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AndrewB

The /newstuff Chronicles #217

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So yes, here were are with another week of 13 new time-wasting add-ons for a game that has been around almost as long as my no-vomit streak. This is a fairly decent week, with a variety of deathmatch, single-player, and cooperative WADs. They come in a variety of sizes, for a variety of games, and a variety of source ports. There really is a little bit of everything this week, with no less than three (3) full weapon replacements. There is even a special something for Heretic this week. Gosh, this week has more variety than a cargo plane crashing into Wal-Mart.

  • The Great Destroyer by Xaser
    622kb - ZDoom, Skulltag - Doom 2
    We start the week, chronologically, with a fairly polished weapons/enemies modification. There are nine new weapons in this WAD, and several new or transformed monsters. Most of the weapons are bullet-oriented. That's no more true than Doom 2 itself, with the last three weapons being projectile-based. These weapons, generally speaking, are more powerful than those used in Doom 2. However, this is balanced out quite well by the enemies, some of which are tougher and/or deadlier than their original counterparts. Many of the weapons are original in what they do and how they attack. Most of the enemies attack similarly to their counterparts. It should also be mentioned that the sound replacements for the weapons are generally fresh and crisp.

  • Teleport by Milian Moritz
    19kb - ZDoom - Doom 2
    In one of the more dampened releases we've seen, this tiny WAD is a simple replacement for the teleporter. It changes the graphics and sound to something quaint.

  • How to Disappear Completely by Pablo Dictter
    1,088kb - ZDoom - Heretic - SP - 1 map - (img)
    Anyone who has played a map by Pablo Dictter would know that we're in for another never bad experience. This is a colorful Heretic map, replacing E1M1, that takes place in the depths of a hot lava cavern. You must navigate through the twisted, cramped hollows of rock and lava, avoiding enemies and deadly lava pools. Weapons and health are quite tight in this level, even on the easiest skill level. The navigation through the map is a very scattered-linear setup, where there is one real path to take, but that path involves shuffling back and forth through the map and searching for the next opening. This WAD involves advanced features such as remote views and slopes, so make sure that you have an up-to-date version of ZDoom.

  • Mario Skulltag DM by Cutmanmike
    78kb - Skulltag - Doom 2 - DM - 1 map - (img)
    This is a fun new deathmatch map for Doom 2, taking on a rich Mario theme. It has loads of colorful graphics and a music replacement. It takes place in a medium-large, wide-open outdoor area. It has lots of platforms, boxes, and otherwise climbable objects. It has some other Skulltag-exclusive items placed in hard-to-access areas, such as a high-jump power-up, and a spread-fire power-up. It's good for anyone who likes a large and/or colorful deathmatch experience.

  • Simplicity by Agent Spork
    554kb - ZDoom - Doom 2 - SP - 3 maps - (img) - (img)
    Yes, we have enough single-player action this week to, at the very least, keep us afloat. These are three single-player maps for Doom 2, small to medium in size, all brown-base themed. These levels have tight, fast, cramped action. Ammunition is fairly tight and health is sufficient. The enemies are small to medium in size. The maps are quite linear and straight forward. In some places, this WAD shines in its artistic detail. But perhaps the most appealing aspect of this WAD is its bite-sized dosage. It can be completed and then completed again in the time it takes to cook a pizza.

  • Quad Arena by Agent Spork
    526kb - Legacy - Doom 2 - DM - 1 map - (img)
    Dug out of the dusty depths of an old hard drive, this WAD which dates back to 2002 has made its way into the community archive. It is a fairly simple, cube-shaped, arena-style deathmatch map. It is best described as a brown metal base with some red and blue thrown in. It has, arguably, three floors, taking advantage of Legacy's room-over-room capabilities. Like many other maps, it has a full arsenal of weapons, with the most powerful ones in harder-to-reach places.

  • Sux4CTF by Cutmanmike
    9kb - Skulltag - Doom 2 - DM - 1 map - (img)
    Perhaps we could call this a small and proud of it map. This Capture The Flag map is shamelessly small. Its theme is ambiguous, with nothing but a grassy area surrounded by stone, populated with brick walls. It is symmetrical, as most CTF maps are. Other than that, its items are placed quite normally.

