How was Classic Doom Treated when (almost) every game started being fully 3D?

[HLRaven]

I haven't been, well born during the 90s so I haven't really experienced how Technology for Video games have been evolutionizing every year, but while browsing Doomworld I was thinking about how people outside of the community during those times have been treating Doom, before (or after) Doom 3 released. Since graphics are now nearing the point where there can be no improvement, I was wondering what opinions people back then thought, like thinking doom is now obsolete because quake exists. (pretty stupid but I don't doubt someone ever thought that)

[Jello]

I was around for it, and I really liked the jumping and 3D atmosphere that Quake brought to the table. I liked Hexen and Duke 3D, but Quake was the game that made me lose interest in Doom. And Quake 2 and Half-Life after it, then Unreal. I really liked American McGee's Alice, and I think it's really underrated. It wasn't until source ports, namely jDoom, came out that I really got back into Doom. The addition of mouselook and jumping, plus the plethora of user content that had been created instantly grabbed my attention.

 

Keep in mind, I was playing Doom before the internet was available, so I had no idea that user made levels really existed aside from shovelware cds. My Mom finally got AOL around 1998, and I was using a 33.6k modem for downloading mods for Quake and Half-Life. I remember spending half a day downloading Day of Defeat for Half-Life, just hoping that someone wouldn't call while I was at school and interrupt the download.

 

So yeah, at least for me, Doom kind of hit the backburner once Quake came out (I also loved GoldenEye and Perfect Dark), but once source ports came out, especially zDoom and gzDoom, I was all over Doom again like a kid in a candy store. I can't think of any game that has aged better. I absolutely love Quake, and I would consider it my second favorite game after Doom, but they're both damn close. Doom is just a little bit more fleshed out as far as the enemy roster and the arsenal are concerned. Just a little bit. Maybe if Quake hadn't doubled up on the nailguns and made an ultimate weapon that wasn't as lackluster and sparse on the ammo as the lightning gun, it would win. The Fiend is still my favorite enemy in any FPS. Followed by the Shambler. And I love the Vore and the Ogre.

 

Hell... I think Quake's bestiary beats Dooms. Except the Spawn, fuck the Spawn.

 

And there are folks that would disagree about using source ports that add mouselook, jumping, and crouching, and more resolution options, and I can see the point. But if those features keep adding more people into the Doom pool, I think it's completely fine. I wouldn't be here if not for jDoom, zDoom, and gzDoom. And if you want to play using prBoom, MBF, Chocolate, or all the way back to Vanilla, or any other source port under the sun, I hope you have fun. Doom was meant to be enjoyed, and any way you want to enjoy it, more power to you.

Edited June 18, 2021 by Jello

[out_of_service]

When more advanced games came out after Doom I remember my circle of friends would always criticize Doom. Oh it sucks because you can't look up or down, or you can't jump, there's no story, the graphics suck etc. And yet...in 2021 Doom has more of a presence than any of those others that came out back in the day!

[Doomkid]

In my local circle of friends and among friends of my older brother, the release of Goldeneye was the thing that really made Doom feel extremely dated. At the time, the difference between Goldeneye's "realistic" 3D models and pseudo-ragdolling effects when they die and stuff was just so far beyond what was seen in Doom, and the game was pretty fun to play so it felt like Doom was dead.

 

No one I knew had ever played/mentioned Quake other than my brother years later with Quake 3, and by then Doom was well and truly seen as a relic. I don't think anyone ever said Doom was bad at any point, it just felt like it was showing serious age by then. I also remember reading on various GeoCities Doom sites and stuff that many Doomers were thinking about migrating to Quake since it was more advanced, though many also said "screw Quake, Doom is still king" so to dedicated Doomers, even when it was "uncool", Doom was still king shit. That was the minority opinion, though. Most just saw it as old and rusty.

