I'm worried about the future of Doom.

[Vic Vos]

Doom ain't going anywhere, not for at least a 100 years.
I mean, Doom 3 is still remembered and Phobos Episode 2 came out recently, so even nuDooms will be just fine.

[Matias]

newDoom sucks and there hasn't been a single good game in any id franchise in over a decade, so for me personally id software might as well not exist anymore. Obviously i'm in the minority of people who don't like newDoom, i feel i got ripped off when i paid 7€ for it, but other people seem to like it and that is all that matters, not every game is made for everybody. As for the future? they are going to make whatever sells the most, that's how companies work.

 

Spoiler

 

[VGA]

lmao!

 

For me Doom 2016 was the right kind of balance of seriousness and fast gunplay with a Doom atmosphere. They went overboard with Eternal, I finished it and after a while I felt like a monkey on a treadmill, no real freedom. You are forced to play in a specific way to get your ammo replenished, you have to do glory kills and farm those retarded zombies that keep spawning or you will run out of ammo. It is ridiculous, you are fighting a boss and mindless zombies keep spawning to replenish your ammo and health, wtf.

 

It feels weird that my survival depends on these ... farming zombies. Also, instead of dodging projectiles like a badass (in the larger, busier arena battles) you are forced to basically run around like a headless chicken because everything is after you. Just run around in a loop, randomly using jumppads mindlessly, just don't stand still! Remember to go for headshots on enemies and farm a zombie now and then. Derp.

 

And let's not waste time talking about the platforming, double jumping from pole to pole like a mix between Mario and Comaneci ...

[DSC]

Didn't people say this crap way back in 1997 before the release of Requiem? Well well, now look where we are now!

[ENEMY!!!]

I was concerned for the future of Doom around 1997/98 when there were a lot of people saying that we needed to "move on" and that Doom was being superseded by better games like Quake, Quake II etc.  Some people said to me that it wasn't worth creating Doom levels as not many people would play them.  I very rarely see sentiments like that expressed nowadays and think Doom is in much better health today, helped no doubt by the rich variety of source ports we have, some of which bring many of the same capabilities as we get in modern games, some of which cater for those who appreciate a more vanilla experience.  I see Doom getting a new lease of life from groundbreaking advances such as the Ancient Aliens and OTEX resources and Bridgeburner56's unique and hyper-detailed mapping style.

[Sergeant_Mark_IV]

You are worrying way too much. Classic Doom outlived every entry in the Doom series so far. And also pretty much any other game ever made. Not even Mario has such an active modding community (thanks to Nintendo being the final stage of corporate cancer).

In the end, Bethesda's Doom games are disposable. That's intentional design.
They are fun to play and complete once. Twice. Ten times if you really enjoy it. Then you move on. But people will always look back at the classic game. There will always be new mods and new levels coming out.
And you are not obliged to buy any of the "Doomguy is Doomslayer" or "Doomslayer is literally Jesus Christ" rubbish they are trying to shove down our throats. They can take the game to any direction they want, Classic Doom will always remain the same.
 

14 hours ago, hailsataneveryday said:

We need to push for them to make Doom an open-source series again (even if we could convince them to release the source under GPL after waiting five years after the game released or something and the engine has no market value, this would be satisfactory), and even more important that we get the power to create new content back into our hands.

This would help very little. The more advanced a game is, the more difficulty it is to make custom assets for it. It would take a hundred times more effort to make a custom monster with the same graphical fidelity and locational damage of any Eternal enemy than perfectly imitating Punchatz or Adrian's latex/clay sculpture-based sprites. As RonnieJamesDiner explained in his post, this is a hill most people who makes mods for a hobby are not going to want to die on. Spending a month to make a single custom enemy for free just so someday Bethesda decides to turn 180 and prohibit you from releasing it? No, thank you.
It would require the game to be entirely designed around practical and easy to produces assets that the community could replicate. This mean toning down the graphics. Something an AAA dev would never do.

[leodoom85]

Basically folks, don't worry TOO much.

If the Doom franchise ends somehow due of reasons, so be it. Nothing that we can do about it.

 

I'm goddamn sure that the franchise will be good enough to stay afloat.

[D4NUK1]

In my opinion, Doom Eternal ticked all of the Best FPS in the decade. It's show how mastercrafted it's and how does not need to make the same game twice to sell more or appeals to a certain fanbase.

So yeah, if you are worried, maybe you take this serious, and try to enjoy the game as individually, and you will see how Eternal it's clearly adobe almost all FPS.

[frag enabler]

OG Doom isn't going anywhere anytime soon, the modding has been going on for damn near three decades and it's not showing signs of stopping

Future installments, i.e. whatever full release follows Eternal, well that's another story, given how it essentially became the champion of the people (not gonna use the term gamers becase holy fuck I wince whenever I have to type or say it), with big names and game journos focusing on interactive movies instead. I really don't know what's next in store for the series after the season pass gets exhausted. Hopefully not a Season Pass 2, that's bullshit of unbearable magnitude (hello Randy Bitchford).

