Good Doom/Heretic/Hexen WADs

[HansDampf]

I also played Dominus Diabolicus recently, and I disagree. I had a lot of fun with it, more than I expected because I'm normally not a huge fan of the vanilla textures with lots of browns and green marble. But I binged through the WAD very quickly. There are lots of cute details, fun fights and traps everywhere that keep you on your toes. But they never felt unfair. When I died it was usually because I made a clear mistake, let myself get cornered, or didn't dodge as well as I could have. I remember one random fight at the end of map 21 that took me a few attempts and could be considered unfair. The only other exceptions are the secret maps 32 and 33 which are supposed to be extra hard where most fights kill you the first time. But those maps have hidden exits at the start that let you skip them (because some people are too stubborn to idclev).
I also liked how the Summoner was used as a boss monster (better than Eviternity 2's Necromenace), usually placed in a position that is hard to reach instead of just dumping him into the horde where you could easily focus on him or make him infight.

It's true though that DD is pretty hard on UV. I'd rate the difficulty somewhere above Ancient Aliens, for sure, but it's not Sunlust. Playing the maps blind without saves is not recommended. And if it's still too much, I mean... there are other difficulty settings besides UV.

Really cool WAD.

 

[JoacoN]

Tried playing myhouse.wad but I mixed up some files while changing some settings and instead loaded Doom 2.
So I played the house map then 6 normal levels of Doom 2 but with some fucked up lighting.
Still it had cool map geometry and I played some Doom 2 after not playing it for a while, so not a bad mistake at all.
Gonna try it out again this night with a friend after fixing whatever shit I broke.

 

[NecroLord]

Tried playing myhouse.wad but I mixed up some files while changing some settings and instead loaded Doom 2.
So I played the house map then 6 normal levels of Doom 2 but with some fucked up lighting.
Still it had cool map geometry and I played some Doom 2 after not playing it for a while, so not a bad mistake at all.
Gonna try it out again this night with a friend after fixing whatever shit I broke.

Is it really that good of a WAD or is it just hyped beyond all belief?

 

[JoacoN]

Tried playing myhouse.wad but I mixed up some files while changing some settings and instead loaded Doom 2.
So I played the house map then 6 normal levels of Doom 2 but with some fucked up lighting.
Still it had cool map geometry and I played some Doom 2 after not playing it for a while, so not a bad mistake at all.
Gonna try it out again this night with a friend after fixing whatever shit I broke.

Is it really that good of a WAD or is it just hyped beyond all belief?

as far as I know it's supposed to be a puzzle map that you need to play with GZDoom hardware rendering, but I broke it by playing with the software renderer and some other settings I had enabled.
The map itself (even if broken) is just pretty simple, a couple pinkies, shotgunners, etc... just the common enemies and two 2 shootout rooms, boring because it's super cramped and you only get the pistol most of the map cause there's not much shotgun ammo.
However it seems that there's a secret you need to find to enable the rest of the map pack? but I couldn't find it (prob broken effect or map part or smth)

 

[dutchwench]

Tried playing myhouse.wad but I mixed up some files while changing some settings and instead loaded Doom 2.
So I played the house map then 6 normal levels of Doom 2 but with some fucked up lighting.
Still it had cool map geometry and I played some Doom 2 after not playing it for a while, so not a bad mistake at all.
Gonna try it out again this night with a friend after fixing whatever shit I broke.

Is it really that good of a WAD or is it just hyped beyond all belief?

You do know it's far from a traditional Doom wad, right? It's basically a walking simulator that gets most of its playtime from byzantine item hunts that prevent progression. You play one level over and over again, but engine shenanigans allow the creator to update this level in drastic ways every time you satisfy his sadistic desire to make you find pointless little objects ordained with Deep Storytelling Value. The skills and the tech of the wad creator are incredible and most certainly contribute to a memorable experience, but beyond that? I would argue that, while the technical aspect is impressive, its popularity is mostly a work of hype. All the wrong crowds started buzzing about this wad for all the wrong reasons, including the, may God forgive me for even uttering these words, story and emotional lore (aka a creepypasta-tier txt dump). Now that there's no noise and people say "who?" when they hear "myhome.wad", it's little more than a tech showcase with baggage in the shape of a silly little story. Maybe only half of this wad really deserves to be seen.

