Interesting John Carmack quote

Magnetick said:

Games like Painkiller and Serious Sam forget about level design. The levels are mostly just arenas, unlike Doom's corridors and exploration.

Serious Sam and Painkiller levels would suck for Doom 4, but they did work just fine for those games. (well I never liked painkiller much....got dull quickly), but really enjoyed Serious Sam it was in many ways a completely different game then Doom, its levels were just arenas (as you say), but due to the amount of monsters attacking it was great fun....a little Unreal Tournament in there too :)

Serious Sam 3 (BFE) level design was just stupid.....think those levels were not even made for the game, just re-used content from another game, thats why it felt so wrong and didn't suit the game at all.....it pretty much felt like cheap crappy COD levels. God, there was so much wrong with that game it hurts to think about it!

Painkiller actually has a decent element of exploration, if you're into secret hunting.

Phml said:

To be fair, the first Rise of the Triad was a pretty shit game. Entertaining but ultimately shit. RoTT 2013 is true to the form in that regard.

I would disagree on it being shit, though it did have its down points, mainly level design.

- low performance. It's unacceptable to have dips below 60 FPS on a fast-paced FPS with small levels, and those happen even with all settings on lowest, on your average gaming rig handling much more impressive-looking games.

I think they've done some to fix the performance, but yah, it wasn't good originally. I think the biggest problem is the framerate killing motion blur whenever you turn to quickly. That was dumb.

- wonky physics. Movement is unenjoyable (regardless of which character you pick, this is not about speed but acceleration, deceleration, inertia, air control and resistance). Jumping is a gamble, partly because of the above.

This is probably just me, but I love bad physics. Maybe that's looking at it from a "So Bad it's Good Perspective", a la Trespasser. It;s add some artificial challenge.

- level design. While RoTT 2013 doesn't make you walk in a straight line like most other modern FPS, it's perfectly willing to make you go through six perfectly identical rooms on one side of a symmetrical room, then six perfectly identical rooms on the other side of that room; or backtrack for a minute with a grand total of two or three enemies spawned.

I'd say it was hit and miss, though I didn't finish the game yet.

There's the idea of doing non-linear level design here, but not any idea as to how it should actually be done. Triggers (switches, keys) are often unintuitive, lacking visual contrast with the environment. Sometimes there's no feedback or connection between the trigger and the newly revealed path. Actual doors and random detail in walls will share the same textures.

Like the original actually. I think this can be viewed either way, though the fact that the effects of a trigger aren't always immediately noticeable was always a bother in the first game too.

- unappealing graphics. I'm not going to check if I'm right or making a fool of myself, but I'll bet the game was built on Unreal Engine 3. It shares this plastic, glossy look common among basic UE games, complete with noisy textures. Couple that with the copy-and-paste nature of the environments, and all in all it's a pain to look at. For me this was so bad I often couldn't see where the enemies shooting at me were until I sprayed like mad and got a "+100" score popup somewhere.

Minus the drab color scheme that ended up camouflaging some enemies too well, I thought the game looked okay overall. I disagree in other words, though I know what you mean by how Unreal games have that "look". It's not so much a glossy look though, as it is a grainy playdough look, like Red Orchestra, which is more painfully Unreal than RotT.

- boring enemy cast. Can it even be called an enemy "cast"? At this point I got to E2M3 or E2M4, and all I fought was nazi hitscanners. I guess some wear helms and some don't, and some are lieutenants, but they all do the same thing, rush slowly at you while spamming machine guns. Every once in a while you've got a dude dashing at you to steal your machine gun or your rocket launcher. That's it. Have fun playing the same fight over and over and over and over and over and...

To be fair the original didn't have much either. It was pretty much soldiers and whatnot, with some variations. Machine gun guards, pistol guards, white officers would play dead, black ones would empty a revolver before whipping out a sidearm, and then the bosses. They have minute differences and tactics, but no, they don't look diverse, especially not in this one.

- poor enemy AI. Getting stuck in doors, getting stuck *through* doors, running into walls, or doing absolutely nothing are common occurances for the bad guys. Their pathfinding is ridiculously easy to exploit (to the point it fails even when you don't try to abuse it), the slightest corner or wall indentation will prove an insurmontable obstacle.

