Is there someone here who played Doom 2 mods in 1994-1995?

[doomlayman]

I have read in Wikipedia that Doom 2 initially came out in October 10, 1994 so maybe between that date to the end of 1995, there were a few Doom 2 mods available back then when the web just started to gain popularity.

 

Is there someone here who played Doom 2 mods in 1994-1995?

How were these mods like and would you recommend them today? Please share an example.

[Rykzeon]

As a someone who had played some '90 wads even I born 20XX, I can say most of mods back then are new maps with new graphics, mostly textures. Some mods also employed quirks in the engine such as self-referencing sector and used DeHackEd to change existing objects and weapons in the game. What is amazing though, some of decent-to-good quality maps has detailed environment and using illusion trick as moving train trick, despite the limitation given by the engine and the editor. You can check list of top 100 wads in 1994 here and list of notable wads here.

I also heard Maximum Doom contained plentiful new Doom II maps, but I've read the the quality sucks, so unless you have alot of patience, then try seek decent-to-good quality instead.

[DNSKILL5]

Most of the more elaborate mods didn’t come about until 97 onward. 

[Kappes Buur]

During the early years mods were mainly available from the now defunct ftp.cdrom.com,

which have been uploaded to various mirrors with Germany having a complete list of

DOOM DOOM2 mods.

Edited May 3 by Kappes Buur

[Cadman]

During this time when Doom and Doom 2 first came out it took the world by storm....mods were just getting started.  There was a lot of experimentation when it came to creating mods or even developing maps (level editing).  The tools were very crude and still being developed.  DEU was one of the first ones...(Doom Editing Utilities).  In the early days I used DoomCAD, DETH and Zeth.  I then transition to Deepsea which was something you had to pay for but for me it was worth it.  There were pros and cons to Deepsea but to me it was easier to use seeing how I'm an idiot anyways...(snicker).  Many folks tried their hand at level editing but most of the time it was not good...textures not aligned, bad reject table, hom's, slime trails...to many to name here.  The ones that really got to me was one or two rooms with millions of monsters in them....arrrrrrrgggghhhhhhh!!!!!  There were also many good maps out there as well.  I agree with a previous post that many mods really did not start coming out until about 97 onward.  Everyone has their favorite mods and for me it's a matter of personal choice.  "Tricks of the Doom Gurus" I believed was published in 1995 was one of the bibles for Doom editing and modification (which I still have a copy of) was used by lots of folks and gave a lot of tips and tricks to level editing and modifications.  There's a little history for you...told you I was old!   :)

 

Cadman - Member TeamTNT / Doom2 Grandmaster DHT5 Standards  

[SCF]

The internet was still very niche in 94/95, but another way people got their hands on things like Doom WADs were magazine CDs. I still have one of those, dated mid-94, that came with a handful of custom maps, as well as a copy of DoomCAD. I remember experimenting with the editor, although I was too young to make any real finished levels.

[LadyMistDragon]

@Capellan  would probably be your best bet, although I'm fairly certain @ReX and @Lutz had some experience with custom wads before they started making their own.

[Lutz]

Yes, @LadyMistDragon -- I am, in fact, quite old.

 

Honestly, I can vividly remember when .WADS would brag about the fact that there were custom textures (in the same way that Doom 2016 levels tout custom geometry), and quite frankly, that was WILD.  As @Cadman mentioned, the internet was barely a thing, so there hadn't previously been a platform for sharing custom content...and as a result, there weren't a lot of games that were in any way designed to be modded.  So the idea that there was a fun game that allowed you to build you own content *and* add assets was practically unheard of, and pretty mind-blowing.

 

My first experience with custom textures was Cleimos (https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom/a-c/cleim10); I don't know that it has held up particularly well, at the time it was a great illustration just how much freedom you had to create what you wanted.

[epg]

On 5/2/2024 at 4:28 PM, doomlayman said:

Is there someone here who played Doom 2 mods in 1994-1995?

How were these mods like and would you recommend them today? Please share an example.

 

I imagine that here of all places you will find many such "someone".

 

Only one of my friends had Internet access at home at this time. He also ran a BBS just for our use. They had just the one phone line, so connectivity was spotty! We all got DOOM, Heretic, Hexen, and Quake this way. (Hey, I eventually grew up and paid!)

 

The only wad that really sticks out in my memory is RAVEN.WAD. I still like it, but I guess people who have played newer stuff first might not care for it.

