Why would Id Software not use the original source for their re-release?

[Zilch]

For Doom's (really it was Doom II because 2019-1994=25) 25th birthday, Id Software released a Unity port of Doom, Doom II and Final Doom.

 

One thing I've always wondered is why did they not build their own - much more optimized - source port from the original source code?

 

There's nothing wrong with doing so, I suppose.  But as many reviewers pointed out, it seems unnecessary.

[esselfortium]

It is still based on the Doom source. It's using Unity as a wrapper.

[D4NUK1]

It's using the original source code, and use Unity because that's a framework more interconnected with modern consoles. Hopefully you don't trink the lie of Unity = Cheap and Bad.

[Zilch]

Ahhhh, my bad!  Should've spent two minutes on a Google search.

 

I recall seeing a lot of screen captures from DF and MVG, and I suppose I just assumed it was a recreation of sorts.  Lighting was completely broken, and various other stuff.

 

I'll maybe try it again.  I did hear some good things from it, and it is in my Steam library of course.

Edited August 28, 2023 by Zilch

[Devalaous]

The port was released in a bad state and like stuff like No Man's Sky, the early negativity has hounded it ever since, with what feels like half the information out there all based on the launch state

[OpenRift]

Honestly I wish they had gotten Nightdive to make the rerelease, like, can you imagine how good a classic Doom port in the Kex engine would be? If the Doom 64 remaster is any indicator, then it'd be pretty fuckin good. It's probably not likely now, but perhaps one day...

[Devalaous]

The Quake II remaster with its libraries of content is what Doom should have gotten, given its legacy. I feel like the heads of the company either changed or changed focus since then. Doom -> Quake -> Quake 2 has been a massive increase in care and respect for the product each time.

[Kinsie]

5 hours ago, Devalaous said:

The Quake II remaster with its libraries of content is what Doom should have gotten, given its legacy. I feel like the heads of the company either changed or changed focus since then. Doom -> Quake -> Quake 2 has been a massive increase in care and respect for the product each time.

The Doom re-release was contracted out to Nerve Software, a longtime Id affiliate who had previously handled the also-kinda-wonky Xbox ports (the source code of which was used as a base). My understanding is that they quietly closed their doors a short time afterwards for unrelated reasons. All the post-release updates that Made It Good were handled by Id's enormous retro games division (read: at the time, basically just Sponge with Kevin Cloud keeping an eye on things) with several community figures (LexiMax, Scuba Steve and Fraggle) contracted to do their thing in a non-GPL-constrained form.

 

I'm not sure the improvement in quality can be assigned to a change in management (things have seemed pretty static in that regard?) as much as it is a change in contractor to Night Dive and Id's retro team getting enough sway to be able to borrow resources and people from elsewhere in the studio (and from Machinegames, of course).