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Ultimate Doom: By The Map - Which IWAD?

Ultimate Doom: By The Map - Which IWAD?  

55 members have voted

  1. 1. Which IWAD should we use for this project?

    • Ultimate Doom
    • Doom II
    • Other (please specify)
      0


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There's been some debate in my proposal for the Ultimate Doom: By The Map project as to which IWAD to use: Ultimate Doom, or Doom II.

 

To try to centralize (and formalize) all feedback on that topic, I've create this sub-topic here, along with a poll. You don't have to be part of the project to participate or vote - but I really want to minimize conversion pain, and simply put, the sooner this is decided, the better. And yes, to prevent shitvoting, votes are public. Not that I don't trust this community as a whole, but there's always some knuckleheads out there.

 

So then, I will present the arguments for both Ultimate Doom and Doom II as an IWAD, see what the community thinks, and we will go from there.

  • Ultimate Doom
    • Pros
      1. This is an Ultimate Doom project, so it's the natural choice.
      2. No real need to port over anything - just need a new set of maps.
    • Cons
      1. More limited bestiary means that harder levels will generally devolve into "throw more enemies" at the player, a situation that an expanded bestiary can avoid.
        • I'd rather give mappers the choice of "throw a legion at them" or "throw some badder nasties at them." You can't really do that in Doom unless you send out a swarm of Cacos or Barons of Hell, and almost everything else is solved in a couple of Shotgun shots.
      2. Simpler gameplay due to not having to worry about several types of enemies that Doom II has, letting the player make some presumptions that would not be safe if these were Doom II enemies.
      3. If the project gets cut down (due to Episode 4 not really getting any attention from mappers), this would actually need to be changed yet again to running off Doom.wad as its IWAD - a situation that could be avoided if we're using Doom II entirely.
        • If a few (but not all) maps got made for E4, then level progression, at a minimum, would have to be altered to fit, although this applies to Doom II as the IWAD as well.
  • Doom II
    • Pros
      1. More people will have the Doom II IWAD, so there is much better reach and potential playerbase.
      2. Expanded weapon roster, powerups, and (especially) bestiary allows for a lot more dynamic situations than Ultimate Doom can provide.
        • The enemies alone nearly double the potential roster to use. To me, this is the single biggest selling point in favor of using Doom II as the IWAD.
      3. A few extra sector types that allow a little more creativity in mapping (I'm especially a fan of the "flickers randomly" sector effect, which only got added in Doom II).
      4. Sandy Petersen and Gregor Punchatz have both went on record as saying the expanded roster was intended for Doom - simply not finished in time, making this more true to id's "intended vision" as opposed to constraining it to the vision that id could achieve at the time.
    • Cons
      1. Need to port over the intermission maps, ending texts, etc. from Doom (which honestly isn't all that hard).
        • There's no way I'm saying this is a project intended to feel like Ultimate Doom, and then still using that bland, boring Doom II intermission stuff. No way in hell. It will feel like Ultimate Doom in every way; episodes, intermission maps and all - it simply will not be using the Ultimate Doom IWAD.
      2. If mappers use some graphics not in Doom II, will need to port those over as well.
      3. It's not using the Ultimate Doom IWAD and so "doesn't feel" like the original Doom if Doom II monsters are used.
        • Though I'd counter that by saying Doom II monsters in Doom maps was one of the major draws of Playstation Doom when it was new, as well as that bit mentioned above by Sandy Petersen and Gregor Punchatz.

In short, I see a lot of people saying I should stick to Ultimate Doom, despite the fact that I feel there are a lot of really good reasons to use Doom II, and most of the arguments against Doom II is basically "But this is an Ultimate Doom project, so it should use Ultimate Doom." Well, that's a fair point, but it also means we will be quite reduced on a few things - things that, to me, could make the WAD feel more interesting and fresh. New levels are a good start, but I'm not particularly interested (personally) in remaining chained to the limitations of Ultimate Doom. (At the same time, I don't generally want a hugely altering gameplay mod either, so aside from the roster expansion Doom II would provide, a new enemy or weapon would definitely be something I'd judge much more carefully.)

