The original Doom was a fantastic game in its own right, but it’s often remembered as much for the mods and user-created levels that surrounded it as it is for its own gameplay and graphical innovations. That same level of customization won’t be supported in the upcoming Doom.
Doom will launch with a tool called SnapMap that will allow users to create their own levels for the game, but this is as close as the game will get to offering mod support, Bethesda’s Pete Hines confirmed in an interview with GameTrailers (via PC Gamer). “Everything that we’re doing on the mod side will be through SnapMap,” Hines said.
SnapMap will be available not just for the PC, but for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions as well. Obviously there will be some UI differences to allow console players to design maps with a controller, but all levels can be uploaded to Bethesda servers and shared cross-platform.
It isn’t yet clear how capable a tool SnapMap will be, but developer id Software is striving to make the tool easy to use while remaining feature-packed. “Give it to anybody and they can do simple stuff, but the complex stuff — all those things that used to be super-complicated — the idea is that there’s enough complexity and depth there that you can do all this scripting stuff, and make new gameplay modes,” Hines said.
With that in mind, it’s clear that SnapMap will have its share of limitations. “Some of the stuff we showed at E3 with the Foundry, where you’ve got these massive open spaces — SnapMap isn’t something that’s saying ‘here, build this cavernous interior space.’ It’s more like the stuff you saw in multiplayer — it’s tighter — you’re not worried about building an interior space that’s 30 stories high and half a mile across.”
No concrete release date has been announced for Doom so far, but the game is set to launch in early 2016. For more on SnapMap and Doom in general, see the full interview on YouTube.
