Relation to Doom, the game

[Agentbromsnor]

I was thinking about this lately, mainly because I see modders in this community who seem to think that its their duty to keep as much relation to Doom in their mods as possible. So I came to wonder why it is, that some people hold so much value to this, and I would like to know what your thoughts on this subject is. Usually when I comment on the fact that they maintain just a few sprites from Doom they say "yeah, but if I remove them it has nothing to do with Doom anymore". My immediate answer would be: "does it have to?".

Personally, I'm kinda done with Doom (2). With that, I mean the game Doom. I still like it, I still like killing monsters and stuff, but I don't really care about it anymore as I used to. I've played through most of the Doom 'episode' WAD's like TNT Evilution and such, and I've kinda grown bored of it. I can see why people want to have a sort of nostalgic feel in their mods, but I don't think it requires resources from Doom to create this feeling. I'm more interested in the engine then the game itself, because I think the editing allows for the most intuitive and creative stimulating map designing I've seen yet.

The same goes for WADs that use those sprites we've all seen a million times before. Its usually always the uzi from Shadow Warrior, the shotgun or the ripper from Duke 3D, etc. I know its hard to create sprites, but this recycling of sprites is this unnecessary I think. I'm not trying to be bitchy here, or 'elitist' but I think we can all agree that some resources are just 'played out' in WADs these days.

What are your thoughts?

[Scypek2]

Well, I thought that one of the most importrant reasons is just that doom resources... already are.

[Graf Zahl]

On certain points I agree.

I still like Doom's monsters and Doom's weapons but for me maps that try to replicate the style of the originals (except E1) or the early 1994/1995 mods tend to be a borefest.

I'd like to see something new and interesting in new projects so projects that looks like it could have been made 15 years ago have no appeal to me. (think stuff like Reverie - yawn!)

(Note: 'New and interesting' doesn't necessarily mean advanced port features)

[Agentbromsnor]

Graf Zahl said:

On certain points I agree.

I still like Doom's monsters and Doom's weapons but for me maps that try to replicate the style of the originals (except E1) or the early 1994/1995 mods tend to be a borefest.

I'd like to see something new and interesting in new projects so projects that looks like it could have been made 15 years ago have no appeal to me. (think stuff like Reverie - yawn!)

(Note: 'New and interesting' doesn't necessarily mean advanced port features)

I agree, its about projecting a certain feeling to the player.

I think its silly that, with all the new features of ZDoom and GZDoom which are nearly up to Build engine standards, we still only see Doom episode WADs most of the time.

Yes, its true that its easier to work with the content thats available to you, but its not that hard to create custom textures. There are plenty of free texture resources available, and spriting (although a timeconsuming task) is pretty easy as well.

[printz]

Graf Zahl said:

On certain points I agree.

I still like Doom's monsters and Doom's weapons but for me maps that try to replicate the style of the originals (except E1) or the early 1994/1995 mods tend to be a borefest.

I'd like to see something new and interesting in new projects so projects that looks like it could have been made 15 years ago have no appeal to me. (think stuff like Reverie - yawn!)

(Note: 'New and interesting' doesn't necessarily mean advanced port features)

That's why I'm a bit excited about Back to Saturn X.

[PRIMEVAL]

I like the old-school classic feel every now and then, seeing familiarity yet new, unexplored locations. But I also love seeing something new, even if it's still just Doom gameplay with new content, whether it be simple sprite replacement or the use of DECORATE.

[Agentbromsnor]

Just a quick point I thought of just now: maybe the problem doesn't lie with the people modding, but with the way the modders are introduced to the game and its sourceports.

[scalliano]

The way I look at it, mods as a whole are sort of like the ultimate fanfiction. We are modding for Doom, so making use of Doom resources is entirely logical, regardless of nostalgia factor. It's unreasonable to expect every mod out there to be a Harmony or Hacx, especially since most TC projects die long before they get anywhere near completion. Creating textures/spritesets can be a pain in the arse, even if not from scratch. I know this. That's why it pisses me off when the usual bolus of haters whinge about mods using R667 assets.

