[king karl]

PsychoGoatee, on 22 July 2017 - 09:49 PM, said:

Since we're talking about a new Duke game, I agree, plus Duke 3D happens to be my favorite in terms of level design. But for me Quake 1 is a bit of a masterclass in level design as well, and the encounters feel quite hectic so I don't see any downsides in anything Quake did myself. Actually I'll prefer that over the Serious Sam / Painkiller direction of tons and tons of enemies, which can be tedious to shoot for me. Though I agree a lot of FPS games these days have too few enemies, or ones that are too bullet-spongey.

that's a good point too, it's important to remember that the ability to have a huge number of enemies is not the same thing as the necessity to have a huge number of enemies. I would not want another horde mode shooter especially since serious sam 4 is coming anyways

[Forge]

I don't want a 20 hour game to be 16 hours of cut scenes.
If I want to experience a tedious, repetitive isometric linear shooter, I'll go play Zaxxon.

[MusicallyInspired]

Ahhh Zaxxon. Fond memories. I don't think I'd care to play it ever again, but those were fun days on the Tandy Coco 3.

[LkMax]

WARNING: incoming wall of text (replying to different people, playing catch up).

king karl, on 22 July 2017 - 10:16 AM, said:

I found it sorta flat empty and all the same looking

Doom 4 had a good variety of enviroments... I'd say between the red sands of Mars to the cold metal of UAC hallways, the glowing yellows of the foundry, green skies of the administration facility, rocky landscapes of Doom's Hell and snowy moutains of VEGA's facility, the enviromet variety was better than a lot of games I've played even though they had basically 2 regions to work with (the UAC and Hell). Doom's original first episode had levels much more alike to each other and Doom 3 is the worst offender on this front with almost no outside areas at all (which is a shame because I really liked those small sections with mars' blowing winds) and the Hell levels were very uninspired (something they only fixed on the BFG expansion).

Also it wasn't really flat, I kept needing to use the double jump boots all the time and you can't get as far from 'flat' as the Argent Tower is.
The combat arenas aren't really oldschool (I'd prefer if they focused more on enemy placement like the first games) but thankfully they had a much better execution than in games like Painkiller, Serious Sam and Flying Wild Hog shooters (at least prior to SW2, I can't opine on it) because you usually had a lot of room to maneuver and the hordes were just big enough instead of feeling endless.

Lastly, the best thing about Doom 4 was the level design, for a modern "closed-world" shooter it could be much, much more linear but thankfully it wasn't.

axl, on 22 July 2017 - 07:49 AM, said:

I understand what you're saying and seeing Duke back in its 90s roots with great leveldesign and 90s rules (no regenerating health, ...) would be really awesome. But I wouldn't call it "innovating". It would be regarded as a "retro shooter".

I agree that wouldn't be as innovative as Duke 3D was, but that's a very hard task after 20 years of gaming and evolution (or regression in some fronts, *cough*), and going back to the best parts of 90's shooters while getting the bits of duke games that are rarely explored nowadays would be enought to make it stand out from the rest.

axl, on 22 July 2017 - 07:49 AM, said:

In its heyday, Duke Nukem 3D was extremely innovating: it was the first FPS with realistic level design (no longer only dark underground bases or space stations, ...), the first FPS with a an actual character that could speak, the first FPS that featured a high interactivity with the environment, etc etc etc... It was groundbreaking at the time.

and swimming, and crouching, motherf*cking JEEEETPACKS, manageable inventory in a shooter (though tecnically Heretic did it first), destructive enviroments way before Red Faction... the jump from Doom to Duke 3D was huge.

axl, on 22 July 2017 - 07:49 AM, said:

To be innovating in FPS nowadays is really hard. In my opinion the last really innovative FPS is probably Half-Life 2.

