Plot

I thought I might try to tie FreeDoom into the the regular doom continuity. The following introduction to FreeDoom is directed at the player and incorporates elements from Doom, Doom 2, Final Doom, and Doom 3. I am posting it here because I want to know if this sort of thing (tying the story to regular id Doom) would even be acceptable, and also because I want a bit of feedback if it indeed is allowable without violating some kind of copyright or something. I assume it falls under fair use... or something. Also, I have not played some of these games, so I want to be sure I don't get something wrong. Here it is:

Many long years have passed since the incidents on Mars and its orbiting research bases unleashed an evil that threatened to consume the Earth forever. Power has shifted, and the names of the major players and organizations have changed. Most of what really happened back then has been classified top secret and quietly swept underneath several seemingly unrelated cover stories. The leaked reports of what truly happened have come to be considered ridiculous works of fiction, cooked up by crackpot conspiracy nuts and con artists trying to take advantage of the weak-minded. You however, know the truth. As an elite officer in a special task force maintained in secret to be used should the threat ever return, you have been specially trained for a fight which you were starting to believe would never come. Just as you were beginning to take a more relaxed attitude towards life, an aggressive coalition of aliens arrived at the outer colony of Salacia on the partially terraformed moon of Triton orbiting Neptune.

The battle for Salacia was a short one. With the element of surprise on their side, the mysterious alien coalition made quick work of the outer defenses and within a matter of hours had all but completely wiped out the military forces stationed there. Strange reports began to filter in about mind control implants being used to turn the colonists into soldiers for the enemy. Shortly before all communications from the moon of Neptune ceased, an automated transmission from the military defense lab on Triton was sent out informing Earth Command that the lab had been compromised. Earth Command now worried that the technology used to disrupt portals and prevent another invasion from the depths of Hell was the true objective of the attack. Your team was quickly dispatched to deal with the threat, but now you find yourself alone. You are the sole survival of the counter-attack force.

Now, the Earth's worst fears have been realized. With the colony mostly abandoned and the bulk of the alien ground forces centered at the lab, it is clear who the invasion force has truly been working for. With the threat of pure evil upon us once more, we have only one hope: you. It is your job to stop the aliens from unlocking the secret of the portal disruption technology - the only thing that prevents the gates of Hell from opening upon the human race once more.

someguy said:

I thought I might try to tie FreeDoom into the the regular doom continuity.

That'd be bad, no one really wants to DEPEND on a copyrighted commercial game for a story.

leileilol said:

That'd be bad, no one really wants to DEPEND on a copyrighted commercial game for a story.

Interesting... I didn't know the point of freedoom was to squash every trace of id software from it's own game/engine. As I understand it, the purpose of freedoom is simply to provide non-commercial data to be used by the game engine.

Take some time to weigh this one for a bit: One of the biggest complaints I hear from people who try freedoom is that it doesn't feel close enough to the original commercial doom. Think about that for a minute. Doom is "classic". Everybody knows it. So I find it a little hard to take your comment too seriously. It sounds more like an extreme hard-lined puritanical view that is perhaps a tad too dismissive, and I really wonder just what exactly you're "depending" on if the games in question have already been released for like 12 or 13 years and are a major part of gaming history.

Did I misinterpret you?

someguy said:

Take some time to weigh this one for a bit: One of the biggest complaints I hear from people who try freedoom is that it doesn't feel close enough to the original commercial doom. Think about that for a minute. Doom is "classic". Everybody knows it.

Personally, I don't understand that attitude. If Doom is such a classic (and of course it is) why the hell don't such people own a copy already or shell out the measly few $ that is required to get one these days? If they do already have a copy, why on earth would they want the exact same game merely reskinned? Why not provide something a bit different in the shape of FreeDoom?

I know that one of the original thrusts of FreeDoom was to allow people to play the game without a commercial IWAD. However, that goal can exist for a number of reasons (eg people building free distribution games based on FreeDoom data). I don't really think the people who don't have their own copy of Doom and only want to get FreeDoom to find out what Doom is like and avoid paying for it will be a particularly big group to consider, nor that they are particularly worth considering in the first place.

I really like the fact that FreeDoom is shaping up to be something a little different to Doom. It means that I have another game to play and not just another copy of Doom. I only wish that I had the skills required to make some original sprites because those are the biggest hurdle to getting a full data replacement in the FreeDoom WAD and progress on them seems to be painfully slow.

