If you had been involved in the development of Doom and Doom II

[DoomGappy]

just founf out GZDoom has this, in case anyone didn't know.

[Gothic]

Fix the unreachable secret in Map15, Romero!

[aRottenKomquat]

More textures, a little more QC, keep the episodic format for Doom 2, and fire all mappers except John Romero and Tom Hall.

[roadworx]

to everyone saying to get rid of the pain elemental: NO!!!! the pain elemental is a vital part of doom 2's bestiary, no matter how annoying you may think it is. it's a ticking time bomb that forces the player to prioritize killing it. it's great both as a way to force the player to multitask, having to kill the pain elemental while also trying to not be killed from all of the surrounding enemies, and also serves as a great way to force the player out of their hiding spot in order to kill it.

[baja blast rd.]

Gonna be boring and go with the obvious with pain elementals and revenants and archviles... 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Even more types of enemies like them.

[plums]

@roadworx I would separate lost souls from PEs and normal ones, so that the normal ones didn't count against the limit. And also buff LS health to 200 so they don't always die from one SSG shot :>

[Jayextee]

This talk of Lost Souls makes me think of an actual serious thing I'd like to have influenced with the development of DOOM; more flying enemy types. They're versatile as all hell IMO, and something I've been sorely aching for when making Ultimate DOOM maps of late.

[roadworx]

25 minutes ago, Jayextee said:

This talk of Lost Souls makes me think of an actual serious thing I'd like to have influenced with the development of DOOM; more flying enemy types. They're versatile as all hell IMO, and something I've been sorely aching for when making Ultimate DOOM maps of late.

oh yeah, absolutely. the one thing i do agree with in this thread out of all else is adding glass cannon type enemies and more flying enemies

Edited October 25, 2023 by roadworx

[plums]

31 minutes ago, Jayextee said:

This talk of Lost Souls makes me think of an actual serious thing I'd like to have influenced with the development of DOOM; more flying enemy types. They're versatile as all hell IMO, and something I've been sorely aching for when making Ultimate DOOM maps of late.

I agree but also let Doomguy walk over/under other monsters.

 

Also I was being serious about the lost soul limit at least.

[Jayextee]

Oh, for sure. Lost Souls being the thorn in the side of many DOOMer means they're a much better-designed monster than people realise.

Edited October 25, 2023 by Jayextee

[Pechudin]

Gonna be boring - water and lava fall textures.

[TheHambourgeois]

gonna say the same thing I say every iteration of this thread: implement the height checks for monsters that heretic did. In fairness, in Doom 1 and Doom 2 they mostly designed to avoid infinitely tall actors being an issue but its really my only complaint about vanilla

[Lila Feuer]

2 hours ago, baja blast rd. said:

Gonna be boring and go with the obvious with pain elementals and revenants and archviles... 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Even more types of enemies like them.

 

Blood Elemental, Ghoul and Void Lord here I come!

[Hellektronic]

20 hours ago, jazzmaster9 said:

"poor taste" (what ever that means in this context)

I meant it mostly in regards to things he did with traps. Ya know, lava pits with no elevator or teleports out, that's (arguably) just poor taste.

Granted a few pits in Doom 1 had no escape, but those were generally easier to avoid.
 

20 hours ago, Murdoch said:

Given that programmers like Lee Killough and other members of TeamTNT put paid to a large number of the engine bugs and limitations less than 10 years later with Boom and later MBF, this is not an accurate statement at all. Carmack was and is a superb coder, but his work was by no means unintelligible to others. Lee in particular was operating on another level when it came to understanding and improving Doom's code.

Well he's one person, who wasn't involved with id Software. Unless you count Final Doom, I guess.

Edited October 25, 2023 by Hellektronic

[Murdoch]

1 hour ago, Hellektronic said:

Well he's one person, who wasn't involved with id Software.

 

True, but it would depend on the bug. Some were simple logic bugs, not related to the renderer which was more Carmack's area. I myself implemented a simple fix that stopped melee attacks landing if they were out of reach of the player back in the day, and my programming skills were never more than "aggressively average self-taught hacker".

Edited October 25, 2023 by Murdoch

[silentzorah]

"Yo Shawn, played through Bloodfalls.  Don't forget to set the UV flag on the BFG."

[OniriA]

I would've decided to not be involved anymore because I would've hated to work in that kind of environment (and under that pressure) to begin with.

 

These guyes were probably really arrogant and full of themselves at the time aswell while making Doom 2. I don't blame 'em because if you're in your early 20's and making a sequel to something that was essentially genre defining that's making waves you would likely feel like an absolute God. 

 

I'm already satisfied with the content that Doom1/2 provided and don't see the need for any changes or additions to its core. That gap and need has already been filled with all the custom content from the community afterwards.

 

PS: If you happened to be a women or LGBTQ, the last thing you want to be involved in is a game development team in the 90's. These were very often highly toxic male dominated environments at the time.

