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Betcha

concerned about number of enemies on screen

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This has probably be brought up before...but what the Hell.

From what I have read about Doom 3, I'm generally content with the way id intends to develop it. id knows the importance of producing that immersive demonic atmosphere that makes you leap out of your chair, eyes wildly scanning the surrounds for demon hoards. There is one point that has me concerned however.

The number of Monsters/Mutants and general zombie freaks from hell on screen at a given time. It seems to me the intense system requirements will limit this somewhat. Doom is known for the moments when you are totally surrounded or being forced to retreat, only to stumble backward into a wall, all the while despartely pumping round after round of hot lead into seemingly unstoppable legions of screaming, hideous demonic creatures. The times when you know its a trap, but you cannot resist taking the shotgun from the pedestal in the center of a large vacated room. The flood gates of hell seem to open as you add its four shells to your inventory, the dark is lit up with a crisscross of fireballs, claws etc, most with your name on them.

Now instead of that, what if we only have a few monsters on screen? Where would be the fear? Individually the creatures may be x10 more frightening and x10 more tough than the Doom incarnations, but where then would be the sheer 'mow down factor'? Where, after five minutes of throwing everything you have at the oncoming enemy you regain your senses to find yourself 'Knee deep in the dead'. In shock you slowly realise you can now peel your aching trigger finger from a weapon that has been quite empty for the last 10 seconds.

I'm sure someone at id said the demons would not be very smart in a recent interview. They can't be to strong or it will forever be like fighting only the large class of doom demons. If the 'solution' is a few tough enemies then it will more resemble what Unreal had for its solution to number of enemies onscreen, which was perhaps fine for Unreal, but it never left you feeling trapped or under pressure except in a few cases. Lets hope PC systems are kicking serious ass when id releases Doom3 and id knows about it now.

My two cents

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Doom is known for the moments when you are totally surrounded or being forced to retreat...


who runs away?!?! i say, CHARGE STRAIT INTO THE INFERNO!!!

/me charges into inferno

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Well, I agree that the main idea of Doom was to charge against ordes of hellspawn demons, but I also find the idea of a few REALLY DETAILED IMPRESSIVE AI freaks very interesting.

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Doom is known for the moments when you are totally surrounded or being forced to retreat, only to stumble backward into a wall, all the while despartely pumping round after round of hot lead into seemingly unstoppable legions of screaming, hideous demonic creatures


I disagree. Doom 2 was known for that but not the first Doom - at least that wasn't an aspect that "made" Doom in my eyes.

The first Doom game's levels created by the developers wasn't filled with hordes of monsters until end of e2 to most of e3. The rest of the game merely had large groups of monsters.

I prefer the first Doom game, because I grew tired of endlessly pumping shots into hordes of enemies - Doom 2 made me realize how easy the Doom enemies are. Doom was all about sneaking around cautiously, fight a few monsters, sneak around again, fight larger groups of monsters, etc.

So all this about "Doom being about fighting hordes of baddies" is complete bullshit in my eyes.

The "real" hordes didn't appear until Doom 2 and I grew tired of the Doom 2 maps, while I still love to play the maps in the first Doom.

But I am nonetheless worried about the few monsters on screen that the new Doom is to have - I still loved Doom for the action among other things.
Few monsters on screen could mean little action and more "Brainy" puzzles - something that I'm not too happy about.

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who runs away?!?! i say, CHARGE STRAIT INTO THE INFERNO!!!


I was a fool! Of course, its so obvious! ;). But realistically, if you want to complete Doom on Ultra Violence without dying once then very occasonally caution is called for. Other than that....charge!

So all this about "Doom being about fighting hordes of baddies" is complete bullshit in my eyes.


