My creative journey in video games began around 2007, when the maps in my favorite game, Doom II, no longer felt challenging enough, and I was looking for a way to spice up the experience. That’s when I first discovered how to create my own worlds in Doom, so I began working on a fan-made mod called Doom II: The First Evil.

Behind the maps lay a story about the first evil, represented by three Cyberdemon brothers (note: the story was heavily inspired by the famous game Diablo). The main character gradually faced increasingly powerful enemies in increasing numbers, occasionally catching sight of one of the Cyberdemon brothers roaming the map. His mission throughout the campaign was to banish all three Cyberdemon brothers from the world.

A short story was created for each map, describing the protagonist’s journey. Even back then, I wanted to use my creativity to tell a story. This desire has stayed with me to this day.

At the time, I knew absolutely nothing about game modding. But that did not stop me from trying the well-known Doom map editor, WadAuthor 1.3, for the first time, where I began creating my own maps one small step at a time. As I learned, my early maps were almost claustrophobic, but by the time I reached the final ones, I was creating much larger and complex architectural masterpieces. My greatest achievements included, for example, building a church and finding ways to work around the well-known 2.5D “room-over-room” limitation. During the modding, I worked on several different areas, including: 

• Creating maps (WadAuthor 1.3)

• Importing new, non-Doom textures (WinTex)

• Importing new midi musics (MIDI2MUS)

• Creating a custom .bat file to launch the game 

• Writing the story