Choose Your Own Adventure

[rabidrage]

It's 1996.  Quake is about to come out, and you work at id.  You know everything about it.  You've been tasked with creating a game in the Doom engine to compete with it, and you have as much time as it took to develop Quake (this scenario is the most unrealistic one ever, but go with it for the fun of the experiment).  You can expand and modify the engine to your heart's content.  You have permission from various creators to use absolutely anything from the modding community up to that point, as well as features from console ports and other Doom games.  What do you do, and do you think you'll be able to compete?  Bear in mind that this allows you to implement colored lighting, reverb, translucency and CD-quality audio from the Playstation, as well as ACS and polyobjects from Hexen.

You face this scenario again with the release of Quake 2, Quake 3 and then Doom 3.  As time goes on, you have access to anything that comes out officially or unofficially for any Doom engine game.  How do you fare and why?

[jerrysheppy]

It depends what we mean by competing.  If you mean actually steal significant market share from Quake, I'm not sure if you can do it since the new bells and whistles of the Quake engine will get a lot of mass-market folks to hop on that game, whilst a new Doom-engine game will be seen as, well, a Doom-engine game.  (We saw how Hexen, Strife etc., new features, and all, actually competed with the Quake generation— which is to say they didn't.)

If you mean "perform a better feat of game design" then that's potentially much more feasible since you don't even need to do more than push the Vanilla engine to its limits.  I think at that point it comes down to whether the premises of your question include knowing how to use the available technology to its utmost.  By which I mean, for instance, that something like Rekkr or BTSX 1/2 is a far, far higher quality and better realized "game" than Hexen, even though actually technologically more primitive.  (BTSX did take longer than you're giving us in this thought experiment, but I'm supposing that this would change if the team were doing it for a living and had a firm deadline.)  Hell, BTSX is a more laudable feat of design than a certain id software game from 2020, let alone one from 1996.

[TheSlipgateStudios]

I would actually rewrite history and create the Doom 3 that classic Doom fans want: action oriented, fast paced gameplay, a little story here and there and a bit of Doomguy's background. I think this would turn out well. (for the sake of this experiment)

[Shepardus]

That's pretty much what Raven was doing for much of its existence.

[Klear]

I would base it on RTX and then watch how nobody manages to get it running for decades.

[rabidrage]

5 hours ago, Klear said:

I would base it on RTX and then watch how nobody manages to get it running for decades.

Well it does have to be able to run on the technology of the time.  And it has to come about without knowledge of future technology.  Though like I said, if you want to modify the engine, you can do that.

[rabidrage]

11 hours ago, jerrysheppy said:

It depends what we mean by competing.  If you mean actually steal significant market share from Quake, I'm not sure if you can do it since the new bells and whistles of the Quake engine will get a lot of mass-market folks to hop on that game, whilst a new Doom-engine game will be seen as, well, a Doom-engine game.  (We saw how Hexen, Strife etc., new features, and all, actually competed with the Quake generation— which is to say they didn't.)

If you mean "perform a better feat of game design" then that's potentially much more feasible since you don't even need to do more than push the Vanilla engine to its limits.  I think at that point it comes down to whether the premises of your question include knowing how to use the available technology to its utmost.  By which I mean, for instance, that something like Rekkr or BTSX 1/2 is a far, far higher quality and better realized "game" than Hexen, even though actually technologically more primitive.  (BTSX did take longer than you're giving us in this thought experiment, but I'm supposing that this would change if the team were doing it for a living and had a firm deadline.)  Hell, BTSX is a more laudable feat of design than a certain id software game from 2020, let alone one from 1996.

 

Let's say I meant a combination of option 1 and option 2.  I see where you'd say option 1 could not happen, but your goal is to try.

I was hoping the option to modify and expand the engine would open up the necessary paths...and let's say the team is doing it for a living.

It's funny, because at the time (when I didn't know anything about how this stuff worked, including the difference between sprites and models), I thought the Quake models didn't look so great.  I got a hold of Doom 64 and thought it looked a thousand times better.

[jerrysheppy]

1 hour ago, rabidrage said:

I see where you'd say option 1 could not happen, but your goal is to try.

