How would Doom 2 have looked like if it was released in 1996?

[mankubus]

I've always noticed the difference from Duke 3D to Doom. The increased definition on the sprites made the monsters more recognizable. The locations had more variety, holes on the walls with explosions (little scripts here and there) and so on, the Build engine had such an special appeal and you could see the improvements. Duke 3D turned out to be such an immersive experience with so many locations while still retaining a classic simplistic fps gameplay. The biggest improvements it's realistic scenarios. While Doom 2 failed to deliver a reasonable city, Duke 3D with a cool usage of textures and with the abilty to add slopes and very tall sectors allowed to make you feel like you were in real streets.

 

As awesome as Doom 2 is as it stands... I wonder if id waited a couple years and released Doom 2 right before going full 3D with Quake... would we have gotten a nice intermediate game rather than basically an expansion pack?

Edited August 26, 2020 by mankubus

[Biodegradable]

1 hour ago, mankubus said:

would we have gotten a nice intermediate game rather than basically an expansion pack?

 

Tread lightly, pal. Them's fightin' words. hehe ;^)

[Gunstar Green]

Doom 2 was id doing what they had done before with previous titles (see Spear of Destiny), make an easy to develop sequel of their last game while the tech for their next game was in development. Doom 2 was never going to be a major step up in the technology sense because that wasn't its purpose. Carmack didn't dwell on old technology and wasn't interested in taking baby-steps forward. With how fast technology was moving at the time it was hard enough to stay on the bleeding edge without being distracted by a side project. Doom's tech was left in the hands of licencees and fans to improve upon.

 

More to the spirit of the topic I guess they could have skipped Doom 2 entirely and a more Doom-flavored version of Quake that would have been Doom 2, it sort of feels that way spiritually anyway, especially if you want to consider Doom 2 an expansion-pack sequel. I don't really see a scenario where they'd ever have made a middle-ground Build-esque game when they already had loftier goals.

Edited August 26, 2020 by Gunstar Green

[Doom-X-Machina]

Quake

[seed]

Honestly it would have been either more Quake 2-esque, or have some better textures, apart from that, with the limitations of vanilla Doom I don't see a Doom 2 with city locations done better at that point in time.

[Weird Sandwich]

As mentioned by others above, I don't think id would have a made such an intermediate step towards a Build-style engine, when they had Quake already releasing that year with even more advanced capabilities. They'd be shooting themselves in the foot. The more likely scenarios:

1. Quake is renamed Doom 2, more red is added to the palette
2. They do basically what the mod community did, and remove/improve limits, add more linedef actions, more new textures, etc. but without fundamentally changing the engine. They also might have used the extra time to change the Hell Knight sprite!

 

[vanilla_d00m]

Closer to how the first DOOM was made. Two more years in the making.. who knows how much more awsome it would of been.

Edited August 26, 2020 by vanilla_d00m

[TheHambourgeois]

itd be doom 64

[Final Verdict]

 

It probably would have had some better textures, but other than that I don't imagine it would have been a better game overall. They had already added a nice collection of monsters to Doom II, so I could only see an additional weapon or two (besides the SSG) being added.

 

I don't think it would have benefited from going down the polygon 3D route. Those early polygon 90's games did not age well at all. At the time they were impressive, but they're hard on the eyes these days.

 

You also have to account for how fast the tech was improving back then. A game would come out and blow everyones mind with its graphics, only to be well and truly outdated a year or two later. Compare that to the modern age, a game from 4-5 years ago still looks good in 2020. In the 90's a game that had been out 4-5 years would have been considered almost archaic. Even the beloved Doom franchise was not spared from this. 

 

When Final Doom came out many reviewers commented on how badly the graphics had aged. Little did they know at the time that Dooms 2D sprites would hold up far better in the long run than the early 3D polygon games. Some of them aged better than others, but Doom aged with grace.

 

[seed]

1 hour ago, Final Verdict said:

It probably would have had some better textures, but other than that I don't imagine it would have been a better game overall. They had already added a nice collection of monsters to Doom II, so I could only see an additional weapon or two (besides the SSG) being added.

 

I don't think it would have benefited from going down the polygon 3D route. Those early polygon 90's games did not age well at all. At the time they were impressive, but they're hard on the eyes these days.

 

You also have to account for how fast the tech was improving back then. A game would come out and blow everyones mind with its graphics, only to be well and truly outdated a year or two later. Compare that to the modern age, a game from 4-5 years ago still looks good in 2020. In the 90's a game that had been out 4-5 years would have been considered almost archaic. Even the beloved Doom franchise was not spared from this. 

 

When Final Doom came out many reviewers commented on how badly the graphics had aged. Little did they know at the time that Dooms 2D sprites would hold up far better in the long run than the early 3D polygon games. Some of them aged better than others, but Doom aged with grace.

 

Yeah, that's the thing about models, they only look good if they have a decent amount of polygons, which the early 3D shooters did not but at least had charm and personality, hence why I would definitely not say Quake 1 or HL1 had jarring models.

 

Sprites age a lot better if they're well done, whereas models don't if they're too primitive.

