maps/wads with ~~cool vibes~~

What're some maps/wads you've played that had a really cool sense of atmospherics and place? Bonus points for something you wouldn't usually find in Doom everyday - the kinda stuff that isn't necessarily "default doom aesthetics".

I really like how Tormentor667 conveys his maps.

Realm667

Although mostly still Doom-like, yet very atmospheric stuff! ;)

@Dragonfly's stuff falls into this category too!

And many other authors alike found here at Doomworld, I see your stuff! :)

And then all the crazy Mods and TC's at the zdoom forums.

QCDE, Quake Champions Doom Edition, if it counts in this topic, one of the nicest DM 

Mod sets I've seen.

But this is a whole other realm when it comes to weapon mods an such so I won't

get into that here.. as well as TC'S, there's a shit ton.

Of course there's wads that are just totally off the hook like Wadaholic's:

Total Chaos

But at my age, I don't want to have a heart attack playing it, it just creeps me out. lol

Wadaholic, you hear me man?

Though, there are several others, but these are the first's that ring the bell.

I'll be lazy and copy/paste lists I made when related questions came up in the past:

Trippy wads:

skyewood
skymaybe
marswar map16
aboocean
surreal2
osiris
aboosysv
symoism
anadream
zanzan
equinox (esp., e.g., map 10)
grove
pacdoom2
hacx
deus (Deus ex Machina)
pisa2
phoenix3
nulspace
wotdoom3

Avant garde:

https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/a-c/anadream

https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/m-o/nemisis

https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/d-f/deus

https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/themes/x-rated/i_am_old_enough_to_look_at_this/ars_sml

https://dsdarchive.com/wads/bloody (Bloody)
http://www.mediafire.com/file/td9du5rrigd566e/wotdoomf.zip (Wheel of Time)
https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/s-u/skyewood
https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/p-r/pinball2
https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/v-z/zomheart
https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom/a-c/cheese

Port-specific:

https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/a-c/b-onahd

https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/s-u/sqwirel

https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/s-u/studio

Equinox is forever my go-to answer to this question

ZanZan, doesn't have much in the way of replay value though 

Some maps with cool not default aesthetics I could remember:

pl2: map01,02,03,05,06,09,11,12,13,16,17,20,29

tntr: map01-19,30

caverns of darkness: whole mapset

2002 doom odyssey: the whole first episode; E2M1,2,3,4,5,9; E3M1,2,5,9; E4M2,8

resurgence: map09

pirate doom: swampy, hell and the one after hell level, the house of mojo

prcp: map03,11,13,14,15,16,17,18,27,29

eternal doom III: map05,06,07,12,30

bloodstain: map12,20,30

suspended in dusk: whole mapset

herian 2: whole mapset

back to basics: whole mapset

wonderful doom (wd13.wad): whole mapset

phobos anomaly reborn: E1M3, E1M6,7,8,9

hellscapes: whole mapset

Knee Deep in ZDoom, I like the small references to the original maps and makes it feel like I'm playing some kind of sequel where the UAC bases were restored after the events of the original game

One that made a big impression on me many years ago was UAC Ultra - it's got a completely non-Doom vibe to me but it's really cool, though quite short (7 maps IIRC). I was also going to say P:AR, but @SilverMiner already mentioned it. That has HUUUUGE maps, may of which are very non-Doom-ey, vibe-wise, particularly as it is now so old.

I'm here to shill for A.L.T. (Absolute Life Transformation), play it for a surreal experience.

B/\|_||-|/\|_|S -- it's cool Bauhaus architecture, some of which are even from real buildings! Just with some demons added.

Beyond Reality -- complete trippy nonsense.

For stuff that doesn't fit Doom's usual aesthetics, I can only recommend the entire works of LilWhiteMouse.

More generally a look at the ZDoom total conversion forum can give you a lot of weird things. Like the recently released Snap the Sentinel, or Hocus Pocus Doom, Memoirs of Magic, Rise of the Abyssal, etc.

I gotta pimp @Big Ol Billy's project The City of Damned Children. It's definitely not your every day Doom wad.

10 hours ago, Pechudin said:

I'm here to shill for A.L.T. (Absolute Life Transformation), play it for a surreal experience.

Oh yeah, I've played my fair share of ALT after reading an article about how Russian Doom map packs are filled with existential dread. I think I had to stop playing it about halfway through because I was already in a weird headspace at the time and it put me more on-edge than I was comfortable with. Probably worth a revisit now, though.

More general response: I'm gonna check out some of the other mods listed here when next I have time to boot up GZDoom.

Finely Crafted Fetish Film by Ribbiks is the first one that comes to mind for me. It has some pretty unusual settings for doom maps and it looks great.

