What We Can Learn From Doom

I like this video analysis because it focuses on one of the things that stands out to me as being the biggest difference between older games and newer games.

And I guess it is why I have described older games as having more interesting enemies and being more interactive. I think in some cases at least they were just much better designed whether intentionally or by accident. Not all of course. We all know there were a lot of issues with many of the older games as they were still learning what made a good game.

It's just a bit of a shame that 20 years later the industry still doesn't seem to know the answer. And actually has forgotten some of the lessons learned long ago.

Anyway, not sure if we have already went over this here but check it out when you have a few minutes:

 

Good video, thanks for sharing!

I'd argue that the priorities changed. They don't really want to make "games" in many cases. They want to make experiences. Also the demographic that the games are made for seem to have changed slightly. I feel like e.g. many console games are intended for people who want a barely interactive, visually impressive, low skillcap linear experience, that requires neither skill nor memorization. After a hard work day they want to unwind for 30-60 minutes "playing" a game (or at least feel like they are playing a game). If I had a different day job I might also have different preferences for games. Maybe I wouldn't play so much of a high skillcap multiplayer shooter and would lean towards linear console singleplayer shooters instead?

 

There is a market for both things, but generally a game with experiences, is what I like to make for console, while a game-game tends to be any side projects I do that are low budget, arcade. (I'd argue doom is merely an arcade game).

Pretty sure it hasn't forgotten a single thing. It's the simple fact that arcade games aren't what most people want nowadays.

The crowd that hangs around these forums is vastly different from a typical gamer. It's night and day tbh.

 

What is the difference between an arcade game and your average third person action game?

I actually disagree about most old games being better. I'm blown away with a lot of the stuff they do with modern games and how well it's executed. Well crafted games are well crafted games, doesn't matter if they were made in '96, '06 or '16.

There are still lessons to be learned from Doom and Super Mario Brothers, but you can also learn from an Assassins Creed or XCOM. It's just a bit harder with modern games because splitting out the fancy effects is difficult, old games tend to be more bare bones so you can really understand all the parts.

 

That's an interesting idea. A few of them actually.

In my mind... well yeah I see @frosted just mentioned the same thing... most of the modern day FPS and third person action games are basically just arcade style games. The difference is... and again this is just how I see it... they traded out focus on enemy behavior design, hidden areas & other secrets, collectibles and so forth with a focus on raw quality of how enemies appear, voice overs and so forth.

So I guess when I said forgot some of the lessons I meant the things that made some older games so darn easy to pick-up-and-play and just good fun. But you're right. It might not be a case of forgetting anything at all and instead a conscious choice to focus on delivering a more movie-like experience. Or at least a different experience.

And that leads to the second thing...

However, you're saying players these days want more of a movie style experience than an actual game (a game-game as you put it). At least I think that is what you are saying?

And that certainly could be true.These games sell in the tens of millions I think so certainly a huge number of people must want this.

Maybe somewhere along the way there was a distinct split. Arcade style games actually evolved (as I had hoped) to have more and more depth. Taking advantage of modern resources to pack more gameplay into the games. And another path was basically taking something like Doom / Quake and pushing it toward making a move-like experience. It basically became it's own genre in a sense... the movie-like military shooter and perhaps the movie-like horror shooter. I guess basically summed up as the movie-like shooter.

I do think you're onto something here. I just find it odd because decades ago I saw the arcade games as being the very simple brain-dead rounds of fun. And these days it seems like the arcade action style games actually have more depth than the games people tend to think of as the "epic" games. That is truly fascinating to me.

Mainly I am thinking about Diablo 3. I basically see this as a pretty deep game with a focus on gameplay. And also I see it very much as the evolution of an arcade game. When I played Gauntlet as a kid my mind likely was filled with a vision of being able to play such a game much like the experience offered today by D3. There are many more opportunities for strategy with all of the various character builds and the large number of gear pieces as well as skills. All of these different things work together to provide a huge number of combinations and a large amount of replay value. They give a basically simple game (Gauntlet) a lot of depth.

Finally, what do you think is the biggest difference between the people that participate in this forum and the typical gamer? Is it simply because we tend to think? LOL! That's not really what I meant but I'll leave it for a funny. What I mean is the difference because we are thinking more ... looking for depth and beauty in the game design & implementation in addition to playing the game and the majority of gamers are just "running and gunning & watching movies"? Or do you mean something else?

