Played Darkening 2, but it was never finished! Why?

I played (well TRIED to play heh) Darken2.wad or "The Darkening 2" (you can find it on the cdrom.com ftp). The intro screen after loading is cool, it's a 3 way symbol or something. The 1st level is awesome, you see the sky it's a bunch of mountains. You climb down the hill and see this HUGE complex. The textures are great, the complex is big and the enemies are pretty easy on easiest skill...well for level 1 anyway. The textures and design are good through out the wad but there's only like 12 levels! And the difficulty seems to only have one setting. Also I seemed to run out of ammo easily and finding health was very hard and I died alot. And this was all on Skill 1 (or is that 0? I'm too young to die, anyway). After you quit it shows what looks to be a good number of map makers on the team like Anthony Soto, etc. Some of them I recognized, so I thought it would be a good wad. Problem is it just wasn't finished. Only 10-12 levels :(. Anyone know why this wad seemed to die in the process?

Also, I'd be interested to hear of other "half finished" type wads that seemed promising in beta but just never got finished.

Oh and I would at to this this wlfdoom. Or maybe that's Wolfendoom. Anyway it's a Wolf3d Doom2 wad makeover that was only 3 levels long. However the graphics were VERY good, it was an almost complete makeover to wolf3d. It redid some classic wolf3d levels but even added a few doom features like stairs and trigged lifts. The boss was a Hell Knight that you had to defeat with the changun (lol!). It's really too bad the author didn't add more levels.

The Darkening ep2 is finished afaik, it's supposed to be only 12 maps + DM maps. A wad doesn't HAVE to have the full 32 maps you know. Map01 is made by Ola Björling, one of the finest mappers ever.

This was always meant to be made by episode.
Darken2 is not an ordinary release... the design and integration of the maps was carefully orchestrated.
Instead of 32 maps of 'good' quality, you are getting 12 maps of the highest quality.
no VPOs, texture bleeding, sector errors, unaligned textures... the lighting is perfect, it plays with doom2.exe, the flow, design, and function of the maps are amazing. Like a really good bottle of wine, you have to savor it while it lasts.
Map12 could still be the best single map ever made for DOOM.

Soon after we started working on the Darkening (way back in 1996), we decided that we'd create three seperately released episodes, rather than release everything together as a megawad. Each would have a strong theme throughout: the first was brick & metal, the second was alien techbase, and the third was to be a tech/gothic/hellish hybrid.

All went well until roughly halfway through the development of Episode 2. Several team members realized they were rapidly losing interest in Doom, and that Episode 2 would make the perfect final project for them. This extra bit of effort on their part is probably what helps make the Darkening E2 one of the most well received Doom add-ons of all time :).

The people who wished to retire included the two project co-leaders (Jan van der Veken and Travers Dunne) as well as the main Episode 2 texture artist (Ola Bjorling), and obviously without that lot an Episode 3 was entirely out of the question.

Having said that, not too long after Episode 2 was released, a guy called Marin Friberg and I started organizing a new project, one which would be in the "spirit" (but not the name) of the planned Episode 3: a great looking, greatplaying set of levels that combined the tech, gothic and hell styles into something unique.

The project, named "Perfect" (for that's what we arrogantly intended it to be ;)), was going well for a while, and we even managed to lure Ola back out of retirement. He started work on a truly amazing texture wad, and it's a crying shame it was never finished, and that so few people have seen what work he did.

After a rather unpleasant incident (which I'd rather not go into), I left the team... and unfortunately that was the last I ever heard about the project. There have been a couple of brief reappearances by Ola over the years, but everyone else involved in the project now appear to have left the Doom community for good.

The odds of further Darkening levels aren't good - I'm the only one left of either the Darkening E1 team, and one of only three people left of the E2 team (the others being Derek MacDonald and Lee Szymanski).

Of course anyone is free to use either of the Darkening texture wads, or to create a wad intended as the "sequel" to Episode 2... I just ask they respect the original team and name their creation something other than "the Darkening".

On a final note, an episode for Doom 1 called "Classic" could technically be described as a "prequel" to the Darkening; call it "Darkening 0" if you like :). It features levels by four of the Darkening contributors: Jan, Travers, myself and Anthony Soto.

NiGHTMARE said:

I'm the only one left of either the Darkening E1 team, and one of only three people left of the E2 team (the others being Derek MacDonald and Lee Szymanski).

I stopped mapping a good while back, and lets face it only had a minor part in the project.

It's a shame Ola's recent work hasn't been completed, judging by the textures and map i've seen it would have been awesome.

