Doom Modding was my First Taste of Game Development!

Recently I was asked something to the effect of: “What was the one game that got you into game development?” At the time I couldn’t come up with an answer, but since I can never shut my brain off the next morning in the shower I came up with the answer, and figured it was worth a blog post. It brought back such great early memories of gaming.
The answer is Doom. It was the first game I modded and had great support for packaging and distributing content in WAD packs compatible with anyone who had the game. If I remember right you could do a single image or level swap to a full game overhaul and it was always contained in the single .wad file no matter how simple or complex.

The most memorable Doom mod was taking the German Shepherd sprites from Wolfenstein 3D and replacing the pink demon in Doom with the dog. I packaged the enemy swap with a half dozen or so levels that started with normal run and gun levels, had a puzzle level that teleported you into a room full of enemies if you failed, and was at a difficulty that still challenged me after hours of play. By the time I completed the levels I could clear them fairly regularly, but everyone else I watched try them struggled with the difficulty. It was great watching other people enjoy something I’d created even if it was on par with some of the overly difficult Mario Maker levels.

The main thing I remember about the level editor was the limitation of only being able to have one play space in the up (z?) axis. I wanted to create an underpass type of situation, but level editor couldn’t ever create it correctly in game. I think it was actually an engine limitation, but even way back then working around limitations was an interesting problem to solve. Doom was a game that pushed PC Gaming forward and the great mod support was my first early taste of game development, I was hooked!

After writing this I'm going to look through my drawer/boxes for the last few remaining floppy disks I have and see if I can find one labeled "Doom WAD." I keep a Windows XP laptop solely because it's the last hardware I have capable of reading 3.5 floppies. If I can find those levels I'd like to play them again!

Genre Mashups in Video Games

I'm talking about genre mashups using Tomb Raider because I just finished the first one and am a few hours into the second so it is fresh on my mind, but this could be said about almost every game coming out. The Tomb Raider remakes are move of an answer to Uncharted than a throw back to the original, and this seems to dictate the genres they include.

The basic genres in Tomb Raider (broadly) are: Platformer/Collection, 3rd Person Shooter, and Quick-Time-Event. I haven't played the original Tomb Raider for many years, but I remember it being mostly an exploration/collection/platformer. The current Tomb Raider is fairly linear to be considered exploration and the puzzles are on the light side. As for collection, many of the collectibles are dropped in front of you and platforming is fairly light. I think you could say the game is trying primarily to be exploration and platforming, but it's linear enough you can't really miss much of the content and fail safes are put in for the platforming portions.


So where the game fails in my opinion is the other genres that are "forced" in. The first I will keep brief because I HATE quick-time events, so any inclusion is going to cause me grief and instantly be unhappy. The areas especially in the first game that included QTEs were the first road blocks I encountered. Luckily most of these were from the E3 Demo very early on and thinned out later in the game. Rise otTR did a better job, they are kinda there, but instead of true QTEs they are time slow downs requiring you to do normal gameplay operations... still annoying, but much better as knowing the controls are normally the worst part of QTEs.



The second mechanic kinda shoe-horned in is the forced 3rd person
shootouts. This won't be an issue for everyone, but I used the bow the rest of the game so when the sections they force you to do a shootout happens the bow isn't always viable and having no previous experience with the other weapons I got stuck on one of those sections for 2-3 play sessions trying to get past it. Forcing players to use one of your systems that has been optional for the majority of the game is okay, but then difficulty needs to be at a beginner level for it, not at a half way through the game expecting everyone to have been using it for hours of play.

Why this matters...
I don't have the time anymore to play games endlessly. Tomb Raider is a game I really like so I persisted, but any game that I'm borderline enjoying I won't pick back up if I hit a wall I can't complete in a few tries. Especially if it is because of a side game mechanic that I don't enjoy playing. I don't think I'm alone in my thinking at least in my demographic with a family and limited gaming time. I think meshing mechanics is possibly a good way to get people into a game, but if you use mechanics that don't mesh well together it was at least keep people from completing them.

Lastly I just want to reiterate that while I picked on Tomb Raider, it is a game I completed (though a little rushed at the end because Bloodborne was in the mail). That means a lot for me, I maybe only complete a dozen or so games a year, so holding my interest to the end is an accomplishment! And Rise of the Tomb Raider is my casual go-to-game right now when I don't want the difficulty of Bloodborne. So these are good games and the critique should in no way take away from that. With their faults they are still a worthy playthough!

Thanks for listening to my rambling.

Difficult Video Games

So I'm stuck on Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate on the 9 star quest: Advanced: Whale of a Hammer. I've 3 carted at least a baker's dozen times. The interesting thing is I can (mostly) pinpoint something I did wrong to cause the carts. Because of this (I think) I keep trying the quest. I concluded melee range is very risky, so I crafted my first set of gunner armor and bow. I have the positioning and timing down of the fight, so now my only problems are terrain forcing me out of position at a bad time or a failed dung bomb attempt trapping me with both of them at the same time and something going wrong.