Fair enough.  Thinking on it a bit more, I'm not sure my answer changes that much. 

The way I see it, even with the state of the art to the "Doom engine family" up through Hexen, you're still not going to compete with the Quake engine on technology and features.  So I wouldn't try, and assuming I had access to the bulk of modern know-how for how to utilize the vanilla Doom engine, I'd lean hardest into doing something that was on the level of the aforementioned REKKR / BTSX in terms of asset quality and level design, with maybe a garnish of an interesting backstory.  I have no idea how close a professional team working full-time could get to that in a year, but that's what I'd shoot for.  I'd use colored lighting, polyobjects, and primitive ACS where they could be of use, but I wouldn't try to make the additional features any sort of back-of-the-box selling point, because as soon as you start bragging about lighting and geometry you're trying to compete with Quake on Quake's own terms and that just seems like a fool's errand to me in 1996.

 

edit: It also just occurs to me that you never specify the size of the team I've got at my disposal.  I've been sort of automatically assuming that I have a team approximately equal in size to the standard for the Doom-Quake era: a dedicated artist, a programmer, 2-4 level designers, etc.  If it's supposed to be a one-man show then shit obviously becomes much harder even if I'm still doing it as a full-time job.

Edited May 7, 2023 by jerrysheppy

[rabidrage]

1 hour ago, jerrysheppy said:

Fair enough.  Thinking on it a bit more, I'm not sure my answer changes that much. 

The way I see it, even with the state of the art to the "Doom engine family" up through Hexen, you're still not going to compete with the Quake engine on technology and features.  So I wouldn't try, and assuming I had access to the bulk of modern know-how for how to utilize the vanilla Doom engine, I'd lean hardest into doing something that was on the level of the aforementioned REKKR / BTSX in terms of asset quality and level design, with maybe a garnish of an interesting backstory.  I have no idea how close a professional team working full-time could get to that in a year, but that's what I'd shoot for.  I'd use colored lighting, polyobjects, and primitive ACS where they could be of use, but I wouldn't try to make the additional features any sort of back-of-the-box selling point, because as soon as you start bragging about lighting and geometry you're trying to compete with Quake on Quake's own terms and that just seems like a fool's errand to me in 1996.

 

edit: It also just occurs to me that you never specify the size of the team I've got at my disposal.  I've been sort of automatically assuming that I have a team approximately equal in size to the standard for the Doom-Quake era: a dedicated artist, a programmer, 2-4 level designers, etc.  If it's supposed to be a one-man show then shit obviously becomes much harder even if I'm still doing it as a full-time job.

 

Yes, let's say a team equal in size and skill to the Quake team.

You wouldn't be able to compete on geometry, though I don't think the original Quake had colored lighting, unless I'm forgetting something?  But you're right--to the average gamer the minutiae could get lost.  I was development illiterate in 1995 and thought the lighting in PSX Doom was awesome, though.  Still fairly illiterate to this day, but trying harder to understand.

 

On the topic of geometry, for what it's worth, there was a primitive version of deep(ish) water in early fan wads, as well as faux 3D bridges.  It's not much...but you can obviously have it to work with.

[jerrysheppy]

Quake 1 did not have colored lighting, but my point is more that I don't think you want to be prompting the consumer to be thinking about advances in lighting technology as a selling point, because in this hypothetical, Quake's lighting technology is the new hotness and using Playstation or N64-type colored lighting is just like dabbing a bit of glitter on the Doom lighting model.  So our hypothetical Doom-engine game likely doesn't come out ahead in this scenario.  It all comes back to my overall philosophy in this scenario, which is to not try to attack Quake where it's strongest.

 

That's not to say that I don't encourage my designers to use colored lighting if it helps create a particular environment, but it's more making the point that the tier of level design, and specifically lighting, that one sees in vanilla Doom/Hexen/Strife/etc. is not going to suddenly compete with Quake in anyone's mind just because you barfed a rainbow on it.

