Should newbies complete DooM I/II before playing (and making) custom map?

[SiMpLeToNiUm]

The IWADs are most people's introduction to Doom. As with most things that develop communities and a hobbyist following, one inevitably moves past the source material and into new and exciting territory. I see no "need" to start with D1/D2, but if you get some inspiration from them, why not? Sure, play the IWADs to get the sense of what was achievable by the OGs with the limits of the time and marvel at the trails being blazed, but don't limit yourself because what's being made nowadays is, in my opinion, very exciting and much more inspiring. Appreciate Doom for what it is and how it started, but don't neglect what people are doing nowadays in pursuit of some artificial adherence to the austerities of yore. Go where your creativity takes you.

[Pompeji]

1 hour ago, Doomkid said:

I don’t mean this in an antagonistic way, but why do people who don’t really like the game that much map for it at all? By that I mean, wouldn’t that time be better spent modding a game you love/that resonates more with you?
 

I can’t imagine having gotten into mapping if I got bored of Doom before even reaching the end, which only takes a couple hours total. A big reason I started mapping is because the joy of Doom literally never wore thin, so I wanted to make my own little worlds within it. Granted, I did start playing custom wads before I even began mapping, but that was just icing on the cake.

 

I don’t mean to turn people away of course - a friend of mine who is a brilliant mapper never really liked the base campaigns either. But I know if that was true for me, I wouldn’t be here right now. I guess post-2000 Doom is a different landscape though, where the majority of people are exposed to the game through mods and such. I feel lucky to have started with “pure Doom” though.

 

The original IWADs for me always felt extremely repetitive or just like dick Romero design to me, where you open a door and 7 cacodemons burst out from your chest and tear you to pieces. Doom is the only one where I've finished E1 through 3. Thy Flesh Consumed was an immediate turnoff when I went into the Sloughs of Despair or whatever it's called(no hate to Sandy I love his stuff). Doom II was great, but around Tricks and Traps the game starts to feel a bit annoying. I actually beat Doom 64, but it's technically a different game. Never have and never will touch Plutonia and TNT because those ones just feel unfair. Getting blasted by 10 chaingunners isn't skill dependant it's frustrating.

 

I love Doom, and anything Doom related, so I chose to start mapping because I wanted to make maps I believed would be fun. Just because I don't enjoy the official WADs doesn't mean I don't enjoy the game. I've played and loved many maps posted on Doomworld, and they've inspired me to make my own as well.

 

No hate intended to any of the commercial WADs, I love Doom and I always will love Doom. It's just not my cup of tea when you reach maps like The Pit. 

[Doomkid]

Just to clarify, I'd never consider Plutonia or TNT must-plays, but I suppose that's just because I didn't even know about them until after I'd played a good number of custom wads and even Doom64.. I discovered both of them alongside Memento Mori, which impressed me substantially more than either of them. I guess it would be different for people who started out with only Final Doom though, they'd probably think of it that way I think of Doom 1 and 2 - as the "hallowed grounds" of the series, lol.

 

I don't mean any harm with the question, it's just difficult to put myself in the mindset of people who started Dooming later on, where there's access to any number of custom mods, megawads etc. right out of the gate. I spose I can see how that would lead to Doom and Doom2's campaigns feeling like random naff you don't need to complete when they're competing against the numerous modern-day gorgeous titan megawads there are out there, the Ancient Aliens' of the world. I guess it's just hard for me to see past the personal connection to the maps present in Doom1 and Doom2! I still replay them every year or 2 just for the hell of it..

[SiMpLeToNiUm]

4 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

...I guess it's just hard for me to see past the personal connection to the maps present in Doom1 and Doom2! I still replay them every year or 2 just for the hell of it..

It's interesting you say this, and perhaps interesting that I have the opinion that I do because I was around during the Skulltag era of Doom, which likely colors my opinions.

[ReaperAA]

Even though I generally think modern wads are much better than the original maps, I would still suggest to play the original maps at-least once in your lifetime, to get an idea of how the stuff generally works in the game.

 

Also since modern wads are generally much harder than the original maps (harder than even Plutonia, which is the hardest official iwad), playing the original maps, especially Plutonia, will help you prepare for the harder stuff.

[Steve D]

To the OP, I am somewhat similar to @Doomkid in that I started playing Doom 2 in 1995, and started mapping in 1996, and I think there is definite value in playing the IWADs.

 

In Ultimate Doom, Knee Deep In The Dead IMO stands as the premiere masterpiece. It was designed to show off the 3D elements of the game, and while it is dead-easy for modern players, it's great for getting a sense of structure, pacing, and how to make maps fun to explore by teasing secrets whose hidden pathways are a challenge to find. When you find the secrets, you often find secret paths to other areas of the map, showing ways to make interconnected -- as opposed to nonlinear -- levels. I've been mapping for all this time and I still enjoy making traditional techbases with secret side-quests, even if my bases tend to have much larger monster populations than the IWAD maps. It's just the same design concepts scaled larger and dialed up to 11. As I often say, Toxin Refinery is the single most influential map I've ever played.

 

I tend to like Doom 2 less because it is, IMO, much less attractive than Ultimate Doom, and its soundtrack, again IMO, isn't as good. However, I don't agree that it's a snooze-fest. It's a great game with some spectacular levels. Map02, Underhalls, is IMO a masterpiece of mood and suspense, as is the somewhat similar Map05, The Waste Tunnels.  These maps use darkness very effectively to create a sense of dread, and when the time comes, the old gameplay can still bring it. They show what can be done in deceptively simple maps -- The Waste Tunnels in particular is quite tricky. Also worth noting is Map04, The Focus, which again uses darkness to create a sense of dread.

