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doom-nerdo-666 · 1 year ago

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A post about Brutal Doom

I was thinking of when i could repost something i wrote before on this blog and now it seems Midnight made a video about BD drama.

You know what? Might as well do it.

This post might still be flawed but i tried:

What is Brutal Doom? A popular Doom mod, maybe the most popular. A mod that makes Doom "crazier" by making its gore more complex and including an ability to perform Mortal Kombat inspired “fatalities” on enemies. It also has features comparable to modern FPS like reloading and ADS. And a bunch of other stuff added for the sake of immersion and insanity (Whether it's intentional insanity or not depends). To some people, it’s “what id Software wanted to make back then” or “the best and only Doom mod ever”. Its popularity and critical acclaim almost paint a blurry image of the mod and so does some of its negative criticisms and drama. Doom is always hit with misinformation and half memories due to Dunning Krueger/osmosis/second half info/game of telephone/Mandela effect tier stuff going on. Brutal Doom is probably the biggest example.

What are its actual flaws? Any mod has its own differences and design decisions from base Doom and aren’t inherently bad just because they’re different; In fact, some mods are great because of what they are, even if they can be better on some maps than others. BD, despite being the “default Doom” to some people, had its issues and some probably weren’t intentional (But might be fixed as of me writing this, so this list is outdated).

The balance was known for being odd, so the shotgun would be OP during ADS and render the SUPER shotgun useless. You could defeat the Cyberdemon with 7 rockets or 3 SSG blasts. Headshots based hitboxes were once placed above enemies, so you had to shoot above a Baron. Some enemy radius were changed, so Cyberdemons and Arachnotrons could be stuck in some places. The player’s voodoo doll was modified in a way that affected some wads like Scythe. A feature of automatically adding props/features to maps (To make them “realistic”) had an issue where iron bars would block main paths and enemy projectiles could go through them but not the player’s) The art direction was also inconsistent, as some blood splatter effects had different resolution from other effects in the game. Sprites of picking up enemies as hostages looked weird and a HUD face for a playable female option had a weird looking face (To be fair, some female mugshots in Doom mods looked weird too). You also had a HUD so disorganized, where a totally different font was on top of the ARMS section in the base old Doom HUD and a grenade counter icon was set outside the HUD (Some weird stuff here and there, with no coherence or direction). And in Brutal Doom 64, chaingunners were invisible.

It’s normal for mods to have these problems because they’re fan projects, but some of these problems were either unique to BD or not that common, while a lot of other mods tried to avoid these things. BD is also said to have “spaghetti code” to the point that a version broke with GZDoom because Mark wrote the letter L where a 1 should have been.

But even then, BD is not so much judged on technical flaws, because of other things like drama including its creator. Even then, worse mods exist. I think ProDoomer for example is notorious for its problems.

How did it got popular? Game journalists giving the mod credit for features that existed prior in other mods and Youtubers (Markiplier and TotalBiscuit) are obvious examples. But there’s also a popular BD based mappack which borrowed FreeDoom maps and it’s how some people got into Doom. The amount of misinfo, its basic appeal (More gore, “modernized” etc) and the influence from the Doom comic are also noticeable. BD was also liked because of its "feedback" (As in how satisfying it felt to play to its audience), even if you think some sounds are too loud or visuals are too flashy (But people loved that regardless). The mod was popular among people that didn’t delve that much into Doom and its modding scene, so BD had its own subculture with submods and off-shoots content. It was essentially like a fanfiction treated as canon (In a series whose fanbase already touched how we talk about/look at/remember/play the games to begin with). John Romero once said that if Doom came out like BD, it would have “destroyed the industry”; He was commenting on the absurdity of the mod but people thought he was saying "it's how we wish we did it". BD64 was also nominated in a “best fan projects” section from 2016’s VGA’s and won.

On a bright side, BD did brought some people into Doom and other mods, so they don’t just stop at BD. There’s even BD inspired mods that try to “fix” the mod or are liked by people that don’t like the original BD.

(Boiled Doom, BD Johnny, BD Lite, Burl Tumd) So for all the "Doom illiteracy", there's some people getting deeper into the Doom iceberg/rabbit hole or whatever term you'd use.

Plus, there's a few other mods that got big enough to have their own subcultures. Complex Doom also has its own addons/submods and fanbase: Megaman 8-bit Deathmatch has its subculture, even if it's mainly because it's based off another game series (But Doom is no stranger to crossovers).

And right now as of editing this, MyHouse had its impact but it might aslo be related to things like the "Liminal Spaces" stuff, so who knows what weird impact it could have.

