|
I don’t think I’d ever played E2 of Doom before this weekend and it is kind of crazy the things they got that engine to do.
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2019 15:13
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 27, 2024 12:47 |
|
|
food court bailiff posted:I don’t think I’d ever played E2 of Doom before this weekend and it is kind of crazy the things they got that engine to do. E2 and E3 are so much less known. E1 was free and I think to most people That's Doom.
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2019 15:20
|
|
|
TheScott2K posted:E2 and E3 are so much less known. E1 was free and I think to most people That's Doom. Yeah, definitely. I mean I had never even seen some of the more Gothic hell textures before, and that's before getting into stuff like the different enemy types and the use of height-changing platforms as traps instead of just secret elevators and stuff is really clever. I am really digging it, and it owns on Switch, and while it is absurd that there isn't online multiplayer (when there was when it was released 26 years ago) I honestly wasn't aware that Doom had local co-op which is a loving blast.
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2019 15:50
|
|
|
E2 and E3 are even more impressive when you consider that the whole game is 2D with extremely clever texture work to extremely accurately simulate multi-level rooms, stairs, elevators etc.
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2019 16:01
|
|
|
food court bailiff posted:Yeah, definitely. I mean I had never even seen some of the more Gothic hell textures before, and that's before getting into stuff like the different enemy types and the use of height-changing platforms as traps instead of just secret elevators and stuff is really clever. Doom did not have online multiplayer. You could do a two person game using direct-dial or serial, or you could play with others on a local IPX network. The only way to play the normal retail/registered Doom "online" over the internet was to use an IPX emulator like Kali, or use a service with a built-in IPX emulator like TEN. Both options cost money at the time. id didn't put TCP/IP capability in the box until Quake
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2019 16:12
|
|
|
Snow Cone Capone posted:E2 and E3 are even more impressive when you consider that the whole game is 2D with extremely clever texture work to extremely accurately simulate multi-level rooms, stairs, elevators etc. I know the engine doesn't support any overlapping of level areas and there's no Y-tracking for almost anything but I'm pretty sure the levels are still 3D. How would you even accomplish elevators etc. where you're clearly moving relative to the level geometry with texture work? I know Doom has been picked apart to hell and back so if I'm way off on this please link me something, old games are fascinating. TheScott2K posted:Doom did not have online multiplayer. You could do a two person game using direct-dial or serial, or you could play with others on a local IPX network. The only way to play the normal retail/registered Doom "online" over the internet was to use an IPX emulator like Kali, or use a service with a built-in IPX emulator like TEN. Both options cost money at the time. Ah, then rant about online retracted, local co-op still owns.
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2019 16:38
|
|
|
food court bailiff posted:I know the engine doesn't support any overlapping of level areas and there's no Y-tracking for almost anything but I'm pretty sure the levels are still 3D. How would you even accomplish elevators etc. where you're clearly moving relative to the level geometry with texture work? I know Doom has been picked apart to hell and back so if I'm way off on this please link me something, old games are fascinating. The short version is it was 2D, but different parts of a room were processed separately to allow for the illusion of 3D. If you look at the maps from Doom/Doom II, unless it's like a cross-shaped room with 4 entrances, no parts of any map ever overlap another, because they can't - they could manipulate things so that, for example, it looks like 2 entrances are much higher, or use clever design to make 1 big room appear to be 2 separate rooms at different heights, but 2 rooms could absolutely not occupy the same space, regardless of their "height." Here is a very broad outline of how it worked and here is the wiki article on the technology used. Despite the fact that it was "just" extremely clever use of 2D spaces, it was still a very cool and advanced-for-the-time concept. Wolfenstein 3D used a more simple, but still revolutionary-for-game-design concept called Ray Casting: 
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2019 16:45
|
|
|
The most layman way to explain it is Doom could only ever have one ceiling, one floor, and space between them (even if that space is zero) at any given coordinate, but they could be at varying heights and could move under certain conditions like flicking a switch. I don't think we had an engine that could do rooms on top of rooms until Duke Nukem 3d's Build engine. Which was an awesome engine, though it had plenty of jank. I think Doom's lack of true 3d actually helped make it so iconic, that constraint lead to some really clever stuff and contributes to the abstract fever dream nightmare architecture that makes Doom work.
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2019 17:05
|
|
|
How did John Carmack know how to do any of this?
