Exploring today’s mod scene with id Software’s classic shooter. By Andi Hamilton
Over the past few years, many of the barriers to making and modifying videogames have been removed. You can grab a free version of Game Maker and knock out Hotline Miami or Gunpoint if you’ve got the time and the inclination. With the introduction of Steam Workshop and similar resources, modding has become both easier to implement and, if you’re on the other side of the fence, easier to benefit from.
Yet id Software’s Doom has always had such a brilliant creative scene around it. Since the very beginning, people have been working out ways to mod the game and create their own unique experiences. Classic mods such as Aliens or Batman are remembered almost as fondly as the base game itself by those who were around during the mod scene’s infancy. Some of the more ambitious mods even ended up becoming full retail releases, like Final Doom or The Master Levels. In fact, one of the creators of Final Doom went on to work for Valve, engaged on no less a game than Half-Life, while a member of the team that worked on The Master Levels is now creative director of id Software itself – Tim Willits. Since those early days there’s always been someone modding a new game mechanic to Doom, or someone forcing it to run on a piece of machinery that it really has no business running on. Here we are, over 20 years since the game was originally released, and there’s still a healthy number of people working on an incredible variety of things to do with Doom.
“Doom itself is a fun as hell game,” says James Paddock, creative director on the colourful, cartoonstyle Doom total conversion The Adventures of Square. “There’s just no denying that – and if you make something in the Doom engine, I almost absolutely guarantee that on some level it will be fun. While we went with a primary colours, MS Painty visual style, we wanted very much to still capture the spirit and the feel of the original Doom with The Adventures of Square, so we didn’t stray too far from the core mechanics that made it such a blast.” Paddock summarises these core values as: “large exploration-based levels with non-linear progressions, and frantic, bustling gameplay involving killing hordes of bad dudes in swift succession.”
There’s a simplicity at the core of Doom that has ensured that it is as much fun to play today as it was on its release over 20 years ago. Like Mario Bros, or Tetris, there’s a solid set of rules that have given Doom a timeless feeling to how it plays. That now standardised set of weapons, varied enemies that create interesting scenarios simply by being mixed together and some of the tightest level design imaginable, combine to create a classic. Doom is as much fun now as it was back in 1993. And of course, if you don’t happen to agree with that, you can always mod it. Doom has had everything bolted onto it over the years, from simple stuff like new enemy models to some of the more recent weirdness, like the Instadoom Selfie Stick mod, which allows you to have Doomguy take posed pictures of himself as you blast his way through Hell.
There are plenty of tools out there that don’t require you to have deep knowledge of all things Doom in order to get results, either. Doombuilder enables you to create levels with practically a drag and drop interface, freeing you to focus on the creative side of things. By removing that required programming knowledge – the only knowledge someone needs is Doom itself – you allow for someone to really go wild with their own imagination. Cyriak Harris, animator and the brains behind one of the more interesting wads out there – Going Down – by his own admission doesn’t have the technical knowhow to make his own games, but has still created an exceptional set of levels.
“I’ve never used Unity or Game Maker, I wouldn’t know where to start,” Cyriak says. “Making your own map in Doom is as easy as drawing a shape and moving the ceiling and floor up and down, pretty much anyone can do that. You don’t need any programming skills, and the maps are simple enough that you can make one in a few days. Beyond that there are tools available to do more ambitious stuff. You can add your own graphics, make your own monsters and weapons, modify it to the point where it is a completely different game if you like. But I think the main advantage is that it’s quick and easy for complete noobs like me to get started. I’ve never been involved in game development, I always wanted to make games, but this is probably as close as I’m going to get!”
If you’re looking to work with Doom on a deeper level than that of a level editor, there are still plenty of resources available. From the start, engine mastermind John Carmack ensured that his game would be relatively easy to modify. He also has a habit of releasing the source code to all of the engines he has created once he’s moved onto his next one, meaning that the community has total access to his creation. This has given birth to ‘source ports’ – allowing Doom to be ported to anything that has an operating system that can run it. It turns out this includes a surprising number of household items. Doom has appeared on everything from an HP printer to a toaster and an actual piano.
There are many different source ports of Doom, each with their own little tweaks and fixes added to the original game engine, all in a neat package. The aforementioned Adventures of Square is being developed in ZDoom, one of the most popular source ports, which contains obvious additions such as mouselook and new textures, but also some tricks that the original engine couldn’t do, like allowing you to pass over or under monsters, and certain translucency effects.
“I think most of the obstacle to creating or editing games is the effort that it takes to make something playable,” says Matt Tropiano, who has been modding Doom since 1996. “Anybody that finally gets the gumption to create a prototype for their game idea or make a map for their favourite moddable game encounters some barrier for starting, and most engines and games these days require a lot of effort and quite a bit of a steep learning curve to break through that initial barrier. If they spend too much time building the foundation of a thing they can’t play, it is easy to get discouraged. People flock to older games and engines because technology exists today to relieve most of that starting difficulty. In the pure, independent game development world, stuff like Construct and Game Maker exist to reduce this discouragement. People like to see a return on their investment, and in this case, that investment is time and effort, but I’m one of those crazy types that enjoys learning how to make the asphalt instead of building the road, so I’m fine either way.”
Another factor is the ability to get help from other hobbyists and creators. “The size and the activity of dedicated communities that rally behind modding certain games or using specific tools will always have an influence of some kind, for either technical help or even just encouragement and inspiration. Doom has plenty of that! The fact that we are using the Doom engine (or rather, an enhanced version of it) is what makes it novel, at least on the surface. That’s the weird power of the Doom engine: it’s runnable on practically any system today, and it turns the heads of anybody who has ever played videogames in the early to mid ’90s. I think people genuinely enjoy looking at what is possible with limited or dated technology, even if it has been enhanced in some way.”
Perhaps the most popular mod at the minute is Brutal Doom, a mod that looks at the action at the very core of Doom and pushes it to the extreme. Based on the absolutely ridiculous Doom comic book, the violence is amplified to the point where you’ve got blood splattering off the walls and ceiling with every kill. You can perform Mortal Kombat-like fatalities on weakened demons. You can taunt.
Some say that Brutal Doom does with its fast-paced action what id Software simply wasn’t able to do at launch. (Which is strange, because despite what Doom feels like these days, interviews with the original team imply that they were actually aiming for more of a horror game, similar to what we eventually ended up with in Doom 3.) Certainly Brutal Doom is a lot of fun and growing in influence even outside of the mod community. There are rumours of a standalone release, and if you read any of the reports that came from the handful of people who actually saw that Doom 4 footage at last year’s QuakeCon, well, it sounds like the new Doom game is borrowing a hell of a lot from Brutal Doom. As has always been the case, it is just another example of a healthy mod scene feeding back into the game that spawned it.
The question is, why Doom? Quake has a much more advanced engine and is also freely available, most modern games contain some kind of built-in editor and, if you are indeed looking for something from a similar era, the Build engine that gave birth to Duke Nukem 3D offers, certainly to the untrained eye, way more possibilities. We’re nearly quarter of a decade on from Doom’s release and the mod scene is still going strong – new and unique experiences are being created, new hardware is being built that doesn’t yet have a Doom source port.
“Its longevity is mostly because it was unlike anything ever seen before at the time,” says Tropiano. “That still contributes to its novelty today, be it nostalgia, or that no other game like it, gameplay-wise, has come out since then. Oh, they sometimes try, but they can never get that exact formula right. There’s only one Doom.”