 

There was a bit of a reignited flame for Doom in 2004/2005, when it was crossing from being "old" into being "cool and retro". This is also the era when Doom3 was released, so a bit of a new wave makes sense. That was possibly the most fertile era for multiplayer Doom as well (sans the Dwango era), with there being 200-300 people online easily during the weekends, over double what's generally seen these days.

 

TL;DR - Since the early-mid 00's it's had "cool retro" status and that has been the case since, but before that was seen as a relic. Side note, I'm thankful that Doom4 and Doom Eternal injected some fresh blood into the fanbase.

Edited June 18, 2021 by Doomkid

[BeefGee]

I always played Doom a little bit on the regular because it was so quick and easy to install, with a small file size too. The pace of action and the quick saving/reloading meant it always had a niche compared to the newer games with better graphics. Some game journalists might crucify me for saying this, but if a game has fundamentally good gameplay then it's a good game and time won't change that.

 

That being said I might play for half an hour here or there but nothing more until the last few years. However, in those moments if friends saw me playing they'd always comment something like "man old school doom is awesome". I remember getting a group of friends to DM Doom at high school one time and we had a blast. That was in the mid 00s. It never lost its cool factor IMO, its just that time started giving it some worthy competition.

["JL" was too short]

5 hours ago, Doomkid said:

"screw Quake, Doom is still king"

 

This reminds me of the motto that was on the Hell Revealed 2 webpage during at least part of its considerable development—"Fuck Quake.  Let's do art."

 

I guess I wasn't as oblivious as some folks to Doom during those years.  Obviously I played Quake 1 & 2, Hexen 2, etc. etc., but the fact that I remember the HR2 development page and partial beta means that I was at least partially tuned into the Doom community. I remember looking forward to TeamTNT's "Doom 2000", which of course became Daedalus and was released in beta form barely before their aspired-to millennial deadline (I recall the news post saying "We're moving west as fast as we need to" in order to still technically say they released it before the new year). 

 

On the other hand, I didn't play Requiem or AV immediately when they were released and had to come back to them a few years later, so maybe I wasn't quite as hip and with it as I like to think...

[Final Verdict]

I think most of us that were around back then went through the same process.

 

Newer games came out and slowly chipped away at Doom but it held its own in a time when there was a lot of change going on in gaming. It was stuff like Quake and other 3D games that really hit Doom hard. I don't recall anyone saying Doom was ever bad or crap, it never went down that path. It was more that it was starting to show its age by that point.

 

Basically, 3D was the next big thing and so people started to view Doom as dated and old.

 

I remember a lot of heated discussion with friends back then and they would often point out things like 3D, jumping, graphics etc. I was a die hard Doom fan but even I thought Doom was coming to an end. Like I said the gaming industry was going through rapid change and it seemed obvious what that meant for Doom. I continued to play it, as did some of my friends despite them arguing that point with me. They would deny it even though you could see it sitting next to their computer and not gathering dust somewhere on a shelf like they claimed.

 

I think few people would have predicted it would still be going strong almost 30 years after it first blew everyone away. Wads and source ports kept it going and Doom also has timeless gameplay, that's something few games can claim. It doesn't seem to matter if someone played it in 1993 or 2013, it still continues to provide entertainment for a lot of people.

 

I tend to view those days (around 1997) as the dark age of Doom, but that's more down to all the discussion about it back then. A few people (not me) saw the signs that it may not be the end for Doom, but that wasn't the general consensus back then.

 

It sounds strange saying all this now, but believe it or not there was a time when Dooms future was uncertain. That time has long since past and if you look around now it's almost impossible to imagine it. Like I said, in my opinion the 3 main elements that saved it in the long run were gameplay, source ports and especially Wads.

 

Doom is always changing and I believe that also helps to keep it going. It doesn't just keep the fire lit, Doom continues to climb and gain in popularity. That is an extreme rarity for such an old game. But obviously I'm a fan, so of course I would say that.

 

It doesn't make it any less true though.

