Gameplay mods and Doomworld

[Linguica]

I've only been reading about Doom stuff in the past couple months after a long hiatus and one thing I've noticed is what seems to me to be a pretty big disconnect in regards to the discussion I see on the Doomworld forums versus Doom-related stuff I've seen on other various websites.

On Doomworld it's primarily dedicated to what I guess would be considered more "classic" elements: new levels, projects, megawads, the normal sort of stuff that isn't terribly different from what was being discussed ten years ago. These projects mostly go through a development period, then are released on /idgames, and are finished.

Other places, though, it seems like a lot, if not most, of the discussion isn't about Doom per se, but about Doom gameplay mods, like [browses around a bit] Doom: The Golden Souls, DoomRL Arsenal, Hideous Destructor, Demonsteele, Wrath of Cronos, Samsara, Project MSX, Russian Overkill, and, yes, Brutal Doom. These mostly seem to go through endless beta revisions and are never really actually "finished." Most of them seem to be centered around the ZDoom / Zandronum forums which I guess makes sense since they all seem to use a ZDoom-derived engine?

Is there a history to this schism? It was a little weird when I started poking around Doom stuff recently and I found this whole other aspect of the Doom community which is practically absent on the DW forums.

[Xaser]

I'm curious to know what "other places" refers to aside from the ZDoom/Zandronum communities. Are outside (i.e. non-Doom-oriented) communities more interested in the moddy side of life than the mappy side?

[kmxexii]

Xaser said:

I'm curious to know what "other places" refers to aside from the ZDoom/Zandronum communities. Are outside (i.e. non-Doom-oriented) communities more interested in the moddy side of life than the mappy side?

moddb, something awful, and 4chan's /vr/ are some places ive seen that feel more "moddy" than "mappy"

theres also the multiplayer schism too but tahts a different topic altogether

[dew]

Has there ever been a point in time where there wasn't a schism? :p

DW is a bastion of purists who enjoy the game as is, so they just crank out more maps. There's always an advanced project or two though, Adventures of Square for example. Pirate Doom seemed community-agnostic and Darch crossposted dilligently. Interestingly enough, I feel it's the Zdoom part of the community that somewhat drifted from mapping to pure gameplay modding. What are some latest big Zdoom projects that include actual mapping? The sequel to Winter's Fury?

Xaser: /vr/ at 4chan is surprisingly hyperactive and quite mod-oriented. You gotta bleach your eyes every time someone reports an update for HDoom though. I'd say Ling also means the early fps thread on SA. Not sure how active reddit is.

[wildweasel]

My best guess is that the "schism" probably started way, way back in the earlier days of /newstuff Chronicles. While idgames was traditionally the only way to release a mod and get any semblance of a reception, reviewers at /newstuff really didn't know what to think about mods that only contained new weapons and monsters, like Immoral Conduct and most of the early output from Xaser and myself. The result was that, a handful of times, these mods were reviewed poorly.

More recently, a number of gameplay mods don't leave beta status because there are constantly new bugs and issues being reported, due to their increasing complexity and ambitiousness. /idgames has made it quite clear in the past that demos and beta versions are not welcome, and that only finished products may be uploaded. I can say that more than a few times, I've released mods to /idgames only to need to update them, which is frankly a pain. Hence, many of my projects remain on services like Dropbox until I'm damn good and ready for them to be permanently archived. There is still that little problem of reviewers not quite knowing what to think about them; the largest and most common complaint I've seen has been that these gameplay mods would be "better if they had maps" or "better suited as a TC" - many times, this isn't the focus of the project, especially in the case of my work.

[Linguica]

Yeah, one thing that has become apparent to me is that the classic /idgames archive model of "version 1.0 forever" is outdated and counterproductive. But what's the alternative, really? I mean, we know what the alternative is, because it's the situation we currently have, but I wonder what the "proper" alternative ought to be.

