Would the original Doom levels stand out today?

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

2 hours ago, Thelokk said:

 

It would have melted a lot of home rigs, I'm sure. My PC back then could barely deal with UD's requirements. 

Oh right, I forgot about that :D How about releasing it a few months after Quake is released and John & co departs?

[Thelokk]

2 minutes ago, HrnekBezucha said:

Oh right, I forgot about that :D How about releasing it a few months after Quake is released and John & co departs?

 

Completely ignored, at least where I lived. Quake was HUGE in a way Doom never was when it came out, and the latter was mostly forgotten. There were literally 8 page spreads in national mainstream computer magazines.

Edited March 31, 2022 by Thelokk

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

8 minutes ago, Thelokk said:

 

Completely ignored, at least where I lived. Quake was HUGE in a way Doom never was when it came out, and the latter was mostly forgotten. There were literally 8 page spreads in national mainstream computer magazines.

Huh, interesting.. Guess that makes a lot of sense, though. I got my first computer much later, so I experienced Doom, Quake, Duke Nukem 3D, Descent and many others all at once. The sense of progress is entirely lost on me.

[Nine Inch Heels]

1 hour ago, Doomkid said:

Well, it's not the approach I suggested either, so you're preaching to the choir a bit here. Giving some weight to historical significance in a grading system, which is what I suggested, is in no way the same thing as writing off other aspects of grading the wad.

I'm well aware of what you're trying to argue, I just wanted to present a hypothetical that went off the rails to illustrate that historical significance and perceived, temporary enjoyment while playing don't mix very well...

 

If you go down the rabbit hole of undermining the, for lack of a better word, "purity" of a grading system by roping externalities into the equation you're not only walking the slippery slope that is a difference of opinion with regards to what constitutes "good gameplay", you're also going to get tangled up in all sorts of debates about what has been inspired by something else, and to what degree...

 

On the subject of handstands while painting: As far as I'm aware, and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, id at the time had pretty much some of the best gear you could get your hands on available to themselves while they made doom and doom2, and they certainly seemed to be well-fed and hydrated, but I digress... I have yet to see anyone hand out any "pity points" for something that was made on an old piece of hardware, or with an outdated builder that won't even run on a system like win10, for example. Nobody's ever really cared about it, unless the work they've been looking at made it a point to get across that it's been made "barehanded" while everybody else has access to power tools (or if the circumstances under which people had to work were nothing short of scandalous like for example the shit going down at blizzard). I don't like the idea that, at the bottom line, considerations such as this will invariably end up giving preferential treatment to anything made in the days of old, because technology is, and always was, moving forwards. I would be singing a different song if Romero et al had to deal with conditions similar to those in Bezo's "Box-mines", but my understanding is that for the most part, they had a good time doing what they did.

 

In the end, I don't think how something came to be is as important as how well something turned out. You might argue that a painter who can pull off a Mona Lisa while doing a handstand has "mad skills", but the "product" I'll be taking home at the end of the day is still a Mona Lisa. The painter may be "better" in a fashion not directly related to painting, but the painting is still the same. When it's on a wall somewhere, I'm looking at the painting, not the artist doing all sorts of weird shit while producing it.

 

There is probably also an argument to be made that WAD-reviews don't need to play the same old record time and time again. The historical significance of the IWADs doesn't need to be repeated ad nauseam. People who care about that sort of stuff know it anyway, so why spend time and energy on reiterating what's been said countless times already in the first place..?

Edited March 31, 2022 by Nine Inch Heels

[PKr]

So many wads and mods and what not have "Doom" in their names... AT LONG LAST somebody named their wad "DOOM.WAD". Never thought I'd live to see this day.

Edited March 31, 2022 by PKr

[Captain Keen]

I feel like I perhaps have a unique perspective on this.

 

I grew up with Doom. In fact, Commander Keen was the first video or computer game I ever played. I loved that entire series and all of the Apogee games (some of which came out after Doom). I remember when Wolf 3D was the coolest game in town, but I was disappointed in it, and much preferred the platform action of Keen and its clones. Then I read about Doom, and thought, "that's what I wanted Wolfenstein to be!" In other words, I was actually looking forward to Doom before it came out. I played Knee-Deep in the Dead in 1993 the week it was released. I played a bunch of the free early levels too in 1994-1995.

