John Romero makes first new Doom map in 21 years

Buckshot said:

Not that this has to do with anything, but I notice in zandronum, some of the door textures are misaligned, but in say... doomsday, everything is lined up as it should be. I presume that's engine errata, right?

Yes, I heard that Romero uses just Doomsday.

Eris Falling said:

Let's send 15+ players charging through the map!

Hah! Looks like it was fun. I say, you didn't fare too well against those mines ;p

I think that second pass would've been my favorite, though. Then again, with all the hitscans in the level maybe it'd've been my most hated, heh.

Eris, that's pure gold!

Wow shotgun frenzy right here...

Great map, loved being ambushed from multiple angles, really kept the experience tense.

The cracks are great! I don't know what you guys are talking about. It's an inventive gameplay mechanic which limits the player's movement in an irregular way in mid-encounter. And it's great thematically and visually. I think it's one of the best uses of damaging floor I've ever seen. I hope I see people copying it.

I think it's bad design to have sections in which the rad suit is used to limit the player's time to explore an area. Just an exercise in trial and error and memorization. Those were the low points of this map for me. I think it would be much better to have a fight in which the player is avoiding damaging floors while dodging enemies, and the rad suit grants freedom of movement.

I really enjoyed this map. Was I the only one who thought John seemed a bit like a kid in a candy store? I sense a lot of pent-up creative energy.

I especially like the jumping puzzles. I don't think the point of jumping puzzles in Doom should be that they are difficult to execute, but that they should cause the functional space to fold back on itself in unexpected ways and cause the player to visualize the space in a more complex and creative way.

Regarding boss fights, this points to one of the fundamental flaws in Doom engine games: the mappers are designing for a player starting with no resources, but the player has the option to start with a tremendous amount of resources. Tower of Babel is a pretty good level from pistol start. Cyberdemons take a while to kill with the rocket launcher, and the presence of lost souls is problematic. This is the thing that breaks my heart about Hexen -- it's explicitly built around resource continuity, but this turns all the boss fights into non-challenges.

Macblain said:

The cracks are great! I don't know what you guys are talking about.

Unless they are the sweet cracks of Creaphis *shudders at the memories*

Macblain said:

Regarding boss fights, this points to one of the fundamental flaws in Doom engine games: the mappers are designing for a player starting with no resources, but the player has the option to start with a tremendous amount of resources. Tower of Babel is a pretty good level from pistol start. Cyberdemons take a while to kill with the rocket launcher, and the presence of lost souls is problematic. This is the thing that breaks my heart about Hexen -- it's explicitly built around resource continuity, but this turns all the boss fights into non-challenges.

It's a problem in many games. I'm not sure it has been satisfactorily solved. In Quake 2 you inevitably had a stack of quad damages by the time you face the Makron. Half Life cheated a few times by taking all your weapons off you at stages. Some RPG-like games like the Borderlands games make the monsters very tough until you've levelled up to match (try playing the Borderlands 2 DLC " Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep" if you are not up to level 30 with your character) but that is like playing a spreadsheet rather than a skill-based game, IMHO, and is a very poor solution.

Map doesn't work for me for some reason. What am I doing wrong?

MegaSphere said:

Map doesn't work for me for some reason. What am I doing wrong?

Given the amount of detail you've given us, you could be doing literally anything wrong.

MegaSphere said:

Map doesn't work for me for some reason. What am I doing wrong?

Not typing idclev18? Loading in Doom 2?

MegaSphere said:

Map doesn't work for me for some reason. What am I doing wrong?

Try restarting your toaster, or warming up a couple slices of bread in it. That usually does the trick, but you might need to get a recent model too because, in my personal experience, most limit-removing source ports won't work in something like this: http://i.imgur.com/2g339T8.jpg.

Dragonsbrethren said:

Not typing idclev18? Loading in Doom 2?

Yeah I went full retard it took me a while to realise it's not supposed to be the first level. It's a cool map feels oldschool but with a twist and it was refreshing to play something that doesn't spawn 200 Revenants blasting at me in designated killzone.

While reading through Masters Of DooM for the 3rd time at work the other night I thought to myself how awesome it would be if Romero were to make a modern day map. IF only we could keep him here with us.

JCB said:

While reading through Masters Of DooM for the 3rd time at work the other night I thought to myself how awesome it would be if Romero were to make a modern day map. IF only we could keep him here with us.

Keep him where? He is making Doom-related interviews, posts unreleased stuff, answers questions on twitter, made a cool map after two decades, posts at the premier Doom community. What more could he do for the fans and the game's lasting appeal.

I wonder about his game, he should kickstart it I think. That's what well known designers of older games have been doing successfully. It will generate some buzz for sure.

Especially if the crowdfunding campaign uses the title "Help John Romero make you his hoe"

Regarding modern mapping style with high detail, could someone link me some maps that do this? I'd like to see what you're talking about. Also, are there any that use only DOOM1.WAD?

