A look back at: Dragon Quest VI

Hooray! First RPG done of 2020. And it's a Dragon Quest game that is generally enjoyable in spades and somewhat annoying in other spades. And wouldn't you believe it, I played a DS remake of the original game, perhaps because the SNES fan translation had poor dialogue transitions that were glitched. Opting for the remake was my option, and my experience with it went generally well. But I gotta say, this took longer than I expected. I am well aware of how long Dragon Quest VII is, according to a lot of people even if you don't do the sidequests you'll be spending about 80 or so in-game hours. This game I played on and off for approximately a month (about thirty days), and there's quite a lot to it.

So the first game was super simple, second upped the party size, enemy numbers, and difficulty. Third went with the class approach, fourth went with the multi-branched story and gave us the wagon, fifth made a good effort with the story. So for the sixth one, I believe it did offer what it could well, giving interchangeable classes (called vocations) allowing them to level up and gain newer abilities, and gave interesting subquests and minigames to handle. Dragon Quest is ready for the big leagues! The game's storyline can easily be forgotten while doing sidequests or grinding for experience/money/tokens. The new stuff blends in with the old to make things neat.

What can I really say, the series is making improvements that make them much more fun. Of course, the pains of grinding get in the way, and while the new skills make things easier (new skills for taking out pesky metal slimes and such) the level thresholds are high in many cases. I relied a lot on both old and new equipment to get through many areas. Plenty to do, plenty to experience. I guess it did what it did well.

Doom Musings: The legacy of Congestion 1024

The early days of Doomworld were rife with inspiration, something that surprisingly holds up to this day. One of the more notable pieces of inspiration was the Exquisite Corpse project. The idea behind it was that one author created a 1024x1024 pixel-sized area, gave it a design and monsters, then the others who wanted to participate had to create their own 1024x1024 pixel-sized area, give it design and monsters, and have a small amount of space as well as have an assumption of just how the previous region looked and played like. It was only one map, but the idea of creating something within a box of 1024x1024 pixels then moved on.

And as such, Congestion 1024 was born, drawing heavy influence on Exquisite Corpse but instead, every map will be playable in the boundaries of 1024x1024 squares*. Now note I said playable, as the player mustn't ever be outside the boundaries, but there can be design, as well as monsters coming in, outside the boundaries (so in theory you can make a city map but confine the player into a square, for example). The designs of Congestion 1024 were done fairly well, but not over the top. But it's because of the limitations of the community project that it showed up on the Roots of Doom Mapping.

And it's entirely because of Congestion 1024 that the idea of making a megawad with limitations took off. Congestion 1024's gets a complete spiritual successor in the Claustrophobia 1024 megawads (yes, there's two of them), a jokewad in Congestion: 64, and the number of 2048 megawads out there (MAYhem 2048 and 2048 Unleashed, both of which I participated in). And the limitation gimmick never really ended there. There were such megawads such as 1 Monster (limiting to only 1 monster type), 100 lines and its many derivatives (these projects deal with making serviceable maps within the limit of certain lines, naturally), ones that involved using only a specific grid size to map, and pretty much any sort of speedmapping competition that uses these gimmicks and/or makes new ones. That's what the Doom community does these days for community projects, as it is far too simple to just have a community megawad without much in terms of limitations or restrictions (the Doomworld Mega Projects for example have no themes at all to speak of).

All this means that each and every community project is tied together in some way other than just being projects done by the community. Yeah, that sounded quite redundant didn't it? Anyways, despite its age (yes, 2005 is that old, people), Congestion 1024 still remains a blast to play, despite the authors of those maps mostly moving on. Nowadays, you probably will remember the names Ian "The Flange Peddler" Cummings and Ray "shitbag" Schmitz just by playing the maps in this megawad, yet the mappers themselves are pretty much moved on from the community.

In my last Doom Musings post I explained how much H2H-XMAS basically had a little of everything, from the imperfections of the level design to the generally guttural gameplay that it gave players. In a way, Congestion 1024 is just like it, heavily imperfect but gives serviceable gameplay usually speaking. Of course, there was some quality control, and the actual difficulty scales up quite nicely. Example below:

Pictured is Lutrov71's Caco District. This is MAP11, and actually it comes right after a death exit (for those unfamiliar, you exit a level by teleporting onto a Romero Head, as well as barrels so you basically die) after MAP10, forcing a pistol start. But it also places players into a quite a bind as the level itself is quite uncomfortable from the get-go. The rocket launcher is behind some barrels, and you don't get the viable super shotgun until you at least make your way to the southwest portion, which will take a while. The hitscanners are in daftly annoying locations and you get a baron of Hell nearby to deal with too, not to mention the cacos who are bound to show up. One of the nastier moments happens when mancubi make their way into the level as well. Furthermore, a lot of people probably don't pay attention to what happens as you go in this level. You see those squares on the outer boundaries of the map layout? These are buildings. Blink and you can easily miss it, but as you go through the map these buildings crumble. This is honestly an extremely cute touch, something that makes the map a lot more interesting.

