Doomed: How id Lost Its Crown 491
bonch writes "Steve Bowler, lead animator for Midway Games, has written an article for Next Generation called Doomed: How id Lost Its Crown. He talks about id no longer being the king of the hill in the FPS genre, losing the multiplayer gaming wars to Counter-strike and the engine licensing wars to competitors like Unreal 3.0, and focusing too much on rendering realistic environments at the expense of modern gameplay features. From the article: 'It's hard to stomach having to shoot a zombie in the head the same number of times as in the body (six rounds from a pistol, thanks for asking) to dispatch it, when you can shoot a light fixture and watch how realistically light dances around the room.'"
The Article Text (ICOS) (Score:2, Informative)
Veteran animator Steve Bowler (pictured) got pretty angry when he bought Doom 3. And he's still a mite agitated...
What was it, 12 years ago, that we first laid eyes on the original, the dark new 3D world that was Doom? Even before that, a select few of us recall with wonder the revival of one of our favorite gaming franchises, in a bold new direction, when Wolfenstein 3D hit the shelves.
For a dozen years Id has been the top dog, the guy to beat, the pater familia to the first-person shooter. It can look back on a legacy of six games, each one an unstoppable sales juggernaut, a technological milestone. You didn't need to know what the review score was for an Id title. You only knew that you needed to buy it.
But one day, the industry changed. The consumer changed. It's hard to put one's finger on it. Maybe it was Counter-Strike. Maybe Unreal Tournament. Something happened to the genre between Quake III and Doom 3, and Id somehow didn't take it into account. Call it braggadocio, or hubris, but Doom 3 is no longer the top dog in the FPS market.
Yes, it's upsetting. I tried not to admit it either. But it's undeniably true.
Some have even argued that Doom 3 is a step backwards in FPS gaming, that even when it hit the shelves we were already years past where it hoped to position itself.
The problem, it seems, lies at the core of where Doom came from, and the hopes we had for Doom 3. It was a tale of gameplay, graphics, and mistakes.
Zombie shuffle
We're all familiar with the helter-skelter breakneck balls-to-the-wall pace that the original Doom set. So where is it in Doom 3? I can appreciate the slow zombie shuffle as much as the next guy, but when Halo's Flood race existed years before Doom's sequel, one has to ask why exactly we're experiencing only one or two imps at a time.
Obviously, there's a reason why we don't have a dozen imps chasing us down a corridor, and I'm inclined to say that it's because of the graphics engine. So much attention has been paid to rendering a realistic environment that there just isn't a lot of room left for that many bad guys. This left the guys at Id with a bit of a conundrum: How could they still make the game tense and as terrifying as the originals?
The answer, evidently, is to have shit jump out of the dark at you.
Yes, I jumped. I was scared. And then I got tired. Tired of having secret panels open behind me after I'd already cleared the room of any possible beasts from hell, only to get clawed in the back. Who knew demons were capable of such stealth and chicanery? Hey, maybe I'll open this door and--surprise!--here's yet another instant 25 hit points removed from my health because an imp was waiting patiently for me to open a door. This isn't gaming. This isn't the Id I know. This is scripted nonsense.
And yet, in the face of such scripted trickery, the A.I. then proceeds to fall flat on its face when given an empty room and a box to hide behind. If it doesn't have a gun, the A.I. just comes straight at you trying to claw your eyes out. If it does have a gun, it hides behind corners and boxes, but since the game lacks a headshot--something which has become so common in FPSs now that it's no longer a boastable feature--it takes an implausible amount of time to dispatch them.
Maybe I'm crazy, but I recall levels in the original Doom where you were downright encouraged to trick the A.I. into fighting itself. Yes, it was a primitive A.I., but I recall being impressed by it. Hell, even the famed Reaperbot for the original Quake is still 10 times more entertaining than fighting drones in Doom 3.
