The /newstuff Chronicles #289

Heya players, this is Amaster doing my very first /newstuff guest reviews. I can feel the power! Just my luck that there were a large number of wads to plow through. Fortunately I had Hobbs to help me out with a couple of large submissions that I wouldn't have been able to get done otherwise. Will this mark the beginning of a regular review schedule for me? I sure as hell hope not!

• The ArchVile Temple - Logan MTM
  Boom Compatible - SP/DM - 1188 KB - (img) (img) (img)
  This short, cramped map claims to work in all Boom-compatible ports, however this is not 100% true. It's clear that the map was compiled with an older version of zdbsp and only tested in ZDoom, as there are numerous misalignments that appear in PRBoom 2.02 and Eternity. Everything else seems to work out though. The architecture is moderately detailed and overall pleasing, though I hope you like brown because that's about the only color you'll be seeing. Architecture interferes with movement occasionally but I think that's intentional. Despite the abundant health and ammo, players will find themselves challenged more by the tight spaces than by the enemies themselves. Give it a whirl if you like close-quarters, frantic fights.
  
  
• 1024 - alterworldruler
  ZDoom Compatible - Solo Play - 43 KB - (img)
  Ok seriously guys. If you're going to call a map "Boom-compatible", try actually testing it in something like PRBoom. This map will not work outside of a ZDoom-based port because it uses ZDoom's flat/texture mixing ability. So it will crash with a missing flats error anywhere else. As the title suggest, it's a map inspired by the 1024 project, so it's pretty short. It's also exceedingly easy. You'll mostly be facing off against zombiemen, with a couple of imps and a demon thrown in. Texturing and architecture are poor (BRICKLIT should never tile vertically). Pass on this one.
  
  
• Ancient Battlegrounds - DJShrimpy
  Skulltag - Deathmatch - 646 KB - (img) (img) (img)
  Huge and hideous. With the exception of maps 1 and 7, it's just gigantic arenas basically. Plasma is abundant. Something some players may dislike. Due to the large sizes, you'd probably need at least 6 people to have a good time. Definitely not suitable for 1 on 1.
  
  
• Burning Fane - Vasek
  ZDoom - Solo Play - 127 KB - (img)
  Another 1024-style map. This one looks pretty good and plays all right. As you would expect, it's very short. But it is sweet. My only complaint is that things are really easy up until the very end, and it's a copy/paste-fest. Check it out for some quick fun.
  
  
• The Challenge - Jacob
  doom.exe - Solo Play - 42 KB
  According to the text file, this is one of ellmo's first wads. But despite that, it's not totally horrid. Texturing could have been more coherent, instead of covering almost every theme there is, and there's no detailing to speak of, but it actually plays all right. One of the traps managed to catch me off guard which is hard to do these days. Ammo is tight and the enemies are abundant early on so lesser-skilled doomers may want to play this on skill 3. Not *too* bad for an early work.
  
  
• Hard Attack - Morbid DooMer
  Limit Removing - SP/DM - 244 KB - (img) (img)
  I really enjoyed this maps interconnectivity and sense of openness and nonlinearity. Detailing is modest but effective. You'll find yourself moving back and forth through the maps "main areas" without feeling aimless or bored. Enemy placement could have been a tad better, since infighting tends to occur. It's not very long but it's a good show.
  
  
• Demon Eclipse: Episodes 1 and 2 - Eric Ou (Eriance/Ezxariarch)
  GZDoom - SP/DM - 14468 KB - (img) (img) (img) (img)
  The following review was submitted by Hobbs:
  
  Where do I start. The new weapons and monsters, the looks, the gameplay, the atmosphere, the music, the, oh screw it. I guess I'll just start from the beginning.
  
  Demon Eclipse is the newest GZDoom was by Eriance/Exariarch. You probably know him for making sprites. He needs to stick to that, and never make levels again. This was the most painful dooming experience I have had lately. The new textures are easily the best part of this wad. They make sense, don't look like crap, and create a theme. The rest of it is just pure port loving, detail whoring crap.
  
