How there were wads in the 90s

[Fobos]

How doom wads are made in the 90s doom builder did not exist so what were they made with

[esselfortium]

Hammer and chisel into a rock.

[YMB]

 

 

Edited February 9, 2022 by YMB

[Chris Hansen]

 

[floatRand]

With hex-editing. 

[Dusty_Rhodes]

Just now, Chris Hansen said:

 

The other answers are damn funny, but this is the best response. Thank goodness for Doom Builder.

[Hitboi]

Using magic in Sandy Petersen's basement.

[Thelokk]

I remember I got a DOS Doom level editor (don't even remember the name) bundled in a shovelware disk way back in 1996 or something. My computer wouldn't even run it. Good times. 

[Kor]

In the 90s I used DoomEd (for Windows and not the one affiliated with Id).  But then I started realizing it wasn't that great for what I wanted to do, so I switched to DETH (Doom Editor for Total Headcases, for DOS) to make my levels.  Sometimes I used WadAuthor (Windows) to merge levels together. And I used WinTex (for Windows) to do wad file editing.  And that started causing problems (like randomly deleting textures) so I switched to DOS program called Patcher, which had no graphical interface whatsoever (you had to type everything in a text file and then run it through Patcher.  It was a pain but I never had any problem with it).

Edited February 9, 2022 by Kor
grammar mistake

[7Mahonin]

They had map editors back then too. They even had books made to teach how to use the editors and utilities of the time. 

[RHhe82]

I remember using DEU as my first Doom map editor in 1994 I believe. Long before Doom 2 came out anyway. DCK (Doom Construction Kit) came a little later on, towards the end of the millennium, I think. There were some other editors as well, but those two were the ones I used a lot.

 

And boy, was it hard work. I don't mean to sound smug on how good things were in the old days, because in hindsight it was awful. It's one thing that we needed to do the alignments manually - that's calculating the correct offsets and because there were no 3d views (our computers wouldn't be able to handle them anyway) we needed to run our levels to see if the textures would match. Rinse and repeat, or stop caring about how good the level's going to look.

 

Worse still, I clearly remember that it was very easy to break level. Linedefs had to be drawn in a very specific way so the sidedefs would point the right way. Also, I remember having to manually adjust the sectors the sidedefs were facing at. I can't remember why I had to do that, was it because I had broke up something myself, or was it just that the early editors couldn't reliably keep track of things.

 

While I'm old enough to feel nostalgia and crave for the days of my youth for now the world is ruined and all, this is something I definitely don't miss. When I first booted up UDB after 20 years of not mapping, I was struck with awe that I could just lay out the level, draw linedefs as I please and the editor would take care of accounting for me. That alignment is just a keyboard press away, and then you do a little fine-tuning in the editor and see the results right away.

[MTrop]

I made a lot of my early stuff using the Shareware version of an editor called DeeP, and I read this book: The Doom Hacker's Guide

 

There was no in-editor 3D preview, but you could still hit a button and it would load up Doom.

[kmxexii]

john romero and sandy petersen were in the closet making wads and i saw one of the wads and the wad looked at me!

[Fletcher`]

DCK 3.62F, baby.

[Lawrence]

When they made Doom, they made a level editor with it - Doomed.  https://doomwiki.org/wiki/DoomEd

 

I remember using WADED in the early 2000's.

 

[DevilMyEyes]

People had to connect their computers into John Carmack's brain, he's got a fully functional doom editor inside, go check it out!

[Kor]

1 hour ago, RHhe82 said:

And boy, was it hard work. I don't mean to sound smug on how good things were in the old days, because in hindsight it was awful. It's one thing that we needed to do the alignments manually - that's calculating the correct offsets and because there were no 3d views (our computers wouldn't be able to handle them anyway) we needed to run our levels to see if the textures would match. Rinse and repeat, or stop caring about how good the level's going to look.

DETH/ZETH had a automatic texture aligner.  What you would do was select all the linedefs you wanted to align in order (one way for front sidedefs and the other for back sidedefs) and then tell it you wanted to align the textures.  It was a pain, but when I used DoomEd I couldn't do that, I had to align textures manually, as you said.  So I thought it was awesome.  Now?  I'd hate to have to go back to such a system.  :). 

[Roofi]

[Maes]

3 hours ago, YMB said:

 

You mean SLIGE right? That thing was the bomb!

Edited February 9, 2022 by Maes

[Major Arlene]

https://www.google.com/

[Doomlover77]

I started making wads for Doom2 using DEU2 in December 1995 & February 1996. 
 

in June 1996 I switched editors from DEU2 to DeeP 8.35s found on PC gamer Cd #30. It was a good editor. Made a few little levels for Doom2. Very successful. 
 

And then in January 1997-September 1999 I made levels for Doom, Doom2, heretic and Hexen using DeeP8.35s. However some of those levels were conversions of my own original levels to other games i.e. a Doom2 level was converted to Doom, Heretic and Hexen using Dm2conv and Her2hex . I still own these levels ! 

