Doomsday of UAC

Doomsday of UAC | UAC_DEAD.WAD

Leo Martin Lim

My colleague over at ONEMANDOOM likes to talk about "Doomcute" a lot. It's a word that's made its way into the broader community lexicon, most recently being the defining feature of We Have Doom At Home. The short version is that "Doomcute" uses the most basic capabilities of the idTech 1 engine to construct quasi-realistic objects, from making chairs and TVs out of floor sectors, to clever use of midtextures to create a helicopter. This is not a new concept; almost from the beginning, more realism-minded mapmakers sought to present a believable space in the 3D shooter games of the day. While we can point to Tom Hall's lingering influence on the original Doom as a precursor -- aside from the early alpha designs, the second episode has everything from levels based on real-life military base layouts to what's implied to be monster stasis tanks in E2M7 -- the first real example of Doomcute is likely Leo Martin Lim's Doomsday of UAC, better known to audiences by its filename, UAC_DEAD.WAD.

UAC_DEAD, if you've at all followed the history of the community, will likely be familiar to you; released in June of 1994, it fairly quickly climbed the ranks of the early community's "must-play" lists. It continued to grow prestige through word of mouth before finally landing on the Top 100 Wads of All Time list in 2003. And why not -- despite its somewhat dated gameplay and long moments of emptiness, it's a compelling map, with some hot and heavy combat moments and a fascinating attempt at a realistic space within the confines of 1994 Doom mapping. The setpiece everyone talks about is the truck, overturned and on fire; personally, I like the UAC logo in the main courtyard, and the cute bathroom layouts.

The plot is pretty simple: demons have attacked a UAC compound in Jakarta (why Jakarta? I can only guess that Leo lived there) and you've been loaded on a truck with five other soldiers to deal with the problem. No sooner do you pull in to the stockyard when the truck is attacked and overturned; by the time you escape the truck, your buddies are nowhere to be found. And so it goes that you'll clear out the stockyards, the front courtyard with its fountain of blood, the parking garage, the lobby, a security checkpoint, a dining hall, and of course the boardroom, full of monsters having an all-hands meeting. A little curious poking around will land you in the reactor area, cheekily in the shape of the UAC logo. The finale, of course, is set in hell; you find an entrance to the underworld in the boardroom (where else would it be?) and it takes you on a rather spooky journey complete with invisible stairs, marked by black candles (the first known use of this mapping trick.) At the far end you'll find your missing buddies, flaming lost souls floating over them and presided over by a cyberdemon; you'll have to first kill his two baron buddies before taking on the big guy and his lost soul entourage.

Combat is mostly imps and shotgunners, especially outside; there are a few pinkies about, but oddly the majority of them are spectres. Inside are a few cacodemons, though they're not really given a lot of room to maneuver. Barons are used quite sparingly, with just three of them at key points (the third one is fought in the boardroom.) I've heard people describe the map as "empty" and I don't think that's strictly true; the rooms are fairly large, yes, but there's plenty of combat to go around, especially on UV. I think it's more that they're occupying a realistic space, and realistic spaces are large. Have you actually been to an office complex? It's full of big spaces, big rooms. Maybe that's not conducive to what most people think accounts for fun gameplay, but it works for me!

Doomsday of UAC is one of those timeless classics. While it's old enough that one of the mapping tricks it makes use of was actually broken by Ultimate Doom, most any source port will make exceptions for it, making the map finishable. Personally what I like it for is precisely its dedication to Doomcute -- while it's fairly primitive in that regard, you can see how Leo strived to make it look like an actual place, something that even a lot of Doomcute practicioners don't always do. It's one thing to use sector art to make a bedroom or dining room, it's quite another to actually make what might be a conceivably functional location -- with bathrooms, parking spaces, gates, and all the other things you might need. Doomsday of UAC in that regard is a baby step on the way to Duke Nukem 3D, Goldeneye 64, Half-Life and beyond.

-June<3