It's wild how much better Doom was than even the later doom clones.

[Yasha]

Some background: I was born in 1995, so both Dooms had already been out by then. I didn't get into PC gaming until like 2013 and even then didn't really play Doom at all until around..2018 or so. I've been recently playing a ton of classic Doom, though, and I absolutely love it. Since the whole era of "doom clones" was past my time, a few days ago I thought to look up some of them, just for the historical context. I picked Rise of The Triad, since it seemed to be one of the more popular ones; Doom fans must have liked it, because its music shows up in wads a lot such as Hell Revealed, and even all the way to Valiant. So I looked up some gameplay footage of it.

 

Wow. I don't mean to be rude, but THIS came out AFTER Doom 1?

 

Just...look at it. Incredibly flat and blocky level design. Weak sound effects. Bare enemy placement. It's incredible how much better in almost all respects E1 looks than this. Romero's level designs run rings around this Wolf-3D-esque design. And the sound effects, sheesh. Doom's SFX to this day sound great, and are designed excellently with every single enemy having unique wakeup and death sounds to instantly alert you to their presence or death. Mowing down zombiemen and shotgunners is still fun as hell because their death sounds are so satisfying. The weapons pack a meaty punch, hitting switches feels great with that loud thunk, the "KA-CHIK" of getting a new gun, I could go on and on. And of course the game design in Doom is excellent--it's wild how the vanilla gameplay of Doom 2 is so strong and can scale so well that you can go all the way to stuff like the Mucus Flow, Scythe 2, Sunder, Sunlust, etc. without the slightest change to the mechanics--no need to add a bunch of crap to support the high-octane gameplay, it just works even in scenarios far beyond anything the boys at iD ever dreamed of.

 

Yeah, "Damn, Doom is good" is an ice-cold take, but it's actually staggering how much better it is than all of the challengers of its time. Maybe back then, the whole concept of a FPS was so mind-blowing anything was amazing, but to my younger eyes Doom is so head and shoulders above everything else, it's no wonder why it is eternal and all of the wannabes faded away.

[jazzmaster9]

Yes it did, but that's more to do with this running on the Wolfenstein Engine and being developed around the same time. 

Blake Stone also released around the same time.

 

This is a case of engine limitation than game design competency.

[Lippeth]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Duke 3D, Blood, Shadow Warrior, Dark Forces, Heretic, Hexen, Strife may all be considered "less-than" Doom clones but they're still among my favorite games. I even really like Chex Quest.

 

That said: Doom is still in its own league of awesome.

Edited February 11, 2022 by Lippeth

[Redneckerz]

Its just one of the more known and famous FPS out there, but yes, blast that game away for how bad it is.

 

Meanwhile im having ludicrous gibs.

 

Also you can flip the bird in ROTT so that makes it edgier than Doom.

 

[Doomkid]

In the interest of fairness, I hope you’re comparing the old Doom and Wold3D clones to vanilla Doom and not a source port!

 

..regardless, yeah, Doom has much better level design, much clearer audio cues, and a much clearer “visual language” than most of it’s contemporaries (things like items and weapons are easy to see against the background, exits and pressable switches that aren’t secret are always easy to identify, etc.)

 

Heck, this applies to most games period, not just the Doom clones. Some dev teams/studios have 300 members and infinite money, and yet haven’t worked out the basics. Items should look like items. Sound cues should actually mean something. The levels/environment shouldn’t just blend together into a visual stew with no clear objectives. Etc etc etc...

 

Edit, just to not be taken the wrong way: I think ROTT is a good game. Below Doom, but still above par for the mid 90s FPS scene.

[Astronomical]

I think that to some degree doom wrote the book for design.  If doom wasn't successful but was just as good, we would be confused about some of it's design choices.  In fact it took me forever to truly figure out how to navigate larger levels without getting lost when getting into the game.  So imagine what it would be like if doom wasn't one of the most important shooters of all time.

[BigBoy91]

Rise of the Triad slander will not be tolerated.

[GraphicBleeder]

Don't trash on ROTT, dude. 

[Zaxxon]

Nothing could challenge Doom's quality before 1996 and Duke Nukem 3D... even though i'm willing to argue that Doom is still way better and more fun to play than Duke. 

[unerxai]

Yeah but ROTT has dog mode.

[ENEMY!!!]

