Was Doom mapping ever on a decline? If so, what saved it?

[Kwisior]

Also, if it was, then why?

[Craneo]

Doom Brutal ans Me House wad were the aviors.

[D4NUK1]

47 minutes ago, Craneo said:

Doom Brutal ans Me House wad were the aviors.

No that not quite right, as they work more like a pubic show of some of the Doom community, but people still had doing maps before and after that, and not every maps tried to be the ones to work with some of those public awarded wads like Brutal Doom.

 

I'll think about 2010 to 2012?

[esselfortium]

The mood of the community in the mid-to-late 2000s seemed to carry the assumption that interest in it was dwindling and slowly dying out. I'm not sure what specifically made the difference, but the explosion of community creations and outside interest in them we've been seeing since the mid-2010s felt basically unthinkable just a few years earlier.

[DJVCardMaster]

The first decline was in 1997 if I'm not mistaken, Doom mapping lost interest in favor of Quake mapping at that time, you can clearly see it with Requiem's development history. Between 1997 and 2001 there is a small gap where there weren't many big mayor releases of content, I think what saved Doom mapping was the release of the source code, Boom mapping and Alien Vendetta, as one of the most iconic big releases.

[Cutman 999]

12 minutes ago, DJVCardMaster said:

The first decline was in 1997 if I'm not mistaken, Doom mapping lost interest in favor of Quake mapping at that time, you can clearly see it with Requiem's development history. Between 1997 and 2001 there is a small gap where there weren't many big mayor releases of content, I think what saved Doom mapping was the release of the source code, Boom mapping and Alien Vendetta, as one of the most iconic big releases.

Man, always i read the wiki of requiem, i laugh my ass of. Only the fucking casali map was given proper playtesting LMAO.

[Dubbag]

as far as I know it never had a so called "weak point" in time.

[DJVCardMaster]

1 minute ago, Cutman 999 said:

Man, always i read the wiki of requiem, i laugh my ass of. Only the fucking casali map was given proper playtesting LMAO.

Yes, it is like "I don't care about this, I'm into Quake mapping, forget about this old game already"

[LadyMistDragon]

1 minute ago, DJVCardMaster said:

Yes, it is like "I don't care about this, I'm into Quake mapping, forget about this old game already"

It's ironic because the Moeller brothers really could not get into Quake due to the complexity which is probably why they faded into the same dustbin as Yonatan Donner.

 

[RileyXY1]

28 minutes ago, DJVCardMaster said:

The first decline was in 1997 if I'm not mistaken, Doom mapping lost interest in favor of Quake mapping at that time, you can clearly see it with Requiem's development history. Between 1997 and 2001 there is a small gap where there weren't many big mayor releases of content, I think what saved Doom mapping was the release of the source code, Boom mapping and Alien Vendetta, as one of the most iconic big releases.

Yeah. During the late 90s Doom was widely seen as outdated and on the verge of becoming obsolete thanks to Quake. Doom 64 even flopped upon its release in 1997. Although source ports first came into existence around this time once the Doom source code was released to the public, most source port projects at the time were rather niche. Although it was source ports that saved it, with source port projects becoming bigger and bolder with mapmakers creating levels that simply could not be made in the vanilla Doom engine. Doom mapping then became something of an art form, and it got even grander once GZDoom came into existence and continued to expand the limits on what can be done in the Doom engine.

Edited August 17, 2023 by RileyXY1

[Cutman 999]

13 minutes ago, DJVCardMaster said:

Yes, it is like "I don't care about this, I'm into Quake mapping, forget about this old game already"

Literally. There was even a quake map demake in there. Is funny to see in hindsight. 

[Gibbitudinous]

Admittedly as someone who wasn't there to experience it in person, it's funny how short the "low period" of doom modding was in hindsight, with the pace of notable releases steadily picking up from 2003 onwards. I wonder how much the release of Doom 3 and the first "11th" annual Cacowards in 2004 had to do with that.

[Mr. Freeze]

The community as a whole was on a decline between 2003 and 2015, when Doom 2016 was announced. That announcement reinvigorated interest in the series at large, which up until then had slowly become a community of diehard fans. 

