DBP26: The City of Damned Children

DBP26: The City of Damned Children | DBP26_TCODC.WAD

Doomer Boards

There’s a lot to be said about the various sections of the Doom community and how different they are from one another. Doomworld is obviously the center of this universe; the Zandronum forums are for the deathmatch fanatics, and the ZDoom forums play host to a wide range of mods taking advantage of the features of GZDoom. And then there’s the Doomer Boards. Their reputation as the community’s scum gutter is absolutely deserved… but the boundless creativity on display in their ongoing Doomer Boards Project series is unquestionable. Don’t get me wrong, I love Doomworld and most of the people on it, but for the foreseeable future, Doomworld is just not a place where someone might make a mapset based on a cult French film from the 1990s — but you might find it on the Doomer Boards! Welcome to Doomer Boards Project 26: The City of Damned Children.

I suspect that DBP26 was project leader Big Ol’ Billy’s baby. Of the twelve maps in the set (not counting two others that were rejected, one by hardcoregamer and the other by joe-ilya) fully half of them were done by Billy; the rest of the team was composed of DBP veterans, including DBP OG Glen “glenzinho” McColl, former r/DOOM moderator vertigo, forum administrator Jon “40oz” Vail, and long-time DBP mappers Jack “Jaxxoon R” Stewart, Zedonk and gaspe. All contributed one map apiece, save for glenzinho, who aside from his own map also collaborated with vertigo on another. I think the implication is clear; while Billy appears to be a big fan of The City of Lost Children, and certainly it makes for some interesting steampunky themes, the concept didn’t have a lot of takers relative to some earlier projects like Evil Egypt. (Of course, it could have been worse — DBP08: MINDBLOOD GENESIS was done by three people.)

It’s difficult to tell exactly how DBP26 connects to The City of Lost Children. The basic theme of a filthy industrial city with a vaguely early to mid-20th century aesthetic certainly carries over; there’s also elements directly from the film such as the disembodied head of Krank, the film’s main villain. The story, such that we can ascertain from the intermission texts, suggests the whole thing is a dream on the part of One, the adult deuteragonist of the film (given that dreams play a major role in the film’s plot, this is logical.) I dug up the old development thread and the prompt Billy wrote suggests that the city elders, looking to resolve economic woes, put the city’s children to work, but when the children revolted, some bright spark had the idea to summon demons to coax the kids back to the mines. Obviously, it didn’t go well. I could find no trace of this prompt anywhere in the release documents; ultimately, it doesn’t matter.

DBP26 is a bit of an odd duck. The textures are a wild mishmash of mostly brick and stone and glass and steel, giving DBP26 a grimy, vintage-urban vibe that you don’t see very often. In some ways, it almost feels like a precursor to the much more famous Zeppelin Armada. I recognize textures from Thief: The Dark Project, Doom 64, among many other sources, much of it photo-digitized, giving the whole thing the vibe of some kind of lost late-1990s shooter.

The project also made the curious choice of using Doom 64 weapons and monsters. Personally, this decision makes no sense to me (Doom 64 textures be damned) but due to extensive DEHACKED shenanigans it’s basically impossible to replace the monster roster. Nevertheless, here’s the usual disclaimers: I was, however, able to replace the weapons with HorrorMovieRei’s Gothic Doom weapons, minus a few things so it plays nice with the DEHACKED. Not really satisfied with using the more gothic replacements for the energy weapons — their more magical provenance didn’t seem right — I instead replaced them with the new weapons from the recent official Doom II expansion Legacy of Rust, ported to ZScript by Jekyll Grim Payne. The Incinerator is aesthetically thematically appropriate enough, at least; as far as the Calamity Blade, it’s such a weird-looking weapon, so obviously a bunch of toys jammed together, that it’d fit just about any theme really. And of course I used Flashlight++ 9.1 — love that mod.