 

[Murdoch]

I still quite vividly remember the first time I played and/or saw Wolf3D, Doom and Quake. I actually first saw Quake's shareware episode in I believe it was a computer shop in a city a few hours drive from where I lived. The fully 3D architecture and atmosphere left quite an impression. But the computer I had at the time was insufficient to run it so I stuck with Doom. I did not get ahold of a capable computer till I think late 1997/early 1998. I got the full version of Quake from, of all things, a CD bundled with the dialup modem that came with the computer or was purchased for it not long after, I forget which. I played it, basically enjoyed, downloaded some maps. Quake II followed, then my first 3D card, and so on from there. But still Doom stuck with me.

 

Obviously, everyone's going to be different. What they value is going to affect how they interpret games as they age. That in turn changes with time as people age and mature. The game they left behind because it was showing it's age becomes a nostalgic treat later in life. However, apart from inevitable comments about the age of the technology, I personally can never recall any fan of the FPS genre suddenly regarding Doom as bad or inferior. It has always been held in the highest regard by the vast majority of people familiar with the genre and in the industry. It is a legend for a reason, and will remain so.

[Chezza]

I was a toddler back when Doom was released and don't remember the incoming hype.

 

I do remember Quakes release and how excited my family was, looking at the pictures in the PC powerplay magazine. Knowing it was the guys who made Doom, we had high hopes. We purchased a new graphics card for it, probably one of the first Geforce? I forgot

 

We didn't really look down at Doom, just focused on the hype and potential future 3D releases. But I recall always having Doom installed and playing it on and off.

Edited June 19, 2021 by Chezza

[ebrl]

Between 1993 (Doom) and 2004 (Half-Life 2) there was a (100% justified) feeling that first person shooters were constantly moving forward one way or another, there was simply no time to stop and linger on either old tech or old mechanics. And Doom also happened to be one of the least hyped games among the big boi releases during that time - first person shooters weren't a major genre before it, Wolf 3D was rather well known but nobody had any idea what was coming. It just caught everyone completely by surprise, there was no real lead-up worthy of how good it was, just a gigantic scramble to get your hands on a copy, which was historic in its own but didn't really create the kind of self-fulfilling emotional attachment that a true hype cycle can generate.

Ironically, in a way Doom also kind of *ahem* doomed itself to be forgotten for a while, because it was so incredibly ahead of its time that it started this crazy trend of massively hyping up the next thing that would blow up the existing tech and make it obsolete (and to be fair, a lot of the games pushing barriers in graphics and physics during that span were also excellent games in their own right). It wasn't until things slowed down with a certain photorealism plateau and a widespread stalling/regression of gameplay ideas that some people started to look back and appreciate just how plain good it is. Even the tech side was generous to it over the years: it represents the absolute pinnacle of what can be done with 2D, where early 3D ended up exposed as a terminally low-poly gimmick. Doom simply looks better than a lot of the games that supposedly killed it, everyone was just too dazzled to notice it at the time (though I still think the original Doom killer, Quake, aged almost as well as Doom - both games share a lot of strengths, among them incredibly solid art direction that elevates what can be/is expected to be done with their engines well beyond their limitations).

 

Edited June 19, 2021 by ebrl
typo

[Biodegradable]

1 hour ago, ebrl said:

Even the tech side was generous to it over the years: it represents the absolute pinnacle of what can be done with 2D, where early 3D ended up exposed as a terminally low-poly gimmick. Doom simply looks better than a lot of the games that supposedly killed it, everyone was just too dazzled to notice it at the time

 

Yeah, early low-poly 3D modeling is still charming in some ways, but it aged rather poorly. Constratingly, Doom's pixel-based artwork has aged like a fine wine and is arguably timeless.

Edited June 19, 2021 by Biodegradable

[Jello]

1 hour ago, Biodegradable said:

 

Yeah, early low-poly 3D modeling is still charming in some ways, but it aged rather poorly. Constratingly, Doom's pixel-based artwork has aged like a fine wine and is arguably timeless.

