Jump to content
Search In
  • More options...
Find results that contain...
Find results in...
glenzinho

All these years later there's still nothing better than Doom

Recommended Posts

Phobus said:

He is right, the shooting is the focus on basically everything that came after. More gore, more enemies, more creative weapons, but the option to just cut and run, or circle strafe with impunity (if you've got the skill) just isn't there in newer games. It is amazing to think that no development team since have had that idea.

Well, there's Wrack where you're partially encouraged to do so, specially in the time attack game mod. Unfortunately, letting enemies alive can result in a massive slowdown of your computer. My computer can't handle many enemies on screen in that game.

Share this post


Link to post
purist said:

Another two reasons are that advances in technology for FPS games makes it harder to make level replacement mods and display many enemies on screen at once.

I don't buy the last one at all. It might have been true in 1996, but it's nonsense now. The Total War series has shown displaying thousands of moving actors on screen, even at fairly close distances, is quite possible. Even as early as 2003 Call of Duty 1 and its expansion pack had huge battlefields, much more expansive than modern CoD games, with enough actors (both enemies and allies) to rival a slaughter map.

Also horde gameplay is not one of Doom's core strengths, it's a feature added by PWAD authors long after Doom came out, starting with wads like Punisher in 1995.

Share this post


Link to post

Hmm and considering games like Serious Sam 3 or the HD remakes of TFE and TSE, it's not like they can't have Doom-level AI in large quantities with pretty graphics and plenty of particle effects on the go these days. The fact of the matter is, people aren't putting the numbers in because they don't make large enough areas in game worlds, presumably because it takes longer to map out a large area to the sort of standard expected in a modern-day big budget release.

Share this post


Link to post

Doom is one of the only games I repeatedly return to and come back for more... Especially with all the mappers developing such cool maps and new enemies.

Modern games are just lacking something... There doesn't seem to be skill involved, it's all about making games too user friendly and one dimensional while trying to woo people with graphics and fancy guns at the expense of good gameplay.

Share this post


Link to post
Woolie Wool said:

I don't buy the last one at all. It might have been true in 1996, but it's nonsense now. The Total War series has shown displaying thousands of moving actors on screen, even at fairly close distances, is quite possible. Even as early as 2003 Call of Duty 1 and its expansion pack had huge battlefields, much more expansive than modern CoD games, with enough actors (both enemies and allies) to rival a slaughter map.


I'm with ya on that one. I'm not sure what is so complex about modern games that they can't do the same things Doom did. I don't know why any game really needs to be that complex. They should be more simple to give the level designers more creative freedom and an overall more dynamic experience for the player.

Share this post


Link to post
Woolie Wool said:

I don't buy the last one at all. It might have been true in 1996, but it's nonsense now. The Total War series has shown displaying thousands of moving actors on screen, even at fairly close distances


Total War and other similar games (real-time RTS) manage to get away with it because, in the first place, they can get away with using less-detailed characters, and they are observed at farther distances than in a FPS or even a 3PS. If each of them was as detailed as, say, a Doom 3 model (and yes, I mean 2004 detail here), you'd have a serious performance problem even today. Take a look at this screenshot from Rome Total War - Alexander: it's a 2006 game but the detail on the models is Quake 3-level, and would definitively NOT be considered acceptable on a 2006 FPS. FFS, you can see the individual polygons making up the shields. Another clamorous example of this: World Of Warcraft. Admit it, the models are not all that great to look at, they definitively were not "hot stuff" even when WoW came out, but it doesn't matter in that sort of game.

But the trend in FPS games is totally different, for good or bad, and ridiculously high model detail has been a staple. TO put it bluntly, in e.g. Duke Nuken Forever, marketers and executives have long determined that players NEED to see every single vein on the biceps of their pig cops, with full bump mapping. So....

Share this post


Link to post

I don't think graphics should be that big of an issue. Imagine what kind of huge, complex games we could be having today if we generally targeted an early 00's level of fidelity (minus making everything absurdly low poly). Something like Deus Ex 1 but with the New Vision and HDTP mods on the Revision maps.