 

Most 3rd person action games are actually in the Action Adventure category. There's interaction with npcs, there's thicker story, there are cutscenes and even limited crafting and other elements. Practically any modern 3rd person game is much more than just the basic game mechanics.

Arcade can be described as basic game mechanics.

In Doom's case it's pretty much straightforward: kill, get key, kill. Arcade is the definition of KISS gameplay without frills, or the bare bones reason for playing, and that's Doom in a nutshell, along with Golden Axe, or even Outrun.

To back this up, look at Quake3, which was heavily touted as "Arcade Deathmatch", even having it on the box as memory serves.

By contrast most modern games (let's not use 3rd person because viewpoint is irrelevant) are arcade+meat+experience, and that changes things a fair bit.

Didn't watch the vid, didn't need to really. Sometimes it's better to formulate your own opinion, and I'd rather do that on a discussion board than be dictated to without 2-way dialogue.

 

Kind of ironic considering Id was intentionally trying to shrug off the arcade tropes at the time.

The TL; DW, Doom was great because it had a variety of enemies that forced the player to react differently to all of them.

Have you ever mapped AI before? Spend some time on that and see if you think the same.

Or you could go down one in the main menu, and get into a multiplayer match in ten seconds. You know, that game mode they actually cared about during development.

 

I don't agree. That's actually a solid design mechanic in modern games, yes. But in doom, you pretty much could punch everything to death, or chainsaw everything to death and so on. Weapons really didn't matter much (coming from someone who did it on nightmare). What mattered most of all in that game is playing enemy against enemy, creating unwilling allies.

I wish weapon choice did matter in doom, but it really doesn't (unless you're a beginner). Thing is, Carmack went on record saying that it was important to have weapons have a strong identity, that you would want to change weapon in a considerate manner - and later reiterated this with Rage.

In Doom though, so long as you have a shotgun, you can kill anything, because if you keep moving and don't get boxed in, you can't die.

So I think really, Doom paved the way for giving the right tool for the job, a system that persists in modern gaming today, but didn't utilise it that well given the strategies available like kiting and enemies hitting enemies

Doom remains my fave FPS and I got a similar kick from the little known Unity game Ziggurat (well worth it if you're a hexen or doom fan).

 

Rage was one of the least fun shooters I have played in my entire life. :-/
When I saw the credits I was surprised and thought "Really, that was it? That was the end of the game already?"

 

I loved the visuals and I got some kicks out of the combat, but it didn't feel as fun as doom, surprisingly.

 

The video pretty much ignored the player's weapons. It's premise is basically that because there are enemies with hitscan weapons that forced the player to find cover, slow projectiles that force the player to dodge, and charging enemies that force the player to back up, this then makes the combat possibilities endless.

 

@RockoDyne Hey man. My greatest interests in game design & dev are the AI and interaction. Yes I have done a ton of different designs for enemy AI trying out different things. Actually my current game project that I should be back to within a month is focused on making enemies very distinct and having a full life cycle. Basically not simply existing just to be killed. Well okay ultimately they are for that. But there will be more to them.

I just like to see games that move in that direction. We have all of this RAM and disk space these days. It'd be cool to see a highly interactive world with many distinct inhabitants. See whwn I look at things like Doom I just am thinking there are other aspects of those games that would have been cool to build on.

Currently we see games building out certain aspects and ignoring others or at least placing less focus on those.

Maybe one day I will win the lottery and can hire folks to build the game I'd like to see.

 

You know.. I think all of these videos are correct. They all basically illustrate the fact that each person has a different experience when playing a game. Some will be really into the secrets. Others get "in the zone" dancing with enemies. Others play with the environment using it to their advantage.

So when we see all of these different videos with different views about what is great and what is not I don't think any of them are wrong. For them their video is probably spot on in explaining what they found so good (or bad) in their game experience.

 

This whole thread seems to be totally missing the point of why doom was a succesful game. Does no one else remember it was released?

Doom was cutting edge graphics. It's 3D fps set up was high tech. The game play was innovative. For its time, Doom was everything the modern AAA industry stands for today.

