The /newstuff Chronicles #239

Hey kids! Everyone's favourite British guy that most people actually haven't heard of is doing this weeks newstuff! Tom Deee! Featuring a selection of... things, and Tom himself going MAD because of crappy 1994 wads! Fun fun! You can expect these to be the crappiest reviews.. uh.. since ever.

• Fear - Patrick "Patrix" Hipps
  doom.exe - Solo Play - 55kb - (img) (img)
  Gotta say, for 1994 standards or whatever this ain't bad. I mean, come on, there's actual LIGHTING and stuff. Wow, that's.. probably like, a new thing for 1994 wads. I suppose when this came out in 1994, everyone was like, "wow, lighting" and came ejaculatory fluid in their pants. Basically, quite good 1994-style with some nifty gameplay and is quite "mazey.", or something. Not bad.
  
  
• Hellrais.wad - Unknown! (the pussy lawl)
  doom.exe - Solo Play - 16kb - (img)
  Pile of shit. HAY GUYS ILL PUT A CYBER DEMON AT THE START OF THE MAP AND YOU ONLY HAVE A PISTOL. OH AND YOU CAN'T GET PAST IT.
  
  I mdk'd it and it's a pile of wank. Teleporters, practically no gameplay, ooh, did I mention that there's more or less no detail? Bog standard 1994 that was probably hailed a masterpiece back then.
  
  (By the way, the textfile says to "survive!". I don't think anyone can survive this bullshit of a wad.)
  
  
• Horror.wad - Patrix
  doom.exe - Solo Play - 20kb - (img) (img)
  "Kill and enjoy!" Meh. 1994-Average map. Fair attempts at detail and gameplay such. Not much to be said, really. Just an average map. Also of note is the final battle at the end, with monsters thrown at you from everywhere, practically. Interesting.
  
  
• MUDWADS Yeah, thats rite. MUD WAD'S (ugh what kind of a title is that) - Dave Swift
  doom.exe - Solo Play - 113kb - (img) (img)
  No thanks. Four 1994 wads where detail and gameplay are practically nonexistent. All levels are like labyrinths. Labyrinths that are so goddamn confusing and not fun at all it makes me want to cry.
  
  
• DMTEXAS1.wad - David Bruni
  doom.exe - Solo Play - 58kb - (img) (img)
  Hey! It's big! Big and totally confusing and has no flow! Hooray! Ugh, give me a map that's short-medium, linear and not SO FUCKING CONFUSING WHERE I HAVE TO WALK EVERYWHERE FOR A KEY OR SWITCH OR AGHHHHHHH
  
  was everyone in 1994 taking LSD or something?
  
  
• The Texas Tornado Deathmatch Wad (even though it's for single player and it's too damn large for multiplayer) - David & Kathy Bruni
  doom.exe - Solo Play - 55kb - (img)
  THANKS GOD I LIKE IT WHEN YOU HAVE TO THROW ME THESE A"MAZE"ING MAPS WITH NO GAMEPLAY QUALITIES EVER.
  
  Just no.
  
  Fuck 1994.
  
  
• DMZOO.wad - David Bruni
  doom.exe - Solo Play - 45kb - (img)
  Hey, there's some actual flow in this ONCE AGAIN 1994 map! And it's not a huge slab of rooms connected together making one huge maze!
  
  Sadly the gameplay is still a pile of shite.
  
  I hate you so much, David Bruni. :(
  
  
• Face Your Fears - Cutmanmike
  ZDoom - Solo Play - 180kb - (img)
  Aah, a non-1994 wad. Thank god. Except this is just some gimmick map. It's dark and spooky, nice detail, great atmosphere. Oh hold on, where the hell do I go? Where's the damn exit? I can't find it anywhere! OH NO SCREAMING FACE FLASHES APPEARS SCREAMS DISSAPEARS. Cool. okay deleted.
  
  
• Thunder.wad - Patrick Woods
  doom.exe - Solo Play - 1 - (img) (img)
  I suppose this is sort of good for 1994. Except I've had enough of playing all these 1994 wads. Besides, after idclipping through it all, it doesn't really look fun.
  