Maybe I;m not paying attention, but I haven't seen too much in the way of this. The fact they can steal your weapon though I thought was a fairly nice twist in gameplay.

- poor enemy placement. Most enemies are spawned dynamically (as if teleporting). Sometimes this will happen in a logical way, out of your sight; but often they will pop up right in front of you, out of nowhere. There is no teleport animation, no nothing; you're clearly expected to hang back and slowly creep up forward so the illusion works, even though the game gives you a range of characters with movement speed ranging from "fast" to "ludicrously fast". Schizophrenic design at work.

Huh, I haven't noticed this either. It has been a while, now I think I hae to go back. That would be poor. Also surprised that they just appear then, and are not pre-placed.

- boring weaponry, boring balance, boring gameplay. No ammo management whatsoever. Infinite machine gun makes it so there's no point using your infinite pistols save for the few seconds when a nazi steals your gun. You have a knife and an admittedly cool dash move... Except when it fails. Rocket launchers replace each other, so you're left using the latest you currently have rather than the one you prefer, and it's more a shoot and pray affair than deliberate choice. Besides, with weak HP enemies in low numbers rockets can be a liability more often than not. So most of the game (early game, anyway) is just hitscanning hitscanners.

No different than the original really. MP40 pretty much invalidates everything else. Pistols as such serve as backup if your MP40 gets swiped (Or, the MP-Sten-40-Mk. II). And the balance may not be great, but I love the arsenal of rocket launchers, especially the carpet bombs and and flame walls.

- invisible walls. And inconsistent, at that.

- bugs, bugs, bugs. Characters will shout with the voice of another character at times. Scripts will fail to trigger.

Again, I think they have fixed a lot of this, minus the invisible walls, which suck.

- generally speaking, because of all of the above, a low budget, low polish feel. The devs had a checklist and successfully crossed a X next to every item, but there's no meat to this game, no depth, no soul.

Really no different than the original, but I'd say that it just feels un finished, and un polished it. I think they wanted to get it out quickly and then let players report all the remaining bugs. I don't know if this was them trying to be "community involved" or thinking they could pull more bucks in by asking others to buy it and playtest an unfinished product.

It's not complete doom and gloom, I'm just mentioning the issues here. There's still an entertaining game in there, but the frustrations pile up too quickly for it to be called "good". I started playing it with a smile on my face, ended up badly disappointed.

I agree with a number of your points, but maybe I just like the bad too for entertainment quality. I mean, I think can fall into that "It's bad it's good", unlike other recent 'retro' releases like DNF, which is just bad (Or mediocre at best maybe, i haven't decided).

Shadow Warrior and Blood Dragon

Two games I still really need to get my hands on, along with a good computer. But looking at that, where does all of this "old-school shooter" ideas come from? It seems easier to go in with an idea, and come out poor, whereas like you said with shadow warrior, it has that idea behind it but ultimatley leaves it behind (I think), and ends up witha good project. Maybe it's all those "Level Design '93 vs Today' memes that are driving people the wrong way.


Though back to the op topic, of course :P

Phml, I don't know much about Farcry 3: Blood Dragon, but Rise of the Triad is much more faithful to a 90's shooter than Shadow Warrior. The Shadow Warrior/Serious Sam/Pain Killer gameplay doesn't entertain me much. If I want to play a game that is more like Doom or Quake, I'll play Rise of the Triad. Also, about the original Rise of the Triad, it's a lot of fun once you play it for awhile. Seems it was made around the same time as Doom, and was suppose to be a Wolfenstein sequel.

A lot of the problems you mentioned have been fixed, and the enemy variety picks up in the second half. The one liners can be turned off, too. Also, I don't think it uses enemy randomization, they are pre-placed from what I can tell.

The thing is, I really don't see what is so great about Shadow Warrior. It's an alright game, but it's nowhere near as good as the original, which it feels nothing like.

Sorry if we changed the subject too much, maybe we should just stop talking about it.

I just hope Doom 4 will be gory, like over the top gory, but not silly gory. The gore in Doom was just great and with source ports adding particle effects we can also have blood oozing down the wall and splatting all over the place, which just adds to its charm!

