deathbringer

Don's Challenge is one of those "it's not finished" wads which is awesome, but only rarely available. I can remember a Zdoom version of DC2 that I'd love to play again (especially as I now know how to run multiple wad files, so I'd actually see the graphics as they were meant to be!), and an EDGE version of the "original" (the first part of a never-finished remake series - he was going to EDGE-ify DC2 as well). Mind you, the first one did have all of E1 copied into one map, with minimal structural modifications. Also, the awesome Twice Risen, which was never finished (but released as an abandonware mess), and it's 11-level demo version, appear to be missing.

Years and years ago, somebody was planning on making a Doom wad loosely based on Death Race 2000. You played as the champion death racer, but after the hell invasion, you had to race across the USA to blow up a power plant (or something), and there appears to have been plans for both driving and on-foot levels. The guy had made some pretty cool sprites, too (zombieman on a motorbike!). But I can't even remember the name, let alone anything else.

Oh man, Pingfang is the Auhfershung of 2015! Okay, the levels aren't made with SLIGE, but maybe it would have been better if they were.

Would Zero Tolerance on the Megadrive count as "Doom generation", or Wolfenstein? Most of the levels were maze-like, all-same-height affairs, though the second section (set in a building) had "slopes" and "ROR"... though only in very specific areas, and probably hacked/faked. It also had skies, though in most levels they could only be seen out of the window, not above you (except for two!) It had some other interesting features, such as a "flashlight" (made the "panel" of wall in front of you fullbright), a gun with a laser sight, crab-like aliens that could walk on walls (and had the necessary sprite angles), blood that splatted on the walls and ran down, "destructible" walls (only some, they just changed like a switch texture) and a fire extinguisher "weapon" that only "killed" fires. There was also a fireproof suit that functioned like armour, but was only damaged by fires.

I've been thinking of making some different assholey traps, though not quite double traps. Maybe a sparsely populated map with big open areas, except one of these big open areas suddenly becomes a Hell Revealed massacre with very little warning. The warning in question being loads of ammo and health teleported in around you, milliseconds before the monster horde teleports at a slightly greater distance. Another idea was to have one of the other large areas you've been through previously fill up with monsters, when you collect an item in a distant room. You think you have a clear run to the exit, then blam!

Slade 3 crashes constantly on Windows 8.1, is that just me? How is it on 10 Using XWE now, which also crashes if you play "the wrong" wav file. But then again, I was using Wintex right up until XP, so I suppose I get what I deserve.

My own personal "canon" is Doom and Doom 2, with somebody else going off on Icarus / Daedalus. After Doom 2, the world continues to fight the demons for many years - that other megawad about "returning to earth" (it's quite old, and the first level is called A Walk in the Park) is what the Doomguy goes through. Later, humanity develops better weapons and other technology, and Twice Risen (anybody got the demo?) happens. Eventually the earth is cleared, then Doomguy goes off on Phobos: Anomaly Reborn.

Haha, some configuration files make assumptions about what you want. I'm making an E1 level for Boom, but the Boom config file is set up for Doom 2, I have to choose textures carefully!

In the same direction? It's called an Elevator (as opposed to Lift), and is possible in all Boom-derived / supporting ports. Which is most of them.

