Would anybody still enjoy a Doom 1 MEGAWAD?

[Baron T. Mueriach]

It's a question I've been meaning to ask,  I'm currently working on a 9 level Knee-Deep in the Dead styled episode, where I'm focusing on interconnected layouts that eliminate backtracking (unlike my previous level I released). I have 3 levels finished, and It'll take awhile, but when I finish it I'd love to make more episodes.

 

I'm not getting ahead of myself here however. I'm not gonna lie to myself and all of you that I'm some kind of mapping guru who just coughs out quality maps, so if I were to start making a MEGAWAD it'd certainly be some time before anyone would see it released.

 

Well, let me know if you'd be interested in this episode I'm making, any feedback is appreciated. I'm contemplating posting screenshots but I think I'll wait on that.

[Captain Keen]

Yes, in fact there's been a bit of a resurgence in Doom 1 wads the past few years! 2022 ADO, Silence, Stickney, UDINO, Solar Struggle, Nostal Doom, 95 Never Dies, and so on. And of course both SIGIL episodes.

[plums]

Also Hell's Bane, Return to Hadron Episode 4, Forsaken Compound.... Ultimate Doom has had no shortage of quality maps released recently.

 

What's important is that you make something you enjoy, and that you take your time to make something good.

[BeachThunder]

Why wouldn't I be??

 

Also, Rekkr is an amazing Ultimate Doom total conversion.

 

[EnkiduGilgachad]

Absolutely! I especially like knee-deep in the dead inspired wads.

Edited April 24 by EnkiduGilgachad

[xScavengerWolfx]

Like plums said: "What's important is that you make something you enjoy, and that you take your time to make something good."

 

Also a episode 1 map set eh? I will check it out when you release it and give feed back on it.

[ALilGrayBoi]

Me personally, I wouldn’t play a doom 1 mega wad. I prefer the action packed gameplay of doom 2 over doom 1. I know some people like doom 1 because of its spooky or sinister feel but doom 64 is WAY better at being spooky. Also doom 1 lacks in enemy variety so it makes some maps really repetitive. That’s just how I feel though. If you feel like making a doom 1 map set you do you. 

[DankMetal]

9 minutes ago, ALilGrayBoi said:

Me personally, I wouldn’t play a doom 1 mega wad. I prefer the action packed gameplay of doom 2 over doom 1. I know some people like doom 1 because of its spooky or sinister feel but doom 64 is WAY better at being spooky. Also doom 1 lacks in enemy variety so it makes some maps really repetitive. That’s just how I feel though. If you feel like making a doom 1 map set you do you. 

[ALilGrayBoi]

4 minutes ago, DankMetal said:

Angry birds 3 leaked footage 

[CravenCoyote]

I also wondered why Doom 1 maps are still being made. Would it not still be possible to achieve the same with Doom 2 and just limit yourself to the same monsters and weapons, and bring over any required textures from the original?

 

Unless there are things I'm not aware of between the two such as enemy hp and weapon damage etc?

 

By all means, I'd still play a Doom 1 wad but my understanding has always been that Doom 2 at its core is just an expansion of Doom 1 (though I could be mistaken - every day is a school day, after all!)

[Doomzilla(iddqd)]

There are literally zero reasons to make maps for D1 outside of getting nostalgic vibes: notice how almost all noteworthy D1 megawads are either remakes of the original episodes, or at least heavily inspired by them? There's nothing D1 has that D2 hasn't, the opposite however is not true.

Edited April 24 by Doomzilla(iddqd)

[costadevale]

1 hour ago, Doomzilla(iddqd) said:

There are literally zero reasons to make maps for D1 outside of getting nostalgic vibes

Episode selection for vanilla, of course! As for the OP...

 

I would play it. As long as you don't force the player to shotgun everything in their way it'll be fine. Gimme gimme more Doom 1 wads!!!

[RHhe82]

1 hour ago, Doomzilla(iddqd) said:

There are literally zero reasons to make maps for D1 outside of getting nostalgic vibes: notice how almost all noteworthy D1 megawads are either remakes of the original episodes, or at least heavily inspired by them? There's nothing D1 has that D2 hasn't, the opposite however is not true.

This is true - but I guess the value lies in episode selection and intermissions at the end of each episode without the hassle of UMAPINFO.

 

From mapper perspective (speaking as a Solar Struggle participant - a megawad that is most definitely not a rehash of original episodes) it enforces restrictions and forces you to be creative in order to make the wad fun without added assets of D2. It can be done, although this is ”under the hood” sort of stuff that’s invisible and irrelevant to a player as long as mapper succeeds in their endeavors.