[Gibbitudinous]

Honestly with how utterly foreign the concept of a "retro FPS" was prior to Doom 2016 reminding audiences what FPS games could look like free from the suffocating brown "realism" of CoD, the sheer productivity of the diehard Doom fans in that time is impressive.

[Klaesick]

2 hours ago, Craneo said:

Doom Brutal ans Me House wad were the aviors.

Non-Doomers when they hear “Classic Doom Modding” lol.

(I think that comment is ironic)

[Craneo]

Just now, Klaesick said:

(I think that comment is ironic)

It is lol

[Immorpher]

23 minutes ago, RileyXY1 said:

Doom 64 even flopped upon its release in 1997.

For the most part it seems the general public believed Doom to be old-hat when Doom 64 was released. There even seems to be some notion that the public didn't like that Doom 64 was still on a fork of the same engine.

Interestingly according to the lead programmer, Aaron Seeler, Doom 64 sold "very well" for Midway. But likely there was concerns from marketing that they couldn't keep going in that direction and they had to switch to Quake 64. Funny enough by the time Quake 64 came out, it was considered old-hat too and didn't have enough uniqueness to it (in contrast to Doom 64). Quake 2 N64 didn't even get much fanfare either. People we really riding that "things are only hot for a month, then forgotten". Here's a link to that Aaron Seeler interview anyway: https://www.doomworld.com/forum/post/2367154

When I wrote "Then and Now of Doom 64", I found all of the individual review scores from magazines and websites of the time, and calculated an average reviewer score of 80%. It actually surprised me it was that high, and it seemed reviewers had a good time with it. But conversely I came across reader feedback and website posts from gamers of the day which didn't like the game. Here's that article: https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/122634/

 

So despite not doing bad in sales, and the reviewers giving it a decent review, the general public either thought it was another port of Doom 2, or thought it "felt old" for its time. It was a tricky time where devs had to ride what's hot on a month to month basis. I could see the Doom community feeling the end was on the horizon. Heck in the late 90's we all had moved on from Atari and NES. Never did we think some of these games could keep a big community years after.

[Kinsie]

35 minutes ago, Gibbitudinous said:

Honestly with how utterly foreign the concept of a "retro FPS" was prior to Doom 2016 reminding audiences what FPS games could look like free from the suffocating brown "realism" of CoD, the sheer productivity of the diehard Doom fans in that time is impressive.

The "Patient Zero" of the current Retro FPS boom would likely be the janky 2013 remake of Rise of the Triad - it was one of the first to really push that back-to-basics design style, and many of the people who worked on it, tested it or played it went on to put out the games that really defined the movement, like Dusk and Amid Evil. Sort of like that whole Velvet Underground "everyone who saw them started their own band" thing but incapable of hitting 60fps even on space-age future computers.

[Herr Dethnout]

Just now, DJVCardMaster said:

The first decline was in 1997 if I'm not mistaken, Doom mapping lost interest in favor of Quake mapping at that time, you can clearly see it with Requiem's development history. Between 1997 and 2001 there is a small gap where there weren't many big mayor releases of content, I think what saved Doom mapping was the release of the source code, Boom mapping and Alien Vendetta, as one of the most iconic big releases.

Now Quake mapping is way less active than Doom's

Hell, even Arcane Dimensions wasn't able to save it :/

[Cutman 999]

47 minutes ago, Gibbitudinous said:

Honestly with how utterly foreign the concept of a "retro FPS" was prior to Doom 2016 reminding audiences what FPS games could look like free from the suffocating brown "realism" of CoD, the sheer productivity of the diehard Doom fans in that time is impressive.

Funny how a decade ago they were generalized as "doom clones" and people just completely forgot about them, and just now some of those games are getting attention.

[Gibbitudinous]

I really wish Blood could get more love but I imagine that the split between the multiple "proper" (read: reverse-engineered) source ports and Nightdive's weird Kex engine remake making things more difficult for modders hasn't helped things at all.

