If you've ever browsed other Doom or Quake communities, you might recognize me by the username hardcore_gamer. If you don't mind, I'd like to share an overview of my history with the Doom community and the things that inspired me to write to create this site.

Personal History

My history with old-school shooters (or "boomer shooters," as they are apparently now called) dates to the late 1990s and early 2000s.

It was a unique period in gaming history; neither Steam sales nor Humble Bundles existed yet, and fast internet was essentially a luxury for the privileged. Games themselves were also a luxury, generally reserved for Christmas or birthdays, and even then, they were not guaranteed. This meant that, for the most part, you had little choice but to simply replay the same games.

Not that I minded. I replayed the shareware versions (sadly, I didn't have the full versions until the mid-2000s) of Doom, Heretic, and Rise of the Triad so often that I could practically play them blindfolded. I also had Half-Life and Counter-Strike, although I lacked the means to play the latter online since I was still stuck in the ancient era of 56k modems.

First Map

Somewhat ironically, my first attempt at creating a level began with Doom 3 rather than the classic Doom games because I found the Doom Builder level editor (the original, not DB2 or its forks) too complicated at the time.

Needless to say, my first Doom 3 map wasn't very good; it was riddled with errors and beginner mistakes. I'm honestly surprised that I even managed to implement some of the more complex functionality, including an opening cinematic with a moving camera, considering it was my first map. Nonetheless, it constituted a meaningful accomplishment because it marked the beginning of my modding journey.

I later created two sequel levels, though they were also of low quality. These were originally published on d3.filefront, which I believe no longer exists, although it might still be possible to find the levels floating around online. The series was titled Hell over Here (the name sounded cooler in my teenage mind, and my grasp of English at the time was vastly inferior).

Eventually, I overcame the learning curve of Doom Builder and began churning out maps in earnest, though these were also essentially garbage. In 2007, I uploaded houses.wad to the id archives, where, if for some inexplicable reason you want to play it, it's still available.

Getting Better

Thankfully, my mapping didn't remain trash-tier forever.

As the years went by, my skills gradually improved. Examples of my modern works include contributions to community projects such as Ethereal Breakdown, Occult Secrets of the Third Reich on Mars, Alone, and Fear & Loathing.

If you're interested in my full mapping history, you can check out my Doom Wiki page.

I've now had over 17 years to refine my skills as a Doom modder and level designer. I won,t pretend to be the greatest modder or mapper ever to have lived. I won't even pretend to be in the top 50. But at the very minimum, my skills have improved to the point where I can release content confidently without embarrassing myself.

And that's good enough for me.

My Reason for Creating hardcoredoom.com

I never really felt much need to create my own thing until a few years ago, as of this writing (which would be 27/06/2025). There were already plenty of options in the form of forums and Discord servers, so I simply felt no need to make a new one.

But starting sometime in the late 2010s and early 2020s, I found myself increasingly frustrated for several reasons, most notably the following two:

Mow browsing options continued to be poor
It just seemed ridiculous to me that even after so much time, the user experience for finding fun levels or mods to play was still mostly subpar. Sure, you could go to forums like Doomworld and look at the latest offerings being posted in the threads, or you could go directly to the id archives. But this isn't a very modern or user-friendly way of doing things.

A major objective of mine with hardcoredoom was to create not only a place where people can find content, but also a better way of accessing it. That meant creating a mod browser that enables users to easily find and sort content via various filters and tags, as well as giving each mod or level campaign its own page, complete with screenshots. This is far better than awkwardly going through old forum threads looking for something to play.

Another major issue with traditional sites is the lack of quality control; usually you have to spend time looking for the good stuff, adding yet another layer of annoyance.

Corruption & Drama within the Community
It's not enough to just have a decent site or forum. Leadership is equally important. Unfortunately, I feel the traditional offerings have floundered in this regard, and in some cases quite disastrously.

The first thing I noticed over time is that while there are, in theory, several major alternatives (e.g. Doomworld, ZDoom forums, discords etc.), in practice it seems like the same handful of people wield major influence over all of them. This might not be a problem if they were all decent people, but sadly, many of them really aren't. Abuse of moderator power is not uncommon.

Perhaps the most infamous example of poor leadership in recent history would be the Marisa scandal (a controversy involving accusations of grooming and inappropriate sexual conduct against a former staff member and moderator on the ZDoom forums). I won't go into specifics other than to say it resulted in a massive loss of faith in that particular community.

Even ignoring such scandals, the moderators on many of these sites are simply not very pleasant; they act like they own the place, punishing users seemingly just because they feel like it or disagree with them.

If this weren't bad enough on its own (it is), like so many other online spaces, the Doom community has also been infected by social politics that frankly don't belong in these kinds of spaces. It's the cherry on top of the shit pie that is the current state of the Doom community.

To keep the story short: there are serious problems in existing online spaces, and I frankly got tired of it all.

Now, with all of that out of the way... enjoy your Dooming.