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After watching Decino play a map from 2000 and talk about how long ago that was, it made me take a moment to check my account history here on Doom world. Turns out I first registered in 2004 here, and my account will turn 20 in a few months. It struck me how much of my life that has been. Who I was when I first found Doom world, and who I am today, and how Doom and this community has been such a part of my life. I'm not the most active here, and usually just lurk. I thought about every year looking forward to reading the cacoawards. Remembering all the nights laughing at absolute insanity in the post hell. Thinking about the time I rooted my brand new iPod Video to load a version of PrBoom so I could watch demos between classes on the train. I remembered being thrilled to see that stupid last secret in Downtown Industrial Zone be figured out with the pain elemental trick. I remembered trying to learn how to do SR50 so I could get a hangar in 9 seconds for the first time. Getting absolutely mugged for weeks trying to play Alien Vendetta, and being too much of a scardy cat to play Doom 3 at night on my old CRT. I thought about my dad buying more RAM for our first PC to play Doom and letting me sneak peeks. And how even today, I still watch YouTube videos of gameplay while working. I thought about playing coop in ZDaemon for hours and hours and hours. It's amazing this community is still here, and thriving! I'm so blessed to have made the friendships in the community I made along the way, and to get to share in the laughs. But there's something I need to get off my chest, and I hope you'll forgive the adult me for the young me that first came to Doom world back in 2004: The truth is, I wasn't 13 when I checked the box and registered for my account; I was only 12 and a half. Please find it in your hearts to forgive <3 Here's to another amazing 20 years of Doom and Doomworld!

i've always had this feeling whenever i've played wads styled after 90s maps where it never really feels like something from the 90s (with a few exceptions). by this, i don't mean in terms of gameplay, but instead in visuals and certain design choices. they never feel authentic, not even to the higher quality maps that came out of the 90s. i think that, if a mapper really wants to make a mapset feel authentically old, there has to be a lot more going into it than simply "less linedefs". now, i myself am not really sure as to what exactly it is that gives the feeling of authenticity, but i've come up with some ideas. feel free to tell me i'm full of shit if you think i'm wrong about all of this. - there were a lot of visual trends back then that a lot of throwback wads seem to gloss over. things like sector bars and curving staircases, for example, were pretty common sights back then. it's always felt like people were trying to make their maps seem more impressive by doing things like that. - thematic inconsistency! while this wasnt the norm for all mapsets - icarus, eternal doom, and strain all have maps that are pretty thematically consistent - a lot of them weren't. that's not to say they were abstract messes ofc, but they switched themes and locations. whether that was because the author was trying to make a big adventure with lots of different places or threw a bunch of separate ideas into one map depends on what it is, but it's definitely something that was common. - lots of moving parts. this is something you see a lot of in the higher quality 90s stuff: moving sectors. in dark covenant for example, i believe in map07 you drained a bunch of water to access lower sections of buildings. or in icarus map01, with the cross in the one room that turns upside down. or, in obituary and the troopers playground, where you constantly have raising staircases, lowering floors, etc. this is especially true with visual things, like icarus's aforementioned cross. it was like they were trying to be cinematic, in a way - while this depended on the author (dark covenant has almost none of this for example), i feel like little optional areas were a bit more common back then as well. it seems like a lot of people took after doom 1's more exploratory nature back then. lmk what you all think, because there's definitely more to this. or not, maybe i'm just wayyyy overthinking shit this isn't an attack or criticism onf any mappers btw, i just obsess over minute details like this lol. i really value authenticity in my own maps, so this is partially so i can figure out what's what when it comes to this

Techbase Sewers

I wonder how many of the things we consider hallmarks of 90s mapping are just people copying the eccentricities of specific mappers, heh. Maybe we can do a genealogy chart.

Hey man, I'm glade that you've enjoyed your time with us...