[MajorRawne]

If Doomworld is a bastion against mods packed with ridiculous, ultra-killy weapons which make an already easy game stupidly easier, then I'm with Doomworld. Really, does Doom need shotguns which fire much faster, zoom in and also operate in super-shotgun mode? Does it even need any other weapons when the pistol has been upgraded to a combat rifle?

[Marcaek]

I don't see how the existence of these mods could be so offensive to you due to the ability to just not play them and the fact that psx doom doesn't support mods anyway

[Da Werecat]

MajorRawne said:

If Doomworld is a bastion against mods packed with ridiculous, ultra-killy weapons which make an already easy game stupidly easier, then I'm with Doomworld.

Cuz all the mods in existence are ridiculusly unbalanced, everybody knows that.

[SyntherAugustus]

Linguica said:

Yeah, one thing that has become apparent to me is that the classic /idgames archive model of "version 1.0 forever" is outdated and counterproductive. But what's the alternative, really? I mean, we know what the alternative is, because it's the situation we currently have, but I wonder what the "proper" alternative ought to be.

Perhaps a ModDB ish system where each file has some sort of profile and it can be updated to whatever "version" the author wants it to be.

Otherwise I would simply have the uploading go through a GUI provided by DW that would include an "Update" button for consistently updating stuff like mods.

[Xaser]

Linguica said:

Yeah, one thing that has become apparent to me is that the classic /idgames archive model of "version 1.0 forever" is outdated and counterproductive. But what's the alternative, really? I mean, we know what the alternative is, because it's the situation we currently have, but I wonder what the "proper" alternative ought to be.

To be frank, this is one of the reasons my gameplay-mod-self rarely uploads anything these days (and likely why others fall into the same bucket); I feel as if uploading to /idgames is a permanent, undoable "hey this is an actual release guys", and given the difficulty of uploading files to the archive and the tendency for the community to (I presume) accept /idgames versions as "finished", my mods never get uploaded 'cause the todo list never shrinks to zero. :P

[snapshot]

Yeah,i noticed that too,It seems like the Other Websites Are Specifically Created for Modding DOOM,Like for instance Zandronum's Message Boards ... Well i have nothing to say,it looks like the Only Interesting thing in DOOM for them is that it's Modifiable,especially that GZDoom and Rest of Source Ports Enhanced Modding side

[Linguica]

MajorRawne said:

If Doomworld is a bastion against mods packed with ridiculous, ultra-killy weapons which make an already easy game stupidly easier, then I'm with Doomworld.

OK, but why? Does the existence of those mods hurt you in any way? Maybe it's annoying when people review a WAD with "not playable with Brutal Doom, 0/5" but that's about all I can see.

I'm just curious if there's some institutional reason why discussion of gameplay mods is almost nonexistent on these forums. Or maybe they were run off? Was there a big forum war over Brutal Doom or something, resulting in throwing out the invaders? Or has it just always been centered around the ZDoom forums et al?

[Marcaek]

I think it's the last point, actually. Since ZDoom has it's own forums and almost all the mods i can think of originate there, why discuss it elsewhere, right? So then ZDoom becomes the center for mod discussion and Doomworld just does without because if people here want to talk about these mods they could theoretically go over there(how often does that actually happen though?).

Not that I agree with that, because it leads to insularity and that becomes a problem when community X has specific identity X and it stays where it "belongs". Then you get "purists" who think that their thing is the only thing and that members of other doom communities are weirdos turning doom into something it's not or purists who don't want anything to change ever because they have rose colored glasses or are overly nostalgic.

