Culling Strike - The Hellforge

Doom 2, Zandronum, FFA, 31 maps

The Hellforge's multiplayer coven has been no stranger to this cacowards page over the last two years, first backing Kaapeli's 2021 InsanityDM and then joining last year's Xenaero-led giant community jamboree of Hordamex. However technically speaking, this is the first time we bear the full brunt of their big budget production. In the driest language possible, Culling Strike is a near-full roster FFA megawad that slants to a larger average map size, or at least feels that way due to fairly complex 3D architecture. Therefore it's recommended for larger organized parties, or at least dedicated seeding groups on a public server. The maps need some population to get properly going. Now let's get to the juicy bits.

At the core of everything lies a new weapon set, more or less. It is Tango's Supercharge arsenal, known from several award-winning single-player projects, but heavily tweaked and amended to better fit the necessities of deathmatch. Yes, that includes a new railgun, it is a Zandronum project after all. It might not come off as a shock that this underlying balance was handled by... Xenaero and Kaapeli. It definitely skews to the side of wild, remorseless fun that does not require long case study and does not worry about duel usage too hard. Yet there's enough variety to make you feel either incredibly powerful or impotent, depending on how your current killstick measures up to the chaotic crowd jousting with their own counteragents of death.

Moving on to the maps themselves, we can say the baton has been passed to the new generation. The majority of these mappers are relative fresh blood brought up by Hellforge's weekly DM sessions, so as far as I can tell, we're finally getting some production unburdened by the ossified sensibilities from 15+ years ago. Speaking in doom age, kids that are into BridgeBurner's bleeding-edge, extremely detail-rich visuals played Mechanix DM wads of the late-2010's a whole lot and used those as a jumping-off point for their own heavily advanced set. Also played a bunch of RottKing's Rott!Zone and liked the live cyberdemon? Monsters in DM maps are back on the menu, boys. There's a certain "fresh eyes" vibe that builds on ideas that were seen as outliers and wild experiments so far. The support of a few old DM vets like Xenaero, Exl and Remmirath only tells me the formula is viable and attractive.

And now I can finally say it. This is the best-looking, most detailed, sexiest DM wad I've ever seen. The layouts may not be as aggressively optimized as NeonDM, but they're grand, epic, gorgeous and impressive. It is truly a testament how far mapper prowess has got when this several months-long community project decisively outpaces even the previous beauty queen, the 12-year-old SpaceDM9. There is a whole lot of beautiful castles and such. There is StormCatcher's techbase in which most floor detail is made entirely of models. And there is obviously Guardsoul's space station with a Halo-like rotating orbital ring that... rolls (literal) dice for special surprise effects, like goddamn orbital bombardment. Oh yeah, there's a lot of scripting, too. Jark's map06 is a flying pirate base that gets regularly invaded by cacodemons you kill for currency that can be exchanged for weapons and items at a no-kill-zone shop. With a dedicated pirate announcer. Please expand this ridiculously involved scheme into a separate team deathmatch set, folks!

All in all Culling Strike is a beautiful, playful, casual, yet highly advanced (and demanding) megawad and a slam dunk award.

- @dew

Vignettes of Deathmatch - @EmZee712 (aka Shane)

Doom 2, limit removing, FFA, 23 maps

A blast from the past in more than one sense, VODM is Shane's personal training ground to become a more efficient, disciplined mapper. You would be excused if you considered this project to be a long-lost DM wad from the mid-90's, because it looks exactly like one of Dwellers, or Danzigs, or other grandparents of DM. However it is meant with no disrespect and goes to Shane's credit, because it is exactly what he set out to do.

A practice in functional and mapping minimalism, it intentionally works with the "less is more" approach and instead of heaping detail it tries to add just enough to convey a sense of place, but not oversaturate the scene with unnecessary distraction. Despite the textfile's claim of 6 months build time, I am fairly certain it goes back to at least 2018, when Shane described it as his side project to train mapping focus, adding maps over time and keeping himself from revising them over and over.

It's an admirable approach, even if it leads to a bit of jank and crampedness here and there, though that further brings the vibe to DM's ancestral roots. It also must be said that this sort of unconventional, slightly unpolished and flawed gameplay can be an X-factor in greatness. Map02 (Modicum) in particular has already been battle-tested as a tournament map for the highest level of duels, so the old adage that limits breed creativity seems to hold true.

- @dew

Vesper & Vesper Community DM - @Xaser & the Doom Central community respectively

Doom 2, Odamex, FFA, 24 maps

This award is a compound of two projects. Vesper is a weapon mod, VesperDM is a mapset built around it. Simple enough, but there's quite a lot of unique and interesting details in the bakground.

First of all, Vesper itself first appeared in 2021 when Xaser created it as a showcase for the then-newly introduced MBF21 specification. In a world of GZDoom and scripting, this standard went against the grain and created an extension on the line of Boom → MBF → MBF21. Offering fixes for MBF, new codepointers and modern understanding of what modders and players want, it was ready for use if only someone picked it up. As one of the engineers of the standard, Xaser took it upon himself to demonstrate some of its might and create a weapon mod that looks like something straight out of GZDoom or Zandronum, but is created entirely with DEHACKED using the new spec and runs in dsda-doom.

With steps 1 and 2 done, all that was needed was a trifle - a mapset dedicated to these new weapons on a port that'd support it. Luckily Odamex developers saw the MBF21 introduction as an opportunity in a "be there or be square" fashion and by mid-2022 the port was ready, the resource pack was ready and the community project was a go. Originally meant to be a quick one week speedmapping affair, it eventually ballooned into a year of work and testing. Then finally the project was released in August at QuakeCon 2023 where it was used for a LAN FFA tournament, so all participants were set to be equally surprised by the new weapons and maps.

So was it a success? We're in the fourth paragraph of the award, what do you think? It really starts with the weapon set. The art is gorgeous, starting with plasma projectile shotguns and ending with steampunk-style weapons that let out cute puffs of their gaseous substance between barrages of fire. Xaser sticks relatively close to Doom's arsenal formula, so there's no need to relearn basic usage, but also he made sure to change every weapon enough to force... a shift of habits. The world of hitscan as you know it is mostly left behind with shotguns shooting multiple wide-spread projectiles, and the chaingun acts more like Quake's nailgun. The new Nox Launcher explodes grenades into clouds of acid that continue to damage nearby targets, the plasma-replacing Ichor Rifle is much more devastating, but works in short bursts, and the ultimate Vile Driver is more of a demonic minigun rather than a BFG.

The maps are an assortment typical for a community project with a happy ending. There's both eyecandy maps and "functionalist" ones that get busy with streamlined gameplay over fancy visuals. There are offerings from veteran journeymen like traversd, worst, Ralphis (who acted as the showrunner for the mapping project), or Xaser himself. And there are relative newcomers whose contributions fit in admirably like Rivi, segfault or Jark. The mapset offers a new spin of the classic FFA formula in maps of Boom-base layouts that feel like a second home to anyone who's been around a few UniDoom projects for a while, and should provide fun even for smaller companies than the rivaling Culling Strike with its sprawling monumental architeture. That is offset somewhat by its comparatively slower-paced gameplay, dictated by the projectile-centric arsenal. If that is your preferred cup of coffee, you will not be disappointed.

- @dew