Up until that point, I’d only released small duel and deathmatch maps for Skulltag (which got… mixed-to-good reactions from the community at the time), so I was no stranger to mapping for Doom – although, I’d released practically zero single-player maps, on account of having very little experience overall, plus my lack of patience for doing more complicated layouts. My mapping skills in general, and my personal discipline in the process itself, were in serious need of a brush-up if I were to feel confident in calling myself a mapper.

I started planning my megawad, and introduced the idea to my good buddy Mechadon. He approved wholeheartedly, and volunteered his advice for when I stumbled over the various limitations of mapping for classic Doom.

My initial sights were not all that high. The working title for the project was Generix – which would, in my mind, completely reflect the nature of the maps. My original specification for the project’s maps was “Small, easy, modest, probably not very memorable“. This turned out to be a massively inaccurate descriptor for the final product of Jenesis because the scope did in fact creep.

During my time off school that year, I set about creating Jenesis, planning the maps out on paper beforehand if I deemed it necessary, then speedmapped like a demon. I also took some old layouts of mine that needed finishing and bloody well finished them.

It wasn’t an easy process – mapping in the format for classic Doom sourceports was something I was not accustomed to, and the initial week of mapping for the project saw me bursting into fits of confusion and rage at the new limitations I had presented myself with. But before too long (ie. October 31st), I had eleven maps in good, working condition.

This small mapset, upon its final release (after many a gruelling testing/bugfixing session), saw a good share of praise from the community. Feeling like I was onto something, I decided that I’d definitely go for the full 32-level “one-man megawad”. From there the project developed, escalating in scale and overall quality as my mapping prowess steadily grew. I was picking up steam fast. Each new map I made was an effort to outdo my previous. My own standards increased dramatically, and before I was even halfway through the project, I was already going back to the first few maps I’d made and making big improvements to them.

I’d finally gotten into a groove. I finally had a way to unleash some of my dormant creativity on the community for the first time in years. And in the cases where I speedmapped, imposing a timelimit on myself actually encouraged me to do it fast, and do it well.

That’s not to say that I had suddenly become a human dynamo and Jenesis was without its share of inactive periods. I went months at a time without daring to look at it. The motivation to keep it afloat fluctuated wildly, and the introduction of all sorts of inescapable commitments, from real-life or otherwise, threatened to halt its progress completely.

I released the final project just before my family and I began the long move to Australia, on the 28th of November, 2011. Just over a year of development had finally yielded a megawad’s worth of content.

For my first foray into classic Doom mapping, it doesn’t feel like I did that bad of a job, and it seems to have made a bit of an impression on people over these past couple decades. It’s far from flawless, yes – but I felt an immense sense of achievement on releasing it. And come Doom’s 18th birthday in December 2011, it even won a Cacoward. Happy days!

The Genesis of Jenesis: A Doom WAD Retrospective