Thoughts on the new Unity Port Update?

5 hours ago, ZeroTheEro said:

Summoning the @sponge, did Bethesda told the id team to use Unity for Doom Classic or you folks use the Unity wrapper because the ease of porting stuff over?

As mentioned, Nerve in this case. It's pretty rare that a publisher would dictate a tech stack to a studio like that, when they do it is often wanting to use internal tech for maintenance reasons. Unity was chosen for its ability to run on just about everything. It's easy to fulfill the whole "Doom runs on anything" meme but "good enough to sell as a finished, professional product that can pass platform cert" means writing a lot of platform-specific code for 6 platforms. Unity has quirks for sure but overall it was absolutely the right call to use it. I'm not sure what the alternative would've been (Unreal Engine?)

7 hours ago, Gez said:

More properly, it's what we ended up calling it due to lack of another name.

 

Officially it's just "DOOM and DOOM II" or, at most, the "re-releases of DOOM and DOOM II". "Unity" is never used to describe it on any official channel. But we do know that it's based on the Doom Classic codebase, except ported to run in Unity instead of in Doom 3. Hence, "Doom Classic Unity port" as a moniker, meaning "the Unity port of Doom Classic". Using "Doom Classic Unity" makes it look like a proper name instead of being a description.

On (most?) storefronts it's DOOM (1993) and DOOM II (Classic) to make things more confusing heh.

I probably would've went with DOOM (2019 rerelease) and DOOM II (2019 Rerelease) but considering I just refer to it as Doomnity myself the current DoomWiki name is probably just fine.

33 minutes ago, sponge said:

Doomnity

Doomity will be from now on :)

I just refer to it as "The New Official Ports"

5 hours ago, Gez said:

Let it go. Edward850 used to be very involved in ZDoom's multiplayer side, left after a change broke netplay (I don't remember if it was ZScript, the move to floating point, or something else but it doesn't really matter) and has hated everything ZDoom ever since, with the spite of a betrayed lover.

Shame. I think it's still a good family of ports for all of its wide modding capability, and given Doom's long and venerable history of people hacking it and making their own things with it, I think it's just as important as PrBoom+ and the New Official Ports.

2 hours ago, sponge said:

Unity was chosen for its ability to run on just about everything. It's easy to fulfill the whole "Doom runs on anything" meme but "good enough to sell as a finished, professional product that can pass platform cert" means writing a lot of platform-specific code for 6 platforms. Unity has quirks for sure but overall it was absolutely the right call to use it. I'm not sure what the alternative would've been (Unreal Engine?)

Makes perfect sense, and it sure turned out well.

Speaking of which, do you guys have any plans to add the ability for users to configure their own control scheme? At least on the PS4 release, that's not an option, and I think that would make the port pretty much perfect from a functional standpoint if you could.

I wasn't trolling. I seriously didn't know it was a source port.

3 hours ago, The Strife Commando said:

I wasn't trolling. I seriously didn't know it was a source port.

What else was it supposed to be, a moose? 

Though seriously, the only alternative it could have been would be a rewrite of Doom, and given it demonstrably plays back 1.9 demos still, such a notion would be monumentally mind bending. To a rather indescribable degree. 

It's good to have the updated version. Since it's the Unity version though, it uses the censored Wolfenstein maps for Doom 2.

8 hours ago, The Strife Commando said:

It's good to have the updated version. Since it's the Unity version though, it uses the censored Wolfenstein maps for Doom 2.

Just some of the art on the wall. It still has the Nazi SS guys and all that.

14 minutes ago, Faceman2000 said:

Just some of the art on the wall. It still has the Nazi SS guys and all that.

Why were the maps censored in the first place? If it was for Germany, why affect everywhere else?

8 minutes ago, The Strife Commando said:

Why were the maps censored in the first place? If it was for Germany, why affect everywhere else?

It's for any country that doesn't allow the use of Nazi imagery outside of historical context or justifiable artistic merit (that's not just Germany). My understanding is it's not so much banned but rather you have to get it reviewed which wouldn't be worth the effort in this case. Additionally, making multiple SKUs for the same game is a real pain in the ass, and nobody is going to do it over something quite trivial.

I will never ever ever understand why so many people have such a hang up with some slight modifications to those subpar secret maps.

1 hour ago, Edward850 said:

It's for any country that doesn't allow the use of Nazi imagery outside of historical context or justifiable artistic merit (that's not just Germany). My understanding is it's not so much banned but rather you have to get it reviewed which wouldn't be worth the effort in this case. Additionally, making multiple SKUs for the same game is a real pain in the ass, and nobody is going to do it over something quite trivial.

Wolfenstein 3D was released with the Nazi imagery years ago.

years ago, yes, but the law is law. 

47 minutes ago, The Strife Commando said:

Wolfenstein 3D was released with the Nazi imagery years ago.

Wolfenstein 3D also wasn't sold in Germany years ago.

8 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

Wolfenstein 3D also wasn't sold in Germany years ago.

Didn't affect everywhere else though.

1 minute ago, The Strife Commando said:

Didn't affect everywhere else though.

It absolutely did.  Here's a picture of the SNES version of Wolf3D.

2 hours ago, The Strife Commando said:

Wolfenstein 3D was released with the Nazi imagery years ago.

It’s not like this port erased the millions of copies of Doom II WAD with uncensored secret maps if someone wants them that bad, and if you want to play Wolfenstein 3D... you’re not going to get that experience in the two Doom II secret maps anyhow. 
 

