If id had made Doom 3 in 1995...

...using the original Doom engine, following the tendencies shown going from Doom to Doom II, what kind of game with what kind of new features do you think it would have been?

- What new weapons, if any?
- What new monsters, if any?
- What plotline?
- What other new features?
etc.

Soundblock said:

following the tendencies shown going from Doom to Doom II,

That right there if it was the same engine.

It would be Final Doom, only that it actually came out in 1996.

I wonder how long will it be until people realize that id effectively ceased R&D on the idtech 1 engine, and even creative work on the original Doom franchise in 1994? It has only been rehashes and ports ever since (the actual Doom 3 and the upcoming "Doom 4" are completely different products). No Rest For The Living and the recent-ish console ports are the exception that proves the rule.

i would have like to see a grenade launcher, a flying hit scanner that resembles a small version of the r667 supreme fiend, a flying boss with aracnotron style atack and jumping monster like the quake fiend

Or it would be litterally Doom 64 :P

I always thought Doom3 could have been a very slightly updated engine - Freelook, jump, and deep water. It could have kept up with (or even trumped) Duke3D and other such contemporaries to the eyes of the masses, even if 2D sprites were starting to be seen as obsolete by then.

I would have hoped they'd hire Gregor Punchatz for another round of fresh beasties, rather than re-hash/re-work the existing cast. What on earth kind of news stuff he might have come up with though, boggles the imagination, especially once sprited and shoehorned into the Doom palette by the artists who knew how to do this best.

It would be Quake. Quake was even originally meant to become "Doom 3", or I think I've read about it somewhere here, but can't find source of this information now.

Also, there was an abandoned ZDoom wad with a goal to recreate Doom 3 as if it was made soon after Doom 2. Supposedly a lot of art/spritework went into the wad, and most of it was lost. I remember seeing an alpha version video, a wadsinprogress.info page and ZDoom forum page, but again, I forgot the name of the project and can't find a proof now.

If anybody recognizes what I'm talking about, please post links.

They would have farmed level design out to community authors and maybe let Shawn Green oversee quality control.

Engine would have been close to how it already is but maybe new line specials coding in as needed, new map specific triggers and maybe some changes similar to simple dehacked changes. It might not necessarily be 32 maps, I reckon more. With more secret levels too.

Not many resources would be applied to new monster art, probably just re-workings of the existing ones. Things along the lines of the plasma trooper, afrit and new spectre monsters is the extent I expect they'd be willing to go. Weapons the same - maybe one new weapon modification like a triple or quad shotgun, homing missiles, a BFG variant or the Unmaker. Maybe a new power up like a quad damage or a blast suit that prevents splash damage.

Mappers will be allowed to import any new textures within reason. I think levels would be longer, nastier and more elaborate with engine tricks as the authors try to outdo each other. Thematic consistency would be an after thought with the progression ending up something like Thy Flesh Consumed but playing more like Evilution or Requiem.

Or maybe it would be completely different, who knows.

Thrilling responses, people.

"It would be Final Doom"
"It would be Duke3d"
"It would be Doom64"
"It would be Quake"

I can see you guys really thought this through.

Going from Doom to Doom II, here's what's new:

- super shotgun
- megasphere
- chaingunner
- revenant
- mancubus
- arachnotron
- arch-vile
- pain elemental
- boss brain
- hell knight
(I'll ignore the Easter egg stuff.)

All this stuff has been analyzed in more details previously, but the gist is that the new weapon is one that rewards good footwork (it's most efficient if you run to shoot a monster in close quarter, then step back to dodge attacks while you wait for the gun to be reloaded), the new item is a one-stop-shop for fully replenishing health and armor (so you can go instantly from 1% health/0% armor to 200%/200%), and the new monsters, with the exception of what's essentially a nerfed baron, are there to bring different combat situations:
- chaingunner: undodgeable continuous fire, contrarily to other zombies who shoot and then walk around, the chaingunner forces you to seek cover
- revenant: homing missile, can't dodge that easily
- mancubus: spread missiles, meaning you can dodge a fireball just to dive in the other
- arachnotron: plasma spam
- arch-vile: original variant on hitscan attack, messes up with visibility, messes up with your controls when you get blown up, also revives slain enemies
- pain elemental: flood combat zone with lost souls
- boss brain: flood combat area with pretty much everything


What's the take away? Doom->Doom II made the game more arcade-like and more dynamic. This is also carried over in the level design, as Doom II emphasized gimmicks over a sense of place. Player has more firepower, can heal damage faster, but enemies are much more varied in their capabilities and attack pattern.

