Doom 3 is the closest game in the series to Tom Hall's original Doom design document

Doom 3 is the closest game in the series to Tom Hall's original Doom design document.

Tom Hall, the actual brains behind Doom who got kicked out halfway through development, wanted a focus on story via cinematic cutscenes, environmental storytelling, and collectable memos. Hall also wanted terminals the player could interact with.

Doom 3's monorail is similar to Hall's concept, except that Hall wanted the level design to be hub-based with the monorail used to travel between levels.

Hall also wanted to have level design that felt like real locations. Doom 3 is the only game in the series which has architecture and layouts that make any sort of sense. This was actually one of the major sources of contention that led to him being kicked out. GoldenEye would come along a few years later and prove that "realistic" level design was best.

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OG Doom has great levels though. I miss labyrinthine level design like this, System Shock, Marathon, etc.

Newer games are mostly just arenas connected by simple, straightforward hallways. It's boring.

It was the closet to Tom Hall's original vision, but his original vision was inferior to what we got. Doom is the best, Doom 3 isn't.

The only reason Doom is any good is because Hall fought tooth and nail to prevent Carmack turning it into a mindless FPS game where all you did was shoot things. Hall is the reason Doom has secret areas and level design dedicated to anything besides shooting. Hall also wanted puzzles. Doom 64 is the best Doom game, and it has some pretty cool puzzles.

I always found it bizarre that people tried to pretend the scrapped Doom 4 wouldn't have been "Doom" when the freaking CREATOR of Doom wanted a strong focus on cinematic storytelling with real human drama.

Quake has among the all time best shooter level design, even with it's nonsensical structure.
No, Doom 1 is the best game in the series, then 64. Doom 64 has some problems the original didn't. And "Hall is the reason Doom has secret areas and level design dedicated to anything besides shooting." Source? I recall Romero and Petersen having most of the involvement in the level design.

The reason they scrapped it was because of fan reaction.

Fans hold a lot of water when it comes to Doom games now.

>The CREATOR
You mean one of the creators. And having seen the gameplay of the scraped Doom 4, it looked pretty rough, original vision or not.
Fact of the matter is, if 3 and 4 were supposed to be Hall's version, I'm glad it's not what we got.

doom.wikia.com/wiki/Tom_Hall

Hall constantly fought with Carmack and Romero.

Hall: Doom should have teleporters in it.

Others: No, it shouldn't.

Hall: Doom should have flying enemies in it.

Others: Nuh-uh.

Hall: Wolfenstein should have secrets.

Others: No, it shouldn't.

>You mean one of the creators.
Original lead designer and creative director, and author of the original Doom design document known as the Doom Bible. Doom was very much Hall's game, but over the course of development he got pushed out, and eventually fired.

As has been said already, Hall's "original vision" wasn't what we got, and he didn't like what we did. What we did get was great, and what he added made it great, but to say it's "his game" after all that happened isn't exactly true.
>Hall is also credited with naming the file format; WAD
Wow, can't believe I didn't know that.

the problem with doom 3 was that they tried to build the levels like a claustrophobic horror game then realised halfway through that they needed to make an action game, they didn't utilise the enemy types well either
Kevin cloud was in charge of that, it wasn't Doom and bethesda came in and pulled the plug on it
not that doom 4 turned out particularly well though
carmack was the only one left at id that knows what Doom at one big team meeting he got up and just said “doom means two things: demons and shotguns”

>You mean one of the creators.
Let's put it one way -- John Carmack contributed jack shit to Doom design other than to whine about how he didn't like storytelling in videogames, which put him in opposition to Hall who had been pushing for more complex storytelling in Commander Keen.

John Carmack was a graphics and engine programmer. All the actual nuts and bolts game design stuff in Doom and Wolfenstein came from Tom Hall and John Romero. Carmack just came up with pie-in-the-sky stuff like "Let's make Doom a seamless open world" that poor Tom Hall had to spend months trying to implement before Carmack randomly changed his mind and decided that level-based design was better.

The irony being that Hall had argued since day 1 that Doom needed level based design, but Carmack ignored him. So Hall had to waste months trying to please fickle Carmack.

