NDCP Released

[Dittohead]

Darren "Doom Dude" Finch announced today the release of the New Doom Community Project. The NDCP is a collection of 32 maps from various members of the Doom community, akin to the Community Chest project that has been hosted via Doomworld. You can read more about the project on the NDCP website or click here to download via FileFront.

[Epyo]

Hooray communities!

[exp(x)]

I may have to check this out.

[Torn]

Didn't this project get started like 2years ago when the first Community Chest was fired up?

[Doom_Dude]

3 years ago and weren't you supposed to make a map for us Torn? :P

Anyhow thanks for the news post Dittohead. ;)

[Sporku]

Here's a mirror.

[iori]

aw spork you're a peach

[SulfurOccult]

and this year's mordeth award goes to...

glad to see it come out. a lot of the mappers got busy with other projects or simply disappeared. this release is an honor to the tenacidy and stubbornness of those who stuck with it the whole way.

(realized i myself have been working on one wad the whole of '05.)

[-_DLD_-]

Wow, this WAD looks excellent!

It should be really fun to play.

[Xtife]

im glad to see this project finaly released :) finaly have my name in the credits of a doom project

not that i actually did anything hah

[TheShep]

Another mirror.

Going to play it now btw.

[-_DLD_-]

Just played Map01 and 02. I'm extremely impressed so far, as the authors did a marvelous job with the level design, architexture, and monster/secret placement. There's also a whole slew of neat custom textures and flats to make the levels look even prettier.

The only disappointment thus far is that there isn't any replacement music (though the text file says "some" music entries are replaced) yet. I just can't stand the vanilla music score outside of the actual DOOM ][ iwad for some reason.

[Doom_Dude]

Glad you liked map01. ;) Originally we didn't have plans for adding new music but a few authors sent in music so I added them. Personally I usually turn the music down and I've had crap luck in finding any music during the few times I tried to find anything.

[-_DLD_-]

I'm just really weird with music. I have a thing for wanting to use the perfect music track for each and every level I make or play, and it really bugs me if the music isn't replaced or doesn't suit the level theme (in some cases, the default music is the best). I've been debaiting filling in the "missing" musics for Hell Revealed and other such classics...maybe I will one day.

If I continue to love NDCP as much as I am now, I may also redo the music.

I guess I've found my niche in the world of megawad making...the score composer, though I can't make music worth shit.

[Negatronica]

-_DLD_- said:

I'm just really weird with music. I have a thing for wanting to use the perfect music track for each and every level I make or play, and it really bugs me if the music isn't replaced or doesn't suit the level theme (in some cases, the default music is the best). I've been debaiting filling in the "missing" musics for Hell Revealed and other such classics...maybe I will one day.

If I continue to love NDCP as much as I am now, I may also redo the music.

I guess I've found my niche in the world of megawad making...the score composer, though I can't make music worth shit.

I feel the same way about music and my levels. I sometimes will make the music first and then build the level around the music.

You can start writing MIDI, all it takes is practice. I sucked when I first started (I still kind of suck). You just have to understand that you'll suck when you first start and the only way to get good is with practice.

[Belial]

-_DLD_- said:

Just played Map01 and 02. I'm extremely impressed so far, as the authors did a marvelous job with the level design, architexture, and monster/secret placement.

...

You are easily impressed.

I'm on map09 now and so far only map03, map06 and map08 were really worth playing. Those 3 are excellent maps. Others weren't exactly memorable, just average or, like map02 and map07, quite bad.

Edit: Oh ya, what is No Brakes (map27) doing here?

[Graf Zahl]

Belial said:

...

You are easily impressed.

I'm on map09 now and so far only map03, map06 and map08 were really worth playing. Those 3 are excellent maps. Others weren't exactly memorable, just average or, like map02 and map07, quite bad.

Edit: Oh ya, what is No Brakes (map27) doing here?

I'd have to agree. I am at MAP10 so far and the ones you mention are exactly the ones I liked best (and also the ones I liked least.)

But my biggest point of criticism would be the completely incoherent order of the maps. There is no sense to it and it feels like a random collection. Tech follows Hell follows something completely different and so on.
Did nobody ever bother to sort them in a way that makes style a little more consistent (like tech maps first, hell maps last and not randomly mixed together?)

[Vile]

-_DLD_- said:

The only disappointment thus far is that there isn't any replacement music (though the text file says "some" music entries are replaced) yet.

I agree... I'm rather burnt out on the original soundtrack. I still have some favorite tracks, but it's hard to listen to them anywhere BUT the iwads.

