Do you ever get to fight more than one enemy at a time

I've seen several doom 2016 videos so far, every one showing a sequence of battles with a single enemy (with impressive graphics and enemy ai). I really would like to see some battles with several monsters at once to see how the fight plays out. Is such footage available?

Multiple monster battles is an aspect of 2d engine doom2 that I really enjoy. These battles requires more decisions by player on order to take out enemies. The randomness in enemy movement and actions and infighting rules leads to varied battle outcomes as the battle plays out differently each time.

Multiple monster battles is an aspect of games that disappeared with the introduction of 3d engines, quake, quake2, doom3 by id. and my primary disappointment with those games (in spite of their graphics improvements). I was hoping the doom 2016 engine might have improved matters so we could have a return to larger rooms full of enemies.

When I raised this question back in the quake and quake2 days I was told that the complexity of the 3d engine and enemy models meant that they simply could not throw that many monsters against a player at a decent frame rate. I would have thought that improvements in graphics cards and 3d engine development would have made that problem go away. So has this limitation gone away? And if so why aren't we seeing multiple monster fights? Or am I just watching the wrong videos?

You're not fighting 20 enemies at a time, but the entire game is filled with multi-monster mashes, from encountering two Pinkies and a Hell Razer, to a couple of Mancubi and Cacodemons giving you trouble while a Revenant and a Hellknight tumble about. You're not fighting absolute hordes and throves of them that you could get stuck on like in the originals, sure, but the game still promotes enemy variety and pattern recognition like the old days.

Also infighting still exists, it's just hard to pull off and not an instant flip-out on eachother if one manages to damage another a little.

Umm, several demons/possessed are attacking you at once in every video I have seen.

I've seen multiple demons gibbed by a rocket launcher/barrel explosion, seen 8+ enemies vaporised by the BFG as well. Don't see how you came to the conclusion you fight "one enemy at a time?"

FreddBoy, could link to one of those videos please, every video on youtube I've seen shows single encounters, including the official footage. I'd love to be proven wrong so I can rush out and buy the game. I can post those single enemy encounter links if you want.

RikohZX thanks for that info, it sounds promising. I don't understand why the footage I've seen so far isn't showing these battles.

Last night (on Ultra Violence) I encountered an area where I was facing about a half dozen imps, 3 Hell Razers, a couple Revenants, 2 Hell Knights, 2 Barons of Hell and 1 Mancubus before I could move on with the level.

The aggressive AI makes it challenging enough without needing tens of enemies.

tmorrow said:

FreddBoy, could link to one of those videos please, every video on youtube I've seen shows single encounters, including the official footage. I'd love to be proven wrong so I can rush out and buy the game. I can post those single enemy encounter links if you want.

RikohZX thanks for that info, it sounds promising. I don't understand why the footage I've seen so far isn't showing these battles.

If you're sticking to pre-release stuff and trying not to spoil yourself on the game, a lot of the official footage sucks. Big time. It's mainly the singleplayer stream stuff from a couple weeks ago, via IGN and Gamespot as well as that one GTX 1080 demonstration video, that really show what the game's actually like.

RikohZX said:

If you're sticking to pre-release stuff and trying not to spoil yourself on the game, a lot of the official footage sucks. Big time. It's mainly the singleplayer stream stuff from a couple weeks ago, via IGN and Gamespot as well as that one GTX 1080 demonstration video, that really show what the game's actually like.

It really doesn't do much justice. Especially later levels stuff gets pretty wild with multiple enemies of various types keeping you moving.

we afre too much accustomed to the megawad numbers of demons

I've only gotten through the first couple of missions and every single area had multiple enemies coming at you. They're challenging enough that you don't need 20 at a time.

Many thanks for the feedback guys and for correcting my initial perspective on the game.

I was able to find a video (a youtube review) showing some multiple monster encounters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0aOcRjeH7A

In summary there are indeed many multiple monster battles in doom 2016, but of a much smaller scale than is typical of doom 2, i.e. rooms of around 5-10 monsters is typical and almost always less than 20. The improvement in monster ai more than compensates for the lower number of monsters to maintain an adrenaline pumping challenge.

I would like to see what the doom community comes up with on the editing scene using snapmap. Perhaps we'll see how far the game can be pushed in terms of multiple monster encounters and how readily good doom players can handle the challenge.

tmorrow said:

I would like to see what the doom community comes up with on the editing scene using snapmap. Perhaps we'll see how far the game can be pushed in terms of multiple monster encounters and how readily good doom players can handle the challenge.

SnapMap is extremely restrictive/limited, so I doubt it. The max number of active monsters is 12. (Thanks, consoles.)

chubz said:

SnapMap is extremely restrictive/limited, so I doubt it. The max number of active monsters is 12. (Thanks, consoles.)

[citation needed]

chubz said:

SnapMap is extremely restrictive/limited, so I doubt it. The max number of active monsters is 12. (Thanks, consoles.)

Unless one of the updates to SnapMap (still wonder when those will start popping up) at some point allows for tags to seperate PC and Console maps (maybe even just have it be a tag that gives a warning saying this goes beyond the normal limits of snapmap, and may not run that well on your console (if they are using a console to play the game)).