I think the conversation will slide a bit again, but...
FreeDoom is unfair in it's very own concept anyway. Just check Doom’s readme.txt :
"We feel that the distribution of new levels that work with the shareware version of DOOM will lessen a potential user's incentive to purchase the registered version."

The same way, 3D Realms (don't even bother asking me the connection, please) let the DukeHRP project go along as far as the original Duke3D was still required to play with the HRP.

In my opinion, using old engines to creates *new* games is really cool and shouldn't need to mimic any commercial game to be fun to play or be of the same kind (for instance, Heretic used to be -wrongly- considered as a sequel to DOOM and every FPS until early 21st was called "DOOM-Like"). I guess the whole concept behind FreeDoom should have been different to avoid that kind of misunderstandings (I'm not shouting "hey, stop everything, it's bad!" -- it's just my guess)

I was playing doom 2 the other day, and guess what I noticed? The story is the same as freedoom. This means that freedoom still contains the doom 2 story, so any talk about not having anything to do with doom is nonsense when it comes to the plot, since obviously there's no problem with distributing the freedoom wad while it still has the doom 2 story in it.

Sheesh.

acc said:

I think the conversation will slide a bit again, but...
FreeDoom is unfair in it's very own concept anyway. Just check Doom’s readme.txt :
"We feel that the distribution of new levels that work with the shareware version of DOOM will lessen a potential user's incentive to purchase the registered version."

This needs clarification. Freedoom is an iwad that will not work with the shareware version of the doom executable. How does freedoom as a project violate this exactly?

I think it's a good idea for Freedoom to have a plot. There were several proposed stories (you can find these in the svn repository), but there was never any decision made as to which to use.

However, I do think that any plot we choose should be completely separate from the Doom plot. Trying to tie it into the Doom story is a bad idea, because John Carmack specifically stated that we should avoid anything to do with Id's trademarks. While using the Doom story is perhaps slightly safer than, eg. using Doom's monsters, it's best to stay on the completely safe side and just avoid the issue altogether.

Having said that, I don't think there's anything wrong with using similar thematic elements; look at Half Life, for example.

Mancubus II said:

This needs clarification. Freedoom is an iwad that will not work with the shareware version of the doom executable. How does freedoom as a project violate this exactly?

I've stated this because it perfectly replaces the whole DOOM II if you bundle it with any port.
For instance, if I try to run any PWAD in ZDOOM using DOOM1.WAD (so the shareware episode of DOOM), ZDOOM just won't run anything and ask a registered IWAD. Meanwhile using the Freedoom project as IWAD actually allows me to run any PWAD I want. After all, Freedoom is there to *replace* original DOOM, right? That’s what I meant to say: the whole concept should have been different (anyway, I shouldn’t talk s** on a project the way I did, all apologies).

acc said:

I've stated this because it perfectly replaces the whole DOOM II if you bundle it with any port.

It doesn't "perfectly replace the whole Doom II" because, as all the developers have been reiterating this whole thread, FreeDoom is intentionally different, not a direct duplicate of Doom. If it "perfectly replaced" Doom, there wouldn't be new threads every few months with people complaining that X weapon/monster/etc. "just doesn't feel like Doom". The fact that it is an iwad does not change this.

(I was thinking about the ability to replace DOOM II IWAD and make run PWAD along without having the retailed DOOM II game, I was talking about overall game/engine/content behavior, I didn't talk about graphics, did I ? My bad then. -_-)

I prefer to think of Freedoom as an alternative to Doom - not as a replacement. Maintaining compatibility with existing Doom mods is one of Freedoom's design goals. It also makes sense to be able to utilize existing mods and tools without first having to convert or modify them.

From a legal standpoint (IANAL) - while iD Software can impose restrictions on the usage of their IWAD's, such as not running PWAD's with shareware Doom, I can't see any way they could prohibit the use of third-party mods with Freedoom without infringing on the intellectual property rights of the mod's authors. It's up to the individual authors to decide if they want to impose any such restriction.

GreyGhost said:
From a legal standpoint (IANAL) - while iD Software can impose restrictions on the usage of their IWAD's, such as not running PWAD's with shareware Doom, I can't see any way they could prohibit the use of third-party mods with Freedoom without infringing on the intellectual property rights of the mod's authors. It's up to the individual authors to decide if they want to impose any such restriction.

With copyrighted materials it works the other way around, generally. You don't need to impose restrictions, but you can allow certain liberties.

