#cacowards

[doom-nerdo-666]

Here it is, Cacowards of 2023!

#doom #classic doom #id software #modding #doom modding #fandom #update #cacowards #someone else's content

[slipgatetourist]

Eviternity II is out now

#Doom #Doom 2 #Eviternity II #Cacowards #wad #pc gaming #retro #gaming #fps

[m39]

Doom WADs’ Roulette (2007): Epic

You know what folks? Change of plans! I must play something else before Community Chest 3 kills me with its marathon-long content. So let’s take a look at another WAD on the list before gathering material for CC3 between reviewing other WADs. And today, we have a perfect WAD that will jump-start my heart back out of the boredom.

G8: Epic

Main author(s): Alexander S. (Eternal)

Release date: October 10th, 2007 (database upload)

Version played: ???

Required port compatibility: Boom/Limit-removing

Levels: 5

Epic is one of the earlier WADs created by Eternal, who actually started posting WADs in 2007. Not only did this WAD earn one of the Cacowards but the author himself also earned the Mapper of the Year award; all in the same year, making it all look like he was just getting started. But we will have to play this WAD to see if it was all well deserved...

Spoilers: It was well deserved.

While it might not look as good as some of the other WADs released in 2007, Epic still looks great. And it’s mostly due to taking place in desert-like areas (with some jungle parts sprinkled here and there) that might give you ancient Egypt vibes. And since I’m a sucker for ancient shit, of course it would hook me in. The final map with the titular citadel is something worth seeing yourself.

Now, I’ve seen people calling this WAD an Egyptian one, but I’m not entirely sure about it, since the maps look like they have elements not only from Ancient Egypt but also from Mesoamerican civilizations. Not to mention some of the modern/army base-looking buildings here and there.

Music-wise... I think it’s all right. Nothing really to complain about, although I feel like the tracks for Sand-Storm and The Citadel are too short for such maps. Not to mention hearing Daedalus’ leitmotif so many times in the past that it gets infuriating.

These maps aren’t that complicated. You just need to remember that there are two moments on Arc of the Pendulum where you have to shoot a switch to progress.

Each map has something different to offer. A Fool's Paradise has you fighting somewhere that looks like a dock built near an ancient temple. Sand-Storm is a big, sprawling level where you can go to most of the locations in any order; you end up here by the teleporter in the previous map and you end up blowing the one from the other side, killing two poor shmucks in the blast radius. Arc of the Pendulum spends most of its time in some castle complex before ending up back in the jungle, near the train station that leads to the citadel. Helltrain makes you board the train at the end of the previous to get to the next map.

And of course, the titular Citadel, which on the foundation level is Sand-Storm again but on a bigger scale, but it tends to fresh it up, with six keys to find instead of three, a short visit to the Martian vessel, you even visit the titular building itself after taking care of the outdoor area surrounding it.

There is also one thing that doesn’t happen in the WAD – supposedly, it would make (at least some) hanging corpses destructible, like the hangmen Keens.

Now, I don’t really think Epic is hard. Sure, there are some tougher moments, but it never really felt like I was about to turn into the walking punching bag for demons. And even though there are cheap moments like with monsters hiding in corners/popping from the ground or hitscanners in the wide areas that don’t really have anything to hide from them, I think I can forgive the author for these for now since this was one of his earlier works (and the hitscanner thing happens rather rarely).

Some of the enemies get updated sprites. Hitscanners now wear different headgear per type, Imps are darker and have yellow eyes, and Revenants’ eye sockets are now green, reminiscing their Doom 3 variant.

Although I don’t remember encountering many bugs, the author recommends not playing the Citadel with the latest (at the time) version of PRBoom among other problems.

Epic might be unpolished in some places but I believe it’s one of those WADs that every Doom WAD enjoyer should play. It’s an excellent introduction to the man's work of Eternal (even if that’s not actually the first WAD he created), and it’s the biggest proof of why he was regarded as the best map maker of 2007.

