Doom 64 is NOT Doom (DEBUNKED)

[Maes]

Actually, not even Doom is Doom if you think about it. The final product deviated so much from the original Doom Bible plans, and so many features were changed, simplified or outright eliminated, that what we ultimately got to play, could not be called Doom anymore. Maybe S.P.I.S.P.O.P.D., but not Doom.

#BringBackInferno #DoomBible4Life

[Guest Unregistered account]

GoatLord said:

On a side note...do the room-over-room and bridge effects fuck up if there are multiple players on screen? If so, could this be a reason there's no MP?

Yes, the 3D floors are really just instantly moving floors and ceilings (you can observe this behaviour on the automap). Sometimes, a fully 3D floor or bridge is drawn (as in, it's correctly rendered as a 3D floor would be), but it's still just an invisible (or self-referencing?) sector that's doing all the physical work.

Maes said:

*hits blunt*

Actually, not even Doom is Doom if you think about it. The final product deviated so much from the original Doom Bible plans, and so many features were changed, simplified or outright eliminated, that what we ultimately got to play, could not be called Doom anymore. Maybe S.P.I.S.P.O.P.D., but not Doom.

#BringBackInferno #DoomBible4Life

Fixed That For You ;)
#BringBackInferno #DoomBible4Life

(Seriously though, I wonder how those live-action cutscenes would've affected he game? I guess that A) it probably would've become worse with age and B) since the Doom Bible lists 320x200 cutscenes as a selling point, that the console versions (apart from maybe the 32x?) would've missed out on them and maybe suffered saleswise.

[Foebane72]

Don't get me started on Tom Hall's "Doom Bible". This is the guy who was so besotted with Commander Keen and cutesy platformers over violent action that he would literally walk around the id office making "blip-blip bleep blop" sounds, like a child. After all, Doom was the main reason I wanted to get away from the sheer number of cutesy platformers on the Amiga.

[VGamingJunkie]

That's just plain untrue that he wanted cartoony and cutesy, considering the Doom Bible seemed to be more horror orientated. I think it's more like he had ambitions that were too high for the rest of the team. Maybe he also wanted to do cutesy stuff but that didn't happen in Doom.

[Deleted_Account]

GoatLord said:

There is far more use of non-orthogonal angles than some are giving the game credit for. I also agree that the designs are generally a lot more sophisticated and orderly than Doom 1 and 2. Really, if you look back, especially at Doom 1, there are plenty of odd architectural choices that are a bit ugly if you're willing to take off your nostalgia glasses. Doom 64 does away with this by appearing more rigid on the surface, but really, there's an elegance to them that rivals the original games. And as mentioned, the heavy use of scripting, faux 3D effects such as room-over-room, and atmospheric elements such as the careful use of lighting, makes it stand out. That's why it's still a very good looking game today.

Well said GoatLord! I find myself frequently returning to Doom 64.

[Koko Ricky]

Thanks. The enemies and weapons are the only weak points for me, and really, it's just that the sprites aren't quite as professional looking as the originals, though they're very good. But most of the death animations are a bit unsatisfying, but the gibs, the decor and especially the cyberdemon death look superb. And of course the RAM limitations account for the limited animation of the shotguns. It's a shame, really. I think with some optimization this might have been feasible.

[Avoozl]

I actually found some of the deaths satisfying such as of the demon and arachnotron besides just the cyberdemon.

[roadworx]

Foebane72 said:

Don't get me started on Tom Hall's "Doom Bible". This is the guy who was so besotted with Commander Keen and cutesy platformers over violent action that he would literally walk around the id office making "blip-blip bleep blop" sounds, like a child. After all, Doom was the main reason I wanted to get away from the sheer number of cutesy platformers on the Amiga.

damn, you really hate tom hall, don't you?

[CARRiON]

I've always seen DOOM 64 as a spin-off. Never liked it myself aside from the music.

Foebane72 said:

Don't get me started on Tom Hall's "Doom Bible". This is the guy who was so besotted with Commander Keen and cutesy platformers over violent action that he would literally walk around the id office making "blip-blip bleep blop" sounds, like a child. After all, Doom was the main reason I wanted to get away from the sheer number of cutesy platformers on the Amiga.

You realize this is the same man that would make extremely morbid jokes with John Romero and was just fine with the extreme violence in Wolfenstein 3D? And was the head of Rise of the Triad, which was extremely violent for the time?

The violence had nothing to do with his eventual leaving of id, it was his ambitions to make the game deep with lore and characters and interactions that the other team members didn't agree with.

