I really believe that Doom has the world's greatest game mod community but just dipping your toes into it can be a daunting proposition. The original Doom was released in 1993; that's 25 years of user-created game content developed in complexity in parallel with the engine used to play it all. There's a lot of community specific jargon and processes. I take most of it for granted but I also remember what it was like when I was figuring out how to install mods for Minecraft to play them with my stepson. I had maybe a year to learn the ropes when I was really starting my sojourn in 2010 and while I had a lot of questions I answered most of them by myself.
Over the years, a small number of people have asked me some of their own. I occasionally thought about making a guide for getting started but never finished writing one. Part of it was sheer lack of will; I just wanted to play PWADs and offer some opinions and screenshots to get prospective players interested. I also didn't want to be responsible for directing someone else's journey through so much content. There are a broad variety of ways to approach the staggering volume and I didn't feel comfortable with the idea of giving any one of them a greater emphasis. All that this really did was enforce my own, explorative methodology.
It doesn't have to be this way, though, and I think that an informative tutorial would serve as an excellent companion piece for the blog. Especially for any reader who has ever found the barrier for entry to be too confusing. This series of features is intended to be a living document that primes potential players for entry into the enormous back catalog. I don't think that I'm qualified to offer in-depth technical support if you can't get mod combinations to work but if there is any way that I can help people feel less lost then I'd like to help.
A general guide on what to do to get Doom up and running on your computer.
