Acorn Doom bug
Acorn Doom bug | Aliens-TC guns | Alignment tests | The Catacombs | Demon Base | Dreamland | Fish! | I Am Very Weird | Ice Floes | Infested Factory | King's Palace | The Light | Martin's Subway | Medieval Castle | Rienzi | Sewage Works | Sewer Control | Space Base | Texture Showoff
These Doom patch WAD files were originally designed for the Acorn RISC OS port published by R-Comp, therefore several require an equivalent limit-removing source port such as ZDoom. Some were designed for Doom (or Ultimate Doom); most are for Doom II. Compatibility information is below.
As the designer of Rienzi and co-author of Sewage Works, I recommend them for their extravagant scenery, attention to detail (e.g. texture alignment) and lighting effects. Obviously I am biased! Some of the older maps were designed by my younger brother when he was only eight years old, so don't be too harsh on them. His latest and best efforts are Dreamland, Sewer Control and Space Base, which are all his own work.
The title of each WAD is linked to the relevant Zip archive for download. On RISC OS computers, Zip archives may be opened using SparkPlug, SparkFS (commercial software) or Infozip. Each archive contains the WAD file, and an accompanying text file in the standard format.
The thumbnail pictures are linked either to a full-size version of that screen shot or in some cases a whole page of screen shots of that map being played in Doom.
Acorn Doom bug
This WAD file demonstrates a bug in the Acorn RISC OS port of Doom. The bug exists at least in version 2.03 but may exist in other versions too. Normally, enemies in connected sectors are alerted by the sound of the player firing a weapon. Sound is supposed to travel across up to one two-sided linedef with the 'block sounds' flag set, but not a second linedef with this flag set (nor closed doors or raised lifts).
In Acorn Doom, sounds instead travel no further than the first connected sector entered via a linedef that has its 'block sounds' flag set. This changes the game significantly because it prevents enemies in more distant sectors from being alerted to the player's presence.
This map demonstrates the bug by being impossible to complete in Acorn Doom. The exit door can only be opened from the far side by an alerted enemy. Despite the air duct linking the two rooms, troopers on the far side cannot hear the player (because the linedef at the near end of the duct has its 'block sounds' flag set).
Compatible with vanilla and Chocolate Doom. Takes less than a minute to play through.
14th December 2012
Aliens-TC guns
This WAD file provides the 10mm assault rifle, grenade launcher and smart gun from Justin Fisher's amazing ' Aliens' Total Conversion - the point being so that you can use these weapons in normal games of Doom.
The new weapons replace the chain gun, rocket launcher and plasma rifle respectively. They behave the same as their Doom equivalents - so grenades don't bounce or do anything outside the normal physics of the game. However the new graphics and sounds make a welcome change. In particular the assault rifle from 'Aliens' looks and sounds much more powerful than the chain gun.
Justin Fisher (compiled by Christopher Bazley)
25th April 2003, release 1
Alignment tests (for Doom)
This small WAD file illustrates some of the principles explained in Martin's texture alignment tutorial - mostly about unpegging textures, but with some stairs and sloping ceilings as well. The wall texture of choice is 'GRAY4' because it resembles the diagrams in the tutorial. Everything is plotted squarely on a 64-unit grid.
There are no weapons, although an exit is available in the vine room. There are 4 player positions and 4 deathmatch starts, for convention's sake if nothing else. You could possibly try it with deathmatch if you add weapons and ammunition or don't mind punching each other to death!
Compatible with vanilla and Chocolate Doom. Takes less than a minute to play through.
3rd June 2007, release 1
The Catacombs (for Doom)
Centred around a tiny, winding, ever-changing system of tunnels. The difficulty levels are intentionally easy; in the future this map will form the first mission of a replacement episode for Doom. However, there are lots of puzzles to make up for it.
Compatible with vanilla and Chocolate Doom. Takes about 8 minutes to play through (depending on how lost you become).
