Which megawad could be considered as a true Master Levels?

[Devalaous]

10 minutes ago, roadworx said:

god, there are WAY too many to choose from. mm2, alien vendetta, community chest 4, prcp... the list goes on and on

 

wait, wat? can someone fill me in lol

 

Tim Willits has an extremely terrible reputation, championing DRM and anti-consumer practices, he's been called out by both Romero and Carmack for lying about inventing things he didn't invent after running his mouth in an interview, his Doom levels prior to the Master Levels were generic and terrible and makes you wonder how he even got in the program, and he had a habit of conveniently leaving out his sister's part in his Doom levels; which is interesting when you notice that a woman in Doom 3 that gets her head ripped off is named after his sister. Given that his two Master Levels have a generic copy and pasted text file which isnt even true, and he claims they were made on DoomEd, it really gives me the sense he was a charismatic schmoozer that talked his way up the corporate ladder and bullshitted his achievements. Every other ML contributor was far more talented, and humble too. Willits has rubbed me the wrong way for a long time, and it only gets worse the more I hear about his egotistical antics. Hes definitely not a very trustworthy man.

[Diabolución]

On 3/29/2021 at 10:36 AM, roadworx said:

can someone fill me in lol

 

Whilst I cannot, Quasar can. The bolds are mine.

 

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/post/1986048/

 

On 5/6/2019 at 4:07 PM, Quasar said:

Romero didn't get proper credit for the work he WAS doing to keep id Software rolling while Carmack was having weird visions of himself in the Matrix due to working 12 hour days non-stop and somehow becoming even more anti-social than usual as a result. Besides Heretic and Hexen, which were already mentioned, he had a hand in putting together The Ultimate Doom, the Master Levels project, Final Doom, Strife, the console ports of Doom (such as PSX), coordinating a bunch of this stuff with GTI, etcetc. The narrative of him not working hard enough was very much Carmack and the other designers' POV, and all because they were frustrated with how Quake was turning into a shitshow due to the engine delays and lack of coherent vision (plus one certain one who shall remain nameless who was going around putting daggers into peoples' hands to get them to stab each other in the back). There's two sides to most stories, is what I'm getting at, and I don't really buy the narrative as it's often told at face value.

[Soundblock]

On 2/28/2021 at 8:33 PM, <<Rewind said:

What does Master Levels mean, to begin with?

All I’ll bring to bear on this discussion is that the name of the project (which was up for some debate & pretty much was defaulted back to when no better replacement was found) is that it at the time also was thought of as a light jab at education, in addition to the pretty obvious “these maps are pretty good” sales angle.

 

The base game, which at the time of ML no doubt was transforming entertainment and then some, had been put together by, academically speaking, a rag-tag band way below the academic radar...

 

I’m pretty sure sticking out a playful tongue out at the often hypocritical established order of things, was part of the appeal to those involved at id & let the moniker survive all the way to the eventually shipped product.

 

Jokes aren’t so funny when explained I guess, + “getting your master levels” is no longer such a commonly used phrase as it was at the time, but yeah we talked about it - a few cheesy names I no longer recall were thrown around. I let Shawn know I thought the academia-jab part of the “ML” option was pretty funny, he confirmed that was part of the appeal for him too & I guess no one came up with any better at the time...

 

So to answer OP’s question, the maps would have to be so good as to enable the author(s) to consider sticking to level design over getting a proper education.

 

¯\_(ツ)_/¯