Romero tweets that Doom is 3D.

[Moustachio]

On 6/11/2020 at 5:17 AM, TheMightyHeracross said:

"2.5 D" isn't a real thing. You can't have "half" of a dimension.

 

If you can move up and down, left and right, and forward and backward, and the game internally uses x, y, and z coordinates in collision detection (monsters may have infinite height but projectiles do not, also it's needed for map geometry), that's 3 dimensions. It's a 3D game. That the game uses sprites instead of models and has no room-over-room is irrelevant. 

 

You can move forward in time, but not back.

[Chip]

I created the first 1D game. it is called  . 

hope you enjoy it!

 

[kalaeth]

18 hours ago, LiT_gam3r said:

I created the first 1D game. it is called  . 

hope you enjoy it!

 

 

there's actually a 1D roguelike, called YOU_ARE_DEAD I think (yup : https://github.com/rupa/YOU_ARE_DEAD )

[Chip]

1 hour ago, kalaeth said:

 

there's actually a 1D roguelike, called YOU_ARE_DEAD I think (yup : https://github.com/rupa/YOU_ARE_DEAD )

as soon as I saw Roguelike, I knew that this was a 2d game. any movement at all would make a game two dimensional. I haven't even looked at the game, but it is not 1d if you can move. yay, I win!

[wallabra]

On 6/29/2020 at 10:50 AM, Maes said:

So are you telling me, I have been living in a lie?

 

I don't like picking up items to do my duty. Heck, I never use the items I pick up in those games! That inventory's more like Wolf3D treasure to me!

 

On 6/29/2020 at 10:50 AM, Maes said:

And Heretic is so ridiculously close to Doom in engine terms (v1.1, of all things), went that extra mile (well, more like extra 10 yards) in terms of controls that would unambiguously shut down most "is X 3D?" debates, and yet it's like the proverbial elephant in the room, ignored/dismissed.

 

It does not matter if it is close or if it is ZDoom with a UnrealScript virtual machine cobbled up on top. It is not the same. It was modified. They changed the source code, but more importantly, they strayed away from strict Doom compatibility. And that makes it invalid.

 

On 6/29/2020 at 10:50 AM, Maes said:

Doom/Heretic maps however can be thought of as the extrusion of two 3D surfaces (one for floors, one for ceilings).

 

Have you ever thought of E3M2: Slough of Despair as an actual living hand that you crawl through, any time you ever played it? No? That's because it isn't. Thought experiments do not make a thing what it is not. And Doom's technicalities can only come so close to actual 3D physics or graphics.

 

You see, that is the raycaster's main purpose - it makes the work of rendering what you would be seeing in the level, rather than making your imagination spend that time on it and detract from your reaction speed. That's also why enemies are two-dimensional sprites, rather than models. Blitting to a screen with a 386 is a fundamental limit and you can't do much as far as perspective goes there. Hell, Quake needed a 486 and a float co-processor to even have a playable framerate, and guess what, it is still more shuttery than a 50s movie camera with a snail for a shutter!

 

Addressing Doom's technical aspects in a more 3D manner is much more feasible if you begin talking physics, though. Everything has a vertical position - which is mostly for map geometry collision, at which point it begins to make some sense that the heights define extrusions subtracted from a CSG of sorts. You can fall, but you can not cross the position of non-floating monsters using height (which is more of a fairness thing, as they on the other hand become non-opponents if you run over their heads like Mario on cocaine, anyway). From that, although your gameplay is mostly horizontal, there is definitely three dimensions when it comes to the simulation of the game.

 

So really, it's 2D in some aspects and 3D in others. Although where it matters itis mostly three-dimensional, unless you're Ribbiks, then it's 9D for all intents and purposes.

[amackert]

On 6/28/2020 at 8:42 PM, insertwackynamehere said:

I wouldn’t be wrong from certain perspectives. 2.5D is a meaningless cutesy term to define Doom in the context of the time period between Wolf and Quake, not some immutable statement of mathematical or computational reality.

 

I'm not sure when people began referring applying "2.5D" to pre-Quake FPS games, but that's not how the term was used originally. "2.5D" came about in the '90s during the PS1 era to describe games that combined 3D graphics (primarily polygons) with traditional 2D gameplay. Examples include titles like Pandemonium, Tomba, Klonoa, R-Type Delta, Einhander, Wild 9, etc. It's a useful label to quickly convey certain basic elements of games like these (typically polygon objects or backgrounds, with traditional 8/16-bit era 2D gameplay).

 

From my standpoint, it's not a term that should be applied to first-person shooters at all, regardless of how a game "fakes" its 3D visual makeup.

[Cacodemon345]

Just because you can't move the geometry horizontally does not make Doom 2D. In HL2, making every piece of geometry movable in a map would have made that said map unplayable.

[Optimus]

Hehe, I just finished reading new John's Romero book and he uses the term 2.5D for Doom. I guess that term is what most people relate to nowadays.

[BeachThunder]

18 minutes ago, Optimus said:

Hehe, I just finished reading new John's Romero book and he uses the term 2.5D for Doom. I guess that term is what most people relate to nowadays.

I've switched to using the term sprite-based shooter. I think that it's a lot clearer.

 

I used to go with 2.5D, but clearly that is a very contentious term...

[Nikku4211]

I use the term 'column-based renderer' for the classic renderers used by these kinds of FPS games. In many cases(with some exceptions), you can tell a column-based renderer from how it only uses two-point perspective when you look up and down.

 

My definition is based on how the environment is rendered and does not take into account whether sprites, voxels, or models are used for the enemies, items, decoration, NPCs, players, etc. in it.

 

Of course, if the game uses X, Y, and Z to track the position of enough entities, then it is internally a 3D game, regardless of how it is rendered.

[Mr. Freeze]

I think we should choose whatever makes the most people mad.