New Doom Engine Info

[Linguica]

I was doing a little bit of surfing just now when I found this post over at Doom3 @ Stomped where id programmer Jim Dosé gives some info about the new Doom engine:

The engine is being completely rewritten, just piece-by-piece. Currently, the renderer, shader system, and game code are completely new. The cgame and network code have been removed. The animation system is currently being written from the ground up. The sound system and UI are still in place, but will be rewritten by Graeme and Robert when they are finished with the mission pack. At some point along the way, John will probably write a new network system.

So, even though we are not starting out with a blank sheet of paper, the final result will be a full rewrite.

Hey Jim, come post around these parts while you're at it :P

[Guest zokum]

A new engine. This is indeed good news. It's probably gonna have all kinds of bells and whistles. Let's hope they spend some more time on mapping than the org. Doom. Romero made 7 maps and Sandy P made 20 there. They're somewhat more stocked on mappers nowadays... :)

[Guest Fanatic]

If it's a new engine, how is it being completely rewritten? That's like saying it's "new and improved". Can't be.

Sounds like they are recycling Quake 3 code as a template. That's kind of weak.

[Carnevil]

It's not weak. Code gets recycled all the time, and that's a good thing. It's a ton less stressful on the programmer, and often times just as effective. As Carmack said, "There's no point in rewriting perfectly good code." That might not be the exact quote, but it's basically what he said.

[NightFang]

I 100% agree with Carnevil on that matter.

[Law]

Typical ID. Focusing on the engine instead of the game play. They do this because they can sell the engine off for even more money. I have a feeling it wont play like Doom, but more like a Doom TC for Quake3. Has anyone else noticed how the quality of ID's game have gone downhill since Doom2. Doom2 was better than Quake, Quake was better than Quake2 and Quake3 was disgusting.

[Risen]

I thought Q2 was better than Quake, although I never played much more than the first few levels of either... Quake was altogether too monotonous. I don't think there were any other colors but dull brown. Puke.

Recycling code is fine, as long as: It's optimized; It does what you want it to; It's not copyright infringement; It works. (Ahem, Microsoft)

[Lüt]

id started the downhill journey with Doom2.

Now obviously they need a good engine before they can start their mapping. This in fact gives them much more time to think out good maps while they wait around for a good engine. If they went ahead with mapping right now, they'd end up pulling a Daikatana.

[Lüt]

id started the downhill journey with Doom2.

Now obviously they need a good engine before they can start their mapping. This in fact gives them much more time to think out good maps while they wait around for a good engine. If they went ahead with mapping right now, they'd end up pulling a Daikatana.

[Guest Russell P]

The quake series are fine for deathmatch, but none of them even come close to matching doom2 in terms of 1player game play.

[Guest Pa3PyX]

I think the first Quake was better for SP than the second one (that was good for deathmatch). It is monotonous, but this is part of the mood it creates. A good quote there; my programming instructor says something very much alike: "Never invent good ideas if you can steal better ones" (and it is not his own phrase by the way, rather than quoted from someone else).

[Vegeta]

I don´t care so much in the engine, I think Quake 3 is the best of the Quake series, but for the gameplay.
I don´t understand people saying that Q3 sucks.
I love the DOOM series, they gameplay is really cool, and the posibilities to create levels and mods are endless. I hope id gives special atention on the gameplay and try to recapture the original, not only make a cool visual experience.

[Guest _Ralf]

Certainly not! Carmack will come up with a hammer engine [which will bring any current card to a crawl :)] and anyone else will come up with the most immersive gameplay ever.

About the original Quake... i was scared to death when i got it, couldn't play longer than an hour at a time :). Today it's much harder to produce a single player game that leaves everyone jawdropped because we played so many games already.

I have full confidence in id software, when they concentrate on single (coop?) play they'll make the best game available at launch time [waiting for Alice meanwhile, HMF2 was cool :)].

[fyrestorm]

just reading that is scary. if id goes for another "engine" attempt, they, i hope, will never be respected for what they were. The gameplay? Havent heard id talk about THAT yet, except claiming of what they'll do. Is it a bunch of bullshit? Maybe. Can I be wrong? Maybe. id better start thinking gameplay instead of engine, and quick.

[Guest Jim Bentler]

Its not scary that they are working so intensively on the engine, its encouraging! The sooner Carmack gets the engine done, the sooner the mappers will know what features they can include on their maps, and the sooner and better they can implement those features in their levels. One of the hardest things about making a computer game is trying to map while the engine is still continuously changing. Adding a bunch of features as they are implemented and converting things to work with the latest engine build is time-consuming and difficult. It is really the reason why games take so long to come out and don't always turn out as good as they might have.

[Carnevil]

Well, as strange as it sounds, the engine actually does have a lot to do with the overall gameplay/funness of the game. I mean... player movement, friction, the movement of objects... all these things are related to the gameplay, yet done in the engine. If id can lay a good foundation for the gameplay in the engine, then well, I think that's a big part of the key. They've fucked in up in every game since Doom... maybe then can do a better job this time. If only I was over there, I'd be able to help with that big time.

[Linguica]

They've fucked in up in every game since Doom...

WTF? If nothing else, the Quake games have been a bastion of fun physics models. Even when id has changed some of the physics fundamentals (air control in Q2 IIRC, and the recent haggling with Q3) the games have always had very solid, very good physics models, as compared to chunkier ones like Unreal Tournament or Lithtech games.

[X-DOOM]

i hope that Doom 3 will not suck!

[Carnevil]

I was referring specifically to the stuff I mentioned.

Oh yeah, and you could have put the same energy you used to write that bigass into FREEING HISSY instead!