[Maes]

Kapanyo said:

B) since the Doom Bible lists 320x200 cutscenes as a selling point, that the console versions (apart from maybe the 32x?) would've missed out on them and maybe suffered saleswise.

Quite the opposite, don't forget that the mid 90s were the "Multimedia" era, and "CD-ROM" and "Full Motion Video" were the buzzwords of the day. All CD-based consoles of the time (Playstation, Saturn, 3DO, maybe Jaguar CD and a few others that didn't survive the test of time...) would have kept the cutscenes intact and perhaps even enhance them thanks to the support for proper MPEG-1 video (rather than the various so-so codecs used on Pee Cees). Cartridge-based consoles on the other hand, yeah, those would've missed out.

If anything, there was a concrete risk that "Doom" would've been turned into a FMV-based rail shooter *shudders* Oh wait, they nearly did that with Doom Resurrection, some 15 years later.

[Foebane72]

CARRiON said:

The violence had nothing to do with his eventual leaving of id, it was his ambitions to make the game deep with lore and characters and interactions that the other team members didn't agree with.

Yes, I know. Tom Hall may have had the right idea, but it was the wrong time. Most modern FPS games have complicated narratives these days, like Doom 3, which not many people liked anyway. Yes, Doom 3 didn't use the Doom Bible (as far as I know) but it was still a different take on the concept than Doom (1993).

Besides, id Software back then preferred pure, distilled fast action gameplay, and I don't blame them.

[Koko Ricky]

I think it would have been nice if Doom had a slightly Duke 3D design element going on, that is, finding a balance between abstract and representational layouts. Doom is also sorely lacking in "realistic" assets, especially in regards to sprites.

[Michael92]

GoatLord said:

I think it would have been nice if Doom had a slightly Duke 3D design element going on, that is, finding a balance between abstract and representational layouts. Doom is also sorely lacking in "realistic" assets, especially in regards to sprites.

I guess the abstractness is one of the reasons Doom is awesome. Exotic layouts are really appealing. Besides, I can't comprehend what's so good in visuals of Duke3D. For example, sprites that 'pretend' to be 3D look very artificial.

[Foebane72]

GoatLord said:

I think it would have been nice if Doom had a slightly Duke 3D design element going on, that is, finding a balance between abstract and representational layouts. Doom is also sorely lacking in "realistic" assets, especially in regards to sprites.

No, thanks. I really liked Duke3D, but it's no Doom. Heck, I couldn't believe that magazine article I saw comparing Duke3D to Quake, as if it were a contender. There is only Quake as winner of that.

[Avoozl]

I recently enabled fast mode in Doom 64 Ex and my god did it make the game challenging, the original game on its own wasn't anywhere near this challenging.

[Voros]

roadworx said:

damn, you really hate tom hall, don't you?

But its all true. Tom Hall, would make bleep-bloop sounds. He even did so once near the beginning in a cape and underwear IIRC. On a sidenote, they were mostly teenagers at the time, so you can't blame them.

But he obviously wanted more cutesy stuff rather than Adrian's dark/gorey/gothic approach. Nagging about the next CK and all that. He was slowly being isolated as everyone grew up.

Then came ROTT.

[roadworx]

Voros said:

But its all true. Tom Hall, would make bleep-bloop sounds. He even did so once near the beginning in a cape and underwear IIRC. On a sidenote, they were mostly teenagers at the time, so you can't blame them.

But he obviously wanted more cutesy stuff rather than Adrian's dark/gorey/gothic approach. Nagging about the next CK and all that. He was slowly being isolated as everyone grew up.

Then came ROTT.

yeah, i know. i just recently read 'masters of doom'. but, really, i felt bad for him. he was pretty coolio. i mean, i liked some of his ideas in the doom bible, and some more commander keen would've been great. but, they made him leave, and then shortly after the company began to fall apart.

i always thought it was stupid, because for some reason they never had two parallel projects: doom and keen. that would've made it a lot simpler.

[Koko Ricky]

Hindsight is always 20/20. They were young and full of piss and vinegar, they were a bit too ambitious and it ended up making things difficult later down the line. Now for the record, I'm not advocating a Duke-style Doom. But I do think having a few representational moments would have been cool. I wouldn't have minded if the maps bore a slight resemblance to how they appeared in the intermission screen. I think this could have been done without going full-on Doom Bible.

[Foebane72]

roadworx said:

i just recently read 'masters of doom'. but, really, i felt bad for him. he was pretty coolio. i mean, i liked some of his ideas in the doom bible, and some more commander keen would've been great. but, they made him leave, and then shortly after the company began to fall apart.