Honestly I think the Quake enemy design aged really well for the most part. They were going for abstract Hellish/Lovecraftian enemy design, and aside from the Spawn I think they hit the nail on the head. And the animation in general just struck me as extremely fluid. Particularly the Ogres chainsaw, the Hell Knights sword swing, and the Shamblers lightning and melee attacks.

 

It's certainly better than the jello filled enemies that made up Quake 2, Kingpin, and the first Soldier of Fortune.

 

Even Unreal enemies look kind of wonky and simplistic compared to Quake's, at least to me. I think Half-Life had some pretty good character models as well. They at least looked like they belonged in the universe. The Skaarj from unreal just looked really robotic to me. 

[Biodegradable]

2 hours ago, Jello said:

Honestly I think the Quake enemy design aged really well for the most part

 

On that we agree, man. Adrian Carmack and Kevin Cloud's art transceneds aging technology.

[Final Verdict]

7 hours ago, ebrl said:

Doom simply looks better than a lot of the games that supposedly killed it, everyone was just too dazzled to notice it at the time.

 

 

That is one of the benefits Doom had, it's no secret that games like Doom aged much better than the early low-polygon games.

 

A lot of those early polygon games aged quite badly, but then it was new at the time and the same could be said for the earliest pixel games of the late 70's and early 80's. It's like comparing Impossible Mission for the C64 to Streets of Rage. The pixel count is higher, it looks sharper and in general is just more advanced.

 

Quake was probably one of the few early polygon games that didn't suffer from it much, especially when you compare it to other low-polygon games of that time. It's there and you can see those jagged points, but it's masterfully (for the time) hidden within the enemy design. For example the Shambler and the Vore.

 

In any case, I agree that Doom aged better than many of those early polygon games and it definitely contributed to its survival in the long run. 

 

The resurgence of pixel graphics over the last decade or so probably helped to bring it to a new generation of gamers. Along with the new Doom games.

 

[DavidN]

I remember a review of Final Doom in PC Gamer by Danny Wallace, where he very hesitantly said “I never thought I’d be saying this, but I think Doom’s had its day” and gave it 4/10, because it just didn’t feel exciting now that Quake was out. And I see why he thought that - fortunately he was wrong, thanks to so the efforts of so many people in this community reviving and extending it :)

[Tetzlaff]

At the end of the 1990s Doom was already considered a classic and got some retro recognition from the Quake community. There was for example this Quake II mod, Generations: https://www.moddb.com/mods/generations-for-quake-ii

 

 

[roadworx]

On 6/18/2021 at 11:14 PM, Jello said:

Honestly I think the Quake enemy design aged really well for the most part. They were going for abstract Hellish/Lovecraftian enemy design, and aside from the Spawn I think they hit the nail on the head. And the animation in general just struck me as extremely fluid. Particularly the Ogres chainsaw, the Hell Knights sword swing, and the Shamblers lightning and melee attacks.

 

It's certainly better than the jello filled enemies that made up Quake 2, Kingpin, and the first Soldier of Fortune.

 

Even Unreal enemies look kind of wonky and simplistic compared to Quake's, at least to me. I think Half-Life had some pretty good character models as well. They at least looked like they belonged in the universe. The Skaarj from unreal just looked really robotic to me. 

yeah, it definitely aged well, which i think may be in part due to the greater limitations of quake 1's engine. they had to make up for quake's shitty 3d models, pixelated graphics, and jerky animations by having really, really good art design. once newer tech was developed, i'm assuming they felt like they could put less effort into that and focus more on making things look """realistic""".

[dpJudas]

Back in the 90's, if you had told me you were still playing Doom in let's say 1995 or 1996, then I would have asked if you had tried playing deathmatch. If you hadn't then I'd ramble a bit about how cool multiplayer is. Then told you about Descent or Quake that you should check out.

