As evilartist recommended, we may as well start now. Doom 4 has crazy potential, being id's pioneer type franchise, it has about as much potential as Doom 3, if not more.

But we all know how doom 3 turned out, and the muted applause it received for it's technological advancements.

So what formula would work best for Doom 4? Survival/horror, Run'n'Gun, somewhere in between? Should it follow doom2, using id Tech 5, and be staged as Hell on Earth? Should it continue it's chapters on Mars? Should it embark on the original doom touch, and even go back to Phobos or Deimos? What can the game offer that is new and innovative - it's hard to be creative with so much having been done already. What can make the game fun?

Here's my personal list for now. I'll add to it and edit it and perhaps we could make a master list if some really good hopes/suggestions come up.

But for me personally off the top of my head:

1. Fun. The game needs to be fun; I don't want to have to discipline myself to play it. There has to be some system that never gets old, which preferably means no more running through identical dark hallways, specifically I'd like to see:

• Death animations. We've mastered a transition between articulated figures (ragdolls) and death animations, and id's a master, so make use of it. Lets see some amazing, varying, rewarding death animations combined with ragdolls.

• "Live" ragdolls. When a demon gets hit in doom3 it plays a "hurt" animation, at which point the demon will flinch, growl, or do some other action to show annoyance at being hit with lead pellets (or plasma bursts). I would like to be able to shoot something/someone's arm - see his/it's arm fly back, and then use that momentum to wind up and throw a fireball at my face. Basically once again combining radgoll physics with animations - to be able to blend seamlessly. One of the things I hate above all in modern games is un-seamless animation transitions (more obvious in quake wars for example. There simply is NO transition between the run and sprint animation: one frame you're running, the next you're sprinting. Simple as that).

• Environment interaction. Not with you as the character, but with them as the demons. For them to make full use of the environment not only as an AI, but via animations as well (such as the Crysis walk cycle. I forget where it was shown in some tech demo, but the character automatically adjusted his walk animation depending on if he was walking uphill or downhill; the animation was never aligned to an imaginary "horizontal plane" as it is with doom3, regardless of whether or not the ground is horizontal (which it is not more often than it is).). This is also obvious in stairs: stepping on stairs that literally "dont exist" or perhaps just "sliding down" because the feet really don't step on the stairs, the animation is actually just transitioning downwards because the ground level has changed. To see something climb on barrels, walk on stairs, seamlessly climb up pillars and poles to get a better shot - that would be nice.

2. Music. An actual soundtrack worth listening to. And not the ambient rpg or rts stuff, an actual soundtrack. I remember a Quake 4 mod team being able to change the music tempo/beat to be more upstart when in battle, and more quiet when no enemies were around (the mod name had Requiem in it, if I remember correctly?). A similar adaption via music for doom 4 would be a very nice treat for the fans.

3. SMOOTH PLAY. This is more of an engine issue, but as we were talking about "the flaw" in quake wars concerning technology, I'd really hate to see this with id Tech 5. Improve the engine tick rate, record the animations at a higher framerate; it doesn't matter what it takes, just do it. Watching a 24fps animation while the rest of the game is running at 60 fps (or whatever it is) just takes away from the experience. It's also evident in d3/q4 multiplayer; especially in quake 4 multiplayer: no matter if you have forceambient on, because it will run even smoother, but it will make the jitteryness of the character animations even more obvious.

4. Unique and Creative Environments. Like doom 1. From different indoor phobos laboratories to computer rooms to outdoor moonish-lands, cliffs, indoor jungles (outdoor jungles too?), and hell. Hell is hell; you can do so much with it, why not push it to it's full potential as with the original doom episodes. Tracks through radioactive slime, lava, both outdoor and indoor, fire-fields (hell on earth offers huge potential for creative environments unto itself). The possibilities are endless. Lets see it done.
Not very specific for now, but I'll add more later. Lets here some wishes people

Yes, thank you Phobos! I was contemplating whether I'd start the thread, but fortunately you took care of that already.

Phobos wrote:

So what formula would work best for Doom 4? Survival/horror, Run'n'Gun, somewhere in between? Should it follow doom2, using id Tech 5, and be staged as Hell on Earth? Should it continue it's chapters on Mars? Should it embark on the original doom touch, and even go back to Phobos or Deimos? What can the game offer that is new and innovative - it's hard to be creative with so much having been done already. What can make the game fun?

Somewhere in between. What Doom 3 lacked that I loved about old school Doom is the constant satisfaction of killing. Call me sadistic, but my favorite part when I first played Doom was watching that zombie fly back, splurting blood. In Doom 3, the zombie will just fall over dead. A few cheap decals fly out of him, but there's no signs of physical trauma (like chunks of flesh missing).

As for the "survival horror" part, Doom 1 was already scary without the need of a thick ambience. Sure, it's nice to have all the voice echos and machine rumbles, but the suspensful music as you head through a quiet, dimmed area kept me on my toes (not dark, but dimmed). Phobos has the right idea with music that will change depending on the mood. It's something I always wished Doom 3 would do (actually, I could've done that with simple map scripting, but I don't know how to compose music

).

Phobos wrote:

Death animations. We've mastered a transition between articulated figures (ragdolls) and death animations, and id's a master, so make use of it. Lets see some amazing, varying, rewarding death animations combined with ragdolls.

Again, YES! I remember how the Baron of Hell used to have his intenstines spill out of his abdomen as he fell backwards. Wouldn't it be great to the same thing, but instead a lot messier? Instead of falling backwards, the giant beast could fall forward and make a huge "SPLAT!" sound as a large blood decal would spread all over the floor and even on the low walls.

"Live" ragdolls sounds like a good idea, too!

More things I'd like to see in Doom 4:

The return of the other monsters. You know who I mean. Pain Elementals. Arachnatrons. Spiderdemon Mastermind. The Baron of Hell.

There's only one Cyberdemon. I never understood why the Pinky Demon had to have cybernetic legs, or why the Lost Skulls had jetpacks. They're demons. Arachnatrons and Revenants aside, why do the original Doom 1 demons need cybernetic enhancements? The pinky demon should just be a big, snarling brute with an intimidating roar.

No more trites. 'Nuff said.

Better or more satisfying weapons. That was something I loved more about Quake 4 than Doom 3. The Q4 weapon sound effects were cooler and they worked better at long-range (even the shotgun). I want a plasma rifle that shoots very quick and leaves a beautiful muzzle flash. Doom 3's sounded and looked like something you'd find at a toy store.

