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This Week in Doom: 04.17.16
I have always loved Doom's (and Heretic's) widely assorted cast of
enemies. Watching them work both with each other (and against each
other, heh) and with the environment was always something I liked to
watch as a kid. Setting up cool infighting scenarios or simply seeing
"how many x does it take to kill y?" was one of my favorite things to do
within Doom. It is nice, as well, that Id left the player very fast in
Doom, making infighting easy and fun to set up. From the zombiemen to
the barons; spider masterminds to the skulls, each monster has a unique
role that no other monster can fill, which adds depth and interest to
the game that many modern games only touch on.
But enough rambling; let's jump to
/idgames!
Our first map of the week is called "Caged" by zepolleon and
can be found here:
caged.zip
Run this DM map in any port under the Doom 2 iWad. This map wasn't
bad-looking in terms of visuals and looked like it'd make a good, hectic
DM map with stuff like the blue armor placed on a lift activated from
across the level. The little things, I guess. Frag a friend on this
today!
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Next up is "Jupiter Carnage!" by Bzzrak Ktazzz, which can be found here:
jupcarna.zip
This wad runs in vanilla under The Ultimate Doom iWad, in the E4M1 map
slot.
I actually think that this map was worse than the author's previous
maps. I should have stopped playing the moment I saw...
but who said I'm known for my good judgment, heh.
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The third wad this week is called "SNES SoundTrack" and it is... well,
the SNES soundtrack. Currently it only supports zDoom-based ports, but
it sounds pretty good to me! Great job here, The massa! Find this wad
here: https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/music/snes
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Our final wad of the week is a biggun, coming in at 42 maps! The name of
it is "Cabro's Legacy," headed by Eldraku. Here is some of its history
from the text file that I found interesting:
"Cabro's Legacy is a compilatory megawad, created in the year 2014 as an
homage to the Cabro's mapping tournaments. It contains maps from the top
three winners from each year. These tournaments started in the now
extinct Cabro's website in the Y2K, and were later continued in the
Arcades3D website until the year 2015. They were organized by Cabro in
their first entries; and later continued by the Arcades3D users Mojon
Man and Wraith, respectively. Rules has changed over the course of time,
but these maps are mostly in classic format, with the main additions
(and the only two allowed, in later editions) being the sky and music.
All 42 maps included here must be understood and played as individual
entries, because they were originally conceived as independent maps.
Upon opening this megawad, you'll start the game in a 'Portal level',
from where you can access to all maps available."
This massive megawad runs in zDoom under the Doom 2 iWad.
What a wad; even the hub level was beautiful (and reminiscent of Mario
64, lol)! Now, some of these maps are from as early as 2000, so some are
not the prettiest maps, but every map I played was fun. Especially in
the later years, there were some really solidly designed maps, including
an actually good city map (nice). There was so much great stuff going on
in this wad; I'm really glad someone took the time to compile all these
great maps together. It's funny how the element of competition from,
say, a tournament can bring out things of a progressively higher and
higher quality. The good news: even the wads that didn't win first were
great and there were a few thirds that struck me as better than the
firsts and seconds for the same set. But when making the hub level, VTM
put in little pedestals that can be "used," showing the name, rank, and
score in addition to the "borders" of the "pictures" showing the rank
for each.
Being from many mappers over many years with different project leads,
each map in this wad is meant to be looked at as its own thing, which is
conveniently facilitated by the compiler through a script that returns
the player to "fresh" status any time the map changes. All maps return
the player to the hub map at the level's respective map set location,
which is cool when playing each map from a particular set/going fully in
order.
As I said, this gigantic megawad was filled to the brim and then some
with high-quality maps; I highly recommend this to every Doomer! Play
this one right away!
Four nice wads to play this week; great job fellas! Let's skip around
the forums and see what we step on.
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On the DoomWorld forums the DoomWorld Roulette Contest: Session 3 has
just finished up; pending bug fixes it will be put on /idgames soon!
Only 4 maps made it in this time around, which is a shame, but man what
sweet maps!
