Bethesda's "Official" addons

[Ravendesk]

47 minutes ago, VoanHead said:

Wait, I thought the wad authors were given some royalties or something maybe for having the pwad in there, were they not? If not then I thought wrong.

yeah wad authors got 50% of all the money these wads were sold for

[Shepardus]

If you have a problem with the official addons, I hope you don't use the official Doom IWADs.

[roadworx]

this thread is proof that people will whine about anything

 

having your addon be on the unity port is a completely voluntary thing and let's shitloads of people outside the community experience your work...yet that's a bad thing because the unity port is a paid product.

 

okay lol

Edited February 7, 2024 by roadworx

[No-Man Baugh]

The worst things about the official addons is:

1: There's not more of them
2: You need bethesdanet to play them

[VoanHead]

The OP said he was more "curious as to whether they actually expand on the lore or not". I believe he wasn't whining that those pwads became addons for the unity port.

[pavera]

The Bethesda addons were a really cool little project literally led by Kevin Cloud and @sponge, an active community member, as a way to extend the life of the game that a lot of people bought on consoles (and Steam) for free. It was a lot of fun and super exciting to work with them to get our mods on there and feels like a timeless honor. They even did little interviews with every author of every release, published on their bethesda blog. The whole thing is extremely positive and a great example of a company doing positive community outreach, something that you just don't always see much of anymore in this day & age.

 

They are as "official" as a community WAD can get, as they were essentially hand picked by the existing Doom team at id. There's really not much more to say than that. No, they do not extend the official "lore" of Doom 1 and 2, as they were projects created by authors in the community. They are their own self-contained episodes, and simply an extension of the game we all love.

Edited February 7, 2024 by pavera

[Kinsie]

4 minutes ago, VoanHead said:

The OP said he was more "curious as to whether they actually expand on the lore or not". I believe he wasn't whining that those pwads became addons for the unity port.

All Doom mods are officially canon. Yes, even - and especially - that one.

[Mr. Freeze]

3 minutes ago, Kinsie said:

All Doom mods are officially canon. Yes, even - and especially - that one.

 

Patently unproven, most likely false. Hopefully false! 

[VoanHead]

3 minutes ago, Kinsie said:

All Doom mods are officially canon. Yes, even - and especially - that one.

yay reelism 1 + 2 happened in the lore :)

[Murdoch]

53 minutes ago, roadworx said:

unless you wanna dig up jim flynn and ty haldermans's graves and get their corpses to sign a document licensing boom to bethesda, then the unity port can't use boom wads

 

50 minutes ago, LadyMistDragon said:

True but it's still pretty shitty.

 

Didn't the Boom source get GPL'ed?

*me googles*

Yep...

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Boom

Therefore the source code is fair game unless there is some weird legal technical thingamywhatsit I am unaware of? GZDoom has Boom compatibility, some of which must surely use bits of the original code, and it has been used for several commercial releases.

Edited February 7, 2024 by Murdoch

[kevansevans]

45 minutes ago, Murdoch said:

Therefore the source code is fair game unless there is some weird legal technical thingamywhatsit I am unaware of? GZDoom has Boom compatibility, some of which must surely use bits of the original code, and it has been used for several commercial releases.

 

There's a massive "thingamywhatsit" that makes using Boom's source code would cause a massive laundry list of legal problems. Long, long, explanation short: GPL is a massively shit license if you want people to be able to "use" your source code due to it being viral. There's a discussion to be had on the advantages GPL does bring, but do take my word for it that it's one of the worst licenses the Doom source could have received. John Carmack wishes he could have used BSD.

 

So as neat it would be to widen the scope of wads that could be shown to the world, it ain't going to happen realistically.

 

EDIT: The missing tweet John is replying to was him admitting that the GPL was a poor choice, even if the alternatives would have resulted in source ports that never had their code released.