Romero said:

Regarding modern mapping style with high detail, could someone link me some maps that do this? I'd like to see what you're talking about. Also, are there any that use only DOOM1.WAD?

Some high profile Doom 1 wads? Hmm, let's see:

-Monument by Chris Hansen
-Bedlam by various authors
-Back to Basics by Espi(RIP)

Those are just a few off the top of my head, I'm guessing there's a few more that I've missed.

Romero said:

Regarding modern mapping style with high detail, could someone link me some maps that do this? I'd like to see what you're talking about. Also, are there any that use only DOOM1.WAD?

Hey John! Great to see you post here and congratulations on the new map - it's awesome! :)

Regarding the question - unfortunately I am unaware of modern maps which use solely DOOM1.WAD. A vast majority of those use assets from "DOOM II", or from the full version of "DOOM", but maybe someone more knowledgeable will provide examples of what you are looking for.

Romero said:

Regarding modern mapping style with high detail, could someone link me some maps that do this? I'd like to see what you're talking about. Also, are there any that use only DOOM1.WAD?

Sure, sir. Examples:

Comatose
Vela Pax
Combat Shock2

But no, none of them use DOOM1.WAD as IWAD.

Deus vult 2 and sunder.wad should be worth a look, they have great aesthetics, but requires doom2.

http://doomedsda.us/lmps/1193/sunder.zip
http://doomedsda.us/lmps/983/dvii-1i.zip

Phobos:Anomaly Reborn

For Boom using The Ultimate Doom.

Romero said:

Regarding modern mapping style with high detail, could someone link me some maps that do this? I'd like to see what you're talking about.

Too many to list, just check out Cacowards.

Romero said:

Also, are there any that use only DOOM1.WAD?

Return to Hadron
Oblivion
Thy Flesh turned into a draft-excluder
ConC.E.R.Ned
...

Romero said:

Regarding modern mapping style with high detail, could someone link me some maps that do this? I'd like to see what you're talking about. Also, are there any that use only DOOM1.WAD?

Ultimate Simplicity would be a great place to start but it uses DOOM2.WAD.

Romero said:

Regarding modern mapping style with high detail, could someone link me some maps that do this? I'd like to see what you're talking about. Also, are there any that use only DOOM1.WAD?

I'll second those, must-see stuff if you want to check some of the most beautiful maps ever made for DOOM:

CWolfRu said:

Vela Pax

XCOPY said:

Sunder
Deus Vult II

Also, anything by Ribbiks, really. The latest one is this:

Stardate 20x7

All of the above use BOOM compatibility. There's also a lot of detailed (G)ZDOOM stuff. I'd recommend looking at:

Unloved
Winter's Fury
ZDoom Community Map Project II

Romero said:

Regarding modern mapping style with high detail, could someone link me some maps that do this? I'd like to see what you're talking about. Also, are there any that use only DOOM1.WAD?

First off, thank you for treating us to some more episode 1 magic. I'll pile on with nostalgic awe over the recent release, absolutely loved the layout.

Modern mapping is sort of divided over several camps, depending on what part responds you're prone to get very varied answers. I'd highly recommend checking out the following, even though these are all Doom II based:

Valhalla

Valiant

Monster hunter Part I

Monster hunter Part II

Edit: this one also deserves a mention, a remake of e2m4 for GZdoom, with lots of fancy effects and a really great atmosphere. All around extremely solid for what it's trying to accomplish:

Redux E2M4

When someone mentions doom1.wad they generally mean the shareware IWAD
http://zdoom.org/wiki/IWAD

But I think John actually meant the first Doom game, instead of Doom 2. So doom.wad

Kind of stunned to say I can't think of any Doom1 wads beyond what's been mentioned.. But I think Romero would really dig No Rest for the Living (nerve.wad), it's rightfully deserving of it's status as a commercial PWAD.

Welp, you've got plenty of material to study Johnny boy, haha. I'd say try out Valhalla first off, it's a pretty damn good map with some excellent architecture and mechanics: a good showcase of what you can really do with what Doom has to offer.

The High/Low series and Mapgame have not been mentioned yet. Except for High/Low 5, they're for (Ultimate) Doom.

I'd also recommend Sunlust and Hellbound, both for Doom II, in the "modern detailed architecture" category.

And in the GZDoom category, Putrefier.

Romero said:

Regarding modern mapping style with high detail, could someone link me some maps that do this?

Knee Deep in ZDoom
High detailed and huge maps, reimagining the shareware episode. The basic layout of the original maps is there, yet it differs that much in detail, it frequently is hard to recognize which part a section is actually mimicking (which is a good thing in this case). See the screenshots, and you'll get the idea.

Also, are there any that use only DOOM1.WAD?

Since map authors are required to make sure their maps don't work with shareware doom, that is unlikely. At least not for download. That was id's biggest concern back then, I guess.

On the other hand, freedoom's episode 1 is just that, but not using id resources at all.

Double Impact is a really cool E1 replacement.