The Process (TPROCESS.WAD)

THE PROCESS

by Mike Alfredson aka "Use3D"

Use3D has been making maps for a long time. So much of his creative energy has been tied up in his two one-man megaWADs, Doom Beyond and Nilla Doom, so much so that he actually jettisoned a number of his oldest maps from Doom Beyond and released them as singular outtakes. I've been covering all of these levels in my run-up to the original Community Chest and will take a gander at Doom Beyond whenever it releases because, well, Mike makes damn good classic-feeling maps. The last batch of Alfredson's outtakes was published in 2019. The Process is the most recent of these, by which I mean it was crafted in 2001 instead of 1997. It's a MAP05 replacement for Doom II, to be played in any port.

Invictus (INVICTUS.WAD)

INVICTUS

by Rex Claussen

Wow, it's been a long time since I've played me some Claussen maps. Pre-Invictus, Rex made a ton of levels including a series of partial and total conversions (A Hex On You, Phoenix Rising, Paranoia, Temple of the Ancients, The Darkest Hour). Along the way, while I imagine The Darkest Hour was about a month away from being released, Claussen participated in DoomCenter's E1 Mapping Contest in 2001. His entry, "Invictus" (E1M6), was a break from form in a variety of ways. It included no copy and pasted geometry from his previous levels and tended toward more abstract level geometry based in OG Doom's aesthetic compared to, say, the more Quake II- or Half-Life-esque base and office designs.

The One Level With All Those Teleporters. (TOLWATT.WAD)

THE ONE LEVEL WITH

ALL THOSE TELEPORTERS.

by Esa Repo aka "Espi"

I think that there is a tendency in this community to think of classically lauded authors as being beneath a bit of fun like Erik Alm and his goofball Find It. Not everything has to be Scythe II to be worth making OR preserving. In Esa Repo's case, his pre-Suspended in Dusk work is peppered with levels that people perusing his back catalogue might find...questionable. The first of these that we got was Barons o' Fun, so named because it's an arcade-type scenario where you attempt to get Barons of Hell to blow each other up with barrels and even scratch each other. The One Level With All Those Teleporters is not an auspicious name to start things off with, and if you keep reading, you'll see what all the fuss is about. TOLWATT is a MAP01 replacement for Doom II, released toward the end of 2001. As to why it requires ZDoom, I think that the only reason is because it has a MAPINFO lump. It seemed to play just fine back in DSDA-Doom apart from not being able to play the included music.

Linna (LINNA.WAD)

LINNA

by Esa Repo aka "Espi"

(based on Come to a Head by "Deadnail")

In June of 2001, Deadnail uploaded his only single player level to /idgames, Come to a Head (SP_DN01). It was a weighty techbase map with grueling thing placement, best enjoyed on HMP and even then you'll likely suffer without knowing the level's five secrets. Nine days later, Espi renovated the level and uploaded Linna, a MAP01 replacement for... whatever the confluence is of source ports that are Boom-compatible and also allow jumping. GZDoom and Zandronum ought to work, Eternity, Odamex, Legacy, and idk, Risen3D? I know that I'm selling someone's favorite source port short right now, I just couldn't tell you which one.

Come to a Head (SP_DN01.WAD)

COME TO A HEAD

by "Deadnail"

The next PWAD on my itinerary is Esa Repo's Linna, but as it lines out in its .TXT, Espi actually based it on a level that had been released by another person earlier in the year. Deadnail appears to have been primarily an author of deathmatch levels who played in what must be a now-ancient version of ZDaemon. At one point, however, they aspired to make some singleplayer levels, and Come to a Head is the fruit of this practice session. This is a MAP01 replacement for Doom II, released in 2001, and is specifically designed for ZDoom. I'm not sure if there's anything going on under the hood that requires it besides maybe the particle fountains, but in terms of gameplay, jumping is required in order to complete the level.

Entryway (KARMEA.WAD)

ENTRYWAY

by Esa Repo aka "Espi"

Espi solidified his status in the Doom community with the superb environmental design of his Suspended in Dusk. The four-map PWAD had been in development since at least 2001 going by the name One Hell of a Day, as evidenced by his early release of its first level. Entryway (KARMEA.WAD - Google translates to "lurid", "spooky", "infernal") is a MAP01 replacement for Doom II and it's fascinating to have it available as one can juxtapose it with the "final" product seen in SID's MAP01 slot. The author had a clear architectural style as seen in here as well as his E2M1ER and LAITOS as the latter originally appeared in the DoomCenter E1 Mapping Contest. It's his subsequent development as an environmental artist through to 2005 that differentiates KARMEA from its latter incarnation.

Fragport (FRAGPORT.WAD)

Stephen Clark. Newstuff reviewer, ZDoom guru, The Ultimate Doomer. All of Clark's critical successes - 007: License to Spell Doom, Super Sonic Doom, and Serpent: Resurrection - were ZDoom releases. Fragport, his debut, is a little different. Conceived for vanilla Doom II, Stephen tried to leverage as many tricks as he could think of in order to show just how hard the original executable could cook. Sure, some suspension of disbelief is required, but that is generally the nature of the beast when it comes to doing anything complex in DOOM2.EXE. Fragport was originally released in 2001 and it is a full game replacement. I've seen it passed around the internet as BOOMSKY, much to my confusion. In the absence of any clarifying information I would stick to the official version found on /idgames.

