T-Rex

Drake O'Brien also made Map 20 of TNT Evilution, which I thought was a pretty okay map, even though it's such a lengthy one. However, I feel for you with Map 21 since that one is so tedious, and as for Map 27, yeah, that one is the most difficult of the wad and it's so unforgiving as the limited health coupled with the nasty monster placement like chaingunners, revenants and those lost souls, that makes the map very, very luck based.

Having a closer look at the differences between the Doom and Duke Nukem 3D enemies, I grouped them not just in threat level and attack/movement pattern, but also their vitality, and these are the following. Keep in mind that this is somewhat as like a guideline for when converting a Doom map into a Duke map. Assault Trooper = Zombieman (weakest of their respected bestiaries) Assault Captain = Shotgunner / Imp (second-toughest for the former, latter for when Pig Cops are excluded) Pig Cop = Imp (while they are generally easier to take down, an Imp can sometimes survive one point blank shotgun blast, and can take more than 10 shots from a pistol if the RNG is unkind, and although Pig Cops can be as threatening as chaingunners, they don't keep firing until you're dead or out of their line of sight. Also worth nothing that originally Pig Cops were going to have an additional melee attack besides the hitscan) RPV = Cacodemon / Pain Elemental (closest as they're flying enemies, though Pain Elemental seems a bit likely since destroying an RPV always spawns a Pig Cop) Pig Cop Tank = Arachnotron Enforcer = Chaingunner / Hell Knight (obvious for the former, and Hell Knights are slightly close to being as threatening as chaingunners) Octabrain = Demon / Cacodemon / Pain Elemental Protozoid Slimer / Protozoid Slimer Egg = Lost Soul Sentry Drone = Lost soul (in the sense that both enemies do take at least two shotgun blasts, and they charge towards you for head-on collision) Assault Commander = Mancubus / Baron of Hell (the former since they're fat monsters, while the latter as they function like mid-boss enemies) Protector Drone = Revenant / Arch-Vile (all are fast, and while revenants do have both melee and projectile attacks, they're still mid-tier enemies while both the Protector Drone and Arch-Vile are the second strongest non-boss enemy before the Commander and Baron respectively, not to mention getting shrunk and smooshed is just as bad if not lethal than getting burst into flames) Battlelord Sentry = Baron of Hell / Spider Mastermind / Cyberdemon (The last two are for those in Doom 2 where they're recurring enemies) Battlelord = Spider Mastermind Overlord = Cyberdemon Cycloid Emperor = Cyberdemon Alien Queen = Icon of Sin (Though different, they spawn enemies, though the Alien Queen spawns only Protector Drones while the Icon of Spin spawns random Hellspawn) That's as close as I can get to Doom to Duke translation.

It's very tricky to decide which Doom enemy could correspond with the RPV. Cacodemons and Pain Elementals are a possibility, thinking about it, but the thing with RPVs is that unlike Octabrains and Commanders that can fly around freely, they fly in a rather fixed pattern. Simply put, when you're designing a Duke 3D map with RPVs in them, you need to give them a hitag value, then set in certain sprites known as locators that will dictate where the RPVs will travel as long as their hitag values correspond with the ones assigned to the RPVs, and they also must have their altitudes positioned. Without the locators, the RPVs will just remain stationary floating around aimlessly.

This is one of my criticisms about the Master Levels, how most of the wads start in Map 01, meaning that you'll be getting used to seeing the same brown sky texture over and over again. Surprisingly, none of the wads have the maps set anywhere between Map 12 and 20, meaning that other than the Hell sky texture that you'll see in Soundblock's Black Tower, the city sky texture misses out. A real pity that Master Levels never compiled the wads together into a megawad, and while Jim Flynn and Dr. Sleep had custom sky textures for their own wads, the project itself could have benefitted from new skies. I have the same sympathy for Catwalk as I do enjoy the concept a fair bit, in fact, I'd take it over Doom 2's The Chasm any day, and heck, I'm glad to see it have some love among those in the Doom community as Valkiriforce did a really good homage to it in his Doom Core megawad with Map 09: The Foxtrot.

