veterane

well, it is more like an art-object than just a game. I have lots of memories from my childhood where I played doom (and hey, I'm still the opposite of an amok running guy). I like the fictional satanistic artwork with all it's pixeled details. the design of the monsters (sprites) and the unique color palette used throughout the game. I like the skysphere with the moon mountains which look like the mountains found in Guangxi southern China (22.614328,106.944866), the unique variety of Monsters, the weapons, the kill effects, and so on.. I could continue that forever. If you like the original artwork that much, it shouldn't be hard to understand that every change to it would be a retreat. As long as it isn't just the same artwork in higher quality resolution e.g. So it's not a question about whether doom is perfect (like mona lisa?). It's about doom being a unique artwork which is loved the way it is/was. So me and others are probably worshipping doom because of it's unique style never found again in other games 'til today. I've never said I'd be convinced that there's no way to update doom without ruining it. ruining starts when something of it's unique orignal artwork is changed. if someone can leave that unchanged while improving the quality of the original artwork then it's probably the best doom update imaginable. I can live with mouselook, better lightnings, water and fire effects, blood on walls and stuff, these are things I would accept as further improvements - As long as monsters, weapons, textures, etc are the same with better resolutions maybe. it's definitively not impossible. it's been on it's way with doomsday ports and similar. But - the big but - at some point, almost every port tries to adapt things and change unique behaviour and artwork which is then disappointing. e.g. I like playing Risen3D with high-res textures, adding the doom remixes from dj redlight and having 3D models switched off. This is as close as it can get to a perfect doom classic update. In contrast, some guys made a Doom Classic remake with the Doom 3 engine, which has all those fancy lightnings and pro aspects of a new generation engine. But they've changed too much.. the level decorations... then used the demons from doom 3 (which are by far not as kewl as the original ones) and the weapon ports (have you seen the chaingun? I almost cried.. that's not even close to the original chaingun, sorry! But ok, weapons in doom 3 were bad in general..) In fact it's a complete different game, despite using almost the same levels. At this point I can just point out to the picture in my first post of this thread: that's what it should look like (+ original monsters of course)

haha, yeah yeah, that's what it is! hm but back to topic. let's assume doom is the mona lisa. What are the different ways to give her an "update"? (aka: what kind of classic doom updates are possible) 1. Try to copy her, without changing anything in size or appearance, using just a better/newer canvas... (aka: Doom 95?) 2. Look at the Mona Lisa picture and draw her for yourself while adding and removing some elements just as inspiration tells you. Give her some extra smile, change her face a bit to look more like those modern girls, draw more make-up, and/or use better colors... (aka: DooM 3) 3. Exactly draw her again using the latest canvas which is more than 10x as large as the original one and also use the latest colors on the market. Let her look like a big polished original. (aka: Doomsday alike ports, but still no perfection due to: not the cutting edge canvas, brushes and colors) so what the real classic doom fan wants(not to say: dreams of) as "update" is the third way with more effort/money and perfection. everytime one starts to draw her and try to polish her by adding or removing stuff which is essentially "mona lisa" (in a figurative sense: 3d models, level decoration, monster decrease, etc), the port changes fom 3. to 2. and the result is going to be somthing like doom3, doom4, etc like.

well, I guess the art is about updating the look, without changing anything of the classic behaviour. In most cases previously, something fundamental has been changed which then wasn't classic like anymore. there's no doubt that it looks strange when you mix up high-res environment and then mix it up with the old <100px sprites. Imagine the picture from above, working on Tech5 Engine or UE3. And let the models be exactly the same as in classic, no polygon models, just >high-res< sprites which fit to the rest of the high-res engine/textures. That would be a real deal (if possible). Somebody (in fact a real lot of ppl) would have to recreate the gfx sprites in high-res (which were real models before photographed iirc) and then make it work in acceptable speed with the current engines. No creative additions to the model-sprites, just high-res. (3D Models means: loss of classic behaviour) I'm no developer expert, but if I ever wanted to make a real doom classic update, I'd try it that way, because it's probably the only way to keep the classic behaviour and feel despite up-to-date graphics.. I guess ID Software still owns all the rights to make such a thing (hypothetically).. so someone can't just buy an UE3 engine license and start working on it.. if ID Software would start anything like that, the choice of the engine would probably be their Tech5 (I think UE3 is better, though). I still hope - looking 5 - 10 years forward - boundaries will be broken to port the classic doom with it's original behaviour to new levels of eye-candy. It might be just wishful thinking, and probably the community will never have the capacity to do such a time consuming work, but hey, you never know what romero or the carmacks have in mind someday. :)

Thanks for the hint dude! What a pity.. would be so awesome to see a doom remake like this.. nevertheless, great rendered image (@Lee Griggs) How would the classic doom look like on a modern engine, like UE3? Just the classic level design, flat walls and stuff.. no useless pseudo mordern decorations.. THAT would be really kewl imo.

I found this picture around: http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/9704/doomhighres.jpg Anyone knows more about it's origin? I was wondering if there's a doom port engine which looks like this. But afaik, neither the doomsday nor the risen3d port (with highres textures) looks like this. So I guess it's just a 3d-rendered image.. but hope dies at last.