I remember my brother (he always cared more about videogames than me, I can hear him listening to gaming podcasts in the shower every day before work) getting massively excited about this "upcoming game" called Doom. When I saw it, I was excited too. I'd known about Wolfenstein, vaguely (my brother had an awesomely gruesome poster of a zombie Nazi... he must have been like 6), but Doom looked incredible. We devoured magazine articles about it... but only had a Megadrive, so couldn't play it. Our family was poor, and a 32X was an impossible dream, a PC didn't even enter the equation. Then, one of our friends said he'd got it! I can remember being absolutely awestruck... like the feeling you'd get if one of your ordinary friends suddenly said he had a Ferrari you could borrow, it seemed that incredible. Anyway, it was only the shareware, but his dad was an architect, and had a 486, so we could play it on the jaw-dropping "high" setting. No sound, though - you don't need that to CAD up some houses. When it came down to it, we just kind of blundered around in god mode, massacring everything with the BFG, and getting lost. Me, my brother and our friend had 5-minute bursts of it each, and would often get stuck on walls and scenery, or stumble about in panic when a Spectre attacked us. I must have been about 9, then. A bit later, we got Zero Tolerance for the Megadrive, and that "had to do", until about 1996, when my brother won a Playstation off a competition in The Dandy (a British comic). Doom was one of the first games we bought, and for years it coloured my perceptions of the game - I just assumed the PC version had the same levels, coloured lighting, creepy music etc. My friend also had it, and used to talk to me about editing - I was already making plans for mods with tons of extra monsters and hundreds of levels (I even bullshitted him that my old friend's "version of doom" had "hundreds of levels". I didn't even know that wasn't possible, at the time). Basically, Ultimate Hell! Anyway, in 1999 (heh, that 6 year gap felt WAY longer), a rich aunt we barely knew we had died, and we got some money. We got a PC, a 450mhz, 10gig HD, Windows 98 monster! For my next (15th or 16th?) birthday, it had to be Doom! I kept trying to run wads from the Maximum Doom shovelware CD in Doom 95, I didn't have a clue what I was doing. A bit later, I discovered Doomworld, Doom Center and Doomsphere (hurry up, Securitron 3! I want that cool shotgun). This led me to source ports. I got Legacy, because I could use the launcher to play PWads. I also, finally, worked out how the "confusing" archive worked. My other favourite game, at the time, was Total Anniahlation. People making extra maps and units for that would make rudimentary "installers", so you couldn't go wrong. Having to "work" to get Doom Wads running hurt my head. Shortly after that, I started to get my head around editing, and immediately started a TC called Doom London: 2666 (a reference to GTA London: 1969). Shame I didn't know the basics of editing - like how to make doors. The first 12 levels were just a bunch of rooms thrown together. I think I finished 17 levels, and a bunch of sprites, before I realised I'd screwed up, and merged all my shit into the Iwad (I somehow assumed I was "putting it into Legacy", using tools that predated Legacy!). I started another amazing TC, this time a PWad, but that also failed. I also made a randomly-textured map of my school, shortly before I left it (I wish I had that, too. I have a half-done remake). I'd also learned more about editing and how to run stuff, by now. I had a version of Zdoom with bots, made a DM version of my school, and had hours of fun fighting them in it. I also started another TC, this one with a consistent theme and plot, called Anarchy Doom, in which you played as a revolutionary, fighting the sinister future government (in 2010), and uncovering an alien conspiracy. It was almost finished, until I fucked up and overwrote the wad with Inkworks (I thought it would put the edited palette INTO the wad, not save a new one). Naturally I had no backups. After that, I started yet another TC, this one based on my stupid Final Fantasy based webcomic, Insanity Please (which I still continue, on and off). I still have that TC, with it's shitty paint enemies and ripped resources, I might release it one day. Around that time, I discovered that "Dosdoom" was now EDGE, more stable, and allowed you to make totally new monsters! It became my main engine, helped along by the old wad called UAC Resurrection (still one of the 'sanest' projects for EDGE!). I started a wad called Ultimate Hell, a "retold story of doom", with loads of new monsters. I'd almost finished the third level, and was also re-making the second, when I lost almost everything in a crash (actually, my data HAD still been there, but I didn't know, and formatted my HD. Windows XP wasn't all fun and games). I had given my work in progress to some guy only days before, but I couldn't find him again, so was stuck with a much older version, and gave up. I also started re-making my crappy semi-jokewad Bughunt, with much better graphics and tweaked level design. I also wanted to make some things with zombies in them, but my attempt at making a base sprite failed miserably (I did the whole thing, and a load of death sequences, THEN discovered he was way too thin, in game). I lost interest in Doom editing for many years, though I hung around the community a bit longer, just playing stuff, and faffing about with my Insanity Please wad. Then, a few weeks ago, I suddenly fancied Dooming again. I'm working on some base sprites for a number of projects I've had running around in my head, including: -A tribute to that Otakon 1996 wad. He said he was "catching the tail end of this Doom thing". What the fuck am I doing, 20 years later? -Insanity Please, re-made and good -Bughunt 2, finished up and crapped out -Anarchy Doom, re-made. Except it will actually just ridicule the way I used to think, in lengthy, strawman-argument filled cutscenes. -Anarchy Doom, re-made again, but about actual "anarchy", and alien conspiracies... actually, a tie-in with a bunch of comics I'm doing.

Long since deleted, "unfortunately"! As was the second attempt, which had an even worse first level (a huge arena with randomly textured, gigantic blocks to represent "buildings", loads of enemies, and the exit switch just out in the open. I'm very slowly working on some more serious projects now, for which I'll need to do a lot of spriting (almost finished a base female to work from). I'll probably cram all my resources into a re-made "crapmap", just to see how they look in-game. It will also be my EDGE testbed, and will probably be a hub with portals to loads of different dimensions and time periods. Maybe I'll release that when it's done.

Pretty boring, but I once made a mod that made the rocket turn into a(n already-exploding) barrel when it exploded. And also the lost souls turned into barrels when they saw you. Then gave the barrel explosion the Pain Elemental's death codepointer. Shooting a rocket on Map12 was apocalyptic! To both your health, and framerate. Later I made them turn into trees after exploding, which dropped and vanished shortly afterwards. This gave the explosions a defined limit, as they were blocked from bouncing off walls and coming back.

