The DWmegawad Club plays: Serenity & Eternity & Infinity

[Memfis]

You can get Serenity together with the music wad at its webpage. The other two come with music wads on /idgames, I don't know why it's not the case for this one.

[Magnusblitz]

SteveD said:

I also had to use my Jump key at the exit since I couldn't get on to the platform. Was there an “E” in that room? I didn't see it.

A step rises from the platform by pushing on one of the non-pink snake walls. The letter for each level isn't necessarily the exit, just somewhere in the level.

[scifista42]

E3M3 - "R You Lonesome?"

The music track started as weak-sounding, but eventually turned out to be good (like the previous 2 map's tracks were). The map: First part wasn't good at all, just narrow corridors with occasional "secret" side paths, all of them quite obvious. Then there was some nukage and some crates, they didn't play ideally, but it was at least slightly better than the beginning. Overally a weak map, though.

[mouldy]

E3M2 - "Doom - The Movie"

This map achieved some high levels of quirky. The monster cinema made me laugh, then there was an enormous room, some twiddly corridors and a secret bit which teleported me back into the big room surrounded by all manner of beasts. And then the exit room, what the hell is going on there.. Scrolly pink and painfull, and a platform that you need to press a flap of skin to access, and its secret for some reason. Very peculiar, you can tell this came from an era when they were still writing the rules for doom maps.

[durian]

E3M2 - "Doom - The Movie"

This was pretty straight-forward; no hairy moments, and pretty mindless combat, but a fun blast nonetheless. A few things strike me about this map - the cute switch secrets, and the cinema obviously. The massive 'E' I liked, as it constitutes an utterly pointless means of interacting with, and changing, the map - stuff like this used to be much more prevalent, and for whatever reason it appeals to me. The area where the path overlaps itself one level up feels quite novel for the time. Finally, there are two areas with nicely done curves: the steps in the main hall, and the exit room - from memory, making neat curves was not so straightforward in the editors that were around at the time, so these stuck out for me.

[Capellan]

Vanilla Doom did have a "you need the (whatever) key" message. Unmarked key doors were quite common because it was a PITA to split an existing line in most editing tools back in 94.

UV is not against my religion I just normally can't be arsed :-)

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

SERENITY.WAD E3M2

I'm going to do a continuous run but with my usual saving rule (saves only to suspend a session, not to reload after death or other screwups). I didn't die on this one, though.

This one... meh. It seems pretty generic for the most part, with a lot of that monotonous stark grey texturing that seems to have been kind of popular in the early days. I don't know if I can outright say it looks "bad", but it sure does look boring. At least Petersenesque acid trips can be interesting in their way. Structuring is also kind of dull, plenty of narrow corridors and in some cases a bunch of doors off the sides leading to small blocky rooms. The sort of thing that exemplifies why what you might see in an actual building doesn't always go well for a Doom level.

There's one custom texture, a scrolling wall of... a Giger chick? A Star Trek alien? I feel like I ought to recognize this thing, but I don't.

Given the previous level, I figured the big E would be the exit. It wasn't. What's a consistency?

All in all, if this level were taken outside the context of an episode, it could be any old forgettable WAD, neither good or bad enough to be particularly memorable.

I realize that apparently I went and downloaded the version that doesn't have the custom music. Bah.

K/I/S: 91% / 0% / 100%

[Magnusblitz]

Capellan said:

Vanilla Doom did have a "you need the (whatever) key" message.

Oh yeah, it was just at the top (with the "picked up a ..." messages) instead of in the middle of the screen, durr I'm dumb.

[Demon of the Well]

Serenity E3M2 -- Doom: The Movie - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets
Nothing in this level is quite as interesting as the sunbaked room from E3M1, but taken as a whole its overall gameplay is a little more engaging, I think. Lots of the action here still involves very dull shooting of small numbers of basic monsters in barren little box-rooms, but more advanced architectural aspects like windows and pronounced height variation make a fairly persistent showing, to the betterment of the whole. Even when a level is rather short and lightly staffed like this one is, features like these help to add interest to both combat and the purely exploratory aspect of play, injecting potential for small (but relevant) variations in approach and playstyle. The best part is probably the big 'E' chamber, which has a cloud of flyers to plink away at from one of the 3-4 different vantages you can easily reach via some footwork on the ground level, while distant snipers plink at you from one of the other said vantages. While it's not as evident in the actual fights, the conceptual/experimental nature of Nathrath/Hermans' style is still at play here, as in the somewhat wonky exit room or the actual 'E' mechanism. I'm not a fan of the exit room, myself--I didn't find the 'puzzle' aspect bothersome, but the room itself is ass-ugly once the lights fly on, and there's no way out once you've entered. The 'E' thing is distantly amusing, though....I'm not sure if the ability to trigger the mechanism more than once (thus causing the 'E' symbol to rise higher and higher out of the floor) is intentional or simply a product of some inefficient design, but I entertained myself by trapping some bipedal monsters on it and then taking flying shots at them by leaping off of the L-shaped ledge.

