Modified Doom engine vs modern game engines

Does the Doom engine even have any real disadvantages at this point? Modern source ports have eliminated almost all of the original shortcomings of the engine. Now things like 3d floors are possible as well as loads of other modern features. This coupled with the massively easier to use tools compared with more advanced 3D engines has lead me to believe that the modified Doom engine is actually better for modding purposes than more complex engines for most people unless you are trying to do something very advanced.

How do you feel the modern modified Doom engine fairs against modern 3D game engines? 

3D architecture might still be problematic. Sure, you can, but it's not as natural for the mapper, and probably not as efficient for the engine. Inherently 2D mapping has its benefits, but also its trade-offs.

The proof is in the pudding, these mid-90s games are the sweet spot for modding lots of content, especially single player maps/episodes. Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, and Quake in particular. Though Quake is probably harder than these 2.5D ones being full 3D using brush work etc.

Half-Life 1 had a very vibrant modding scene too, more for multiplayer though.

Would be cool if somehow there was something as easy to make levels for (easy to pick up) for new games as well, SnapMap being one attempt at it, but it would take a lot of work to put something like that together. Making stuff with the tools the devs used seems to be a much higher entry level these days, and would take longer to make assets which people would also expect to be in high res possibly, and by then you might just be making a game so you might as well sell it, so it wouldn't be modding.

I'm rambling but I agree.

(And I say easy to pick up, but it still takes lot of time and work to make stuff for Doom and Duke 3D. Getting a hang of creating the shapes you want with the sectors and the various effects you want, script and test the combat encounters and overall thing placement, study other maps and make note of all the textures you can use for different contexts to get some idea of a good looking level, then you have to do shading/sector lighting, and when you're done it took anywhere between a few days and a few thousand years. Still, at least it's accessible, compared to making a new episode for Half-Life 2. Which itself is probably more accessible than making a new episode for a more recent game.)

It's working pretty well for Adventures of Square.

[Sans all the times I broke stuff trying to do something crazy, but that's a given in any engine, I'm afraid. ;]

I Remember Duke Nukem 3D Having 3D Sectors floors by 2 methods Which was quite impressive at the time

On 6/14/2017 at 2:14 AM, hardcore_gamer said:

Modern source ports have eliminated almost all of the original shortcomings of the engine. 

That is a crazy assertion! The Doom engine is best for a specific type of mods/games and limited for anything else.

8 hours ago, VGA said:

That is a crazy assertion! The Doom engine is best for a specific type of mods/games and limited for anything else.

For first person shooters I mean. Sure there are still some things that the modern Doom engine can't do but I honestly don't feel all that limited when making levels anymore. And I am saying this as somebody who has made levels for Doom 3 and Quake. The biggest problem is you can't do 3D floors above another 3D floor, but otherwise I can do what I want mostly.

3 minutes ago, hardcore_gamer said:

The biggest problem is you can't do 3D floors above another 3D floor, but otherwise I can do what I want mostly.

Wait. Are you sure about this? I actually did a 3D floor above another 3D floor in GZDoom (UDMF) and it worked without any problems that I could detect.

One massive shortcoming of the Doom engine is it's lighting. Even GZDoom's dynamic lights are incredibly basic, with no support for shadows of any kind, be it from Things or level geometry (as far as I've ever come across!).

15 minutes ago, Zulk-RS said:

Wait. Are you sure about this? I actually did a 3D floor above another 3D floor in GZDoom (UDMF) and it worked without any problems that I could detect.

screenshot?

Here they are.

Sorry for the delay.

14 minutes ago, Zulk-RS said:

  Hide contents

 

 

 

 

Here they are.

Sorry for the delay.

What the hell? How is this possibe? When creating a 3D floor you need to assign the sector in question a tag and then give the same tag to another dummy sector that's used to create the 3D floor. How is it possible then to have 2 3D floors in the same sector?

EDT: I just figured it out. You just assign the same tag to all the dummy sectors. Wow, mind blown that this is possible. Well then I guess the modern doom engine has barely any shortcomings anymore.

^ You mean by using the 3D floor line action right? Well... I created two dummy sectors of different floor and ceiling heights and then made both the dummy sectors reference the same sector.
 

9 minutes ago, hardcore_gamer said:

When creating a 3D floor you need to assign the sector in question a tag and then give the same tag to another dummy sector that's used to create the 3D floor.

Basically I tagged the sector in question and gave the same tag to two dummy sectors to create two 3D floors one on top of the other. Though, I have no idea if this will create any problems.