Cyberdemons as killable, common enemies. Remember how frequently you'd encounter a Cyberdemon in Doom II? Why can't we have that happen in No. 4? It could be about 2/3 the size of the one in Doom 3, and play that awesome animation where its entire body explodes, leaving only a pair of bloody leg stumps (which can become physics objects).

Doom 4 is capable of so much. Let's hope that the leads id hires think alike to this community, and maybe some of our wishes will come true.

evilartist wrote:

Cyberdemons as killable, common enemies. Remember how frequently you'd encounter a Cyberdemon in Doom II? Why can't we have that happen in No. 4? It could be about 2/3 the size of the one in Doom 3, and play that awesome animation where its entire body explodes, leaving only a pair of bloody leg stumps (which can become physics objects).

Doom 4 is capable of so much. Let's hope that the leads id hires think alike to this community, and maybe some of our wishes will come true.

I can seriously just imagine encountering a cyberdemon in a large, open, earth landscape (perhaps the ruins of a huge city?) with a hellish sky. There is so much potential there it's amazing to even think about - and a cool cinematic intro would be neat too.

Phobos wrote:

3. SMOOTH PLAY. This is more of an engine issue, but as we were talking about "the flaw" in quake wars concerning technology, I'd really hate to see this with id Tech 5. Improve the engine tick rate, record the animations at a higher framerate; it doesn't matter what it takes, just do it. Watching a 24fps animation while the rest of the game is running at 60 fps (or whatever it is) just takes away from the experience. It's also evident in d3/q4 multiplayer; especially in quake 4 multiplayer: no matter if you have forceambient on, because it will run even smoother, but it will make the jitteryness of the character animations even more obvious.

That Quake Wars decision was by Splash Damage. They figured that players wanted to see the exact spot that the hitboxes are in order to be most accurate (Paul Wedgewood said this in an interview somewhere...). This required to get rid of interpolation (because apparently interpolation is kind of misleading when it comes hitbox movement in animations). John Carmack mentioned in his 2007 speech that he disproved of this decision, and also stated that there really isn't any way to fix it and that he doesn't recommend hacking on top of it anymore than it already has been hacked on. I guess it's kind of a messy system SD put together.

And before you reply to my post, Friar, let me just say that hitboxes is pretty much the way to go. Making the guns "more accurate" doesn't necessarily do anything. Especially when you WANT them to scatter. There are games (including Doom 3) that got rid of hitboxes, and competitive gamers and casual gamers alike shared their dislike of the system over hitboxes (me included). It just doesn't work as well.

Sorry to point you out Friar, but I've been meaning to share my thoughts on that. I know you said something about hitboxes a couple of times before, but I never decided to reply... Probably because I was lazy or something...

Also... I didn't notice any choppiness in Quake 4... I don't think they used animation blending like they did in Doom 3, but the animations looked smoother in Quake 4 than they did in Quake Wars I think... (And when I say animation blending, I'm talking about the blend between two different animations, not interpolation.)

Dinky wrote:

Also... I didn't notice any choppiness in Quake 4... I don't think they used animation blending like they did in Doom 3, but the animations looked smoother in Quake 4 than they did in Quake Wars I think... (And when I say animation blending, I'm talking about the blend between two different animations, not interpolation.)

I think the animations were nice, for example you could actually see someone switching weapons rather than just having a new weapon magically "appear" in their hands, but I was just talking about the actual frame-by-frame interpolation as a whole.

You can turn forceambient on, see everything in ultra-smooth play, at a very high framerate.

Bring 3 players on the screen and shoot a rocket at the ground between them with quad damage on, and they just "appear" on the opposite side of the room via concussion.

They move so fast that you don't actually "see" them fly through the air, they just appear. a few quick short frames later to have moved an extreme distance because of the blast. Hard to explain. Perhaps I should record a video of it.

Like I said in the other thread, I'm all for classic frags, no matter what the rating, no matter what the margin of market! I would hate to see Doom go soft in search of a wider audience, that would break my heart.
I'd really like to be able to blow an arm off, the thing keep comin'. Blow a foot off, the thing keep hobblin'. Blow a head off, the thing keep hobblin' around in circles after me, bleeding everywhere, gets lost and ends up tripping over some railing and into some lava for sizzles!
Weapon modding is also an idea I think could lend very well to Doom. We saw this with the Duct Tape-style mods of everyone wanting a flashlight on all their weapons. Unrealistic pigs, yet why not have a flashlight as some interchangable weapon-mod feature, along with scopes, silencers, glowy GUI ammo display (as in, player may not always want a glowing GUI on their weapons), etc. Choice and personalisation marks the games of the future, in my opinion.
Maybe more in the way of destructible environments. For some reason, maybe it was a rumour I read up on, I expected to see a lot of destructible environment and far more moveables/physics in Doom3. If you shoot a rocket at a wall, not only particles fluff out at you, but other things should happen. Wall gets more broken somehow (can be FX tricks, doesn't need to be "atomic"), lights go out (another thing I expected out of Doom3), moveables go flying everywhere. To be honest, the explosions in Doom3 felt really lifeless, the rocket launcher felt like something that makes enemies spring into the air with a fluffy particle effect. It lacked that intensity from the original DOOMs, despite those also being just sprites, it managed to capture an intensity and harmfulness for its time. Meaning a new rocket launcher for a new Doom should need to have far more attention paid to recapture that same feeling of harm, that this weapon is a killer, not a fluffy particle creator.
And finally, unlike the original DOOMs, I would like to play it and not be THE ONLY human left alive in the game. Doom3, in parts, was leading toward a more interesting experience where you race around a corner and instead of ghoulies, there's some petrified scientist panting at you. That was cool. Especially if it's going to be set on Earth, it would be great if you could pick up some co-op NPCs along the way, here and there, to help you fight. Maybe you need to protect them for a certain period so that they may help you fulfill "objectives" a little later. It doesn't sound like traditional DOOM but it's something I'd personally enjoy seeing, in any game really. To save some innocent people instead of just trying to single-handedly whipe out demons and zombies from hell. Show people that DOOM isn't all about killing monsters, you might help a little old granny across the road too!

