Seriously, I LOVED this new Doom. Best FPS I've played since Half-Life 2. So polished, and straight up FUN. Incredible level design, rewarding secrets for the min/max people, plenty of player upgrades for the role playing people, and copious amounts of straight insane combat for the action crowd. As far as I'm concerned, this game is perfect. Multiplayer is a different discussion.
Definitely a highlight of 2016. I haven't played a more unapologetically "gamey" video game in a long time. Case in point being the glory kills. Why does breaking off a demon's arm and beating it across the face give you health and/or ammo? Who cares! It looks great, it plays smoothly, and it's just fun.
I specifically remember an instance where Doomguy needs to shut down some power conduit. The doctor on the radio specifies that you only need to shut it down temporarily and that it can solve the world's energy crisis (by harvesting the energy of Hell). Without a moment's hesitation the Doom marine just destroys the power conduit.
> I haven't played a more unapologetically "gamey" video game in a long time.
I agree. There's games like Rocket League (which is amazing), but that's a silly concept from the start. But you rarely see "hardcore" or dark games that are willing to admit that they are indeed a video game.
I love the mix between high quality, photorealistic graphics for the majority of things, and then the "gamey" elements, like glowing armor packs just floating and spinning in mid-air. Also other elements like the pre-recorded voice for the security system having dialogue for "Demon Invasion".
It's got a perfect balance of just campy enough to be hilarious, but without turning the game into a joke. Like Cabin In The Woods or something.
I've only played the demo so far, but I like that the first thing we learn about Doomguy is that he has no patience for questgivers. When you pick up your armor in the second room, a comm screen comes on and says "Hello. I'm Dr. [whatever], the director of this facility, and I think that we can work together for our mutual benefit--" Then Doomguy rips the comm screen off its mount, throws it against a wall, and moves on.
I also like that, as you say, it doesn't matter why glory-killing demons buffs you, but some valiant writer explained it anyway. (The database entry for the armor says that it's shot through with channels that absorb and repurpose demonic energy, or something.) I really appreciate it when someone actually takes the time to justify game mechanics like that; it helps with the whole suspension-of-disbelief thing for me.
I haven't played the new Doom yet, but having recently watched the sequel to "Indie Game: The Movie", is the destruction of the comm screen related to the hate in the movie of current games starting out with so much hand-holding and obligatory tutorials that break the immersion and thwart the joy of discovery? If so, gotta love the commentary...
I liked this one a lot--it was much more reflective, and a lot of it was really an examination of how social media and gaming culture affect the creators both negatively and positively. For instance, rather than just touch on the soundbite part of Phil Fish flippantly saying "Japanese games just suck!" in a panel discussion, they pull back and show a much more thoughtful response from Jonathan Blow on the differences between versions of Zelda, and how now games feel obligated to hold your hands, remove discovery, keep you on the rails. Similarly, how criticism affected Edmund McMillen, creator of Super Meat Boy.
The best parts, though, are the more atmospheric elements: the workstations and tools, the thought processes behind game mechanics, and the deeper themes and commentary built into games.
The original "Indie Game" was much more of a linear storyline following the developers, and this one isn't like that.
Just got done watching this, it was painful. Embarrassing behavior by a lot of them, during that Zelda talk scene.Seriously around 15 minutes, of drawn out scenes, with Edmund ranting? Felt like all of the stuff left on the cutting room floor, slapped together to cash in on the success of the first one. Which I thoroughly enjoyed. To each their own I guess.
Everyone was concerned about how the glory kills would break game momentum, and they implemented so well, that it's actually completely fluid. So good.
I remember that scene, specifically because 'Doomguy' PAUSES. He listens to find out WHY they're asking for a cleaner shutdown, maybe there's a good reason. Oh, just mining more energy from hell? Not good enough, CRUSH.
> I haven't played a more unapologetically "gamey" video game in a long time.
Japan has way more of those on a very regular basis. Maybe because consoles and handhelds are more popular there, not to mention actual coin-op arcades still thriving there.
Maybe it's something about the keyboard + mouse combo on PCs that doesn't really lend itself well to "gamey video games", but it's probably more to do with games and developers taking themselves too seriously in the West.
It's also probably the most finely tuned high performance game out there. The frame rates it gets on even modest hardware are just incredible.
It's a complete 180 from Doom 3. I've tried to play Doom 3 a handful of times in the last decade. I never once got to shoot anything because I didn't have the attention span to get through the 30 minute intro/story/tutorial.
I played it on 1080p to get buttery smooth performance on my 980, but turning on Vulkan got me INSANE performance at 1440p. Doom is really a testament to what is possible with todays hardware when proper engineering is applied to game development.
