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Doomkid

CoD was made by DOOM lovers/mappers?

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Doing my typical browse-old-shit-in-the-archive run, and figured this was worth sharing.

Mackey McCandlish - Lead designer, Modern Warfare 2. Old Doom stuff: http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?search=1&field=author&word=mccandlish&sort=time&order=asc&page=1

Kevin Worrel - Lead Designer at Treyarch (CoD company). Old Doom stuff: http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?search=1&field=author&word=kevin+worrel&sort=time&order=asc&page=1

Brian Glines - Designer at Treyarch, previously at Ion Storm. Old Doom stuff: http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?search=1&field=author&word=Brian+Glines&sort=time&order=asc&page=1

So, as much as the average Doomer hates CoD, they gotta realise those guys actually love DOOM, and CoD was heavily inspired by it. Just a tidbit of interesting food for thought.

EDIT: Brian Glines probably has the best maps of the bunch, at least for deathmatch. Mackey did a map in Momento Mori, but his other stuff, while ambitious, hasn't aged well. Kevin Worrel was obviously just learning the basics of design back then, but this is still an interesting glimpse into what these guys could do back the golden days. They should get back to their roots with the next CoD game. (Yeah, like that will ever happen!)

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Doomkid92 said:

So, as much as the average Doomer hates CoD, they gotta realise those guys actually love DOOM, and CoD was heavily inspired by it.

Just because they like Doom and mapped for it back in the day doesn't necessarily mean that they based CoD on it in any way. Doom and CoD are both designed with completely different philosophies. Doom is about minimalism, setting your own pace, freedom and exploration. CoD is about setpieces, a predetermined (often slow) pace, and forcing the player along a single, prescripted path. And that's just the level design, the gameplay mechanics are also extremely different. Reloading, iron-sights, regen health, no armor pickups (afaik), headshots. It's not even remotely the same game.

If there is any inspiration, I'm not seeing it. No jumping and sometimes-centered weapons don't count.

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Very good points Sodaholic. I suppose I assumed that because I had this vision of 15 year olds making Doom maps, and being like "You know what'd be cool in doom? Sniper rifles, and storyline cutscenes, and if you were part of the army, and..." and so on.

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Sodaholic: "Inspiration" isn't the same thing as "imitation." Modern metal bands might be inspired by Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden because that's what they grew up listening to, but doesn't mean the music they make is similar. The creators of Call of Duty surely played a ton of Doom and Quake in their formative years, so of course it counts as an inspiration. Hell, without Wolf3D and Doom the FPS genre probably would have ended up far different. Consider Doom invented Deathmatches, for example.

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Nomad said:

Consider Doom invented Deathmatches, for example.


Um no. That title would go to MIDI Maze from 1987.





Have a nice day! :)

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It's worth pointing out that the Modern Warfare 2 map Karachi is actually a cut-down version of a Counter-Strike map that one of the devs made, way back in the day.

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Danfun64 said:

Um no. That title would go to MIDI Maze from 1987.


But John Romero coined the word Death Match.

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Maybe MIDI Maze did it "first," but how many people do you think it inspired versus how many Doom inspired? I mean Battlezone could probably be considered the first first person POV shooter, but it didn't really become a "genre" until Wolf3D (not to mention the id guys did Hovertank and Catacombs even before that). Let's not split hairs here--Doom was most likely most modern developers' first experience with Deathmatch.

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lets just say that while Midi Maze started deathmatch, Doom popularized it.

There, happy?

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To be fair, in the 90s Doom modding basically was your CV to get into most game companies - especially if they wanted to make an FPS. I think it's probably more accurate to say that anybody interested in making games probably knows of Doom and odds are they'll find out about modding it. It's an easy thing to pick up, so people will give it a go. Most of the ones in industry don't stick at Doom though, because they've got their jobs. They probably don't "love" Doom - it was just something they did back in the day when everybody was doing it. They picked up a bit of knowledge and interest and then applied it to newer things. It's why I have a degree in Computer Games Software Development, so I'm familiar with how the story goes. I just didn't do the right thing to get in the games industry once I'd graduated.

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Superluigieth1 said:

*edited Justin Beiber cover picture that will likely be removed when I wake up tomorrow morning*


Um...what?

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Too bad CoD is nowhere near as good as Doom. But, yeah, Doom influenced a lot of people.

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Phobus said:

To be fair, in the 90s Doom modding basically was your CV to get into most game companies - especially if they wanted to make an FPS. I think it's probably more accurate to say that anybody interested in making games probably knows of Doom and odds are they'll find out about modding it. It's an easy thing to pick up, so people will give it a go. Most of the ones in industry don't stick at Doom though, because they've got their jobs. They probably don't "love" Doom - it was just something they did back in the day when everybody was doing it. They picked up a bit of knowledge and interest and then applied it to newer things. It's why I have a degree in Computer Games Software Development, so I'm familiar with how the story goes. I just didn't do the right thing to get in the games industry once I'd graduated.


Im trying to get into the industry. What was the right thing to do?

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From the people I've spoken with; make something. Most / all game dev studios have a requirement where they won't hire anyone who doesn't have 2+ years experience on a shipped product. I won't try to pretend I'm in the industry or anything, so take it for what it's worth, although I have had the luxury of actually meeting some people who work for some well known AAA studios.

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Have confidence in the portfolio you built up at uni and actually apply for games programmer jobs like 3-4 of my mates did, in my case. They're all in the industry doing mobile games or tools for apps and games with the same degree as me (hell, I actually scored higher than three of them).

I pussied out and just do IT stuff instead. Pays just as well, probably less stressful and probably less fulfilling.

For you... I dunno - you'll need experience with modern engines and tools if you're after games design, otherwise learn programming. Either way, you'll want a portfolio and to make plenty of relevant applications. Be prepared to start at the bottom of the pile of you've not made the next huge thing out of your bedroom though.

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Influential game. If I'm not mistaken, CoD is still o this day based on an extremely and heavily modified Quake III engine. Probably a lot of Quake fans too, even if the games are totally different.

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Clonehunter said:

Influential game. If I'm not mistaken, CoD is still to this day based on an extremely and heavily modified Quake III engine. Probably a lot of Quake fans too, even if the games are totally different.

Yep, if you look on the fine print of CoD game boxes, they always list a copyright to ID for the engine.

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I find it funny how people say that the latest James Bond games are CoD clones when they in fact used the same ID Tech engines even during the XBOX/PS2/Gamecube game gen, they did eventually add similar features however.

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Ragnor said:

McCandlish also worked on Hell to Pay.


Neat, I just played his One Must Fall TC "Doom must Fall", (http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?file=themes/omf/dmf-sp.zip)

and though it's just one level, it definitely reminded me of Hell 2 Pay, it wasn't as good, but it was cool fighting the OMF bots in Doom.

EDIT: OH, even though the above release is from 2000, the original TC is from 1995, and it had different maps, it was split into 3 downloads though, with vanilla's complex installation: http://www.doomworld.com/idgames/index.php?search=1&field=filename&word=1dmf&sort=time&order=asc&page=1

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