deicide a lie none taken none given

That access already exists with ZDoom, Legacy Doom, etc.
Again: What's the point?


In fact the only sequences i disliked were the RC car sequences, not the full size bigtruck maps.
And the lack of the scuba gear was kind of confusing. Although the underwater maps were very well designed and the water effects nice.


Seems you don't get my point. I don't want id to copy existing franchises to give casual gamers "trendy features" they might expect.
I want id to thrill us the same way they did back in '93 by giving us something new and groundbraking like in the good old days.

The original point? It was that Id can code whatever they want into their engine, and I mentioned that they could even code native conversion of old doom wads if they wanted to. What's not a Zdoom option is that they could use DOOM 4 assets to extrapolate a level ~in theory, making the level appear native to Doom 4.


I had a problem with it. The engine treats the big trucks as though they had similar mass as the RC racers, and all sorts of wonky physics can ensue. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIfnaz4fZxw

The RC car sequence was a nod to the Build engine; you find the RC cars in them, and they are used to get the keys.

Right, because we all want the old levels with Doom4 textures slapped on.

The only way they'd look half decent is if they're entirely remade from scratch with the intention of making them Doom4-like, and that would be a huge waste of time for id.

If they ever want to redo the classic stuff then that should be it's own game for sale, "Classic Doom Remastered" or something.

Not at all; Of course I mean that the extrapolation would read in a hallway, but assign DOOM3/4 style hallway assets, and when it reads a moving elevator, it writes a pre-fab elevator asset, (perhaps even with a switch to activate it). When it reads a secret door, it uses an an animated hidden door asset... I did mean what I said, when I said it should appear DOOM4 native.

**Yes I know how complicated that might be, but that wasn't the point of speculating about it; and if DOOM4 shipped with a GECK/Creation kit of it's own, and used tiled assets, then it wouldn't be quite so implausible would it?

It'd be a waste of time.

Exactly why it would be pointless for id to make. This is the sort of thing for modders to take the time to do, not idSoftware

You are the reason I don't like Stalker anymore: you shoehorn it in every single thread about id games as if Stalker is perfect and wasn't actually ambitious, but ultimately not that remarkable game that didn't deliver 60% of what was promised and is only alive because of the mod community that delivered what the developers didn't. And don't forget that Stalker can also get really damn buggy, especially when mods are concerned. And the last thing: Doom is nothing like Stalker, nor does it need to be. You're comparing apples to oranges and the fact that for some stupid reason you want oranges to be like apples when you can just eat apples baffles me to no end.

It must indeed. Doom originally is a movement game with really no plot and pretty simple, even stylized, combat and monsters. That evolved to Doom 3 which was very much a different game with a much more realistic style. Doom 4 continuing from there could be pretty well any kind of shooter, we don't know, and id may not really either.

I have been playing a lot of Stalker lately. A CoP mod S.M.R.T.E.R, mostly, it's a pretty good one. It's a very beautiful game and a pleasure to wander in, well most of the time. It's well populated with various threats. Another 20 - 30 hours and I'll have most of my chops back, it takes a while when you are old.

My point you miss is fairly plain. You can do more with a shooter than just ape CoD, do a rehash of old games done with a prettier engine or a true RPG like Fallout etc. There are other ways to do it and Stalker hits a sweet spot in many of the essential progression mechanisms and it's approach to herding the player through the game.

I was hoping Rage would give me a lot more freedom. I hoped it would give us intelligent combat and a few other things too. It did give us good single player combat mechanics, especially close in.

For me, one of the biggest draws to Doom is the sense of the unknown, and the abstraction. Feeling like you're transplanted into a labyrinthe of horrors and secrets that exists in no other media or world. Even today, no games really capture that same sense of other that Doom did - part of it's clearly the visual design, a larger part is the level design. I really enjoyed Doom 3, but I only felt like it was Doom in the waste processing areas. Part of that was the hexagonal tiles that don't quite fit the futurism, the well-aged and neglected feeling of the architecture there certainly felt oppressive and drew my interest. The original Doom has these very clear East European/communist/minimalist undertone in its structural design.

The lack of linearity, the sense of having to find your own damn way and rock the shotgun while you're at it, that's definitely a key component to the interaction.

Designers (and the fans who cling to whatever excuses the devs are peddling) seem to think they're streamlining an experience and making content more uniform and measurable in quality by creating something linear and obvious, but it looks more to me like a fundamental lack of understanding of the appealing mechanics behind a game experience. The core of a strong game experience will always be the application of a limited set of interations/tools to a large variety of problems. Doom gives you the basic rules and elements and slowly but surely ramps up the difficulty while throwing you the occasional curveball.

It's definitely worth noting that many of us wouldn't rate the original Doom so highly if it weren't such a brilliant cooperative game, as well.

What's important? All of it, up to and including the aspects you (and a newbie designer) might not consider.

Nope. The point is who would want to play something like this?
Would it be worth for id Soft to invest time into functionality that only very few people would use?
I pretty much share Vyncent's view on this.
When i play the original maps (or maps designed for the original Dooms) i use ZDoom with original textures and texture filtering to off to retain the original design.
The only thing i do is switch to a higher resolution (320x200 is just awfully low) and enable additional lighting effects that don't destroy the original look and feel.

