Tell me about TNT and other old drama

[Sigvatr]

I wasn't around the Doom community back in the days of TNT and other controversial things. I was wondering if anyone would be able to tell me some of their experiences and opinions of that time.

[Technician]

Nothing really. TNT planned to release Evilution for free. id then fired them to complete the wad and release it with Final Doom. People were upset, but we all understand we would have done the same.

[kristus]

Technician said:

id then fired them

Fired them?

[LogicDeLuxe]

I learned about the story right here: http://www.doomworld.com/10years/bestwads/infamous.php

Back then, I didn't have access to the internet, and never saw anything about it in the magazines. It was just there in the store, and I picked it up.

The opposite goes for the Master Levels. I did read about them in the magazines, but never found them in the stores. I finally got them with the id Anthology.

[Ed]

Despite TNT's monumental contributions to Doom and it's players, in the late 90s they always seemed to be the hot spot for controversy. Their forums were always a war-zone. Lee Killough's exit from the community was a mess from what I remember as well.

[Maes]

And let's not forget this. Granted, perhaps DW didn't even exist yet and some of you weren't even born yet, but heh, if that ain't TNT-related drama... ;-)

[Quasar]

The community reaction to Final Doom was pretty shameful, I think, in retrospect. It seemed more fueled by jealousy than any meaningful concern. I want to think that if the same thing happened now (id making a user modification an official product) we'd be excited and supportive of the idea, instead of bitching and screaming.

[Gez]

Quasar said:

I want to think that if the same thing happened now (id making a user modification an official product) we'd be excited and supportive of the idea, instead of bitching and screaming.

Well, would "Doom Classic" (the iPhone app) count? It is based on GLBoom after all.

[Ed]

Team TNT absolutely deserved to have a wad go commercial. There were a lot of great wads released in the mid-late 90s, but none of them came close to the polished, professional and overall quality that their releases had. Ty Halderman is more or less a main artery in the system that keeps Doom alive. They sorta went on to develop the most significant and evolutionary source port that sparked life into the modding/mapping community that still exists to this day.

I dunno man. Anyone that could be mad at Team TNT must have some serious superiority issues or just really, really didn't want to pay for Final Doom.

[vdgg]

This is veeery remotely TNT related and has nothing to do with drama, but anyway, is there *any* hint about which Plutonia level was designed by which brother?

Ed said:
TNT - polished

Icarus and Evilution were slightly inferior to much older MM, IMO. Eternal Doom, OTOH, got less attention then it deserved in terms of new mapping tricks. (Doom Wiki about Requiem: It is well-known for introducing various architectural tricks that continue to be used to this day, including faked 3D bridges. I don't see a thing Requiem has which Eternal has not).

[Technician]

kristus said:

Fired them?

Spell check shows it's limits: My lazy crosschecking skills.

[Grazza]

I don't recall it really being such a major drama, except to a few people closely involved with it. To the broader Doom community it wasn't such a big deal.

At least, that was the case in the CompuServe Action Games Forum, the main hub of Doom activity back then; UseNet may have been a different matter, but UseNet was often a shitfest no matter what the topic.

vdgg: I'd suggest rechecking your dates. Evilution much older than MM? Evilution was made before Icarus, and its release was delayed as a result of it being made part of Final Doom. As for Eternal, I think it did get a lot of credit for innovative, ground-breaking ideas. Though perhaps you're nevertheless right that the large amount of attention and credit it got was still less than it deserved; I'd guess due to having a less good "PR team" prior to Team Eternal merging with Team TNT. The original Eternal team was, I'd say, more tightly focused on mapping and developing resources, whereas a number of TeamTNT guys were high-profile Doom community members.

[vdgg]

@Grazza: Without checking, from memory - MM: 1995, TNT & Icarus - 1996. Maybe I just built a gramatically incorect English sentence which spread confusion. By saying "...inferior to the much older MM..." (article added) I meant it was Memento Mori which was older.

[lupinx-Kassman]

Both Memento Mori and it's sequel came out in 96' I believe.

[Spleen]

Ed said:

There were a lot of great wads released in the mid-late 90s, but none of them came close to the polished, professional and overall quality that their releases had.

Really? I like Hell Revealed and Memento Mori 1/2 more than Icarus, Evilution, and Eternal Doom.

[Grazza]

vdgg said:

@Grazza: Without checking, from memory - MM: 1995, TNT & Icarus - 1996. Maybe I just built a gramatically incorect English sentence which spread confusion. By saying "...inferior to the much older MM..." (article added) I meant it was Memento Mori which was older.

Why post without checking?

I understood your meaning. It's just that you are wrong about the dates (except in a trivial sense of calendar years). MM came out (initial release) at the very end of 1995. Icarus came out less than three months later, which makes Evilution contemporaneous with MM.

[myk]

Ed said:
Team TNT absolutely deserved to have a wad go commercial. There were a lot of great wads released in the mid-late 90s, but none of them came close to the polished, professional and overall quality that their releases had.

It had its merits among megawads, but there were various WADs that played better in general, and a bunch that avoided having amateurish or ugly graphics like some of the ones found in TNT.

[Sigvatr]

I always hated Evilution's graphical style, and the "new" graphics.

I also did not like how the name of the episode had to be prefixed with TNT.

[Sigvatr]

Actually that's not entirely true, a few of the hell levels looked very good.

[LogicDeLuxe]

Sigvatr said:

I also did not like how the name of the episode had to be prefixed with TNT.

So why had it to be prefixed with TNT then? I always thought, the name were given by the authors.