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Maes

Most detailed/visually stunning PWAD of all times?

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As per title, which are considered to be the most visually stunning PWADs ever made, considering their time of release?

I'm asking this excluding some pretty obvious maps like UAC_DEAD.WAD from 1994 , or the infamous Gothic99.

Running on vanilla doom is not a requirement.

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A few that come to mind are Vrack, Deus Vult, and Phobos: Anomaly Reborn

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Some Kama Sutra maps have loads of details too, from what I can remember.

Pablo Ditcler Heretic maps are also pretty darn well detailed too.

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- Caverns of Darkness
- Demonized
- ZDoom Community Map
- Hi-Tech Hell 2: Alien Tech (best use of 3D floors I have seen so far)

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Yes, Michael Krause's work could be considered "underdetailed" but looks very good.

Naan said:
Pablo Ditcler Heretic maps are also pretty darn well detailed too.

They have their style, but I think they go too much into the small scale stuff, that does not look too neat in DOOM, along with its blockier artwork. Compare with Espi's SID, for example (which looks very smooth, for the most part).

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myk said:

Yes, Michael Krause's work could be considered "underdetailed" but looks very good.



If something looks good it can't be considered 'underdetailed'. That term explicitly means that the actual detail in a map is insufficient.

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Graf Zahl said:
That term explicitly means that the actual detail in a map is insufficient.

Or that it does not meet a certain (relatively quantifiable) standard; it's possible that someone obessed with detailing ("more detail = good") might consider it underdetailed, for example.

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I'd say Earth and Phobos are visually stunning. I'd say the Pleiades mapset was too, but the skys are fucked up. I'm not sure if the same thing happens in Earth.wad either.

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Jägermörder 02 - Terra Nova

Others I'd add have already been mentioned, so no need to say them again. :p

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Not to toot my own horn or anyting but I like 'the dam' by SirTimberWolf (fancy that huh?) It's kindda nicely detailed and works with a strong theme thnough to be honest I dunno wtf I was thinking putting crates on a dam >.>
it's in the idgames archive.

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A bunch of short hyper-detailed maps I began over 3 years ago which I thought I would finish in a matter of weeks by imposing a 48-hour-limit per map. I'm keeping with the limit, though it ends up that I'm only putting in a few hours a year. I've kept them mostly to myself, although I did post a few screenshots (1 2 3) when somebody asked for pump room shots. That's from my first one about 3 years ago. Floor is obviously incomplete, but it's a start. I was going to do one map per theme. That one is basically done, next one with a brown base theme is half done, green stone castle map is 1/4 done (SoM said it gave him an idea to code a thing placement utility called "spew" when I showed him an overhead fly-by looking down at all the torches... I wasn't exactly sure how to take that), and uh... I know I started a sky map but I don't know where it went. Also laid out a bit of hell and I think there were 3 other themes I had to do. Er, actually iirc I did start a silver starbase. Heh, I have yet to put in this year's hours. I should catch up on it soon.

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My favorite maps as far as visual effects go are Ogro Power Facility by SoM and De Kerker by rf` ;)

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I heartily agree with the statements about Krause's maps; They are fairly low on detail, but his sense of scale and proportion (rendundancy award) is so pristine. As underdetailed as they are, I've always appreciated their visual appeal and weight.

Note that he is among my favorite mappers across all engines.

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myk said:

Yes, Michael Krause's work could be considered "underdetailed" but looks very good.


omg, I love Michael Krause's maps... beauty through simplicity... few wads achieve that, Plutonia is one of these as well as some Hell Revealed maps.

Jehar said:

I heartily agree with the statements about Krause's maps; They are fairly low on detail, but his sense of scale and proportion (rendundancy award) is so pristine. As underdetailed as they are, I've always appreciated their visual appeal and weight.

Note that he is among my favorite mappers across all engines.


Even if his maps are kinda underdetailed (not being a pejorative word for me), they display quite a bit of vast space and, I dare say, "majesty". And I think he was often close to VPOs and HOMs.

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Hell revealed is kinda underdetailed for purpose IMO, this WAD emphases the extreme difficulty more than graphics.

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Use3D said:

Hmm, not even Altar of Evil..? ;)

No sorry back then I liked to rely way too much on heavy detail and didn't put much effort into the gameplay area.Result was an map which looked stunning but had annoying gameplay maybe some others disagree with the gameplay.I wish I had never released it the whole map didn't had any outside areas at all bad if you ask me outside areas greatly improve any doom map imo.I'm not going to waste any time on updating it for all I care it can rot away in the archives.

Best map ive made so far would be Total Control good amounts of detail and good gameplay.

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My first encounters with "visually stunning" PWADS were Requiem and Eternal Doom. Those made a huge impression, escpecially Requiem's MAP13 and MAP31. For Eternal, it was the overall look more than anything else.

In recent years, I've had lots of "visual pleasure" courtesy of Alien Vendetta and Kama Sutra.

EDIT: I forgot to mention "Null space" and "Lego base" by Russel_P.
Easily two of the best one-level addons in existence(!)

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GothicDM blew me away at its release.

As for visually stunning... Batman Doom deserves to be mentioned. Not alot of trivial detail, the overall design and ideas are fantastic.

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