Jump to content
Search In
  • More options...
Find results that contain...
Find results in...
Jimmy

Doom 2 as another "Ultimate Doom"

Recommended Posts

With the two "The Way X Did" projects being talked about lately, I've been having ideas - some of which have been truly mad - but I think I have one here that could be fun to undertake. Let me explain it and hopefully prompt some discussion. :P

So far, the only descriptive enough name I've managed to come up with is "Doom 2 the Way Doom 1 Did". This basically boils down to telling Doom 2's story with Doom 1. Like another Ultimate Doom, rather than a whole other game, which I think would certainly be interesting. What if id had just chosen to make Doom 2 as another 3 episodes to add onto Knee-Deep in the Dead, The Shores of Hell, Inferno and Thy Flesh Consumed?

Well, here's how I think they'd work, complete with shoddy names I came up with on the spot:


E5: Hell On Earth (Doom 2 MAP01-11)
Doomguy arrives on Earth to see its green plains being ravaged by Hellspawn who found their way to Earth while he was battling on Mars. He has to free Earth's population by launching the evacuation procedure to allow humanity to escape the nightmare.

As with Doom 2 E1, this would be mainly techbases but with some slightly more Hellish settings, like that of MAP11, thrown in.


E6: The Gate of Perdition (Doom 2 MAP12-20)
Doomguy battles his way through the ruined cities of Earth to reach the demon's entryway. Upon reaching it, and finding no way to destroy it, he has no choice but to plunge through it.

As with Doom 2 E2, this would be mainly giant city maps, which progressively get more demonic and hectic.


E7: Mortal Sin (Doom 2 MAP21-30)
The Doomguy now has to fight his way through Hell itself, to defeat the Icon of Sin and stop Hell's invading forces at their source.

As with Doom 2 E3, this would be flat-out Hell.


Perhaps since there were more maps per episode in Doom 2 than 1 (nine to eleven, instead of eight plus one secret), the episodes could feature nine or ten standard maps instead, though this would probably mean making the project ZDoom-exclusive or something. Anyway, getting into trivialities now.

---


The new maps themselves would follow the parts of the story told by each episode of Doom 2, chronicling Doomguy on his journey through the infested cities of Earth and his trek through Hell to defeat the Icon. As I said, for the most part they'd use Doom 1 textures, and it would probably be good to have at least a few levels that just take the themes from the previous episodes and reuse them, but layout-wise they'd have the larger scales and openness of Doom 2's maps to correspond to the larger city settings.

Also, as Doom 2 was also done by Doom 1's mappers, their mapping styles would ideally be present in all the new maps, so in that sense it would be like a "The Way X Did" project that sought to preserve the stylings of the original authors in brand-new Vanilla format maps, hence my initial title of "Doom 2 the Way Doom 1 Did". At the moment, I'm a little indecisive as to how the different mapping styles would be arranged throughout the episodes, but I'm thinking that the styles of Romero, Petersen, McGee, and even Green and Willits should all have spots throughout.

I also haven't decided if this project should be a doom.wad or doom2.wad thing, but the latter would be good for ease of including all the Doom resources including the new textures and monsters that came with Doom 2, though it would come without the episodic splitting of the maps that Ultimate Doom provided.

Now, three new episodes is quite a lot of new maps to go through without anything completely "new" (as in, to Doom 1), so the addition of Doom 2 content would probably be necessary. The new episodes should have themes unique to them, like the original episodes did, so while for the most part Doom 1 textures and themes would be used throughout the new maps, some Doom 2 textures would be included where necessary. It would also be ideal to introduce the new monsters in a steady progression. Perhaps the mancubi and arachnotrons would be the ending fight of episode 5.

I'd like to get some discussion going on such a project and hopefully get some motivation to start one. Would this be a fun idea? :)

Share this post


Link to post

I personally prefer Ultimate Doom's episodic nature over the long trawl of levels in Doom 2, so this sounds interesting. Only thing is, Doom 2 has much better textures (the various brick ones and the METALx series, among others) -- it was clear to me that with the first game, the artists weren't so sure of themselves or what they could achieve.