  I tried it for a few minutes.
  
  It's not.
  
  
• Ressurection Of Chaos - Udderdude (and numerous other authors he edited maps from.)
  ZDoom - Solo Play - 3671 KB - (img) (img) (img) (img)
  (for Hexen)
  
  THANK YOU UDDERDUDE. I don't care if Udderdude didn't make any of the maps in this wad, because it's extremely fun. Besides, he's altered the maps completely: Textures, monster placement, special stuff.. happening. I tells ya, this is one fun wad. Not only that, but no goddamn puzzles from Hexen! Just action! And, at the end of every level are some enjoyable bosses which make the wad ever-so-more enthralling to play. However, the levels do seem a bit uneven when all mixed together, seeing as though they were all really made by different authors. Either way, entertaining wad, and I wait for another wad by him (which hint hint should be for hint hint Strife.. hint hint.)
  
  
• A day of revenge against Seg Violation a.k.a. "Seggie" - Cecelia
  doom2.exe - Solo Play - 70kb - (img)
  The author hates the segment violation in Legacy that happens all the time to him. So he makes a wad where he replaces the chaingun guy with a poorly ripped segment violation error message. Gives a slight smile to your lips, but the smile is hardly seeable by others. Is overall pointless.
  
  
• Total Darkness 2 - Evilhomerdoomer
  Skulltag - Solo Play - 623kb -
  Great wad here! And it's quite linear, just the way I like it. Starts quite easy at first, until it throws numerous battles with the medium-larger monsters, and then progressing onto tougher ones. Some very nice detail as well, sort of reminding me of Mephisto's mapping, except with less copy and paste. Only one flaw is it's quite cramped-ish, but that's about it really. I like it!
  
  Nice shotgun sound replacement too, I guess. And it's got that music that everyone should know but I forgot the name since I'm stupid.
  
  (No screenshots because Skulltag is a faggot and won't take the screenies. ;_;)
  
  
• Fragman - Robert T. Marentette (Admiral R.O.B.)
  doom.exe - SP/DM - 29kb - (img) (img)
  I cannot be arsed with another 1994 wad with yet no detail, horrible gameplay and bad item placement. OH AND IT HAS BARRELS YAY BARRELS ARE GOOD
  
  Reminds me of Langor's Ringmaster map for Skulltag.
  
  WHICH WAS ALSO TERRIBLE
  
  
• The Pit Of Doom - THE BIG GUY!!!11exclamation mark
  doom.exe - Solo Play - 42kb - (img)
  I don't want to live anymore. Another shitty 1994 map! I LOVE YOU SO MUCH FUNDUKE THANKS FOR UPLOADING YET ANOTHER MASTERPIECE THAT WILL BE PLAYED BY EVERYONE ALL THE GODDAMN TIME FOR SURE
  
  
• Reversi - Udderdude
  ZDoom - Solo Play - 122kb - (img) (img)
  The author says this is inspired by Tricks and Traps, but it reminds me of Dead Simple, because it's a linear map with a lot of forced battles. That's where the criticism ends, because this map is a fun romp! I really enjoyed playing through it, and, well, there's not much else to say. Fun gameplay, good detail/texturing - what else can I say? Well, there's a fun (word of the day!) arch-vile battle with numerous pillars lowering and raising. It's fun! Get it! FUN FUN FUN!
  
  FUUUNNN!
  
  
• Strife Weapons! - Doom A Holic
  doom2.exe - Solo Play - 118kb - (img)
  Most weapons replaced with Strife graphics. Fun, if you sort of like that kind of stuff. But the SSG reload graphic replacement? BEST EVER!
  
  
• EVERY OTHER 1994 WAD - SOME GUYS (but uploaded by funduke I HATE YOU)
  doom.exe - n/a - stopuploadingkb -
  I refuse to play any more 1994 wads now, they hurt too much. So, there's only one way to review them in a quick, easy but informative way
  
  EVERY 1994 WAD IS SHIT
  
  
• The Infected Tower - Daniel Moody (TheBattleOx)
  doom2.exe - Solo Play - 137kb - (img)
  General first map by this author guy. Limited texturing and boring gameplay and no height changes. Nothing special, eh. Should've been kept on the authors hard drive, though it is better than 95% of 1994 wads.
  