Of course, it's the little movie theater mockup that is the level's claim to fame. Certainly one of the oldest (although perhaps not THE oldest) iterations of something that became quite a trope in 90s PWADs, that....it's hard to tell just how representational the general theater area is supposed to be (e.g. is that wood room behind the screen with most of the monsters initially facing the wall supposed to be a restroom, or is it just....a wood room with monsters facing the wall?), which could be interpreted as a shortcoming in the intended effect, but the screen/seating setup itself is something that was often imitated in later WADs. I guess it looks okay, given the time....Incidentally, that's more or less all there is to say about the aesthetics in general--the texture scheme is both monotonous and monochrome, though largely inoffensive (and frankly, another cold concrete room would've been preferable to the full-bright fleshpit at the end), and I must give the authors credit for continuing to pay attention to lighting variation, even if only in simple ways.

Serenity E3M3 -- R You Lonesome? - 100% Kills / 100% Secrets
Hard to say what to make of this level, it doesn't seem to have any particularly pronounced identity, mainly just a lot of narrow wooden corridors with a Doom-Preschool level of opposition in them....

.....Okay, so I wrote the above line, and then sat here thinking about it for 5 minutes, and I guess it's not entirely fair. The comparatively involved/semi-puzzle-y shotgun-get at the start sets it apart from the maps on either side of it in the lineup, at least, and it does have kind of a cool opening shot (although seeing any combination of full-bright marble and wood textures/flats in a 90s context still makes me reflexively cringe just a little....if you've ever slogged through any significant part of the stuff you can find on D!Zone or Demon Gate or Maximum DooM, you surely know what I'm talking about), again emphasizing that Serenity's authors understood the value of lighting contrast. Odd little bit of 'realistic' detailing used in a couple of the elevators, too, so they're definitely interested in aesthetics, even if by modern standards these are essentially naked levels. I guess the structure in the center of the ooze-canal to the west is also notable for being the most complex/intricate construction we've seen in Serenity up to this point, although it still feels about as dull and insubstantial as the rest of the level while you're actually playing through. There are in fact other memorable things about the map, too, but they aren't memorable for the right reasons...there's the grotesquely overpowered/unnecessary cherry-red secret, and the fact that the 'R' in this level is in a hidden area, in contrast to the prominent displays made of the 'S' and 'E' in the previous maps. Can't say I blame the author for hiding it, mind you....my retinas are still sobbing in anguish after the way they were violated in there.

So, yeah, I guess on an intellectual level I understand that this map's not just the dull wooden hallway that I initially said it was, but the problem is, despite its various unique features, the whole map, and to a lesser extent the whole episode, still feels like it's that hallway, because there's very little substance in the gameplay department. Oh, well, maybe it improves down the line...I definitely recall that at least parts of Eternity and Infinity are better, anyway.

[Never_Again]

Good to see one of my old favorites reviewed in depth.

scifista42 said:

Serenity

E3M1 - "A Warm Welcome"

The teleport trap was kind of weird, 2 monsters were even stuck, but okay.

Yes, that's an error on the authors' part. It's possible to get 100% kills on this map, though: -fast + infighting.

Jaws In Space said:

sErenity: E3M2 - HMP, Pistol Start

I have played this map before, at least 4 times in fact, anyone who has attempted to get through all of the Maximum Doom should be quite familiar with this one as it appears in Maximum Doom a minimum of 4 times, with various changes made each time.

Yep, that room with the "E" is at the core of a number of WADs by different authors. There's a little story behind this.

One of the earliest DOOM level editors that allowed creation of maps from scratch was Geoff Allan's Doom Edit, later known as DoomEd The Real Thing (to distinguish it from another Windoze-only editor of the period, called "Renegade Graphics Doom Edit" by Joe Pantuso). Sometime at the end of March 1994 version 2.50 beta 4 was released. It included four sample WADs, one of them was MINE1.WAD. Subsequently, many other WADs by different authors were released that were based on this level. The Green Herring and I compiled a list of all such known WADs:

• MINE1.WAD - Mar 1994
  
• FLASH.WAD - Apr 1994
  
• TECHBASE.WAD - May 1994
  
• WATCH51.WAD - Aug 1994
  
• POT.WAD - Sep 1994
  
• RALPH5.WAD E1M2 - Oct 1994
  
• SERENITY.WAD E3M2 - Oct 1994
  
• ASNEW8.WAD - Dec 1994
  
• Xmas Doom MAP01 - Dec 1994
  
• D&D11D1.WAD - Dec 1994

Note that the E1M2 in RAPLH5 was sourced from DRAGON1.WAD, currently unavailable. That makes it eleven.