I love a good story in a game. Most of my favorite games, save multiplayer only ones such as Battlefield, are story-heavy.
Sometimes you just want to shoot demons because they are demons. There is story in Doom but it rarely prevents you from continuing to send demons back to hell for more than a few moments. There's more in the menus but those can be read at your leisure.
Yeah I was worried at first when the bad guys started talking, but then the marine ripped the console off the wall in mid-sentence and I realized the developers were just messing with me.
If you just want to shoot stuff and ain't got time for nothin. Let me recommend Devil Daggers. It's 5 bucks on Steam and tremendously fun if you enjoy a harsh challenge. This guy [1] is the world record holder for surviving 14 minutes. My record is more like 3... After 20+ hours of 2 minutes sessions...
Whoa, that game is fascinating. It's like the compressed all of the mechanics of the whole original Doom skill progression into 5 minutes, replace the fiction of "different" weapons with regularized weapon stat bumps, and then everything up to 11 in an empty arena.
Also, for MP, take a look at Robot Roller-Derby Disco Dodgeball. It's a content-heavy instagib multiplayer arena shooter with an emphasis on score (in some modes), and some interesting takes on attack, defense, and movement.
If you're up for some traditional Arena FPS, take a look at Reflex, Xonotic, and UT4. Or just boot up Quake 3 (or Quake Live) again.
I almost forgot Half-Life Deathmatch. That's still an absolute blast to play.
DOOM 2016 is indeed a super fun game. It is exactly what I wanted it to be as a DOOM game. Pretty shallow (in a good way) with stunning visuals and no slow down.
Overwatch is also a superb FPS although very different.
2016 has been a good year for fans of FPS :)
Other than Uncharted 4 the only games I have played recently are DOOM, Overwatch and of course Rocket League (which is by far my favourite game in the past few years, it is just so much damn fun).
Damn man, I'm halfway through Uncharted 4 right now. It's going to take me about three times as long to finish that game, because I spend half the time looking at the panoramas. Mind blowingly beautiful art design.
I know what you mean. Uncharted 4 is breathtaking. People love to rip on console games but just look at Uncharted 4. It is stunning. What really blew me away when I first played it was the face animations. You can actually see the fatty tissue on the faces move. The artists and programmers at Naughty Dog are wizards.
Yeh motion capture is big bucks, and Naughty Dog has the backing to do it. I've heard $100,000 per face, just to get them mapped. They are by far the elite when it comes to console developers. Everything they make is amazing. The Last of Us 2 on PS4 needs to happen.
But some of the trees in certain levels are completely 2D bitmaps even in very near to the player areas. (eg the level after you emerge with the submarine to the surface) That is the only thing that could have been done better. And Tomb Raider 2013 and Tomb Raider 2016 already copied Uncharted gameplay in a very carbon copy way, but added some innovations. So if there will ever be a Uncharted 5, it will be harder than before without competition.
Tomb Raider can copy the gameplay aspects, but it doesn't have the story and characters everyone is invested in. The climbing/jumping is secondary to that in my experience, and it's not even that great to begin with. The gunplay is another sour point in my opinion. But the world it all lives in, is the reason we're playing it.
I didn't get into Overwatch. I'm kind of a jerk, and I don't have a mic so asymetric multiplayer doesn't work super well for me. I'm holding out for Quake: Champions to scratch that itch, but it'll probably be window-only anyways (curse you Carmack, Bethesda, Zenimax, and anybody else who is against gaming on Linux (but I'll only curse Carmack softly: he's done to much to attract that much ire from me)). For now, Xonotic and Quake do very well for that.
I want to be playing DOOM, but I haven't been able to yet: maybe when I get a PS4, or when I go to college, and don't have my mother breathing down my neck about playing M-Rated games.
Yes the biggest drawback to DOOM is the gore. The gameplay is superb though.
I would love to see a non-gore FPS using the id Tech 6 engine. What I love about Overwatch is the art style. The cartoon design and lack of gore makes it much more accessible IMHO.
I don't have a problem with gore at all but sometimes I just want to frag without a million litres of blood going everywhere :)
Many older games barely have any blood effects at all. Look at Quake, and Half-Life: sure, there was blood, but not nearly so much.
If you want some less gory fragging, might I reccomend Robot Roller-Derby Disco Dodgeball? I swear I'm not making this up: It's a dodgeball-themed instagib arena FPS with an interesting weapon mechanic, as well as an interesting take on movement. I'd say it's worth checking out.