[Final Verdict]

35 minutes ago, seed said:

 

Yeah, that's the thing about models, they only look good if they have a decent amount of polygons, which the early 3D shooters did not but at least had charm and personality, hence why I would definitely not say Quake 1 or HL1 had jarring models.

 

Sprites age a lot better if they're well done, whereas models don't if they're too primitive.

 

Yes, some of them aged better than others. But the vast majority look fairly primitive from today's perspective, sprites tend to age better.

 

There are a few notable exceptions though, as you mentioned HL1 and Q1 are both fine examples. But there is a few others that held up quite well. However, there was a shed load of low effort polygon games released back then and many of them are hard to stomach now. That isn't to say the games themselves weren't enjoyable or had no charm, it's more of an aesthetic thing for me. I suppose it's a matter of perspective.

 

Keep in mind though I'm talking about early examples, stuff like Q1 and HL1 were a different story as they were very high quality efforts for the time. For a start they were developed with a larger budget and made by established developers. The stuff I was referring too was more middle tier or low budget efforts, which flooded the market in the later half of the 90's.

 

Either way, early polygonal 3D was rough to say the least. It got there in the end but it was a very bumpy ride.

 

[MrFlibble]

If your hypothetical Doom II '96 were still to be based on the Doom engine, I'd venture it would have had features you can see in Hexen and Strife, possibly including ambient sounds, horizontal-moving sectors, earthquakes and slippery floors, a hub level system, possible NPCs and dialogue, player inventory, selectable player characters etc. As a matter of fact, quite a lot could have been done to add more depth to the original Doom formula while staying close to the core gameplay mechanics. It would still be considerably different from the classic Build engine games I guess. Also it would look dated, no matter what you do.

 

You can also look at HacX as another, simpler possibility -- no extra engine features but feels like a mix between Duke3D and (somewhat) Quake design-wise.

[Gunstar Green]

On 8/26/2020 at 11:09 AM, seed said:

 

Yeah, that's the thing about models, they only look good if they have a decent amount of polygons, which the early 3D shooters did not but at least had charm and personality, hence why I would definitely not say Quake 1 or HL1 had jarring models.

 

Sprites age a lot better if they're well done, whereas models don't if they're too primitive.

 

Hell, plenty of indie games today are aping those early 3D shooters so I agree that they had a lot of charm.

 

That said, yeah, it's kind of funny to look back at old magazines and discussions and seeing people gush over the new 3D games of the time while putting down older 2D art. A few decades later that 2D art still looks as good as it did when it was new and many of those 3D games are really hard to stomach.

[mankubus]

On 8/26/2020 at 9:35 AM, seed said:

Honestly it would have been either more Quake 2-esque, or have some better textures, apart from that, with the limitations of vanilla Doom I don't see a Doom 2 with city locations done better at that point in time.

 

 

With this tech a Doom 2 would have been possible in a city environment.

[mankubus]

On 8/26/2020 at 6:12 PM, Final Verdict said:

 

Yes, some of them aged better than others. But the vast majority look fairly primitive from today's perspective, sprites tend to age better.

 

There are a few notable exceptions though, as you mentioned HL1 and Q1 are both fine examples. But there is a few others that held up quite well. However, there was a shed load of low effort polygon games released back then and many of them are hard to stomach now. That isn't to say the games themselves weren't enjoyable or had no charm, it's more of an aesthetic thing for me. I suppose it's a matter of perspective.

 

Keep in mind though I'm talking about early examples, stuff like Q1 and HL1 were a different story as they were very high quality efforts for the time. For a start they were developed with a larger budget and made by established developers. The stuff I was referring too was more middle tier or low budget efforts, which flooded the market in the later half of the 90's.

 

Either way, early polygonal 3D was rough to say the least. It got there in the end but it was a very bumpy ride.

 

 

Yeah, Duke3D i think it's the game that aged the best from the 90's era. Even to this day seeing the building collapse upon itself in a million explossions in level 2 is quite impressive. Build had so many cool tricks. My hypothetical Doom 2 would ideally be in an improved Doom 2.5 engine that competed with Build engine, not 3d Quake.

[uber]

Funnily enough Romero replied to a very similar question (except it was 1995 instead of 1996) during his AMA a couple of days ago:

"I wouldn’t change a thing about DOOM 2. After releasing any game, there are always things you think about that you could have done, but of all the entire series, DOOM 2 is my favorite."

It's obviously not the end-all-be-all response to this question, considering that he's not the only person responsible for the game, but it at least means that a theoretical Doom 2 '95/96 wouldn't have been too different from what we got, other than bugfixes and some more polish. Besides, I doubt id would have wanted to essentially split their team in half by working on Quake while also making significant changes to the Doom engine (or just straight up making it in id tech 2) and adding lots of new content.

[smeghammer]

On 8/28/2020 at 11:02 PM, mankubus said:

Yeah, Duke3D i think it's the game that aged the best from the 90's era. Even to this day seeing the building collapse upon itself in a million explossions in level 2 is quite impressive. Build had so many cool tricks.

 

Agreed. Check out Ion Fury, released last year, based on the Build engine! It's really cool.

[MemeMind]

Your Eternal Destruction 
A Doom 2 based Quake mod.

[Pixel Fiend]

We wouldn't be here at all.

[Juza]

Think of Doom 3 but with less polygons.