Art Data Interactive and Doom

[3DOKid]

Oh goodness, thanks to trev I've been readng this article again, and it's so full of LOL.

Best quote:

"...there is simply no comparison between Doom on a PC and 3DO..."

Well, yes. Even I believe that.

has anyone who knows something about Doom actually played the 3Do and PC version to completion?

The reason i ask is that apparently the 3DO version has extras like different levels and monsters. And a big supprise at the end of the 3DO. Probably terminal eye-strain from the frame-rate, but I live in hope.

[bitrate]

I was thinking of starting up a thread at some point to discuss what exactly went wrong with the 3DO port of Doom and you beat me to it

I've read some interesting things over the years on this subject.

Obviously, Art Data got in way over their heads. This is quite apparent to anyone who has played the game, but it is also something that is brought up in some interviews that I've read.

Art Data apparently had to re-write the entire Doom engine to get it to run on the 3DO which is one of the big reasons given for its incredibly delayed release. They also had big turnover in their engineering department as people gave up on figuring out how to make it work on the 3DO.

Some other interesting things to consider about the 3DO port:

"Anyways, the game as I mentioned before Doom 3DO is very ambitious, which is its downfall. First of all, it's the ONLY early port of Doom to feature full 3d view of the characters. So you see the enemies at all angles, not just the front. Next, this port is the ONLY early port to features invisibility effects in the way of the Spectre enemy, which was cut from the other versions."

This is a quote from a 3DO Doom review by Elbryan42 on GameFAQs.

[cybdmn]

The reason i ask is that apparently the 3DO version has extras like different levels and monsters. And a big supprise at the end of the 3DO. Probably terminal eye-strain from the frame-rate, but I live in hope.

Abandon all hope.

The changes made to the levels are exactly the same in all early console ports. Mostly some minor things where simplified, for gameplay reasons or for the framerate.
At least, there are two console exclusive levels included.

http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/MAP16:_Hell_ ... sole_Doom)
http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/MAP17:_Hell_ ... sole_Doom)

Art Data apparently had to re-write the entire Doom engine to get it to run on the 3DO which is one of the big reasons given for its incredibly delayed release.

This is interesting, have you any source?
Because, i am in doubt about statements like this. Remember, that you could read everywhere, that the engine for Doom64 is completely new? I do, but it is now known, that this is not true. The Doom64 engine is based on the original engine.

Some other interesting things to consider about the 3DO port:

"Anyways, the game as I mentioned before Doom 3DO is very ambitious, which is its downfall. First of all, it's the ONLY early port of Doom to feature full 3d view of the characters. So you see the enemies at all angles, not just the front. Next, this port is the ONLY early port to features invisibility effects in the way of the Spectre enemy, which was cut from the other versions."

This is a quote from a 3DO Doom review by Elbryan42 on GameFAQs.

I am not sure if thats really true, but as i remember right, the Jaguar version has the 8-views for any monsters too. But as i said, i am not sure about that.
The 3DO version is in fact the only early port that features invisibility effects. But, in the end, it is still a very stripped down version. Lower texture quality, fewer textures, simplified levels, no cyberdemon, no spider mastermind, no multiplayer.

[bitrate]

This is interesting, have you any source?
Because, i am in doubt about statements like this.

The 3DO version is in fact the only early port that features invisibility effects. But, in the end, it is still a very stripped down version. Lower texture quality, fewer textures, simplified levels, no cyberdemon, no spider mastermind, no multiplayer.

According to the article, the 3DO also does a better job with the environment than the Playstation. I'm going to look for some video's to compare the two because I'm interested to see if this is true and if so how pronounced it is.

[bonefish]

The PlayStation port of Doom is rather excellent. But I was surprised to see how the lousy 3do port compared to the Saturn one. The Saturn port doesn't fair much better in the frame rate department compared to the 3do, which really surprised me. Just another example of the Saturn architecture being too complex ( )

[3DO Experience]

According to the article, the 3DO also does a better job with the environment than the Playstation. I'm going to look for some video's to compare the two because I'm interested to see if this is true and if so how pronounced it is.

Ummm don't stone me for this but could you compare the Jaguar version as well?

[cybdmn]

The PlayStation port of Doom is rather excellent. But I was surprised to see how the lousy 3do port compared to the Saturn one. The Saturn port doesn't fair much better in the frame rate department compared to the 3do, which really surprised me. Just another example of the Saturn architecture being too complex ( )

Right, the Saturn port is a little bit crappy too. To me it was the controls, who let this port fail. The controls are very inaccurate.

Ummm don't stone me for this but could you compare the Jaguar version as well?

First, thanks for the article scan. I really never heard of this before. This is interesting.