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2019 19:11
|
|
|
poisonpill posted:How did John Carmack know how to do any of this? The concepts had been around since the 70's, he just applied them in novel ways. He also had a very cool way of doing lighting: quote:Unlike Wolfenstein, which had flat levels with walls at right angles, the Doom engine allows for walls and floors at any angle or height, though two traversable areas can not be on top of each other. The lighting system was based on adjusting the color palette of surfaces directly: rather than calculating how light traveled from light sources to surfaces using ray tracing, the game calculates the "light level" of a small section of a level based on its distance from light sources. It then modifies the color palette of that section's surface textures to mimic how dark it would look.[29] This same system is used to cause far away surfaces to look darker than close ones.[19] Romero came up with new ways to use Carmack's lighting engine such as strobe lights.[19] He also programmed engine features such as switches and movable stairs and platforms.[15][17] After Romero's level designs started to cause problems with the engine, Carmack began to use binary space partitioning to quickly select the portion of a level that the player could see at an given time.[15][25][31] Taylor, along with programming other features into the game, added cheat codes; some, such as 'idspispopd', were based on ideas their fans had come up with while eagerly awaiting the game.[17] That snippet also gives a glimpse at how interesting the dynamic between Carmack and Romero was back then - they basically went balls-out, knowing that they were both brilliant and could bring each others' concepts and ideas to life. His whole career has been using existing concepts in unique and often groundbreaking ways. See also: Adaptive Tile Refresh, which was an incredibly clever way of doing smooth screen scrolling in platform games - originally designed as a proof-of-concept to pitch Nintendo on a Super Mario 3 PC port, and then used for Commander Keen. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/12/heres-what-id-softwares-pc-port-of-mario-3-could-have-looked-like/ Snow Cone Capone fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Aug 19, 2019 |
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2019 19:21
|
|
|
TheScott2K posted:E2 and E3 are so much less known. E1 was free and I think to most people That's Doom. It's still the Doom I load up by default when I just want to play Doom. The other episodes are good but just not the same. And They Flesh Consumed sucks.
|
|
#
?
Aug 19, 2019 21:35
|
|
|
poisonpill posted:How did John Carmack know how to do any of this? John Carmack was kind of an ultra-nerd of the most extreme time. There was a joke that there was a John Carmack in every class, you know the one, if you ever seen him, there's only one of a kind, that talks in trigonometry in English class and no one understands what he's saying. I bet if he were to explain their implementation in Doom, only a handful of people would ACTUALLY understand the exact reasons for why it was superior to everything else available at the time. Even though it's not actually 3d, it's a method for simulating 3d thus by some definition it is still a 3d engine (though a primitive one.) Obviously the math that we use in modern ones existed long before we had computers to do it. The breakthroughs were not a mathematical one but simply related to computing power available. Not sure who actually thought something like Wolfenstein was 3d, when the enemies are clearly flat objects.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2019 00:43
|
|
|
Sodomy Hussein posted:It's still the Doom I load up by default when I just want to play Doom. The other episodes are good but just not the same. And They Flesh Consumed sucks. It does. It sucks. It is some Ministry of Truth poo poo that it always shits up whatever rerelease of Doom drops.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2019 02:25
|
|
|
I like Thy Flesh Consumed, starting with the third map because holy poo poo Map 1 is absurdly brutal and if you limp to the finish line your reward is a map that starts with a massive firefight over a lava pit.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2019 02:53
|
|
|
Thy Flesh Consumed loving owns, get good!!!!
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2019 03:30
|
|
|
The individual levels were good and most of them were very challenging but they don't have that episode cohesiveness that eps 1-3 did and I think they suffer for that. The proper ranking, from best to worst, goes: Doom Heretic Doom 2 Thy Flesh Consumed Hexen Evilution Plutonia I dunno where Doom 64 fits in cuz I've never played it but I know a lot of people love it.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2019 03:34
|
|
|
I liked doom 64. Some guy was selling his N64 cheap with a bunch of games and cpntrollers, and I found out about it too late as another kid already bought it and was in his bus waiting to go home. BUT he didn't have the cash in hand and I did, so we stormed his bus, de-n64d him at the seller's instructions, much to his chagrin, then played some sweet rear end N64!
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2019 03:38
|
|
|
SilvergunSuperman posted:I liked doom 64. What a wild Monday!
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2019 03:56
|
|
|
Jerry Cotton posted:What a wild Monday! Well I don't see you contributing doom 64 stories.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2019 03:58
|
|
|
I really like the master levels for Doom 2 and unironically would buy a Master Levels 2 set right now if iD released it.
|
|
#
?
Aug 20, 2019 04:49
|
|
|
Barudak posted:I really like the master levels for Doom 2 and unironically would buy a Master Levels 2 set right now if iD released it. why would anyone pay money for Doom 2 levels, they are more common than water. if you played a single Doom 2 WAD every day forever you would never finish all of them before the heat death of the universe
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2019 13:50
|
|
|
I wish games would focus more on showing game play in their marketing pictures/videos. Like I remember when I could look at those pictures on the box and get an idea of what the game is. Now a days it's cutscenes/UI removed shots but I guess it works because every game seems to do that. Apparently giving the consumer less information leads to more sales.
Duck and Cover fucked around with this message at 19:02 on Aug 21, 2019 |
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2019 18:29
|
|
|
Steam needs to make it a requirement that every game listing has at least 1 video that is nothing but gameplay.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2019 19:02
|
|
|
Duck and Cover posted:I wish games would focus more on showing game play in their marketing pictures/videos. Like I remember when I could look at those pictures on the box and get an idea of what the game is. Now a days it's cutscenes/UI removed shots but I guess it works because every game seems to do that. Apparently giving the consumer less information leads to more sales. lol remember playable demos
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2019 19:29
|
|
|
Why bother with demos when people buy your games months before they are even released anyway?