I wouldn't say that, there were a lot of innovative games since HL2, they might just not suit your playstyle, and HL2 had realistic physics but besides that it used the same basic principles that the first Half-Life laid as foundation, but with more "cutscenes" than the first game (in the case of HL2, a lot of locked rooms with characters talking while the only thing the player can do is walk around and listen).

king karl, on 22 July 2017 - 03:24 PM, said:

so here are some more essential elements of oldschool level design:
-If the player started every level with just the starting weapon could they complete the level in an enjoyable way? the answer must be yes

I think that's silly to expect. If the levels are designed with previous levels in mind they can be made more challenging from the beginning than if the player is expected to finish everything with a pistol start.

king karl, on 22 July 2017 - 03:24 PM, said:

-every level should loop back into itself in enough places to double as a multiplayer level

I wouldn't be against that in principle but it also may compromise the level in some ways.

king karl, on 22 July 2017 - 03:24 PM, said:

-the player must be able to walk from the end of the level to the beginning even if they have no reason to
-the doors (by in large) must not lock behind the player just to keep combat interesting (the occasional ambush is a fine exception)

100% agree.

king karl, on 22 July 2017 - 03:24 PM, said:

-a specific button for interacting with the environment must be dedicated and should be employed for both secret doors, doors, and switches

???
A "use" button? That's pretty commom in games.

Forge, on 22 July 2017 - 05:29 PM, said:

What you need to do is to convince the developer to redistribute their memory allocations:
- less memory to cut-scenes and eye-candy.
- dedicate more memory to game-play aspects, features, & level design

I like eye-candy :3
Open world games prove you can do pretty levels while still making them big and interactive.

king karl, on 22 July 2017 - 09:17 PM, said:

well build engine design is the pinnacle of the 90s shooter and should be used as the model, doom and wolfenstein were still limited from the potential and lack of experience and as soon as quake started to sacrifice number of enemies for 3d models it started to slide downhill. Many criticized quake at its release for a drab boring level design compared to duke 3d so any attempt at capturing the essence of the perfect 90s shooter should take quake with some derision.

I'd say Quake was the pinacle just because you could build truly 3D and vertical levels, but Duke 3D was more aesthetically pleasing. Aditionally, Quake had enemies plenty enought, you either didn't play on hard or you like slaughter maps (I don't).
Come to think of it, I thing it had as many enemies on its levels as Duke 3D.

[king karl]

LkMax, on 23 July 2017 - 07:14 AM, said:

WARNING: incoming wall of text (replying to different people, playing catch up).





I'd say Quake was the pinacle just because you could build truly 3D and vertical levels, but Duke 3D was more aesthetically pleasing. Aditionally, Quake had enemies plenty enought, you either didn't play on hard or you like slaughter maps (I don't).
Come to think of it, I thing it had as many enemies on its levels as Duke 3D.

and that right there is the crux of the matter, people give quake a pass for being technically more advanced but beyond that it was not as fun and does not hold up as well today. We began to lose alot of gameplay potential the minute they went to full 3d like that

[LkMax]

Fun is subjective. Quake is basically Doom 2.5 with a slightly different theme (lovecraftian demons replacing christian demons). The gameplay potential is actually bigger because of the limitations being reduced but developers (edit: after quake) chose to go a different path and follow the pseudo-realistic "cinematic" experiences.

[MusicallyInspired]

You can't say if you enjoy Quake you can't be a "true" 90s shooter fan, if that's what you're getting at. If you think the majority of people who like "90s shooters" didn't like Quake's level design than you're just plain uninformed. I wasn't really partial to it, but Quake's success speaks for itself.

Also, how exactly did Doom 3 BFG change the Hell levels? I haven't played it.

[Zaxx]

MusicallyInspired, on 24 July 2017 - 10:49 AM, said:

You can't say if you enjoy Quake you can't be a "true" 90s shooter fan, if that's what you're getting at. If you think the majority of people who like "90s shooters" didn't like Quake's level design than you're just plain uninformed. I wasn't really partial to it, but Quake's success speaks for itself.

Also, how exactly did Doom 3 BFG change the Hell levels? I haven't played it.

They removed the infamous trap room and that's all they changed if I remember correctly (apart from the obvious BFG changes like the better ammo distribution of course).

[LkMax]

@MusicallyInspired
To be clear, when I said "developers" I meant the ones that came after Quake, not id. I love Quake 1 myself, it's one of my favorite shooters (and still the best in the franchise).
About the BFG edition of Doom 3, it had a new episode called The Lost Mission and the hell levels had a design with more varied segments than the base game, visually speaking.

[Zaxx]

LkMax, on 24 July 2017 - 05:46 PM, said:

@MusicallyInspired
To be clear, when I said "developers" I meant the ones that came after Quake, not id. I love Quake 1 myself, it's one of my favorite shooters (and still the best in the franchise).
About the BFG edition of Doom 3, it had a new episode called The Lost Mission and the hell levels had a design with more varied segments than the base game, visually speaking.

