Project Proposal - Ultimate Doom: By The Map

Cool idea that I've sometimes wondered about myself, although I'm gonna have to agree on the premise of it being more of a Doom 1 megawad rather than Doom 2. It would be great to play a mapset that actually comes with those map visuals instead of reworking everything for Doom 2.

Alrighty, DOOM 2 IWAD it is, using DOOM in UDMF. The map will be called E1M2! I'll use the Doom 1 to Doom 2 tecture addon resource for starters! DOOM 2 unless otherwise noted!

It's an interesting idea but I question the inclusion of E4. A third party intermission screen is going to connect with far fewer people than there are slots to fill and you'd be diluting what would otherwise be a set with coherent vision. Doom is already a complete game without Thy Flesh Consumed. You don't have to get to thirty-six maps!

Besides, we all know that E4 is set in Quedlinburg, Germany, and not on a plot of farmland in Berkshire or something.

Good luck with this!

I think the Doom 2 IWAD with Doom textures patched in the best middle ground and gives the highest amount of freedom for individual mappers.

I'm starting to see an edge in people saying it should be UDoom's IWAD instead of Doom II, and only one voice (not counting my own) that feels we should use Doom II for it.

If anyone wants to defend Doom II, I'd really like them to speak up here. If we're going to change the IWAD, it should be done as early as possible to minimize conversion pain for mappers.

1 hour ago, Alfonzo said:

It's an interesting idea but I question the inclusion of E4. A third party intermission screen is going to connect with far fewer people than there are slots to fill and you'd be diluting what would otherwise be a set with coherent vision. Doom is already a complete game without Thy Flesh Consumed. You don't have to get to thirty-six maps!

 

Besides, we all know that E4 is set in Quedlinburg, Germany, and not on a plot of farmland in Berkshire or something.

 

Good luck with this!

If it winds up not happening, I'll just wind up chopping it to Doom: By The Map. But Ultimate Doom also allowed for some novel stuff, so kind of hoping I don't have to.

I don't mind either way, tbh! I just wanna see SOME new custom stuff, even new textures and the like! Beyond DooM 1 in D2 if we use D2! Perhaps some Cage stuff....

Seems like it would be pretty integral to the project to have those Doom 1 intermission screens between each level. I can't understand why we'd want to do away with them and lose the map screen we're trying to create.

Anyway, awesome idea! I have a real fetish for the creepy style of Episode 2 and I have some cool ideas for how to kick it off. Put me down for Deimos Anomaly and I'll have a bash at it.

EDIT: Oh, unless it's possible to script those screens in ZDoom format. I have fairly limited UDMF knowledge beyond basic map scripting.

2 hours ago, LordEntr0py said:

Seems like it would be pretty integral to the project to have those Doom 1 intermission screens between each level. I can't understand why we'd want to do away with them and lose the map screen we're trying to create.

 

Anyway, awesome idea! I have a real fetish for the creepy style of Episode 2 and I have some cool ideas for how to kick it off. Put me down for Deimos Anomaly and I'll have a bash at it.

 

EDIT: Oh, unless it's possible to script those screens in ZDoom format. I have fairly limited UDMF knowledge beyond basic map scripting.

I think one thing that is key to remind people is that even if we use the Doom II IWAD, I will *NOT* be using the usual Doom II intermission. The map definitions are in GZDoom's source, so literally 99% of the work in restoring them is simply copying and pasting the lumps and associated data, and voila, it's restored. It might be SLIGHTLY shaky ground in a legal sense, but we are still not including anything that's not needed (like stock enemies and so on), so it's not exactly allowing people to pirate Doom/Doom II here, and other than that and any textures from Doom that might not happen to be in Doom II, I am copying no further stock game assets, so it should be okay and still meet the definition of not being a standalone, playable WAD without either the original IWADs or something like FreeDoom.

If that changes anyone's objections to using Doom II as the IWAD, please speak up. I fully intended to port over the intermission maps and scripts to make that happen - I'm not going to be using that plain-ass Doom II intermission. Personally it's one of the things I hate about Doom II. I perhaps should make that clearer, so I will edit the original post to reflect that.

So in short, yeah, it's totally possible. It's how thyinterpic.wad for Episode 4 even exists - it's a custom-coded intermission screen, and the format of it isn't too hard to grasp.

