Opening Cutscenes...

Good or bad?

Yes, as long as they can be skipped

As long as they aren't too long.

The only cutscenes in a Doom mod that I can stand are the ones in Urban Brawl. The cutscenes made by moving zdoom marines around are just god awful.

bgraybr said:

The cutscenes made by moving zdoom marines around are just god awful.

The one at the start of KDiZD is the best example I have seen, though in the vast majority of cases I totally agree with this statement.

I do like a few of the intros/cutscenes that Tormentor667 has done tho. (uTNT to name one)

I'd lean towards "bad", unless it's on the menu screen and you can immediately start the game (like KDiZD, Stronghold...).

If you absolutely have to put an opening cutscene once the game is started, make it skippable.

In 99% of cases, bad. Story is really gameplay's bitch in Doom, and since you have very little to work with in Doom cutscenes like completely non-emotive marines and more often than not a lack of spoken dialogue, they tend to suck as well. Of course there are the rare exceptions, most notably Action Doom 2.

Heck, just make it a separate map which is its own episode. Then the player gets to see the intro or not from the episode selection screen.

Did Doom and Doom 2 ever have cutscenes? No. Therefore I don't want to see cutscenes in PWADs. Doom's story is expressed in static images.

Ok, the cutscene is short, and after you teleport and the real gameplay starts, it autosaves. But because it's so short, I could probably make it into images.

If you have any kind of talent writing a good story and coordinating an interesting sequence of actions to progress that story ..then no, Doom obviously isn't the medium to showcase such a thing. Honestly I can't remember the last I looked forward to or was impressed by a zdoom cutscene.

Gez said:

Heck, just make it a separate map which is its own episode. Then the player gets to see the intro or not from the episode selection screen.

The other option is to make the intro in a TITLEMAP (the equivalent of DooM's static TITLEPIC). That way, the player can either choose to watch it or immediately bring up the game menu, skip the intro, and start playing.