For some more traditional quake-style fragging, I'd check out Xonotic. It started out as a Nexuiz fork, but has grown far beyond its predecessor. Think Quake's movement, but with an extended weapon arsenal akin to UT in feel (largely due to having alt-fires, although a few weapons directly copy either Quake or UT), and a few tweaks of its own (you can hold space to automatically bunnyhop, dramatically lowering the skill floor, but keeping the ceiling relatively high). There's also a ton of maps, and quite a few gamemodes. And it's free. Just check out the beginners guide first. You'll be glad you did.
Or, if you're more into CPMA, and want some strafe-jumping-bunny-hopping action, go grab Reflex. It's a continuation of CPMA/OSP from some of the original developers. If you care, you already know the drill.
Also on the FPS radar, Warsow (its motto might as well be "you suck and that's okay," and it's got a playerbase that's arguably even more liable to pound you into a pulp than the above. But it is free), the UT4 beta (I've... heard it's good? Never been much for UT though. But it's free), Lawbreakers (it's kinda like Overwatch, but it's made by cliffyb's team, and it looks more arena fps inspired. Watch for it on store shelves in the next few years), A Fistful of Frags (A western themed FPS that really feels western: you can't just fire off your weapon constantly: every bullet is precious because reloads are slow, and if you're moving, you can kiss any chance of hitting anything goodbye, but if you stand still, you're a target. And it's free on steam), and Cube 2: Sauerbraten (it's coming om a decade old now, but it still feels fun. It also feels more like, say Half-Life than Quake (figure out the expansive map, use it to your advantage, get to a vantage point, and kill 'em before they know what hit 'em). Did I mention it's free?).
Or just boot up your favorite Quake game that isn't Quake 4. Or load up Half-Life. The deathmatch hasn't stopped being good as those games got older.
Don't need a mic to play Overwatch, depending on how far you intend to get. Having a mic is just one part of your success which is explained by many independent variables (class knowledge, map knowledge, reflexes, aiming, awareness, ...).
It will be a long time (very likely longer than you'll play the game anyway) before you can say "There is nothing more I can do. I am at the bottleneck of my performance, and the only possible way I can improve is by getting a mic so I can speak instead of just listening to callouts and using the callout buttons in game." You probably won't even reach a point where that is the most impactful change you can make.
In fact, if you're a jerk, then not having a mic might be improving your success due to being less toxic and not demoralizing the team ;)
Then main reaper or one of the other more solo characters. People say that overwatch is heavily based on players switching, but so far having a balanced team has proved to be more important than one person constantly switching to a hard counter of an enemy hero. To say nothing of heroes like Mei, who can only be countered by a better Mei.
Still waiting for a good sale on Doom but a recent shooter that I really enjoyed is "Wolfenstein: The New Order". It's quite fast paced and the weapons really feel great.
I haven't played it yet, but I really enjoyed the original Doom, and I am encouraged by how much of the original design philosphy stayed intact in the new installment (medkits+glory kills encourage you to stay on the on the offensive and on the move, minimal hitscan weaponry and smart enemy design discourage just staying in cover, keys and secret powerups encourage exploration, and there's still Carmack's story mentality ("story in a game is like story in a porn movie - it's expected to be there, but it's not that important"))
OTOH, given that I already have the original doom, is the new one really worth it? I mean, it's good, but it's not exactly going to beat the original at it's own game...
Seriously, even the doom 1 automap is there, even the hotkey is the same. (Also, same rules: demons don't respawn, so if you saw that glowing armour poweup in some crazy ledge, you have "infinite" time running around the map like a headless chickeb trying to figure how wtf to get there)
I had the same reservations as you, especially after DOOM 3. But DOOM 2016 feels like an updated version of 90ies DOOM I grew up with. It is indeed perfect (in single player mode) and evokes the same feelings I had as a kid.
It's a shame it's DRMed with Denuvo trash, and doesn't work in Wine because of that (of course they could release it for Linux and DRM-free to begin with, but it's probably too much to expect from today's Bethesda / id).
I'd rather wait for Shadow Warrior 2 (upcoming native DRM-free Linux release).
Denuvo copy protection & DRM is the successor of SecoROM is from Sony DADC Austria (now a separate company, but you get the idea). Sony DADC is also the company who presses the DVD and BlueRay disks for most other companies.
I avoid it as there are rumours it is trashing your SSD/disk with many many littles writes. And the infamous Sony root kit... And all SecoROM games are broken on newer Windows versions - the gamers "love" that. Everyone should avoid to buy titles with Denuvo and it will go away by itself - as it worked with DRM music, nowadays we have non-DRM MP3 music, that's great and he end consumer won.