Flicking through that video, I can see that Rise of the Triad was constrained somewhat by the Wolf3D engine - it looks like they took it quite a bit further than Wolf3D did though.  I was around 10 at the time, and I remember that in the UK PC gaming magazines of that era it got good reviews, but it wasn't regarded as being quite in Doom's class. 

 

ROTT came out in December 1994.  It wasn't until 1995 when we had shooters coming out that were widely considered to rival Doom (Heretic, Descent, System Shock, Dark Forces, Hexen).  PC Gamer UK and PC Zone UK both considered Hexen as a Doom beater, but for well-documented reasons it didn't catch on as much among gamers.  Thus, there wasn't really a general sense of Doom being surpassed until 1996 with the arrival of Duke Nukem 3D and Quake.

 

 

[Yasha]

2 hours ago, Doomkid said:

In the interest of fairness, I hope you’re comparing the old Doom and Wold3D clones to vanilla Doom and not a source port!

 

 

Most of the things I mentioned--level design, sound design, game mechanics--are pretty much identical to DOS Doom in nearly all source ports. Gameplay nuances can be different, but I don't think things like GZDoom having monsters with normal heights or slightly improved AI matter too much. In any case, even comparing DOS Doom to many shooters of the time, it stands head and shoulders above them in so many aspects. Which is nuts given that it's earlier than most of them. Like I said: we are still making and playing Doom WADs to this day that use the exact same gameplay as DOS Doom, and nearly the exact same engine (though, admittedly, most are Boom maps, but Boom's added features aren't that dramatic of a change from DOS Doom). That's crazy, especially since modern WADs are on a scale literally unheard of back then. Sunder, outside of its Boom-specific mapping tricks, is running the exact same gameplay design and engine as E1M1. Doom's design effortlessly scales up to insane levels without the slightest issue.

[Katamori]

My favorite recent example is the Fortress of Dr. Radiaki. Civvie made a great video about it recentyl:

 

 

 

Pure DOS-era trash.

[PsychEyeball]

Sure, Rise of the Triad came after Doom and Doom 2, but keep in mind this was developed with way inferior tech (aka the Wolf3D engine). And even then, ROTT had a staggering amount of features that Doom didn't even have or games in general wouldn't have for several more years. You enjoy rocket jumping in FPSs? Thank ROTT for that, because it did it first.

 

You call ROTT a Doom clone but it's barely even similar beyond being a first person shooter. It's more arcadey, nonsensical and had a completely different dynamic regarding the weapons, the enemy encounter and the map design in particular. Doom didn't feature infinite ammo for your basic guns and a dozen of different rocket launchers. Of course level design will be weaker in ROTT because it's not as if the Wolf3D engine allows for as many possibilities than the Doom engine does, there's only so much you can do with a tile-based editor and 90 degree walls.

 

You wanna blast Doom's competition? At least pick a game that actually wasn't good. Because your overall opinion seems to be rather uninformed. 

[jazzmaster9]

Also Rise of the Triad was able to do a lot of things Doom could not despite its limited engine, Floors Above Floors, Moving Platforms, Real Rocket Jumping and even multiple endings.

[RHhe82]

I'd agree with many that ROTT is a bit unfair comparison. It did came out in the time of Doom Clones, but I don't think it qualifies as one. Not like Heretic, Hexen, Dark Forces (I guess), Strife, maybe Descent... and Duke Nukem 3D.

 

But you are still right, it's amazing how much better Doom is, and how well it has aged. That's naturally thanks to source ports, but I'm fairly certain there's more to it. Duke Nukem 3D was enthroned a Doom killer once, and as teenager I gushed over it, too, but nowadays when I'd boot up Duke Nukem 3D, it doesn't take long before I find out I'm not actually enjoying. Doom I can still play for hours and damn my humanly body for requiring sleep and adult life responsibilities that I need to go to work and chores or whatnot.

[Zaxxon]

^Rise of the Triad didn't really have floors above floors though. It used these floating platforms to form paths above the actual floor, but two floors above one another? Or actual stairs? There's no such thing in the entire game, only the platforms. The stages are still flat as flat can be, not to mention that it can only render the corners in 90 degree angles.

[Maggle]

RoTT was developed for a heavily modified Wolf 3d Engine around the same time Doom was being developed, and was originally meant to be Wolfenstein's sequel. Their plans changed when ID told them they can't make it a Wolfenstein sequel because they didn't want it taking sales away from Doom. So it doesn't have the same cutting edge tech, but nothing really did at the time. It still did quite a bit for itself since its engine still allowed moving walls, floating platforms, and death traps, and the game itself introduced Rocket Jumping and CTF. RoTT's sounds were also much clearer and higher quality than most other games in the early 90s, it even had voice acting. The graphics were also quite good for the time, using photographed actors kinda like Mortal Kombat. 

