The Old Stuff Chronicles

Along with the faint scent of fresh coffee, so to with the rising sun doesSaturday morning bring with it another edition of this weekly featurearticle. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Oldstuff Chronicles.<p>Of all the various levels and experiences that I have exposed you to in theweeks prior to today, today's feature was a very difficult choicefor me to arrive at and is unusual in two aspects. Bear with me...<p>First, today's feature numbers among the very first external levels forDOOM(2) that I ever had the pleasure to play. Stop for a moment and ponderthat -- me, now the seasoned creator of several successful levels andbattle-hardened veteran of far more DOOM levels than I can possibly recall,taking his very first steps into the great unknowns of the plethora of mapsavailable.<p>This first point leads to my second -- today's feature is the only level ofthe several previously examined that I have been less than confident aboutsharing with the DOOM community. Why? Because I suspect that a number of youwill strongly dislike the level that I am about to present you with, and Iam hesitant to expose a map as distinct and powerfully nostalgic as VoidshipII to such harsh criticism.<p>The author of Voidship II, Kevin McGrail, was inspired to create aship in the heavens run by the forces of Hell when he first caught sight ofthe starry sky of a previous Oldstuff feature, Doomsday of the UAC,back in 1994. The end result of McGrail's now-revered muse, creativity, andseveral refinements over the years resulted in the final product -- a mapworthy of being featured here on Doomworld.<p>Voidship II is a keenly textured, well-populated, puzzle-drivenpiece of art. McGrail forces the player to use his or her brains as much, ifnot more, than the arsenal presented to combat the environment and enemiespresented throughout the level, often giving the player with a destinationbut no obvious path to reach it. I begrudgingly selected Voidship IIfor today's article for fear that some of you will despise it, but I hopethat you prove me wrong on that and embrace Voidship II with an openmind and experience it for everything that it is -- creative, encompassing,and interesting. It is time well spent. Do take care, and enjoy!<p>Note: those of you without DOOM2 should be aware that a version of thislevel exists for DOOM.

Personally I enjoy the Doom version much better; maybe it's just in my head, but the classic Doom "feel" just isn't there in the Doom2 version.

I still remember playing this map for the first time, what a rush.

demons are a lot more menacing without the SSG..

Quite right. In fact I've always been of the opinon that the ssg pretty much reduces the threat level of demons and spectres below that of troopers...

Yeah.Ssg makes it easy.Usually,when I make a map,you encounter about 10 hell knights before you get anything better than a shotgun.I made one once,it was gonna be kinda like,you trying to get to a shelter or somthing and you had to excape from a city,get into a shelter,then find that its full of demons as well....but I didn't like it too much.I'm not the best map maker @_@

Hate the Voidship? Never! That was one the first I played too.

I don't hate it,its a GREAT map!I just think that the ssg makes it too easy

I don't like this map :P

Is there a demo anywhere I can download showing how to play through this map? This map is very un-intuitive on what you're supposed to do next.

It may not be that you are a bad mapper, it's just that putting the player up against 12 hell-knights with a pistol is very unprofessional, poor, stupid.

Sorry, it's just that the concept pisses me off. ;]

It's not that hard. Just look around the current room - if everything looks the same, backtrack to the previous room, etc.

This is one of those maps which you either love or hate.

Frag Me said that you'd fight ten Hell Knights not before you got the shotgun, but before you got a better weapon than the shotgun. I think that's a little much, but possible.

FM, would you consider the chaingun a better weapon than the shotgun?

I guess you can put me in the group of people that hate this map then. Because I've made it to the blue key door, but the blue key is nowhere to be found. I also got trapped in the little maze on the way to the blue key door as well and couldn't seem to find my way out, is this map supposed to be used with standard doom2.exe or something like Zdoom that allows you to jump?

"This is one of those maps which you either love or hate."

Unless of course you are me. There are areas of this map that are very clever, thought provoking and use the limitations of the doom engine to its advantage. I like the way the start area slowly opens up and evolves, giving you a few well paced fights without you even really going anywhere. It features a few original "tricks and traps" that force you to think, or just start fighting when you didn't expect to. There is good use of textures and the map looks good.

However, ultimately, for some reason I'm fairly indifferent to this map.

I have played better, but I have also certainly played a lot worse.

Yes, I got to the blue door with out he key as well. And since I just ran out of shells I just got pissed off and quit. I havn't lit up in 24 hours and I don't want to make the situation worse.
I think the shotgun is better against the larger deamons because there is more power in 50 shells than in 200 rounds. But the chaingun is great for sniping via the tap fire button trick.

Of course a chaingun would be better than a shotgun. But I must say a plasmagun or BFG would be about 300 times better than that. ;-)