Doomworld Mega Project 2021 (18 maps)

[Pegleg]

Map name: The Black and the Gray

Version: 1

IWAD: Doom 2

Map slot: 01

Compatibility: Vanilla (complevel 2)

Tested with: Chocolate Doom 3.0.0, PrBoom+ 2.5.1.4, ZDoom 2.8.1, GZDoom 3.2.5, and GZDoom 4.6.0

Music: "Breakaway" by Maxime Tondreau

Build time: Several hours spread out over a few days

Editor used: Eureka

Difficulties: Implemented

Freelook/Jumping/Crouching: Not intended, but doing so shouldn't break anything

Co-op: Yes

Deathmatch: Starts only

Additional textures: Noir Texture Pack by FuzzballFox and TheGreenHerring

Known bugs: Switches don't animate in Chocolate Doom, but they still function

 

This map is short and to the point, without a whole lot of monsters. Most, if not all, of the combat is optional (some fights are less optional than others); a pacifist run is probably quite doable. The ammo isn't too tight, but UV is meant to use most of your ammo. The map has a black and gray theme, with a few splashes of color here and there.

 

dmegp21p_v1.zip

Edited December 29, 2021 by Pegleg : Added information about editor.

[Scypek2]

All that craziness capped off with a regular vanilla doom map. What a great way to conclude the project!

 

A very nice little map in both the visuals and gameplay. The only issue I found is that you can straferun right onto the secret ledge, and since that's not where the secret sector is, you can get all of the secret's contents without getting the secret.

[Obsidian]

Name: Broken Tooth

Music: "In The Dark" by Bobby Prince

IWAD: Doom 2

Compatibility: Vanilla (complevel 2)

Tested in: Chocolate Doom, ZDoom

Difficulty settings: None

Co-op/DM: None

Build time: A day and a half

Screenshot:

Spoiler

 

Let me know if there's any bugs!

[cannonball]

Here is my entry;

DMP21CB.zip

 

Name - Frags and Spencer

Music - Freighthoppers by James Paddock

IWad - Doom 2

Compatibility - Vanilla (Hopefully, it seemed fine when I tested this but it runs close in a few spots)

Tested - Chocorenderlimits, DSDA Doom

Difficulty settings - None

Co-op - Nothing as of yet

Build time - A few days (A couple of hours per day)

 

This is very much inspired by one level of Alien Vendetta, hopefully this is enjoyable and has a certain level of bloodlust.

[Jjp]

Name: R.N.G.

IWAD: Doom 2

Music: varies due to scripting, but all from Doom 2 (no new music added)

Compatibility: GZDoom

Tested with: GZDoom 4.7.1

Difficulty settings: yes

Co-op: untested but probably works

Build time: a few dozen hours spread out over a month

 

I couldn't think of any ideas that I really liked during the year, so here's a really, really stupid idea instead. If the title doesn't give enough of a hint about how the map works, the level "design", if one can even call it that, certainly will. The map is a long grind, so if you skip over it after a few minutes, I won't mind at all.

[TimeOfDeath666]

Congrats to everyone for making another DMP :)

DMP2021.zip

[Walter confetti]

That was ultra fast to compile lol

I've had a lot of fun doing this session, i wonder what comes for this year!

[TimeOfDeath666]

That's what happens when you choose name-brand DMP over imitation-brand :)

[Walter confetti]

My map missing the new texture pack, but for the rest looks... interesting. Feels like it's some sort of mini-version of Maximum Doom or some shovelware disk, with good, weird and even more weird stuff. No real bad maps here, really.

 

Some micro reviews for the maps i've played:

 

7soul - Cool map, reminds me of a less detailed No Rest For The Living MAP01.
Danlex - Already played your map, is a pretty good map, even if "too" little for Strife maps. But still a pretty good and fun map!
DuckReconMajor - A 1994 style micro-slaughter map that can be beaten in 5 minutes with cheats, crazy stuff but fun. I've expected some new music like some 80s pop midi tracks or something.
TimeOfDeath - Freaking wonderful. Cacoward material. Btw, how this thing can be beaten. Really a crazy, crazy little map.