 

And it's still not a very good comparison because RoTT really doesn't play much like Doom. You get a couple of infinite ammo bullet weapons like Dual Pistols and an SMG and the remaining weapon slot is for a variety of different rocket launchers or magic weapons that gib most human enemies in one or two hits. There's powerups that transform you, platforming challenges, and the whole game is very much focused on being the most zany, wacky, over the top game possible considering its tech. There's a lot of boring, generic, uninspired or just plain terrible Doom clones from the 90s, and many of them came out well after 1996. Go look up Operation Body Count if you care that much. Came out around the same time as RoTT, but it's a lot worse in pretty much every way, on top of being pretty damn dull and not being very easy on the eyes to put it nicely. RoTT did its own thing and did the most it could considering its development history and engine. RoTT is one of the few shooters from the early-mid 90s that I would say were worth playing.

[Captain POLAND]

I got into the Descent games before Doom, so it might just be nostalgia talking, but I'd say that the first two Descent games are, not necessarily better, but at least as good as Doom 1 and 2. There are points to be made for both series. I have no reservations about saying that Descent 3 was better than Doom 3, though. If only there was a Descent 2016 or Descent Eternal...

 

Never played ROTT or Strife, and I do enjoy Heretic, but not as much as Doom. I really like Hexen too, but it's overall quite a different experience from most Doom maps so I don't really see them as direct competition (with the exception of the BFG vs. Wraithverge comparison - Wraithverge wins, BTW).

 

Dark Forces is another one I see mentioned here that I liked a lot, the main campaign was just so much fun to play through, and I enjoyed it more than any Doom IWAD, but Doom wins in terms of custom content and such for me. Duke Nukem 3D was fun but one thing that brought it down for me was that it didn't have a weapon that felt as powerful as the BFG. The enemies also had less 'character' to them, if you know what I mean. But the level design and the secrets were better.

[ENEMY!!!]

The Descent community is still going fairly strongly (though not as much as the Doom community) with the D1/2x-Rebirth source ports.  Overload was intended as a sort of sequel to Descent. 

 

I'm pleased and feel vindicated to some extent by the strength and longevity of today's Doom community, as I remember that even though I was enjoying some of the newer shooters (especially Half-Life), a large part of me remained an old school Doomer in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and others kept telling me that it was old and outdated and time to "move on".  I don't think I expected to still be regularly playing Doom maps 20 years later though!

[Sneezy McGlassFace]

As others pointed out, ROTT is on Wolf 3D engine. But imagine what it could've been, if they built on Doom engine, instead. Ooooh, boy! 

ROTT is an arcadey shooty bang-bang run gun fun action. That opposes well to Doom's semi-serious tone of hell invasion. It's over the top ridiculous and I respect that. 

Speaking of which, is there a ROTT resource pack for weapons and enemies, and stuff? I would LOVE that. 

[Helm]

Besides the engine being optimized for speed of motion, which other Doom clone engines can't always boast, I'd say it's solid design fundamentals that elevate Doom over almost all the other doom clones. And when you think about doom clones, don't think just about the cream of the crop like DF or Duke3d, think about the probably hundreds of b-tier 'oh, we can code a 3d engine too!' shovelware titles like Tek War, Radiaki Op Bodycount and such. 

Take a very simple part (by today's standards) of Doom's fundamental design: enemies have a chance to get hitstun and that will reset their state. Different guns, different stats for hitstun. Different enemies? Different thresholds of pain. Think about how important such a detail is to the Doom experience, and then go play a random clone from the 90s and check for hitstun, heh.

Doom's developers had made dozens of fun, well designed and scoped games before Wolfenstein, even. 

The other winning part of Doom that contributes to its legacy is that they had a very talented graphic artist art directing the project in Adrian Carmack. Most other Doom clones besides Dark Forces, actually, do not have strong art direction geared for immersive 3d first person shooting at all. I'd say that to this day, after 30 years of community content, the best artwork in the game is not made by fans, it's the original character design and spritework by Adrian Carmack. 

It's super fascinating to see what other developers took from Doom 1/2 and what flew over their heads. Everyone was wowed by fast, 3d immersive first person camera, nearly nobody that tried to replicate the success of the original game put enough thought into how to design gameplay for 3d space, though, even though the shining example was in front of them. For most of the competition 'oh man, I am walking around in 3d and shooting a gun at a sprite!' was the success criterium.

