You would think we were peeking far back in time, but we're not -- the technology's moved ahead so fast. Thanks for the link.

I'm reminded of 16th century France and Ancient Greece circa 300 B.C. It would be like learning Algebra or Geometry except for video games.

well put.

you can't help but appreciate carmack's philosophies when reading this. from making the player the boss in a difficult situation to encouraging modding of the shareware files. it's somewhat of a shame id couldn't reign romero in a bit because creativity is one of the things id has suffered from since the turn of the millennium. carmack's ideas of fight or flight could still be valid for a fps today - look at dark souls and the propagation of other hardcore games. part of the problem is structure in the game world. linear gun and run like doom/serious sam has no real place today but an open world doom akin to dark souls where there's freedom of choice through development of skill to allow progression could be something worth playing. being good enough to take on cacodemon valley from the outset of the game armed only with a shotgun would be fun.

>linear gun and run like doom/serious sam

in that period we had backtracking.

in newer doom custom maps the player starts in a room and sees 3 or more possible ways to go :D

>being good enough to take on cacodemon valley from the outset of the game armed only with a shotgun would be fun.

sounds good.

You can say Romero was creative etc, but in all honesty, I think its fair to say he's not done anything great since leaving ID.
That's fine, but to hold him in such high regard 20 years on is a little, well urgh.

Carmack is a coder first and foremost, it was up to Tim Willits to come up with the creative stuff, who incidentally looks like he's being surpassed at idsotware are looking for a design director.

The bottom line is videogames released in the mid 90's were much easier to innovate with.

Carmack probably has as many flaws as he does positives, and i think his engines put some fair limitations on his design team with his personal goal to be the first to cover the big things in 3D rendering, which he kinda did IMO.

I looked at a video from rage 3 years ago and said it would suck, and so did many here, the things they raised then were still true in the finished product. When that happens constantly, you have a serious internal problem.

yeah I agree with you regarding romero which is why I suggested he be reigned in for nothing else than a creative spark the team could bounce off for gameplay concepts - certainly not for his daikatana hogwash. id just lack ideas I think and beyond a top engine and amazing artistry that is where their downfall I think can be attributed.

his engines being limited for designers is a good point. for instance in doom 3 you had a massive focus on lighting and shadows that basically dictated the game in its entirety. is part of it his unwillingness to add bloat to the code to create more varied gameplay experiences or a lack of talent around him?

I can see why they are struggling so much with doom 4. it has to find a new direction to travel rather than what I essentially think id has been doing for the last 10 years and that is upgrading the past.

You seem to have trouble distinguishing between technology and game design. You could make a game like Skyrim using the Doom 3 engine if you really wanted to. The only limitations would be hardware and the level of creativity of the game designers.

you seem to have trouble remembering the significance of the timing of these engines and the effect these new toys like mouseaim and shadow rendering have on the gameplay. while skyrim could be made in the doom 3 engine that isn't the relevant point here. carmack advanced technology in such a way that new gameplay experiences were created because of his talent and not irrespective of it.

There was a time where game design was limited to 2D side scrollers. Are you implying that game engines are advancing at the same rate they did then? Skyrim could have been made on the Q3 engine too. The limitations on game designers weren't nearly as significant by the time of Doom 3. And the advancements in technology from Doom 3 to modern engines aren't nearly as dramatic as they were then.

what I'm saying is that engine development, especially with id, has had a direct influence on game design. doom 3 is one of best examples of this. constant advancement isn't the point, milestones are.

Doom 3 is the worst example. That may have been true back in the days when engines went from 2D to 3D. id Tech 4 was a dramatic advancement in how the graphics looked but had virtually no impact on gameplay. Like I said, Skyrim could have been made using the Q3 engine. Doom 3 just had shitty game designers.

we'll just agree to disagree.

The doom3 engine didn't perform well at all in open environments. That's a big reason why the game ended up being sort of a survival horror.

