2 years older, and a bit wiser

It is now 2 years ago that JC showed DOOM III in it's early stage to the public, at the Appel Tokyo Expo. This was the showcast for the Gforce 3 running on a Apple computer. http://www.apple.com/hotnews/articles/2001/02/mwtokyo/

I have been waiting for DOOM ever since. Following each snippet of news and analysing/watching each screenshot. I remember reading Zaldron's analysis of the Tokyo video, and not understanding anything of it (and i still don't).

The Alpha seems cool (but not as cool as I hoped) but an alpha is not something you can judge a game by (as they say).

I see the release of a screenshot does not stirr the community as it did, and it does not get me that excited either.

But looking forward, I hope we will see DOOM within the next 6 months, and I think I'm going to like playing it. But I don't think I going to like it as much as i anticipated 2 years ago. But who knows... Tell me about how you experienced the waiting.

People right now are getting restless, mainly because there havent been any screenshots released as of late. I can't blame id though, they already had the alpha leak and don't want anymore to get released. I think the game will still be much anticipated, especially with the sidetrip to hell.

I still thing this game will rock. Its been quite some time that id focused solely on single player. I remember when Quake3 came out. I was like wtf?? is this the way fps is going. Do I need massive bandwidth to the web to play games. It's nice that id created the start of the road for multiplayer but took some steps back (and some forward) and decided to go single player again. They also seem to have invested more than they ever have into this game. I don't think it will turn out bad. I have had the same experience since macworld, following every snippett...everything. I suppose it is only a game but nevertheless, I'll still be as excited as a child on christmas morning the day the game comes out.


Roll on DoomsDay

If anything, the last two years have only strenghtened my anticipation of this game.
We've got to learn that the game will have a general survuival horror main objective over it, but with a few mission objectives thrown in. We've learned that it has an advanced physics engine in it, we've learned that it has the old weapons in it.

I could go on listing what we've got to know about Doom 3 since then, but I don't wanna waste time on that.

At any rate, I think one of the big factors to make me anticipate the game unlike ever before is the fact that the weapons seem to have a really nice, meaty feel to them and then the fact that the game has regular zombies Resident Evil style in it, which imo was one of the best steps id could have taken.

Mixing Doom with RE couldn't have been a better direction to take Doom.

While I consider the original Doom concept close to perfect, I know that just transferring it to a new engine won't do the trick. Resident Evil, which I have only recently tried, has probably one of the best concepts I've seen since Doom. Shooting zombies in that game has proven to be more fun than I could have imagined, (but the characters in the RE series are probably the worst, most cheesy player characters I've come across in any serious game - no kidding!).

Combine RE's cool survival horror scare factor and freaky zombies with Doom's already scary concept + scare factor, it's total kickass concept and it's badass player character, throw in some additional coolness (like making the zombies sound more evil by making them snarl with hoarse growling instead of making those laughable moaning sounds) and you have a game that is sure to become a classic in its own right.

...imo

Man, has it really been almost 3 years since the game was announced? Somehow the time seems a lot shorter.

I'm still looking forward to this game as much as ever.

Along with Deus Ex 2.

I think I speak for the community when I wipe two years worth of drool from my chin.

DC

I still want this game as ever.not beacuse of the graphic alone,but New technology(real time lighting)+old shoot em up (but still fun) gameplay+idgame cool factor+"it`s DOOM,damn it" element also.

Doom-Child said:

I think I speak for the community when I wipe two years worth of drool from my chin.

DC

heh, you're not speaking for me.. i have very little hope for it at this point

Two years ago I was argueing with deadnail over his indifference to Doom III, and now I find myself sharing most of his thoughts on the game. Namely, that Doom III is not Doom. Doom was made by a basement full of young, enthusiastic programmers with the intent of making a fun, fast action game - and it changed the world.

Doom III was made ten years later by two dozen very talented, very rich people with the intent of "redefining what people expect to see in a 3D action game" (Todd Hollenshead's words). The problem is that it tries to do this with sexy graphics instead of introducing a few good ideas to the genre. I expect Doom III to be pretty enjoyable, and editing for it should be interesting, but it don't expect it will have a very big impact on the games industry as a whole.

Everyone's doing great graphics. Everyone's trying to make big, detailed, intense single-player shooters. Look at Unreal 2 - they certainly tried their best, but in the end it's just the same game all over again. The first-person shooter genre is just getting used up, always rehashing the same idea with nicer presentation and more hype.