I would be a fun idea, yes. Even if it means three Wolfenstein levels. :P

Share this post


Link to post

From the thread title I thought you meant something like Doom 2 with an extra episode, which has been done already (NRFTL)

Share this post


Link to post
ComicMischief said:

I personally prefer Ultimate Doom's episodic nature over the long trawl of levels in Doom 2, so this sounds interesting. Only thing is, Doom 2 has much better textures (the various brick ones and the METALx series, among others) -- it was clear to me that with the first game, the artists weren't so sure of themselves or what they could achieve.

Agreed about the episodic nature of Doom 1. Funnily enough, I kind of prefer the overall texture palette of Doom 1 where the colors and themes seem a lot more diverse and varied. There's quite a bit of just dull brown in Doom 2, which does look nice, mind you, but overall I just don't find it quite as aesthetically pleasing as Doom 1. This is kind of why I'd like this project to be centered on utilizing Doom 1's textures more than Doom 2's - a bit like it's just id's take on Doom 2 if it were simply an extension to doom.wad, as Thy Flesh Consumed was.

ComicMischief said:

I would be a fun idea, yes. Even if it means three Wolfenstein levels. :P

No, I don't think it should, I really don't like the Wolfenstein levels, if I'm honest. xP Like Doom 1, I think the secret levels should just be regular but optionals maps that just serve as a detour through the episodes rather than as kind of gimmicky "easter egg" maps.

Ragnor said:

From the thread title I thought you meant something like Doom 2 with an extra episode, which has been done already (NRFTL)

And Xaser's Lost Episode. :P Plus probably quite a few others. I'm aware the concept of "let's make a fifth episode" is perhaps overdone, but I'm thinking of making Doom 2 itself into further Doom 1 episodes. If done right (and DTWID and D2TWID has proven that there are definitely mappers in this community capable of doing so), it could certainly seem like the official add-on Doom 2 could've been if it wasn't a whole other game.

Share this post


Link to post
Jimmy said:

Like Doom 1, I think the secret levels should just be regular but optionals maps that just serve as a detour through the episodes rather than as kind of gimmicky "easter egg" maps.


Though I was joking about the Wolfenstein levels, I'm not sold on the idea that E2M9 and E3M9 are anything but gimmicky levels. Less blatantly so, sure - but they still are.

Share this post


Link to post

Oh, sure, they're pretty gimmicky, but they feel less like a radical departure from the actual game like Doom 2's do. The Wolfentstein maps do seem to be there to serve as a distraction from the game itself, rather than an optional alternate route through it. I mean, maybe that's not that bad a thing, and this project can include something similar - I guess I'm just not too partial to the default Wolfenstein maps, myself. :P

Share this post


Link to post

Uh, Doom 1's secret levels WERE gimmicky with the exception of Military Base. UD bumped it to 2, if you dont count an easy pseudo-techbase as gimmicky, given the style of the other levels

Share this post


Link to post

This could help for those who weren't very interested in D2TWiD because of the intended bugs that were included in it. I said during the process of the first DTWiD, since many of E2 and E3 maps were rush jobs by Sandy Petersen, it would have been nice to see E2 and E3 get the same kind of love and attention that E1 did, demonstrating a more consistent theme, with lots of exaggeration of height variation and angles like the crazy surreal phobos bases depicted (compared to a real life military base).

I don't however, feel as though the plot for Doom 2 is too unrealistic, unbelievable or even not understandable as it is.

Share this post


Link to post

When I was young, I thought it would have been much cooler/more consistent if Doom 2 was also divided into 3 episodes. Perhaps the main reason was so people couldn't skip to the end without cheating, since there wasn't a shareware Doom 2 preview like with D1.

