Limited Run Games

[Code Monkey | 2,006]

1 hour ago, avatar! said:

Curious how Doom holds up today? I was never into FPS games, although I played a little bit of Doom years and years ago... including a very special VR edition of Doom (but that's a different story

Anyway, can anyone comment on whether Doom I, II, and especially III would still be fun today for someone that's not a big FPS player?

Also, I'm curious how many of these they will sell across platforms? I venture to guess somewhere between 10,000-100,000 order of magnitude.

I played Doom 1 and 2 extensively in the 1990s but had never played Doom 3 until last year. I honestly felt if someone had told me that was Doom Eternal and I paid $80 for it, I would have been happy. It's an amazing game. 

[Tanooki | 4,932]

I'd say the old duo of Doom and the sequel definitely hold up very well.  Thankfully not being mouse using crazy full 3D look everywhere, it leaves a bit more freedom(eh?) to actually enjoy the scope of what is before you a bit more.  You aim towards the target, if it's higher or lower it'll nail it auto aiming towards the beasties.  YOU can be entirely slow, methodical, tactical more often than not, or if you're comfy with it, run in like a speed running idiots with guns blazing and do fine if you have the ammo totals to back it up.  Sadly the modern 5 years of them use that as the only way backed with spamming fuel+chainsaw to get the drops needed to keep it up which sucks (aka: glory kills.)

There are a lot of chapters with many missions in each.  It slowly ramps the challenge up on any difficulty so you don't get destroyed, but it's not easy either, just balanced.  D3 is crap though, gameplay wise, visually nice though.  It's not so much doom but an endless pop scare.  Even after you truly clear an area just behind you, the game not too long in will just start to progressively more and more star trek beam in imps to shoot you in the back.  It gets beyond tiring into downright infuriatingly obnoxious.

[Dr. Morbis | 2,088]

1 hour ago, Tanooki said:

You aim towards the target, if it's higher or lower it'll nail it auto aiming towards the beasties.

It doesn't do any height adjustment auto-aiming; what's happening is that Doom is not a 3D game - it's actually a 2D game in disguise - so when you aim at a monster higher than you, he's not really higher than you since all characters are actually on a 2D plane.  Think of Doom as like the Matrix, only instead of, "there is no spoon," it's, "there is no altitude."

Edited April 4, 2021 by Dr. Morbis

[Sumez | 2,947]

That's only really partially true. It might be completely true for hitscan weapons like a shotgun, but objects obviously still have an Y coordinate used to at least display their "sprite", and for something like rockets you can easily see it actively moving up or down to adjust for the height of the target it assumes you're aiming for.
This can be relevant if they are standing on a raised wall that you would have hit had the projectile not been auto-aimed, and if you are close enough, it'll still just hit the wall instead, as it can only adjust its trajectory so much.

Game working like a 2D game is true in the sense that if you are within the coordinates of any room/platform, you're treated as standing on the floor of that room (or falling towards it), since rooms cannot overlap eachother. So essentially the map is 2D'ish, but objects still have 3D coordinates.

Edited April 4, 2021 by Sumez

[Californication | 1,477]

I was kind of chewing on what Dr. Morbis had said yesterday, but what Sumez said seems more accurate. I'd just like to add that when you shoot at an enemy on a higher plane in Doom, sometimes it takes a shot or two for the "aim to adjust." 

I think Dr. Morbis, theory is more closely aligned with something like Smash Tv, where the stuff in the "back of the room" is smaller and when you rotate your shots they always go to the spot on the 2D plane without delay.

