Looking for help

[Skinny's_Comics]

 

 

Hello, I apologize if this isn't the right place. But I am an indie comic writer/creator/publisher as a hobby on the side of my full-time job. So far I've published two issues, about to publish the third and working on the fourth. I love Doom. My first gaming experience was when my Dad brought home a computer from work and we took turns playing Wolfenstein, Doom, Blake Stone and etc... Anyways, our last campaign ended up bringing in nearly $8k and our fan base seems to grow with every book. 

 

 So what my artist and I want to do is make a standalone doom wad we can sell legally, I'm not sure on the terminology sorry. My artist is on board to make any assets we may need. Our budget is pretty much shot as well, but if we can find some folks willing to help us out with a demo to test the waters on Kickstarter I think we could probably all make a good deal since it'll be distributed digitally and there won't be any overhead like printing books, posters, and etc... Sending e-mails is free haha

 

I know this may seem a bit scammy but you can look us up on Kickstarter and if you want to check out our comics, I included the pdfs below. I'm sure it'll be a worthwhile venture for anyone willing to take a gamble on us.

 

 

Issue 1

https://www.dropbox.com/s/bfzbt44o6vr0p8u/Otis Stein %231.pdf?dl=0

 

Issue 2

https://www.dropbox.com/s/d5or1spbxfuuwr1/OS2 Deluxe PDF.pdf?dl=0

[Kappes Buur]

3 hours ago, Skinny's_Comics said:

... is make a standalone doom wad we can sell legally, ...

 

The only doom engine which can legally be used to make for profit games is GZDoom. See Custom IWAD

 

Have a look at this list.

While some of the older titles were made with ZDoom, you can find some titles made with GZDoom which can be bought legally from Steam.

[Edward850]

20 minutes ago, Kappes Buur said:

The only doom engine which can legally be used to make for profit games is GZDoom.

Any source port that is GPL can be used, this doesn't only apply to GZDoom. This typically means any port as the only active non GPL port is Zdaemon (which is closed source anyway). What you can't do is redistribute the original executable, as GPL does not apply retroactively, which I outlined in this post (among other relevant notes):

 

Edited April 12, 2023 by Edward850

[Skinny's_Comics]

27 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

Any source port that is GPL can be used, this doesn't only apply to GZDoom. This typically means any port as the only active non GPL port is Zdaemon (which is closed source anyway). What you can't do is redistribute the original executable, as GPL does not apply retroactively, which I outlined in this post (among other relevant notes):

 

thank you, this is very helpful. I am hoping to use only original assets and nothing from Doom. I've downloaded a map editor so I can try learning more about doing this. I'm just not a very computer literate person. I just kinda pray over my computer like a tech priest and hope the gods favor me.

[Skinny's_Comics]

Sorry for double posting but do you think it would be a better path to try just making something with an engine like unity? I just assumed doing an overhaul of Doom maybe a bit easier and nostalgic. 

[ipecacodemon]

1 hour ago, Skinny's_Comics said:

Sorry for double posting but do you think it would be a better path to try just making something with an engine like unity? I just assumed doing an overhaul of Doom maybe a bit easier and nostalgic. 

 

Uh oh, one of the most common and most dreaded questions in amateur game development: "what engine should I use?" Common because it's a perfectly logical thing to consider as a foundational decision for your project, dreaded because:

1. its importance is typically overestimated by the person asking and

2. it doesn't actually have an answer! It completely depends on what the scope of your project is, what your skills are, how you feel about the interface/tools, if you're comfortable with the workflow etc. because every engine and environment is simply going to be different in some ways and do at least some things if not most things differently than others.

 

I'm not saying this with the intent of discouraging you, but making almost any game that's any complicated is usually going to take more effort than most people who haven't done it might imagine. It's true that making games has become exponentially more accessible and in many ways easier to get into and get started than it used to be even 10 years ago let alone 20 (and that's super awesome and good for us all!), but if we're talking about something more than a student project, something you hope will entice strangers into playing it and even give you money for it, it's still going to take a ton of work.

 

Now to try to address your question a bit more directly, there are three main advantages I can think of when it comes to making a total conversion for Doom:

1. you don't have to worry about the structure of the game or defining your own game logic or any of the technical stuff as long as the scope of your project is relatively close to what the original game is. Just replace all the assets and provide your levels. The flipside here of course is that you might find yourself restricted by the limitations and arcana of the engine - really this is a universal, but the Doom engine is particularly old and weird when compared to most offerings on the market today. The ZDoom family of ports do offer some very powerful and flexible scripting features that can alleviate this, but learning how to use them well enough to implement major gameplay modifications might have you feeling like you should've chosen the other option instead. Well truthfully if you're not much of a technical person as you say, this will likely end up being the most difficult hurdle regardless of what route you choose.