I personally don't play Doom for nostalgia, I play it because it's still ace. It's faster than all FPS games of today, it doesn't demand much from your system, it has an iconic (still) armoury/beastiary which can be expanded upon or altered depending on a mod's requirements, and a practically infinite number of levels.

Don't get me wrong, I fell away from Doom for a number of years, but it's always there when the desat brown gets too much. Funnily enough, it was the advanced ports that rekindled my interest.

[NiuHaka]

Well, I think you briefly touched on the reason that you don't see new resources like new sprites very often. It is a huge amount of work to complete an entire monsters sprite set. Even the things that go into making a weapon that has realistic perspective takes the kind of planning and setup that most people either don't know how to do, don't have the talent/skills to do, don't have the time to do, or don't have the desire to do. A single monster can potentially and reasonably have up to around 100 unique images that makes up his sprite set. That is just too many images for your normal hobby. There are tricks that you can use like mirroring sprite directions but even if you just made somewhere around 60, which is about how many sprites the imp uses, you are still looking at completing a colossal project. Now lets assume someone was to accomplish this and then they plug it into doom and notice just how much it clashes with the rest of the games assets. "Well, now I need to do this to everything else in the game... screw that!". The only way a sane person would want to make custom assets would be to make something that fits into Doom so that they don't have to replace everything in the game. Work like this is a full time job that can take quite some time to finish. Usually more time than just the love of Doom would require.

To add more to all this just take a look at how small the doom community is and then realize just how rare this type of artistic talent/skill-set really is. I'm confident that you can see why we don't see more custom assets that don't look like they belong in Doom.

[Agentbromsnor]

scalliano said:

The way I look at it, mods as a whole are sort of like the ultimate fanfiction. We are modding for Doom, so making use of Doom resources is entirely logical, regardless of nostalgia factor. It's unreasonable to expect every mod out there to be a Harmony or Hacx, especially since most TC projects die long before they get anywhere near completion. Creating textures/spritesets can be a pain in the arse, even if not from scratch. I know this. That's why it pisses me off when the usual bolus of haters whinge about mods using R667 assets.

I personally don't play Doom for nostalgia, I play it because it's still ace. It's faster than all FPS games of today, it doesn't demand much from your system, it has an iconic (still) armoury/beastiary which can be expanded upon or altered depending on a mod's requirements, and a practically infinite number of levels.

Don't get me wrong, I fell away from Doom for a number of years, but it's always there when the desat brown gets too much. Funnily enough, it was the advanced ports that rekindled my interest.

But is it STILL interesting in 2012? Because I don't think it is.

I don't agree that a mod is an expension of the game, perse. Ofcourse, in many cases it can be, but I think anything that expands or alters the levels or game-engine can be considered a mod, and it doesn't have to be tied to Doom 'lore' or anything.

Also, the reason why I made this topic to begin with, is not because these standard Doom WADs are always bad, but because they are repetitive and done so many times before, and I think in some cases these WADs can give newcomers in this community the impression that mod's have to follow in those footsteps in order to be considered good.

[Agentbromsnor]

NiuHaka said:

Well, I think you briefly touched on the reason that you don't see new resources like new sprites very often. It is a huge amount of work to complete an entire monsters sprite set. Even the things that go into making a weapon that has realistic perspective takes the kind of planning and setup that most people either don't know how to do, don't have the talent/skills to do, don't have the time to do, or don't have the desire to do. A single monster can potentially and reasonably have up to around 100 unique images that makes up his sprite set. That is just too many images for your normal hobby. There are tricks that you can use like mirroring sprite directions but even if you just made somewhere around 60, which is about how many sprites the imp uses, you are still looking at completing a colossal project. Now lets assume someone was to accomplish this and then they plug it into doom and notice just how much it clashes with the rest of the games assets. "Well, now I need to do this to everything else in the game... screw that!". The only way a sane person would want to make custom assets would be to make something that fits into Doom so that they don't have to replace everything in the game. Work like this is a full time job that can take quite some time to finish. Usually more time than just the love of Doom would require.