 

The maps begin getting much more difficult in Map08, Tricks 'n Traps, and Map09, The Pit. Both maps subject the player to resource starvation, along with heavy use of mid-tier monsters in often tight spaces, to shoot up the difficulty. I personally had a much easier time with Ancient Aliens at a similar stage in the game.

 

There are plenty more great maps in both IWADs, and then there is the wonderful Plutonia, already suggested by several posters. I think the IWAD maps, by being quite small compared to most PWADs, make it easier to see and figure out the underlying dynamics of the game. The IWADs are also cruel, malevolent and tricky, especially in Doom 2.

 

None of this means you "have to" play the IWADs to become a good mapper. You can step right into modern mapping by a careful study of the best PWADs out there. It's not uncommon that brand new mappers appear out of nowhere with a beautiful masterpiece of a map. Unbeknownst to us, they were off in their own world, studying our best mappers, learning how to use the tools of the trade, and bringing inspiration from other games into a creation that totally blows us away. So there are no set ways of doing things. Nonetheless, I think the original games have much to teach us, and that's my 2 cents. ;)

[BladeWolf]

Well, according to my own personal experience and opinion, yeah! A first timer should give either Ultimate Doom/Doom II a shot before they try any sorts of mods, to get that 90's look, feel and control. And as @Steve D mentioned, the shareware episode is well crafted enough for anyone to easily identify and start to get good at the game. Maybe after they've had their fill with both games, they can be free to try out mods. Me personally I only chose to try out mapsets until after I found out the technicalities behind mapping, thanks to Doom Builder.

[ReaperAA]

2 hours ago, Steve D said:

I personally had a much easier time with Ancient Aliens at a similar stage in the game.

 

This was... interesting to read, as I generally find Ancient Aliens pretty hard (even harder than the likes of Alien Vendetta).

[Steve D]

1 hour ago, ReaperAA said:

 

This was... interesting to read, as I generally find Ancient Aliens pretty hard (even harder than the likes of Alien Vendetta).

 

And it is, but it's a different kind of hard than Tricks 'n Traps. In Ancient Aliens Map08, literally titled Ancient Aliens, you are placed in difficult combat situations, mostly the result of Archies being fairly plentiful, and you have to solve the combat puzzles. But happily, you are provided with plenty of ammo and a lot of post-fight healing, so even if you die several times, as I just did, you know you can win if you just play better next time and learn from your mistakes. Further, the Skillsaw map has easy, logical, very linear progression, so you are led through one encounter after another with little chance that you will get lost or make a huge mistake that means you have no health or ammo. Not so in Tricks 'n Traps. I found myself constantly in need of health and ammo and forced to run away from enemies in order to find it -- and not always succeeding. When I died in Tricks 'n Traps, I felt disempowered and hopeless. It was a harrowing experience on pistol start. It was an experience I had no desire to repeat. It's a classic map, but it's not fun for me, whereas the Skillsaw map is a lot of fun. 

 

Styles make fights, of course, and YMMV. I'm just saying that if you pistol start each map, Doom 2 is IMO not easy. At least not for an ancient keyboarder like me. This is not to say that Ancient Aliens is easy -- it's not -- but it's a different kind of tension. It's beautiful where Doom 2 is . . . not. It's tough but welcoming whereas Doom 2, at its toughest, is vicious and cruel. Or put another way, Ancient Aliens invites you to fight in a boxing ring and beats you up, but takes you out for a beer afterword, whereas Doom 2 sneaks up on you in an alley, puts a knife in your gut, drags it around, and then laughs while your guts spill onto the pavement. Anyway, that's the feeling I got from Tricks 'n Traps. ;)

[Mangcubus]

Episode 1 is a requirement as far as I'm concerned.

[SilverMiner]

Hmmmm

[gaspe]

I would say yes. id iwads are still a very good introduction to the game, its mechanics (and I think this is often overlooked in favor of the gameplay but getting familiar with stuff like teleports, keys... is as important), the monsters and tropes that are still used in pwads nowadays without being too overwhelming for the newbie players. I feel similar to @Doomkid and I think that it's weird for someone to want spend time and effort into modding a game you don't like. On the other hand I can understand who think otherwise and there's likely the difference of perspective between doomers who started in the 90's or at least were long time fans of the game and those who discovered it only in the past years. I think it's almost guaranteed that nowadays before starting to play Doom people have already played more modern games and the iwads can look rough in comparison while the mapping scene with more detailed works can be more appealing. Though I'm optimistic because I see that 90's wads and older stuff is still played and loved these days.

A thing that I would strongly argue in favor is to beat at least Plutonia, not necessarily on UV, before going to tackle harder wads and a good chunk of pwads but I read of people who started directly with HR and related stuff so, what do I know.

 

23 hours ago, ZeMystic said:

Honestly I'd go with some of the better PWADs over the first two games. See what people like and what's popular first, as opposed to the possibility of taking inspiration from Nirvana.

That's a very bad advice. I'd rather have mappers doing flawed things like Nirvana and trying to do something unique that they like instead of cynically copying whatever thing is popular or the newest trend.

[ketmar]

48 minutes ago, gaspe said:

I think that it's weird for someone to want spend time and effort into modding a game you don't like

actually, there may be a situation when somebody like the game mechanics, but don't like default maps, for example. or want to have "that one small feature" that will turn the game into a perfect hit. so why not.