For the Jaguar version, it is easy to compare the sources (PC and Jag) directly. You can find the complete source code of the jaguar port at atari age:

http://www.atariage.com/Jaguar/archives/DoomSource/

For a comparson of all ports, the best source of information is Ledmeisters site:

http://www.classicdoom.com/

The main difference, i found are the missing of all invisibility effects in the Jaguar port, and the missing of ingame music, there's only music in the intermission screens. The rest is the same stripped down version, every single map is the same. The pro of the Jaguar port is the playability, even for the controller isn't really the best choice for this kind of games.

[3DOKid]

Isn't the jag version supposed to be rather good? After a quick look around I think it was made by ID Software rather ADI.


This is LOL-full too:

[3DOKid]

I can also honestly say i never liked Doom. On any platform. And I've tried on several occasions to feel the magic but I never felt the urge to be bothered to get past level 2.

I believe it's something to do with the over zealous PC owners of the mid-nineties who waxed lyrical about the 3D engine. Had they never been into a video arcade? Doom was on the PC the tail-end of 1993 and in 1994, when most people were getting round to playing it, the 3DO had NFS, the Jaguar had AVP and Doom, even by then, looked kind of dated. Another gripe was the blocky enemies. Escape from Monster manor may play like a lump of doggie-do-do but the enemies scales nicely and looked wonderful up close.

Dooms game-play, to my mind, was even simplistic. Sure Shoot'em ups were fun, demons even more so but Alone in the Dark was a deeper type of game and the arcade and home consoles had far better shoot'em ups.

What was it about Doom that made it so good?

People talk about the level design but again, I don't see it.

Were PC owners of the early 90s so blinkered, so insular, so new to computer technology that they were all sucked into the hype surrounding this game - or am I missing something?

The reason why I think it t was so successful, is because the first level(s) were given away free, and at the time there was not a great deal much else on the PC.

[cybdmn]

Isn't the jag version supposed to be rather good? After a quick look around I think it was made by ID Software rather ADI.

Thats right, the Jag port is in fact the only console port done by id Software. The SNES port was done by Sculptured Software, 3DO by ADI, the 32X port was done by SEGA of America, The Saturn port was done by Probe Entertainment, and the Playstation port was done by Williams Entertainment.

I have done a little comparsion with screenshots for the most ports:

http://www.blood-is-red.de/wiki/wikka.p ... Vergleiche

I can also honestly say i never liked Doom.

I have read your blog, i know.

I believe it's something to do with the over zealous PC owners of the mid-nineties who waxed lyrical about the 3D engine. Had they never been into a video arcade? Doom was on the PC the tail-end of 1993 and in 1994, when most people were getting round to playing it, the 3DO had NFS, the Jaguar had AVP and Doom, even by then, looked kind of dated. Another gripe was the blocky enemies. Escape from Monster manor may play like a lump of doggie-do-do but the enemies scales nicely and looked wonderful up close.

At this point you are wrong. Nothing can't compete with Doom back then. Forget NFS, its a racer, you can't compare that to a first person shooter.
Forget AvP for the Jaguar, it is THE Jaguar game, but, it came much later and it is really slow in comparsion with Doom, plus, the Engine is more like Wolfenstein 3-D, no Steps, and all Corners in 90 degree. The pure amount of enemies in AvP is nothing against Doom. You will find hardly more than a little bunch at the same time. But really, if you don't like games like this, you will probably never understand WHY Doom is the ultimate reference in this genre.

Dooms game-play, to my mind, was even simplistic. Sure Shoot'em ups were fun, demons even more so but Alone in the Dark was a deeper type of game and the arcade and home consoles had far better shoot'em ups.

Don't mix first person shooters with classic arcade shooters. Thing is, Doom is an arcade style, mindless action game, but with total different gameplay, yet alone for the perspective.

What was it about Doom that made it so good?

Were PC owners of the early 90s so blinkered, so insular, so new to computer technology that they were all sucked into the hype surrounding this game - or am I missing something?

Definately yes, you missed something. In 1993, there was no game on any home entertainment system which can compete with Doom, tech-wise. Not on any game console, not for Atari or Amiga computers, even not for Apple computers. All first person shooters with the potential to compete against Doom came later, and most of them don't add something to the experience, plus most of them lack multiplayer.

The reason why I think it t was so successful, is because the first level(s) were given away free, and at the time there was not a great deal much else on the PC.

No, thats not the resaon, maybe one reason. Look, the first levels of Descent where given away for free too, but it never was as successfully as Doom.

As i said, you have to like this kind of games, to understand what made this game as big as it is. This is a phenomenon. Even today you can buy it (Retail, Steam, XBox Live), and there is still a gib community creating new maps, for a game, which is 15 years old.