Nobody played Doom for the level design. You spent more time cursing the designers for placing the red key so far from the red door. If you thought about it at all.

The key take away from Doom is that gamers will buy the latest, shiniest games out. Especially if that's what all their friends are playing. In short, the model that's been working for AAA companies ever since pong was first developed.

 

The thing is you seem blissfully unaware of what is actually going on in the field. Even the simplest AIs today dwarf Doom in the number of behaviors, and that's assuming it's still using a simple state machine and not an actual problem solving AI. Then there is the fact that many of these behaviors aren't simple, like searching through a navmesh for cover, and have to be carefully controlled because they aren't cheap operations.

Worse yet is that your own biases and closed mindedness have probably prevented you from playing games that are shining examples of interaction that you hold up so high. Metal Gear Solid (the whole series) is full of weird ways to interact with the AI, yet I am certain you will never play it because MGS is notorious for being a movie first and game second. Hell, I don't think I've ever heard you mention any stealth game, and it's an entire genre predicated on the notion of F***ing with the AI.

 

Ha ha. A lot of truth in this. No doubt the "new and exciting" tech was the cause for the initial interest. I think it could have bombed big time though had the game itself not been fun to play. I mean there were people still playing that game a decade later and probably even to this day.

 

Blissfully unaware, biased and closed-minded reporting in for duty. LOL! Thanks for the laugh. It's good for the soul.

I know these discussions strike a nerve with you. It really isn't intended to have that effect. Of course, I take a look out there and read about the "advanced" things modern day game devs are doing because it is something that interests me. While it may be true these guys are spending months working on advanced AI what I am saying is something must happen to it between the time they are doing R&D and and the time the game is released.

I do know that one of the major things hailed in some modern games is in the intelligence of enemies to use their environment to protect them from the player and also their ability to work together and even flank the player from multiple sides. And I am not saying this is not good. Heck, I remember playing Pac-Man too! It was a solid little game and perhaps the earliest example of squad based AI. Although the ghosts didn't actually communicate (at least I don't think so) the result of their individual behaviors essentially resulted in the ghosts working together when in chase mode. That was a very intelligent design. Simple AI behaviors that combined to create something greater.

There has been some progress made over the decades as devs explored different technologies. Halo or at least Halo 2 probably cemented the use of behavior trees although I think it is very likely games used such a thing long before. Other games have explored using neural networks. Things have been done. I get that. All I am saying is things were being done back in the 80s and 90s as well. Enemies attempted to find the player, evade the player, some had their own goals to work on not directly related to the player. Devs experimented with giving enemies different characteristics such as how brave they were.

I'm waiting for a game world that will literally blow me away with the AI and interaction. Right now I am thinking perhaps Worlds Adrift will finally be that game: "Imagine building a game world—not one based on scripted events, but on millions of individually simulated entities with rich behaviour. A fully physical, living, breathing simulated reality based on simple rules. A massive world with no artificial boundaries and where nothing is faked. An environment where thousands of players can interact simultaneously, where their actions have long-lasting consequences and create emergent storylines." That is what Worlds Adrift promises.

Supposedly, the inhabitants all basically have their life cycle. They live out their lives regardless of the player doing anything. You can watch as hunters chase their prey. Or you can step in. You can interact with basically anything (I will believe that when I actually do it).

It's not that I don't see what folks are doing. Maybe I just have higher expectations from it and because of that I see little progress beyond what was done decades ago. I'm hoping Worlds Adrift finally serves as an example of the kind of thing I have been talking about and waiting for.

 

You should watch jonathan blows video about the witness where he says something similar. Its a really interesting listen if you like to listen

 

Ah, that old pipe dream. I guess since Minecraft, everyone is giving the "living, breathing world" a second shot. It just looks like a steampunk Starmade/Space Engineers (which are just Minecraft in space) with better server tech.

Seriously though, read that exert and tell me it doesn't sound like it was written by a twelve year old brainstorming for his dream MMO... or by Peter Molyneux, whichever. I hate to harp on marketing spiel, but what's the actual game? What do you actually do in it? Even after looking on the site, all I can tell is it's No Man's Sky with crafting (and that's not a good sign). Even Dwarf Fortress, the gold standard for world simulation, is still going to be introduced by it's gameplay first, and then the procedurally generated tavern songs later.


