From Doom to MW3 - How much has changed in FPS games since Doom?

[Heister]

I'd really like to hear your thoughts on this as I don't really think they've changed that much. They've become slower for the most part if anything.

So yeah, all opinions welcome!

[spcd]

Doom was pure gameplay. There was a story, but you didn't notice anything of that story during the gameplay. Only after an episode you would get some text. And there was a story in the manual.

Games like HalfLife2 and Call of duty are not just games. I would call them a hybrid of a game and a movie. It's a new sort of entertainment product. The experience is much more important than real gameplay elements.

Another very important difference is that it's very annoying to die in COD or HL2. If you die you have to replay a section but the experience stays the same. The same scripted events will happen, the same dialogue lines will be said etc...

In Doom it's normal to die a lot. You just start the level again, and each time you will become better at that level and you will find more secrets etc... When you have enough map knowledge you will be able to beat the level.

This type of gameplay allows for speedrunning levels. The first time you do a level you might need 30 minutes, but after some practice you can do it in under 5 minutes. Games like Doom and Quake never get boring, even if you have played those levels multiple times.

Games like Call of duty and Half-Life 2 are VERY different to Quake and Doom, and I really can't understand how you can't see that. Maybe you haven't really played them properly.

[Fumarole]

Portal is nothing like Doom other than the viewpoint.

[Subatomic]

Portal is nothing like Doom other than the viewpoint.

I wouldn't call Portal a FPS though, as it most notably lacks the 'S' part (unless you count shooting the portals).

[deano2099]

Portal is nothing like Doom other than the viewpoint.

To the point I'd argue Portal is in no way an FPS.

[Fumarole]

Hence it being one way in which the genre has changed.

[Nalano]

The Z axis.
Enemies that dodge.
Enemies that flank.
Enemies that take cover.
Enemies that flush you from cover.
Stealth and enemy awareness.
Secondary fire mode.
Physics.
Bullet physics.
Narrative elements.
Vehicles.
Ally management.
Objective-based multiplayer.
Class-based multiplayer.
Realistic environments.

If you think this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yr-lQZzevwA) is the same as this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAH-wXCOl5U), you're just not looking.

[Drake Sigar]

I think most of the FPS developers were too busy following the footsteps of Doom and Quake to do anything interesting with the genre at the start. Half Life did shake things up a bit, but a few years later Halo came out and the genre has stubbornly refused to budge since. There's nothing wrong with Halo by itself, the 'problem' was the sudden popularity it garnered from a massive new gamer base created during a time when the industry was going through a transitional period (The Sims came out a year before, everything changed).

I would argue that the FPS should be broken down for spare parts much like RPGs have (the only difference is I want the RPGs back), and used to create more games like Mirror's Edge, Portal, Amnesia, Deus Ex, etc. Games which blur genres. Games where you barely have to fire a shot. Spending hours shooting is only viable for competitive multiplayer, I can't play an FPS single-player campaign without growing very, very bored.

[Hypernetic]

The Z axis.
Enemies that dodge.
Enemies that flank.
Enemies that take cover.
Enemies that flush you from cover.
Stealth and enemy awareness.
Secondary fire mode.
Physics.
Bullet physics.
Narrative elements.
Vehicles.
Ally management.
Objective-based multiplayer.
Class-based multiplayer.
Realistic environments.

If you think this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yr-lQZzevwA) is the same as this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAH-wXCOl5U), you're just not looking.

Also, hats.

[Nalano]

Also, hats.

Also, hats.

At any rate, a genre that can include SS, CS, COD, DX, HL, TF2, L4D, UT, BF, R6, Portal, Tribes and Thief is a wide genre indeed.

[Icarus]

I wouldn't class Portal as an FPS, though. Sure, it's a first-person game in the Source engine, but I'd personally call it a puzzle game.

Most of the other ones Nalano mentioned are definitely pure FPSes, though (Although I'm not sure about Thief, but then I don't know what genre I would put it in)

[Fumarole]

Good call on Rainbow 6, that's a perfect example of how the genre has changed.

[Nalano]

I wouldn't class Portal as an FPS, though. Sure, it's a first-person game in the Source engine, but I'd personally call it a puzzle game.

It has a gun - the titular portal gun - and you shoot it. It's a puzzle game, but so is World of Goo, and you can certainly see a substantive difference between the two.

You can call it a puzzle FPS, if you want to distinguish, but genres are such that anything can be merged with anything. There are plenty of FPS RPGs for instance - I've done a lot of shooting in the first person PoV in Deus Ex and, for that matter, Skyrim - but even if you wanna define it narrowly (which, arguably, would negate Hexen), then you still have arena FPSs, tactical FPSs, action FPSs, horde modes of varying renown, objective-based team games, and a long laundry list of game modes and abilities that Doom-clones have never seen.

[Heister]

Games like Call of duty and Half-Life 2 are VERY different to Quake and Doom, and I really can't understand how you can't see that. Maybe you haven't really played them properly.

I agreed with almost everything you said spcd. But if you break down the gameplay in CoD or HL2 it's just the same as Doom isn't it? Get from A to B and shoot/collect/heal on the way.

