Visit to id in '93

[LogicDeLuxe]

Lord_Z said:

I had no idea they started with having treasure pick-ups. That was really fun to watch.

They are present in the press release demo as well.

Quasar said:

Romero had his machine turned down to 2 MB according to what he said, which is why the game was running so terribly and running out of memory so frequently. This is probably why they turned up the final memory requirement to 4 MB.

I think, they made it 4 MB due to the frequent texture loading delays you can notice in the video. I guess, with all sounds present things became even worse. Vanilla Doom doesn't even start with only 2 MB available, but I once noticed that Boom still does with 1 MB. Just in case you are in a curious mood to try this.

That error message is a bug which occurred randomly when the exit button is hit.

[Deeforce]

Nice video, thx!

[Use]

Lord_Z said:

I had no idea they started with having treasure pick-ups. That was really fun to watch.

Having treasure and demonic items in the game was from the Doom Bible, which was the original design spec.

[kristus]

I never understood why they had extra lives in Wolf3d. good thing they removed it in Doom.

EDIT: I mean, in Descent they make sense. Cause you can actually utilize them to overcome a boss or something. But in Wolf they are just letting you restart the map w/o weapons or ammo like a clean start.

[myk]

It was a gaming standard which id used in their previous (side-scroller) games. Often design elements are taken for granted until they become a problem or some idea comes up that forces them to be changed. In DOOM, death handling is more or less the same as with "additional lives", except that the number of lives is unlimited. In Wolf3D they still fit more than they would in DOOM because it's a simpler, more architecturally monotonous game where you have a score system which includes a top scores list. The limit on lives is a way of making the higher scores more meaningful. Without the scores, limiting the number of lives makes less sense.

[kristus]

Actually in Keen it didn't make much sense either since you had saves there too iirc. Most games that got extra lives do it's hi score in a way that it counts from the start of the game until you lose your last life. And in some cases you last continue. In Keen Wolf and Doom you can save your game. So extra lives makes no sense. Specially since you can't use them to soften up a boss like you can in Descent.

[myk]

The idea of saves, at least in these older games, is so you can go to sleep or whatever, where you leave the game too long to rely on the pause key... and not to restart when you die. People can use saves to advance if they're rather gay (admittedly, most of us are the first time we play, as we might be eager to see what lies ahead) but you can still play by the rules and reserve them solely for interruptions.

[LogicDeLuxe]

myk said:

People can use saves to advance if they're rather gay (admittedly, most of us are the first time we play, as we might be eager to see what lies ahead) but you can still play by the rules and reserve them solely for interruptions.

Sierra's motto was "save early, save often" for quite some time. It's obviously a design question how a save feature is meant to be used.

[Khorus]

There's no rules for how someone should use the save/quicksave feature. That's personal preference. I personally would rather abuse quicksave but also have -fast on with a new wad than to start from scratch or some designated save point each time.

[myk]

That just means retards are allowed (or even encouraged) to play too :p

Games aren't "serious business" so designers don't really need to force things past making certain simpler mechanics available. Saves were introduced as a commodity for home gaming, where people could come and go to continue their games. If you look at earlier games, they were pretty much like arcades, with some home-friendly additions like this one.

A system that added saves but retained the possibility of playing a game without their abuse would have required some method to delete previous saves associated to player deaths (not to mention exits from the game), making it sure it were bugless. Hence, developers didn't bother.

Saves are abusable because you can always apply them in convenient situations, making the game much easier. This also makes game-testing less effective, since, how do you factor in that people will be saving in various places just to go past hard situations? Without abusing saves, you start in designated locations of the game, with "from scratch stats" (that might be static or might depend on the level) which are accountable and may be balanced with the behavior of the game in the long run.

Of course, the addition of features always impacts how a game plays or is played, so eventually saves became "part of the gameplay" in various games. Player habits, perhaps based on sloppy features, impact design. Besides, saves tend to make games quicker to complete, which is something developers may favor, as they don't really want you to stick to games for too long. In addition to making a playthrough easier and faster, it makes replaying less meaningful and orients play to "the aim is mainly to complete the game". Knowing games have a shorter commercial life span and reach due to tech changes and other factors, intensive replaying is against their interests if they wish to sell you another game anytime soon. This development is a point in favor of people saying "older games were better", in my opinion. At least in single player mode.

[Mikko_Sandt]

myk said:

but you can still play by the rules and reserve them solely for interruptions.

That sounds a bit silly. Maybe you can specify who made these rules because I forgot to check them out?

There is no way one can abuse the quicksave function, for example. It is there so that it can be used, preferably often. A level designer who doesn't take this into account should not design levels.

