E2M6: Halls of the Damned (Doom)

E2M6: Halls of the Damned is the sixth map of The Shores of Hell in Doom. It was designed by Sandy Petersen and it uses the music track "Sinister." The par time is 6:00.

The base featured in the level is likely (despite its hellish name) man-made and is perhaps supposed to resemble an underground bunker or tunnel complex such as the real Cheyenne Mountain base.

Walkthrough
Head into the room in front of you and turn left to find a door, behind which is a switch that will open a wall back in the start room leading to a perimeter tunnel. Take a right to enter a large open area with a nukage river running through the middle. At the other end of the room is a Berserk pack on a pedestal.

Picking it up will cause the river to flood and another wall to open revealing a tunnel of nukage. Head down it to press the switch at the end. Head back to the entrance to the nukage tunnel and make a left into the top left part of the perimeter tunnel to find a wall has lowered revealing a pair of doors, a locked exit door and the door to the main parts of the level.

Official

 * 1) In the north end of the map is an octagonal grey brick room with exits in the four cardinal directions (as well as the entrance you came from in the southwest). Go through the door in the west; the area behind it counts as a secret. Beware of the crusher here. To exit, either quickly return through the door, or flip the switch in the western alcove.
 * 2) From the octagonal hub mentioned above, go through the door in the north. Step onto the raised platform in the next room to trigger the secret, as well as an enemy ambush.
 * 3) After getting the yellow skull key, follow the winding corridor in the east of the octagonal hub. Open the yellow door and flip the "exit" switch. It is a fake, and will lower you into another enemy-infested area. Go through the door ahead of you to get back up.

Non-official

 * 1) There is a chainsaw in the monster alcove across from the blue skull key.

Bugs

 * The "hanging leg" decoration in the starting area (Thing 274) has no flags set for any of the difficulty classes, so it does not actually appear in the level.
 * In the hidden alcove between the blue key and wood maze, two extra demons appear in ultra-violence on top of two other demons, rendering them immobile. This blocks the Baron of Hell until one of the demons is killed.
 * The crossable linedef 302, located in the wood maze to the left of the backpack, has line type 2 "W1 Open Door" on it. Because the line also features a non-zero, but unused tag (11), crossing it has no ill effects on the level.
 * Like in many of the preceding areas, there is an "entrance door" (DOOR3) right behind the player's start location. However on this level, there is a corridor running right behind the start room leaving no room for even a possible teleporter pad behind the door. While not being a proper bug, it is rather an oddity in level design.
 * The eastern corner next to the blue key can be passed through if approached at a precise angle. Doing so causes an effect similar to that of No Clipping, but you cannot return to the normal map. With a bit of luck, you can use the exit switch from outside the room, resulting in a time of around 0:28 if a player completes the level up to that point as quickly as possible. An example of this can be found here.

Records
The Compet-N records for the map are:

gram Notes
A couple of revenants appear in the PlayStation/Saturn ports' versions of the level.

The level is references in the Doom novels, known as simply the "Central Halls". Though not going into grand detail, the multi-colored exit doors and the dark, maze-like corridors of halls are the main focal points of its references.