Thank god he got kicked out then

Is it happening? Are we getting the "Doom 3 is actually the best in the series" hipster backlash now that Doom won all kinds of GOTY awards?

>carmack was the only one left at id that knows what Doom at one big team meeting he got up and just said “doom means two things: demons and shotguns”
The problem being that John Carmack is not a game designer. He's a programmer. He couldn't design a game to save his life. He's like Miyamoto except Miyamoto knows how to make games. During Doom 3's development Carmack kept meddling because he didn't like Doom having a story. (Kinda like how Miyamoto keeps stripping story out of various Mario games.)

"Fickle Carmack" made Wolfenstein, Doom, and even Keen possible though. Dude may be an autist but in terms of programming he is an OG Mack Daddy.

if you seriously think carmack had no input into the games design/art etc you are delusional

...I know this? I referenced Romero, and Petersen doesn't get enough love for his Doom 1 design, and as said, his programming skills made the game possible in the first place.
The worst thing is that I actually liked Doom 3, but now what your saying seems like it's going to be the case.

Sure, but he was primarily there to code engines and give the designers the tools to make a great game, which he is very good at.

>if you seriously think carmack had no input into the games design/art etc you are delusional
He really didn't have much input. With Doom, it came down to Hall vs Romero. They're actually friends nowdays, but Romero essentially usurped Hall by going behind his back and pushing for Doom to have abstract level design, next to no story, and levels that always ended in flipping a switch. Hall HATED the idea of Doom having no "point" so to speak. He wanted players to have a reason to get to the end of each level. And what's remarkable is Doom 2016 does have actual reasons.

>but Romero essentially usurped Hall by going behind his back and pushing for Doom to have abstract level design, next to no story, and levels that always ended in flipping a switch.
So the design that made it good?

If that's what makes Doom 1 good, then does that make Doom 2016 bad? Because Doom 2016 has a clear story thread, and levels that have a clear POINT. Hall wanted players to have a reason to go from A to B, and Doom 2016 has that. Doom 1 didn't.

>If that's what makes Doom 1 good, then does that make Doom 2016 bad?
No, because they're two different games going for two different things, but attempting what Hall wanted to do back then wouldn't have been as effective as what we got. The point is that Hall's vision isn't "objectively superior" to what we got, and a lot of shit in the OP is pretty silly.

The way the Doom bible was read, what Hall wanted to do and what D44M did are two completely different things.

D44M may have a story and a plot for each level, but it only comes into play for the beginning, the end and sometimes the very middle of the level, everything else was gameplay.

As for Hall and the Doom bible, it seemed that he wanted to tell a story with genuine character interaction and an arc with themes, plus different characters and not a singular figure we can call "The main character". It seemed the tone was actually going to be serious

D44M's story (and lore) was just fan service turned up to ten and the only "arc" that was present was Olivia being fucked over and Hayden getting pissed at you. The tone was pure tongue in cheek "seriousness"

And the most compelling lore thing in Doom 2016 is the origin of the Doom Marine, and it's interesting because it may be the single biggest piece of fan service in video game history.

>now that Doom won all kinds of GOTY awards?
It isn't too hard to win against a years worth of shit. Still, it could've been worse.

just play nudoom then

>it doesn't matter that he was part of a team and got kicked out it was HIS game

what?

I'm going to sound ignorant as hell for this, but how does one do cinematic cutscene storytelling effectively in the DOS era?

I guess we will never know.

Still (Pixelated) images with text beneath.

>GoldenEye would come along a few years later and prove that "realistic" level design was best.
But every game with realistic level design has proven to be inferior to Doom?

>got kicked out halfway through development
More like at the beginning.

Goldeneye does have inferior level design to the first Doom, so you may be on to something.

>Some dude wanted a thing
>Didn't get the thing
>Thing we got was amazing

Okay.

People act like Metal Gear Solid V was "Kojima's" game when he was really just part of a team. Dev fanboyism is weird.

Doom 3 makes a poor Doom game.

But goddamn is it a great VR game.

It felt too stealthy

I hate the VR push, but fuck i'm actually tempted to try this.