  
• Epic Battles Demo - Your Name Is
  ZDoom - Solo Play - 121kb - (img)
  Uh, okay. So we've got a bunch of monsters and helper marines just dumped here in a map which is just a bunch of automatically generating goddamn slopes or whatever. GEE THAT'S FANTASTIC!
  
  

fp?

Ha!

Rofl a 94 wad got the pic spotlight.

TomD666 said:

DMTEXAS1.wad - David Bruni
doom.exe - Solo Play - 58kb - (img) (img)
Hey! It's big! Big and totally confusing and has no flow! Hooray! Ugh, give me a map that's short-medium, linear and not SO FUCKING CONFUSING WHERE I HAVE TO WALK EVERYWHERE FOR A KEY OR SWITCH OR AGHHHHHHH

you suck at Doom.

Kaiser said:

you suck at Doom.

;_;

Why do you guys even bother to review the -94 maps?

<3 Tom Deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

(No screenshots because Skulltag is a faggot and won't take the screenies. ;_;)

Look in your personal dir in "C:\Documents and settings".

Anders said:

Why do you guys even bother to review the -94 maps?

Good question. Nobody cares about them and nobody wants the real stuff to get lost between them.

Funduke if you read this:

You are annoying the hell out of the entire Doom community. Please stop uploading that crap! If you pre-selected the good WADs it'd be ok but most of this is utter garbage and prevents us from even finding the good 1994 WADs among them (which I think are mostly in the archive already.)

TomD666 said:

Hellrais.wad[/b] - (img) HAY GUYS ILL PUT A CYBER DEMON AT THE START OF THE MAP AND YOU ONLY HAVE A PISTOL. OH AND YOU CAN'T GET PAST IT. ... (By the way, the textfile says to "survive!". I don't think anyone can survive this bullshit of a wad.)

It's actually quite easy. Here's a demo. I kept it pacifist in an attempt to make it a challenge.

Funduke is not "annoying the hell out of the entire Doom community". He is IMO doing valuable work, but a little selectivity would be a good thing, especially for files that are already available online at cd.textfiles.com. A good index of the Doom files there would certainly be very useful though.

For those who can't get their head around the fact that he is uploading "old stuff to /newstuff", note that this is just the mechanism by which files are added to the archive (which is not part of Doomworld). It was Doomworld's decision to have weekly reviews of the contents of /newstuff.

So the best solution is to not review the '94 esque crap.

Anyway, I dislike this newstuff.

1.ROC was the only interesting thing but since it's half-serious half-humorours nature it somehow doesn't speak to me as a "serious adventure". Personal opinion only. Nothing interesting this week.

2.The reviews just sound stupid. I'm sorry, but shouting and mud throwing is something I'd expect from a 8 year old mentally handicapped individual who lacks an ability to express himself with logical words and just decides to go crazy. I'm sorry TomD, these reviews sound stupid. That and the skulltag screenshots thingy :/

One word: Meh

Yeah.

I don't see why uploading old and shitty WADs shouldn't be allowed. If people here don't like reading reviews of them, the solution is obvious.

Grazza said:

Funduke is not "annoying the hell out of the entire Doom community". He is IMO doing valuable work

That's debatable. For me he is only making it harder to find the good stuff among all the crap he uploads. If his stuff was actually good (or at least decent) I wouldn't complain but most of it (read over 95%) are obscure WADs nobody has heard of and most people don't even want to hear of!

Graf Zahl said:

That's debatable.

No it's not. Clearly there are members of the community (Grazza and others) that don't find it annoying, so Funduke can't be annoying the 'entire community'. Though personally I agree with you and others that Funduke could be a little more selective in what he uploads.

Anyway, pretty lame week. Craptastic wads with craptastic reviews to boot. Face Your Fears was, well, dark and pointless. DMTEXAS1 doesn't look too bad, and it's a '94 wad. I really don't see what's so wrong with the lay-out in this pic

"The reviews just sound stupid. I'm sorry, but shouting and mud throwing is something I'd expect from a 8 year old mentally handicapped individual who lacks an ability to express himself with logical words and just decides to go crazy."

That's me, genius.

I think the requirements for /newstuff chronicles should be that a link must always be provided for each uploaded file, even just updates, and then reviews for any wads the reviewer deems require attention, to whatever depth the reviewer sees fit. That's both to save the reviewer from being forced to do a (some times half assed) review of what he doesn't understand or consider important while giving the freedom to expand on what is judged relevant, and to ensure that the spotlight presents what has been uploaded so everyone (be they supposed majorities or minorities, weirdos or doomgods) can refer to recently uploaded material.

I have never participated as a reviewer simply because I don't feel like playing wads I'm not imterested in. So reviews should not be mandatory, and review combinations where a couple of guys concentrate on their fields would work best (reviewers who tend to prefer technical novelty versus reviewers who tend to prefer playing.)

I'm part of the "DOOM community" and am by no means annoyed by what Funduke does, and I don't think Funduke should hire a QA team just because someone feels he scrolls too much on this page.

Also, this feature might entertain some people with novelties for a week... but I feel it's equally important (and more so to me in particular) as a chronicle of what's been uploaded, so you can look back and spot releases and moments using the Forum once the uploads aren't new anymore.

The reason for uploading not only outstanding good WAD's is, that i'm working on a reference for all the WAD's, that are in the 'Maximum DooM' -collection, that comes with the 'Master Levels for DooM II' -cd.
Many of those WAD'S have been converted from add-ons for the original DooM to be playable with DooM2.
Unfortunately, most of the original textfiles are missing in that collection and some of the WAD's have been crippled during the conversion.
So i think it's good to have the originals avaiable somewhere.
You can get the current version of my 'Maximum DooM Reference' here:
http://www.geocities.com/southparkduke/doom/
When it's complete, i will upload it to /idgames.
As you will notice, there are not many WAD'S still waiting for a link to a place where they are online avaiable.
So your pain will not continue forever.

Grazza said:

... Funduke is not "annoying the hell out of the entire Doom community". He is IMO doing valuable work, but a little selectivity would be a good thing ...

I think i will possibly continue uploading old stuff when the Reference is done. And that stuff will be either not under a minimum of quality or interesting for some reason.

Greetings
FunDuke

... By the way: Not all the WAD's, that i'm uploading are in the Maximum Doom -collection. I do allready mix some stuff of higher quality amoung them, in order not to piss everybody off.

Graf Zahl said:

That's debatable.

good and bad are debatable so let's ban reviews!

TomD666 said:

That's me, genius.

Thanks claryfying that up. I'll keep that for the future.
And thanks for kind words too ^^

Graf Zahl said:

Good question. Nobody cares about them and nobody wants the real stuff to get lost between them.

Funduke if you read this:

You are annoying the hell out of the entire Doom community. Please stop uploading that crap! If you pre-selected the good WADs it'd be ok but most of this is utter garbage and prevents us from even finding the good 1994 WADs among them (which I think are mostly in the archive already.)

That, simply put, is entirely untrue. There are people (like me) who care about 1994 WADs, even though most of them admittedly are crap; you are simply voicing your own opinion here and trying to give it more weight by wrongly claiming that you speak for the entire DOOM community (which you certainly aren't).

There's nothing wrong with having your own opinion, but kindly label it as such and don't try to present yourself as some sort of community spokesperson.

That being said, regarding the merit of uploading these WADs, let me just say two things:

a) the /idgames archive *is* an archive and thus almost by definition should strive for completeness. If there are old WADs that are missing, then they definitely *should* be uploaded. Also note that this is not the "those parts of /idgames which some random person happens to personally like" archive - just because someone thinks those WADs are crap doesn't mean they should be uploaded.

b) it's trivially possible to skip over these WADs if they are being uploaded, but it's not easily possible (or really feasible at all without attempting to hunt down CD collections etc. dating back to the time when they were first released) to get these WADs if they're not. If you don't like them, simply look at the text files before downloading and avoid anything that's from those days; or wait for t/nc, which makes it *even* easier, as 1994 WADs are usually labelled as such. However, if you put yourself in the position of someone who *does* like them (or at least wants to see them), then you'll realize that it's not possible to just get them from elsewhere if they're not being uploaded.