  To start off there's a whole arsenal of new weapons, courtesy of DECORATE. I personally am not a fan of weapons mods, but hey, for wads that change everything else I was willing to give it a shot. I will know better next time. The weapons are really quite weak, so much so I think that they were inherited from Heretic. Theres quite a bit of stolen sounds there, I won't give examples, I'll just let you figure it out. Oh yeah, my personal favorite part, there is a weapon (slot 4 I believe) that makes wonderful squelching noises when its in the idle state. Totally unnecessary. Moving on to the counterpart of weapons...
  
  ...Monsters. I don't have quite as much to say about these. For the most part they seem quite horrible. For instance there is a floating recolored monster spawning cube that flies around shooting projectiles at you. While this might sound ok, they are used in horrible ways, do more to annoy you than actually hurt you, and seem to have an enormous amount of health (though this might be attributable to the weapons). Another fine example are wraithverge ghosts. Which again, are just annoying. Next subject.
  
  K now it's time to go into how absolutely beautiful this wad is. To be honest its not particularly beautiful, contrary to the popular (and quite true) (G)ZDoom megaproject stereotype. Although the wad has a coherent theme that works well, it looks quite blocky at times and in general does not present any bit of architecture that just wow'd me.
  
  Actually, the indoor areas look pretty good. Not anything really memorable, but still they look nice enough. The outdoor areas on the other hand just look so terrible. The use of height variation is awful. The fact that a slew of slopes, normally quite ugly themselves, would help out this WADs outdoor areas is a testament to its ugliness. Anyways...
  
  The gameplay is crap ranging from utterly boring to utterly retarded. That's all that needs to be said unless you want a novel about it.
  
  Oh and one more thing, the wad supposedly features new music. I cannot hear it no matter what I do.
  
  
• Doom-plus and Doom v1.91 hacks - Miguel Folatelli (aka myk)
  doom2.exe - n/a - 6 KB
  A pair of patches you can apply to version 1.9 of doom(2).exe, compiled into a single package by Myk:
  
  "The patch in PLUS incorporate's e6y's hacks to raise Doom's limits so that it can load large or complex levels, the one in LONGTICS loads the changes discovered by cph to enable v1.91 demos."
  
  
• Gamarra's story: Part III \ - Giulio Galassi
  ZDoom - SP/DM - 87 KB - (img) (img) (img)
  Crappy joke map with no effort put into it. One of those "so bad it's good" attempts, except it's got no kind of thought or creativity behind it. Requires ZDoom for some reason. Don't waste your time.
  
  
• Kastel of The Koebrah - Ruba
  doom.exe - Solo Play - 33 KB - (img) (img)
  After reading the text file, I can't tell if this is a joke map or not. Either way, don't bother. Map 31/32 textures mixed with normal Doom textures. Nazis and demons. You get the picture. Its only positive aspect is that it's really short and easy.
  
  
• Das Labor - Hannes Müller
  Limit Removing - SP/DM - 250 KB - (img) (img) (img) (img)
  If nuts.wad were toned down a bit and turned into something more playable, this would be it. I'll be honest and say that I played through this with IDDQD and IDKFA helping me. I was unable to find the exit though. I'm not sure if this level can be completed normally. Each area is jam packed with ludicrous numbers of enemies. I don't mean in the sense of Hell Revealed either. It's just a crazy mess of enemies separated by doors and teleporters. In the author's defense, I'll say that it's not visually abysmal and some attempts at interesting architecture were made. Play it if you liked nuts.wad.
  
  
• Megaaussie's Mega Deathmatch - Megaaussie
  Skulltag - Deathmatch - 354 KB - (img) (img) (img)
  Awful. Map01 has terrible connectivity and few weapons. It's also got a pitch-black middle area connecting the two "arenas". Maps 2 and 3 have zero visibility and enough copy/pasted "architecture" to ensure that you have as much difficulty moving around as possible. All three maps are hideous. Avoid.
  
  
• The Newstuff Chroniclez - DU0
  EDGE - Solo Play - 156 KB
  I was unable to review this because EDGE wouldn't run properly. No I'm not kidding. Yes it's kinda funny.
  
