The /newstuff Chronicles #394

• Nostrum - PirateNipple
  Doom 2 - Vanilla - Solo Play - 119290 bytes - (img) (img) (img)
  Reviewed by: udderdude
  One map for Doom 2. Pretty much your average brown (with extra brown, seriously) temple map, with a few nasty traps that'll send you running for your quickload key. The difficulty is quite uneven in this regard, and aside from the traps there isn't much challenge to be had anywhere in this map. The outdoor area is also, in my opinion, far too bright. Play if you're bored.
  
  
• The Prison - Adam Mason
  Doom 2 - ZDoom Compatible - Solo Play - 233761 bytes - (img) (img) (img) (img) (img) (img)
  Reviewed by: udderdude
  One map for Doom 2. It's usually pretty easy to tell when a map author has not even bothered to send his map to anyone for playtesting, but this takes things to a whole new level. Ammo starvation is extreme here. Unless you skip or run past every enemy you can afford not to kill, you'll run out of ammo. Some of these are extremely luck-based, as running past 3 Barons in a narrow hallway is very risky. There's also no chainsaw or berserk to help you out.
  
  Later on in the map, there are multiple double arch-vile traps where there's almost no way you could even run away fast enough to get out of sight and not get fried. And several traps where it's almost guaranteed death no matter what you do. I gave up and tossed on God mode to see the ending parts of the map, and it's just a bullshit bonanza.
  
  Thankfully the map has skill levels. Just don't even bother trying it on UV, it's just plain broken. You'd have to save/load constantly and get extremely lucky to even complete it.
  
  
• W.W.E.M (Worst Wad Ever Made) - DXBigBoss
  Doom 2 - Vanilla - Solo Play - 1736 bytes - (img)
  Reviewed by: Processingcontrol
  This WAD entirely consists of an untextured square room filled with Cyberdemons.
  
  Did DXBigBoss really need to waste his time uploading this?
  
  
• Klingon Honor Guard Textures - Ozymandias81
  N/A - PNG Support - N/A - 12670294 bytes - (img)
  Reviewed by: Processingcontrol
  This WAD contains textures from the 1998 FPS Star Trek: "The Next Generation: Klingon Honor Guard". All the textures are PNGs so they don't work in vanilla Doom. A small demo map is included that's supposed show off the textures, but it's so ugly that it makes the textures look bad.
  
  The textures themselves are decent, and it'd be interesting to see a map that uses them.
  
  
• Marine's Folly - Mr. Chris & valkiriforce
  Doom 2 - Vanilla - Solo Play - 75935 bytes - (img) (img)
  Reviewed by: duncan
  Marine's Folly is a replacement for Map 14 of Doom 2 and certainly has the makings of an old school Doom 2 map...i.e. it's very brown. The level is medium sized, with no errors to speak of and structured fairly well. Gameplay is fairly easy but relaxingly enjoyable and it fills about fifteen minutes of time. It's not really strong enough to warrant a release of its own but could fit nicely into a vanilla mapset. The map isn't strictly linear and is nicely self contained, with each path inevitably carrying you in the right direction.
  
  The level is largely undetailed and suffers from a lack of texture variation...the same brick wall texture is used pretty much throughout the entire level. The author has clearly put some effort into this and shows some potential. I would fully encourage them to continue mapping; my advice being to now work on including detail and making the levels more visually appealing. For a player perspective, I would suggest downloading it and testing it for yourself, but don't expect to find anything other than a largely mediocre map. If you like your Doom old school (which I wholeheartedly do), then you should enjoy it.
  
  
• PalPlus - Sigvatr
  Doom/Doom 2 - Vanilla - N/A - 13485 bytes - (img) (img) (img) (img) (img) (img) (img) (img)
  Reviewed by: udderdude
  This is an interesting mod for Doom/Doom 2. It replaces the game's palette with one that is much darker and gloomier, with less saturated colors and more contrast. Some people may like it, some may hate it, but you do have to admit it changes the way the game looks in a significant way. This mod works best with modern maps that have less of the texture alignment/mismatching floor and ceiling issues that are everywhere in older maps. Otherwise the new dark/gloomy look clashes with the cartoony/unrealistic look of the map itself.
  
  
• EGA Doom - Sigvatr
  Doom/Doom 2 - Vanilla - N/A - 1174 bytes - (img) (img) (img)
  Reviewed by: Sodaholic
  Well, what we have here is a palette for Doom that uses the EGA palette. Looks surprisingly good, especially given the limitations of 16 colors. Not much else to say about it, other than this is one of the better attempts at an EGA Doom palette.
  
  
• 5 Minute Map Collection - Various
  Doom 2 - Vanilla - Solo Play - 323438 bytes - (img) (img) (img)
  Reviewed by: duncan
  Quote from the textfile: "Considering most of the maps were done in such a short time, there are many missing textures, HOM's, unfinished areas, and many other things missing altogether. As such, don't report any bugs, this is just for fun anyway." Sounds great already, doesn't it?
  