My points:

- no more imps spawning behind me whenever I pick up a health pack
- serious rebalancing of "imp enemies" in favour of non-melee enemies
- remember - letting something jump in your face every time you open a door doesn't necessarily gain you the Oscar of the best Thriller and Suspense movie - you can do better, we know it and you know it best.
- no more having to read pda's or listening to sound files every 3.25 minutes, this breaks the pace and you have to keep a log for the billion of key pads to open.
- much more physics interaction (ragdoll rather than burnaway, blended impact animations with ragdolls, build some walls out of bricks rather than a brush...)
- do not try to make it a cinematic experience unless you want to direct a movie, if you try to create a game than focus on gameplay mechanics, AI, Character design...
- don't remind me of my mortality with a stamina bar
- reloading is fine, eventually faster reloading is even "finer"
- introduce a human fraction collaborating and joining team with whatever enemy you decide to introduce, has worked in almost all movies and games. This adds welcome variety for players.
- think about replay value (first Deus Ex is a good example)
- if you aim for a teen rating, than stay clear of excessively displayed graphical violence, but keep the suspense and atmosphere up.

And please, do not make the console versions close platform - allow the subsequent addition of custom maps, mods...
Speaking of custom content, please do not think providing players with the tools and the SDK is a waste of time.

Phobos wrote:

Dinky wrote:

Also... I didn't notice any choppiness in Quake 4... I don't think they used animation blending like they did in Doom 3, but the animations looked smoother in Quake 4 than they did in Quake Wars I think... (And when I say animation blending, I'm talking about the blend between two different animations, not interpolation.)

I think the animations were nice, for example you could actually see someone switching weapons rather than just having a new weapon magically "appear" in their hands, but I was just talking about the actual frame-by-frame interpolation as a whole.

You can turn forceambient on, see everything in ultra-smooth play, at a very high framerate.

Bring 3 players on the screen and shoot a rocket at the ground between them with quad damage on, and they just "appear" on the opposite side of the room via concussion.

They move so fast that you don't actually "see" them fly through the air, they just appear. a few quick short frames later to have moved an extreme distance because of the blast. Hard to explain. Perhaps I should record a video of it.

No, I know what you meant.

But I shot people with rockets all the time... They never just appeared on the other side of the room... And I played competitively with force ambient... Your description sounds like someone with a computer that runs at 2 fps or some serious lag online.

I never had any problems with animations in Q4. And I'm left a little puzzled about what you really mean...

For me? More of the same in a better graphics engine, I think that's all that I ask. :mrgreen:

I love every aspect about Doom3 and thought it was pretty well balanced. The only thing I know I want to see returned is the editing capabilities. But I'm sure they will be there. Can't wait to make the Doom 4 Ultimate mod! :mrgreen:

BNA! wrote:

- if you aim for a teen rating, than stay clear of excessively displayed graphical violence, but keep the suspense and atmosphere up.

suspense only works as long as they don't print the age rating on the box or the disk or anywhere. once you know the game or movie is rated something less than no-holds-barred then it isn't suspenseful anymore.

Fast gameplay. Storyline should not get in the way of run and gun.

Try something different. It's been really annoying seeing how blase Doom3 and Quake4 turned out. There's nothing in these games' singleplayer that I can recall as unique.

-More varied environments; Like in RTCW and the HL2 series.
-More gameplay variation instead of the popup-monster & PDA gameplay of D3
-More light =)
-Take advantage of PC hardware ref viewtopic.php?f=40&t=21502&p=198664#p198664

ViPr wrote:

BNA! wrote:

- if you aim for a teen rating, than stay clear of excessively displayed graphical violence, but keep the suspense and atmosphere up.

suspense only works as long as they don't print the age rating on the box or the disk or anywhere. once you know the game or movie is rated something less than no-holds-barred then it isn't suspenseful anymore.

Judging a book by the cover has always been one of the best content evaluation approaches.

Let's cut the crap - I'm too old to care about kids who only feel attracted to M rated games. Good content always prevails over attention seeking violence or otherwise fabricated M ratings. If a person follows the stupid path to downgrade a potentially interesting experience front up by a rating not matching his or hers expectation, than this person deserves to get punished by wasting a whole life hunting for the most spectacular sub par low quality content.

- more enemies on screen at any one time
- the sdk and _all_ of its tools ported to every platform that it is feasible (WxWidgets would be nice for this)

BNA! horror that is rated less than 18, sucks.

i'm guessing you don't want it to be a horror game because then you will miss out coz you are in germany. well that's not fair of you.

Well. Making Doom3 a strict horror game was a mistake anyway. Doom1 and 2 were never only about horror.

well action parts and horror parts would be good but they couldn't really do big action sections with lots of enemies in doom3 (like in the other dooms) because of technical limitations; the framerate would get too low if there were too many enemies probably.

Yes horror parts are good. They just need to be that, parts, and not make up the whole game. ROE (the expansion pack) did a better job of introducing action parts and lots of monsters. Big ones too.

Hmm. I wonder if RAGE is nearing completion and Doom 4 will be the next main project for id, and not just a smaller, internal project. This way of overlap would ensure the best possible flow of work. Have a small team start up preproduction of the next game so it's ready whenever the previous game is done.
This could also mean Doom4 is Idtech 6. Probably not, but entertaining thoughts.

ViPr wrote:

horror that is rated less than 18, sucks.

LOL. Go home kiddo.
It's been said by BNA but since this is a wishlist I'll just repeat the things I'd like see improved:
Imps in Doom3 were really really annoying and no fun in melee combat, the spawning of enemies was very overused, weapons felt kinda slow (firing rate and reload times), and movement was slow and immobile. The Quake1 feeling in terms of jumping and running is what I'd like to see again.

Phobos wrote:

3. SMOOTH PLAY. This is more of an engine issue, but as we were talking about "the flaw" in quake wars concerning technology, I'd really hate to see this with id Tech 5. Improve the engine tick rate, record the animations at a higher framerate; it doesn't matter what it takes, just do it. Watching a 24fps animation while the rest of the game is running at 60 fps (or whatever it is) just takes away from the experience. It's also evident in d3/q4 multiplayer; especially in quake 4 multiplayer: no matter if you have forceambient on, because it will run even smoother, but it will make the jitteryness of the character animations even more obvious.

D3/Q4 do not have character animation jitteryness, it must be your framerate or your network lag. The animations are recorded in 24 fps but are interpolated and I dare say nobody except maybe animation professionals can tell the difference between 60fps keyframe animation and 60fps animation interpolated from 24fps keyframes.