>Doom 3 is the closest game in the series to Tom Hall's original Doom design document.
>Tom Hall, the actual brains behind Doom who got kicked out halfway through development
Thank god he got kicked out then
Also,
>GoldenEye would come along a few years later and prove that "realistic" level design was best.
Fucking kek

We have cowadooties for cutscenes now.

Why can't we like both classic Doom and Doom 3?

I actually quite enjoyed D3 when it came out. PDA scavenging and what story was there was nice and once you get a mod for a flashlight on most of the guns. it's a nice little shooter.
>That plasma reload.
Too sexy.

Because Doom 3 is a mediocre game

We can, and I do. I contest that the 4 or 6 main Doom games (depending who you ask) are all not bad. The individual quality varying depending on who you speak to.
Still have my box copy of the game, and still enjoy it.

Because they're completely different games and are bound to attract people with different interests as a result.

>attest*
excuse me.

>plasma reload sound
Satisfying as fug

RoE's Super Shotgun reload is pure sex. Having fired and fallen love with a similar gun, it was a satisfying thing.

>>GoldenEye would come along a few years later and prove that "realistic" level design was best.
>Fucking kek
Perfect Dark is the greatest FPS game ever made, and it was built on Goldeneye's foundation.

>Perfect Dark is the greatest FPS game ever made
Nah.

yikes

What are you, a single railroad of interests?

>cinematic cutscenes, environmental storytelling, and collectable memos. Hall also wanted terminals the player could interact with.

Are these good things?

They're good for certain games if they're designed with them in mind. Except for Environmental storytelling, that's one of my favorite things in gaming if done right.

Underage detected. Perfect Dark was the zenith of FPS design.

>N64 baby
>calls others underage.

Maybe he should take that garbage to join the "original vision" club with George Lucas. Fucking unskilled dipshits who spout their "GRAET IDEAS" while taking credit for the work the people who actually make the shit can fuck off and cut themselves at Fine Arts Schools.

They worked for System Shock and Marathon.

...

Marathon is my favorite from the era. Followed by Doom. Followed by Dark Forces.

I liked Doom 3.

>even with it's nonsensical structure.

It's so fucking weird how they managed to pull that off. Quake's level design is fucking stellar, but 90% of the time they don't reflect any kind of structure that inhabitants would build. Anyone who STILL hasn't played it reading this thread, do it.

He's not wrong, though. There really hasn't been and FPS game to surpass Perfect Dark.

In terms of what, exactly? Gunplay, level design, enemy variety? I had a Playstation growing up so I didn't get to play PD.

Marathon is great, but I'm more of a Doom man myself. It's really comparing apples and oranges though, can't go wrong with either. My ranking of the mid to late 90's shooters goes...
>Doom (1, 2, and 64)
>Quake
>Blood
>Marathon
>Duke 3D
>Quake 2\Shadow Warrior
>Wolf 3D
Others I didn't include I either didn't play or did, but didn't enjoy.
What do other user's have?

>literally one of the greatest programmers of our era
>contributed jack shit to widely used engines even today that took the entire pc gaming world by fucking storm

Besides the failed megatextures, all of the technological advances in id's engines were simply implementations of other peoples work. Carmack did very little original programming in his career.

The nonsense levels helped on two fronts: it let the developers make maps based exclusively around fun, not logic, and it helped the weird, grungy atmosphere. Somehow, it managed to capture the impossible geometry and architecture of Lovecraft's writings.

Is that you, Tom Hall?

>In terms of what, exactly? Gunplay, level design, enemy variety?
Mission design, weapons, gadgets, AI, music, etc, The whole package. We only have games that feebly attempt a few aspects of what Perfect Dark achieved. Plus immersive sims like Dishonored that aren't really the same thing. (Dishonored is descended from Thief, which was influenced by Goldeneye, Perfect Dark's predecessor.)

Just got into DOOM and im playing through the newest one

is the multiplayer dead on pc

Engine design and game design are completely different things. Tiago Sousa of Crytek replaced Carmack. Sousa was responsible for the graphics in all Crytek's games, but he had zero input into the game design.