 

Around 1999 though I got into other things and literally forgot all about Doom for the most part, with a brief re-interest when Doom 3 came out (which I never finished and thought was blah). Then in 2011 after getting a new computer I decided to give OG Doom another shot. I hadn't touched it in over a decade. Hadn't really thought about it, either. I played Knee-Deep in the Dead assuming that it would be horribly dated and I'd laugh at the fact that I used to be so blown away by it. Instead, I couldn't believe how entertaining it was. I played through it twice. It completely blew me away, and in my opinion it had easily withstood the test of time. That was when I played my first post-90s wads, too. At the time Jenesis was fairly new and that was the first 'modern' wad I played, which I loved, and I slowly got back into Doom because of the quality of level design in Knee-Deep. I wanted MORE of that experience.

 

Now, with that said, I don't think the level design of the original games is all equal. Episodes 2 and 3 are a major step down from Knee-Deep, though still entertaining, and they hold up better than Doom 2 imo. Mt. Erebus especially holds up well. Doom 2 kinda lowkey sucks from a level design POV. There are only a few good levels, and nearly half of the game I would say is poor (again, talking about just level design here). The visuals are a lot more bland, too, with a lot of brown drab areas that blend together in the mind. Doom II is special because its base gameplay improvements are great; a new weapon, much needed new mid-tier enemies, new level features and linedefs and so on. There's a reason it's the main IWAD that is used today. But as a collection of levels, it is far more dated than the first Doom. TNT Evilution is just bad (imo) and Plutonia has dated too, as it now feels very samsey and I think many recent WADs just make it almost irrelevant except of course in historical context.

 

Knee-Deep in the Dead, though? Still entertaining. I probably play through it once a year. After Knee-Deep, honestly, I'd probably rank Episode 4 as the next best set of levels. The visuals of those are kind of bland, though. Hell settings have always been my favorite, but Inferno was never that great a series of levels, with only one masterpiece (E3M6) and a few straight duds.

 

So, the TLDR version is that yes, Knee-Deep I still think would hold up if it was released today (in some hypothetical world where it didn't exist but Doom as a whole did). It wouldn't blow minds but the pure entertainment level of it would gain new fans and I think get some notice. The level design is still fantastic, if simple, and it's just "fun" for lack of a better word. The atmosphere is still unique, as another poster pointed out. Not all of us only care about the fanciest or largest or hardest wads, either. There is an art to simplicity. Personally, I'm actually a fan of more vanilla gameplay rather than slaughter wads, though I also like wads that have a modern feel without becoming *full* slaughter. Some examples: Valiant, Heartland, Eviternity, and now Elementalism. All fantastic and among the best wads made by anyone. Many of the wads I keep returning to, though, have that vanilla feel, but perhaps with some modern twists (such as map size). Examples include Jenesis, No End in Sight, Deathless, Earthless, Sinergy, Moonblood, Reverie, Zone 300/400, Unholy Realms, Whispers of Satan, Hellbound, Akeldama, TNT: Revilution and most of Scythe 2. Yes, I also loved SIGIL, and can't wait for the sequel.

[PasokonDeacon]

I think there's still enough simple but effective design and uncanny elements to the original IWADs for them to get some attention, supposing this hypothetical where everything but the originals had released. Of course, this hypothetical's nothing new and always feel farcical to discuss. Just look at any successful new E1/"id Did" tribute WAD release and you'll see a regular rotation of players who really enjoy old-school experiences vs. those who can't be bothered. That's likely the kind of reception you'd get now if doom.wad/doomII.wad got memory holed today and they re-released tomorrow. People would feel nostalgia and advanced appreciation of something they've known yet can't remember, with only its imitations since as reference. Basically, we'd see Doomworld turn into a Jorge Luis Borges novel overnight!

 

WRT Dean of Doom/ONEMANDOOM/similar review outlets and their approaches, I definitely think the schism between historic canonization and evolving play standards canonization has been with us since the Cacowards became a thing. Because let's face it, these reviews exist to curate, to recommend to players how and where their time and efforts should go. There's always an agenda behind a review of any work in any medium, not that I want that to sound like some nefarious thing since it rarely is! The best outcome in our community will be more new commentators curating more and more new players venturing beyond just what the big influencers suggest. It'll always be a struggle for one's maps/mods to stand out when there's just so many, unless the curators start to have brutally high/exclusionary standards for what makes Doom fan content "worthwhile". So we have a critical scope problem that deserves multiple approaches, ranging from the Megawad Club to YouTube overviews to recommendation charts to the Wadazine and company. Some criteria are so opposed to each other (the obvious being "how well it felt then" vs. "how well it feels for me now") that we'll likely never find that magic compromise that suits most people.