I wouldn't want to play the old, blocky maps with modern texture rendering and post processing.
For me that just doesn't go together.


Nice one. Didn't know these kind of tricks would work.
But i don't exepct too much realism from a non-realstic game like DNF anyway as long as it is fun.


Yup. I know. Lo Wang is still cleanin' up my harddrive with his Katana. LOL
The sequence in Duke's Cave where you have to get that power cell is a nice reminiscence of the first map in Shadow Warrior where you have to get the key with the rc car.

I think quite a few people would use it, people love custom maps but at the minute we're at a level of complexity where one guy can't knock out a custom map unless he happens to have a lot of 3d modelling experience and at least some scripting experience and definitely not even remotely in the same time frame.

I am working on a Doom mod for rage which uses alot of the textures from the HD texture packs available for Doom and keeps the same (more or less) geometry and http://imgur.com/a/Vadc1 perfectly playable to me. Obviously it's not rage level complexity and things are very rough around the edges but it's still perfectly enjoyable.

I've been trying to write a parser that'll take in original doom format maps and spit out a rough approximation in brush work as a idTech 5 .map (no it doesn't work yet, but the theory is solid), not as a completely finished playable map but it'll save people days of wrestling with the idTech 5 editor, then it's just a case of texturing, lighting and adding the interactive elements.

Do you mean that the original point ~my original point; the reason I mentioned the notion of a wad map convertor... was "who would want to play something like this?" ? Seriously?

How many people used 'Quake C'? What percentage of the global user-base actually compiled extensions for the game?

Of course it would be worth it. (Though I never suggested they do this; I just said that they could if they chose to. )


That wasn't ever suggested. (Who would want that!?)
I don't understand where the disconnect for this is. Let me put it visually: http://i271.photobucket.com/albums/jj125/Gizmojunk/example-1-1_zps125f72fe.jpg

The results wouldn't look anywhere near that well (the Phobos mod pic), although I applaud your support of the theory.

Actually the results could look that well, but that would take a huge lot of Carmack's dedication, as though it were a core part of Doom4. Carmack should use the time to program better things, so no it would most definitely not be worth it. It would be a waste of time. I want him improving Tech5 and improving the AI. Not "smart" AI but AI that can climb a wall and such, instead of letting the player have safety on platforms.

Made-from-scratch material will always look better, and that's why "Classic Doom3" looks really cool.

I would prefer work be done to improve doom4; but of the converter, I don't think it need be as poor as you believe. Such a thing would best work by producing a 'best effort' reproduction ~an at times inaccurate one; so long as the tiles line up with no holes, and the secrets all have accessible doors, and moving platforms have their counterparts, then the map would likely be playable. There would certainly be some maps that could not be converted. That's life.

If it had tiles for the cardinal angles [hallways], and tile sets for approximate sized rooms, it might work just fine.

If they got really fancy they could note use of certain default textures and supply tile sets that were reminiscent of them.

I already said it can be done, but it would be waste of time

The maps would still look better on source ports than something made of generic Doom4 pieces, and a level made from scratch always far better.

You want playability? Get a source port, load up hires textures. Done

I wouldn't think it's a waste of time, one of the best aspects of the older Doom games was how practically anyone could make a map or mod and share it with their friends. With modern engines that's not as realistic as it once was, with incredibly minute control over every aspect of a scene giving fantastic amounts of control at a ridiculously high price in the form of knowledge, skill and time barriers required to accomplish what were simple tasks 20 years ago.

I'm not saying don't bother doing Doom 4 with all the graphical bells and whistles, that's something that's doable with a 200 man team and a giant budget, but including a stripped down, streamlined version of their toolkit to try recorrect that balance of control and skilled manhours required to make 'basic' mods that's been completely knocked for six in the last decade, is something that could really, really take off today. Especially when you consider things like the popularity of Steam Workshop integration in something like Skyrim. Not many FPS games in recent years can boast that sort of 'mod-ability', even with the full toolset available, just because it's daunting work that takes an incredible amount of time to make something coherent and fun.

Being able to enable more gamers to produce their own content to share with their friends would be a giant plus as far as I'm concerned

I agree they need to make mapping easier, but people would be disappointed to make something in DoomBuilder to see it spat out as a generic looking thing in Tech5, which is why a translator like Gizmo suggested isn't the way to go.

Now if you're talking about a long-term actual tool with redone HD "classic" texture materials and all, sure that'd be nice. However that's something to worry about until Doom4 actually ships.

The only thing id should be focusing on right now is the actuall game itself. Once that's done they can worry about DLC and modder-friendly tools and whatnot

It's a very large part of the Stalker world and the extensive modability has kept the game alive long after it would have dwindled away to nothing. It still has a thriving community to this day. New mods coming out and some talk of Lost Alpha being released as a full game in the series.

I miss nothing; you're the one who misses one simple point: just because you CAN do something different doesn't mean you NEED or SHOULD. Yeah, you can tell an awesome story with a shooter - BioShock proves that. Yeah, you can give the player a helluva choice in how to play a shooter: Deus Ex proves that. Yeah, you can be just dumb fun with cinematic set pieces and different stuff in it and also have multiplayer that will keep customers buy sequels yearly: Call of Duty proves that. But just because Call of Duty can be that, doesn't mean you should. Just because Deus Ex can, doesn't mean you should. Just because BioShock can, doesn't mean you should. Because franchises are generally built around the same basic idea. It's okay for Serious Sam to run around and gun down hundreds of monsters while spewing one-liners and it's okay for Gordon Freeman to solve puzzles for just as much time, if not more, as shooting guys, both while being completely silent. But when Serious Sam starts solving puzzles and doesn't utter a single word and Freeman gets a larger-than-life macho personality, people cry foul and they are right to, because this is not what Sam and Gordon are known and loved for. Doom isn't loved for being like Stalker. Stalker isn't loved for being like Doom. Because they are not. Now of course you can say that franchise can go in a fresh new direction, but this fresh new direction is needed when the franchise grows stale and overuses the old formula - Doom isn't the case.

Your hopes aren't the game's fault.

Oh, and DOOM 3 wasn't that much different. Under the modern coat of paint the essential formula of key hunting and monster blasting was preserved almost completely unchanged. I mean, just think for the moment: even the obsolete things like pushing switches or going to portals to end the level were preserved.

And again: the Stalker wasn't that remarkable. If it was, the franchise would be alive. Whenever you talk about it, you more talk about the mods, than about the actual game. The only thing I'm gonna give you on it is the feel of how much more powerful you get thoughout the game and how they pulled it off without the artificial RPG stuff like experience points and et cetera.

I really like the idea of a straightforward grid-oriented map editor with pre-designed pieces that users can plug in wherever they want. That sort of modular approach to level building really worked well for Timesplitters and Tony Hawk. It could certainly support custom pieces as well. To me, as level modeling and design approaches an unreachable level of detail, a versatile but modular level building utility would be a realistic response to Doom's tradition of modding and expansion. Expansion packs full of additional level pieces could represent a worthwhile investment for players weary of horse-armor and half-hearted storylines tacked onto the end of the game.

id may not realize it, but they need that player investment to keep word of mouth a part of their marketing arsenal. It would be especially unwise not to launch with modtools, and a modular builder like the one described has amazing potential.

Of course, I can even see a modular enemy or monster design tool, not dissimilar to the basic character builders we see in Bethesda's games. Considering how repetitive the monster models can get, the ability to change eye spacing, body and limb size on the fly would be a boon internally to the devs. There doesn't need to be a single identical monster if they don't want it to be. I know that would be an easy sell - the end of generically identical enemies in id's titles.

Yup. I'm dead serious. Ask PenGun how many people were interested in his collection of Doom I/II user maps.
Modding worked in the 90s. Most people interested in this topic are those who grew up with it.
The modern mass market doesn't seem to care for moddability as more and more people seem to be just consuming instead of being creative.

Additionally, like mentioned in this thread before, designing a good looking map in a modern environment takes some serious amount of time compared to the simple maps in the original Doom games.
Just using prefabs and predefined textures, like it would have to be done with a Doom map interpreter, would lead to visually boring results.
Only the map layout would change.
Gamers got used to insane amount of texture and geometry detail in modern games.
Look at what People can Fly did with the Painkiller games and later the Gears of War series.
You just can't get the same detail with old maps like you would get with maps designed from scratch.

Carmack went into the same direction with the Megatexture tech.
Maximum unique detail without geometry or texture repetition even if you go through an area just once in a whole playthrough.
And you can't get this detail with automatic generators like they exist for tree rendering for example.
You have to have manpower to do this. And manpower is expensive.

The picture link you provided supports my viewpoint. It looks better than the original Doom map but it is far from being exciting.

And keep in mind id is not a independant developer anymore.
Features that lead to content for free is something the industry doesn't want.

Right to the point.
A relative of mine is a big Stalker fan. Because of the mods!
He said the standard game svcked but the right mods made it great.

And there's the problem: Companies don't earn any money on free mods.
Even if Stalker is still "alive", the company doesn't profit from it.

So why should any game company go down that route of pleasing fans in exchange for going broke?
At the end of the month they have to pay their bills like anybodey else.

It would be valid to say that a thriving mod community would drive up sales of the base game and give it a longer lifetime, with new people continually coming onboard.

On balance though, I wonder what percentage of people who buy a game would even get interested in a mod community? I suspect that a high majority (90%+) just play the base game and leave it at that, but I've nothing more than gut feeling to base that on.

mods are like what ll cool j said wars come and go but my soldiers stay eternal value is the key true that making something out of nothing only visionaries can do that

now I know that military service is not mandatory in us well it is a must here and I did not enjoy it one bit cause there is some person always going this is the time you wake up this is the time you go to sleep anything you do in between is by the numbers man I envy you guys not the guy who is a military man that had a significant role with rage well anyhow to quote 9gag alcohol cause no story starts with salad