Post by wafflerevolution on Sept 11, 2013 18:09:22 GMT
by Apathetic_Prick
It was named after a pool cue. Who'd have thought??
Doom. A game named after a pool cue and was originally supposed to be based on Aliens. How original. Instead, becomes a game named after a pool cue where you have to fight demons of all shapes and sizes. And with a chainsaw, no less.
Doom is revolutionary for two reasons. One, the world went from mazes consisting of walls at 90 degrees with no difference in elevation to walls at any angle, differences in vertical elevation (up or down) as well "sector specials", such as activator lines (very basic stuff today – opening doors, raising lifts and such - but quite advanced in 1994) and damaging sectors.
The second, and more important aspect is modding. Not LANning – Spectre had that going for it two years prior, iirc – but modding (mind you, Doom apparently just made LANning fun). Extra levels, new weapons, items and creatures (Dehacked, at that time, was a modder's wet dream) were suddenly all available to be worked upon. Even to this day, Doom has a very active mod community with several sites devoted it, such as Doomworld and New Doom being the two most prominent.
Aside from those two major aspects, Doom's gameplay was pretty much straight-up run-and-gun, with some atmospheric lighting for good measure – making it very tense straight-up running and and gunning. The weapons are a combination of standard fair, but also with some new stuff, like a rocket launcher, BFG, and shotgun.
Why is the shotgun new? Well, it was new to the first-person genre because up until that time, the actual functionality of a multi-impact hitscan (layman: instant hit) effect didn't really exist – or, if it did, it wasn't ever demonstrated.
The thing about Doom's arsenal is that it's extremely well balanced. Even with the new weapon from Doom 2, the Super Shotgun, the balance wasn't actually all that impacted, and that's what still sets it apart from other major shooters like Half-Life, Halo and especially the Quake (The Race for the Rocket Launcher) series. It isn't perfect, but it's very good.
Of course, as previously mentioned, Doom has a sequel. In fact, three of them. Doom 2, Final Doom and Doom 3 – and Doom 3 also has its own expansion, Resurrection of Evil, or RoE. Doom 2 and Final Doom (which is made by a modder group called Team TNT) are sequels whereas Doom 3 is a remake of the first game.
Doom 2 eliminated the episodic approach of Doom 1, and also never had a shareware release. It was also commercially released through retailers, unlike the first game which had to be ordered. It was also the first Doom title to be released with a source port, Doom95 – 3 years before iD GPL'd the Doom engine (in 1999). Doom 2 offered up not only a new weapon, but several new monsters which also forced the player to create some new – and usually very spontaneous – tactics to survive the onslaughts of opponents. Doom 2 on it's highest "fair" level of difficulty - ultra violence - is still harder than anything else I've ever played. Doom, Doom 2 and Final Doom on their highest level of difficulty, Nightmare, are significantly harder. Not only do the enemies move faster, but they also respawn eight seconds after being killed.
Final Doom is another 64 levels on two episodes, 32 levels per each (as 32 is the highest number of levels that can be played on an unmodified Doom 2 version of the Doom engine). One of the episodes was similar in gameplay to Doom 2 – the episode called Evilution. The Plutonia experiment was the much harder of the two.
Doom has also appeared on almost every console except the PS2, Dreamcast and Gamecube since its inception, the most notable of those being Doom 64 on the Nintendo 64 (duh) - which was a standalone title - and Doom 3 and its expansion on Microsoft's XBox. The Collector's Edition of Doom 3 and Resurrection of Evil also both came with versions of Ultimate Doom and Doom 2, both fully capable of 4-player co-op or deathmatch on a single XBox, but no online co-op or deathmatch – which is where Doom 360 comes in.
Interestingly enough, Doom and Doom 2 both also made it to Nintendo's Gameboy Advance. However, the blood was changed to green, and the structure of both games was also changed for, assumably, censorship purposes.
In terms of modifications, Doom has definitely changed over the last few years because of source ports like ZDoom, EDGE, and Legacy. They add the capability to use 3D floors, completely altered weapon functionality, the use of models, 3d acceleration, ambient noises, inventories, new item use structure, item vendors (and thus currency), friendly AI, new and much more advanced line definitions (level design) and real-time scripting – much like a lot of modern shooters.
Doom has come a long way since 1994. It's one of the oldest shooters – and definitely one of the most important - and seems to have survived far better than any game from that era, and thanks to it not only being so modifiable, but that there are also tools available to do so much more than iD had originally, intended, it most certainly will probably be with us for some time to come.
