FORTDOOM Brings Old School DOOM to Fortnite
Jon Condit
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If you’re an 80/90’s kid and grew up with gaming like me then you understand exactly what I mean when I say every game other than DOOM has at least one problem. It’s not DOOM. Few games have made such an indelible mark on gamers and gaming alike.
In honor of 25 years of mods, remakes, and remasters we bring you FORTDOOM. A faithful recreation of E1MI Hangar built using Fortnite’s newly released Creative Mode.
Shoutouts to my Mixer family who helped provide feedback and inspiration on the map as it progressed. @KingBaileyBomb and @WASD, @Covent, @JaredFPS, @DrScreammm, @Definez, and @DEVGAMER who actually worked on and playtested the original DOOM games!
A couple of concessions had to be made here and there. Somethings just weren’t doable using a grid-based system. Ironically, one of the things that set the original DOOM apart at the time was its walls being able to be positioned at nearly
Players start off with 1HP and no shields. The environment is largely indestructible to maintain the linear exploration of DOOM’s maps. While I wanted to recreate the varied wall textures we all have come to love, the map in this instance just looks better with a unified color scheme so I tried to keep the wall and floor tiles consistent throughout.
While I was just lamenting that I couldn’t add enemy mobs to the map, Epic Games added the Gunner Trap the night after I finished building it, giving me the ability to add some “Zombiemen and Imps” to the level. I still have some requests though, Epic, if you are reading this (hint hint).
- Add triggers and target options to building objects so that states can be changed. This would allow for buttons or character position to be used to trigger hidden doors etc. This could be added the same way you allow customization of Traps by holding X.
- Which brings me to Trigger Traps, tiles that when run over by the player trigger changes of state to other items. These would also count towards scoring, in a map like this tracking how many secret areas were found should count towards the players score.
- Angled Indestructible walls. I needed angled walls in many places and had to double up the walls behind them to keep players from breaking out.
- Invisible barriers. The windows of E1M1 were clearly big enough to jump through but we all know you cant, we all tried.
- Add an option on the Gunner Trap so that they can be killed by players. Also allow for increased detection range 2 tiles is a little too short.
- Timed Escape Game Modes for speed run maps. Using Trigger Traps mentioned above in conjunction with the Timer element you already have in game timers could be started and stopped via game objects allowing players to challenge each others best times.
- Teleport Traps. Basically Rifts tied to tiles so that we can move between levels after completing a map. These could either teleport a player to another area on the same Island or another Island instance.
- AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST Where the hell are all the cool high tech building objects from Dusty Divot? Those would sure come in handy right now.
25 years after the first episode of DOOM was unleashed on the world there is still an active community of modders and multiplayer servers keeping us knee deep in the dead. Thanks to projects like Zandronum, Zdaemon, Odamex, DOOM Explorer, and communities like DOOM World players have been shotgunning barrels and dodging Cyber Demons for almost 3 decades.
Fans have rejoiced at the news of Sigil, DOOM designer John Romero’s spiritual successor to DOOM making it the unofficial Episode 5. This madness drops in February and if you can’t wait for that, DOOM World user
How does a rather simple FPS shooter captivate gamers for a quarter of a century? It’s certainly in no small part due to the amazing work of the team at id Software. The creators of this game have gone down in video game history as legends at this point for sure and the game did include some major new features for the time but the game’s success was due in large part to how it was distributed.
DOOM was one of the first and largest titles ever to be released as Shareware. On December 10th, 1993 at midnight, the first episode of DOOM was uploaded to a server at the University of Wisconsin with the intention of letting the users distribute the game files themselves. Within hours, over 10,000 people downloaded the game and crashed the university’s servers.
There was a time when you could walk through a Target or WalMart and every computer in the store had DOOM running on it. Any time we went shopping I would head to the electronics department to find a computer on display and spend the whole time playing DOOM. By 1995, a mere two years after it’s release, there were more copies of DOOM installed on computers than Microsoft’s Windows 95 operating system.
I digress though. Like most fans of the game, I could go on and on for days about its influence on video games of today. Trace the roots of any FPS shooter and you will always come back to DOOM. All your favorites… Call of Duty, Battlefield, HALO (admit it, Master Chief is basically Doomguy), PUBG, and yes, even Fortnite all have DOOM to thank, in one way or another.
Categorized:Horror Gaming News