As for Portal; It's not a first person shooter. Yes, you can pick up a turret but that doesn't count as a shooter. Would you class Dear Esther as an FPS?

@Nalano's post #7 - Any FPS that includes all of those elements still isn't enough to differentiate a game enough from Doom.

Anyone remember that level Favela in MW2? Did nobody else here think that that level felt a lot like Doom? I'm not talking about the scripted events, I'm talking about the gameplay. Especially when you're by yourself. Take a look. It's not great footage but it's enough -


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jdo8H91tOv8

[Fumarole]

I stand by Portal as ​it's an indication of how diverse the genre is now from the 90s. It's the result of evolution, and may be a new species of game, but its DNA shares ancestry with Doom. You have to look at games of its ilk instead of claiming they're too different, otherwise all you're saying is that all these similar games are similar, and what's the point of that?

[Heister]

I stand by Portal as ​it's an indication of how diverse the genre is now from the 90s. It's the result of evolution, and may be a new species of game, but its DNA shares ancestry with Doom. You have to look at games of its ilk instead of claiming they're too different, otherwise all you're saying is that all these similar games are similar, and what's the point of that?

Not so much similar, just not as different as some may think.

[BrothaBear]

Graphic quality has improved but Gameplay has been cheapened. Like a.....cheap...cheap whore lol. Not games require even less skill, rely TOO heavily on things like (killstreaks) or some other deadly force that players can't intervene. Worst yet classes...My god the classes. I remember back in the day where a man wasn't judged by the gun he held, but how he used it!

...Anyways class-based gameplay seem to degrade FPS games like how VH1 did to music. You just knew what to expect when you saw it.

[deano2099]

I stand by Portal as ​it's an indication of how diverse the genre is now from the 90s. It's the result of evolution, and may be a new species of game, but its DNA shares ancestry with Doom.

It also shares ancestry with Tetris. Far more, I'd argue. The only thing it has in common with Doom is that it looks like it.

The problem is if you consider Portal to be an FPS then so is Deus Ex, the System Shocks, Thief and so on. In which case the genre really hasn't moved on from the 90s, and if anything it's gone backwards as they were all narrative heavy games.

[Nalano]

The problem is if you consider Portal to be an FPS then so is Deus Ex, the System Shocks, Thief and so on. In which case the genre really hasn't moved on from the 90s, and if anything it's gone backwards as they were all narrative heavy games.

Y'know, I would have made a long argument with examples and chronologies to explain just how daft I thought this statement was, but I realized that I have the next best thing: You're arguing Wizardry's point. You're saying nothing's changed in any genre in twenty years, because everything has roots somewhere in the panopticon of games design.


@Nalano's post #7 - Any FPS that includes all of those elements still isn't enough to differentiate a game enough from Doom.

You clearly have no idea what you're talking about. I dunno if you've never played Doom, or if you've never played any game after Doom, but I'm positively flabbergasted by the blase insensibility of that statement.

[soldant]

Cool, I've provoked a thought and a thread!


I agreed with almost everything you said spcd. But if you break down the gameplay in CoD or HL2 it's just the same as Doom isn't it? Get from A to B and shoot/collect/heal on the way.
If I break down any game far enough I can find a common element, but clearly not every game is the same as every other game. Or to use your point, I can strip down Deus Ex or Portal or any of the other titles people are pointing out and say it has something in common with Doom. I can do the same for Doom and Wolfenstein 3D. But they are all clearly very different. As people have already stated the focus on story has become a lot more important to the point where the games (except perhaps Serious Sam 3) are story-driven. Doom and Wolf3D and so on were just rooms with guns and monsters/Nazis and a title suggestive of what they were, and that was partly due to engine limitations. Take Doom 2's Suburbs map (I think it's MAP07, can't remember too well... actually might be Downtown, whatever they work for the same point). If you weren't told what it was, you wouldn't know, nor do you really care. None of it really matters.

It's entirely different for Half Life 2 however, where the environment looks like an actual city or whatever, and the game has a strong (if ambiguous) storyline marching you forward. Also Half Life 2 is entirely linear, while Doom did have a slight form of non-linearity by forcing you to hunt for keys and switches (which I wouldn't classify as true non-linearity since you effectively follow a single path in the end anyway). The two share the fact that they're first person perspective and that you shoot guns... and that's about it. They share those elements because they're FPS games but there's a significant advancement from Doom to Half Life 2... or really just Doom to Half Life. Or Quake to Half Life since Quake had proper 3D environments, Doom itself didn't support floating platforms being a sector based engine.

FPS games have come a long way and that was my point in the other thread - traditional FPS design like Doom or Heretic doesn't hold up very well today because it's just about shooting and little else, but that's what people wanted back them. Even the Serious Sam series wasn't a direct copy of those days; it still features largely linear levels focusing on arena setpieces and has a story which plays a more prominent part than the story ever did in Doom. Hell, even Doom and DN3D are distinct in that part because DN3D attached a greater importance to the environment Duke was in and tried to make the environments look more plausible.