  
• Odamex - KillingMaster
  doom.exe - SP/DM - 29 KB
  Lame joke wad. This is not Odamex.
  
  
• Blood Rock - sitebender
  Boom Compatible - Solo Play - 53 KB
  One look at the file name will give you an idea of what you're in for. A hell themed map which is very, very red. It's also VERY difficult. Lots of monsters. Hardly any ammo. Expect to spend a lot of time running scared. Despite this, I had a pretty good time playing this one. The map is laid out so that you can slip by many enemies. A few parts are somewhat unfair though. Try it out if you like high difficulty.
  
  
• Status bar replacements - Daniel
  doom2.exe - n/a - 105 KB
  A large set of replacement status bars based on Doom textures. Give 'em a shot if you feel like spicing up that 13 year old HUD. Note that they all remove the little weapon/ammo counters, but not the large ammo counter on the left.
  
  
• Toxic Province - DJShrimpy
  Skulltag - Deathmatch - 562 KB
  Most of these maps are straight up arenas. The rest don't have great layouts and you will occasionally find dead ends. Some places will trap you for a period of time, which is never fun. Weapons and ammo are too readily available in some maps and nonexistent in others. Like the text file says, the theme is "toxic", so expect lots of slime, some of which may damage you. I didn't particularly enjoy that either. Visually it ranges from bland to painful. Overall there isn't anything very noteworthy about the maps. Give this wad a try if you need a new DM set to play. But if you never pick it up, you're not really missing anything.
  
  
• White 0 - Hyperdormant
  ZDoom - Solo Play - 118 KB
  The following review was provided by HobbsI feel wads with a decent amount of effort put in deserve a decent review (scathing or not) and a few screens. I also feel wads that are total crap deserve nothing but a crap review. This is one of the latter type of wads. 26 levels of someone transferring one of their LSD trips into ZDoom. Truly epic.
  
  
• RL-PL-BFG-Upgrade - Karate Chris
  Skulltag - n/a - 57 KB
  Some graphics upgrades for the rocket launcher, BFG, and plasma rifle, as well as their respective projectiles. The changes are minor edits to the original Doom weapons. Not bad looking but not terribly interesting either. Try it if you like pink plasma.
  
  
• ZDoom Catch The Chicken v4.0 - Cutmanmike and HotWax
  doom.exe - Deathmatch - 404 KB
  A Catch the Chicken multiplayer mod for ZDoom. Players Attempt to grab the chicken, which spawns somewhere in the map, and then hold onto it for as long as possible to gain points. Supposedly it works on any map, and a test map is included. I had a hard time really testing this out with bots, but it looks like it could be fun.
  
  

Lastly, sitebender has updated his Pandora's Box mod to fix a couple of issues. Check it out.

Well, that was fun. I hope I didn't royally screw everything up. This whole thing has certainly been a learning experience and I've gained a lot more respect and understanding for what the regular reviewers have to go through. Props to Hobbs for helping out. Begin posting.... NOW!

ODAMEX

oh and fp

Heh I didn't do a whole lot really. Really awesome newstuff btw.

Oh and sp

Third. Good work oh black belt Master of Ass.

Are there any screenshots to that "Newstuff Chroniclez" wad? I'd play it myself but EDGE doesn't support software rendering anymore so I can't. :(

hobbs fails at guest reviewing.

Lizard commando: with a wad made by DU0, are you sure it's even worth it? :/

darknation said:

hobbs fails at guest reviewing.

I sort of agree, that review of Demon Eclipse was kind of weak.

HobbsTiger1 is a big meanie :(

EDIT: Nice reviews btw, A(ss)master

Hmm, I enjoyed Demon Eclipse. I believe most of the music replacements came from Blood and Hexen.

Playing Hard Attack now...

AlexMax said:

I sort of agree, that review of Demon Eclipse was kind of weak.

-sort of
-kind of

Thats my opinion on it

Chrono_T said:

Lizard commando: with a wad made by DU0, are you sure it's even worth it? :/

Hehe, probably not. I'm just curious how it looks.

Amaster said:
Try it if you like pink plasma.

