#cacowards

It’s time for some blast from the past… kinda...

G6: Reverie

Main author(s): Michael Jan Krizik (valkiriforce)

Release date: November 14th, 2011

Version(s) played: ???

Required port compatibility: vanilla

Levels: 32 (standard Doom II format)

Reverie is a megaWAD that pays homage to the old WADs of the 1990s; stuff like Requiem, Plutonia, Icarus, Memento Mori… Eternal Dud -_- and so on.

The text file goes into detail about the maps – how long these took to create individually, what they are referencing, etc.

The plot is where it gets weird when it comes to Doom – The events of the WAD never happened; Doomguy was just in a coma, fighting his way to wake up or something. The story even references how the WAD itself was inspired by the dream the author had.

Let’s hope that this WAD has many of the highs that the ones from the 90s had, along with as few lows as possible.

And by the way, from now on I’m playing on UZDoom, because le no chicken decided to try to take a Generative AI dump into the GZDoom’s code and a shit ton of GZDoom devs decided to make their own fork (after years of dealing with le no chicken’s arrogance and shenanigans). Let’s hope UZDoom holds up.

My memory of the WAD is kind of hazy at this point in time, but I remember that it looks very good for the vanilla restrictions. There are a lot of themes as well; one map might be happening in a library of sorts, only for the other map to happen in the Egyptian ruins.

Speaking of the library, Sleeping Spirits looks good overall, but I have a weak spot for the rain effect that happens in the outdoor areas of the map. It’s not the first time this effect was added, since I remember H2H-Xmas having a similar effect on some of the maps, and that was at the very end of 1995. I still like it, being here.

The music is great to listen to. It was made by the returning composers – PRIMEVAL, Jimmy Paddock, and stewboy, with the former making most of it.

My favorite tracks were City Streets and Fallen Sun. The former kind of sounds like it was made by Jimmy, when it’s actually PRIMEVAL’s work (the first part is especially great). The latter track, meanwhile, I heard the first time while playing the Lost Civilization WAD from 2019. Basically, when I’m listening to it, my first thought is not Civvie’s Delight.

Also, I feel like Arachnobus Mayhem and Knee Deep in DOOM are two halves of one track; I hear strong similarities between these two in my opinion.

Playing Reverie was kind of a mixed bag to me; some of the maps were easy to understand, some of them had at least one what did it just do kind of switch, and some are borderline moon-logic bullshit. At least one fifth of the WAD felt like the last type; these were dragging on and were too big for my taste (at least when it comes to vanilla); not to mention the a lot of times you have to backtrack in many maps.

Triplet II is a reference to the original map from 1995, where there are three portals for each individual key; thankfully, it is not as moon-logicy as the original map.

The Tech Towers requires to also collect the skulls to unlock the exit.

Hello, Cybie ends with you accidentally teleporting into the escape shuttle, and crashing it, forcing you to pistol-start Armageddon Valley.

I remember one moment in Tyranny, where at one point a Hoovy comes out of the toilet near the yellow key, and, I swear to God, it made me chuckle a bit. Seven years of Mockawards - didn’t giggle even once, and yet this moment made me do it.

Changing the subject, Final Doom (the map) ends with another icon of shit, but this time, John Romero’s head is placed in such a spacious room that the splash damage it receives is minimal; it needs dozens of rockets to be put down. At first, I thought that its health had increased until I checked further.

Metal Mansion might probably be more painful to play, though. Imagine moon logic on moon logic, where it forces you to find secrets to actually finish it. Oh, and you can also get stuck in it. Didn’t even finish it after trying once. MAP32 is not worth playing with this shitshow in the WAD before.

Reverie didn’t feel challenging. Sometimes there was bullshit, but nothing severe. It got harder in the last sixth, from what I can remember, but after many slaughter WADs, the last five maps were nothing.

Sleeping Spirits, that I mentioned earlier, has a couple of ghost imps; AKA can’t be hurt normally, and you have to use blast damage (among other, less reliable things).

I found only two bugs (on Tech Towers and Sleeping Spirits). Although I’ve also read that some of the levels are overblown, and you can’t save without the source port.

Reverie looks great when it comes to the vanilla restrictions, but I think it should’ve had less switch hunting. It’s a good WAD, but flawed.

This review would’ve been earlier, but unfortunately, the Doom fatigue struck again, and I wanted to read one to two books and try a bunch of games on Steam (the ones from the top 250 page, to be exact; year-by-year lists). I hope the fatigue will strike again later than sooner.