[Xtife]

well this is certinly not anything like CC (though we did try lol) the level of skill between maps will greatly vary :)

and no we didnt really end up orginizing the maps all that much, people just picked a slot and made a map.

we had alot of trouble with our mappers, some took only a few weeks, some took months. we had alot of people come and go, and it ended up in a bit of a mess that took 2-3 years :P so you cant expect anything amazing. but im proud of what we accomplished anyways

[Doom_Dude]

Graf Zahl said:

I'd have to agree. I am at MAP10 so far and the ones you mention are exactly the ones I liked best (and also the ones I liked least.)

But my biggest point of criticism would be the completely incoherent order of the maps. There is no sense to it and it feels like a random collection. Tech follows Hell follows something completely different and so on.
Did nobody ever bother to sort them in a way that makes style a little more consistent (like tech maps first, hell maps last and not randomly mixed together?)

It would have been great to have organised things like that. Overall this has been a large learning experience for me since I took over the lead role. There is a LOT of stuff I think should be pre-thought out and decided on before starting any sort of editing project, which I didn't realise before. We (and myself included) made mistakes and took more time than should've been required to get this whole thing finished. Obviously some people are going to like what we made and others will have things they dislike about it. All we can do is take in all the things people do and don't like and try to make a better project the next time we decide to make something like the NDCP.

[Scuba Steve]

MasterOfPuppets said:

and this year's mordeth award goes to...

Pfft 3 years is nothing in terms of Doom mods... there are a few potential releases coming out this year that have been in development for almost 7 years.

Anyways I ran through all the levels and there are some real winners here and some real duds... but that's no different from any community mapset. Overall much more goodness than badness.

[Doom_Dude]

Belial said:

Edit: Oh ya, what is No Brakes (map27) doing here?

Lutrov and Cyber-Menace made the level for the NDCP and then shortly after wanted to release it seperately.

[-_DLD_-]

I enjoyed playing through the maps thurougly, but they're not "memorable". With me there's a difference.

I can play through a map then say "heh wow, that was really sweet" then not play it again for a looong time.

Memorable maps I'd want to play through once every little while on the principle of them rocking. I'm a little weird this way, I guess.

[Dittohead]

There's a good handful of quality maps in this set, and some by authors I've never heard of which really impressed me. I thought Maintaince Area was really good, along with map32 "castle of the wolf". Map01 is a no brainer, probably my favorite map out of all of them. And then there's Espi's map which is really great too.

On a whole, I think it belongs on the upper tier of megawads released in the past 3 years. Granted there are some duds here and there, but atleast the gameplay rarely suffers.

[DeDo]

I really wish it had more new music. Only 3 levels I think have not the standard doom2 music.
Btw. anyone else having problems with map09? I can't run it. PrBoom crashes with the following error message: R_TextureNumForName: [ not found.

Instead of the [ I get a symbol which I can't duplicate lol. But it looks like [ cut in half with only the upper half visible. I tried to run it with prboom 2.2.4, 2.2.6 and doom2 v1.9. Any ideas what's wrong?

[Grazza]

DeDo said:

Any ideas what's wrong?

No, but I can provide some further information that might help track down the problem. I get the same error in Prboom 2.02 and Eternity, but it is OK in Prboom-plus (both software and hardware rendering).

I'm not sure which of Andrey's improvements in the rendering code will account for the difference though.

Edit: Weird. The problem still occurs in Prboom-plus 2.2.6.18, but it works OK in Prboom-plus 2.2.6.19. The only change between the two listed in the changelog is:

[+] Support up to 65536 sidedefs instead of 32768.

This isn't an issue that should affect this map, but maybe there were other changes that were relevant.

[Graf Zahl]

Linedef 5076 in that map contains a texture with an empty name instead of '-'. That's enough for some ports not to like it.

[Belial]

I'm on map23 now, the wannabe HR type map that didn't work out :P. Edit: No contest. Worst map so far, and probably the worst in the whole wad. I can't imagine how anything could beat that map at sucking.

The last few maps were somewhat better than the first ten. Only map13 (extremely low on ammo) and map15 (unique design but flawed gameplay) were really bad, and I've skipped map19 as it just screamed 'obligatory overdetailed map with annoying gameplay'.

The good maps include map11, map14 (even though it's mostly symmetric it plays quite well), both secret maps, and map16 (very intense action). Map17 and map20 were fun as well.

[Lüt]

Good news, I was wondering what happened to this. I'll play through this over the next few days. Nice to see it finally got a release.

[Enjay]

I've dipped in and played a few maps at random from pistol starts. To me, that's how the WAD seems to hang together - a bunch of one-off WADs compiled into a single file. Anyway, I've only tried a few but the ones I have were very nice actually.