MidnightMage - Cool little map with some little charming details

Wahrnehmungskrieg - Small puzzle experimental map, died too fast since i'm not fast enough to shoot at all the BFALL switches

 

The rest looks like are all slaughtermaps or maps with quite a lot of monsters or maps i don't time to take a full play, maybe in the next days.

Edited January 2, 2022 by Walter confetti

[Kinsie]

On 1/1/2022 at 5:34 PM, TimeOfDeath666 said:

Congrats to everyone for making another DMP :)

DMP2021.zip

I could have swore that compiling a megawad entailed putting everything into a single WAD file with a cohesive level order and nice title/intermission graphics and testing it all out to ensure it works together, as opposed to just, uh, bunging it all into a zip file with missing bits (if Walter's post is any indication).

 

But then, I've been a little out of the loop on the mapping side. Have expectations changed?

[cannonball]

14 hours ago, Walter confetti said:

My map missing the new texture pack, but for the rest looks... interesting. Feels like it's some sort of mini-version of Maximum Doom or some shovelware disk, with good, weird and even more weird stuff. No real bad maps here, really.

 

Some micro reviews for the maps i've played:

cannonball -

Surprisingly this is exactly how I felt after making my entry. :p

@Kinsie This is pretty much what I expected. I don’t know whether there will be a final compilation. Don’t fret, it’s TimeOfDeath.

[brick]

27 minutes ago, Kinsie said:

I could have swore that compiling a megawad entailed putting everything into a single WAD file with a cohesive level order and nice title/intermission graphics and testing it all out to ensure it works together, as opposed to just, uh, bunging it all into a zip file with missing bits (if Walter's post is any indication).

It's been done before, both X Years a Doomer projects from last year were like this (not to mention the Master Levels way back when). If I understand there's a Heretic map in here too, so this alone makes a single wad compilation impossible. I do personally prefer the single-megawad approach for convenience but I'll take what I can get.

[Walter confetti]

14 minutes ago, cannonball said:

Surprisingly this is exactly how I felt after making my entry. :p

Lol

[Dynamo]

23 minutes ago, brick said:

If I understand there's a Heretic map in here too, so this alone makes a single wad compilation impossible.

DUMP 2 had a Marathon map of all things, didn't stop them from having a unified project.

[TimeOfDeath666]

1 hour ago, Kinsie said:

I could have swore that compiling a megawad entailed putting everything into a single WAD file with a cohesive level order and nice title/intermission graphics and testing it all out to ensure it works together, as opposed to just, uh, bunging it all into a zip file with missing bits (if Walter's post is any indication).

 

But then, I've been a little out of the loop on the mapping side. Have expectations changed?

This wad series was never about cohesion, it's a compilation of random maps from random mappers. I decided to rethink the method of compilation after receiving levels for non-Doom games in a Doom megawad project (which is hilarious by the way, and I love that mappers chose to pick apart my non-rules to see what they could get away with submitting). This zip-compilation was obviously less work for me to compile, but it also more resembles how I imagined these projects from the beginning: playing random maps on /idgames.

 

Walter's level used an external texture pack and I added a link to the texture pack in his text file. That's the way his map was submitted and I didn't change anything.

 

15 hours ago, Walter confetti said:

Btw, how this thing can be beaten. Really a crazy, crazy little map.

There's a demo in my folder btw. There's a way to freeze the nazi in a partially resurrected state that stops him from activating the walkover lines that lower the lift around the kill machine at the exit. Freezing the nazi was originally a bug, but then I designed the map around it.

[Kinsie]

2 minutes ago, TimeOfDeath666 said:

This wad series was never about cohesion, it's a compilation of random maps from random mappers. I decided to rethink the method of compilation after receiving levels for non-Doom games in a Doom megawad project (which is hilarious by the way, and I love that mappers chose to pick apart my non-rules to see what they could get away with submitting). This zip-compilation was obviously less work for me to compile, but it also more resembles how I imagined these projects from the beginning: playing random maps on /idgames.

