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

[Edward850]

23 hours ago, Gibbitudinous said:

In any case, Blood: Fresh Supply much like other games "remastered" in KEX, is seemingly based on wholly new code under the hood rather than being reverse-engineered from Duke 3D's code like the fan-made source ports since AFAIK it's completely incompatible with most Blood mods that weren't made specifically for it (aside from Death wish), so as far as I'm concerned, it's a remake. 

You know you could have just asked instead of making stuff up. Blood fresh supply is built from a disassembly of Blood, and is fully compatible with the original assets and maps. Mods originally made for the DOS version are fully compatible as long as they never modified the original executable (there was no Blood equivalent of Dehacked so there was no community standard to adopt for executable changes).

 

All the DOS assets are in fact used in FS with the sole exception of the movie files, which were converted to OGV due to the need of a codec to play them.

Edited August 19, 2023 by Edward850

[Gibbitudinous]

Alright fair enough, but digressions about the woefully inadequate terminology for categorizing video game rereleases aside, my original point was that having yet another form of the game that's incompatible with previously existing "ports"* wouldn't make the modding situation any easier, and AFAIK that point still stands.

 

* As much as any of them can be considered ports for a game whose source code is infamously lost.

[zokum]

Depending on how long it takes to make the average map, any decline most likely have some sort of noticeable delay. A megawad with 32 maps released in 2010 most likely had its start in 2009 or earlier. So the decline in mapping starts before the decline in releases. If myhouse inspires people to make more maps, then we'll obviously see the rlease amount increase a while after this map was at its most popular. The number of released files isn't all that important, I think the size matters much more. A large project with 32 big maps is on average a lot more mapping work than a one map production.

So, the amount of megabytes released, adjusted with the "build time" in the text files could give us a more accurate idea about any declines. If a big megawad inspires people to make large projects instead, that's not a decline at all.

[Deadwing]

On 8/17/2023 at 9:55 PM, Jakub Majewski said:

 

Here's a graph showing how many files were submitted to idgames per year. I stole it from another thread, forgot which one, but it talked about the size of the archive. There are some patterns to be observed here.

 

Indeed, After Quake came out, the numbers dwindled, but in 2003 they started growing again, likely because of the annoucement of Doom 3. Then it shrunk again and kept the same pace until 2014, when I believe Doom 2016 was announced. Then, it's about the same pace as before, but it appears that as the 2020s began, there's been a growth spurt. I suppose Doom Eternal has made Zoomers become interested in the game.

 

I'm surprised to see that there wasn't any increase from the last 5 years, it felt like there ware so many more great stuff being released later on, especially in 2021-2022

[Roofi]

The graph tells that modern map makers should be more confident releasing their crap on idgames as people from the 90' did.

Edited August 22, 2023 by Roofi

[CasualScrub]

I'm curious what caused that slight jump in 2014 on the graph.

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

3 hours ago, CasualScrub said:

I'm curious what caused that slight jump in 2014 on the graph.

Possibly because you had two strong wads for Doomers (Going Down + BTSX E2) and two projects capable of wider appeal that I believe were both featured in a few online articles on popular gaming websites (Action DOOM 2 + The Adventures of Square). Just a guess, though.

Edited August 23, 2023 by TheMagicMushroomMan

[baja blast rd.]

15 hours ago, Deadwing said:

I'm surprised to see that there wasn't any increase from the last 5 years, it felt like there ware so many more great stuff being released later on, especially in 2021-2022

 

There have absolutely been substantially more high-effort projects, like mapsets and megamaps that people really sunk a lot of effort into, which is probably what you're thinking of. And I don't mean just BTSX-ish "big names" but a pretty broad range of such projects that extends even to big speedmap wads that people lead and compile diligently. 

 

But we're talking an increase from ballpark of a few dozens of such projects (which is what it seemed to be in the mid '10s when I was first paying attention), to a ballpark of several to a dozen dozens (now).

 

That's a pretty huge increase but that's still a minority of releases represented on that graph, which I'd bet is largely determined a lot more by the # of tiny and small uploads than anything. Old idgames also has a bunch of one-off DM maps, sound files, etc.

 

I'd be disinclined to read much into that graph about the popularity of mapping. The same amount of mapping energy can lead to very different upload #s based on how it is distributed. (Also some the narratives in this thread created around it are overfitting just-so stories imo. :P)

[Doomkid]

On 8/18/2023 at 6:55 AM, Jakub Majewski said:

 

Here's a graph showing how many files were submitted to idgames per year.

 

While I think this graph is accurate in that 1994-1996 were Doom's heyday in raw numbers, I think it's worth mentioning that less than half of wads ever publicly released - probably substantially less - are/were on idgames.

 

There's a metric ton of DM-only wads, gameplay mods, and all kinds of other stuff for ZDoom and the multiplayer Doom ports (and several other long-forgotten ports like Doom Legacy and such) that were never uploaded to idgames, as well as a bunch of other wad hosting/general file hosting sites where people uploaded and released wads. Oblacek, Best-Ever, TSPG, WadArchive and a whole bunch of others just had so many wads that were never backed up, or are still out there, but not on the archive.

 

With all that said, I still think the trend shown by that graph is fairly accurate in terms of "Doom's popularity per each year", aside from that big 2005 spike, as deathz0r explained. I just had to mention that so much more content was being made than that graph reflects!

 

I think it's safe to say Doom 4, Doom Eternal, and big mods over the years like Brutal Doom, MyHouse and others have brought in a stream of new players, but in terms of content being made and released, there was never anything even close to a low point, at least in the realm of single-player Doom. 2002 being the absolute nadir makes sense, and even then there was an active pulse.