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A Look At How Far PC Gaming Has Come
Bit-tech is running a feature examining the progress PC games have made over the past couple decades. The article highlights aspects of modern games we often take for granted or nitpick, and compares them to earlier games in which such features were implemented poorly or not at all. Quoting:
"Doom's legacy is still being felt today in fact and it's a fair bet that you can take any shooter off a shelf, from America’s Army to Zeno Clash, examine it, and list a dozen things that those games owe to Doom. Things like the wobble of the guns and the on-screen feedback that tells you which direction you are being shot from — these were things that id Software invented. On the other hand, from a story perspective, Doom was absolutely rubbish. You start in a room, no idea what’s going on and you are surrounded by demons. You have to read the manual and supporting media to get a grip on it all — something modern games would get heavily slated for doing. Yet the idea that plot was optional caught on and the same flaw was replicated in other games of the era, such as Quake and (to a lesser extent) Duke Nukem 3D. There were years and years where the lessons of early story-driven games were forgotten and all anyone really cared about was having as many sprites or polygons as possible."
I admit I am a carmack fanboi but damn that's how good doom was. It didn't need a story. It didn't need a manual even. Heck it didn't even need a mouse. There's also the important open source aspect of the game that gamers can create their own WADs which later turned into an integral part and the games themselves in Quake TF, and for the real CS:S and TF2. All because of doom.
Doom isn't a game, it's an attitude.
Doom's gameplay is very fun, and there are only few modern games that are similar to it. The original Serious Sam games were similar. Games with good stories are good, but games like Doom are too. Does every game need to have a story? A movie or a fiction book without story, that is bad. But for a game it shouldn't be a negative criticism if it doesn't have one. Depending on the style and purpose of the game, just being fun is enough. Many modern games feel too heavy and slow paced to match the fun of fragging monsters seen in Doom.
For the last 5 years the evolution in mainstream PC gaming has been all around fancy new graphics.
The only new original gaming style that poped-up was MMORPGs (not really new, but it did became mass-market in the meanwhile).
[This point was really hammered down for me when "Supreme Commander", highly hailed as innovative, came out and it turns out it's an almost 1-to-1 copy of the old "Total Annihilation" from 10 years ago only with better graphics]
The other grand "evolutions" have been the not releasing of demos anymore, the crazy DRM + phone home features, the rise of the "major game publisher" and the death of the small independent software house.
"There were years and years where the lessons of early story-driven games were forgotten and all anyone really cared about was having as many sprites or polygons as possible."
Nonsense. Doom wasn't supposed to be story-driven game, it was an action game. You grabbed your minigun, charged into a room you'd never seen before and blasted away. You even had a chance of surviving. There are no story lessons from Doom because there weren't supposed to me.
It's exactly the lack of immediate mindless action that's put me off gaming for a long time after. I want gaming, not cinematic experiences. If you prefer cinema that's fine and there's room for both, but for me all the plot-driven stuff is a turn-off. I still want to grab a minigun and charge into a room blasting widly in a totally unrealistic fashion as strange creatures fall in front of me. Shortly before being overwhelmed by ridiculous odds, of course.
When I do play acrade games, I tend to head MAMEwards. Plot-driven stuff just doesn't do it for me at all - if it does for you then that's fine and I'm certainly not criticising it, I'm just saying there's more than one type of gamer and Doom appealed to me in a way that almost none of the other FPS stuff has. That's precisely because it has little story or plot.
Cheers,
Ian
PONG didn't have a story line either, and what's good enough for PONG is good enough for me!
I think it's fairly obvious that the numerous cultural references found in Duke Nukem 3D were intended to be homages instead of being passed off as original. These comprise one of the main reasons I was looking forward to Duke Nukem Forever - the gags, the easter eggs, the nods towards low culture. Without all that you miss the essence of Duke and have just another generic FPS.
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
And didn't it all start with Wolfenstein 3D back in 1992?
Of course there have been other FPS games too, but Wolfenstein 3D was a revolution at the time.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
and even later the Wing Commander series I am actually disappointed with many of today's games. Haven't found a space game that makes me feel like the explorer that Starflight did and Wing Commander was simply amazing in both story and game play.
What do we have now? Dozens of games with either space marines or commandos? Yawn.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Prior to DOOM!, most decent PC games were available for Amiga / Atari ST, with better sound and graphics.
A few years before that, my Amiga/Atari buddies were already salivating when i could play Wing Commander II, Falcon 3.0 or Civilization.
I'll grant you that Doom put the final nail in the coffin, but the PC had already taken the edge for high-end quality games when it came out.
This post is awesome.
What about Myst? I'd say it was a pretty significant PC game in it's day.
>>>I do find the general idea of trying to trace where particular things originated int
Almost everything traces back to the original Atari console, early 8-bit computers, or 70s-era arcades. Just picking some random games off the top of my head:
Space Invaders - shooter
Space War or Star Raiders - first person shooter (ship)
Hostages - first person shooter (person)
Donkey Kong - platformer
Crystal Castles - 3D platformer
Pitfall 1 2 - Adventure
Haunted House - survival-horror
F15 Strike Eagle - simulation
M.U.L.E. - real time strategy
A D & D - stat-based RPG
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
need to read holy book (manual) to get a grip on it all
That'll learn ya to RTFM!
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
Actually, everything traces back to a rock and a stick. Or in the case of the Inca, a head and a stick.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You start in a room, no idea what's going on [...] You have to read the manual and supporting media to get a grip on it all
Damn straight! What kind of game would start with such a vague premise?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
Hey, thank you, whoever you are. I will most certainly check this out.
I was a fiend for Total Annihilation. It was the first game I played against other people via LAN and it gave me a hint of what was to come.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Duke Nukem Forever is a homage to Zen. It's the sound of one hand clapping. It's the tree that falls in the forest with no one around. It's the rock that falls in the puddle and makes no splash. It is, therefore, the purest form of gameplay. The ability to get your heart rate up and feel the excitement of playing a game with no actual game.
It is the ZPS. The Zeroth Person Shooter.
Eventually, it will deliver, and people will be unsurprised to purchase it, take it home, and have it be an empty box. And it will get good reviews, for the game will have ended as it began.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
True, Doom wasn't true 3D, but it looked 3D enough to fool anyone who didn't know difference between polygon rendering and raycasting (most people), and at the time computers just weren't fast enough to render a 3D polygon world anyway, so they did the best they could on the technology they had.
But Doom was the first to bring that 3D look, with inertia, gun movement, enemies that turned on each other, lots of blood and gore, 2-4 player multiplayer deathmatch+coop over serial/modem/ipx, all of with user editable content. Each of those features had been around before one way or another, but never all of them together. Doom defined the FPS genre.
Moria, Nethack, Pirate Adventure, Zork, Maniac Mansion
well, I learned more about history from Civ IV's civilopedia then in grade school. i dont't know if this speaks more about the quality of the game, os the complete disregard the authorities in my country have for education.
What ? Me, worry ?
Completely pointless post, but thanks for the link. That engine, from the meager look I've taken at it, seems absolutely astounding. Its GPLv2'd, has 5-8 full featured games running on it right now, and an active developer community. AWESOME is exactly right. (OSX, *nix, and Windows!!)
"Suddenly, all the industry wanted was shoot'em-ups and blow'em-ups, catering almost exclusively to the lowest common denominator. Gaming became like television, a way to waste time in some brain dead activity that reduced you to a twitching zombie-like state. "
"Suddenly"?
I think you're forgetting some history.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC