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Maes

What's *really* so bad about 1994 WADs ?

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Sounds like a rheotorical question, yet...

Being in my early-to-mid teens at the time, no internet yet, the only way I could somehow expand my DOOM experience was by purchasing one of the many CD-ROM WAD collections, and somehow I ended up with some Italian "DOOMANIA: Il Passaporto per l'inferno" (The passport for hell) WAD compilation, you guess it, with ca. 200 MB worth of 1994-1995 WADs mostly for DOOM 1 and to a lesser extent, for DOOM 2.

Some famous TCs of the time such as Alien Doom were also included, but they were a pain in the ass to install...anyway, back to the point:

Today, when we talk about a bad WAD, we're all very quick to label it as a 1994 WAD...yet, not all WADs from that era are bad (UAC_DEAD.WAD is very good example) and there are a lot of fairly detailed levels from that era, which would have nothing to envy to your typical, decent, "non 1994" WAD of today.

Sure, there were a lot of awful maps with nukage elevator floors, random texturing, HOMs etc. etc. but those were almost always some beginner's maps, contrasting with experienced mappers who achieved very good details, excellent texture alignment and monster placement etc. etc. Mappers from both "fronts" still exist today, and both kinds of WADs still find their way into archives such as idgames, so I don't see what was *particularly* bad about 1994.

The only thing I can easily think of is the quality and ease of use of editors and tools: the now legendary DEU, while allowing for complete control over a WAD, was VERY hard to use (one of the reasons I never seriously undertook mapping) and while ultra-fine detail was possible, the lack of automation and 3D preview meant months of map building time.

Compare the build times mentioned in 1994 readmes (typically a month for a single WAD), with today where most single maps can be made, apparently, in a matter of days or even hours.

About monster placement and particularly numbers....sure, there were engine and hardware limitations at the time (DMINATOR.WAD crawled on a 486 ;-) ), and linedefs/sidedefs were limited by the vanilla engine, but the point is that even then there were bad maps and good maps.

Then there are ofc the new capabilities of source ports like removing engine limits, scripting etc. but are *these* enough to scrap any pre-source port era map as "awful" ? Was there some boost in mappers talent or some other groundbreaking change that suddently made "non-1994" maps better, more detailed, and easier to design, apart from friendlier editors?

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Back then, everyone and their Grandma attempted to make Doom maps, so there was a much higher crap ratio. Nowadays, most of the people who still make maps are very hardcore and have a ton of experience. There aren't many new mappers, and certianly not BBSes full of crap from whoever happened to make their very first map that day (And then upload it!).

There were a few good 1994 maps, true .. but it does nothing to offset the massive amounts of crap.

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udderdude said:

Back then, everyone and their Grandma attempted to make Doom maps, so there was a much higher crap ratio.


That still seems to be the case today, and it's actually made easier by friendlier editors and Windows. A DEU beginner using DOS tools would probably leave unclosed sectors and the such, as there was no automation at all for aiding you when adding crates, doors etc.

If by "bad" maps we mean "defective maps" then yeah, there were many more of them back in the day.

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The standards of Doom mapping mimic the standards of the gaming industry in general. New limits are being pushed and passed on a regular basis, and each time somebody sees something more impressive, the previously impressive projects become less so.

Of course, I think people in that cycle have a major lack of foresight, but that's another discussion.

I'll admit I do like a lot of "1994" maps. At that time people were thinking rather uniquely and innovatively, and it came through very nicely, or at least in intriguing and memorable ways, in a lot of instances. There was a certain abstractness to the designs that defied what was "acceptable" by professional standards; people just set out to make something fun and wild-looking, and stereotypical n00b maps aside, it worked. These days, that seems to have been replaced by the professionalism you can find basically any gaming company aiming for. Not that I dislike one over the other, but the 1994's often left people wondering just where exactly they were or what exactly this or that was supposed to be, whereas now we have everything neatly and unquestionably put together.

Of course, that's going by a general scale of what's popular and not the absolute output of the community, but the trend has notably shifted that way over the years.