 

[NecroLord]

Tried playing myhouse.wad but I mixed up some files while changing some settings and instead loaded Doom 2.
So I played the house map then 6 normal levels of Doom 2 but with some fucked up lighting.
Still it had cool map geometry and I played some Doom 2 after not playing it for a while, so not a bad mistake at all.
Gonna try it out again this night with a friend after fixing whatever shit I broke.

Is it really that good of a WAD or is it just hyped beyond all belief?

You do know it's far from a traditional Doom wad, right? It's basically a walking simulator that gets most of its playtime from byzantine item hunts that prevent progression. You play one level over and over again, but engine shenanigans allow the creator to update this level in drastic ways every time you satisfy his sadistic desire to make you find pointless little objects ordained with Deep Storytelling Value. The skills and the tech of the wad creator are incredible and most certainly contribute to a memorable experience, but beyond that? I would argue that, while the technical aspect is impressive, its popularity is mostly a work of hype. All the wrong crowds started buzzing about this wad for all the wrong reasons, including the, may God forgive me for even uttering these words, story and emotional lore (aka a creepypasta-tier txt dump). Now that there's no noise and people say "who?" when they hear "myhome.wad", it's little more than a tech showcase with baggage in the shape of a silly little story. Maybe only half of this wad really deserves to be seen.

My sentiments exactly.
It's really not my kind of WAD at all.
Seriously, this isn't Doom.
It diverges way too drastically from the core Doom design principles.

 

[Average Manatee]

Nothing wrong with weird/experimental wads, it's just an issue when people start acting pretentious about it because internet memes.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

What websites should I go to find custom wads for Doom?

Reading this thread got me interested, probably want to start with simpler older one instead of top wads

I saw Zdoom forums but there are big drama and some projects are dead. Any websites I should watch out for?

 

[dutchwench]

What websites should I go to find custom wads for Doom?

Reading this thread got me interested, probably want to start with simpler older one instead of top wads

I saw Zdoom forums but there are big drama and some projects are dead. Any websites I should watch out for?

Don't think my answer will be exhausting, but Doomworld forums is one place where plenty of devs migrated after the drama.

 

[Sjukob]

simpler older one

https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/megawads/scythe

 

[Gostak]

Update yay.

 

[Average Manatee]

Finished Extra Beany Canned Doom.

7/10. Another kind of meme map wad with very some very unconventional and funny map designs. Not quite as memey as Crate Expectations was but still very clearly a tongue in cheek approach to map design. Overall found it fairly enjoyable, there's a number of meh maps but nothing awful and a few great ones. In particular I really enjoyed Map 26 Imperial Engine, which has a rather unique idea. Difficulty is fairly moderate but there's definitely a few levels that some will find excessively slaughter-y.

 

[Average Manatee]

Finished Simulacrum.

10/10 absolutely amazing. This is the new Sunlust for me. Great gameplay all the way through. It's very slaughter-y. Not sure what definition people generally use to define a slaughter map, but here if you press a switch and only have 50 enemies spawn in you consider it a small fight. The readme says the slaughter is only in later maps but I'd say that it starts somewhere between map 3 and 5

Difficulty-wise... I'm honestly not sure. Certainly some maps are extremely difficult, and a number of fights required lots of attempts. But on the other hand there are a lot of fights that looked extremely hard that I managed the first or second try, and a number of other fights that I spent 10+ attempts on only to succeed on the first try I devised a better strategy for (which for me is pretty much the most enjoyable thing I can accomplish in a wad). But overall it was mostly smooth all the way through. I'm not sure if that's just me getting better at slaughter maps, I'd have to go back and replay a bunch of maps to compare. This is all with save/load for major fights though, doing these maps in one go would be extremely difficult, though I'll probably attempt it at some point in the future. There were 2 maps that I wasn't able to finish (20 and 23), I'll have to go back and give those another try. Also be warned that this wad LOVES archviles. Lots of them. Especially archviles dumped in an area already full of corpses.