What are we saying about DOOM? DOOM is all about fighting the forces of Hell with big guns. The very idea of it is not for kids at all. How can you make a game about killing off things from Hell and make it some G-rated kid-friendly market-widening product? Especially in this modern age of games. That's a silly and disappointing approach. It's not attention seeking, it's about meeting up with your original intentions and serious portrayal or your ideas. The original DOOMs were sickeningly gory, disgustingly so, for its time. Maybe we've all grown forgetful of just how vile the original games really were, and don't lie, that was a big part of the appeal!
If you decide your game is going to be about "guns vs. demons & zombies" in any realistic sense, don't then say "but wholesome fun for the whole family", the two ideas do not go together. The old pitfall of pleasing no one in an attempt to please everyone. That approach is more attention-seeking than anything, I believe. Always make your stuff for the fans, and to hell with the public at large, I say.
It boils down to 1 simple equation = cause and effect. Shoot a zombie's head right off, and score a colourful Piñata pony for your garden? Just make a colourful Piñata game to begin with or don't bother. Cause and effect of "guns vs. hell" is not wholesome family entertainment right from the very premise, the cause of shotgun blast to rotting zombie flesh is an effect not suitable for the wider audience right from the very idea of it, so why try to push it that way?
I don't mean to disrespect anyone by saying this, but - maybe id Software should just make a new Commander Keen game instead of dragging DOOM further into the playground market, if that's their intention. Save Doom4 for a little later when the public at large may not be sooo politically correct and over-sensitive about the very essence of the idea of DOOM to begin with. I'd still be just as happy to play idtech5 Commander Keen because at least it could then meet its own intentions thoroughly without offending anyone. I would have greater respect for that.
I say all of this as a die-hard DOOM fan, to be sure.

Doom on Earth will be perfect for co-op multiplayer because the rednecks can grab up their shotguns and rakes and go out demon hunting!

Maybe a pre-Doom 4 mod called "Doom 3.5: The First Wave" is in the cards. Have it set in Alabama...

Could work for an id pre-viz as well.

lowdragon wrote:

Iam sure there will a lot of "more-advanced" rendering techniques already be standart the time d4 comes out but i mostly would like to see "effects" so that the [game]world appears more seamlessly. Like light/liquids/dust/hair/fur - surface/body interaction, physically "correct".

Those kind of realistic effects are possible without expanding the color-range into HDR, though, which is my point.

Lets stop wishing for D4 and actually try and mod it. A nice easter egg could be when you are on earth and you go to betrugers appartment and find many notes on a so called gate at such and such a place in such and such a city

mod all that? people would end up dying from over working and your computer would slow down to about 2 fps. Although that pain animation to rag doll transition sound like an awesome idea. The only possible way you'd probably able to make it is if literally everyone on the forum was part of the mod team.

Hm.. what about a bit more world-demolishing?
Example running away from an hellknight and find a room with a lot of barrels and a locked door.
one grenade and woosh, a hole in the wall where you can run through.
Then you hear a loud noise, turn around and see the hellknight breaking through the door.
It would be awesome if you are not the uber-powered player but sometimes even have to avoid a specific monster till a specific place where you could actualy kill kom some how.
another point is the lack of survivors. i dont wand to have an whole squad, but in quak4 it's in my optinion somehow nicer, cause sometimes oyu get some guys with you, letting them talk some creazy stuff etc.

i dont know if its somehow useable, but the prey portals, and gravity fields were realy nice, same as some vehicles in quake wars. so it would be cool (in my opinion) having a bossroom with some gravity problems, or driving outside from station to station. and event a portal which "slides" trough an room and on the other side is an hell room

somehow changing dimensions ^^

even a walk through mars-city would be cool, resident-evil style. zombies, monster, crashed down buildings etc.

maybe combined with the vehicles to drive from buildign X to another

Cool modding tools should also be there

and at last, it would be nice if not everything looks so plastique. shiny metal etc is nice, but as example there has to be at least 1 plant somewhere. showing that the engine can something like plants etc too, not only static stuff with metal effects.

Ah.. this time its the last.. give the player a bit more choices. as example to make it possible to save some guys when you're fast enough, (they can die later maybe, maybe they go another way and concact is breaking off), making the player get the feeling hes also able to controll the environment a bit.

comiceman wrote:

i dont know if its somehow useable, but the prey portals, and gravity fields were realy nice, same as some vehicles in quake wars. so it would be cool (in my opinion) having a bossroom with some gravity problems,

This isn't prey.

Phobos wrote:

comiceman wrote:

i dont know if its somehow useable, but the prey portals, and gravity fields were realy nice, same as some vehicles in quake wars. so it would be cool (in my opinion) having a bossroom with some gravity problems,

This isn't prey.

So?

Modifyable gravity effects would be cool. Maybe not be used as much as in prey, but for some areas. Like if Doom 4 has places where you are in a spaceship or something and the ship loses artificial gravity. Also in regards to portals, yeah cool stuff, but I think they becoming gimicky now... I mean it would be cool for Doom 4 to be able to do it, but I wouldn't want it in the SP story unless they could really make it fit and not be like some cheesy gimmick.

I loved Doom 3 mainly for my own sandbox purposes. I didn't like the game really, I just liked all the neat little mapping features and GUI stuff. I wish iD would take the time to properly document all the features/editing tools and actually milk their engine for a while.

I mean I love that Carmack is really on the leading edge but it seems like tech 4 was over and done with so quickly. I kinda wish they would stick around with the engine and milk it for a while, like how Valve is doing with Half-life 2... but

I also wish id would have some depth to their games. Albeit a good old Quake 2 frag fest can be fun as hell, but I'm getting to the point where shiny graphics don't really impress me anymore.. storylines and cinema styles like Call of Duty 4 do.

Paveway wrote:

I also wish id would have some depth to their games. Albeit a good old Quake 2 frag fest can be fun as hell, but I'm getting to the point where shiny graphics don't really impress me anymore.. storylines and cinema styles like Call of Duty 4 do.

Then most likely, none of their games will impress/interest you anymore. id Software is an arcade action focused company imo and to inject so much storyline and movie style stuff is not in the vein of what they do at all, they would lose their identity as a company. If you look for that stuff in an id Software game, you are sure to be disappointed. Of course, they are trying to add more story, which started with Doom3, and continuing on in RAGE, but it isn't going to be Call of Duty, nor should it be.

