Talk:Master Levels for Doom II

Some levels that were created by the contracted designers were not used in the Master Levels, but were still included in Maximum Doom.  This statement is misleading because it implies that the extra levels were submitted as part of the contract. The available documentation fails to support that assertion; for example, Dr Sleep specifically states that he was never asked for permission to include RECANT11.WAD in Maximum Doom. It seems more likely that the authors were simply well known in the community because they had each released some solid maps previously, and so when id got out their shovel to fill up the CD, those maps happened to turn up as being popular. Ryan W 17:40, 6 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Actually, there were some levels that were submitted to the Master Levels project that were rejected. Chris Klie specifically mentions this in the The Un-Official Master Levels for DOOM II FAQ


 * I produced a total of 12 levels for the project, 6 of which were included. The out-takes (The Fury; The CPU; The DMZ; Device One; The Hive and The Enemy Inside) can be found on CompuServe's Action Games Forum (GO GAM586) as part of CDKSTUFF.ZIP, which contains all of my freeware levels for DOOM, DOOM II and Heretic.


 * However, none of these appeared in Maximum Doom, and were thought to be lost with the demise of CompuServe, until a recent thread at Doomworld caused Chris himself to show up and upload these levels to the idgames archive.


 * The only maps from any of the Master Levels authors that appeared in Maximum Doom were stuff that was already released/available, so I am removing this from the article. Nuxius 23:18, 6 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I reworded it to be more accurate and added it back in.Nuxius 23:45, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Dropped author
Hey, as a piece of late-to-arrive trivia regarding the authors; should the article mention the "seventh author"? When ML was initially compiled, Sverre's levels were not part of the add-on. Shawn (Green) had already decided on the levels/authors, and he thus already had a full set; there was simply no room left for Sverre's maps. When Jay (Wilbur) sent out the required contracts it came to light the so-far-unknown seventh author had (for some reason) lied about his age, and any contracts would be legally invalid. According to Shawn "the kid's dad freaked out". The team quietly dropped the author's levels and Sverre Kvernmo stepped aboard in his stead. Most people who have read the ML FAQ know some of the above already, but the rest of the details are from the id people themselves, gathered from various e-mails exchanges I've had with them. Today no-one of the people who were involved back then (Jay Wilbur, John Carmack, Shawn Green, or John Romero) can remember who this author was. It would be fun to know who it was, though... --82.181.253.186 20:11, July 16, 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I meant "seventh author", of course. --82.181.253.186 20:43, July 17, 2010 (UTC)
 * By the by, better late than never, but here's the e-mail convo (edited for consistency; all the quotes are real, I only placed them in order):
 * Me: "Wasn't there an author that was dropped and Sverre took his stead?"
 * John Romero: "I don't remember any author being replaced on ML. Sverre was there from the beginning because of Eternal Doom."
 * Shawn Green: "Yes, I remember that. If I remember correctly, all the level spots were taken up when Sverre and I finally got in contact and I had to turn him down. Then at the last minute, I found out one of the guys lied about his age and we couldn't use him. The kid's dad freaked out when Jay sent him a contract to sign, so the spot opened up and Sverre was the first guy on my backup list."
 * Me: "Who was this author? John? Jay?"
 * John Carmack: "Sorry, I don’t know anything about that."
 * Jay Wilbur: "Wow, that's a blast from the past. I really wish I could help but I lack recall of the details around this."
 * Shawn Green: "I don't remember who the kid was."
 * Can this piece of historical curio be added to the article? 128.214.133.2 13:18, October 20, 2010 (UTC)

Rejected Levels
Someone should post the list of all levels that were meant to be included but got rejected.

Question about zdmlmenu
This isn't exactly about the master levels and may be considered off topic to some extent, but I have yet to find a thread to post questions about zdmlmenu. Anyways, has anyone else had the problem with zdmlmenu where on certain levels, after dying, the music will rest back to "running from evil" instead of using the custom music provided?