Maps look great all around. A lot of them are spectacular, a few use fairly stock doom textures that feel kind of meh. The aesthetic is very inconsistent, you go back and forth between fairly standard levels, some hell levels, some outdoors-y world levels, some psychedelic levels, some sunlust-like machine levels. Even if you don't want to play the wad everyone should download it and warp to level 24 just because they did a really cool effect there that I haven't seen before.

Not much more to say, play it. Even if you don't like slaughter maps or tough maps, try it. Suck it up and drop the difficulty down if you have to, it's good. I downloaded this wad on the 21st and finished it on the 26th, 5 levels a day, playtime 18 hours, that's how much I enjoyed it.

 

[actor]

Update yay.

i love this wad. beat doom 1 with it and will probably try some other maps once i find some good ones.

 

[Gostak]

Just like with Hideous Destructor it makes each run of a map play out a bit different due to the randomness in the spawns.
With Obsidian you could also have an endless amount of maps getting created according to your preferences via all its supported settings/knobs to tweak.

 

[Average Manatee]

Trying to master some Simulacrum levels. It's getting me a lot better at the game. Literally just had an epiphany that made a fight so much easier.

When you're facing a cyberdemon and a bunch of chaff you want to start infighting with? Try shooting the cyberdemon. You want it to spend the next 15-20s shooting you and hitting everything around it rather than barely nicking one enemy and wasting its attention on that. And this situation happens in basically every one of these levels. It's revolutionizing my gameplay to cause this much extra infighting.

 

[Lawful Pacific]

 

[randir14]

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Is it really that good of a WAD or is it just hyped beyond all belief?

I think MyHouse.wad is more of a really, really interesting novelty wad than it is something that people will go back to over and over again. It is worth watching John Romero checking it out:



The best part is watching Romero play Doom, something that's basically "his baby", and being taken completely out of his comfort zone in Doom.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I don't know if it's been mentioned here, but this is one of my favorite series of third party wads for Doom 2:

https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/p-r/raven

It's semi-third party, since it was made by Tim Willits back in 1995 - before he got his job at id Software.

Here's a video of some rando playing it without commentary:



He's breezing through it. Pretty nuts.

 

[NecroLord]

Is it really that good of a WAD or is it just hyped beyond all belief?

I think MyHouse.wad is more of a really, really interesting novelty wad than it is something that people will go back to over and over again. It is worth watching John Romero checking it out:



The best part is watching Romero play Doom, something that's basically "his baby", and being taken completely out of his comfort zone in Doom.

I've been hearing a lot about this WAD, but I simply cannot be bothered to play it.
It seems like a walking simulator with some horror atmosphere thrown in.
This is not what Doom was made for.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

It seems like a walking simulator with some horror atmosphere thrown in.
This is not what Doom was made for.

It's probably not my cup of tea either, but it's really funny watching Romero outside of his comfort zone in that video. I've been playing several pwads lately, ranging from Plutonia, to the above mentioned Raven series, and I've also been enjoying Perdition's Gate. Perdition's Gate is a 32 level pwad for Doom 2 that was originally supposed to make it in to Final Doom, but for some reason the window closed on that. So the author sold it to WizWorks and it was released with one of the D!Zone discs. It's been available for download for several years now.

Shame it wasn't in Final Doom, because it's not crazy like Plutonia or TNT are. It's still a challenge because the author loves his monster closets and traps. You get a key or flip a switch, you're going to get attacked. The levels are well done, nice looking, and they have a nice flow to them. They're not linear, and there's a little backtracking, but I haven't run in to too many situations that I couldn't figure it out with a little exploration.