The problem is if you consider Portal to be an FPS then so is Deus Ex, the System Shocks, Thief and so on. In which case the genre really hasn't moved on from the 90s, and if anything it's gone backwards as they were all narrative heavy games.
Not really. Things can still be an FPS but they can be different. Remember "FPS" is a very broad category and as we've already said the games within that category diverge greatly, from the straight shooters like Quake to the more complex games like Thief. They're clearly FPS games because they still have that core mechanic, but they place importance on different elements which distinguish them. You might consider "FPS" to be a Supergenre.

[Heister]

You clearly have no idea what you're talking about. I dunno if you've never played Doom, or if you've never played any game after Doom, but I'm positively flabbergasted by the blase insensibility of that statement.

Did you watch the Favela video?

[Atarra]

FPS is barely a genre at all. It's a mechanic.

Arguing for a stricter definition of an FPS is silly, because then you're talking about something else entirely from the first-person shootery.

Arguing that there's been no evolution in FPS games is like saying that MMORPGs haven't evolved because the new hotness is yet another fantasy game.

[Heister]

FPS is barely a genre at all. It's a mechanic.

Arguing for a stricter definition of an FPS is silly, because then you're talking about something else entirely from the first-person shootery.

Arguing that there's been no evolution in FPS games is like saying that MMORPGs haven't evolved because the new hotness is yet another fantasy game.

I'm not saying that FPS games haven't evolved. What I'm saying/think is, the gameplay hasn't. Yes, we get to follow npc's around, watch a cutscene, walk around while a cutscene plays out. But the gameplay hasn't really changed at all. I'm talking about the core gameplay. The reason we buy the games. Do we really care about the story? Personally I don't. Yes I'll watch the cutscenes but all I really want to do is play the game.

[DaftPunk]

No offense mate but we really did came a long way from Doom,and today's fps games play totally different.

[Heister]

No offense mate but we really did came a long way from Doom,and today's fps games play totally different.

Yeah that's what they're saying. I just don't see it. Gameplay wise that is.

[soldant]

Yeah that's what they're saying. I just don't see it. Gameplay wise that is.
That's because you're focusing on one single detail and ignoring the sum of the parts. You're basically stripping out the vast majority of the gameplay and taking the absolute basics and claiming that because they're all common elements that FPS games haven't advanced.

Which simply isn't true. They all share the absolute basics (otherwise they're not FPS games) but they're all clearly different because of the other things they do.

[Nalano]

Did you watch the Favela video?

That's your reply? Here, crib notes:

Gameplay developed since Doom

You:

Jumping. Dodging. Sliding. Crouching. Going Prone. Leaning. Vaulting. Climbing. Grappling. Swimming. Diving. Using a secondary fire mode. Using a non-lethal weapon. Using a weapon that isn't direct-fire. Blind-firing. Zooming in. Driving a vehicle. Flying a vehicle. Using a jetpack. Using a fixed emplacement. Puppeteering. Specializing for a role. Killing silently. Laying traps.

Your enemies:

Jumping. Sprinting. Dodging. Vaulting. Sliding. Crouching. Going Prone. Leaning. Climbing. Grappling. Swimming. Diving. Leaning. Blind-firing. Switching to appropriate weapons. Hiding behind cover. Flushing you from cover. Using fixed emplacements. Driving vehicles. Flying vehicles. Using jetpacks. Using weapons that obfuscate your view. Using weapons that stun you. Retreating. Reacting to visual and auditory stimuli. Communicating. Working in tandem. Flanking. Not killing you. Killing each other, and not just by mistake. Helping you.

Your environment:

Variegated. Recognizable. Modifiable. Destructible.

And that's in just your dumb plotless shoot-em-ups.

[Grizzly]

I agreed with almost everything you said spcd. But if you break down the gameplay in CoD or HL2 it's just the same as Doom isn't it? Get from A to B and shoot/collect/heal on the way.

Honestly, describing FPS as "A game in which you shoot things" is just as accurate measurement as saying that Monopoly is a game "In which you roll a die and move stuff around". That would put it on par with Dungeons and Dragons, even though they are completely different games.

[Drake Sigar]

FPS is barely a genre at all. It's a mechanic.

Yup. When it comes to the first-person perspective, most of the time it seems gamers focus more on the viewpoint than the content. First-person has been used for survival horror, dungeon crawlers, puzzlers, 'art' games, even the odd action adventure.

[deano2099]

I've probably said it before, but FPS is a stupid genre label really. Call of Duty is always the biggest, most obvious example. But then you get a genre that includes Deus Ex and even Portal in some people's mind, but excludes Gears of War and Space Marine.

[Nalano]

I've probably said it before, but FPS is a stupid genre label really. Call of Duty is always the biggest, most obvious example. But then you get a genre that includes Deus Ex and even Portal in some people's mind, but excludes Gears of War and Space Marine.

Well, if we exclude Portal and Deus Ex but add action TPSs, there's still a whole huge wave of things developed since Doom.

Also, NOLF.

