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mammajamma

Engine pushing WADs....

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Could you recommend some WADs that push the vanilla engine to its limits, whether by size, complexity, or architecture? I'd like to know how far you could go sticking straight to the core engine.

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although still unfinished, kdikdizd is and will always be the best example.

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It would be pretty cool to write a historical treatise on this topic, starting from the earlier WADs, including cases struggling with the limits as well as tricks and hacks discovered through time.

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I thought Earth.wad and Phobos2.wad were certainly legendary, despite the fact that now I think they play like shit.

Harmony is almost vanilla compatible.

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Sometimes it's hard to tell how much authors struggled with limits because they didn't always leave notes about it. Of the megawads from this millennium, Alien Vendetta has some limit straining stuff, especially Mutator's work (lots of detail for vanilla, including the huge Map20.) Plutonia 2, as well; just look at Map29 for an obvious example. Kama Sutra also has its share of relatively large and complex levels.

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Patrick said:

I thought Earth.wad and Phobos2.wad were certainly legendary, despite the fact that now I think they play like shit.


I found them fun, weirdly enough.

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The sky may be is another good example too.

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I have practically all of those WADs on my hard drive. I was hoping for some more underrated works that espoused the creativity of mappers working around the limits, or something else of the sort.

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I Second Batman Doom. Does anyone know how that effect with Killer Croc was done? I'm wondering if I can create similar behavior in ZDoom w/o using DeHacked.

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The "rocks" are dead monsters; Killer Croc uses the Arch-Vile's resurrection behavior. The revived monsters then use the Lost Soul attack to fly towards you, then (I guess) die again.

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My "Outpost of Hell" runs on vanilla Doom 2, but it suffers savegame overflow or something like that (I can't remember its proper name!), because of the map size.

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There was one extraordinarily beautiful wad by Lutz[?] that had no monsters and showed off quite a bit of cool vanilla architecture. I can't remember what it was for the life of me. I'm tempted to say it was called inferno? I can't be arsed to look it up, but it is worth a look.

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I'm going to agree with Batman Doom. Suspended in Dusk is a magnificent wad and a great example of the limits of vanilla Doom mapping... but Batman Doom pushes the limits of every aspect of Doom. The maps are filled with scripted sequences and bizarre effects, and the engine itself is pushed to the limit with the deh file. It is truly outrageous that it runs on the vanilla base (just like Jem).

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Patrick said:

There was one extraordinarily beautiful wad by Lutz[?] that had no monsters and showed off quite a bit of cool vanilla architecture. I can't remember what it was for the life of me. I'm tempted to say it was called inferno? I can't be arsed to look it up, but it is worth a look.


Sounds interesting; does anybody know what it's called?

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DeHackEd is something else. It alters the limits, so it can be argued that its results are not within them, and DeHackEd work isn't about the limits in regard to size, complexity and architecture, as specified in the original post.

mammajamma said:
I was hoping for some more underrated works that espoused the creativity of mappers working around the limits, or something else of the sort.

Another level set where the mappers worked around the limits in most levels is The Darkening II. Most intensive limit-testing levels belong to this decade and are relatively well known. In the classic era, some sets or levels did have parts that were simplified or reworked to fit the limits, but it was generally only some sections and not a matter of working around the limits all around. One reason is because computers were less powerful and the most detailed maps could affect performance, and another, especially later, is that people were not as familiar with the limits and by then had Boom and other ports to explore larger or more complex maps.

Patrick said:
There was one extraordinarily beautiful wad by Lutz[?]

I don't remember that, but there were different tech WADs showing unusual effects like fake 3D and the like by Iikka Keränen and Lee Szymanski. Chris Lutz did make Inferno, which has monsters and is arguably one of those limit-testing sets.

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mammajamma said:

Sounds interesting; does anybody know what it's called?


It wasn't Phobos: Anomaly Reborn? That's a brilliant wad that made my pIII sizzle a bit.

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Patrick said:

There was one extraordinarily beautiful wad by Lutz[?] that had no monsters and showed off quite a bit of cool vanilla architecture. I can't remember what it was for the life of me. I'm tempted to say it was called inferno? I can't be arsed to look it up, but it is worth a look.


Yes, it's Inferno. E3M1 to be precise. It's a full episode, but the first map is really amazing and shows some beautiful architecture (no monsters indeed).

Also, IMO, Eternal's "Baker's Dozen"'s Map13 (The Tower) is brilliant. Could you believe it was made in 4 hours?

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40oz said:

Hacx has a pretty wild dehacked file too.

Meh, not really. The breaking glass was interesting and a few of the monsters were unique... beyond that most of the weapons and monsters are just reskins.

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