What do all the old goats have to say about Doom? (10+ YEAR MEMBERS ONLY)

[everennui]

I've read a lot of threads here and sometimes I'll get sucked into something from xx year about yy thing and it just fascinates me. The logical thing to do would be to sort the dates ascending from the dawn of time, but as anyone who has ever tried to do that, it becomes obvious that there is too much for one mere man to find what he's looking for - especially if he doesn't know what it is he's looking for to begin with.

I would like to hear about the history of Doomworld. If you have a memorable experience with Doom/Doomworld I'd like to hear about it. How has Doom evolved/devolved?

I want to hear anything that is important. I'll let you judge that for yourself. ...but as a guideline, I'll ask that you ask yourself, "Did this do anything positive for Doom (or detrimental)."

Why am I asking this?

Maybe someone wants to put together a comprehensive, "showcase" of Doom and modding in general.

If you post links to other threads, please briefly explain why you are linking to the post.

[Maes]

Doom (or at least DoomWorld) is like life: you never realize it has changed until you stop and realize that by now you're an "old fart" and spent the last 10+ years of your life posting on it. Changes are slow and subtle.

Despite that, I personally am not old enough to remember the prototypical DoomWorld, but I do have a few interesting personal moments and lived through some of the "befores" and "afters" of the community.

Other than that, the only common pattern I could find is that the same questions keep getting asked over and over. The most common are how to run Doom on system X, what's the best source port or IWAD, Doom related dreams, some wacky theories about Doomguy and the monsters etc.

[Lüt]

Maes said:

Changes are slow and subtle.

Is that your way of saying it'll be another decade until you finally change your avatar?

[Maes]

Lüt said:

Is that your way of saying it'll be another decade until you finally change your avatar?

No need to change what is perfect.

FWIW, I once made a CybieButtFish avatar concept to jump on the whole fish avatar bandwagon, but it looked like a fish giving a blowjob to a cyberdemon.

Speaking of avatars, I'm old enough to remember a time where they didn't work for common forum users (only old timers and mods/admins had them). I can't remember when they were brought back though...2009 or so?

[Memfis]

I think Doomworld is less chat-like nowadays. In old topics I see a lot of very short and simple responses. I guess in the past it was exciting to simply talk about the game, but now people are looking for more sophisticated conversations since stuff like "your favorite monster" (for me it's the yellow key card by the way) has been done a hundred times already.

People got much better at playing and mapping for the game, so they started discussing that stuff in more detail, which again made them even more skilled, etc. For example, in ancient WAD discussion threads you won't see too many people talking about gameplay much (Belial and other skilled speedrunners are a notable exception).

I think there is less sense of wonder about the future now. Eternity portals are incredibly cool, but they aren't generally seen as something that will change the history of Doom forever. In the old days ZDoom updates and stuff would make users more excited or so it seems to me.

A lot of legendary users have obviously matured by now and will usually avoid big drama when possible. They are a lot more reserved now and leave thoughtful responses.

[roadworx]

Memfis said:

-snip-

hey, you haven't been on doomworld for 10+ years!

[RestlessRodent]

I suppose I would be included here.

One thing I have noticed is that the people have changed much, many new people while you still have some people still around. Would be interesting to see a list of active community members, when they joined the Doom community, and see who is still around.

Also, I have matured much since I joined the forum and community in general. Others have also matured too. So some fellow members who were quite hyperactive are not quite so hyperactive now. I would say that respect has increased as members matured, before a bunch of us would make fun of each other or in general just dislike each other for pointless reasons. Plus, 10 years is a long time and people can change quite much over that time.

At least here and everywhere else, compared to back then, I put more thought into my posts and such so my post count has dropped much.

Also things come and go. Doom Connector was a big thing, now that is gone. New Doom is gone. A bunch of source ports are gone and some have come back (such as Doom Legacy), some are still around.

I pretty much just like working on source ports programming them rather than playing the actual game, since I do not play games much anymore.

Also, quality megaWADs are more common than they were in the past because those dedicated to mapping have improved greatly since then.

[Vorpal]

Memfis said:

In the old days ZDoom updates and stuff would make users more excited or so it seems to me.

I think this was a function of how much people disliked the quakes and such. There was this excitement that the quake-like zdoom features would enable everyone to make stuff as advanced as [Modern Game X] but with the pristine look and feel of doom/doom2.

In reality I dunno if any of it was realized, it seems that all those projects inevitably alter drastically the classic gameplay, so they become shiny baubles that you toy with once or twice and then you're done.

[Fletcher`]

Its fine.

Edit:

/me spanks

[Grazza]

Memfis said:

"your favorite monster" (for me it's the yellow key card by the way)

Bastard! It's the blue keycard!

A lot of legendary users have obviously matured by now and will usually avoid big drama when possible. They are a lot more reserved now and leave thoughtful responses.

:)

[Use]

DW has changed a bit, before it was more like a group of friends who knew each other fairly well, most drama was shrugged off and things a little less serious. You could call someone out and be less fearful of reprisal, and the victim wouldn't feel the need to write some 7 paragraph blog about how their feelings were destroyed or the community is garbage because it was a closer knit group.

