#megawad

[1stprototype]

Okay that's actually a really cool level transition.

[valkiriforce]

Anomaly Report, DOOM II

[whatever-whatsoever]

Doom sky is the best.

[mileena--kahnumm]

DOOM II - Whispers of Satan - WOS.Wad

Mod I'm using- E.V.P Enhanced Vanilla Project

[stormkeepergu]

My thoughts on retro computing and gaming

Man, one frustrating thing about retro computing and gaming is that a lot of stuff can get pretty expensive, namely the more interesting things, but even useful things are starting to get more expensive too now! I’m in the process of dealing with multiple projects that I balance in my head, but what that basically comes down to right now is making a note of individual items I really want. I have…

[neilforshaw]

I got mentioned in the Cacowards again this year! Twice in one lifetime!? 2 times more than I ever expected though. 🤣🤣🤣

This time I was part of Doom 2 In City Only megawad lead by MyOlden and featured lots of other far better mappers than me. https://doomworld.com/cacowards/2024/best4/

no one else has posted about it on my timeline so i guess i gotta do it

This year's Cacowards are up!

[rubyfridays]

Sakuya warmup drawing from this morning (also was one of the requests). Nothing too crazy, just a little something to get me back into the drawing mood cause good god I've been playing so much classic doom as of late. Heck just beat struggle antaresian legacy the other day, and TNT revilution before that. Now those are some good megawads! Oh yeah uhhh sakuya. She's cool. I didn't really think much of her in general until I finally played luna nights, which I should totally replay soon. Oh and she was the first character I ever beat a touhou game with, which was PCB of course!

[thothxv]

myhouse.wad-adjacent facts and blatant shilling for the musicians who soundtracked it

As has been largely disseminated, new mappers making levels based on their own houses are a common trope in the doom community, and they are often referred to generically as "myhouse.wad". The earliest myhouse maps are actually some of the oldest Doom maps in existence, predating Doom 2 (also at least one Doom 2 map was based on Sandy Peterson's house...)

A lot of people are impressed with myhouse.wad's room over room. I'm more impressed that in the first house myhouse used a boom-style silent teleporter to implement room-over-room sloppily so that the illusion very easily breaks (just step back up the stairs while one of the basement doors is open: it will snap shut because you are being teleported back into the version of the house with an upstairs, and thus there can't be an open door there), just like an inexperienced mapper might in 1999, before using modern GZDoom portals to do it more convincingly in the second house.

There's been a lot of theorizing about myhouse's author, probably because veddge is a very very competent mapper and also because everyone who does know who the author is has stonewalled inquiries at the author's request, implying that the author has a meaningful identity in the Doom community. Or maybe they're just shy. However, DavidXNewton noted in his analysis series on myhouse that it does a lot of things in a ways that are unnecessary using modern UDMF and ZScript but would be familiar to someone coming from a less advanced mapping format like Boom or Old ZDoom. This is indicative of Veddge being more along the lines of what he says he is: either someone truly returning after a long absence, or at the very least someone who isn't terribly familiar with modern GZDoom mapping. Either that, or the entire map was mapped in character. I genuinely don't know which I'd find more impressive.

"doomcute" is a term used to refer to maps that recreate real-world items or environments in doom (usually because the immediate reaction from players is "oh that's adorable!"). Myhouse maps are invariably trying for doomcute, but another early doomcute map was Shamus Young's Doom City from 1995 (yes, Shamus Young of DM of the Rings fame. I discovered while researching that he actually died last year. Rest in peace). Doom City recreated a couple of real-world looking buildings, but the thing everyone seems to remember about Doom City is its recreation of... a gas station. Food for thought.

Hilariously, myhouse almost got lost in the shuffle on Doomworld, because most people weren't looking for a myhouse.wad to play. Several of Veddge's collaborators posted in the thread to keep this from happening.

I believe Veddge's confirmed collaborators on myhouse are Kevansevans, esselfortium, and Jimmy. I don't know much about Kevansevans, but I believe he helped with the scripting and some of his scripting work from other sources made it into the wad because he's officially credited (as is everyone whose work was used in the map: it's all inside the PK3). Essel and Jimmy are credited only in anagram form because they are responsible for the music, which is actually wholly original (also Jimmy gave no indication he was involved until it was revealed by players unscrambling the anagram, which was very very funny).