[Grizzly]

That's because you're focusing on one single detail and ignoring the sum of the parts. You're basically stripping out the vast majority of the gameplay and taking the absolute basics and claiming that because they're all common elements that FPS games haven't advanced.

Which simply isn't true. They all share the absolute basics (otherwise they're not FPS games) but they're all clearly different because of the other things they do.

To use a metaphor which might just explain it even better: You say that, say, a hawk, has not evolved significantly from its dinosaurian predecessors, since it still lays eggs - completely ignoring the fact that it now can fly, for one.

[Unaco]

What's changed since DOOM?

Mouse control.

[Sketch]

Yeah, I was gonna say it's like comparing matchlock guns to todays. You pull the trigger and something goes bang, but it's a very different thing.

[squirrel]

There have been new gameplay mechanism being developed for FPS / TPS, but this time game console and arcade game take the lead.

I think this game is not popular in the west, it's not popular here neither, but it did have some popularity in Japan, a Sega's great work called 2 Spicy (link (http://2spicy.sega.jp)), a TPS in which you use pedals to control movement while light gun to aim and shoot. I am not sure if that gun is a light gun or a motion sensor. I heard that light gun that work on LCD display is not affordable for game console users, but is sometimes used on arcade game. Anyway that technical details is not that relevant, but you will see some innovations in shooter games.

Actually this arcade game runs on x86 PC by Linux. So strictly speaking you can say it's PC gaming, and it is not on Direct X, too!!

Wii used to be new hope for shooter games, but Nintendo is such a jerk towards 3rd party developers. But you all know about the Metroid series on Wii. Sony all introduced their motion sensing gameplay for Killzone 3, too.

Problem of PC gaming is that it is quite difficult to motivate development of new input system, besides of mouse+keyboard, wheel+pedal for driving games, and joysticks for horizontal versus fighting games.

[Danny252]

By this much, apparently: http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m1d4p8Hwix1qgykbzo1_500.jpg

[Keep]

gameplay


gameplay


gameplay elements


gameplay


gameplay


gameplay


gameplay


core gameplay


Gameplay

Can I join the "Wow that actually is a useless word" wagon?

So the argument I see in this thread is:

1. Doom is an FPS.

2. Shootmanbanger 2012 is an FPS.

3. Portal's not an FPS!

4. Nor is Amnesia!

5. Or Mirror's Edge!

6. Or Thief!

7. Therefore FPS' haven't changed what givvvvvvves???


Is this a lament that the core "gameplay" of FPS's has stagnated, or an upholding of that same "gameplay" at the expense of other possibilities?

Cos there are only so many ways to shoot a man bang. The first guy that coded it did pretty much all that needed doing.

[Voon]

What's changed since DOOM?

Mouse control.

Thanks to Quake

[Tikey]

Can I join the "Wow that actually is a useless word" wagon?

So the argument I see in this thread is:

1. Doom is an FPS.

2. Shootmanbanger 2012 is an FPS.

3. Portal's not an FPS!

4. Nor is Amnesia!

5. Or Mirror's Edge!

6. Or Thief!

7. Therefore FPS' haven't changed what givvvvvvves???


Is this a lament that the core "gameplay" of FPS's has stagnated, or an upholding of that same "gameplay" at the expense of other possibilities?

Cos there are only so many ways to shoot a man bang. The first guy that coded it did pretty much all that needed doing.

Pretty much this.

And of course the FPS genre has changed. Otherwise you wouldn't have people clamouring for a return to the "true fps' of yolde"

[Mantracker]

The idea behind FPS games is that it is fun to shoot things and hit them. This has been true ever since our forefather outlived that other guy who thought throwing pointy sticks at animals was boring. There is no need for games that tap in to this sensation to "evolve" because it has been fun for 500000 years, and considering how slowly our genome changes, it will be fun for way longer than any of us need to be concerned about.

[fiddlesticks]

Gameplay developed since Doom

You:

Dodging.
Doom had that.


Using a weapon that isn't direct-fire.
Do you mean non-hitscan weapons? If so, Doom had that.



Blind-firing.
Doom had that.



Your enemies:

Reacting to visual and auditory stimuli.
Doom had that.



Killing each other, and not just by mistake.
Doom had that, though I guess the mistake part is somewhat arguable.


What's changed since DOOM?

Mouse control.
Doom had that.

Don't get me wrong, I agree with your general sentiment. The FPS genre has evolved quite a lot over the years. But making inaccurate claims won't really help your point.

[Heister]

That's your reply? Here, crib notes:

Gameplay developed since Doom

You:

Jumping. Dodging. Sliding. Crouching. Going Prone. Leaning. Vaulting. Climbing. Grappling. Swimming. Diving. Using a secondary fire mode. Using a non-lethal weapon. Using a weapon that isn't direct-fire. Blind-firing. Zooming in. Driving a vehicle. Flying a vehicle. Using a jetpack. Using a fixed emplacement. Puppeteering. Specializing for a role. Killing silently. Laying traps.