 

Doom 64 did something similar to what I'm suggesting, in that it used colored lighting as part of its featureset but used it as part of a broad-front push to create its own aesthetic via all-new textures and a generally different artistic imagination.  And it's a matter of historical record that for all its merits, Doom 64 was, uh, not a Quake killer or even a real Quake competitor, so you'll need to go farther than it did in some sense.  The good news for our hypothetical team is that there's a lot of room to further improve on Doom 64 from a design standpoint without exceeding vanilla limits, let alone Hexen ones, but you do have to know what you're doing.

[OceanMadman]

I would like to make some kind of wolf3d sequel, which I guess that could do well because there were no wolf3d sequels up to that point that bringed anything new apart from new maps and resources. I'd try to code as much new stuff as I could (Let's say, "colored lighting, reverb, translucency and CD-quality audio from the Playstation, as well as ACS and polyobjects from Hexen" as it's said in the op) and try some mapping trickery to make it feel like a new engine, such as fake 3d floors with midtextures, reflections done with textures clipping through the floor, etc. And about stealing resources uhhh, I guess I'd go with Osiris so I could make some egyptian styled maps.

Edited May 7, 2023 by OceanMadman

[rabidrage]

25 minutes ago, OceanMadman said:

I would like to make some kind of wolf3d sequel, which I guess that could do well because there were no wolf3d sequels up to that point that bringed anything new apart from new maps and resources. I'd try to code as much new stuff as I could (Let's say, "colored lighting, reverb, translucency and CD-quality audio from the Playstation, as well as ACS and polyobjects from Hexen" as it's said in the op) and try some mapping trickery to make it feel like a new engine, such as fake 3d floors with midtextures, reflections done with textures clipping through the floor, etc. And about stealing resources uhhh, I guess I'd go with Osiris so I could make some egyptian styled maps.

 

How well do you think it would do against Quake?

[OceanMadman]

17 hours ago, rabidrage said:

 

How well do you think it would do against Quake?

I bet there were still many wolf3d fans in 1996, so I guess it wouldn't be as succesful as quake but a lot of people would still buy it.

[rabidrage]

19 hours ago, jerrysheppy said:

Quake 1 did not have colored lighting, but my point is more that I don't think you want to be prompting the consumer to be thinking about advances in lighting technology as a selling point, because in this hypothetical, Quake's lighting technology is the new hotness and using Playstation or N64-type colored lighting is just like dabbing a bit of glitter on the Doom lighting model.  So our hypothetical Doom-engine game likely doesn't come out ahead in this scenario.  It all comes back to my overall philosophy in this scenario, which is to not try to attack Quake where it's strongest.

 

That's not to say that I don't encourage my designers to use colored lighting if it helps create a particular environment, but it's more making the point that the tier of level design, and specifically lighting, that one sees in vanilla Doom/Hexen/Strife/etc. is not going to suddenly compete with Quake in anyone's mind just because you barfed a rainbow on it.

 

Doom 64 did something similar to what I'm suggesting, in that it used colored lighting as part of its featureset but used it as part of a broad-front push to create its own aesthetic via all-new textures and a generally different artistic imagination.  And it's a matter of historical record that for all its merits, Doom 64 was, uh, not a Quake killer or even a real Quake competitor, so you'll need to go farther than it did in some sense.  The good news for our hypothetical team is that there's a lot of room to further improve on Doom 64 from a design standpoint without exceeding vanilla limits, let alone Hexen ones, but you do have to know what you're doing.

 

I like your way of putting things into perspective and I think you're most likely right.  Doom 64 was not a Quake killer or competitor for sure.  Did that perhaps have anything to do with the fact that it was only available on N64?  I was the only one among my friends who had one at the time.

[LadyMistDragon]

Make something a little closer to John Romero's original vision for Quake, only a little bit less ambitious at first. Then after that, we could theoretically start going bigger and better. That might lead to further problems down the road as AAA has shown us generally, but initially, some sort of Strife-styled/medieval-styled/space-styled version of an RPG-lite game would be cool. Maybe I'll say more later.

[DannyMan]

Since HacX is one year away, I would've told their development team to restart production to a Quake add-on 

[rabidrage]

On 5/8/2023 at 10:38 PM, DannyMan said:

Since HacX is one year away, I would've told their development team to restart production to a Quake add-on 

 

...in the Doom engine?