And thanks for volunteering. Good luck on Deimos Anomaly! It will be pretty important to set the tone for E2, and as a bonus, you'll get to introduce a new baddie and/or toy as well, since we're no longer on shareware episodes. :)

If you want to stick to the original formula, both the Plasma Rifle and Cacodemon first appeared in E2M1. How much flexibility you have in that regard ultimately depends on what IWAD we go with, I suppose - E2 could also easily be a good place to introduce something like the SSG, or maybe Chaingunners, if we're using Doom II content.

Man, whoever gets Sewers is really going to have their work cut out for them.

Just an empty expanse in the corner of nowhere.

Wanna chime in again and say I'm also apprehensive about doing E4 for this project. I mean, this is the first time I'd even heard of the custom-made map screen made for it, so making an episode based on a map that wasn't even in the original game just seems extraneous, honestly.

My suggestion would be to put E4 aside for the time being, but if the project starts to become very popular, we could start opening up slots for it if there's enough interest. (Perhaps even get someone to make a new map?) Plus I think we'd want to focus on getting slots filled for the original episodes anyway.

6 hours ago, SiFi270 said:

Man, whoever gets Sewers is really going to have their work cut out for them.

Just an empty expanse in the corner of nowhere.

That's why we're not doing Sewers.

4 hours ago, Triple_sSs said:

Wanna chime in again and say I'm also apprehensive about doing E4 for this project. I mean, this is the first time I'd even heard of the custom-made map screen made for it, so making an episode based on a map that wasn't even in the original game just seems extraneous, honestly.

My suggestion would be to put E4 aside for the time being, but if the project starts to become very popular, we could start opening up slots for it if there's enough interest. (Perhaps even get someone to make a new map?) Plus I think we'd want to focus on getting slots filled for the original episodes anyway.

As I said before, if nobody really wants to take up E4, then it'll just become Doom: By The Map, and if mappers then take it on, it'll return to Ultimate Doom: By The Map.

I'm not going to hold a whole project back just because nobody cared about E4, after all, and don't think we should simply exclude it, but at the same time, the first three episodes are the most important.

Although since that's also the episode where you can throw anything and everything at the player, I think there's a good reason for having it try to exist.

Someone making a new map for E4 would be interesting, and I did float around a similar proposal that if someone made a map for SIGIL/Romero's E5, then I'd add it in as a sort of "stretch episode," although again, that depends on someone actually making one, and that's quite a bit to expect out of the community. I'm surprised E4 even got one, honestly.

47 minutes ago, Dark Pulse said:

I'm not going to hold a whole project back just because nobody cared about E4, after all, and don't think we should simply exclude it, but at the same time, the first three episodes are the most important.

A potential problem regarding this is that you could have a mapper spend their time and effort lovingly recreating an E4 map, and then if they're the only one, the map gets booted from the project, which can be very disheartening (or maybe it just becomes a secret map or something). I think very few people would want to participate on an episode that may or may not get the ax.

The project itself iiiiiiis interesting... the inherent asymmetry in the quality of the maps based on their structures is going to make mapping for it a bit tricky. For instance, Hell Keep and Pandemonium have excellent outlines that the player could do a lot with, but stuff like Warrens and Limbo are really vague and open to the author's whims, while Computer Station and both Anomalies are so small that I dunno how much can be done with them (assuming they won't be as big as Command Control from the outside). I think the project is a cool exercise in creating architecture, but I just worry about how to create a lot of the innards (like Halls of the Damned and Slough of Despair) exciting.

13 minutes ago, dobu gabu maru said:

A potential problem regarding this is that you could have a mapper spend their time and effort lovingly recreating an E4 map, and then if they're the only one, the map gets booted from the project, which can be very disheartening (or maybe it just becomes a secret map or something). I think very few people would want to participate on an episode that may or may not get the ax.

That's a good point, and admittedly I hadn't thought about that.

That said, I would think that if someone took that time and effort, I would include it in the release after it's sent to me like any other map, and just fill the remaining slots with dummy maps, or possibly alter the level progression so that after the final "made" map we just cut to Daisy's demise or whatever. It definitely would be unfair if someone put the effort in to not use it, or to relegate it to the Alternate Versions WAD.

13 minutes ago, dobu gabu maru said:

The project itself iiiiiiis interesting... the inherent asymmetry in the quality of the maps based on their structures is going to make mapping for it a bit tricky. For instance, Hell Keep and Pandemonium have excellent outlines that the player could do a lot with, but stuff like Warrens and Limbo are really vague and open to the author's whims, while Computer Station and both Anomalies are so small that I dunno how much can be done with them (assuming they won't be as big as Command Control from the outside). I think the project is a cool exercise in creating architecture, but I just worry about how to create a lot of the innards (like Halls of the Damned and Slough of Despair) exciting.