Anyway, to cut to the chase, very interesting idea. I'm pretty full with projects at the moment (loads of crap to do with DMR before it's finished) but if it's still up and running down the track, I'd like to be a part of it.

Share this post


Link to post

Swell idea, Jimmy! Boot this one off the ground and I'd be sure to contribute some maps -- at least while I still have the desire to create levels in the style of id's designers. Both of the Way id Did projects have admittedly left me famished and in want of exploring a less restrictive mapping style (you know, like my own), but there's fuel in the tank yet.

I'd certainly suggest coming up with a name that doesn't comprise in excess of 10 syllables, though, heh.

Excited to see how it evolves! Particularly on the formatting and map selection front.

Share this post


Link to post

doing city maps in Doom 1 would be pretty interesting, mainly due to most Doom1 sectors not breaching 250 in height.

Share this post


Link to post
Jimmy said:

Perhaps since there were more maps per episode in Doom 2 than 1 (nine to eleven, instead of eight plus one secret), the episodes could feature nine or ten standard maps instead, though this would probably mean making the project ZDoom-exclusive or something. Anyway, getting into trivialities now.

That couldn't possibly be less true.

Share this post


Link to post

40oz: Well, Doom 2 is full of "intended bugs" - far more so than Doom 1, I believe, which is why D2TWiD is the way it is - there was a kind of mantra the D2TWiD team adopted - Leave It In™ - which actually worked astoundingly well at times in making the maps feel as though they had that authentic "id"iness. However, the idea of this project is to tell the story of Doom 2 with Doom 1's designs, so the maps will probably be just a tad cleaner as a result. Though the stance of "Leave It In™" will probably carry into this project to some extent, too. :P

As for the idea of E2 done by a mapper who actually gave quite a lot of shits, NiGHTMARE has that covered. :P

Alfonzo: Haha, would be fantastic to see some Fonzmaps in this. :D If you can pull off another Bedlam then it'll be a shoo-in for sure. ;P

The name "Doom 2 the Way Doom 1 Did" will probably not stay, heh. Though it is seven syllables, not ten. :P (Unless you were referring to the thread title, in which case that was just a summation of the project's concept.) Maybe it should be called something corny like "The New Trilogy" or even just goddamn "Hell On Earth".

Should I draw up a maplist if anyone's interested in mapping for this right now? I should probably get a resource WAD together, too.

Tarnsman: If anything I'd like to see something like Downtown done in Doom 1, where the sectors are large and epic in scale, compared to Doom 1 where everything seemed a lot more tightly contained. It would probably be fun to take the layout and room structure ideas from Doom 2 and apply Doom 1 themes to them, as if to suggest that the id authors, pondering how they could present the next trilogy of Doom episodes, suddenly went "hey, we could totally make these maps stupid huge if we wanted" and made the new levels really big and expansive to contrast with those of the original four episodes.

Quasar: Ah yes, Eternity has an extensive MAPINFO lump as ZDoom's does. Although I guess one thing I'm slightly concerned about is using advanced source ports to present this project the way I've suggested (with additional episodes on top of Ultimate Doom's original four, plus the inclusion of Doom 2 monsters), when its main concept is Vanilla mapping in the style of the original authors and so should ideally be able to be run with either Vanilla or Chocolate Doom.

Share this post


Link to post

Well there is also the issue of the texture selection as 90% of anything "city" related texture wise is D2 exclusive. Pretty much only GRAY* and I guess GSTONE could be convincingly used as a building exterior in a Earthy city from the D1 texture resource.

Share this post


Link to post

Hence why I will probably put together a texture resource with a few definitive Doom 2 textures, to allow for the Doom 2 city themes to be mixed with those of the Doom 1 texture sets that this project will seek to use most prominently.

I'll do so now, actually. :P

Share this post


Link to post

I'm quite partial to the episode system myself, so I'm all for this idea. I rather failed to make it into DTWID2, but I could give this a shot!

TO THE MCGEE CAVE

Share this post


Link to post

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×