Historical revisionism (sort of) BD was given credit for features that existed in other mods and source ports, since its audience were people not too knowledgeable on Doom modding in general. Romero likes the mod but he never saw it as “what Doom should be”; His comment on “destroying the industry” was about the absurd gore. But various sites and content online still kept mentioning BD like they had too. Like the Doom version of someone who wants to talk about Tomba and another guy feels the need to mention that one popular SGDQ 2014 stream because of the memes around it.

(The internet is a reverse to a real party where a guy ruins the mood by bringing up something awkward, so instead everyone brings up the awkward thing and one guy is left alienated and in an awkward mood)

BD’s popularity meant people had certain ideas of the games and their mods that were misguided and not really true. I honestly think BD is just a microcosm of a fanbase that, for better or worse, “owned and readapted” a series in a way that can’t easily be separated from fans.

The community’s reaction and drama It’s not true that BD is only hated because “purist boomers hate anything new” or “modders were jealous of its popularity”. Some modders did however made it so their mods were incompatible with BD and pulled off goofy pranks: This is not just because of drama, but also because BD fans were asking other modders to make their mods compatible with BD and because SgtMark’s code was notorious for being sloppy at the time.

But the reasons why people hated Mark was because of how he behaved at the time. One instance, someone discovered a racist joke in the code (Something to do with the Plasma Rifle being described as “being so hot, it turns a white guy into a ** than rap music” or something like that). Another instance was a user claiming he was feeling depression and Mark replied with a Wikipedia article of suicide. These 2 in particular were seen as the worst cases and lead to Mark being banned on most Doom forums. Other drama includes Mark not properly crediting artists of the sprites used in his mod.

These are things that did happen, however, most people never post links or screenshots of them. This is the reason why people think BD drama feels fake at times: For someone that has an infamous history in a community, rarely do people post evidence that this ever happened. In turn, some people think Mark is being falsely accused.

One video that showed off BD’s glitches did use screenshots based on some events, but this video has an interesting story: You know the site Encyclopedia Dramatica? They used that video in an article about Doom. While most people saw Mark as an edgelord, ED treated Mark like any “loser lolcow”. This is surprising because, considering their nature, you’d think they would praise Mark for being edgy.

Maybe in some chan sites, people like that Mark was edgy (Or hate him for not being edgy enough). 4chan’s /vr/ board can be critical of Doomworld and ZDoom Forums but they also were critical of Mark’s personality and (At least in 2017/18) were the ones that most criticized BD for its gameplay and code problems. While most people heard stories of Mark’s character, /vr/ posted screenshots and webms of BD’s glitches and problems. Some even see BD as “Doom’s own Yandere Simulator”.

But there are also times when Mark wanted to stay away from drama: I think there was a version of a Project Brutality mod that had some patch to make it unplayable and crash someone’s game if mixed with BD. I recall this being an instance where Mark was getting tired of drama.

And like many other people in the community, even SgtMark criticized an update of WolfenDoom Blade of Agony that was going to a direction people thought was too far for a mod. (Something to do with a Wolfenstein inspired by trying to have specific real life references in the setting: This lead to Realm667 being down for a while and Tormentor distancing himself from the community for a while: As of writing this, maybe this drama is also waters under the bridge). Plus, Doom’s fanbase always had its sorts of drama. Let’s not forget Graf Zahl having to take a break from GZDoom development because he didn’t like that Lilith PK3 won a Cacoward.

And as of currently, a majority of people left the ZDoom Forums due to MarisaDesu and how others handled the situation badly.

More on SgtMarkIV Despite what happened, he is unbanned on Doomworld, he occasionally collaborates with other people and doesn’t get into drama anymore. It’s possible that Mark grew from all that mess, since people can change and other people in the Doom community had their own dramas and controversies.

Maybe one could also point out that he’s from Brazil, so consider the troubles of living in that country. Plus, a lot of edgy people in the internet come from countries within that middle/south American zone and/or with Latino-adjacent languages.

He also made more than just Brutal Doom, since Doom modders tend to be involved in different projects. He even made maps that were liked by people who otherwise dislike BD. Some modders and other people also had positive interactions, including Nash who did a gore based more before BD.

Did BD inspire Doom 2016? Being the most popular (And a bit forced/astroturfed) Doom mod, this seems believable at first. Hell, Doom Eternal has some enemy designs (Fire Baron, Stone Imp, Riot Chaingunner) that can be traced to Realm667 designs. But BD’s premise was based on some basic ideas that probably existed before (Nash for example did a gore mod that predates BD). 2016 claims its inspiration from the “meme” Doom comic, which was popular among fans, even if it was originally panned at the time.

