WORKS of the MASTERS

Chris Klie

Chris Klie originally submitted twice as many maps for the Master Levels as the 6 that were accepted. He released the 6 "outtakes" in 2008, making this episode 12 levels total.

Mid-90s Doom mappers tended to polarize into two distinct camps regarding story: "who cares, just kill demons!" versus "8+ paragraphs of detailed setup in the readme". Chris's levels are all the former: completely story-free, relatively short, and fast-paced - this is like an album of 2-minute punk songs - with occasional tricky puzzles and secrets. I put this episode first in the menu because it's a good punchy starter. If you're an experienced Doom player you'll blitz through them relatively quickly, but that's not to say some of the fights won't bloody your nose.

All the levels are roughly equal in size and difficulty, so I've arranged them in a loose thematic progression, starting with the pure tech-themed "The CPU" and moving gradually through more techbase-styled areas into tech-hell hybrids, finishing with the few levels that are mostly hellish architecture. Chris didn't express any preferences on non-default music or sky art for any of these levels, so I picked stock Doom / Doom II ones that felt appropriate.

Chris' naming convention for a majority of the levels, "The [Noun]", appears to be a nod to the names for American McGee's Doom II levels (The Gantlet, The Focus, etc).

In an interview regarding this work, Klie describes his inspirations: the feeling he had playing Doom, particularly its first episode, for the first time. [TODO more about each level here? pick a few of my personal standout moments?] [TODO a bit of info about Klie's other WADs, "The broader context of this work", including the Lost Episodes of Doom, and his later career at LucasArts]

Cabal

Sverre André Kvernmo, who also went by "Cranium" back in the day, falls on the opposite side of the story spectrum from Klie: Cabal is a 12 level series with a detailed story, told mostly in its readmes, and an interesting overall concept:

You once were the biggest and baddest Cyber-demon to rule hell and you spear-headed the council that governed the underworld; "the Cabal". Betrayed by the other members you find yourself not only dismantled, but also a victim of the utmost demonic humiliation: You've been morphed into a human! Of course you're out for revenge and have to kick the other members of the Cabal's butts one by one.

Originally intended to be the beginning of a full 32-level megaWAD - a common ambition in those days - Kvernmo was contacted by id and decided that having some of his planned series in an official release was the better option. He later released the other 7 Cabal levels on Compuserve, and from there they eventually made their way to the idgames archive. A later revision combined them all into a single WAD, caball.wad, with some balance changes to make the levels play together as an episode better with non-pistol-start gameplay. Those versions of the levels are what's included in this compilation.

  TODO finish:

I reached out to Kvernmo and he had lots of input regarding the level ordering of this episode. What you play here is the outcome of that discussion.
  
  Bloodflood has really tight ammo budgeting.

  "Derelict Station" and "The Watchtower" were collaborations with Gregory Lee Hyne.

  Temple of Death was Kvernmo's first map. It's more sprawling and rambly than others in the series, semi reminiscent of Jim Flynn's earlier work.

  "The Face of Evil" has an incredibly cool reveal that I don't want to spoil here. It and Black Tower feel the most "epic", but Eye of the Storm is the canonical finale, with a massive final assault bigger than anything seen before.

Kvernmo contributed 3 levels to Eternal Doom, before embarking on a professional level design career: first at Xatrix Entertainment on Redneck Rampage, then on to ION Storm, Third Law Interactive, and Funcom in Oslo. After a long absence from Doom mapping Kvernmo became active again in 2013 with the release of Plasmaplant, followed by a few more releases in subsequent years, culminating in the 2016 megawad Echelon.

Willits/Chasar + Mustaine

Unlike the other 4 episodes, the levels in this one share no cohesive theme and are not part of any larger series. Think of this episode as a small grab bag, a short break after Cabal and before the very substantive Titan and Inferno.

Tim Willits and his sister Theresa Chasar's first Doom collaboration was The Raven Series, an 11-level set for Doom II. This is likely what first brought Willits to id's attention.

Chasar devised the layout for "E4M5: They Will Repent" for Ultimate Doom's bonus episode, Thy Flesh Consumed, in its entirety with Willits finishing up the monster and item placements. Chasar's account of their process, from the Unofficial Master Levels for Doom II FAQ:

We also worked on two of the Masters Levels together. I got credit for the second one, but they were both a joint effort. We kept trading the files back and forth. Tim did the final editing on both of them.

After the Master Levels, Chasar bowed out of level design. Her credits on these and the Ultimate Doom level don't seem to be as widely acknowledged as perhaps they should be, and my giving her an equal billing here, by all accounts completely earned, is an attempt to help rectify that.

Too obscure for this compilation is Kick Attack!, a promotional tie-in WAD for Kick, a citrus soda from Royal Crown Company (of RC Cola fame). In one of the stranger id Software side gigs, Willits apparently did level design but it was part of a larger marketing effort that also produced some custom monster replacement sprites.

