If you could ask any of the original devs a question, what would it be?

[⇛Marnetmar⇛]

6 hours ago, Jaws In Space said:

-In one of the early alphas, Tom Hall’s levels all had boundary markers drawn around the outside. Was there a specific reason for doing this? Was it important to keep the levels inside a defined space for some reason?

 

I've explained this one before. This has to do with Tom Hall's realistic take to designing his maps. As many people know Tom Hall drew the below intermission screen for the Doom 0.5 Alpha. What people don't usually know about his image is that Tom Hall shaped his maps the same way the the buildings in this image are drawn.

<snip>

 

For example Contr, which is a weird sided Octagon would later be turned into Pandemonium by Sandy Petersen. Likewise Waste, which is tepicted as a trapazoid, would later become Refinery. Most of the other buildings are drawn as rectangles, which is why so many on Tom Hall's maps are rectangular in shape. So all of those boundary markers around the perimeter of his maps depict the true exterior walls of his buildings.

<snip>

Adding on to that, COMPSTA2 features a version of this map with more proper level boundaries:

 

 

Here are the locations labeled:

 

And for fun, here's a Doom Builder screenshot with Tom's maps overlaid according to their confirmed and alleged Doom Bible counterparts (some of them scaled wonkily in order to fit):

 

[Nevander]

Now I really, really want to see a WAD of all of those maps making up that overall map made into a single map where you must traverse each area to finish.

[Pure Hellspawn]

i'd want to know why the intermission screen from DOOM was scrapped in Doom 2.

 

Why the Hell Knight was added as opposed to another monster.

 

Could there have been more weapons added in Doom 2? Perhaps another explosive weapon? Maybe a weapon stolen from Hell?

 

[Pirx]

7 hours ago, fraggle said:

Why does Doomguy wield the pistol in a left-handed way when the shotgun and plasma rifle are wielded in a right-handed way?

 

 

lol, this. and why gets his gloves off for punching.

 

many limitations are because of time constraints (not enough of a bug to fix it) and optimizations for the computing power available back then.

 

what's with that final doom player height bug? are you not getting placed properly on the floor when going through a tele?

and what is meant by safety pin for the bfg and rl? that he doesn't switch to the rl although he has rockets left? (haven't played with the vanilla exe in ages, sorry!)

 

 

[Grain of Salt]

9 hours ago, axdoomer said:

I can answer a few that I know the answer. You can call me captain obvious if you want.

 

[snip]

 

Not to be rude, but there's a reason this thread isn't called "If you could ask some guy to guess the answers to any question..."

[Torturephile]

Why didn't the Doomguy and enemies have death animation rotations?

[Da Werecat]

8 hours ago, fraggle said:

Why does Doomguy wield the pistol in a left-handed way when the shotgun and plasma rifle are wielded in a right-handed way?

I'll speculate (since everybody does that).

 

Camera in the right hand, the left hand holding a toy gun. With the shotgun that would mean holding it by the pump.

 

They never bothered to mirror the photos after that.

[Arctangent]

3 hours ago, Pirx said:

and what is meant by safety pin for the bfg and rl? that he doesn't switch to the rl although he has rockets left? (haven't played with the vanilla exe in ages, sorry!)

With most weapons, if you hold the fire button while they're raising, you'll shoot them when they're completely raised.

 

The rocket launcher and BFG are specifically coded to not do this, however, meaning you have to press the button after they're completely raised, or else they won't fire. This is kept in most source ports, actually.

 

As for why: so you won't blow yourself up with splash damage. Well, that's why for the rocket launcher, anyway. The BFG probably was for ammo conservation or something.

[Doomkid]

The game is so fun in deathmatch - why didn't they make some official DM maps? I know you can DM in the existing maps, but it takes like 70 billion years to get a single frag. A full pack of idmap01-like stuff, perhaps included with Doom 2 or the Master Levels or something would have been greatly appreciated.

