Good WADs of 2009

[tofumonamour]

Hi all,

I've never posted before but I've been keeping tabs on Doomworld on and off for a couple of years, mostly to check out the Cacowards. The 2008 awards were mostly very good and indicated a lot of serious quality mapmaking during that year. I admit that I haven't done such a good job keeping up with the Newstuff threads this year, but every month or so I get a wild hair to play something new and... nothing ever gets a good review. This may or may not be dovetailing with the general "how long will Doom's influence last" threads that pop up here frequently, but am I wrong in noticing a stark, stark dropoff in the number of quality projects being released lately? The new 1024 megawad is literally the only SP wad I've notice to get glowing reviews so far, and if good wads picked up for Cacowards were equally distributed across the year, then there should already be half a dozen good ones already out! People have posted many "best-of" threads on here but I haven't seen any threads pulling together good releases since the last round of awards. Are we really seeing a dropoff in quality work or have I missed all the great projects this year? Please enlighten me, Doom community! And thanks for all of your hard work, you sure know how to make a summer desk-worker entertained.

[PhilibusMo]

I think that part of the problem this year has been the lage amount of supposed joke wads and first time mappers realeasing their effots onto the internets in hope of fame and recognition, without realising that their work is actually a small steaming pile of excrament. (Not that I can really talk, having only uploaded one wad to idgames which was a pretty early attempt, just one i found quite fun and don't expect to recieve glowing praise)
The main problem is probably that most well known and talented Doom mappers are currently tied up in Mega WAD projects which take a fair amount of time so don't get released very often, making it seem as if all that is being worked on at the moment is Dark Dave style wads by pedantic idiots.

[The Ultimate DooMer]

Such as myself, who hasn't released a wad for 5 years...hoping to finish mine this year though.

Titan 2 is probably my fave of this year so far though (not counting P2 which technically was last year)

[Shanoa]

Claustrophobia1025

[kristus]

There's some serious quality on the horizon.

[NiGHTMARE]

I would argue that Plutonia 2 counts as a 2009 release. It may have 31/12/08 as the release date, but that was obviously too late for last year's Cacowards, and so it'll be in the 2009 awards.

Besides, at the time of it's upload it was already 2009 in many parts of the world, and since so many people were celebrating the end of the year, probably the majority of people didn't play it until 2009 :P.

There's also NDCP 2. Sure, some of the maps weren't so hot, but others were fantastic.

[pavera]

Heh, I still haven't played through NDCP 2. Just the first couple maps. But anyways, 2009 is still only halfway over and I think there could be great stuff on the horizon. There have certainly been quite a few good single-level wads released this year. We got Mapgame this year, which I enjoyed very much. We also got the Ultimate Needs More Detail, which I thought was excellent as well (though some wouldn't agree with me). We'll be getting Whispers of Satan (hopefully, can't wait!) this year as well. Plus, I plan to release at least a couple more levels this year which I'm planning on being much better than my previous release.

And we also have the 1994 Tune-up wad coming (perhaps) toward the end of the year, Vaporware has been announced for release (though probably sometime in 2013), and Torn is working on an amazing looking Vanilla megawad.

I don't think there's much to worry about.

[40oz]

I didn't like ndcp2 that much. I played the first map and I was like "This is great!"

Then i got to the second map and my computer had diarrhea all over the place.

So I IDCLEVed to map03. And I was like "ugghhh."

Then I IDCLEVed to map04, and I was like "ughhh."

then repeated the same thing for the next two corresponding maps. Also when it was released it had a ton of bugs and even though the rules were initially to make it boom compatible they switched it to ZDoom compatible after they realized it was too much to bring what they had into boom compatibility which REALLY turned me off.

[pavera]

Heh, well I'm glad I didn't waste my time. I stopped after Map02 made my computer smoke.

[Super Jamie]

Here's all my keepers so far this year:

superjamie@one:~$ ls /media/1000/DOOM/PWADs/2009/
1024CLAU.zip  jthdemo.zip            mrchris4_centrum.zip  rienzi.zip
bmtech.zip    litf2.zip              ndcp2.zip             rnrrrasc.zip
cogs0421.wad  mek-dom1.zip           nightomb.zip          styx3.zip
cyc-384.zip   mrchris1_stoned.zip    nmdu.zip              tangentsynapse.pk3
dwspd021.zip  mrchris2_iconic01.zip  pwb.zip               The Facility.zip
evil eye.zip  mrchris3_abyssus.zip   reloadd2.zip          valve.zip

[newt]

NDCP2 had a lot of really great maps in there, but the bugs and compatibility inconsistencies bogged it down unfortunately... As it is now, the organization required to get a real solid bugfix probably can't happen given recent circumstances (though to be honest a lot of the organization wasn't there to begin with on many levels). Unless someone (or more like several) takes it upon themselves to fix all the bugs it probably won't happen, sadly...

As for good releases, sure there haven't been a whole lot, but the year's half over yet. Titan 2 and 1024 were really good. I've yet to play through much of Plutonia 2 but what I did get a taste of certainly didn't disappoint (even if megawads have the tendency to get stale).

And then of course there's bound to be an RTC-3057 Hub 2 release right around the corner, amirite?