 

https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/p-r/raven

 

We also made our own and shared them amongst ourselves on this private little BBS. All dust now. Not that they were worth preserving for the world, but for my own sake, I sure wish I could replay some of those.

 

I imagine there's a whole class of private little long lost wads, never played by more than a handful of teens, and never to be seen again.

[epg]

On 5/3/2024 at 12:13 AM, Cadman said:

"Tricks of the Doom Gurus" I believed was published in 1995 was one of the bibles for Doom editing and modification (which I still have a copy of) was used by lots of folks and gave a lot of tips and tricks to level editing and modifications.

 

That book and CD were amazing! I had one friend with a copy, and we were constantly fighting over who got to borrow it. I haven't dug in, but it looks like it's archived for posterity:

 

https://archive.org/details/tricks-of-the-doom-programming-gurus

https://archive.org/details/cdrom-tricks-doom-gurus

 

[LegendaryEevee]

Yes this was officially the first one I ever played for DooM and even to this day I look at this with fond memories the ability to go in all these different rooms especially the movie theater enemies that would chase you all throughout the college church thing the different music unlike I had ever heard before this honestly is what gave Doom staying power to me because at the time I had beaten all the games up to that point and was about to move on knowing now people could create their own levels made the enjoyment infinite my eternal thanks to whoever made this wad it made me a long time Doom player 30 years later now

[Capellan]

Memento Mori was originally released in early December '95. It has a bunch of new textures.

 

The version available today is a patched version from February '96, but it's 98% the same thing.

[Sinnesloeschen]

It was for Doom 1 first, but i remember my friends and me playing the Alien Total Conversion mod in 94/95 and being utterly impressed.

 

It's like, a whole new game, dude!

 

 

 

https://doom.fandom.com/wiki/Aliens_TC

Edited May 8 by Sinnesloeschen

[TheGreenZap]

I definitely remember Alien Total Conversion. It seemed awesome at the time.

There was another wad I played around that time that had a custom crashed spaceship in it, but I can't remember the name of the wad. I bet someone remembers this. It was quite good at the time.

 

Also, we were highly impressed at the time with anything out of the ordinary in a wad. It was all new to us. If there were toilets in someone's wad, we cracked up. Of course we were younger then, so it was funny and kind of cool at the same time.

Edited May 8 by TheGreenZap

[Redneckerz]

@doomlayman One could tell a thing or two about Doom 2 or how levels were edited back in 1994-1995, if you are interested to know.

[LVENdead]

A lot of the mods I remember from back then were like weapon sprite and sound replacements. I remember both Sailor Moon and Supersoaker mods that were incredibly basic by today's standards but were still pretty mind blowing for a kid. They didn't change anything about the specific weapon behaviors, just literally how they looked and sounded. Later on, I do remember some interesting if not also fairly basic DeHacked stuff, but needless to say that almost nothing was as comprehensive as even some of today's more basic mods.

 

Outside of that, most of the add on content for Doom was just one off WADS I'd download from the AOL download page. I think the first pwad I actually ever played was this one called Pit.wad that was literally a giant square room with a bunch of pits in it and various monsters (one of them had a Cyberdemon I think). It also had a midi version of Smells Like Teen Spirit (which embarrassingly I didn't realize until middle school). All of that was enough for a kid with an overactive imagination to find it legitimately captivating. It would be considered trash by today's standards.

 

 

[Lila Feuer]

On 5/2/2024 at 11:31 PM, Kappes Buur said:

During the early years mods were mainly available from the now defunct ftp.cdrom.com,

which have been uploaded to various mirrors with Germany having a complete list of

DOOM DOOM2 mods.

It ages me horrifically to know what ftp.cdrom.com was.

[Murdoch]

Depends how you define mod. There's a few solid maps from the time period, some including new graphics, that are worth playing like Memento Mori as others have said. But that's more adding content than modifying the game itself. Then you had graphics and/or sound mods that changed things up, but were usually basically just Doom wearing a different skin and talking in a different voice. Most of those wore thin pretty quickly because of their repetitive nature, especially if they used voice lines as wakeup sounds for monsters.

 

Most modern mods rely on source port features that didn't exist back in the day. It was all Dehacked. I played some preliminary Dehacked patches before I got online in 1997 that I got off magazine discs, but most of it was pretty stupid. The earliest true mod I played at the time would have been Aliens TC, which was released first on Doom but then re-released on Doom 2. It was actually done with care, thought and vision. It's the only true mod from the time period I would consider worth playing for those very reasons.