These four maps run in Boom format under the Doom 2 iWad.
The DoomWorld Roulette was create a few months ago by Alfonzo on the
idea of using Jmickle66666666's map theme generator to give specific
themes that each mapper must follow. The catch is that the mappers do
not know what theme they have until they select their slot. So the
mappers choose a mapslot, with 6 chambers per "gun" (episode, I
suppose). One of these 6 chambers is further complicated by being
flagged as eccentic, meaning that it gets a unique set of words/phrases
not present regularly, which are generally "not useful, but funny."
Being a contest, it does have a deadline, which is now past.
Unfortunately 67% of the mappers did not meet the deadline, though to be
fair some dropped out beforehand. Still, the 33% that did submit a map
did a terrific job! Each of the four maps here were very high quality
and felt like they were neither rushed nor under a deadline at all.
Congrats to Brainmuncher, Pinchy, yakfak, and Rayzik for their awesome
maps this time around! I had a ton of fun playing each of them and I
know I'm not the only one! I encourage all readers to check out this
contest and keep an eye out for the next one; it's sure to be a ton of
fun to participate in!
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Wildweasel's "'(File)Size Matters' 64K Competition" thread on the zDoom
forums has been getting some cool new submissions as the deadline draws
closer. There is still 1 week and a couple days to go for you to get
your submissions in; so let's see what you can do!
Check the thread out here:
http://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=50859
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On the Zandronum forums "Micro Tank version: 1T.1" has begun receiving
new updates!
This mod is awesome as-is and I'm very excited that the author has
decided to continue work on it.
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One Man Doom has 3 new reviews up! Chris Hansen is the author of each of
them, which is cool because he has been mapping for a long time, makes
great maps, and is a cool, down-to-earth guy.
First up is a review of "The Revenge of Avind." This was Chris' debut
map and is pretty darn fun, occupying the MAP01 slot. Read KMX E XII's
full review here: http://onemandoom.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-revenge-of-avind-avindwad.html
Second is "The Blessed Hex," which takes place after the first map, as
part of a series of four. This one appears to be in the mapslot MAP22.
Check out KMX's sweet review here:
http://onemandoom.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-blessed-hex-blessedwad.html
The third and final review this week is of a map called "The Unknown
Chasm," which is in the MAP03 slot and is supposed to follow the
previous two. Be sure to head on over and peruse the review here:
http://onemandoom.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-unknown-chasm-chasmwad.html
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Wads in Progress has 2 new wads up!
"The Trinity Chamber" by Jetengine is a new zDoom map for Heretic that
looks pretty sweet. Check it out here:
http://wadsinprogress.info/?a=listwads&wad=1800
"Blood Lust" by rentschlers is a zDoom map for Doom 2 with DM support
that also looks good. You can see some screenies and a small blurb of
info here: http://wadsinprogress.info/?a=listwads&wad=1801
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New blog on Doomsday; "Refinement" talks about how skyjake is...
refining the Home UI and making things more user-friendly. Cool-sounding
stuff; check it out here:
http://dengine.net/blog/2016/04/refinement/
Hope you feel better soon skyjake!
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More cool demos rolling in for Ribbiks' maps! I highly recommend
watching these amazing runs; quite a few are nailbiters and very
entertaining to watch! Great job with these demos, guys!
Check them out on the DoomWorld thread here:
https://www.doomworld.com/vb/doom-speed-demos/86724-demos-for-miscellaneous-ribbiks-maps/
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No news for Doom 3 this week, but the Doom Reborn team is looking for
good people to help set it free. Check out their site here:
http://www.doomreborngame.com/
Enough of my prattling; get back to Doom!
That about wraps it up for this week. Once again, Vinny and I would like
to thank YOU, the people who keep the community alive, for visiting this
tiny corner of the internet and getting your news from Doom Wad Station.
Mucho appreciado!
See you next week, same Doom time, Same Doom channel. If you have news -
a wad, a new site, a youtube video you want to share, just
email me and we'll get it into
TWID.
