8 ms·

Doom Cacowards

102 points by ecliptik 5y ago

paulryanrogers 5y ago
Ashes Afterglow looks really impressive. Blade of Agony too, even if it may not have a Cacowad award of its own. These mods are a great way to experience a mix of old and new tech and old and new styles in gaming.
- everyone 5y ago
  I highly recommend the Ashes 2063 series.
  - paulryanrogers 5y ago
    Finally installed it tonight. So far so good. Besides the lack of slopes it's a good mod: solid art, actual plot, levels that feel connected, good gunplay, and perfect lighting for that lantern.
markus_zhang 5y ago
Doom/Build engine games/Quake/Unreal/Half-Life1&2 are the best games for modding. Engine is relatively simple, tons of tutorials and high quality examples, and a steady fan base. The 90s through early 2000s were the best time for FPS modding and mapping, par none.
- Arrath 5y ago
  Half-Life led to some of my most favorite mods of all time. Natural Selection, Day of Defeat, Science and Industry, Action Half-Life. All complete bangers. > The 90s through early 2000s were the best time for FPS modding and mapping, par none. Absolutely agreed.
  - markus_zhang 5y ago
    Yeah really would like to relive that period...
yeetsfromhellL2 5y ago
I'm still not sure how SIGIL only got a 2019 runner up. A 5th Episode of the original DOOM, made by John Romero, which was completely awesome, kicked ass and had a soundtrack by Buckethead? I fail to see how any of the competitors could have matched it.
- everyone 5y ago
  The standard of DOOM maps has gotten very high. SIGIL is fine, but compared to the current standard, the maps were pretty crappy tbh, in every respect, technical, encounters, design. Afaik they only included it at all as an honour to Romero. If some randomer had submitted it, it would not have been mentioned.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    This is often the case with games with an active mod community - modders are often willing to spend way more time on polishing and perfecting things than the original designers were. They should have given Romero Most promising newcomer.
  - dleslie 5y ago
    I'm a hardcore Doom fan; have been since its release. I have it as one of the first installs on every device I have; even my Windows machines have a portable Doom configured and ready to go in their Onedrive folders. SIGIL is probably one of the best _Doom_ experiences since "Doom the way id Did". Too many modern maps lean heavily on limit-removing ports, and other modern features, and lose the sine qua non that made Doom unique and special. They eschew the radically unreal lighting and abstract-but-familiar level design to push the engine towards realism, and consider hardness to be a factor of enemy quantity and not the complexity of the situation. I'd rather be dying because I was sniped while low on health and fending off a lone imp than find myself circling an insufferably large swath of enemies, soaking them with BFG blasts.
    - sacrosancty 5y ago
      Somehow I find those high-class wads to be tedious and frustrating. But I find slaughterwads to be a great way to clear my head and truly escape the normal world. They get your heart racing. No time to stop for a breath. If you even turn around, you'll be dead. They're all I play on Doom. Some of my favorites are Dholes and Royale Arena - Cannonball which have beautiful architecture and some puzzle elements but still swarms of monsters. Working through Oreo Cake Massacre at the moment which is more crude.
mosfetarium 5y ago
Doom mapping is basically it's own weird artform that people have been refining for nearly 30 years. Unlike a modern AAA game it's typical for a single person to make a Doom map and so people can develop very unique and identifiable styles that come through in their maps. If you're an old Doom-fan and never got around the checking out the scene, Cacoward winners are a great place to find some highlights.
- dleslie 5y ago
  It's incredible how it sucks people in. The skill floor to expressing yourself is _damn low_; if you can draw 2D polygons, then you can make a Doom map with DoomBuilder[0]. But the skill ceiling is high. And the ease of creation allows for equal ease in iteration. And the source ports add loads of neat little features to add even more capacity for variety. So you start by throwing together some boxes; and before you know it you've spent 11 years building a monster of a map in your spare time[1]. 0: https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Doom_Builder_2 https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Doom_Builder_2 1: https://doomwiki.org/wiki/UAC_Invasion:_The_Supply_Depot https://doomwiki.org/wiki/UAC_Invasion:_The_Supply_Depot
  - mosfetarium 5y ago
    The incredibly low skill floor is definitely a big part of the scene's success. I know a number of veteran professional level designers are kinda worried about the field. So many of them got their starts playing around with the level creation stuff that frequently came with PC games. It got them interested and allowed them to walk before they could run. So they're a bit afraid a new generation might be starting from less than they had. There's some hope that maybe Minecraft and Roblox will be a younger generation's starting point. Game development is the most accessible it's been in many decades, but level design specifically is perhaps less accessible than it was circa 2000.
    - dleslie 5y ago
