Doom modding

Development of Doom When developing Doom, id Software was aware that many players had tried to create custom levels and other modifications for their previous game, Wolfenstein 3D, but the procedures involved in creating and loading modifications for that game were cumbersome. John Carmack, the lead programmer at id Software, designed the Doom internals from the ground up to allow players to extend the game. In particular, game assets, levels, and other content was separated from the engine in WAD files. Tom Hall is responsible for coming up with the name WAD. The idea of making Doom easily modifiable was primarily backed by Carmack, a well-known supporter of copyleft and the hacker ideal of people sharing and building upon each other's work, and by John Romero, who had hacked games in his youth and wanted to allow other gamers to do the same. In contrast, some video game artists, including Jay Wilbur and Kevin Cloud, objected due to legal concerns and the belief that it would not be of any benefit to the company's business. Utilities and first mods Immediately after the initial shareware release of Doom on December 10, 1993, players began working on various tools to modify the game. On January 26, 1994, Brendon Wyber released the first public domain version of the Doom Editing Utility (DEU) program on the Internet, a program for creating new levels. DEU continued development until May 21. It was made possible by Matt Fell's release of the Unofficial Doom specifications. Shortly thereafter, Doom players became involved with further enhancing DEU. Raphaël Quinet spearheaded the program's development efforts and overall project release, while Steve Bareman led the documentation effort and creation of the DEU Tutorial. More than 30 other people also helped with the effort and their names appear in the README file included with the program distribution. Yadex, a fork of DEU 5.21 for Unix systems running the X Window System, was later released under the GNU GPL license. Carmack released the source code for the utilities used to create the game, but these were programmed in Objective-C, for NeXT workstations, and were therefore not directly usable by the mass userbase of IBM PC compatible. Jeff Bird is credited with creating the first custom WAD for Doom, called Origwad, on March 7, 1994. Soon, many players were creating custom WADs and sharing them over AOL, the CompuServe forums, and other Internet-based channels. Many of the WADs were made in the style of the base game, others were based on existing TV series, films, or original themes. Some of the id Software staff were impressed by some of the WADs; John Carmack later said the following about a Star Wars-themed modification: Another early modification is Aliens TC, a total conversion based on the film Aliens. Although the WAD format allowed modifying the game to a higher degree that most others, the amount of customization was still limited. Much of the game's behavior, such as the timing of enemies and strength of weapons, was hard-coded in the Doom executable file and impossible to alter via WADs. DeHackEd, a Doom editing program created by Greg Lewis, addressed this by letting users modify parameters inside the Doom executable itself, allowing for a greater degree of customization. Commercial mods Around 1994 and 1995, mods were distributed primarily through BBSs and via CD collections found in computer shops or bundled together with instruction guides for level creation. In later years, FTP servers became the primary method for obtaining these works. Although the Doom software license required that no profit be made from custom WADs (and with Shawn Green objecting to people selling their mods), some WAD sets and shovelware bundles were nonetheless sold at certain outlets. To compete with unauthorized collection CDs, id Software also began hiring and recruiting particularly talented modders in the Doom community to create official expansions. The team produced Master Levels, a expansion pack containing 21 levels. It was released on December 26, 1995 on a CD, along with Maximum Doom, a collection of 1,830 other mods that had been downloaded from the internet. During this time, id Software was also working on their next game, Quake. In 1996, Final Doom, a package of two 32 level megawads created by TeamTNT, was released as an official id Software product. Various first-person shooter games released at the time use the Doom engine under a commercial license from id Software, such as ''HacX: Twitch 'n Kill (1997). In some instances, these are simply custom WADs packaged with the Doom'' engine. In addition to the many people who contributed to commercially released mods, various authors became involved with the development of other games: • Kenneth Scott, who contributed artwork to HacX, later became the art director at id Software and 343 Industries on the post-Bungie Halo games. • Tim Willits, who contributed two levels to Master Levels for Doom II, later became the lead designer at id Software. • Sverre Kvernmo, designer of five levels in Master Levels for Doom II and member of TeamTNT, was hired by Ion Storm for Daikatana. • Dario Casali, author of a quarter of Final Doom, was hired by Valve to work on Half-Life. • Iikka Keränen, author of several Doom and later Quake mods, was hired by Ion Storm to create levels for Anachronox and Daikatana, and by Looking Glass Studios to create levels for Thief II: The Metal Age. Keränen was later hired by Valve. • John Anderson, also known as "Dr. Sleep", level designer of five levels in Master Levels for Doom II and E4M7 in The Ultimate Doom, later worked on Blood, Unreal, and Daikatana. • Matthias Worch, a level designer, joined Ritual Entertainment to work on SiN. He later contributed to the Unreal series. • James Paddock, who has composed music and designed levels for many mods, has composed for SIGIL. Source port era Around 1997, interest in Doom mods began to decline, as attention was drawn to newer games with more advanced technology and more customizable design, including id Software's own Quake and Quake II, but a dedicated following continued into the new century, with modern Doom modding becoming more popular than Quake modding. On December 23, 1997, id Software released the source code to the Doom engine, initially under a restrictive license. On October 3, 1999, it was released again under the terms of the GNU GPL-2.0-or-later. With the source code available, it became possible for programmers to modify any aspect of the game, remove technical limitations and bugs, and add entirely new features. These engine modifications, or Doom source ports, have since become the focus for much of the WAD editing activity, and with the decline of MS-DOS, using a source port became the only feasible way for most people to play Doom. Many source ports exist, and several are in active development. ==Notable mods==