History Of Doom Movie Debuts

Rogerpq3 writes "A G4/Tech TV feature on DOOM 3, offering a history of the DOOM franchise in the words of the folks at id Software. The clip can be found on the air on The DOOM Franchise, episode 310 of a series called 'Icons.' The piece offers clips from DOOM 3 and other games, interview footage, analysis and more, and for those without access to the program. You can download the movie at: 3DGamers, Doom3HQ, Doom3.de, Doom3maps.de, and FileShack. It's really worth the download for any Doom and id fans out there. (Thanks: BluesNews)"

Comments

Wow! It's a wonder Doom went anywhere...

[Anonymous Coward]

...if this history is any guide. I had no idea early Doom was so simplistic with the blank textures and the white-on-white maps. How could you even see the monsters? The graphics must have really improved along with the ability to resolve the webserver name.

Something good on G4TechTv

[secondsun]

Does this mena that there will now be another good thing to watch on G4TTV? (The first being the back of my eyelids of course).

TechTV wasn't a GREAT network, but I never turned to it and felt like my brain was being removed from the back of my head. Now, post merger, the content is trite, the reviews are lame (but getting better at least), and the Screen Savers has passed into unwatchable. Maybe I am missing some show that comes on in my off time, but what is good on the network?

My Doom History

[mfh]

- First played doom on a 486 at my buddy's place
- His mother had to kick me out after playing on the family computer for 8 hours at a time
- Could not afford a system that could run Doom
- Finally got a p100 and bought Quake
- Headfirst into the mod community
- Made levels for Quake, Q2, Q3
- Mods include Thunderwalker 2, Allstar2 CTF, Painkeep Arena
- Invented Doom for Columbine that will likely never see the light of day (for obvious reasons)
- Decided to design Doom 3 mod tenatively called "Doom 3 Bloopers" where we have some fun modding the orginal game
- Still can't afford a computer that can play latest Doom Game

Re:My Doom History

[mfh]

> More details on those mods please! Especially Doom for Columbine and Doom 3 Bloopers. Just curious.

Doom for Columbine was in pre design for some time over at Sourceforge. We were going to try and do something to show that violent video games were not the cause of violent actions, but it was stupid to think that this would mean anything to anyone, and it was going to be far too difficult to do it in a tasteful way so that the victims families of the Columbine tragedy would not be hurt.

We tried several different designs out in concepts and none of them panned out. We looked at doing a mod where the main character was an undercover FBI agent trying to crack down on school gangs, and while it sounded good on paper, the display of extreme school violence still would have upset the families of the victims.

The other approach was to do a kind of nonviolent game where your goal was to obtain reputation by pranking different people in the school, but it seemed off-topic to do that, when the results of Columbine were so clear. Two students decided to wage war on their peers as a way of getting even for years of abuse. It was a tragedy that I think isn't too far in the history to warrant a mod using the game blamed for the violence in the first place.

Looking back, I would have liked to do a realistic Doom/Columbine mod that enabled people to go on shooting rampages in a school setting. This may sound outrageous, but we believed that the mod might enable students to get out some of their daily frustrations in a fairly realistic setting, before actually going as far as really killing students. The problem we faced was that of liability; if a student played our mod and decided they it was a good idea to start really killing students (you know, used free will) then there existed the possibility that we could be held responsible -- not that we should legally be held responsible for someone else's actions, but it would be a messy situation.

I guess our rights to do a mod using the Columbine theme exist, but we're not sure how to proceed with that. Suggestions are welcome if you want to see this mod made.

Meanwhile, because we're nerds, we've been looking at doing a bloopers mod for Doom 3, to make fun of the serious and scary theme Id Software spent millions putting together. Why? Because I think it will be easy enough to pull off without having any models people onboard. We can use existing models to create the mod, and as you may know it takes quite a bit of time to do even one Doom 3 model, let alone animate the damn thing. Plus, my experience tells me that models people are the least reliable type of team member because they generally get snapped up for big bucks when they are any good, thus leaving free projects desolate of talent above the age of 15.

The bloopers could be a total rewrite of the Doom 3 game, but by fouling up the script and making the levels dysfunctional. I think it would be funny as hell if chainsaw weilding enemies dropped their weapons during a crucial cutscene, or someone turned on the lights when a really scary part of the game came up. Or if the guys forgot or messed up their lines in the game...

The greatest need on that kind of project would be for voice talent. I could easily program all the events by simply changing and rearranging the scripted events. The dialog would be pretty damn funny and I could write most of it myself. Level alterations, I could do too.

Since I've been in the mod community, I've noticed that you just can't rely on people to work hard at something, unless they've got a good reason to.

The negative press we received for Doom for Columbine overshadowed what we were trying to do with it. It made it so it wasn't going to be fun to make that kind of mod. The negative press stole away any desire I might have had to do something with Columbine. But I really think a bloopers mod would be fun as hell to do, and it would be played by everyone if it was hilarious enough. Plus I wouldn't have to rel

Interesing comments from Carmack

[agingGeek]

Alright, I will probably be modded down for this, but I still find it interesting as it validates something that I said about 2-3 years ago. Carmack stated on Icons:Doom that Doom was being developed with the Xbox in mind. They commented about having known before hand what the specifications and capabilities of the machine would be. We've seen the poor ports, and simpler interfaces, and now there is proof that even the best developers are curtailing themselves in order to keep things in line with the lowest common denominator. While this isn't necessarily a bad thing, it could sign the end of some mainstream PC style games. In particular, I have never truly enjoyed the sloppy, slow controls of FPS on consoles, nor have I ever enjoyed playing an rts on a console. Hopefully, if such a trend does occur, there will be a new movement of indies to come out and fill the void that could be created.

Re:History of Doom, eh?

[shplorb]

You've got your dates off by a year there!

Doom was released in 1993
Doom II was released in 1994
Quake was released in 1996

Re:history of dooom

[Jad LaFields]

I remember feeling the same way when my ex-girlfriend's brother asked me if the GTA games prior to GTA3 really were in 2D. Sheesh. I remember playing some games which didn't even have specialized pixels and instead used ASCII characters to represent your "tank" or "adventurer". (Albeit still well after some of you old-timers who remember when text-based games were "teh hottness".)

More on topic, I also remember getting grossed out by the blood when watching my dad play wolfenstein 3d (specifically how your little face icon would get increasingly more beat-up as your health decreased -- how awesome was that, you didn't even have to look at a health bar to know how badly you were doing!)

Of course, a few years later when I played Doom with my friends, there simply wasn't anything cooler than shooting a barrel with a bunch of enemies around it and watching that glorious two-second animation of them turning into bloody mush. The sound effect that accompanied that animation is still one of the most satisfying sounds in videogame history. =)