I don't want bad guys to just have a puff of blood and fall to the group with some rag doll physics and thats it.

Yeah, just simple blood sprays that puff into the air and disappear pretty much sucks even the kind that just starts forming a puddle after the monsters death isn't satisfying at all, you want some blood splattered on the floor and walls after each shot.

bcwood16 said:

I just hope Doom 4 will be gory, like over the top gory, but not silly gory. The gore in Doom was just great and with source ports adding particle effects we can also have blood oozing down the wall and splatting all over the place, which just adds to its charm!

I don't want bad guys to just have a puff of blood and fall to the group with some rag doll physics and thats it.

I agree, the gore in Doom 3 was underwhelming to say the least.

The gore was more or less adequate. Weapons, on the other hand...

Da Werecat said:

The gore was more or less adequate. Weapons, on the other hand...

I did love the Plasma Rifle, I hated it in Doom and the look made it even worse....yuck! However the Doom 3 version looked cool, sounded cool and as far as I could tell pretty powerful. Other weapons were questionable, though the sounds were the worse, something a MOD can easily fix and one of the first things I did with Doom 3 along with making corpses stay...I hated instant dissolving of bodies....yuck!

Da Werecat said:

The gore was more or less adequate. Weapons, on the other hand...

Adequate is not enough when we are discussing Doom. As for the weapons, I thought only the Chaingun and the Plasma Gun were cool. The rest were pretty disappointing. Especially the Shotgun.

Doom 3 has bigger problems, I'd say. "Fixing" the gore without "fixing" the weapons wouldn't make much difference.

But after Rage I'm pretty confident that they'll get it right for Doom 4.

Avoozl said:

Yeah, just simple blood sprays that puff into the air and disappear pretty much sucks even the kind that just starts forming a puddle after the monsters death isn't satisfying at all, you want some blood splattered on the floor and walls after each shot.

I can't help but wonder if the blood puff trope can be attributed to censorship, bad art direction, hardware limitations, or all three. It seems that's been the portrayal of blood for almost two decades now, and I'm shocked to see that even brand new games use this same aesthetic. It doesn't need to be so realistic as to be unsettling, but it needs to be more satisfying.

This might sound rather sadistic, but examining actual videos of how blood leaks out of the body after sustaining large amounts of damage might be good research. It would also be nice to see some actual gore, as in, giblets, muscles, tissue, organs, bones, etc.

It doesn't have to be excessive, but the original Doom was unafraid to give us a taste of explicit gore that, in terms of severity rather than detail, is mostly unrivaled, even today. It's been two decades. Surely it's possible to represent that level of gore with a modern engine without it being inappropriate.

Trivia: alpha version has a different particle system. Blood spatter can stain various surfaces on impact. In the final version, blood decals are being applied to surfaces behind the damaged actor.

GoatLord said:

It would also be nice to see some actual gore, as in, giblets, muscles, tissue, organs, bones, etc.

This was explored in Soldier of Fortune series by Raven. Looked a little excessive, probably because it was unusual.

Da Werecat said:

Doom 3 has bigger problems, I'd say. "Fixing" the gore without "fixing" the weapons wouldn't make much difference.

But after Rage I'm pretty confident that they'll get it right for Doom 4.

RAGE had some of the best modern weapons I've ever seen and the ones in Wolfenstein seem to be even better. I am not worried at all in this regard.

Honestly, if it's really that hard to capture what the essence of Doom is, then drop the whole idea of a modern Doom game and just release a souped up version of Classic Doom similar to Brutal Doom. Just update the sprites, the animations, the sounds, the levels (make them more real looking and interactive like the Duke Nukem levels), add in some modern graphic effects like bloom, motion blur, particle effects, etc. And of course, make it all bloody and gory like Brutal Doom. Try and do this on a low budget and then sell it for like 10 dollars USD. I am sure they could make a small profit on that. Doom's gameplay after all is super addicting and I am sure that even some new gamers who never played the original would buy it to try it out if it was sold at a cheap low price.

doom_is_great said:

Honestly, if it's really that hard to capture what the essence of Doom is, then drop the whole idea of a modern Doom game and just release a souped up version of Classic Doom similar to Brutal Doom. Just update the sprites, the animations, the sounds, the levels (make them more real looking and interactive like the Duke Nukem levels), add in some modern graphic effects like bloom, motion blur, particle effects, etc. And of course, make it all bloody and gory like Brutal Doom. Try and do this on a low budget and then sell it for like 10 dollars USD. I am sure they could make a small profit on that. Doom's gameplay after all is super addicting and I am sure that even some new gamers who never played the original would buy it to try it out if it was sold at a cheap low price.

