The problem is that oldschool fans don't know what they want. They say this and that but what they really want is a game that will live up to their fond memories soaked with nostalgia and glorified by time. Nothing will live up to that. Ever. It's impossible. Therefore I care very little for all those grumblers blabbering about bringing back the oldschool, pure action, carnage and heavy metal. I guarantee nothing will satisfy them.

I don't want a 20 years old game with better graphics. I want a new game that'll show me one of my favourite franchises 20 years later. I want an interesting plot presentation (even though it's still the simple "demons attack, kill them" type of thing). I want cool scripted sequences and mind-blowing cinematics from time to time. Why not? I've been playing pure run&gun oldschool DOOM for 20 years. I don't care how "oldschool" or "hardcoe" DOOM 4 is as long as I have fun and feel good about it.

I try not to envision the game itself too much to avoid making up expectations. But I'll say a couple of things.

* Action core is obviously one of the priorities for a DOOM game. I think RAGE was a big step in a right direction there. The feel of movement, weapons, effects and enemy responses were all handled remarkably well. As long as id continues working along those lines we should be fine. Just don't spam invisible walls all over the place again.

* One of my personal requests would be to try to create a bit more open environments. BioShock 1/2 did it very well. Levels are linear in terms of critical path but there's a lot of:

- interconnectivity which makes the levels more believable, more interesting in the gameplay space and extends the in-game illusion of freedom
- semi-non-linearity allowing playing areas in a different order
- a good amount of optional, exloratory spaces

* Continuing from the previous point, DOOM is a game about action and exploration. Even if the levels do end up being more linear like DOOM 3 / RAGE, there should still be a bunch of optional places.

* There's a lot of opposition towards anything that might detract from pure run&gun gameplay. I think as long as it's (i) justified and (ii) enriches the gameplay, go for it. Obviously the "hardcoe" fans will say "no! guns, explosions, blood and guts all over the place is what DOOM is about, nothing else!" but, like I said, such opinions don't really matter to me.

It's Id; if they wanted to they could write an in-engine interpreter to run Doom2 wads in the Doom 4 engine

Why do you believe this? I don't think it matters to anyone that something 'wasn't there before'; No one wants a 1:1 Doom2 clone with just better graphics. What matters is what that 'something is'. What matters is whether or not that 'something' is appropriate. PREY was an awesome game; do you want Spirit walking in DOOM4? ~how about alternate fire modes and realtime portals... which of these seems appropriate for Doom?

No; I think it's a hold-over from the early days when the term was used with 'Elder Scrolls'; and I think possibly as a reference to the "Adoring Fan" easter-egg/nuisance character. In any case, it's almost always used derogatively.

I'd say the 'problem' is that they know exactly what they want, and it's inconceivable to some ~so they espouse that the old-fans are impossible to please.

It rather reminds me of the scene in 'Hitchhiker's Guide' when http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jv2728FUmxE.

** BTW I doubt that it's nostalgia; it's activity. Just about any Doom fan still has Doom2; it's not nostalgia for the past when you can played the game anytime you want to. It's when you play a series, and one of them doesn't fit; fans can state their opposition, concern, or discontent ~and why.

I am a fan of cool scripted sequences and mind-blowing cinematics; and not just from time to time. I tend to play games to reach the cinimatics ~though I'm not a fan of 'Quicktime events'. Nothing wrong with a few cutscenes IMO, but it's probably best done in between levels... not in between rooms.

I played Quake 4, and found it nowhere near as enjoyable as the original GLQuake.

Those two "can idTech 5 do this" videos are nonsense.

The first one - Lighting Test - is just box rooms with a handful of lights and some relatively static objects. You could do that in 1997 with OpenGL 1.1 on a 3DFX, and you can download and run any number of tech demos that do the same box room thing. It would look good, run fast. The problem is when you try to replicate it with complex geometry, huge scenes, lots of lights, lots of moving objects, and racing through it in a first-person view - particularly with keyboard/mouse control where any given new frame can potentially bring in a completely different set of objects/lights/etc. Those techniques just don't scale well. That's why Doom 3 itself had very few lights, and very few overlapping lights.

I've no idea what to make of the second (Doom 3 with modern graphics). To me the texturing is very flat, there's no definition, no detail, it's just flat expanses of fairly monochrome colour with some nice looking (and some utterly gratuitous) shader effects slapped on. Is that really what people want to see nowadays? Flat textures and OTT shaders? I guess the one advantage of a flat grey texture is that when you ram your face into a wall it doesn't lose any detail - you still just see flat grey. But the OTT shaders are very much like the whole "loudness war" thing in music; looks great in short doses but ultimately wearying and fatiguing over the longer term.

I thought the shadows of the Marine on the wall were bad judgement, as they reveal that wall itself was [seemed to be] a flat panel with normal-mapped detail ~but the shadows didn't deform with the depicted details and so made the whole thing appear strangely flat; [as it probably was ~but wasn't supposed to seem so].

Unfortunately some people seem to just see shadows and just see normal mapping and if both look awesome in isolation it's considered "good enough". In reality how things work together has a subtle but huge effect on the end result, and if done badly enough can be extremely jarring. Not the kind of jarring that jumps out at you and shouts in your face; more a subtle insidious feeling that something is not quite right, and that once it's pointed out to you, you can't help noticing everywhere.

This is the kind of thing that Carmack still cares enough about and will still put in hard work to get right, but just the same as the problem doesn't jump out, the fact that someone went and fixed it doesn't really jump out either. So people look for their latest flavour-of-the-month checkbox features (which are really not much more than fragile eye-candy that doesn't hold up well and often completely breaks when you try to generalize it), they won't see them, so they howl about "bad graphics".

That's laughable to a great extent. If you don't think Mortal Kombat fatalities and stupid Duke fillers ruin what Doom is then you clearly don't know what Doom is.




Yet you basically want Doom4 to be Doom2 with slapped on HD textures

It was a question. Is it possible id tech 5 to render dynamic lighting?
"The problem is that id Tech 5 is not able to render Global Dynamic Lighting, meaning that a progressive day and night cycle is not possible."

idTech5 can do dynamic lighting. You misunderstand what Global Dynamic Lighting is (me too). Tech4 also couldn't do a day and night cycle, the only thing you can do is try to fake it by having a light on a path, which you could just as easily do on any engine, like Tech5

Edit: BTW, keep in mind that Carmack is updating Tech5 so don't be too surprised if you find out it can now do day/night. Like with Prey, ETQW and so on, they tend to upgrade the tech depending on what the game needs.

I think too many people are making the mistake of thinking Tech5 can't do anything Rage doesn't have. Not that I blame you, just go back and watch the tech demos and be amazed

That is what I want. Thank you for your answer.

Joleco, here are some screenshots I thought you might like. They show Rage running with realtime lighting and shadows:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=136570227
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=136570472
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=136570393
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=136570364
They were taken by id.dav, using the "slowmap" command
Now for Rage this runs very slow, and that's probably why Carmack made a new "state of the art" lighting system for the upgraded Tech5

You can see they are realtime shadows because their projection scale depends on the light source and direction

idTech 5 can do dynamic lighting and shadows - they're already there in some places in Rage. It just happens that the bulk of what you see is pre-baked, but that doesn't mean that it can't do them at all. Look at the shadow under your car, look at enemies casting shadows, look in parts of the Dead City - there are plenty of examples of dynamic lighting and shadows all over Rage.

I didn't see any of that ~I told you I haven't played it.

Of course not.

I expect it to have better graphics, it might even be cool (very likely so), but my interest is in the signature gameplay ~and that it's not fouled up.

Everybody knows what DOOM is, everybody knows what you're supposed to do there; shotguns and demons. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt-iVFxgFWk#t=14m24s

So yes, you do just want Doom2 with better graphics
You pretty much say so in every post...

For id's sake I hope that's not what they make. Once again it'd be hyping trailers and then on release just mediocre sales along with very mixed reviews, and possible action from Zenimax


Yeah, with a description like that you still end up with health regen, help markers, linearity, so on and so forth

No... of course not. Not every change would foul up the gameplay; but some changes certainly would.

Don't take my word for it ~Click the smiley in my post that you quoted.

You ought to be specific instead of stating the obvious that everyone knows "just keep it Doom"
You've yet to share anything at all about what could be done to still keep it Doom other than literal reinterpretation

I don't need to [more than I already have in past posts]; and that's really not the topic. The topic is 'What makes Doom ~Doom'; and it comes with a poll. I voted for the first two options. My point has been that it doesn't need things done to 'still keep it Doom' ~at least not until it meets that initial goal. After that, they can add anything cool that doesn't detract... IMO NPC based stories, quests, and interactive dialog would detract. (I've nothing against any of those as game elements ~ They're just not something I would want in Doom.)

** As I mentioned... Something like a real-time portal (like in Portal and Prey) would not detract; it would actually compliment the series gameplay; Weapons maintenance on the other hand would detract IMO. So would so would any kind of stat/skills. having Marine classes like engineer or spy would detract IMO.
Prolific Quicktime events would detract; but a Power Armor exo-suit might be a cool replacement for the invulnerability power-up ~or not, and simply exist as another power up. I say "might" because it's an option ~not that I'm suggesting it.

Too bad most people wouldn't agree those things would detract, only make the game better. Except quests... I don't know where you got the idea that anyone would even think of putting quests in Doom

IMO anything that slows the pace down would detract; anything that would shift the attitude of the player from visceral instinct towards 'left-brain' problem solving would detract.

So the player reaches the lower steam-tunnels and needs to get to the science labs... but there's this a demon-mangled blast-door at the access tunnel ~that no longer opens. He sees this cowering maintenance worker who says he can open the doors, but first needs a fusion battery to run his plasma cutter; and that is in the supply office, and it's filled with Imps.

**It's not really different from having a room with a key to another room... but it would doubtless involve at least two cutscenes [so to speak], and could be worse... might expect player input [replies].

That's fine, we all have an opinion
You're right about this thread, I got lost in Doom4 talk and forgot this is about what "DOOM" is in general, the 'big idea'

Did you know you can skip these by pressing "Esc" ?

So?
*I mean... So I'd have to stop, find the guy; and initiate dialog (or have it forced...) and I could choose to skip it and not know what was needed to pass the door.

It's not so simple. Anytime that would happen, it means that the area is designed around it and the NPC made invulnerable [in this case they'd probably be inside a security room near the door, and made vulnerable once the door was open, while they were in the hall]. The whole thing would be better left out IMO.

Assuming id knows how to make a game, your pause menu would tell you your objective

But that's the point... You'd have to pause the game to read it ~~~Even reading detracts in a game like this.

They could have simply overlay that pops up when you're at the door. Wouldn't take longer to read than it takes to read your health or ammo

No they don't. They want "classic DOOM". And what is classic DOOM? A hundred people will tell you a hundred different things. Original DOOM is simple and everyone thinks "oh, it's simple so it's obvious what DOOM is" but when you ask, a lot of opinions are almost contradicting one another.

A lot of the "old fans" ARE impossible to please. It's not just DOOM, it's a number of other franchises. And it's a psychological thing. Those people talk about what "features" make DOOM but in the end what makes DOOM for them is a set of experiences, memories, specific periods in their lives and so on that were present during their first encounter with the game.

For instance they want a "fast paced gameplay". Make it a bit slower and they'll say "noo, it's not DOOM anymore". Make it fast and they'll say "nooo, it's not it, it lacks the feel and balance and the spirit of the original game". And then you can try to adjust until the end of the world because it's no longer THAT game. Because it's a bad design? Maybe. But maybe it's because you're ~20 years older and the insane number of factors is different.

I know people who hate everything new in music, movies, games. That doesn't mean there's not a single decent thing. That means the time of their youthful absorption of the world has passed. That's why "everything svcks and oh where are the good old days when everything was awesome". Now don't get me wrong, there're a lot of valid complaints about the state of things (gaming in that case) but to some it'll "never be the same", hence you can't please such people.

That brings me to the point I've made earlier, I don't care how "oldschool" or "hardcoe" DOOM 4 is as long as it's a good game. DOOM 3 is nothing like the original DOOM. And I love it because it's an awesome game and it shows the franchise from a slightly different angle.

---

One more point to my previous post. One of the cool things in the original game is that the combat is based around enemies with projectile attacks which means a lot of movement and dodging, as opposed to the currently popular hitscan enemies leading to cover based combat.

So yeah, to stay true to the thread we're in:

action core + exploration + movement / dodge based combat.

On the "lore" side:

demons + shotguns + hellish influence on our world