I think what you two are doing is pointless, discussing historical facts. What currently matters is since some years -lets say five- that game developers have practically total freedom (with some sacrifices of course), so their creativity isn't hindered due to the technology of the time.

Rage sucked (which it did) not because of a technological reason. Doom4 is being done from scratch because Zenimax ordered id to do so because the almost released game sucked, or so news say. This describes the company's work since 2004.

But if you want to do the theoretical exercise, would doom3 have been as bad as it was if it used the q3 engine instead of idtech4? We know it'd have allowed more freedom and that part of the gameplay was limited because of that engine, both which are facts, so I'll say doom3 would have been better if it used the q3 engine. For that to happen what was required was to release the game earlier, which didn't happen because of a third fact: at the time id had few employees for how big their projects were, which was an internal decision made at the peak of the company.

I think the discussion here is how id Tech engines have historically set the standard for game technology in the industry and continues to do so to this day. Therefore anyone interested in learning about game engine design should download all the id Tech source code and study it.

Your example is wildly false. In either case the conclusion is the same. Doom 3 had wicked and treacherous game designers who hindered the technology. Just a few optimizations later and you had large outdoors multiplayer (Quake Wars).

"Just a few optimizations later and you had large outdoors multiplayer"

Yeah, and you also had widespread use of dual core processors and better gfx cards or a higher % of the market with better hardware. Doom 3 was released Aug 2004, Quakewars was Oct 2007, that's a long time in terms of PC hardware. So its more than a few tweaks. DC CPUS were coming out in what 2005? maybe late 2004??

In 2007 Crytek had Crysis.
Epic had unreal 3.

Both games were graphically a step up when compared to QW.

P.S.

For the record I love the Doom 3 and the Engine based on what it did at the time it did. It was just too repetitive, but it scared the crap out of me at the time, Playing that game in 04 with the lights off and headphones on, was pretty impressive as an experience which I don't think I'll get again until the viewing medium changes.

That's obvious. If you reread the comments you'll find we already discussed hardware limitations. Doom 3 is a terrible game.

The point was that this is because of shitty game designers, not the engine. Even with the hardware at the time, the game could have been brighter or you could have had more outdoor sections. It didn't have to be a survival horror game at all. But again, that has nothing to do with the engine.

"For the record I love the Doom 3 and the Engine based on what it did at the time it did. It was just too repetitive"

Again you seem to have trouble distinguishing between a bad game and the technology used. ET:QW and D3, two very differnet games, same engine.

Yes there are other potent engines too.

Nice article.


They talk about this here yet their next game Quake didn't have this implemented either, it wasn't until Quake 2 that you could see what weapon a player is carrying.

Even q2 didn't have it initially IiRC. I believe vwep was originally a community addition in q2 but later was added officially.

you remember correctly, good sir. erry mutha fuckin weapon was the shitty shotgun at first.

The major contributions of people like Carmack are in the realm of technology, not game design. Such discussions about game design would not even be possible without the tech, nor would your lan partys.

i know what your saying, but gamewise doom was a perfect FPS. yes, the tech was important. but if there was only the tech and no worthy gameplay, it would be long forgotten i believe.

think about the modes deathmatch / coop. lightning. vertical gameplay. map editor. the hud, the different weapons, different texture themes etc. this all was a concept done in a very short time. wolfenstein in comparison was very simpel. all at id contributed, tom hall the designer (doom bible), john romero the deathmatch maniac etc. and the fans took the gameplay in custom maps a step higher: more scripts, better enemy positions and riddles, deleting engine limitations.

You have it backwards. Doom was a very simplistic FPS and Doom 3 was terrible. The only reason those games are memorable is because of their engines. Most of the things you mentioned aren't even related to gameplay.

Missing the good 'ol days :(

In an era of where it often takes 20MB to put in all the advertised features, they did it in less than four.

Ah, them days...

Don't remember where did I find the link, maybe on this site:

A Visit to id Software (1993)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q65xJfVkiaI