  To summarise the project/most ridiculous concept I've seen in a long time, basically this is just a megawad of horrendous, mis-textured, error ridden extremely short maps which no player could ever enjoy playing. I almost understand that the authors were curious about the challenge of creating a map in five minutes. But I have no understanding of why they thought it a good idea to release it, as from a player perspective, there is no fun or point in this whatsoever. Any minute you spend downloading and playing this is a minute of your life wasted.
  
  
• Obstructor - Wraith
  Doom 2 - ZDoom Compatible - Solo Play - 93980 bytes - (img) (img) (img)
  Reviewed by: Processingcontrol
  When I started up "Obstructor," which claims to be vanilla compatible, on Prboom+, I got the message "P_CheckForZDoomNodes: ZDoom nodes not supported yet," which is a good sign that the WAD was made by a lazy newbie author.
  
  However, when I switched to ZDoom, it first appeared to be a pretty good level. The architecture was very interesting and unique, which brought my hopes up. Unfortunately, as I went through the map, my opinion of it went lower and lower. I encountered two major problems which made the level unplayable for me:
  
  1: Not enough health
  The health you get in this map entirely consists of a few health potions and about six stimpacks. This means that if you accidentally get hit by a few stray revenant missiles or get blasted by a few archivile attacks and end up with 10% health, you're screwed and have little chance of survival.
  
  2: No strong weapons
  For most of the map the only weapons you have are a shotgun, chaingun, and chainsaw. That's fine if you only have to face weak enemies, or if the stronger enemies only appear alone, but this isn't the case. Revenants teleport in front of you and corner you against walls without giving you room to dodge. Archviles come out in places with little cover and bring groups of other baddies with them. Throughout the map I was wishing I'd encounter a SSG or rocket launcher. There actually is an SSG, but it's right at the end where you can just run to the exit without any resistance.
  
  Despite its unique architecture I wouldn't recommend this map to anyone, unless they enjoy fighting tough monsters without even the minimum amount of resources.
  
  
• Alfa 1 - Wraith
  Heretic - Vanilla - Solo Play - 91078 bytes - (img) (img) (img) (img)
  Reviewed by: tombom
  A single level for Heretic. Unusually, it comes with two versions of the wad, labeled easy and hard. The hard version just puts more monsters in compared to the ultra-violence level of the "easy" version.
  
  It's clear that this is one of the mapper's earliest maps, and it's not very good. The first two "sections" of the map are pretty much just hallways - hallway to a very small arena, then hallway to a small "maze" where you fight lots of disciples trapped in cages. I admit to not being very good at Heretic, but you're given very little ammo and have no space with which to avoid the disciple's attacks. This leads on to a terrible secret: you have to fire on a random door and then you step on to a teleporter which gets you to a nice item stash, including the best armour, once you kill the disciples. Unfortunately, *there's no way back*! So finding this secret is a failure.
  
  You then find a yellow key which leads on to a new area where you have to walk across a very narrow ledge while lots of monsters are attacking you, including with attacks that can knock you off the ledge. When you fall off there's no way to get back and you're on 1hp damage per second tiles. The ledge leads to a door that you again need to fire on to open where you can get a green key. The green key opens an area where you walk through a really long, dark passageway with invisible enemies in it to the end.
  
  This map was not fun to play. I had to open up Doom Builder to see where to go several times. Both the yellow key and green key had doors indistinguishable from normal walls. There's a paucity of both health and ammo, which isn't fun. Just cramped hallways. Generally a lot of the same texture is used in each area, which is incredibly dull. Don't bother.
  
  
• Abandoned Mansion - NoneeLlama
  Doom 2 - Vanilla - Solo Play - 55127 bytes - (img) (img)
  Reviewed by: duncan
  This is a vanilla-compatible map which has an old school feel about it. Set in a courtyard and a mansion, the design is basic and there is an abundant use of marble textures but it's well done and promising. Gameplay isn't challenging but it is a fairly action packed affair which is enjoyable to play. There are no errors and the map is simple and effective. I took quite a lot of issue with the final room, however, which sees the player transported to Hell. The size of the room, steepness of the stairs, brain textures and random metal flats which are the same height as the floor gave the room very hap hazard feel. If there is any work needed on this map, then this is the room which needs it. Overall, worth a look, not a bad effort at all.
  
  
• Promise - Wraith
  Doom 2 - ZDoom Compatible - Solo Play - 42106 bytes
  Reviewed by: Rambosee
  Promise.
  
  Well, if this single-level wad is good at anything, it's keeping promises. Here's its description: "My first wad. Its quite dificult and ugly." This pretty much sums up my entire review right here. It's beatable, but difficult. It could be 2 star or 3 star material if the level itself was decent enough. Well, guess what? It ain't.
  