I don't really have much in the way of deep or intelligent points to make about WADs specifically, but I have thought a fair bit about why a lot of "retro" indie games feel so disappointing and misguided and a few of the conclusions I've drawn possibly apply here as well: - Only looking superficially at "the greats" of the time rather than also going through the not-so-greats to consider the zeitgeist and what people were attempting that might have had merit if they were implemented differently, or just to see that something was attempted before, and didn't work, rather than repeating those mistakes. - Bad application of a modern lens of what makes "good" or "bad" game design, which has tended to have shifting views and trends over time. This can cut in both directions with regard to ditching something "bad" that was a defining feature of the era, or mistakenly thinking something "bad" really was a defining feature of an era when that's highly debatable (looking at you, all "make the game stupidly hard because that's how retro games were" people). It can also go in the direction of "this is now considered 'good' but no one in that era was doing that". (I can say regarding WADs that a lot of times old WADs that I like, part of what I like about them are aspects that would now be considered "bad", particularly when it comes to slower pace / exploration / ambush fights rather than big arenas). - Only considering the immediately relevant things you're trying to imitate (i.e. making a game, so only looking at games), rather than what the other antecedents to those things were in things like movies/TV/comics/etc that devs might've enjoyed at the time. I think this is the one that gets the most overlooked. Just for general retro games examples, consider how common it was for any "barbarian" themed game in the late 80s/early 90s to pay specific homage to the Schwarzenegger Conan movies, or for there to be Xenomorph-inspired monsters appearing even in things that weren't otherwise riffing on Alien(s). Probably the most Doom-WAD-relevant thing to say about this sort of thing is that Doom itself was influenced by Dungeons & Dragons way more than you would think a sci-fi action game would have been, and Doom mapping likewise probably cribbed more ideas from tabletop maps (and specifically the types of dungeons that were current at that time, since that's also changed since then). - Somewhat of a side note to the previous point, but I'm going to set it apart as worthy of its own bullet point, forgetting to consider what influences outside the specific time period would exist, i.e. what would people making stuff in this time period have grown up being a fan of? ("oldschool D&D" is probably a good answer for Doom-relevant stuff here too).

A lot of people just make shitty maps and then say 90s influence as a shield to valid criticisms regarding bad movement, haphazard monster placement, and overall thoughtless design. It's not really 90s, just a crutch for low effort.

Moreover, modern mappers forget to put their real name, adress and phone number in the text file. What a shame !

This thread could really use some more specific examples -- I'd be most interested in seeing which maps people do consider nailing that 90's feel. It's a lot easier to talk about "why does this work?" when there's something tangible to look at.

An important limitation to note is the tools used for the time. A lot of the limitations older editors had directly affected how you could make maps, both in time and technical complexity. You couldn't simply draw sectors over other sectors, for example, you had to carefully build them inside out as no editor had that feature to just construct new sectors out of overlapping lines. In a way, DOS is a vital tool to making a 90s wad.

This was a fun project I started 1.5 years ago. After a looooong time of procrastination, lack of time and attention into it, this map is finally done. It's nothing special, just DoomGuy's gaming room and his bedroom, thought it would be a cool idea to make it for a YouTube video. The Computer and the TV running was done in a video editing software, I don't know how to pull off something that crazy in Doom so I just decided to edit it. So yeah that's all, if you're interested you can check it out here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zehwvJBNcs2ddOhSn_pe8wkfahHAbTSn/view?usp=sharing YouTube Video: Don't click this if you don't want to get spoiled:

"You wake up, a supershotgun and 20 shells infront of you, and suddenly, you hear the roar of multiple barons behind you. "Terrible... slaughter stuff, just make some normal mapset, please. Elitist gameplay all over the place." you mutter in frustration. Apparently, your mission after chasing the intergalactic cow is to investigate the cursed Temple (Of Fear) which was born out of nothingness. To find out more about your mission and have a chance at deciphering what the intergalactic cow is, play Hell Revealations linked below!" Ex Nihilo: Directors' Cut is a vanilla* [complevel 2] challenge map and is the original unedited version of the Hell Revealations' Map28: Ex Nihilo, as it was submitted to the project around a year ago which had to be revised to its current state in hrs.wad as project lead, Arsinikk, found it too overbearing and its difficulty far higher than the intended scopes of the project. The directors' cut features a completely cut fight, the original final arena before it was heavily modified, and about 700 more monsters among other differences. The map was designed and playtested primarily by its coauthors, @tonytheparrot and myself. Music: Mist Ache, composed by Lee Jackson, originally from Rise of the Triad. The map REQUIRES hrs.wad (https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/megawads/hrs) to be loaded alongside the map and is slotted at MAP28 to be played (simply idclev28 upon booting both wads up) Playtested primarily on dsda-doom -cl2 and on CRL, chocolate doom, and crispy doom for compatibility. *while vanilla compatible, a limit removing source port is recommended to avoid sprite flickering due to the presence of too many monsters on screen, intercepts overflow may be disabled. PLAY IT HERE: https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/levels/doom2/g-i/hrs28og Special thanks to: Screenshots: HRs-Ex-Nihilo_Original_Version.zip

Never, that was a cardinal sin that will condemn you to the smelliest pits of Doomworld hell where badly drawn replacement sprites will poke your naughty bits with sharpened sticks for all eternity!