[Demon of the Well]

The interesting parallel is that map-centric projects (or threads about them, anyway) of all sorts--megaWADs, community mapping projects, single releases, etc.--are nearly as rare on the ZDoom boards as mod-centric project threads are on this one. I've never seen anything to indicate that the ZDoom forum or its community actively discourages them (either formally or informally), or anything....the interest in that type of content just simply doesn't seem to be there to anywhere near the extent that it exists here. The priorities are different, for whatever reason. Whatever the initial cause of this forking in the path of content-focus may have been, it would seem to make sense that it now maintains itself without any particular oversight--folks who are new to Doom (or at least to Doom modding) whose interest has been sparked by modifications to the game system naturally tend to end up focusing on ZDoom and its community (because it's the primary bastion or forge of that type of content), whereas those who are primarily interested in exploring new worlds framed more or less in the context of classic Doom naturally tend to end up either here or on review/content-listing sites (which often leads to here, sooner or later).

I can see where one might have some reasonable concerns about a degree of excessive insularity resulting from the present status quo, but given that the markedly specialized 'duality' between the two communities appear to be something that is being organically and incidentally maintained (read: no one appears to be trying to actively keep the two separate), I personally am not really inclined to view it as some kind of toxic 'diaspora' or anything like that. If folks want to talk more about gameplay mods on Doomworld, more power to 'em, I say, I see nothing wrong or unhealthy about that. But for my part, I'll likely abstain--I've played Doom for so long and internalized the base ruleset (and its most common simulation variations) to such an extent that to me, the game IS the maps, and the rules are my interface for experiencing them, rather than the other way around (and so, I am definitely the kind of player who is far more likely to be interested in major gameplay modifications if they are presented in the context of a mapset custom-made to use them with)--and so it's this site that I've had bookmarked for years and years, simply because this site is the best source for that kind of content, and news pertaining to it.

As to what actually accounts for the initial cause of the 'schism', if you want to call it that, I'd postulate that because gameplay mods are largely enabled by/an extension of the nuts and bolts of ZDoom's robust and ever-growing technical feature set, it's practical for folks who are interested in creating that kind of content to make their 'home base' around the fountainhead of information, support, and news about that feature set (and of course, over time, like simply calls to like, I was rambling about above)--pure pragmatism. If you look at the DoomWorld forums themselves, I think you can see a similar type of close-knit specialization embodied within the 'special interest' forums devoted to particular engines or 'base games'--Eternity, FreeDoom, whathaveyou.

[Ed]

I would like to know at what point did the split occur. There was a time where the community as a whole seemed to embrace any additional features that could be made available to a wad author. Perhaps it was a backlash against the orgy of ZDoom features crammed into every new pwad that was released in the late 90s-early 2000s. Much like post-punk alternative brushing away over inflated glam metal bands.

[Doomkid]

I always thought it would be swell if all Doom forums linked to one another. (Doomworld, Zandronum, Zdoom, Zdaemon, Odamex, maybe even NewDoom?) In another thread Marcaek mentioned bridging the gap between the sections of the community. This could be a major step towards that. I feel all authors should be encouraged to post their works on more than just one forum, too.

There is definitely a bit of a split, there is a completely different batch of doomers in #zandronum, #zdoom, #zdplayers and #odamex, and for reasons I don't quite understand.

[gemini09]

There is no split, if you ask me.

ZDoom has its own website, and it's the center for ZDoom downloads and help and information, and also user forums --- naturally that's where the ZDoom modders hang out as it's simply "in-house".

As for why these gameplay mods are rarely exposed here on Doomworld, however, I really don't know.

[wildweasel]

MajorRawne said:

If Doomworld is a bastion against mods packed with ridiculous, ultra-killy weapons which make an already easy game stupidly easier, then I'm with Doomworld. Really, does Doom need shotguns which fire much faster, zoom in and also operate in super-shotgun mode? Does it even need any other weapons when the pistol has been upgraded to a combat rifle?

It sounds to me like you haven't tried playing the majority of gameplay mods made since ~2004. I would suggest you try out GMOTA, Psychic, or Weasel Presents: Terrorists; these are gameplay mods that are well regarded for difficulty balancing.

Or Hideous Destructor, which is well regarded for not being easy to play, period.