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2019 19:36
|
|
|
I've always heard that demos hurt sales more than they help more often than not. Back when demos were more prevalent they usually sucked, because you got to play like 30 minutes of a game that would probably take a couple of hours to get sucked into.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2019 19:41
|
|
|
If it's a game that takes time to get into, offer a demo of some midgame stuff. They do it all the time for early reviewer impressions and conventions. I would argue that if you can't provide a fairly comprehensive impression of your game in 30 minutes, you've got some design issues. I mean technically you can abuse Steam's 2-hour refund policy, but that seems like kind of a cop-out, especially since that system can be finicky. As it stands, I know several people who pirate games as essentially demos, then either uninstall entirely or buy the actual game.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2019 20:02
|
|
|
better yet, don't make a video game that makes you wait two hours before you can start having fun
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2019 20:05
|
|
|
Snow Cone Capone posted:lol remember playable demos I do. They haven't really left they've just changed in name. Open Beta, Beta, Early Access, released game that you refund.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2019 20:12
|
|
|
Bonaventure posted:better yet, don't make a video game that makes you wait two hours before you can start having fun I agree for the most part, but stuff like 4X strategy or RPGs can naturally take some time before you've got more than "move your explorer and move your farmer" or "attack/item/run," but both of those examples can be solved by making the demo a short chunk of gameplay from a few hours in. Depends on the game really, but "the first couple hours are pretty slow" is a much smaller issue than "given 30 minutes of gameplay from any point in the game, we still can't hold your interest," IMO. Duck and Cover posted:I do. They haven't really left they've just changed in name. Open Beta, Beta, Early Access, released game that you refund. Only the last one is anything like a demo though, and like I said it's a crappy thing to have to try to rely on just to try out a game. Early Access is almost always full-price, and open beta is explicitly "help us break our game" and is almost always marketed to people who are already in for buying the game.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2019 20:17
|
|
|
Many games on Steam still have demos. I would guess their play rates at the low single percentage points, perhaps sub-1.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2019 20:19
|
|
|
Snow Cone Capone posted:I agree for the most part, but stuff like 4X strategy or RPGs can naturally take some time before you've got more than "move your explorer and move your farmer" or "attack/item/run," but both of those examples can be solved by making the demo a short chunk of gameplay from a few hours in. These terms have such undefined nebulous changing meaning that they suck to discuss. I don't disagree. AAA games aren't going to have demos because they suck. Indie games are so cheap I'm not sure a demo is completely necessary. I would still like to at least see what the game is before buying it.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2019 20:34
|
|
|
What terms? Early access and open beta? Has "open beta" ever meant anything but "free bug/stress testers?" I'm not even sure what you mean by "AAA games don't have demos because they suck." The developers suck and therefore won't make demos? The games suck and are therefore not worth making a demo of?
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2019 20:42
|
|
|
Open betas are just time-limited demos.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2019 20:47
|
|
|
For multiplayer-focused stuff like Destiny or Call of Duty, sure, to a point, but you go in with the expectation that things might break or bug out or just not work entirely. I think the whole early access/open beta thing of letting people play your game before it's finished is its own can of worms separate from the question of demos though.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2019 20:50
|
|
|
Fortnite still labels itself "Early Access", right now, in August of 2019. It is a meaningless term. Meme Poker Party fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Aug 21, 2019 |
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2019 20:54
|
|
|
Chomp8645 posted:Fortnite still labels itself "Early Access", right now, in August of 2019. That's for the PvE mode no one plays.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2019 21:08
|
|
|
Kaiju Cage Match posted:That's for the PvE mode no one plays. No. If you play a battle royale match, right now, the loading screen will have a nice big "EARLY ACCESS" tag in the corner. Try it yourself or watch any streamer.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2019 21:10
|
|
|
It's a convenient way for devs to get people to pay for an unfinished product, and in cases like Fortnite it just gives them license to throw stuff in the game with a minimum of testing. Totally unrelated to a dedicated game demo.
|
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2019 21:12
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 27, 2024 12:47 |
|
|
Snow Cone Capone posted:What terms? Early access and open beta? Has "open beta" ever meant anything but "free bug/stress testers?" Open beta has meant everything from "stress test" to "demo" to "preorder bonus" typically varying degrees of each. I certainly remember games that probably could have used some stress testing (Anarchy Online launch was uhh something). Beta now is Early Access. Except Beta/Early Access isn't even really like the buggy Betas of old. Except when they are. AAA games don't have demos because they would gain nothing through having demos. I'm unconvinced there are enough people on the fence for Assassin Creed 20th cooler hoodie edition that would be become buyers if there was a demo and I imagine the numbers support my belief. (because if they didn't the big money making companies would totally put the demos out) Duck and Cover fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Aug 21, 2019 |
|
#
?
Aug 21, 2019 21:23
|
|