 

We're at the point where the middle ground between critical discourse and player-convenient discourse has begun to unravel. Social media and Discord communities would more quickly pass over the hypothetical "doom.wad in 2022" release far quicker than forum-goers would. You also have great articles here like Roots which haven't yet been made into a YouTube equivalent, let alone derivative deep dives which the main stable of well-known Doom YTers stay away from. I'd love to watch a cross-analysis of widely played mods and the tools used to produce them, as well as what general know-how informed those works. That's the kind of "special feature" enrichment I crave for movies, music, and games among other arts, but you can't have a one-size-fits-all approach to that either.

Edited April 1, 2022 by PasokonDeacon

[Nikku4211]

12 hours ago, Thelokk said:

This is, in fact, one of the big gripes I have with Doom 2 - a huge step back in level design, at least in my opinion. If I had to choose which one has at least some staying power, I'd choose Ultimate Doom.

Even when compared to the first 3 episodes?

 

Reminder: Doom 1 Episode 4 came out after Doom 2.

15 hours ago, Roofi said:

I like Ultimate Doom for my part but I have fairly low standards. They teach good level design but they definitely lack of real challenge if you don't play on Nightmare.

Even E4 has lack of real challenge? I've heard it's way more difficult than episodes 1-3, and I can confirm that from me trying to play it.

 

8 hours ago, HrnekBezucha said:

If it was released today as a megawad, it would get some blueberries for old school design, and strict adherence to the vanilla limits.

While people still do make vanilla levels for Doom occasionally, I guess even those have a higher standard for visual design compared to real 1993-1995 Id Software maps.

And perhaps higher standard for game design too? Since back in '93 FPSes as a whole were revolutionary to most people, so even in a parallel universe where the IWAD had crappier mapsets, Doom would still be a famous, important game.

 

8 hours ago, sandwedge said:

Haha that's a funny idea too.  Assuming Sigil somehow worked under vanilla constraints.  considering visually it wouldnt run in DOS, if it somehow did back in the day I think people would be awestruck on how it was even running lol.  But design-wise compared to everything else in 94 it would be legendary.  Imagine the soundtrack too?  And omg, in terms of establishing visual design, imagine the number of eyes we would be shooting over the years lol...

 

Unless, y'know, Id Software actually raises the limits of the engine they were developing specifically for their game. Not sure how many tutti-fruttis would show up, though.

It would definitely mess up people's PCs, though.

 

And by soundtrack, do you mean the MIDI pack, or the Buckethead one that would've only been in the CD version like what happened with Hexen? Since in '94 most people were still using floppy disks for everything.

 

6 hours ago, HrnekBezucha said:

Oh right, I forgot about that :D How about releasing it a few months after Quake is released and John & co departs?

Then it'd get received poorly because in 1996 Doom was considered 'outdated', and not 'oldschool' or 'nostalgic'.

 

Like Final Doom did back in the day, actually.

8 hours ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

On the subject of handstands while painting: As far as I'm aware, and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, id at the time had pretty much some of the best gear you could get your hands on available to themselves while they made doom and doom2, and they certainly seemed to be well-fed and hydrated, but I digress... I have yet to see anyone hand out any "pity points" for something that was made on an old piece of hardware, or with an outdated builder that won't even run on a system like win10, for example. Nobody's ever really cared about it, unless the work they've been looking at made it a point to get across that it's been made "barehanded" while everybody else has access to power tools (or if the circumstances under which people had to work were nothing short of scandalous like for example the shit going down at blizzard). I don't like the idea that, at the bottom line, considerations such as this will invariably end up giving preferential treatment to anything made in the days of old, because technology is, and always was, moving forwards. I would be singing a different song if Romero et al had to deal with conditions similar to those in Bezo's "Box-mines", but my understanding is that for the most part, they had a good time doing what they did.

Even if Id had good tools and skilled programmers, back in 1993, FPSes weren't that commonplace. A lot of people weren't used to them, or at least how the genre's game design would benefit from innovations in engine technology.

 

Thus, Doom 1 was designed in an era where FPS game design wasn't taken for granted, thus pretty much everything they were doing was new for 1993 standards.

 

In other words, even if Doom wasn't the first FPS by Id, they were still greatly expanding the book on FPS design. They're bound to make some serious mistakes that don't age well, but were fair for its day.

 

That's just how it is when you're experimenting with technology that was new to most people when it came to video games at the time.