Speaking of DEHACKED shenanigans, here’s how that shakes out: the Wolfenstein SS guy has been replaced by a l’il spider bot with a zombie head on it, functionally filling the same role as a chaingunner. The actual chaingunner has been replaced by an exploding barrel (which I’m reasonably certain was lifted from Duke Nukem 3D? Don’t quote me on that) that spawns a spiderbot upon exploding. There’s some weird business going on with the chaingun in that the chaingun itself has been appropriated for the decoy barrel, and the unused dead lost soul is now the chaingun. The archvile — who at the time had no Doom 64 equivalent anyway — has been replaced by the phantasm from Blood — there’s no line-of-sight fire spell, but it moves fast, hits hard, dodges projectiles sometimes, and resurrects like crazy. There’s a new “evil eye” enemy that’s literally an eyeball on a pole that throws revenant fireballs at you and targets you with lightning that sorta works like the archvile flame spell but doesn’t go away when you get out of sight, only stops moving. The revenant, by the way, has been replaced by a shrunken down version of the Tchernobog sprite from Blood and has no melee, which changes things up a bit. And the baron of hell is now just a bigger hell knight, easily the size of a cyberdemon.

With all that out of the way, how does the wad actually play? Pretty good, actually. DBPs can be hit or miss, both from one project to the next and within a project as well, especially when you get large groups together. But with such an obviously personalized project as this with a comparatively smaller team of solid mappers it’s an interesting product, mostly (if not always) shying away from typical Doom abstraction towards a more quasi-realistic, Build-style expression of space. Probably the spot I had the most trouble with, ironically, was the first map, Big Ol’ Billy’s “Arrivée/Arrival” (the maps are named in French in the CWILVXX titles on level start and in English in the automap.) It’s a lot of open space and a lot of hitscanners and fireballs coming your way, reminding me somewhat of some of ck3D’s maps for Duke Nukem 3D. The most annoying part is the new eyeball enemy, as while they’re immobile, their lightning spell is difficult to avoid (albeit not as strong.) They get increasingly more common later in the wad, making them irritating to deal with.

You should probably give DBP26: The City of Damned Children a try. As Doomer Boards Projects go, it’s not the most famous nor is it the most ambitious, but it’s certainly solid, one of the closest I’ve seen to achieving that Build aesthetic I constantly wish I could see more of from Doom mapping, while at the same time being a solid play. You don’t have to have seen the Caro and Jeunet film to appreciate it, though it certainly helps. It makes me wonder if we’ll get a Brazil-inspired mod sometime.

 

GET IT ON /IDGAMES

 

MAP01: Arrivée

Big Ol' Billy

Feeling a lot like a ck3D Duke Nukem map, Big Ol' Billy starts us off with a sprawling seaside rampage. The opening minutes are simple enough: find the blue key, open the gate. But once you're inside the inner section, the threat level ramps up tremendously, with lots of hitscanners (including the annoying little mini-spiders) and imps and not a lot of cover. The initial action in here is going to be drawing the zombies to you so you can plug them from cover, but later on you'll be working your way around a slime river, finding a way into a tower and dealing with a pair of mancubi guarding the exit, all while machinery pounds away in the distance.

MAP02: La Rue de la Haine

vertigo & Glen "glenzinho" McColl

A strange level. The opening area is an odd, somewhat abstract building interior that seems to be a warehouse of some sort. Getting outside requires some work, where you're repeatedly faked out with one switch after another not lowering the red key but instead revealing the next switch. Once you're finally outside, the alleyway is treacherous, but if you can get into the next building, vertigo and glenzinho pile on the pressure with lots of bad guys in a relatively small area, forcing you to take cover in the little half-stairway. They also tantalize you with a pair of secrets (one nested in the other) that provide lots of reward for very little effort -- you just have to find the way there.

MAP03: Sécurité

Jon "40oz" Vail

Classic 40oz arena level. It starts off dead quiet as you enter the area, which made up of a large circular space with water in the middle bisected by a gently zigzagging bridge. You'll be dealing with attacks in waves as you first clear the crowd of bullshit that fills up the arena as you initially explore it, then deal with a couple of subsequent rushes as you throw switches. The final fight, in the area beyond the yellow key switch, is pretty tame in comparison, until you realize just how big that one hell knight is.