Oh and interesting logo

Ola's appeared once or twice and he stated he was slowly working on a map, and had not entirely stopped working on the set of gothic-styled graphics.

NiGHTMARE said:

Of course anyone is free to use either of the Darkening texture wads,

By this you mean the actual Darkening wad or seperate texture wads?

Sorry, that should have read "sets", not "wads" :).

There was intended to be a seperately released E2 texture wad, but for some reason it never happened.

Opulent said:
Map12 could still be the best single map ever made for DOOM.

If it hadn't been for those crate jumps... :-/

NiGHTMARE said:

There was intended to be a seperately released E2 texture wad, but for some reason it never happened.

Is it fine to use textures from Ep2 or are they 'one hit wonders.' ;)

http://ukiro.com/doom/

Lutrov71 said:

Is it fine to use textures from Ep2 or are they 'one hit wonders.' ;)

Ola originally wanted people to wait for the seperately released texture wad rather than use the Episode 2 wad. However, since it never appeared several people have gone ahead and used it anyway.

Whether or not Ola would find this acceptable obviously isn't for me to say, but I suspect he'd prefer mappers to not include Episode 2 textures in their wads - instead, simply tell players to load up your wad and the Darkening E2 wad at the same time.

Anyone's free to use the Episode 1 textures I made, but to be honest they're quite pathetic compared to my more recent efforts :).

It's best to ask Ola for permission. Some on the textures (the rock ones?) aren't original but I can't be sure.

Szymanski said:
(...)

Nice to see you around here again, Lee... /me tips hat :)

Jonathan said:

http://ukiro.com/doom/

Sorry for going off-topic, but what in the hell is this beauty?!

I may as well admit here, that I have something of a kind of crush on Ola Björling.

I think it was finished. But I think the last map was a bit weird... How do you get that one key over the crate? I always just noclip to get it...

Wow...after reading Erik's post i realized after years that AFAIK=As Far As I Know!

Damn...that just made my week bud!

Nmn said:

Sorry for going off-topic, but what in the hell is this beauty?!

It's not off-topic, that's Ola's website!

Jimi said:

I think it was finished. But I think the last map was a bit weird... How do you get that one key over the crate? I always just noclip to get it...

You need to jump between the crates - it's sort of difficult to execute but finding the path should be easy. It's the actual jumping thats tricky, I usually need 2 or 3 tries at least.

In retrospect, the crate jumping section should perhaps have been placed earlier in the level, so you wouldn't have to terminate an otherwise perfect demo recording 10 minutes into the map because you keep falling off. But the map (and all of Darkening E2, I might add) was primarily made for the "normal" player and not the elite demo recorders. I wanted a map that tested the players skill in every single aspect; All sorts of monster fights, chosing the right weapon for the task, using ammo wisely, finding your way through, selecting a good path in doing so, problem solving and also pure "driving skills", which is what the crate jump section is all about. I wanted to create the ultimate Doom map in every aspect - it has some obvious flaws, but in all, it's the best work I've done, it's my top achievement in Doom editing.

And guys, thank you for all the kind words. It's really heartwarming. It really made my day when I dropped back in here for old times sake, and found this thread right away.

There is pretty much no chance in hell that there will be a Darkening E3, and probably nothing else from me either. I have been part of some start-up projects as a texture designer, but I've always ended up disappearing due to developments in my real life. So seeing as I'm obviously not to be relied on in a project any more, I've decided to stay out of them. (And here is where I guess I should apologize to everyone I've let down by just vanishing - I am truly sorry about this, but I haven't had much of a choice.)

I have gone through a lot of shit in my private life over the past 3 years, and there isn't much room in my life for these ambitious hobby projects any more. If I ever release anything, it will be a texture set - I have a few hundred unused textures around. But don't count on it, because I won't release stuff "as-is", it needs to be complete and perfect and wether I will be able to pull that off is doubtful.

The pictures in that link are from a map that my previous editor of choice (WadAuthor) ate - it was at 29000 sidedefs. I think I have a 19000 sidedef version backed up, but it's quite unlikely that I will finish it. It's a pretty linear thing, so apart from some minor architectural novelties and the all-new textures it's nothing special.

I usually have tried it some 5 times and then I noticed I always fell off from that one crate and then I just noclip... I also thought maybe I should shoot a rocket into the wall and the explosion would give me enough velocity to land over the crate... but I never did that, because I didn't have that much health to use or I just didn't want to waste my health that way. Maybe next time I won't fall off from that one crate.

Thank you.