It clearly doesn't look like a modern game, but as long as the textures aren't muddy as hell, and the objects in the world aren't origami shapes, I think level designers would have a whole shitload of freedom to design complex games. Seriously, we have quadcore 64-bit CPUs, many GB of memory, and lightning fast storage drives such as SSDs. Let's create something that really takes advantage of it on the gameplay side of things, rather than blowing it all on Hollywood CG-esque visuals.

Share this post


Link to post

Lots of detail is always a nice thing I think, be it realistic detail or stylised detail.

However I also agree that games should focus on gameplay above all.

There's gotta be a balance between looking good, and playing good...which is always nice when it happens.

As for Doom, it looks decent....obviously the graphical style of the time is little but they still managed to pull off some artsy fartsy looking areas quite well. They could have gone the Terminator 1990 DOS game route...or end up with the game looking like Vette!

I'm glad they didn't...as cool as those games look (Yeah I like that graphical style) I don't think it would have suited Doom so well. For what they could and did do, I think they did it well.

Gameplay though, could have used a bit of jumping way back when....but source ports fix this. Also more enemies would have been cool...but again, mods can cater for this. It's not like the devs were entirely lazy and left stuff out. Stuff was out because of some limits....but thankfully like I said, these days mods can remove those limits for when you wanna change stuff up.

Share this post


Link to post

That's my point, it's good as long as it looks good doing what it's trying to accomplish. And you mention limited resources. So why not take older yet scalable technology, take advantage of the "good enough" visuals that are easy to quickly pump out content for, and make something bigger and better in the gameplay department with all that extra headroom?

Share this post


Link to post
Sodaholic said:

That's my point, it's good as long as it looks good doing what it's trying to accomplish. And you mention limited resources. So why not take older yet scalable technology, take advantage of the "good enough" visuals that are easy to quickly pump out content for, and make something bigger and better in the gameplay department with all that extra headroom?


Aye indeed!

Share this post


Link to post
Maes said:

Total War and other similar games (real-time RTS) manage to get away with it because, in the first place, they can get away with using less-detailed characters, and they are observed at farther distances than in a FPS or even a 3PS. If each of them was as detailed as, say, a Doom 3 model (and yes, I mean 2004 detail here), you'd have a serious performance problem even today. Take a look at this screenshot from Rome Total War - Alexander: it's a 2006 game but the detail on the models is Quake 3-level, and would definitively NOT be considered acceptable on a 2006 FPS. FFS, you can see the individual polygons making up the shields. Another clamorous example of this: World Of Warcraft. Admit it, the models are not all that great to look at, they definitively were not "hot stuff" even when WoW came out, but it doesn't matter in that sort of game.

But the trend in FPS games is totally different, for good or bad, and ridiculously high model detail has been a staple. TO put it bluntly, in e.g. Duke Nuken Forever, marketers and executives have long determined that players NEED to see every single vein on the biceps of their pig cops, with full bump mapping. So....


Rome: Total War: Alexander was a completely antiquated game when it came out, and is at this point three generations obsolete. Rome II looks perfectly fine to me, and when you have problems you can just add more LODs. And what about the first Call of Duty and its expansion, which are now over 10 years old?

But at any rate, scenarios where you see more than 10 or 12 monsters on screen in the original Doom games are exceedingly rare; horde gameplay is an invention of PWAD authors. Doom is not Serious Sam.

Share this post


Link to post

You may have quad's and GB of memory, but I do not.
I have to make this point because so many do not often consider how wide a variation there is in the current active hardware. There are still machines from the 90's that work perfectly fine for most everyday work. This machine is XP on a 1.3 GHz with 700MB. Would not run most of the windows FPS on them though as those things are as bad as the latest Windows in being CPU hogs.

I get freebie games dumped here, and I cannot even try them because none of the 6 machines here will run them. There is nothing in the games that would entice me to get or make a machine that could run them (A waste of resources to make a machine for one trivial use).

Many of these games have gone off on graphical tangents that require the latest GPU and CPU and memory. Yet Doom can run on the kind of hardware that I have and still have better gameplay.
It must be the gameplay. Doom has enough.

Descent was not too far behind, but it was more abstract and is stuck in the one form of play. About the time you reach the 20'th map it is getting repetitive.

Doom can be manipulated into variations. Even without DEH mods it is still more flexible.

