Why does Doom 3 have so little height variation?

[Lila Feuer]

On 1/9/2018 at 8:32 PM, hardcore_gamer said:

And Doom 3's hell level still remains to this day one of the most memorable gaming moments I have ever had where as there are no moments in HL2 that I can say stand out very much.

Yep, because Hell was the only part that stood out in all of Doom 3's labs and facilities. Whereas HL2 has Route Kanal, Water Hazard, Ravenholm, Highway 17, Nova Prospekt, Anticitizen One, Follow Freeman etc. and that's just the base game.

 

[silentzorah]

Doom 3 has no verticality in its map design, because you die if you fall two feet.

[seed]

27 minutes ago, cyan0s1s said:

Yep, because Hell was the only part that stood out in all of Doom 3's labs and facilities. Whereas HL2 has Route Kanal, Water Hazard, Ravenholm, Highway 17, Nova Prospekt, Anticitizen One, Follow Freeman etc. and that's just the base game.

That's my man.

 

And not to mention the cut Lost Coast which was originally supposed to be included as part of Highway 17 (good thing it's still available as a separate game), imagine how much it would've added to the overall experience.

[DooM_RO]

17 hours ago, Arl said:

 

Oh my...   

 

Yes, that's a wild example there, it's takes temperament to deal with that level of overcrowding.

 

 

 

I got severe brain damage just from looking at that.

[snapshot]

1 hour ago, silentzorah said:

you die if you fall two feet.

lool

[Shaviro]

1 hour ago, DooM_RO said:

 

I got severe brain damage just from looking at that.

Try navigating in it :D

 

Seriously. It's fucked up! You can spend 5 minutes just trying to get your bearings. Sooo glad that level is practically done.

[Tetzlaff]

4 hours ago, cyan0s1s said:

Yep, because Hell was the only part that stood out in all of Doom 3's labs and facilities. Whereas HL2 has Route Kanal, Water Hazard, Ravenholm, Highway 17, Nova Prospekt, Anticitizen One, Follow Freeman etc. and that's just the base game.

 

 

Honestly I only remember Ravenholm as a level that stood out from all those abandoned Eastern European city settings in HL2.

[GuyMcBrofist]

Doom 3 has plenty of distinction between places to me. Enpro has that giant reactor and the laser that goes up forever. Comms transfer has that maintenance lift on rails that you had to find your way around with. Recycling is Recycling. Monorail has a giant monorail. Delta labs has another giant reactor that looks like a human heart, and one section has you using teleporters all over the place. Hell is Hell. Central processing has a huge three story computer. CPU complex has that giant rotating bridge. The excavation sites are all rocky and hazardous. It's all pretty memorable.

 

The only same-y thing that stuck out to me last playthrough was that towards the end of the game they started reusing some ambient sounds from the beginning of the game and I was like "eh?" Couldn't tell if it was laziness/deadline related or intended.

[jupiter_ex]

17 hours ago, GuyMcBrofist said:

Delta labs has another giant reactor that looks like a human heart...

you reminded me of Quake 4

 

On 1/25/2018 at 1:19 PM, cyan0s1s said:

...HL2 has Route Kanal, Water Hazard, Ravenholm, Highway 17...

HL2 has an entirely different game design approach than Doom 3. Actually I could say Valve has an entirely different game design approach than Id. Id's games used to be mechanically and storywise pretty straightforward up until pretty recently, as much as it pains me to say.

 

I always think of the following: The soul cube can float, can speak, holds the souls of a million aliens, has rotating blades, and it's the only thing that can defeat Hell's mightiest warrior. Portal's companion cube doesn't speak or move. And it's just a regular prop with a heart painted on it. It only appears in one level. Yet mostly nobody remembers the soul cube, and there's even plush toys of the companion cube

[/offtopic]

[Caffeine Freak]

17 hours ago, GuyMcBrofist said:

The only same-y thing that stuck out to me last playthrough was that towards the end of the game they started reusing some ambient sounds from the beginning of the game and I was like "eh?" Couldn't tell if it was laziness/deadline related or intended.

That's always stuck out to me. The truth though, is that they are always re-using different ambient sounds throughout the game in many different combinations, so it's sometimes hard to tell if you've heard a particular ambient sound before. But the instance you describe towards the end of the game is one place where it's really noticeable.

[GuyMcBrofist]

Yes, I noticed the reuse of ambient sounds throughout the game as well. I guess to clarify, my recollection is that they introduced new sounds throughout the game as well that helped to give a sense of being in a new place. It was towards the end where the new sounds stopped coming and I was left with kind of a weird feeling, like something was missing.

[Koko Ricky]

I don't get why neither Doom 3 nor Doom '16 didn't go nuts with Hell. It's one of those dues ex machina situations that gives you full freedom to explore the impossible or otherworldly. 

[Lila Feuer]

Yeah, the multiplayer Hell maps are much cooler looking.

[Koko Ricky]

2 hours ago, cyan0s1s said:

Yeah, the multiplayer Hell maps are much cooler looking.

Fuck yeah they are. Those are the only environments in the game where you can travel freely between hell and the UAC. I also really like the psychedelic/organic hell level that's super colorful. Man, so much cool shit. I don't know why we didn't get more of that in SP.

[hardcore_gamer]

I was rather underwhelmed by the hell in Doom 2016 honestly. Doom 3's hell was much more fucked up and evil, where as hell in Doom 2016 barely even looked like hell at all other than a few skeletons here and there. It mostly just looked like some kind of an alien desert.

[printz]

I'm guessing id just didn't feel like adding unnecessary height variation in the levels. And still, height variation is there, but with all the precautions important for a human-populated installation, such as rails and fences. There are lots of elevators and service ladders for you to take. I guess more regular stairs would have been welcome in case of fire, though... But where to evacuate? On Mars' surface? Not helping.

[Koko Ricky]

Well let's also consider that vertical exploration wasn't of interest to id at the time. It's a very "realistic" shooter, so the player isn't vaulting and grappling and such, it doesn't fit the narrative.

[Soundblock]

By the time Doom 3 came out id was also heavily focused towards their games being showcases to show off the technology they were making for third party licensing. Likely they wanted to show off sellable semi-realistic places rather than wild abstract ones, like in... uh, Doom. Sacrificing much of the soul of the original at the altar of realism, I guess. In particular flying "AI" has IMO take a downward curved in id games after the original Doom engine. Quake 2's fliers didn't hover & hunt like Doom's fliers, instead auto-adjusting to be on the same height level as the player, etc. True 3D seems a helluvalot harder to write convincing monster behavior for though, maybe particularily fliers.

Edited January 28, 2018 by Soundblock

[snapshot]

Because the levels would probably end up like Half-Life Xen, and we know how that turned out.

[DooM_RO]

9 hours ago, dmg_64 said:

Because the levels would probably end up like Half-Life Xen, and we know how that turned out.

 

Good point.