One for Wills ;)

[Enjay]

This is the worst level I have ever played.

Well, maybe I won't go so far as to say that. It certainly is bad though. Very bad. This is one of those realllly old Doom levels, back when everyone was trying to figure out the Golden Secret as to what made a good Doom map. He states in the text file that he wanted to "try to make a Star Wars level"; whether or not he succeeded no one can say, but as far as I could see there's nothing Star Wars about this map. Maybe those Barons of Hell at the end are supposed to be Wampas or something.

The map is best exemplified by one of the very first rooms. It's somewhat open, mostly one texture, and has a very glaring HOM effect. That's how most of the level tends to be - monotonous, rectangular, and with a good dash of mapping errors. Gameplay is very basic - shoot some zombies/imps, go forward, and stop in some side rooms to collect ammo/health. You know the drill. Oh yeah, and one of the keycards is in a secret. Thanks, Josh.

Texturing ranges from boring, as mentioned before, to ass-ugly. In some places the author was content enough to slap STARTAN on every surface. However, there are two or three rooms where the combination of clashing textures, bizarre architecture (think lots of misshapen corridors and pointless ledges), and lighting all come together to form one glorious, unholy assault on the senses. I swear I could taste how bad some parts of the level were. It's as if the author is trying to torture the player.

Just in case you didn't read the above paragraphs - do not download, not even to fulfill your morbid sense of curiosity. This level is aggressively bad, and all you'll be left with is a sense of longing for the minutes you killed playing this.

Now, basically, Wills was right - the WAD wasn't good. However, there was something about the basic layout of it that I liked. Or maybe it's just that the filename has my signature "NJ" initials. Who knows? So, anyway, I was a bit bored this afternoon and I decided to set myself a time limit of 4 hours to tart-up the level and see how it turned out. I wasn't trying to "fix" the map or anything like that. It was just an experiment in speedmapping (kind of) for my own amusement. So, here are the results. It's nuthin' fancy. It's still just a basic "oldschool" map that (should) work on any port but I think it's OK.

Whaddaya think. Worth putting on /idgames or just sticking in the bin?


Original WAD as reviewed on Doomworld.
http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/?id=15481 (runs on E1M2)

[edit]
My remix (idgames links).
ftp://ftp.fu-berlin.de/pc/msdos/games/i ... chllnj.zip
http://www.gamers.org/pub/idgames/level ... chllnj.zip
ftp://ftp.ntua.gr/pub/vendors/idgames/l ... chllnj.zip
[/edit]

[Cutmanmike]

I've got like 50 bad wads that could do with a bit of "enjaying"... why'd you have to pick a bad wad?

It's okay but the problem I have with maps like this is that they're too flat. By that I mean that there's no variation in height for too long and it just... bores me. I don't know why.

[TheDarkArchon]

I've got like 50 bad wads that could do with a bit of "enjaying"

... why'd you have to pick a bad wad?

..what?

[Project Shadowcat]

Basically? I liked it.

[Cutmanmike]

I've got like 50 bad wads that could do with a bit of "enjaying"

... why'd you have to pick a bad wad?

..what?

The 50 wads I mentioned aren't necessarily bad wads. Just not good enough for the current doom crowd.

[Enjay]

Updated it to fix a couple of texture alignments that were annoying me. Not worth redownloading for I guess.

So, if it's not worth redownloading, why am I telling you?

I don't know.

Time for bed.

[Penguinator]

After a long hiatus from playing Doom, this really brought me back into it. Fun, fast paced, and the detail level was perfect. I did got lost for a while and as a result those slow moving elevator things got on my nerves. Otherwise, I'd say this would do well in the archives.

[Remmirath]

Do you know why is Nigel so good? Because he takes crap and takes good stuff from it.

The original map was bad, i admit it, but i've done even worse back in my days of mapping (but i haven't never had any HOMs in my crappy maps...=P), and i've seen even worse wads in all my career (see deathtonigera.wad... =P). But all in all, it was really bad. What Nigel did was taking the basic layout and revamping it until this good map came out.

Nice work!

[.+:icytux:+.]

yes, the original was horrible. really, i think people shouldnt upload their maps if they arnt as good as enjays seriously, its not that hard to do maps like that, i learned it very quickly.

[Project Shadowcat]

yes, the original was horrible. really, i think people shouldnt upload their maps if they arnt as good as enjays seriously, its not that hard to do maps like that, i learned it very quickly.

Even though you're all talking about a map that is almost as old as Doom itself. <<

[Remmirath]

Yeah, i didn't notice it. This is a 1994 map, so we can't complain much about it. >_>
But even if so, the author could have done a much better job.

[Cutmanmike]

It's fine for a beginner's attempt. We all have to start somewhere.

[.+:icytux:+.]

oh, i thought we were talking about a recent released map, that explains it (i can imagine the editors at that time :S)

[Remmirath]

DEU

'Nuff said.

[Enjay]

Imagine? I still have nightmares about them.

Just for the record, I wasn't trying to show anyone how to map or show how "one three three seven" I was at mapping or even try to show up the original author. Quite genuinely, there was something about the map that I liked but whatever that something was it was packaged in a typical 1994 WAD with a whole bunch of significant additional problems. I haven't checked myself, but apparently the original even causes doom.exe to crash. I just fancied doing something in my editor but didn't feel like starting a map from scratch and the original challenj.wad was just sitting there on my HD, nagging at the back of my mind as it had done since I downloaded it.