ETTiNGRiNDER said:

SERENITY.WAD E3M2

There's one custom texture, a scrolling wall of... a Giger chick? A Star Trek alien? I feel like I ought to recognize this thing, but I don't.

Ripley with the facehugger in Medlabs, "Aliens".

[Steve D]

^^^Thanks a ton, Never_Again! I really enjoy this kind of Doom archaeology.

[Salt-Man Z]

E3M3: R You Lonesome?
First off, love the Axel F midi. And then (and it may just be the nostalgia talking, but) I love the first section of this map, with all the wooden corridors snaking around and over and through everything. (Love that dropoff where the shotgun guy can shoot down into the starting area at you.) Then there's the slimepit section, which is only okay, and finally the crates which are pretty boring (also have some missing textures, or is that only in OpenGL?) The only thing I missed was the two sergeants and (of all things) the map in the R secret: I would have gone back to search for them, but alas, another one-way exit area. Ah, well. Was I seeing that "R" texture correctly? FIREBLU alternating with a wall of chains? Definitely bizarre.

[dobu gabu maru]

E3M3: This one is a completely different beast if you’re playing from pistol start. Finding a shotgun—and more importantly, ammo—is quite an ordeal until you get into the lower right section of the map. Even then health is pretty scarce, and having to run through some nukage nearly ended my run of the map. I think it probably could have been a bit more lenient to players, but it wasn’t too egregious.

[Demon of the Well]

You can actually get a shotgun and some ammo right at the start, in a hidden-yet-not-secret area behind the player's start point. Which reminds me, some of the secret sector placement here is pretty weird, I triggered one just walking around casually in the starting area to look through those two little windows to one side.

[7hm]

Demon of the Well said:

You can actually get a shotgun and some ammo right at the start, in a hidden-yet-not-secret area behind the player's start point. Which reminds me, some of the secret sector placement here is pretty weird, I triggered one just walking around casually in the starting area to look through those two little windows to one side.

It seems to be weird through the whole wad. Regular rooms just tagged as secrets, and I'm pretty sure that there's mandatory secrets on m4. That's what I wrote two days ago at least. This wad is pretty forgettable, even if I'm enjoying it.

Anyway...

Slot: 3 3
Map: R You Lonesome?
Author: Holger Nathrath, Bjorn Hermans
Notes:
Another really fun layout. Tight corridors mixed with slightly larger spaces, not a lot of backpeddling. I'm pretty sure this one used the trick from e3m1 again, where the light burns you, but my health was too low to test it out. I spent a decent portion of the level at low health after a couple poorly planned room entries, but the absurd secret room got me through. I got confused at the end looking for the exit. It took me a shockingly long time to find it.

[Memfis]

e3m3 - awesome combination of music and the opening shot, you load the map and you just know it has to rock. The progression is interesting again: you need the yellow key not to progress further but just to get back to the starting area that you left. There are some clever small maze-like parts and a happy all powerups secret.

Then there is the sewer part (where you can get hurt quite a bit if you're in a hurry and you miss the rad suits) with the cool stairbuilding switches. For some reason I like the scenarios in these wads where you activate a trigger, it opens something behind you, so you go activate that and then you can go back and proceed. Might seem pointless but hey, it's fun!

It all ends with a classic two layer crate storage. I remember getting embarassingly lost there when playing for the first time. :D

[Capellan]

e3m3
More structured variety to the textures here - not just a random room of marble in amidst the gray, but actual 'zones' which each have a recognisable identity. That's an important though not terribly 'flashy' development, level-design wise.

There's also some more thought-out use of varying height, with cross fire areas, views into other zones, and a bit of Doom parkour to pick up secrets and reach the exit.

Some goofs on the secrets where it looks like they've split sectors after tagging them, but that's relatively minor. Speaking of the secrets though, some of them barely seem to qualify to me - I've hit 100% on every level thus far which is about four times what I'd normally do.

The baron fight's a complete waste of time alas - just an ammo sink since there is no way for him or the demons to threaten you.

[Zed]

E3M2:

OK, this one was really easy. No deaths, secrets were trivial. First exit in under 6 minutes. One thing that caught my attention was the E room, where the letter kept raising... up to a certain point, I don't know why it stopped there. If E3M1 was a little too easy, this was a walk in the park.