E2M1ER (E2M1ER.WAD)

E2M1ER

by Esa Repo aka "Espi"

Espi kicked off his career with the experimental Barons o' Fun, a level where the object was to goad goat men into tearing each other apart over barrel splash damage. Esa wouldn't upload another single player level to /idgames until nearly a year later in mid-2001, where he dusted off "an old PWAD" for release alongside an updated-but-previously-released-elsewhere KARMEA. E2M1ER is an E2M1 replacement, natch, and a full-fledged level as compared to BRNSOFUN's arcade-style execution. Between this level and his Laitos, which originally appeared in the DoomCenter E1 Mapping Contest, it's clear that Espi liked making OG Doom levels in his idiosyncratic style. I wonder how they compare to his entries in the piecemealed Flashback project.

No Hope For Life Episode 1: Back to the Fight (NHFL.WAD)

The road to Hell is paved with E1 replacements. No Hope For Life is a joint venture by three fixtures of Doom's source port boom: Andy Leaver, Jay Trent, and Pablo Dictter. Andy had already done a small set of E1 levels, bitebwad, in 2000. Jay participated in the 2001 Doom Center E1 Mapping Contest (judged by the man himself, John Romero), clinching 2nd place out of fifteen entries. Pablo had published a ton of levels by this point, many of which are no longer publicly available, and was working on an E4 replacement with Karthik Abhiram, Tobias Munch, Damian Lee, and Joel Murdoch - The Ninth Gate. tNG never fully panned out, though, whereas we have 2001's No Hope For Life Episode 1: Back to the Fight available to download on /idgames... admittedly some two years after its initial, official release. The authors suggest ZDoom but it should work in any limit-removing port, the primary concern being the dreaded visplane overlord.

Subversion (SUB-EP.WAD)

Pablo Dictter was a community fixture during the source port boom, releasing a slurry of small maps and also contributing to a couple of larger products, chiefly Alien Vendetta. He was a contributor to several different original Doom productions as well. One of them was No Hope For Life Episode One: Back to the Fight. The E1 replacement had PD working alongside Community Chest regular Andy Leaver as well as Jay Trent, now of The Becoming fame. Somewhere during the process of building NHFL, three of Pablo's levels were cut as they had too many darn maps. Dictter picked the castoffs up, dusted them off, wired them three more levels, and sent them to /idgames in July of 2001 as Subversion. This is a partial Episode 3 replacement for the Ultimate Doom spanning E3M4-E3M9.

The Anomaly: Part II (ANOMALY2.WAD)

THE ANOMALY

PART II

by Varun Abhirama Krishna

Varun is Karthik Abhiram Krishna's younger brother by about five years. The two made their /idgames debuts at around the same time in 2001, KAK with Ick (closely followed by Chaos Punch) and VAK with The Anomaly: Part II. They would eventually go on to tag-team a PWAD - 2004's Reanimated - but that is a story for another day. There's no way to infer exactly why but it's clear when comparing the two side-by-side that Varun was a more natural level designer than his older brother. I wager that you'll come to the same conclusion, whether or not Karthik's relative naivete is more interesting as an outsider perspective. ANOMALY2 is an E4M6 replacement for the Ultimate Doom and should play back in any source port.

Evil's Playground (Diabolique part two) (EVPL.WAD)

Time for another curveball in Pablo Dictter's portfolio. This publication primarily exists for Evil's Playground, released - I believe - in 2001. The subtitle is Diabolique part two, a reference to a previously-created level called - you guessed it - Diabolique. I'm not sure when the latter was created but it was included in the release of EVPL as something of a bonus, isn't available otherwise, and both were purportedly part of the Diabolique project. Pablo had his hand in like three or four different Doom avenues alongside his River of Fire series, Good V/S Evil (where An Infernal Place came from), and a couple of others that released later. Even if he was compelled to carve up The Gates as a failure. This dead-end PWAD couplet replaces E3M1 and E3M2 of the original Doom.

ea Speedmap 3 (EASPD3.WAD)

EA SPEEDMAP 3

by Erik Alm

There's a sidestory to a lot of these authorial careers who had their heyday in the early '00s that I've been glazing over. 2001 was the birth of the community speedmapping event, I mean insofar as it was officially documented on /idgames. Whether it was Doomworld, NiGHTMARE, or SargeBaldy, people came and did the best that they could within 100 minutes. Erik Alm apparently never applied to any of the DWSPD festivities but he was a fixture of both NTSPD and SBSPD. ea Speedmap 3 was actually created for NiGHTMARE's #3 session in December of 2001. Alm's connection died while he was submitting it, though, so rather than let it go to waste, he uploaded it to /idgames in early 2002. EASPD3 is a MAP01 replacement for Boom-compatible ports.

