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Zaldron

Bucket o´ Daemons vs Few monsters

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There´s a community reaction that always worried me, and that concern´s the "DooM horde" concept. Many, many of you people want waves after wave of demons. That´s not a bad thing, it works really good on AvP, specially in coop. But how many games today spawn that amount of enemies? Practically none.
The first reason why this happened while FPSs evolved was the polycount limit added to all engines in order to mantain consistent framerates.
But there´s also a second reason, something that few people realized : GAME DESIGN.

FPSs had evolved in terms of technollogy. 3D models were added to have 65536 rotations per axis, frame system to enhance the animation, later skeletal system, facial expressions, multiple skins, hit location, bolt-on objects, physics system, lip sync, and many other improvements. The reason for this? To make each one of those enemies unique, to attach to every model a different behavior, enhancing the experience.

What would DooM3 be with lots of monsters? To start, the new lighting system will be completely useless. Having perfect shadows has no meaning while your view´s hogged with 25 monsters, and your 32 channel output saturated with groans and screams.

Remember that DooM3 characters are really, really high-polycount, complete with per-pixel light&bumpmap recalculations. They´re slow to load, and no LOD will help that much. You can have picmipmapped the texture for an enemy that is far, but you can´t extract triangles from the model. Why? Imagine how jumpy and screwed the shadows will get. It doens´t matter that an enemy´s 60 meters from you, his shadow can be at your feet. It´s worser when the enemy gets in front of a light source, covering the room in darkness. If you LOD the model, the shadow will get all distorted at the borders.

For what I saw in the video, iD´s going for the opposite direction. Few monsters (compared to the DooMs, of course), stalking trought the bases, shrouded in darkness, and with excellent AIs.
This is the way to go... why kill 4 zig-zag drunken zombies with a shotgun when you can face a really fast, jumping Imp with climbing habilities and deadly claws, while all around you the shadows hide the surroundings and the base corridors send echoes of screams?

UPDATE : Nothing to do with the rest. I saw some comments from JC and Jim Dosé on /. Dima, that crap about Valve tech licensed is as fake as "my room´s clean".

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Guest DoomJustSender5

BUT WE NEED MULTUPLE ENEMYS NOT ONE THIS IS NOT ALIEN VS. PREDITOR WE NEED A HAPPY MEDIUM WHAT DEFINES DOOM IS THE EVIL HORDES YOUR ALONE ON THIS

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You sound like some idiotic 12th century monk. Just because a game that´s old to today standars have a feature doens´t mean that it should be on its sequel.

You VS the hordes of evil. You´re right about that, but why ALL of them must attack you? I mean, Hell has a really lame army if one Marine that is nothing more than a private can kill them all.

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Guest Dark_Fox

I'm go for a medium amout of enemies, I was rather dissapointied in one point on HL, the alin invasion did not feel like a alien infestation, there where more Hgrunts than aliens?!

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Right, medium is the way to go. Quake 1 and 2 had this. The game should feel like there´s a complete horde, but using scripted events of marine´s dying, and monsters running trough places where you can´t reach (like beyond windows).

30 - 50 enemies per level (if they´re done with excellent AI) will make a fantastic experience. Besides, the levels can be LAAARGE now, since the portal technollogy and the dyn lighting makes the level file much, much more smaller and easy to load.

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Guest DoomJustSender5
Zaldron said:

You sound like some idiotic 12th century monk. Just because a game that´s old to today standars have a feature doens´t mean that it should be on its sequel.

You VS the hordes of evil. You´re right about that, but why ALL of them must attack you? I mean, Hell has a really lame army if one Marine that is nothing more than a private can kill them all.

amen

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Guest DoomJustSender5

doom3 best have a kick ass level maker like duke 3d
and dialog character interaction and some friendlys that work with you like a coulple of marines from your squad but not too many

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Guest Dark_Fox
DoomJustSender5 said:

amen

Shut the fuck up you queer!

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A good mix would be the best. Not either Serious Sam style hordes or just a few monsters with excellent AI. Better: some levels with a Quake2 style medium amount, some special situations with a very few (or even just one) skilled enemies, and from time to time big hordes of monsters rolling over you. But the horde experience must be included, it´s just a part of Doom. Not all the way through (that would be braindead), but from time to time.

What you say about the new lighting system mustn´t mean that it would be useless to show monster hordes, because there is no reason to have that gloomy, spot-like lighting (like in the movie) ALL the time! Imagine some levels inside a space station, with brighter diffuse lighting, or some hell environments with diffuse lighting ---> that would look also amazing with the new engine, but it must not draw a dozen complicated shadows, you know what I mean?

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Zaldron said:

Stop with the "amen" fetish.

Who cares i want about 100 monsters per level.i want that some special areas there will be at least 10-20 demons in a room.

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Guest tropikal
Zaldron said:

You sound like some idiotic 12th century monk. Just because a game that´s old to today standars have a feature doens´t mean that it should be on its sequel.

You VS the hordes of evil. You´re right about that, but why ALL of them must attack you? I mean, Hell has a really lame army if one Marine that is nothing more than a private can kill them all.

one of the coolest things video games can do is make you feel like you're a part of something that is a lot bigger than you. like in quake2, when the single player started sucking was when i felt like the levels were designed for me, and didn't have the feeling like there was a war going on all around me and i have to do what i can to survive. this kind of vibe will be a crucial factor for me and my enjoyment of doom3. the times i get the urge to replay quake2 is when i want to get that feeling of being a part of something bigger than just my character and unfortunately only the first few levels really did that (with the ships flying over the sky and the cool backdrops out the windows, cool stuff like that). half-life was really cool except for the few times when it dropped this vibe too. some of the stages felt like they were designed around me and goals for me to accomplish (not near as fun) but every now and then a level would make you into a helpless peon trying to survive in this great conflict going on all around you.

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