Based on that, a Doom III continuing the trend would have provided new stuff reinforcing these elements. Examples of stuff that could have been imagined:
- damage boost powerup (like Quake's quad damage) which reward player rushing in combat to take as many enemies as possible during the short time the powerup is active
- inversely, something that reduces damage the player takes (or give a % chance not to take damage at all) could fit the same function of inciting the player to rush into combat to take advantage of that protection before it runs out
- armor kits giving +50 armor instead of just +1, for when a megasphere would be too much
- newer, weirder monster niches. Doom II's roster seems complete enough generally, but I could see something like Hexen's afrit to provide a flying monster between the lost soul and the cacodemon with an attack pattern different from the imp in that it can come from above, making good use of the increasing use of vertical level design. I could also see something kinda like Heretic's iron lich in so far as it's a monster with three different attacks with different effects on the battlefield (one is straightforward, another can stab you in the back after you dodged it, and the third forces you to focus on dodging it for a while if you don't want to be sent into the air, losing movement control and becoming disorientated). The different attacks, however, would probably be more telegraphed (maybe being always repeated in a sequence instead of random, or maybe a different buildup for each). Lastly, I imagine there would be some fast monsters that shoot while moving.

Doomkid said:

It could have kept up with (or even trumped) Duke3D and other such contemporaries to the eyes of the masses, even if 2D sprites were starting to be seen as obsolete by then.

Considering, some of Build's features aren't available to Doom, even on source ports, I doubt that idtech could have been a match in 1995. id would have to code its own portal render engine, if they wanted to. Or they could license Build, but that seems even more unlikely, and it wasn't well known before Duke3d anyway.
Obviously, they opted for writing a full 3d engine and made Quake instead.

Actually, I wonder how Doom would be, if Ken Silverman were an id employee and he had coded Build for Doom back then. It would have the same music, graphics, monsters, and they probably still would have ditched any role playing properties, I think. But there are a lot more option for the map geometry and even moving parts. Maybe some ideas from the Doom bible would have survived as Build could handle them, like multi story elevators and cranes.

Doomkid said:

I always thought Doom3 could have been a very slightly updated engine - Freelook, jump, and deep water. It could have kept up with (or even trumped) Duke3D and other such contemporaries to the eyes of the masses, even if 2D sprites were starting to be seen as obsolete by then.

If such an engine was released in 1995, sure, it would keep Doom competitive for a few years to come -the improvements required would be relatively minor-. Let's even assume that id released a complete equivalent to Boom already in 1995, along with new levels and resources to go with it. How long would Doom stay mainstream then?

There would 3-barreled, very short shotgun that would shoot 59 pellets every 2.5 seconds. Damage around 550-700. Then people would say that this weapon is bullshit and the original SSG is way better.

LogicDeLuxe said:

id would have to code its own portal render engine, if they wanted to.

I think portals are overrated. How much are they actually used in commercial Build games?

And I mean in the way that's not possible in Doom, obviously.

I think Doom would have followed a Mortal Kombat trajectory. The third installment would have been a good-looking shark-jumper, crowded with too many features and characters. Years later, people would look back and say Doom 2 was the series' peak.

I'm picturing a cross between Brutal Doom and ROTT. Stacks of features. Multiple characters, wacky powerups and weapons that aren't really used in a meaningful way. Probably some new architectural elements, like environmental hazards.

I wonder if they would have been influenced by Hexen and made Doom 3's visual design more cohesive and polished. More careful use of color, more unified textures, better-drawn characters, use of irregular decorations to break up the polygonal environments, etc.

40oz said:

Thrilling responses, people.

"It would be Final Doom"
"It would be Duke3d"
"It would be Doom64"
"It would be Quake"

I can see you guys really thought this through.

Anything wrong with it? These replies actually do carry information, because said games exist and have known specifics and features that differ from / extend / surpass Doom, which you could expect to appear among hypothetical Doom 3's hypothetical innovations.

40oz said:

Thrilling responses, people.

"It would be Final Doom"
"It would be Duke3d"
"It would be Doom64"
"It would be Quake"

I can see you guys really thought this through.