Well, I did'nt mean that was ALL Doom was about, but that was a favourite aspect of mine, something personally that concerns me about Doom 3. I just love mowing demons down in huge numbers. And of course Doom means different things to different people. It taps into each persons psyche differently. If mowing down huge quantities of Zombie guys and imps is not your thing, then I guess you have nothing to worry about. BTW, I found Doom to tame. When you can complete it on Ultra without dying once, which is common for many Doom fans probably yourself included....well lets just say I prefered the tougher and more varied demon scum in Doom 2

\off to play more Doom2

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I just thought of something. Have any of you guys played SvenCoop for Half Life? It basically gives Half Life a Coop function (duh). Anyway, the way the level designers keep the game running at a decent speed is to have few enemies onscreen at one time, but to create the sense of more enemies by having them teleport in when you kill an enemy. Basically every set enemy spawn point will have maybe 3 to 5 enemies stored but only one on the screen at a time. Once that one is dead a new one comes in and so on until there are no more enemies stored. By using multiple spawn point you get multiple enemies. I don't see why this can't be used in Doom 3. Just place the spawn points along a track that's out of a players view (I say track because this allows a mobile spawning point that is always out of the player's sight) so that there is the feeling that hordes of demons are moving in on your position. What do you think?

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Well, I did'nt mean that was ALL Doom was about, but that was a favourite aspect of mine, something personally that concerns me about Doom 3. I just love mowing demons down in huge numbers. And of course Doom means different things to different people. It taps into each persons psyche differently. If mowing down huge quantities of Zombie guys and imps is not your thing, then I guess you have nothing to worry about. BTW, I found Doom to tame. When you can complete it on Ultra without dying once, which is common for many Doom fans probably yourself included....well lets just say I prefered the tougher and more varied demon scum in Doom 2


- Hm, you found Doom too tame? Try completing all the maps using only your pistol. Doom 2 really isn't much harder than Doom IMO.
But anyway, I feel sorry for you that your fav aspect isn't going to be in the new Doom game, but to say that I won't have a problem with the new game having only few enemies is wrong. I would prefer Doom 3 to have a decent amount of enemies (but not hordes of easy monsters) to keep the action flowing - but also some sneaking around too.

What I fear, is that Doom 3'll be too puzzle-based like HL.

By using multiple spawn point you get multiple enemies. I don't see why this can't be used in Doom 3. Just place the spawn points along a track that's out of a players view (I say track because this allows a mobile spawning point that is always out of the player's sight) so that there is the feeling that hordes of demons are moving in on your position. What do you think?


- Problem: If Doom 3 allows bodies to remain (not "sink into the floor") it'll still cause a lot of high-detailed models on screen, which will likely be too much for the engine. But maybe Zaldron can enlighten us a bit on this aspect?

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It's all about flow.

You don't need 5432542 enemies in the screen as long as they just keep coming. That's what made E1 and E2 great, not those mini-arenas that make games like Serious Sam or Doom 2, but the fact that you're fighting 3 to 5 enemies per each 90° turn you make walking throught those corridors.

3 to 5 is what I think Carmack means with "few". The models shouldn't dissappear after dead, and that's likely to be controlled with a console command or something.

Of course you could attract all the creatures into the same room and pile them up until your system freezes. But hey, that's your choice.

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Of course you could attract all the creatures into the same room and pile them up until your system freezes. But hey, that's your choice.

Yeah, well, that won't last for long until systems can handle about 100 of those models just as easily as systems of 1995 could handle Doom rooms with 100 sprites without a hiccup. id would only be shooting themself in the foot if they didn't bother to leave room for the hardware in years to come.

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What really drives me nuts is that LithTech (at least for Shogo) had a console command to control the amount of polys you wanted to be rendered per scene. Why can't id add something like this?

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o well i guess i wont see a hell revelead on doom 3 that will acculy remind me of the original

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Why can't id add something like this?

They probably can. I'm sure they will. (If they've learned anything at all from what's been done with Doom, that is.)

i guess i wont see a hell revelead on doom 3 that will acculy remind me of the original

I'm sure you will, just not made by id themselves.

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i agree with the person who started this thread, and hold the excact OPPOSITE opinion of dsm, to me, doom II wa a VASTLY superior game because of JUST THAT in the level design. with doom3, a WHOLE lot of the satisfaction will be gone when you clear a room out.

also the archville will now suck

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also the archville will now suck

I'd like to hear more about that. How is it that you archieved such flawed conclusion?

