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Zed

How to remember WADs

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Hi there, fellow doomers.

I'm with you again to ask another question (duh!).

All of us (or most of us) have been through this at least once. You play an incredible/amazing/etc. map. You enjoy it, finish it. Then you forget it. Then you remember about such wad. You keep searching for weeks/months/years and you can't find it. You have no idea of how it ended up in your laptop/PC, and you want to play it again. Not even this thread can help you.

So, having said this, what do you do to remember certain/specific wads? There are tens of thousands of wads out there. Do you have some kind of "strategy" to remember wads you haven't see/play in years? Can you find them, even after 5-10 years? Do you look into your Doom folder(s) for days, or you just go into idgames and try to find it?

I know this question might be quite irrelevant/stupid, but I've lost days trying to remember specific wads/levels and, to this day, I haven't been able to do it successfully.

Thanks and good day.

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Music? Even if it's a piece of music that's been used multiple times in various wads, it usually reminds me of the first wad that I played with it. Obviously this doesn't help the people with custom playlists.

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If you want to go all hardcore, try organising a database of some sort. Enter everything you play there, use some thematic tags and other notes to make quick search possible, maybe add screenshots too.

For some stuff like books/movies/anime there are specific sites where you can maintain such lists. Would be cool if there was a Doom one as well, maybe it could be integrated with doomworld.com/idgames even. I'm using myanimelist.net for keeping track of anime that I watch and it's incredibly helpful.

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Obsidian said:

Music? Even if it's a piece of music that's been used multiple times in various wads, it usually reminds me of the first wad that I played with it. Obviously this doesn't help the people with custom playlists.


Yes, that's correct, and it was one of the main reasons I wanted to ask this. You may remember the music, but a lot of wads use the same music for different levels, and vice versa. And what about unkown/obscure but great wads that use known/mainstream songs? Or, as you said, people with custom playlists?

Memfis said:

If you want to go all hardcore, try organising a database of some sort. Enter everything you play there, use some thematic tags and other notes to make quick search possible, maybe add screenshots too.

For some stuff like books/movies/anime there are specific sites where you can maintain such lists. Would be cool if there was a Doom one as well, maybe it could be integrated with doomworld.com/idgames even. I'm using myanimelist.net for keeping track of anime that I watch and it's incredibly helpful.


OK, but what program/software should I use? Let's say I remember a wad with a lot of mountains. Or a lot of tech-bases. Or pits. There isn't nothing like it in/within the Doom database/community, as I understand it, and it's unlikely it will be done any time soon, am I right?

kmxexii said:

You could always review them as you play them, it's a lot of effort though


Heh, I think that could be a little time-consuming, especially for casual play.

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I remember them by what they contain. Some have epic music, some have amazing visuals or a very strong theme, some are a journey that gets ingrained in my head.

And, obviously, some are from people I know or have a lot of respect for. Some still, I helped to create!

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Depends what sort of memory you have. I find that if I read the txt as well as playing the wad, I tend to remember it, or at least enough about it to find it some time later.

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Zed said:

OK, but what program/software should I use?

You could start with OpenOffice Calc (or its MS Office counterpart) - with columns for the /idgames database URL, wad title, notes, hyperlinks to screenshots and whatever else you feel like adding.

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I keep a review log.
In the review I put down a rating 0.0 to 5.0, sometimes rate some aspects separately (like the graphics were a 5.6, but the play was 3.0).
Separately translate this to an appropriate rating for an Id game wad review.
A brief description of the theme, and how well it modeled the theme.
Was it linear, did it play well, and was the design interesting,
Write down details that I liked and what I did not like.
Always record the irritating details like too many monsters, lack of ammo, or excessive symmetry.

A must is to record what settings were needed to play it, like the game, and any pwad needed for missing textures.


Every once and a while I post some of the reviews to the Id game wad review.

I keep new wads in a several separate directories until they are played.
I also sort the wads into directories according to game requirements.

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I generally just put gameplay mods in one folder, and level wads in another. If I give the folder a custom icon and put it on my desktop, I don't forget it.

I also make shortcuts that automatically load specific files, or just keep the command to load the file handy.

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I take screenshots and post them in the wiki, then I can remember the WAD.

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Touchdown said:

I keep everything I've ever played unless it's trash. So if I want to play it I've got it ready to go.


I also do that. But even then, I have like 5,000 "good" wads, so even if it's easier than searching through the entire idgames archive and/or 50-60 shovelware CDs, it's still a little time consuming.

Having said that, there are some cool ideas here, I'll try out some of them.

Thanks and good day.

EDIT: Missing words.

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I've used a note pad and a pen to write down filenames of maps I liked that I'd like to check more than once.

Obsidian's suggestion works but i haven't been able to utilize it successfully. Sometimes I'll listen to a new CD ive never heard before with a wad I've never played before, and somehow images of those maps remain permanently in my mind whenever I listen to it.

I haven't looked into it much really but I think I would have more trouble accidentally creating permanent images of maps I wouldn't mind forgetting and running out of original music to play maps to.

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