Matty_V

Keep at it! scrue real life. Had some excellent well populated rounds of FFA on it.

That vanilla lounge server was great, but it seems gone again. The Doom shack server with bourgeois dm wad is a good alternative. Better maps actually.. who made these?

I love zandronum because it makes doom look thousand times better with the OpenGL rendering features. And there is still a fair bit of vanilla play going on. But zdaemon is where you find the most hardcore crowd. Also the number of OS servers in Europe is bigger at ZD, so good news if you’re from there.

Oh and Dweller2m11 also pretty perfect, all in my personal expert judgement. Others mentioned in above posts hugely fun as well (still have to check out dwango 12).

Ok Guys, I have enough and my fear has quieted down. I have to confess that I am a somewhat obsessive perfectionist who was looking for the perfect duel map. There was that possibility that the perfect map somehow escaped me, by playing just the tried and trusted classics handed over from generation to generation of doom players. After the completeness check here, I now have sufficient comfort that I have all the notable duel maps on the radar. The perfect maps are... (drumroll) ..... judas23, d5m1, king1 and the pyrrhics. Thanks for your contribution to my peace of mind, now that is cleared up I can return to enjoy playing mp doom again!!

Cool, played through it. I think I like the dweller ones best of above, although it does make you feel you’re warping to an age bygone ;) I can really appreciate well designed stuff so cheers for the input!

I’m talking about these ones: d5m1, ssl2, judas, king1, dweller2m11, map01, map07, moo2d, boo, pobla8, lazarus1j. Also the ones in the zddl4 pack. I can actually see why these are ‘canon’. Since these are perfectly executed maps which actually add to eachother in which element of doomplay they emphasise. Superfast shotgun aiming, verticality, warpfest, lineair, hide and seek, tricks.. However I played the pyrrhic maps (not sure yet what’s my favourite one out of the pack) and I would nominate these as I can not find a reason why these should not stand in the same line of recognised ultimate 1-on-1 maps. I would say these are ‘recent’ maps which are the culmination of doom duel knowledge. But I am curious to know if I might not be missing some, and what the opinion of others is. Thanks for the suggestion and, haven’t seen Mega before and will check it out! Have seen your site Doomkid, great compilations, not done with it all yet!

Which other Doom 1-on-1 maps should be canonized? There are the 10 or so eternal favourites of course which are still played all the time. And not without reason, these are of exceptional quality. But sometimes fear is creeping up on me that there are actually other maps out there which are just as awesome if not more awesome in the unfathomable deep sea of Doom dm maps. What do you think, is this fear legitimized?

What I meant with balance; each weapon has a function under the circumstances. Opposite to fps’ers where weapons are simply superseded by better weapons regardless of circumstances, fe quake 1. So in matches between 2 good players in good maps different weapons are used and there is no one-sided play. Doom has a unique set of weapons, I think no one would deny that. The super shotgun, the most satisfying weapon to frag someone with no matter what game you compare it with. And the BFG of course, together the 2 most prolific examples. Talking about the weapon balance needs to treat the BFG. This weapon is unique in the FPS world because it has almost no comparison. You shoot before you see someone. It all comes down to anticipating where your adversary is, and lesser to the aiming part. That feature of the weapon gives the play a huge tactical element. This tactical play idea is defeated however in matches with a lot of players at once, since movement of other players is inherently more unpredictable and then the BFG becomes too powerful to rack up huge numbers of frags easily. It has its own crazy type of fun, playing Brit maps with 6 players or more and spamming the BFG to death. But I like that tactical element to the game, the challenge to be constantly aware of the whereabouts of the opponent and trying to use that. Back to the art of mapping. What I consider the pinnacle of doom play is where the action is fast, there is constant movement and tactical play. A game where only one weapon is really used offers less opportunity and less tactical element. In doom each weapon has a purpose under the circumstances. So good mapping is necessarily an interplay with the weaponset. fe enough hiding space for BFG, just large enough open space to reward distance battle with shotgun or chaingun, etc. The quake style play as referred to above, also has tactical play with the territory/ item domination as mentioned above. But a different kind. Emulating this in doom is making doom more quake and less doom. It’s a matter what you’re after in the end.

This is an excellent post! Good to read deeper philosophy of level making. The distinction between a duel map and a Deathmatch map also deserves attention. My opinion is that doom’s weapon balance is perfect in duel. But of course that also demands that the level design is made with that unique set of weapons of doom in mind.