To add more to all this just take a look at how small the doom community is and then realize just how rare this type of artistic talent/skill-set really is. I'm confident that you can see why we don't see more custom assets that don't look like they belong in Doom.

This is something that you always have to consider, when you're trying to get into modding a game. Modding takes up alot of time, no matter what game you're trying to mod.

I think if you look at 'true' modern 3D games and the ammount of effort somebody has to put into editing and scripting with those type of SDK's, Doom is still relatively easy to work with. Besides, the Doom engine works with the WAD file system, which makes things even easier. All the data you need, is inside the WAD (unless you use PK3 or something fancy like that), whereas most games are all made of seperate files that all need different programs to edit.

[NiuHaka]

Agentbromsnor said:

This is something that you always have to consider, when you're trying to get into modding a game. Modding takes up alot of time, no matter what game you're trying to mod.

I think if you look at 'true' modern 3D games and the ammount of effort somebody has to put into editing and scripting with those type of SDK's, Doom is still relatively easy to work with. Besides, the Doom engine works with the WAD file system, which makes things even easier. All the data you need, is inside the WAD (unless you use PK3 or something fancy like that), whereas most games are all made of seperate files that all need different programs to edit.

I agree with most of what you just said. The one thing I might disagree with is that it seems that you are implying that sprites are less time consuming than 3d monsters. I'm creating 3D monsters for my mod project (http://www.doomascension.com/ site is severely outdated.) and in my opinion 3d monsters are many degrees simpler and less time consuming than a complete sprite set.

[Phml]

The only question I ask myself when I see anything, new or old, is how good it is, not how close it relates to the source material which I couldn't care less about.

Sadly, save for textures most custom resources don't hold up to the quality standards Doom set and so aren't as enjoyable to me, worth seeing once for the novelty factor and no more. Eriance's stuff is great, there's also some few (so few) quality assets here and there, that's about it.

Don't get me started on "original" mods with concepts directly lifted from super popular video games, movies or internet trends, or "original" gameplay tweaks where the entire design process can be summed up as "wouldn't it be cool if we did this"...

Is Doom still interesting in 2012? Yes, if only because there still isn't anything better in the same genre. I wish there was; I truly do.

[Vermil]

Some people enjoy playing most any form of Doom mod, but have no interest in making a mod in half those styles.

[TimeOfDeath]

DOOM is liek so gr8, yo.

Doom is my favourite game and I like wads that are oldschool or newschool. But, I prefer wads that don't change the gameplay (monsters, weapons) because we're all used to how many shots it takes to kill every monster with every weapon, and that's a huge part of Doom. Playing wads that change that gameplay is like playing a different game. I have to be in the mood to play a different game, but I'm always in the mood to play Doom. I have nothing against wads with new monsters/weapons, but I'd have to be in the mood to play them.

[Agentbromsnor]

NiuHaka said:

I agree with most of what you just said. The one thing I might disagree with is that it seems that you are implying that sprites are less time consuming than 3d monsters. I'm creating 3D monsters for my mod project (http://www.doomascension.com/ site is severely outdated.) and in my opinion 3d monsters are many degrees simpler and less time consuming than a complete sprite set.

Oh they are very time-consuming. In fact, the only thing that would make models work better in Doom is if the engine would interpolate the rotating of monsters and characters.

If you were trying to say that spriting as a task is often overlooked, then I agree. But again, like I said its still something you as a modder has to take into consideration before starting a project.

Modding is Serious F'ing Business. :)

May I add by the way, that your project looks very nice?

[NiuHaka]

Agentbromsnor said:

...the only thing that would make models work better in Doom is if the engine would interpolate the rotating of monsters and characters...

...May I add by the way, that your project looks very nice?

most ports do interpolate between animation frames and directions. I can't think of one that doesn't.

Even though my mod uses models I tend to think that sprites work best for most projects. Models are somewhat of a novelty and my assumption is that even people who are interested in my project won't use the mod/mods all the time.

And thank you.