There have been maps with more than 5 3D floors in the same sector. This is designed to be able to do as many as you like.

Even the engines using the simplest method like overlapping sectors or the oldest ones using dummy sectors like Eternity or cDoom allowed for an arbitrary number of 3D floors (or "rooms") over other rooms. It was never limited to just one extra room. It's just that this extended 2D/2D+ style of mapping becomes increasingly clunky and unnatural the more rooms/levels you add, and at a certain point a fully 3D engine becomes preferable.

Actually, if you carefully examine modern FPSs' environment, you'll find that there often aren't many environments with multiple overlapping floors per-se, but rather, complex decorative geometry. If you tried really hard, a good percentage of e.g. Quake's or even Doom 3's environments could be "Doom-ified" with little loss in gameplay value or architectural complexity. Those that don't (e.g. factories full of catwalks) can be adequately served with even basic RoR extensions. The tough part are all those decorative machines, rails, etc. and in general all decoration that is a 3D object rather than a decal or a wall/floor texture.

Something that could could be considered a problem is performance. To play complex Doom maps you need a decent PC, despite its low graphics. In my laptop I usually got around 20 fps with GZDoom on maps with 3D floors, dynamic lights, etc. and I even remember getting single digit framerates with Phobia (Legacy engine) while something like Half-Life 2 or Doom 3 would run at 40-60 fps the entire time with high settings.

EDIT: Just realised that this actually shouldn't be a problem to post on this topic, since you need a strong PC to play modern games anyways.

That's another interesting topic altogether: how efficient are those pimped-up Doom engines compared to a modern game engine for visuals of the same complexity. After all, a modern engine will be created from scratch to include what was tacked-on a-posteriori to the original Doom's engine (though it's debatable how much is really left of it e.g. in GZDoom).

It's also worth noting that most Doom engines are still being developed and evolved with the mindset of being -primarily- a software-rendered engine, and that hardware acceleration is just another tacked-on afterthought, implemented with vast differences in different ports, so that not even the common ancestry of the software-based renderer remains.

Since Phobia got mentioned, that mod has one map where there's some vertical chains entirely constructed out of 3D floors. That's definitely something that affects performance.

But normally 3D floors are rarely a limiting factor with hardware rendering. What's really costly is wide open maps with a lot of stuff visible all at once. The best example for this kind of map would be Frozen Time which is even giving modern computers a thorough workout.

And Phobos: Anomaly Reborn had some problem spots even on high end systems of its own vintage. Doom is not the most efficient engine. It has to regenerate most geometry every frame, of course modern games which are designed for how modern graphics hardware works can do this more efficiently.

This is a common misconception among some Doom players. Just because the game itself is old that obviously doesn't translate to more recent maps that were made without those limits. A 10 year old laptop with an Intel integrated graphics chipset is not going to cut it if you want acceptable performance outside Vanilla maps.

On 17/06/2017 at 0:13 PM, hardcore_gamer said:

What the hell? How is this possibe? When creating a 3D floor you need to assign the sector in question a tag and then give the same tag to another dummy sector that's used to create the 3D floor. How is it possible then to have 2 3D floors in the same sector?

 

EDT: I just figured it out. You just assign the same tag to all the dummy sectors. Wow, mind blown that this is possible. Well then I guess the modern doom engine has barely any shortcomings anymore.

You can have two or more tags per sector in UDMF, that makes it a bit easier. :)

You can do this with 3D floors. There are more bridges than those in the screenshot, 8 in all. Each sector has only one tag, but some tags have multiple 3D floors.

It is MAP12 in empyrion.

One thing I can't really seem to figure out though. How do you place things on top of 3D floors/bridges? They just spawn on the lowest floor. Ditto with ceiling decorations.

Maybe you need to change their height, so they spawn above 3D floor.

58 minutes ago, hardcore_gamer said:

One thing I can't really seem to figure out though. How do you place things on top of 3D floors/bridges? They just spawn on the lowest floor. Ditto with ceiling decorations.

Select the item in 3D mode and use the mousewheel to raise them up or down. The only thing you can't place on a 3D Floor (presumably without a little more work) is a player start.

3D Architecture is much easier and faster to work with on modern engines, You don't have to create alot of uncessary 3D Floors and mess with Linedef effects, you just insert your BSP wherever you want them to be and modify them however you want, Modelling is also done directly in that piece, For instance creating a floating cave, ugh can't even imagine how many sloped 3D floors it requires.