Doomworld's thought(s) on Red Faction?

[taufan99]

I find it weird that this series is rather niche, even among Doomworld users. I've heard the first game was conceived out of Volition's plan to develop Descent 4, which eventually got cancelled with the engine being recycled for RF1.

 

I bought the first game during one of GOG.com's sales not too long ago, and I gotta say I dig the "Descent if it was a proper human-character FPS game" nature it has (that is, not all empty spaces but not too claustrophobic as well). The destructible scenery feature is neat as well. I wonder if Doom source port developers would like to make their own interpretation of the feature, other than (G)ZDoom's version with decals instead of "actual" architecture destruction.

[Kinsie]

3 hours ago, taufan99 said:

I wonder if Doom source port developers would like to make their own interpretation of the feature, other than (G)ZDoom's version with decals instead of "actual" architecture destruction.

You first, Ideas Guy.

[Vermil]

3 hours ago, taufan99 said:

I find it weird that this series is rather niche, even among Doomworld users. I've heard the first game was conceived out of Volition's plan to develop Descent 4, which eventually got cancelled with the engine being recycled for RF1.

 

I bought the first game during one of GOG.com's sales not too long ago, and I gotta say I dig the "Descent if it was a proper human-character FPS game" nature it has (that is, not all empty spaces but not too claustrophobic as well). The destructible scenery feature is neat as well. I wonder if Doom source port developers would like to make their own interpretation of the feature, other than (G)ZDoom's version with decals instead of "actual" architecture destruction.

 

Destructible walls ala Operation body count or Catacomb, would be easy in Doom ports with XG, ACS etc etc. Might even be able to fudge it with vanilla Doom actions?

 

Indeed I've done OBC style destructible walls using XG before for instance.

Edited May 9 by Vermil

[taufan99]

1 hour ago, Vermil said:

 

Destructible walls ala Operation body count or Catacomb, would be easy in Doom ports with XG, ACS etc etc. Might even be able to fudge it with vanilla Doom actions?

 

Indeed I've done OBC style destructible walls using XG before for instance.

I'm aware of simple destructible walls like that, but I'm thinking of the ones where some parts do blow up and others remain intact, like the ones in RF itself. Although, come to think about it, those might be an overkill even for GZDoom.

1 hour ago, Kinsie said:

You first, Ideas Guy.

This, but in this case replace "making maps" with "programming".

[Redneckerz]

5 hours ago, taufan99 said:

I find it weird that this series is rather niche, even among Doomworld users. I've heard the first game was conceived out of Volition's plan to develop Descent 4, which eventually got cancelled with the engine being recycled for RF1.

 

I bought the first game during one of GOG.com's sales not too long ago, and I gotta say I dig the "Descent if it was a proper human-character FPS game" nature it has (that is, not all empty spaces but not too claustrophobic as well). The destructible scenery feature is neat as well. I wonder if Doom source port developers would like to make their own interpretation of the feature, other than (G)ZDoom's version with decals instead of "actual" architecture destruction.

The kind of dynamic destruction in Red Faction wasn't done by many. Battlefield Bad Company comes to mind, as does The Finals.

 

To Doomify that, my first guess would be voxels. But Doom's architecture isn't really suited for dynamic destruction. Sure you can make explodable walls, but that's static destruction.

 

Am afraid this isn't the dream thread you are looking for, Taufan.

[Dweller Dark]

I found Red Faction 1 to be a bad experience overall, but the dynamic destruction was cool while it lasted. 

[ETTiNGRiNDER]

Only ever tried the first one and it's been an age, but I played it through once, and I remember enjoying it but not a whole lot else about it so it was probably "just ok"?  One thing that does stand out in my memory as something it did well was escort missions of all things, the MC even lampshades it the first time (when you're capturing some company exec and taking him with you for the info he has or something like that) with comments along the lines of "an escort mission, really, you mean I can't just shoot this guy?"; it was clear that the devs knew that escort missions usually suck and they made an effort to make them better by having the characters you escort actually try to hide somewhere safe when there's fighting instead of just running into the crossfire like a dumbass

Spoiler

(except when the story script calls for them to run into the crossfire like a dumbass for the purposes of dying "tragically" at least).