Well, if we told you that it would be EXACTLY like the 2004 Doom 3, would you believe us? Besides, assuming it still kept a software renderer, how much could the state-of-the-art in that kind of FPS really be pushed, until developers/publishers (ya know, the ones that actually have to make money off the thing) decided that it wasn't viable anymore?

And to put the final nail in the coffin, there were some post-Doom II releases, with id's blessing and (partial) involvement. Notice a pattern about their features? Correct, they are stuck at Doom II level, with the only major exceptions being platform-specific ports like the PSX or N64 one, and then the changes only affected the rendering/sound, not so much the gameplay (actually, console versions in particular were all about downsizing, not expanding).

The above being said, it would've been nice to see an official desktop version of Doom 64 back in 1997, even without the N64 visuals. Just the resources, and a slightly updated source port (though a MS-DOS version would've been unlikely. Doom95 (gasp!) would be a more probable candidate...unless Killough stepped in and pimped Boom for this job, but that was in 1998.

Interestingly, Carmack has actually talked about this very scenario!

I watched a talk from Carmack where he mentions that in retrospect Quake was too much of a jump forward. Instead of changing everything when moving to Quake and having to scale back parts of it to finally get it out the door, he thinks it would have been better to keep the rendering engine more of less the same as Doom and instead focus on the networking part. They had plans for perpetual servers and other things that were pretty sci-fi for the the mid 90s but they had to cut it back a bit for Quake. QuakeWorld was closer to their goal but still not quite there - I think they were dreaming about something closer to an MMO.

What would the game have actually been like? Who knows - I'm envisioning some kind of Doom World (heh) with perpetual servers you could log in to and join the battle against the demon hordes. Maybe something half-way between co-op and MMOs - a lengthy campaign across different levels that would take a few weeks to play through before it resets again.

Here is the talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaN4wUii0T0

I think I only got through half of it (I should really get back to it). That dude sure can talk...

Da Werecat said:

I think portals are overrated. How much are they actually used in commercial Build games?

And I mean in the way that's not possible in Doom, obviously.

You understand that every two-sided line is a portal in Build games, right? That is the way a portal engine works. Everytime vertices are moved at runtime, it is using portals in a way Doom can not, due to its restrictive BSP tree. Polyobjects can overcome this limitation to a certain degree, but they are still very restrictive.

Overlapping sectors are another benefit in Build games Doom can not have, also due to its restrictive BSP tree.

Here is a video where someone is coding a portal engine from scratch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQYsFshbkYw
It explains the way it works very well.

LogicDeLuxe said:

You understand that every two-sided line is a portal in Build games, right?

You realize that two-sided lines are possible in the Doom engine, right?

I know how a portal engine works. The question is: do you actually need it that badly to make an impressive mid-90s game? Portals aren't everything. Besides, portal-based engines don't even have a monopoly on room-over-room architecture.

Portals? Had them all along, we just didn't know (?) about it.

it would be cool to have a doom 3 the way id could have done in the 90's community project :)

i would be willing to make the new monsters, as long as they are monsters and not boring ass zombies. i wonder if it would be possible to contact punchatz to see if he has any ideas of creature design he would like to share with the community

If id had made DOOM 3 in 1995, it would be simply the Classic Doom (The same engine ,Quality ... etc)

Not to be overly cynical, but the final product would have been mediocre, at best. Releasing it just a year after Doom 2 would pretty much guarantee very few changes to the engine and very few new assets.

An excuse to post these again...

Maybe a refinement of the engine and a focus on better sprite animations? And accounting for mouse+KB skilled players. I like to dream it would be something like 3DGE with the Doom4Ever mod.

If ID made Doom 3 in 1995, It would be called Doom 95, pun intended.

Then if they released the source, we would basically all be based off Doom 3. It would also likely be a Windows/Mac OS X only venture also.

raymoohawk said:

it would be cool to have a doom 3 the way id could have done in the 90's community project :)

i would be willing to make the new monsters, as long as they are monsters and not boring ass zombies. i wonder if it would be possible to contact punchatz to see if he has any ideas of creature design he would like to share with the community

Well, I shot him a line for the hell of it, asking for a piece of his mind on the issue. He's "kinda busy" but check this out.

Punchatz: "thought I'd share something I was moving around my house when I got your text"

https://scontent-ams3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpt1/v/t34.0-12/12083724_10156136030805187_928359049_n.jpg?oh=51f46dd484ffc29d236434e7c14f3853&oe=56180237

EDIT: the image link broke - hope you saved a local copy

Poor thing's seen better days.