I can dream. :c

[esselfortium]

The full release of SCYTHE 2!

[Solarn]

Mr. Chris's E2 replacement maps have been pretty great so far, in my opinion. I hope he continues with them and makes a full episode replacement.

[Ralphis]

bunch of single player bullshit

[Remmirath]

Ralphis said:

bunch of single player bullshit

That also includes my Technophobia Overdose. :P

[Super Jamie]

Ralphis said:

bunch of single player bullshit

Feel free to contribute the fixes so Skulltag (and GZDoom) doesn't crash on ATI cards under Linux. Feel free to make a Linux client at all for ZDaemon.

[Reisal]

Solarn said:

Mr. Chris's E2 replacement maps have been pretty great so far, in my opinion. I hope he continues with them and makes a full episode replacement.

That's my intention..once I'm done with all 9 maps, I'll be putting them all in one file, tweaking each map further and then release it as a full episode replacement.

[Scuba Steve]

tofumonamour said:

but am I wrong in noticing a stark, stark dropoff in the number of quality projects being released lately?

Yeah... I same the same thing every year but, invariably, I still find 10 high quality releases. I said "there won't be any big releases like LAST year" in 2006, then Phobia came out... I said it in 2007, then Genesis of Descent came out.

I know how you feel.. but there's no shortage of good maps for the foreseeable future.

[40oz]

Super Jamie said:

pwb.zip

rofl

[Super Jamie]

What? Sure it was short and linear, but it was also really good fun and had a couple of clever monster placements. Can't say the same for pwb2, though pwb3 is pretty enjoyable.

[40oz]

I know I just think it's adorable that you are enjoying the crap i submit to idgames. It's nice to have my very first fan.

[Super Jamie]

Anytime :P pwb3 is now in the keepers folder too

But hey, I just like good maps. Mr Chris' series has been good this year, and I'm forever pimping SlayeR's Redemption. I've played that enough times that the maps are more familiar to me than some IWAD levels.

Out of interest, I got HOMs on lines 338 and 340 in pwb3, like the upper texture was missing, though Doom Builder tells me the texture is there? I only tested in GZDoom.

[myk]

Super Jamie said:
Feel free to contribute the fixes so Skulltag (and GZDoom) doesn't crash on ATI cards under Linux. Feel free to make a Linux client at all for ZDaemon.

You might be a fan of those engines, but if they don't work properly on your system you might as well try others or get a Windows system or partition, as those are basically Windows ports. They're still proprietary for certain reasons: ZDoom was from the start a "Windows port" and the devs still find some non-free libraries and dependencies convenient, aside from any simplicity of concentrating mainly on one (most popular) OS line. You might be able to complain that you've only got Linux regularly, and the ZDoom devs can retort they only have Windows regularly.

Any complete Doom engine supports cooperative and deathmatch in raw form and you've got Odamex, which is free software and multiplayer specific.

[Super Jamie]

I understand that, my point was more to make a small irrational statement in response to small irrational statement already made.

Realistically, if I wanted to play Skulltag under Linux, I could make a config file under Windows and run the Linux client from a terminal, which is a way around the ATI crash issue. I just don't care about multiplayer that much :P

Btw, the ZDoom devs are great with Linux support. The software client compiles flawlessly under Linux, and there's a thread on the DRD Team forums which regularly contains small patches to get GZDoom compiling on Linux too.

[Ralphis]

Super Jamie said:

Feel free to contribute the fixes so Skulltag (and GZDoom) doesn't crash on ATI cards under Linux. Feel free to make a Linux client at all for ZDaemon.

Been there...

[The Ultimate DooMer]

The Great Bicycle Mystery 2 is worth checking out, some good stuff in here.

[Walter confetti]

claustrophobia 1024 and trbute

[Do0minat0r]

I haven't noticed a dropoff in good releases this year. If anything, I've actually noticed a pick up. Just look at all the nice episodes or megawads out this year already:

Plutonia 2 (really good)
Titan 2 (really good)
Map Set #1 (above average-good)
Da Will (mixed bag, but Map01, 03, 08, and 10 are very good)
Tribute (quite good)
The Ultimate NMD (really good original game tribute, especially with some of the pistol start issues fixed now)
Mapgame (really good)
Claustrophobia 1024 (really good)
Styx (good)
Nine Anomalies (above average)
Mr. Chris's series of maps (very good)

Then, of course, there are plenty of single levels out this year that I really enjoyed, too many to name though. But I don't get where you say it's not been a good year. And don't forget some of the releases that may be out before this year ends, such as Thomas's Harmony and Paul and Kristian's Whispers of Satan (REALLY looking forward to this one!), amongst other ones I've forgotten about or didn't bother to mention.

Overall, I just think that some may be playing this year down because one of its most anticipated projects, NDCP2, didn't turn out nearly as good as hoped, and CC4 is almost certainly a 2010 story (if that; I'll believe it when I see it). But just because a year has its dissapointments doesn't mean that things are lackluster.

[Super Jamie]

Do0minat0r said:

Nine Anomalies (above average)

I love wads with missing textures too :/

[Do0minat0r]

Super Jamie said:

I love wads with missing textures too :/

A bug free version was released. Use os3.zip, NOT oskyrt3.zip.