      Yep, as a fellow game developer (programmer) I had similar concerns... Until recently. Unity had the issue of the high skill floor of creating meshes for scenes until recently. You can now build reasonable looking unity scenes using a process akin to Hammer and QERadiant; albeit still inferior to those, IMHO. There's also the resurgence of interest in crunchy arcade shooters, using classic engines no less, which is drawing attention to tools like DoomBuilder and TrenchBroom. Annnd VR tools are making complex mesh building a lot more accessible by making it a lot more intuitive.
moron4hire 5y ago
It's that "ca-cowards" or "caco-(a)wards"?
- qbasic_forever 5y ago
  caco 'wards (aka "caca-(a)wards") named after the cacodemon: https://doom.fandom.com/wiki/Cacodemon https://doom.fandom.com/wiki/Cacodemon
29athrowaway 5y ago
This one is very good, Action Doom 2: Urban Brawl: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbzch3PD2GU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbzch3PD2GU
Noumenon72 5y ago
The Cacoward levels are so good that SoBad on YouTube is playing _the runners-up_ and still encountering awesome levels like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drKn_EzQxg0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drKn_EzQxg0, with that super cool concept starting after 1:27 (but don't skip to there).
- ecliptik 5y ago
  Always happy to find another Doomtuber to subscribe too. I really enjoy watching Decino[1], especially their deep dive Doom technical videos. 1. https://youtube.com/c/decino https://youtube.com/c/decino
  - Noumenon72 5y ago
    You might enjoy his video critiquing one of Decino's Italo-Doom playthroughs, then. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7GYBZlhrg8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7GYBZlhrg8
- kbenson 5y ago
  Wow, that's creative. I want to watch all of these now. Thanks for the link!
AgentME 5y ago
I used to be really into the Doom modding community and the ZDoom forums specifically 10-15 years ago, so it's really funny to me seeing a reference to this here now. Back then I got invited into helping on a big custom map pack project and did a lot of level scripting for it. Nearly failed a few high school classes because I was skipping homework to work on it, and I ended up quitting cold turkey before the end to focus on school. The project was great experience and I think of it as my first real software development experience programming something for actual users. (It was also what made me realize I absolutely needed to learn a version control system like Git. Never again am I doing any group work on that kind of project if actual version control isn't used!) I was excited to learn later that the project got finished and it was one of the 2010 Cacowards winners (Stronghold).
- h2odragon 5y ago
  Looking back on it, was school the right choice? Do you think you'd have done better to go with the passion back then?
  - AgentME 5y ago
    It definitely helped for getting into college, which helped me out a lot, though fittingly I did end up dropping out of college years into it because of more projects I picked up on my own which then helped get me a job. I think a lot of homework is busywork, made under the idea that nothing a kid does already outside of school has educational value. It's a shame that some of the most educational experiences I had were in conflict with the system. But then again, maybe that is an unusual experience? I think there's a stereotype I don't want to fall into, of autodidacts who fail to realize something unusual happened with them and think that all that's necessary to put others onto their path is to merely remove the obstacle of school. I wonder if it's possible for schools to better encourage this kind of experience, of kids learning through fostering mildly-competitive scenes of projects like this.
MathMonkeyMan 5y ago
I enjoy watching expert doom players grind crazy modern maps more than I enjoy playing doom. Went through a whole phase where I was watching various doom streamers on twitch, or mappers who play and critique each others' maps. It's fun.
dakial1 5y ago
That bring me memories! I was an avid Doom/Heretic/DukeNukem3D map builder, I'd spend an amazing amount of hours building huge maps while listening to Queen (some queen songs, "Made in Heaven" Album specifically, bring those memories immediately). It was really tons of fun, glad to see there is a community still alive doing that.
- BlueTemplar 5y ago
  I wonder if you have dared to try "Queen : the eYe" ? https://www.pcgamer.com/saturday-crapshoot-queen-the-eye/ https://www.pcgamer.com/saturday-crapshoot-queen-the-eye/
  - dakial1 5y ago
    oh my god, just saw a playthrough of it. looks horrible to play, even 14 years ago…
bluedino 5y ago
Doom is such a great learning tool. If you have any interest in DOS games and programming, grab a copy of the Doom specs and start plugging away at the WAD file https://www.gamers.org/docs/FAQ/DOOM.FAQ.Specs.html https://www.gamers.org/docs/FAQ/DOOM.FAQ.Specs.html You can use any language you want to work with the data, but C is probably the most straightforward. The first time you decode some sprite data, or a level map, you will have the strangest sense of joy as it appears on screen. I used to play around with that stuff in the 90's with a copy of Turbo C and started to write a Mac level editor (very simple one at least) a few years back but haven't really worked on it since I had kids. https://github.com/robilic/MDE https://github.com/robilic/MDE
pyb 5y ago
My personal favorite : Going Down by Cyriak Harris.
- m463 5y ago
  cryiak! wow He had these really really weird but unique youtube videos years ago, for example EDIT: this was the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQO-aOdJLiw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQO-aOdJLiw also: cows & cows & cows https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FavUpD_IjVY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FavUpD_IjVY