Personally, I’d love to see Romero and/or Petersen make two new maps for Doom II to replace those levels, because they really aren’t that great. They’re not even that great as remakes of the original levels from Wolfenstein 3D.  

2 hours ago, AlexMax said:

 

It absolutely did.  Here's a picture of the SNES version of Wolf3D.

 

Well it was because of Nintendo at the time. Other versions were uncensored.

1 hour ago, Gerolf said:

It’s not like this port erased the millions of copies of Doom II WAD with uncensored secret maps if someone wants them that bad, and if you want to play Wolfenstein 3D... you’re not going to get that experience in the two Doom II secret maps anyhow. 
 

Personally, I’d love to see Romero and/or Petersen make two new maps for Doom II to replace those levels, because they really aren’t that great. They’re not even that great as remakes of the original levels from Wolfenstein 3D.  

I personally think the Wolfenstein levels are cool to have in Doom 2.

3 hours ago, The Strife Commando said:

Didn't affect everywhere else though.

This is extremely a false equivalence. This was 1991 and id Software wasn't going to particularly care if a product in a niche market at the time was going to be banned in the even nicher market at the time of Germany.

It is now 2021, video games aren't a niche market and Germany and other related countries with similar rules certainly aren't either. Pointlessly withholding the game over needlessly specific details of an easteregg as of now is beyond stupid.

Also, might I add, Doom 2 did have a version released that removed MAP31 & 32 entirely (I think it was intended for Germany but the game was in the index at the time so it might have been for another country?), here's the catch, it made this version incompatible with every other for multiplayer, demos and some mods. A considerable pain in the ass.

3 hours ago, The Strife Commando said:

Didn't affect everywhere else though.

How do you know that?

Just because the game was not changed doesn't mean it didn't have worldwide effects in the decisions from the company owning Wolf3D rights.

I wouldn't be surprised if one of the reasons Wolf 3D is not seeing a re-release is because there's very little interest in working on it if it's gonna be banned in several countries, they might as well work in some other game that's more universally appealing, like the Doom re-release.

@The Strife Commando I think Nintendo was definitely responsible for the censorship of the blood and gore, but the cancelled SEGA MD/Genesis version (not to be confused with the home brew version) was also going to censor the Nazi imagery despite having the blood and gore intact. So I don’t think the censorship for the Nazi imagery was directly because of Nintendo if Id had planned to also censor the game on SEGA. It was likely done for the same or fairly similar reasons discussed here about why the secret map textures were censored in this Doom port. 

On 1/1/2021 at 6:19 AM, The Strife Commando said:

I wasn't trolling. I seriously didn't know it was a source port.

It literally says "Thoughts on the new Unity Port update?" in the title.

If you are telling me you aren't capable of reading beyond 5 individual words, then i hope you understand how extremely poorly that reflects on you, right?

Though if that were the case, ill have to rephrase this in 5 words or less:

"Port" is in the title.

7 hours ago, Faceman2000 said:

I will never ever ever understand why so many people have such a hang up with some slight modifications to those subpar secret maps.

Its a historical change that makes little sense to the world id crafted for the game, so i get that. But, i agree with you that the attention towards these msps, secret as they are, is a bit much.

1 hour ago, Ferk said:

How do you know that?

He doesn't, but it sure makes a point now.

Part of the changes i believe were because Nazi imagery back then, just so shortly after the fall of communism and East Germany was a tad more visible then it is today. Ofcourse Nintendo plays a part here: The engine was eventually found on SNES thru Super Noah's Ark.

When they originally developed Wolfenstein 3D, id Software sold games by literally having people call Donna Jackson on the phone to place an order.

When Nintendo (or Sega) wanted to sell Wolfenstein 3D, they had their own world-wide distribution network. One can suppose they were a bit more aware of regulatory issues in various countries than id Software was...

Port. It didn't say source port. Have you forgotten about video game ports? Anyway, it's unfair that every country would get affected because of one country. It's not just Wolfenstein. Other games got censored because of a country with censorship laws, and the censorship affected everywhere else.

Well yeah, because it's simpler to make one game that caters to everyone than to make several versions of the game.

But it's not just games. Movies are also affected, have you noticed the trend of pandering to China in movies?

59 minutes ago, The Strife Commando said:

Port. It didn't say source port.

Wait.

So because it does not literally spell out the word ''source'', you get confused and you don't think ''Maybe i should look up what ''Unity'' or ''Unity port'' means'' but rather, you instead act coy and blissful?

Seriously, what the heck.

59 minutes ago, The Strife Commando said:

Have you forgotten about video game ports?

You thought this was a port of Assassin's Creed: Unity by any chance or what?

59 minutes ago, The Strife Commando said:

 

Anyway, it's unfair that every country would get affected because of one country. It's not just Wolfenstein. Other games got censored because of a country with censorship laws, and the censorship affected everywhere else.

One universal version is easier to craft than making specialized versions of the same thing. But its something that happens everywhere. In China, anti-China rhetoric gets removed from a movie - So a specialized version is made for that audience.

Its supply, demand and consideration. Wolfenstein & Germany aren't that much different there.

Edit: Basically what Gez said.

Well there are mods that remove censorship, so no problem.

Not for consoles.

2 minutes ago, The Strife Commando said:

Well there are mods that remove censorship, so no problem.

which is why you took half of page 5... because no problem...

this doesn't even solve that for consoles.

2 minutes ago, jazzmaster9 said:

which is why you took half of page 5... because no problem...

 

this doesn't even solve that for consoles.

The Xbox 360 version is still available, which doesn't have the censorship.