[scalliano]

Agentbromsnor said:

But is it STILL interesting in 2012? Because I don't think it is.

I don't agree that a mod is an expension of the game, perse. Ofcourse, in many cases it can be, but I think anything that expands or alters the levels or game-engine can be considered a mod, and it doesn't have to be tied to Doom 'lore' or anything.

Also, the reason why I made this topic to begin with, is not because these standard Doom WADs are always bad, but because they are repetitive and done so many times before, and I think in some cases these WADs can give newcomers in this community the impression that mod's have to follow in those footsteps in order to be considered good.

Mods like Diaz are good examples of a gameplay mod which alters the theme of the game, but if someone isn't interested in Doom, an all-new, all-singing, all-dancing standalone game based on the engine is still unlikely to get them interested. Just because Doom modding is less work than modding for something like Crysis doesn't mean that there isn't still a shit-ton of work involed. Some of the more advanced Doom mods have taken years to complete. My first mod took 14 months to make, and it recycled a lot of resources in addition to those I made myself. It wasn't even that advanced.

As for dull and repetitive, give me a break. Doom is a simple game. You shoot stuff, find keys and get to the exit. That is its appeal. It isn't bogged down with things like plots, cutscenes or expostition fairies treating you like an imbecile, because it doesn't need them.

The bottom line is that most people who are involved in the Doom community are so because they want to play Doom, in whatever form it may take. If Doom isn't doing it for you anymore, then maybe it's time to move on. I just don't see the point in trying to turn a game into something else if the only reason for doing so is that you're bored with the original. Fact is, even the really advanced ports like the Z's and Doomsdays still have their limitations, and no matter how far you may think that you're straying away from the norm with your new flashy TC, chances are someone has already done it with the original Doom resources.

If you have the time/motivation/patience/talent/skill to pool the resources for a standalone Doom engine game together, all well and good. We do need more of them. But to think that it will turn heads outside of the Doom community is a pipe-dream, frankly. The odd gamer may discover it by accident, but chances are the only feedback you'd get is from us losers.

Modding is Serious F'ing Business. :)

Only if you're a twat :D

[Agentbromsnor]

I think MM8BD showed that thats not a pipe-dream, really. Within the first two weeks of release it gained a large following, and among them were alot of people outside the Doom community.

I respect that some people just like to play Doom, I don't care about that. I think the whole point of modding is to do something different then the game its based on, either in story, continuation, or something else. And with scripts these days, the engine isn't THAT limited. I've played several WADs that implemented very original gameplay elements, and even interesting cutscenes. I just think its a bit sad that those type of WADs could benefit so much from a original texture and/or sprite (or even models, for the advanced ports) resource.

[scalliano]

MM8BDM is very much the exception rather than the rule. Ask anyone outside the Doom community what Harmony is and they'll probably stare blankly at you.

Basically what you're implying is that maps alone don't count as mods. I don't think that's fair. Mapping is probably the biggest amount of work when it comes to a mod and most mapsets these days do have custom textures involved. Whether or not they benefit from such is entirely subjective. Same goes for sprites, sounds, music, everything. Look at Freedoom. According to what you've said, it should be the best .WAD out there purely because of the resource replacements, despite the fact that the gameplay mechanics are exactly the same as Doom's.

If everything on /idgames was a TC, there wouldn't be very much on it. As I said before, TC's have a nasty habit of not being finished because the amount of work involved is just too great. If you want to embark on such a project, then good luck.

The primary purpose of modding is expansion, not replacement. Why shouldn't Doom itself be privy to the advanced features that ports like ZDoom et al bring to the table? Why should they be reserved only for those authors willing to invest 3-4 years of their lives pooling resources for a complete game? Screw that. I've played some amazing .WADs for Doom which have had cutscenes, new weapons, new enemies, new textures, new music, more cutscenes, the works, but they have still been Doom at their core. I fail to see why that is such a problem. Why flat-out replace something which doesn't need to be replaced?

[Agentbromsnor]

MM8BDM being an exception is irrelevant, my point still stands.