[Terrcraft]

general understanding is post quake/2 interest fell, then picked up with source ports, then wanned, doom 3 comes out and brings some interest but its still pretty niche, interest remains pretty level but still a small community with few new people entering, then brutal doom gets picked up in gaming news websites bringing a new casual interest which would result in some bleeding through to the wider community over the past decade or so. The BD momentum rolls into DOOM 2016 which introduces the series to a whole new demographic that gets into the series, around this time Skillsaws AA was also covered by some news outlets which probably brought some people in. Then a retro FPS wave accelerates with DUSK, AMID EVIL, ION FURY, etc bringing more eyes to the retro fps scene in which doom is a predominant feature of. Then Doom eternal and the Pandemic results in even more people being introduced. and recently with MyHouse.wad getting pretty popular. Doom is about as popular as its ever been.

It probably has enough momentum to keep going, but if it were to slow down it would likely be if somehow no interesting mods were released which is unlikely because something pretty interesting comes out every week, and if ID software goes through another period where no new doom game comes out for 12 years. 

 

[Gibbitudinous]

It's honestly hilarious how My House has exploded to the point that the phrase "myhouse.wad" has almost become the "among us" of Doom, especially considering how the pre-existing ubiquity of the phrase was the very reason that specific wad was called that in the first place.

 

https://www.youtube.com/clip/UgkxBDIuMKCC9pZcaWyqzsijTI5oQ-1Oi_wH

[Mystic 256]

I don't think its ever been on a decline

["JL" was too short]

26 minutes ago, Gibbitudinous said:

It's honestly hilarious how My House has exploded to the point that the phrase "myhouse.wad" has almost become the "among us" of Doom, especially considering how the pre-existing ubiquity of the phrase was the very reason that specific wad was called that in the first place. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/clip/UgkxBDIuMKCC9pZcaWyqzsijTI5oQ-1Oi_wH

It would be supremely ironic if a new generation comes to associate the concept of a "MyHouse map" with an elaborate, creative and detailed project.  Basically the complete opposite of what the term meant for 30 years.

[Herr Dethnout]

2 hours ago, Gibbitudinous said:

I really wish Blood could get more love but I imagine that the split between the multiple "proper" (read: reverse-engineered) source ports and Nightdive's weird Kex engine remake making things more difficult for modders hasn't helped things at all.

Not to mention, the only way to make a map is using a custom mapedit version made ONLY for Blood. And is an DOS programs.

[Klear]

3 hours ago, Kinsie said:

The "Patient Zero" of the current Retro FPS boom would likely be the janky 2013 remake of Rise of the Triad - it was one of the first to really push that back-to-basics design style, and many of the people who worked on it, tested it or played it went on to put out the games that really defined the movement, like Dusk and Amid Evil. Sort of like that whole Velvet Underground "everyone who saw them started their own band" thing but incapable of hitting 60fps even on space-age future computers.

 

I would also point out Bulletstorm from 2011 in the context of <suffocating brown "realism" of CoD>, even if it probably didn't have that much impact on the zeitgeist. I always saw the game as the truest spiritual successor to Duke Nukem 3D.

Edited August 17, 2023 by Klear
Rephrasing

[JustAthel]

If it ever was on a decline, it may have been before my time. But I'd imagine with the rise of ZDoom and Doom in Hexen format, it really gave way for a lot more innovative new ideas to be given light. A lot of older projects from, say, 2007 for example, DO have ties to the ZDoom engine, at least what I can remember anyways

[Gibbitudinous]

1 hour ago, jerrysheppy said:

It would be supremely ironic if a new generation comes to associate the concept of a "MyHouse map" with an elaborate, creative and detailed project.  Basically the complete opposite of what the term meant for 30 years.

As deliciously ironic as it would be, it'll probably become more well-known for endlessly derivative copycats as is the wont of successful indie horror projects.

 

1 hour ago, Herr Dethnout said:

Not to mention, the only way to make a map is using a custom mapedit version made ONLY for Blood. And is an DOS programs.

 

Yeah that's pretty ridiculous. Some mappers aim for compatibility with DOS Doom because they want to, not because they have to. Requiring use of a DOS program to map for an already underappreciated FPS like Blood is just stupid.

[Kyka]

 Me.

 

 

Don't ask me to explain or validate that in any way.

Edited August 17, 2023 by Kyka