I still have the second half of Plutonia Revisited to finish. After that, I hope the rest of the WADs go down smoother.

Every year (even in 2018 where the majority of the awards have been given to first-timers), there’s claims that the Cacowards are biased or ignored magnificent stuff. For Doom’s 25th anniversary, the 2018 Caco Committee (Cacommittee?) have introduced 25 older mods that really should’ve gotten a Caco.

https://www.doomworld.com/25years/top-25-missed-cacowards/

I can’t believe it.

One of the first custom maps I’ve ever played (other than the notorious nuts.wad) was The City Of The Damned – Apocalypse. Exploring that incredibly atmospheric  map made me realize how great the engine was and how much you could achieve with some imagination. A fellow friend of mine, Duke_Nume (which you might remember as the maker of some Golden Souls 1 guest maps) taught me the basics of Doom Builder 2.

After that, I’ve made a couple of maps and tried to make a megawad called “Gore”, it was inspired by Tormentor667’s maps and Happy Time Circus. I had plenty of ideas but the end result was not very good, so I ended up abandoning it.

In 2011, Duke asked me if I wanted to join him for a project called Serious Sam: The Retro Encounter,  a TC based on Croteam’s glorious franchise. After months of work we made a complete multiplayer experience, with the plan of adding single player maps later after completing all the assets, but the first release  was met with mixed results, and we quickly lost interest.

Serious Sam 3 released in the same year,and because of the hype for that game I’ve decided to pick up the project again and remake it from scratch. Duke wasn’t in the team anymore as an active developer but he still helped by giving me advice and playtesting everything.

I’ve continued working on this remake for two years, and then since I was getting pretty slow at mapping I decided to work on something else to blow off some steam, so I came up with the idea of a bright, cheery mapset inspired by a previous test map I made which was set in an Aztec garden and had a relaxing purple-pinkish sky.

The mapset would be known as Golden Souls a couple of months later, and was announced in 2013 after New Year’s Eve. The idea of having a hub was, curiously, not directly inspired by Mario 64, but by another mod I was playing at that time, Unloved. I really appreciated how BlueEagle managed to capture this feeling of exploring an interconnected world, and I really wanted to make something similar to that, but with a totally different theme,  and so Mario’s paintings came to mind.

DOOM - The 2017 Cacowards

Another year, another Cacowards. This time though, they decided to switch to a yearly format (you will no longer read "The 14th, 15th, etc", but they will read as "Cacowards [Year of release]"). Not that it matters in the long run, though.

It's no surprise that after the release and reception of the newest installment in the franchise (DOOM 2016) people started to look up the DOOM community and get a little bit more involved. This is yet another celebratory event in the community, which I'm pretty sure is gearing up for the Road to the 25th Anniversary of DOOM. And you should do the same, and what a better way to do so by playing all of these WADs and mods!

Espi Award for Lifetime Achievement -  Marisa "Randi" Heit. Thank you for ZDoom, thank you for everything!

Cacoward Winners

lilith.pk3 https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/j-l/lilith

Shadows of the Nightmare Realm https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/s-u/sotnr

No End in Sight https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom/Ports/megawads/neis

Dead.air https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/92135-deadair-v2/

Brigandine https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/92776-brigandine-rc2-updated-2017-05-13/

Counterattack https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/m-o/mek-catk

Legacy of Heroes https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/j-l/legher

Saturnine Chapel https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/s-u/satchap

Stardate 20X7 https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/s-u/sd20x7

Void and Rainbow https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/97787-void-and-rainbow/

Multiplayer Awards

Pyrrhic https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/deathmatch/Ports/p-r/pyrrhic

Progressive Duel 2 https://zandronum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=58&t=7872

Gameplay Mod Awards

Doom Delta https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=52262

Final Doomer https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=55061

High Noon Drifter https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?t=57098

RUNNERS UP

Rise of the Wool Ball https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/94330-rise-of-the-wool-ball-3-v12-now-gzdoom-compatible/

Hadron E2 https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom/Ports/g-i/hadrone2

Revilution https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/megawads/tntr

Waterlab GZD https://forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?t=55741

Disjunction https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/d-f/disjunct

Curse of the Demon Lord https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/hexen/a-c/curse2

Water Spirit https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/v-z/watrsp

Hellscape https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/d-f/dhs-lutz

Dark Tide https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/Ports/d-f/dt-lutz

Congrats to all the winners!