Shit, I wish I had read this before I bought a copy 30 seconds ago. Now I have to spend my weekend digging through my closet for a copy of windows and a spare hard drive.
Ah. You are indeed correct. However, Wine is actively improving this (it doesn't crash immidiately now in the latest builds of wine, although it doesn't work either), and with any luck we'll get the game within the decade. Not exactly encouraging, but we ought to get a fix eventually.
Personally I'm not interested in Wine improving DRM support. So I don't mind the fact that the game is failing there because of DRM even if I don't like that the game doesn't work in general. The shame is the fact of DRM usage, not that Wine doesn't support it.
More likely though, Denuvo will simply be broken for good (it's already happening), and versions with DRM removed will surface.
Yeah, but I'd rather not play the game illegally, if possible. As bad as it may be, the DRM is the dev's choice...
You know, I was going to finish that sentance, and then I remembered what DRM is, and what it does. In short, I came to my senses. Somebody should crack it ASAP.
Luckily I don't own it, since it's unplayable for me anyway and I'm only buying DRM-free games. Just commenting on reports of those who tried to run it in Wine (expecting it to work because it's using Vulkan, and Wine already supports Windows Vulkan), and failed because of DRM.
No, I actually wouldn't buy a DVD which I cannot play on my DVD player.
Whether that's because of retarded use of DRM or because I apparently chose the wrong DVD player for $MEGACORP to even know that I exist, is completely irrelevant.
As someone who's lived in both spaces(GameDev and Phone UI/UX engine development) there's certainly similarities but there's also some pretty stark differences.
For instance you're given no guarantees for execution time on a phone. That slice of time that Sony/MS takes for their overlay that's mandated to no less than x% of a frame? Doesn't exist on Android/iOS. The OS is welcome to wake up some background process(or another app on Android) and steal away one of your cores.
From a development side you just don't have the same resources to dedicate to performance on phone development that you get in gamedev. Combined with a culture that doesn't value performance as much(hello Java) that's why you see different results. Google/Apple is targeting the guy in his garage who wants to put out something in ~3 months. Rarely do you see the development times that games have and that is where the divergence happens.
Another difference (when it comes to games programming) is that Android phones in particular are incredibly varied, and the GPU drivers are often really bad so moderately non-trivial code can easily crash the whole phone. The upshot is that you have to code very carefully to a small subset of OpenGL ES, which limits the clever stuff you can do do improve performance.
For example, trying to share your GL context across multiple threads is a good way to crash or hang your Android app, even though in principle it's supposed to work.
Windows hardware is also very varied, but it seems like desktop Direct3D drivers are relatively good compared to mobile GL drivers. (OpenGL drivers, unfortunately, are also really bad on desktop.)
Reductive and ridiculous. Games frequently have smaller languages (like Lua and Scheme) embedded inside them for scripting purposes. There is no shortage of game mods.
If you use Nvidia Nsight you can see this exact same stuff happening every frame. Pretty nice tool to use if you ever wonder whats going on in your gpu every frame. We use it frequently for our simulation work.
I never said anything in the article was wrong. I liked the article. The 'actually' part was just a bad habit typo I hadn't noticed until right now so I fixed it ;-)
I wonder if he was able to do this analysis with the original binary, or that he used the very recent (2 days ago) crack that removes the denuvo "anti-tamper" system.
I've only heard about it in the last few years. It seems like a very cheap, but very effective hack. The way the FOV/bokeh works is very nice, and a similar technique should be used for water refractions (those have been bugging me for over 10 years).
Actually, this was sort of a thing already back in the 90s...
There is an alpha of Duke Nukem 3D (LameDuke) which had some screen space reflections. As I recall, the game crashed when you look up or down on the reflections, likely because of a pixel read beyond screen boundaries.
IIRC, and I don't know if it's the same with this alpha version, but I remember messing around in a level editor for the original Duke Nukem 3D, and mirrors were done simply by having an adjacent room with mirrored geometry :)
(and, I assume marking the wall between as a mirror so it knows to also render the dynamic objects mirrored--but I don't know for sure, I was quite young and didn't have a lot of success with this level editor because I didn't understand it fully)
Those are not screen space reflections. For one, they are impossible to do without a z-buffer (which that game did not have), not to mention it would be an extremely stupid idea to do such an expensive computation for a flat mirror.
I'm a noob regarding 3D engines/hardware and have a question: Why haven't we moved engines to the 3D hardware?
Like, why can't we have a high-level engine running on the GPU itself, updated through drivers, and just feed it a monolithic file containing the game level's entire geometry, for example?