If there was one central tenant of game design, it's probably asking the question: what purpose does something serve? The more meaningful an answer you give, the more worthwhile it is to overcome the risks involved in implementing it. If you can't give a meaningful answer, then adding it is a waste of time and energy that could be spent on something that is valuable. There is too much crap in this world already to make something thoughtlessly.

 

Go easy on him. All he wants is a simplistic game like doom, with more interactivity then Skyrim.

 

Dwarf Fortress coupled with the Armok Vision project?

 

What do you guys think of Devil Daggers?
http://store.steampowered.com/app/422970/

I just bought it and I have to admit that the only reason for that is the compelling aesthetic and my curiosity. The gameplay doesn't appeal much to me and I likely won't play it for a long time. But a friend of mine has it too and it's simple and quick enough to have a bit of leaderboard competition fun, which we rarely get to have.

I was thinking cloning this game might even be a good way for me to finally get a game done, ever.

 

Personally I'm waiting for No Man's Sky to come out in June, but that's more an exploration game than a sandbox. Still I registered my user name with WA just in case it takes off and I decide to play it.

 

A wave based arena shooter? Meh, sort of wastes the horror aesthetic. It's pretty much a proof of concept, but you might want to check out In The Kingdom.

 

Well the gameplay looks okay to me, I dont really like the art style myself, or maybe its the ambient sounds I dont like seems like it needs some rock music or something. If the gameplay doesnt appeal to you enough that you would play it for a long time then why would you want to make a clone of it.

 

Thanks for the link! But it's not quite my cup of tea. Do you know "Brutal Doom"? That one is pretty good but I get a bit motion sick from all retro shooters. With Devil Daggers it's better because most of the screen is black and a match only lasts a minute or so.

I liked playing Skyrim for a long time, should I make a Skyrim clone? Seriously though, I think there is an argument to be made for working on something that I mechanically understand even though I'm not super invested into it as a genre. It might (maybe, hopefully?) make it easier for me not to obsess over gamedesign choices and actually reach a "finished" state even if I'm not 100% happy with it (something which I'll never be with anything anyway). I don't know, might as well be a crappy idea. I'll need to think about it for a while.
I actually like the sounddesign very much. Rock/Metal music would make the whole thing less serious and ominous I think, and I usually have a preference for things that take themselves super serious. I totally understand if someone has a different personal preference though! Imho there is no right or wrong for that aspect.

 

I'd be happy with just steps. I don't really expect one game to come out and truly just be kind of the "be all end all" for AI and interaction. But I'd definitely like to see more progress in that direction. I think that is what annoys me about it all.

I get that a lot of players don't care so much. Basically give them the same game over and over with a little better graphics each time and they buy it by the tens of millons. I'd just be happy to see a game come out with sub minecraft graphics because the folks focused nearly all of their effort and time into making a ton of interaction and interesting AI. I mean sure if they have the resources pump up the graphics too. Just saying that personally I would be thrilled to play in monochrome if the game had a lot more meat to it.

Saying all of that... I do have a plan for my own modest attempt at moving things in that direction. Basically each thing I do has that as a focus whether it is the shmup with enemies reacting with a bit more intelligence than normal or a platformer where the enemies are examining their environment and not simply moving via waypoints. Basically just need to build up to it because the bulk of work and things available seems to be made for exactly the opposite kind of game (scripted events, waypoints, whatever). It definitely is a path that requires more work and may not even be seen for what it truly represents by many folks.

 

Yeah it's not a bad idea.

 