I'm actually going to talk about Essel and Jimmy in detail over the next few bullet points, because I feel like it. And they're both really neat.

Sarah "esselfortium" Mancuso is responsible for memory=entryrrrr/////, the piece the plays in the burned house and various other places throughout the wad. She's composed professionally for video games and has several albums, but in the Doom community she's probably best known for creating and managing the Back to Saturn X project, a trilogy of megawads (only two of which are presently released) being developed by a massive team of modders, with custom assets, a custom palette, a complete original OST, and some very impressive maps... all intended to be playable with a vanilla doom2.exe. Which is insane: Vanilla Doom is brutal to map for, on account of harsh limitations that it's hard to be confident your map or project falls within. Back to Saturn X was so ambitious that it found previously undiscovered ways that Doom can crash. Of course, in addition to running the project, Essel also mapped for it, made textures for it, and composed a significant portion of the soundtrack. And because that was not impressive enough apparently, Essel also (with some help from a few others) created Knee-Deep in Knee-Deep in ZDoom, a joke wad that takes the (in)famous Knee-Deep in ZDoom, a mapset designed to show off the features of ZDoom, and recreates as many of its tricks as it can entirely in vanilla. A feat I can only describe as black magic of the highest order. She also went out of her way to say Trans Rights during her bethesda interview, so that's cool too.

James "Jimmy" Paddock is responsible for the increasingly glitchy and messed-up version of D_RUNNIN that plays in the second house. Which figures, because Jimmy's music is everywhere. He takes commissions for music, he's contributed free music to the community, and his music is very very popular. Notable wads he's contributed tracks to include Plutonia 2, Speed of Doom, Reverie, Back to Saturn X Episodes 1 and 2, Eviternity, and Doom 2 In Spain Only, and the MIDI soundtrack to John Romero's SIGIL, which some consider to be even better than the Buckethead soundtrack. He also is the project lead and mind behind The Adventures of Square, a standalone, free game made in GZDoom, he's done texture work, he's made several award-winning doom mods (cacowards, that is), mapped for numerous other projects, and had just done a whole ton of stuff. The doom community gave him an award for lifetime achievement. Oh, and he did an alternative MIDI OST for Prodeus? Genuinely didn't know about that.

While researching this I learned that Jimmy is going to be evicted in a month, so now's a great time to check out his music online and see if you're into it. I'm not a super fan of his vocal delivery, but I really like some of his instrumentals and MP3 versions of his MIDIs.

[doom-nerdo-666]

Play as Kemonomimi Daisy or Buunguy

this also seems for a megawad and daisy companion mod that will at some point be made

[soup-with-a-blog]

i did it

i should replay eviternity ii...........................

[wadbot]

biowar.wad: Operation BIOWAR MAP01 (488, 628, 0) Author: Chris Harbin, Paul Corfiatis, John Bishop Date: 1999-11-21 Description: Biowar is a doom2 megawad in the spirit of ICARUS and others. It consists of 18 regular levels and 1 secret level. The levels range from moderate to hard and are all very well done. Enjoy!

[kracovx]

Doomguy goes to hell

commissioned work for a megawad

[lilafeuer]

Doomed Worlds - Interval 35f

IWAD: Alien Vendetta (2001) a 32-level megawad for Doom II Compatibility: Vanilla Screenshots: Used Nugget Doom source port

[whatever-whatsoever]

Even though I like the concept, Uprising megawad provides such a ridiculous amount of monsters to be slaughtered that it started to grind my nerves. One episode had near 1400 monsters, majority of which were probably those skeletons.

[pitoframbling]

An SC-55 render of CoTeCiO's "Extradimensional Beings", from the megawad DOOM 64 for DOOM II

[m39]

Decade of DOOMstruction(2000s): 30-32 maps WADs (vanilla)

Just a little warning before we start: Four WADs from this batch were played on easy because they were hard, and I want to be less tired when playing them. Avert your gaze if you are allergic to easy difficulty plebs. Also, try to guess which WAD I haven’t played like this.

