Unofficial Expansions for Doom

[ShoDemo]

Hello again. I wanted to ask one thing that mostly involves collectors and generally doomers more experienced with community wads. So, I was browsing Ebay the other day and as I was searching for Doom Big Box versions, I encountered many unofficial expansions, with hundreds of levels, like D!Zone, The Ultimate Add-on Collection, Demon Gate and many more (can't remember something else right now). Were these any good, or did the authors of these expansion packs gather every garbage map they found and sold it? I am asking out of curiosity, more than anything else.


Not saying this to offend anyone, but some wads are less creative or fun than others, depending on the experience of the wad creator (or creators in many cases) and his personal taste. I, for an example, know for certain, that I most likely wouldn't make a good wad from the beginning, but I could get better in time with community feedback. And I don't think those wad creators had so much response back in the day (correct me if I am wrong).

[Sayok6]

Hmm... IMO The best one is probably The Lost Episodes of Doom, and the worst would be Perdition's Gate and Hell to Pay. I'm not counting D!Zone, Maximum Doom and many others because they were just random maps downloaded from the internet. If you really want 'good-quality' expansions, get 'Final DOOM' and 'The Master Levels'.

[Jayextee]

> worst
> Perdition's Gate

Mileage may totally vary there, since I thought Perdition's Gate was a better map set than (the official) TNT: Evilution, personally. Hell 2 Pay was also great, probably on a par with it.

[40oz]

Many of the things you will see are compilations of 1994 wads scraped up from BBS boards at the time and sold on CDs.

The Lost Episodes of Doom, Perdition's Gate, and Hell To Pay are original Doom mapsets made, packaged and sold commercially. These are available for free these days, and the people who made these wads have also made other great Doom wads too. There has been some pretty great stuff released over the course of time. For collecting purposes, they're cool to have but the best stuff is pretty accessible these days.

Have you had some bad experiences with wads lately? Maybe we can help find what kind of maps you're looking for.

[Gez]

IIRC all of the Lost Episodes levels except one or two were released earlier and can be found on /idgames, but they're not packaged the same way.

Perdition's Gate is pretty good; Hell To Pay isn't as good but it has a goofy charm with the 90s POVray sprite replacements. Music is ace though; if you liked the soundtrack in TNT you'll love the PG/H2P soundtrack.

[Salt-Man Z]

Man, I loved Perdition's Gate, but Lost Episodes was pretty dreadful. (Though I did enjoy the fourth episode from The Lost Episodes of ZDoom, which repackages an additional batch of Carter/Klie maps.) H2P I lost interest in after a couple maps, though I've always meant to go back to it.

[VGA]

Start off with TNT:Evilution (which is included in Final Doom)
Also Perdition's Gate is good! Short maps but fun. I can't believe someone would consider it the worst lol

[Memfis]

I think Perdition's Gate is too lame in how it tries to squeeze as much gameplay as possible out of maps with like a room in a half. There are way too many stupid hordes of monsters, teleporter traps and all that crap, and many of the stages look like they were made in one sitting by extreme abuse of symmetry and copy-paste. The whole wad just screams of "OMG, we have to make 32 levels but we have very little time and very few ideas!". There is a bunch of cool design/detail ideas, but it looks quite lazy (or maybe rushed is a better word) and is overall rather tedious to play since it feels like you're progressing too slowly due to all these dumb hordes.

Hell to Pay has a pretty good number of "legit" maps that can feel like an actual adventure and don't seem so desperate to prolong the gameplay. To me it's an obvious winner. Of course, before playing you need to delete all sprites and sounds.

[ShoDemo]

Sayok6 said:

Hmm... IMO The best one is probably The Lost Episodes of Doom, and the worst would be Perdition's Gate and Hell to Pay. I'm not counting D!Zone, Maximum Doom and many others because they were just random maps downloaded from the internet. If you really want 'good-quality' expansions, get 'Final DOOM' and 'The Master Levels'.

Ok, that's good to know. I will be buying the Doom trilogy soon, so it will have Final Doom and I'll see about The Master Levels (they were available in Steam and Depths of Doom trilogy I think).

[ShoDemo]

40oz said:

Many of the things you will see are compilations of 1994 wads scraped up from BBS boards at the time and sold on CDs.

