Coelacanth: Lessons from Doom (2010)

To get an idea of this madness, it can help to look at some relevant footage.<p>Speedrun of Dead Simple from Doom 2: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfijpjvS9Q8&amp;feature=player_detailpage#t=326" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=dfijpjvS9Q8&amp;feature=player_de...</a><p>Quake Done Quick: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpiNDxssUL0" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=VpiNDxssUL0</a><p>~<p>That sort of manic movement is, I think, what really sets apart the elite FPS players of the Doom, Quake, and UT era (and the games in the same vein) from folks in the CoD&#x2F;Halo games.<p>Also, the level design is pretty much strictly better, because it mattered a lot more. With regenerating health and lots of ammo&#x2F;easy pickups, you no longer have to be quite so careful when putting together a level, because you know that if the give the player X seconds of time without suffering everything will be okay.

<p><pre><code> &gt; Doom is about “maneuverability as defense” &gt; ... &gt; There’s nothing quite like it today. </code></pre> There&#x27;s one game i&#x27;m aware of: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Painkiller_(video_game)" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Painkiller_(video_game)</a><p>By default it also moves fairly slowly, but the player is strongly encouraged and almost forced to use bunny-hopping to gain extreme agility and speed. Most youtube LPs showcase this quite well. &quot;Asylum&quot; and &quot;Snowy Bridge&quot; are imo the highpoint levels to watch for this.

Interesting article. I played with making Doom levels back in the day and it wasn&#x27;t exactly easy. The tools (DEU, DETH, etc.) were generally clunky DOS apps that resembled very simplified CAD programs. Documentation was non-existent or spotty at best, so you really had to spend a lot of time figuring out how to do simple things. It would easily take you months to ramp up and start building levels that were more complex than two rooms with a door (and even that was pretty complex to figure out the right line defs, sectors, actions, etc. to just make a door work!). This was before the web took off so you couldn&#x27;t just Google for a Stackoverflow answer when you got stuck!<p>Duke Nukem 3D and the Build engine were pretty interesting for level creation. The game engine included the editor so you could actually drop into a mode where you walk through the level and directly modify textures, floor&#x2F;ceiling height, etc. Was a very cool experience at the time.

I just finished reading David Kushner&#x27;s Masters of Doom, which tells the story of DOOM development, as well as the id software story around it. It was well-written and thoroughly researched story, should be a good read for many in here.

What a great analysis. I&#x27;d like to see stuff like this on other games : what about shooters with instant-hit and slow physics where the player is still definitely NOT a tank (2-3 bullets from most guns will kill you), still capturing the same sense of gameplay-over-narrative and experience diversity -- <i>Counter-Strike</i>. In fact, I&#x27;d like to see an article like this on every archetypal shooter type. Goldeneye, Halo, System Shock, Counter-Strike... does anyone know of more game analysis like this?

re: how mod-friendly Doom was, Portal 2&#x27;s simplified level editor (released 2012, after this was written) was pretty well-done--only exposed a tiny fraction of the things one could do, of course, but enough to build real puzzles, and with just enough default visual interest that the product didn&#x27;t necessarily look awful.<p><a href="http://theportalwiki.com/wiki/Puzzle_Creator" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;theportalwiki.com&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Puzzle_Creator</a><p>Of the user-made levels, it&#x27;s surprising how many used the full level editor anyway--even though, as the post notes, building levels ain&#x27;t quite as simple as it was in the Doom days. User-made level gallery:<p><a href="http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/browse?appid=620&amp;browsesort=trend" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;steamcommunity.com&#x2F;workshop&#x2F;browse?appid=620&amp;browseso...</a>

Entirely off-topic, but that thread title sounds like the best metal album ever.

Has anyone come across the Neo-Doom megawad?<p>There is one level with a Cathedral.... you walk in through the entrance to see a few dozen imps standing at pews, and there are a couple of Knights of Hell and a Baron on the front stage giving a sermon.<p>The mock up was pleasingly realistic, then I noticed that the crucifix on the front wall was inverted.

Team Fortress Classic is similar. The levels were built for gameplay, not realism. A large modding community surrounded the game also.

I was disappointed to learn that the article wasn&#x27;t about a living fossil fish.

[2010] but always nice to revisit