Share this post


Link to post
Sodaholic said:

Seriously, we have quadcore 64-bit CPUs, many GB of memory, and lightning fast storage drives such as SSDs.


Indeed we do but:

  • Each CPU core is at most 2x faster than the best single-core CPUs ever developed (for desktop, let's keep that at a 3.80 GHz Pentium 4 or an Athlon 64+ 3800). And nobody really got this whole "parallel programming" right for games, at least: they are mostly single-threaded affairs, still.
  • We have more RAM, but unfortunately, the speed of RAM didn't keep up with the multiplication of cores. So today you can buy an 8-core i7 CPU...too bad that RAM isn't actually 8x or even 16x times faster than the DDR or DDR2 used 10 years ago.
  • Having fast secondary storage hasn't been an issue since the days of UDMA, unless you still have to deal with insufficient RAM, and really need fast page swapping.
In any case, the power of individual CPU cores has hit a plateau/brickwall, at least for now, and you only see "additive" improvements, which however don't translate automatically into better systems. That's also part of the reason why you don't have this constant change in hardware requirements that you had during the 90s, where the CPU power gap more than doubled overnight with the introduction of the Pentium, and when in 1997 a Pentium 200 had 10x the power of a 486 DX/66 which was "the shit" just 3 years ago.

Woolie Wool said:

Rome: Total War: Alexander was a completely antiquated game when it came out,


Even WoW had a completely antiquated graphics engine but guess what, that didn't prevent it from becoming a massive hit.

Rome II looks perfectly fine to me


So it does to me, but is that an actual in-game screenshot taken with usable detail settings and in a realistic gameplay situation (in what tactical situation you face your own troops taking cover?), or just a prepared pose? Also, while the models themselves are obviously better than the older Rome...they are still at most Doom 3 or Battlefield 2 in quality. And I only see about two dozens of them on the screen. No Modern FPS would "fly" with that quality of enemies (compare e.g. Far Cry 3 and others). We also need to see what kind of AI an individual unit has in those games. Does it simply follow orders like "go there", "stand ground" and "fight back if attacked"? Is so, that's a totally different situation than a FPS.

E.g. in a game like Battlefield 1942, the main CPU hog was not the number of actors or 3D models visible: it was the percentage of CPU time dedicated to AI bots (!), which could even be set by the user (max 25%). That's another thing to consider: modern FPS have way more complex AI than Doom (even if we all might be inclined to disagree...) and spawning thousands or even "just" hundreds or even a few dozens of them at once, will be a bigger performance hit than the rendering itself. Even in Doom, the time dedicated to handling its simplistic AI in NUTS.WAD-like maps can easily exceed the rendering one.

So, it's really a vicious circle. To have better graphics, you need to cut down on active actors. To cut down on active actors without (?) sacrificing gameplay, you need to make each of them "smarter" and harder to defeat. But by doing so you also increase CPU hogging, other than GPU hogging, so you hope that the next CPU & GPU generation will allow you to beyond. But when those come out, players will have greater expectations, so there you go again....a 2x CPU power increase every 3 years is really not enough to give even Doom 3-quality visuals to Doom II Hell Revealed gameplay, sorry.

Woolie Wool said
But at any rate, scenarios where you see more than 10 or 12 monsters on screen in the original Doom games are exceedingly rare; horde gameplay is an invention of PWAD authors. Doom is not Serious Sam.


"Exceedingly rare" if you play it on anything under UV, maybe. Even E1 on UV can become pretty crowded. The left-hand door in E1M3, for example, just makes you wish you had access to a RL (if you didn't get it in E1M2 already). And let's not even speak of NM gameplay. Even the PSX version had more than 10 enemies on screen quite often.

Share this post


Link to post
Woolie Wool said:

But at any rate, scenarios where you see more than 10 or 12 monsters on screen in the original Doom games are exceedingly rare; horde gameplay is an invention of PWAD authors. Doom is not Serious Sam.

Credibility: all gone.

Share this post


Link to post
Maes said:

"Exceedingly rare" if you play it on anything under UV, maybe. Even E1 on UV can become pretty crowded. The left-hand door in E1M3, for example, just makes you wish you had access to a RL (if you didn't get it in E1M2 already). And let's not even speak of NM gameplay. Even the PSX version had more than 10 enemies on screen quite often.