[Trev]

Lots of interesting comments this thread has led to ... good stuff!


Not much left for me to say except to re-emphasize that ADI was full of it. I don't mind a bit of hype for a game (all developers do it) but blatant lies are another thing. Does anyone know where any of the team are today?

And oh, btw, am I the only one that likes Wolfenstein better? Now there is a port that does 3DO proud! And how can you beat Nazis as the enemies?

Doom 3DO = (except the soundtrack)

[3DO Experience]

Thanks for the comparison links, I'll have to read them later (on my lunch hour now). And no Trev I like Wolfenstein better too.

[13BEAST]

And oh, btw, am I the only one that likes Wolfenstein better? Now there is a port that does 3DO proud! And how can you beat Nazis as the enemies?

I definitely like Wolf3D better than Doom, but Duke Nukem 3D is my favorite 90s computer FPS.

[BryWI]

I have a confession to make. SNES doom was the first doom i played. It was playable to me back then too. I played it alot too. If you play the pc version before hand though, thats when you know you are playing something of lesser value. Once I played the PC version, I never went back.

[Scarlettkitten]

I've played nearly all version of Doom and I still don't get it. I think the game's too shallow, walk, shoot, open door, shoot, walk, etc....

Immercenary is more involving.

[3DOKid]

I've played nearly all version of Doom and I still don't get it. I think the game's too shallow, walk, shoot, open door, shoot, walk, etc....

Immercenary is more involving.

Agreed. I think, as a concept, Spacehulk was the superior game. The strategy elements, mixed with FPS elements - has this been repeated?

A Spacehulk 2, with the same basics but more guns and more enemies would stand up today. Games like Tom Clancys efforts and Band of Brothers have an element of strategy to them, but quite honestly I don't think they are as good.

[mattyg]

What was it about Doom that made it so good?

People talk about the level design but again, I don't see it.

Were PC owners of the early 90s so blinkered, so insular, so new to computer technology that they were all sucked into the hype surrounding this game - or am I missing something?

What made Doom stand out at the time was not the graphics , not the gameplay , but if I remember rightly it was networked play.

For the first time you could chase friends around a maze with a chainsaw etc. This was the revolutionary part and the reason its remembered fondly.It's also the reason the console versions were naff.

As for ADI.........I think they thought that porting would be easy , that they would be handed easy to build graphics libraries (like sony did with developers for PSone), this is the same reason MKIII never got finished

[Trev]

SNES doom was the first doom i played.

Was it heavily edited do you know? I'm curious to try it just as an historical curiousity.

[3DO Experience]

Agreed. I think, as a concept, Spacehulk was the superior game. The strategy elements, mixed with FPS elements - has this been repeated?

There was a game... a sequel to another. It came out around the demise of 3DFX, I know because I had bought a Voodoo 5 5500, the demo was written for it and when the game came out they changed it to run under nVIDIA, the cocksuckers! It NEVER ran correctly under any GeForce card. The demo was better.

[cybdmn]

Wasn't that called Space Hulk: Vengeance of the Blood Angels? Im not sure, if that's a sequel or just a kind of remake, i never got into that. It was released in 1996 for the PC, Saturn and the Playstation if i remember correctly.

[BryWI]

Was it heavily edited do you know? I'm curious to try it just as an historical curiousity.

It's been a long time since I have played it so I cant remember too much about censorship edits and blood and stuff. I do remember some details like fake walls that had transparencies were taken out. Some details for sure like that were downgraded. Certain levels were taken out for space requirements. episode 2 was pretty short iirc. I kind of liked that way though lol. Also in order to get to episode 3 i remember having to be on a harder difficulty. So it made it pretty brutal. I never did beat it on snes. I remember being able to go to the episode before it on one level difficulty lower then it would go to episode 3 after the end of 2 on that one lower difficulty. But then i wouldnt get the true ending even if i did beat episode 3.

Im sure that was worded weird, but maybe you understood it lol. I really dont recommend playing that game though. Its very difficult to play it at that frame rate. Not used to it anymore.

The same reason I cant really get into Killing Time anymore. That and the headache i get from trying to remember which way to go.

[3DO Experience]

*Stares at cybdmn... slaps him on the face.*

[3DOKid]

*Stares at cybdmn... slaps him on the face.*

I think what 3DO experience is trying to say is that Space Hulk Vengeance of the Blood angels, was a 3Do original, ported to those platforms. And it was extra-crammed-pack full of goodness.

*Stares at cybdmn... slaps him on the face.*

[cybdmn]

As i said, i never got into that. At least, there are plenty of those Warhammer (40k) stuff. Hard to say, which game is really a sequale, and which is just another game within this universe.