Hm, gotta play that someday. I'm one of the 5 people on the planet who considered BFG an improvement over the original but somehow I'm still yet to play Lost Mission.

[MusicallyInspired]

LkMax, on 24 July 2017 - 05:46 PM, said:

@MusicallyInspired
To be clear, when I said "developers" I meant the ones that came after Quake, not id. I love Quake 1 myself, it's one of my favorite shooters (and still the best in the franchise).

I was replying to king karl there.

[Romulus]

No such changes were made to DOOM 3 BFG's Hell levels.

[LkMax]

Not the original levels, yes, as far as I remember.

MusicallyInspired, on 24 July 2017 - 08:58 PM, said:

I was replying to king karl there.

Alright then, I suspected that but I saw my post could've been ambiguous.

[Player Lin]

Not really a fan of Quake(but the second game is other story but again, not like DooM, Duke or HL... and telefrag-ing a final boss, WTH? Yeah, worse shit for me.

[Zaxx]

Listened to the whole thing and honestly it's strange how Randy is constantly saying that they did World Tour "out of love" because based on his lack of knowledge of the game's issues he sure did not play much of it. I think that if you do something out of passion even if you're the CEO of a large development studio you should find the time to get a firsthand experience of your product, especially if you had a close relationship with earlier iterations of that product because in that case your feedback can end up being invaluable to QA.

I have to admit I'm sad about World Tour because overall I think the ideas behind that release were stellar:

- Some old issues of original maps were fixed, they added new skyboxes and generally the old levels felt a bit more polished thanks to the small touches.
- Jon St. John may not have sounded excellent but I still appreciate the higher quality original one-liners and I actually liked his more humorous tone on the new recordings. You may not love that but you can clearly feel that he has a passion for the character and that he loves doing the voice of Duke.
- I liked the new episode, it had nice levels and they took advantage of newer hardware by increasing detail and enemy counts the same way Nerve Software's Doom 2 expansion, No Rest for the Living did. It was great.
- On the surface they made a good port: the normal maps and the new lighting were great additions and they were much better in implementation than what Polymer achieved, the engine handled screen tearing better than EDuke32 so it had its unique advantages. It was also technically better than Megaton Edition, especially since they patched in the proper widescreen fov, something we asked the Megaton developers for years to do yet they never did.
- The rewind feature was nice to have.
- Lee jackson's amazing new soundtrack: Bulletdam quickly became a new favourite of mine from the Duke 3D tunes.

On the other hand though they failed on a lot things when it comes to smaller details and smaller technical issues:

- The re-recorded one-liners vary in volume, sometimes you can barely hear what Duke is saying.
- The engine is noticably buggier than other ports of the game: I had keycards not working, sometimes ambient sounds overlap each other to the point where the game starts stuttering and sound just gets loud as fuck, they could have done a lot more in regards to optimization because in the new episode at a few crowded moments I had fps go as low as 70 (dangerously close to the sub-60 fps that would not be acceptable for the port of such an old game).
- Weird design quirks: I think it's not an exaggeration at all to say that the episode 5 boss was broken and that the new weapon and the new enemy type felt unpolished compared to the original assets of the game.
- The original DOS version of Atomic Edition should have been included since Gearbox shut down the release that had it so as of now there is no legal way to acquire the original version.

Honestly these are not huge issues, they could be fixed in a patch or two... that's why I don't understand why they never were. Gearbox kinda has a responsibility here since World Tour will be the only commercially available version of Duke 3D for years to come and I think that if you're doing a passion project you should embrace that responsibility by acting as an IP holder that has the utmost respect to the classic your company decided to maintain for future generations. I hope that at least they will release the World Tour source code so that the community could improve EDuke32 compatibility and even EDuke32 itself because some features of World Tour would make a good addition (Gearbox's renderer would surely be a worthwhile addition).

[Zaxx]

I'll just write this into a separate comment because the subject is different and the previous one was already long of a wall-of-text (sorry).

Based on the stream I'm also a bit worried about Duke's future. What Randy is saying about the next Duke game feels very similar to how 3D Realms approached the development of DNF: they wanted to make a game that is on the level of Duke 3D when it comes to impact and that's a goal you can't really accomplish by simply wanting to accomplish it really hard, that's the market's and the audience's job to decide. A mindset like that diminished confidence when it comes to development because you want to live up to a standard you simply can't live up to.

I also don't feel that Randy is seeing the bigger picture when it comes to what Bethesda is doing: sure, Doom 2016 was a great success while the new Prey flopped but I think it's more complex than that. I don't think that Bethesda had to bet on Doom 2016 that much because it simply was not that big of a gamble for various reasons:

- Bethesda knew id has a solid game: the game design was steller to the point where all of the gameplay mechanics had a part to play in the overall gameplay. For example id realized that the chainsaw was a fun weapon in the old game so they had to include it but they also knew that it wasn't super useful so they made it more limited but a very-very useful part of the arsenal. They also knew that the BFG would be overpowered in a contemporary game so they changed it accordingly and made it a bit more meaningful when it comes to its functionality. I could go on and on about why that game is great in its design because it has a lot of these small elements that manage to make it amazing on the whole but on top of this Bethesda knew id has great tech behind it in the form of id Tech 6, they knew that SnapMap will end up as a nice little partial replacement for modding, etc.

- Bethesda did not bet only on Doom 2016. For years now the company is building up a portfolio of classic FPS IPs that can affect each other on the market: if Wolfenstein is good the audience will be more confident in the quality of Doom, if Doom is good more people will jump on Wolf 2 at release, if there is a new multiplayer Quake in development people will excuse Doom's contemporary multiplayer modes more easily etc. Wolfenstein was received well so it was not a huge gamble to come out with Doom as a second attempt on modernizing classic FPS and that's also why the failure of Prey won't really matter in the long run. Yes, the game failed financially but the word of mouth is good and Bethesda's similar titles were successful so Prey will turn a profit as soon as there is a bigger discount on it: people will be like "hey, I liked Doom and Wolfenstein, I'd love to play something else from those guys, guess I'll try their System Shock". Just like how The Elder Scrolls compliment Fallout Bethesda's FPS titles also compliment each other by aiming at similar demographics.

- Bethesda gave itself room for failure: Brink and RAGE were the first FPS titles Bethesda published and Brink failed while RAGE achieved mediocre results but overall it was a mostly solid game. Beth failed but could turn that to an advantage by learning from their failures, Gearbox has to do the same by carefully analyzing why DNF failed so much (I don't think they did this, more on that later).

- Bethesda knows people are tired of CoD-like games and that they couldn't turn a profit with a CoD-like game. They axed the original Doom 4's development because they knew that even though the game could have been a solid modern military shooter it could never be a successor to Doom and there are two reasons for that: the CoD crowd has no idea what Doom is so the IP has no power over them while the Doom crowd hates everything that resembles Call of Duty (something that was evident in RAGE's bad reception because that did not reflect the quality of the game, it was a lot better than how it was received by id fans). The Call of Duty crowd has Call of Duty, they don't want a similar title but on the other hand Doom crowd was crawing for a shooter that has the same principles as classic shooters and Bethesda realized that that was a big enough and passionate enough niche to base a successful product on. That's why they won.

So I really don't think that Gearbox should bet on Duke and Duke alone, I think they should just try to build a similar portfolio starting with IPs that are less important. You have Bulletstorm, make a new Bulletstorm! The Blood IP is in limbo, Redneck Rampage is owned by Blizzard: try to get one or both of those and develop new titles for those franchises. If one or two of those are successful, a solid enough Duke game will be a winner too.

As for DNF: I strongly disagree that it was a 7/10 game and that it failed only because of the incredibly high expectations. DNF had very few parts that were 7/10 or to translate that to a term: solid. Some levels were 10/10, some levels were 9/10 while others were 1/10 or 2/10, some design ideas were great, most of them were terrible and overall the game just did not gel, it did not show confident, coherent game design, the individual design elements did not compliment each other and as a result the game just fell apart. For example DNF originally had a 2 weapon limit that did not compliment the arsenal: Duke has traditional weapons like shotguns or BFGs while he also has access more fun, exotic but slightly less useful weapons like the shrinker or the freeze ray and people will just not use those if they can only hold 2 weapons and if the exotic weapons don't serve a real purpose in the overall gameplay.

