II's music is pretty good, commenting on how it sucks only causes undue arguments.

The review did well in pointing out there's no new music, and I wasn't assuming the last two word sentence referred to that in particular, more to the wad in general, and that Agent's "C" is more a result of a slight annoyance at the criticism of his criticism (aside from whether one may somehow personally not like DOOM II's music, you can't bring that up as relative to a review of an map add-on... no one gives a shit if the reviewer likes the standard music or not, only whether the wad has new music and how it is, if that applies.)

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Well, just simply stating that Doom 2's music sucks probably wasn't a good idea. Perhaps I should have just said I wasn't too fond of it. Still, my criticism about the lack of any custom music remains. The music plays an important role in the gameplay of a level, at least for me. Good, suitable music choice for a level is a key thing. It wouldn't, for example, be very suitable for a dark, atmospheric map to have, say, Doom E1M4's music. It just doesn't make sense. You can't tell me Doom 2's music is perfectly suitable in every map in Armadosia, because it's not. In most cases it's rather boring, and only helps to amplify the dullness of the wad's gameplay.

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i find it ironic because agentspork reuses the same old crappy nin / rott midis we hear in doom wads all the time lol

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gargoylol said:

i find it ironic because agentspork reuses the same old crappy nin / rott midis we hear in doom wads all the time lol

Boy, I most certainly didn't see that comment coming from ten miles away. EDIT: Oh, and I've never used NIN music in my levels, to my knowledge. If I have, I must have been completely unaware of it, especially considering I've never even listened to NIN before.

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speaking of msuic in agent spork's wads... what music is used in geo and geox :)

id like to hear music like that with all the levels of simplicity

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Various MODs I stole from other wads, which they probably stole from somewhere else.

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