 

Edited April 4, 2021 by Californication

[LeatherRebel5150 | 1,056]

 

[Sumez | 2,947]

Such a silly headline. That guy is just paraphrasing stuff he's heard around, and obviously doesn't have any real definitions to cling to, and hasn't been working with the actual code behind that game.  Doom has a lot of complex depth mapping going on to create the 3D effect, which was something that really made it stand out at the time. Read all about it here: 
https://soulsphere.org/apocrypha/bsp/
or here:
https://doom.fandom.com/wiki/Doom_rendering_engine

Yeah, lots of stuff in the engine works on a 2D plane, but saying the game "isn't 3D" is just looking for clickbait. It's all about projecting stuff to give the illusion of 3D space, and that's true for any 3D video game, from Battlezone (1980) or I, Robot (1983) to Cyberpunk 2077 (2077). Where you want to draw the line for what constitutes "real" 3D is just an arbitrary personal definition.

Doom 1 projects walls and floors into a 3D perspective to give an indication of their size, angle and distance in a 3D space. Even if it's much simpler in comparison, that's exactly what Quake does too, it just doesn't store the level data as fully rotatable 3D models. It's more similar to comparing a game with simple 16x16 tile based maps (like Super Mario Bros.) to fully detailed vector or pixel maps like Worms or Limbo. All 2D games.

[guitarzombie | 924]

Doom will make you a man.  Play it.

 

I got the big $130 bundle for switch.

[Tanooki | 4,932]

10 hours ago, Dr. Morbis said:

It doesn't do any height adjustment auto-aiming; what's happening is that Doom is not a 3D game - it's actually a 2D game in disguise - so when you aim at a monster higher than you, he's not really higher than you since all characters are actually on a 2D plane.  Think of Doom as like the Matrix, only instead of, "there is no spoon," it's, "there is no altitude."

I know I was just trying to simplify it relating to your usual 3D shooter is all trying to make it sound like a catch all.  I know it's technically flat.  But like others said since I was here last, you can miss, you need to adjust, but the game will finally catch something higher/lower than your line of sight.

Mods since, such as zdoom, etc they do allow for mouse aim and you can blast them on the first hit as clean as playing quake.

[Tanooki | 4,932]

And speaking of it, how much you want to bet the odds are LRG within the year announces Retromania Wrestling as a release game for the Switch etc on physical media?

Spiritual sequel to the old arcade wrestlefest which people call by far the best of the era.  Seemingly loved by many who have learned to figure out the mechanics so far, lots of modes and fun stuff to do, many homage if not straight up allowed wrestlers from the old era to current.

[O.G. CIB | 415]

20 minutes ago, Tanooki said:

And speaking of it, how much you want to bet the odds are LRG within the year announces Retromania Wrestling as a release game for the Switch etc on physical media?

Spiritual sequel to the old arcade wrestlefest which people call by far the best of the era.  Seemingly loved by many who have learned to figure out the mechanics so far, lots of modes and fun stuff to do, many homage if not straight up allowed wrestlers from the old era to current.

They already have that game signed if I recall correctly. That’s a done deal 

[TDIRunner | 2,734]

Doom, Doom 2 and Final Doom absolutely hold up today, no question.  The speed running and moding communities are quite large as well.  It's the type of game that will never get old.  

[Tanooki | 4,932]

On 4/4/2021 at 11:20 AM, Mr. CIB said:

They already have that game signed if I recall correctly. That’s a done deal 

I wrote them about it, it is, and it's coming this year, but wasn't clearer when.  Also I had inquired what happened to the PC one, seems they forcefully removed the Steam version due to some critical damaging bug to the game, it will return once squashed.

[AdamW | 713]

On 4/3/2021 at 9:25 PM, Dr. Morbis said:

It doesn't do any height adjustment auto-aiming; what's happening is that Doom is not a 3D game - it's actually a 2D game in disguise - so when you aim at a monster higher than you, he's not really higher than you since all characters are actually on a 2D plane.  Think of Doom as like the Matrix, only instead of, "there is no spoon," it's, "there is no altitude."

This isn't really true. Doom understands height fine. Watch what happens when an enemy up high fires a projectile weapon at you (e.g. an imp) or you fire a rocket at it. It travels correctly from high to low. If you change your height while it's in flight it can pass above or below you.