8 monsters have line of sight to you when you open the door, and at most five would be on your screen at any one time because they come from two different directions. The only real fights where you have a huge throng of enemies in E1 that I can remember are a couple in E1M6, and E2/E3 in most cases had fewer monsters than E1, just tilted more towards the stronger types.

Doom II makes slight progress towards horde gameplay (map08 and map27 come to mind) but still far behind Punisher, and for the most part they preferred a few tough monsters placed in dangerous positions rather than swamping you with a huge wave of monsters. Horde gameplay was established by the time of Plutonia, but that was not made by Id Software, but by the Casali brothers, and it was long after the release of Doom II, when 486DX2 and Pentium processors had become much more common.

For sure, Doom can do it and do it very well but it wasn't really a part of the game's original design.

Share this post


Link to post

MAP16: 12 mancs, 18 cacs, and 36 imps teleport in when you go grab the blue skull key. It also has 25 imps in a small room, and 27 imps plus one rev in the exit area.

Share this post


Link to post
Gez said:

MAP16: 12 mancs, 18 cacs, and 36 imps teleport in when you go grab the blue skull key. It also has 25 imps in a small room, and 27 imps plus one rev in the exit area.


He'll still argue that you don't see more than 5 or 6 at a time...and that doing otherwise means that you play in the "wrong" way (e.g. circle-strafing the entire horde, which you're not supposed to do in 1994 Doom), and not in the "intended" way, e.g. running away, taking cover, fighting them one by one etc.

STOP PLAYING DOOM IN THE WRONG, NON-INTENDED WAY GUYS!

Share this post


Link to post

I think nowadays the biggest problem with FPS games is that they forget they are video games, and so include things that are pointless or exclude things that would be integral to other genres, foregoing fun and elegance for the sake of: 'OH THAT HAPPENS IN REAL LIFE SO REALISTIC SO GOOD'.

Just imagine a Mario game where you have to stop to eat every mushroom you pick up, or a Sonic game taking place in real-world environments. Oh wait, that did happen: It's called Sonic '06. And it was a disaster.

Share this post


Link to post

More like a Mario game where Mario gets winded after a short sprint and breaks his legs after landing from a height greater than 2 meters, and just sits there groveling and whimpering miserably in pain. Oh and he can die from a heart attack if you force him to run and jump for too long.

Share this post


Link to post
Woolie Wool said:

Horde gameplay was established by the time of Plutonia, but that was not made by Id Software, but by the Casali brothers, and it was long after the release of Doom II, when 486DX2 and Pentium processors had become much more common.

Plutonia does not establish anything like horde gameplay. Go 2 It is a lightweight version of Punisher, which predates Plutonia by a year. The rest of the megawad has quite low monster counts and focuses on strategic sniper placement and vicious ambushes.

On the other hand, Doom 2 is full of proto-hordes. It reaches your criterion of 12 monsters at once in map02, heh. Large packs of monsters just thrown at you without much refinement become prominent in map08, 09 and 10. Then Sandy goes one step further and sets the foundations of the slaughter genre in 16 and 18. Hell, even silly ol' Nirvana easily obliterates your "12 monsters" bar by setting you up in a 16 imp close combat ambush and the cavern is even much busier than that. Then in his every remaining E3 map Sandy uses at least one 10+ pig invasion, that's straight out of Serious Sam.

Doom 2 = Sandy Petersen explores hordes.

Share this post


Link to post

Well, it's pointless debating this with WW. He probably plays on HMP or lower difficulties only, or he will retort that even in cases of such proto-hordes you're not supposed to face them directly in stock maps, because those levels were not created with circle strafing and mouse + WASD controls in mind, which'd make the player much more efficient.

Share this post


Link to post

Nah, I kinda get what he means. The original games are certainly less slaughterish and overwhelming than what many people remember from the 90s when they played on a friend's computer with keyboard only, wondering what inhuman pr0 skillz they need to obtain to learn strafing properly.

But he's wrong with his initial remark when he says "Also horde gameplay is not one of Doom's core strengths...", because it doesn't matter that modern high count hordes weren't present in the original games. This community has clearly proven that horde gameplay is where Doom absolutely excels. The engine supports it and supports it well.

Share this post


Link to post

Not hating the Doomers but here goes my honest opinion.

