Doom 64 on Steam petition?

So I think Doom 64 is the best Doom ever made. It has everything I want from a Doom game. Amazing level design and visuals and great combat...only problem is that it never came on PC which is A DAMN SHAME. Now that we have the excellent Doom 64 EX port I think it's time we finally got it "officially" on PC. What does the creator of the port think? So why would Bethesda/Id/The Doom Community even want this in the first place? Well here are a number of reasons:

1. It could be an excellent promotion for Doom 4. The Doom 4 trailer video is doing pretty good at 1.600.000 views but maybe this would make it even more popular.

2. It would introduce new players to Doom. A lot of people have played Doom and have forgotten about it or they simply want something new. Doom 64 being on Steam could mean an influx of new players on Doomworld which means more people to play our WADs and maybe even more mappers. It would also show people that Doom is also about atmosphere and tactical thinking and not JUST non-stop action.

3. It might create a demand for Doom 64 maps. I think Doom 64 has a LOT of very good resources and has a lot of potential for amazing maps.

What do you guys think? We could get a petition running and see where it goes. If it gets enough views we could spam the link to it on Id's or Pete Hines Twitter. Pete Hines is pretty active on his twitter and answers quite often.

Here is a link to the port. https://doom64ex.wordpress.com/

While it would be great to see an official blessing for Doom 64 EX, given what happened with Powerslave EX I'd be wary of shoving it in the IP holders' faces, for fear of it getting cease-and-desist'd into oblivion.

esselfortium said:

While it would be great to see an official blessing for Doom 64 EX, given what happened with Powerslave EX I'd be wary of shoving it in the IP holders' faces, for fear of it getting cease-and-desist'd into oblivion.

Well, all the creator did was made the port. You still need the WAD file for it and you create it by getting the ROM and you need a cartridge for it (at least officially). Besides, why would Bethesda turn down free money? The creator did all the work for them.

It would be neat to see, but the community has already done a fantastic port job that is everything DOOM 64 was, plus all of todays source port features. Think I'm just happy for that itself.

esselfortium said:

given what happened with Powerslave EX

I'm trying to imagine the thought process that lead to that, and all I can come up with is "Ohh, looks like there are literally tens of people who'd really like to play this obscure FPS, why don't we stop them from doing that and invest money in a questionable reboot no one will buy?".

Unless they have the source code and merely want to port the game themselves for a quick buck.

It would be a better idea to get it in a pre order or something similar for the new Doom, otherwise, nobody would play it. Most of the doom's currently on Steam are just bad emulators that require a sourceport to play decently on modern systems.

Bad idea, and very unlikely in any case. When Midway went under, all their IP was bought by Time Warner. So at this point, the portions of Doom 64 owned by Midway would be buried in that company's portfolio somewhere.

Meanwhile ZeniMax and Bethesda are fairly loathe to work outside of companies they don't wholly own; they cut off all the old style arrangements id Software used to make getting stuff like Doom ported to all the current systems and handle everything themselves. The chance of these companies negotiating a deal over a 1997 game that might make chump change on Steam while using an open source port neither one of them approved of in the first place is slim pickens.

...DOOM 64 DESERVES MORE LOVE.

Doom 64 is one my favorite games of the entire series, but it is unfortunately a rather obscure title. But I suppose if Noah Ark 3d or whatever it's called can make it to steam, than I suppose Doom 64 can as well.

The first 2 Doom games are on steam, so I dont know what makes Doom 64 so special that it would introduce new players t doom when Doom, Doom II and even Doom 3 are already on steam.

esselfortium said:

given what happened with Powerslave EX

Oh, is that what happened? Fuckin' dumb. :\

What I want to know is why Kaiser took a risk and included the game data, rather than tools to rip it like his previous reimplementations.

Eh, at least I downloaded it when I had the chance. I stopped looking for my Powerslave disk the moment I noticed the file size of the EX version.

Didn't this guy also make the Strife Steam port? If so, I don't see why Bethesda wouldn't put it on Steam.

DooM_RO said:

Didn't this guy also make the Strife Steam port? If so, I don't see why Bethesda wouldn't put it on Steam.

The Strife IP wasn't as complicated; Night Dive Studios were able to either buy or license it so it could go ahead. As Quasar has explained, the legal rights to the Doom 64 IP is much more complex. Night Dive did try to resurrect another game with a similarly complex ownership issue and gave up: http://www.kotaku.com.au/2015/02/the-sad-story-behind-a-dead-pc-game-that-cant-come-back/

Jon said:

The Strife IP wasn't as complicated; Night Dive Studios were able to either buy or license it so it could go ahead. As Quasar has explained, the legal rights to the Doom 64 IP is much more complex. Night Dive did try to resurrect another game with a similarly complex ownership issue and gave up: http://www.kotaku.com.au/2015/02/the-sad-story-behind-a-dead-pc-game-that-cant-come-back/

Doesn't Zenimax still own the Ip? I mean I understand Midway had a contract with Id to make it for them but how does that make it belong to Midway?

