Doom Absolution / Doom 64 2 research

[Immorpher]

There is an interesting ad going around in magazines in 1997, where they are selling "Doom 64: Abolition", assuming its a misread of Doom 64: Absolution. Looks like they were trying to sell it before even being released: https://archive.org/search.php?query="Doom 64 Abolition"&sin=TXT&and[]=year%3A"1997"

[betabox]

I've seen many catalogs like that in game mags with price listings, especially games for home computers. There are often items that haven't yet been released, sometimes even cancelled in the end. I think these are just projections of price points, and they seem to botch with them sometimes.

[Quasar]

12 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

I guess I misused "planning" more or less. To me, if the game design isn't really finalized (and we admittedly have no idea how much it was finalized before the title was dropped), that would still be the planning stages. I'll cede the definition to someone who actually makes software, but there's usually at least a grace period where you know some of the things you want and can work towards implementing them even as other parts of the spec are still being finalized, and I figure that's the point Doom Absolution reached before it was canned.

Fair enough. I can only speak for Nightdive but the "planning" phase of a project is what management does before they even hand us whatever code or assets have survived from an original game and tell us to go nuts. We of course have a lot of freedom to set parameters even past that point but the basic goal of the project ("port this game to these platforms") is set.

 

For Doom Absolution it's clear there was a pretty simple plan: do another IWAD's-worth or so of maps but this time supporting two-player deathmatch. We're still unclear on what would have been included beyond that (single player? Turok Rage Wars style bots??) though Tim's mentioning that the macro system would be even more heavily deployed than in the first game would lead credence to there at least being some kind of SP because it's hard to imagine macro scripting playing very well with MP considering how it destroys it for the original Doom 64 campaign.

 

I would imagine that core plan had been set and approved by management even before Doom 64 shipped, since it seems that the team went straight into developing Absolution as the first game was released (Doom 64 shipped in March 97 so they got about 3.5 to 4 months' work in before it was canned, which is not insignificant by any measure with an engine already largely set in stone - those guys worked quickly). As to the details of individual maps, those likely rested with the mappers.

[Dark Pulse]

7 hours ago, Quasar said:

Fair enough. I can only speak for Nightdive but the "planning" phase of a project is what management does before they even hand us whatever code or assets have survived from an original game and tell us to go nuts. We of course have a lot of freedom to set parameters even past that point but the basic goal of the project ("port this game to these platforms") is set.

Yeah, and by that definition, the plan was definitely set pretty quickly and that'd be production at that point. Of course, Goldeneye came out that August and that almost certainly put the nail in the coffin - how's your old Doom Engine game gonna compete with that, and then you throw down Turok already being out there and Quake on its heels.

 

7 hours ago, Quasar said:

For Doom Absolution it's clear there was a pretty simple plan: do another IWAD's-worth or so of maps but this time supporting two-player deathmatch. We're still unclear on what would have been included beyond that (single player? Turok Rage Wars style bots??) though Tim's mentioning that the macro system would be even more heavily deployed than in the first game would lead credence to there at least being some kind of SP because it's hard to imagine macro scripting playing very well with MP considering how it destroys it for the original Doom 64 campaign.

 

I would imagine that core plan had been set and approved by management even before Doom 64 shipped, since it seems that the team went straight into developing Absolution as the first game was released (Doom 64 shipped in March 97 so they got about 3.5 to 4 months' work in before it was canned, which is not insignificant by any measure with an engine already largely set in stone - those guys worked quickly). As to the details of individual maps, those likely rested with the mappers.

Yeah, what I'm really wondering from all this is how they'd have made the macro system work with multiple players.

 

Obviously with a single player, you don't have to worry about consistency or anything like that, but when you've got multiple players involved, you've got to sync up all those actions for all those players, meaning that you can't simply rely on, say, knowing triggering this macro when the player walks over this linedef, because with 2+ players you may need to trigger it even if the other player hasn't touched that linedef. And then you need to deal with "What happens if two players trigger an opposing action," etc.

 

PS: Per Wikipedia, Turok was actually the one out in March (on March 4th). Doom 64 came out the next month (to the day - April 4th). Though in Europe Turok came out there simultaneously, whereas PAL Doom 64 was a December 2nd release.

[boris]

21 hours ago, Immorpher said:

There is an interesting ad going around in magazines in 1997, where they are selling "Doom 64: Abolition", assuming its a misread of Doom 64: Absolution. Looks like they were trying to sell it before even being released: https://archive.org/search.php?query="Doom 64 Abolition"&sin=TXT&and[]=year%3A"1997"

 

There are even more mistakes.

• Diddy Kones Racing
• San Francsico Rush
• Wayne Gretzy
• Lamboughini

[Dark Pulse]

4 hours ago, boris said:

There are even more mistakes.

• Diddy Kones Racing
• San Francsico Rush
• Wayne Gretzy
• Lamboughini

And Ken "Griffy" Jr.

[Immorpher]

You just don't understand! They just had exclusive games developed for them as the sole reseller. Just you wait until my "Conkers Quest" arrives in the mail that I pre-ordered 20 years ago. :D