2. it's actually really easy to make levels for Doom compared to "true 3D" games, especially with today's tools. The flipside is mostly covered in the previous point, i.e. engine limitations and quirks, like lack of sector-over-sector or inability to make geometry move in the horizontal plane. (yes, the ZDoom family of ports do have features that can accomplish some of this to some degree or at least create the illusion of it for the player, but again if you're not used to doing this sort of thing it'll probably be more difficult to learn versus how a "normal" modern engine would let you implement it) 

3. despite how differently Doom does things, we have an entire community of people sharing and building upon knowledge and experience for almost 3 decades now completely for free, not looking for you to buy their courses or their asset packs or looking to make money from YouTube ads on their slapshod "copy and paste" video tutorials etc. Not to mention you can practically download any WAD you like and look at how each level is built in detail, pore over the DeHackEd or Decorate or UMAPINFO files yourself, etc.

 

Of course it needs saying that the main advantage of engines like Unity/Unreal/Godot/etc. is that it's generally going to be much easier to make almost any genre of game you want in them, they have the kind of flexibility and all around performance to support that. But you'd have to figure out how to write and structure your game logic and everything yourself. They don't have the default scaffolding of here's these different guns that already work, here's an imp that already knows how to move and shoot projectiles, here's these things called doors and lifts and crushers you can have in your levels etc. Obviously there are a shitton of resources for these engines online, sure (though I'd argue many of those resources are nowhere near as thorough as they could be), and ultimately it's up to each individual developer which approach they're more comfortable with.

Edited April 12, 2023 by ipecacodemon

[Skinny's_Comics]

Yeah most of those are why I leaned more into an overhaul. It seemed like something I could learn more easily during the process too. My question was more in regards to the legality of selling it. That's the one thing I failed to look into but after reading more into it, shouldn't be an issue with what we're hoping to do.

 

 

[Stabbey]

You can't legally sell a WAD - and if you did, it'd be hard to make money off of it with all the amount of free stuff out there already... but you can sell a comic and include a WAD for free. I think that's how "The Lost Episodes of Doom" got around that - they were selling their strategy guide for their WAD, and the WAD was included with the book.

 

However...

9 hours ago, Skinny's_Comics said:

I'm just not a very computer literate person. I just kinda pray over my computer like a tech priest and hope the gods favor me.

and

9 hours ago, Skinny's_Comics said:

Sorry for double posting but do you think it would be a better path to try just making something with an engine like unity? I just assumed doing an overhaul of Doom maybe a bit easier and nostalgic. 

 

do not go together. If you want to make use of a game engine, it helps a lot to know what you're doing. Trying to program a game engine is tricky enough for those with some experience. It is not something I would recommend to a computer illiterate.

[Skinny's_Comics]

On 4/12/2023 at 8:56 AM, Stabbey said:

You can't legally sell a WAD - and if you did, it'd be hard to make money off of it with all the amount of free stuff out there already... but you can sell a comic and include a WAD for free. I think that's how "The Lost Episodes of Doom" got around that - they were selling their strategy guide for their WAD, and the WAD was included with the book.

 

However...

and

 

do not go together. If you want to make use of a game engine, it helps a lot to know what you're doing. Trying to program a game engine is tricky enough for those with some experience. It is not something I would recommend to a computer illiterate.

 

It'd be easy to get folks to buy it. I convinced people to buy a 48 page comic book for $60. My demographic isn't really the pre-existing doom market, this is more like a licensed game. My customer base already exists, I just have to continually find new and exciting things to offer them. The next thing we're doing is a cereal club. Folks are already pretty excited about that and our first limited hardcover trade. Plus, I've got some connections I can probably use too. I know guys like Doug TenNapel loosely because we're both into indie comics and stuff and I've got a marketing firm that handles the social stuff for my campaigns too. So making a sale isn't an issue. I may not know about making a mod but I do know how to monetize my creative endeavors.

 

For the legal thing, I noticed the work around you talked about with the guide too. That's why I said the legal thing probably won't be an issue after reading more into it. I can just bundle it with a pdf trade or something, so it's not anything that I can't work around. I'm used to jumping through hoops anyways. IDK if wad is the right term though, I'm not educated in this stuff. I just play games and get stoned. But I am looking at a complete overhaul essentially. I'm having my artist make all new textures and everything. I have a lot of musician friends I can get music from too or have them make me custom tracks for it.

 

 

 In regards to not knowing what I'm doing, yeah it's probably a bad idea. But eh, why not? Anyways that's why I made this thread hoping to find someone interested, kind and bored enough who might want to help while I learn how to do it as well.

 

 I've got my artist running down a few sprite sheets right now and I'm playing with the map editor while watching yt videos on it. I don't have aspirations of doing anything crazy. I'm not a dev but I've played enough to have a good understanding of the limitations of the engine and I like them honestly. I want to give my fans something cool like Chex Quest or some shit. This isn't for Doom fans, just fans of my comics and it may attract some gamers too.