Build engine games are way better IMO. Shadow Warrior, Blood, Duke 3D, Redneck Rampage; that's four totally different scenarios, settings, stories, and heroes I can think off the top of my head for ya and none of them suck; they actually have humor and are fun too (adults have to have fun you know). Doom engine does have Strife (RPG?); and some other FPS that hold their own pretty well probably, but Doom (all ID games?) seems to take itself too seriously. Painkiller was better; very fluid gameplay and perfect example of stupid simple gameplay IMO. Far Cry is another good one.

Funny thing is what I just noticed about Doom 3. Started playing original Half Life and Opposing Force expansion, and can't help but notice a severe similarity between them. Was Doom 3 trying to be Half Life? The Doom movie further enhances it beyond any perception or thought I originally had about this. There's no way in heck, even if it did freeze over, that you can say Doom 3 is not trying to copy the original Half Life game. For the record, Half Life 2 was a lot different than Doom 3. But guess what, Half Life 2 is a lot different than Half Life 1. (gee, wonder who was being creative...) I'm not even joking folks. Even the scripting is very similar. Let's see here... Scientists. Bathroom. Oh wait uh, they're scientists working on a huge portal experiment that goes haywire right? Oh yeah, there's gotta be a flashlight too! We won't have any outdoor areas so uhh... Right. Heck, Half Life 2 has become such an obstacle, we might as well make Resurrection of Evil expansion and throw some kind of gr@v!ty gun in there. Okay, Half Life 2 will be ours now! Yay, terrific. Did Half Life 1 copy original Doom?

The best thing that happened to Doom was Alien Vendetta; no joke. For some reason, that also seems very similar to Doom 3.

Think the only thing that makes Doom great, is the technology it pioneered. There was never any other software program (video game), as immersive as Doom. The potential for 3D FPS games was never as incredible as it was when Doom got released. Doom 3 is sort of similar, but it looks worse since many other FPS games were already released, or being released at the same time (and they were trying to be impressive FPS games rather than, technology). Doom 3 pioneered the use of shaders I think (though haze was the only directX9 effect and it was tacked on at the end, Doom 3 was visually stunning despite being developed around 64mb Geforce 3 hardware). It might've been the best thing for Carmack to leave ID (kind of feel sorry for him as he might not find his proper place in the game world with idiots).

Clonehunter said:The thing with Doom is that it has a great modding community that helps the game remain fresh in the long run.

Highly agree except the part about Doom. There's a lot of talent that goes around with custom wads and source ports that are way better than the original Doom.

Share this post


Link to post

I don't even know what's better: comparing settings/stories/heroes when it's mostly about gameplay, or saying that Painkiller's gameplay is superior.

Anyway, dis gon b gud.

Share this post


Link to post
Holering said:

Build engine games are way better IMO.


Share this post


Link to post

Holering said:
Build engine games are way better IMO. Shadow Warrior, Blood, Duke 3D, Redneck Rampage; that's four totally different scenarios, settings, stories, and heroes I can think off the top of my head for ya and none of them suck; they actually have humor and are fun too (adults have to have fun you know). Doom engine does have Strife (RPG?); and some other FPS that hold their own pretty well probably, but Doom (all ID games?) seems to take itself too seriously. Painkiller was better; very fluid gameplay and perfect example of stupid simple gameplay IMO. Far Cry is another good one.


Great another one that has that opinion. :) Blood is as gory if not more than Doom. And it's a lot more detailed and fun. :)

Share this post


Link to post
Holering said:

I'm not even joking folks. Even the scripting is very similar. Let's see here... Scientists. Bathroom. Oh wait uh, they're scientists working on a huge portal experiment that goes haywire right? Oh yeah, there's gotta be a flashlight too!

Are you aware that "scientists are working on teleportation experiments which go haywire and then monsters invade" is the plot of the original Doom? From your synopsis, the twist brought by Half Life to that plot is the inclusion of a bathroom and a flashlight in the story.

Doom 3 did copy Half Life's way of having the story be told through scripted events during the game, but then again, every other shooter ever since did the same thing.

But you really cannot say that Doom 3 ripped off Half Life's plot when Half Life's plot was ripped from Doom 1.

Share this post


Link to post

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×