Caco District, in my opinion, is perhaps an inspiration PWAD level, as it is a really difficult level coming from a forced death exit, and it is quite the challenge. Other types of forced pistol start levels, such as the ones in Unholy Realms, most likely followed this example, giving players quite a challenge from the get-go of a death exit, meaning players will more than likely have to try it multiple times in order to even survive. Of course, not all is set in stone to make actually interesting maps like this one though. As the next examples show...

Pictured are the layouts for MAP07, MAP27, and MAP16. When you play them, they are completely made as arenas, which I'm generally not a fan of. MAP07 even pulls the player directly into a Dead Simple clone that no one really likes all that much in the community these days. MAP16 tries to segment each particular setpiece, offering the four central columns as triggers while the cages to the outside sometimes having monsters. MAP27 is my favorite of these, a dangerous arena where falling means instant death plus four spider masterminds in the four outer towers, which yes you can crush with the outer switches, and it's done well enough. Of course, these are arenas, so there's waiting. Maybe there's some things for the next Doom musings, who knows.

These two maps are Zyklon B (MAP24) and Nullspace Junior (MAP32) both of which are easily the most challenging levels. Zyklon B has a rough opening with an arch-vile in the middle room, where you start, but it's even nastier outside, even culminating in a cyberdemon somewhere in the north end in one of Congestion 1024's nastier levels. You can barely see much in the screenshot above, but Nullspace Junior is done fantastically with teleport ambushes and the sense of danger pervades damn near everything.

Of course, there are others too, especially given what you might experience in the latter half of the maps. One other thing I'm pretty sure Congestion 1024 innovated is a way to make the death exit foolproof. You see, I often play quite a few WADs on the lowest difficulty setting, not because I suck at Doom but rather because I want to see how well things were made difficulty-wise, which includes missing things or what not. An example of what I'm talking about is Scythe 2's first episode. The last level has a strange death exit, but if you were presumably at 200/200 health and armor, and you're on the lowest skill setting, you can survive it. The death exits that are present on MAP20 and MAP29 of this WAD though decide to pull away from the classic "Romero head in a black room with barrels" by adding a voodoo doll. This ensures the player will die, even with God mode on, and this is the most foolproof way to utilize a death exit.

Community projects owe quite a lot to Congestion 1024, but I often think that they owe quite a lot more than they realize. The creative prowess of some of Doomworld's oldest community members still prevails despite the age of these maps.

*There were a few exceptions, which may or may not have been accidental, but those maps with the exceptions were still kept anyways.

Doom Musings: The legacy of H2H-XMAS

Happy 2020 guys. This year I promised to do something different this year in my very last blog post of the year 2019, and sure enough, I will expand this blog to include anything that belongs to Doom under a new tag. That would be known as Doom Musings. I muse over things such as notable PWADs, as well as wad concepts, ideals, mapmaking things, new features, all because I have been a member of the community for quite some time that I got to talk about all this at some point in an expanded blog post. The fact that my VERY FIRST POST said I would talk about Doom yet it's been two whole years and I talked about everything that isn't Doom tells me I gotta start doing that. So this will certainly be a new year resolution for this blog.

The 26th annual Cacowards showed a nice, long essay regarding The Roots of Doom Mapping, highlighting certain projects that have changed and evolved the way Doom modders modded their maps. There's sure to be some legacy in many of the projects listed there, but I feel a disturbance in the Force! What other notable Doom WADs were made in the years that have been sidelined, and what exactly was important for them?

So I will look at a gem I have always looked back on, known only as H2H-XMAS, perhaps the most well-known Christmas WAD out there.

Why is it the most well-known Christmas WAD? Well, how many other Christmas WADs do you really know of that the Doom Community snorted out? The only one I can think of is 32in24-14, a project I created a crummy map for, it was one of the very few 32in24s that bothered with single player Doom, giving us Christmas-themed map names and a few actual Christmas themed maps.

H2H-XMAS on the other hand is an old WAD from way back in 1995, which is 25 years ago right now. It is certainly a legacy WAD, containing 32 Christmas themed levels, and while the overall pacing of the WAD is completely uneven, it gave us Christmas music to listen to, Christmas-themed graphics, the prospect of actually playing as Santa Claus, as well as a few sprite replacements that are meant for the usual Christmas festivities. The WAD is one of the early examples of a team effort (for those in the community, most multi-level WADs are usually in three categories: One-man megawad, community project, or team WADs), with a team known as the Head 2 Head (H2H) getting together and compiling this 32-level megawad for those who wish to play it.