 

Walter's level used an external texture pack and I added a link to the texture pack in his text file. That's the way his map was submitted and I didn't change anything.

Shouldn't a "mega project" at least aspire to the bare minimum of running out of the box without any additional configuration or chasing up texture packs? If I want to run random maps from idgames, I'll do exactly that and it probably won't have some guy shoving his own name across every surface (seriously it's in the OP eight times) and ranting about "unauthorized copy-cats" and "imitation brand" like he actually did something.

[TimeOfDeath666]

lol nice try but my name appears 12 times in the OP. Go read the other DMP text files and threads to see how little credit I take, I'm nothing more than an organizer and compiler in these projects. If I didn't speak up about copycat projects, people would still think the maximum project is affiliated with this project due to the similar name and the OP being a modified OP from one of the dmp threads. I'm not sure why Obsidian started his project, but there was an earlier copycat project that scifista started out of spite.

[Obsidian]

51 minutes ago, TimeOfDeath666 said:

I'm not sure why Obsidian started his project, but there was an earlier copycat project that scifista started out of spite.

 

I started the Doomworld Maximum Project because we were a month into 2021 without a DMP thread and the way that you have been running the DMP in the last few years has left much to be desired. You've said before that the Doomworld Mega Project has always been subject to your whims, but considering the first six years of the series existed with far less constraining rules than what you decided to enforce in 2018 - which is more than enough time to establish a pattern of how the series is run - I have to call guano. Whether you like it or not, the Doomworld Mega Project name carries connotations and people expect a particular sort of project when they see that name, or at least they used to before 2018: they expect a project where everyone is welcome and no-one is barred provided they don't have ill intentions. The Omega Project that Scifista started was an attempt to still keep that spirit alive when you promptly decided to turn the series into a vehicle for your own capricious whims: if I had to hazard a guess, I would say that it didn't catch on because at the time the DMP still had the pull of its established brand that the Omega Project couldn't quite escape, a factor that is no longer present after the past few years of lackluster DMPs.

 

You didn't so much drop the torch as consciously toss it over your shoulder. I just happened to be the person who picked it up.

[Major Arlene]

1 hour ago, TimeOfDeath666 said:

I'm not sure why Obsidian started his project

I said it before and I'll say it again, people are allowed to start projects with similar names.

Honestly, knock it off, this is just petty and exhausting, and considering what little effort you put into both the rules and the compilation of this project it's clear you're more focused on drama than the project itself.

[Doomkid]

2 hours ago, TimeOfDeath666 said:

there was an earlier copycat project that scifista started out of spite.

This is unmitigated bullshit btw, just posting this for posterity, scifista was a champ back when he was around

[TimeOfDeath666]

I agree that scifista was an excellent poster, but that's just my interpretation of what happened back then according to these posts # # #

[Impboy4]

@TimeOfDeath666 maybe it's time for you to retire from hosting DMP and let someone else (who could care less about knockoff/imitation projects) take over the reins. Obsidian and scifista have the right idea which you currently do not.  This current iteration of DMP is a lame joke and you know that but your ego is too large to notice.

[Pegleg]

5 hours ago, Obsidian said:

if I had to hazard a guess, I would say that it didn't catch on because at the time the DMP still had the pull of its established brand that the Omega Project couldn't quite escape

 

I think that the Doomworld Omega Project 2018 didn't have the sort of response that DMP 2017 had, despite having the same ruleset, primarily due to Scifista's sudden and unexpected disappearance. While Scifista had been relatively quiet in the thread over the course of 2018, there was still communication, and Scifista was still online quite often. However, as months passed without an appearance, people began wondering if the project would just collapse. As I recall, there were a couple maps withdrawn from the project, which probably discouraged others. It didn't help matters that there was no established plan in place for what to do in the event that Scifista never returned (which is exactly what happened). In my opinion, that is ultimately what hurt the Omega Project, as opposed to the pull of the DMP.