I also disagree with the points you made about games being, in general, shorter and easier than they used to be. To what exactly do you compare modern games? The claim that games are easier than they were is usually made by people who have played for more than a decade. Our skills have obviously gotten better. When I played Sonic 2 as a kid it was somewhat hard to preserve enough lives to beat the final boss. Now I can go back to the game and beat the final boss with at least 10 lives still left. Oh, and that game takes maybe two hours to complete. When I started playing shooters I used only keyboard; obviously things got much easier once I mastered the mouse as well. I'm sure this applies to many of us. The games didn't get easier; we just got better.

Surely some games are short but some games have always been short. On the other hand we now have tons of games with multiplayer modes you spend hundreds of hours playing to compensate for "short" single-player campaigns. ("Short" because new shooters still take me a week or two to complete, the same as before since I tend to enjoy them in small doses instead of trying to force myself to get it done in one night.)

[Use]

myk said:

The idea of saves, at least in these older games, is so you can go to sleep or whatever, where you leave the game too long to rely on the pause key...

Yes Kristus, now you know what a savegame is, would you like to know how to put on your shoes next?

[myk]

Mikko_Sandt said:
That sounds a bit silly. Maybe you can specify who made these rules because I forgot to check them out?

The rules depend on the game being played, and the features the game includes determine that. For example, above I analyzed the introduction and function of save games, the effect it had on later games, and the effect players had on games after using it. The rules I mentioned referred mainly to games like Wolf3D and DOOM. Keep in mind we were discussing the removal of game points between Wolf3D and DOOM. You can't say a game that loads a save game after each death goes by those rules.

There is no way one can abuse the quicksave function, for example. It is there so that it can be used, preferably often.

I agree the user can't abuse it when the game already does :p

I also disagree with the points you made about games being, in general, shorter and easier than they used to be. To what exactly do you compare modern games? The claim that games are easier than they were is usually made by people who have played for more than a decade.

It's not about comparing different games. The same game is easier. When save games are assumed to be part of the game (this is especially so when they are automatic), using them often or effectively is part of being a good or successful player of that game. Encounters and situations in newer games may be pretty difficult, even harder than in older games, but they end up being relatively quick and might not require that much practice when automated save games come in. Games then tend to be more about how far one has progressed (and seen new areas) than about how one has fared during that playthrough.

Surely some games are short but some games have always been short. On the other hand we now have tons of games with multiplayer modes you spend hundreds of hours playing to compensate for "short" single-player campaigns.

Much of what I said is about games being reusable, and not necessarily about how long a total playthrough lasts. I was referring to the effect on single player; any additional worth in the multiplayer mode aside. Multiplayer, especially head to head, is fortunately not really affected because it's competitive and forces two or more people to get involved at the same time.

[Nes]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VH3--YSpfwQ

Bam.

[myk]

Heh, nice work; the only thing missing is the smaller fonts appearing at the bottom left :p

[Gez]

I like that YouTube's related videos include "Water and sanitation: a partnership for change".

[gemini09]

That was a great watch! I enjoyed hearing Romero's random comments. How old was he back then? He had plenty of that old youthful energy, and it's not so far-fetched that he contributed a lot of the fun factor to the game, as many have claimed already.

Keep rocking on, Doomers :-)

[999cop]

I wonder why John Romero has been keeping this from us for more than 15 years...

does he make a profit by releasing this video now in any way? Hmm...

[DuckReconMajor]

999cop said:

I wonder why John Romero has been keeping this from us for more than 15 years...

does he make a profit by releasing this video now in any way? Hmm...

Did you read the description at all?

[Nes]

999cop said:

I wonder why John Romero has been keeping this from us for more than 15 years...

does he make a profit by releasing this video now in any way? Hmm...

What have you been smoking? Oh wait...

[Torn]

999cop said:

I wonder why John Romero has been keeping this from us for more than 15 years...

does he make a profit by releasing this video now in any way? Hmm...

Next time to read his post instead of complaing about nothing...

[Bashe]

Great video, and a real piece of history. Takes me back to when I watched dad play Doom when I was just a wee thing.

[magicsofa]

myk said:

In addition to making a playthrough easier and faster, it makes replaying less meaningful and orients play to "the aim is mainly to complete the game".

I don't really see how save games detract from re-playability. After all, if it is so much easier to complete the game, it will take less time to go back and start again, no? Doom and Wolf3d are two games that I've played through hundreds of times, saving all the way. I have a friend who is really into Morrowind and Oblivion. He has beaten each several times, never without saving before challenging parts. It's cool to challenge yourself and try to complete something without saving, but that's a novelty rather than the norm. Maybe in Super Mario I am willing to restart the same damn level all the way at the damn beginning (or maybe halfway :D), but I usually won't spend hours running through the same sprawling doom map only to get killed at this one particular spot.