[necroslut]

Zaxx, on 28 July 2017 - 11:53 PM, said:

[...]
So I really don't think that Gearbox should bet on Duke and Duke alone, I think they should just try to build a similar portfolio starting with IPs that are less important. You have Bulletstorm, make a new Bulletstorm! The Blood IP is in limbo, Redneck Rampage is owned by Blizzard: try to get one or both of those and develop new titles for those franchises. If one or two of those are successful, a solid enough Duke game will be a winner too.
[,,,}

Oh come on, Redneck Rampage is completely forgotten and justly so - it wasn't even a good game to begin with. It isn't even a great concept worth imitating or resurrecting.

[gemeaux333]

Redneck Rampagne was like "Mars Attacks !" but focused on the part of the rednecks !

[Zaxx]

necroslut, on 29 July 2017 - 04:11 AM, said:

Oh come on, Redneck Rampage is completely forgotten and justly so - it wasn't even a good game to begin with. It isn't even a great concept worth imitating or resurrecting.

It was the weakest of the Build games for sure but overall I enjoyed RR1 and RR Rides Again and I think the concept (rednecks shooting aliens) is fun enough. Conceptually it would need a lot of modernization to be funny now but I think it could be done if a reboot would focus more on the whole UFO narrative. Imagine an "XCOM FPS" (you're not shooting rednecks anymore but rather a lot of different types of aliens) with a bit more characteristic and less stereotypical rednecks and some great country music.

[Tea Monster]

I enjoyed RR, but I don't see it being successful in today's game marketplace.

[Mark]

I don't know about about it being a successful money maker for a large company, but I think a few guys getting together could slap something together very fun to play and look at. Its not like the hillbilly thing has been overdone.

[Zaxx]

Tea Monster, on 29 July 2017 - 06:05 AM, said:

I enjoyed RR, but I don't see it being successful in today's game marketplace.

Just look at what Devolver and Flying Wild Hog did to Shadow Warrior 2013: they made a very high quality game from a very-very dated concept and an IP that 3D Realms did not consider a successful one back in the day. Shadow Warrior had a lot of baggage when it comes to the concept but FWH managed to end up with a version of Lo Wang that ended up being just as popular as Serious Sam and the first game was actually very cheap to make. Gearbox is not a big publisher now so it would make sense for them to tackle the "middleware" with an IP like Shadow Warrior or Blood and succedding on that market is not as hard or as risky as it would be in the AAA space.

But of course there is no chance of either of these games happening because both franchises are basically locked down thanks to their IP holders.

[NNC]

Zaxx, on 29 July 2017 - 05:28 AM, said:

It was the weakest of the Build games for sure but overall I enjoyed RR1 and RR Rides Again and I think the concept (rednecks shooting aliens) is fun enough. Conceptually it would need a lot of modernization to be funny now but I think it could be done if a reboot would focus more on the whole UFO narrative. Imagine an "XCOM FPS" (you're not shooting rednecks anymore but rather a lot of different types of aliens) with a bit more characteristic and less stereotypical rednecks and some great country music.

For sure not. Maybe if you just compare the 4 major Build games (although I personally like it more than Blood).

[Zaxx]

Nancsi, on 29 July 2017 - 10:46 AM, said:

For sure not. Maybe if you just compare the 4 major Build games (although I personally like it more than Blood).

I know this is a bit subjective but the gameplay mechanics feel kinda unpolished compared to other Build titles.

[OpenMaw]

The shooting in RR is kinda shitty, honestly. It really suffers from the "pecking hitscanners" and the guns don't have enough punch, which makes a lot of enemies feel like bullet sponges.

The idea works though. I think if they brought it closer to something like the movie "Chuck and Dale vs Evil" it would work. A couple of good-hearted but sorta stupid rednecks fighting off aliens. I say that because I always got the impression Redneck Rampage didn't have much affection for it's 'heroes' and that the game was taking crass pages from South Park. I think something more charming could be done with it.


As to Duke, I'd love to directly ask the Gearbox guys some questions. I'd love to know why Duke's character was redesigned. Why they felt the need to give him that makeover. I'd love to know in more specific, nuanced, technical detail what they think made Duke3D work as well as it did.