Silently hoping for a Quake remaster. Or a new release. Or a Duke game. Please give me a new, good Duke game.

[Bauul]

12 hours ago, hailsataneveryday said:

 

I want to see source ports of Doom 2016 or Eternal at some point, and I definitely want to be able to make levels for them, even if source release never happens. I'm having a hard time understanding why some people are actually arguing with me about this.

 

It's not that people are arguing with you, it's more that most people here see the Classic Doom games and the new Doom games as entirely different things. The new games are fun and all, but if they never get modding tools... most people here will just shrug and move on. 

 

This website built its back on modding and playing the original games. That's what we're all here for. Doom 3 came and went. Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal can come and go as well, and we'll just keep on trucking with our love of the original game.

 

Thats why no-one is particularly rallying behind your cry for more openness with the newer titles. id have stated that they want to go down that route, and if they manage it, that'd be nice for sure. But if they don't, no-one here is going to really be too upset, because that's not what we're here for in the first place. No-one here sees the future of our little hobby as anything really to do with the newer Doom games.

Edited December 11, 2020 by Bauul

[Mr. Freeze]

I don't understand in what way the community here would be impacted by Doom either dying off. From 2005 to 2016, Doom had zero new games released. And in that time, several of the most well-received WADs of all time were created. The community will endure no matter the status of the franchise. 

[Cacodemon345]

Also, Duke3D has pretty much managed to survive despite attempts to bury it to death by Randy Bitchford and despite how Duke Nukem Forever came to be. Shadow Warrior still continues to live to this day.

[seed]

1 hour ago, Cacodemon345 said:

Shadow Warrior still continues to live to this day.

 

At least that series moved on successfully, unlike Duke. Duke is pretty much stuck in place.

[hailsataneveryday]

I was pretty loopy when I made this thread. Been trying desperately to quit caffeine, cheated bigtime yesterday, and then went into a manic state where I decided I wanted to start a movement to make the Doom series open source and moddable again (last time this happened, I wanted to start a tax exempt charity to teach game programming to homeless people and started calling everyone I know trying to find a board of directors).

 

Apologies for that, but it pisses me off how every other response has been about how "don't worry, the Doom community isn't going anywhere", or "don't worry, they'll keep making games". When I made this thread, I wasn't worried about that the future of the Doom games would no longer exist or that the classic community would suddenly disappear, I just noticed that id doesn't have the same ethos that it did when it game to making games, and I wondered why.

 

For those of you arguing that nobody would ever want to make anything cool for the engine if it were released and/or modding tools were written for it, I still say you're wrong. But the spirit isn't there for it, apparently. You don't want nice things even if you could have them. I guess it's just a different era. I remember the days of Dark_AleX practically devoting his life to reverse engineering PSP's firmware and making it do ridiculous things, ROM hackers spending months or years to accomplish small things, and the like. And I think that when the Elder Scrolls VI comes out and the modding community begins for that, you'll all be eating your words.

 

Fact of the matter is, it wouldn't really be too hard. People make games with Unreal Engine as a hobby and spend months or years on a single Skyrim project. A small dev team could easily complete a TC in a year. A mapper could make a basic map without too much hassle in a couple of months. But I guess nobody here wants that. Argue for your limitations, and they're yours.

 

For the people saying it's impossible or that nobody would be interested, I still say you're absolutely, 150% wrong. If they released these tools, shit would happen.

Edited December 12, 2020 by hailsataneveryday

[hailsataneveryday]

13 hours ago, Sergeant_Mark_IV said:

Spending a month to make a single custom enemy for free just so someday Bethesda decides to turn 180 and prohibit you from releasing it? No, thank you.

 

I've read about things like this happening, and if someone tried that with one of my projects, I'd just tell them what they could suck, start hosting the project in a country with lax copyright laws, and take all the the free publicity to the bank with coverage from various indie gaming press outlets and try to use the notoriety to my advantage. Kids these days have no guts.

[oCrapaCreeper]

With how complex Eternal’s engine is it is a disappointment there’s no official effort to let players take advantage of it as a series that’s achieved its longevity through modding anyway. Eternal doesn’t even have a snap map mode like 2016, which even if more limited than desired let people come up with pretty cool things that wasn’t just recreating e1m1 for the 10000th time.

 

 There’s so many creative mechanics in the levels and many potential “chess board” combinations with the monsters to create fights, but none of that potential is being given to the community even in a basic form. Community made master level mods do exist as mods with what can be accomplished as is, but without official support it’s going to take a long time for more meaningful and creative mods to be made.