Your enemies:

Jumping. Sprinting. Dodging. Vaulting. Sliding. Crouching. Going Prone. Leaning. Climbing. Grappling. Swimming. Diving. Leaning. Blind-firing. Switching to appropriate weapons. Hiding behind cover. Flushing you from cover. Using fixed emplacements. Driving vehicles. Flying vehicles. Using jetpacks. Using weapons that obfuscate your view. Using weapons that stun you. Retreating. Reacting to visual and auditory stimuli. Communicating. Working in tandem. Flanking. Not killing you. Killing each other, and not just by mistake. Helping you.

Your environment:

Variegated. Recognizable. Modifiable. Destructible.

And that's in just your dumb plotless shoot-em-ups.

This game/chapter has a lot of those elements and yet to me it still felt like Doom when I played it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jdo8H91tOv8 When it came out I honestly thought that the Favela chapter was maybe a nod to id.

[deano2099]

Can I join the "Wow that actually is a useless word" wagon?

So the argument I see in this thread is:

1. Doom is an FPS.

2. Shootmanbanger 2012 is an FPS.

3. Portal's not an FPS!

4. Nor is Amnesia!

5. Or Mirror's Edge!

6. Or Thief!

7. Therefore FPS' haven't changed what givvvvvvves???



My point was more that Doom and System Shock were only a year apart, and if you're going to consider those sort of games FPSs, then many of the modern innovations in the genre are hugely streamlined and cleaned up versions of the things we saw in those games.

Personally I don't think it's sufficient to be a game that just has first-person shooting in it and be called an FPS. I think that has to be the primary mechanic of the game.

Point being I do think FPSs have developed hugely, it's just that including games like Human Revolution, Portal and so on within the genre we're discussing actually demonstrates less development, because including those means including the 90s immersive sims in the discussion-space, and they're where many of the more interesting ideas in modern mainstream-FPSs came from.

For example Bioshock was a huge leap forwards for the FPS, but all it really did was take all the bits of System Shock 2 it could feasibly use while still keeping the focus on the shooting. If we're not calling SS2 an FPS then Bioshock was revolutionary for the genre. If we are calling SS2 an FPS then it really wasn't.

[Nalano]

Doom had that.

You mean Doom had moving to the side. I'm talking acrobatics.

You mean Doom had Rocket Launchers. I'm talking C4, grenades of all types, sticky bombs, landmines, mortars and all weapons with high arc fire, guided missiles, seeking missiles. RC explosives, gravity guns, and picking up and throwing things.

You mean Doom had enemies who stayed put until you entered the room. I'm talking enemies who can hear you in the next room. Who didn't see you because you were in the dark.

Doom did NOT have blind fire, because Doom did not have a way for your weapon reach over obstacles without you reaching over obstacles, and Doom most certainly did not have allies nor independents nor separate enemy factions. Furthermore, the Doom engine was updated after the fact for mouselook, when Doom got ported everywhere.


This game/chapter has a lot of those elements and yet to me it still felt like Doom when I played it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jdo8H91tOv8 When it came out I honestly thought that the Favela chapter was maybe a nod to id.

Is that your only response? I mean, seriously, you're not even answering me. You're just ignoring me. Stop that: It's insulting, and makes you look ignorant. You might as well stick fingers in your ears. At this point the only conclusion I can draw is that you don't play FPSs. You really don't.

[Unaco]

Rooms on top of other rooms.

[Wizardry]

Thanks to Quake
Ultima Underworld had full mouse look and mouse movement controls before Wolfenstein 3D came out. In fact, you could play the game entirely using a mouse.

And to address Nalano, it had allies, factions, stealth, noise detection, physics and more. If System Shock, Deus Ex, Mirror's Edge and Portal are all FPSs then the genre label is meaningless, and Doom is just a drop on the ocean.

[Oof]

"How much has changed in FPS games since Doom?"

A lot, and not enough. Who would have thought that 20 years later, we'd still have about the same amount of interactivity with the game world in FPSs (and often less -- Duke Nukem 3D let you flush toilets!) as we did then.

[fiddlesticks]

Doom did NOT have blind fire, because Doom did not have a way for your weapon reach over obstacles without you reaching over obstacles
You can use the rocket launcher's splash damage to kill enemies you can't see, though I concede that's not the really same thing as your example.


Furthermore, the Doom engine was updated after the fact for mouselook, when Doom got ported everywhere.
Mouselook in the way we know it today was introduced by Quake, but mouse control in itself was present in Doom, you just couldn't look up or down. I believe it might even have been present in Wolfenstein 3D.

I admit though, at this point I'm mostly arguing semantics, so I'll leave the field clear for people whose arguments are more interesting than mine.

[Angel Dust]

To me, the thing that renders the OP's 'point' entirely moot is the fact that I still play Doom from time to time, simply because the genre has evolved and there isn't anything made these days that scratches that same itch that Doom does.

As for modern FPSes, well I've been having a ball with The Darkness II lately. The quad wielding, darkness powers, allied companion, levelling elements, and the way those things affect health/ammo/enemy management, means that while, yes, I am still killing dudes from a FPP, it doesn't really play like Doom at all.