Linguica said:

Was there a big forum war over Brutal Doom or something, resulting in throwing out the invaders? Or has it just always been centered around the ZDoom forums et al?

Brutal Doom was...a bit touchy, even for ZDoom and Zandronum's forums. Between the terrible attitude of its author, the focus on features few people thought were necessary, and the admittedly pretty awful fanbase, most folks at ZDoom and Zandronum are pretty tired of Brutal Doom itself and a number of its forks. I want to say the only thing Brutal Doom that remains popular at ZDoom is the so-called "Sperglord Edition."

[edit] But hey, if Doomworlders say that we should be posting more gameplay mods here, I suppose I could do that sometime; I'm just a bit hesitant to do so right away for reasons I'm not quite sure of.

[TerminusEst13]

WildWeasel said:

[edit] But hey, if Doomworlders say that we should be posting more gameplay mods here, I suppose I could do that sometime; I'm just a bit hesitant to do so right away for reasons I'm not quite sure of.

Same, on both counts.
I mean, there's no logical reason as to why one wouldn't--this is a general hub of Doom, and gameplay mods are just another facet of Doom modding. Theoretically speaking, gameplay mods should be just as fine to post here as any other.
But there's always this sort of...hesitation.

The people here seem to lean extremely heavily on the side of vanilla or mostly-vanilla play. I mean, after all, it's Doom. They love Doom. It's Doomworld, the world of Doom!
And then there's gameplay mods, many of which have very little to do with Doom and its gameplay. A lot of gameplay mods are more interested in experimenting with a development platform and trying to make something different...half the time they have absolutely nothing to do with Doom aside from "demons are the enemies". Hell, sometimes it's not even demons that are the enemies.

I'm sure very few of us with common sense will say that gameplay mods are actually bad, but for a forum focusing primarily on the Doom experience and the Doom gameplay, gameplay mods aren't going to cater to that. Mapsets and megawads, on the other hand, are going to let people savor more in that tried-and-true 20-years-proven gameplay.
I mean, even look at the Cacowards--the main focus is on mapsets and megawads. Gameplay mods have their own little niche on another page, when there's probably just as many gameplay mods as there are mapsets.

I don't think it's really any big question mark, I really think it's just a matter of the audience here. The people at Doomworld want more Doom. I mean, you love Doom.
But, to break out an age-old and tired phrase, sometimes gameplay wads just aren't Doom.

[Blzut3]

Honestly I think part of the problem is that as ZDoom got more advanced, the community began to split into mapper and programmers. That is on one hand we have a group of people who make great maps, but can't keep up with the standard being set by modern game play mods. These people come here and tend to map for vanilla or something vanilla like. On the other hand we have people who have great ideas for how to make the set of weapons and monsters, but can't make a playable map if their life depended on it. Those people tend to hang out at the ZDoom forums for the reasons stated by other people, but also partly I think because of ZDoom's overly long release cycle and telling people outside of the community to use a development version is weird.

For people outside of the Doom community, I do think shiny things interest them more. Showing someone brutal doom and proclaiming it was done in the Doom engine is much more interesting than Doom the way id did.

[Velvetic]

Blzut3 said:

Honestly I think part of the problem is that as ZDoom got more advanced, the community began to split into mapper and programmers. That is on one hand we have a group of people who make great maps, but can't keep up with the standard being set by modern game play mods. These people come here and tend to map for vanilla or something vanilla like. On the other hand we have people who have great ideas for how to make the set of weapons and monsters, but can't make a playable map if their life depended on it. Those people tend to hang out at the ZDoom forums for the reasons stated by other people, but also partly I think because of ZDoom's overly long release cycle and telling people outside of the community to use a development version is weird.

For people outside of the Doom community, I do think shiny things interest them more. Showing someone brutal doom and proclaiming it was done in the Doom engine is much more interesting than Doom the way id did.

I couldn't agree more.

[Xegethra]

I tend to like both new maps and mods, but I play more new maps than mods.