As far as Doom itself, well I still feel mostly the same about it; I love it. I obviously need to spend more time editing and less time doing anything else.

[pming]

Hiya!

Yeah, Been here a while. One of the most memorable things I...er...remember, was sitting down with my coffee, fireing up Doomworld one morning, and seeing "World Trade Center attacked" (or some such), with a pic of a flaming tower. This was something like, I don't know, it was MINUTES after it happened. My first thought was..."haha...kind of a sick joke...wonder where he's going with this...". Then I read and found out it was real and actually happened and was happening.

I remember thinking "Wow. Doomworld gets the scoop on this when the news is still standing around trying to figure out what happened and set up their cameras, lights, etc to get "a good shot" for reporting. I realized then that intendant media (re: folks with cellphones or video cameras) were going to be the one's to trust with "latest breaking news, as it happens".

And on a more DOOM related front...I remember the "10 sector wad" competition being widely accepted and participated in. I did (got mine on the "second" 10 sector runners-up" wad package), and had a lot of fun! Everyone was participating, talking about it, bouncing ideas around, etc.

We should do more community competitions. :)

[Pure Hellspawn]

i remember a ton of things considering i was a teenager when i was first on here. i lurked even longer.

i remember older notable users such as assmasta, deathz0r, darknation, and cyb.

i remember being super excited for super sonic doom and mock 2: the speed of stupid.

i used to be 50/50 between here and ZDoom. now i only am here.

i did play with Doom Connector for a while - as a big romero head. i enjoyed the headquarter maps.

i remember the days before Doomworld had cacowards. and terrywads. and when the worst wad was an award.

if you want to know more, pm me and i'll tell you more stuff i remember. there's quite a bit and i'm not going to write a novel on it here.

[Chronohunter45]

Doom and the doomworld community have aged like fine wine to me. Many of us have been here to witness both tragedy and success, such as members passing away/taken before their time and others moving on to create their own games respectively.

By far the most fascinating to me is how much the mapping architecture has changed over the years. Seeing limit-removing source ports open up the future to larger and more complex maps may not seem like that big of a deal to many newer members, but for myself at least the vast contrast between your circa 1995 DEU generated map and a modern Lutz map is quite extraordinary...

...and the realization that I've been around to witness it and map some maps of my own makes that experience all the more precious.

Also, I think I still hold the current longest active member/lowest post count card. At this rate I'll never see a custom title.

[Jayextee]

I remember Skulltag being new and only having two maps, I remember posting a concerned missive at how the press will treat videogames post-Columbine, and I certainly remember the adorable 'username' and his bad English, decrying us "Doomers" as "ball shit snakes".

I also remember little other tidbits community members may not. I tested Doom Millenium for a short while on a computer that could barely run some of the more complex maps, I remember playing RTC-3057 back when it looked like a circa-1995 WAD with stock resources (save for a red-recoloured RSKY1), and Graphic State Games scouting these forums for vanilla mappers to work on their upcoming Gameboy Advance title, Dark Arena (replete with users sending off NDAs by fax!).

I remember BigDog and his promising-looking DoomCenter, King REoL and his "superdetail" that really equated to making curves and arches with MANY texel-sized sectors, and a really bizarre demo of a space level (with TNT: Evilution episode 2 sky) for a "Plutonia 2" project. Wonder if that ever went anywhere? :P

*cough*

This is a neat little community right here. Has its flaws, but what doesn't? I mean, I sorta quit after a year or two of activity back in the early 2000's due to mental health problems and me wanting to effectively 'detox' all my habits and goings-on whilst I tried to get my life together; but coming back in the early 2010's was kinda nice, seeing that it was all still here and about as much remained the same as had changed.

I'm an old goat, and what I "have to say about Doom" is that our being here right now and talking still about a '90s game really showcases the power of modding, and community. This is a scene bigger than the sum of its parts, and it's great.

[40oz]

I think there are fewer mysteries about Doom as there may have been to me 5 or 6 years ago. Its a little disgusting how much I struggle to think of good forum threads now that there are so few questions that remain unanswered about how the little nuances in Dooms programming work or design history and mapping philosophy. I think it wont be much longer before I come full circle and start asking the same questions again in hopes that someone chimes in with some little tidbits of information I may have missed, but as of late it does seem like people are less inclined to have really deep conversations about doom.

There's no shortage of maps though, thankfully.

I'm a little disappointed that dw seems less tolerant of heated debate topics than I remember it to be, even specifically Doom related ones. There aren't a lot of known rivalries anymore, which I'm sure most people would agree is a good thing. Unfortunately I find arguments pretty exciting and motivating and can inspire competition. ("I dont like to see this douchebag getting credit for my ideas so I'm gonna make something better") its mostly why I have a tendency to take a really strong stance on some things. I can understand that people can take it personally and end up being very frustrated for the rest of the day even if they're winning the argument. So I'm a little unsure if there's a smarter way to get people charged up without breaking rules and pissing people off.

Idk. For the most part things are very good, if not better on the whole spectrum of things.

[Csonicgo]

What I have found about Doom is that the Doom community is larger than it has been in years, but we don't see it here any more.

