I'm not going to go into my long and storied history with DooM in this post. That's a time commitment. I'll just say happy 14th birthday and talk about what I'm doing with DooM right now. First, I'm playing it. Call it research. Call it procrastinating. I decided that if I was going to be working on a co-op wad for the new years LAN party, I should regain my feel for the game. I played through chief.wad, an old co-op favorite. I forgot how simple those levels were. They were also generally hub based, which meant that wherever you spawned, the action wasn't too far away. Good design. They were super basic, architecture wise, and sometimes painfully linear and cramped. I don't enjoy co-op when it's basically a conga line of marines each waiting for the guy in front of them to die so they can start shooting.
I've also been playing b2b.wad (Back to Basics) by Espi. It's a replacement for Episode 2, but generally feels too light and happy, not like a descent into hell like the original. Also, the levels are so huge I frequently found myself checking the map to figure out where this key I just got was supposed to go, but then I sometimes did that in the original DooM as well. The main thing I get out of it is the occasional deja vu of seeing structures that resemble ones from the original DooM, and since I'm using those textures, it's good to have a refresher.
How am I using DooM textures in DooM 2 you may ask? I'm taking advantage of the awesomeness of the Skulltag source port. It's crazy sweet. I just add DOOM.WAD to the command line and instantly have access to all the old textures and flats. In fact, there's no longer even a distinction. If I want to put a wall texture on a floor or ceiling (or vice versa), it's no problem! I can't tell you how convenient that is compared to how editing used to be.
I'm also using "Hexen" format, which has good and bad elements. It gives me access to all the funky fresh features like poly objects and lines that trigger scripts, but it removes a bunch of the old line types that I really liked. I can tell you right now, I'm never making a deathmatch level in this format. I love OpenCloseFast doors way too much. In the meantime, I've put a fair amount of thought into ACS and the DECORATION lump (the replacement for old DeHackEd patches). I would really like to try a class based co-op experiment. I'd also like to try some new monsters. I won't have that ready for the LAN party, though. For that, I just want a playable, decent looking level with lots of baddies to kill.
Oh yeah. And OpenGL is cool.
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