This is a feature that recently appeared in the printed magazine, now available here
http://www.edge-online.com/magazine/remembering-doom-3

There are some nice follow-up comments - might be good for a few regs here to add to the mix with your own reflections and memories of this great game.

The brightest memory I have is when I got the game, played it for an hour or so... then I realized that this is it...this is the game... I was in the "sewers" level. I was thinking to myself: "jesus christ wtf is this shit I waited so long". I was stuck, frikkin bored and annoyed. The game was perfectly moddable, but gameplay was made by a retard. They sold a lot of copies back then, but now people will not buy their games so well from them anymore because ID has lost all the credibility.

Id has always been very good at pushing the technological envelope. That's the sole reason behind the original Doom's success. They pushed the envelope so far that nobody else could compete. Who else had a first person shooter with varied lighting, levels that didn't adhere to the boxy status quo, and hundreds of enemies on screen at once? The experience they offered was exclusive.

The problem is that as time has marched forward, they haven't been able to keep pace. They demoed normal mapping and stencil shadows back in 2001 but by the time Doom 3 went gold, everyone was using those techniques and it wasn't that big a deal. The game was a success no doubt, but it wasn't legendary.

Carmack can keep doing his graphics thing. He's good at that. But they need another guru to help them push the envelope in other directions. I think the next big thing is AI and procedural animation. Imagine what Doom 3 could have been if the characters weren't dictated by a bunch of canned animations. Imps could have crawled around on the ceiling all by themselves. That would have scared the shit out of people.

rich_is_bored wrote:

The problem is that as time has marched forward, they haven't been able to keep pace. They demoed normal mapping and stencil shadows back in 2001 but by the time Doom 3 went gold, everyone was using those techniques and it wasn't that big a deal. The game was a success no doubt, but it wasn't legendary.

True enough. It's a still a damn fine-looking game engine, imo, though.

rich_is_bored wrote:

Carmack can keep doing his graphics thing. He's good at that. But they need another guru to help them push the envelope in other directions. I think the next big thing is AI and procedural animation. Imagine what Doom 3 could have been if the characters weren't dictated by a bunch of canned animations. Imps could have crawled around on the ceiling all by themselves...

Still, with Doom4 on the way, who knows? Have id recruited new people for this? Here's hoping - although I know they like to their team small and tight. I absolutely agree with you that Carmack, whilst a genius with game engine technology, needs a 'foil' in the game design department; someone who can envision, develop and guide innovative game play and story development to compliment a stunning visual experience.

Dogstar wrote:

Still, with Doom4 on the way, who knows? Have id recruited new people for this? Here's hoping - although I know they like to their team small and tight. I absolutely agree with you that Carmack, whilst a genius with game engine technology, needs a 'foil' in the game design department; someone who can envision, develop and guide innovative game play and story development to compliment a stunning visual experience.

there have been hints. they have hired people to do specific tasks like john dean for AI gameplay. i remember in a RAGE interview that they want to expand AI and do different stuff like flocking behavior, flanking and other coordinated attacks.

matt hooper has stated that not only do they wish to push the graphics fidelity for RAGE, but he would like to push the "gameplay fidelity" as well.

we'll see. outside of graphics, i have not seen anything radically new in any RAGE media yet.

I only remember the introduction to the enemies and then the hell levels. Everything else was a mechanical blur. Yet I can still remember the entire levels from the original doom and many moments from them because they did a great job of making each one stand out from the others and kept the visuals different for each chapter.

It was a decent game and still great to mod for. In many ways the game felt like it was being held back from its true potential. Besides the graphics and enemy designs, everything else felt constrained and like they were playing it safe. Their titles since then have had the same feeling.

I agree with a lot of the criticism. I thought the early Mars levels were good, in a Half-Life sort of way, and the hell and cavern levels were also enjoyable, but most of the techbase stuff in between felt very mechanical. A monster would be introduced, and then done to death, the game felt heavily scripted and repetitive and there were too many imps and not enough pinky demons.

At times it felt as if I was playing through a "here is all the bits and pieces that made Doom so good" demonstration, let alone a techdemo, rather than being immersed. The problem for id Software was always the issue of catering for those who wanted old-school Doom gameplay vs. adding modern capabilities, and while graphics and sound wise it was nothing short of a masterpiece, for gameplay it fell short on both counts.

But still, it wasn't bad, it just could have been so much better than it was. And the Doom 3 mod community has recognised this over the years and produced many mods that, in my view, are significantly better than the original SP campaign.

What's amazing is, games have only just recently passed Doom 3's graphics.

Enpro was and still is amazing. Still holds up today 4 years later...

=NoMercy= wrote:

What's amazing is, games have only just recently passed Doom 3's graphics.

erm... no? IIRC, a lot of games surpassed D3's graphics in the same year, sure they may not have been for the PC (in which case. yes they have, because pc's arent really good at gaming with great games. Hell, i have a Gaming computer that can barely run doom 3...)

but what is amazing, is that even though doom 3 pretty much defunked ID's doom franchise (it was so promising), it still managed to influence so many games. Hell, i was reading (or watching, not sure) something on Dead Space; and they've stolen assets from the doom3 (well, assets as in gameplay items; PDA type things.) and there was something from Bioshock that was very doom 3 like, but hell if i can remember it.

Gmz1013 wrote:

but what is amazing, is that even though doom 3 pretty much defunked ID's doom franchise (it was so promising), it still managed to influence so many games.

WTF, why are still so many people talking as if Doom 3 was a bad game? It was id Softwares most commercially successful game, and we all wouldn´t be here on this board if Doom3 had such terrible gameplay. Of course it influenced many other games, because it is a classic.

Quote:

and there was something from Bioshock that was very doom 3 like, but hell if i can remember it.

The developers of Bioshock themselves announced that the atmosphere in their game will be like a mix between System Shock 2 and Doom 3.

i played the bioshock demo and thought... "why is this considered to be such a great game? its very similar to doom3!"

pbmax wrote:

why is this considered to be such a great game?

because...

pbmax wrote:

its very similar to doom3!

lol!

i mean the same critics that bashed d3 liked bioshock...

pbmax wrote:

lol!

i mean the same critics that bashed d3 liked bioshock...

Because they were stuck in an "OMG D3 sux HL2 4 teh winzz!!" mode.

The environment in D3 was freaking amazing. I found myself just looking around at... stuff. I think it was so subtly awesome that many people just walked right past it.

Tetzlaff wrote:

Gmz1013 wrote:

but what is amazing, is that even though doom 3 pretty much defunked ID's doom franchise (it was so promising), it still managed to influence so many games.

WTF, why are still so many people talking as if Doom 3 was a bad game? It was id Softwares most commercially successful game, and we all wouldn´t be here on this board if Doom3 had such terrible gameplay. Of course it influenced many other games, because it is a classic.

Well, I love Doom 3, but half of my friends hated it... well, actually, I should rephrase that, its not doom 3, its actually the engine (a bunch of my friends played doom3 and quake4, and hated them both because its was very limiting or something like that)

Gmz1013 wrote:

Well, I love Doom 3, but half of my friends hated it... well, actually, I should rephrase that, its not doom 3, its actually the engine (a bunch of my friends played doom3 and quake4, and hated them both because its was very limiting or something like that)

Well okay, but that makes even less sense. Though I also remember that some people weren´t able to grasp the concept of unified lightning and the leap in technology that comes with it, and only looked at texture resolution or something like that ("but the textures in the Unreal Engine 2 are way sharper! The detail in Doom3 comes only from FAKED bump maps!")...