 

But perhaps what's needed is for the community to debate amongst themselves. This project is, after all, intended for you guys. If a bunch of you feel like Ultimate Doom will make you happier, then I'll respect that decision and stick to that IWAD, regardless of my personal feelings.

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Not everyone automatically feels that more is better, or that more is always appropriate. One of the original creators of the game, whose maps are pretty much unanimously loved most, and the only one who has made "fan made" maps for Doom, has only ever made them for Ultimate Doom. Never for Doom 2. I think that alone says volumes about Doom 1 being a well loved game that isn't ipso-facto inferior to Doom 2 because it doesn't have as many monsters, an SSG or a megasphere. If anything, it says that in the hearts of many Doom 1 is still the better of the two, but I don't want to have that debate here, it's tertiary to the other points I'd like to make: The amount of Doom mods that have been made in the last few years also shows that making mapsets for Doom is a good way to go to please the player base. Hell, Sigil is in response to a demand shown by fans, and as such was made for Ultimate Doom, not Doom 2. Most mods are for Doom 2. Yet Doom 1 has clearly demonstrated itself as still a well loved game with plenty of room in the community modding space for projects made especially for it.

 

Given all of that, then, when a project has a natural inclination towards the Doom IWAD, it seems in poor taste to disenfranchise all the Doom 1 fans who understandably want to play this as a Doom 1 mod. There are plenty of Doom 2 mods. Let the doom 2 mods use the doom 2 IWAD. Furthermore, there's almost a 'canon' at this point of doom 1 mods (DTWID, Doom In Name Only, etc. etc.) and now Doom By Map fits into this developing Doom 1 mod 'canon' perfectly. I believe that by breaking from this developing trend would not only disrupt this so called doom 1 mod 'canon', but more to the point will be disappointing and off putting to a lot of Doomers. Whereas I doubt a lot of people will feel bad about this project not being made for doom 2.

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Personally, I think that you're extrapolating a bit too much out of how Romero has "only" done work for Doom 1 - especially since he said himself that if SIGIL did well on sales, he would indeed do a similar project for Doom II. I think part of the reason he did so little for Ultimate Doom and Doom II was that by then id were working on Quake, and they definitely needed Romero doing coding, not mapping.

 

That said, I can't disagree with much of the rest of your statements. I feel that Doom had the superior execution, I definitely like it a lot more than Doom II for a multitude of reasons (soundtrack, general flow, nostalgia, balancing out Sandy Petersen), and yes, several major megawads have based themselves around the Doom (or Ultimate Doom) IWAD.

 

All excellent reasons for shifting things over, and why if the community is really that far behind it, I will do so, even if to me personally it feels a little limiting.

 

It's an interesting debate, but it's also why I'd really like to see what the community thinks about it. I know you posted snippets of these thoughts in the other thread, but it's good to have them nice and formalized here. :)

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My logic behind wanting you guys to use the original game for this is that, besides it feeling more appropriate, it serves as a "break" from most mapsets. As much as I like Doom 2's bestiary and the SSG, it feels nice to revisit UDoom's simplicity every now and then.

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13 minutes ago, KVELLER said:

My logic behind wanting you guys to use the original game for this is that, besides it feeling more appropriate, it serves as a "break" from most mapsets. As much as I like Doom 2's bestiary and the SSG, it feels nice to revisit UDoom's simplicity every now and then.

A simple, but heartfelt reason, and likewise one I can't argue against. If that will truly make the community (or at least, the community who cares enough to vote on it) happy, then that is just as well a reason as any others.

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Use Ultimate Doom. It'll be interesting to see what you can do with the limitations you're presented with.

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I enjoy the odd udoom wad but I don't think there's a reason to limit yourself here.

I think you'd be better to use doom2 and just use the extended bestiary carefully, save them and the SSG for the later levels but have the start conform to what's in udoom.

Kind of a compromise I guess (not that you need to compromise).

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I vote for Ultimate Doom. I won't be upset either way, but I do like the idea of "Ultimate Doom: By the Map" utilizing the Ultimate Doom bestiary, not the Doom 2 bestiary.

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2 hours ago, NerdyButLazy said:

Use Ultimate Doom. It'll be interesting to see what you can do with the limitations you're presented with.

Though that limitation would also be up to the mappers themselves.