So it turns out Monster Hunter is actually much more difficult than Dark Souls after you get deep into the game. Like many things different monsters will be harder for different people, but you will find at least a few to give you a hard time. This is the third quest I can think of that's given me serious problems, but this one more so than the ones before. So the question is why keep playing, and why does it feel fair compared to many other games?

I've read up on this and been thinking about it a while. I think the most comprehensive insight I got was an article about speed running games. It talked about how games needed to be predictable to speed run. The controls had to be tight, and in the same situation everything had to work the same way. Then playing a Mario Maker level that you just stood there and all kinds of things happened around you for 2-3 minutes while you watched a Rube Goldberg machine type of level push you through to the end. The game functions so tightly that they can do that.

That is the way Monster Hunter works. Fighting in this case two frenzied Black Gravios' you want to stay to the left of center because centered his beam will hit you and on the right side his downward beam will hit you on the way back up at the end. 90% of the time after any beam some kind of AOE attack will come from home so you have to be out of melee range, etc... Because mostly everything happens the same you can see your mistakes and what you could have done to avoid it. So you always feel like if you'd been just a little bit better you would have won!

I think this is the key... making sure the player can see how they could have prevented the death or penalty of whatever kind happens in your game. Games that don't get this have you dying and questioning why, did the AI get a lucky roll, was there anything in my control that could have let me win? Dangling the carrot at the end of the stick and realizing if you're just a bit better you'll be able to reach it is the sweet spot.

Closing Notes: Monster Hunter does have advantages here as by 9 star quests you have sunk a lot of time into the game and understand it. The variants of the monsters means you have fought an easier version of the same monster before, preparing you for this tougher version, and before you fight multiple monsters you've fought them solo and killed them, so nothing is new except the complexity of taking on multiple at the same time. But still the game is setup to make all this happen.

Destiny's Death Loop

Contrary to the title this is not really a negative thread, it's a look at the mechanic. First off I'm late to the Destiny party, I've only played off and on for the last month or so and am around level 12. I know it's a polarizing game, but I'm mostly on the it's pretty good side, but not crazy about it.

So my experience so far is that you can go through the content quicker than you level up. So you get to the point that you are a level under the recommended level for the content and you end up dying on one of the harder waves, this restarts the set of waves, I die again around the same spot and this is the death loop.

The interesting thing about how they do it is you keep all the experience and gear you get on the attempt and so keep your progress and eventually you level up to the level the content was designed for, this boost in level, plus practice from seeing the waves a few times eventually allows you to push past. While going through 4 or 5 waves again is daunting, those kills are what allows you to level up after a hand full of attempts, so the progression is still there.

This does have pros and cons, if you want to play this keeps the game moving and you progressing fairly quickly. However, I have also quit playing and not picked up the game for a couple days knowing I was stuck in one of these death loops and would need a few more rounds before I broke out of it.

I do like Destiny's speed, it feels like you are playing old school Doom with fairly fast paced combat. It is in waves with less mobility, but it's in that spirit. I doubt I'll like it well enough to go through the grind I hear is waiting, but it's a huge hit and I just don't play console shooters, so it's something I can't be ignore and had to try. So far the ride has been fun!

Timed Progression

Ah Nintendo, you do everything a little bit different! Some times better, most of the time just stranger... Anyway, why am I blogging about Super Mario Maker and not playing it? Timed progression!

So I have only a few small problems with the game:

The first is the price point, I know it's Mario and a console release, but this is a development tool they already had laying around they decided to release as a full title. And yes I know it takes a lot of work to polish dev tools to a public release state, but still.

Second it requires the Wii U gamepad, the huge, screen one that never feels right when you're playing on it, and only for the touch screen. What you see on the tv is EXACTLY the same as what you see on the gamepad. I've never liked the controller and use a pro controller whenever I'm able, this won't matter for some people.

Those two are both minor complaints, now to the big one... The "building blocks" you use to make the level unlock over DAYS! 9 DAYS! (according to reviews) that's insane! And the controls you get out of the box don't even allow you to make world 1-1 from the original game! I feel like I should probably embrace a minimalist approach and make levels as fun as possible with the limited controls, but there was so much fun I wanted to have that I'm just disappointed... I'm hoping I don't have to play every day for the 9 days, but the tutorial kinda sounded like it. I'll pick this up in a week and two days and hope everything is working I guess... This strategy sounds okay to someone that's never played a Mario game or pretty much any other platformer, but selling this as the end all to make awesome Mario levels and then locking it down for the first 9 days is just messed up... this is the wrong kind of different. Even a tutorial progression that took an hour might be alright, but not timed with no way to bypass. /sad

Maybe I'll post an update 9 days from now about how good the game is... I really look forward to playing it!