I finally finished Sartre’s Nausea today. Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance. Now excuse me while I cut my wrists.
Just kidding! I got sunburned today and um… I’ve been Doom mapping again. Ah yes – I’m still unemployed. But I got my student loan in the mail so now the only issue is making September rent and having enough food money for the next two months.
Sweet, I was finally banned from the Doomworld forums. Now you can download <a href=”deepsea.zip”>this</a>, if you please.
Edit: I’ve actually been losered.
Features:
Differences from Original Maps:
Release Date: January 2001
I recently got some mail from Richard Wiles, author of the Dickie and Spooky series’ along with Crusades and a mapper for The Darkening E2. He has an announcement to make:
I am currently compiling a doom2 wad of (so far) 5 SP and 3 DM maps. The Slayer will be a plain vanilla doom wad comprising of small but ultra-violent maps… maybe not quite HR2 standard but enough to give you a buzz. If you enjoyed the Dickies and the Crusades, well you ain’t seen nothing yet!
Ideally, I am aiming for at least 10 sp maps. I have avoided the use of source ports to reach the widest possible audience.
I am looking for some extra help from texture & music authors. Ola has retired, or so he tells me. Anyone out there care to join me? I’d also appreciate some help from talented mappers… (I know who you are)
Drop me a line if you are interested.
A couple people found a bug in SurgeDM 2 map03 where you can fall in a hole near the plasma gun which is caused by a bad nodes build. Nick should stop using Deep’s nodes builder. BSP or Zennode is all you need, baby! … so be checking the ID Games Archive for the updated version. Note that I’ve uploaded all the WADs in the textures section into the archive.
As many people know, DCK is a rocking editor. The only things which keep people from using it are bugs which cause frequent crashes and it can only be run under MS-DOS. Hopefully if a detailed list of bugs can be compiled, Ben Morris may wake up and the Doom community can finally get the Doom editor they deserve. (HA!) Along with this feature list, this could make “the dream map editor” for Doom engines and will hopefully serve as a guide for other people creating level editors.
Finally it is done. From the minds of Paul Fleschute, Yashar Garibzadeh, Michael Watson, Nick Baker, his brother Daniel, and… myself. A ~17 level pre-release beta was released in Xmas of ’99 with progress slowing down soon after. For months the WAD sat on Nick’s hard drive waiting to be completed until finally he gave in and sent it to me. I fixed up most of the levels which existed and finished a couple more of my own to get a grand total of 32 deathmatch maps. Nick finished off the level graphics along with some more level fixes & new textures and now it’s here.
Included in the pack is 32 deathmatch levels for a Boom compatible port, such as ZDoom or CsDoom. The map paces range from insanity to mildly delicious. I think most people will really enjoy my MAP30, especially you Q3A buffs out there. Nick mostly went with small symmetrical maps with the rest following, for the most part. I tried to do a few non-symmetrical levels although I through in a few mirrored pattern ones. Hope you enjoy!
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Correction from my last update. Thank you, Zokum, for reminding me of another source port which allows CTF play in Doom and it’s none other than CTFDoom. However, it does not have netplay like Skull Tag does. 
Some cool stuff everyone should check out:
This deathmatch map acts as a preview for Kristian Aro’s upcoming Doom II partial conversion, Brotherhood of Ruin. The level is dressed up with textures straight out of Raven Software’s Hexen 2 and contains four main areas connected by narrow hallways.
Gameplay, for the most part, is quite linear with rarely more than one direction to go. The map contains an odd item placement including only one shotgun, one chaingun, 4 SSGs (with 3 of them very close to each other) and two rocket launchers, with one only available if you by chance happen to respawn by it. Another problem is a narrow staircase exiting the main indoor area which you will hit your head off the ceiling constantly running down. Very annoying in deathmatch.
Visually, the map is quite beautiful. The Hexen 2 textures have converted to the Doom palette quite nicely with most of the map being light brown. Unfortunately, one texture was left unedited with an ugly blue colour on it, seeming totally out of place. Also, the hinges of the exit door are not lower unpegged, making it seem sort of unrealistic. There’s some nice additions to the map including Boom colourmaps along with added friction of water and lava.
Lighting has been quite well done in the level with a mix of pulsing lights from torches and smoothed lighting being emitted from various sources including the bright red/orange sky. A hallway near the shotgun had a sector lighting error which had lighting coming out of the wall which looked light Kristian really wanted a darker light level in it.
Overall, the map is nice too look at… unfortunately like many other deathmatch levels, this is the only reason for it’s existence. If you want gameplay, try getting Dwango5 MAP01 instead (Tow the line. Tow the line).
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I’d like to set the record straight. Doom’s lighting system goes by 16 units! Too many times I’ve seen levels that go by 10 or even 8 units. Light levels between 16 intervals are rounded down. For instance, if you set a sector’s light level at 150, it will be rounded down to 144.
I personally recommend always using smoothed lighting in maps. This means that all sectors meeting each other will have lighting either 16 above or below the neighboring sectors. All lighting should have a specific source. For example, a florescent light in an alcove, a window, or a skylight. The lighting of a level should match the sky which corresponds with it. The first eleven levels of Doom II should have all had darker outside areas since the the sky represented what looks to be dawn.