DooM_RO said:

Doesn't Zenimax still own the Ip? I mean I understand Midway had a contract with Id to make it for them but how does that make it belong to Midway?

We don't know who owns what, we can only speculate, but it's highly likely that Midway (or whoever own their assets) have rights to some aspects of Doom 64.

Jon said:

We don't know who owns what, we can only speculate, but it's highly likely that Midway (or whoever own their assets) have rights to some aspects of Doom 64.

Doubtful. Midway was contracted to make the game for id. As in "We pay you to make the game, we hold all the rights, you walk away at the end of this."

Still very likely Zenimax has those rights.

Guy I worked with years back, Anthony Wilson, worked alongside the DOOM 64 team at midway as he was doing development for a few different games there. I'm not sure he was assigned to that specific project, but he knew quite a few of the midway team that did. I'll message him and see what he says or what info he might be able to get.

:D

[/trollpost]

The same thing is going to happen to these Steam-only apps one day. You buy an encrypted blob, and depend on a company to decrypt it for you. Until they either go out of business, or simply quit supporting the game.

At that point, there will be no way to decrypt the blob, and the game will be gone. Yes, maybe they will provide a tool when that day comes. Or maybe they will not be able to, for legal, or other agreements.

Good luck getting your money back, and good luck ever seeing the game run again.

As an alternative, they could do what they do for, say 1 year, and collect the bulk of money for the new title. But, once sales drop off, they should remove the DRM stuff, and just sell it like any other product.

Otherwise, you're buying a promise, to be redeemed during their bankruptcy. Unless I'm missing something.

kb1 said:

At that point, there will be no way to decrypt the blob, and the game will be gone.

Not with the powers of vodka-powered zero-day Russian warez d00dz ;-)

I would love that, providing any legal issues can be sorted out. You make some good points OP, and I would love to seem new maps for Doom 64 maybe even a Megawad. But from what I hear mapping for Doom 64 is a lot more difficult than for the original Doom games, and that may be partly why we don't get as many new maps for Doom 64 at the moment.

Maes said:

Not with the powers of vodka-powered zero-day Russian warez d00dz ;-)

If what I hear is true, and they did a piss-poor job, then, yeah. But if they know their stuff, it could get ugly.

Bottom line is, eventually it has to get into machine language form, to execute, so it can be copied, and made to run regardless, but personally, I'm getting tired of that BS.

Anyway, they should release the source, and let us do the port, and they can sell the WAD. Kaiser already has a nice emulation port going, right?

I'd prefer if Zenimax/Bethesda not know of Doom64 EX's existence. I'd also appreciate if this won't be mentioned to Pete Hines either.


Edit: Didn't realized this was an old thread... ugh.

Kaiser said:

Edit: Didn't realized this was an old thread... ugh.

It's not that old, it's not like you necro'd it or anything...

Not every single fucking PC/video game in the history of forever needs to be on Steam. kb1 makes a good argument in that regard, that and I'd like to see services such as GOG have a more extensive library so Steam isn't holding this huge-ass monopoly of titles. When companies have a huge chunk of the market like that they tend to make/roll out decisions that are pretty pants-on-head and hurt/fuck over the consumer (i.e. the monetized mod debacle of April).

Personally, I'm happy with Doom 64 as is.

EDIT: Trying to type at four minutes til midnight is hard 'cause I keep leaving shit out of this post. Whoopsiedoodle. :u

Nems said:

Not every single fucking PC/video game in the history of forever needs to be on Steam. kb1 makes a good argument in that regard, that and I'd like to see services such as GOG have a more extensive library so Steam isn't holding this huge-ass monopoly of titles.

Personally, I'm happy with Doom 64 as is.

I strongly agree with you on this.

Nems said:

I'd like to see services such as GOG have a more extensive library so Steam isn't holding this huge-ass monopoly of titles.

GOG is a little too picky about what goes on their service for anything to be fixed here. Steam not only has a larger user base, but makes it much easier to get on the store. I'm not saying GOG being picky is necessarily bad, but just that making statements that sound like "more people should release on GOG" is a little naive.

That'd be pretty swell but I doubt it'd happen.

Doom 64 deserves not to be forgotten seeing as it's the true Doom 3.

Nobody is "forgetting" Doom 64 though. The number of LPs and reviews of it on YouTube have grown exponentially just in the past couple of years, and largely thanks to Kaiser's efforts.

It has also been run at nearly every GDQ event for the past 3 or 4 years, and is due to be raced at the upcoming SGDQ. If you haven't heard of Doom 64 and consider yourself any kind of retro gamer, you are a shameful one at this point.

We don't need any more "help" from people throwing the stuff we do at companies on our behalf so that they can turn around and make threats or force us to monetize it in ways that do not benefit us.

Please let this horrid idea die.

SlashBane said:

That'd be pretty swell but I doubt it'd happen.

Doom 64 deserves not to be forgotten seeing as it's the true Doom 3.

Sequentially speaking, its technically DOOM #64.