Did we read the same book? Not according to your last sentence. Id was evolving, not "falling apart" as you put it.

[hex11]

GoatLord said:

But I do think having a few representational moments would have been cool. I wouldn't have minded if the maps bore a slight resemblance to how they appeared in the intermission screen. I think this could have been done without going full-on Doom Bible.

Didn't some of the maps look kinda like the intermission screen, but then they got jumbled up into other slots (or maybe even Doom II?)
The alpha versions had some nice textures too.

[Voros]

Foebane72 said:

id was evolving, not "falling apart" as you put it.

Actually it was a bit of both.

[Koko Ricky]

Yeah, Quake was rife with tension because the engine as taking forever to develop, and so their intended story, which would have been their first real attempt at an involved narrative, got shoehorned as a Doom clone. Carmack was too laser focused on perfecting the tech. They were clearly not as tight as they had been just a few years previous, and yet they were still ahead of the competition.

[Foebane72]

GoatLord said:

Yeah, Quake was rife with tension because the engine as taking forever to develop, and so their intended story, which would have been their first real attempt at an involved narrative, got shoehorned as a Doom clone. Carmack was too laser focused on perfecting the tech. They were clearly not as tight as they had been just a few years previous, and yet they were still ahead of the competition.

Id software IS a tech company, first and foremost, with kick-ass fast action games using the tech coming out. Story is not needed in a game, same as story is not needed in a porn movie, John Carmack said so. Let other companies handle that story rubbish, he must've thought.

[Arctangent]

That porn metaphor is pretty damn dated, considering nobody watches porn for the story, but there are plenty of games that draw people in through their story and narrative over their gameplay, and plenty more that would not nearly be so strong or engaging without it.

[Tetzlaff]

Id Software has always been about the gameplay, not the tech above everything else. They always developed their tech to serve the intended gameplay.

Back on topic: Doom 64 is not Doom... it's Doom with a twist! :)

[Foebane72]

Tetzlaff said:

Id Software has always been about the gameplay, not the tech above everything else. They always developed their tech to serve the intended gameplay.

Well, yes, that's what I meant.

As for Quake being a Doom clone: maybe id Software had intended Quake to be more elaborate, but maybe they simplified it because of the long, troubled development of the engine, which gave John Carmack so many problems that he had to bring in Michael Abrash from Microsoft to assist him in solving the mysterious "black hole" bugs.

The bugs were solved in the end, but I think Id basically settled on a true 3D Doom clone as "proof of concept", that it was feasible.

[hex11]

ID games have been all the same gameplay since Doom: run around 3D maze and kill hordes of things, just with different engine and physics. I'd rather just play Doom or older game like Elite or whatever.

[roadworx]

Foebane72 said:

Story is not needed in a game, same as story is not needed in a porn movie, John Carmack said so.

first off, just because john carmack said that doesn't automatically make it true.

secondly, i'm not sure if you've noticed, but there's a lot of games out there that have stories that help the game immensely.

[geo]

roadworx said:

first off, just because john carmack said that doesn't automatically make it true.

secondly, i'm not sure if you've noticed, but there's a lot of games out there that have stories that help the game immensely.

You dare question the God that brought us here together today? John was correct and because he said it once it shall be echoed for the rest of eternity as fact!

Anyway.... I see people on the Steam forums wanting stories in arcade games. One cited even Angry Birds has a story, therefore you should too. Story does help people finish it, but as for me I just don't like getting punched in the face with story before I play the game. Let me play then hit me with a story.

Then again there are those stories where the illogical gets in the way and hinders the experience.

[Koko Ricky]

Storytelling has definitely become a point of focus in many modern games, due to technological advancements making it feasible not only to have cinematic cutscenes, but to allow for incredibly subtle details such as facial expressions and depth-of-field effects. However, I'm rarely impressed or engaged by them; as a 90s kid, cutscenes were typically these brief, special little moments that were either about pushing the limits of hardware, or were used to dictate gameplay, as in point-and-click adventures or action/puzzle games such as Prince of Persia and Flashback. The novelty and briefness of it felt appropriate.

These days, while not necessarily shoehorned, there's something that feels mandatory about cutscenes and it conflicts with my philosophy that games are primarily about temporarily plugging into an alternate reality centered around reflex action and precision timing. Thus, lengthy cutscenes (and, by proxy, overly long tutorials) get in the way. I'm there to to blow off a little steam, have a little fun. Storytelling is the icing on the cake, a way of adding a bit of extra immersion; thus, it works better as a background element, whereas many games push it to the forefront.

id Software recognized this mentality from the beginning and all of their games reflect this.