And personally, due to their abstractness, the 1994's are the only maps I can ever draw inspiration from.

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udderdude said:
Back then, everyone and their Grandma attempted to make Doom maps, so there was a much higher crap ratio.

Well, that there were more people into it only helped. Now there's so much more info available (it's been accumulated on many sites and documents, source codes and whatnot, enhanced by easy access to the Internet and quick exchanges of information in general), and the tools (including the game engines) are so much more efficient that it's not hard for any relatively intelligent person to produce a map that is decent in one way or another (although it may still suck in some respects) in a relatively short time.

And, individually, experience matters, but as far as fundamental design or execution is concerned, talent is superior. This can be seen in both playing (or demo recording) and mapping, where relative newcomers often barge in with very good or superb productions.

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The derogatory usage of 1994 wads came about as a result of uploaders who used no quality control when they put their stashes of old stuff up on the archives, which ticked off the TNCers who had to review fifteen first maps a week.

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I own the "Master Levels" CD, which includes several thousand user-made wads for Doom and Doom 2, and while I enjoyed them 10 years ago, nowdays they look pretty bad. This isn't because I've been spoiled by Zdoom and whatnot, but because I'm able to realize that the original id levels were--at least in my opinion--put together fairly meticulously, and for the most part were extremely well crafted. But the majority of the wads on that CD--most of which were from 1994 and 1995--were clumsily put together or just plain ugly, or extremely amuterish. Seeing as Doom map editing was an entirely new form of modding back then, it was really no surprise. There were a select few diamonds in the rough back then.

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I could cry everytime I think about the mid90s and all the good stuff that came out of the 90s in general... especially times at the mall at EB Games playing Doom II

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Really 1994 wads arent much different than today. You get some good ones and some crap ones. The major difference is there were tons of wads made in 1994, apparently with a much higher crap ratio. Which I guess is why 1994 wads are thought poorly of

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Total fucking malarky. There were far more shitty wads in 1994 than today. For the most part, the only people that remain mapping in the community today are people with a degree of proficiency in mapping, who enjoy it. There is nowhere near the ammount of new mappers doom had when it debued in 1994.

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HobbsTiger1 said:

Really 1994 wads arent much different than today. You get some good ones and some crap ones.

Scuba Steve said:

Total fucking malarky. There were far more shitty wads in 1994 than today.


Heh, that's really something dividing the community, isn't it? ;-)

The only thing most people seems to agree on is that "there were more crap wads in 1994, but not all 1994 wads were pure crap, as not all modern WADs are pure gold".

IMHO, what made (some) 1994-1995 WADs look crappier was:

  • a) Vanilla engine limitations: even what we consider as minimal detail today, would probably blow the vanilla .exe engine back then.
  • b) Much harder to use editing tools: honestly, try adding a single crate in DEU (you can still find it and use it) and see how you have to f*ck up your eyes to make all necessary sector additions corrections manually...and aligning textures without fancy visual aids, etc. etc. no wonder detailed WADs were rare.
  • c) "Everyone's grandma" syndrome combined with unforgiving editing tools. Oh and maybe a high percentage of single-room wads with a couple of cyberdemons, but you can still find those today. :-)
If you doubt point (b), compare the building times mentioned in the readmes: it's very rare to find anything below 2 weeks for a single level, and there was a very good reason for that too!

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Maes said:
If you doubt point (b),

Not (b), but (c), which isn't very relevant, especially compared to the other factor you didn't consider; current understanding of DOOM's specs and possibilities, which were limited back then and are now thoroughly worked out. While there's a factor of personal experience there (some mappers have been mapping for years while back then it could have been a maximum of 1 or maybe almost 2 for people who pioneered into Wolf3D mapping), the combined "community" experience is a critical difference.

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I think another problem was the fact that this kind of technology was entire new meant that players could make extremely gimmicky maps (such as ones that feature way too many freaking enemies or craptacular renditions of their house/school/place of work), or maps that were done for the sake of making a map.

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GoatLord said:

I think another problem was the fact that this kind of technology was entire new meant that players could make extremely gimmicky maps (such as ones that feature way too many freaking enemies or craptacular renditions of their house/school/place of work), or maps that were done for the sake of making a map.