I've tried out a small handful of mods, some I like, and some I don't. Those that I do like I will use them interchangeably, never feeling like I have to use them...because I know I don't....sure, they change the gameplay, maybe fix a few issues, make things act more interestingly, or improve and make something perform in a new way, but that doesn't mean I want to use that mod all the time...like people have said before, we like Doom....so we'll play Doom normally too.

I've made my own maps, and I am making one right now. But I have also done a bit of modding myself, altering some monsters and having managed to make a new one myself based on a monster idea I have always generally had (not necessarily thinking of Doom for it, but when I came to make my own monsters I thought I would try recreating my idea).

So far this is the only Doom forum I come to, even though I am interested in both new maps and new mods.

I don't know much about this "Divide" in the community but I have seen some people against new mods, or not too happy with being shown new maps. I can understand why you might prefer one over the other, but to get angry and offended that somebody wants to change the game in such other ways is a bit beyond me....I'm not interested in all mods or all mapsets, but I also see no reason to get hot under the collar over them either..they are optional and not forcing themselves on you so why get mad? Like, I'm not interested jazz for example, but I don't turn into the hulk every time I hear it...that would be pointless.

[Phml]

I think people naturally gravitate towards the places where the discussion they want to have is happening. It's good to have various outlets focused on different things, it allows for deeper conversations on whatever specifics they're about.

Doom seems more like a medium than a brand, in that being a very basic game at its core, open source and 20 years of modding have allowed people to take it in all kinds of different directions.

Honestly I think part of the problem is that as ZDoom got more advanced, the community began to split into mapper and programmers. That is on one hand we have a group of people who make great maps, but can't keep up with the standard being set by modern game play mods.

Agreed on the mapper/programmer split, but not with a supposed barrier to entry to modding. Trust me, I'm a complete computer idiot, but you guys have made ZDoom so intuitive even I can do stuff on par with popular modern gameplay mods.

It's more a question of motivation than ability. TerminusEst13 puts it well, desire to experiment vs working formula. Then you've got another layer in that if you want to see the default game like a complete system, like a self-contained universe, then exploring all the possibilities requires consistency in the core simulation. Sometimes you want to design a new rulebook, sometimes you want to see all the outcomes that can come from the current rules. Two different brands of experimentation, almost mutually exclusive.

Having been on the other side of that fence as well, I strongly suspect there's nothing insurmountable about mapping for mod makers. I do most of my Dooming with my own gameplay mod, and I don't feel the need to spend hundreds of hours for a few maps of my own, when instead, I can experience dozens of high quality maps from other people.

Perhaps both things are linked to an extent, when you think about it. If you make a standalone gameplay mod, then it can be used with every map. If you make a standard vanilla map, then it can be used with every gameplay mod. Either approach maximizes their potential audience.

In comparison a complete mod with maps and changes is inherently exclusive, as you become increasingly specific in the experience you deliver. It needs to be very good to catch people's attention, some players won't be interested no matter what because whatever differences your mod includes are irreconcilable with their way to enjoy Doom.

Even if you're making said mod because you want to rather than for recognition, knowing other people are watching is a powerful motivator; pushing you to see it through the end instead of giving up, to make a second pass rather than calling it good enough. A shrinking audience can be a dealbreaker.

It might be that a complete mod requires an amount of effort disproportionate for most people, if they're going at it solo. I think another big reason Doom mapping/modding is still thriving owes to the fact you can get results on your own. Even community projects tend to be people doing maps largely on their own.

[dew]

Phml said:

In comparison a complete mod with maps and changes is inherently exclusive, as you become increasingly specific in the experience you deliver. It needs to be very good to catch people's attention, some players won't be interested no matter what because whatever differences your mod includes are irreconcilable with their way to enjoy Doom.