BTW, I’ve decided to spice up my playthroughs of Revolution and Alien Vendetta with MIDI packs. It definitely helped with the former which has nothing but stocks.

Speaking of which…

2001 – REVOLUTION!

This WAD is still fun to play. It has some annoyingly cheap moments involving being surrounded by hitscanners, and the amount of damage floors might be too much in at least one-third of the maps, but the rest of it is great. I especially like the first third of the WAD, where stuff happens on Earth (at least I think that was Earth), and you explore many... earthly locations for the lack of better words (but there are still moments where the other maps shine).

Also, the MIDI pack has bangers. Worth playing with it if you are allergic to stocks.

This WAD is worth checking out, even if I feel like it should tone down with cheapness and damaging floors (even when I think that it’s easy).

2002 – ALIEN VENDETTA

Another WAD that still holds up. Sure, the last sixth of it might feel like a slog (not counting yet another oh-so-popular icon of shit map), especially MAP26 and MAP27 (to a lesser degree than the former), and, if I’m being honest, can be kind of outdated in some places, but other than that, it was a blast most of the time. Maps like Misri Halek are something that should be played without any prior knowledge. And the MIDI pack from 2022 only helps it (it made some of the more sluggish maps less annoying).

I 100% recommend checking it out, if just for MAP20.

2003 – SCYTHE

Aside from MAP28 (which I refuse to even touch with a 2m long stick), this WAD was also just as much fun as it was before. AKA pretty good. This WAD is a perfect choice for people who want to play small maps rather than some monolithic-sized ones, with only MAP26 and 30 being oddballs of slaughter fest variety. It also (haphazardly) splits into three episodes, starting easy and getting harder and harder with each episode.

Not to mention how it’s a megaWAD that doesn’t end on another icon of shit.

Check it out.

2004 – HELL REVEALED II

Oh… Oh boy…

I’m gonna be straight with you people – I skipped like four maps in this WAD (bonus ones, MAP27 and 28; not counting MAP30 because it’s yet another icon of shit) because I was that done with it using every cheap tactic at least once per map and the WAD itself overall. I felt like at least one-third of it was made with the idea of shoving as many monsters as possible on maps blockier than LEGO. And that’s just on easy. I’m still surprised I managed to finish it twice in the past on normal without burnout. If not for the fact that the music is great, I would probably throw a towel around half a point; up to the two first thirds if I would have a better mood.

Now, my rant aside, it’s not really a bad WAD per se, because it has some fun moments. It just feels so outdated even by the standard of the year it was released that I would recommend it only for people who are really curious about this WAD, or masochists who eat a couple of slaughter/hard maps on breakfast all at once.

I recommend checking Dean of Doom on this WAD to see how insane it gets (on Ultra-Violence that is)

2005 – SAMA KUTRA

Now, this WAD is what Hell Revealed II should’ve been. It has a smaller amount of blocky maps stuffed with demons (although, I still skipped two maps due to this fact) and replaces them with the ones with fun gimmicks like the map getting darker with each grabbed key, the one that happens on the sports gymnasium, and the one resembling a mini-golf course (and it’s a shame that the only map that’s talked about when the WAD is mention is MAP30 and its… Hellaverse fitting humor).

Not to mention the WAD feeling less cheap than the previous one (although, there are still moments here and there). The music could have less semi-duds, though.

Still, if I had to choose between this WAD and HRII, I would go for this one. It gave me much more fun.

WINNER

Back in 2022, I wasn’t sure if Alien Vendetta was the best WAD of the 2000s’ because I have so many more WADs like this to check out.

Today, I am confident to say that… it is (at least when it comes to having 32 maps and with vanilla restrictions). And so, it gets the first Queen of Diamonds award for the best 30-32 maps long megaWAD of the decade. And as for runners-up, I am naming Revolution and Scythe 1 as those.

For the next roster of WADs… oh God… get yourself some anti-insomnia pills.

We have community projects galore coming up.