But it’s more than the comic, 2016 is based on other parts of the fanbase. Death Battle made a popular video where Doomguy faces Master Chief and loses; Doom fans were upset because they think he should have won and even Halo fans thought the fight wasn’t truly faithful to either of the series’ gameplay or lore. You could even point out Doom fans being jealous of Halo “ruining FPS” and having a green armored soldier, hence the comparisons between Master Chief and 2016’s Praetor armored Slayer. Plus, when did a blank slate whose face bled on the HUD and was shown hurt in the iconic box art was seen as “being stronger than he actually is”? 4chan had one or two meme copypastas where someone described how strong Doomguy is and most of it is just basing Doomguy’s “Power level” on gameplay factors and the games’ little lore it had. Chances are some of this was ironic since one post even compared Doomguy to a generalized idea of “JRPG teams who kill God with the power of friendship” but some people took it seriously. It’s like Chuck Norris memes but based on a specific character and you wonder how much comes from jealousy over a certain other character.

Either way, the Doomslayer can be seen as fanservice to some fans but still with its own ideas and concepts. Besides, both Doom 3 and FPS during 7th gen were seen as presenting ideas that contradict the values of classic FPS, so 2016 was a “responsive” type of game. Hell, 2016 had no reloading, which once became default for FPS games in a while. Doom is associated with speed, even if it’s because of Quake and the presence of ALWAYS_RUN in source ports.

Doom fanbase status Not everyone into Doom is a modder or anyone that cares about wads. But i do believe that anything around mods, wads, ports, documentation and so on could be seen in a high regard. Because ever since 2016 and Eternal, the fanbase has grown and you can see different “layers” in a way.

This results in people hating Brutal Doom based on poorly received and limited information. They know the community hates it but have no strong base around it. Between Youtubers that came around 2020 and people who make Animal Crossing crossover fanart, it feels like they want to impress the old guard. Meanwhile, /vr/ actually used to show BD being buggy and awkward. And /vr/ had fans of more niche/demanding mods like Hideous Destructor. I feel like people could at least research these stories about BD or ask someone for better proof, but also know that Mark may not be the same guy he was in those times.

Personal takes I tried to be a bit “diplomatic” because BD discussion is a bit of a mess and there’s a lot to be said from various prespectives. Even if i stole opinions or perspectives of others, i tried to go for more obscure ones (People say Doom fans repeat the same jokes, when i see people repeating statements and other stuff). There’s a lack of objectivity and verification from “both sides, even the middle” and i tend to explore different corners of the fanbase to add a bit more sense. Especially in a series that was manipulated by its fanbase in ways that even the old guard doesn’t realize.

The reason why i think other mods should be acknowledged besides Brutal Doom is because Doom modding is a greater universe on its own and it shows how much can be done with the iconic FPS. Part of why i think there could be other award events besides Cacowards and that any time someone disagrees with changes of a certain source port, they should be free to make their own fork of it and base it on their personal preferences or interests of potential target audiences.

Doom modding is a product of freedom and expression from fans, given by John Carmack being influenced by “hacker culture”. Think of topics like being pro consumer or videogame preservation and documentation. Doom has a lot of things that other videogames could benefit from in terms of fanbase interaction. Even with Quake: I like that single player mods are getting popular, but i hope it doesn’t kill off Q1 multiplayer and any interest for Quake 2 or other games. Even if you dislike a game or something related, don’t let it die. Elitism over what you can/can't do feels out of place in modding and open source scenes or even hacking.

This whole post could have been done by someone that knows better and could present it in a better way than i did. In fact, i say this about any Doom “blogpost” i wrote. However, discussion around BD is so messy, i even question some otherwise wiser figures. Maybe it’s from an OCD mindset of trying to make sure everything is clear and fair. The truth is complicated and people prefer shortcuts for answers. I know “let’s all get along” is a boring, cliche thing to day. But Doom has a special fanbase and for all the faults and dramas, i think there are things to learn and some solutions that should be fair to more people.

Regardless of who you are, if you're reading this, you have some things you’re really good at and that’s something to be proud of. And it’s also nice to do new things and enjoy the works of others or collaborate. I dunno what else to add. I made too many Doom blogposts, i should actually make a map or real content.

But i still want to post stuff, since i haven't reposted the actual "Doom fanbase status" and some other stuff like Doom and Halo or whatever.

A post i recommend checking out (Could even inspire an interesting Youtube video) is this one about things that can be traced to Doom fans.

#doom #modding #doom modding #classic doom #id software #opinions #fandom #fanbase #brutal doom #doom 2016 #doom eternal #john romero

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