The Lost Episodes of Doom, Perdition's Gate, and Hell To Pay are original Doom mapsets made, packaged and sold commercially. These are available for free these days, and the people who made these wads have also made other great Doom wads too. There has been some pretty great stuff released over the course of time. For collecting purposes, they're cool to have but the best stuff is pretty accessible these days.

Have you had some bad experiences with wads lately? Maybe we can help find what kind of maps you're looking for.

Didn't know that these were free. Going to check them out. And as for bad wads, I don't think I have encountered something horrible as far as wads go. I was just asking, because I was born in 1999 and wanted to learn more about these wads since I probably wasn't even born, when they were being released and I generally love learning <<new things about the 80s and 90s era>>. Still thanks for replying. :)

[Devalaous]

Ive played Lost Episodes and Hell to Pay to completion, and Perdition's Gate up to Map 12, the Lost Episodes are not all that great (And all but one map from it are available for free on the archive) but worth a look for the history value I suppose.

Hell to Pay is a great story-based megawad with all kinds of amazing sector wizardry going on, like launching ships and missiles, a timed mission where you have to blow up fuses to stop a self-destruct sequence (complete with walls showing you how much time you have left!), there were so many parts that wowed me at the creativity of the mappers back then. The sprites are "eh", if anyone makes a HTP sequel, I'd love for the sprites to get replaced with better versions that still keep the style they were going for. Amazing soundtrack too. Really felt like something I would have paid for in an instant had I been into Doom at the time it released (and well, had a computer for that matter)

Perdition's Gate is like a condensed TNT with shorter bloodier maps, and levels that flow into the next like a continuous journey, at least for the first 12 maps. I need to get back to it and finish it off, really liked what I played of it

[ShoDemo]

Gez said:

IIRC all of the Lost Episodes levels except one or two were released earlier and can be found on /idgames, but they're not packaged the same way.

Perdition's Gate is pretty good; Hell To Pay isn't as good but it has a goofy charm with the 90s POVray sprite replacements. Music is ace though; if you liked the soundtrack in TNT you'll love the PG/H2P soundtrack.

Hell to Pay sounds really good as you're describing it and if you liked Perdition's Gate I'm downloading that too!

[ShoDemo]

Salt-Man Z said:

Man, I loved Perdition's Gate, but Lost Episodes was pretty dreadful. (Though I did enjoy the fourth episode from The Lost Episodes of ZDoom, which repackages an additional batch of Carter/Klie maps.) H2P I lost interest in after a couple maps, though I've always meant to go back to it.

Another point for Perdition's gate. And if I ever play and finish the Lost episodes, I will surely check out the Lost Episodes of ZDoom (my favourite source port).

[ShoDemo]

Guys, first of all thanks to all of you (haven't replied to all messages as most of you recommended similar wads and I still don't know how to multiquote). So, as I see it, these wads are not loved by all the community members equally (some hate them, others love them), but they are well known and I ought to check them out, in order to form my own opinion. Because from a point and after the thread is about opinions. And I have to say I wasn't expecting to hear much good about these levels (only knew about the Master Levels), which surprises me and is really good as a whole. I mean more levels to play = more fun. :D

[Sharpie]

I find it funny that a lot of people are comparing Perdition's Gate to TNT, since it was originally going to be a third episode for Final DOOM. Shawn Green even loved it.

[ShoDemo]

QuirkyKirk said:

I find it funny that a lot of people are comparing Perdition's Gate to TNT, since it was originally going to be a third episode for Final DOOM. Shawn Green even loved it.

I read that on the wikia after seeing your message. I guess that's how business works (too bad :( ).

Now playing ancient aliens, epic 2 and more, so I'll play perditions gate afterwards (and Final Doom and Hell to Pay). There's no way I won't enjoy it if it is as polished as an official Doom game (I mean Final Doom).

[JohnnyTheWolf]

Both Perdition's Gate and Hell 2 Pay look quite decent, although the latter's amateurishly-made custom textures are particularly distracting.

[Salt-Man Z]

If you're gonna play Perdition's Gate in a ZDoom port, I highly recommend grabbing NightFright's "fix" to add level names and remove episode text. (The PG episode text is achieved in-game via custom graphics.)

https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=35389