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Patrol1985

An old scan from a Polish gaming magazine

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One of the most prominent Polish gaming magazines of 1990s was "Secret Service". A Polish gamer recently found and scanned an article giving the results of a mapping contest for Doom (I'm not sure whether it was just Doom or also Doom 2) organized by the said magazine. The prizes were:

1st place = Gravis Ultrasound sound card
2nd place = Advanced Gravis Analog Pro joystick
3rd pace = Gravis Gamepad

The scan is of poor quality, which makes reading quite hard (not to mention that you have to know Polish :P), but you get to see screenshots which allow to observe the level of complexity and some new monsters / weapons. Enjoy:

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I managed to decipher (hopefully correctly) every word except the jury chairman's name...

Here's the original text (link will expire after 1 month):http://pastebin.com/n8U7Pe0t

As mentioned earlier here, there was a fixation of using the word "plansza" (literally: board), for a map. In this text it used also for a multi-map WAD, somewhat illogically.

The text:
Our holiday “Best DOOM board” contest has been finished! Hi-tech gaming hardware, sponsored by PMC has been distributed! Time for results and an afterthought.

The quality of boards sent to us was very good, they were varying from one level to gigantic monster WADs containing various maps. Generally speaking, you did pretty well! We have received dozens of frightening boards for DOOM and even one for a good old Wolfenstein.

An atmosphere of horror prevailed in the works of the participants. Looking at them you may easily imagine Doomers’ brains with all nightmares inside, as if from the most disgusting horror movies. Hanging corpses, laying corpses, impaled corpses, corpses falling abruptly on your head. Corpses by the walls, corpses on the ceiling. Corpses in acid rivers. Loads of corpses. Millions of them!!!

Huge monsters, often drawn by the players from scratch, almost impossible to kill. Strange shapes of new weapons resembling those from Marvel Superheroes comics. Pentagrams and many other satanic cult symbols on the walls. Doom, Doom, we are all Doomed!

Jury who slogged nights watching contest entries are being haunted to this day by groans of the dying, sounds of shots and strange, surreptitious looks over the shoulder...

After long discussions and arguments the referees have chosen the top participants:

FIRST PRIZE for creating a difficult map, new weapons and monsters:
Michał Gąsiorek (Warsaw). A soundcard GRAVIS ULTRASOUND goes to his hands.
SECOND PRIZE for creative layout and clever traps:
Norbert Bombała (Wrocław). He receives a joystick ANALOG PRO by ADVANCED GRAVIS.
THIRD PRIZE for a simple and deadly design:
Andrzej Kieńć (Wrocław). GRAVIS GAMEPAD goes to him.

Jury has also decided to grant honorable mention to Mirosław Henning (Wodzisław Śląski) who gets a gimmicky 3D mouse pad.

We invite all the rest to take part in one of our Christmas contests. All details in the next SECRET SERVICE issue.

Chairman of Jury comittee – G***

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vdgg said:

I managed to decipher (hopefully correctly) every word except the jury chairman's name..


Vdgg, the "chairman's" nickname is "Gulash" (meaning "stew", as in the dish). He's my all-time favourite Polish gaming journalist and has quite a following to this day. His specialty were fighting games (with Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat and Virtua Fighter being his favourite series), but every now and then he would write something about FPS games as well.

Sadly, Gulash has been suffering from some serious disease, which forced him to suspend the publishing of his own gaming magazine ("Neo+"). While it has never been officially stated what sort of disease it is, word of mouth says it's cancer :(

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Firefish, the page I originally posted gives the results of the contest. The issue you linked to mentions the contest for the very first time. These are two separate issues and yours is a good find too!

Some rules mentioned:

1. The deadline of the contest was set to September 1994
2. The map had to be compatible with Doom 1.0 or Doom Shareware 1.1
3. Any map editor could be used, with some being listed in the same issue Firefish took the page from - I wonder what tools were recommended back then :D

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I was attempting to find the issue with the results but neither September 1994 nor December 1994 nor January 1995 provide them. It might be they are incomplete scans.

It was an attempt to help the thread, Patrol1985. :)

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FireFish said:

It was an attempt to help the thread, Patrol1985. :)


And a good one too! I had those issues in paper form, but sadly lost them over time. If I manage to get my hands on PDFs or something I will share it.

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FireFish said:

I was attempting to find the issue with the results but neither September 1994 nor December 1994 nor January 1995 provide them. It might be they are incomplete scans.