MAP04: Le Bidonville

Jack "Jaxxoon R" Stewart

By far the largest and most complicated map in this set up to this point, "The Slums" is a warren of dilapidated shanties, industrial passages, slightly-dressed up domiciles and murky waterways. It's a classic Jaxxoon R adventure map, up there with "Doomguy Is A Mummy" from DBP23: Evil Egypt for example. Enemies lurk around corners and in secrets, popping out of ambush closets and surprising you behind doors. And just when you think you've cleared the map, it fills up again. At least once you've cleared the way to the exit he does you the solid of unlocking a teleporter at the map's beginning for you to take when you're done sweeping for items.

MAP05: Phare

Big Ol' Billy

A short and sweet l'il map, sort of an interlude. You're introduced to a weird new enemy that causes damage as long as you're in line of sight; other than that, you'll be dealing with a hectic ambush inside a lighthouse made up of four large platforms constantly rising and falling. Work out the simple puzzle in here and it's two more enemies then you blow the whole thing to smithereens. Odd.

MAP06: Dans la Machine à Rêves

Big Ol' Billy

Big Ol' Billy gives us an action-packed city level. From the docks, we move towards the main street, the site of a bloody traffic disaster; exploring leads us to a sunken toxin facility dominated by a cyberdemon, a backstreet area full of bad guys, and a crowded urban graveyard with just a little bit of grass to make it feel more pastoral than it really is. The phantasm assault before the blue key can be really annoying if you don't manage to put them down before they resurrect everybody.

MAP07: À l'Intérieur de la Machine

Zedonk

It's another "Dead Simple" clone, but a really hectic one, with timed waves as more and more of the map gradually opens up. Starting with a circular firing squad of zombies, then you move on to imps and other guys, then hordes of pinkies, then a steady trickle of teleporting arachnotrons, a cyberdemon shows up at one point, and four phantasms eventually pop up to undo all your hard work -- it's madness, utter madness. Good luck.

MAP08: La Gare et la Maison Impie

gaspe

Here's a fun one. A church dominates a Y-shaped intersection of streets; surrounding it are urban tunnels, some kind of courtyard, a loading dock, all the little pieces of a great city map. I really like the circular staircase made out of midtextures. Combat is pretty straightforward, though as new areas open up, so too do new enemies wander around the map. The finale has you dealing with a mess of revanants and phantoms in the church proper, but you'll also at some point warp to some kind of sinister tower surrounded by beasties. Fun map.

MAP09: La Mort de l'Innocence

glenzinho

This one's an urban zone sandwiched between the waterfront and a train line. The tracks connect the north and south ends of the map, though you're mostly just using them to access the points west. Lots of interesting combat scenarios here, from the mess on the south end to the phantoms appearing one-by-one in the central area as you progress. The storage yard to the north is full of those bastard little mini-spiders. There's also a truly devious secret that requires you find multiple hidden switches to unlock a bonus room.

MAP10: Choisis ton Camp, Camarade!

Big Ol' Billy

Ah yeah, this is the kind of Build-style urban bullshit I enjoy. Big Ol' Billy has crafted a large city map with a bunch of different sights, from the burning building to the mysterious church with the crushing ceiling to the mine site with an excavation down a deep elevator shaft, the first trip on which will have you fighting enemies appearing on either side, only to drop you in the excavation proper which houses a large power generator of some sort and tons of bad guys, including a mess of imps for a bit of soft slaughter. I was skeptical about the Silent Hill music but it works for this great map.

MAP11: La Tour

Big Ol' Billy

After the sprawling adventure that was the last map, this one is short n' sweet, an assault on a tower that looks out over what happens to be the very battle ground you spend the first map clearing out. It's tough fights all the way up, with the finale having you face off against two cybies in close quarters. The good news is that Krank's disembodied head is utterly defenseless, so all you gotta do is punch it a few times (you are helpfully given a berserk pack for the job) and everything goes to pieces.

MAP12: Notre Heros

Big Ol' Billy

Just a credits map where you wake up on the waterfront from MAP01, but it's morning, and everything is normal -- no demon stuff anywhere, except for the captured monsters waiting on the quay. Was it all a dream? Or a nightmare?

 

 

 

-june<3

Last night I had a dream
You were in it, and I was in it with you
And everyone that I know
And everyone that you know was in my dream
I saw a vampire, I saw a ghost
And everybody scared me, you scared me the most
In the dream I had last night
The dream I had last night