
One Doom fan, 300 hours, and one gargantuan level - uptown
https://killscreen.com/articles/doom-map-300-hours-make/
======
Scuds
Every time I come across one of these AAA+ doom maps, I kinda blanch at the
setup involved in running these with no background knowledge. You need an old
Doom2.wad, to download an appropriate sourceport from Sourceforge, probably
without an installer, maybe some looking up commandline options to run the
game with a pwad if it's not immediately apparent.

Sure, none of this is a problem for the HN crowd, but what I'd like is a
"Click to run this wad" button on a WAD gallery page that would download and
run the WAD either via NaCl or even just javascript, making the experience of
playing these fan created levels seamless and opening it to a much wider
audience.

edit: yes I realize the IWADs are not freely distributable even though the
engine is OSS

~~~
derefr
> "Click to run this wad" button on a WAD gallery page that would download and
> run the WAD either via NaCl or even just javascript

The Internet Archive's "Internet Arcade" project
([https://archive.org/details/internetarcade](https://archive.org/details/internetarcade))
is the perfect place to preserve and display these, just as much as it is for
old arcade cabinets.

What that implies, though, is that MAME/MESS would need to get over their
singular goal of emulating real hardware, and build in support for "abstract"
platform-neutral virtual machines that games have been built on: say, ScummVM,
or the Z-Machine, or even Shockwave Flash(!).

If they started down that path, they could maybe go further, and also support
the execution of low-level game engine "runtimes" like Löve2D.

But go any further than _that_ , and I'd question whether we're really doing
"emulation" of a game using an interpreter, rather than shipping a game engine
and loading levels in it. With things like the Doom engine—or, say, the RPG
Maker 2000 runtime—you get to a the point where, to faithfully run a "game"
made with these things, your emulator would have to include the original
_asset bundle_ that came with the reference engine. That's not quite an
emulator any more.

Maybe what we really need is a Docker-like abstraction for MAME: the ability
to have "base images" for game engines, and then "derivative images" that
represent projects loaded into those engines—where you only have to load a new
"game engine" layer into the emulator when the game you're playing references
a version you don't have cached yet.

You could even split things into three layers: a layer for the OS (Windows 95,
say); a layer for the game engine; and then a layer for the game project. And
the whole thing gets "pulled", revived into a merged container, and then
loaded into DOSBox.

~~~
db48x
> You could even split things into three layers: a layer for the OS (Windows
> 95, say); a layer for the game engine; and then a layer for the game
> project. And the whole thing gets "pulled", revived into a merged container,
> and then loaded into DOSBox.

You can do this today with dosbox on archive.org. Here's how:

Upload the game engine (Doom, to keep with the current theme) as an IA item;
this may or may not have already been done (I happen to know that Doom is
hidden because you can buy it on Steam, but I'm pretty sure the shareware
version is there somewhere). For the sake of this example, assume that your
item has "foo" as its identifier, and the game is in "foo.zip".

Then upload your game or level (WAD, in this case) as another item. Assume
that this one is called "bar", and has a "bar.zip" containing the level and a
batch file that I'll describe.

Edit the metadata for your item named "bar" so that it includes this
information:

    
    
      emulator=dosbox
      dosbox_drive_c=foo/foo.zip
      dosbox_drive_d=bar/bar.zip
      emulator_start=d:\bar.bat
    

The batch file "bar.bat" is responsible for starting the game, which might
include copying files, changing config files, specifying command-line
arguments, etc.

If you want to use windows you can use the same system to load it as well. Of
course this really only works with the earlier versions of windows which ran
in dos, and thus can run in dosbox. Check out
[https://archive.org/details/win3_SKIFREE](https://archive.org/details/win3_SKIFREE)
for an example.

You can also host everything on your own webpage; I recommend my own project,
the Emularity, which simplifies a lot of it
([http://emularity.com/](http://emularity.com/)).

------
bluedino
Wow, that level is _massive_. I wonder what the system requirements are on
that. Doom played perfectly on a 486/66 with 4MB. Like how many linedefs are
in that thing...

~~~
ggambetta
Interesting question. I guess with today's processing power you could have a
much more expensive offline preprocessing step and create a much better BSP
tree, reducing the impact in runtime?

I don't think linedefs take that much memory, but you could hit the limitation
of number of textures in the same level, since I doubt 90's Doom did streaming
from disk. So you probably can get massive geometry but a relatively
homogeneous-looking level.

------
agentgt
The one thing I didn't like about Doom is the surreal look both of the
artistic and map layout. e.g. no space ship or space station would ever be
designed like that (it is the same with Star Wars Death stars... did no one
think of putting up a guard rail?).

It is one of the reasons I liked Duke Nukem 3D a lot more as a teenager.

The map does look cool but it doesn't have that real space station feel.

I guess you could argue hell alters the layout.

~~~
TeMPOraL
One thing I'd really love game designers to do when designing levels - focus
first on what it is, and _then_ only on how it plays. E.g. if designing a
space station, first consider how a space station would look like, what
facilities it needs, what would be the optimal placement, etc. Only _after
that_ add the puzzles, enemies and stuff.

In other words, I'd like game designers to pay more attention to details in
world building.

~~~
dkonofalski
The problem with that is that space stations and whatnot aren't designed to be
fun as you go through them. Games are supposed to be fun. It would be
incredibly misguided for a game designer to design the level around a real-
world location first and then add the puzzles and enemies. Do you have "fun"
walking through the halls of your doctor's office or through your local water
treatment plant? There's a reason why they don't do exactly what you're
suggesting.