E3M3:

Another easy map, maybe a little bit harder than the previous map, but still easier than the first one. Again, no deaths, first exit in around 10 minutes. 5 of the 6 secrets are basically the same one. I thought that teleporter was the last secret, but no, it was the exit. So, 5 out of 6 secrets, and I missed a couple of monsters.

These two maps were a bit of a disappointment. I expected the difficulty to go up, not down, but anyway, they're still fun little maps.

EDIT: Sorry, typo.

[scifista42]

E3M4 - "All the Marbles"

Totally apparent 1994 again. Many ultra-narrow corridors twisting around like spaghetti. Prevailing monochromatic texturing, mostly ugly. Simplistic architecture even in the most elaborate rooms. The most basic combat scenarios there can be - it doesn't feel challenging to me anymore. But undoubtly also creativity. Gimmicks were quite frequent - like the computer room with items, crusher room, a clippable midtexture, secrets in pits, or an E1M4-style maze (which I actually liked). Nice music. Not really an exciting experience on the whole, but I'm glad that we're playing these old wads this month, for a change of "perspective" on Doom level design.

[mouldy]

E3M3 - "R You Lonesome?"

Some lolworthy stuff in this map, I know its old, but still I have to chuckle. It does give quite a bit of perspective on how far doom maps have progressed over time though. So anyway, finding the secret soulsphere meant I never went below 100 health. Unfortunately the low difficulty meant I didn't save, and fell foul of the unmarked exit, so a few enemies escaped me. I did find all the secrets however, even a few that weren't marked as secret. With the general simplicity and lack of texture alignment I'm guessing map editing was quite a task back then. Or maybe mistakes were just waved off as unimportant in those days.

[Memfis]

e3m4 - awesome music once again. Really, the whole soundtrack to the series is so great, I could just sit in front of the computer with my old semi-broken headphones on and have a good time. What, I get to play some pleasant levels as well? I can't possibly complain here. :)

This one uses mainly marble textures. I love the lamps near the doors in the first room. The computer area with four items is so entertaining to figure out. Then there is a dropoof to some corridors: a classic Serenity moment at this point. I liked the outdoor area so much that I stole it for my recent crapmap called pikalev.

[Magnusblitz]

E3M3: R You Lonesome?
100% kills, 6/6 secrets

Okay, running with the music file now. Beverly Hills Cop? Yeesh.

Still very 1994, and not in a good way. Lots of really narrow, boxy corridors, and crappy texturing. Weird things like the horrific flashing 'R' room. Most of the secrets appear to be accidental tags, E4M3-style, and contained in a secret hallway that... doesn't really give anything. But that's fine, because the room filled with all three orbs and a berserk pack should tide the player over if he's having too much difficulty with the block-monster-line-blocked baron of hell and demons. Oh, and on top of that is an unmarked exit. And even if you realize it's the exit, you can't go back! Hooray.

[Capellan]

Tools in 1994 were much more primitive than today.  These maps were made with DEU 5.21 and DEU 5.22 GCC.  IIRC 5.21 started to get problematic if your level went past about 80kb as it didn't have any memory extenders built into it (so you were just using DOS's base 640kb).  5.22 GCC fixed that problem, at least.

I don't recall when exactly automatic X and Y alignment tools were introduced but *I* didn't know of or use them until DETH came on the scene, so it is quite possible that when these maps were made any such work had to be done line by line, with the level designer manually calculating the offsets and then entering them in the sidedef details.  And of course if you moved a vertex afterwards, you have to manually redo every X offset again.  That got old real fast, which is why as people got more savvy you started to see SUPPORT inserts to break up textures, and use of textures that tile every 16 units (since you can use 3:4:5triangles to make your diagonals 80 units and they'll look OK).

I *think* DEU 5.22 GCC was probably around when commands for 'insert a vertex and split the line', 'insert a line and split the sector' and 'insert a shape inside this sector' started to become available, but again that might not have been until DETH.  I do recall drawing a lot of my pre-Demonfear maps on grid paper before firing up my level editor, because it was much easier to alter things in the pencil and paper then on the computer.

Couple all that with the fact that you had to build the nodes for the level and then fire up Doom in order to check stuff – a process that even with batch files took a minute or more before you even saw the map – and you can see why 1994 maps tend to look the way they do :-)

[scifista42]

Memfis said:

e3m4
I love the lamps near the doors in the first room.

Do you mean the misaligned ceiling ones, the misaligned wall ones, or both?

[Memfis]

Lol @ question. The ceiling ones. :)

[dobu gabu maru]

Capellan said:

Tools in 1994 were much more primitive than today.