Well, there's always Pirate Doom as an example of the best of both worlds approach. It has its own nifty campaign, but it's ready to be used as a general gameplay mod. I admit that "just make something as complex as Pirate Doom" is a poor advice. :)

[AkiraZXE]

I think part of Pirate Doom's appeal is that it's not dramatically different gameplay, and a lot of the maps aren't more-than-Doom or not-Doom, they're just Doom with a different flavor. Personally, I see it as a natural sort of progression from some of the other themed wads from the mid-late-90s, some of those crappy Star Trek and Star Wars wads come to mind. If those are the gameplay/level combination equivalents to some of the early released maps, then Pirate Doom is equivalent to CC4 or some such thing.

Anyways, I haven't been here long enough to really know if there's a history, but isn't it just a matter of audience? It seems pretty simple that people with more interest in ZDoom and its features would end up at forums with more of a focus on those things, and so the creator of gameplay mods and ZDoom-feature-heavy maps would just end up sharing there. So, then, people who don't care that much will just end up on other forums more often than not, and it doesn't make much sense to share there if nobody really cares.

I guess a simpler way to put it would be to compare the two to general stores and specialty stores. There's nothing really wrong with having similar stocks, but if they're too similar, it defeats the purpose of having that separation.

In any case, it doesn't really feel like it's a forced schism to me, as if lines had to be drawn and all that.

[Captain Red]

Something I've always wondered, if a modder could slap together a working prototype for a TC they would like to make but lack the skill at mapping to really get very far (say one 'tech demo' kind of map showing off any new monsters, weapons, themes and other ideas) how likely is it to be met with any kind of success?

[TerminusEst13]

In my experience, there would be very little success.

I am a terrible mapper, but I've taken my stab at mapping a few times, and I've made two major gameplay mods where one of the biggest requests from people was moar maps (Cyberrunner and Metroid: Dreadnought).
In both of these, I created two tech-demo-esque maps for different situations showing off the different weapons, items, skills, enemies, abilities, and etc, and people liked them!

http://puu.sh/ckUgN/cf9fe7d22c.png
(Not pictured: Enemies. They're camera-shy, sorry)

I hate to try and toot my own horn, but I think it looks kind of neat, too.
People were really interested in seeing what could be done with them! People wanted to see more!
Very few people really came on board to map, and those that did didn't make anything.

The cool thing about getting help is that someone is offering to work on your idea instead of their own. Great!
But the real thing is uuuuusually people are going to be more interested in their own idea instead of yours. I mean, basic logic, right? I think my own idea is cool, it is mine and cool. Your idea is cool, but it's not mine.
Thus, even in the off-chance someone does actually decide to jump on-board to help, very frequently they'll drift away. With every mapper I checked up on, about 90% of them found they came up with another idea and wanted to work with that instead and then they'll be back to work on Metroid right afterwards promise really it'll be good dude honest I swear on me mum.

Anyone can help, but the chances of the help actually finishing is a complete wildcard that can't really be relied on.
I've found it's better to never plan for something that you can't personally do--so my gameplay mods are pretty much standalone and don't require maps to run.

[Blzut3]

Phml said:

Agreed on the mapper/programmer split, but not with a supposed barrier to entry to modding. Trust me, I'm a complete computer idiot, but you guys have made ZDoom so intuitive even I can do stuff on par with popular modern gameplay mods.

It's not that the barrier to entry has gotten much higher over time, but the new features have unlocked a certain kind of creativity that is hard for some people to wrap their minds around. Granted there are a number of people that are good or decent at both fields, but the general trend I notice is that those good at mapping tend not to take features beyond their face value. Which of course was fine printing text on a screen was a revolutionary thing. (Of course I exaggerate.)

[Linguica]

How many marginally-active Doom forum communities are there anyway?

* Here, obviously
* Newdoom lol
* ZDoom
* Zandronum
* Something Awful has an early-FPS thread that talks about Doom a lot
* 4chan's retro games forum generally has a Doom-oriented thread going somewhere