 

Nobody is saying that I will EXPECT mappers to make use of the Doom II bestiary if we go with that, after all - I'm merely giving them the option if we do. If they want to only stick to using the Doom monsters, that's fine.

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I've already said my piece in the other thread, but again I'm going to second and third Hellbent & KVELLER respectively. There's many folks who do still love the original game and sometimes it's refreshing to play a UD map from the sea of D2 maps out there. 
I would also point to No End In Sight as another great example of a UD megawad made in recent years.

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15 minutes ago, Triple_sSs said:

I've already said my piece in the other thread, but again I'm going to second and third Hellbent & KVELLER respectively. There's many folks who do still love the original game and sometimes it's refreshing to play a UD map from the sea of D2 maps out there. 
I would also point to No End In Sight as another great example of a UD megawad made in recent years.

Another fine example, yes.

 

Perhaps I'm underestimating slightly the drive for people who actually want Ultimate Doom-compatible WADs, as I was under the impression that only a fraction of the playerbase has them compared to Doom II.

 

I'm going to let this topic run for at least a few days to generate a sufficient amount of feedback, perhaps a week at most. I'd think that by then we should have more than enough of an opinion to know where we're going.

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I voted for Ultimate Doom, because I strongly agree with the idea that the maps won't feel like Doom maps with the bestiary and added weapon of Doom II. I also agree that it would more refreshing to give the mancubi, revenants and arch-viles a break, given the community's propensity to use them. Lastly, I'll say that I personally prefer the Doom monsters to the Doom II monsters.

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Had this question been asked a few months ago, I would've definitely voted for Doom 2 as it not only offers an expanded bestiary and the SSG but also more variety of textures.

 

But after playing "Deathless", I started believing that it is indeed possible to make a fun UDoom megawad. Deathless was awesome despite(or infact because of) the limitations.

 

Also if u go with doom 2 route, it will simply end up as another megawad in the vast ocean of megawads out there. Whereas UDoom has very few megawads, so it has a greater possibility of standing out in the crowd.

 

Thus my ultimate vote goes to UDoom. It was a tough decision tho.

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4 hours ago, Vermil said:

Make a Doom2 wad, but only use Doom1 weapons, monsters etc?

While doable, that would kind of defeat the point IMO. At that point you might as well use Ultimate Doom's IWAD.

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Since this project is going to be for GZDoom, why not go with Ultimate Doom and include a few custom monsters to make up for the reduced bestiary?

 

Some good fits could be:

 

- Vulgar from Demon Eclipse.

- Hades elemental from Demon Eclipse.

- Overlord from Demon Eclipse.

- Hierophant from Demon Eclipse.

- Chaingun zombie from KDIZD.

- Chainsaw zombie from KDIZD.

- Hellknight from KDIZD.

- Bruiser demon from KDIZD.

- Shadow from KDIZD.

- Soul harvester from KDIZD.

- Grell by NMN.

- Wraith by Ghastly_Dragon.

- Terminator by Vader (from Thunderpeak).

- Super shotgun zombie by Carnevil (from Skulltag).

- Mother demon by Cage (from Doom 64 for Doom 2).

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11 minutes ago, NiGHTMARE said:

Since this project is going to be for GZDoom, why not go with Ultimate Doom and include a few custom monsters to make up for the reduced bestiary?

 

Some good fits could be:

 

- Vulgar from Demon Eclipse.

- Hades elemental from Demon Eclipse.

- Overlord from Demon Eclipse.

- Hierophant from Demon Eclipse.

- Chaingun zombie from KDIZD.

- Chainsaw zombie from KDIZD.

- Hellknight from KDIZD.

- Bruiser demon from KDIZD.

- Shadow from KDIZD.

- Soul harvester from KDIZD.

- Grell by NMN.

- Wraith by Ghastly_Dragon.

- Terminator by Vader (from Thunderpeak).

- Super shotgun zombie by Carnevil (from Skulltag).

- Mother demon by Cage (from Doom 64 for Doom 2).

As I said in the original topic, I kind of want it to be "vanilla plus." Hence why I have no problem including the Doom 2 enemies (although the way voting is going, that's looking increasingly unlikely), but why actual new and custom enemies and monsters would need to be much more carefully thought out and planned for.