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

On 5/7/2023 at 11:43 AM, rabidrage said:

It's funny, because at the time (when I didn't know anything about how this stuff worked, including the difference between sprites and models), I thought the Quake models didn't look so great.  I got a hold of Doom 64 and thought it looked a thousand times better.

It's kind of a tangent (and I don't really have an intelligent answer to the OP question at the moment), but as someone who's spent a lot of time on stuff of the Doom/Quake era, "why do sprites sometimes look better than early-era models, even when models are technically more detailed?" is a question I've mulled over a lot.  The answer I eventually settled on is that models aren't as "photogenic" as sprites, that is, when you're looking at a static screenshot, it's easier to notice the blocky polygonal bits of a model, whereas the sprite is at worst scaled up and the pixels look a bit chunky, but all the details that are there are there.  It's only when you're actually in-game (or watching a video at least) that you can see how much more smoothly you can view the models from any angle imaginable, which is their biggest advantage over sprites (though Quake models, and interestingly even more so Chasm models also have way bigger skins than the pixel allotment of most sprites so there's more up-close detail than you might think).  So you can look at a Quake screenshot alongside a Doom one and think "wow those Quake monsters look like garbage" but in-game it's a different experience.

 

In latter days, the resolution you play at also plays a part, once you cross the point where the lines of the polygon boundaries become crisper than the details of the skin, the lack of details in the mesh becomes more glaring.  I happened to be messing with the DOS backport of Hammer of Thyrion for Hexen 2 recently and noticed how at 320x200, it's hard to notice much of what's wrong with the Paladin hands, while in high resolutions they look astonishingly bad because it becomes clear how the blocky sculpting of the thumb doesn't even line up right with the shading on the texture.  Those sorts of resolutions were probably largely unattainable when the games came out, though.

[Gez]

On dimanche 7 mai 2023 at 5:50 AM, rabidrage said:

It's 1996.  Quake is about to come out, and you work at id.  You know everything about it.  You've been tasked with creating a game in the Doom engine to compete with it, and you have as much time as it took to develop Quake (this scenario is the most unrealistic one ever, but go with it for the fun of the experiment).  You can expand and modify the engine to your heart's content.  You have permission from various creators to use absolutely anything from the modding community up to that point, as well as features from console ports and other Doom games.  What do you do, and do you think you'll be able to compete?  Bear in mind that this allows you to implement colored lighting, reverb, translucency and CD-quality audio from the Playstation, as well as ACS and polyobjects from Hexen.

Well, Final Doom was published in 1996.

 

I guess if it had been up to me, I would have made Final Doom more into the definitive GOTY version of Doom, turning it from a couple of Doom II packs into something more like WadSmoosh: a single all-in-one Doom game with The Ultimate Doom, Doom II, the Master Levels, and yes, both campaigns from Final Doom all in one single IWAD (and if I get to rewrite history a bit, add in Perdition's Gate and Hell to Pay too); resolving the resource conflicts. With a "marathon" campaign mode (no relation to the Mac game, but the idea of a very long endurance run) where you go through all of these levels in sequence plus with the console-exclusive levels interspersed where they logically fit story-wise.

 

I would also add back many of the stuff that was left on the cutting room floor -- more resources and assets that we only got to see when Romero published them in 2015 but that obviously were always available to id Software. So lots more textures and decorative items; perhaps even some extra monsters and weapons if there's sufficient material for them. It would have shipped with a map editor (probably derived from DoomEd but with some changes inspired by third-party programs like DoomCAD, such as treating sectors as they should be instead of just being line properties) and a random map generator (which is where the real development work would go, since the rest was mostly repackaging already-created stuff) that could make use of all that extra content.

On dimanche 7 mai 2023 at 5:50 AM, rabidrage said:

You face this scenario again with the release of Quake 2, Quake 3 and then Doom 3.  As time goes on, you have access to anything that comes out officially or unofficially for any Doom engine game.  How do you fare and why?

By the time of Quake 2, I honestly see no real point in trying to keep releasing more Doom engine games. At that point, the Doom engine was old enough to be obsolete without being old enough to be retro.

[The BMFG]

id make something in the style of the og max payne, like shootin down mobsters and shit. i think something like that in dooms engine would be tons of fun