[Guest zokum]

Quake 2 was all focused on gamplay. The dm maps were released half a year after the org. game. It also had 2 mission packs. Quake 2 had a very good single player imo, but it didn't get god until you got a whil into it. The first "demo" unit doesn't do the game justice. It gets rather half-lifish a while out. Jump puzzles, trigger stuff, drain nukage. Start up power plants and stuff like that. Quake 1 sucked a lot in sp, but the missionpacks are a VAST improvement, esp the 2nd one. More enemies, variety. Quake 1 was a technology test dm game. And quite a successful one too!

[Guest Diposhitz]

If Carmack can write such an engine like in Doom, I'm sure he can do it again to fit the gameplay that everyone liked in Doom.

[Guest Omniverse]

Doom 3 will probably have great deathmatch, and crappy single player, judging from id's last three games. Personally I don't know if id is capable of taking gameplay beyond Doom. Quake and Quake 2 never did anything all that far above Doom as far as gameplay is concerned; still the basic run and get keys formula.

However, we are all just speculating. We won't know until we place the Doom 3 CD (DVD?) into our CD(DVD?)-ROM and click Play.

[Zeku]

You guys mentioned physics models, and the engine being related to the fun of the gameplay, but didn't hit on a big issue: self-damage. Quake introduced the idea of not taking full damage from your own attacks. Lessened self damage was created before the invention of rocket jumping, chronologically. Lessened self-damage only serves one purpose, (beyond the rather absurd and inelegant rocket jumping) and that is to simplify aggression, increasing the percentage of instances in which it is advantageous to fire the weapon, and thus continuously aiding those who do not make good decisions about movement and firing.

If Doom3 contains lessened self-damage, the chance of it recapturing the charm of the original is crippled. Other, perhaps more significant issues, such as extremely fast player speed, (a great failing of Serious Sam) large map size, and the numerical quantity of enemies have already been mentioned.

Doom was fun long before we had puzzles more complicated than 'find something or other.' Complex puzzles and dynamic worlds are appealing in their own way, but a foundation of fast pacing, weapon balance, and a linear distribution of risk and reward is more important in my opinion. The quantity of strategy or reflex involved in the process of winning should be based on map choice, not the game's design. This is possible by making a game based entirely on reflex, (cf. Doom) while providing no limits to map design.

[NiGHTMARE]

You're all forgetting one thing. ID software has programmers. It has artists. It has level designers. It has sound effect creators. They all do their respective thing, so there's no way that all of them can focus on the engine.

At the moment the coders are working on the engine and everyone else is finishing off Q3: Team Arena. How exactly can they start work on the game itself, other than pre-production sketches, without an engine to work with?

[AdamW]

I think there's a certain amount of blindness in the quake bashing that goes on around here. All three Quakes are very, very good games on any scale of judgement, let's not lose sight of that for a start. No, for straight up play none of them matches Doom(2) in single player (although imo the map design in both is way ahead of anything id made for Doom except Episode 1). Yes, the graphics for Quake1 are a little monotonous, but if we're going to base our opinions of games on graphics I don't think any of us could defend Doom(2) compared to, say, Half Life. It's not the important thing. And the important thing is that all three Quakes have perfectly good gameplay. I played q1 and q2 all the way through three times each and enjoyed it each time, and on an overall scale of games that's pretty high up. And as far as speedrunning goes, speedrunning Quake is certainly as intriguing, difficult and engrossing as speedrunning Doom, hence the communities of about equal size for both. And let's remember that Quake 3 is, quite simply, a damn good multiplayer game. The engine is awesome, the graphics are wonderful, the weapons are nice and (finally) equally balanced, and the level design is fine. There are thousands of people out there who quite happily blast away at a game of unmodified Quake3 every day of their lives, and there's very few other games that can make that boast. And remember, there's nothing _incompatible_ between liking Doom and liking Quake. Hell, my favourite game of all time is TIE Fighter, but I still play Doom every day. You don't have to get exclusive about this kind of thing. Enjoy lots of games, why don't you?

[AdamW]

rocket jumping was invented _before_ Quake came out. Get Doom1, go to E1M4, get a rocket launcher, run to the exit bridge and blow yourself across the gap with a rocket. Rocket jumping. Invented in Nov 1995, IIRC.

[Guest BLAZE]

speculation, anticipation, frustration....

you guys are fucking awful.
worse than the press.
you (like everybody else) really haven't got a fucking clue what's going on behind the doors at id so you make up all kinds of stories about what they should be doing and how they should write their fucking code. PER-LEASE. Slag off all their prior releases only to wet your pants as soon as a single screenshot gets posted somewhere.
I appreciate that this is a doom site and fair play to anyone that genuinely wants the next doom game to remain true to the originals but getting down to techy issues like focusing on engine software rather than gameplay is just a little tiresome.
even if the gameplay sucks you lot are all ace developers apparently so just go re-write the damned thing.

[Zeku]

I strive for precision, so I'm glad you corrected my oversight regarding rocket jumping. I should have specifically stated I was referring to rocket jumping in its current form: a small health sacrifice for greatly increased vertical mobility, which can be used often, and in almost any situation.

Nevertheless, that information does not apply to my argument. I was merely specifying that reduced self-damage was not originally created for the purpose of increasing mobility. If someone can give me a reason for this design choice other than the one I presented in my previous post, I would be very interested to hear it.

[Risen]

Actually, Rocket jumping came about before that, even. Anyone here actually play Episode 3? Not only was it invented by Id before Doom's release, it was implemented as a tactic into Doom. Try getting to E3M9 without it. (Jumping doesn't count!)

I totally agree with your point though: I see people take 3 direct rocket hits in Quake3, and I think, wtf?

[Guest Omniverse]

Did that serve any purpose other than to irritate those of us that are actually enjoying this thread? No? Then fuck off.