 

Back then each year had a new thing most of us were excited about. So many things were changing that in 1994 I'd be running DOS, next year Windows 95, year after that Windows NT. Same with the games, 2D games in 1992, Wolf3D in 1992, Doom in 1993, Descent in 1994, Quake in 1995, Half-life in 1997, UT in 1999. Each iteration had something new we had never seen before. Alongside all of that we had sound cards (Adlib, Soundblaster, Gravis Ultrasound) with games that were just plain amazing on that front. Dune, Star Control 2, etc. Unlike today where games just seem to become more and more plain and predictable every year, the 90's sure were a lot more fun. Now it's like, ok a new shooter out? What's new? They got a battle pass and some skins.. yay.. The game mode itself is either a battle royale or a counterstrike variant with some spells but basically the same old rehashed shit.

[Nate42]

I was in college when Quake came out. Yes I'm that old. Among my circle of friends, Quake was not an instant hit. Partly because it really required a 3d accelerator to be at its best, and most people didn't have one yet. It also had a pretty uniform color palette. If you were stuck with the software renderer in low res, it was considerably less detailed than say Duke Nukem 3d, which was the preferred game of many of my friends at the time. A lot of people didn't "get" the signifcance of the true 3d graphics and world. It looked worse in their opinion, so what was the point. I knew I was looking at the future, and I bought a Rendition Verite card basically just because of Quake, but it took others longer to come around.

 

Doom was considered a bit passé at the time, but more because of Duke than because of Quake. And the mod scene hadn't really picked up yet, which is of course what has given Doom its everlasting life.   

[HLRaven]

39 minutes ago, dpJudas said:

Unlike today where games just seem to become more and more plain and predictable every year, the 90's sure were a lot more fun. Now it's like, ok a new shooter out? What's new? They got a battle pass and some skins.. yay.. The game mode itself is either a battle royale or a counterstrike variant with some spells but basically the same old rehashed shit.

I suggest you should try out indie games or smaller companies, Ultrakill, GloomWood, Fallen Aces, Dusk, Hrot, (and there would are more than just retro games)

I don't think games released nowadays have been less fun, You just gotta look more harder due to how games can no longer be improved in terms of Technology. However I did notice some cracks leaking with some companies are returning to less scummy practices, (DLC's being actual DLC, Cheats, etc) so the future for me is looking bright.

I loved reading all of your stories on those times! It's fascinating how Doom went through it's dark age and people looked away from it and after Video Games stopped improving greatly in technology people are turning back to older games and seeing how precious they were. Not just Nostalgia.

[HLRaven]

3 minutes ago, Nate42 said:

And the mod scene hadn't really picked up yet, which is of course what has given Doom its everlasting life.   

Yeah the mod scene really made this game become into what it is today, I would probably not be here if it weren't for Russian Overkill or Brutal Doom, makes me wonder if Doom 4 would ever exist if it weren't for the modding community

[OldDoomer]

I can only point this out.

 

There were FPS games prior to Doom, but they were nothing of the sort of game play that Doom provided. The critics and the retrospectives you read about are all very much correct; Doom was a sort of nexus for not only FPS games but video games as a whole when it released. Think of all the sort of emerging genres and game types during that time. You had emerging FMV content, which most people even then knew was a real load of bull. You had rather rudimentary 3D models in forms of polygon titles, typically found in flight sims, racing games, etc. All the while there was a persistent 2D and 2.5D aspect that continuously lingered well through the 1990s. Sure Doom wasn't true 3D but for most people we had not seen a game of that sort when it released at consumer level. Think even further into Doom's early development. Even the guys at id Software were still in a mindset of things such as tracking score and picking up items for points in the early builds of Doom; effectively left-overs from a generation growing up on largely playing arcade games or 'board' titles that scrolled.