I played quite a bit of Maximum Doom, even if several of them were broken. There used to be a guy on here who was doing an A-Z playthrough, and writing short reviews. I think he got pretty "far" (up to F, at least).

Well, you go to the "levels" section of Doomworld, and search for "Female Doom"...

I presume you mean Archvile? heh, remember there was once a megawad in progress that was ALL this shit. The second level had a huge corridoor which was all a door (I didn't know what I'd done, so many of the following maps had no doors), and a "caged baron", except I didn't even know about impassable linedefs, so it just walked out. I also remember a ship level which was just a big cube of metal plating, pointed at one end. There was also a ton of MSPaint sprites, which I'd applied to the Iwad (I started thinking Wintex, that tool that predates Doom Legacy, had some how "applied them into the Legacy.exe" and if I downloaded another copy, I could use that for "normal doom").

I think the fatalities and Doom Comic quotes are kinda funny. But I can't be bothered to play it myself, I just watch vids on Youtube. I did find it amusing that the Zdoom forums have banned Brutal Doom discussion, but the first five pages of their projects forum is all weapon mods, by people hoping to make the next Brutal Doom. Are there any mappers left?

I can't remember exactly, but it was one from Maximum Doom, which didn't include most of the text files, and also left out dehacked patches, or neglected to mention replaced sprites in the wads. Wunderbar. I can remember playing one with a night sky and lots of silver, in Doom 95. And another which was supposed to be set in a shopping mall. You were supposed to chainsaw through "breakable walls", but without the dehacked patch, they were cyberdemons! I probably played that one after discovering Doom Legacy, and it's all-important launcher (I knew nothing of command lines, or even drag-n-dropping, back then. It was my first PC). In fact, being able to run any wad I liked in Maximum Doom without crashes or weirdness made me so excited, I ran up the garden to tell my parents. I also remember playing a "Batman" wad, because I'd heard Batman Doom was amazing. But this Batman wad was just a 1994 level with the Batman logo in one room. I can remember thinking it was nothing very special XD. A bit later on, a favourite of mine was city2.wad. In fact, I might have to go and get it off the archives, for a bit of nostalgia. EDIT: Oh, okay, not city2.wad, that's a rather naff series of DM maps with added Beavis and Butthead sound effects.

The old, bizarre wad "Female Doom" has a bunch of them (demon-strength hitscanners you have to fight with a pistol for the whole first level, woohoo. I Skill 1'd alright), but they're all nearly naked. You could use them as the base for an edit, though. If you want to play the maps (which are pretty good), get New World 2 instead.

Have you tried XWE?

I think HL2's variety made it prettier. Doom 3 only really had 3 kinds of levels, and you were in one of those about 75% of the time (with occasional cobwebs or fleshy bits). Heh, that game's like the anti-Doom 3, not only is there a free, huge, open environment, you can SEE it, too!

DP Oh yeah, and my question: I've made Lost Souls into "scripted" explosions, using Dehacked (they rush through all their frames, until the death frame, which has explosion damage on, on sight). This has also made the Pain elemental into a deadly "flamethrower", which I've decided to exploit. However, the "exploding" frame (SKULG, 596) ((actually, SKULE and SKULF have been 'skipped', as they may be handy later. This dehack is going to be VERY extensive when it's done. Like HACX level complicated) is not the final frame, the following four frames are supposed to be harmless (I've set them all to "fall"), but if you touch any one of them, it jumps back to the first frame and blows up again! Is there any way to stop this? I've tried setting the frames after the explosion one to those of another object (the BFG "hit" from the rays), but that doesn't solve the problem. The Lost Soul itself has the following flags: Visible and untouchable / No Gravity / Travels over cliffs / Floating / Semi no-clipping / Puffs vs bleeds (though it's not even shootable, but yeah). So in theory I shouldn't even be able to touch it and "reset it", right? I could set it to no clipping, but I'm a bit wary of having the flamethrower tank shooting through walls / unexpectedly up onto platforms.

I don't know how you do it exactly, but it is possible to have "instant lower" lifts. You can also have "crystal sectors", which allow for doors and lifts with transparent parts in them. So you can give a crystal lift a "glazed" look, and set it to insta-lower when shot. It won't "look broken", make a sound (unless you sacrifice one type of switch sound or a smashing sound, and never use switches that make those sounds anywhere else), or spawn flying debris, though (unless you 'sacrifice' a monster and do some dehacking). But this is only vanilla!

Ooh, just today I was thinking of doing a Barrels 'o Fun remake called A Barrel 'o Laughs. What I had in mind requires infinitely tall actors to be turned off, though.

Anybody keen on having a go at reviving Don's Challenge? That bloke is an uber perfectionist, keeps releasing things for 5 minutes, then taking them down for 5 years because they "need tweaks".