What’s Awesome, Doom?: 900 Deep in the Dead

As it’s Doom’s 22nd Birthday, I got a little nostalgic for one of the things I made for it, the well-received ‘900 Deep In The Dead’ replacement episode.

digitaleidoscope

I’ve done a small amount of modding across a few games in the past and I’ve found one of the most rewarding things is seeing what you can do within that game’s limitations, to see how far you can push it and what tricks you can come up with to fudge it the rest of the way.

In the Doom community, this is high art. Actually, they take it a step further. The Doom engine is already pretty confining, but Doom people like to take it to new heights by imposing their own artificial limitations. The limitations of Doom aren’t enough, so these mappers add more to the mix — maximum map size, number of monsters, sector count — or in the case of this month’s WAD, linedef count — to force themselves to be more creative. That’s the theory, anyway — complexity through simplicity. I just made that…

View original post 940 more words

Advertisements