It's not a 90's wad unless it has terminatortheme.midi or headlikeahole.midi playing

MyFace.wad (may finish this as a personal use mugshot addon eventually)

Welp. Wouldn't have seen that coming.

not necessarily. down the drain captures 90s wads - specifically the less fondly remembered ones - almost perfectly. it can absolutely be done, you just have to know what you're doing. besides, this is more of a vibe thing, y'know? you can make a map in deu, but it won't necessarily feel 90s because people had different sensibilities at the time. this is more about getting into their heads rather than what tools were used

you're so right about highly dynamic maps, lots of moving parts... i feel like there's a few lifts in doom 2 which are just so stylish that they inspired old mappers to make more and more byzantine versions of the same. and lots of stair builders etc. with more modern, more arena-like and picturesque approaches to mapping you don't see the big transformations so often, or they're designed as big SET PIECES instead of just being part of the level logic! i don't think optional areas have gone away in particular, even if mappers now imbue their stuff with a stronger linear tug. I guess some things tagged as secrets could just have been dead ends for their own sake though I miss that stuff but I don't miss deep water or pseudo-crouch sectors one bit. ALIENSTC-style descending railings are still cool though

I've been a bit away from Doomworld these past 2 weeks. I plan on getting back to Apprehension, as well as a couple new DM projects soon enough! Level 7 of my SP mapset is nearly done, I just need to finalize texturing. I've got big plans for something new, plus I'll release Havok DM 3 soon enough - (6 Zando:UDMF DM maps) - I might have another compilation of older maps I want to release soon, too. As well as working on my massive 200+ map 'collection', and my new in-progress CTF set, 'Fury CTF' (working title). I'm hoping a bit later this week, I'll be able to get back to making more levels - it'll help me blow off some steam. Hoping to have some more time to myself soon! Anyway, I hope everyone is doing well! :)

This is not a texture per say, it's a font, but it could be used in textures! And there's somehow two of them! STBAR Numbers; Standard small font; It looks atrocious in-game, be warned. I was inspired by Dragonfly's font in Eviternity and thought that I could make my own. It's not a particularly difficult thing to do, making it look good is the true challenge. I'm even more disappointed in the looks of this font seeing that Dragonfly was able to make a good looking font that is only 7px tall. This one is 10px ans looks awful. :( Feel free to use!

~ rosy rubicunda ~ A small 4-map (+ 1 intro and 1 credits map) collaborative wad between @OverflowingMocha and I. Features somewhat tough microslaughter and a cute color palette. Requires a source port that has compatibility with both MBF21 and UMAPINFO to function. Tested primarily with DSDA-Doom, however Woof and other MBF21 ports will likely work just fine. Screenshots: Map & Song List: Credits: Download!!! (now on idgames!)

Wow it's An map This is a map that's designed to be hard. There are no difficulty settings just hard I guess I made this in 9 hours Midi is a parasitic Existence by AD_79 Download Here Screenshots

Bethesda condensed the separate games into one bundle package a few years ago. The bad news is you technically would be buying Doom I/II again (though these would be the "proper", original versions of the games, and not the modified Eternal/BFG Edition versions, it should be noted - the wiki has a pretty detailed list of the changes). The good news is that you could snag several other games you might not have: Doom 3 (with its expansion, Resurrection of Evil), the Doom 3 BFG Edition, as well as Doom 64's remaster. And it's all for a pretty cheap price, all things considered. It might even go on sale again soon if that's really too much - it was barely $6 for the entire lot about two summers ago. Up to you whether it's worth it or not, though. https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/27490/DOOM_Classic_Bundle/

Oracle MAP02 UV Max in 12:05 or2-1205.zip

I came for awesome drama and I got feels instead.

Speaking of dramatic and stuck into memory, lo and behold, the one of suspenseful suspended crate in dusk. Suspended in Dusk, a WAD made in 2005

https://dsdarchive.com/wads/class_ep e2m1 max 1:27 https://youtu.be/dLtUgRj8HQ4 ce2-1-127.zip e2m1 tyson 2:36 https://youtu.be/kp9Sgd5YTPw ce2-1t236.zip

I think the far bigger reason why this wasn't done in the 90's is the low thresholds for render overflows in Doom. It was far to easy to reach either the visplanes or drawsegs limits with such constructs so the engine's own limitations made them hard to pull off. These days where the vast majority of maps is at least limit removing, this isn't a blocker anymore.