 

Also, Marnetstapler, that's an awesome find - I had no idea the computer panels were a recreation of that Alpha intermission layout!

 

9 hours ago, silentzorah said:

Why did the Machinegun evolve into the Chaingun?  Ditto for Rifle/Assault Rifle into the Pistol.

Oh wow, one I actually know the answer to - It was to avoid all the guns looking "samey". Originally all the guns looked near enough to Doomguy's stock weapon visible on the player sprite, but at some point in development they realized it would be better to have each weapon instantly identifiable, so they gave them all a unique appearance. I'm really glad they did this in retrospect, much as I love the bayonet.

 

Quote

Why didn't the Doomguy and enemies have death animation rotations?

Hell, most of the enemies didn't even have full alive rotations!

 

EDITed because oh my fuck it is so hard to quote people from two different pages

[Da Werecat]

I heard they only thought about making dedicated DM maps when working on Quake. And it was Willits' idea.

[Pirx]

1 hour ago, Arctangent said:

 

 

As for why: so you won't blow yourself up with splash damage. Well, that's why for the rocket launcher, anyway. The BFG probably was for ammo conservation or something.

Ok, this. Thanks. That might be helpful for less experienced players, but if you try to rocket some baddies at close range, just enough to get away unscathed or with little damage,  that delay backfires, literally.  Or stupid chaingunners mow you down. 

[Guest Unregistered account]

I've actually always wanted official ID Deathmatch maps beside IDMAP01.

It would be really interesting to see how they designed levels for that gamemode (would there be any tropes, like nothing but SSGs? With a "power" item in a hard-to-access area?) and also what kind of settings they'd use.

[axdoomer]

On 2017-5-3 at 2:39 AM, Grain of Salt said:

 

Not to be rude, but there's a reason this thread isn't called "If you could ask some guy to guess the answers to any question..."

You're not rude, maybe you're just unthinking  ;-) . Let me explain: There are some questions people wouldn't even bother to ask the devs because other people here have an exact answer or close to exact that can be given now. They are not guesses, some of us are game developers, programmers or engineers. We can follow the same thought process as the original developers and understand their decisions. Some can ever answer questions that some people would believe are only meant for one of the original developers due to their difficulty, but some Doomers may already have struggled with these questions in the past and already have found the answer.  

 

I think people are welcome if they have the answer to questions people have and wouldn't get otherwise. How many of us will have the chance to meet the original developers? Moreover, even if you could meet them, how much time could you talk with them? Maybe just enough to ask 2~3 questions. 

 

As a side note, I hate those threads where people speculate "what if" or "if you could", but when people have questions, they must be answered by whoever may have the answer. Even if the answer is wrong, it may still help some people to better reflect about their question by exploring other tracks and this way they may stumble on the answer by themselves. If they are stuck on a question, it can unlock them from where they got blocked. 

[RightField]

Someone maybe tweet Romero or Carmack or anyone else from the original team this thread?

[DAZZER]

Does the 8-level WAD from the Casali Brothers which impressed Id Software still exist ?

[Cruduxy Pegg]

Why didn't they re-balance things from Doom 1 in Doom 2? Although the answer is probably "we didn't feel the need to".

 

Also ask Raven devs if nobody complained about centaurs in its entire testing sessions\cycles.

[42PercentHealth]

3 minutes ago, Pegg said:

Also ask Raven devs if nobody complained about centaurs in its entire testing sessions\cycles.

While we're asking Raven devs questions.... Why 2 Heresiarchs??

[nxGangrel]

If you kept the rifle in the finished game, would the zombiemen drop them instead of clips?

[Outrageous Videos]

How come they put the mastermind as the final boss even though she's much weaker than the cyber?

[⇛Marnetmar⇛]

32 minutes ago, Outrageous Videos said:

How come they put the mastermind as the final boss even though she's much weaker than the cyber?