 

Thus, some things expected from Doom WADs now weren't as expected back in 1993, which is why it's important to consider the time period when reviewing.

 

Now, I'm not saying you should always consider how significant something eventually became when reviewing it. I'm just saying I prefer judging a game by the standards of the time period, and perhaps even considering that people at the time would not know for sure how influential Doom's design would eventually be in the then-future.

 

Because now is the time where we know which things were and weren't influential, which things were and weren't successful. But back when it was new, you wouldn't know this. You would just see it as what it was, though even then some things would feel impressive or revolutionary because of how different most games were at this point in time.

 

And yeah, 'At the time' has basically become a mantra here. But I feel it's for a good reason.

[Nine Inch Heels]

17 minutes ago, Nikku4211 said:

And yeah, 'At the time' has basically become a mantra here. But I feel it's for a good reason.

I'm not entirely sure what we disagree on just yet...

 

"For its time", it was an awesome product - a pioneering one at that, with all the experimentation that was necessary and the inevitable failure here and there. So far I'm with you. Where I am stuck is this idea that a review that was created decades later - decades worth of evolution of the genre itself as a whole, as well as the modding community at large - somehow needs to go out of its way to "pretend" that it is, in fact, not a contemporary review...

 

...Because that's what you do when you hand out "nostalgia points", you look at something through the lens of "the days of old", and, most likely, you're not even going to do a particularly good job at that, because this fascination with a product like classic doom as people experienced it back when one could consider oneself fortunate to own a 486 with 100MHZ or more isn't something you could even hope to re-live these days. It's an experience you can have only once, it's that fleeting and nebulous.

 

So, from where I am looking at it, it is way more "honest" and less "half-assed" to talk about how one feels about something today, in a modern day context, rather than trying to somehow conjure up the magic of days gone by, but without ever being able to convey it with words... The question "how well something aged" is just as interesting to ask and answer as "how significant and influential something has been" over the course of a couple decades. It feels wrong to me to scrutinize someone who is looking to find an answer to a question someone else thinks shouldn't be asked like that. In cases likes this, I'm a firm believer in putting your money where your mouth is. If you disagree with the approach, go ahead and do a review of doom.WAD the way you think it should be done...

[DarkScythe13]

Its an interesting thought. Its hard to remove the nostalgia glasses - for me personally theres something I really genuinely love about Ultimate Doom’s levels though. Unmistakably fun, surreal, memorable in a way that more complex modern games arent and unhindered by conventions around realistic location or sensible or practical structures. Doom I cant help feel was something special for more than what it brought forward from a tech standpoint. Its aged far better and has so much more on offer than Wolf3D rigid limited design, but simple and arcadey enough to allow the map devs enough freedom to create some unique and fun maps. Perhaps Im part of a crazy minority but I actually really enjoy Sandy Petersen’s levels in Doom I (in Doom II a little less I guess).

 

That said Doom comes from an era from which many of us going up learned to suspend our disbelief. We had to actively use our imagination for the many classic games from back then. An appreciation younger generations arent as likely to appreciate given how far games have come with coherent environments. TBH sometimes I cant help but feel a little disappointed or do feel as strong of affinity for some modern game areas. Doom 2016 and Eternal (in particular) helped a little bit (particularly the hell environments)  but nothing ever really comes close to the simpler more efficient no frills designs of the classic games for me. Even with the Doom Engine being capable of far more complex designs with the power of newer PCs than what was capable in the original days of Doom 1, theres something about the detail level of the vanilla maps that I feel is just right. Throw too much complexity or too much detail and it becomes more obstructive and distracting, thats my take on it all, but again thats my own nostalgic built experience. To summarise, I feel theres something timeless yet perhaps under-appreciated about the older maps from a modern standpoint, and I think its a shame. 

[Aaron Blain]

I have a related question -- what if the evolution of mapping didn't start with DOOM.WAD? What if you came from another planet where principles like transition textures, height and space variations, horseshoe layouts, etc., weren't even an unconscious basis for your mapping? Look at the weird boxy nonsense level design in other games before id raised the standard.

[ImproversGaming]

Personally, I don’t think I can reasonably or rationally separate the impact and nostalgia from the original doom WADs and compare it to its more modern counterparts. Also, it doesn’t seem particularly fair, they are just different. For me the originals still hold up really well and the litmus test is to load one up and see how it feels. Still no feeling for me like loading into Hangar!

