Compilation news

All right, before we move on to more mods, let me announce something loud and clear: our indispensable Dermuda has put together a tremendous archive of all Mac Wolfenstein mods currently known to him. The archive can be downloaded at

If you have any interest in Mac Wolf modding, make sure to download it, as it contains over a thousand mods as well as Excel files that list all scenarios known by (but not necessarily in possession of) Dermuda at the time. Get the thing, play some obscure mods, maybe look at the Missing Scenarios document and see if you can produce any. Get going!

And what do we have in terms of mods today? Just mapsets, and I'm afraid that as time goes on, the mapset-to-Partial/Total Conversion ratio will only increase, as we have ported many of the latter, but there still hundreds of the former left. But mapsets are fun too, yes? Yes. And what we have today is a simple compilation... a compilation of compilations.

Our first compilation of the day is called (amazingly enough) Compilation, but I'm not sure who made it. Clubey gives author as "unknown" and Dermuda's spreadsheet only ascribes authorship (by one Julien12) to one of the three variants. Well, perhaps he made all three. Versions are from years 1995, 1996 and 2002. Chronologically, Compilation started out as a First Encounter effort - six maps of variable size, varied design and lots of enemies. The 1996 version upgrades it to Second Encounter capabilities, in that almost all enemies on most maps were replaced by Officers in a rather puzzling design decision. The 2002 version apparently discards that and focuses on the 1995 output again, touching up a few things and making much more reasonable use of Second Encounter features. Play the 2002 one for optimal experience, or all three to see how a mod evolved over time.

The second and last compilation is called Compilation des 21 niveaux, which reportedly means "compilation of 21 levels" when translated from French. It was made by Jean-Sebastien Rimmel. True to its name, it offers 20 maps for the Third Encounter (although I only see First Encounter enemies used). Those maps are nothing out of the ordinary, many being just a bunch of mostly rectangular rooms with a lot of enemies, although they significantly grow in size and complexity in the last five. A potentially more interesting thing can be found in Clubey's readme: he says he modified these maps slightly, removing the items automatically placed by WolfEdit in the bottom right corner (many modders leave those intact for some reason) and placing crowns and secret pushwalls near the exit elevators as needed. I've seen a bunch of maps before where the only treasure item was a crown or one-up right in the exit elevator, so it's interesting to learn that it might have been Clubey's work. And as a community maintainer, Clubey isn't unique in his desire to improve releases: as far as I know, Brian Lowe (the owner of Wolfenstein 3D Dome and some other websites) also slightly modified certain releases before placing them for download. Personally I would have left them untouched, but I guess either approach has its pros and cons.

Next time: something with new graphics maybe? How about that?!