*shrug* I sometimes wonder too how many people bothered spending weeks or even months over the horrors of DEU to produce a craptastic map with a few square rooms and a couple of cybies...plus pretty visible HOMs.

Even the "friendliest" editors of that era were really primitive and some even lacked any correctness checks. Check the build time of a typical 1994 megawad: probably months, and for a reason...

Imagine how *worse* it would be if an editor as powerful as e.g. DoomBuilder was available in 1994: it would either help people correct some things like HOMs and texture alignment, but on the other hand it would allow EVEN MORE WAD kiddies to make they own home renditions, or cybie arenas....oh dammit, those still exist ;-)

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The standards in Doom mapping have certainly changed. People just don't want to see rooms with mismatched textures and pointless gameplay. It takes some thinking in todays world to actually make something most people can agree on.

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Kirby said:

The standards in Doom mapping have certainly changed. People just don't want to see rooms with mismatched textures and pointless gameplay. It takes some thinking in todays world to actually make something most people can agree on.


I still am not convinced...I played a lot of the 1994 WADs in the above mentioned "Doomania" CD, and I can assure you that most of them were just too plain or too boring to be enjoyable, but there were also a lot of good ones I would still play today and that would be hard to distinguish than "non-1994" WADs. It just seems to me that "1994 WAD" has just become a convenient adjective for "crappy WAD" without being entirely justified by the facts.

Most of those WADs were simple or contained errors just becase the editors of the time were hard to use, and if you *really* wanted to produce a WAD in 4-5 hours, you couldn't really get any better than what would later be known as "the stereotypical 1994 WAD".

And, from what I know, cybie arena, "football courts" (ugghh...) , far too many renditions or single room WADs weren't considered good BACK THEN, how could they be used to represent the whole era of early mapping ? Sure, feedback and collaboration left much to be desired back then, as most people would just upload their creations on some BBS in a "fire and forget" manner...

...anyway, to sum up: I played a LOT of 1994 WADs back then, and the overall impression left to me is that I had a lot of FUN, save for the few times when I picked an incomplete (!) or bug-ridden WAD, ranging from "HOM" to "tutti-frutti".

Especially the megawads back in the day were great, and some of those early WADs contained quite smart tricks (DEADBASE.WAD with its "multifloored buildings", UAC_DEAD.WAD with its superb architecture, another one which had a very weird looking street light...)

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Remember Duke Nukem 3D? The fact that it included the level editor and that it was comparatively more powerful and so easier to work with helped create the massive amount of 10-meter-toilet maps that there were (even though IMHO DN3D's maps were pretty well made).

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spank said:

Remember Duke Nukem 3D?


Yeah. Kind of a tangent, but I think that more game engines should take a cue from the build engine. It was so easy, straightforward and sensible... in a way infinitely powerful for its time.

Generally, Doom maps are still harder to create than any build engine game map. Not that every aspect is easier, or if there is even the goal to make it easier.

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spank said:
helped create the massive amount of 10-meter-toilet maps that there were

And for DOOM you had tons of maps that were slight modifications of E1M1 or other originals, changing some textures, thing locations, or vextex positions. Many of those have been lost or are found only in marginal compilations.

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spank said:

the massive amount of 10-meter-toilet maps that there were

rofl, what now?

I only briefly played the game in a store display. Too bad, sounds like I could've had some fun in the editing scene back then :P

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myk said:

And for DOOM you had tons of maps that were slight modifications of E1M1 or other originals, changing some textures, thing locations, or vextex positions. Many of those have been lost or are found only in marginal compilations.


Heh I bet that minimal E1M1 modifications has also been the first "new" map ever created for several people, including myself (well, I actually never got much better than that...thanks DEU for putting an early end to a potentially ludicruous mapping carrer!).

Hard to use editors didn't help either...so moving around a few vertexes was waaaay easier than burning your retinas trying to master DEU's manual sector management :-p

Then there's of course the doubtfully tasted DMINATOR.WAD which is a whole modified Episode 1 with a ton of monsters, which was just too much for most machines at the time :-p (Specially designed for coop...yeah right...)