Multiplayer wise, no one does deathmatch better, and they are sticking to that. Also, isn't Call of Duty4 a counter-strike clone? I am surprised people aren't sick of that yet either.

I think ID should let you choose between a Good Guy and a Bad Guy campaign. You can go to hell as the good guy or go to earth as the bad guy.

Bad Guy Weapons I'd love to see
1. Voodoo Doll
2. SoulCube 9000:D - You can possess an enemy and kill more enemies using his abilities or commit suicide
3. Limb Launcher - Collect body parts of fallen enemies and use it as ammo.
4. Touch of Death - Like the Voodoo doll use your hands to manipulate the integrity of an enemy, putty style
5. Double Meat Cleaver - Oh baby...slicing body parts for you launcher. I have a dirty mind :twisted:

6. Teleporter Grenades for multiplayer could be used as surprise meat cleaver attacks on marines.

Multiplayer CTF classes could seriously rock too...
1. Berserker - Very fast meat cleaver and chainsaw zombie
2. Re-Animator - A twisted undead coroner that supplys limbs as health and body sew up for revive
3. Imp - Sneaking class like an alien wallwalking and pouncing

4. Executioner - A medievil style trapper that builds stoppers like guillotines
5. Betruger lol - Possession and faking death ragdoll style with a death message saying he dies would be cool

Lol I could go on for hours but they are just some things I'd love to see in Doom 4:D

Douglas Quaid wrote:

1. Voodoo Doll...
...3. Limb Launcher ...
...4. Touch of Death ...
...5. Double Meat Cleaver - Oh baby...slicing body parts for you launcher. I have a dirty mind...

This isn't Postal! This is DooM!

Douglas Quaid wrote:

...Multiplayer CTF classes could seriously rock too...

This is not Call of Duty 4. This is DooM!

I'm not saying your ideas suck. They just seem out of place for this particular IP. I know I was pushing it a little by supporting "stalking AI", but this just makes me think "wtf?" Voodoo doll??? And the whole good guy/bad guy thing sounds like a role-playing game.

evilartist wrote:

Douglas Quaid wrote:

1. Voodoo Doll...
...3. Limb Launcher ...
...4. Touch of Death ...
...5. Double Meat Cleaver - Oh baby...slicing body parts for you launcher. I have a dirty mind...

This isn't Postal! This is DooM!

Douglas Quaid wrote:

...Multiplayer CTF classes could seriously rock too...

This is not Call of Duty 4. This is DooM!

I'm not saying your ideas suck. They just seem out of place for this particular IP. I know I was pushing it a little by supporting "stalking AI", but this just makes me think "wtf?" Voodoo doll??? And the whole good guy/bad guy thing sounds like a role-playing game.

I dont think he was serious dear =)

Douglas Quaid wrote:

Bad Guy Weapons I'd love to see
1. Voodoo Doll
2. SoulCube 9000:D - You can possess an enemy and kill more enemies using his abilities or commit suicide
3. Limb Launcher - Collect body parts of fallen enemies and use it as ammo.
4. Touch of Death - Like the Voodoo doll use your hands to manipulate the integrity of an enemy, putty style
5. Double Meat Cleaver - Oh baby...slicing body parts for you launcher. I have a dirty mind :twisted:

6. Teleporter Grenades for multiplayer could be used as surprise meat cleaver attacks on marines.

I have that game, it's called BLOOD.

Kristus wrote:

I have that game, it's called BLOOD.

I too was thinking it sounded like blood, which was one of my favorite games of the build engine and the first game I ever mapped for.

Douglas Quaid wrote:

I think ID should let you choose between a Good Guy and a Bad Guy campaign.

you can do that in my quake vs doom vs prey mod!

you can be any race you chose.

Okay back to doom 4, Do you think that it should be like doom3 where the player is terrified to go into a darkened room because of zombie noises or do you think they should ditch the whole crapping your pants horror genre and go for an all guns blazing killing everything including your team mates genre? I personally like them both possibly the "all guns blazing" a little more. Bursting into a room full of bad guys and sending them tumbling over bits of furniture with out taking your finger of the trigger for a full 8 seconds has always been fun. But nowadays games concentrate to much on realism, you can barely poke your head over the roof of a car without it being instantly shot off.

For D4, I'd like Id to predominantly ignore what is "current" and popular in modern FPSs and instead look into the past at games of old. The original Doom did not become the phenomenon it was because Id did everything in accordance with what people thought was "in" back then.
Old games (that is 1970's-80's) are rich in ideas that have never been updated or incorporated into a modern game. I just thought of an idea that could work in a modern Wolfenstein-type game, because I'm quite sure I've seen something a la that in some old game I tried back in the 80's:

You can pick up keys that don't necessarily open "the door to freedom" (and allow you to progress), i.e. a wardrobe key that might contain a Nazi uniform that you can wear to become "invisible". But suppose the theft of a key will trigger an officer to spawn and arrive at his office that you just visited (and stole the key from), where he discovers his key missing. The Officer runs to the nearest alarm station and triggers the alarm.
All this because you stole a key.

Now this specific idea would obviously not fit in D3, since the enemies are soulless monsters with no real personality, but suppose there are other random acts the player can do that triggers unforseen events (good or bad). The idea of key cards that are >NOT< strictly needed to progress, but which could open doors/drawers to other niceties could certainly be applied to D4, and would make the world feel more real as well.

Which leads me to my next big wish; Id released a promo video for the next Wolfenstein game (a common thread in my post I see), in which they claimed the entire game would be just one level that the player can explore seamlessly. I don't know if they've actually managed to make this work flawlessly or not, but if they have, I sure would like the player to be able to explore the game world at their own convenience (no more from A to B gameplay - I don't mind it, but it's pretty darn old now), only blocking off certain few areas for later in the game (no fun if you encounter the final boss after just five minutes of play). And while we're on this subject, it'd be lovely if the player is given multiple missions that they can elect to complete in any order of the player's own choosing, instead of "Go here and do this, then go over there and do that".
Say, you're in a desert area and there's a power plant to the north, a military communications base to the east, a city to the west and a star port to the south. You get four missions that you can complete in whatever order you want to: Go to the comm base and call for help, or go to the city and save some people and look for surviving troops, or go to the power plant and reroute some power in the favour of human military units in need of power, or you can go south, infiltrate the star port, where there's a link to Hell that you need to shut down to remove them from the starbase to help some of the humans to evac to the stars (homage to Doom 2 plot).

