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.

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.

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.

Heart of Fire (HOF.WAD)

HEART OF FIRE

by Pablo Dictter

Pablo was one of the more prolific authors to emerge during the source port boom. Much of his output consisted of small, straightforward levels with a hefty amount of detailing. Today Dictter is probably remembered for his sole contribution to Alien Vendetta, "One Flew Over the Caco's Nest" (MAP21). The stringy layout is emblematic of his style back in the early '00s. He also indulged in level design for the Raven branch of the id family. Heart of Fire is an E1M1 replacement for Heretic, originally released for what appears to have been something like a limit-removing port - wHeretic. Published in 2001, it is a sequel to the similarly-titled River of Fire which was stamped back in May of 2000.

Warehouse (WAREHOUSE.WAD)

WAREHOUSE

by Pablo Dictter

Dictter's WADography is kind of a pain to sort out. He shopped some of his PWADs around online before uploading them to /idgames so the dates of creation are less than clear. Forget the fact that his first ten or so levels never found their way to the archives! This particular release has its own curious detail. Pablo notes that Warehouse won a Doom WAD Station contest. I can't find anything mentioning it on the current iteration of Larkin's site, though. While there are a few archive.org snapshots of DWS back when it was hosted on the now-defunct NewDoom they are pretty much identical to the way it's currently laid out. Minus the garish background, of course. Whatever the case, it's an E1M1 replacement for The Ultimate Doom. The author suggests that you use a Boom source port but Varun Abhiram was able to play it in vanilla.

The Chemical Base (CHEMICAL.WAD)

THE CHEMICAL BASE

by Pablo Dictter

Pablo was another prolific figure during the source port boom beginning in 1999 but mostly from 2000 and on. He rubbed elbows with the likes of his soul brother Tobias Münch as well as the Abhiram brothers (Karthik and Varun) and even found his way into the Alien Vendetta lineup. Dictter made a lot of levels but something like half of them - all early works - didn't find their way to /idgames. It's no wonder then that his first-archived material shows a lot of craft in, if not making interesting layouts or room shapes, adding a lot of visual panache. The Chemical Base is a MAP01 replacement for Doom II and was released somewhere on the borderline between 2000 and 2001. The WAD itself has an older timestamp while the .TXT leans toward the latter.

The River of Fire (RIVERF.WAD)

THE RIVER OF FIRE

by Pablo Dictter

Pablo made a good number of Doom / II levels that are no longer publicly available before he started uploading stuff to /idgames. The confusingly titled They Will Repent (House of Pain Part Two) was his archival debut. The quasi-E4 styled map pointed pretty strongly to the level design that he would be infamous for in Alien Vendetta. As it turns out, though, he also dabbled in making levels for Heretic. The River of Fire is the first of these irregular morsels to find their way to broader publication. It wasn't uploaded until 2001 but it was available elsewhere circa 2000. It was made for a now-defunct source port called wHeretic but as far as I can tell the engine did not have any special features, primarily existing to bring the game from DOS to Windows.

They Will Repent (House of Pain Part Two) (PD-TWR.WAD)

THEY WILL REPENT

HOUSE OF PAIN PART TWO

by Pablo Dictter

It's unfortunate to generalize an author's entire career based on a single level but Pablo Dictter has been most remembered for Alien Vendetta's "One Flew Over the Caco's Nest" (MAP21). It's not a horrible level but it can't compare to the masterstroke of "The Spooked", his MAP16 submission to Doom 2 Unleashed, Paul Corfiatis's 2011 community project. Judging by his AV work, his 2001 self had a pretty good eye for architectural detail but little ability to create interesting spaces. He made many levels prior to here but this is his earliest /idgames material. An archived version of his 2001 home page lists a bunch of stuff but circa the included.TXT in 04/05/00 he listed Two Gates - I believe a work in progress - and what I assume is this very PWAD. It's titled They Will Repent (House of Pain Part Two) and is an E4M5 replacement for The Ultimate Doom. Pablo doesn't mention a source port but I don't see anything that a limit-removing one couldn't handle.

Doom 2 Unleashed (PC_CP.WAD)

Paul Corfiatis is a veteran Doom mapper, the author of ancient WADs like The Twilight Zone. Upon releasing his Whispers of Satan megaWAD with best Doom buddy Kristian Aro, he opted to start a community project, which debuted in 2011 as Doom 2 Unleashed. It's a forty map megaWAD whose last eight levels constitute their own episode, titled "No Hope for Peace". The scope of the project was restricted to maps that functioned in any limit-removing port and used only stock Doom II textures. I'm not entirely sure how the bonus episode is handled outside of ports that support maps in excess of 32, let alone custom episode definitions, but in ZDoom NHFP shows up as a selectable episode, backed by the soundtrack from Inferno.