Edited February 7, 2024 by kevansevans

[Gougaru]

4 hours ago, Egg Boy said:

Not quite sure what exactly makes Sigil and Sigil 2 "confirmed" official, as no one has said they are canon or anything, if we're going by that definition. Romero making them does not immediately make them official, as he hasn't been at Id for decades. Its as official as any of the other wads in the add on section.

Both box sets say they are unofficial episodes so super weird to see confirmed out of no where.

[Shepardus]

40 minutes ago, Murdoch said:

 

 

Didn't the Boom source get GPL'ed?

*me googles*

Yep...

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Boom

Therefore the source code is fair game unless there is some weird legal technical thingamywhatsit I am unaware of? GZDoom has Boom compatibility, some of which must surely use bits of the original code, and it has been used for several commercial releases.

Because it's GPL, anyone using the source code has to release their own source code under the same or compatible license, which id/Bethesda are either unwilling or unable to. The commercial games using GZDoom either don't modify GZDoom at all or do in fact release their source.

[Edward850]

32 minutes ago, Shepardus said:

which id/Bethesda are either unwilling or unable to.

Unable. Console SDKs are not GPL compatible.

[Kinsie]

43 minutes ago, Shepardus said:

The commercial games using GZDoom either don't modify GZDoom at all or do in fact release their source.

 

10 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

Unable. Console SDKs are not GPL compatible.

This is also, incidentally, why GZDoom-based games are unable to make the leap to console.

[Yugiboy85]

6 hours ago, DoomGater said:

I think the meaning of the term "official" in the context of a computer game is not appropriate. It's just a scam to make money.

 

The addons are completely free of charge. 

[Edward850]

1 minute ago, Yugiboy85 said:

 

The addons are completely free of charge. 

No no he's onto something, they should be actively paying me to play Double Impact!

/s

[Murdoch]

6 hours ago, Shepardus said:

Because it's GPL, anyone using the source code has to release their own source code under the same or compatible license, which id/Bethesda are either unwilling or unable to. The commercial games using GZDoom either don't modify GZDoom at all or do in fact release their source.

 

Yeah I thought of that after I made my post. The console stuff precludes a source release as Edward pointed out, so no Boom stuff. Licensing is fun!

 

10 hours ago, DoomGater said:

It's just a scam to make money.

 

That's a very skewed interpretation. No one is forcing anybody to buy anything at gun point here. It's up to the consumer to make an informed decision and either purchase, or not. And really, it's frankly idiotic to call the official Doom addons a "scam" to make money because....

 

1. A scam implies duplicity. Where, exactly, is the duplicity? It is quite clear what they are, and no one is forcing mod authors to do it.

2. The official addons are completely free to download.
3. Everyone who had purchased the game digitally got the update for free.

 

So... scam? Not seeing it. So what if they're called official? Bethesda officially owns Doom, like it or lump it, so they can call it what they want. And they are being quite clear about what these are.

[DoomGater]

9 hours ago, Murdoch said:

 

Companies like money, yes. Your point is... ?

...in the second part of the sentence.

[ShallowB]

I feel like this whole thing is a problem with people not understanding that "Official" means something different depending on context, and there is no such thing as an intrinsic "officialness" trait.

 

They are "Official" in the sense that they are legally distributed through and compatible with the source port made available by Doom's current legal rightsholder.  That is what "Official" means in the context it is being used for Bethesda's add-ons. 

 

"But are they canon to the lore?!" WHAT LORE? Depending on the source you check, Doom 2 isn't even canon to Ultimate Doom.  Thy Flesh Consumed doesn't even fit between Inferno and Hell On Earth.  Doom, since its beginning, has always had the thinnest veneer of a story and not even the people who wrote it cared all that much about it.  Even if you look at the new Doom games that have wikis full of LORE you'll find there are massive discrepancies between Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal, and that's not even getting in to the LORE trouble when they try to tie in older Doom games.

