Things id got wrong

[SnipSnap8]

There is one thing that you've probably all noticed if you looked into some Doom ports. It isn't anything really bad, but it kind of irks me.

Why is it that every single port has that [REMOVED] usual music except the PSX port? Why is it that PSX had an entirely different tone and atmosphere? So is with Doom 64.

I just wonder why is it that Id all of a sudden say "hey, let's get that classic music out of the way! Let's scare some people!" But don't get me wrong, the ambience in the PSX and 64 versions are great.

EDIT: Getting a bad response to this. OK, I'm not a super Doom fan like you guys are, so I didn't really look into it much.

EDIT 2: And now I think posting this was utterly a waste of time.

[fraggle]

SnipSnap8 said:

Why is it that every single port has that traditional hardcore rock music except the PSX port?

Everyone always says this, but if you actually listen to the Doom 1 sound track, it's far more atmospheric than hard rock-y. Listen to the music from E1 for example. Only E1M1, 4 and 9 can really be considered heavy. The rest of the tracks are actually really good, atmospheric music that do a great job of building Doom's spooky atmosphere.

I've heard this argument before and I've never been convinced by it. I don't find PSX Doom's "music" does anything to build atmosphere for me - it's just a bunch of noises that frankly send me to sleep. Apologies to all the PSX Doom fans out there (and I know there are a lot of them) but I really just don't see the appeal. The original PC Doom's music is haunting and spooky and whenever I've seen videos of PSX Doom it's like the developers tore the heart out of the game.

[Dragonsbrethren]

It wasn't id that made that call, and there was some sort of legal issue with using Bobby Prince's sounds and music at the time.

Shane - There has been great interest surrounding your work on the Playstation port of Doom and Final Doom, how did you get the job? Did you apply to do it or were you headhunted for the project?

Aubrey - I was the Manager of Music Development at Midway (San Diego) when Id partnered with Midway to do the console versions. Id was in the middle of a dispute with their original composer and decided they needed a new audio guy. After taking a tour of the Midway San Diego audio department and spending some time with me, Id decided I was the guy they wanted to do the sound and music. I was honored that the company placed their trust in me and I wasn’t about to let them down.


Shane - We are big fans of Doom, as most gamers are, but always felt the original heavy metal soundtrack on PC never fit what was essentially a spooky, creepy game, I for one turned the music off when playing to get into the atmosphere, however with your soundtrack on the Playstation version the music track got turned up. When you first started the project what did you initially want to do with the soundtrack, and did the end result fit this, were you happy with the final outcome?

Aubrey - In my opinion one of the most dangerous mindsets for anyone to have when doing creative development is to focus heavily on what you think people want rather than do what you think should be done. I trust my instincts. At first I was getting pressure to deliver a clone of the original. But, I had a vision for a soundscape that would enhance the tension and suspense similar to what happens in movies. To my knowledge this had never been done before in a game and I felt like game music had fallen into a rut. Everywhere you turned there was high energy, crank it all the way music from wall to wall in most games.

There were the exceptions here and there, but, never anything like what I wanted to try. There was very little dynamic range and no one seemed willing to go out on the edge. So, I started sampling weird things like a bee in a coke can or a faulty fan in a laptop and made those "instruments" to be played in my compositions. These bizarre instruments along with a core set of traditional samples gave me the textures I needed to create the first truly ambient score in a video game. Nowadays the style is used often and I am proud to have paved the way and set a high standard for other composers to emulate. The players deserve no less.

Interview

-edit-

fraggle said:

Everyone always says this, but if you actually listen to the Doom 1 sound track, it's far more atmospheric than hard rock-y. Listen to the music from E1 for example. Only E1M1, 4 and 9 can really be considered heavy. The rest of the tracks are actually really good, atmospheric music that do a great job of building Doom's spooky atmosphere.

This too, and honestly I think the PC ambient pieces are better compositions than the PSX ones.

[Gez]

SnipSnap8 said:

Why is it that every single port has that traditional hardcore rock music except the PSX port? Why is it that PSX had an entirely different tone and atmosphere? So is with Doom 64.

That's for the "Things Midway got wrong", mister.

And now for some traditional hardcore rock music:

[Koko Ricky]

Wasn't there at least one other CD-based console that used Aubrey Hodges' dark ambient score? The Saturn version, maybe? I figure that consoles that could handle music files instead of midi sequences just took advantage of the situation. Remember that the 3D0 version has a completely unique version of the OST. As for Doom 64, Midway probably felt Aubrey was really effective with the PSX version and figured he could strike gold twice. I don't think hearing the N64's hardware play familiar Doom songs would have been appropriate at all.