 

In terms of Dean of Doom, I like where they are at. They run the show their way and are upfront about how they score. If you are factoring in nostalgia or historical significance (or not), fine, just front up to it. Sure, it is biased to their likes, opinions and views, but I’m good with that and applaud them for putting out a creative, humorous and intelligent show that raises Doom awareness in a great way. I don’t need to agree with it all to appreciate it. Kudos.

[Trar]

On 3/30/2022 at 11:10 PM, Nikku4211 said:

This premise gives rise to another question.

 

What if Doom's IWADs levels were more like the kind of amateurish levels that most Doom mappers were making in 1994?

With all the recognisable flaws in design characteristic of a 1994 level and then some.

You mean, what if the guys at Id were the kind of talentless hacks who put out shitty Wolfenstein engine games of the kind you see Civvie11 play on his YouTube channel. The world would be a worse place, probably.

Edited April 3, 2022 by Trar

[Nikku4211]

11 hours ago, Trar said:

You mean, what if the guys at Id were the kind of talentless hacks who put out shitty Wolfenstein engine games of the kind you see Civvie11 play on his YouTube channel. The world would be a worse place, probably.

 

Except instead of that, they would've had the same innovative Doom engine, but just made maps as if they were newbies like in 1994 getting used to mapping for the Doom engine.

[Captain Keen]

For those of you having issues imagining Doom existing but without those iconic original maps, just pretend that the original games were entirely the same as far as the engine/mechanics but they just had hypothetically different actual maps. And then imagine the actual maps we know were released today as wads. Or, in other words, pretend Doom The Way Id did was the actual mapset back in the day, and then the real maps were released now as wads.

 

I would say the entire question is just a fun hypothetical! No need to overthink it. I think that's what the OP was trying to imagine.

 

13 hours ago, Trar said:

You mean, what if the guys at Id were the kind of talentless hacks who put out shitty Wolfenstein engine games of the kind you see Civvie11 play on his YouTube channel. The world would be a worse place, probably.

 

Hey, I like Corridor 7! And Blake Stone! And I guess Operation Body Count? Not so much The Fortress of Dr. Radiaki... even when that one was new it was pretty clear it sucked.

 

Not to get off topic, but you know which old school game with terrible reviews I actually enjoyed? Creature Shock. Amazing graphics for the time, and simple yet tense gameplay. Some really cool creature designs, too. When I played that in the 90s I really wished there was a version of Doom with those graphics.

[sandwedge]

32 minutes ago, Captain Keen said:

I would say the entire question is just a fun hypothetical! No need to overthink it. I think that's what the OP was trying to imagine.

 

Yeah absolutely it's a fun idea that doesn't make too much sense if you overthink it, not sure how that movie about the Beatles version of this did it.  It was some parallel timeline stuff I think.  However part of me was also wondering how you do vanilla maps when staying true to vanilla might actually "blend together" without the type of setpieces you have today.  Would we say that the original iwads dont have enough flair today? 

 

Actually I have to remember the engine limits too, as I recently played Ray Mohawk 1 which is not limit removing, so the bigger places look relatively barren as a result.  I think maybe the answer is that making wads today is sort of like making things "how we remember it" - usually things looked much bigger and crazier at the time when that was all we had to go on, so just do that for today's eyes!

 

Also that Operation Body Count TC from a few years ago actually does that game justice.  The original looked like a trashfire, at least in the civvie video.

Edited April 4, 2022 by sandwedge

[Kute]

Let's be honest, they'd be considered far too small and easy. \

 

The maps were made to be able to run on 486's.

 

Shotgunning barons isn't what it used to be. And hitscan maps aren't the most fun things in the world. 

 

I think Doom is possibly the greatest videogame of all-time, but those maps are severely overrated. 

[Jokin]

I would say that probably not a chance. 

I've been going through the skill progression WAD list and one thing that I did before playing each WAD was checking their release date. Even though I've never created a map, I would guess that current mappers are light years ahead of ID when they released DOOM, to the point where some things have been figured out. Doom was groundbreaking when it got released because there was nothing like it, but because of that same reason they had nothing they could use as a reference. 

[Trar]

On 4/3/2022 at 8:35 PM, Captain Keen said:

Hey, I like Corridor 7! And Blake Stone! And I guess Operation Body Count? Not so much The Fortress of Dr. Radiaki... even when that one was new it was pretty clear it sucked.

I'll give you Blake Stone. That was probably the best usage of the Wolf 3D engine in its day.

Edited April 5, 2022 by Trar