If you're going to turn it like that, then why play games at all? Hell, the way you put it, every Call of Duty game is still very much Doom at its core.

The reason as to why you should use custom resources is simple: to stray away from the monotonous textures and sprites we have come to see a hundred million times before.

Also, I think you're over-generalising a bit too much when you say that EVERY Doom TC is still Doom at its core. I played most TC's I could get my hands on, and at least half of them make a very good attempt at breaking free of the typical "shoot monsters, get key, open door" gameplay from almost 20 years ago.

And you're right, modding is about expanding, and thats precisely my point with this topic; There's not a whole lot left to expand on anymore after 20 years. I've seen virtually every combination of Doom E1M1 possible, I'm bored of it, and in my opinion in some cases it just makes it worse for GOOD mods (not neceserally all mods have to be TC's, mind you) to be discovered and played.

[NiuHaka]

Agentbromsnor said:

The reason as to why you should use custom resources is simple: to stray away from the monotonous textures and sprites we have come to see a hundred million times before.

...I played most TC's I could get my hands on, and at least half of them make a very good attempt at breaking free of the typical "shoot monsters, get key, open door" gameplay from almost 20 years ago.

And you're right, modding is about expanding, and thats precisely my point with this topic; There's not a whole lot left to expand on anymore after 20 years...

It seems to me that the only thing left for you is to make a mod of your own. Perhaps recruit some talent. If you're idea is a fun idea it shouldn't be hard to find help. Other than that it seems that your relationship with Doom is dying.

[scalliano]

The Vuvuzela mod is an exception too. Fact is my point stands as well.

Also, it helps if you actually READ my post. I didn't say every TC was still Doom at their core, I said I'd played .WADS which had loads of advanced features but were still Doom at their core. That in itself does not constitute a TC. Replacing all of the graphics, however, can, but not always (as is Freedoom's case). One of my favourite Doom mods is UAC Ultra, a Boom-compatible mapset which uses NO stock Doom textures at all.

Most mods these days use custom resources in some form or another. If you can't see them, you're not looking hard enough. I've played Doom-themed mods which also stray from Doom's original gameplay formula - I'm not prepared to rubbish them just because they still use STARTAN.

I'm also not prepared to rubbish a mod bcause it doesn't use advanced features. Doom mods don't need cutscenes or custom monsters or scripted events. They're great, when done well, but they shouldn't be included just for the hell of it.

And Call Of Duty is NOT Doom, but to follow the modding framework you have laid down, every Doom mod would ultimately become Call Of Duty.

[Agentbromsnor]

You're missing my point here. If you look at the Half-Life community, or at the Duke 3D community, and can't see the difference between the content then you need your eyes checked.

I never said every contribution needs to be 'advanced' and 'modern'. I merely pointed out that alot of the Doom mods are stale, and bland copies of eachother.

Every feature should be in a mod for a reason, and I never suggested that they should be included 'for the hell of it', I don't know where you got that from honestly. Its just that modders aren't exactly encouraged to include any new features in this community. The Duke 3D community is another good example of this. If you take a look over at the Duke 3D forums, there's 100 times more variation involved in the modding. So my question remains: why can't the Doom community have that same luxery?

Offtopic: I am working on a mod right now for (G)ZDoom, but I don't know if I ever get to release it, because me being a lazy person, I made a copy of Doom2.wad and just edited the sprites, textures, etc.
Maybe someday, if I get to delete all the unused Doom 2 stuff from the WAD and replace all the levels with my own, I'm allowed to upload it.

[NiuHaka]

Agentbromsnor said:

Its just that modders aren't exactly encouraged to include any new features in this community. The Duke 3D community is another good example of this. If you take a look over at the Duke 3D forums, there's 100 times more variation involved in the modding. So my question remains: why can't the Doom community have that same luxery?

Big difference I have noticed is that it is a lot easier to map for Doom and there are greater limitations which also seems to force greater mapping creativity. My opinion is there is nothing in the other fps modding communities that comes close to the best that the Doom community has to offer. The drawback is that there seems to be much more crap as well.