Next up on channel dsm: I really hope the characters are more colourful and interesting. Instead of a typical Sarge barking orders at the player, have some more involving humans: an NPC the player has every reason to hate (he/she talks mean to the player at every turn, assigns the player shitty tasks, and is generally an asshole etc.), then have another NPC who really treats the player like a human being, friendly and chatty etc. and a third NPC whom you can either piss off or cheer up depending on how players treat this fellow.
D3 suffered from the annoying Non-talkative NPC Syndrome which means every time you walk up to an NPC and click on them they just say one of several variations on "I don't have time to talk with you". How about some actual INTERESTING people in there? Like somebody who tells you a bit about the game world you're in, a bit on the history of the UAC and the current state of affairs on Earth.
D3 did have a decent story (miles better than what Q2 gave us), but it did suffer a bit under "two-dimensional characters". Here's hoping that's improved in D4.

And finally, here's hoping the ending is a lot better than "Hell is ruined, now let's have fun rebuilding Earth!". And by that I mean that I hope the story ends on a somewhat dubious note. Like: "Humanity survived and we have braved the worst, but are we truly safe?" with an underlying hint that humanity may quite likely be in for more trouble to come. In fact, if Doom 4 is not the last full game in the franchise (not counting expansion packs as "full games"), it might as well end with things looking pretty darned grim.

dsm, I agree with most of your (long) post there. and to expand on the suggestion of multiple non linear objectives, I would like to see a cause and effect of choosing certain objectives over others, eg the player can't save npc's into two different places at once, so has to choose which is more important to his mission, the same could applied to weapon and equipment upgrades.

dsm wrote:

Instead of a typical Sarge barking orders at the player

I don't know I found Sarge funny
"took you're sweet time marine!" he's the type of character you almost expect to say "god dam commies" half way through his sentence.

How about changing the way the player reacts to different situations. For example: Lowered health = slower movement/reaction/targeting. I know if I was getting a beat-down I wouldn't be able to get up and run full speed.
Maybe some different enemy/player interactions. How zombies that you can blow the arms off of and keep on coming. Or that actually grab hold of you and and start chomping. Perhaps the imps could do the same. Jump on your back and nibble on your noggin. :twisted:

But what ever id does I hope they get rid of the PDA system.

i want to jump!

so it was the first paraphase of commanderkeen,,,,

-Less tech demons, I never though that the neo-tech demons of doom 3 made sense, I'd like to see pure flesh and blood demons, with the exception of the cyberdemon/mastermind.

-Heavier weapons, The pistol and shotgun almost felt like a pea shooter, I'd like an arsenal of weapons that have some beef to them.

-More unfair fights. I liked how in doom, you would battle an area full of 50 monsters.

-no flashlight, I never had a problem with the flashlight, but I think doom should be more action than going around dimly lit hallways waiting for someone to politely introduce themselves with satanic imagery appearing before hand.

-More hazardous environments, Crushing rooms, ways of killing the room full of enemies with a flip of an unstable fan blade switch.

- A giant boss with no possible way of killing him with weapons, ie. Lava Demon at end of quake episode 1.

-Puzzles, not go find this key code, but actual arrange these markings in a certain order to activate some hellish opening to the next area.

-at least one hot chick, no explanation.

-lone wolf, no higher head marine or commander telling you how to kick ass.

-multiple paths though the game, and possibly different endings. I'd like to see an ending where everyone dies... lol

-achievements, the only reason I've ever played a game multiple times was to get everything possible achieveable in a game, for example, Metal Gear Solid 4, I didn't stop playing until I finally got the big boss rank and everything unlocked.

-Coop, is a must, possibly with a slightly different story/ending. An idea being that the game starts out with 4 marines, 3 of them die, you play the remaining marine, or if 2 player coop, 2 survive, you play those two.. ect..

- multiplayer game mode call invasion, A large map where one side is a group of marine, and the other side is 100-1000 monsters barreling towards you. with the choice last man standing survival or respawning until the invasion is over.

-Takes place in Hellish enviroments, not close corridor computer labs.

If I repeated any, I lazily apologize for not reading 11 pages of others ideas.

As evilartist recommended, we may as well start now. Doom 4 has crazy potential, being id's pioneer type franchise, it has about as much potential as Doom 3, if not more.

But we all know how doom 3 turned out, and the muted applause it received for it's technological advancements.

So what formula would work best for Doom 4? Survival/horror, Run'n'Gun, somewhere in between? Should it follow doom2, using id Tech 5, and be staged as Hell on Earth? Should it continue it's chapters on Mars? Should it embark on the original doom touch, and even go back to Phobos or Deimos? What can the game offer that is new and innovative - it's hard to be creative with so much having been done already. What can make the game fun?

Here's my personal list for now. I'll add to it and edit it and perhaps we could make a master list if some really good hopes/suggestions come up.

But for me personally off the top of my head:

1. Fun. The game needs to be fun; I don't want to have to discipline myself to play it. There has to be some system that never gets old, which preferably means no more running through identical dark hallways, specifically I'd like to see:

• Death animations. We've mastered a transition between articulated figures (ragdolls) and death animations, and id's a master, so make use of it. Lets see some amazing, varying, rewarding death animations combined with ragdolls.

• "Live" ragdolls. When a demon gets hit in doom3 it plays a "hurt" animation, at which point the demon will flinch, growl, or do some other action to show annoyance at being hit with lead pellets (or plasma bursts). I would like to be able to shoot something/someone's arm - see his/it's arm fly back, and then use that momentum to wind up and throw a fireball at my face. Basically once again combining radgoll physics with animations - to be able to blend seamlessly. One of the things I hate above all in modern games is un-seamless animation transitions (more obvious in quake wars for example. There simply is NO transition between the run and sprint animation: one frame you're running, the next you're sprinting. Simple as that).

• Environment interaction. Not with you as the character, but with them as the demons. For them to make full use of the environment not only as an AI, but via animations as well (such as the Crysis walk cycle. I forget where it was shown in some tech demo, but the character automatically adjusted his walk animation depending on if he was walking uphill or downhill; the animation was never aligned to an imaginary "horizontal plane" as it is with doom3, regardless of whether or not the ground is horizontal (which it is not more often than it is).). This is also obvious in stairs: stepping on stairs that literally "dont exist" or perhaps just "sliding down" because the feet really don't step on the stairs, the animation is actually just transitioning downwards because the ground level has changed. To see something climb on barrels, walk on stairs, seamlessly climb up pillars and poles to get a better shot - that would be nice.