25th November 2006, release 2
Demon Base (for Doom)
According to your watch, it's the 12th of June. Which is odd, because it was definitely the 5th of June about five seconds ago, and you were at your friend's birthday party, not here...
Frantically, you cast your mind back to the time which was presumably a week ago. There was that girl; a real shocker. That was your most recent memory - the girl. Cascading chestnut-brown hair and bright blue eyes; shame about the complexion. Actually, hang on, how many people have you seen with grey skin hanging off them...? And was that really her cheap perfume that smelt of rotting flesh...?
More memories come back to you, fleeting glimpses of something almost like those movies you weren't allowed to stay up to watch as a kid. Rooms full of zombies... evil experiments in dark laboratories... more and cheaper ways to efficiently zombify lots of people at once. The worst thing was, you seemed to be helping them!
Something fishy's up on the Martian colony. You jump up from where you are sitting, and decide there and then to go and do something about it.
Requires a limit-removing source port of the game such as ZDoom, Jeff Doggett's Doom for ARM or Acorn Doom+ published by R-Comp. Incompatible with vanilla and Chocolate Doom because of the complexity of the map. Takes about 17 minutes to play through (depending on how much time you spend exploring).
4th November 2009
Dreamland (for Doom)
A medium-sized level featuring a few nice ideas, including two mazes. There is a secret exit to mission 9 of episode 1. This map is called 'Dreamland' because most of the design work came to Martin in a dream. Scary, eh!?
Martin thinks this is easily the best of the maps that he has designed and I am inclined to agree. I had a lot of fun playing it and died in all the right places.
Compatible with vanilla and Chocolate Doom. Takes about 15 minutes to play through.
7th October 2006, release 2
Quite a lot, mostly affecting secret areas and map features. Nothing that affects gameplay.
Fish! (for Doom II)
This was an experiment in finding out whether I could take a simple map based on the gimmick of its resemblance to a word (in this case 'Fish'), and rework it into something imaginative and unique. I believe that I have succeeded; hopefully you will agree.
Having relied upon new textures in all my previous WAD files, I also wanted to what I could do when restricted to using only original Doom II textures. It is still a relatively small level, but takes a reasonable amount of time to play through and has some neat design elements. You'll need to keep your wits about you in order to survive.
"Fish" is the despised pet name by which my little brother was known, by the way.
Requires a limit-removing source port of the game such as ZDoom, Jeff Doggett's Doom for ARM or Acorn Doom+ published by R-Comp. Incompatible with vanilla and Chocolate Doom because of the complexity of the map. Takes about 11 minutes to play through.
"The room with the bars is rather annoying IMHO; apart from that it's a classic, fun level."
20th April 2014, release 4
I Am Very Weird (for Doom)
I believe this the best of the early levels that Martin designed, although not as good as his later efforts (such as 'Dreamland'). Because the scenery is relatively simple it isn't very taxing on computing power. It features a number of traps and secrets. I implemented the level layout for him in DETH and in the process was also allowed some creative input.
Martin says that he named this one 'IWEIRD/WAD' because he sought to emulate strangely-named levels such as 'COMBINE/WAD' and 'FISTULA/WAD', the meaning of which was not apparent to him. He only inserted 'Am Very' upon realising he had to think up a title for the help file!
Compatible with vanilla and Chocolate Doom. Takes about 7 minutes to play through.
"The phrase 'polishing a turd' does rather spring to mind..."
—Martin, 13th April 2014
Martin Bazley & Christopher Bazley
18th April 2014, release 3
Ice Floes (for Doom)
After the intricate detail of Demon Base, Martin decided to go for the grand scale this time. Marvel at the views from the top of the enormous ice shelves! Actually, don't, because you'll die. It's not that easy.
Compatible with vanilla and Chocolate Doom. Takes 9 to 12 minutes to play through.