 

I have a soft spot for the Doomworld Mega Project, as it was the first project that I participated in upon returning to the community. The "all-comers" approach of the DMP, and the relatively relaxed set of rules did make it a very attractive project for someone new. While TimeofDeath is right that the rules were never static (heck, the earliest DMPs allowed troll wads), it is also true that the changes were never as drastic as between 2017 and 2018. Scifista was far from alone in expressing displeasure with the ruleset of the DMP 2018, and all it takes is a cursory reading of the first two pages of the DMP 2018 thread to see that. Nevertheless, DMP 2018 still had over 30 submissions, which is considerable given the amount of discontent in the project's early days.

 

It is probably true that some people soured on the Mega Project with the changes in 2019 and 2020, but I think there is still some amount of "pull" for the idea, judging by the 18 maps that the project received. I still advertise the Mega Project, and other projects in the same vein (such as Omega and Maximum Projects) to any mappers who want to get involved in a project. The Maximum Project had over 30 maps. Outside of these two, DavidN's RAMP project had maps from over 60 unique mappers. There is definitely still interest in these sort of "all-comers" projects--the concept is not dead.

 

However, the last thing that we need is for bickering between project leads, regardless of why Scifista started the Omega Project or why Obsidian started the Maximum Project and gave it that name. I know for a fact that there were some people that were put off from contributing to them this year because of the "drama" that they perceived. At the end of the day, there is enough creativity within the community to sustain multiple versions of this type of project, and no one needs to be protective of their "brand." We don't need the drama, because it just turns people off and makes them focus their efforts elsewhere, and it also pushes away new mappers who are looking for a place to contribute.

[FEDEX]

@Pegleg you have used the right words.

[Walter confetti]

Another maps played last night and this noon:

 

• E. M. - Funny mockery of TimeOfDeath slaughtermaps, you nailed his style pretty good. This map reminds me of TimeOfDeath DMP2018 map for some reason.
• Endingghost - A unexpectedly pretty good map, maybe one of the best despite it's simplicity in the layout design. Amazing, moody track. Also the night sky make me think of Master Levels maps.
• SilverMiner - Good short map pretty reminiscent of Plutonia early maps both in layouts and gameplay. Textures crashes in prboom+ 2.6.1um
• eltiolavara9 - weird but pretty unique map, reminds me of WOOO 2 good maps. Fun puzzle platform.
• cannonball - a proper small review this time! A very, VERY challenging slaugthermap sets in this Evilution like techbase, lots of good details, true challenging gameplay, LOTS OF ARCHVILES and lots of fun, also shares the same night sky with the EndingGhost map, giving again that Master Levels map feel.
• pegleg - fun short little map that use the nor pack map, pretty good stuff both in layout and gameplay term, i've expected a night sky here too but works good also with the stock texture.
• Obsidian - Dark, gritty map full of interesting gimmicks (AV jump, Rocket Launcher centric gameplay with cramped rooms and mazes, overall a fun small map.

[eltiolavara9]

3 hours ago, Walter confetti said:

Another maps played last night and this noon:

• eltiolavara9 - weird but pretty unique map, reminds me of WOOO 2 good maps. Fun puzzle platform.

 

WOOO and WOOO2 along with mock2 have been a massive inspiration for me, so that means a lot, thank you!

[Walter confetti]

Final part of my maps mini reviews! All considered, fun pack. I wonder what kind of stuff you'll do for 2022! Also i hope to see more users do a thing for it!

• General Roasterock - Fun little slaughtermap that uses OTEX  and a blue theme sets in a some sort of fortress\cave. Also another night sky map! Yay! Pretty good map overall, short but challenging.
• Jjp - sorry but i give up on this. Looks all the same boxy gray room and plays boringly, with way too many monsters to be interesting, at least for my tastes. A map that i didn't like it.
• lokbustam257 - Played on ultimate doom, so wacky texturing straight out from low effort 1994 maps lol. Funny remake of Congo from Plutonia Experiment, easier than the original but still a good map. Cool stuff, if you have in mind to participate in the 2022 edition and making a thing for it, i'd like to see a remake of first level from chex quest into plutonia experiment! Or, if not, i have a idea for the next map.
• Sctpe2k - didn't played your level since i don't wolfestein 3D installed on my pc anymore.