Well, that's part of the challenge, but also part of the fun - to try to create a new experience that evokes a lot of the feeling of the original, without being direct calques of them. The "match the exterior" rule is already a good way to help do this, and some of the Doom community's best maps have come from artifical constraints, be it 10 sectors, 100 linedefs, or 24 hours mapping period.

Some of those structures are definitely small and/or hard to see, so like I said, we're going for approximations to the best of the mapper's abilities, but remember that just because it's small on the surface, does not mean it can't extend into the rock it's on, or down below the surface, or have some sort of extradimensional piece... I mean, they are ANOMALIES, right?

@Wraith777 did this for A.L.T.'s "Vat" (MAP27) if anyone is curious for a potential example. It's "Spawning Vats" (E2M7). Heck, you might be able to con him into converting it for this project.

1 minute ago, kmxexii said:

@Wraith777 did this for A.L.T.'s "Vat" (MAP27) if anyone is curious for a potential example. It's "Spawning Vats" (E2M7). Heck, you might be able to con him into converting it for this project.

 

 

 

Interesting, I didn't know about that map!

That said, I will probably leave that up to him, assuming he drops by in here, especially as I don't think too many people would be too happy if we just used maps that were in other WADs already. But hey, if he don't mind, it could at least fill in a slot unless someone wants to take a new stab at it.

(GZDoom might also open up other possibilities as well, like making that dome more of a dome for example :P )

1 hour ago, Dark Pulse said:

That's why we're not doing Sewers.

I was going to say "correction: that's why you're not doing sewers" and submit an empty joke map but it turns out I don't even have enough mapping experience to make that turn out how I want it to so I gave up and that's embarrassing.

5 minutes ago, SiFi270 said:

I was going to say "correction: that's why you're not doing sewers" and submit an empty joke map but it turns out I don't even have enough mapping experience to make that turn out how I want it to so I gave up and that's embarrassing.

Poor Strong Bad. He was hoping I'd run out of ways to disappoint him by now.

I do not want to seem picky, but in OP there are too many text in paragraphs, it is difficult to read and this will push away participants.
Important text will not take so much space, you can look at other big projects and see their OP. Maybe reduce extra chatter in the OP?

It is best to indicate what is accepted and what is not accepted point by point. If this is not the case, many questions and contradictions will emerge later.

2 hours ago, riderr3 said:

I do not want to seem picky, but in OP there are too many text in paragraphs, it is difficult to read and this will push away participants.
Important text will not take so much space, you can look at other big projects and see their OP. Maybe reduce extra chatter in the OP?

It is best to indicate what is accepted and what is not accepted point by point. If this is not the case, many questions and contradictions will emerge later.

I'll clean it up as the project evolves. Right now I'm still waiting on some clearer points as to if this should be UDoom IWAD, or if my explanation of how I'm using Doom II (such as porting over the intermissions) will suffice.

I'll probably wind up spoiler tagging the extra detail and try to keep the main points to 1-2 sentences, but it's always better to give too much info as opposed to too little.

This is an interesting concept. I thought someone had done/tried it before, but I couldn't find it, so I may just be misremembering a different project. Or maybe someone just mentioned this idea and then never took it any farther. I don't plan on contributing a map because I have too much on my plate, but I wanted to share my two cents (and if this project goes on long enough, I may come back to it when I have more free time).

The issue with the automap shape being small (e.g., the anomalies) would imply that either the fighting would take place in a tightly confined space or most of it would be underground. Then there's Hanger, the first map, which is absolutely huge on the automap. There's still a lot of creative potential to be had from the automap shapes, so I'm interested to see what comes out of it.

With regards to whether to include E4, do what you want. The way I see it, you should pick a direction and go with it: either do all four episodes and don't release it until all 36 maps are complete or do the first three episodes and come back to "Thy Flesh Consumed" later. That way you set the expectations right at the beginning. People understand the scope of the project and they're not caught unaware when, six months from now, you come back and say "Hey, we didn't get enough maps for XXX, so I'm just changing the plan."

19 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

As I said before, if nobody really wants to take up E4, then it'll just become Doom: By The Map, and if mappers then take it on, it'll return to Ultimate Doom: By The Map.

I agree with Dobu's thinking regarding having mappers work on something and then it end up not being released with the rest of the project. Yes, the map would still be released in some form, but think about it from the mapper's perspective: he/she joined the CP to create an E4 map for "Ultimate Doom: By The Map" not create a map for a standalone (or few map) project with another name.