102 points by ecliptik 5y ago

Ashes Afterglow looks really impressive. Blade of Agony too, even if it may not have a Cacowad award of its own. These mods are a great way to experience a mix of old and new tech and old and new styles in gaming.

everyone 5y ago
I highly recommend the Ashes 2063 series.
- paulryanrogers 5y ago
  Finally installed it tonight. So far so good. Besides the lack of slopes it's a good mod: solid art, actual plot, levels that feel connected, good gunplay, and perfect lighting for that lantern.

markus_zhang 5y ago

Doom/Build engine games/Quake/Unreal/Half-Life1&2 are the best games for modding. Engine is relatively simple, tons of tutorials and high quality examples, and a steady fan base. The 90s through early 2000s were the best time for FPS modding and mapping, par none.

Arrath 5y ago
Half-Life led to some of my most favorite mods of all time. Natural Selection, Day of Defeat, Science and Industry, Action Half-Life. All complete bangers. > The 90s through early 2000s were the best time for FPS modding and mapping, par none. Absolutely agreed.
- markus_zhang 5y ago
  Yeah really would like to relive that period...

yeetsfromhellL2 5y ago

I'm still not sure how SIGIL only got a 2019 runner up. A 5th Episode of the original DOOM, made by John Romero, which was completely awesome, kicked ass and had a soundtrack by Buckethead? I fail to see how any of the competitors could have matched it.