Maybe I'm just getting old.

hehe.. I dont think I followed doom3 for the full 2 years. I only remember seeing a small post @ the unreal2 forums that sturred it totally up. it had screenshots showing from the tokyo event. and I was totally amazed when I saw it. people gave some "details" in that post an I really thought those faces they showed had 250.000 polygons and every bit could be shot off. ears, nose, cheakbone. I emediatly started day dreaming of me hiding in this martian spacestation looking around and stumbeling upon a formar human;
"his ankle was broken (180 degree turn) and it was moving at me at a eerie slow pase, lifting his hands ready to grab me. I moved backwards slowly picking my shotgun treying not to alarm this zombie to much. I pointed the shotgun at his face and pulled the trigger. I lookad at this former human and saw the horror, the zombies face was all messed up, blood was dripping down from every wall, the left side of his face revield his teath, it tried to open its mouth and the left side of the jaw fell out of its socket. it was hangin open. the zombie dident notices anything. and snarled at me treying to grab me one more time. I pulled the trigger again and shot his head off bits off bone and brain mass where slowly sliding from the big steel wall behind the dead zombies body".

that was one of the daydreams I had. Reallity soon revealed that the models wherent containing 250.000 polygons, but that this effect was made by a new techniqe. the models where very low poly. and you couldent shoot of every bit of body (big dissapointment for me at the time)

slowly more information appeared. revieling things about the creatures and technical information. the unreal 2 forum had atleast 1 doom3 vs unreal2 thread everyday. then I found out about this forum.

end I still enjoy it. now that we know loads of information. like the warning system (PDA) and about the stamina I can conclude that I want this game more thaen any other game at the moment. I am still a bit dissapointment because the lack off good damagesystem. no breaking "virtual bones" to disable a zombies arm. or cleaving a pinky's face with a chainsaw leaving big cutmarks in its head slowly letting out all of its brainy fluids.

I think my interest in this game has grown. And also kinda worrying about other games catchin up doom3's engine technology.

lol i don't care about new concpets, new wepons and new monsters to frag is PLENTY to me.

Id be happy if they only released 100 new levels for the first doom.

As for as revolution goes i think they'll only revolution concepts of game play such as gore and feer and graphics. (Thats all that matters to me.)

id probely could have released their game last fall but they keep on polishing it. (thats completly my opineon) I think because of all te time spent polishing it will make it a HUGE game.

ps: the only doom alpha ive played is DOOM 1 alpha.

Black Hand said:

I think because of all te time spent polishing it will make it a HUGE game.

Allow me to criticize first-person shooters in general, again. There's a strange trend lately where bigger development teams get more money and spend more time on their games, yet it seems like the player can always beat the game in six or seven hours of persistent play. Seven hours for your $50 and their 3 or 4 years of development.
Maybe it's just because we're getting better at these games (after all, the genre hasn't really taken any new direction since Half-Life), or maybe it's because FPS developers in general are getting inneficient and lazy. I hope Doom III strikes a fine balance between longevity and fun - just like the original Doom did.

I beat warcraft three in eight hours.
I'm a long ways away from saying that it sucks though.

I've seen some pictures of the wirefram from one of the levels of doom 3 on a computer screen in the background of some interview.

Unless thats the ludicirsly over sized over populated supermunitions level (that just about every fps has) i think its fairly safe to say that the levels are going to be big enough for my tastes.

Lord FlatHead said:
Allow me to criticize first-person shooters in general, again. There's a strange trend lately where bigger development teams get more money and spend more time on their games, yet it seems like the player can always beat the game in six or seven hours of persistent play. Seven hours for your $50 and their 3 or 4 years of development.
Maybe it's just because we're getting better at these games (after all, the genre hasn't really taken any new direction since Half-Life), or maybe it's because FPS developers in general are getting inneficient and lazy. I hope Doom III strikes a fine balance between longevity and fun - just like the original Doom did.

Allow me to defend this recent trend if I might, as it is something that I have thought about on a number of occasions. FPSs are one of the few game genre's these days where the games actually are getting shorter and shorter. And if you think about it, it really does make sense. Look at a level from Doom, and then look at a level from something like Half-Life, or Quake 2. There's a pretty big difference in detail, eh? And we've all seen the screen shots of Doom 3- there's an incredibly amount of detail in each of those levels. It's not like game developers are sitting around with thier thumbs up their asses or anything, it's just that the amount of focus and input to make a good level by today's standards is exponentially greater than the time and effort needed to make a simpler level. And don't anybody even give me any of that "well, it was pretty impressive back then... it's easier 'cause we're used to it" bullshit. The time it takes to make a map or a level is directly related to the amount of information you're putting into that level, and that amount of information is constantly increasing in order to keep up with demand.