~~~
rwallace
Different people have different tastes. Yes, I do find it interesting to walk
through unfamiliar buildings in real life, and I'd find it more fun to go
through a realistically designed level even if that meant e.g. the pacing was
a bit uneven.

~~~
sadfsdfsadfsd
I think there's a flaw in this want, which is that you don't know what
"realistically designed" means. I've never been on a large space station, and
aside from academic or artistic ventures, one has never been built.

The same is with wastewater treatment plants, etc. And, if you're targeting
realism, size might be an issue.

That said, there are games that are thoughtful about this, such as doorkickers
or heist.

------
proactivesvcs
It's already scared the jeepers out of me several times. I've also now managed
to telefrag a Pain Elemental for the first time ever. Seems a bit late to only
achieve this in 2016!

------
paulpauper
It's amazing how there is such a huge fan base for old games and technologies.
Not to take this too off topic but this may be why fears of technological
unemployment may be overblown, because there will always be uses for old
technology or integrating new technology with old technology.

~~~
projektir
It's not like he's getting paid for making Doom levels, though, so I'm not
sure how this addresses technological unemployment.

~~~
clarry
I'm thinking of taking a year or two to make my own FPS with an aesthetic &
gameplay similar to the 90s classics. But I'm concerned that even though
there's a huge number of people who played and liked these games, they would
also consider these games a product of their time and that it would be quite
difficult to sell such a game.

~~~
ludamad
Making a reasonable wage with a game is a lot of stress and luck. What if you
approached it differently? A reasonable engineer could take a 50% pay cut and
still have a living wage. Why not take a personal year now and then?

~~~
clarry
It's tough, I'm not an engineer.

------
tomw1808
two things I will never forget:

iddqd idkfa and the compaq presario I wasn't supposed to use for that.

------
qwertyuiop924
This is totally nuts. I haven't gotten around to playing it yet, but I feel
like I totally should.

If Doomworld knows about this (they probably do: they maintain /idgames), it's
definitely going to win the Mordeth this year.

~~~
sdegutis
After watching like 3 minutes of it, I'm suddenly reminded of the suspense and
sense of mystery that Doom had. I don't think I've ever experienced that in
any video game since then.

~~~
projektir
I think the clones (Heretic and heXen) did a pretty good job with it. I prefer
heXen and Quake to Doom at the end of the day. There was a whole slew of FPS
games in that style around that time, many of which were great (Dark Forces,
Witchaven, Shadow Warrior, Duke Nukem 3D, etc.).

You don't see that as much in modern games, though, because they seem to be
targeting a very different audience. Neither Doom nor heXen style games are
being made at all right now as far as I can see.

Demon's Souls is also excellent suspense wise, even though it's a different
genre. The author mentions it as inspiration.

~~~
qwertyuiop924
I found Hexen and Heretic a collection of boring slogs. Neither are
particularly enjoyable, IMHO.

Now Strife, OTOH...

Quake was actually quite a lot of fun, especially in MP. Singleplayer was
quite good as well, but it's not as good as Doom's: Technical limitations mean
that you don't get the massive waves of enemies of varying power, instead
getting maybe a strong enemy or two, and a weak enemy or two, as there can
only be ~7 enemies on screen at once (at least, on the hardware of the time).

~~~
sdegutis
Yeah but Quake was the first Doom clone where you could actually aim in two
dimensions, X and Y! Doom's only letting you aim in X felt a bit cheesy and
limited after playing Quake. Especially Quake 2 with mods, those were
extremely fun times.

~~~
prefect42
Unless I'm remembering out of order, heXen/heretic had two axis aiming before
quake. Doom being locked on one axis was a tad cheesy. Also which one of those
had the Chicken Gun ;-)

Another fun MP game was Rise of the Triad.

~~~
rangibaby
They had "freelook" but it was horrible:
[http://zdoom.org/wiki/Y-shearing](http://zdoom.org/wiki/Y-shearing)

~~~
projektir
I thought the weirdness of it added to the atmosphere.

The controls were clunky, though.

~~~
rangibaby
> The controls were clunky, though.

Especially with the flying item IIRC, that was impossible!

------
alexellisuk
Fantastic work, this reminds me of playing Doom after school on the LAN. Good
video walk-through but a shame you know where are all the monsters are ;-)

------
clarry
I don't know how to feel about this article. Four decent sized Doom maps (I'm
assuming they're referring to the official iwad maps) doesn't sound like an
unusually large map for a community creation. The 2-3 hour time requirement is
rather vague (how experienced a player are we talking about? does the time
include deaths and re-attempts?) too, but I've certainly played maps that took
me as long, and I've watched others play such maps.

I guess there's nothing wrong with TFA per se, but I don't know if there's
anything particularly newsworthy in it either. It sounds like the author just
isn't aware of what's been going on in the Doom community for the past two
decades.

~~~
wang_li
There's a video embedded in the article of someone playing through the whole
map. The video is an hour long. And I just realized has full mouselook.

\-----

Unrelatedly, and perhaps it's just nostalgia, but I find myself wishing some
of the more modern Doom variants had more of the aesthetic of the original
games. Colors, sizes of the rooms and such.

~~~
clarry
Well there is nothing worng with playing the original games (perhaps with a
beefed up engine if the original is too clunky for your taste). There's plenty
of maps too so you'll never get bored. I think I've played around a hundred
pwads now and it feels like I've only scratched the surface.

