Location: Games / Doom
Doom Matthias Worch
Doom Modding

My computer was broken when Doom came out.

There I was, with this shiny, super-fast 486 DX2-66 that my dad had bought from the computer company he shared his offices with, and it was friggin' broken while all of my highschool friends were excitedly sharing stories about how cool this new "Doom" game was. I had never paid much attention to Wolfenstein 3D, preferring the more "sophisticated" RPG games of the time, but Doom was impossible to ignore. PC Player loved it, my friends were loving it, and I, too, was aching to play. Doom didn't just look like a dumb shooter game that I could pass on in favor of the likes of Ultima Underworld. Doom was an irresistible high tech horror techno dungeon.

Of course I joined the fray as soon as my PC returned from what would turn out a boot sector virus-induced hiatus. A short while later, my neighbor and I were regularly carrying our computers and monitors back and forth so that we could play coop and deathmatch via null-modem cable. Doom added a whole new set of words and experiences to our gaming vocabulary: terms like "fragging" and "coop play" had never existed for us until we played Doom. Doom was cool.

Initially, Doom 2 didn't live up to that experience. It was more of the same, and I found the level design to be lacking; in fact, I have never finished a playthrough of the original Doom 2 campaign. (Shocking but true.) When I bought my first modem in 1995, my friend and I had moved on to playing Heretic deathmatch instead. The first level I ever made after downloading WadEd from was actually a Heretic map. Nothing ever came of it, it was just a test room with a bunch of walls and objects. But of course I was hooked on making these maps immediately - years of using the 3D Construction Kit and playing dungeon crawlers had laid that foundation.

Troopers' Playground Doom Matthias Worch
Level 7 of TTP

My optimism was boundless, my confidence unshakable. Of course I could make levels that were just as good as the official Doom maps. Of course my levels would be the best custom maps out there. I wouldn't release anything less. That cockiness must have been annoying to my friends and contemporaries, but with this self-assurance also came the benefit of high standards. I took pride in what I did, never quite believed that my work was good enough, and only presented it to the world when I was confident that it might entertain people.

After a couple of years, I had made a highly regarded single player episode (The Troopers' Playgound) and contributed to the quintessential megaWAD of the time, Memento Mori 2. I was also operating a national Doom deathmatch league via the FIDONet DOOM.GER forum. Several friends and I threw regular LAN parties in which we played deathmatch all night. Doom 2, after the brief initial let-down, was a major part of my life, and those were fun times.

Memento Mori Doom Matthias Worch
Memento Mori 2. This isn't my level, but it shows the new stat bar I
worked on for many weeks (Thomas Moeller added some extra magic).

There's many reasons why Doom had such a strong editing community, not the least of which was its unprecedented modability. Superb 3D graphics and visceral gameplay had drawn us in, but the enemy/weapon design was the real reason for Doom's longevity as a single-player game: Doom had a finely tuned bestiary of differing enemy classes and projectile types, with almost infinite potential for creating new combinations. There were weak enemies with hit-scan weapons that could take out the player from across the room. And there were enemies with slow-moving projectile attacks that could be dodged by the skilled player. Every time you opened a door in Doom, you would scan the room and create a plan of attack for that area, changing weapons according to the enemies you were fighting and the order you wanted to eliminate them in. Shotgun zombies in the back of the room and a Cacodemon ("flying tomato") in the front? No Problem! Just position yourself between the Cacodemon and the Zombies and whip out the chaingun! The zombies would shoot the demon in the back, and as you unleashed a hellfire of bullets on the Cacodemon he'd have almost no chance to ever even shoot back. Then you'd change to the single barrel shotgun to take out the zombies in the back.
We had a lot of fun mixing things up, and the best Doom single-player maps kept pushing this highly refined interplay of enemies and weapons to heights never imagined. To this day the supposed spiritual successors of Doom have not reached the same level of depth. Sure, Serious Sam knew how to throw tons of enemies on the screen. But it did not come close to Doom's level of enemy and weapon interplay.


Watch a playthrough of my Memento Mori II Level 3

The Legacy

I was hanging on to Doom editing as long as I could, and fittingly my last editing work would show up in Requiem, which arguably turned out to be the swan song of the traditional Doom editing culture. There's plenty of reasons why Doom has such a strong legacy, and even today people are still playing the levels.
This page is dedicated to everybody who was part of the great Doom era of the 90s. It is dedicated to those who are just now discovering the game for themselves. And it is dedicated to everybody who is keeping the legacy alive. Doom spawned countless professionals who are now major contributors to the gaming industry. Its lessons still inform my fundamental ideas on game design. I hope we all keep enjoying the game (and that we keep learning from it)!

Here are my articles and downloads for Doom, in reverse chronological order:

TTP Prototype

January 7, 2007

My old room in Essen doesn’t bear much resemblance with what it looked like 15 years ago, back when I started making my first game mods on ye olde Amiga and DX2-66. I’ve been gone for 9 years – only to reappear once every xmas – and of course my parents started using the room for other purposes. But tugged away in one of the old drawers of my old furniture, there’s two boxes with 3 1/2 inch disks that used to host many of my (then) biggest treasures. One of the boxes bears an old “Amiga – European Computer of the year 1990!” sticker; the other one is still locked with one of those cheap universal keys that nobody has ever trusted to keep anything save – with the exception of Diebold voting machines, maybe.