Now, as for Community Chest 3, as I said at the start, I’ve decided that in the case of the community projects, I will play them the first time and gather the screenshots of where the secrets are/interesting locations between reviewing other WADs; in parts. By now I’m halfway done with CC3 secrets and I’ll try to finish searching for them before tackling The Ultimate Torment & Torture.

Until then, I’ll see you all next time.

Bye!

#doom #doom wad #review #doom mod #doom 2 #doom 2007 #2007 #epic #doom epic #epic WAD #doom wads’ roulette #cacowards #top ten best wads of the year

[lunatic-harness]

condolences and godspeed to my mutuals fighting the fandom misogyny war. yeah i dont have much to say here cause im not a fandom person but go off

#t. guy whose deepest fandom interactions are downloading cacoward winning wads every december #gege i swear to god fix your female character writing you're already on the right track with maki vs sukuna

[glutko]

HOLY FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK

I GOT A GOLD CACOWARD FOR AUSTRIAN AVIAN ASSOCIATION.

#not corruption #doom

[omfak]

Morning, everyone!

I'm proud to announce Austrian Avian Association: Post-Mortem, an update and expansion to my 2023 Cacoward-winning and Schnabelperchten-starring Doom WAD!

This expansion features a brand-new six-map epilogue and three new deathmatch levels! What joy!!

Check it out here:

#doom #katharina #arts #artists on tumblr

[no-rest-for-the-doomed]

#036: CYBER SANCTUM SOUL PURGE (2023)

Yeah yeah, SIGIL 2, Eviternity II, cacowards winners and all that. I have been playing most of these, but truthfully the holidays make it hard to zero in on Doom for me. So I saw this little 1-map affair and decided to give it a go.

Using the AUGER;ZENITH resource wad (which I haven't played yet - sue me), Boss makes a pretty fun looking cyberpunk city with my favorite part probably being an arcade with neon 80s flooring and attention to detail. It feels a lot like Duke3D up until the final arena, which for some reason (either via bug or choice) cuts out the music and has FIREBLU everywhere. Not my favorite choice, but I guess there had to be *some* 'CYBER SANCTUM' in the map. HNTR wasn't too terribly difficult, but a lot of the combat boiled down to camping in hallways mowing down monsters that had already woken up. Truthfully, although the DW forums page touts UDMF compat it sure didn't feel like it. Granted, I wasn't playing with mouselook and probably missed out on some details, and it's not that I mind a simpler experience - just something interesting.

Overall, pretty fun little coffee-break wad that'll keep your attention for about 10-15 minutes. Fun to look at, fun to play, and the strange ending is worth sticking around for.

Bio's verdict: Ho-ho-ho!

#classic doom #doom #id software #retro gaming #doom modding

[1stprototype]

I'm the kind of person that thinks it's a spectacular idea to try and stream when there's a bad storm happening.

Got to beat two really good cacoward winning wads though! Take that, nature!

[thathomestar]

Hey what are some good doom wads that arent too far into slaughtermap or ballbustingly hard territory that youve played i always have a hard time finding ones that match my skill level

most of the stuff i've played just comes from the top 10 lists/cacowards on doomworld, it's not too hard to avoid the more slaughter-y maps

[biomecharnotaurus]

....the cacowards are a thing

[bihet-dragonize]

Doom anon here, I'm bored so I'm gonna lay out the interesting background of the Doom 64 remaster released on modern consoles & PC. it got longer than I anticipated though...

so Doom 64 originally released in 1997. it was created by the same team as the PlayStation Doom and Final Doom ports. there's more to both of those releases, like PlayStation Doom inheriting things from the Jaguar port, but I'll skip it since it's not terribly relevant here

Doom 64 used a heavily modified Doom engine descended from the modified engine that was behind the PlayStation ports, and its source code was never made public