everyone 5y ago
The standard of DOOM maps has gotten very high. SIGIL is fine, but compared to the current standard, the maps were pretty crappy tbh, in every respect, technical, encounters, design. Afaik they only included it at all as an honour to Romero. If some randomer had submitted it, it would not have been mentioned.
- bombcar 5y ago
  This is often the case with games with an active mod community - modders are often willing to spend way more time on polishing and perfecting things than the original designers were. They should have given Romero Most promising newcomer.
- dleslie 5y ago
  I'm a hardcore Doom fan; have been since its release. I have it as one of the first installs on every device I have; even my Windows machines have a portable Doom configured and ready to go in their Onedrive folders. SIGIL is probably one of the best _Doom_ experiences since "Doom the way id Did". Too many modern maps lean heavily on limit-removing ports, and other modern features, and lose the sine qua non that made Doom unique and special. They eschew the radically unreal lighting and abstract-but-familiar level design to push the engine towards realism, and consider hardness to be a factor of enemy quantity and not the complexity of the situation. I'd rather be dying because I was sniped while low on health and fending off a lone imp than find myself circling an insufferably large swath of enemies, soaking them with BFG blasts.
  - sacrosancty 5y ago
    Somehow I find those high-class wads to be tedious and frustrating. But I find slaughterwads to be a great way to clear my head and truly escape the normal world. They get your heart racing. No time to stop for a breath. If you even turn around, you'll be dead. They're all I play on Doom. Some of my favorites are Dholes and Royale Arena - Cannonball which have beautiful architecture and some puzzle elements but still swarms of monsters. Working through Oreo Cake Massacre at the moment which is more crude.

mosfetarium 5y ago

Doom mapping is basically it's own weird artform that people have been refining for nearly 30 years. Unlike a modern AAA game it's typical for a single person to make a Doom map and so people can develop very unique and identifiable styles that come through in their maps. If you're an old Doom-fan and never got around the checking out the scene, Cacoward winners are a great place to find some highlights.

dleslie 5y ago
It's incredible how it sucks people in. The skill floor to expressing yourself is _damn low_; if you can draw 2D polygons, then you can make a Doom map with DoomBuilder[0]. But the skill ceiling is high. And the ease of creation allows for equal ease in iteration. And the source ports add loads of neat little features to add even more capacity for variety. So you start by throwing together some boxes; and before you know it you've spent 11 years building a monster of a map in your spare time[1]. 0: https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Doom_Builder_2 https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Doom_Builder_2 1: https://doomwiki.org/wiki/UAC_Invasion:_The_Supply_Depot https://doomwiki.org/wiki/UAC_Invasion:_The_Supply_Depot
- mosfetarium 5y ago
  The incredibly low skill floor is definitely a big part of the scene's success. I know a number of veteran professional level designers are kinda worried about the field. So many of them got their starts playing around with the level creation stuff that frequently came with PC games. It got them interested and allowed them to walk before they could run. So they're a bit afraid a new generation might be starting from less than they had. There's some hope that maybe Minecraft and Roblox will be a younger generation's starting point. Game development is the most accessible it's been in many decades, but level design specifically is perhaps less accessible than it was circa 2000.
  - dleslie 5y ago
    Yep, as a fellow game developer (programmer) I had similar concerns... Until recently. Unity had the issue of the high skill floor of creating meshes for scenes until recently. You can now build reasonable looking unity scenes using a process akin to Hammer and QERadiant; albeit still inferior to those, IMHO. There's also the resurgence of interest in crunchy arcade shooters, using classic engines no less, which is drawing attention to tools like DoomBuilder and TrenchBroom. Annnd VR tools are making complex mesh building a lot more accessible by making it a lot more intuitive.

moron4hire 5y ago

It's that "ca-cowards" or "caco-(a)wards"?

qbasic_forever 5y ago
caco 'wards (aka "caca-(a)wards") named after the cacodemon: https://doom.fandom.com/wiki/Cacodemon https://doom.fandom.com/wiki/Cacodemon

29athrowaway 5y ago

This one is very good, Action Doom 2: Urban Brawl: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbzch3PD2GU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbzch3PD2GU

Noumenon72 5y ago

The Cacoward levels are so good that SoBad on YouTube is playing _the runners-up_ and still encountering awesome levels like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drKn_EzQxg0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drKn_EzQxg0, with that super cool concept starting after 1:27 (but don't skip to there).

ecliptik 5y ago
Always happy to find another Doomtuber to subscribe too. I really enjoy watching Decino[1], especially their deep dive Doom technical videos. 1. https://youtube.com/c/decino https://youtube.com/c/decino
- Noumenon72 5y ago
  You might enjoy his video critiquing one of Decino's Italo-Doom playthroughs, then. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7GYBZlhrg8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7GYBZlhrg8
kbenson 5y ago
Wow, that's creative. I want to watch all of these now. Thanks for the link!