  • Vae Victus by Derek Braun
    2,534kb - Enhanced Port - Doom 2 - SP, Co-op - 7 maps - (img) - (img) - (img) - (img)
    We certainly won't be starved of single-player action this week. This WAD stands out in a few ways. It is inspired by the famous Alien Vendetta, with many maps of great size and difficulty. The themes range from miscellaneous-base to red-hot-nightmare, and the visual detail ranges from normal to extravagant. And this WAD is, indeed, difficult. Ammunition is demandingly scarce, and health is no invaluable commodity either. It seems that the best approach for a player is to kill enough enemies to make an area tolerable, and then move on to the next area. On that note, the layouts of these maps are sometimes linear and sometimes not. As a side note, there some decent MIDI music replacements from various sources. Overall, this is a very difficult WAD, and cooperative play seems to be the best solution.

  • Operation Mjolnir by WildWeasel
    1,171kb - EDGE - Doom 2
    Weapon WADs seem to be increasing in popularity lately. This WAD brings us ten new weapons, all of them packed into number slots 0 through 5. Such weapons featured in this WAD are silenced weapons (that do not wake enemies), automatics, shotguns, a projectile weapon, a flamethrower, and a flashlight. They tend to be slightly more powerful than the standard Doom 2 set, and they have an advanced ammunition system that involves reloading. Perhaps the highlight of the WAD is the flamethrower. It is fun enough to set imps aflame and listen to them scream like men as they turn to charcoal. However, this is an EDGE-exclusive WAD, so don't expect to see this on any online servers.

  • WTF?! DeathMatch by DD_133
    524kb - Skulltag - Doom 2 - DM - 11 maps - (img) - (img) - (img) - (img)
    Okay, I guess you can't win all the time. This is a joke deathmatch WAD for Doom 2, and it runs on maps 1 through 10 and 32. It has a variety of themes, including bounce of death, raining rockets, too many weapons, post office sorter, and mirror world. While extremely silly and free-spirited, it probably won't prove to be a fun deathmatch to anyone. But then again, I suppose you never know.

  • Rifles with Bawls by MasterOfDeath
    249kb - ZDoom - Doom 2
    We have yet another full-fledged weapon replacement for Doom 2. The theme of this WAD is quite miscellaneous, with weapons that are generally visually different but functionally similar to the originals. There are exceptions, though. The replacement for the fist is far more powerful, while the BFG replacement is significantly weaker. All in all, it is something different.

  • Sector 997 by Christopher Emirzian
    647kb - ZDoom - Doom 2 - SP - 1 map - (img)
    This is a fairly normal, medium-sized single-player map for Doom 2, and it uses many of the textures from Doom 3. There is nothing that really stands out in this map; it is a mix of indoor areas linked together in a main-floor/basement system. It is fairly easy to fairly hard in its difficulty, depending on the skill level you choose. Ammunition and health are balanced normally. The enemies are small to medium-large in size. Maybe this is the cool-down WAD after a heavy week of Dooming.

  • School by Jason Benson
    19kb - Doom 2 - DM - 1 map - (img)
    As was so popular in 1994, a person has made a Doom map out of their school. This single map contains lots of plain, brown hallways, and crudely-sketched rooms. Some of the areas received a lot more attention than others. Various powerful weapons are scattered throughout the map. And heck, there's even an enemy thrown in the map like a radish thrown in a bowl of pudding. Have fun and stay alive until next week!

    Re-releases

    If a WAD has been reviewed before, and something in it needs fixing, then its best place is right here.


  • Destructomaniac by TheDarkArchon

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omg first post :B

in the middle of playing vae victus .. i still haven't died even once, and i'm in map 6. come on, kill me allready!

edit : i got blowed up. taking a break now. :p

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At last, Newstuff gets released. Three weapon mods this week, all of them very much worth playing. I highly recommend The Great Destroyer to anybody that says that DeHackEd is obsolete.

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wtf? all image links lead to 404
EDIT:
aye aye, but this ain't comfortable

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Vae Victus was very enjoyable. I must say it was amusing to box zombies in the first map to the tune of final fight music. Overall I felt it didn't get difficult until maps 5 and 6 where plenty of enemies were used as snipers, such as revenants on high+distant ledges. Mouselook is recommended by Dittohead and that's probably why. :)

Also, I'm not sure if it was intentional, since sometimes shortcuts benefit speedrunning, but getting around the pillars blocking the map06 exit was very simple.

