Barry Christian vs. Gary Ragland

I don't know why exactly, but I always tend to view these two authors similarly. Maybe it's because they were both among the first to create something with any kind of code changes (i.e. hex editing).

Anyways from Gary I liked Assassinate Hitler and Schabbs 2000 very much (along with Episode Four/Countdown to Disaster but those weren't released until late 2001/2002 when the source code was clearly out already). And from Barry Christian, I'm not a big fan of a lot of his earlier works (all he way up to Six Depths of Terrorism, to be honest, though that and Domination are okay), but I remember immensely enjoying Armageddon and The Road to Neushwanstein. So in the timeframe of focus it happens to be two major games from each author.

On the topic of Barry's works, I didn't like the occasional hidden keys and am tempted to knock a little off because there are no skill settings as far as I can tell, but one strength to both Armageddon and TRTN is that they are well-structured mods and have very memorable endings. For Gary, I don't recall the endings being nearly as memorable, but the mapping itself is just as good IMO, there are skill settings, and I don't recall any mandatory items being hidden behind a pushwall.

So in the end, I can greatly appreciate both authors' works and I think all four games I'm mentioning are excellent mods, but honestly I can't say for sure which one I like better as they both have a few unique strengths as well as slight weaknesses.

As thus, that being said, who do you prefer (or do you have a general tie between the two as well)?

I voted tied.

Gary Ragland had 2 masterpieces Ass H and Schabbs 2000. His other 3 sets I'd describe as very good.

Barry's first 2 sets had way too many bosses. Domination and 6 Depths of terr were very good and his final 2 sets armageddon and trtn I'd describe as masterpieces.

2 masterpieces each and about the same number of very good levels each.

I voted for Gary. I like Barry, but in terms of decoration, compactness and excitement, nothing beats Gary Ragland.

BTW just a quick bit of trivia: re Ass H with Gary, did anyone notice the ceiling color sequence follows exactly E5L1-E6L10 of the original Wolf3D? I bet it was just hex-edited to make the one episode in the game start on Level 41 of Wolfenstein (even though it says Level 1 as usual). Schabbs 2000 OTOH seems to have all unique ceiling colors.

Oh and (in Schabbs 2000) I wonder if Chris peeked in for Level 9, the game's one secret level (the normal elevator in Level 8 has the secret floor code and thus skips you straight to Level 10).

That was an old times method to potentially make Level 9 of any episode a secret (and Level 10 the boss) level though. So my wonder about Chris' involvement is in the level itself.

Schabbs wrote:I voted tied.

Gary Ragland had 2 masterpieces Ass H and Schabbs 2000. His other 3 sets I'd describe as very good.

Barry's first 2 sets had way too many bosses. Domination and 6 Depths of terr were very good and his final 2 sets armageddon and trtn I'd describe as masterpieces.

2 masterpieces each and about the same number of very good levels each.

Seems like about my thoughts though re Gary I'd honestly call new30 just 'above average' at most and I don't really see a quality difference from Ass H onwards (including E4 and C2D). Sure S2000 is by far his biggest set (and Ass H second) but that doesn't mean the smaller ones aren't mapped as well.

Chris and Gary split level 9. You can obviously see who did which part both in the gameplay as well as the overview map which reads "Chokage" in Chris' part for kicks.

I don't know how to get the overview map because S2000 does not have the typical GAMEMAPS/MAPHEAD files setup; they have different names and I don't know how to 'fool' any editor into reading them.

But also I'm wondering how that really weird ceiling in Level 9 came up. It was also used in Level 60 of Barry's Armageddon though (I think).