16th December 2008, release 1
Infested Factory (for Ultimate Doom)
A secret research facility beneath the surface of Phobos has been frantically beaming out distress signals for the past three hours, but obviously nobody noticed until tea break was over. Now it's probably too late.
Nobody is known to have survived, but it's a valuable place and you and a friend have been sent in to clean up. The entrance lobby doesn't look too dangerous. 'This is easy,' snorts your friend, reaching out to open the door, just as it bursts into flames... Easy it ain't.
Two slightly different versions of this WAD file are available. The preferred version requires Ultimate Doom (because it uses the SKY4 texture from the fourth episode), whereas the other version is designed to work with plain old Doom I.
Requires a limit-removing source port of the game such as ZDoom, Jeff Doggett's Doom for ARM or Acorn Doom+ published by R-Comp. Incompatible with vanilla and Chocolate Doom because of the complexity of the map. Takes about 12 minutes to play through.
7th December 2006, release 1
King's Palace (for Doom II)
Another one of Martin's early levels, and a very strange one! The 'palace' in which you start is deserted but in the 'space port' across the courtyard "You are in for a nasty surprise", as he puts it.
Actually, describing it as a 'palace' is an overstatement (even given the inherent limitations of Doom) but then he was only seven years old when he designed it.
Compatible with vanilla and Chocolate Doom. Only takes a couple of minutes to play through.
27th April 2014, release 2
The Light (for Doom II)
A bijou level involving a room with a lamp, a dark maze with green torches (pictured) and a miniature end-of-level boss. This was the very first level which Martin designed. From the point of view of implementation it gave me a chance to experiment on a small scale with gradated lighting effects (i.e. multiple adjacent sectors with successively lower light levels).
Compatible with vanilla and Chocolate Doom. Only takes a couple of minutes to play through.
15th November 1999, release 1
Martin's Subway (for Doom)
This level is based on the map for the first mission of Doom, with the addition of some subway-like tunnels and stations. Of course there aren't actually any trains because that would be impossible to implement.
It is the first WAD file that Martin created completely independent of me, and after a lot of work it's finally looking quite polished. Having play tested it on 'ultra-violence' I can also say it is very taxing if you unexpectedly unleash a big monster in a confined space.
14th April 2005, release 1
Medieval Castle (for Doom II)
Yet another level based on the concept of a medieval-style castle, although hopefully it is unique enough to provide a bit of entertainment. You must infiltrate the castle, which naturally is infested with monsters, and somehow reach the boat house at the rear to make your escape.
This map started as an experiment to demonstrate my new flaming torch graphics and gradually increased in size (a little) and detail (a lot). In particular the towers with the spiral staircase took longer to get right than I care to think about!
Requires a limit-removing source port of the game such as ZDoom, Jeff Doggett's Doom for ARM or Acorn Doom+ published by R-Comp. Incompatible with vanilla and Chocolate Doom because of the complexity of the map. Takes about 6 minutes to play through.
"Short, decent lighting, and alright design. Not very bad enemy placement, but not great. I did get a bit of a laugh at the Baron's placement, simply because I ran past him and was killed a few seconds later. Overall, not bad."
—Anonymous (review on the Doomworld /idgames archive database).
24th May 2014, release 6
Rienzi (for Doom II)
This is a very detailed map with a volcanic theme and several specifically-designed graphic elements. You must descend through caves and potholes to the innermost sanctum of a cyber-demon before making your escape from the bowels of the earth via the crater of a volcano.
The hostile environment can be almost as challenging as the minions bent upon your destruction: if something looks hot then it is probably painful to some extent! In most places falling into lava is fatal because there isn't anywhere suitable to climb out. There are also a couple of traps where you must act quickly to save yourself.
I have tried to design the map so that gameplay isn't completely linear: there is no single correct order in which to explore, and more than one method of tackling the few set-piece encounters with powerful monsters. You won't always be in possession of the ideal weapon with which to fight an enemy - that would be too easy! Supplies of ammunition are also limited, so you may have to wield a chainsaw on 'ultra-violence'. You don't actually have to kill the cyber-demon to reach the exit, but failure to do so would likely result in your dishonourable expulsion from the Society of Armed Volcanologist Exorcists (SAVE).