See? Someone remembered it's Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

darknation said:

hobbs fails at guest reviewing.

At least somebody did it :P

Too many meh wads released. I did however <3 hobbs review and the status bar replacements.

The Newstuff Chroniclez I got working in Edge but someone gave me a link to the missing dll to make it work. Edge works suprisingly well on my shitty computer.

You can walk around the map in Zdoom but you miss all the scripted comments. Ill post some screens when I feel like installing edge again.

Hobbs' review seems kinda forced, as if he just decided to make a negative review for the hell of it.

TomD666 said:

Hobbs' review seems kinda forced, as if he just decided to make a negative review for the hell of it.

It was kinda forced because playing the wad was kinda forced. I actually was praying to god when I got the WAD the e2 would be as awesome as e1

For anyone wondering what /newstuff chroniclez is like, it's just DU0 somehow being even more whiny than usual.

Proof (if any were needed)

The intro text (whine whine whine):
http://img246.imageshack.us/my.php?image=shot0007vk2.png

The end text ("LOK AT ME I R 1337 LOLZ):
http://img149.imageshack.us/my.php?image=shot0006ny5.png

This crap-tastic excuse for a sprite is supposed to be AlexMax:
http://img171.imageshack.us/my.php?image=shot0002zq9.png

It was almost inevitable after the inception of the newstuff chronicles that a new category of joke wads would form; that is, wads created specifically to troll the reviewers. Remember andrewb.wad? They're on the rise at the moment, perhaps because, as some argue, the chronicles themselves are becoming less objectively critical and more outright insulting.

The first Gamarra wad wasn't a proper map at all. The second had far too high a monster density. Gamarra3 is at least playable, although it is a textbook example of being "top heavy" - hard to begin, as crowds of monsters cut you off from the bigger weapons, trivially easy by the end. Fewer thin corridors, and making the bigger weapons easier to access, would help enormously. Of course if you don't like retro wads ("1994-style") you're going to hate it anyway. It requires a port that treats a zero-length REJECT as being padded with zeroes (ZDoom, Eternity, PrBoom-plus with comperr_shortreject turned on)

And finally:

incorporate's

AARGH myk you are better than this :(

The day we lose deathz0r and alexmax is a sad day indeed
but the day we lose /newstuff is the day i go emo and jump off a building.

TheDarkArchon said:

For anyone wondering what /newstuff chroniclez is like, it's just DU0 somehow being even more whiny than usual.

Proof (if any were needed)

The intro text (whine whine whine):
http://img246.imageshack.us/my.php?image=shot0007vk2.png

The end text ("LOK AT ME I R 1337 LOLZ):
http://img149.imageshack.us/my.php?image=shot0006ny5.png

This crap-tastic excuse for a sprite is supposed to be AlexMax:
http://img171.imageshack.us/my.php?image=shot0002zq9.png

First of all, bahahahahahahahahaha that's fucking hilarious.

Well, I suppose if he wanted to fly under the radar, he should be thanking his lucky stars I wasn't reviewing. I have a working copy of EDGE, installed soley for the purpose to make sure no EDGE map escapes my wrath. I suppose I should have said something sooner, but I wasn't aware that Assmaster was having problems in the first place.

But really, I'm just honored that I've built up so much infamy based on a questionable review of a WAD that, in all honesty, (and I think we can all agree on this) wasn't that good. Sure, I also do the GODDAMN SHITHOUSE but those are for the obvious cancers, the maps that should have never left the authors hard drive. Seriously, when you can have resentment and animosity appear out of thin fucking air just like that, that's not just nuts, that's borderline delusional and encapsulates a lot of the baseless hate of Doomworld that some of these people seem to have. It'd almost be kind of sick if it was about anything other than retarded community shit.

But in a way, I'm glad that they've finally turned me into another one of their enemies. Now I feel I finally have some leverage that I can use to deliberately piss these trolls off, whom I was formally only able to resent from the sidelines.

TomD666 said:

Hobbs' review seems kinda forced, as if he just decided to make a negative review for the hell of it.

I agree, and it's just what i expected...
Anyway, I loved Demon Eclipse!

