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Doomed: How id Lost Its Crown
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.'"
Dupe...original article can be found here.
Almost the same title, too.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Zombies can remain animated independant of if their head is intact or not.
Who writes these things anyway? Honestly folks.
RTFA again for the best results.
Light dancing around the room?
We're talking about doom 3 right?
Light?
Umm.. maybe how nice it looks when you shine your flashlight around the room... unless you have your gun out...
One of the real reasons Doom3 never took off is because I needed to buy a new computer to use it. And so did everyone else.
Counterstrike runs on crap hardware, and basically, a crap internet connection. You'll get called a lagger, a newbie, and a lamer, but it will work, and you can play, and have fun.
Gameplay is extremely important, but so too is availability.
Duped story so I'll dupe my comment.
Doom 3 was a great game, imo, however people's complaints about the whole flashlight mechanism were justified, and I can see how it would detract from the entertainment value. Id's goal was to make a scary game, and if you played the game with the swapped-in flashlight as they intended, it was indeed scary. The lighting was better than in any game I'd played at that point and created an unparalleled atmosphere of creepiness.
That being said, the idea that in "the mysterious future" you wouldn't be able to hold both a flashlight and a gun hurt the game's credibility. And going for the cheap scare so many times did tend to get old.
They were also determined to make D3 a single-player game in a field now dominated by multiplayer and massively-multiplayer games. I would have thought that they'd have realized this better than anyone, given that they practically created the market for multiplayer FPS gaming, but they chose to make Doom 3 a single player game, and between that and the whole flashlight deal, many people decided the game was a dud, and thus its fate was sealed.
I still thought it was a great game though!
rooooar
And this is based on your real world experience with Zombie's I presume?
Drag n' Drop DVD Recommendations
Now that's something I've never understood in the movies or in the games. I mean, if you're a zombie, you don't have a brain. Period. It's all mush and all you want to do is to eat the brain of someone else for some obscure reason (protein content, perhaps?). So, why would a headshot be more effective against a zombie than a bodyshot? It just doesn't make any sense. If I were facing a zombie and I had a shotgun, I'd just shoot his bloody legs off and run away bravely.
The owls are not what they seem
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.
You are forgetting about the BLOOD SUCKING LIGHTBULB MONSTERS!
Is that the engine only seems to be able to do dark well. Something always seemed wrong when I played the game, it seemed too dark. Yes, I know it's supposed to be dark, but something was off. I couldn't put my finger on it, but later someone pointed it out to me: The game doesn't have any kind of radiosity.
Radiosity is the property of multiple light reflections. When a light shines on a surface it reflects, of course. However that light can then further reflect off another surface and so on. That's what leads to soft shadows, and is the reason why when you turn on a flashlight, the whole room is slightly illuminated, not just what oyu are pointing at.
Doom 3 doesn't do this, a light hits a surface and will reflect to the screen, but there's no multple levels of reflections. The net effect is hard shadows, corners that are always dark. You can't get a good brightly lit scene.
Now I don't fault them on this, doing radiosity in realtime isn't feasable at this point on most cards. However other games can deal with this, the don't do all their lighting in realtime. Some is done in realtime, some is a precomputed light map. That allows for a global illumination, but one that doesn't have to happen in realtime.
That is my big problem with the engine. Sure it's more accurate than the UT2004 engine, technicly speaking, but it doesn't look as good. UT is "faking" the lighting and shadows, but they look good, and you can have a nice brightly lit outdoor map, or a dark indoor map, and they both work. You can have a light source that casts light on to all surfaces, even those it doesn't directly hit, since it's calculated before hand.
Personally, I'd rather have a game engine that looks good rather than one that is more accurate.
...and irrelevant rant about Doom 3. It's clearly not everyone's taste, but the hell, I really enjoyed playing id's final version of what the original Doom was meant to be, but could not become, due to technological drawbacks back in time. So this guy, while providing you mit wrong "facts" about "no headhsot in teh g4me 'n stuff dud3!12" (in fact, the Doom 3 engine FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER featured collision-detection based on the actualy polygonal structure of objects, NOT just el-cheapo-hitboxes, and definately recognizes different body-zones of its models!) basically just spills biased mud in the company's face that will get Enemy Territory: Quake Wars as well as the sequel to Quake 2 delivered soon, constantly innovates the industry in the field of real-time 3D-graphics, and sold its latest and greatest groundbreaking engine to be incorporated into some of the most eagerly awaited games in the genre.