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Graf Zahl said:

Isn't a 'Weapon mod worth playing' a contradiction in terms??? :D

Not for some of us. I know it's just a joke, but please be more tolerant in the future.

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Good. We are converting more and more into the weapon side. Soon it will be clear that no project shall ever be without weapons mods! Plus the fact that we may get screenies of the weapon mods soon!

Oh yeah, vae victus and sector 997 rule.

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Eh, mariost ended up not being a lot of fun. All the jumping necessary to get anywhere slows things down. Weapons take a little bit to reach as well.

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Well what did you expect? It WAS made by CutManMike, he's suffering from mental damage or something, so he'd do something evil like that.

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WildWeasel said:

Not for some of us. I know it's just a joke, but please be more tolerant in the future.



Apparently you didn't get the joke. You can use a weapon mod when playing some level but frankly I have no idea how you could play the weapon mod itself!

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Not keen on Sector 997. It's just an average map ruined by heavy over-population and boring, repetitive fights in cramped conditions. You don't need to have teleporting monsters come in at every turn, and every time you go back through a room you've already been in. Fewer monsters would help the map run a lot smoother and faster. Seems to me to be a lot like Udderdude's earlier work :o\

Played through the first level of Vae Victus and liking it so far. Only slight complaint is the windows, why are they all impassible lines? I tried to short cut through the window as you hit the switch to open the exit door, but just ended up in slime.

Also played through Sporks map earlier in the week and enjoyed it. Something you can pick up and play through quickly. Very nice, and no tight teleporting hellknight battles either.

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AndrewB said:

So yes, here were are with another week of 13 new time-wasting add-ons for a game that has been around almost as long as my no-vomit streak.

ROFL

I'm sick as all Hell right now, and just last night I was thinking of that episode of Seinfeld where he talks about his no-vomit streak. Just for the record, mine is about 10 years now, and I don't think my current cold is going to break it.

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Well looks like some people are back to complaining about my maps .. someone decided to rate it 1/5 on idgames. Christ. If it's not your kind of map it doesn't mean it's total garbage. 1/5 is meant for 'square room with a cyberdemon in it and a BFG'-type maps. I thought Vae Victus was a little boring, cause I didn't die in it after 5 straight maps. It was easy. But I sure as hell didn't rate it 1/5 for it. I sent it to several playtesters and they liked it. Yes, some people like cramped, frantic battles with little room to manuever. Stop being such babies. Play it on skill 3.

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I gave it 1/5 because I don't think it's very good (probably a bit of an exagerration I admit). I think it definitely has the potential to be fun, but the over-populated, monotonous cramped environments get boring. A bit of variation would make it a lot better. It's the exact same crticism as your earliest maps that didn't get good reviews on release.

I'm not whinging about difficulty (though cramped environments and fairly scarce health packs are a pretty cheap way of making a map 'hard'), I just thought the monster density made the map play a lot slower than it should.

If you can't take critcism don't bother releasing anything.
And what's the point of a rating system if people are only allowed to vote if it's 'their kind of map' and they like it?

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Amaster said:

Eh, mariost ended up not being a lot of fun. All the jumping necessary to get anywhere slows things down. Weapons take a little bit to reach as well.


Seconded. I was playing Assmaster, my brother, and some other folks on this map. There are so few spawn points, it's basically a spawn camper's paradise. I don't mind the jumping TOO horribly much, but getting stuck in a valley with only a chaingun blows.

It looks pretty though.

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Nice to see a new Heretic SP; also I want to say thanks to udderdude
for last week´s awesome Hordes of chaos.

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Vae Victus is the winner this week!! I also promise to play Spork's maps...soon.

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Mario Skulltag DM rocked. Simplicity rocked. Quad Arena looked nice. Vae Victus rocked. Sector 997 was pretty cool. Loved the textures. Pretty decent week. Good reviews.

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I think Sector 997 has been really overlooked and undervalued. Even though it's just one level as opposed to VV being a larger compilation of levels, they're both good in their own right.

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Graf Zahl said:

Apparently you didn't get the joke. You can use a weapon mod when playing some level but frankly I have no idea how you could play the weapon mod itself!

Your style of humor is rather cryptic to me. I'm sorry I didn't get it.

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