I think this game points me toward an issue with either my thinking or the terms we use to describe gameplay. If you pitch a game to me as "A survival game harder than Dark Souls where you will live about a minute and try to survive longer than your friends on the leaderboard" then I'm not invested just by that description. It doesn't sound like fun to me. When you tell me about "A realistic military shooter with focus on real-world ballistics and large open maps", then I'm interested. However if the second game turns out to be a clunky mess like Arma 3, where you walk a few minutes and then get sniped without seeing an enemy once, or you clip through the environment and get shot, and generally everything in that game feels clunky and awkward, then I end up quite disappointed. With Devil Daggers it is the opposite. The description of the concept is correct, but what makes this game actually fun and has kept me playing for 3 hours already is that the game manages to get to adrenalin pumping intensities within a minute of play. It feels ultra high stakes because you keep competing with your own best run ever and your friends best run ever. That makes it feel ultra high stakes and all-or-nothing when you come close to the previous best time that you aim to beat. The skill ceiling is so high I can barely see it from down where I am. The flow is great, the rapid iteration cycle works just like in Hotline Miami, the sound design is both functional and atmospheric. The whole thing is a mesmerizing ultra-violence fps that keeps me coming back and trying to beat the highscore of my friend. It certainly helps, that we have about the same level of skill and competitiveness in this kind of game. We've last had such a satisfying highscore battle with the Bulletstorm Echo missions. We'd make videos and send us our new records. Here the replays are built into the game directly. So you can verify that those gods of insanity at the top of the leaderboard are not cheating and are really just scarily good. I've watched a 460 second run by the developer the other day and I got motionsick so hard that I felt bad for almost an hour.

I'm sensing an interesting disparity of gameplay concepts that I buy vs gameplay concepts that I actually enjoy (not in general, but in some special cases). Here the buy clearly was driven by the aesthetic and the gameplay is what keeps me playing longer than the average indie game in my library

 

It's a tricky thing having a description when games mean many things to different people. For example, Dishonored is marketed as a gung ho steampunk killing fest, when in reality you can do the game without any killing. It's the same with films, sometimes marketing gets it all horribly wrong and it flops when it really is just intended for another audience.

 

Its funny that giant bomb just did a video on devil daggers and does look alot cooler then the trailer made it look

 

I don't have that game in my library yet but will probably grab it this weekend and give it a try. At only $5 it would have to be a complete bunch of garbage with everything screwed up to not be worth that.

My first impression from the videos is it looks good. Very simple. That is not a bad thing though. Sometimes you just want a game you can jump into and within seconds be in the core of the gameplay. It actually looks like the ideal kind of game for a one person (or possibly 2 or 3) Indie to build. Basically just taking a portion of a larger game and focusing on that one piece. In this way it reminds me of Tower Defense games extracting just the combat portion out of RTS games.

 

My wife and I watched this history flick a couple weeks ago. The Doom era was obviously a very transformative period for Id, so it gets a lot of coverage in the movie. "It means different things to different people" was very true even within Id. I remember at the time there was some press about disagreements within the company (mostly tabloid-grade gossip) but after watching this I realized it was worse (and more complicated) than I think most people on the outside suspected.

Anyway, it's worth watching, even if it's slightly tangential to the topic.

 

What's your highscore? I've just reached 170 seconds.

 

Honestly I completely forgot about it over the weekend. Spent my computer time split between playing Diablo 3 and browsing and buying Unity assets to dig through. Since I could never find any "real" examples in Unity3D (instead just very simple stuff) I thought perhaps the best Unity Way learning materials would be to buy some kits/templates and dig through them..It was a very productive learning weekend. Not as good as I hoped but still way better than all of the tiny example stuff I'd come across previously.

EDIT: It also occurred to me that even better may have been to dig through source code of LudumDare Unity3D games. However, I didn't have time for that either. I want some "real" examples to dig through so I can see what the common Unity Way approaches are. Like what is being used in the real world by "real" people.

 

You really should give it a go, I already have played ~7 hours and I'm aiming to get into the top 100 one day ^^. Still got a long way to go till there.

I would be surprised if any gamejam games are a good way to learn from in general. Aren't those hacked together in the quickest way possible? Often with disregard to best practices or "proper" way of doing things? I think buying good templates will help you more. Finding out beforehand what really is "good" might not be easy though. I wouldn't know myself how to decide because I'm still too far in noob territory regarding Unity.

 

Yeah I think that is a valid point. Kind of "haste makes waste". I was mainly thinking they may well be enlightening due to the limited time meaning they don't have time to screw around so chances are that how they end up doing things in Unity would be some of the fastest workflows.

I have a solid level of experience in game dev in general it is just connecting it to Unity3D that has been a challenge for me. Probably because a big focus of mine has been to streamline things. Always trying to find a way to accomplish the same thing in less time and the Unity workflows so far have seemed slow and tedious to me. Might not be true but I think GameJam projects would be streamlined out of necessity.

I am "getting there" though. A major change lately has been not hating to work inside the Editor. That is just a huge thing for me.

