3saster

Well in this case, the Master Levels are something that are being commercially sold, and a basic repackaging means that someone can obtain a copy of the master levels for free without needing to pay for it. That constitutes piracy, and ignoring the issues of whether piracy is right or wrong, it is something that is illegal at the moment, so you don't want to go out posting your links in the open. With that being said, what can be done (and indeed, what the similar WadSmoosh project does, which is fairly widely used) is that it provides a program to build the combined WAD. When it gets ridiculous is when companies start going after that; Nintendo is notorious for shutting down Rom Hacks, despite that Rom Hacks nowadays are generally a patch file to turn a pre-existing rom (which can be aquired legally) into a hacked version of the Rom, so nothing illegal is going on there.

Posting from an old topic (Hellebarde and Survive in Hell are megawads though, though the former is split into 3 episodes of 10 maps each iirc):

As far as Cacowards go, Kuchitsu is one I have absolutely have no idea why it won a cacoward. The maps are clean enough I guess, but they are easy, dull, and don't do anything interesting. It's especially jarring when you consider the other cacoward winners for that year, like BTSX1, Stardate 20X6, Swim with the Whales, and Pirate Doom! This one really sticks out like a sore thumb to me. I'll also add Romero's E1M8b and SIGIL here. E1M8b is not very good as far as I'm concerned, and while I was pleasantly surprised by SIGIL (since I expected from E1M8b that I would hate SIGIL), I still didn't find it anything incredible, it's alright, but nothing more. On the flipside of "official" levels, I love No Rest for the Living, and believe it deserves all the praise it gets, official or not.

Plutonia 2 is excellent for me, it blows PL1 out of the water imo. It is clear it's inspired by PL1, but at the end of the day, it's very much its own thing, and even the levels that are "imitating" the original level still do their own thing and go for the "bigger, better, meaner" sequel approach (MAP11 is a clear example). That being said, I'm surprised you are through the first half or so and still didn't like any of the levels, that's quite odd. If there's one point where the quality of PL2 is especially rocky, I'd say it's the first half of the third episode (namely the 21-24 stretch), but the rest is pretty solid stuff for the most part imo. I'd say at least stick with it to around MAP20, there are some real gems in there. MAP17, in particular, is one of the single best maps I've ever played in any doom wad, it's an incredible showcase of how to do true, non-linear design well (MAP18 after it is quite excellent too). Anders Johnsen and Martin Hunsager of Alien Vendetta fame did a review of the mapset which is a fun read (keep in mind they played it in co-op though). That being said, if you didn't like Plutonia 2 til now, I have a feeling you won't like the rest, but like I said, stick with it for a little bit longer at least. It's fine if you don't like it btw; just cause everyone else loves it, doesn't mean you have to (and vice-versa)! Something else I should note is you may want to check out Plutonia: Revisited. Whereas PL2 is a sequel, PRCP is a community project "re-imaging" of Plutonia, so many of the levels are very similar to their original counterparts, while the overall package is closer to the style of PL1 then PL2 is (though many levels are also rather different). I liked PL2 much more than PRCP, but your mileage may vary. I will note that at least for me, PRCP was forgettable at best for the first half; all the good and great levels popped up in the second half.

If you ask me, that's not really the reason it's stayed relevant for that long (and Skyrim and the Elder Scrolls series in general have large modding communities too). The main things that allowed Doom to thrive in modern times imo is the extensibility and theoretically infinite modding (thanks to modifying the source code itself, or the very large feature base of other ports like GZDoom), and, most importantly, the ease of getting started nowadays. Of any game I've ever played, Doom has by far the lowest barrier to entry to get started modding, especially for mapping. The relative simplicity of Doom, while it has its limitations, is one of its biggest strengths, and the reason so many people get into Doom modding in the first place. As for the original question, I'd almost argue it's an unfair question, Doom 2016/Eternal and Doom 1/2 are very different games in terms of how they play. Classic Doom is the one I've spend way more time on though, because as was mentioned before, Doom 2016 gets repetitive, and once you're done the main campaign, there isn't that much reason to go back unless you want to collect all the secrets. Combined with the lack of real custom content (even if SnapMap had a huge amount of cool maps, there isn't that much that can be done with the limits of Snapmap and 2016's gameplay), while I really enjoyed 2016 on my original playthrough, I don't see much reason to go back to it for a while. Meanwhile, with classic Doom, there's so much user content, and so much that can be done with it (either through vanilla, or extended things like GZDoom) that you'll never run out of stuff to play in Doom! So while I enjoy both Classic and Non-classic Doom, classic is certainly the one I keep playing all the time.