They really, really, really need to listen to the guys who worked on Doom 2016 and understand how they broke the original game down and learned from it and made it their goal to stay true to the good stuff and discard the bad stuff. Gameplay, gameplay, gameplay. You get that shit right, and everything else is gravy.

[king karl]

MusicallyInspired, on 24 July 2017 - 10:49 AM, said:

You can't say if you enjoy Quake you can't be a "true" 90s shooter fan, if that's what you're getting at. If you think the majority of people who like "90s shooters" didn't like Quake's level design than you're just plain uninformed. I wasn't really partial to it, but Quake's success speaks for itself.

Also, how exactly did Doom 3 BFG change the Hell levels? I haven't played it.

that's an exaggeration of what i'm saying.....I'm only saying it was criticized at its time for being inferior level design to duke nukem and the 3d graphics had immediate and longterm negative implications

[king karl]

Tea Monster, on 29 July 2017 - 06:05 AM, said:

I enjoyed RR, but I don't see it being successful in today's game marketplace.

I duno someone just made Immortal Redneck on steam and it did pretty well I think.....not that I'm clammoring for a redneck rampage game

[Flesh420]

Seems like Randy is looking at Duke in the wrong way. He says that if Duke is to make a comeback the game has to be something like Doom was in 93, a game that'll do something that hasn't been done yet.
This seems like a recipe for disaster. We're past that time in gaming, and one of the reasons Doom '16 was so successful is because they went back to old mechanics somewhat—meaning the combat took center stage. At this point in time, and with all the cinematic shooters like COD, it would seem Duke Nukem could make a considerable amount of controversy just by being a good game that's fun to play: full exploration, open maps, item placement, interactivity (pool tables, etc.).
Just a good fucking game that is actually fun to play, something not bounded by an overbearing story or any other bullshit.

I mean, people are eating up 'retro' style games, and I feel that if they just made a solid Duke game that isn't necessarily trying to overachieve, they'd have a huge franchise. Doom '16 was good, but you can also see where Id decided to pull back in allot of ways for things like consoles and assuming the player is stupid. There's really only like three maps in the whole game that are decently nonlinear, but the combat is something you can always come back to and enjoy. Seems like Duke could take what Doom accomplished and push it even further.

[Altered Reality]

Flesh420, on 08 August 2017 - 08:13 PM, said:

Seems like Randy is looking at Duke in the wrong way. He says that if Duke is to make a comeback the game has to be something like Doom was in 93, a game that'll do something that hasn't been done yet.

He is perfectly right. We'll have to see if he is capable to live up to his promises, but what he says is correct. That was the ONLY reason why Duke Nukem 3D was so successful. For the first time, the protagonist of an FPS made sarcastic quips, insulted the enemies he killed, blew up inanimate objects, he could swim, he could fly and he moved in a world that was way more interactive than anything that was ever done.
In order for a new Duke game to be successful as well, it must raise the bar as much as Duke Nukem 3D did back in the day.

Doom 4 did not "go back to the roots" in the sense that it was a completely nostalgic throwback. It removed the LIMITATIONS that appeared again and again in modern games (corridor levels, weapon limit) and introduced new mechanics to the series (finishers, weapon upgrades). It even gave an in-universe explanation for everything that happened, to increase the immersion and give the player a reason to "be there".

[axl]

Altered Reality, on 09 August 2017 - 02:36 AM, said:

He is perfectly right. We'll have to see if he is capable to live up to his promises, but what he says is correct. That was the ONLY reason why Duke Nukem 3D was so successful. For the first time, the protagonist of an FPS made sarcastic quips, insulted the enemies he killed, blew up inanimate objects, he could swim, he could fly and he moved in a world that was way more interactive than anything that was ever done.
In order for a new Duke game to be successful as well, it must raise the bar as much as Duke Nukem 3D did back in the day.

Hmmmm... Doom 4 was a very successful game and was no way near as revolutionary as the original Doom... There are lots of examples of succesful games that don't raise the bar in any way.

A new Duke game can be successful in many ways... it can be just a retro-kinda-like FPS where everything just works... (like the new Doom or Wolfenstein) or, it can, as you say, be a highly revolutionary game that raises the bar as much as Duke Nukem 3D did back in the day.... However, the latter seems, at least in my opinion, very difficult to achieve. What was the last truly revolutionary shooter? The only game that pops in my mind is Half-Life 2...