Critical analysis of maps has always been one of my weaker DOOM points, but if I had to think on it... - Performance, as the obvious low fruit. People build modern maps for modern PCs, even when they think they aren't. The most successful 90s map sets will be those designed to run on a 486 or (towards the end of the decade) a Pentium 2, the kind of hardware that outright keels over if introduced to Nuts. - As others have mentioned, the tools back then would force a certain methodology by nature of their limitations, although one cannot blame the tools for subpar work they will nevertheless influence the outcome. - "An abstract kind of hell". This phrase seems to apply more to older maps than newer ones, with new wads and custom textures often leaning heavily into being a fully realised set of locales, rather than the loosely manifested themes of the older maps. Look at E1M7, for example - a similar map made now, would much more resemble an actual "Computer Station" and might even resemble something like a corrupted datacenter. - Mapper mixing across engines. Doom mapping, vs Build mapping, vs Quake mapping, vs whichever big engine editor you want to name, all have their distinct traits and tropes. As time goes by, these communities intermingle or cross over into each other, which some might argue has a bit of a dilution effect on the specific characteristics of a given engine. Build mappers, for example, seem much more fond of doomcute and thus an influx of Build mappers is likely to result in a realism trend for a map pack. tl'dr: 90s maps really are a product of their time, and without a fairly intimate familiarity of both the tooling and the mindspace of mappers at the time, efforts to replicate it will often end up as fairly shallow homages which only encapsulate a few of the things that made a 90s pack so 90s. This is just my very broadly spoken opinion.

Almost 30 years have passed, and all those 30 years and technological advancements will have an influence on how maps get made. Nobody uses the editors that were popular in the 90's. Most people use higher resolutions than 320x200 when designing their maps and they of course have experienced a large portion of map sets that were made throughout all this time. All these factors will affect how the map will look. I find it very rare that some newly released project successfully manages to replicate that very peculiar look of these early maps.

I made a custom palette for my Doom 1 episode.

Fragport if you're going for a cheesy 80's action move vibe. Solar Struggle with its planet-hopping plot would also be a solid candidate.

Map03 UV Speed in 36.06 mdnt03-36.zip

I totally agree, I think the main thing is that in most projects people just aren't that critical about "is this 90s enough." Most people are doing a "soft throwback" rather than a hard one, if that makes sense. To really get hardcore 90s vibes, you either need a mapper or team of mappers who are specifically dedicated to reproducing the style and ready to be very self-critical and compare often to real 90s maps, or a community project leader that is willing to be strict about it.

Most of the time I won’t add exploits but what I do with them is the same regardless of whether I made them or someone else found them. If an exploit is possible, then it is a trade off. If, it lets you deal with something faster then it will also be harder than the section is normally. If it allows you to do something safer then it will also have to take longer than the usual methods. I like this kind of design because it treats exploits in the map as game mechanics and balances around them meaning that knowing the exploits doesn’t exactly make the map easier to speedrun or trivialize encounters. Instead it just broadens your choices to deal with fights while maintaining the time or difficulty balance.

It imports monsters from other maps to stimulate your failing economy.

It's a hobbyist project. You've nothing to apologise for. I love what you've done, it's amazing.

The truth is that there should be at least one more release, but I haven't focused on that yet, my apologies.

I like this. Playing the map game right now. There should be an automap themed one.

Another mapper falls victim to the custom palette virus. Looking forward to playing this and I'd love to use the palette as well

Today are presented: E1M9: Strategical Offensive Array (secret level) E1M4: Command Center E1M5: Chemical Processing Plant *** One of the two maps of the first episode, where we can still encounter not only visible demons but also spectres and even their number will be the same. To be honest, it would be very interesting to find out the reason for this almost full replacement *** *** Starting from this point, the remaining maps will grow noticeably in size and become more confusing and less obvious to advance. This process looks absolutely logical considering the approach to the end of the episode but it's funny that it was perceived more heavily in the first two episodes than in the last two. And by the end of the megawad, I had already played out so much that it was really a pity that there is no fifth episode :))

I think the pinnacle of weapon design would be a chain-bfg, an amalgam of the two. Imagine having the delayed shot as the gun charges up, then a big ball of energy and on impact it shoots 40 tracers of 2 bullets each.

Map02 UV Pacifist in 19.46 mdnt02p19.zip

E4M3 Stroller in 1:11.97 e4m3str111.zip https://youtu.be/FhAmGwGHAsM

Make the map what you'd want to play yourself

Was digging through my hard drive and found some screenshots from an abandoned WAD that I worked on for about a month and never finished (peep the missing candle in the first shot).