 

Speaking of the MC's commentary I guess he was kind of divisive, I remember thinking he tended to be spot on in voicing my thoughts about situations as a player, but I've seen reviews that were like "I hate the MC, he's a complete dick" so maybe that says something about me.

 

I also remember appreciating that there was some boss I was having trouble with to the point that I looked at a walkthrough thinking it was one of those annoying trick bosses that were popular for a while, and the answer was just "nope, you just didn't shoot him enough yet".
 

All in all looking back at my comments in this post as a whole, I'm going to conclude that it was probably a "just dumb fun FPS" that had the misfortune of coming out in an era when people preferred to bitch against those.  Although I've seen other people accuse it of having been a Half-Life knockoff which... I didn't see it that way at all personally, beyond there being sci-fi and mad science stuff which is true of a zillion games.

[LadyMistDragon]

I frickin' loved the theme of the first Red Faction along with the overall use of detailing and the realistic level design. Red Faction 2 was pretty good too but felt nowhere near as unique. Haven't played the latter titles but I've heard Red Faction: Guerilla is quite excellent indeed.

Edited May 9 by LadyMistDragon

[Major Arlene]

I swear I did see someone on Twitter recently who did make some destructible geo physics work for GZDoom but unfortunately I can't locate the tweet anywhere :(

 

I enjoyed Red Faction 1, I've also played some of the community stuff that's around which is pretty cool. Other than that I don't have too much attachment to the games

[Kinsie]

1 hour ago, Major Arlene said:

I swear I did see someone on Twitter recently who did make some destructible geo physics work for GZDoom but unfortunately I can't locate the tweet anywhere :(

There is a system in GZDoom to basically apply a health value (and i think also damagetype resistances?) to a UDMF linedef so you can damage it with weapons using all the proper damage calculations. Everything else is the usual wonderful/terrifying stretch of smoke and mirrors.

 

You could probably do something like the "cinematic physics" (read: offline physics simulations pre-baked into a model animation so you can have lots of individual chunks without turfing the framerate) from some Valve games pretty easily if you have any Blender-fu by exporting some level geometry from GZDB and using that as the basis... but we're getting past the topic here.

 

Basically, Red Faction's GeoMod engine is built around real-time CSG. Which is to say, brushes can add and subtract solid space just like in Quake or Unreal or whatever, but it can do it in real time during the game, so explosions can "just" create a new subtraction brush on the fly. That's grossly oversimplifying it, but it's enough to say the concept is directly incompatible with Doom (and probably also Quake) engines. You'd have to build something for the concept directly from the ground up.

 

Red Faction 2 kept GeoMod but dramatically increased the amount of indestructible geometry because it's not a very good game level design is hard enough as it is without letting the player burrow around all your keycard doors. RF Guerilla onwards kept the GeoMod name but completely rewrote both the engine and the entire concept of the engine to instead be based around having fuckloads of physics objects active at once so you can realistically blow up model-based buildings.

[taufan99]

Thanks for all the replies! I guess the consensus (at least here) is that it's only a little more than a Half-Life clone with dynamically destructible environments (and ragdolls on later games). Nonetheless, I'm enjoying RF1 so far.

[Lila Feuer]

RF1 was the best FPS for me when I was 14, good memories with it on PS2. On PC years later not so much, at least with the single player. I did have fun with the multiplayer though, but that was a decade ago when I still cared about the game. RF2 kinda really sucked, really highlighting what few strengths RF1 did have seeing as there was none to honestly be found here with its short, largely unsatisfying sequel. What these games did excel at however was the great soundtrack and all the weapons you could use. Played a very small amount of Guerrilla, to the point I may as well have no opinion on it but people seemed to generally like this one and is a purported fan favorite. I tried to play Armageddon but I just really didn't like how similar it felt to Saints Row: The Third but with an RF skin, and by this point I wasn't really super into the change in perspective as well as how generic the games had become, none of the things I particularly liked about the first one were here anymore by this point, but for what it is supposedly it's decent dumb fun. I did thought once upon a time that the series was deserving of a reboot, but given with how wanton the Saints Row IP was mishandled in the end I think we dodged a massive bullet.