There is a connection already... MAP15 has a secret exit to MAP31 (only official secret in the entire wad so far), and MAP31 exits to MAP32. EDIT: Ignore this, I wasn't paying attention to when it was said

This is pretty cool! The only thing that really bugs me is the screenshots section, I'd love to see what maps some of those screenshots are from! Speaking of screenshots section, it might be a good idea to put a lot more screenshots in each page (remove the margins, etc.); as it is now, half the magazine is screenshots! Not a huge deal, but it does look kinda strange.

That game does indeed "borrow" more than a few Doom assets... My guess is since the game is so obscure and such a failure, Id either didn't know, or did and didn't bother suing, it probably wasn't worth the legal trouble in this case. Even if it did use WAD format, that's not inherently illegal, and the WAD format is just a way of packaging data in a generic way, it's not intrinsically glued to Doom. In fact, the WAD format itself is relatively simple, so it's very possible to make another data format that resembles WAD, unintentionally or intentionally. As a fun note related to this, Amulets & Armor is a game that uses the WAD format for its maps, but otherwise has no relation to Doom in any way.

Why is everyone so obsessed with making everything exactly one map? You could well combine merging maps together with hubs. Put, say, each episode in its own individual map, then combine all the maps together into a hub. Hubs are more like splitting a map into separate data chunks rather completely separating maps. It would also allow you to have paths leading to multiple potential maps easily, so it would work well with the suggested non-linear approach (which is the only real way to make combining all these maps together not rather pointless).

I can't take credit for this fact, this is from Agent_Ash in the ZDoom discord:

Just finished 2 playthroughs of Amid Evil for the first time (first on Medium, then on Evil). Really an absolutely amazing game, highly recommend it to anyone who likes classic shooters even a little bit. I did find Medium a little easy, but Evil was far more exciting. If you're experienced with difficult classic shooters, I'd probably recommend you just dive in on the hardest difficulty (which is hidden a la Quake btw).

I'd probably leave the original noendgame up as well, the solution I posted will only work in GZDoom 4.2.0 and up (or the LZDoom equivalent), whereas the original should work in any ZDoom based port, since it's modifying MAPINFO. If you decide to fork GZDoom, be sure to make a PR to merge it back into mainline GZDoom :P

Since I found the previous ZDoom noendgame file unsatisfactory (I have to remember to use it, I can't see the ending text, and only works for maps where the ending is on MAP30/ExM8), I wrote a better one. What this does is that when you beat a level that would end the game, it instead takes you back to the beginning of the map for 1 second (to make an autosave), then ends the level normally. This should work on any mapset (like Valiant), lets you see the ending properly (doesn't change the map itself at all), and makes a good autoload. The catch is that it will only work on GZDoom 4.2.0 and up/corresponding LZDoom (and it doesn't work for hubs, but stats don't make sense there anyway), but I don't think that's that big a deal. No harm in posting it. FinalLevelStats.zip On a different note, would it be possible to allow the user to change what maps are in the WAD, as far as DoomLauncher is concerned? It's not uncommon for mapsets to have "end maps" that aren't meant to be completed (for example, MAP12 of UAC Ultra), or even more extreme cases (Deus Vult 2 technically has 32 maps, but only 13 of them are actual levels, the rest are dummy maps). These can be misleading as to how many maps are in the set, and in the case of end maps, you won't be able to get 100% map completion on Doomlauncher. I currently fix this by manually editting the sqlite file, but it would be nice to be able to do it from DoomLauncher itself. EDIT: Changed file; I uploaded the wrong version.

It does leave a corpse if the pain elemental is crushed :P (and that can end up spawning ghost pain elementals, a true horror!)

That particular map wasn't even by skillsaw, that was a guest map by Joshy :P It's not unfair or especially tough if you are familiar with that sort of map (and it's not a bad introduction if you aren't). If you loved Ancient Aliens, you'll love skillsaw's other major works, Lunatic, Vanguard, and Valiant. The last one in particular is among my favourite wads, and shows very much how you can keep Doom feeling like Doom, while modifying most of the cast.