@ArticleWriter thank you for your extensive recap of failed/cringe CP's. It's hard to keep track of the useless shit Troonworld tries to pass for the last 2 years. I haven't tried Doom 2 in Song Only, but considering who started the project and who hijacked it later, i can imagine how retarded it is, because i tried Amalgoom from the same retards, aka, Johnny Cruelty and DoomGappy. Amalgoom is not bad in concept but a complete failure in execution, because it was led by two different morons, both of which have no idea what makes a good-looking/playing map, not even a classic one.
So the idea is to combine elements from Ultimate Doom and Doom 2, but only from corresponding slots... meaning you can only combine Hangar with Entryway, Nuclear Plant with Underhalls and so on... It could work if done right, and if only the correct textures from these maps are used to create something familiar and nostalgic but also new and original. Except, these motherfuckers have no taste or understanding of that, so you see wooden flats and green vines in the very first map that should be featuring elements only from Hangar and Entryway. I'm not sure about where the wood flats appear first, but i'm pretty sure the green vines don't appear up until Episode 2 in Doom, while in Doom 2, they're not even in the texture pack. As for the wood flat... well the default ceiling flat for UDB is wood, so i bet they accidentally left it like that, because they're too incompetent to even realize that this texture has no place there. And i'm not talking about a small barely visible mistake, i'm talking about a freaking ceiling that immediately sticks out. Keep in mind, DoomGappy and his idiot friends have been playtesting these maps for over a year.
The following Amalgoom maps are not much better, the texturing is terrible across the board, and they completely fail to recapture the atmosphere of the original maps. Different architectural elements or map layouts are directly lifted from the originals, but used poorly and without any logic. The amount of straight-up copying from the originals varies from author to author, because this project is so poorly managed there are no clear guidelines to give it any sense of coherency.
By the way, i think you forgot the terrible dogshit gimmick CPs continued by TroonGappy - His "Tribute Quilt" series, which aren't even his idea, just another thing he hijacked. It's once again copying elements from the original iwads, but only in 1024x1024 toilet sized squares, which he then takes and combines in one gigantic map of squared rooms with 64 unit doors connecting them. The result is an unplayable, incoherent mess that is just pure chore to play and navigate. Looks like DoomGappy's creativity boils down to copying the originals and nothing more. His solo maps are one retarded square shaped, flat abomination, that uses only 1 texture. The other solo releases of his, is one almost exact copy of Entryway but with minecraft textures, and another one that is almost an exact copy of Dario Casalis's "Pharaoh", but with more egyptian textures, a night sky, and some awful custom sprites. I wonder what this retard will do when he runs out of original IWADs to straight up copy from?
And speaking of gimmicks and trends, the "In shit only" has to be among the most annoying and tired ones. I can't stand it. Here are the DBPs coming up with fresh themes, new textures and ideas every 1 or 2 months, meanwhile the faggots of Troonworld, only know how to come up with retarded gimmicks. How many "in name only", "in memory only", "in song only", "in Spain only", "in city only", "in 1024x1024 only" do we fucking need? How hard is it to just make normal maps, and focus on the "fun factor". Every single CP these days needs to have a shitty gimmick. It's either some gay ass trans furry retarded shit, or some restriction like 1024x1024 that will result in garbage, because there's no way to make a good map in that amount of space. Yet we keep seeing these useless projects pop out every year. Restriction wads suck ass, because there's no good reason to want to put a restriction on yourself when you're making a map, and you expect it to be good - "i'm gonna use only 10 sectors", "i'm gonna use only 100 linedefs", "i'm gonna use only 1 texture", "i'm gonna make a 1000 units toilet sized map"... enough of this shit, make normal maps!
I watched Dario Casali play through the entirety of TNT: Evilution
My absolute favorite Doom playthrough on youtube, across all releases. Dario is not only very insightful when it comes to level design, he's also very funny, and puts most Doom youtubers and streamers to shame. Combined with his average playing skill and hilarious deaths and outbursts, his videos have the perfect formula for entertaining video game playthroughs. His Plutonia and Half-Life runs are fantastic as well. I still like to rewatch one or two videos from him with my morning coffee. It's a shame that he's too busy to maintain his channel with regular content.
Someone in the thread a year ago mentioned Dario was critical of Sunlust.
That might've been me. As far as i remember, he was critical of Sunlust in his interview with that faggot Nirvana. Here, i found the timestamp, it was painful to listen to Nirvana's autistic voice, but i had to be sure. Dario still tries to be polite about it and give Sunder and Sunlust praise, but you can tell he really dislikes the elements that we complain about when it comes to slaughter maps - the trial and error, the "no room for mistake" mentality, the lack of space to move and dodge, the RGN nature of the encounters, and so on...
He also mentioned in one of his playthroughs, i don't remember which one, but he said he only recorded videos for the Sunlust maps he enjoyed, and he didn't care for the rest. Considering there are only 6 videos of Sunlust on his channel, it is safe to assume that he considers the other 26 maps to be unplayable dogshit.
But who cares, right? No matter what Casali, Romero, McGee, or any other professional level designer with 30 years of industry experience have to say, this community is so retarded, they'll continue to produce artsy, colorless, cringy, slaughter maps that play like a boring chore designed as a punishment, because fags don't listen to reason, and they don't understand game design. They're also contrarian for the sake of being contrarian, so if someone with skill and experience tries to tell them what is the right way to make maps, you can bet they'll do the exact opposite, because they think they're better than the real level designers. After all, these are the same people who say "Talent doesn't exist", because they want to feel on the same level as people who actually achieved something in the gaming industry, and they're also extremely jealous of them:
https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/141725-mapping-how-much-of-it-is-talent/
This one features something called "girlmapping", though given this is Doomworld we can safely assume no actual women were involved at any point.
I can tell by looking at the screenshots that some of these maps took a lot more than 1 hour to make, which is another reason why these gimmicks are retarded. Why are you putting 1 hour restriction on a map, when there's no way to prove that the people actually used 1 hour to make their shitty maps? It's obvious that some of these morons sat down for the better part of a day to make this, and then lied to look more creative.