In the time right after Quake was released, you'd have to be crazy or something to want to keep playing doom instead of the bunnyhopping brown rocketjumping game, when then turned orange in the next instalment, then really really shiny in the second next. Those who were playing Doom at that point were fanatics of the highest order, and stuck together long enough to create a community and a site for said community to rant and rave on, post reviews, that kind of thing.

From those who hate doomworld, we usually see posts like "Doomworld thinks they're the Doom community" and "Doomworld tries to be in control of everything Doom". Well, save for a few offshoots, in the past, we pretty much were and had to be. No one else was willing to do it, save for a small group of dedicated people that handled the FTP servers, and Team TNT, along with those wanting to keep the modding scene alive, especially when doom came under fire by the media for being the latest scapegoat to blame a shooting on - the talking point "they made their own maps to practice" put mods in the crosshairs.

As for communities, NewDoom never really took off, DoomCenter didn't make it, DoomNation lasted only a few years, so anything else was locked to a particular region or niche interest like ZDoom (at the time) and the Brazilian/Russian/Eastern European Doom communities. Or, we had Doomworld.

Then Doom 3 came out, which brought a bunch of newbs who posted about how much the game ruled or sucked and what maps they were going to make, then stopped posting within months because the multiplayer felt like garbage and there was no coop at launch.

Post KDIZD and Stronghold, "Is Doom dying?" threads started popping up. It wasn't until Brutal Doom that a second wave of noobs showed up, but this time, they weren't registering on Doomworld, they had facebook and youtube and Kotaku and Facepunch and other related forums for that new group. Doomworld never saw much of them. Add the rising popularity of /vr/, and Doom's community is likely very large, but nowhere as organized as it once was.

Plus, many of us have grown up (we were kids after all).

As for Doom itself, Well, thanks to those .. *cough*.. mods that caught public attention, Doom became popular again. It was already "cool" to like retro games again, and Doom fit the bill. Now I see Doom shot glasses at Target. If you would have told me I would see a Doom shot glass at Target, I would laugh in your face - no one caters to a bunch of nerds playing a 10+ year old game!

Until they started catering to everyone who has rediscovered that 10+ year old franchise, especially through the Doom 2016 reboot.

I don't think Doom is going anywhere. It's too iconic to die. It's like Super Mario Bros. at this point. If you haven't played Doom, what's wrong with you?

[Uncle 80]

My thoughts exactly, it seems the series as a whole has experienced a surge in interest. Not so strange, considering "everybody" has internet access now (and aren't on dial-up anymore) and of course game 3 and 4. Back in the 00's, I eagerly awaited every newstuff and frequently visited sites like Sir Robin's Doom Castle and basically played everything I got hold of. These days, all the new "must-play" wads seem to slip by me most of the time. Of course, I'm not 20 and uneployed/student anymore like in 2000, though.

I wish the "old" guys would get togehter and make an "AV2.WAD" or something. Classic "over-detailed" vanilla Doom maps is still where it's at for me :)

[Soundblock]

I find Doomworld to have been amazingly consistent throughout its lifespan, always springing something new about Doom, keeping the debate about the game lively and informing. Its like a neverending source, constantly renewing itself.

Csonicgo said:

In the time right after Quake was released, you'd have to be crazy or something to want to keep playing doom instead of the bunnyhopping brown rocketjumping game

Dr Sleep said during Daikatana development a few times - "we should have made it in the Doom engine". He was being serious, though I thought him crazy at the time.

[40oz]

Any Daikatana TCs?

I wonder if the game could get a fair reboot in the Doom engine.

[Linguica]

Doom engine Daikatana, huh??

[Xaser]

I can't post in this thread without my buddy Superfly!



On that note, it's really weird that I can post in this thread according to the title qualifications. I'm Doom Old People now, I suppose. :P

[Koko Ricky]

I've been a Doomer since 1994 and DW is like a second home to me. It's weird to think my time hear has accounted for almost half my life, but then again Doom is more than a game to me, it's a 24/7 obsession. I imagine a number of you feel the same. Not a day doesn't go by that I don't at some point think about the forum, the franchise, a map I want to design, someone's mod that left me intrigued, or even how god awful the movie was.

Doom modding is to me a form of interactive art. It is simply astounding how much sheer content the community has created, as well as the incredible scope of the bigger projects, not to mention how refined mapping has become. I'm incredibly grateful to be able to interact with people who share my love for this hobby and I also feel grateful that, in spite of some of the sheer oddness of some of my posts, I'm accepted here in full, something that is very important to me.

[Tango]

Like some of the other folks here I am also amazed it's been 10+ years for me D: Been almost 11 actually. I think it took me some time between when I registered + when I became semi-active here since I was pretty active in the SkullTag community at the time. Can't say I have a ton of memories (that I can think of right now at least) from that time either. I do remember submitting a map I was really proud of to the archive and waiting very excitedly for the newstuff review, which ended up essentially being deathz0r saying "it was pretty good I guess," much to my disappointment.

2006 is a long ass time ago though. I miss being a kid and hanging out in #dmclub all day mapping :(