[Arsinikk]

Reasons to still use DOOM 1:

• Through DEHACKED you can have access to all the Doom 2 monsters and Doom 2 codepointers. (Rekkr is a great example of this)
• The use of the episode format
• More than 2 secret maps in a megawad.
• Have a scrolling end screen for the end of episode 3
• Intermission screen maps.
• Animated Intermission screens:

 

RUST:

 

Double Impact:

 

The only thing DOOM 1 can't do is have the Super Shotgun, because it's hardcoded to not use the second "3" slot... and the Super Shotgun slot is hardcoded to check and switch the weapon if less than 2 shells are left (to avoid negative ammo).

Edited April 24 by Arsinikk

[Korsuv]

1 hour ago, CravenCoyote said:

I also wondered why Doom 1 maps are still being made. Would it not still be possible to achieve the same with Doom 2 and just limit yourself to the same monsters and weapons, and bring over any required textures from the original?

 

Unless there are things I'm not aware of between the two such as enemy hp and weapon damage etc?

 

By all means, I'd still play a Doom 1 wad but my understanding has always been that Doom 2 at its core is just an expansion of Doom 1 (though I could be mistaken - every day is a school day, after all!)

As a player, I would tend to say the same thing as you, but as a mapper and/or modder, it will greatly depend on the objectives. Anyone who sets out to create a complex mod knows that it necessarily takes time; I say this through the prism of my own subjective experience obviously. If you just do one or two maps, obviously that's no problem. If you intend to do an entire episode, on Doom 1 you can limit yourself to 8, but 32 on Doom 2 if you want to be canonical we'll say; You don't have to of course, but for my part, I wanted to respect this standard. And finally, if you push your mod, let's say you're going to redo the sprites of each creature. Here too for obvious reasons, Doom 1 has far fewer monsters (and therefore sprites) to retouch, and if you have a realistic vision of your work, you know that it is better to aim for a rather limited number. So if you want to test a proof of concept, it's better to start with Doom 1. For example, the team that worked on Doom 1 started with 1 and then 2.

[Patrick_Plays_Doom]

Thats like asking "Would anyone still enjoy eating chips?" Of course! 

(no offense tho)

I would love an doom 1 PWAD!

good luck on the wad!

[Bri0che]

Well, I won't say much that people above didn't already more or less said...

Doom I is still enjoyable to this day. And so people will still enjoy a released Doom I megawad :) the truth is that, maybe, there is less people in the research of Doom I maps in compareason of Doom II, and this is purely a reason of content. Doom II is basically Doom I with more things (except for textures where some of them have been removed when some of them have been added).

Honestly, the reason I prefere Doom I is just because of this very limitation, the gameplay feel more "authentic" and "shorter" (in a very figurative way), and, damn, can I say it ? Why did they threw away the episodes system ? This is the ultimate (Ultimate Doom haha) reason of why Doom I is superior to Doom II in my opinion.

 

[cannonball]

As someone who has made a couple of UDoom maps in my time. I have always enjoyed the limitations compared to the Doom 2 bestiary. At the end of the day it is how you use what you have that counts and as others have said you can remove a large amount of the limitations if you wished. There are many maps that I have made that would likely be less fun if revenants and chaingunners were peppering the player. 
In the end I think the UDoom mapping still has a place in this community and it is surprising what people can come up with (Example being the recently released Foresaken Compound), that has a fresh feel even after 30 years of wad making.

In short to the op, just make what you want in your own distinct vision, you never know, you might have the next classic UDoom Megawad to be discovered by the community.

[DreadWanderer]

I certainly would, and by the looks of it others would too. I always thought that Doom 1/UD mapping is terribly underrated and in a way more difficult because you have less to work with functionally speaking, and people are more used to the manic action patterns of Doom II or Final Doom. Like plums noted, Forsaken Compound is a very recent E1 replacement that's absolutely worth playing, and I'm glad that UD is making a sort of comeback.

I think you have the right plan - taking it step by step. A megawad is an extremely demanding commitment for a single person, and having a back and forth with the community as you're working on it can provide great feedback and perhaps new ideas.
 

2 hours ago, Doomzilla(iddqd) said:

There are literally zero reasons to make maps for D1 outside of getting nostalgic vibes: notice how almost all noteworthy D1 megawads are either remakes of the original episodes, or at least heavily inspired by them? There's nothing D1 has that D2 hasn't, the opposite however is not true.