According to id PWADs that are linked to or modeled after their IWADs are derivative, and they allow you to make them as long as these WADs require their paid-for IWADs. It's not a restriction on linking PWADs to the shareware. This is obvious from the newer EULAs that address this literally, but also evident from the copyright they are defending.

Some people say "but you can't copyright the WAD format, so they can't do that". Except that the WAD format is defined by what the engine needs to run WADs, not by the specific structures of DOOM.WAD and DOOM2.WAD. It requires any TEXTUREx, PNAMES, palettes, color maps, 3 or 4 demos, flat and sprite markers, ENDOOM, various miscellaneous graphics, music, and sounds. And except for the lumps defined in the code, everything else depends on the IWADs. You have to imitate the copyrighted IWADs to produce something that runs the PWADs made for them. You have to derive your product from theirs.

A truly new (and non-derivative) game would use its own PWADs, although it could also use any PWADs that replace only stuff specified in the source code (such as the miscellaneous graphics, music, &c).

A game that is derivative of the source code is fine, because of its license, but not of the IWADs. And copyrights of DOOM and DOOM II PWADs were never totally free because they've always been produced in the context that they're derivative materials.

I have thought ever since I got the first Freedoom with Legacy that it was trying be a DoomII replacement, that was recreating the same gameplay of each original room with an equivalent.
Many of the levels looked so familiar, and I remember solving a level like that in one of the Doom games.

But I am really confused now about what FreeDoom is trying to do, and it does make a difference to the player. It is especially important because FreeDoom is unfinished and the players encounter things that seem to need fixing, and they want to be helpful and point it out, but in reality they do not know which way is 'correct' or 'intended'.
They point out things that seem wrong, because they have been given the wrong impression about what is in character for this wad.

Leaving this as confusing as it is, where only a few developers know what the target is, is going to lose supportive people. If they don't know whether they are pointing out something important, or appearing to be making a dumb mistake, they will just stop pointing, or caring.

I am not sure from this thread that the developers are consistent in this regards (but I cannot tell which repliers are developers and which are not).

I program professionally (Linux, and embedded systems) and this is exactly the kind of loose end that can ruin a project.

As to my wishes:
1. The best reason for a DoomII clone wad would be to fix all the irritations, bugs, inconsistencies, with the original.

2. A completely new set of levels is much more work, independent,
harder to pin down what you are trying to do. More freedom, not constrained by trying to match any existing wad. I think it will tend to wander to this unless you actually set rules saying that you are sticking to some doom wad as a guide.

3. I want to make considerable improvements to some levels. For instance I think that every place that you can see a monster should be accessible to the player. After all how did the monsters get up there. All it needs is some back passage. It does not even have to affect solving the level. I cannot even begin to suggest such things until I know how much it is with or against your design guidelines.

4. I think all levels should be solvable by people with slow fingers.
The original Doom readme says things to that effect, that this is not a twitch game. But some of the FreeDoom levels cannot be solved except the exceptional finger speed and dexterity. It this following some guideline, some previously established criteria for a doom level, or can I argue against it. I don't want to appear stupid for not knowing how it has to be that way, that the developer is trying to match some established criteria.


Sorry this is so long, but I actually have to cut this short.
There is much more to this that has been brewing in my mind for a long time.

someguy said:

I was playing doom 2 the other day, and guess what I noticed? The story is the same as freedoom. This means that freedoom still contains the doom 2 story, so any talk about not having anything to do with doom is nonsense when it comes to the plot, since obviously there's no problem with distributing the freedoom wad while it still has the doom 2 story in it.

Sheesh.

While it's possible to replace the story intermission texts using dehacked, they're actually stored inside Doom2.exe itself and not the wad. Thus, there is no legal obligation for FreeDoom to replace them.

Reading this topic, I just feel I have to say something. What I like about Freedoom is that it's an original Doom-based game and not a copy. Different levels and monsters make it a different game I think. Besides if I want to play Doom, then I'll just play Doom.

Being free got me interested in playing Freedoom since I learned about free software last year. I think it would be cool to have a story, but I don't want it tied to Doom.

Though the story posted is good in my opinion, even though I don't think it can be used in Freedoom.

Wait, FreeDoom has a plot?

sgtcrispy said:

Wait, FreeDoom has a plot?

Yes: you want to do AGM, who awaits you in map30.

sgtcrispy said:

Wait, FreeDoom has a plot?

Of course it has - disgruntled former employee vs malevolent mega-corporation.