31–40 of 51 posts
Doom mapping is basically it's own weird artform that people have been refining for nearly 30 years. Unlike a modern AAA game it's typical for a single person to make a Doom map and so people can develop very unique and identifiable styles that come through in their maps. If you're an old Doom-fan and never got around the checking out the scene, Cacoward winners are a great place to find some highlights.
Doom mapping is basically it's own weird artform that people have been refining for nearly 30 years. Unlike a modern AAA game it's typical for a single person to make a Doom map and so people can develop very unique and identifiable styles that come through in their maps. If you're an old Doom-fan and never got around the checking out the scene, Cacoward winners are a great place to find some highlights.
It wasn't always so easy. Doing maps in the mid 90s relied on very limited tools and ones imagination. Build actually helped push things forward a lot. Glad to see modern Doom tooling has risen to the occasion.
It really gave me an appreciation for how much of a difference tooling and infrastructure, specifically fast feedback cycles, can make in a final product. Even if you don't see the difference in the development pipeline as a player, you can definitely see the difference in Memento Mori[2] and Sunlust[3].
[0] https://doomwiki.org/wiki/WADED
[1] https://doomwiki.org/wiki/DCK
Doom mapping is basically it's own weird artform that people have been refining for nearly 30 years. Unlike a modern AAA game it's typical for a single person to make a Doom map and so people can develop very unique and identifiable styles that come through in their maps. If you're an old Doom-fan and never got around the checking out the scene, Cacoward winners are a great place to find some highlights.
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It wasn't always so easy. Doing maps in the mid 90s relied on very limited tools and ones imagination. Build actually helped push things forward a lot. Glad to see modern Doom tooling has risen to the occasion.
Yep. I made maps regularly between 95 and about 2001. Then I went and made a map in 2006, and the difference was night and day. Moving from the 1995 workflow of DOS editors like WADED[0] and DCK[1] to Doom Builder was an incredible experience. My previous workflow had been: make as much of the map as I could (with just the top-down sector view; no previews other than seeing what the textures and flats looked like!),…
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The standard of DOOM maps has gotten very high. SIGIL is fine, but compared to the current standard, the maps were pretty crappy tbh, in every respect, technical, encounters, design. Afaik they only included it at all as an honour to Romero. If some randomer had submitted it, it would not have been mentioned.
I'm a hardcore Doom fan; have been since its release. I have it as one of the first installs on every device I have; even my Windows machines have a portable Doom configured and ready to go in their Onedrive folders. SIGIL is probably one of the best _Doom_ experiences since "Doom the way id Did". Too many modern maps lean heavily on limit-removing ports, and other modern features, and lose the sine qua non that made…
Boom-level limiting removing ports and WADs are not that distinct to for example, Memento Mori, Requiem or Scythe.
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The incredibly low skill floor is definitely a big part of the scene's success. I know a number of veteran professional level designers are kinda worried about the field. So many of them got their starts playing around with the level creation stuff that frequently came with PC games. It got them interested and allowed them to walk before they could run. So they're a bit afraid a new generation might be starting from…
Also, bad and low quality doom levels can be extremely fun to play. There is a fun element to this as well.
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It's incredible how it sucks people in. The skill floor to expressing yourself is _damn low_; if you can draw 2D polygons, then you can make a Doom map with DoomBuilder[0]. But the skill ceiling is high. And the ease of creation allows for equal ease in iteration. And the source ports add loads of neat little features to add even more capacity for variety. So you start by throwing together some boxes; and before you…
The incredibly low skill floor is definitely a big part of the scene's success. I know a number of veteran professional level designers are kinda worried about the field. So many of them got their starts playing around with the level creation stuff that frequently came with PC games. It got them interested and allowed them to walk before they could run. So they're a bit afraid a new generation might be starting from…
†A "softlock" is when it's possible to get into a situation where the player can't win but they also can't die and start over, so they must either restart the game or wait for some in-game timer to count down to zero. In normal course design you should prevent this, if necessary with an "anti-softlock" where Mario assuredly dies once frustrated in this way, e.g. you miss an important jump, and Mario just falls to his death, rather than being stuck in a deep pit from which he cannot escape. But in troll design you make dying in this circumstance possible but extremely difficult, so that the player's skill in tested not only in winning, but also just in dying. This art is called an anti-softlock or most often "anti" for short and is a crucial part of "troll Mario".
That's not even on a general purpose computer, a Switch is something you might have purchased or been gifted solely to play video games and now you're a level designer, able to show off your aesthetics, pacing, mechanics and so on.
(Java) Minecraft is way beyond that because it's not even just about level design, it goes way beyond even a Doom TC. People change the physics rules, how graphics are rendered, not to mention radically changing the gameplay. I basically only play the ascend-to-godhood type packs, and even among those there's so much variety between something tightly themed like Compact Claustrophobia or Star Factory, and big sprawling do-what-you like packs such as Stoneblock, or Project Ozone. But now you're a video game programmer (albeit in Java) not even just a level designer.
https://www.gamers.org/docs/FAQ/DOOM.FAQ.Specs.html
You can use any language you want to work with the data, but C is probably the most straightforward. The first time you decode some sprite data, or a level map, you will have the strangest sense of joy as it appears on screen.
I used to play around with that stuff in the 90's with a copy of Turbo C and started to write a Mac level editor (very simple one at least) a few years back but haven't really worked on it since I had kids.
I'm still not sure how SIGIL only got a 2019 runner up. A 5th Episode of the original DOOM, made by John Romero, which was completely awesome, kicked ass and had a soundtrack by Buckethead? I fail to see how any of the competitors could have matched it.