Is that a troll post?

I think what many people neglect to realize is that while Doom as a brand still carries some weight, overall it and Id don't carry anywhere near enough to be able to sell 4+ million copies on name alone. Id Software is (or tries to be) geared for AAA quality shooters and as a result of this it's a 200 person studio. For this to be profitable they need to sell a whole damn lot of copies of their next game. Rage bombed at 2.2 million copies. Compare that to Doom3's 3.5 million. For them to create "Doom, the carbon copy" or "Painkiller Doom" would require them to drop back down to 10 or 20 developers. Why? Because it would sell like crap, look like crap and play like crap. On the scope of 4 million copies, it's safe to say that nobody today gives a damn about antiquated has-been game design.

You could be lucky and "kickstart" a new project aimed at bringing life back to some oldschool game style, but going from triple A and back to novelty niche shooters is a painful process that would (and should) send shivers down the spine of any ambitious developer at id.

I just don't have faith that Doom 4 is going to see the light of day. With the way things have been going, with all the restarts and all the departures of talented employees from id, I just don't see Doom 4 ever coming to fruition. So in my opinion, they ought to just dramatically downsize Id and make Id basically a tech company that also sells little low budget sequels of their games on the side for their niche fanbase. Besides, I just have the feeling that if Doom 4 does actually see the light of day, many gamers are going to react to it the same way they reacted to the new Wolfenstein. "Did the world need another Doom? Did the world need another space marine game with big, ugly monsters and dark corridors? NO!"

GoatLord said:

This might sound rather sadistic, but examining actual videos of how blood leaks out of the body after sustaining large amounts of damage might be good research. It would also be nice to see some actual gore, as in, giblets, muscles, tissue, organs, bones, etc.

Here's juicy video that can spur your gory imagination:

Most games nowadays just don't have as much effort put into them as the past games.

Shaviro said:

I think what many people neglect to realize is that while Doom as a brand still carries some weight, overall it and Id don't carry anywhere near enough to be able to sell 4+ million copies on name alone. Id Software is (or tries to be) geared for AAA quality shooters and as a result of this it's a 200 person studio. For this to be profitable they need to sell a whole damn lot of copies of their next game. Rage bombed at 2.2 million copies. Compare that to Doom3's 3.5 million. For them to create "Doom, the carbon copy" or "Painkiller Doom" would require them to drop back down to 10 or 20 developers. Why? Because it would sell like crap, look like crap and play like crap. On the scope of 4 million copies, it's safe to say that nobody today gives a damn about antiquated has-been game design.

You could be lucky and "kickstart" a new project aimed at bringing life back to some oldschool game style, but going from triple A and back to novelty niche shooters is a painful process that would (and should) send shivers down the spine of any ambitious developer at id.

Could you please elaborate? Also, Doom 3 had a lot of classic Doom in it but it didn't really do it well. Do you think that Doom 4 could work as a much-improved Doom 3?

Avoozl said:

Most games nowadays just don't have as much effort put into them as the past games.

Doom had about 15 devs, modern games have over 200.

Doesn't mean they will put in an equal enough effort, also it doesn't explain why games are being so simplified now.

Avoozl said:

Most games nowadays just don't have as much effort put into them as the past games.

I disagree. I think, overall, there's a lot more man hours and attention focused on games (especially the art / graphics) than ever before. But I do think that often there isn't enough emphasis on nurturing a creative vision, or focus. This is probably just a side-effect of larger development studios, and perhaps also the influence of modern publishers. But I'm speaking as an outsider, here, so these are just my impressions.