It was an attempt to help the thread, Patrol1985. :)


November of course
https://archive.org/stream/secretservicemagazine-1994-11/SecretService_11_1994#page/n5/mode/2up
How did I did I find it? The secret was to scroll left ;)

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Here are the pages from June 1994 issue of "Secret Service" which mention recommended tools for editing Doom:

https://archive.org/stream/secretservicemagazine-1994-06/SecretService_06_1994#page/n11/mode/2up

These are:

1. dmaud.exe + doom audio studio (for sound recording and replacement)
2. dmgraph.exe + doom image editor (for monster sprite replacement)
3. doomledit v 1.4, doom map editor, doomvb 3.0, doom editor utils (map editors)
4. Doomcad (a level editor recommended as the best available)
5. Doom control center (for splicing maps, sounds and sprites together)

+ a bunch of other utility programs (i.e. an alternate multiplayer setup program)

A cool piece of Doom history :)

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Patrol1985 said:

A cool piece of Doom history :)

Quite! It's always fun to read such stuff. Thanks for translating it!

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What do the 1st 3 Pictures in that page represent ? a Wierd weapon,and a wierd Silver monster (Or friend ?) ...

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Patrol1985 said:

Sadly, Gulash has been suffering from some serious disease, which forced him to suspend the publishing of his own gaming magazine ("Neo+"). While it has never been officially stated what sort of disease it is, word of mouth says it's cancer :(


That’s a saddening information.

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Olroda said:

Quite! It's always fun to read such stuff. Thanks for translating it!


All credit goes to FireFish. He found this awesome archive!

DMGUYDZ64 said:

What do the 1st 3 Pictures in that page represent ? a Wierd weapon,and a wierd Silver monster (Or friend ?) ...


That's new content added by one of the guys taking part in the contest. Those guys put a lot of work into this, especially considering the time when the contest took place and tools available back then. I'd like to test those WADs.

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Patrol1985 said:

All credit goes to FireFish. He found this awesome archive!


I appreciate the Enthusiasm and nice mention, but VDGG and you translated the texts. i just browsed around for the magazine after reading the topic.

That baseball bat an silver surfer like creature are mesmerizing. Its more something people would do with modern tools and advanced engines.

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I actually should have a couple of scans of old Polish Doom articles on my drive, along with translations into English.

Assuming I can find it, I'll try and upload it somewhere later for everybody's enjoyment :>

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Awesome stuff coming!

First, here there are scans of *all* known and unknown Polish gaming magazines of the era. You have to register, though, and the format is .djvu.

The funniest stuff I found is a Gambler 10/94 Doom 2 review (view here, will be translated later if only I am able...) and a Doom level-by-level solution published in Gry Komputerowe, 1994/3, /4, /5. ((1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)). If there is interest, I will give more English translations, for now just two maps: E3M2 and E3M6.

Second Building:
Slouch (!) of Despair
It is one of the most difficult stages. Its difficulty lies in the fact that it is just one, huge area without rooms, but with a thousand of labyrinths, corridors and nooks instead. You don't know from which side an enemy may pop up and from which side you may get it in the neck. But that's a nuance. Go to the other end of the area. You will get a machine gun there. You will also have to break through a labyrinth totally full of the flying ones. So hit a skull's skull by your skull (isn't it good) and everything will be OK. To finish this stage you will have to obtain a blue keycard, guarded by flying skulls. A plasma gun will be handy here. When you get that blue keycard, go with it to the door and lower a platform. Behind, there is a teleporter.

Sixth Building:
Mt. Erebus
Hard as hell. Not only does the computer go crazy there (slows down in a weird way), but it is full of monsters, traps and the like. But we won't give up, will we? We'll show who the real player is. Enter the first door. Explore meticulously all the rooms. It is important in this level to find a blue keycard. Watch out not to jump into a room with two teleporters: there is no way out from there. While you wander around here and there, visit a building on a small island in the middle of the acid. Inside, you must press all the skull images which you can see. A secret passage will open. It can only be entered from the side of the acid. You can see it on the screenshot. Over there, a few more kills and you're in the penultimate stage.

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vdgg said:

The funniest stuff I found is a Gambler 10/94 Doom 2 review (view here, will be translated later if only I am able...)


I can give it a shot, if you don’t mind. I remember reading this one when it was published. I don’t know where I got all my old game mags, so you made my day by sharing it here.

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Should be fixed now, thank you.

I feel like we saturated the topic, so I don't expect many new comments...

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It’s Krazov, with the "Z". ;]

As for “New extras were invited ...”—an extra meaning an actor, like in a background of a movie. I was surprised that English doesn’t have a special word for that.

I’ll look up at your editing later and compare them to my version. It should be educational for me.

And for future scans, I’m glad to make a first draft, if time will let me.

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