Edited May 10 by Murdoch

[Doomkid]

I think it was probably 1998 when my dad downloaded Doomed 2 Die for me but I wouldn't recommend it these days, lol. Around 1999-2000 I found the following wads online, I just made them a zip so it's easy. They're all from 1998 or before iirc:

 

https://www.mediafire.com/file/srk1fzaziaqil6i/90s_wads.zip/file

 

Has Simpspons Doom, Area 51, DoomCity.. All humble creations in the modern era, but in my opinion some of the best offerings from that time.

 

There's a lot more good stuff from this era out there for those who care to hunt, but this is the stuff I actually played in the late 90s.

[Trigsy]

On 5/4/2024 at 5:33 PM, epg said:

 

That book and CD were amazing! I had one friend with a copy, and we were constantly fighting over who got to borrow it. I haven't dug in, but it looks like it's archived for posterity:

 

https://archive.org/details/tricks-of-the-doom-programming-gurus

https://archive.org/details/cdrom-tricks-doom-gurus

 

Oh, awesome! Thanks for the links. I believe I had looked for this at one point and didn't easily find it. Maybe that was just something with a similar title, though.

 

[Lila Feuer]

@Doomkid Looks like you and me were just a year off, I started downloading stuff in 1999, first PWAD anything I ever tried was this one which I'm surprised to see it reviewed: https://onemandoom.blogspot.com/2013/09/asdoom-final-countdown-asd2wad.html

doomgate.de was where I got all my initial downloads which at the time hosted the cream of the crop when it came to megawads, partial conversions and I believe TCs.

[Somniac]

I started playing pwads around 96/97. The Doom95 launcher made this really easy. I don't know exactly what disc they came off, but there was a huge folder of wads my dad got and I got to experience a lot of the cool maps of the time: UAC_DEAD, Trinity, the Dr. Sleep levels, Deimos Subway, and literally a hundred more I don't remember and many I probably never played at all. I assume pretty much whatever was on Maximum Doom or something like that, there were numerous compilations after all. In spite of that, a lot of the bigger wads of the latter 90s (Requiem, MM, STRAIN and so on) completely passed me by until many years later when we got better internet. All I knew was what was on the computer at the time. A couple of other ones that come to mind are  Gum and Madness, arguably poor by today's standard (and by the standard of better contemporary maps), but I remember liking them a lot at the time. These could possibly be considered proto-slaughter.

 

I would love to be able to access that folder again, but that desktop died a long time ago and was already held together by tape and goodwill when it did.

Edited May 10 by Somniac

[Maximum Matt]

THIS is why Maximum Doom is still relevant.  

[Doomlover77]

I started playing Doom & Doom2 wads in September 1995. Got the wads from Toolkit For Doom volume 2, PC Gamer & PC Attack. Great times. My favourite Doom wad was Myhouse.wad from 1994 and my favourite Doom2 wad was Surreal2.wad. @Doomlover77

[Maximum Matt]

14 hours ago, Doomlover77 said:

Surreal2.wad

Deep cut

[DoomGater]

Around that time I started playing PWADs; some of them contained sprite and/or texture replacements. Can't remember if I've got it from CompuServe's "Go Action"

(was it even possible to download files from there?), or from somewhere else. Maybe from one of those obscure BBS/Mailbox systems, which where around at that time.

BTW: Does 'Fava Beans' ring a bell?

 

[ARMCoder]

I don't recall the exact year, but I remember playing some maps/mapsets like ASDoom2, 2DieFor and some others fun wads (eg, one that changed the RL into a pie thrower). All from the late 90s, from CD-ROMs or BBSs.

[smeghammer]

I still have a couple of old magazine CD ROMs from back then - I ripped off the DOOM WADs and put them on my site. They are mostly shite shovelware, but you never know...

 

https://www.smeghammer.co.uk/links/old-coverdisk-cds/

 

Check out PC Zone 10 1994 - it had a competition, and the finalists/runners up are not bad at all IIRC.

 

I definitely played most of the others at one time or another.

Edited May 18 by smeghammer

[Caffeine Freak]

 

On 5/2/2024 at 5:28 PM, doomlayman said:

How were these mods like and would you recommend them today? Please share an example.

 

Eternal Doom (1996) is an incredibly ambitious, lengthy and well-executed WAD that is worthy of any Doomer's time and shotgun shells. I didn't play it until late 2008-early 2009, but I can safely say it's one of the stronger WADs I've played from the mid-90's.

Edited May 20 by Caffeine Freak