Carmack: "Doom 4 will have 30 demons crawling all over you on there"

Getting back to the subject at hand, I really like the idea of having 30 highly detailed enemies at once coming at me. When I think of post-Doom shooters like Perfect Dark, Painkiller, Gears of War, even the original Quake, and of course Doom 3, the idea is that you battle no more than a handful of enemies at a time. That's why the Left 4 Dead games are so fun, because sometimes you're fighting several dozen enemies at once. I'd love to see that with id tech 5 and creative monster designs.

Back to the topic... people won't like it unless its 100 enemies at once like the original Dooms.

I'd love 30. Beats Doom 3 and Duke Nukem 4ever. Rage looked like it had a lot on screen. But then it might get to the point where... can 30 enemies all shoot fireballs at you? Can 30 enemies shoot plasma at you? There are lil details...

geo said:

Back to the topic... people won't like it unless its 100 enemies at once like the original Dooms.

I defy someone to point out a single moment in the DOOM or DOOM II IWADs where 100 monsters attack you simultaneously. It doesn't happen. Dozens, yes, but not 100.

(In fact, if 100 monsters attacked you regularly, I think spechits overflow would be happening all the time.)

Scythe

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIinV5II-sw&feature=related

Scythe is not the DOOM or DOOM II IWAD.

And this right here is what bugs me about people's recollections of Doom. They don't remember the games themselves, they remember various OTT addons. It's like everyone thinks of Doom and all their brains can conjure up is Nuts.wad.

Those are not representative of what Doom/2 were about at all.

Exactly, most of us know that Doom's strengths in gameplay have nothing to do with 'hordes of monsters'. If anything that's still a niche even in this community and not an accurate representation of Doom.

But 30 is a damn fine number. Because it certainly wasn't uncommon to be in situations were that was the case, especially in Doom 64 (I know it's not as "official," so sue me) where the monster count in some places was pretty high.

Somehow I'm the jerk... Ah well someone has to play devil's advocate. But 30 zombies is great. I'm just thinking it might not be 30 arachnetrons.

I never said you were a jerk. I'm just pointing out that people's memories of the size of the monster encounters in the original DOOM games seem to be overinflated.

Plutonia might be a different story. I'm not sure. I've never played that in UV, to be honest.

And I think I was thinking of intercepts overflow earlier, not spechits.

I didn't say you said... anyway. I just felt like that. Maybe I'm just a troll and don't realize it :-)

30 is plenty honestly for one screen... there can be another 30 standing behind you :-) But I think the most Doom 3 had was 6 and that was rare.

Plutonia didn't have much spam save for the secret levels.

Its not that it needs an army of a bazillion angry demons coming at you at once. Go play Serious Sam, like someone said...

However, there is something special about sneaking around corners, taking potshots at imps & feeling like a total badass doing it... Then suddenly, you hear a door open up & you are immediately surrounded! Shotgunguys to the left, cacos in your face & more imps flanking your right. Health drops to 10% & by the time you realize you*ve gunned them all down, you hear a pinky approaching from behind... Do a 180* & SSG to the face! ...Then its quiet & eerie again. A good number of enemies at the screen is fine, but pacing, dynamics & making the gameplay around it work is important too.

geo said:

I didn't say you said... anyway. I just felt like that. Maybe I'm just a troll and don't realize it :-)

30 is plenty honestly for one screen... there can be another 30 standing behind you :-) But I think the most Doom 3 had was 6 and that was rare.

Wait til Phobos comes out. We manage a lot more than 5 or 6 on screen. :D

^^^^ also, what he said. A horde is good in the right place, not constant waves of hundreds of guys should be left in the capable hands of Sam.

AirRaid said:

...Wait til Phobos comes out...

Salivates...

Slightly related to the thread, Rage's system requirements appeared yesterday, and they seem to be pretty standard, even a bit low for today's computing power. I guess Doom 4 won't be too much different, even if there are more things on the screen at the same time.

Let's hope the relatively "tame" requirements stem more from optimization than consolization.

TheEndOfUs said:

A good number of enemies at the screen is fine, but pacing, dynamics & making the gameplay around it work is important too.

VERY MUCH. What makes DOOM shine over its modern-day "throwback" wannabes is the fact that it has variety in its enemy encounters. Sometimes there's hordes, but sometimes it's just a couple of bad guys down a hall or around a corner, or an ambush you didn't expect.

AirRaid said:

Wait til Phobos comes out.

Do I have a choice?

Megamur said:

VERY MUCH. What makes DOOM shine over its modern-day "throwback" wannabes is the fact that it has variety in its enemy encounters. Sometimes there's hordes, but sometimes it's just a couple of bad guys down a hall or around a corner, or an ambush you didn't expect.

Yeah...
Halo comes to mind. Walk into a room, get ambushed by 3 or 4 waves of the same 3 enemies. Walk into another room, another 3 or 4 waves of the same 3 enemies.

It has a good storyline though.

Face23785 said:

Yeah...
Halo comes to mind. Walk into a room, get ambushed by 3 or 4 waves of the same 3 enemies. Walk into another room, another 3 or 4 waves of the same 3 enemies.

It has a good storyline though.

You're generally right in that there's usually a particular enemy class per "room," though there's usually also at least a minor "annoyance" class (Grunts) to distract you from the real fight. Still not very creative or fun unless you throw vehicles into the mix.

What makes Doom fun, in my opinion, is that there's always more than one type of enemy in a given room. You have to come up with multiple strategies (sometimes on the fly) to combat the different attack patterns. I haven't really seen that in any modern shooters, so I question how Id would go about translating it.