 

"But Sigil is canon!" Legally, it is not. Even Romero calls it "Unofficial." Oh hey look it's that word again, but in a different context this time! When Romero says Sigil is "Unofficial" he is saying he does not have the legal right to call Sigil "the fifth episode of Ultimate Doom" or to make Sigil's "story" part of Doom's canon lore.  When Bethesda say Sigil is "Official" what they are saying is they have the legal right to distribute it. These are not contradictory. 

 

But what is "canon" anyway? Can John Romero make something canon even if he doesn't have the legal right just because he was involved in the original development? If so, does that give the same rights to Sandy Peterson and American McGee? What about Tom Hall, who started Doom's story and levels but was not involved in finishing any of them? What about community members like John Anderson, the Casalis, or the TNT team whose work was legally acquired by Id Software and distributed "officially"?

 

"TNT Evilution, Plutonia Experiment, and No Rest For The Living are confirmed canon!" Why? Again, if you're going by the story, it's a thin thread tying everything together.  If you want them all to be connected, you can certainly do that.  But there is no intrinsic "canon-ness" to those expansions that other "official" add-ons like REKKR or BTSX or Harmony lack.  If your metric is that only Id can make things canon and not Bethesda, remember that the people working at Id when nerve.wad was made official are not even the same people who were there when plutonia.wad was made official. And if an entirely different Id has the power to grant something "officialness," then what's the difference between that and when Bethesda does it?

 

TL;DR don't worry about it, just have fun

Edited February 7, 2024 by ShallowB

[DoomGater]

15 minutes ago, ShallowB said:

TL;DR don't worry about it, just have fun

my sentiments exactly

[D4NUK1]

Why Doomguy don't kill forever the icon of Sin, there a l o r e reason because he like to sell more games to be popular? or he stupid?

Why Doomguy it's a viking and a girl in this official add ons, he can change whatever he wants? He can be John Wick?

 

 

Spoiler

Very subtly joke asides, i really like the officials addons because they made some pins for the authors, their articles in the DoomSlayers Club it's intereseting and it's just cool that something that being done by fans it's shared for free for play even in consoles where the mods are something that can be impossible or need to be a paid DLC.

 

Edited February 7, 2024 by D4NUK1
Lore reason.

[Kinsie]

To cut the snark for a minute: The Official Mods system is basically just a way to backdoor at least some choice cuts from the community onto consoles, where loading arbitrary files is typically banned by order of the manufacturer. Some alterations have needed to be made by the original developers for technical or legal reasons (especially in the pre-owning-Raven era we just left), but it's generally been a lovely little positive to get some mainstream eyes on the incredible output of our strange little corner of the internet.

 

And hey, it beats the hell out of how some rights holders respond to modders.

Edited February 7, 2024 by Kinsie

[Gifty]

The sanctioned add-ons page has been an unalloyed good in spreading the love for a non-commercial art scene, but hey, gaming culture does love its aggrieved sense of false persecution and bland anti-establishment rhetoric divorced from any real perspective on capitalism!

 

Anyways everyone should go download Doom Zero from the add-ons page, it's the best!

Edited February 7, 2024 by Gifty

[Mr. Freeze]

Be sure to download Base Ganymede and write a letter to id telling them how rad you think my soundtrack was. 

[TheCorinthian]

19 hours ago, Ozcar said:

The moderator better close this thread, before it gets too ugly.

I think I'm starting to agree. No wonder outsiders call the doom community toxic. Teaches me to ever ask a question.

[esselfortium]

Is there a problem with the answers that were given?

[The BMFG]

1 hour ago, TheCorinthian said:

I think I'm starting to agree. No wonder outsiders call the doom community toxic. Teaches me to ever ask a question.

Where's the toxicity? 

[Cutman 999]

1 hour ago, TheCorinthian said:

I think I'm starting to agree. No wonder outsiders call the doom community toxic. Teaches me to ever ask a question.

Well if you are bullshiting, responding to the negative response of your bad thread, at least don't do it in the most passive/agressive way possible.

[Downcologo one]

I like them, the only problem is with SIGIL, which has a BIG mistake there. Not to mention that this port does not even support boom format