As to why it takes so long, once again the amount of detail required calls for a constant increase in the number and quality of music, sounds, textures, etc. And because there is the need for so much more to be put into all of these things, it takes more people just to be able to get everything done. And that's not even getting into all of the planning that's required these days. It's not like you can just sit down and toss out whatever the hell you want to just because you want to... ya know?

Well, that pretty much covers the content, but what about the playing length? FPSs are very simple: you shoot stuff and activate stuff. That's it. Granted, there are a number of ways to activate stuff, but that's pretty much all it boils down to (and, yes picking up stuff and completeing objectives falls under activating stuff). Six or seven hours? What do you expect? Adventure games range in the 8-15 hour slot and RPGs are in the 15-40. You can't expect to get that much time out of a FPS, they (as a general rule) are just too simple in design. Hell, Metroid Prime, even with all it's exploration barely lasted 10 hours if you knew what you were doing (and that's for 100% completion too). And, just for a moment, think back. How long did it take you to beat Quake 2? Quake? Doom? Hell, I can knock any of these games out in a weekend and I'm not even that good. In a sense games have not really been getting that much shorter play-wise. It only seems like they have because you notice more content. But as games progress that content becomes more and more compact, and you can't just blaze by anymore. The games take the same amount of time to play, but you are left feeling like there was less there than there really was.

Or perhaps, as well, a facter added to this is in the basic design. FPSs are fast paced, and it's not easy to throw in obsticals that won't upset the pace of the game. In that sense, the games blaze by because developers don't want to experiment with new ways of approaching the game... they just still with what they know works.

And, to be fair, how would you increase the duration of the game? In Doom 3 the character moves slower so that you can't just rush through and miss everything. In Quake 2 the enemies were tough enough, and large enough in numbers to slow your progress. In Half-Life, the pace was slowed a bit by the tasks that you had to complete while being attacked. In Unreal, there were fewer enemies, but the enemies were so tough to kill that most of the game was spent in skimishes. Are these really the best ways to go? Eh. If you ask me, a game should try to have replay value above all else. If a game is done in a way that gets you to want to come back and play it again then what was once 6 or 7 hours for $50 becomes 12 or 14 hours for just as much money. But then again, making a game in a way that would get someone to play it again who normally would only play it once if harder than it seems.

Well, it's late and I'm sure that most of this didn't make much sense (hell, I'm still trying to figure out what I'm talking about), but as an overall sentiment, the state of gaming these days could use some work, but it's not as bad as you seem to think.

i think we all realy know that but put aside logic in faver of our own arguements, its always good to have somone wright that down though.

As far as i see you've only missed on thing. Its easier to add detail now.

As for gameplay having "stagnated", I'll say that it depends on how you see gameplay.

I don't care about interactivity - interactivity is for RPGs. What I want is the joy of shooting stuff and that's what a proper FPS exploits to its fullest extent.

Doom was great because it was simple, because it had cool weapons (that have yet to be surpassed imo) and because it had good enemies that were satisfying to kill with the weapons you had.

Even today, Doom is a lot more fun than most other FPSs, while all the new FPSs have shown a lot of good gameplay ideas. How come? Because none of the other FPSs have perfected the actual killing like Doom has.

Doom 3, while it doesn't have any smartypants shiny, new gimmicks not seen before, there's a chance that the killing itself is more fun than most other FPSs due to:
Heavier focus on sounds.
Using the exact same weapons as the ones Doom had and trying to make these weapons feel the same as the old versions - just now there's a chance that they will sound much more badass.
Using classic, old enemies and trying to make them feel similar (but making them more dangerous in terms of attack strategies etc.).

To me, gameplay in an FPS is everything to do with how meaty it feels to kill an enemy - the realistic physics will add a lot to this I feel.

You've probably played the alpha, but consider that it is by no means representative of the game.

Yes, you may be right that Doom 3 won't be anything special, but I think you're turning the game down before giving it a chance to show you what it can really provide - who knows? Maybe it turns out to be so much cooler than you think it will.

However, I agree that the game probably won't be revolutionary in terms of gameplay (except perhaps for a new 'use' system based on the Quake 'use' system), but it might still be a cool game.

dsm said:

To me, gameplay in an FPS is everything to do with how meaty it feels to kill an enemy

Having played the alpha, I can say you're going to LOVE killing stuff in Doom3.

agree.. not only the meatyness.. the whole engine has such a stable and heave feel to it. Tust hearing the feet of the pinky hitting the ground making a big heavy stable metal noise while its rampaging towards you after it screamed for a couple of seconds just makes me panic!

Yep! And another thing: the weapons actually FEEL like weapons!