 IMO, SpaceDM9's Tokyo level takes the cake for cool vibes.

Bloodstain had some SERIOUSLY groovy and atmospheric levels in its last third. It's still one of my favorites after all these years. Suspended In Dusk is another, rarely has a dilapidated, dirty, and shitty old concrete bunker base felt so beautiful, I always feel myself getting sucked into it when I play it. I think SID is an excellent example on how to use a dirty and grungy low color aesthetic in a good way, a little bit akin to Resident Evil 4.

Somewhat criminally, the lists I gave above didn't include Asylum of the Wretched. Be sure to load the deh patch (won't at all work without), and think before shooting at the start, since you don't have a key...

Void and Rainbow is the most aesthetically pleasing map I have ever played. Very cool and relaxing...until the final boss.

Cold Front, a 4-level wad by Egg Boy, is perhaps the first to match ice and egyptian motifs in one uniform package, personally to great success. You don't get these two beautiful themes in individual wads every day, less so together. 

9 hours ago, xvertigox said:

I gotta pimp @Big Ol Billy's project The City of Damned Children. It's definitely not your every day Doom wad.

 

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all of the Doomer Board Projects maps are unique and none feel like vanilla doom. the good stuff

I' hardly a map atmosphere connoisseur - far from it. I'm very much about gameplay flow and stuff like that.

That being said, these WADs have some pretty sweet atmospheres in places, albeit I don't exactly recall the specific maps to which that applies:

DOOM Zero.

Memento Mori. (people say MM2 is better but have yet to play it)

Back to Saturn X (only played e1 a bit) - this one has some absolutely terrific atmosphere.

Foursite is pretty cool and is actually only "one" map.

On 12/18/2020 at 11:49 PM, Grazza said:

Somewhat criminally, the lists I gave above didn't include Asylum of the Wretched. Be sure to load the deh patch (won't at all work without), and think before shooting at the start, since you don't have a key...

So uh, I'm still figuring out some of the ins-and-outs of playing mods. How do I insert dehacked stuff into gzdoom? Do I just select it and drag it onto gzdoom like everything else?

If a mod comes with, say, 2 wads and a deh file: copy all 3 files at once, then right click GZ and paste.  

I think this is necessary because trying to drag and drop 3 files at once opens 3 instances of GZ, each running 1 of the 3 files.

Nihility comes to mind, the heavy use of a bunch of Alpha/Beta assets, ambient sound effects instead of music, and all tweaked gameplay, makes it feel somehow very oldschool yet so very fresh.

It plays overall like Doom, but the levels are just slightly spooky in ways that the original game seldom was.

It's one of my very favorite .wads

Suspended In Dusk is another that comes to mind, it's my favorite use of concrete textures ever. Very nice detailing without getting in the way of gameplay, and highly atmospheric, you can just picture the reek of mold and rust, all the dirt and grime accumulated in all the crevices and vents, and the staining on the floor of acid rain and years of windswept dust in the courtyards of the facility, your footsteps echoing as you make your way through the halls. You stack up next to a door to get ready for what's on the other side, and you can just imagine the caked on dirt on the walls rubbing off and sticking on your shirt/armor and pants as you do, leaving a telltale mark that you've been there.

That brings to mind the original TNT Evilution, a level set which feels like it takes Doom's initial 'used future' tech aesthetic (likely inspired by the old Star Wars movies), and turns it up further. Everything just looks so old and dated; rusted out facilities, old vehicles, disused spaces which have barely been cleaned or maintained for decades, but the infrastructure probably still kinda works so that's why it hasn't long since been decommissioned.

Map 18, Mill, I think has some great examples of that, with the ratty steel plating all over, the spaces with what could either be septic pools or aggravated leaks, and the one section which appears more advanced, more new, more modern, with its nice new blue carpet and shiny new computer banks. The final arena of the Mill constitutes a huge hall with a massive wooden deck, lined with tall and rough concrete walls, cold to the touch. Perhaps it was long ago a factory floor or warehouse, but now it's conspicuously devoid of industrial equipment, cargo, or monsters, with the tense droning ambient music to make you company, you can just picture those planks creaking loudly as you make your way across, you could try to move quietly but the noise of the old floor echoes all around you just the same as it bucks and flexes. You just know the monsters are somewhere, lying in wait, you know they've long since heard you, maybe even seen you, and they're waiting to come for you, just spring their trap, and the battle will be on.

EDIT: Whoops, seems I forgot I replied to this thread before, even mentioning SID that time.

these do be vibin' doe 😶

community chest 2 map 24 (the vibiest of maps)

community chest 4 maps 10, 11, 21

japanese community project maps 27, 28