There is some precedent for splitting them up. When "Doom the Way iD Did" was released, it was only the first three episodes. And DTWiD was released years after the game came out, so you can't say that it was some project that was released in 1994 before Ultimate Doom came out. After DTWiD, they began to work on the fourth episode as "Ultimate Doom the Way iD Did." And when UDTWiD was released, it was only the fourth episode. Maybe they'll go back and repackage everything as one four episode Way iD Did collection, but, for now, they're split into two parts. So, you doing that here wouldn't be so unimaginable and unpalatable to the community.

19 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

I did float around a similar proposal that if someone made a map for SIGIL/Romero's E5, then I'd add it in as a sort of "stretch episode," although again, that depends on someone actually making one, and that's quite a bit to expect out of the community.

Personally, I wouldn't worry about Sigil: By The Map just yet. You're getting ahead of things. Finish the first 3 or 4 episodes and then later, you can come back to Sigil: By The Map.

May I try?

5 hours ago, Pegleg said:

With regards to whether to include E4, do what you want. The way I see it, you should pick a direction and go with it: either do all four episodes and don't release it until all 36 maps are complete or do the first three episodes and come back to "Thy Flesh Consumed" later. That way you set the expectations right at the beginning. People understand the scope of the project and they're not caught unaware when, six months from now, you come back and say "Hey, we didn't get enough maps for XXX, so I'm just changing the plan."

The ideal intention is that E4 gets covered - I consider it as much a part of Doom as the other three episodes, hence why I'm starting by calling this Ultimate Doom: By The Map. Whether or not E4 actually would get made would depend on people being willing to take a stab at it or not, and if people really only want to focus on the first three and be done with it, then I'd just say "Well okay, here's the first three episodes at least, if anyone steps up and is willing to do E4, I'll do the expanded release once that happens." (I'll address the issue of "What if someone did some E4 maps though?" in my response to the next quote.) In other words, if the interest just isn't there, I'm not going to hold back E1-E3 just because nobody does E4; I'd simply downgrade the scope, call it Doom: By The Map, and if enough people then decide to tackle and finish E4, time for the expanded release as this project originally intended.

In short, I have zero intention of holding this project back for E4. Hell, I don't intend to hold it back for *ANY* episode. It's why beta releases were planned for about every five maps or so, to give mappers time to tune stuff after their initial versions and feedback is generated to improve them. I want this project to be the best it can possibly be, so until at the very least there are maps for the first three episodes, there are no deadlines, there are no timelines, I want mappers to be able to explore, innovate, and create some interesting new possibilities. If slots take awhile to fill, I might even try to do one or two over the summer when I've got a large chunk of time off to devote to stuff like this that I really can't while my work schedule and other hobbies keep me busy.

So yes, the first release, it's literally impossible to have *ANY* complete episode, as it will literally be the first five completed maps (granted, right now only five people are taking a stab at it, but you get the idea), so things are going to skip around a bit as map slots get filled. The only way even one complete episode will exist is if enough people tackle and finish that episode for whatever the next release winds up being. Right now that's looking most likely like E1, since E2 and E3 only have one person tackling a map for them right now, and E4 is pure virgin territory.

5 hours ago, Pegleg said:

I agree with Dobu's thinking regarding having mappers work on something and then it end up not being released with the rest of the project. Yes, the map would still be released in some form, but think about it from the mapper's perspective: he/she joined the CP to create an E4 map for "Ultimate Doom: By The Map" not create a map for a standalone (or few map) project with another name.

 

There is some precedent for splitting them up. When "Doom the Way iD Did" was released, it was only the first three episodes. And DTWiD was released years after the game came out, so you can't say that it was some project that was released in 1994 before Ultimate Doom came out. After DTWiD, they began to work on the fourth episode as "Ultimate Doom the Way iD Did." And when UDTWiD was released, it was only the fourth episode. Maybe they'll go back and repackage everything as one four episode Way iD Did collection, but, for now, they're split into two parts. So, you doing that here wouldn't be so unimaginable and unpalatable to the community.

Currently, the plan is that maps get added in the order they are submitted. If the first release is E1M1, E1M2, E1M5, E2M1, and E3M7, then you will simply skip around those maps. Let's say the next one adds E1M6, E2M2, E3M1, E3M9, and E4M1. The map order would be adjusted accordingly - E1M1, E1M2, E1M5, E1M6, E2M1, E2M2, E3M1, E3M7, E4M1. And so on and so on and so on.