Mouselook in the way we know it today was introduced by Quake,
I know this isn't your point but you've just reminded me of something. The first game I played that came with mouse-look as the default control scheme was Terminator: Future Shock which pre-dated Quake by a good year. To get mouselook working in way we know today in Quake you had to create some custom bindings.

Someone probably gonna turn up now and find an even earlier example of FPS mouse-look.

[Heliocentric]

Doom did not have blind firing, just not true within the defined context of the phrase.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blindfire

[SirKicksalot]

Who would have thought that 20 years later, we'd still have about the same amount of interactivity with the game world in FPSs (and often less -- Duke Nukem 3D let you flush toilets!) as we did then.
http://www.abload.de/img/176usyvyx1.gif

This is what hurts the most. I'd trade graphical fidelity for better interactivity.

[soldant]

Mouselook in the way we know it today was introduced by Quake, but mouse control in itself was present in Doom, you just couldn't look up or down. I believe it might even have been present in Wolfenstein 3D.
If I recall mouse look was in DN3D by default... though it was very fiddly and due to the nature of the engines of the time it'd distort your perspective quite a bit. I agree with you that Quake ultimately popularised mouse-look and WSAD. Doom didn't need it, and it wasn't until the other ports (e.g. zDoom and friends) came out in force that it was needed.

Off topic but I used to know a friend who played DN3D with mouse movement (as in mouse controls player movement not looking around). Ridiculously disorienting.


This is what hurts the most. I'd trade graphical fidelity for better interactivity.
DNF had interactivity all over the place. Were you happy with your trade? ;)

Though to be fair for most games I don't see much of a point. Flushing toilets in DN3D was something you did in E1M1 and then left alone. I can totally understand why developers don't add in pointless interactivity.

[Oof]

Flushing toilets in DN3D was something you did in E1M1 and then left alone. I can totally understand why developers don't add in pointless interactivity.

I'd thought we'd go in the direction of being able to kick doors down, scale buildings by rope, rappel from rooftops, hide in cupboards, push items in front of entranceways in order to seal them off, throw chairs around, etc. Instead, we can't even flush toilets anymore.

[Heister]

I'd thought we'd go in the direction of being able to kick doors down, scale buildings by rope, rappel from rooftops, hide in cupboards, push items in front of entranceways in order to seal them off, throw chairs around, etc. Instead, we can't even flush toilets anymore.

You could do that in Portal. But as it's not an fps...

[SirKicksalot]

Off topic but I used to know a friend who played DN3D with mouse movement (as in mouse controls player movement not looking around). Ridiculously disorienting.


DNF had interactivity all over the place. Were you happy with your trade? ;)

Though to be fair for most games I don't see much of a point. Flushing toilets in DN3D was something you did in E1M1 and then left alone. I can totally understand why developers don't add in pointless interactivity.

I also played it with mouse movement. And I played shooters like that until HL2.
I liked DNF's interactivity. I also enjoy picking up stuff and activating random objects. And most of all, I like physics and an environment that reacts to my actions. I hate how static it is in most games.

How come so few games have good destructible environments? I'm frustrated by Crysis 2, for example - the engine supports procedural deformation and destruction, but it's only used on big metal containers and a few walls. Years ago Black provided a COD-style experience and you could blow up the entire map, in fact to exit the first room you have to break down the door.

[Oof]

You could do that in Portal. But as it's not an fps...

It's in first person, and you shoot, but it's an outlier in a lot of ways, so it doesn't count.

Sure, you can probably find a recent-ish FPS that lets you flush toilets (although, the point of my comment is not that I want to flush toilets in FPSs... hahah), but it's a rarity.

[Heister]

It's in first person, and you shoot, but it's an outlier in a lot of ways, so it doesn't count.

Sure, you can probably find a recent-ish FPS that lets you flush toilets (although, the point of my comment is not that I want to flush toilets in FPSs... hahah), but it's a rarity.

I'm glad :D

It's only a matter of time before someone makes a first person public toilet cleaning simulator. It could be fun?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCk8VEvIGpA

[Dexter]

I'd like to present these videos, that should be obligatory for any such threads.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1ZtBCpo0eU


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4yIxUOWrtw

[Nalano]

I'd thought we'd go in the direction of being able to kick doors down, scale buildings by rope, rappel from rooftops, hide in cupboards, push items in front of entranceways in order to seal them off, throw chairs around, etc. Instead, we can't even flush toilets anymore.

Shit, man, half the games out today are door-kicking, rope-scaling simulators. HL2 had missions where the very point was to make use of the physics. DXHR was all about stacking boxes and FONV had you scouring every goddamn desk drawer in the city. There are plenty of FPSs now that let you make use of physics to set traps and crush opponents. If you take TPSs into account, there's a veritable shitload of ways your character makes use of the environment.

The reason we can't flush toilets nowadays is as Soldant said: What's the point? Useless interaction is useless. You want to flush toilets? Okay, play DNF. Hell, DNF lets you fling poo around. And in the words of the Duke himself: "Why am I doing this?"

(btw, ME2 lets you flush toilets. And that's why ME2's a great game, amirite?)