An Infernal Place v1.1 (INFERNAL.WAD)

AN INFERNAL PLACE v1.1

by Pablo Dictter

An Infernal Place v1.1 is a Doom II conversion of an E1M1 replacement that Dictter had made a few months prior in 2001. The original iteration was published on I assume his hosted website as well as Doom WAD Station, where you can find a few of his maps that never found their way to the archives. It was apparently meant for a larger-scale project called Good V/S Evil that never really took off in his esteem. In any event, v1.1 changed the format to Doom II and made some changes to sectors and thing placement that make for a somewhat different play. Worthy enough of being considered for a separate review? By my reckoning, yes. After all, I did decide to cover RRW_D201. This revision of INFERNAL is a MAP01 replacement that purportedly plays back in any port. The original might, too, for all it matters.

An Infernal Place (INFERNAL.WAD)

AN INFERNAL PLACE

by Pablo Dictter

Pablo was a boundless fountain of youthful energy around 2000. He made a ton of very small levels, the earliest of which are ferreted away in his personal archive. Some were never uploaded to /idgames, instead appearing on Doom WAD Station. An Infernal Place is a slightly weirder situation; it was originally released as an E1M1 replacement on DWS, where it is still available as such. The version on /idgames is v1.1, a Doom II conversion with a few alterations. Nowadays we typically think of maps as either stolidly for one game type or the other but it's not all that unusual when you consider how many 1994 authors converted some of their PWADs to Doom II. This review is for the original publication of An Infernal Place, timestamped 03/04/01. It is purportedly meant for play in a Boom-compatible port.

Europa 2 (EAEURO02.WAD)

EUROPA 2

by Erik Alm

2001 appeared to have been a pretty formative year for Erik. Alm made five submissions for Sam Woodman's One Week Mapping Contest, demonstrating an esoteric taste that spanned "short and sweet" to large-scale challenges informed by Hell Revealed. It also marked the debut of his Europa series. The first entry was a massive labyrinth that mixed his stiff encounter design with a tangled layout and key sidequest that evoked shades of 1995. This entry - the second - closes out 2001 on a high note that sees a drastic change of style away from some of his less user-friendly design decisions. EAEURO02 is a MAP01 replacement for Doom II to be played in a Boom-compatible port. As is the case with EAGOTH1 and EAGOTH2, you need to play this with the Gothic DeathMatch II texture pack.

ea Gothic 2 (EAGOTH2.WAD)

EA GOTHIC 2

by Erik Alm

As I mentioned in the review for EAGOTH1, 2001 was a big year for Erik. His participation in the One Week Mapping Contest was an important stepping-off point for someone who was previously not confident in the worthiness of their work. Toward the end of the year he started a string of single releases beginning with Europa 1 and, shortly afterward, ea Gothic 1. EAGOTH2 is the speedmapped squeakuel to the latter. Another fast and furious Boom-compatible blastathon, Erik elected to utilize the MAP29 slot for this go around. Was he potentially filling the whole E3? Or is it merely another case of sky-and-soundtrack preference?

ea Gothic 1 (EAGOTH1.WAD)

EA GOTHIC 1

by Erik Alm

2001 was Erik's coming out party, starting off with a handful of submissions to Sam Woodman's One Week Mapping Contest before moving on to his first solo release, the relatively large Europa 1. He continued his frenzy of activity along a different path with ea Gothic 1. This is still a level for Boom-compatible ports but it's a much smaller, intimate affair that requires the beloved Gothic DeathMatch II texture pack. The product is a MAP27 replacement for Doom II, presumably because Alm appreciated the combination of Hellish sky and the curious atmosphere of "Waiting For Romero to Play".

Europa 1 (EAEURO01.WAD)

EUROPA 1

by Erik Alm

Erik has gone on to great fame with Scythe II often lauded as the direct ancestor of the Doom community's current gameplay standards. He humbly began in 2001, though, kicking out five submissions for Sam Woodman's One Week Mapping Contest. Thus spurred into action, he started an impressive array of small solo releases. Europa 1 was his first such publication, a Doom II MAP22 replacement for Boom-compatible ports. If you're looking for something on the level of the 2003 Scythe's short, accessible first two episodes then, well, hunt somewhere else. This one is large and, as is the case with Alm's early output, not particularly fair.

Nexus (NEXUS.WAD)

NEXUS

by Brad "Vorpal" Spencer

2001 was a pretty big year for Brad. When I last left our hero we had just seen Maximum Breakdown in 1999, a level that tested some of the fledgling ZDoom engine's capabilities. 2000 gave us the publication of Atomic Tomb, a hard-hitting OG Doom level in Spencer's swampy style, as well as a few deathmatch releases (Freonic Craze, Fury of Procyon, and Terror's Wing). 2001 brought one more of the latter - Sector X-9: Silo Control - as well as the first version of Alien Vendetta, which had five Vorpal ventures. Nexus came in between and marks the logical end of the author's trend from ZDoom to Boom, finally settling into vanilla. A result of his participation in AV, perhaps? This is a MAP01 replacement for Doom II and should play back in anything, though Brad takes care to stress the original .EXE.