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Tech

This Is Why Modders Are Angry About 'Doom'

Not being able to put 100,000 demons into one room is a bad thing. Who knew?

The new Doom is out, and the enthusiasm we expressed for its single-player campaign last week still hasn't dimmed. But that's not where Doom's ultimate longevity will come from. The original Doom from 1993 has thrived for years on mods, to the point that where we still cover them with some regularity.

New Doom's nod to that legacy is the "SnapMap" feature that lets players design their own levels, but as a new video from YouTuber MarphitimusBlackimus demonstrates, it's far from ideal.

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For his SnapMap, Mr. Blackimus tries to create a map with over 100,000 revenants—demons with shoulder-mounted missile launchers grafted into their flesh—into a single room. If it sounds a little childish, it is, but this was the kind of silly (and processor-demanding) stuff that used to make us give each other high fives when the original Doom first came out. The video is the chronicle of his struggle.

He first discovers there's no way he can get 100,000 revenants on the existing design grid, so then he tries to put a mere 25,000 revenants in a "crap ton of rooms" Again, failure. And again. Eventually, he whittles down his efforts to a mere 64 revenants standing before 21 empty rooms. But even that's not the end of it, as he learns he can only have 12 demons alive at any time. That becomes the map's name: "12 demons and 21 empty rooms." Hellishly exciting.

It certainly highlights some of the severe limitations of SnapMap's capabilities, and potentially the Doom's lifespan. A recent piece from PC Gamer revealed many other issues, such as the way you can design your own layouts and command the AI to work within the established parameters of the coding, but you can't do any wacky things like design antigravity rooms. Thanks to a limited tileset, all of the maps—however creative—end up looking like a deserted, demon-infested Martian facility.

It's cool, but it's not still-designing-maps-20-years-later cool. And that's a shame.