Question about megawads

I'm using GLBoom+ and I just beat my first non id Megawad.. Icarus: Alien Vanguard. I thought it was a great megawad, maybe a tad bit too easy (I had to check a couple times to make sure I had it on Ultra Violence) with great music (map20 Kreygasm). Anyway, I also liked the continuous theme it offered but what bothered me a bit was that the interludes that play every 10 levels or so were the same interludes from doom 2. I know doom isn't supposed to have a story, but I liked how the interludes shed some background onto the iwad. I also noticed that the automap always showed the name of the map as a doom 2 map, ie Map 01 of Icarus was called Entryway, Map 30 was called Icon of Sin, etc. My question is how can I get rid of that stuff so I can see the megawads map names and interludes

Also, I need a new megawad to start: are there any that play similar to DOOM 2 M10 and TNT Map 09? You know, lots of low level monsters to mow through, but still challenging. Thanks

Yes, both automap names and intermission strings (and much more) can be changed via a DEHACKED patch, which should be included inside the wad or loaded as a .deh file with it. Some megawads (mainly the older ones) don't have DEHACKED patches for simplicity sake or because the authors didn't bother.

DEHACKED patches are compatible with all source ports. They can be created and edited via a DEHACKED editor (for DOS) or WhackEd editor (for Windows). Here are DEHACKED editing tutorials.

With the megawad recommendation, I can't think off anything right now, hopefully someone else helps you out.

You can replace the map names and text screens using DeHackEd for ports like GLBoom+, or with the more flexible MAPINFO for Eternity and ZDoom (and derivatives), but usually that's down to the author of the megawad to do. Quite a lot of older projects don't have those changes, presumably because it was either difficult to do or not widely heard of at the time. More modern works will have it more often than not.

If you're after that style of map, I think valkiriforce's works will do well for you. Try searching for Doom Core or Reverie on the archives. I'd link you them myself, but that's pretty difficult on my phone.

Not many vanilla megawads come with dehacked patches that replace the Automap map titles and text screen interludes. As mentioned above, a dehacked patch is the only way to do it, and it has to be loaded in addition to the base megawad itself. Some vanilla megawads like DTWiD, and Alien Vendetta come with dehacked patches that fill in these blanks, and Boom megawads and short episodes such as Speed of Doom, or Claustrophobia 1024 support dehacked patches being embedded inside the wad, for extra convenience, so you're more likely to find the map titles and intermissions replaced in boom wads.

Memento Mori and Memento Mori 2 stand out to me as "medium" difficulty megawads. Biowar and Scythe are pretty good and easy going too.

I think Memento Mori 2 is the pinnacle of classic style mapping that probably will never be topped. So definitely play that. Requiem comes close to it but it has some filler and maps that are more artistic than playable.

40oz said:

Boom megawads and short episodes such as Speed of Doom, or Claustrophobia 1024 support dehacked patches being embedded inside the wad

Sorry for nitpicking here but that is a feature of Boom-based source ports rather than Boom wads. For example Epic 2 is a Vanilla megawad besides some savegame limits AFAIK and it has embedded dehacked (in a .bex form actually), it just can't be read by original Doom EXE or even Chocolate Doom.

Concerning those earlier vanilla megawads not having dehacked for just map names, I think there's the problem with .deh patches that the map name can't be longer than the original map name otherwise it just wouldn't show in its full length in the automap. This was solved with .bex patches, which require Boom-compatible source port, however. Also, I don't know if in the earlier source ports there was a simple -deh command line switch and I guess the authors would assume you're not going to bother with modifying the executable with dehacked just to have correct names on the automap.

Oops, thanks I didn't know that. Sorry for the misinformation.

40oz said:

Oops, thanks I didn't know that. Sorry for the misinformation.

No problem, overall the thread was very helpful.

Thanks everyone

I decided to start Doom 2 the way id Did, so far it's really really good.