I think Enforcers are more troublesome than Pig Cops, considering they can run fast and coupled with their chainguns and ability to spit venom at you, they're more or less the chaingunners of Duke, so I still stand with Pig Cops being the equivalent to Imps, since both the imp and the chaingunner, despite the slight difference in health, are still very close in vitality, and taking into account that both the pig cop and enforcer have the same amount of health, plus imps can cause trouble if they get the chance to Zerg Rush you, which makes them close to being a medium-tier monster, albeit a weak one.

So, for a bit of fun guessing, I considered taking a look at the Duke Nukem 3D bestiary and consider which enemy is the equivalent to Doom and Doom 2's, and here's which enemy I think corresponds to each monster, though some of the Doom monsters might share a Duke enemy with each other depending on the situation. Assault Trooper = Zombieman Assault Captain = Shotgun Guy / Imp Enforcer = Heavy Weapon Dude / Hell Knight Pig Cop = Imp (Some might consider Pig Cops the Duke equivalent to Shotgun Guys, but they take more hits than the Captains, so I'm settling with Imps) Recon Patrol Vehicle = Imp (since RPV's are just Pig Cops on hovering cars) Pig Cop Tank = Arachnotron Octabrain = Demon / Cacodemon / Pain Elemental Protozoid Slimer = Lost Soul Protozoid Slimer Egg = Pain Elemental Sentry Drone = Lost Soul Assault Commander = Mancubus / Baron of Hell Protector Drone = Revenant / Arch-Vile Battlelord = Spider Mastermind Battlelord Sentry (Mini-Battlelord) = Baron of Hell / Spider Mastermind / Cyberdemon Overlord = Cyberdemon Cycloid Emperor = Cyberdemon Alien Queen = Icon of Sin (possibly) Would you agree that these are fitting equivalents? I haven't included the mini Overlords and Cycloids since they've never been utilised in the official game, except for the World Tour re-release, and speaking of which, I'm not including Firefly Troopers and the Cycloid Incinerator for that reason. I haven't included the sharks as they're just critter-type enemies, and turrets are just stationary hazards that you can destroy.

Zombieman = Trooper Shotgun Guy = Sergeant/Shotgunner Heavy Weapon Dude = Enforcer/Chaingunner

I'm glad to see there is some love for Klie's levels as I can appreciate his more experimental design tropes. They can be a little unorthodox at times, but there is some charm to them, and I do enjoy BF Thud, his Master Levels outtakes and the ones that made the cut. I feel nowadays he gets so much hate due to people taking everything MtPain27 says as the gospel and jumping on the bandwagon. I don't think Willits is a terrible mapper as I find his worst maps to be average at best while the only bad thing I can say about them is they have some rather questionable and annoying concepts. Jim Flynn's Master Levels submissions, getting past them being large and time consuming, I do enjoy both of them because I do like his architecture, attention to detail and texture selections, and while Sverre Kvernmo's maps are good for the most part, a couple of them get a hard pass for me, like Mephisto's Mausoleum which I find to be a roll of the dice in some parts, especially the ending, and as for The Express Elevator to Hell, the concept is okay, but this is another map where getting to the secret exit is luck based as it requires having the arch-viles to cooperate with you, which isn't always the case as they would try to light you on fire before you can get your position to be launched into the ledge to the secret exit which itself is very precise, and there's them resurrecting the enemies you killed, especially the baron.

Scythe 1, the 3 Heures d'Agonie trilogy and Hell Revealed 1 are the best wads to start with that are difficult, but not overwhelmingly so if you've taken Go 2 It slowly.

Map to give me most immersive experience? I would say Misri Halek, Map 20 of Alien Vendetta. It truly feels like you're an archeological explorer excavating an intricate labyrinth inside an Egypytian pyramid while fending off against monsters infesting the place and making your way out by hunting switches, secret doors, hidden tombs, and solving puzzles. TNT's Map 31: Pharaoh may have started the experience, but Misri Halek has refined the concept into something much more engrossing, paving the way for other maps and wads of the same theme like Scythe 2's Egyptian episode and Epic 2.

I think I might have mentioned this in my previous post regarding Paul Turnbull's Mayan Temple wad and whether or not it's only compatible with older releases of Doom, but I have noticed how The Unholy Trinity has a patch simply called trinityu.wad which fixes the texture problem on the main wad that occurs on Ultimate Doom, which seems to be the same problem as the one in Mayan Temple. I've tried to use the trinityu.wad with the wad, but it doesn't work because the patch has other certain texture names inside that's only on The Unholy Trinity. However, if a patch wad can be made for Mayan Temple that fixes up the problem with some of the textures, then surely that would make it playable on Ultimate Doom and you won't have to go through the trouble of downgrading your Doom game or having to use a source port like ZDoom. Is there someone who can be able to create such a patch?

Worst official level from each IWAD, for Doom, including Thy Flesh Consumed, I would say E2M9: Fortress of Mystery. While it showcases the infighting element as you can get the barons and cacodemons to kill each other, that's all there is as it's two rooms, followed by a "secret" room where all the keys are right near each other and the exit. Pretty much the weakest level in Doom as a whole. I count Episode 4 as part of Doom as I can't find a single map I detested from it. Doom 2, the honour of worst map goes to Map 21: Nirvana, it's poorly designed, even by Sandy Petersen's standards, that it outdoes Map 24: The Chasm, in terms of ugly level design and absent-minded or absurd concepts. TNT: Evilution, the worst map for me would have to be Map 21: Administration Center. Map 27: Mount Pain comes very close, but its myriad of bullshit moments pales in comparison to the extremely tedious, yawn-inducing, grindy slog that is Administration Center. I had more fun with the simplistic, rudimentary abstruse game design philosophies of Map 08: Metal. The Plutonia Experiment, that's a very tough one as most of the wad is good, but while it has a couple of duds, looking at Map 21: Slayer, with it being a scaled-down, almost copy-paste job of Doom 2 Map 11: Circle of Death (what is it with IWADs and crappy Map 21s?) and Map 26: Bunker, I don't really like Map 11: Hunted all that much, it's so flat, texture selection is uniform and uninspiring, the arch-vile maze is confusing as hell, the door opening linedef triggers feel so random, and the key switches are at the opposite sides of their corresponding bars forcing you to go through the maze again. The concept of hunting arch-viles in a maze while they're also hunting you is neat, but the execution is incredibly clunky, making it not that fun.

Hell Revealed really isn't a bad wad, and while Hell Revealed II is a mixed bag and has issues like cramped tiny rooms stuffed with heavy monsters, it's fairly decent. Now Mockery, that's a pretty bad wad, and it was designed purposely to be very crappy.

Favourite mappers, so many to name, most of whom are mappers from the 90s. - John Romero - Tom Hall - Tim Willits - John "Dr. Sleep" Anderson - American McGee - Ty Halderman - Gary Gosson - Tom Mustaine - Jimmy Sieben - Jim Lowell - Brian Kidby - Christen Klie - Yonatan Donner and Haggay Niv - Dario and Milo Casali - Denis and Thomas Moller (TiC) - Matthias Worch - Anthony "Adelusion" Czerwonka - Iikka Keranen - Adam Windsor - Bill McClendon - Sverre Kvernmo - Adam Landefeld - Alex Mayberry - Jim Flynn - Paul Schmitz - Bob Evans - Chris Couleur - Valkiriforce - Paul Corfiatis - Shamus Young - Kristian Aro - Rex Claussen - Chris Hansen - John Bye - Malcolm Sailor - Jan van der Veken - Nick "Nightmare" Baker - Ola Bjorling - Travers Dunne - Paul Fleschute - Anders Johnsen - Kim Andre Malde - Mike "Cyb" Watson - Yashar Garibzadeh - Lee Szymanski - Anthony Soto - Brad "Vorpal" Spencer - Karthik and Varun Abhiram Krishna - Kurt Kesler - Erik Alm - Gusta and Method - Joshy - Darkwave0000 - JC Dorne - franckFRAG - William Huber - Jambon - Oxyde And that's the lot I can think of.

It would be awesome if he were to go back to doing Doom maps again, bringing out more excruciatingly challenging, punishing and brutal ballbusters for the masochists and adrenaline junkies out there who want more that go beyond what Plutonia dishes out.