I do think that unless id starts printing gold soon they're liable to be sent to the knacker's. I just wish they'd bring their pride down a bit. I'd like to see them stop trying to make so-so AAA games, and instead focus on making superb AA games, if that makes any sense.

schwerpunk said:

I do think that unless id starts printing gold soon they're liable to be sent to the knacker's. I just wish they'd bring their pride down a bit. I'd like to see them stop trying to make so-so AAA games, and instead focus on making superb AA games, if that makes any sense.

I guess that's what the new Wolfenstein is; AA. Do you mean something like that?

Shaviro said:

I guess that's what the new Wolfenstein is; AA. Do you mean something like that?

At the risk of having to eat my words, I suppose I do. I'm not sure what the budget or manpower devoted to that game is, but I'd imagine it's less than Rage's.

Machinegames has 50-60 employees according to the wiki.
I guess they could do that if this last shot at the next big thing (Doom4) fails.

With Carmack out of the picture, if Doom 4 fails I see no reason why Bethesda could still have a use for Id. If Wolfenstein is as good as I deem it to be, I could very well see Machinegames getting the rights to Id trademarks and possibly gain some of the better and more motivated Id members.

In any case, if Doom 4 flops, I think it will mark the end of Id and maybe a new beginning for Machinegames...but that really depends on how Wolfenstein: The New Order is.

Alternatively, people on Doomworld could start a kickstarter for a spiritual successor to Doom on a very advanced Id Tech 1 engine, with very crisp 2D graphics with 2D sprites that have lots of frames.The Kickstarter money would be used for getting the best 2D artists in the industry to make the game look and feel as crisp and timeless as possible.After all, I believe that very well done 2D graphics can outlive 3D...Just look at the best-looking Doom maps.

The resources would be made available during development to Doomworld users to make maps and the very best maps are inserted in the final game.

Oh my God, I'm daydreaming again.

DooM_RO said:

It seems like they are having a hard time deciding what Doom is all about but I am glad they are at least trying to find out. I think making it purely action oriented would be a big mistake - as big as making Doom 3 purely horror oriented. Doom had BOTH action and horror sections and maps like E1M5 are testament of that.

Yes. This is one way to look at it. Another is comparing Doom on absolute or relative terms. If you look at what Doom is compared to games today you'll see this cartoony fast-paced action game with story tucked away in a readme file. If you compare it to what it was to other games back in 1993, you'll see a completely different picture. It was darker, moodier, slower, less arcadey, less cartoonish, more realistic and more story driven than many other games - in particular Wolf3D. Never before had the player been put into the shoes of the main character with as much emphasis on the experience as was the case with Doom. This is also why my memories of Half-Life are so similar. If you compare the relative progress of Doom to the relative progress of Half-Life you will end up with two somewhat similar shapes and sizes.

I guess there is no right or wrong way to look at it. You could see Doom as this fast paced, brainless slaughterfest (with the aide of pwads) or you could see Doom as the next big thing of its time; pushing the medium in a completely new direction dictated by immersion, experience and suspense. That said, you just can't ignore the fact that a 200 man team needs to sell a whole lot of copies just to break even. They *have* to settle on a style that will sell. This is where the tricky part comes in.

As I see it:

1) They could create a serious sam slaughter-fest, but that kind of project is better scaled for a ~10 man large team and sales would never ever cover the cost of a 200 man team making it. There simply isn't a big enough market for that today.

2) They could polish up Doom2 with nicer sprites etc. and pass it off for 10 bucks. This is better suited for a ~3 man large team. A project like this would probably sell 25.000 units max.

3) They could try to create Call of Doom. This style of fps is finally becoming less and less successful. The latest CoD is receiving lower sales than previous installments. We seem to have met a fatigue for this sort of shooter. So yeah, it would be a tremendously bad idea to go for that. First of all they wouldn't be able to do as "good" a job of it as the games that have thrived on it and secondly they would be 3-5 years late to the party. Let's not forget that the core audience for a Doom game is typically vehemently opposed to anything CoD. This would be seen as another betrayal a la RAGE PC launch.

So what could they do instead? I recently described my take on it, but I guess it all comes down to figuring out what to bring from the old Doom and then wipe everything else on the board clean. Forget Doom, Quake and Rage. Forget Call of Duty and Half-Life. The first person shooter genre will soon need a new beacon for other less inventive developers to follow. The timing could be just right in 2 or 3 years. This time they'll have to beat Valve to it though as I'm guessing Half-Life 3 is held on the back-burner intil the right idea and/or time comes along.