People misunderstand the limitations of the Doom engine. It *does* have a concept of height. What it can't do is have stacked level geometry, minus a few very cute tricks you can do to fake a bridge.

The height-auto-aiming thing is not "because it's a 2D engine and doesn't understand height at all" but "because it doesn't have mouselook" (i.e. the ability to point your view up or down), which I think was either because it was too taxing for PCs of the time or because id thought it'd be too confusing/difficult for players, I honestly forget which it was. The basic engine is capable of supporting it quite easily, though, many source ports add it as an optional feature.

Edited April 6, 2021 by AdamW

[Sumez | 2,947]

The default rendering engine doesn't really support changing the angle to look up/down in that way, hence mouselook probably wouldn't work well. Also, keep in mind using the mouse to aim up and down wasn't a standard for FPS games at the time, unless you count stuff like Star Wars Arcade. Even using the mouse to look left or right wasn't the expected default scheme. The game just auto aims because it's what makes sense for the gameplay.  

Duke Nukem 3D has mouse look and renders the world in a similar way, and you can easily see the perspective distorting when you look up and down.

Edited April 7, 2021 by Sumez

[MiamiSlice | 3,089]

Blasphemous is getting a retail release. 

Cue the whining!

(not me though, I sold both my copies already... didn't actually want this game to begin with, it's yucky)

[Californication | 1,477]

46 minutes ago, MiamiSlice said:

Blasphemous is getting a retail release. 

Cue the whining!

(not me though, I sold both my copies already... didn't actually want this game to begin with, it's yucky)

Do you know if that is Switch only?

[Californication | 1,477]

8 hours ago, Sumez said:

The default rendering engine doesn't really support changing the angle to look up/down in that way, hence mouselook probably wouldn't work well. Also, keep in mind using the mouse to aim up and down wasn't a standard for FPS games at the time, unless you count stuff like Star Wars Arcade. Even using the mouse to look left or right wasn't the expected default scheme. The game just auto aims because it's what makes sense for the gameplay.  

Duke Nukem 3D has mouse look and renders the world in a similar way, and you can easily see the perspective distorting when you look up and down.

Star Wars Dark Forces had look up and down on the PS1, don't think that was true in the PC version.

[MiamiSlice | 3,089]

25 minutes ago, Californication said:

Do you know if that is Switch only?

Lol. It’s Switch, PS4, Xbox One.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,520]

27 minutes ago, Californication said:

didn't actually want this game to begin with, it's yucky

I revel in yucky 

[Sumez | 2,947]

LRG are doing Dangun Feveron! I think that's the last of the current M2 ShotTriggers releases to get a physical run?

Of course, they know what they can get away with charging for it , $45 for the base version, that's gotta be the most expensive LRG release so far?

[MiamiSlice | 3,089]

2 minutes ago, Sumez said:

LRG are doing Dangun Feveron! I think that's the last of the current M2 ShotTriggers releases to get a physical run?

Of course, they know what they can get away with charging for it , $45 for the base version, that's gotta be the most expensive LRG release so far?

Power Rangers was $60 I think 

[TDIRunner | 2,734]

9 minutes ago, Sumez said:

LRG are doing Dangun Feveron! I think that's the last of the current M2 ShotTriggers releases to get a physical run?

Of course, they know what they can get away with charging for it , $45 for the base version, that's gotta be the most expensive LRG release so far?

There have been several games that have been $60.  In some cases, they can't control the price of the game.  I'm not sure about this situation, but at $45, I'm guessing it has something to do with the agreement to publish the game.  

[TDIRunner | 2,734]

1 hour ago, Californication said:

Star Wars Dark Forces had look up and down on the PS1, don't think that was true in the PC version.

Yes, you could look up and down on the PC version.  That was considered a pretty big deal at the time.  

[TDIRunner | 2,734]

2 hours ago, MiamiSlice said:

Blasphemous is getting a retail release. 

Cue the whining!

 

Why?