 

They’ve obviously said they’ve wanted to make steps to get there one day but right now it’s not happening for sure.  Even asking for basic tools seems overreaching right now which is sad.

Edited December 12, 2020 by oCrapaCreeper

[ketmar]

1 hour ago, hailsataneveryday said:

If they released these tools, shit would happen.

yeah. i believe that we will see a constant stream of new maps and mods, exactly as it happened with Doom3.

Edited December 12, 2020 by ketmar

[Biodegradable]

4 hours ago, hailsataneveryday said:

For those of you arguing that nobody would ever want to make anything cool for the engine if it were released and/or modding tools were written for it, I still say you're wrong. But the spirit isn't there for it, apparently. You don't want nice things even if you could have them. I guess it's just a different era.

 

I think you'll find that it's not so much that as much as people are simply skeptical based on what it is you're essentially hoping for: A brimming nuDoom mapping/modding scene with the same scale and longevity as Classic Doom has experienced. I highly doubt a lot of people would willingly object to such a prospect. All we're basically arguing is the bar for entry would be higher because of the complexity of the technology. Even from a hobbyist perspective, mucking around in a Classic Doom level editor is much easier to pick up and play with than a nuDoom one would likely be because of its complexity. Again, not to say that absolutely nobody would give it a go if the tools were made available, but the complexity would definitely factor into the likelihood of just how many people would jump willingly on it, even just for a laugh. An important factor to keep in mind is just how simple and accessible Classic Doom's tools are, meaning anyone regardless of experience in programming or level design can step on up and essentially Plug 'n Play. Naturally, I am downplaying it a little, but that's just for comparison's sake.

 

4 hours ago, hailsataneveryday said:

For the people saying it's impossible or that nobody would be interested, I still say you're absolutely, 150% wrong. If they released these tools, shit would happen.

 

Even if the source codes for nuDoom were released, it'd take years for the right kind of level editors to be programmed to streamline the process in the same fashion Classic Doom enjoys, less id Software were to give the community access to the nuDoom level editors as a point to start from, but I honestly doubt that'll happen to begin with. This is also why some folks have been referencing Doom 3 because, despite having its source engine/code also released, the game has sadly not experienced nearly the same level of community-made content because of it being a more complex piece of kit, thus pushing up that bar of entry. Yes, you will find some community-made content for Doom 3, but it pales vastly in comparison because of it.

 

We're not trying to piss on your dreams and be naysayers, fam. We're just pointing out that you might be asking quite a lot for nuDoom to be able to replicate that same level of community-driven longevity that has kept Classic Doom thriving. However, given how much id Software/Microsoft have been engaging with the community lately, even hiring our programmers to help fix the Unity port, build the re-release for Doom 64 and include community-made megaWADs into official releases, who knows, perhaps they will make nuDoom tools accessible AND streamline the tech right out of the box.

 

Honestly, we could speculate about this shit for days. Ultimately, we're just skeptical of such a thing being possible with nuDoom is all.

Edited December 12, 2020 by Biodegradable

[Murdoch]

I think it is a mistake to conflate classic doom and new doom. As much as i like the new games,  i think they will be more or less forgotten in ten years time while classic doom still will have an audience and a modding community. It is its own independent animal.

[wrkq]

On 12/11/2020 at 1:26 AM, xvertigox said:

She'll be right m8

 

On 12/11/2020 at 12:36 AM, leodoom85 said:

Someone said that Doom is eternal.  

 

Got to see that everywhere I turn
Will point to the fact that time Doom is eternal

[Solid SOAP]

My first Doom game was Doom 2016.

 

Fantastic game, imo. Frantic, fast, and generally fun. I've been pretty disappointed by the FPS genre for a while; one of my first was Bioshock for the 360, and I then played Duke Nukem 3D on the same console. After that... not much else came out that I really enjoyed. Doom 2016 reignited that fire for me.

 

Of course, when Bethesda announced that the classic Doom games would be available on Switch soon after 2016, I had to pick them up.

 

The initial debut of the classic games may have been spotty, but id and Bethesda have been consistently supporting the games for what... a year, now? Updating and improving the ports to be the best they can be.

 

And now, I fucking love this series. It might be one of my favorites... currently it is, at least. One I go through enough WADs, I think I will be ready to make my own.

 

--

 

Doom aint going anywhere. New, AAA releases may never take the place of the classics, but this community always will be thriving, whether or not the wallets are of whoever owns Doom.

Edited December 17, 2020 by Solid SOAP

[FractalBeast]

I'll just ignore all the tryhard "nuDoom sucks" wankers who weren't even in their dad's nutsack when id dropped Doom 1 and 2.

 

There's a fundamental problem comparing OG Doom modding with hypothetical Doom Eternal modding.