Edited February 10, 2022 by Doomlover77

[Captain POLAND]

Very badly.

 

(kidding lol).

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

I remember trying mapping for Doom 2 when I was also trying to map for Duke Nukem 3D. Both editors ran in DOS and I can't for the life of me remember what either of them was called. The Duke editor had things like 3D view, slopes, portals (like interactive portals, I guess), fake ROR, deep water effect and a ton of other cool features. I remember thinking who would map for Doom when there's Duke? And here I am two decades later, mapping for Doom.

[Kristian Nebula]

4 hours ago, Chris Hansen said:

 

 

This was fun to watch. I remember starting with DeeP 8.35 shareware, which had the CTRL+D drawing mode, but with the 800 linedef limit back in 1996. I was also using a bit of DEU and DETH, too. Got a full version of DeeP eventually and used it until I switched to DB around 2005-2006. 

[RHhe82]

26 minutes ago, HrnekBezucha said:

I remember thinking who would map for Doom when there's Duke?

 

I know, right? I did like Doom quite a deal more back then, but Duke Nukem was cool at the time with seemingly more opportunities for creative level design.

 

But if the first Doom map editors weren't exactly user friendly, the Duke3D editor that was shipped with the game (right?) was even worse. I could never figure out how to actually do stuff other than simplest of doors and lifts. So, when my poorest Doom levels were somewhat playable string of rooms and hallways or very short completable levels, my best Duke3D levels were single rooms with some puddle in the middle and a "train" (slightly raised octagonal floor) that either wouldn't budge or that would blow through the walls and possibly crash the game.

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

5 minutes ago, RHhe82 said:

 

I know, right? I did like Doom quite a deal more back then, but Duke Nukem was cool at the time with seemingly more opportunities for creative level design.

 

But if the first Doom map editors weren't exactly user friendly, the Duke3D editor that was shipped with the game (right?) was even worse. I could never figure out how to actually do stuff other than simplest of doors and lifts. So, when my poorest Doom levels were somewhat playable string of rooms and hallways or very short completable levels, my best Duke3D levels were single rooms with some puddle in the middle and a "train" (slightly raised octagonal floor) that either wouldn't budge or that would blow through the walls and possibly crash the game.

 

Yeah, I managed to figure out how to make a classic slide-upward door, and just used that everywhere. Those awesome looking space doors that split in the middle and slide sideways, that's wizardry, as far as I'm concerned. Somewhat realistic environments (Duke3D textures invite for that) but with boxy rooms and 90 degree walls. And no cohesion. Open a door, now you're in a hotel with empty rooms that are so small, you have to walk on the bed. Open a door at the end of the hallway and you're on a rooftop corridor(?). Jump down and you're in a subway. Of course, any doors would gib you. That's Build Engine classic. I was like 8 and I didn't give a damn. It was a hot mess but it was a mess I made. And the feeling of making a map is just as good now as it was back then.

The moment I found out how to make a lift for the fake ROR, watching my character on the automap slide through solid walls and void into the destination room, that stuck with me. Blew my pre-pubescent mind. These little things are to live for.

 

I'm pretty sure the editor came with my copy of DN3D. Not 100% sure it was supposed to be included. Just like the editor for Doom came with the copy of Doom. And I'm pretty sure that was not supposed to be included.

[PsychEyeball]

11 minutes ago, HrnekBezucha said:

I'm pretty sure the editor came with my copy of DN3D. Not 100% sure it was supposed to be included.

Build was indeed shipped with Duke Nukem 3D. I can't remember if it was on the good old radioactive logo CD on which Duke Nukem 3D 1.3 was (this one included Duke Nukem 1 and 2 for free), but my copy of Atomic Edition had Build on it.

 

I had fun as a kid printing out pages and pages of documentation to try and get things done with it, even though in retrospect it was a nightmare to work with. Made me respect the efforts of level designers a whole lot!

[forgettable pyromaniac]

6 hours ago, 7Mahonin said:

They had map editors back then too. They even had books made to teach how to use the editors and utilities of the time. 

ayo what books? wanna read through some for fun, and the only one i ever found... couldn't find a PDF, or even an archive or it.

[Kor]

16 minutes ago, forgettable pyromaniac said:

ayo what books? wanna read through some for fun, and the only one i ever found... couldn't find a PDF, or even an archive or it.

Tricks of the Doom Gurus was one of them.  And it came with a CD containing editors and hundreds of levels.

[7Mahonin]

28 minutes ago, forgettable pyromaniac said:

ayo what books? wanna read through some for fun, and the only one i ever found... couldn't find a PDF, or even an archive or it.

Doom Construction Kit was the one I had, it came with a disc, and there was also Doom The Hacker’s Guide, but that was more for DEH editing. There’s a few more but those are the only two I own. I would say that these books are outdated, but not entirely. There is still some things you can learn from these books, but above all else you will understand what it was like then compared to now. The books put a large emphasis on understanding the limitations of the Doom engine, many of which, if not all, can be bypassed in this day and age.