 

In short, while I don't mind using GZDoom's advanced tricks - freelook, crouching, jumping, and so on, since going by the map means needing a better exploration of the 3D space - I feel deviating too far from it would start to make it feel more like a mod.

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Maybe use Ultimate Doom iwad and pwad with extra textures which are variations of Doom1 textures/flats. It may dilute the lack of resources.

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5 hours ago, Vermil said:

Make a Doom2 wad, but only use Doom1 weapons, monsters etc?

 

That's a pointless limitation.

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Make it for WadSmoosh and you solve all problems. :p

 

More seriously, though, Ult. Doom is the logical choice. The Doom II extras can be brought. Look at how KDiZD even went as far as bringing in new graphics to avoid using Doom II resources while still featuring Doom II critters such as chaingunners and Hell knights.

 

Speaking of KDiZD, I recommend checking out its intermission map. :p

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I think what nightmare said would be a good choice. I would not recommend anything outside of something closely relating to Doom in some way however, like you said, you should be careful about it but in my opinion I wouldnt go against it or not think about it. Besides that, like what almost everyone said, Ultimate Doom is the one to go with.

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2 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

As I said in the original topic, I kind of want it to be "vanilla plus." Hence why I have no problem including the Doom 2 enemies (although the way voting is going, that's looking increasingly unlikely), but why actual new and custom enemies and monsters would need to be much more carefully thought out and planned for.

 

In short, while I don't mind using GZDoom's advanced tricks - freelook, crouching, jumping, and so on, since going by the map means needing a better exploration of the 3D space - I feel deviating too far from it would start to make it feel more like a mod.

Well, two of those I mentioned are just Doom 2 enemies with alternate sprites, and several of the others could be adapted as alternate sprites (e.g. hades elemental sprites for the pain elemental, soul harvester sprites for the arch vile).

 

I don't think many people would object if some of the enemies looked different, but behaved exactly the same way! 

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I think an understated, subtle monster addition would be nice. Like, maybe darker, tougher imps that show up in the second half of episode 3 and maybe some kind of revenant-lite type monster that appears on E2M7 for the first time and then again on E3M6 and E3M7. I think it's cool when monsters make a late showing in an episode--it adds a nice "whoah" factor and not many wads do it, but sometimes less is more. 

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3 hours ago, Hellbent said:

I think an understated, subtle monster addition would be nice. Like, maybe darker, tougher imps that show up in the second half of episode 3 and maybe some kind of revenant-lite type monster that appears on E2M7 for the first time and then again on E3M6 and E3M7. I think it's cool when monsters make a late showing in an episode--it adds a nice "whoah" factor and not many wads do it, but sometimes less is more. 

As I said, I'm not opposed to it - my proposal even mentions I'm open to the possibility - but it's a community project, so I want it to be a community decision, and the maps would need to be carefully balanced.

 

(Not to mention any maps after the initial appearance has been determined should get to rebalance their levels around the addition.)

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Use Doom II IWAD and include the Doom1-in-2 texture pack PWAD. Then you have all the resources, and everyone can map as they see fit. No compromises needed!

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I really love Doom 1, but I think yall should use Doom 2 and simply emulate Doom 1. Putting the SSG only in episode 4 would be cool I think. Macubii could appear in E2, Arachnotron in E3, and Revenants in E4. Bam, you just spiced up the old themes without changing everything. Save Archviles and Pain Elementals for E4. BOOM!

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Just FYI, we discovered when making KDIZD that it's technically illegal to include resources from one Doom game in a mod for another. So if this mod does get made for Doom 2, you'd need to either knowingly break the law or recreate all the necessary intermission graphics from scratch (or you could recreate them as level geometry as in KDIZD).

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2 hours ago, NiGHTMARE said:

Just FYI, we discovered when making KDIZD that it's technically illegal to include resources from one Doom game in a mod for another. So if this mod does get made for Doom 2, you'd need to either knowingly break the law or recreate all the necessary intermission graphics from scratch (or you could recreate them as level geometry as in KDIZD).

At this rate it's looking pretty unlikely that Doom II is the direction we will be moving in, but that is definitely something to keep in mind. Can possibly be countered via use of WadSmoosh though.

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