So that developers can say, here's the world, here's the textures, here is the models for monster A, monster B..and then just update each model's location and the camera position every frame?
We do upload everything, when it fits and makes sense. But with streaming and level of details - you dont waste hardware on invisible or barely visible stuff, so the visible stuff can get more details.Of course you can hit bandwidth limit or maintaining what's visible can use too much cpu, so it is a tradeoff. But usually opimum is not "just gpu".
GPU is bad at many tasks, has no direct access to disk, way less memory, you would have to build cpu in, and add interfaces to network, disk, sound, input devices. And why? The tech is already factored even between engines - libraries exist. The part of engine that benefit from being on GPU is uploaded there already just not in factory,but when you start a game, so it is customizable, so you can run new engine on old card.
The id tech5 engine for rage was already very impressive and ran extremely well on my mediocre machine, while still looking beautiful. Felt like my computer suddenly was twice as capable.
I wonder why the article mentions this: "Unlike most Windows games released these days, DOOM doesn’t use Direct3D.".
Implementing Direct3d today seems a waste of development time to me and a useless self-restriction to a platform. Why would anyone do that? Is there a source that compares release titles of direct3d games vs opengl/vulkan on windows?
Most big time game dev targets consoles in addition to Windows. Each console has its own incompatible graphics API. When there is no business imperative to support PCs that don't run Windows, "useless self-restriction" is irrelevant.
From what I've heard, Direct3D (up to 11) and OpenGL work somewhat similarly, as will Vulkan and Direct3D 12. If a dev has already abstracted their engine to support a console (or two, or three), supporting another PC graphics API isn't that big of a deal, until driver bugs appear. Which they inevitably do; that's why new drivers appear suspiciously close to big game releases.
I thought I remembered reading how the 'new driver releases' appeared so that the manufacturers could ship their own case by case patches/optimizations for various games.
EG: Game X is telling us Y, but in reality algorithm Z produces the same results a lot faster, so use Z.
Yes, i somehow had the impression that ps4 used opengl, but they use some own cooked gl fork. So my point is more about pc games i guess, since opengl runs on all major oses. The only reason for d3d seems to be the xbox.
It doesn't have anything to do with DX either. It's a custom low-level API that's an evolution of the PS3's libGCM. As I said, it's closest counterparts on PC would be Vulkan or D3D12.
What do you mean by "implementing Direct3D"? Vulkan and OpenGL expose very similar programming models at roughly the same abstraction level.
If your question is "why use D3D [or insert other proprietary API] over platform-agnostic APIs", the reasons are many and varied. Better tooling, more mature drivers, more familiarity among team members, better support from the OS vendor, etc. That's not to say it's always the right decision, but I would never expect the quality of Vulkan or GL on Windows to be as high as D3D.
Vulkan is much more detailed and lowlevel than opengl.
You mean id tech6 would be better, more performant, more beautiful it it were rendered in d3d?
d3d is another api to learn for a restricted platform, whereas opengl can applied to all platforms, as a subset also on mobile. D3d really must be better about some larger factor to be a feasible choice today. It doesn't seem to be so (see this doom engine for example).
Vulkan is not available on PS4 and XboxOne which are the main targets for game development like it or not. This almost immediately rules out implementing a Vulkan graphics back-end because when you support XboxOne you are already using a version of Direct3D-12 so why bother with Vulkan if you can modify your existing XboxOne Direct3D-12 implementation for PC with a lot less effort. On top of that, support from both Microsoft and GPU vendors will be better for Direct3D-12 than it will be for Vulkan. Linux sales are so small it's not worth implementing another graphics back-end for.
That's how it is and will be as long as Microsoft shares their Direct3D implementation between their platforms (Xbox and PC).
There will always be exceptions but they are exceedingly rare and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. Vulkan has a future but I expect it to be more of a mobile focused one.
Doesn't this kind of breakdown make the explanation more complicated? Maybe it's my idiotic brain but I think of everything in terms of that one scene and can't extrapolate the Information to various scenarios.
I'm thinking the target audience is other game developers.
Most modern game engines have most of the features they talk about (the article really good about linking to sources), but those pieces are organized in a different manner so you end up with different restrictions, changes in performance, or scalability to different hardware / scenarios.
The novel thing here is how they put together the pieces, not the pieces themselves. Most cutting edge articles are about a specific technique, so it's really good to see how it all fits together in an article like this.
Oh wow, I had no idea id had another hit on their hands. I just finished reading "Masters of Doom" and was craving some of the classic doom gaming experience that I had growing up.
