SO I MADE A DOOM WAD! news

Although Doom as a game has been released and re-released multiple times since 1993 (and was even preceded by Wolfenstein 3D, Catacomb 3-D & Hovertank 3D in the years prior) I have only been playing it myself since late 2020 after it was added to Gamepass. I thoroughly enjoyed the game, even though I was constantly playing 'Knee Deep in the Dead' from the start. I think that was because I just wanted to beat the first episode in one sitting. In March 2021 I eventually brought the game via the Microsoft Store through the Microsoft Rewards Programme. I brought Doom II & Doom 64 months later during a sale, however, I mainly played the original. Due to the version on the Microsoft Store version being the Unity Edition the number of mods available was quite limited. The first mod for Doom I played was a little WAD called 'Double Impact' (this is one of the few mods available for the Unity Edition). By the time I had come to play 'Double Impact' I had only completed the first episode of the original game. Why? You must think I'm crazy. The thing is at the time my girlfriend had started playing with mods in Fallout 4 on the Xbox One and one day I thought why not a Doom mod. I picked 'Double Impact' as it was one of the shortest of the WADs available. It was either that or 'Sigil', which I decided against due to it apparently being difficult and the unofficial Episode 5 from John Romero - this wasn't something I was ready for yet. I played 'Double Impact' and enjoyed it. I feel it could have ended after E1M6, but that was probably due to the difficulty in the later levels. Perhaps, 'Syringe' with its 7 maps would be more for me, but that didn't could until later.

I started to watch Doom videos on Youtube, mainly Decino, although I have watched videos from Doomkid. I started becoming interested in Doom mods other than those available in the Unity Edition. I downloaded GZDoom and attempted to run Freedoom in it, but I couldn't get the program to work. At one point I tried ChocolateDoom, but that didn't work either. This is where I found something called 'Master of BOOM' developed by someone called 'papermare'. Apart from the 5 default levels playing other WADS in it is fine until you pick up an item and then the program crashes. I eventually however managed to get GZDoom to work. I downloaded Doom Builder 2 as I wanted to make my own WADS, but I ultimately decided that I wanted to do this with the main WADS themselves. It wasn't until January this year that I brought the steam versions during a sale.

For my first WAD, I wanted to make something simple as I needed to learn how to use the Software, however, I have already learnt a lot. It was also really fun to make. As I didn't really know how to use Doom Builder 2 properly I turned to video tutorials by 'TheDemonTurtle', 'Chubzdoomer' & 'Doomkid, so thank you very much to them. The single-level WAD took a month to make, although I did it in my spare time and tested it rigorously.

I have quite a few more ideas for further WADS, which I can not wait to produce them.

Thanks for reading!