2. Music. An actual soundtrack worth listening to. And not the ambient rpg or rts stuff, an actual soundtrack. I remember a Quake 4 mod team being able to change the music tempo/beat to be more upstart when in battle, and more quiet when no enemies were around (the mod name had Requiem in it, if I remember correctly?). A similar adaption via music for doom 4 would be a very nice treat for the fans.

3. SMOOTH PLAY. This is more of an engine issue, but as we were talking about "the flaw" in quake wars concerning technology, I'd really hate to see this with id Tech 5. Improve the engine tick rate, record the animations at a higher framerate; it doesn't matter what it takes, just do it. Watching a 24fps animation while the rest of the game is running at 60 fps (or whatever it is) just takes away from the experience. It's also evident in d3/q4 multiplayer; especially in quake 4 multiplayer: no matter if you have forceambient on, because it will run even smoother, but it will make the jitteryness of the character animations even more obvious.

4. Unique and Creative Environments. Like doom 1. From different indoor phobos laboratories to computer rooms to outdoor moonish-lands, cliffs, indoor jungles (outdoor jungles too?), and hell. Hell is hell; you can do so much with it, why not push it to it's full potential as with the original doom episodes. Tracks through radioactive slime, lava, both outdoor and indoor, fire-fields (hell on earth offers huge potential for creative environments unto itself). The possibilities are endless. Lets see it done.
Not very specific for now, but I'll add more later. Lets here some wishes people

Yes, thank you Phobos! I was contemplating whether I'd start the thread, but fortunately you took care of that already.

Phobos wrote:

So what formula would work best for Doom 4? Survival/horror, Run'n'Gun, somewhere in between? Should it follow doom2, using id Tech 5, and be staged as Hell on Earth? Should it continue it's chapters on Mars? Should it embark on the original doom touch, and even go back to Phobos or Deimos? What can the game offer that is new and innovative - it's hard to be creative with so much having been done already. What can make the game fun?

Somewhere in between. What Doom 3 lacked that I loved about old school Doom is the constant satisfaction of killing. Call me sadistic, but my favorite part when I first played Doom was watching that zombie fly back, splurting blood. In Doom 3, the zombie will just fall over dead. A few cheap decals fly out of him, but there's no signs of physical trauma (like chunks of flesh missing).

As for the "survival horror" part, Doom 1 was already scary without the need of a thick ambience. Sure, it's nice to have all the voice echos and machine rumbles, but the suspensful music as you head through a quiet, dimmed area kept me on my toes (not dark, but dimmed). Phobos has the right idea with music that will change depending on the mood. It's something I always wished Doom 3 would do (actually, I could've done that with simple map scripting, but I don't know how to compose music

).

Phobos wrote:

Death animations. We've mastered a transition between articulated figures (ragdolls) and death animations, and id's a master, so make use of it. Lets see some amazing, varying, rewarding death animations combined with ragdolls.

Again, YES! I remember how the Baron of Hell used to have his intenstines spill out of his abdomen as he fell backwards. Wouldn't it be great to the same thing, but instead a lot messier? Instead of falling backwards, the giant beast could fall forward and make a huge "SPLAT!" sound as a large blood decal would spread all over the floor and even on the low walls.

"Live" ragdolls sounds like a good idea, too!

More things I'd like to see in Doom 4:

The return of the other monsters. You know who I mean. Pain Elementals. Arachnatrons. Spiderdemon Mastermind. The Baron of Hell.

There's only one Cyberdemon. I never understood why the Pinky Demon had to have cybernetic legs, or why the Lost Skulls had jetpacks. They're demons. Arachnatrons and Revenants aside, why do the original Doom 1 demons need cybernetic enhancements? The pinky demon should just be a big, snarling brute with an intimidating roar.

No more trites. 'Nuff said.

Better or more satisfying weapons. That was something I loved more about Quake 4 than Doom 3. The Q4 weapon sound effects were cooler and they worked better at long-range (even the shotgun). I want a plasma rifle that shoots very quick and leaves a beautiful muzzle flash. Doom 3's sounded and looked like something you'd find at a toy store.

Cyberdemons as killable, common enemies. Remember how frequently you'd encounter a Cyberdemon in Doom II? Why can't we have that happen in No. 4? It could be about 2/3 the size of the one in Doom 3, and play that awesome animation where its entire body explodes, leaving only a pair of bloody leg stumps (which can become physics objects).

Doom 4 is capable of so much. Let's hope that the leads id hires think alike to this community, and maybe some of our wishes will come true.

evilartist wrote:

Cyberdemons as killable, common enemies. Remember how frequently you'd encounter a Cyberdemon in Doom II? Why can't we have that happen in No. 4? It could be about 2/3 the size of the one in Doom 3, and play that awesome animation where its entire body explodes, leaving only a pair of bloody leg stumps (which can become physics objects).

Doom 4 is capable of so much. Let's hope that the leads id hires think alike to this community, and maybe some of our wishes will come true.

I can seriously just imagine encountering a cyberdemon in a large, open, earth landscape (perhaps the ruins of a huge city?) with a hellish sky. There is so much potential there it's amazing to even think about - and a cool cinematic intro would be neat too.

Phobos wrote:

3. SMOOTH PLAY. This is more of an engine issue, but as we were talking about "the flaw" in quake wars concerning technology, I'd really hate to see this with id Tech 5. Improve the engine tick rate, record the animations at a higher framerate; it doesn't matter what it takes, just do it. Watching a 24fps animation while the rest of the game is running at 60 fps (or whatever it is) just takes away from the experience. It's also evident in d3/q4 multiplayer; especially in quake 4 multiplayer: no matter if you have forceambient on, because it will run even smoother, but it will make the jitteryness of the character animations even more obvious.

That Quake Wars decision was by Splash Damage. They figured that players wanted to see the exact spot that the hitboxes are in order to be most accurate (Paul Wedgewood said this in an interview somewhere...). This required to get rid of interpolation (because apparently interpolation is kind of misleading when it comes hitbox movement in animations). John Carmack mentioned in his 2007 speech that he disproved of this decision, and also stated that there really isn't any way to fix it and that he doesn't recommend hacking on top of it anymore than it already has been hacked on. I guess it's kind of a messy system SD put together.