I guess what it all boils down to is the fact that the gameplay is just too simplified for the graphics. It's hard to stomach having to shoot a zombie in the head the same number of times as in the body (six rounds from a pistol, thanks for asking) to dispatch it, when you can shoot a light fixture and watch how realistically light dances around the room.
And don't
Re:Of course you have to keep shooting (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Light? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Of course you have to keep shooting (Score:3, Informative)
From Night of the Living Dead [imdb.com]:
Reporter: Chief, if I were surrounded by eight or ten of these things, would I stand a chance with them?
Sheriff: Well, there's no problem. If you have a gun, shoot 'em in the head. That's a sure way to kill 'em. If you don't, get yourself a club or a torch. Beat 'em or burn 'em. They go up pretty
easy.
Reporter: Are they slow moving Chief?
Sheriff: Yeah. They're dead. They're all messed up.
Re:Headshot! (Score:4, Informative)
Return of the Living Dead [imdb.com] said the reason zombies eat brains is, "because it's the only thing that numbs the paaaaaiiiiin! The paaaaaaiiin of death!" But that's not a very serious zombie movie.
If I were facing a zombie and I had a shotgun, I'd just shoot his bloody legs off and run away bravely.
Well in that same movie, even the dismembered parts continued to move.
Re:Seriously- (Score:3, Informative)
Miners or minors - either would be accurate in those days.
Re:Seriously- (Score:3, Informative)
feel free to dust off your crap hardware and load the latest version of non-source engine counterstrike via bloated/slow steam delivery platform.
I used to love how CS 1.5 and older ran on modest hardware... not so much anymore =(
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Re:The problem I have with Doom 3 (Score:5, Informative)
No, that's not what radiosity is. The effect you're referring to is called diffuse interreflection, and radiosity is a finite element method for simulating it based on heat transport. Of course, in the real world most surfaces aren't totally diffuse, and radiosity would have been a bad choice for simulating global illumination effects in Doom in particular since there's an awful lot of metal and other surfaces with strongly specular BRDFs.
More to the point, all global illumination algorithms are too slow to use in real-time game engines, and so level designers typically precompute these effects and store them in textures. This has nothing to do with the choice of engine: if your engine can display textures, it can approximate these precomputed effects. I don't know whether id decided to do this in Doom or not, but if they didn't it isn't because the engine is fundamentally limited in some way.
Re:Dupes: How Slashdot Lost Its Crown (Score:4, Informative)
Blades good, shotguns and pistols bad? (Score:3, Informative)
Disparaging pistols and shotguns because they're close range weapons makes and promoting the epitome of close-range weapons, a blade, makes no sense.
I also think that the M1 carbine is a terrible choice for a weapon
While it might be cheap (or was cheap in surplus form at one time), the ammo would be nowhere as easy to come by as
The best weapon is likely to be civilian sporting weapons, if only for the widely available ammunition. 12 guage shotgun shells capable of blowing a head off at 25 yards could be found anywhere. There's also a half-dozen hunting rounds (.308,
The best rifle choices are likely to be M4-style AR-15s in
I think AKs tend to be less accurate, but they're also dead reliable, even when full of mud or rust. Ammo availability would be good, but not what the AR-15 clones would have in the US. Outside the US, the AK would be a no-brainer.
The author is mostly right about machine guns, but I have to believe that in some limited situations, a high volume of fire from a large-caliber gun (US
Handguns are more effective than the author claims, despite the difficulty in getting headshots outside of 35 feet or so. At panic ranges a handgun is indispensable and its size makes carrying as a backup a no-brainer.
Many hunting pistols (mostly 6" barrel revolvers) would be decent with scopes at ranges up to 150 feet and be more maneuverable than any rifle, and the ammo is everywhere.
Makes me wish... (Score:3, Informative)
Reading all of this material about zombies makes me wish that they existed to provide a bit of sport!
Anyone who hasn't seen Shaun of the Dead, check it out -- quite amusing.