[soldant]

I'd like to present these videos, that should be obligatory for any such threads.
They're obligatory in that we can use them as a perfect example of people who think satire or parody should be done with a sledgehammer.


You could do that in Portal. But as it's not an fps...
Oh god, not this again...

[Nalano]

They're obligatory in that we can use them as a perfect example of people who think satire or parody should be done with a sledgehammer.

Or that there are people out there who mistake satire for in-depth analysis.

[Oof]

Shit, man, half the games out today are door-kicking, rope-scaling simulators. HL2 had missions where the very point was to make use of the physics. DXHR was all about stacking boxes and FONV had you scouring every goddamn desk drawer in the city. There are plenty of FPSs now that let you make use of physics to set traps and crush opponents. If you take TPSs into account, there's a veritable shitload of ways your character makes use of the environment.

There's a difference between designing a level or mission in which you can open drawers or move boxes to reach your objective; and designing these elements from the start to be a core feature of your gameplay. I'm talking about "emergent gameplay", obviously. CoD would be pretty awesome if it weren't just about shooting people in the head. Maps (and, more importantly, gameplay) would be so much more interesting if you could move objects around in order to make choke points; if you could destroy and deform terrain or buildings; if a gun that shoots grappling hooks were available to you; etc. As it is, I can't stand to play it.


The reason we can't flush toilets nowadays is as Soldant said: What's the point? Useless interaction is useless. You want to flush toilets? Okay, play DNF. Hell, DNF lets you fling poo around. And in the words of the Duke himself: "Why am I doing this?"

(btw, ME2 lets you flush toilets. And that's why ME2's a great game, amirite?)

There's that New Yorker charm -- deliberately ignoring what I've written just so you can take a jab. Nice one. Useless replies are useless. Also, ME2's a middling game.

[Heliocentric]

On emergent physics use.
In splinter cell I always prided myself on taking down guards with a thrown drink bottle. Deus ex Human Revolution took this to its natural extreme, vending machines. Using a combination of augmented legs for jumping, arms for throwing and fast battery regeneration I cleared whole bases by making like a drop bear vendor.

Sure I'd reload, I wanted that bloody pacifist achievement!

Vending machines are perfectly valid ways of completing boss battles.

[b0rsuk]

You mean Doom had moving to the side. I'm talking acrobatics.


DooM has various quirky methods of movement, such as Archville-jumping, rocket jumping (required to find a secret in one of official levels), strafe running, wall running, and probably a few others I'm not aware of.



You mean Doom had Rocket Launchers. I'm talking C4, grenades of all types, sticky bombs, landmines, mortars and all weapons with high arc fire, guided missiles, seeking missiles. RC explosives, gravity guns, and picking up and throwing things.


No True Scotsman fallacy. You've been shown to be wrong, so you change definition of indirect fire on the fly. DooM had indirect damage in form of explosions, not just rocket launchers but (in)famous exploding barrels. The barrels happen to be one of more requested features in various FPS and action games.



You mean Doom had enemies who stayed put until you entered the room. I'm talking enemies who can hear you in the next room. Who didn't see you because you were in the dark.

DooM has enemies who can hear you. Practically all of them. If they don't see you and you fire a shot, they go after you.




Furthermore, the Doom engine was updated after the fact for mouselook, when Doom got ported everywhere.

He said mouse control and DooM has that. Not mouselook, but in vanilla doom you can set Mouse as an input device and rotate your view using it. It's very convenient. Furthermore, some of developers played it that way before the game was finished. I think it was mentioned in description of one of songs by Bobby Prince. He explained where the names came from.

By the way: Portal is really not a FPS - by definition. First Person Shooter. I remember there was a time when a broader name was in use - FPP, for First Person Perspective.

As for various gimmicks, it's a question what makes a game fun, not just what makes a game advanced. Diablo 1 had succubi who shot missiles and ran away when you approached. Intelligent ? Yes. Fun ? No way, it was incredibly frustrating and just time-consuming for warriors.

DooM 2 had one of biggest monster sets in the entire FPS genre, and still has very hard to achieve variety in this regard. The sequel alone added 8 monster types, for a total of 18. Meanwhile modern games often have 5 or so. DooM II levels, while abstract, are all fun and varied. Modern games amuse you with offices complete with cubicles, ruins, warehouses, military bases and not much more. In a way they are much more constrained. Not to mention the number of weapons you could use.

[Oof]

On emergent physics use.
In splinter cell I always prided myself on taking down guards with a thrown drink bottle. Deus ex Human Revolution took this to its natural extreme, vending machines. Using a combination of augmented legs for jumping, arms for throwing and fast battery regeneration I cleared whole bases by making like a drop bear vendor.

Sure I'd reload, I wanted that bloody pacifist achievement!

Vending machines are perfectly valid ways of completing boss battles.

Love DE:HR for this reason. We're finally moving forward again. Still, we've only had a few handfuls of games that have moved the genre forward like this in its over-20-years lifespan.