EDIT: I forgot about the legal issues regarding Bobby's compositions, so that probably further prompted Midway to choose Aubrey. I'd also like to add that it's very difficult to describe the appeal of the PSX/N64 tracks. Dark ambient music will either move you, or it won't. I've always responded very strongly to certain movie scores and I feel that these incarnations of Doom have a cinematic horror flair to them, and I love that kind of stuff.

[Six]

Gez said:
That's for the "Things Midway got right", mister.

Fixed for those who like the ambient music.

I've always been very selective over the original midi tracks. The ones that build suspense like the track... Suspense, for example, and the ones that are spooky such as Dark Halls suit perfectly for Doom and create that perfect dark and creepy atmosphere. However, tracks like Between Levels are just plain goofy as hell to me and kill any form of atmosphere and immersion.

For me, the thing id got wrong was the music selection.

[dg93]

The original Doom series should of allowed to player to jump. I don't know why ID never thought of that concept. Thankfully modern Doom source ports have that option.

[Doomkid]

The music of Doom has always been a "different strokes" kinda thing. I personally just hear non descript grumbling sounds when I play the N64 / PSX versions, but that's not to say I actively dislike them. My first exposure to Doom was accompanied by e1m1s amazing tune played through windows general Midi, so naturally that association is engrained in my head. I'm not surprised at all Romero & co were into hard rock and metal, and I think Prince did a great job considering what he had to work with.

It's actually a thing I dislike about most post-2000 games: No catchy/moody/suitable background tunes. Hell, PSX Doom is like Mozart compared to modern standards (as in, it's a shitload better than no soundtrack at all!)

[june gloom]

I prefer both myself but their effectiveness depends on their use. Hodges' work or Prince's creepier tracks are effective for darker, more cramped maps, but with stuff like Doom 2's huge fights it needs to be something faster-paced.

Episode 1 I thought was the perfect mix of Prince's opposing styles. They saved the creepier tracks like "Dark Halls" for the more cramped levels while the brighter and more open maps like E1M9 got the rock and/or roll.

PSX Doom's music worked because all the levels were darkened across the board for atmospheric purpouses. I feel like monster counts also matter in which style to use.

[The_MártonJános]

fraggle said:

(...)it's just a bunch of noises that frankly send me to sleep.

Aaaand those noises are 8:15 long.

[Dave The Daring]

Doomkid said:

The music of Doom has always been a "different strokes" kinda thing.

Indeed. I'm the polar opposite of you, in that I really dislike pure MIDI music. I always turn the PC music off because it just ends up annoying me. That's not to say that MIDI music can't be used to effectively convey an atmosphere in a Doom map, I just don't think it's achieved very often. Give me the PSX/Doom 64 music any day.

[june gloom]

I also want to say that if it comes down to it, I prefer Lee Jackson over Bobby Prince. Prince's music is fine for Doom given the type of game it is, but Jackson is by far a better composer (compare his tracks for Rise of the Triad vs the two or three Prince did -- Prince's stand out for being so... basic compared to Jackson's Latin/new wave Brazilian jazz fusion car crash.)

[scifista42]

^ I agree. Even today's Prince's music in Wrack (yes, it's by Bobby Prince!) sounds a bit like that. I mean "relatively basic". But good!

[dew]

Yeah, Bobby did his work well enough, but Lee has the edge on him when it comes to catchy stuff... even with Bobby's "borrowing", heh. Going Down the Fast Way is one of the best action tracks of the 90's and doesn't reach the legendary status of At Doom's Gate or Running from Evil only because of exposure (which stems from RotT's quality). Similarly, Sign of Evil is Doom's best creepy/ominous song, but Lee trumphs that with You Suck. Fuck me, You Suck beats even the Imperial March, haha.

[Memfis]

I wish people referred to ROTT songs by the Hell Revealed slots, not by their titles. :)

[june gloom]

I wish more wads used ROTT music, 'cuz I'm not a fan of Hell Revealed.

[William Blazkowicz]

I think that episode 3 should have had less puzzles/easier puzzles. May be me, but I think a few of the puzzles where too cryptic.

[Technician]

the_miano said:

The original Doom series should of allowed to player to jump. I don't know why ID never thought of that concept.