Yeah, but single player was always where it's at.

any reccomendations of non dead pc games that have multiplayer that plays like doom

Nope. Lots of players. Peak hours on the weekend of course, but quite a large community. Deathmatch servers, co-op, invasion, megagame, it's all there and it's good fun.

Know of any mappacks that stand up to it?

You have to play Perfect Dark to understand its god-tier design brilliance. It's not something that can be explained. Objective-based missions in carefully crafted levels that can take hours to complete first time, yet can be speedrun in 1-2 minutes with practice.

Does it emulate well?

Is this another one of them 'pretend that Doom 3 is anything other than warmed over dogshit' threads?

Doom 3 was awful then and it's awful now. D44M is a pretty mediocre console shooter and even it's better. Shit, I'm not convinced that the Call of Doom trash they were originally making would have been worse than Doom 3.

For me it's
>Unreal
>Doom games
>Hexen 1&2
>Jedi Knight Dark Forces 2
>Quake 1&2
>SiN
>Strife
>Half life
>shit
>Goldeneye

Wait for Quake Champions

How were Perfect Dark's linear missions "objectively superior" than the more sprawling map layouts of Doom or Quake?
>weapons
They're fine, but nothing truly outstanding or game-changing.
>AI
Again, it's good, but nothing AMAZING and TOP OF THE LINE. Fuck, F.E.A.R. has better AI
I will give you music, that shit is top tier.
Don't get me wrong, Perfect Dark is fantastic, but saying it's the pinnacle of the FPS genre, and was never topped in any aspect by games beforehand or afterward is just your own taste.

>no hexen/heretic

Embarrassing.

Unreal's not really in the same category. It's far more exploratory and content to let the player wander around. It's not open world by any means, but the maps are enormous compared to its contemporaries. And that soundtrack, hoo boy that soundtrack...

what about unreal tournament

>AI
Unreal had better enemy A.I and it came out ~2 years earlier

I forgot about Heretic, but I still have to get around to Hexen. I'd put it between Marathon and Duke 3D

The best, recent Quake map pack is Arcane Dimensions. That shit lives up to the hype, despite what some people say about how it's the "Brutal Doom" of Quake.

It's complicated. Game is quite demanding to emulate and only a few plugins handle its visual effects properly. The XBLA remake/port is almost universally better, aside from some art style changes, so people with an XBO or 360 ought to play that version.

>Unreal Tournament
>not dead
I know it hurts, but Epic is too busy shilling Paragon to care about UT.

Unreal can be described in short as "Quake 2 done better".

dude the quake thing you recommended looks great

when is it coming out

Champions? No one knows. I'd guess 2018.

Doom 3 is the best. I Currently playing it and brutal doom 64. Imho doom one and 2 looked OK back in the early 90s but they did seem bit boring, bland. I the level design was ahead of their time. It never excited the 13 year old me though. But doom 3 was my personal favourite. I just remember owning xbox version envying the pc version. Is doom 4 any good? Do you need a tourch? Is it worth pirating? Does it take place on a high tech facility on Mars? I is it anything like doom 3 at all?

fuck you user

now im excited and have to wait a year
you fucking selfish prick

what do i play in the mean time

>How were Perfect Dark's linear missions "objectively superior" than the more sprawling map layouts of Doom or Quake?
Perfect Dark's missions are not linear, though. Perfect Dark has missions where all the objectives can be completed in any order, and most missions have a large degree of freedom in how you tackle them. Also, Doom/Quake's maps don't really have anything to do in them besides shoot people. There are no complex objectives.

Perfect Dark's surrendering and fleeing for reinforcements AI is a lot better than Unreal's. Plus wounded enemies leave blood trails, which is Deus Ex-grade crazy level of detail.

>There are no complex objectives.
And that's a bad thing because? They're pure run and gun maps, and that's what they try to be.

>Is doom 4 any good?
Yes
>Do you need a tourch?
Like a flashlight? No, it's more action focused instead of horror, so you can see everything basically perfectly fine at all times.
>Is it worth pirating?
Yeah
Does it take place on a high tech facility on Mars?
Yes
>Is it anything like doom 3 at all?
It's got demons and shotguns.

You can play Quake Live, which is still decently active.