[Drake Sigar]

The reason we can't flush toilets nowadays is as Soldant said: What's the point? Useless interaction is useless. You want to flush toilets? Okay, play DNF. Hell, DNF lets you fling poo around. And in the words of the Duke himself: "Why am I doing this?"
Useless interaction is still interaction, sometimes that's enough. If there's a vending machine around, I want to press the button and watch a soda fall out. No idea why, I guess being able to do something that the majority of games don't allow is often facinating, no matter how pointless it may seem.

Starwars Kinect gave me some perspective though, at least the ability to move in directions hasn't been taken from us yet.

[Heliocentric]

Love DE:HR for this reason. We're finally moving forward again. Still, we've only had a few handfuls of games that have moved the genre forward like this in its over-20-years lifespan.

Wait.. I'm not sure if you are mocking me, but I like it!

[Grizzly]

No True Scotsman fallacy. You've been shown to be wrong, so you change definition of indirect fire on the fly. DooM had indirect damage in form of explosions, not just rocket launchers but (in)famous exploding barrels. The barrels happen to be one of more requested features in various FPS and action games.


I disagree - Indirect fire does not equal splash damage. Shooting arrows in an arc over an hill to hit targets behind that hill is indirect fire. Firing on an explosive barrel in your sights which then kills a target you can not see is collatoral or splash damage (but you are aiming at the barrel - and not the invisible target, as opposed to indirect fire, where you are attempting to hit a target you can not see directly with the weapon you currently have).

[Oof]

Wait.. I'm not sure if you are mocking me, but I like it!

Hahahahah! I'm being serious. Sort of.

[soldant]

DooM has various quirky methods of movement, such as Archville-jumping, rocket jumping (required to find a secret in one of official levels), strafe running, wall running, and probably a few others I'm not aware of.
True but it wasn't until source ports that "jumping" had much meaning since, if I remember right, the original Doom.exe (and Doom2.exe since it's fundamentally the same engine) had an infinite height for "solid" objects (i.e. the player, monsters, static decorate objects that couldn't be walked through). Strafe running and wall running were engine quirks. Rocket "jumping" is sort of there I guess.


DooM has enemies who can hear you. Practically all of them. If they don't see you and you fire a shot, they go after you.
Technically true, but Wolfenstein 3D also had this. If the player "made a noise" while on a specific floor ID set in the map editor, and the enemy was on that same floor ID, they'd "hear" the noise... it wasn't really distance. I don't recall exactly how the monsters worked in vanilla Doom but I think it worked on sectors.


By the way: Portal is really not a FPS - by definition. First Person Shooter. I remember there was a time when a broader name was in use - FPP, for First Person Perspective.
As Nalano said, you have a gun that shoots portals.


DooM 2 had one of biggest monster sets in the entire FPS genre, and still has very hard to achieve variety in this regard. The sequel alone added 8 monster types, for a total of 18.
That wasn't much of a stretch really; some were just variants of existing monsters - you got a different variant of the Baron of Hell (the Hell Knight, one at half-strength of its original), a zombie with a chaingun, a smaller Spider Mastermind that shot plasma instead of using a chaingun, and a Cacodemon that shoots Lost Souls instead of lightning bolts. The Arch-vile, Revenant, and Mancubus were sufficiently different. Blake Stone had a boatload of enemy types as well.


DooM II levels, while abstract, are all fun and varied. Modern games amuse you with offices complete with cubicles, ruins, warehouses, military bases and not much more. In a way they are much more constrained. Not to mention the number of weapons you could use.
Doom 2's levels are abstract due to engine limitations at the time. To be honest I love them, I love trying to guess what each place was supposed to represent. But they're not without design flaws, such as lots of backtracking (which doesn't add much to the game), and again they're just large sectors with very little decoration. It's true that level design is a lot more constrained today but that's largely because people seem to be focusing on particular settings, just like how every 2nd game was a WW2 game in the mid 2000s. If you made a bunch of abstract rooms like a Doom 2 level, it'd be criticised and rightly so, because in today's age with the kind of abundant graphics processing a big empty room isn't particularly good. The Doom games are my favourite games bar none, but the abstract level design was a limitation of the time, and I don't miss key/switch hunts.

[deano2099]

As Nalano said, you have a gun that shoots portals.


Fine, but only in the same way my forthcoming game where you inject heroin in the first person is also an FPS.

[Heister]

As Nalano said, you have a gun that shoots portals.



It's not a gun. It's a device that fires portals. We call it a gun as it's easier than saying handheld portal device. It's as much a gun as a torch is.

[fiddlesticks]

If you made a bunch of abstract rooms like a Doom 2 level, it'd be criticised and rightly so, because in today's age with the kind of abundant graphics processing a big empty room isn't particularly good.
True, Doom's level design hasn't agred nearly as well as its gameplay elements. Though I'd actually be genuinely interested in an FPS that forgoes realistic level design in favour of abstract and surreal architecture. Something akin to what Sunder (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxFlWeduknY&feature=plcp&context=C4cc13f9VDvjVQa1PpcFOsruJVfFh83x2cbCDAl8Mv 5EhgcAzMB0g%3D) did.