LittleBurger said:

Unless one of the updates to SnapMap (still wonder when those will start popping up) at some point allows for tags to seperate PC and Console maps (maybe even just have it be a tag that gives a warning saying this goes beyond the normal limits of snapmap, and may not run that well on your console (if they are using a console to play the game)).

That is not remotely how consoles work. "Not run well" means "not at all" as they have no swap space. That's even assuming RAM is even the problem as the game has plenty of times thrown 20+ monsters at you in a room. Hence the [citation needed] earlier.

Edward850 said:

[citation needed]

It's extremely easy to test. Just pick a large piece, place 6 zombies in each of the four corners, and play. Only 12 will ever be visible at a time. The others won't actually spawn until existing ones have been killed to make room for them.

I did that, and that doesn't tell me if it's some hypothetical console limit or a network entity limit, and since the campaign proves otherwise that tends to suggest it's a networking limit.

Edward850 said:

I did that, and that doesn't tell me if it's some hypothetical console limit or a network entity limit, and since the campaign proves otherwise that tends to suggest it's a networking limit.

I understand how you came to that conclusion based on the campaign, but I don't believe even for a second this is a network-related issue.

Okay, then what else is it supposed to be? If it's demonstrably not RAM, CPU or GPU as the campaign proves, then the last logical option is network which is the only thing the campaign does not have.

Edward850 said:

Okay, then what else is it supposed to be? If it's demonstrably not RAM, CPU or GPU as the campaign proves, then the last logical option is network which is the only thing the campaign does not have.

My assumption is that they wanted to place a hard limit to prevent players from getting crazy and throwing in a ton of monsters, which in turn could tank consoles and weaker PCs. Although it's true that there are sometimes more than 12 monsters at a time in the campaign, that doesn't mean they ever specifically abided by the campaign's numbers, either. SnapMap was co-developed with another studio, after all--a studio that wasn't affiliated with the campaign in any way what-so-ever.

What you said made absolutely 0 sense and is not how programming works. They may be different studios but it's the exact same rendering and AI.

Edward850 said:

What you said made absolutely 0 sense and is not how programming works. They may be different studios but it's the exact same rendering and AI.

I never said anything about rendering or AI. I'm talking monster limits. What I'm saying is Escalation Studios, who developed SnapMap under id's guidance, most likely found 12 to be a good number for monsters: Enough to produce an intense battle, but not enough to hurt frame rates.

So then what does that have to do with consoles?

Edward850 said:

So then what does that have to do with consoles?

Consoles were the target platform, since maps made on PC must also work on consoles. That's why we're stuck with console limits even on PC, despite powerful rigs clearly being capable of supporting more monsters, maps with more props and rooms, etc.

But you just established that it wasn't a console limit at all.

Edward850 said:

But you just established that it wasn't a console limit at all.

Must have missed that part.

I haven't played the game but since this is just speculation, I don't feel like I need to in order to respond. I see two hypotheticals here:

id programmed "game modes", the campaign and snapmap levels being tow different game modes. In snapmap, there is a limit to the number of active monsters in play at any one time. This limit is twelve. The so campaign doesn't have this restriction.

id programmed the game with a hard limit on active monsters. In the sp campaign its idk let's say 30, while snapmap this limit is set to 12 for whatever reason.

So clearly, it being a network issue (whatever that would entail) is not the only answer. And it certainly is " how programming works ".

sudo459 said:

So clearly, it being a network issue (whatever that would entail) is not the only answer.

Except you haven't actually presented anything to the contrary. If you want to suggest an alternative to the networking limit, you need to suggest something else that's supposed to be limited.

sudo459 said:

And it certainly is " how programming works ".

My job is programming. And while yes the best I can give is an educated guess, it really would be a damn good one, wouldn't it?

my xbox one ran all of the single player very well, even when there were alot of monsters. I Think edward is right. Hopefully we can see this upped a little bit, it also might be a rendering thing, as it seems some of the bigger monsters take more to run then the smaller ones, if this is the case hopefully we can see an update that allows more of the small monsters if some of the bigger monsters arnt present. at least a bit more flexability. oh and fyi chubs most people don't have a pc that is as strong as current gen consoles so even if they were just going for pc it would be silly to make the game apeshit to run. All of id's games have taken a big stance on having lower end machines play their games.

You shouldn't be a scrub and judge the game off of shitty videos, OP. This game has no shortage of demons to fight.

That sucks that the consoles bogged the game like that. It's incredibly obvious that that's the case. The PS4 and XBone are decent machines for now (a year ago), but when you have people trying to make affordable alternatives to the 1080 it's easy to see how the limitations of the consoles hold back a lot of potential. Especially when there are LOTS of gaming PCs that out perform the PS and XB.

Should have been like Doom. Put too many monsters in... doesn't work. Take some out.

MrGlide said:

All of id's games have taken a big stance on having lower end machines play their games.

I can't really expalin how wrong you are. Quake was one of the first games to require a dedicated GPU. I think Carmack made Doom so it would play on "low end" machines, because that's what the consumer had, but computers were like +1000$ when a 386 was new.

Wolf 3D got people buying computers. Doom got more people buying computers. Quake got people buying GPUs. iD's crowning achievement isn't the ability to play on low end machines it's the ability to make computer components cheap. Carmack sold more computers than anyone and that's why you can pick up a decent one for $200.