My original inspiration came from an audio cassette adaptation of Jules Verne's classic tale Journey To The Centre of the Earth, which I enjoyed as a child. It featured Wagner's Rienzi overture as incidental music, from which this WAD got its name (rather than any direct link to the medieval Italian politician Cola di Rienzi).
Requires a limit-removing source port of the game such as ZDoom, Jeff Doggett's Doom for ARM or Acorn Doom+ published by R-Comp. Incompatible with vanilla and Chocolate Doom because of the complexity of the map.
This map also has an entry on the Doom Wiki.
"Its dark and scary"
—xbobby64 (review on the Doomworld /idgames archive database).
"A very good WAD and a thoroughly enjoyable time. More importantly, our first 10/10!"
—CaptainPlanets's playthrough on YouTube.
"All in all, this is a well-designed level that will provide half an hour or so of fun :) There's a good difficulty curve, some cool-looking areas and a decent amount of variety too."
—review on PekoeBlaze - the official blog.
27th November 2011, release 6
Sewage Works (for Doom II)
A sewage works in your hometown has fallen prey to the demons that invaded planet Earth. Having been parachuted into the heart of the complex, it is your job to clean up. There is a digusting odour in the air, and it isn't just the smell of unprocessed sewage putrefying in the sunshine. If you beat the demonic invaders then you will have to find your own way out. Local human survivors say that the main entrance has been barricaded or damaged; the old sewer tunnels are perilous but may be your only alternative.
I spent days (weeks?) redesigning this map to make it compatible with vanilla and Chocolate Doom (no visplane overflows etc.) before realising it is impossible to save games without overrunning an internal buffer. That would be impossible to solve without deleting half of the map so I recommend that you play using ZDoom, Jeff Doggett's Doom for ARM or any other source port that removes the save game limitation. Another reason for using a modern source port is that most fix a bug where monsters get stuck in doorways (and there are a lot of doorways in this map).
This map also has an entry on the Doom Wiki.
"Quite an adventure with original ideas and some cute new graphics thrown in. Recommended."
—Memfis (review on the Doomworld /idgames archive database).
"All of the visual design is amazing. Everything is so mental. Look at the lighting, the shadows, just with sectors, and the perfect texture."
—BugoTheCat's playthrough on YouTube.
Christopher Bazley & John Tardrew
29th July 2014, release 16
Sewer Control (for Doom)
It seems a bunch of demons has invaded the sewer control system, and have plans to flood the city with raw sewage! After a bit of straw-drawing, you have been sent in to get rid of them. Unfortunately, they could only find a pistol to arm you with. You think it'll be easy. You wish.
Compatible with vanilla and Chocolate Doom. Takes about 5 minutes to play through.
25th November 2006, release 3
Space Base (for Doom)
Martin describes this as a pretty average (not to mention small) map, except for the starting area. He thinks the start is astoundingly original because you can already see the exit (but can't reach it). Fortunately, that is not the only thing this WAD file has to recommend it.
This is a well designed level incorporating some good ideas. He has obviously taken time over the texturing and other details. Ideal if you fancy a quick blast.
Compatible with vanilla and Chocolate Doom. Takes about 5 minutes to play through.
21st October 2005
Texture Showoff (for Doom)
Designed many moons ago by Martin around the concept of a series of rooms with alternately red or silver decor. Apparently this was inspired by my experimentation with coloured lighting effects in his earlier map 'I Am Very Weird' (through judicious use of similar textures in different hues).
This level will forever be unofficially known as the Showoff-Waah, due to the 10 character limit on file names imposed by most old RISC OS filing systems.
Compatible with vanilla and Chocolate Doom. Takes about 5 minutes to play through.
13th September 1999, release 1