The New DOOM Thread (2016)

[Major Malfunction]

Oh hey, here's another tidbit. Remember health vials?

Those +1 health bonus items that occurred throughout all the various Id games and overcharged your health to a maximum of 200%? Yeah, they don't do that anymore. They stop at 100% so don't even bother looking at them. Only the super health punches you up to 200% now, every other health item is essentially a first aid, though why anyone would bother with a +1 first aid kit is beyond me. Well, I guess you could survive a shotgun blast to the face for the price of 10 so there is that.

 

[Riskbreaker]

you get experience and level up at the end of the match

it's an RPG

Mayhaps this thread can be moved to a more suitable subforum now?
Considering the tastes of those fine folks that frequent our local General RPG board, that move would surely bring some much needed positivity to this thread!

Those +1 health bonus items that occurred throughout all the various Id games and overcharged your health to a maximum of 200%? Yeah, they don't do that anymore. They stop at 100% so don't even bother looking at them. Only the super health punches you up to 200% now, every other health item is essentially a first aid, though why anyone would bother with a +1 first aid kit is beyond me. Well, I guess you could survive a shotgun blast to the face for the price of 10 so there is that.

Another thing that is in there purely because it is instantly recognizable part of classic Doom, not because it has any proper role within their game.

 

[Major Malfunction]

They're still mixed in with armor shards so the illusion of strategic item-pathing from the Quakes is there on the map, but the armor cap as far as I could tell was 100 for the best armor and the health bonus is no longer a bonus so you're really better off straight-pathing towards the big respawn spots. Invisibility makes you completely invisible. Bonus items, as far as I could tell, canceled each other out -- that is, you can't be invis and have quad damage for example. Best new powerup was ADD energy ball which halved cooldown timers and raised your attack speed by 100%. It's better than demon mode, obviously, because a skeleton which shoots 2 rockets every 8 seconds while floating around with a jetpack at the speed of a helium balloon and snarling tends to draw quite a bit of attention. Picking up the demon mode powerup also stunlocks you for a few seconds while you transform, though I didn't notice if it made you invulnerable for the duration or not -- if not, you're better off getting melee kills by baiting opponents to pick it up than going for it yourself. There seems to be an option for toggling player indicators in server creation, presumably so you can have a quest compass pointing to every person on screen/map, but I never tried it.

 

[Space Insect]

I'm going to assume from most of this news that the invulnerability spheres with the trippy vision are not in this game.

 

[Melan]

Those +1 health bonus items that occurred throughout all the various Id games and overcharged your health to a maximum of 200%? Yeah, they don't do that anymore. They stop at 100% so don't even bother looking at them. Only the super health punches you up to 200% now, every other health item is essentially a first aid, though why anyone would bother with a +1 first aid kit is beyond me. Well, I guess you could survive a shotgun blast to the face for the price of 10 so there is that.

Another thing that is in there purely because it is instantly recognizable part of classic Doom, not because it has any proper role within their game.

That's modern IP management for you. They "care" about classic brands and "revive them" "just as the fans asked". It is all about remixing a set of vague callbacks and mental associations to sell something without any actual thought behind it.

It used to be a few years ago that they said "all that old regressive crap sucked ass - here, try this new coolness". It didn't work, people got angry, so they have changed tack. Now they say "we love you and we love those old mouldy games just like you - look! we are wearing ironic Pac Man shirts! We TOTALLY get what you want."

Which is the worse? The first tells you point blank they don't give a shit. The second lulls us to sleep, corrupts language, and muddles our understanding of games.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Hey, modern gaymers eat this shit up. I guess nothing shows how much gaming has declined when even something like Doom appears too complex and difficult for both modern developers as well as modern players to understand.

 

[Darth Slaughter]

https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?101337-DOOM-E1M1-recreate

Hi guys! Here's my remake of the iconic E1M1 from DOOM. I build this to familiarize myself with the engine. I try to be as faithful to the original aesthetic as possible while adding some more details to the scene.

Too much bloom... but I like the colors....

 

[Angthoron]

Would be funny if someone made a faithful fan remake of Doom on Unreal while id made... whatever it's making on their own idTech.

 

[Lyric Suite]

https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?101337-DOOM-E1M1-recreate

Hi guys! Here's my remake of the iconic E1M1 from DOOM. I build this to familiarize myself with the engine. I try to be as faithful to the original aesthetic as possible while adding some more details to the scene.

Too much bloom... but I like the colors....

 

[Drax]

Nah, less bloom and it looks fine.

 

[Ninja Destroyer]

Different engine means different gameplay. The levels can be 1:1 copies but the other aspects can't be copied.

 

[Dalek]

Different engine means different gameplay. The levels can be 1:1 copies but the other aspects can't be copied.

What ? The whole point of using an engine is to keep pretty graphics while injecting any gameplay you want. Ofc everything can be copied.

 

[Drax]

Different engine means different gameplay. The levels can be 1:1 copies but the other aspects can't be copied.

Different engine to what? NuDum?

 

[Ninja Destroyer]

Doom engine - newest Unreal engine. Id and Epic had different priorities when it came to the engine and what would be their biggest strentght. The movement, action-reaction of the enemies, and overall it wouldn't be the same game. Come to think of it, I don't remember any of those projects to be completed. There was a similar one for Duke3d but I think it died quickly. It will be interesting to see System Shock in action and how it will be changed compared to the original. I think Jedi Knight could work really well in Unreal engine for example.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Nah, less bloom and it looks fine.

There's more than just the bloom. There's that ambient occlusion shit, and the lighting is too damn dark.

Nobody knows how make good graphics anymore. I tried to play BF4 back when they had the free week a while back and i the overload of retarded visual effects nearly gave me eye cancer.

 

[AlexOfSpades]

Doom engine - newest Unreal engine. Id and Epic had different priorities when it came to the engine and what would be their biggest strentght. The movement, action-reaction of the enemies, and overall it wouldn't be the same game. Come to think of it, I don't remember any of those projects to be completed. There was a similar one for Duke3d but I think it died quickly. It will be interesting to see System Shock in action and how it will be changed compared to the original. I think Jedi Knight could work really well in Unreal engine for example.

I'm sorry, but I think you're wrong.

Movement speed, reaction time of enemies, all of that is completely configurable in engine. The engine is nothing more but an interface and a basis for physics and rendering. The laziers the coders are, the closer the game will be to Unreal Tournament 3, but the more time they invest into making new code rather than repurposing existing assets, the more unique the game can be. I personally believe you can completely clone a game's feel in any engine, like for example, UT feeling in Source, CS:GO feeling in Unity, Doom feeling in UE. You just have to:

1) Understand what composes the "feeling" (movement speed, size of rooms, reaction time of enemies, aggro range)
2) Replicate that feeling.

 

[Lyric Suite]

How about you leave Doom alone and make your own original contribution to the classic formula. If you can.

 

[Drax]

I once edited the fat rocket-launcher wielding dudes to shoot blue lamps.
That was neat.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Bethesda wanted to buy Carmack and his tech for some reason, got shafted, now they try to milk whatever they can. They give around 0 fucks about old school id, why would they require that?

That reminds me...

Hey News Jew! Any word on that lawsuit Bethesda made against John Carmack where they claim ownership of the tech used in the Oculus Rift?

 

[Kutulu]

How about you leave Doom alone and make your own original contribution to the classic formula. If you can.

I think they cant, i genuinly believe that somehow some of the old school fps creators where actually inspired, even the people that licenced the engines produced
games that where almost perfect. You play Hexen, Heretic, Shadow Warrior, Blood they all feel almost perfect, non of those games have weapons that feel
terribly unbalanced, everything has that "oomph" you wanna feel while playing fps.

When you go the 3d era you alot of new devs and games like Sin, Kingpin, Requiem etc They arent really bad but they lack that fluidity of gameplay that their predecessors had.

So imho you had guys that where just better at their jobs at those times, the people that tried to copy them failed and after a while the "good guys" turned to shit as well.

----------------------------

Doom 4, just dont call it that, generic modern FPS it is. I really hate that they feel the need to include leveling system and pokemans mini games via collecting all weapons.

 

[Lhynn]

It comes down to who these people were and who they are today. What inspired them back then is a lot more interesting than what moves them today, and it shows.

 

[Melan]

When you go the 3d era you alot of new devs and games like Sin, Kingpin, Requiem etc They arent really bad but they lack that fluidity of gameplay that their predecessors had.

So imho you had guys that where just better at their jobs at those times, the people that tried to copy them failed and after a while the "good guys" turned to shit as well.

Let's not forget that there were plenty of horrible Doom/Quake clones as well, they are just long forgotten. What is interesting is why the good games were good.

Something was in the air that was most likely down to peoples' influences, but also in the philosophy of game design. Story-centric thinking had not yet infected designers before Half-Life came along, so they focused on gameplay, and had a different understanding of constructing game spaces and the game experience that takes place in it. Constructing large, branching levels was relatively cheap in terms of time, assets and manpower.

Also, the kind of "common wisdom" that has infected dev studios (and probably courses where they teach game design?) is antithetical to designing a game experience based on choices, because "choices scare gamers". Just look at how even things like branched corridors are removed from AAA titles because some blithering idiot in a focus group was overcome with horror when he had to choose between going right and left. Verticality is out of the question because "people don't look up". The correct way must be heavily "signposted" with light and sound cues. Unfortunately, I am not even exaggerating.

The mysterious thing about the modern era is why nobody has made a proper Quake-stlye FPS with high mobility, non-linear level design, and strong verticality.

 

[shihonage]

My 2D ASCII shooter is based on Doom philosophies, and it's been pretty depressing to see people barely grasp the idea of colored keys opening same-color doors, getting lost in trivial mazes, never using the automap. Never using save-anytime feature, leaving themselves at the mercy of autosaves. And what's most depressing of all, they think every weapon pickup is an upgrade over previous one. They just tend to choose a "favorite", regardless of its particular shortcomings, and try to use it for every situation. Nevermind that double shotgun uses twice the ammo and has a short range... just point and shoot, until you run out of ammo and die.

Modern gamers ignore scripted messages which are actually pretty obvious gameplay hints, like "This area has a weak wall", or "That bridge is dangerous". They just ram through the bridge and lose tons of health, ignore the wall with goodies in it, etc.

I was forced to radically streamline the first level so people don't give up on it so easily. I had to change the first prompt to "PLEASE PRESS F1 AND READ HELP". Not that it helps.

The impression I get is pretty dire, and it's result of years of conditioning. There's been a fundamental shift in philosophy, where games have become this feeding tube of entertainment, an IV that you hook yourself into, rather than something that requires active thinking and observation. Instead of being rewarded for being clever, you are showered in participation awards.

When outsiders used to label games as pointless waste of time, I always defended them for their benefits in stimulating the thinking process, imagination, etc. But now there are many games which are exactly what they've been stereotyped as. Just something for the dudebro to mash buttons with while he chills on the couch. Keep mashing until you get your shiny medal for walking 10 meters.

 

[Gentle Player]

You play Hexen, Heretic, Shadow Warrior, Blood they all feel almost perfect, non of those games have weapons that feel
terribly unbalanced

 

[Lyric Suite]

That's Hexen's equivalent to the BFG.