Doom as 1993 + great graphics will not sell though. Some things change.

I think Doom 4 should be a much improved Doom 3...kinda what you guys are doing with Phobos. As I said, D3 already had a lot of the things that made Doom "Doom" such as secrets, finding weapons faster than "officially", some degree of nonlinearity etc. The problem was that these features were not very good. I think Doom 3 was a product of Id realizing that they were way behind the times when Half Life came.

I think there are two types of shooters: before and after Half Life. I find it very strange that people mock Doom 3 for being repetitive/boring when both Quakes suffered from the same problem in terms pf gameplay/leveldesign/innovation. If you look at them objectively (from a singleplayer POV) they were really just Doom with slightly prettier graphics and some other minor bells and whistles. In short, they came in a time when the industry was still very young, very major technological advancements happened every year and people were amazed by Quakes for this reason. This led to id stagnating I believe and by the time they really tried to innovate in Doom 3, Valve had already made Half Life and because id had basically been stagnating, Doom 3 suffered for it. Id realized that they were making the same games over and over again and wanted to do something new but because they hadn't accumulated experience during the late 90s, they couldn't surpass Half Life with Doom 3...which is what I think people expected. Had Doom 3 come out during the early 20s maybe things would have been different. Just think this: How would you have recieved Quake 1 and 2 had they come very shortly after Half-Life?

In conclusion, I attribute the faults of Doom 3 to the stagnation of Id...which happened right after Doom 1.

EDIT: As for making a new beacon for FPS, I TOTALLY agree. Other companies should be following THEM, not the other way around. Besides maintaining the intergrity of the franchise, I EXPECT Id to innovate, which hasn't happened to their latest game, RAGE. They need to realize that good is not good enough, they need to take a few risks I think.It is blindingly obvious that they can't wow us with just graphics anymore(although I do expect them to) so they have to innovate somehow. I have a feeling that the Oculus Rift will be something similar to Doom/Quake so maybe they can make an Oculus Rift-first experience? Doom 4 could be the first FPS made specially for the Rift. Imagine strolling the moon of Phobos and believing it is real...with a real gun peripheral that aims as you move it in real life.

DooM_RO said:

In conclusion, I attribute the faults of Doom 3 to the stagnation of Id...which happened right after Doom 1.

I agree completely. I remember back when Quake and Duke3D competed for the crown, it was basically an argument of nice 3D graphics versus an actual game. I know that isn't entirely fair, but that was a common view back then. Quake seemed to be a product of an urge to make Doom for 3D. No matter the cost. On the other hand you had 3DRealms continuing the course that Doom 1 had plotted. Yes, the game had lots of silly aspects, but it was easier to relate to running around in a bank, sewer or city than running around in dark basement #71. It was been there done that already.

Then when games like Unreal, Jedi-Knight or Half-Life came out continuing the trend that Doom once started, id was stuck making a multiplayer game. So when they finally got to Doom3 they were still playing catch-up to Half-Life. Time fuck. HL1 and Doom3 are much closer than Doom3 and today. It's hard to pinpoint where id is now. I guess RAGE was a step in the right direction even though ironically what ruined the game was less than compentent direction ;)

EDIT: As for making a new beacon for FPS, I TOTALLY agree. Other companies should be following THEM, not the other way around. Besides maintaining the intergrity of the franchise, I EXPECT Id to innovate, which hasn't happened to their latest game, RAGE. They need to realize that good is not good enough, they need to take a few risks I think.It is blindingly obvious that they can't wow us with just graphics anymore(although I do expect them to) so they have to innovate somehow. I have a feeling that the Oculus Rift will be something similar to Doom/Quake so maybe they can make an Oculus Rift-first experience? Doom 4 could be the first FPS made specially for the Rift. Imagine strolling the moon of Phobos and believing it is real...with a real gun peripheral that aims as you move it in real life.

Somehow I don't think Carmack and id were on the best terms when he left. I don't really have much to back up that statement, but it's a hunch. As things were when Carmack was still employed I would have seen it as a given, but now I don't know.