[CrazedCleric]

I got into the Red Faction series through Guerrilla, though I did eventually play all of them. I love the first half(-ish?) of RF1 but the latter parts are often grating and unsatisfying.

 

Spoilers for me whining about not being good at games

Spoiler

The biggest problem with the games second half for me is the mercs. They take much more punishment than the guards and scoring headshots (which is difficult to do reliably due to the inaccuracy of most weapons and the long sightlines) is almost required due to how many of them get thrown at you at once. Then there's the fact that their weapons are both accurate and very damaging. The rail driver is the worst offender in that regard, it one-shots you and the mercs can hit you with it through walls.

 

[SilverMiner]

On 5/9/2024 at 9:10 AM, taufan99 said:

I wonder if Doom source port developers would like to make their own interpretation of the feature

There is a source port CDoom, and like its v1.9 has sector destruction mode. I saw it in its author's video

 

Red Faction is cool but ending makes all the game not worth it, and there's not enough explosives not to be stingy to use it

 

 

[taufan99]

15 minutes ago, SilverMiner said:

There is a source port CDoom, and like its v1.9 has sector destruction mode. I saw it in its author's video

These ones, right?

Spoiler

 

I actually find it impressive and full of potential (despite the low-quality video captures). Gotta try my hand on CDoom one of these days. Oh, and the fact that it last got an update in 2022 makes it all the more interesting!

17 minutes ago, SilverMiner said:

Red Faction is cool but ending makes all the game not worth it, and there's not enough explosives not to be stingy to use it

Ah yes, ammo resources problem. Wouldn't be a late-90's/early-2000's FPS game without it!

[SilverMiner]

1 hour ago, taufan99 said:

These ones, right?

yes

[ReaperAA]

I quite like RF1 and even RF2 (2 is one of my guilty pleasure games I'll admit). But to be really really objective about them, neither are close to the best games of even their time period.

 

RF1 is a very Half-life 1 inspired game and you can see that in various aspects, such as the ingame weapon hud, interaction with NPCs, tutorial, level design, boss fight with the trash bot and what not. But it doesn't get quite there and the level design + gameplay balance also goes down the further you progress through the campaign. The mercenary enemies are imbalanced AF if you are playing the game on anything higher than easy difficulty and the railgun mercs in particular as infamous for being capable of 1-shotting you even on easy.

 

Shameless plug, but I made a balance mod to try to address some of the issues:

https://www.factionfiles.com/ff.php?action=file&id=6306

 

Despite the issues, I still recommend to give RF1 a shot as it is a decent game. I also highly recommend to try out the Kava campaign mod, which is a sequel to base RF1's story and has better flow:

https://www.factionfiles.com/ff.php?action=file&id=5837

 

 

As for RF2, it borrowed elements from Halo, such as dedicated grenade button and regenerating health, but it when it comes to designing encounters, it seemed to have borrowed all the wrong lessons. Since you regenerate health and enemies generally do high damage on hard difficulty, you will find yourself constantly having to hide behind cover before going further.

 

It's funny that it actually somewhat feels like a Call of Duty campaign before the MW era CoD campaigns. I still enjoy occasionally booting up the game for botmatches and stuff, but only because I have nostalgia for it (i didn't play RF1 until years after RF2). I doubt most would enjoy it today.

Edited May 25 by ReaperAA

[Eurisko]

I played the original to death on PS2 but funnily enough never went back for any of the sequels. 
Might go do that.