Hell's Eventide (EVENTIDE.WAD)

HELL'S EVENTIDE
by Marty Ihlen, Travers Dunne and Rick Clark

Hell's Eventide is a product of tag-team mapping between Marty Ihlen, Travers Dunne and Rick Clark. The tremendous trio passed the WAD from member to member after modifying it, creating a medium-size map for Doom II with its own particular Hellish style. The story is a little muddled but the protagonist appears to have witnessed the downfall of his father's kingdom to the forces of evil, brought on by a jealous subject, an adviser named Hilsgarde. The result rended time and space in such a way that future, past and present commingled, resulting in a twisted, broken world. The narrator thus resolves to fulfill his father's dying wish, now that he's older, and slay the source of evil, thus returning things to their proper place.

Eternal Doom (ETERNAL.WAD)

Eternal Doom began life as a 12-map episode for Doom II, produced by Team Eternal and under the direction of Paul Schmitz, the author of Artifact and Welcome to Hell. A number of WAD authors cleaved unto him, including Sverre Kvernmo, who is responsible for many of the new graphics (that is, the stuff not ripped from Heretic and Hexen). Eternal Doom was updated two more times, adding fifteen and six levels, respectively, to turn it into a mega-megaWAD. I know this project eventually came under the purview of Team TNT, but I have no idea when that happened. I'm guessing some time during the development of Eternal Doom II, but I have no basis for that assumption. For sure, Eternal Doom III was headed by TNT, given Ty Halderman's involvement.

ESW2 (ESW2.WAD)

Doom's appeal has always had an international flair, and while it was tougher to suss out during the early years there's a decent chance of finding Doomers who speak your own language. The Russian community is the largest such example that I can think of, but other more tightly-knit groups include French, Czech, and Japanese. The producers of ESW2, if the names and email address are any indication, hail from the South American country of Chile. The 10-level Doom II PWAD, released in 1995, takes its title from the handle of the main contributor - David Jander aka ESW - who made seven of the included maps. I suppose that the other three authors for the other three maps are his friends.

Welcome to Hell (WELHELL.WAD)

Paul Schmitz created Artifact, one of Doomworld’s picks for the top 10 WADs of 1995. He also contributed some maps to Eternal Doom, very much in keeping with his mapping style. Welcome to Hell, his lesser-known followup to his premiere trilogy, is something in a bit of a different direction, finished near the end of '95 but released in early '96. It’s not exactly one large map cut up into three linked adventures. Each of the levels is fairly small and / or short compared to the offerings of Artifact. Schmitz has refined his map making sensibilities, however, creating a number of challenges with a unique aesthetic sense.

Dawn of the Dead (DODEAD.WAD)

Dawn of the Dead is an episode replacement for Doom's Knee Deep in the Dead. Well, almost an episode replacement. Jan Van der Veken never finished E1M5 (at least, for this episode), so it's more like 8 maps. The story takes place on Jupiter's moon, Europa, where simple lifeforms were discovered, leading to attempts to terraform the planet (I mean, that would probably kill all the native species, but whatever). The end goal was to colonize the moon, and at the "current" time, there's a burgeoning population complete with a contingent of space marines. Of course, they managed to discover relics from a past civilization that mastered teleportation technology (sploops!) and, later, some manuscripts containing vague warnings (double sploops!). And, now, the moon's colonies have (mostly) overrun by an unknown hostile force. Owing to your expertise, you're sent in to deal with the situation.

New Update at DoomX.net

Oh, hey! Eriance's evil twin updated a few days ago, mostly to say that he's slowly chipping away at his magnum opus (and talking about Rage, which I love). DoomX and Demon Eclipse are my two watched Mordeth-esque projects, and coincidentally, Eriance recently pushed out a new beta of his pet project as well. It's a great time to be playing Doom, especially with all the user projects going on, like Doom Core, Reverie, Back to Saturn X, Community Chest 4, Doom the Way id Did, 1994 Community Tune-Up Project, Plutonia Revisited, TNT2: Devilution, Doom Unleashed, Progressive Fiction, Interception, and that's just the megaWADs I can name off the top of my head, not to forget the wonderful work of Paul DeBruyne, or Kaiser pushing out Doom64Ex (already garnering some user-made maps). Actually, there's just new stuff being made every day for Doom. It's one of the greatest gaming communities to buy into.

The Cabal Series

THE CABAL SERIES
by Sverre Andre Kvernmo

as featured in Super Serials

Bloodsea Keep	Derelict Station	Bloodflood	The Watchtower
Temple of Death	We Who are About to Die	The Express Elevator to Hell	Eye of the Storm
Mephisto's Maosoleum	Black Tower	The Image of Evil

If Sverre Kvernmo is known for anything, it would be his body of works included in id's Master Levels for Doom II. Less people may know that these works were parts of a work-in-progress megaWAD entitled "The Cabal", which Kvernmo stopped developing when contracted by id. Ever the gentleman, he gathered up the remaining maps and released them to the archives as Cabal 1-7. Together with his four (er, five) Master Levels, they represent one third of his unfinished magnum opus. Though part of me wonders what might have happened if Kvernmo had completed his project, I recognize enough of a quality gap between the freely available maps and his contracted work that I'm grateful for the intervention. I'm sure the experience coupled with his natural talent created the base upon which he built his three astounding Eternal Doom entries.

Hell Revealed (HR.WAD)

Hell Revealed was designed to be hard. Let's just get this out of the way. Donner and Niv, the WAD's architects (I believe hailing from Israel), used skill level 4 to create a difficulty level for those who found Ultra-Violence in other PWADs to be easy, using skill level 3 to provide a setting more in line with the previous UV standard. However, to quote Donner:

"...some people never bother to use skill level selections, and always play on Ultra-Violence. These people see that Hell Revealed is too hard for them on Ultra-Violence but instead of playing on skill 3 or even lower, they just say 'Hell Revealed is too hard' and switch to godmode or don't play at all. To me it seems really stupid - after all, that's what difficulty levels are for!"