[3DO Experience]

Well to further clear things up the sequel I was referring to was a PC only title. And so cybdmn doesn't feel too hurt he/she was correct about Blood Angels being a second Space Hulk game. There was another made for the PC that came before it. Blood Angels was better however. If anyone wants the first PC Space Hulk game, just PM me.

[Silanda]

This is my first post so hi everyone. I figured this was common knowledge, but it doesn't seem to have been mentioned yet so I though I would post the reason afaik 3do Doom sucks so bad. According to old usenet posts by 3do Doom's programmer, Bill Heineman, ADI never managed to get the game working, so his company was hired at the last minute to port the Jag version in about ten weeks. Not really enough time. To compound the problem, a slightly older beta was mistakenly mastered and released instead of the final version.

Incidentally, Heineman also coded the excellent 3do version of Wolfenstein so he obviously knew what he was doing. It's a shame ADI didn't hire him much earlier and actually gave him time to properly finish Doom.

It's a shame we'll probably never hear ADI's side of the story, because without anything explaining why they had so much trouble they appear to have been grossly incompetent.

[BryWI]

Interesting indeed. Never knew that.

[3DOKid]

A quote from rec.games.video.3do.

---

From: John Carmack <jo...@idcube.idsoftware.com>
Date: Fri, 24 Dec 93 15:29:18 -0600
Subject: Re: id's choice not to develop for 3DO

Feel free to quote this.

We have a few reasons for not developing on the 3DO, but development
machine bigotry isn't one of them. I used an apple IIGS for snes
development (I am never, EVER, going to work with nintendo again),
and I am suffering with an atari falcon for Jaguar work until I can
port the tools to NEXTSTEP. I wouldn't turn away a mac based
environment.

The biggest reason is that I doubt that 3DO is going to become a huge
success. $750 is way out of line for a pure entertainment machine.
Was the NEO-GEO a success two years ago? We bought one, but we don't know anoyone else that did. I doubt there will be all that many
units sold.

To make matters worse, there are over one hundred third party
licensees suposedly developing on 3DO. If there were only a couple
companies developing for it, they might make money. I predict there
is going to be some serious lossage going on in the 3DO developer
community.

The other major argument is somewhat philosphical. I don't like what
people expect out of CD games. Does anyone think that the cheeseball
dialog in crash and burn is a GOOD addition? It turns my stomach.
People expect CD games to have tons of digitized speech and video,
and the 3DO is going to be strongly associated with it. The joke
here is that if we ever do a CD version of DOOM, you are going to get
the game and "The Making of DOOM" a one hour feature film. Companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars putting all this media into their games, and it often actually detracts from it. We don't want
to be part of this crowd.

I would rather cut down to the essentials and fit on a cartridge than
uselessly bulk up on a CD. I have a minimallist sense of aesthetics
in game design.

Many developers are planning on waiting out the eary 32 bit hardware
wars, but I want to do a cool product even if it doesn't make tons of
money. Sandy (our map designer) semi-derisively calls DOOM jaguar my

"reward" for writing DOOM pc. "Good job, you can go play with your
new toys."

Our initial appraisal of the Jaguar was "nice system, but Atari
probably can't make it a success". But when I got the technical
documentation, I was VERY impressed. This is the system I want to
see become a standard platform.

I was slated to do a cut down version of DOOM for the super nintendo
SFX chip, but I kept thinking about how cool a jaguar version of DOOM
would be, and nintendo kept rejecting wolfenstein-snes for bullshit
reasons (a golden cross bonus item might offend christians. right.).

We finaly decided that we didn't want to be a part of the
chicken-and-the-egg problem of new systems not attracting customers
because developers haven't written for the platform because there are
no customers. The jag is cool, I think it has a shot at success, and
I am going to put my time where my mouth is.

Why the jag is cooler than the 3DO (from my point of view): It only
costs $250. The bulk of its processing power is user programmable.
The 3DO has a capable main processor (a couple times better than the
weak 68k in the jag), but most of its power is in custom hardware
that has narrow functionality for affine transformations. The jag
has some stupid hardware for z buffering and gouraud shading, but I
can just ignore it and tell the two 27mhz risc chips to do EXACTLY
what I want. A 64 bit bus with multiple independant processors may
not be the easiest thing to optimize for, but there is a LOT of
potential.

There will probably be a version of DOOM for 3DO. We are talking
with a few companies about licensing out the port. It would be kind
of fun to do it here, but I am eager to get to work on the next
generation game engine that will make DOOM look puny...

John Carmack
Technical Director
Id Software

---

Story of his life eh? Right in so many ways, wrong in so many ways.

[BryWI]

It's amazing that old posts like that still float around.

[3DOKid]

It's amazing that old posts like that still float around.

Some of my 1994 rec.games.video.3do posts are still about too