Here I have to disagree because you're looking at it from a purely functional perspective. You're right that at a basic level, Doom II has more of everything and essentially "contains" Ultimate Doom in its assets. The devil is in the non-functional aspects: how UD demands a certain vibe and pacing that are usually very different from Doom II (more survival horror-centred), as well as the self-imposed limitations of the mapper. Maybe the latter is more of a psychological trick - it's easier to limit yourself by mapping for UD instead of playing the "try not to use the arch-vile" game. It's hard for creative people to restrain themselves when they have a wider palette of options.

[Shepardus]

Sometimes it's nice to play a map and know you're not going to be ambushed by arch-viles.

[CravenCoyote]

17 minutes ago, DreadWanderer said:

I think you have the right plan - taking it step by step. A megawad is an extremely demanding commitment for a single person, and having a back and forth with the community as you're working on it can provide great feedback and perhaps new ideas.

 

This is excellent advice. I recently did something similar (it was 9 maps for Doom 2 consisting of 3x Knee Deep in the Dead, 3x Shores of Hell and 3x Inferno style maps). Feedback was really, really helpful.

 

Creating those 9 maps took it out of me and that was with the additional resources that Doom 2 offered. The back and forth with the community, seeing their advice, watching their videos and simply talking were extremely beneficial. They even helped to keep motivation up.

[Somniac]

Its a different kind of challenge when you can't just slap down some Chaingunners and Revenants and boom, kinetic gameplay. Not forgetting the decreased texture options too.  Not that you can't make fast-paced UD maps or even a slaughtermap if you want, but I guess it naturally lends itself to slightly slower-paced gameplay and that's a great excuse to go spooky. When I made Arrokoth I specifically chose UD for that reason because the shoe just seemed to fit. A better example would be Nihility, which takes those qualities and turns them up to 11, and still has plenty of nail-biting fights. Also the E2 style lends itself best to that sort of thing IMO. 

 

There's definitely an audience for it. I'm running a UD community project and IIRC it filled up in about two days and there's quite a variety of maps there. 95 Never Dies is probably my most anticipated wad this year, not because I have half a map in it, but because I've seen a bunch of the other maps and they're crazy good. We had D:30 which had something like 6 episodes. Tom's Halls is another one I can't wait to see finished, looks really good. 

 

So yeah, make Doom 1 maps. Whether its Registered Doom or Ultimate Doom or an older version, even. Hell, make shareware maps. That'd be a fun challenge potentially. 

Edited April 24 by Somniac

[Angry Saint]

I hope so, as I'm working on a Ultimate Doom Vanilla Episode.

[DRON12261]

1 hour ago, Arsinikk said:

Reasons to still use DOOM 1:

It may be subjective, but if we consider stock resources, the textures in Doom 1 will be clearly more interesting than the textures in Doom 2.

[Arsinikk]

It's a little interesting to see the different reasons why mappers like to map for Doom 1.

 

I notice a lot of mappers mentioning working with the limited bestiary, and the challenge that comes with that. Which is a complete valid viewpoint and fun challenge.

 

I find this very interesting as I take more of a modding perspective and see Doom 1 more as a tool to create new monsters and things via Dehacked, while not having to worry about replacing existing Doom 2 monsters. More along the lines of what Rekkr did with heavy use of Doom 2 actions despite it being for Doom 1.

 

I'm not saying either perspective is wrong or right. It's mostly just an interesting observation on how mappers view mapping for Doom 1 very differently.

Edited April 24 by Arsinikk

[DoomGappy]

Does this answer your question?

[Misty]

Of course! I have soft spot for Doom 1 projects and I believe many others have similar feelings. So, keep going and don't afraid to seek playtesters if needed. Good luck with project!

Edited April 24 by Misty

[Lila Feuer]

Ignore the silly naysayers, some of the best Doom projects are designed with the first game in mind!

[yakfak]

i work with Doom 1 a lot 'cos of what it implies - a lower-stress type of gameplay, an abstract sense of place and a more dungeon-like layout. that's just my rule, though, not anybody else's... even if Doom 1 and 2 are more or less the same game at different levels of completion I do perceive trends and reasons why you'd pick one over the other. actually when I play super-streamlined takes on Doom 1 I often feel a bit disappointed

 

2) Doom 1 work tends to represent cranky solo creators more since Doom 2 is more often the realm of the community map pack x3

 

edit: 3) the maps from Doom 2 are way better than the original imo, it doesn't have to be about nostalgia

Edited April 24 by yakfak

[taufan99]

DOOM I/Ultimate DOOM is love, DOOM I/Ultimate DOOM is life.

Can't have DOOM II or even Final DOOM without it.