 

However after Doom's release it's as if every single company tried to jump on the bandwagon and release their own "Doom." I remember writing something about it a while back and looked more into the release schedules from that time period, but I want to say that roughly just over 100 major FPS games released on PC between Jan 1994 - Dec 2000. Think about that for a moment. Conservatively there were upwards of sixteen FPS games releasing every single year (just for PC; not counting anything that may have been console-specific) all trying to be the "new Doom". Ironically as many said it wasn't until Quake came along that we got something that got people to stop talking about Doom, and then arguably games such as Golden Eye and Half Life after that. Still though there was an astronomical amount of FPS games during that time, at a time that - it should be reminded - that most people didn't seriously get internet in their homes until the mid to later 1990s. The technology for FPS however just continued to advanced, and advance, and advance, like it was absolutely never going to stop.

 

I was always fairly fanatical about Doom personally. Contributing however I wasn't able to afford a computer that could run all the latest games during that time, so for the most part I was stuck with Doom as matter of consequence. The relatively good thing though was people still created levels well through the 1990s so there was never a lack of content. I remember quite seriously getting back into Doom proper around the time ZDoom came along and initially being blown away by Tei Tenga, which was one of the first Doom WADs to feature a hub level setup. Something mentioned above about Quake was very much a similar situation with me. Graphics cards back in the day were pretty pricey, and I didn't know very many friends that had really good computer setups that were constantly updated with the latest technology in mind. I did have one friend that could run Quake decently, but the great thing that lingered about Doom was it continued to be a title that could easily be installed and ran on most anything by ~1995 (every computer at our school's computer lab had Doom crammed onto it, as most everyone had it and it was easy to install.). Personally I still was quite content with many of the 'lower' end FPS games well through the 1990s. I remember spending way too much time playing Redneck Rampage, more entertained by the absurdity of it all. I also put a lot of time into a little known FPS that was overshadowed by Half Life called Shogo MAD. I was able to actually run Shogo MAD decently, and that game combined FPS with FPS-mecha. As I enjoyed games like Mechwarrior that was pretty mind blowing for me to see an on foot FPS and mecha FPS play out in the same game engine.

[dpJudas]

5 hours ago, HLRaven said:

I don't think games released nowadays have been less fun, You just gotta look more harder due to how games can no longer be improved in terms of Technology. However I did notice some cracks leaking with some companies are returning to less scummy practices, (DLC's being actual DLC, Cheats, etc) so the future for me is looking bright.

You're right I probably exaggerated it a bit there. There are of course good games made today - i.e. Apex has some interesting gameplay despite being a battle royale shooter with skins. What I meant was that back then each new game, good or bad, almost always managed to do something I had not seen before. You really have to play Apex for a while before you start appreciating what they actually added to the genre as it has gotten so subtle in comparison.

[Koko Ricky]

Doom was dismissed by the mainstream once the 5th console generation (N64 and PS1) picked up steam. Final Doom and Doom 64, which were the last franchise releases of 90s, were being stacked up against Goldeneye, Turok, Quake 1 and 2, etc. The trend toward embracing the latest tech meant that literally, from one year to the next, a once beloved title could suddenly look outdated and lame.

 

In hindsight, this was a pretty obviously wrongheaded attitude, as we now recognize how quality graphics are a marriage of both hardware optimization and strong art direction. A lot of early "true" 3D shooters were hampered by deficiencies in both aspects, resulting in blurry, chunky, laggy, flatly lit games.

 

It wasn't until releases like Unreal Tournament, Spyro the Dragon, GTA3, and Conker's Bad Fur Day, that texture resolution and polygon counts were able to transition us out of the abstracts of massive smeared slabs of psuedo-representational forms.

 

The advent of semi-phototeal games in the 2010s contextualized why Doom-style aesthetics can still be compelling.

Edited June 23, 2021 by GoatLord

[Gez]

Gotta give a shout-out to Descent for choosing mining drones as the enemy, a clever way to deal with the low poly budget of that era's 3D capabilities.

[famicommander]

When I was a kid everyone loved Turok and hated Doom 64. Turok was "real" 3D with polygons and all that fancy noise. Looking back, Turok has single digit frame rates and fog everywhere while Doom 64 is still a rock solid 30 fps and extremely well constructed.