  For bugs in the text file, it states that there are texture misalignments across the map. That is nowhere close to the truth. The whole map is just one huge texture misalignment.
  
  I only had to play 10 seconds of it before I closed it down. I did give it a run with noclip after, and... oh God. No detail ANYWHERE in the map.
  
  This map isn't from 1994, but it's so goddamn bad that it should have been included in the 1994 Tune Up community project. You already know what I think of this wad, and take my warning.
  
  

I haven't heard of 5 Minute Map Collection until now but I played some and it's pretty fun. The maps are at least fair.

I made a crude colormap for the EGA palette wad so the major lightlevels (64, 128, 192, etc) have some sort of contrast. Perhaps I should have told sigvatr about it.

A lot of bad wads in this edition of newstuff. Wonder why.

It's nice to see more Heretic maps being released these days. But unfortunately, most of them are by rookies.

Not a lot of interest here really.

I did play Marine's Folly myself at some point - I found it to be fairly entertaining and wasn't bothered by the looks, as I remember it.

udderdude said:

...and it's just a bullshit bonanza.

I LOL'ed hard at this. Best description ever!

I'm deliberately posting to say I absolutely love W.W.E.M. just to reduce it's chances of landing a worst wad cacoward. You gonna have to try less than that!

Ooohhhh, Five Minute Megawad... Such a serious review for what, to me, was just a silly exercise. There a couple of nicely-built maps in there (most that went up to 10 minutes). Abandoned Mansion is about the only somewhat worthwhile thing mentioned in this one.

40oz said:

I'm deliberately posting to say I absolutely love W.W.E.M. just to reduce it's chances of landing a worst wad cacoward. You gonna have to try less than that!

Okay, how's this

Snakes said:

Ooohhhh, Five Minute Megawad... Such a serious review for what, to me, was just a silly exercise. There a couple of nicely-built maps in there (most that went up to 10 minutes). Abandoned Mansion is about the only somewhat worthwhile thing mentioned in this one.

Well, like I said in the review, I pretty much understand the exercise of making the maps...but there's no point hiding the fact that they are terrible maps and barely worth playing. I say barely now, because someone above said they enjoyed them so it is all subjective.
They are terrible maps because they were made in 5 minutes, not because the authors are bad. There are thousands of mis-aligned, badly textured maps with null gameplay that have taken more effort than this, so anyone who fancies playing maps like that might want to give them a shot first

Snakes said:

Ooohhhh, Five Minute Megawad... Such a serious review for what, to me, was just a silly exercise. There a couple of nicely-built maps in there (most that went up to 10 minutes). Abandoned Mansion is about the only somewhat worthwhile thing mentioned in this one.

You forgot Marine's Folly and Nostrum.

The rest of the wads are skippable though.

If you're looking for something worthwhile for Heretic that hasn't been published (in /newstuff reviews) yet, go here.

Marine's Folly is quite a fun little level.

duncan said:

Well, like I said in the review, I pretty much understand the exercise of making the maps...but there's no point hiding the fact that they are terrible maps and barely worth playing. I say barely now, because someone above said they enjoyed them so it is all subjective.
They are terrible maps because they were made in 5 minutes, not because the authors are bad. There are thousands of mis-aligned, badly textured maps with null gameplay that have taken more effort than this, so anyone who fancies playing maps like that might want to give them a shot first

Oh, I completely agree. I knew whoever picked it up would say something like that because the concept is so over-the-top.

And yes I did forget Marine's Folly (haven't played Nostrum). I still wish it had a more varied texture scheme, though. Or at least more identifiable architecture in its individual areas.

PalPlus looks exactly like Doom used to without gamma correction on my old dying monitor.

Dragonsbrethren said:

PalPlus looks exactly like Doom used to without gamma correction on my old dying monitor.

that was the purpose of sigvatr's contrast.wad iirc, palplus seems to be the same thing. looks great for tech bases or rusty metal / stone doom2 themed maps, more realistic and colder than the cartoonish original palette. a bit drab for hellish red & fire though. i use it for every suitable map since sigvatr released it, it has almost become a standard for me.

Abandoned Mansion is very nice, reminds me of some Michael Reed maps.

Abandoned Mansion was really cool as well. A solid map with nice texturing / atmosphere, and fun gameplay.

I thought Obstructor was pretty good. Great use of height variation thoughout. Personally, I quite like WADs where you're not given the full arsenal of weapons. I didn't find myself short on health at any point either, seemed just about right. If people think it's too hard, play on a lower skill setting like I did.

kristus said:

It's nice to see more Heretic maps being released these days. But unfortunately, most of them are by rookies.

This just reminded me that I still have an unfinished HTC map somewhere on me hard drive. I do want to finish that someday soon :P

Esselfortium said:

Okay, how's this

Pshhh, that won't even compile you crazy fool. Who do you think you are, John Romero?