I assume it's because jumping in a pseudo-3D world instantly reveals the engines limitations. Sprites and 2.5D geometry become instantly obvious.

[Linguica]

Something else id got wrong: not including the full rotations of the doomguy / trooper / sarge!!

[Technician]

Linguica said:

Something else id got wrong: not including the full rotations of the doomguy / trooper / sarge!!

And cutting off part of the shotgun. At least we got the unedited graphic in the alpha.

[Salt-Man Z]

Technician said:

I assume it's because jumping in a pseudo-3D world instantly reveals the engines limitations. Sprites and 2.5D geometry become instantly obvious.

That's what Hexen did, though...

[june gloom]

And what did we learn from that?

[Salt-Man Z]

I dunno? Hexen was awesome.

[fraggle]

Linguica said:

Something else id got wrong: not including the full rotations of the doomguy / trooper / sarge!!

I bet they did this to save space. Remember the shareware version fit on two floppies? They probably had to make every byte count in order to make that work.

[The_MártonJános]

dethtoll said:

I wish more wads used ROTT music, 'cuz I'm not a fan of Hell Revealed.

Dimensions of Time?

Memfis said:

I wish people referred to ROTT songs by the Hell Revealed slots, not by their titles. :)

I wish those retards replaced the ENTIRE stock music. Leaving the exact tier of MAP20-MAP26 the same as in the IWAD is far the worst thing I could imagine. Plutonia did almost the same, except for MAP21 which is still a good thing in comparison.

[Linguica]

fraggle said:

I bet they did this to save space. Remember the shareware version fit on two floppies? They probably had to make every byte count in order to make that work.

Yeah I am sure the process was make full sprites -> panic that shareware version is a little too large -> cut out nonessential frames -> forget to ever put frames back in. Still silly though.

edit: oh wait they actually made the shareware to fit onto 3 low-density floppies. There would have been plenty of room if the target was 2 high-density floppies :\

So we were deprived of the missing frames until 2014 because id Software, in 1993, decided to target a technology from 1984 instead of a more advanced one from 1987. You can never escape the past...

[BlueFeena]

I'm fairly certain the installer files used a limited form of compression. Remember that Registered Doom is a little over 10 megs in size, spread across four disks. A typical floppy held about 1.44 megs, and 10 / 4 != 1.44. I imagine the rotations were omitted for memory concerns.

[Linguica]

Let's see if id could have kept in the missing frames and still kept the shareware file size small enough to fit on 3 low-density floppies.

Using a compiled WAD, I can see exactly how much space those new frames take up:

Doomguy missing frames:
29.17 kb

Trooper missing frames:
28.98 kb

Sarge missing frames:
27.50 kb

Total:
85.65 kb

So we need to remove at least 86 kb from the WAD somehow, hopefully without changing too much. Let's count out editing / removing any textures, or changing the levels at all.

First off we can remove some graphics / sprites that never appear in the shareware version.

Registered level names:
53.66 kb

Unused shells / casings:
1.67 kb

Unused fireballs:
23.01 kb

Total:
78.34 kb

...OK, we're already super close. Are there any other notably big lumps?

Well, DEMO2 is 45 kb long, whereas DEMO1 and DEMO3 are around 10. With a shorter DEMO2, you could save 30kb easily.

Shorter DEMO2
30 kb

Total:
108.34 kb

Hooray, we did it!

[Gez]

I hear your points about saving disk space, and dismiss them with the retort that all the shareware sounds and songs are duplicated in the registered IWAD.

They also toyed with, and decided not to bother using, other compression schemes. Did you know they had a tool that would create a PNAMES-like list of flats, so that sectors would then reference their floor and ceiling texture by index (two bytes for a word) instead of name (eight bytes for a string), thereby saving 12 bytes per sector?

They also did not use lz77 compression like they did in their previous games (Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, etc.). If they were really struggling for lowering their byte budget, they could have done that. Indeed, they have for Jaguar Doom.

[kb1]

Well, it also saved memory, which was probably a bigger concern. They were desperately trying to keep the requirements low.

That's why the sound samples were low quality, I'm sure. Also, the texture caching, PNAMES scheme, reduction in texture and PNAMES count, savegame size limit, etc. Ever wonder why they dropped some of those beautiful Doom textures when they made Doom II? Memory, I'd say. Back then, having 8Mb was a big deal.