Yeah, I see clearly now, id is doomed.
:%s/Open Source/Free Software/g
YTARY!
Even though the gameplay itself for D3 was far below what it should have been, I have to say I must give them credit for being able to create such a powerful and frightening environment as they did. D3 was the first game I've played since the Marine campaign of AvP that actually made me scream, jump out of my chair, and have to leave the room. (Yes, I'm a sissy.)
Everyone craps on D3 so much, and it bugs me. Yes, gameplay is probably the most important quality in a video game, and I admit it was severely lacking in D3. But dammit, they really really excelled in other areas and did a few things other video games just don't do. They do deserve some credit.
I caught the Mountain Wumpus! He gave me his treasure chest ($100) to let him go free again.
Morrowind, of course, was an RPG, but it wouldn't be impossible to remake Doom 3 or UT2004 to look and act like it.
The thing is, non linear games where your actions determine your standing in the game, as well as its path and outcome, are the wave of the future. Especially games with thousands of mini adventures on the side. Also, in Morrowind you interacted with practically *everything*.
If Morrowind were not done years ago and were done today through the Doom 3 *or* Unreal 2 Engine (either of which would imply far fewer bugs than Bethesda's own "engine"), it would eclipse all other games in popularity for 2 years. I say that because Morrowind appears to be almost the single player's equivalent of Starcraft in popularity and longevity.
The lesson: forget the graphics arms race, achieve Doom 3 or UT2004 level graphics and leave it at that, and concentrate on a deep, complex, non linear, "easy to get into it quick" story lines, and endless paths of quest resolution. Give FPS players a world to explore, tweak the outcomes, and generally have fun in.
ID somehow appears to be furthest behind in pursuing this goal, even though Doom 3 is no more linear than HL2 or Unreal 2.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
"And while id was looking down.
Unreal stole its gaming crown..."
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Carmack et al are on record as saying that games don't need story. Romero (that other one) was booted out of id after he tried to get them to focus on gameplay and design, not just graphics. Admittedly he failed spectacularly, but from that point one id was a one trick pony. They make pretty looking games where you kill zombies/cyborgs and collect keycards.
Is this behind the times in terms of gameplay? Sure. Imo, Deus Ex and System Shock 2 both beat the pants off DOOM3 (and Painkiller and Max Payne) in terms of gameplay and design. And they're more than five years old!
Frankly, DOOM was only "revolutionary" because it was the first game that really nailed how to do graphics good enough to make an FPS game work. Expecting fabulous gameplay out of id is like expecting a Terminator movie to bring you to tears.
DOOM3 is about shooting things. Period. Don't like it, okay, I can relate, but don't try to act as if this is a surprise.
now they get slashdotted on the dupe, too.
Holy cow, that's gotta suck.
At least, now they do. The requirements for game development are increasing every day, stretching development cycles and requiring more resources.
id's games have always been about groundbreaking technology, so it's not surprising that as development costs expand, gameplay filligrees in id titles suffer (relative to the competition). id uses its games as technology demos. Don't get me wrong, I love 'em, but their focus is not on the sort of game logic that distinguishes the experiences this story refers to (no, I haven't RTFA yet). Let's face it: AI is an interesting area that needs improvement, but programming headshots is boring. Making realtime rendering engines as good as they can be is a real technical challenge, and something that id can do better than anyone else. That's what makes them unique, and consequently it's also what makes them money -- not from game sales, but from engine licensing.
Saying that Carmack doesn't know how to build a truly engaging game is like saying that Lucas doesn't know how to write a truly engaging script. [Rolls eyes]
FPS games that are single-player only never last.
And you know this because? Based oin the lack of a available servers to log into? What? I know lots of people still playing Morrowind a year later.
Everyone plays ut2k4, hl2, CS, whatever because it's fun either sneaking around and sniping people, or jumping around flinging rockets.
I'll bet money that there are still more people playing Quake 3 than all those games put together. Tens of thousands of people every day on their office LANs. It's not generating any new revenue for Id, but Id is still the king by far if you're counting numbers of current players. "Hardcore" gamers and the gaming rags are so far out of touch with the mainsteram that it's rediculous.