 

A motivated person can make a good award-worthy .wad with new monsters, textures, weapons and maps - solo. Now imagine doing the same for Doom Eternal in some hypothetical TES-Creation-Kit like program. Solo. Good luck, I'll see you in 666 years.

[Mordeth]

On 12/11/2020 at 1:41 PM, DSC said:

Didn't people say this crap way back in 1997 before the release of Requiem? Well well, now look where we are now!

 

They did. Requiem was believed by many to be the last collective gasp of our community. And we did lose some notable mappers to Quake, and some who even went on to become industry professionals.  The source release and subsequent explosion of source ports with advanced editing features was probably crucial to keep enough people interested to stick around.

[Murdoch]

18 minutes ago, Mordeth said:

Requiem was believed by many to be the last collective gasp of our community.

 

They did? Haha, I missed that discussion. Or I do not remember. They were a shade off target on that prediction...

[TenenteZashu]

Honestly I do understand your concerns, but I'm mostly worried about the direction Doom as a franchise is taking, don't get me wrong but whilst Doom 2016 is very good ''modern'' adaptation of Doom I feel like Doom Eternal is going a bit too far, I understand the whole concept of not making the game too easy and beatable with pretty much only one gun (even tough if you use the ballista-ssg combo is pretty much the same) and having the player constantly on the move but when you spend a sizable chunk of your total play time on platforming sections (Urdak specifically) I feel like some of Doom's spirit is being taken away for the sake of making things different.

[Spladam]

-Edit: just reading your last post OP, would not have even replied if I saw that, I guess we just agree to disagree. I ended up just repeating what was already said.

Edited December 20, 2020 by Spladam

[smeghammer]

I think that as long as the old guard (middle-aged buggers like me...) pass on the torch to the younger guys and gals here, Doom will be fine.

 

How many of you have kids? And if so, do you enthuse to them about Doom? I certainly do with my kids - my eldest is definitely interested in the level building aspect  (she'll get over Minecraft soon enough...) and my youngest is generally interested (though steam trains probably take precedence). So I think that as long as we are enthusiastic and pass on the love for original Doom - both in terms of just playing, but also in terms of the editing possibilities - it will live for a while yet.

 

Certainly, hobbyist editing of modern games is a much bigger investment of time and effort and indeed knowledge, but learning to edit with the simpler tools for Doom will very likely be a great way in to computers in general and game dev in particular for a lot of people. It's a damn site more accessible than a dry ITC lesson at school... Learning to modify Doom can trigger interest in several computer related subjects - programming (ACS, zscript/decorate etc.), animation (sprites), graphic design (flats/textures etc.); game design (level creation)... Any and all of these are creative and can stimulate someone to perhaps do more advanced stuff for something else. Certainly, when I was younger, playing Doom and tinkering with early editors in the late '90s has stuck with me.

 

You could equate Doom modding as somewhat equivalent to the massive creativity in the '80s when it seemed everyone was tinkering with one variant of BASIC or another on Amiga, BBC micro, Acorn Electron etc. 

 

I think younger kids - before they are influenced by peers at school etc. - are quite happy to play 'old' games and - if the games are good - they will stick. We all know that Doom is 'old-fashioned', but we play and love it because it's good and our enthusiasm for it will certainly ensure it will continue.

 

Spoiler

And I do like Doom 2016 too, but it is definitely different.

 

 

Edited December 17, 2020 by smeghammer

[slayermbm]

When humanity leaves earth in the year 2xxx to terraform and colonize Mars, I bet some form of OG Doom will be running on the spaceship computer they'll use. No, but seriously, I don't think Doom will be abandoned anythime soon in the next 15-20 years. Our community is something else, always engaged in creating fresh content to good ol' Doom.    

Edited December 17, 2020 by slayermbm

[smeghammer]

1 hour ago, slayermbm said:

When humanity leaves earth in the year 2xxx to terraform and colonize Mars, I bet some form of OG Doom will be running on the spaceship computer they'll use. No, but seriously, I don't think Doom will be abandoned anythime soon in the next 15-20 years. Our community is something else, always engaged in creating fresh content to good ol' Doom.    

Completely off-topic - your user pic is the first album I ever bought - newly released vinyl back in the day. Still got it too! 

[slayermbm]

17 minutes ago, smeghammer said:

Completely off-topic - your user pic is the first album I ever bought - newly released vinyl back in the day. Still got it too! 

(Off-topic) Cool. I was born in '89 so I kinda missed the golden era of vinyl. My father have a lot of Black Sabbath and Pink Floyd ones from back then. The Number of the Beast is my favorite Maiden album, and probably one of the best I've ever heard. Hallowed Be Thy Name sent chills down my spine the first time I listened, not so many years ago.

Edited December 17, 2020 by slayermbm