You know, I'm actually pretty surprise we have yet to see a megawad project where contributors have to use the mapping programs from the mid 90s. I think it'd be exceptionally humbling for those of us spoiled by things like the 3D view mode, as I've never even had to consider how difficult it would be inserting a linedef to split a sector.

Anyway, (posting a bit early)
E3M4: Maybe the weakest map so far. There’s less straight combat and more… puzzles? It’s a lot of trying to figure out what you’re supposed do (like that area with the red key) and poking around the place. It’s… interesting I guess? Definitely not your standard Doom map.

[Magnusblitz]

Which Doom map editor came with this gem? I remember having this book as a wee lad, doing a few tutorials but never finishing it. Always loved reading it, though. I think my dad actually completed the whole tutorial level...

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

Never_Again said:

Ripley with the facehugger in Medlabs, "Aliens".

Thanks, I knew it was familiar somehow. I guess I was on the right track thinking Giger, too.

Serenity E3M3:

One death, but I got back to a comparable level of gear pretty quickly.

This map was step up from the previous for me in pretty much all regards; it was more or less the sort of thing I like to see when I boot up an old WAD.

Cool secrets. The ones I found anyway. I particularly liked the one near the start (shotgun & armor). The one pentagram secret with all the powerups behind it was a bit overpowered I suppose, but having a chance to go on an invinciberserk rampage for a bit was a touch of stupid fun. I'm guessing this level has one of those multi-sector secret areas where everything's tagged secret even where it didn't have to be, rather than that I missed a whole lot.

Visuals were oldschool but good, there are even some nice cast-light effects and such. Pretty decent texturing with some choices that were quirky, but none that I thought were outright ugly. Well, maybe one, there was a weird texture that flashed between a frame of FIREBLU and some new texture of big gold chains. WAD bug? Port bug? Deliberate trippiness? I dunno. Overall better-looking than the previous two.

Some of the structure is a bit corridor-heavy, and wading around in nukage was mandatory (if there was a radsuit or shortcut in a secret, I missed it.)

Exit not marked as such.

K/I/S: 96% / 100% / 16%

[Walter confetti]

Started playing this series tonight continuously from e3m1 to e3m4 with zandrodum and the ultimate freedoom IWAD (heresy(?)!) on HMP, i think i've played this episode already (serenity.wad) when i was a kid on some shovelware CDs, lots of 1994 mapping style (of course, is from 1994! what a smart boy i am!), but with lots of pretty cool touches here and there and pretty solid gameplay so far, anyway let's start with:

E3M1: Fast and sweet starting map, the toxic floor at undercovered outdoor area at the beginning was kind of unexpected, there's some pretty cool lighting detail at the starting room, and the map progress in some kind of linear way, but isn't a boring map. The music reminded me of a Green Day "Hitchin' a Ride" for some reason. Died 2 times.

E3M2: Oh god, the memories! At first impact with the BGM in it i was thinking "Holy crap, it was YEARS that i don't hear that MIDI!" but then i've seen the level itself and i said: "Hey, i already played this as a kid!"...

Ok, over all the nostalgic moment, this is a nice map, maybe too withe (better say gray) and empty, with some wooden and marble room parts, is a weird map maybe too "technological" and episode 2-ish (especially the brown and blue room with that e2m4 switches trick) for an "Hellish" map, also i think this was an already released map on solo projects, like a billion of times with different wadfile names and some minor changes, layout is good, i had walked around the map for searching the way to get in the other huge area, then i've seen this un-noticed bluewall door in a section that i've opened after some switch puzzle in the marble room, the new textures is cool. The exit room is crap.

E3M3: A wooden level with a much more hellish feeling on it, also here starts my main problem so far: Mazes. Layout is pretty nonlinear. There's again some nice light detailing in it like in e3m1. Also, why teleports doesn't work?

E3M4: Ah, what a sweet, relaxing jazzy theme have this map! Also there's some pretty nice puzzles (like the red skull key room), the only thing i dislike in this map is the crypticity of some parts and the maze after the yellow key room...

So, as i wroted before, maps are ok for an 1994 episode, music some lighting detailing gives to this episode a gloomy atmosphere... i like it so far.

[Steve D]

Memfis said:

You can get Serenity together with the music wad at its webpage. The other two come with music wads on /idgames, I don't know why it's not the case for this one.

Thanks, Memfis! I'll be listening for obvious copyright violations in the other 2 episodes. I wonder if they ever get cease-and-desist orders at idgames from ASCAP lawyers, or if someone scans the wads coming in for potential trouble? I'm sure there must be tons of copyrighted songs and sounds in all those maps.