So - funduke, please, do keep it up, and don't let idiots like GZ deter you.

Schneelocke said:

So - funduke, please, do keep it up, and don't let idiots like GZ deter you.

It's really nice that you have to call someone who is regularly annoyed by these uploads an 'idiot'.

I am not alone. If I were there wouldn't be these strong negative reaction that regularly result when he uploads a bunch of old crap.

Check out every single /newstuff review here that had to bother with Funduke's activities. I can't remember a single one that spoke in favor of this. (But this week it was particularly obvious.)

The problem is not that these WADs are from 1994, the problem is that even by 1994 standards they are far below average - or to be more precise: The large amount of crap in these uploads buries the potentially good stuff that gets ignored as a result.
As Grazza said, a little selectivity would definitely help.

roflcopter

http://www.rofl.name/images/roflcopter.gif

/newstuff is always a good laugh, but this time i almost crapped my pants

good stuff heh

I attest to the quality control. My week there were two or three decent old wads but I just lumped them all together and called them ALL shit because I couldn't be bothered to keep track of which one of the 30 was which. That's not hyperbole, there were literally 30 wads and only 3 were worth the 3 seconds to download, let alone unzip. A little quality control would go a long way here.

It doesn't matter tho, the uploader is mentally deficient born to two equally retarded parents and will continue to upload every steaming pile he stumbles across and drools over.

Ofcourse uploading old wads should be allowed, it is a good thing to make sure they're preserved. What I don't get is why DW review them every week.

Just skip them or just put them in a list marked as 1994. That cant be that hard and everybody would be happy.
Just tell people they exist and skip review of them.

worst newstuff ever.

Graf Zahl said:
The problem is not that these WADs are from 1994, the problem is that even by 1994 standards they are far below average - or to be more precise: The large amount of crap in these uploads buries the potentially good stuff that gets ignored as a result.
As Grazza said, a little selectivity would definitely help. [/B]

What you're saying is pretty pointless in relation to funduke's reasons for uploading which he already clearly stated. And nothing is going to be ignored if its any good, otherwise any week with a lot of uploads in a bad week.

Also, if I were a reviewer and were forced to review everything I'd also get a headache; to make a good description of a wad you need time already, but if in addition the wads are going to be pointless or lame to you, the less reason there is to make an effort. I would surely balk if I had to review an assortment of "port" wads when I hardly play them. It would be a waste of time for me and I wouldn't be inspired to post much of relevance about them if they have any value. Thus reviews should either be by a couple of people (or more) with different preferences (maybe with two reviews for some of the wads if these wads are special enough.) Otherwise, just links, and people can add below if they wish. Look at the "reviews" this week... at least we got the links to all the uploads.

TomD666 said:

EVERY OTHER 1994 WAD[/b] - SOME GUYS

myk said:

at least we got the links to all the uploads.

We did?

myk said:

Thus reviews should either be by a couple of people (or more) with different preferences (maybe with two reviews for some of the wads if these wads are special enough.)

Sounds a nice enough idea in principle, but in practice anything that complicates the process just makes it less likely to happen at all (or without cock-ups).

Grazza said:
We did?

Ah... missed that among the rubbish. Well, perhaps next time TomD666 can make a link to each database entry and say nothing at all. It will look better, spare some visual space, and be more useful.

It's true that the need for communication between the reviewers could hamper things, but they would also be taking some work off their backs. Not that 2 reviewers should be an explicit requirement, but I do think that reviewers might as well not review necessarily everything and instead make sure that what they do review is relatively worth it.

Joy, yet another absol-fucking-lutely useless week of Newstuff flooded with '94 wads. The last few weeks of /newstuff may as well have not even been done. This is just a waste of time.