The lock was busted open in a matter of seconds, and as I started digging around the content of various disks, the one that caught my attention was labeled “Lord Bane’s Playground”. LBP was an Unlimited Adventures module that I had sunk over a year of my life into in 1993. I really wanted to see that old module again, but unfortunately for FRUA fans, the disk had been overwritten with something else. Fortunately for Doom fans, the new file was NoName.WAD, which turns out to be an early version of what would become The Troopers’ Playground episode for Doom 2. Apparently I had a fetish for “playgrounds” back then. Or my English just wasn’t good enough to come up with other titles.

I don’t recall the minute details of my Doom editing career. I do remember that the first ever level I made was actually created in Heretic because I liked the art so much. It was nothing more than a simple room with a player start. Then of course there’s the TTP/MM2/Requiem phase, in which I also made the two deathmatch levels that would be released as part of TTP. But in between, there is a black hole. I guess NoName.WAD neatly falls into that hole.

The WAD contains four levels, of which the first one should most interesting because I don’t recall ever releasing it. The TTP status bar was done, and there’s also some enemy frames of a fishdude that replace most Hellknight animations (but not all – I guess I wasn’t completely done yet at the time). I had completely forgotten about that fish guy! Apparently there’s also some Dehacked work that’s more of less lost on me today because the archive doesn’t contain the .DEH file, just a patched Doom2.EXE that had been renamed to NoName.EXE. If you still have an original Doom 2 setup you can try to get it to run – but if you do, you’ll have to use NWT to merge the WAD with the main IWAD.
The fish guy never made an appearance anywhere, he would be replaced by the evil Doom trooper instead. He doesn’t look particularly good, either. But I’m sure back then, I though he was the greatest thing ever, even if just for the reason that I had replaced a monster in my favorite game! What can I say, this was 1994…

nonamewad 400x300 TTP Prototype

Here’s a breakdown of the levels:

  • Map01 – My first completed Doom 2 SP level. As far as I can recall, it has never been released before. First map ever – of course it’s rough around the edges and if you choose to play this, you should save often to not get stuck. There’s various slime areas that can only be passed with enough health.
  • Map 02 – I think this is the third SP level I ever made, and would appear as map08 in the finished TTP. Definite improvements in this map, and a bunch of custom graphics. I still have a soft spot in my heart for this one.
  • Map 03 – I made this level right after the initial one, and it would become map03 in TTP (with a few touchups). Still early and rough, but it had some good ideas and a neat non-linear flow.
  • Map 04 – Early version of map06 in TTP, with some missing areas. I also reused this level in Requiem.

Anyway. Without further ado, here’s the file: NoName.ZIP. I hope you have some fun with it, especially if you’re an oldschool Doom player like me.

Filed Under Doom · 1 Comment  

TTP file_id.diz

November 15, 2005

spectral TTP file id.diz

“SPECTRAL”? I don’t remember that for the life of me… Anyway, fixed the link to Arma3.zip, which incorrectly went to the Beyond Belief download instead. I guess a few people have been trying to download it lately, maybe I should convert it to Q4 sometime?

BTW, FILE_ID.DIZ files were little info files you’d add to your BBS uploads, so that the BBS could display the info its interested users. Ah, the time before the Internets… icon smile TTP file id.diz

Filed Under Doom, Page Status, Quake · 1 Comment  

Requiem

July 5, 1997

Requiem was a troubled production. Several team members, including the moderator, dropped off the face of the Earth for intermittent periods. When it was finally released it was branded as a beta, and I don’t think there ever was an update. Despite its troubled history and late release, Requiem is a really good map pack with some impressive levels by the greats of the Doom editing. It was included in DoomWorld’s Top 100 WADs Of All Time. I created 4 levels for Requiem.

Download Requiem.

Filed Under Doom Levels · 4 Comments  

Doomking

July 31, 1996

The “Doomking” was a national Doom deathmatch league that I ran back in 1996 via the FIDONet #doom.ger forum. At some point I might add a little retrospective on that time. Until then, I still have the old bi-monthly ranking lists from back then, which you can download here.

Hast du damals im Doomking gespielt und diesen Post aus irgendeinem Grund gefunden? Bitte einen Comment mit Namen und heutiger Web Adresse hinterlassen!

Filed Under Doom · 3 Comments  

Memento Mori 2

July 27, 1996

The second MM “mega-WAD”, which brought together ~20 of the best level designers of the time (many of which are working in the industry these days). I made four levels for this. Included in DoomWorld’s Top 100 WADs Of All Time.

Download Memento Mori 2.

Filed Under Doom Levels · 2 Comments  

Ring of Havoc – Enhanced

April 22, 1996

This was a quick beautifying pass of a pre-existing level. Looking back at the level in 2008, I’m not sure why I did it, but I guess the level has historical value icon smile Ring of Havoc Enhanced

rohenh Ring of Havoc Enhanced

Download ROH – Enhanced.

Filed Under Doom Levels · Leave a Comment  

The Troopers’ Playground

March 15, 1996

My Doom 2 episode. Nine levels with new textures, a new enemy type and some Dehacked work. Included in DoomWorld’s Top 100 WADs Of All Time.

Download The Troopers’ Playground.

Filed Under Doom Levels · 1 Comment