Agentbromsnor said:

Offtopic: I am working on a mod right now for (G)ZDoom, but I don't know if I ever get to release it, because me being a lazy person, I made a copy of Doom2.wad and just edited the sprites, textures, etc.
Maybe someday, if I get to delete all the unused Doom 2 stuff from the WAD and replace all the levels with my own, I'm allowed to upload it.

If you are saying that you are editing the IWAD then you won't be able to upload it. I recommend PWAD instead so that people can just plug it in and so that you can upload it legally.

[Agentbromsnor]

I agree with that.

Also: I'm intending to remove the Doom stuff from my mod before I even begin considering uploading it anywhere. My intention is to make it run independant.

[scalliano]

Seeing as your point seems to be constantly shifting, I'm not surprised I'm missing it.

You began by saying how you were bored with Doom because of all of the .WADs which used stock resources, and how there should be more projects which had a completely original pool of resources. Then you said that Doom mods are bland and formulaic, then it was about changing Doom's gameplay. Gameplay which has held the attention of gamers for the last 20 years thanks to its simplicity. The quality of modern shooters is as stagnant as you accuse the Doom modding community of being. This probably says more about the genre than Doom itself. If you want to change Doom's gameplay, go and play GZShmup.

If mods don't need to be advanced or modern, then what exactly do you mean by "new features"? You're contradicting yourself here. Most new features in Doom modding come from the capabilities of whatever source port the mod is for. If that's what you mean, then GZDoom has a shitton. Mods like Suspended in Dusk have pushed the limits of what is physically possible in vanilla. The Half-Life and Duke3D engines are more advanced to begin with, so it's not a fair comparison. You might as well say that the Q3 modding scene dumps all over Doom, given the multitude of weapon and gameplay mods available for it.

Nevertheless, I look forward to playing your hyper-original standalone project, by which time I'll probably be working on my 4th or 5th Doom mod.

[Agentbromsnor]

Duke 3D uses a sector-based 2D-engine with sprites, how is that an unfair comparison?

If you're saying that every mod is made from the ground up to support all the latest additions for the sourceport its developed for, you're frankly talking out of your ass. Dynamic light has been a part of GZDoom and Skulltag for I don't know how long now, and yet its still a big taboo in maps today.

Its okay if you want to put me off as some kind of pretentious prick, but if you honestly can't see the point with the majority of Doom maps/mods today being just as varied as they were 15 years ago, you're just blind to the issue.

If you insist on ending a discussion on a childish remark: I look forward to your 5 millionth Doom E1M1 remake map.

[Melon]

Agentbromsnor said:

Dynamic light has been a part of GZDoom and Skulltag for I don't know how long now, and yet its still a big taboo in maps today.

To be fair, this is because the dynamic lights aren't very good and are ugly. I don't mean offense to the people who coded them, the Doom engine isn't really suited for dynamic light effects.

The major problem here is that Doom's engine is just outdated tech at this point. If you want to make an FPS with all sorts of modern features then you should just use a modern engine, like Unreal. Serious Engine is really easy to use if you want something that can handle lots of monsters on screen at once. Even if ZDoom has nice 3D floors, rendering them has a tendency to tank framerate, because the engine's fundamentally not optimised for it.

Even in the presence of excellent modding features like Decorate, the Doom engine is just really limiting in what it can do, except what it can do it does really really well, hence why most of the mods tend to be "E1M1 remakes". If people wanted to do something fancier, they'd make it so much easier on themselves to use some other tech.

[Agentbromsnor]

It doesn't neceserally have to be "new" and "modern", just original. There's plenty of ways to be make a original Doom mod that isn't stale.

Also, having seen a couple of modern WAD's, I'm pretty confident that there's still some life in this old engine. In addition, if everyone in the Doom community had this mentality of "the engine isn't optimised for this" then we wouldn't even have the sourceports that we have now, so that argument is a little flawed.

Besides, I already explained that Doom is easier to mod then most modern games, and easier to make maps for. That alone is a big reason to keep improving the tech.