Best Year for Pwads?

What, in your opinion, was the best year for new pwads? The excitement of the early years (1994-5), despite the rough edges the wads inevitably had; the middle years (1996-8), when the tools had improved, mappers had become more proficient, and Doom was still one of the most popular games for user-created add-ons; or the later years (1999-present), when the community has shrunk somewhat, but the level of expertise among those who are still mapping has risen continually?

(Mods: feel free to move this poll to "Wads and Mods".)

July 1997 I think it was when Requiem, STRAIN, and Gothic DM were all released...

Can you install strain under XP? the batchfile appears to do nothing

Maybe someone should dig up the old authors and ask them whether they could repackage it in some more up-to-date format.

fen: I could send you the finished install if you like. it is a modified exe as well though.

2001.

Ugh, this make me miss Doomoscope.

Such a good concept, why did it have to die?

Probably 2001 - AV, Fragport, TVR!, Slayer and Murderous Intent were all released...

2002 is a close second, with the vast improvements to ZDoom and all the quality ZDoom wads coming through.

If you could that'd be great, It'd need to be zipped (or .rar .ace etc) as my email limit is 5meg.

Unless someone knows what format it is? winrar says it's a corrupt LHZ which isn't much use.

Regarding the best year I think last year was very good, but i'll check out what was released when.

STRAIN, when extracted, is a straightforward .wad plus .deh. The only specific XP issue is that DOS batch files often screw up under XP. I believe the extracted wad and deh are available for download from somewhere (I don't remember exactly where; EDIT: can't find it; Biffy's post in this thread might be useful for those who find it difficult to extract). NB: Demo compatibility between STRNHACK.EXE and PrBoom + Strain.deh is quite poor. EDIT2: I have now realized what the problem is: PrBoom doesn't handle Holobots correctly at all. :(

My main reasons for choosing 1997: HR, STRAIN, Requiem and Hacx. My second choice would be 2001 (AV, Equinox, Slayer) or 1996 (Icarus, MM, MM2 and a lot of good episodes).

As I see it, '97 was probably the peak year for releases, when technically editing was mastered, but '96 also has a bunch of very relevant stuff (many authors who laid their foundations then later made their skills totally clear by '97.) I think the middle years, probably the most important in respect to development and possibly also output in general, were '95 to '97 (the early stage being '94 when the rudiments were being assimilated but WADs were rarely near id standards.) After this a lot of awesome shit was done, but overall skill remained established from before.

2001, more likely than not. That year saw some pretty good SP levels released, and there was of course the E1 Week at Doomcenter.

1995. I think that's when Justin Fisher made Aliens TC.

ravage said:

1995. I think that's when Justin Fisher made Aliens TC.

No, 1994.

Um, heh. :P

sent you an email, Lee... that is, if that is your current email address....