The only way there won't be Ultimate Doom content if it gets "cut down" to just the first three is basically if nobody bothers with E4 period, which I find somewhat unlikely. If maps were made for it but only one or two people ever have interest, they will be included, it just won't be called Ultimate Doom: By The Map and it will be pointed out they are essentially bonus maps, but a full E4 would still be missing.

I am not going to have anyone who contributes work for this project get left out in the cold. That is why there is no set amount of people who want to do a take at a given map, that is why if there are 2+ attempts at a map, the ones that don't become the official slot get turned into a secondary WAD of content, and yes, it's why even if there's only one or two people interested in E4, they will get their slot and it will just be disappointing that we couldn't muster a full nine for E4.

In short: If they build it, it will be there.

5 hours ago, Pegleg said:

Personally, I wouldn't worry about Sigil: By The Map just yet. You're getting ahead of things. Finish the first 3 or 4 episodes and then later, you can come back to Sigil: By The Map.

That's the plan, since as I said, by the concept rules of this project, someone would need to make an E5 intermission map in the first place. Unless someone wants to do that, E5 isn't happening.

If it does, and E4 gets filled up, then E5 becomes the new stretch goal. I'll probably wind up calling it Ultimate Sigil of Doom: By The Map or something though. Got to reflect that it's not just E5, after all.

10 minutes ago, DukeOfDoom said:

May I try?

By all means! It's open to anyone and everyone who'd like to try. All I need to know is what map (or maps, if you're crazy) you'd like to take a stab at, and I'll fill your name in on the first post for that slot.

Remember, you don't have to pick an empty slot if you don't want to, either! Competition is good, and it drives some mappers to be better.

So, for what iwad is this project intended? Doom.wad or doom2.wad?

1 minute ago, Walter confetti said:

So, for what iwad is this project intended? Doom.wad or doom2.wad?

Part of the reason why I'm aiming for Doom II (besides the expanded enemy roster and SSG) is that if the scope gets "cut back" it actually won't affect anything, since UDoom does slightly differ from standard Doom.

So far, I am sticking with using Doom II as its IWAD, but the epilogue screens from Doom will be added in, the map screens as well (obviously), it will be episodic, and so on. It's going to feel like Ultimate Doom, just not be actually using Ultimate Doom.

But I've been requesting feedback on that front, so if you've got an opinion on it, by all means. I think a few people thought that I'd be using the bog-standard (and dull) Doom II intermission screens and so on if I were doing this but using the Doom II IWAD and that's simply not the case at all.

That said, I'm really hoping that people voice their opinions so that if there IS an IWAD change, it gets changed as early as possible so mappers don't need to convert their stuff.

My vote is still for Doom 1 iwad. 

Is Deimos Lab open? I've not mapped in *squints at my most recent post* at least since July of last year, so a simpler concept like Deimos Lab might be just what I need to get back in the groove of things. I'll try to have a basic concept done soon-ish. Looking forward to doing a new map. Probably gonna start with the Doom II wad and try to make it not too dependent on it visually, so I can cut it down to the Doom I wad if we decide to change. Hope this project gets more traction, I've always wanted to do something like this!

EDIT: Hit reply too quickly.

2 minutes ago, THMG said:

Is Deimos Lab open? I've not mapped in *squints at my most recent post* at least since July of last year, so a simple concept like Deimos Lab might be just what I need to get back in the groove of things. I'll try to have a basic concept done

Deimos Lab is quite open. Due to the similarity in exteriors, if you'd like to take that on, you may want to have a little chat with @DJVCardMaster since he's working on Phobos Lab.

Shall I put you down for that officially?

1 minute ago, Dark Pulse said:

Deimos Lab is quite open. Due to the similarity in exteriors, if you'd like to take that on, you may want to have a little chat with @DJVCardMaster since he's working on Phobos Lab.

 

Shall I put you down for that officially?

Yeah sure, I didn't notice Phobos Lab was taken, so I'll do that. Put me down for it.

6 minutes ago, THMG said:

Yeah sure, I didn't notice Phobos Lab was taken, so I'll do that. Put me down for it.

Well you said you wanted Deimos Lab in your original post. Phobos Lab is "taken" in the sense that someone else is mapping for it, but as I said in my initial post, there is no "only one mapper can ever have this map" rule, so if you want a stab at Phobos Lab, I will put you down for that as #2 and then it will come down to "who made the better map" as decided by feedback and testing.

That said, Deimos Lab has nobody on it at all, and it will give you slightly more choice in your pickup/monster placement. (I'll be updating the main post with all that soon.)

I'll put you down for Deimos Lab when I update, unless you actually did mean you wanted Phobos Lab. If so, let me know. :P