 

That's Sandy Petersen's doing. He was in charge of arranging each level in order and didn't realize that the Spider Mastermind was weaker than the Cyberdemon.

[Grain of Salt]

I would've liked to have been a fly on the wall when John Romero and Adrian Carmack first learned John Carmack's name.

[Not Jabba]

13 hours ago, Marnetstapler said:

 

That's Sandy Petersen's doing. He was in charge of arranging each level in order and didn't realize that the Spider Mastermind was weaker than the Cyberdemon.

He probably still made the best choice though. Suppose they'd been switched -- the SM still would have been an ineffective boss in E2M8, if the player had a plasma rifle and/or some decent cover. And would the Cyberdemon have become such an iconic boss if you could have two-shot it with the BFG the first time you encountered it?

[Nevander]

What I'm gathering is that they messed up by a) giving us the Plasma Rifle before fighting the Cyberdemon and also b) giving the Spider Mastermind such low health.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

That and the whole BFG oneshotting it or 2 shotting it at medium range. No idea who thought that map is remotely challenging even in pistol start where the caco and baron help eradicate the boss lol.

[Deleted_Account]

On 5/3/2017 at 3:13 AM, Doomkid said:

The game is so fun in deathmatch - why didn't they make some official DM maps? I know you can DM in the existing maps, but it takes like 70 billion years to get a single frag. A full pack of idmap01-like stuff, perhaps included with Doom 2 or the Master Levels or something would have been greatly appreciated.

I used to like playing deathmatch on E1M3.

[PanterD2S]

Id ask Mr. Romero if he actually did find "spare time to run the demos" and about his thoughts while watching the "impossible". ;)

[kb1]

They probably didn't realize that the Mastermind was going to be so easy, and they probably missed a lot fo other things too. Textures and sprites were being tweaked, Carmack was changing the engine here and there, Romero was modifying linedefs, and playing a lot of DM, ,and they were probably tweaking monster stats, all at the same time. The game was very fluid during development, and they rushed through building it. We're lucky to have as polished a game as we do. None of the were Doom Gods, not even Romero, at that time. But with the experience he did have, he and the others were wondering: "Is this encounter too difficult?" "Is the game too easy? Too hard?" Those are difficult questions to ask when you're in the middle of it, and it's brand new.

 

It probably took most of us quite a few playthroughs to actually become annoyed at various shortcomings, like the BFG/Rocket Launcher "safety". The id guys probably had dozens of things on their to-do lists that they fixed. The answer to why they did this or that is the same: "We had X months to build the game, and we did our best, having no precedent for what we were attempting."  (Not trying to provide an excuse - I just imagine that that's what might have happened)

[Tracer]

I'd ask Tom Hall who his favorite actor is.

[Impie]

On 5/2/2017 at 5:44 PM, ETTiNGRiNDER said:

- Is there any truth to the theory that the final design for Korax was originally the riding serpent rather than the "rider" himself?

- ...and was the Heresiarch-like demon at the end scroll of Heretic supposed to be Korax, or were they planning to introduce a twist even then (making the player think when they got to the Heresiarch that he was the end boss)?

Sorry to necrobump, but I actually have an answer to this.

 

The answer to the second question is obvious enough if you ask me: the Heresiarch IS the original Korax, since he's on the endscreen of Heretic, behaves almost just like D'Sparil's second form, and even greatly resembles D'Sparil, albeit more demonic.

 

I did actually email someone at Raven over ten years ago about this, and they told me they'd decided last minute to make the final boss more fearsome, so the real Korax got downgraded to a sub-boss and replaced by a big monster. I agree that the Heresiarch honestly isn't that threatening, except maybe on nightmare, but it's a shame they sacrificed any sort of continuity on a whim. It led to Eidolon just being a generic devil who also didn't ride a serpent.

[RUSH]

If the first episode of Doom 1 takes place on the moon, why does the skybox feature a bunch of grassy mountains? Should be stars, like seen in the space maps from TNT.