#7 says get out of the car and onto a bike. Bikes can be tipped over easily and offer no offensive value. Now a truck with a suitably large bumper offers both offensive and defensive value. What better way to take out a dozen zombies in the road way than just making sure you got both hands on the wheel and preparing for a slight, momentary, loss of traction as you travel over crushed re-dead bodies?
As Interstate '76 said:
"Don't get out of the car, never get out of the car."
(tactic worked well in many places of GTA3)
If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance -- Derek Bok, president of Harvard
I never understood how people got "lost" in Morrowind. From the moment you get off the ship, they tell you where to go and who you need to see to begin the main quest. All of the other quests are pretty self-explanitory, despite the fact they are not presented on a sliver platter. There is some work involved and that seems to throw some gamers off.
Far more people are used to "On-The-Rails" RPGs, where you must do this, then this then this, etc. Playing a game like Morrowind requires a mentality shift. The game is not in control of the experience, you are. I firmly believe that is the better type of game, but opinions differ.
The problem I see is that for too many gamers, the goals must be rammed down their throats before they can do anything. To suddenly say "Hey, we've created this entire world, have fun!" is too much for them to deal with. Not because they are stupid, but because it is so vastly alien to them.
Personally, I will be far less likely to buy an "On-The Rails" game because it is too frustrating. I have this great world around me, but it is very much like being on a train. I can see all of the potential, but everything is predestined. No getting off to enjoy the scenery and explore the world rushing past my window. I must fight this guy, I must go here...I get pissed. If I wanted to be led around, I would have put in a DVD movie instead. I want to go off on my own and do my own thing.
With Morrowind, I can slip in and out of the main plot at will, or ignore it completely. There is no forced-anything. From the moment I walk out into Seyda Neen, the options are virtually limitless. I can go anywhere, do anything and be any kind of character that I want to.
Choice is good, replayability is fantastic and having the opportunity to simply walk away for a while and pick up right back where I was in my "other life" is priceless. I've done marathon sessions before, but only because I've had a night where I had nothing better to do. You get sucked so far into the game and your character, but unlike Everquest and World Of Warcraft, myself (and other Morrowind fans that I know) find it very easy to put the controller down and not let it consume our real lives.
Being able to not just live one adventure, but continue on a lifetime of them, without it getting in the way of everything else (or costing money every month) just can't be beat.
I know it's a dupe, but this time I get to respond instead of just giving mod points...
I played D3 at a friends house for about an hour. Big screen, dark room, was fun. But the fact is, I'm not the gamer I was back in the early nineties; zombies just don't do it for me anymore. Doom was amazing because it was a technical tour de force; I still remember walking into some of those rooms and going 'that is so *cool*!' Frankly, the whole zombie/monster story was pretty old even then, but Doom was such a good game, I was happy to play the entire thing. Hell, I did the same for D2.
Quake was pretty good, but seemed like pretty much the same thing with a slightly mideval twist to it. By the time Q2 came around, it seemed like I was playing the "same-old-thing", even though, id never disappointed in the graphics level.
But in the intervening years I'd gotten married, had kids, played a lot of other games, and given the time I now have to play, I'm looking for something different and original. Id seems to think that they can coast on demonic bitmaps and licensing forever.
...both Taco's hand and Zonk's hand are doing the same things.
Ron dies in chapter 9 of book 7.
I take it that you have some significant experience in non-realtime rendering, but it doesn't sound like you have much experience with game engines and how level designers use them.
Precomputed light maps do indeed have to do with the choice of engine, because the engine takes care of computing the lightmaps for you. Halflife 2 for instance, supports normal mapped radiosity calculations, in which the diffuse lighting components are added along different vectors during compilation, and then dotted with the normal map during the rendering. "Level designers" don't store them in textures, the compile tools that are associated with the engine do, and the engine takes care of displaying them appropriately.
Having precomputed lightmaps in the doom 3 engine would break all the internal consistency of the lighting. Mobile lights in engines based on precomputed lighting are treated differently from static lights. Doom 3 doesn't have this distinction.
The doom 3 approach allows lights to be much more dynamic, but when a light is that dynamic, you can't have precomputed light maps. You wouldn't have any way of updating them to reflect changing light conditions. Every time an imp warps in, all the lights dim. This couldn't be done realistically with precomputed light maps.
Adding precomputed light maps would require redoing all the internal assumptions about lights in the engine, and you would be basically writing your own.