Gestalt666's Town of Heresy (666TOWN.WAD)

GESTALT666'S

TOWN OF HERESY

by John "Gestalt666" Bye

By mid-1997, John was pretty much done with Doom. He would still contribute a few maps to The Darkening E1 but he had gone over to the Quake side after seeing Black Star Coven's first team release, The Talosian Incident. When the time came to open a relief valve, then, he opted to design something for a different idtech game - Heretic. Thus became Gestalt666's Town of Heresy, an E1M1 replacement. It's Bye's final solo release and caps off a career characterized by atmosphere more than anything in its level design. He also had a wild, unpredictable streak with bits like the computerized domain of CyberDoom and "The Living Maze" from Cygnus IV. 666TOWN is - for the most part - unlike any of these things.

Sacrifice (Doom Tutorial) (SACRIF.ZIP)

SACRIFICE

A DOOM TUTORIAL

by John "Gestalt666" Bye

I made some assumptions on Bye's back catalog based on the way in which they were uploaded to the archive but I've come to find out that Sacrifice was actually his first published level. In 1996 he converted it to a Doom II map and then offered it up to the community along with a slightly worked-over version as a sort of Goofus / Gallant pairing. His intent was to illustrate some freshman foibles in order for beginners to have a better idea on how to handle part of PWADcraft's essential window dressing. This is the equivalent of polishing a turd due to the source material but John does show in a few instances that a bare minimum of work can breathe a bit of life into stale scenes.

The Subway (C4SUBWAY.WAD)

THE SUBWAY

by John "Gestalt666" Bye

When Bye released The Park in mid-'96 his Cygnus IV episode was just beginning. The author had despaired of the amount of effort that he had poured into Magnum Opus and was focusing on shorter levels. With the publishing of The Subway a few months afterward, though, his work was nearly complete; the original version would release later in September. This single map offering was a primer for the sort of level design that prospective players could expect from the entire adventure. It's a MAP09 replacement for Doom II and if you've already played CYGNUS20 then you can check out because, much like PARK, C4SUBWAY is functionally identical to the finished product. It has the same backing track, too, so you don't even get that novelty.

The Park (PARK.WAD)

THE PARK
by John J. "Spook" Bye

Bye released a handful of small, single releases before declaring his Magnum Opus, after which he vowed to stick to less time-consuming level design. The result of this three-month creative streak would outpace his previous levels in just about every aspect and result in his most accomplished solo work - Cygnus IV. Two of its maps actually saw additional publication in 1996 - apart from the not-quite-megaWAD. The Park is the first of them, being the opening level of the episode. It's a MAP01 replacement for Doom II. Spoiler alert: if you've already played the entire fourteen-level publication then this offers absolutely no mechanical differences.

Magnum Opus (MAGNUMOP.WAD)

MAGNUM OPUS

by John "Spook" Bye

It's interesting that Bye felt comfortable using this title since he would go on to craft the Cygnus IV episode / megaWAD and then tag team The Talosian Incident with Malcolm Sailor. Not to forget his two submissions to The Darkening E1, of course. Magnum Opus occurs relatively early in his career history. This MAP01 replacement for Doom II was released in 1996 and marks an important turning point that points the way toward his future productions. First, John tries his hand at crafting his own soundtrack and delivers a simple and moody piece. Second, the author was apparently dissatisfied with the amount of time spent making the level. He vowed to spend his future on less "huge" levels, possibly creating a series composed of smaller ones.

Maze - BIG IS BEAUTIFUL (MAZE.WAD)

MAZE

BIG IS BEAUTIFUL

by "Spooky" John Bye

This is the second level that Bye authored and it's sort of a disappointment after having seen the conceptual promise of CyberDoom. I'm almost prefer to play his highly orthogonal lighting experiments. The title is Maze and while this accurately describes its main setpiece it fails to fully encapsulate the more banal aspects of its level design. The subtitle, BIG IS BEAUTIFUL, can be true especially when we're talking about the macrotecture that typifies high skill ceiling mapsets. Not for MAZE, though. This was originally made back in 1995 and is an E1M1 replacement for the original Doom.

Hall of the Mountain King (HALLMONT.WAD)

HALL OF THE MOUNTAIN KING

by John "Spooky" Bye

Bye's early authorial career showed that he was willing to work with some crazy ideas. CyberDoom portrayed a virtual world whose structures represented hyperlinked websites in cyberspace. Gardens of Delight dialed back on the madness as a fairly mundane chateau / castle kind of thing. Hall of the Mountain King went even further, taking the promising static light work of GARDENSD and cranking it up at the expense of any semblance of interesting architecture. It differs from his earliest material in that it's actually an E1M1 replacement for the original Doom but it still hails from 1996.

Garden of Delight (GARDENSD.WAD)

GARDEN OF DELIGHT

by John Bye

Bye went on to have a career in the games industry but he got his start by reviewing user maps for Doom. It wasn't long before he began to make them. John's work is glazed over in current discussions of the community's history because his peak style does not reflect the overall trend toward action-oriented mapsets as depicted in Erik Alm-centric retrospectives. In some ways his goals as a level designer were and remain diametrically opposed to the zeitgeist of what we are calling the "modern" era. Garden of Delight is as good a showcase as any of his tendencies. Released in 1996 after CyberDoom, it's a MAP01 replacement for Doom II.

CyberDoom (CYBER.WAD)

CYBERDOOM

by John Bye

1994-1996 was a watershed period for the Doom user community. A significant minority of folks in the games industry got their start making mods during this time. Heck; as of right now one of them is running id software! John Bye started out by reviewing PWADs before delving into a level editor himself. He would go on to publish a large solo project, Cygnus IV, as well as his idtech1 swan song in 1997 (The Talosian Incident). Bye kicked off his authorship in 1995 with the relatively reviled Sacrifice but his /idgames career opens on CyberDoom, a MAP01 replacement for Doom II. The core of his person is evident in its construction but if you only knew his levels for their careful sector-based lightcasting then this may come as a shock.

Cygnus IV (CYGNUSIV.WAD)

UK Doomer John Bye published a few Doom WADs before gliding over to Quake, himself having some claim to fame as a reviewer of levels for various id games. His most famous work is The Talosian Incident, a megaWAD produced as part of Black Star Coven (most of the work done by Bye and compatriot Malcolm Sailor). Before TALOSIAN, though, there was Cygnus IV, published for Doom II, I believe in 1996 (with a 1997 update). Bye originally released some of these maps serially; CYGNUSIV collects the scraps and fleshes the concept out to a fourteen-map episode (right on the cusp of the idgames definition of a megaWAD).

The Talosian Incident (TALOSIAN.WAD)

The Talosian Incident is a 20-map megaWAD for Doom II by Black Star Coven, an organization consisting of a number of Doom authors who intended this to be their farewell to the Doom community, in search of browner pastures. From what I can tell, it was supposed to be longer (probably the full 32 maps) but, well, here we are! Most of the maps are courtesy of John "Gestalt666" Bye and Malcolm Sailor (eight and nine, respectively) with a few other authors contributing one map each (including a collaboration with Ola Bjorling), and almost all of the new, atmospheric music by Bye. As an interesting sidenote, few of these authors would actually end their Doom mapping careers with this release.