AgentME 5y ago

I used to be really into the Doom modding community and the ZDoom forums specifically 10-15 years ago, so it's really funny to me seeing a reference to this here now. Back then I got invited into helping on a big custom map pack project and did a lot of level scripting for it. Nearly failed a few high school classes because I was skipping homework to work on it, and I ended up quitting cold turkey before the end to focus on school. The project was great experience and I think of it as my first real software development experience programming something for actual users. (It was also what made me realize I absolutely needed to learn a version control system like Git. Never again am I doing any group work on that kind of project if actual version control isn't used!) I was excited to learn later that the project got finished and it was one of the 2010 Cacowards winners (Stronghold).

h2odragon 5y ago
Looking back on it, was school the right choice? Do you think you'd have done better to go with the passion back then?
- AgentME 5y ago
  It definitely helped for getting into college, which helped me out a lot, though fittingly I did end up dropping out of college years into it because of more projects I picked up on my own which then helped get me a job. I think a lot of homework is busywork, made under the idea that nothing a kid does already outside of school has educational value. It's a shame that some of the most educational experiences I had were in conflict with the system. But then again, maybe that is an unusual experience? I think there's a stereotype I don't want to fall into, of autodidacts who fail to realize something unusual happened with them and think that all that's necessary to put others onto their path is to merely remove the obstacle of school. I wonder if it's possible for schools to better encourage this kind of experience, of kids learning through fostering mildly-competitive scenes of projects like this.

MathMonkeyMan 5y ago

I enjoy watching expert doom players grind crazy modern maps more than I enjoy playing doom. Went through a whole phase where I was watching various doom streamers on twitch, or mappers who play and critique each others' maps. It's fun.

dakial1 5y ago

That bring me memories! I was an avid Doom/Heretic/DukeNukem3D map builder, I'd spend an amazing amount of hours building huge maps while listening to Queen (some queen songs, "Made in Heaven" Album specifically, bring those memories immediately). It was really tons of fun, glad to see there is a community still alive doing that.

BlueTemplar 5y ago
I wonder if you have dared to try "Queen : the eYe" ? https://www.pcgamer.com/saturday-crapshoot-queen-the-eye/ https://www.pcgamer.com/saturday-crapshoot-queen-the-eye/
- dakial1 5y ago
  oh my god, just saw a playthrough of it. looks horrible to play, even 14 years ago…

bluedino 5y ago

Doom is such a great learning tool. If you have any interest in DOS games and programming, grab a copy of the Doom specs and start plugging away at the WAD file https://www.gamers.org/docs/FAQ/DOOM.FAQ.Specs.html https://www.gamers.org/docs/FAQ/DOOM.FAQ.Specs.html You can use any language you want to work with the data, but C is probably the most straightforward. The first time you decode some sprite data, or a level map, you will have the strangest sense of joy as it appears on screen. I used to play around with that stuff in the 90's with a copy of Turbo C and started to write a Mac level editor (very simple one at least) a few years back but haven't really worked on it since I had kids. https://github.com/robilic/MDE https://github.com/robilic/MDE

pyb 5y ago

My personal favorite : Going Down by Cyriak Harris.

m463 5y ago
cryiak! wow He had these really really weird but unique youtube videos years ago, for example EDIT: this was the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQO-aOdJLiw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQO-aOdJLiw also: cows & cows & cows https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FavUpD_IjVY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FavUpD_IjVY