 

Edited October 27, 2023 by OniriA

[Lila Feuer]

2 hours ago, silentzorah said:

"Yo Shawn, played through Bloodfalls.  Don't forget to set the UV flag on the BFG."

This always makes me unreasonably angry. Love the secret sector tagged chamber with NOTHING IN IT.

[Antiquated]

Make Spider Mastermind have a cool attack that gives it a more useful niche (maybe some form of attack that can go through walls but in a balanced way) and less infight prone, and make Spirit World less resource heavy since that map is so fun but also really easy.

[Maximum Matt]

I would seriously purchase a whole heap of player-made homebrew levels TNT-style and incorporate them into Doom II, because let's face it, there were loads of levels out there at that time way better than a lot of the IWAD maps - you'd probably even have enough good ones to make two whole full 32-level mapsets (which may have the unintended butterfly-effect consequence of the Casali brothers working themselves to death trying to create four megawads a few years later)

[LadyMistDragon]

Trying harder to create better textures for Doom II. Of course, that assumes development time is unlimited and that's not really how commercial game development works...

[Lila Feuer]

It kinda surprises me how rushed Doom II and Quake II were considering how well they turned out in the end. Different times. Less moving parts. You rush a game nowadays and you get the new Cyberpunk.

["JL" was too short]

6 hours ago, LadyMistDragon said:

Trying harder to create better textures for Doom II. Of course, that assumes development time is unlimited and that's not really how commercial game development works...

I don't know, how many entirely new textures did Doom II have?  Even if Adrian Carmack and whoever else (if anyone) was helping him could only make one single decent texture in an 8-hour workday (which is obviously an extremely conservative estimate even with 1994-tier software and hardware) it seems like they should have been able to make a lot more textures in the time they had.

And that's not even getting into how a lot of the existing textures would be "better" for design purposes if they did stuff like having being neatly divisible into 16/32 unit high increments, which shouldn't have taken much/any extra time compared to making them sloppy and irregular, as long as you understood going in that it was something that was helpful for level designers.  Of course, it then probably wouldn't have mattered since I doubt it would suddenly have made Sandy start giving a fuck about good texturing.

[Craneo]

In all due honesty, a better color palette with a wider range of colors covered and not like 400 shades of brown, a better shade of blue, more shades of yellow and some darker reds too, oh, and purple, can never go wrong with purple.

mostly commenting on the graphical aspect and trying to be as realistic as I can I think cuz I don't think I can say "ADD MAPS FROM HELLBOUND" or "ADD THESE NEW WEAPONS" like hindsight is more prevalent to those, while the colors one, I dunno, I just feel Doom could of used some more color shades personally.

[Nimlouth]

I would have pushed hard for not keeping the ugly tan brown gloves on doomguy! Also, the super shotgun idea was super cool, I would've tried to come up with more alternative slot weapons. That also means I would've argued hard to make "Doom 2" an expansion for Doom and instead keep developing a better, bigger, different Doom 2, probably proposing going into a more Raven-influenced route with hubs and inventory, so to not step into Quake's territory.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

Nerf the icon of sin battle so the pillar takes 5 mins to raise and you just have to fight survival style until then, with the icon positioned so all projectiles can harm it without the timing. just because the boss always angers people and comes high in lists of things they hate.

 

Also when they release Ultimate Doom make it an EXE that launches both doom 1 & 2. Imagine the value!!!

[Individualised]

22 hours ago, LadyMistDragon said:

Trying harder to create better textures for Doom II. Of course, that assumes development time is unlimited and that's not really how commercial game development works...

 

5 minutes ago, Pegg said:

Nerf the icon of sin battle so the pillar takes 5 mins to raise and you just have to fight survival style until then, with the icon positioned so all projectiles can harm it without the timing. just because the boss always angers people and comes high in lists of things they hate.

 

Also when they release Ultimate Doom make it an EXE that launches both doom 1 & 2. Imagine the value!!!

Doom II did have better textures, they were cut later in development.

[Jayextee]

17 minutes ago, Pegg said:

because the boss always angers people and comes high in lists of things they hate.

This is IMO why it absolutely shouldn't be changed. You're in hell, what did you expect? Plus gamer whinging sorta pings my level designer sadism a bit...

[Cruduxy Pegg]

11 hours ago, Jayextee said:

This is IMO why it absolutely shouldn't be changed. You're in hell, what did you expect? Plus gamer whinging sorta pings my level designer sadism a bit...

I don't really have issues with the map but it is kinda silly how badly balanced the map is for players who don't have the rocket timing down (an otherwise never needed skill to progress in doom 2).

 

And the map is more fun as a survival fiesta than the intended way to currently play it anyway.

[Rudolph]

15 hours ago, Individualised said:

Doom II did have better textures, they were cut later in development.

They were? Tell me more.

Edited October 29, 2023 by Rudolph