The weapons might be a bit weak compared to the standard Doom arsenal, but therefore you have a big variety of them.
Ther're quite powerful weapons though... the Hellfirestaff and the Demon Shredder are just examples.
You just have to use this waepon set clever.

DoomerX said:
Oh yeah, my personal favorite part, there is a weapon (slot 4 I believe) that makes wonderful squelching noises when its in the idle state. Totally unnecessary. Moving on to the counterpart of weapons...

No, it's not totally unnecessary!
It indicates by this, that your ammo count for this weapon has increased by 1.
While the sound it makes by this may not be to everyones taste, I still think it's a great idea, to have a weapon that recharges itself.
Besides that, I think that the sound just supports the slimey/organic look of the weapon... wich is a good thing IMO.

The new monsters, are the best edited sprites I've seen up to date and though I agree that some of them (especially the flying ghost) can be annoying, they provide a good and fresh challenge IMO.

Architecture and detail was awesome... I don't understand at all how anyone can call it blocky. With the exception of 'Hard Attack', this wad was the most beautiful to look at in this t/nc.
Also, what the hell is wrong with slopes?

Contrary to the review, I recommend everyone to take a look at this as it is IMO certainly one of the best releases this year.

Oh, and one more thing;

DoomerX said:
The gameplay is crap ranging from utterly boring to utterly retarded.

That's an amazingly constuctive criticism!
If you had invested more time and shown more interest in actually get used to this mod,
you could have discovered, that this mapset holds a lot of challenging and fun gameplay, once you get used to the new weapons and monsters.
My only complaint in this department would be, that the ammo is a bit unbalanced throughout the whole episode 2.
There were places where I had to use the Vorpal Blade nonstop and other places where I had full ammo in all categorys!

I had a gameplay review at least as long as the current review and I dropped it because nobody would read the thing.

I actually enjoyed both wads that Hobbs reviewed.

DE is the first wad that's a good reason for me to keep GZDoom on my HD.

White0 has some really unique and interesting gameplay ideas, too bad that the execution is so crappy. Without the bugs and with better mapping this might've been something in the spirit of Cyberdreams' originality.

Hobbs had a row with Eriance over at zdoom because he couldn't play DE on his comp - or something. As a result, he's written some review showcasing how bad/retarded/stupid DE is. But I for one think that DE is one of the best GZDoom wads to date and that anyone who disagrees ... uh, is...bad.

He doesn't mean it - he's just pissed off.

Amaster said:

Blood Rock - sitebender
Boom Compatible - Solo Play - 53 KB
One look at the file name will give you an idea of what you're in for. A hell themed map which is very, very red. It's also VERY difficult. Lots of monsters. Hardly any ammo. Expect to spend a lot of time running scared. Despite this, I had a pretty good time playing this one. The map is laid out so that you can slip by many enemies. A few parts are somewhat unfair though. Try it out if you like high difficulty.

Thanks for the review! No stars though? At least you had fun playing it, and yes running from monsters is exactly what I wanted, after all, sometimes you need to save ammo for the ones that block your path, not the ones on the sides :-) I also didn't think it was that difficult.

I assume Hobbs should be a oldschool doom lover, as he seems not to like WADs that alters the original Doom gameplay like Doom Eclipse do.

Well I won't blame his review, but I really don't think appreciating Doom Eclipse is only a matter of being a die-hard GZdoom fanboy. Some people may be just seeking some fresh gameplay that breaks the routine of the usual map styles.

AlexMax said:

First of all, bahahahahahahahahaha that's fucking hilarious.

And he keeps going on and on about Neo Doom, which was forgettable at best. I wonder how long DU0's been sucking Daniel's doodle.

While Eriance's sprites have always impressed me, I have to agree with a lot of the points Hobbs made in the DE review. The maps are uninspired at best, the weapons just don't feel powerful and aren't all that fun to use. Most of the new enemies look pretty damn sweet, but are overpowered and incredibly annoying. It seems no one likes monsters that can be brought down with any reasonable amount of firepower.

I will admit that the bosses are good fun, though.