That's basically all there is to H2H-XMAS in terms of actually new stuff, sans the levels. The levels will feature traditional Doom 2 gameplay, with no new monster behavior to speak of. The levels themselves are horribly aged at this point. There are no moments of level design that stick out, not even when you decorate it all with cute Christmas decorations does it hit its stride. The majority of the maps are carryovers from H2H's previous workings, then littered with Doom monsters to give them some singleplayer playability. To point out a few blatant offenders:

The two maps above are MAP26 and MAP27, respectively. The first is an arena map, and when you play it, it's completely wooden. Not much to go for is it? It is notoriously small in size. And so is MAP27, which looks less deathmatch-friendly because as you can see, it's just several square rooms.

Here is MAP13 and MAP28, respectively. Again, they are symmetrical arenas mostly made for deathmatch, but given monsters just to allow for the singleplayer feeling to come in. There is a lot of openness the these particular levels which makes them frantic. Plus they are a little better in the design department.

Finally we have MAP17 and MAP12, respectively. Both of these maps seem reasonably designed from a birds-eye view, but if you look at MAP17, it's got bits of radial symmetry and loads of interconnecting paths that scream reskinned deathmatch map. And it is, along with the ones before it. And MAP12 is here, because, well...

Those who have played H2H-XMAS will definitely understand the true crux of the megawad, its gameplay. The community has lavished the megawad known as Hell Revealed for its idea of making "hard" gameplay but neglecting to bother with the aspect of designing it well. However, H2H-XMAS not only was released before the legendary Hell Revealed, but did much of the same thing, only in even uglier locales. You will quickly notice that the most common enemies met in H2H-XMAS are the revenants and shotgun guys. These two enemies are prevalant in just about every map especially in the middle maps and especially MAP17 and others around it (MAP15 is another blatant revenant-filled map with entire courtyards dedicated to them). The arena maps shown in the pictures above may look like garbage to the modern Doomer's eye, but they are a load of fun to prance around in as you deal with enemies that are scattered throughout the grounds. Because of that I outright adore this WAD, it is a very nice WAD to unwind some time in by playing some pretty tough outings despite any and all design choices being uneven and the WAD in general being uneven.

So let's talk about the rather infamous MAP12. Just looking at the layout is one thing, you have these terraced areas at the southeast, an open yard to the northwest, and some weird steps to the northeast. In that area, the starting points are these weird octagons, and they overlook that yard there. You can expect it alright, but the northwest courtyard will have plenty of enemies in it, with the hitscanner enemies being the biggest concern. That's not to leave out everything else. The majority of this level's architecture is orthogonal and quite banal, but in MAP12 you won't notice it as you combat the numerous imps, revenants, hitscanners. It's so easy to die here, but on the other hand it is not as easy to die. One thing H2H-XMAS does is give you more than enough supplies, so even if you must backtrack to keep alive, you'll stay healthy unless you're exceptionally bad at supply management.

Remember when I said H2H-XMAS was a team effort? Let's look at the authors and their styles here. The most notable author here is Dave Swift, a mapper who has made some levels in Maximum Doom I have played. His style is "throw shotgun guys in most places, keep many areas populated". He's not the best when it comes to level design, but if you look at the level layouts above, guess what, the latter four were all by him. So he can definitely create arena setups and make them memorable in gameplay but not graphics. None of his maps are posted in pictures here, but Eric "Geezus" Spry created the first few levels. His levels are short, basic in architecture, and basically they lack the tact that makes the other ones shine. Then there's Pavel Hodek, who created the best two maps in MAP06 and MAP07. Why these two maps are the best is that they look better than many others but also feel like they work excellently for both singleplayer and deathmatch. They are both not symmetrical and have many areas that don't look interesting, but seem unique when put up against Swift's symmetrical designs and the others as well. Another mapper was Zach "Zeek" Lawson, who designed MAP31 (a rather lame level that definitely wasn't tested), MAP18 (the hockey rink) and MAP20. None of these levels are as fun as the others. Finally, you have all the other levels not designed by Lawson, Swift, Hodek, or Spry, with one author contributing only one map each.

It's all varying in quality and makes the whole megawad obviously uneven, but it still manages to be playable to all. The more I look at H2H-XMAS and its obvious imperfections, the more I think about the imperfections in the level designs of other FPSs, including Doom itself, and whether or not the authors decided to screw it and just make something weird. It was quite simple to see. Some authors are simply better at making memorable levels than others. Some have created more intricate level layouts. And some offered layouts that just seem like they could be silly easter egg levels. And H2H-XMAS has a lot of those. I mean, Doom has E2M9, the crummy level of only three rooms and a weird gimmick. Duke Nukem 3D had the Lunatic Fringe, Spin Cycle, and Tier Drop levels, all radially symmetrical gimmick levels. Heck, even Wolfenstein 3D had its silly gimmick level in the Pacman secret level and that wonderful absurd death diamond of a secret level for Episode 4.

So really the legacy of H2H-XMAS stands two-fold, it's a wonderful example of 90s imperfection, and it is a holiday-themed levelset. The stuff from the 90s is wonderfully outdated and the imperfections just hold a weird charm to them. And theming something for the holidays was quite the thing back then.