COMM 344: Doom and Modification Culture

Doom is widely known for it's extremely open stance on modding. In 1993, mods were limited to levels and basic graphic changes. Still, this was enough for many people. Tons of levels in the style of the original game were created, but some gamers weren't satisfied.

The first major Doom modification was Aliens TC, a total conversion of Doom into a game based on the film Aliens. It inspired a slew of other movie themed mods, including ones based on Star Wars and Batman.

Batman Doom is of particular note, as it was one of the first total conversions to use a program called Dehacked to modify Doom's code. This was at a time when Doom was closed source, and no one knew how exactly the game was coded. Dehacked worked by reverse engineering the game's DOS executable. People worked tirelessly to change a game that was mostly closed off from change.

But in 1996, Quake was released, and the Doom modding community began to die. But then, in 1997, Doom's source code was released in a not-for-profit license, and in 1999, it went GPL.

The result? Doom became the new Hello World. People run Doom on tons of different devices. People port other games to Doom's engine, including Sonic The Hedgehog, The DayZ, and Resident Evil.

A game so bright in the engine of a game that had more than 40 shades of brown in it's 256 colors.

The modding community has kept Doom alive 21 years after it came out, but Doom is also timeless for it's art style, which I'll cover in my next blog.