Playing Doom with John Romero

In celebration of Doom's 20th anniversary, John Romero leads IGN through the game's legendary original episode, sharing stories, insight into his design processes, and secrets.

That's a really interesting video.

Why didn't WE do anything like this with him?! We could have played DTWID with John Romero instead of those posers from IGN.

That was awkward to watch.

Great video. He says that because the bar in modern mapping is so high, we would tear apart and make fun of any map he would make today. Some people will, but I think as long as it's at least on par with the original maps, everyone would love it. John, you have to make at least one new map someday before you die.

Ed said:

That was awkward to watch.

Why? It was very nice to see Romero play doom after 20 years and still enjoy it like a child, still remember all the secrets and all the facts about the launch day.
By all accounts – at least considering Doom - he's exactly like us. He loves picking this game apart, he knows all the trivia by heart, which shows he just cares so fucking much.
Also - he's a perfectionist, like many of us - which stops him from making maps, because they wouldn't be perfect enough. Heh, I can relate to that too :)

Toutes proportions gardees of course...

DooM_RO said:

Why didn't WE do anything like this with him?! We could have played DTWID with John Romero instead of those posers from IGN.

I'd piss myself like a little girl if I saw him playing something I helped build.

Ed said:

That was awkward to watch.

That was awkward to read.

We got Tom Hall for an interview, I see no reason why we couldn't get Romero. Maybe we could even convince him to be more active in the community.

Yeah, I'd really like to see him do another map. Who cares if it doesn't meet some modern standard in terms of detail? It's the design that matters, and I have no doubt he can still come up with some awesome levels easily on par with anything we do.

>We could have played DTWID with John Romero instead of those posers from IGN.

>He says that because the bar in modern mapping is so high, we would tear apart and make fun of any map he would make today.

its about doom which is 20 years old. its not about mapping today. i see a point in discussing mapmaking today, but this would only adress a small crowd. i think this sort of analysis is all we can get from big sites. doomsday and zdoom is meantioned, thats a win. the playthrough videos from big sites normally suck because the writers suck in play old games. i like that romero plays.

to sum it up, i found it entertaining and not so dry like the gdc video.
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014627/Classic-Game-Postmortem

No offence to the wad, but why would John Romero want to play dtwid or any other random pwad? On doom's 20th bday, I'd rather see him play doom the way id actually did. As in, doom.wad.

I don't think Romero plays many pwads. When he is asked about his favorite pwad, he says something like "hmm... erm... ah too many monsters here, I can't chat and play at the same time" and never answers the question. Not that I think this is a problem, I enjoyed the video. There are some nice mapping and game design tips. Doomworld is also mentioned :)

well, i take all back... romero speaks at the end @ 1:15 about community map development and detailing. sorry didnt listen to the end.

He seems intimidated. He shouldn't be, I think we could really use him around here and I bet a lot of people here would help him polish his skills.

he could do new cool maps, thats for sure. maybe he now has distance to doom (understandable) and it would take time to map (no time left).

One thing that hasn't been brought up yet, I don't agree with his vision for a new Doom game at all. His idea sounds about as unDoomlike as you can get. I can see the appear in huge player counts like that, maybe that could work in deathmatch, but in co-op I just don't think it would work well at all. He didn't really sell me on the idea, it sounds like hubs but done blander and directionless.

If Romero made a new map, I'd be all about the gameplay. If his 1990's maps can be forgiven for texture alignment errors, so can his 2010's.

That said, Doom Builder would take the sting out of that for him. ;)

Slightly unrelated note, but any reason why it says 0 comments on the front page? Oh yeah, and John Romero roolz. :P

DooM_RO said:

He seems intimidated. He shouldn't be, I think we could really use him around here and I bet a lot of people here would help him polish his skills.

there are a bit of negative comments towards him strewn randomly about the site, unfortunately. Can't be too fun to read those. Although I suppose they are few and far between. Would be cool if he was interested in being more involved.

Badboy said:

he could do new cool maps, thats for sure. maybe he now has distance to doom (understandable) and it would take time to map (no time left).

As I recall, one of the stumbling blocks for him was a lack of features in current map editors that he found very useful in DoomEd or whatever he used back in the day. I'll see if I can find the transcript of our convo about it.

The bottom line is, Doom has an active enough competitive scene that he'd meet a sizable number of players I doubt he could match

Unless you're referring to shit about Daikatana

I believe this was the feature he missed in modern editors: John Romero said:

There was no selecting of sectors in DoomEd. You just clicked inside a sector anywhere and it did this:

right-click: pick up sector properties
left-click: set sector properties

There was a sector inspector panel that held sector properties and you could modify them.

Sector Inspector was my pirate handle in the 80s. I was the only one who knew my handle, lol.

Eureka has a similar functionality, not via its panel but you can select a sector and copy its properties to another just by hovering over it and pressing the c key, then you can select that sector and edit. There's a copy and paste sector's plugin for DB2 that's similar, but DB2 lacks the inspector panel. Neither is identical, but we've got something close.

DoomEd sounds like it has faster workflow, but I imagine most mappers here wouldn't go for having to make sound channels again and giving up all the other potential of joined sectors. Not to mention auto-align, which I bet Romero would've abused the hell out of if he did get around to coding it :)

its understandable, he misses his old tools.

a) but he could use those old tools and go over the map with newer builders.

b) and as a talented gamemaker he could adapt to new builders better and faster than we.

It almost makes me wonder if he's actually submitted a map anonymously before, only to have it torn apart. Although I doubt that would happen here - people are usually quite good about providing constructive criticism, and pointing out what 'new' mappers have done right, as well as wrong.

P.S. cool video

Finished watching it - The awkwardness loosens up after the second level. I like the casual banter towards the end about Doom 3 and other modern gaming trends.

I found myself getting motion sickness watching them play. I had to watch it in small bits with some long breaks in-between. Strangely I don't have this problem when I play. Is it me getting old? :(

It was cool watching them play and hear John's stories and ideas.

Badboy said:

its understandable, he misses his old tools.

Heh, I still want his old tools. For historic purposes, if nothing else, although I suspect I'd have no problem using them for my normal mapping if ported to a modern OS. DoomEd sounds like it was a really good editor from what we've heard, certainly better than what we had in the 90s, even if certain tricks weren't possible with it. Burns me up that Bernd Kreimeier apparently could've released it, but opted to remove it from the source because DEU was good enough and converting file formats was hard...

I'd play anything Romero came up with gladly and even consider it canonical as part of the Doom universe, say, if he did a whole episode.

Shame it probably wouldn't be for vanilla though. More than likely he'd target Doomsday as that seems to be his new favorite port. Remember back when he loved Doom Legacy? :>

Ixnatifual said:

I found myself getting motion sickness watching them play. I had to watch it in small bits with some long breaks in-between. Strangely I don't have this problem when I play. Is it me getting old? :(

Same thing started happening to me over the past six months or so while watching demos. Had to watch in small bits with some long breaks in between. I've watched tons of demos over the years with no problems, until recently. Doesn't happen while playing. I guess 31 is considered old? :/

its the age and something personal. i read about it from older quake 3 players.