Imagine this tall biped form, slowly walking throught the level, he has no mouth but you can hear his savage thoughts, his eyes won't leave you. With every step he makes, he'll spread that fire we saw on the QW video, marking a path of destruction.

I don't see how they can NOT make the Archvile right.

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The Archvile probably won't suck in Doom 3, because hopefully id makes it look more like a demon from Hell than a stupid space alien.

The fact that it looked like a space alien was the only thing that I disliked about this otherwise piece of genius.

That's another thing I disliked about Doom 2: Most of the new enemies were either lame (Pain Elemental, Arachnotron) or looked like damn space aliens rather than Hell spawn.
Agreed, the concept of those enemies were fairly decent, but they didn't fit in as well - hopefully they will return in the new game as more demonic creatures.

Of course you could attract all the creatures into the same room and pile them up until your system freezes. But hey, that's your choice.


I think the id guys will try to avoid that you can do this.
A thing that bothers me, is that I've read somewhere that Carmack stated that the game will be a "slow-paced" game - this doesn't sound promising in my ears.
But maybe I have just misunderstood something?

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Yeah, but then Paul Jaquays said somewhere it would be a 'fast action game'. I'm just as stumped as the rest of you.


... And then Zaldron posted something about Paul Jaquays not being as trustworthy as John Carmack and that he'd rather believe what Carmack said...

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Don't ask me, I just referred to a post made by Zaldron some time ago.
I would, however, love to believe that it's true what P. Jaquays says, but the problem is that we have two id guys saying two very different things about the same thing.

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No, what I wanted to say is that DOOM's mainly an action game. If Carmack says it's more slow paced, he's talking about the insanity we've seen in the last years of DOOM editing.

The game's about killing demons that lurk in shadows and leap a lot. It is more slow-paced, but hey, so is every other FPS out there.

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Ahh, thank you for elaborating Zaldron. I feel much better now :-).

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i wanna see how archvile will be(if id want to include it).it may not have resurection power.but,after watching that fire scene,archvile's flame attack will be incredible(if the fire remains after attack)

just wondering,in that fire scene,each flame considers as one light source?

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just wondering,in that fire scene,each flame considers as one light source?

Check the fire's coronas. I'll say there's a lightpoint per each one of those. That's 3 to 4 lights.

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also the archville will now suck

I'd like to hear more about that. How is it that you archieved such flawed conclusion?

I don't see how they can NOT make the Archvile right.

ok you have just cleared out a room of about 20 difficult badguys, wiping the sweat off your forhead, almost out of ammo, you sitback and admire the pile of corpses, then you hear the horrifying cry of the archvill as he runs into the room, even as you pump pounds of lead in his ass, hes RESSURECTING more demons like they were christ's twin brothers.

but then you wake up and realize id is only allowing "a few" monsters at a time, so the archville serves litle purpose

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ok you have just cleared out a room of about 20 difficult badguys, wiping the sweat off your forhead, almost out of ammo, you sitback and admire the pile of corpses, then you hear the horrifying cry of the archvill as he runs into the room, even as you pump pounds of lead in his ass, hes RESSURECTING more demons like they were christ's twin brothers.

but then you wake up and realize id is only allowing "a few" monsters at a time, so the archville serves litle purpose


Killing the same monsters over and over again, because the Archvile resurrected 'em gets annoying very quickly, if you ask me - especially when he resurrects lots of them.

The new Archvile will probably still be capable of resurrecting the fallen monsters, but there just won't be that many monsters to resurrect.

Just my opinion, but I feel sorry for you that you feel let down.

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archvile deals alot of damage so you have to shoot from distance or stay in cover, while he/she/it resurrects monsters.

doom 2 had dozens of monsters coming at same time, like in the map suburbs or whatever, after you pick up the blue keycard and swoooh bastards start spawning

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What really drives me nuts is that LithTech (at least for Shogo) had a console command to control the amount of polys you wanted to be rendered per scene. Why can't id add something like this?


satan gave us the dick-sucking game called kiss: psycho circus

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Ummh the archvile's attack is far more terrible than his resurrection spell. I find that fire blast far more dangerous and worrying than a few renovated imps.

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