Now, SOME such levels appear in my "marginal compilation" but they are not the majority :-) Most are, tragically, original work. The saddest wads I recall from that era, excluding maps that failed consistency check, are those wannabe-wolf 3D maps for Doom 2.

Seems that many people didn't realize that recreating a Wolfenstein level in Doom 2 was an inside joke by iD, intentionally kept a secret level, yet there were entire megawads full of wolf-3D like levels. Read my lips: Doom was all about non-orthogonal-walls, 'nuff said :-p

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Maes said:

(well, I actually never got much better than that...thanks DEU for putting an early end to a potentially ludicruous mapping carrer!).

Hard to use editors didn't help either...so moving around a few vertexes was waaaay easier than burning your retinas trying to master DEU's manual sector management :-p


Don't blame the editor. DEU was pretty hardcore but at least it let you control everything. And was really powerful once you learned it. :P

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spank said:

Remember Duke Nukem 3D? The fact that it included the level editor and that it was comparatively more powerful and so easier to work with helped create the massive amount of 10-meter-toilet maps that there were


Heh, in the Saturn verison there's a giant toilet secret level.

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udderdude said:

Don't blame the editor. DEU was pretty hardcore but at least it let you control everything. And was really powerful once you learned it. :P


Yeah...it let you spend 3 months to build what would be one day known as a "1994 WAD". That's really hardcore :P

As for completenes...well, all you REALLY need to build a DOOM level is a tool for placing vertexes, linedefs, sector tags, selecting textures, placing monsters....name one editor of the day that lacked any of those things.

But try building a square room with DEU and with Doombuilder...there probably won't be much difference at that point, but try also placing two crates and a door to the room: DEU will require you to manually set new sector tags for all those objects, while doombuilder will seamlessly integrate the new sectors with the existing ones. That's about 5 minutes less work for a couple of objects.

Now imagine you're trying to build SPIRAL STAIRS in deu or something else involving sectors-inside-other-sectors...just painful. If older maps took several weeks or months to build without all being masterpieces, there was a good reason. Let's not even discuss texture alignment...

And yeah, I tried other editors of the day: most were as hard to use and windows 3.1-based (yuck...) so no wonder quality mapping took off only years later. DEU 6 with the 3D preview also never came...(yeah, that was expected in late 1994 or 1995 but never materialized :-p)

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Nah DEU was alright. Once you figured out sector references you were fine... and the mode of selecting vertexes to draw the sector clockwise or counterclockwise made sense to me at the time. I managed to do some really neat shit at least.. all of which is now long lost of course :(

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Actually, 1994 was a great year for Doom maps. It had a much lower crap ratio than 1995, which had almost nothing good. It might be because at that point it was still difficult to make anything for Doom and the people that could figure it out were smarter than most. I guess 1994 gets picked on because it was the first year people were making anything, but in all honesty it was one of the best years for Doom mapping.

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The bad reputation only comes from Funduke's mass uploads of crap. Since all the good 1994 WADs have already been in the archives there wasn't much to be added in terms of quality. It was mostly obscure material (not necessarily from 1994.) that better was forgotten.

But it's precisely this that caused this 1994 hatred.

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Maes said:

huge block of text that didn't need to be quoted


There are good maps from 1994 and I agree with most of your assessment but I disagree with your final assesment. A "good" map cannot be made in days or hours. Maybe days if the author works non-stop but in general, where most people have lives, it should take at least a few weeks and a REALLY good map could take months of painstaking attention to detail.

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By comparison, the original Doom/Doom 2 levels were considered (atleast in their time) as very professional looking. Most people at the time were just simply wowed by multiple height variations and textures on the ceiling and floors. By the same notion, I believe that in 1994, those wads weren't all that bad. As Use3d said, its just a matter of equal progressions.

When a game is in it's prime, its very hard to find mappers in the community who can match that level of skill. It was always takes a couple years for the community to get as good, or even better, than the original developers.

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