And it doesn't hurt that the Doom Engine is open source.
It was named after a pool cue. Who'd have thought??
Doom. A game named after a pool cue and was originally supposed to be based on Aliens. How original. Instead, becomes a game named after a pool cue where you have to fight demons of all shapes and sizes. And with a chainsaw, no less.
Doom is revolutionary for two reasons. One, the world went from mazes consisting of walls at 90 degrees with no difference in elevation to walls at any angle, differences in vertical elevation (up or down) as well "sector specials", such as activator lines (very basic stuff today – opening doors, raising lifts and such - but quite advanced in 1994) and damaging sectors.
The second, and more important aspect is modding. Not LANning – Spectre had that going for it two years prior, iirc – but modding (mind you, Doom apparently just made LANning fun). Extra levels, new weapons, items and creatures (Dehacked, at that time, was a modder's wet dream) were suddenly all available to be worked upon. Even to this day, Doom has a very active mod community with several sites devoted it, such as Doomworld and New Doom being the two most prominent.
Aside from those two major aspects, Doom's gameplay was pretty much straight-up run-and-gun, with some atmospheric lighting for good measure – making it very tense straight-up running and and gunning. The weapons are a combination of standard fair, but also with some new stuff, like a rocket launcher, BFG, and shotgun.
Why is the shotgun new? Well, it was new to the first-person genre because up until that time, the actual functionality of a multi-impact hitscan (layman: instant hit) effect didn't really exist – or, if it did, it wasn't ever demonstrated.
The thing about Doom's arsenal is that it's extremely well balanced. Even with the new weapon from Doom 2, the Super Shotgun, the balance wasn't actually all that impacted, and that's what still sets it apart from other major shooters like Half-Life, Halo and especially the Quake (The Race for the Rocket Launcher) series. It isn't perfect, but it's very good.
Of course, as previously mentioned, Doom has a sequel. In fact, three of them. Doom 2, Final Doom and Doom 3 – and Doom 3 also has its own expansion, Resurrection of Evil, or RoE. Doom 2 and Final Doom (which is made by a modder group called Team TNT) are sequels whereas Doom 3 is a remake of the first game.
Doom 2 eliminated the episodic approach of Doom 1, and also never had a shareware release. It was also commercially released through retailers, unlike the first game which had to be ordered. It was also the first Doom title to be released with a source port, Doom95 – 3 years before iD GPL'd the Doom engine (in 1999). Doom 2 offered up not only a new weapon, but several new monsters which also forced the player to create some new – and usually very spontaneous – tactics to survive the onslaughts of opponents. Doom 2 on it's highest "fair" level of difficulty - ultra violence - is still harder than anything else I've ever played. Doom, Doom 2 and Final Doom on their highest level of difficulty, Nightmare, are significantly harder. Not only do the enemies move faster, but they also respawn eight seconds after being killed.
Final Doom is another 64 levels on two episodes, 32 levels per each (as 32 is the highest number of levels that can be played on an unmodified Doom 2 version of the Doom engine). One of the episodes was similar in gameplay to Doom 2 – the episode called Evilution. The Plutonia experiment was the much harder of the two.
Doom has also appeared on almost every console except the PS2, Dreamcast and Gamecube since its inception, the most notable of those being Doom 64 on the Nintendo 64 (duh) - which was a standalone title - and Doom 3 and its expansion on Microsoft's XBox. The Collector's Edition of Doom 3 and Resurrection of Evil also both came with versions of Ultimate Doom and Doom 2, both fully capable of 4-player co-op or deathmatch on a single XBox, but no online co-op or deathmatch – which is where Doom 360 comes in.
Interestingly enough, Doom and Doom 2 both also made it to Nintendo's Gameboy Advance. However, the blood was changed to green, and the structure of both games was also changed for, assumably, censorship purposes.
In terms of modifications, Doom has definitely changed over the last few years because of source ports like ZDoom, EDGE, and Legacy. They add the capability to use 3D floors, completely altered weapon functionality, the use of models, 3d acceleration, ambient noises, inventories, new item use structure, item vendors (and thus currency), friendly AI, new and much more advanced line definitions (level design) and real-time scripting – much like a lot of modern shooters.
Doom has come a long way since 1994. It's one of the oldest shooters – and definitely one of the most important - and seems to have survived far better than any game from that era, and thanks to it not only being so modifiable, but that there are also tools available to do so much more than iD had originally, intended, it most certainly will probably be with us for some time to come.
And it doesn't hurt that the Doom Engine is open source.