When I asked John Romero why Doom’s lighting is done by 16 units, he responded, “I believe it was so Carmack could store the value in a nibble (4-bits, which is 0-15).” Um yeah, that means nothing to level designers. 
Lighting effect sector types such as pulsing or flickers like fire must have lighting with a difference of at least 32 of a neighboring sector. These work nicely set at a high level of light, such as 208, set and the lighting surrounding is set at a lower level such as 128. Another good effect is having two similar sectors together, such as 208, then 176, both with a sector lighting effect then a 144 light level for the other part of the area without the lighting being changed.
Light levels used should be 255, 208, 192, 176, 160, 144, 128, 112, 96, and 0. Light levels from 16 to 96 are really the same light level considering the Doom’s limit colour palette. 255 is full-bright meaning no matter what distance you are from the sector, the colour of the textures and flats in it will always stay the same. 255 is a good light level to use in a lighting sector which has a texture in it which is more rare in the Doom palette such as light blue or purple. Example: The Darkening E2 blue light textures. 192 and 176 are usually useful for outdoor areas but pay attention to what sky you are using!
One fun lighting effect I created years ago is vertical lighting on walls. You create multiple sectors 1 unit wide within a wall with 16+ light levels as the ceiling level of each rise. You will see this effect in an upcoming map of Crucified Dreams.
Dark lighting is useful for hiding enemies behind the shadows or even try placing enemies in dark sectors with lighter sectors behind them giving off a silhouette appearance. Many new level designers make the mistake of creating levels which are either too bright or even so light that you can’t see any enemies attacking you.
Lighting should be used to enhance the beauty and atmosphere of a map, so use it! Here are some WADs I recommend displaying the usefulness of lighting.
Welp, neither problems were solved. Someone suggested VideoThief for capturing screenshots in DCK but I again retrieved a garbled image. I also downloaded SciTech’s Display Doctor to try getting VESA modes working again under MBF but again I was unsuccessful. I DID get the screen to actually come up instead of a blank monitor screen with the power light flickering… but of course the video was all messed up, split in half and it was just really screwed up. I promptly deleted both programs. Guess I’ll have to use ZDoom (Zed-Doom, not Zee-Doom) for screenshots.
While mapping for Crucified Dreams, I’ve been noticing some really weird bugs of either the Doom engine or just Boom/MBF. One thing is if you run or strafe run along walls that aren’t right or 45°/135° angled, you get a vibrating effect sometimes. In one map if you ran along the wall up these stairs, it would actually reject me in a way… it would shoot me back the direction I was running. Also, if you place linedefs and vertices really close together, you get huge slimetrails. For instance, there’s one area which has a floating torch by the cave wall, but the cavern ceiling is very very high. I didn’t want the lighting of the torch going all the way up to the ceiling, so what I did was create a Quake-ish dynamic lighting of sorts. I did this effect about three years ago, but this time it was a bit more difficult since the wall wasn’t at a right angle to the grid. I created 5 sectors inside of the wall and made these sectors all 1 unit away from each other within the wall, then I set the lighting of each sector +16 to get the effect of lighting smoothing vertically up the wall. Well when I compiled the map in Zennode, I got some absolutely monster slimetrails that covered half of my screen. I went back in the editor and moved some vertices around to 2 units away which alleviated the problem. It might have only been the nodes builder, who knows? Here’s a screenshot of that area now. The slimetrail error reminded me off the yellow key area of ChordG which Malcolm Sailor was never able to fix.
I’ve decided to work DMDCTF1 under the Skull Tag engine as it’s right now the only port which allows human vs. human CTF which will soon become easier with client/server support and the source port also includes bot support. This wad will be out before the end of the month.
After a long wait, the Classic series is finally being continued. With past maps including work from Jan Van der Veken, Nick Baker, and Travers Dunne all of The Darkening team, Anthony Soto has released a worthy successor in the series.
As the previous levels in the series, this map was created in the Romero Doom E1 style with simplistic architecture and lighting which is still pleasing to the eye. A mix of windows and computers perfectly define a setting of a military base on Mars. The style is mostly hallways connecting to rooms which is what Doom does best. One of the first rooms is even reminiscent of Anthony’s MAP04 of The Darkening E2 with its skylight. The yellow key area reminds me of the original Doom’s E1M6 and also E1M3 of Dawn of the Dead by Jan Van der Veken with thin cement surrounded by nukage.
Gameplay-wise, enemies are well-placed with a mixture of former human troopers, sergeants, imps, and demons situated around every corner; some teleporting in to surprise you. Oops, I just ruined the surprise. Unfortunately, this map is a little on the easy side. The enemy placement is very similar to Doom’s original E1′s with the weaker enemies in relatively small hordes. There was one occasion where I just stood in one spot and shot each imp teleporting in sequence one by one.
Final verdict: Good details and architecture capture the player’s attention, even runs under doom.exe (thus any port); but the level is fairly short and a breeze to fight through. Still an enjoyable experience.
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Welp, problems are still not fixed. Another person didn’t have success capturing screenshots in DCK so I doubt that it’s possible at all. (*cough* Tarin try programming a little exe to do this! *cough*) Someone suggested getting Display Doctor from SciTech which I think was linked from the Doom Legacy web site. Anyway, maybe I’ll try that to get VESA shite going. Note to Linguica: DETH has a horrible interface. End note to Linguica.
Despite what seems to be laziness on my part, I have been working hard on various Doom WADs including much progress on Crucified Dreams which will soon be ready for a small private beta test via CsDoom. I’ve also been working on Jägemörder2 and some other various stuff. I finished off all the levels of Surge 2 a month ago and all Nick Baker had to do was complete the intermission/level name graphics and release it. Maybe this post will pressure him to release Surge 2.
I will also be releasing SacrificeDM Special Edition which will include all six SacrificeDM maps in one WAD and all of them will include some modifications to improve gameplay and visuals. The WAD will be designed with CsDoom in mind, so hopefully it’ll get thrown up on a server or two once it’s released.
Next week I’ll be finished my Real LifeTM job so then I’ll have more time to wrap levels, projects, etc. up. At the end of August I’ll be headed off to university in Ontario and I’m not sure what my computer situation will be there. Right now it looks like I’ll be using a crappy old P100 but I’m still not sure. I want a new computer damnit! 
MorbidDM1 seems to crash ZDoom v1.22 or at least it did for me. If it won’t run for you, then open the WAD up in Wintex or some other editor and delete the D_RUNNIN lump as the MOD music is having some troubles in that version. I think some beta releases of ZDoom were made to fix the sound code but I don’t know… whatever, I don’t use that port much. I’m a MBF bitch.
Yes, I made the “Judgement Day” level in the Skull Tag preview…
I have a new texture set for you, entitled Plantation Mansion by Crista Forest. There’s some nice stone trims in this one, check it. I’ve also added Erratic 1 by Jonathan Rimmer. Also on the agenda, I’ve reworked my Doom II MAP07 revamp to include new items placement and I also added more structures, details, and textures. Deadly Simplified v2.0 is one sweet new map.
Well Nick Baker has bugged me too much and I finally ‘finished’ this page and got his new map out. Nick’s new map is a deathmatch one, entitled MorbidDM2 : Flood Dead. He has said the map was inspired by Parallel Team‘s Fragfest Initialized and it’s quite a great map.
Tutorials, tutorials, tutorials. This one may get confusing to newbies, but I uploaded instructions on how to create a horizontal spinning fan in a ceiling vent such as Quake 2′s base2 map. Note that there still isn’t in-editor shots to ease the learning curve as I couldn’t find any screen capturing program that would work in DCK. Neither ScreenThief or Neograb worked correctly. I would appreciate if someone would send me links to other pure-DOS screen capturing programs that I could test out. Screenshots make my editing tutorials much easier because it’s more visual and practical.
dmdctf1.wad, the evil filename, is still not out. I heard awhile back that CsDoom was supposed to have CTF support in its next release but v0.6 didn’t include it so I’m not sure what I will do now. I know Nightfang is working on Doom Tournament which will have CTF support and Skull Tag already has CTF support however you must convert to the ZDoom format and do some scripting… not my thing. The map is currently compatible with Doombot4 alongside Captain Mellow’s great node-work; but bots get old very fast. I guess I’ll just wait it out although I would like to be the first Doom mapper to get a detailed CTF level out.
Over the past few months, I’ve downloaded too many Quake III Arena levels and I have a backup of about 200 quality maps to check out. Ouch. I’ve also picked up the Deus Ex, Vampire (Dark Ages), and STV:Elite Forces demos… gotta check those out too. Have to buy some time first.
Idea: A fan that will actually spin around, horizontally, in the ceiling or floor
Procedure: Doom’s animated texture option makes this idea very easy to implement
First thing’s first, let’s see what we’ll make:
I did the best I could to explain this great effect. Most people (like me) would learn better if they actually looked at the map in the editor and figured it out all visually. This text maybe very confusing if you do not have prior knowledge of Doom editing and the basic concepts behind how the engine works. I suggest you check out Doomworld’s editing section, read all of the docs posted, and visit Ricrob’s Place and go into the Unoffical Doom Wad Handbook. Also keep practicing in an editor, as it’s the best way to learn.
 Figure: Patch FAN1 in Wintex |
 Figure: Patch FAN2 in Wintex |
Released today was a brand new deathmatch level from Nick Baker entitled “MorbidDM2 – Flood Dead”. Dressed up in some brand spanking new textures, this level certainly does look great, and the gameplay isn’t far behind. 4 ssgs, 4 chainguns, 2 rocket launchers and a lone plasma rifle make this map a great one for three or four player FFAs. Nick has also included some unique structures and architecture such as a pouring waterfall which you can actually swim into for grabbing a plasma rifle. ZDoom effects are persistent through the map including deep swimmable water, spawn spot sprinkles, and an opening script to introduce you to the level. This map is a very worthy level to include in your deathmatch collection! Oh and I also created half the map so you better goddamn download it.
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