And before you reply to my post, Friar, let me just say that hitboxes is pretty much the way to go. Making the guns "more accurate" doesn't necessarily do anything. Especially when you WANT them to scatter. There are games (including Doom 3) that got rid of hitboxes, and competitive gamers and casual gamers alike shared their dislike of the system over hitboxes (me included). It just doesn't work as well.

Sorry to point you out Friar, but I've been meaning to share my thoughts on that. I know you said something about hitboxes a couple of times before, but I never decided to reply... Probably because I was lazy or something...

Also... I didn't notice any choppiness in Quake 4... I don't think they used animation blending like they did in Doom 3, but the animations looked smoother in Quake 4 than they did in Quake Wars I think... (And when I say animation blending, I'm talking about the blend between two different animations, not interpolation.)

Dinky wrote:

Also... I didn't notice any choppiness in Quake 4... I don't think they used animation blending like they did in Doom 3, but the animations looked smoother in Quake 4 than they did in Quake Wars I think... (And when I say animation blending, I'm talking about the blend between two different animations, not interpolation.)

I think the animations were nice, for example you could actually see someone switching weapons rather than just having a new weapon magically "appear" in their hands, but I was just talking about the actual frame-by-frame interpolation as a whole.

You can turn forceambient on, see everything in ultra-smooth play, at a very high framerate.

Bring 3 players on the screen and shoot a rocket at the ground between them with quad damage on, and they just "appear" on the opposite side of the room via concussion.

They move so fast that you don't actually "see" them fly through the air, they just appear. a few quick short frames later to have moved an extreme distance because of the blast. Hard to explain. Perhaps I should record a video of it.

Like I said in the other thread, I'm all for classic frags, no matter what the rating, no matter what the margin of market! I would hate to see Doom go soft in search of a wider audience, that would break my heart.
I'd really like to be able to blow an arm off, the thing keep comin'. Blow a foot off, the thing keep hobblin'. Blow a head off, the thing keep hobblin' around in circles after me, bleeding everywhere, gets lost and ends up tripping over some railing and into some lava for sizzles!
Weapon modding is also an idea I think could lend very well to Doom. We saw this with the Duct Tape-style mods of everyone wanting a flashlight on all their weapons. Unrealistic pigs, yet why not have a flashlight as some interchangable weapon-mod feature, along with scopes, silencers, glowy GUI ammo display (as in, player may not always want a glowing GUI on their weapons), etc. Choice and personalisation marks the games of the future, in my opinion.
Maybe more in the way of destructible environments. For some reason, maybe it was a rumour I read up on, I expected to see a lot of destructible environment and far more moveables/physics in Doom3. If you shoot a rocket at a wall, not only particles fluff out at you, but other things should happen. Wall gets more broken somehow (can be FX tricks, doesn't need to be "atomic"), lights go out (another thing I expected out of Doom3), moveables go flying everywhere. To be honest, the explosions in Doom3 felt really lifeless, the rocket launcher felt like something that makes enemies spring into the air with a fluffy particle effect. It lacked that intensity from the original DOOMs, despite those also being just sprites, it managed to capture an intensity and harmfulness for its time. Meaning a new rocket launcher for a new Doom should need to have far more attention paid to recapture that same feeling of harm, that this weapon is a killer, not a fluffy particle creator.
And finally, unlike the original DOOMs, I would like to play it and not be THE ONLY human left alive in the game. Doom3, in parts, was leading toward a more interesting experience where you race around a corner and instead of ghoulies, there's some petrified scientist panting at you. That was cool. Especially if it's going to be set on Earth, it would be great if you could pick up some co-op NPCs along the way, here and there, to help you fight. Maybe you need to protect them for a certain period so that they may help you fulfill "objectives" a little later. It doesn't sound like traditional DOOM but it's something I'd personally enjoy seeing, in any game really. To save some innocent people instead of just trying to single-handedly whipe out demons and zombies from hell. Show people that DOOM isn't all about killing monsters, you might help a little old granny across the road too!

My points:

- no more imps spawning behind me whenever I pick up a health pack
- serious rebalancing of "imp enemies" in favour of non-melee enemies
- remember - letting something jump in your face every time you open a door doesn't necessarily gain you the Oscar of the best Thriller and Suspense movie - you can do better, we know it and you know it best.
- no more having to read pda's or listening to sound files every 3.25 minutes, this breaks the pace and you have to keep a log for the billion of key pads to open.
- much more physics interaction (ragdoll rather than burnaway, blended impact animations with ragdolls, build some walls out of bricks rather than a brush...)
- do not try to make it a cinematic experience unless you want to direct a movie, if you try to create a game than focus on gameplay mechanics, AI, Character design...
- don't remind me of my mortality with a stamina bar
- reloading is fine, eventually faster reloading is even "finer"
- introduce a human fraction collaborating and joining team with whatever enemy you decide to introduce, has worked in almost all movies and games. This adds welcome variety for players.
- think about replay value (first Deus Ex is a good example)
- if you aim for a teen rating, than stay clear of excessively displayed graphical violence, but keep the suspense and atmosphere up.

And please, do not make the console versions close platform - allow the subsequent addition of custom maps, mods...
Speaking of custom content, please do not think providing players with the tools and the SDK is a waste of time.

Phobos wrote:

Dinky wrote:

Also... I didn't notice any choppiness in Quake 4... I don't think they used animation blending like they did in Doom 3, but the animations looked smoother in Quake 4 than they did in Quake Wars I think... (And when I say animation blending, I'm talking about the blend between two different animations, not interpolation.)

I think the animations were nice, for example you could actually see someone switching weapons rather than just having a new weapon magically "appear" in their hands, but I was just talking about the actual frame-by-frame interpolation as a whole.

You can turn forceambient on, see everything in ultra-smooth play, at a very high framerate.

Bring 3 players on the screen and shoot a rocket at the ground between them with quad damage on, and they just "appear" on the opposite side of the room via concussion.

They move so fast that you don't actually "see" them fly through the air, they just appear. a few quick short frames later to have moved an extreme distance because of the blast. Hard to explain. Perhaps I should record a video of it.

No, I know what you meant.

But I shot people with rockets all the time... They never just appeared on the other side of the room... And I played competitively with force ambient... Your description sounds like someone with a computer that runs at 2 fps or some serious lag online.

I never had any problems with animations in Q4. And I'm left a little puzzled about what you really mean...

For me? More of the same in a better graphics engine, I think that's all that I ask. :mrgreen: