7hm

PrBoom+ and Crispy are my preferred. I used to use ZDoom and the software renderer for wads that needed Zdoom, have mostly switched to GZDoom now. The only reason I dislike the zdoom ports is the lack of backward compatibility for people doing weird workarounds (which I'm fine with from a software dev perspective, but makes it annoying to need to figure out what version number you need for certain wads).

Very cool, glad you found the post, and thanks for digging out the maps.

Updated 4/22 I've been working on an excel spreadsheet that contains information about not only wads, but the maps within those wads. I wanted a way to be able to quickly load up maps by a particular author, or in a particular series. Thus began a pretty lengthy cataloguing process. I've been kicking it around for the last couple years. There are, as of this latest update, about 13k maps catalogued across 2k+ wads, made by ~1400 authors. The excel spreadsheet has some basic search functionality if you want to find out who made what when, etc. How to use the search: Just type in whatever you want to the search box and it will filter based on that. It looks for inclusion, not exact matches. So doom would match to doom, doom 2, doom the way id did, etc. You can be more specific by using "" ie. "doom the way id did" would only find those maps. You can use - to filter your results. ie ("ultimate doom" -romero) would result in all the ultimate doom maps that romero did not do. You can use + to force a field. ie ("doom 2" + romero) would only result in the "doom 2" matches that romero is involved in. You can use +/- with "", but you need to enclose the +/- inside the quotes. ie. "+doom 2" Results show up in the "Results" tab. How to use the results tab to create a batch loader: The whole point of me doing this is that I use it to automatically generate a batch file to play wads. If you want to read about that, view the below: Things I'm still working on: More maps / wads. There are obviously thousands more maps, if not wads, to go. I should also probably include vanilla / limit removing compatibility (as well as other source port specific stuff) - right now I basically just say "Boom / ZDoom / Doom" and lump limit removing and vanilla together. I also don't distinguish which version of ZDoom or GZDoom is required (when that's appropriate, I guess graf says it shouldn't be required). At some point I'll put this into an actual DB and then build a front end off of that, either some kind of launching program or some kind of web based thing. But that's a long way away.

Speedmap names are generally great. One thing that surprises me is just how few duplicate map names there are. Obviously with one word names you get duplicates, but you’d think there’s be more with two and three word combos that just seem doomy.

It's been 6 months so I'll update this thing again. Up to 16k maps across 2645 wads. Not much changed in terms of authors at the top from last time around, so I thought I'd just throw out some random numbers instead - from what I've catalogued, 26 authors have been credited on 100 or more maps, 76 have been credited 50 or more times, and 227 have been credited 20 or more times. Right now I've got 1695 credited authors accounted for. The "to sort" file on my hard drive still have like 2k wads though, so lots left to go. DoomWads.zip

Yeah I figure that backup isn't going to be found, but was hoping someone had these ones in particular stuck on a hard drive.

Anyone have these Alex Mayberry levels? Into the Mouth of the Beast (INBEAST.ZIP) Starship 2 (STARSHP2.ZIP) The first is for Doom 1, the second for Doom 2. They're referenced in the Mayberry Perdition's Gate text file, but compuserve...

My ten year old plays Doom with me. He's generally ok with it all, but when the lights go out in the game, he gets seriously freaked out and we either have to stop or he waits for me to reach him in the level. Barons scare the heck out of him. Spectres are near invisible in Crispy Doom. They freak him out quite a bit too. Game holds up as an immersive experience as much as it does an action experience. That's not to say that Doom 3 wouldn't do even better as an immersive / horror experience though.

there were 32 maps in 2018. that's certainly less than in recent years, but died is a real stretch.

I played 11 and then 24. They are definitely in the wrong order. 24 has far too many instances of monsters flooding spaces they can’t escape from and the player being able to shoot them from safety. In some cases doing otherwise isn’t even an option, because they flood the corridor and force you to spam to get past them. I have an FDA I’ll post tonight. Things that call out for really needing change are the stuck reventants in that outdoor courtyard and the imp teleport in the same courtyard.

Map 9: Well that was unexpected. This is legit one of the scariest maps I've ever played. The monotonous grey texturing and the slightly odd progression works perfectly with the invisible monsters. I don't disagree about the limp ending, but I also don't really want to go through a map like that for much longer than this ended up being, so I'm happy that the ending was quick. I died stupidly in my first attempt, cleared it on the second playthrough after spending most of the map close to death from a couple bad shotgun blasts. I liked this one enough to make me want to go back and try to close out Archi's map 8. alt_9.zip

Map 7: Lots of terrible attempts with the spiders to start the map. Agree with Capellan that the starting shooting gallery was not very engaging gameplay. On my successful run you can also see some atrocious attempts at platforming to get across the pit as I became increasingly frustrated. Finally managed to get past that first section and then I enjoyed the rest of the map. Leaving the pirate ship to explore the coast was a cool little moment. Map 8: Died in the revenant hell teleport area. Once the teleports started I was worried I'd die if I stopped. I died anyway. Don't think I'm going back to this one. It's weird, but it's straight ahead corridor weird and does nothing for me. Neither of these maps hit the same highs for me that the earlier ones did, so I hope the set picks up again. I'm looking forward to seeing more of Azamael maps. alt_8.zip alt_7.zip

Those people would be wrong. The Master Levels are v good, with a handful of exceptions. (in my opinion, of course) I think that stuff like Scythe is fantastic but while it's very much the Doom 2 action, it's not much of the Doom 2 gameplay, if you catch my drift. Doom 2 was a weird set of levels. The community decided to go in a different direction for the most part, probably for the better. Honestly Plutonia is not much like the original Doom levels either, so it really depends what the OP is looking for. The best of the Master Levels are also not like Doom 2, but for different reasons. They're all worth trying though. After I finished Doom 2 I just randomly started going through Cacoward winners as I figured out what I wanted to get out of Doom. Turns out I really like the weirder, more puzzle oriented, or more adventure oriented maps. While I enjoy a harder action oriented map it's almost always because I can approach it as a puzzle rather than a pure action combat sequence, because I can figure out the former but I'll just die to the latter. What you like is obviously different, what the OP wants might be completely different. The only way for the OP to identify that at this point is to play a bunch of stuff. So looping back around to the start, I guess I agree with you. @dmslr should just try different wads and then will have a better sense of what to ask for more qualified recommendations.

Doom 2 the Way iD Did is about as close to the original as you'll get. If that's too close I'd look at early community mapsets like Memento Mori 1 and 2. Also look at Final Doom if you haven't played them yet. Plutonia is the evil older brother and will give you a sense of where modern mapping sensibilities evolved from, but TNT is just a touch harder than Doom 2. Similarly, the Master levels are a really good collection of pwads from the early days of Doom. Other than that, just run down the list of the top 100 wads from the first ten years list Doomworld has. You'll find lots of classic Doom gameplay there.

Hah, yeah looking back at just what I've got on my page for the other error and the word is clearly not what I thought it was. re: one of the puzzles

Map 5: A pretty linear affair. Some odd progression choices as noted by others. The shootable switch, the berserk jump (I went for it as a secret, not realizing it was just mandatory progression and that I'd have hit it anyways), etc. My first attempt ended against early Revs... I was pretty tired and playing quite poorly. The second ended in the railway station. No excuses there. Decided that rather than make a third attempt at a very linear map I'd move on. The map is fine, but there's so little ability to define your own path that I don't think it could sustain my interest for many attempts. It's not a modern level per se, but still very much a corridor crawler. Map 6: I liked this one a fair bit more than 5. Yeah, it was linear as well, but it had some interesting moments, like the opening of the street when you first hit the apartment block, and the outdoor area with the viles that you return to for the rush to the exit. Otherwise it was similarly linear but with lots of little pop up encounters. Some potentially mean ones too, if you get unlucky with random shots, but nothing that you don't have the tools to handle. I have to say that when I'm playing a map like this, I appreciate the author just dumping weapons and ammo on me. This isn't a puzzle to solve, it's a level to clear. I don't want to be wandering around looking for something to scrounge, unless there happen to be some interesting offshoot sections (like the second floor of the apartment). At the end of the map I said screw it and skipped the AV, ran by the spider demon and the barons, and just rushed the exit. No regrets. I'm glad the tunnel was wide enough to allow that. alt_5.zip alt_6.zip

This was fantastic. I'm not great at puzzles, but I spent a couple hours on it last night and came back this afternoon to finish it off. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes puzzles. Nothing to do with Doom, but fucking awesome to see something like this. What a creative use of the engine. Spoilers for pen and paper images: Spoilers for minor bug stuff: Spoilers for random commentary:

Hellllll yes.

What's the deal with your map? Was it supposed to be a puzzle or something? I thought about coming back to grab the correct music, but for a 30 second map it doesn't seem worth the extra bother. Here's the rest of my CL2 FDAs. I had seen Jthom's map previously when @HAK3180 recorded it. I'm ok with the shootable switch, I actually like that kind of thing. I'm generally better at the puzzle / adventure side of things than I am at the combat. DMP2018cl2_7hm_15-18.zip

On that page, it does. On the other page the reverse is true, and that's the only one that doesn't work. It also looks like they just added aware.wad into the contents of several of the maps that previously required it. That's not the case with Mad Butcher's versions. It also looks like there are some very minor adjustments to the map from the older versions.

It's interesting that of the two, the one with no limits got significantly fewer maps submitted for it. Anyway here are some terrible FDAs of me working my way through the map set on UV. Maps 1-14. I only finished a handful of them, some of them I'll come back to later. Favorites so far are Phobos, valkiriforce, and JudgeDeadd's maps. DWMP2018CL2_7hm_1-14.zip

I think what gets it for me more than anything is just that it comes so early in a set like this. I'd have expected it from a teen #, there's just a lot of running around looking for the next switch to pull and it's rare to see progression like this. The map itself is fairly conventional, outside of some weird moments like the explosion behind the door, or the AV, but it's the context that surrounds the map that presents the twist.

Map 2: I remember this one, I really love the platforming and the weirdness of it. Everything is so big and far away. It took me a while to catch on to the path forward the first time I played it, and just as long this time. We also get to see the start of the really small ledges for mandatory progression. I remember dying in the second half when I played it the first time, but no real issues this time around. Map 3: God, this one took me like 6 attempts. All my failures are included in the attached zip. I grant that I'm a sloppy player, and this type of map really highlights that. I can luck my way through a few tough encounters, but the constant grinding incidental combat just wears away at me and I inevitably screw up. That said, I loved it. There's just so many options to pick from; I think I tried a new route each time, finally landing on one that worked for me on the successful run. You know a mapset is going for something different when you have a map 3 that takes 30 minutes to beat. Not sure what issue people are having with the door, worked for me each time without fail. Map 4: Jumping the gun a couple hours here, but it's the fourth somewhere. Well then. Now for something completely different. When I first loaded this one up it took me a while to figure out what was going on, but this is a fantastic map. Running the obstacle course beside, towards, and away from the big guy is a great way to give weight to otherwise fairly simple platforming challenges. As @TheOrganGrinder says, this is a map that will leave an impression on players - the kind of map you remember long after the set is finished. For as much as I think Map 3 was the best map in the set thus far, it's the other three that are more weird, more memorable. I'm a couple tries into map 5 now, not sure if I'll actually get a successful clear of it before moving on to 6 and beyond. I think that after giving each of the maps the old college try I'll either just drop it and move on to the next, or drop the difficulty. Not sure. To be honest I'd rather just leave it and come back to it on my next try through the wad; that's normally how I play megawads like this. Record everything, keep the clears for posterity, and dump the rest when the set is otherwise done. alt_2.zip alt_3.zip alt_4.zip

Same. If if you want to release the map separately or add a fix wad, have at ‘er, but it’s nice to see a project just say “nah these were the rules, we’re going to follow them to the letter, and when we’re done we’re done”. Im through the first ~10 cl2 maps. I bounced off the slaughter start, enjoyed the straightforward Phobos map, and am currently up to pcorf’s. Fave map so far is valkiriforce’s. Just a really frantic start with a number of options to gain a foothold.

Awesome, thank you both! Oddly, it looks like the download links on http://azeraaron.0fees.net/page1.htm?i=1 are actually still good.