Mustaine's "Map14 Homage" was rejected by American McGee - upon showing it off at id's offices McGee scoffed, "build your own geometry dude!" After this Mustaine went back to the drawing board and came back with the very solid PARADOX.WAD.

Mustaine also submitted two maps for the Master Levels that wound up in Final Doom's free-wheeling TNT: Evilution chapter, "MAP10: Redemption" and "MAP17: Processing Area". I didn't include these because unlike Dr. Sleep's Canto VIII in Ultimate Doom, they're not otherwise connected with his Master Levels contribution, and would have added the less widely owned Final Doom to the requirements for running this mod.

Mustaine's Doom work ended with the Perdition's Gate retail addon in 1996 and the DM map Paradox2.wad in 1998, but as a co-founder of Hipnotic Interactive (later renamed to Ritual Entertainment) he worked on one of Quake's expansion packs, the Quake 2 engine-based game SiN, and more.

Titan

TODO finish

- loose story of sorts, in which you are sent on increasingly inane investigation missions by the UAC. the readmes mention that you are only ever given a pistol, so these maps are all pistol-start.
- ordering: the 4 non-ML releases are presented in their order of release (mines, anomaly, farside, trouble) and follows the story progression implied in the readmes, but i had to make a call on where the ML levels (manor and trapped) fit in to that. from early on i felt that Trouble, with its size and strangeness, would be the strongest finale, and so spliced in Manor and Trapped just before it.
- mostly big, nonlinear maps! idiosyncratic style of progression and puzzles, frequently strange and inventive.
- "Are You Saved?" message on monitors in the final level a somewhat enigmatic gesture of Flynn's religious faith.
- Flynn was roughly Dr Sleep's age, ~42 or so when he released his first Doom level.
- Boom was the most influential early Doom source port, adding lots of features that are still in use today and codifying the "Boom Compatible" standard.
- Flynn lived in Sunnyvale, California and passed away in 2018, within a month or so of John Anderson.

TODO: when we say flynn's maps are "puzzley", what do we mean by that? lots of different "puzzle map" sub-aethetics within doom mapping.

individual level writeups, just to try it out:

- mines: larger and more rambling than any other map in the series! huge outdoor area, intricate mines, and just when you think it's over there's a large and involved complex of buildings on the ledge overlooking the main area.

- anomaly: start in a relatively empty central area, ringed by a large outdoor space with separate groups of buildings, each of which holds a different adventure. midway through detour off to an east wing for the yellow key, with a particularly tense cyberdemon standoff. last leg takes you through an outdoor arena and finally through a memorable vista up along walkways through green marble towers.

- farside: start in an open space with intricate staircases, adjoined by a couple oddly human-scale interiors. big interior space ("prototypes of alien technology"?) to get the red key, then a large fight in a vaguely city-like outdoor space to get the yellow key.

- manor: large building surrounded by darkness and tough ranged - "watch those windows", indeed. inside, intricate progression through rooms with secrets tucked away. tower structure just east of starting area is an optional BFG secret, which turns on the lights and lets you mop up the monsters at the edges of the space that have been hassling you the whole time.

- ttrap: multiple distinct areas, each with their own adventure, gradually expanding sense of scope. yet another city-like outdoor space. blue key secret arc is entirely optional and ties back to the first area.

- trouble: start in a strange, cramped hub. nearby "gallery" room like in anomaly but this time panels open up to reveal screenshots of places you've just visited, and they're teleporters! progress through multiple outdoor spaces with large buildings nesting within them. progress feels at its most open ended here. finale focuses back down to an interior section.



  

Inferno

TODO finish:

- Anderson's literature background is readily apparent. His Inferno series' story is based very loosely indeed on the Inferno part of Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy. (Anderson also wrote a definitive biography of HP Lovecraft)
- was pushing 40 when he did most of his Doom work, older than probably most Doom level authors at the time, and from biographical details on his old website had already lived an interesting life by the time he became a level designer.
- trademark lighting style, high contrast wedges of light. distinctive for the time, widely mimicked later.
- aversion to the typical colored door trim textures for key-locked doors.
- some maps make heavy use of symmetry, considered against dogma in modern doom level design.
- "Waters of Lethe" was the intended conclusion of the series, and it never saw the light of day, as Anderson passed away in 2018. all we ever saw of it was a single screenshot on Anderson's website from the mid 00s.

Xaser did this homage for Ultimate Doom The Way id Did, released in 2019. In that WAD it's in the E4M8 slot and called "An End to Darkness", but Xaser says its title was "Waters of Lethe" while he was working on it, so it is a direct homage and the first screen you see when starting the level is a very careful recreation of the screenshot on Anderson's old website.