doomses
I record every game I play and I post them weekly. Here are links to one, two, and three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, and twenty.
Alright, so I usually write about a bunch of different tiny trashgames/indie games, but I wanted to break up the monotony of that with themes! This time it’s all Doom. Next week I’ll resume with normal programming.
A truncated history of my experience with the series
My first experience of Doom was watching my older brother play Doom 64. It looked so cool and scary that I purchased the strategy guide for it without intending to actually engage in the game. A couple years or so later, I acquired the Doom GBA port and loved it.
Streaming, level design, WAD Wednesdays
Other than checking out videos of world record speedruns, I’ve never cared for watching other people play games once I became independent from spectating my brother. I understand why people enjoy interacting with pesronalities and maybe benefitting from emotional contagion, but it just doesn’t feel right for myself.
Robert Yang posted videos of himself analyzing the level design on Half-Life, and after a few minutes of skepticism, I fell in love with it. His commentary was entertaining, but more importantly to my taste, it was educational. Just like I prefer non-fiction over fiction, I almost feel like there needs to be a utilitarian purpose behind what activities I choose to engage in, and learning behind-the-scenes stuff certainly applies here.
I somehow sniffed out JP LeBreton’s WAD Wednesday Doom stream—random levels from the idgames archive are chosen and played. Unlike Yang’s show, it’s not explicitly about level design theory, but it is often discussed as a symptom of LeBreton’s experience in the field. Furthermore, many of the viewers are learned about Doom’s history and engine, inciting riveting discussions of its inner workings, thus completing my thirst for expanding my knowledge.
I try my best to catch the stream live in order to participate with the chat in realtime (watching the archive on YouTube is not the same). However, I haven’t been able to do so in a couple months due to the fact that so many events in my life happen on Wednesday nights—and of course it’s important to engage in IRL social engagements, so those must be prioritized. And yet, I’m gutted when I cannot make WAD Wednesdays because having a set time to immerse myself in this little world provides a stress-relieving refuge from responsibility and real-life human beings.
I’d love to go back in time and convince id Software to change the name “WAD” (‘Where’s All the Data?’) to “TAD” (‘There’s All the Data!’) because JP might be doing TAD Tuesdays instead, and I rarely have shit planned on Tuesdays.
(sorry)
WADs
I wanted to play a bunch of WADs from the WAD Wednesday community, and I succeeded in finding a few of them—I checked the usernames in the chat log from the streams and searched for them in the idgames archive. I played a few others that popped up on Twitter as well.
WAD Wednesday 1 Year Anniversary Mapset
A few weeks ago, Arjuna Gonzales, Fisher, & Eliot Lash created a map each that was then streamed by LeBreton. Find it here.
Being that I’m new to Doom, this is the first “my house” map I’ve played and it’s excellently done. I love recognizable objects being turned into chunky geometry in sort of a demake fashion. There’s quite a personal bent to this regarding a person and their alcoholism that’s intense, and I’ve got to commend Gonzales for taking it that direction. Awesome song, too!
You know that that groggy feeling after a nap—you’re not sure what day it is, how long you’ve been unconscious, nothing’s really fitting together well. There’s a point in this that shifted my mindset towards that, which makes me felt like I’ve been playing it for hours, moist from sweat, the sun covered by curtains yet poking through too strong, even though none of those latter things actually happened.
This is just one of those maps you ought to experience yourself.
More WADs!
“Get Well Soon” by Arjuna Gonzales
I intended on playing a joshthenesnerd map but somehow ended up picking this one instead—but I can play the former in the near future!
I’m quite fond of this type of level that has a layout that is based on a design that’s not explicitly great architecture, yet the gameplay that results is actually quite a joy to romp through.
Hidden Base by fusedtoast
This view comes from the starting position of Doomguy at start. The way the darkness frames the positive space is beautiful, and that makes me sad that I don’t see that visual device used more often. An excellent concise map!
Deimos Abandoned Base #79 by Peter Morotomi
This is a ridiculously large map. It’s also quite challenging and uses space in a way that made me feel overwhelmed. It’s also Morotomi’s first map (!). I’ve played two hours and haven’t finished, but I will someday because it’s just grand!
Steep Town by RottKing
This screenshot (intentionally) does this map no justice, but I don’t want to reveal anymore because it floored me when the initial area opened up to the main space.
This is a vicious level that made me rethink my strategy multiple times, and because it’s so damn good, I took the time to push through it. I’m stuck right now, but will definitely complete this someday.
Doom 64 for Doom II
First things first, Doom 64 is by far my favourite Doom after playing through the original up to Doom 3 (my computer doesn’t have the space for/can’t run DOOM (2016)). This is because:
- It has a horror atmosphere that still feels like Doom. In my opinion, it loses nothing from the original games.
- The lighting. Oh my god, the lighting here is exquisite. There are fucking GRADIENTS and they’re gorgeous. The palette is wide for a Doom game while still retaining a moody atmosphere.
- The soundtrack. I highly prefer dark ambient music over metal anyways, so it’s perfect. Bobby Prince’s midi songs (of the originals) are mostly funny to me (especially with plenty of them being inspired by actual metal songs), though I really dig a few of them. Aubrey Hodges’ work feels perfectly integrated with the gameplay and affects me viscerally.
- Every level is distinct and memorable. I won’t argue that the original Doom might have better level design (if one can judge that), but every stage in Doom 64 really has their own idiosyncratic personalities that really changes map-to-map.
So being that the levels from Doom 64 were “ported” to Doom II, so much of what I love about the former game is missing. Yeah, I became a grumpy old man at first, rolling my idiot eyes. Well, when I finally accepted that it’s its own damn thing, and not an ersatz imitation, I fell in love with it!
Just like most demakes, it was quite a treat to check out the ways the authors adapted some stuff from the original version into Doom II’s engine. There were some things that I couldn’t have prepared myself for because of this…
Redux.wad by Daniel Trim
Trim (dt_)is the creator of Outpost Omega in Doom 64 for Doom II. I needed help figuring out how to pass it, so I asked. After sending a video of where I was stuck, dt_ sent me a demo (.lmp) and I went on a mission to figure out how to play it (I don’t know shit about Doom or computers beyond the obvious). I asked for help on LeBreton’s Discord, and Dr. Motherfucker ended up helping me out sigificantly.
dt_ has helped with several projects and such, but I decided to check out a 6-map WAD created solo. This one has a pistol start* and a steady ramp up in weaponry that’s quite exciting to me.
Although the textures are kinda bland, the design is pretty cool and eventually got to a point where I quit because I was scared (well, that’s because I was tired and it was nighttime, but still, that doesn’t happen too often), not going beyond the third or fourth map. I’m sure I’ll pick up the rest of this one someday!
- Well, I think almost every WAD I’ve played has a pistol start, I guess I mean the player only has a pistol for awhile before upgrading to better equipment.
Rekkr by Revae and friends
This is the first TC I’ve played. It’s kinda wild exploring a world using Doom’s engine without any of the actual Doom bits. I played up to the third map and had to stop because I want to set aside time to play this. It’s been engrossing so far with its excellent textures and peculiar enemies, not to mention the neat level design.