[Graf Zahl]

2 minutes ago, Helm said:

The other winning part of Doom that contributes to its legacy is that they had a very talented graphic artist art directing the project in Adrian Carmack. Most other Doom clones besides Dark Forces, actually, do not have strong art direction geared for immersive 3d first person shooting at all

 

Huh, what? To me this has always been Doom's weakest spot. Most games build their assets to fit the intended theme - but in Doom virtually all levels feel like they had to make something with a fixed and not particularly fitting set of textures.

 

Let's please take off those rose tinted glasses. When it comes to art direction virtually everything from the second generation of FPSs (i.e. Duke Nukem 3D and onward), with the exception of Quake far outdoes Doom by a wide margin. I especially single out Quake here because it feels to be done by the same approach as Doom, i.e. create a limited texture set and then build some levels from it.

Duke Nukem 3D on the other hand clearly went another route by creating the textures that were needed to do the intended locations right.

[Master O]

48 minutes ago, ENEMY!!! said:

The Descent community is still going fairly strongly (though not as much as the Doom community) with the D1/2x-Rebirth source ports.  Overload was intended as a sort of sequel to Descent. 

 

I'm pleased and feel vindicated to some extent by the strength and longevity of today's Doom community, as I remember that even though I was enjoying some of the newer shooters (especially Half-Life), a large part of me remained an old school Doomer in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and others kept telling me that it was old and outdated and time to "move on".  I don't think I expected to still be regularly playing Doom maps 20 years later though!

 

In the fighting game community, people still play all of Capcom's and SNK's iconic games, from Street Fighter to King of Fighters, (and more obscure ones, like World Heroes) so longevity is not just limited to FPS-es.

[Helm]

I agree they didn't figure out how to use textures in a 3d space as effectively as competition did even a couple of years later, in terms of theming realistic spaces. Inadvertently they created the 'abstract level design' principle, nonetheless but I wouldn't give that up to intentional art direction, sure. I'm mostly focusing on the enemy designs, guns, items, etc. All very iconic.

[Graf Zahl]

Agreed. The enemy design was miles ahead of many later games, but looking at Doom 2's weird nondescript levels still gives me eyesores. They didn't wow me in 1994 and I never warmed up to them - I really prefer playing user mods instead of the original campaign.

 

[yakfak]

I honestly think that if Doom 2's textures and their usage were more constrained to particular themes it'd feel less explosively inspirational. it's like seeing a new texture pack - imagine what I could do with this??? - vs. a new level set with its own textures - look what we've already done with this!!! if doom 2's city maps looked like cities beyond in squint-your-eyes terms, if floor, border and ceiling ever produced a sense of continuous verisimilitude, if stock doom suggested even one time a place where the nature of the structure you were standing in was at all guessable, if the conventions were initially hammered on then current doom stuff would be totally different

[Ludi]

16 minutes ago, yakfak said:

I honestly think that if Doom 2's textures and their usage were more constrained to particular themes it'd feel less explosively inspirational. 

 

This is a great point. Doom's textures feel like they were tailor made to be tinkered with and have custom maps . I doubt that this wasn't intentional, considering the tools for mapping Doom had at the time. I feel like Duke textures are harder to be creative with for the exact reason that they were designed for specific scenarios.

 

It's also why community made texture sets like cc4-tex and OTEX follow the same principle of functioning like a bin of Legos that you can build whatever you want with 

[Helm]

yakfak is on the money, I think the community figured this out over the decades, like, from the stock textures, what if a map only uses one theme, or two? Stronger sense of place and even the abstraction plays up to that approach. The original games, as much as I love them, look like a texture carnival to modern eyes. And that's because back then even putting these different colors and details next to each other in a fully 3d space was extremely novel. That technological novelty has faded, obviously. But even in that weaker part of the original games (texture usage) there is still the germ of something much more amazing, as the textures in the game themselves are also pretty great, a lot of them absolutely iconic in their own right. I live for metal2, for example.

[msx2plus]

the reason many "clones" (not something like ROTT, think more like Mars3D) fail is because they're trying to be something they're not. doom clones wanted to be doom. but doom wanted to be whatever it wanted to be. it was a hodgepodge of influences, not just "oh shit i'm also gonna do that!"

 

if the clones followed suit in that regard, many would be more fondly remembered.