How important is swimmable water to Doomlikes?

[Cruduxy Pegg]

Idk about all of you but I enjoyed getting killed by gillbeasts that move at a torpedo speed in blood's underwater mazes.

[RjY]

14 hours ago, rdwpa said:

I've played a number of (G)ZDoom mods that have those swimming sections where you move very slowly and start 'drowning' if you spend a set time underwater.

I haven't played many ZDoom mapsets and I think the only one I have done with swimmable water was Zen Dynamics where I don't recall it annoying me too much, at least no more than anything else, certainly no worse than that knife fight arena.

 

A similar thing is Boom friction. Both have similar gameplay effect in either reducing your speed or increasing your inertia. Neither of which I can stand for long. Thus I am so glad there is an option to disable Boom friction. It was only added because the original Boom code performed very badly, so you could turn it off if it made your 486 lag. Of course this is no problem any more -- but the option remains as a necessary part of demo compatibility, to my great appreciation.

 

3 hours ago, MrGlide said:

Thats strange, because I've heard the term elsewhere before.

Many years ago, before these games were called First Person Shooters, they were called Doom Clones. You might be thinking of that.   "Doomlike" seems to be nothing more than a reinvention of the older term.

[Gez]

"Doom-like" has been used a lot in the past, probably even more than "Doom clone", and it has even been used by the New Scientist.

 

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2076552-google-deepmind-ai-navigates-a-doom-like-3d-maze-just-by-looking/

[Magnusblitz]

2 hours ago, Optimus said:

One good thing is that it allows for more verticallity

 

 

This is what I was gonna say - one thing that water adds is more vertical game design. Imagine a big square area with a bunch of bridges going through it. If the bottom of that area is water, the player can safely jump down from any bridge no matter how high. Not so if it's ground (and there's falling damage). Water also allows for easy two-way vertical movement without needing a bunch of lifts and such.

 

Doom's lack of true 3D is a big reason underwater movement wasn't part of it. I think that's why it feels like a bit of a thematic gimmick in Duke3d but something really important to Quake.

[ReX]

22 hours ago, RjY said:

"Doomlike" seems to be nothing more than a reinvention of the older term.

Or, if you want to sound pretentious, use the word "Doomesque". Heh.

[reflex17]

Any required part of swimming in any game like Quake or Half-life feels like more of a tech exercise, the best example I can think of is the Water Temple in Ocarina of Time, that level stands out in a lot of people's mind one way or the other for a reason. The gameplay of shooting fish in Quake and quite a few of the puzles in Half Life 1, not to mention the sequels, also feel like tacked on physics experiments to me in the long run, and are an arduous point of the playthrough that actually causes me to think twice about playing the game/level. Half Life Episode 2 is near but kicking those energy spheres at walkers was not something I wanted to do even once. Duke Nukem Forever was "bad" for the same reason, in my view.