 

It's often drag and drop and GameObject.Find throughout. At least my last one was. Knowing you will never look at the code again in 48 hours means maintainability goes out the window. As soon as the systems works in 80% of cases you call it done and move on.

There is certainly plenty to be learned from the exercise. But the code is often messy.

 

Try the next ludum dare

 

I probably shouldn't post this stuff here derailing the thread but as the train is already veering off course I'd like to take this opportunity to say the key to me finding joy working in the Unity Editor is largely based on using ProGrids 2. This functionality should really be included in Unity "out of the box". I mean it makes the Scene Editor actually usable and into a rapid development tool. I am guessing most folks around here already use it. If not I highly recommend grabbing it.

Now I am wondering about Pro Builder. May be like the same thing on steroids.

 

For level design, you would probably like it better than using blender (far less cruft and pointless features, with a UI intended for this one sole purpose). If you haven't done any modelling, you may still end up scratching your head at times though.

 

Thanks! I never even considered actually modeling the full scene. I might give that a try. No, I don't mind modeling at all. I started 3D modeling 16 years ago but only use Anim8or and Blender. I find Anim8or faster to work in but Blender is good too as long as you have the keys memorized. Of course, I don't have the patience to do hours of modeling on some detailed stuff. I do it just because I find it much simpler and faster to build things in 3D than I do drawing in 2D. So I used to render them out as sprite frames.

 

Did anyone ever figure out a good way to handle colliders when using Blender to build bigger parts of a level? Like setting up box and sphere colliderds automatically by script or manually inside blender and exporting them?

P.S.: Devil Daggers! Played 9 hours so far, which I never would have thought in the beginning. Probably gonna end up playing this a whole lot more, but my wrist is beginning to hurt. It's a physically demanding game.

 

No idea about the Blender collisions thing. I plan on getting some good Unity game dev time tomorrow since I am taking off work for my birthday. I'll grab that game tonight and try it out since I can stay up way later than normal.

 

9 Hours?! Ha ha! Sounds like you ended up finding a new style of game you greatly enjoy.

I just finished my workout and sat down. Went to Steam and bought it. I only played it for about 3 minutes or so. I like the atmosphere and look of the game a lot. Controls are great too. But I don't like the way the way crap just comes out of "nowhere" especially behind me. I guess you're supposed to move a bit spin around move a bit spin around and so forth.

I'll probably play it again at some point but as of right now it's not really my kind of game. I think a lot of people would like it though. It kind of reminds me of those multiplayer arena shooters. I never cared for them either but obviously a lot of people did.

 

Yeah, if you stand still you're dead, constant movement is important. But the enemies are faster than you, so you can't just run in a straight line away from them or you are dead too. Watch some top of the leaderboard replay like one from DraQu or Mattbush (the dev). Also playing with headphones helps, you need to listen for close enemies. Everything makes a destinct sound. If you can hear something but can't see it, it's likely breathing down your neck already, waiting to kill you in the next second if you don't do something about it ^^. I'll play another round now.

Edit: new record 189 seconds

 

That's cool. I'll give it another go later. Right now I am playing around building random Doom style levels with ProGrids 2. Also knocked out a test as a model and imported it.

Guess I'll try ProBuilder next. Just need to find the fastest possible way to get things done at each step of the way. Kind of seems like old times all over again.

 

Yeah I would like to see some more nifty AI. But I'm not interested in watching npcs wander around eating, sleeping, and youknowwhatting all day long. I'll just take the usual enemy AI with a wider range of dialogue and behaviours, preferably with some procedural aspects where applicable so that I don't see absolute repetition, no blind spots or 5-second memories, decent teamwork and tactics, that sort of thing. And character.

Splinter Cell games are great but the AI was pretty boring. In Conviction when they know you're around they bob up and down from behind crates like puppets and do that for half an hour straight without coming up with any new ideas. You can finish off 9/10 and the last one continues doing exactly the same thing.

 

Well there a new blender plugin that is going to release. That this type of think, assign Tags,Collider,etc. Make more easy the life of exporting from blender to unity.
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/b2u-blender-to-unity-custom-exporter-importer.364451/

Here is a video about this plugin:

 

That sounds promising, got to take a closer look tomorrow. Thanks a lot!