Doom 64 was never officially ported from the Nintendo 64 until the 2020 remaster, which meant you had to play on N64 or on an N64 emulator. N64 emulation was then and is still now an imperfect thing, but especially back then it was pretty rough

thanks to no port & no source code, people in the community wanting to play it on PC decided to recreate its levels to play in one of the Doom source ports on PC

initially, Samuel Villarreal (also known as Kaiser) released Console Doom in late 2002, a set of maps based on various console versions of Doom (including Doom 64)

in 2003, a team led by Kaiser released Doom 64: Absolution, also known as Doom 64 TC. it was a total conversion mod created to run in a custom Doomsday source port engine. this actually recreated Doom 64 as a whole, though with many obvious differences too. levels were recreated from scratch, and it won a Cacoward as 1 of 2003's 10 best WADs

Doom 64 TC rearranged the level order, as well as adding 6 additional levels by Kaiser, 4 of which were in the campaign and 2 which were like bonus levels (Doom 64's original bonus levels were added to the campaign as secret levels reached from new secret exits)

in 2005, Kaiser released The Outcast Levels for the Doom 64 TC, a mini-episode set of 7 new levels by Kaiser and 3 unfinished levels which would later be completed and released in 2008 as part of Kaiser's next Doom 64 project, Doom64 EX

Doom64 EX was Kaiser's further attempt at accurately recreating Doom 64 for PC. to this end, Kaiser reverse engineered Doom 64 and created a nearly 100% accurate reimplementation of Doom 64 for PC, which you needed to provide the ROM to play it as it used many of the game's assets and its levels directly from the ROM

in 2013, Kaiser won the Cacowards' first Lifetime Achievement Award, or Espi, named in honor of Esa "Espi" Repo. he won largely but not exclusively for all his work around Doom 64. in the article, Kaiser's next project -- Turok EX -- is mentioned

I won't go into all the history of Turok, the decades of Gold Key Comics or Valiant's revival or Acclaim purchasing it. I could write an entire box set of books about Turok, tbh

Kaiser was working on remaking Turok: Dinosaur Hunter using his KEX 2 engine, which was an outgrowth from Doom64 EX. it was pushed to the side for awhile though

in the meantime, Kaiser worked with Nightdive Studios on the Strife re-release. the source code was lost, so Strife: Veteran Edition essentially uses Kaiser and others' pre-existing work on Chocolate Strife for its engine -- Chocolate Strife being an offshoot of Chocolate Doom, a Doom source port with the goal of being strictly accurate to vanilla Doom including its bugs and limitations. because of this, Strife: Veteran Edition had to be open source itself for using that code

KEX 2 was the basis for Strife: Veteran Edition's graphics engine, as well as being the basis for Nightdive Studios' next remaster, Noctropolis, in 2015

also in 2015, Kaiser mentioned in an interview that Nightdive had acquired the license to remaster Turok and that work on it would resume. the remaster released later in 2015, using the next iteration of Kaiser's KEX engine, KEX 3 (or just KEX now). KEX was also what was used in System Shock: Enhanced Edition, also released in 2015

I could go on and on about KEX... but I won't. it's a very cool engine though, used in basically all of Nightdive's remasters -- not always as a way to recreate everything, it's used as an abstraction layer for things too, much like Unity in those Doom remasters from 2019 done by Nerve Software

well, just to bring things full circle, when they were going to remaster Doom 64 for release alongside Doom Eternal, they went to Nightdive Studios, where Kaiser is employed, and they used his KEX engine for it. and the 7 new levels as part of a mini-campaign that acts as a sort of prequel to the 2016 Doom and Doom Eternal, called The Lost Levels? those new levels were made by Kaiser too!

sorry it took so long for me to get there, but I just think that it's a very cool story

it shows how incredibly important it is for game developers to support modding and to release the source code for their games. this wouldn't have been possible otherwise

I think it's insanely cool that someone was so dedicated to playing a specific version of DOOM that they straight up reverse engineered it. That's cool as fuck. Also YES I think modders are so cool and I think they're a necessary part of the video game ecosystem. It's a great example of how if you have a question their is always some person that has the answer lol video game molders remind me of those people in Minecraft who've recreated the entire Library of Congress. It takes such great dedication and patience and love for something and it makes me a lil emotional.

Sorry my reply is so late, but this was nice to read. Mad props to Kaiser and respect to the devs for being like "Ayo, we're trying to remaster Doom64, you reverse engineered it, join us please!" lol

#my answers #Kia's answers

[doom-nerdo-666]

Hi, I just recently got into DOOM (and found your blog). Do you have any good recommendations for fan doom mods/maps? (they range from the most popular ones to your own personal favorites or little niche levels)

I'm going to see what i can think of because there's always good stuff that not even the Cacowards bring up.

As for mapsets or wads:

Romero's Sigil is obvious as if it should be official.

Memento Mori series

Requiem

Icarus Alien Vanguard

300 minutes of /vr/

Ancient Aliens

Anomaly Report

Alien Vendetta

Back to Saturn X series

Doom 2 Reloaded

Doom 1/2 The Way id Did

Some of the Doomer Board Projects like AUGER;ZENITH and Emerald City

Doom Zero

Doom city which is pretty good for a single map

Epic 2

Good Morning Phobos

Jenesis

Japanese Community Project

Moonblood

Munity

Plutonia 2 and Plutonia Revisited

Rebirth

Scythe 2

TNT Revilution

PhobosDeimos Anomaly

UAC Ultra

Going Down

Doom 64 for Doom 2

Consolation Prize (PS1 Doom and Doom 64 but compatible with gameplay mods)

Whispers of Satan

Note that some of them could be difficult or even have things like DEHACKED enemies or whatever can get in the way of a gameplay mod.

And speaking of gameplay mods:

High Noon Drifter

GMOTA

Combined Arms

Space Hunter

Colorfull Hell

DAKKA

Legions of Bones

Vanilla Doom Plus

Legendoom Lite

MK-Champions

Corruption Cards

TrailBlazer

Project Babel

Supercharge

Samsara

MetaDoom

Doom Delta

D4T

D4V

Final Doomer

Demon Counterstrike

Treasure Tech

Bratwurst

Netronian Chaos

Highway Acceleroid Booster

Eriguns 1/2

Psychic

Cybers Monster Randomizer

La Tailor Girl

Dusted's Pandemonia

Accessories to Murder

Cola 3

Hideous Destructor

Lt Typhon

And for TC stuff

Golden Souls series

Beyong Reality

Strange Aeons

Skulldash

The Edge of Time

REKKR

Reelism 1/2

Adventures of Square

Pirate Doom

StrongHold: Edge of Chaos

Project Uber

Winter's Fury

There's probably still examples i'm missing, so this is what i thought of.

A good way to look for more is see info of people involved like if they have Doomwiki articles or accounts on other websites and see what else they did.

And because this list is already big, you don't have to look most of them right way so feel free to use your time and interest with how you look at them.

Because some of this stuff can be difficult for newcomers like certain wads and mods.

There's also what versions of GZDoom or ZDoom a certain mod could use since some mods might be discontinued while GZDoom gets new updates.

#recommendation #doom #classic doom #id software #someone else's content #doom modding #modding #wad #gzdoom #ask #gameplay mod #map or mapset #total conversion #extra flavor

[m39]

Doom WADs’ Roulette (2009): Killing Adventure

Br1: Killing Adventure

Main author(s): Ruba

Release date: September 5th, 2009 (database upload)

Version(s) played: ???

Required port compatibility: ZDoom

Levels: 32 (30 + 2 standard)

Killing Adventure… confuses me. At first glance, it looks like a typical 1994 slop made by a twat who has more farts in his head than brain matter. But something tells me there is more to it than it shows. It might actually be self-aware Troll WAD made to piss people off.

Is it true though? From what I’ve heard about its author, he was definitely a troll in the community. But I must play this WAD to be entirely sure about it, so let’s get into it.

Starting with me, feeling like WADs from the mid-90s’ looked better than Killing Adventure. I do realize that the maps were done like this on purpose, but it doesn’t change the fact that they look overly basic, stale, dull, and other synonyms of the word boring.

I liked the music, though. At least half of it feels relaxing to listen to (MAP11 might have the best track), although, there are also tracks that are more blood-pumping.

I hope you like patience because this WAD will test it. Although the maps are simple and I don’t think you will get lost playing them, almost all of the maps seem to feature one, rather small square/rectangle/whatever-shaped area that constantly repeats itself and has the same roster of enemies in (probably) almost every single one of them. You might feel like you are running in circles.

Thankfully, there are maps that create shortcuts after reaching a key or some other important place. That’s always nice in a WAD.

Some of the maps tend to be more interesting than others. Jail for instance will kill all enemies in cages when you reach the end of it, so, if you want to, you can spice it up by ignoring everything on your path (except barrels of course) and just run to the exit.

Hundred Demon Fortress (I’m slightly changing titles to be written correctly) is basically a pun to the fact, that you fight one hundred Pinkies in the area next to the start.

Death Row Ultima, meanwhile, makes you choose the correct switch to open the door with Romero’s head, otherwise, it sends an Arch-vile squadron on your ass. Still a better ending for the WAD than another Icon of Shit.

There are also maps that use Keens either in the form of secret-hunting or just stagnating your progress until you kill all of them, with Column Shift Punch Halls being the biggest example of the mechanic related to them.

Also, three of the maps from this WAD use fans’ favorite – chess-moving floor filth.

vomit noises

sigh

I don’t think it’s worth talking about how funny this WAD is since it’s yet another case of LUL SOS RANDUMP crap that most of the Mockaward winners at this point did.

I’m gonna say it now, but Killing Adventure feels like Mock 2 lite. I only watched MtPain’s April Fools’ review on the latter, but I felt like the WAD was making fun of many elements that appeared in the Doom maps back then (hell, even now), focusing on one thing per map. This WAD, as I said earlier, most of the time is the same thing with one, small area repeating itself ad nauseam. Its joke, at best, became stale after MAP11. And I’m surprised that I managed to properly play these maps twice without falling asleep.

Most of the time, the WAD was rather easy, but there were moments when it got hard (not for a good reason of course). Arch-viles on Grey and Easy smell of lots of bullshit (I got lucky on my second try), and Pyramidal Hell might look like hell, but if you know how to get to the exit, you can just grab an invun and run there (secret exit is behind the regular one).

And, uhm… I think that’s it. Killing Adventure tries to be funny, yet now that I think about it, it fails to deliver on that. It fails as regular WAD, a joke WAD, and it’s basically a worse version of Mock 2 on every level. You might get a chuckle out of it when you play it the first time, but after that, there is nothing to laugh at.

Let’s hope that’s the last poor-quality WAD from 2009. Luckily, the next Doom map on the list promises something better.

Don’t read my next review if you are afraid of clowns.

#doom #doom wad #review #doom mod #doom 2 #doom 2009 #2009 #killing adventure #doom killing adventure #doom wads’ roulette #cacowards #mockaward

[dac-dot-workshop]

It's finally up on idgames!

So for those who have no idea what this is, I organised a community project among the Doom community where the goal was to make any kind of map with one specific restriction: no more than thirty monsters. This isn't a lot, especially when some modern maps can throw thousands of them in one map - hell, most maps will throw thirty monsters in one encounter. But in the end, 64 maps were made, from one-and-done fights to grand if lonely adventures; easy maps to ungodly hard maps, all of them with difficulty settings; from mappers who have won multiple Cacowards to mappers literally releasing their first maps; from maps that fits under vanilla limits to maps that literally wouldn't run in GZDoom at first (Everything should run fine in DSDA-Doom and Eternity ports though!); maps in basically every settings, from techbases to hell, red to blue, fire and brimstone to ice and snow.

All in all, something I'm damn proud of organising. This is a good set of maps, and I guarantee you'll love at least one of them.

#doom #doom modding #gamedev #community project

[glutko]

Congratulations on your cacoward win!

I'm not super plugged in so I hadn't heard about AAA yet, but it looks fantastic and I'm absolutely sitting down with it the moment I have the time.

Thanks!

[scrubdowner]

got recommended some decino vids on youtoob and now I'm on a doom kick again, time to go through the recent cacowards

#mine #doom