Introduction

This site was launched all the way back in August 2002. We're frankly a little surprised we're still here after all this time.

Although, full disclosure, there was a period when I should probably should have dropped the pretense of it being a "we". Far from being a mapping team in the accepted sense, this site initially only had two contributors. And it's probably fair to say that one of them was effectively conscripted and wasn't exactly given a choice in the matter. It's rather unlikely any further maps will be released by DooMGoaT, but I'm grateful for the few they did create. Not to mention the textures and occasional sprite work they produced. They have effectively retired from the Doom community completely and now mostly just provide technical support (and not just to us, but, like, for a living, now that we have to pretend we're grown-ups and such). I'm sure I can still tempt them to do the odd bit of playtesting, though. They've definitely caught a few serious mapping bugs over the years that I probably would have missed.

So, for a while, it was just me, DooMAD. The sole pilot at the helm. Fortunately, for this place, a pilot with an egregious amount of spare time on their hands. Unfortunately, however, qualities like focus and motivation are not nearly as abundant. A master procrastinator, achieving new heights of very little. It starts to look bad when it takes a global pandemic and everything being cancelled or closed for several weeks just to prompt you to update a website. Between PC games, IRC, Bitcoin, D&D, going to Metal gigs and other various activities, a new mapping project may sporadically occur. No promises can be made that such projects will ever actually be finished, though. It's probably best to gloss over the part where one of my maps has been in production since 2003 and still isn't finished yet. And by "in production", I mean I'm not currently doing any work on it at all.

That said, I'm really starting to appreciate the merits of collaborative mapping and community projects. If you can find other people to get involved with a particular map, or indeed series of maps, there's less chance of shelving a project, as someone will hopefully want to continue working on it. Plus, you can bounce ideas off each other and learn from one another. Maybe they use a particular texture in a way that didn't occur to you, or perhaps they have experience with a source port feature that you might not be as familiar with. As an example, I now understand that portals can often be a far more elegant solution to having rooms above other rooms, when compared to placing dozens 3D floors, which is the way I always used to do it. Working with others gives you the opportunity to pick up new tricks and evolve your mapping style, potentially leading to better levels overall. So at least some of the new content here will continue to come as a result of teamwork (which was the original idea, after all). And, having worked on a couple of maps with Exl now, it's probably fair to call them an honourary member of the team at this stage.

The early days

Things have changed a great deal over the years. Our first encounters with Doom editing were DoomCAD and WadAuthor. By today's standards they're pretty rudimentary, but I can't really use that as an excuse for the quality (or lack thereof) of my first few maps. It would be accurate to describe my early works as "unplayable eyesores", but I'm hoping that was a common trend with many novice mappers back then. Thankfully, most of those maps will never be seen by the general public, as I at least had the good sense not to upload them to the /idgames archive, where WADs are forever immortalised.

The community landscape has also shifted dramatically. My gateway into the Doom community was when I first discovered the NewDoom forums in April 2001, back in the days when dial-up internet was still a thing. Shortly after, I found DoomCenter, then finally in July 2002 I registered on the Doomworld forums. Of those giant community hubs, Doomworld is now the lone survivor. It's strange to think my little corner of the internet has outlived some of those veritable goliaths.

This place

As with many other smaller Doom pages that have survived this long, updates to this site are somewhat rare. In solidarity, I took the time to compile a list of links to every known Doom site I could still find out there, so there's plenty to keep you busy. There is also an editing utilities section with a wide variety of programs to download, along with some walkthroughs to read if there's any chance we've sparked some inspiration to make some Doom maps of your own.

While many other games released after Doom moved towards 3D models, those never felt to me like they "fit" with Doom's aesthetic. So when people started talking about the prospects of using voxels, it was something I wanted to get on board with. The voxels section started well enough and a decent amount of progress was made initially, but the project has definitely stalled at this stage. I appear to lack the artistic talent to create shapes that are more complex than simple boxes and contributions from other artists have dried up. Hopefully someone will reignite interest in the project at some point.

Although the site initially began as a simple page to showcase some WADs, it has since expanded to include a small number of hosted sites. Primarily, this was a cunning ploy to generate more content for the site without the effort of actually having to make it. But we're also proud to preserve what we can and keep as many Doom sites online as possible.

You can now look back on the previous versions of the site layout using the links on the right. It has come a long way from the original appearance it had when the site was first launched. The images link to archive.org (with the exception of the third one, as for some reason, the archive.org website took a short hiatus from visiting us) and the previous version to the current layout is still hosted locally. I hope that people find the current iteration a vast improvement over the old layouts.

The future?

Going forwards, I find one of the great things about Doom is that it continues to evolve over time, with programmers adding new features to their various source ports. There's always something new to experiment with and more skills to learn. Even now, I'm still adapting to things like UDMF, vertex slopes, DECORATE and all manner of other additions I never conceived were possible when I first opened DoomCAD and WadAuthor all those years ago. At some point I'll probably have some content to demonstrate how much (or indeed how little) I've understood these new bells and whistles. More content for Heretic is also likely. And there's always the possibility to look at some of the other Doom-engine games as well.

Watch this space.

Well... don't watch, because you'll probably be waiting a while. Check back at an undetermined point in future. That sounds more appropriate.