Coelacanth: Lessons from Doom (2010)
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Speedrun of Dead Simple from Doom 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfijpjvS9Q8&feature=player_de...
Quake Done Quick: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpiNDxssUL0
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That sort of manic movement is, I think, what really sets apart the elite FPS players of the Doom, Quake, and UT era (and the games in the same vein) from folks in the CoD/Halo games.
Also, the level design is pretty much strictly better, because it mattered a lot more. With regenerating health and lots of ammo/easy pickups, you no longer have to be quite so careful when putting together a level, because you know that if the give the player X seconds of time without suffering everything will be okay.
In those days, my friends and I used to get into UT quite a lot. Most of the more experienced UT players I watched would use the double-tap of the left/right arrow button to trigger the short sideways leap as a means of rounding a corner (for a better chance of surprising an enemy), or to make it harder for an enemy to keep a bead on them when they were being fired on. I was always surprised at how - to me at least - this simple mechanic made such a difference to how dynamic the combat felt.
> Doom is about “maneuverability as defense”
> ...
> There’s nothing quite like it today.
By default it also moves fairly slowly, but the player is strongly encouraged and almost forced to use bunny-hopping to gain extreme agility and speed. Most youtube LPs showcase this quite well. "Asylum" and "Snowy Bridge" are imo the highpoint levels to watch for this.
If anyone else is into these kinds of shooters, and wants to try more recent titles, I also highly recommend both Hard Reset (2011) and Shadow Warrior (2013) by Flying Wild Hog. I believe some of the developers were part of the original Painkiller team.
Sure, on the avatar scale, they play at a similar level. The environments are what really set the earlier generation apart, and in that respect very little approaches that sort of design.
The game that I felt captured this dynamic really well, at least in multiplayer deathmatches, was Half-Life. You were surprisingly zippy, and the long jump module gave you a lot of ability to get out of where you were in a hurry. I enjoyed this sort of dynamic because it played well to my strengths. Having mediocre aim but being able to dodge well worked out okay in this setting. Doom and Half-Life are probably the only shooters I've ever been decent at.
the Descent series is all about this, even in multiplayer.
Here's a video of two of the best players in the world: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8eCULTB3IQ (with audio commentary from some of the other best players, starting at around 7%.)
[edit] Oh, but the reviews are pretty terrible. :|
Thankfully, due to the hard work of several people, Descent runs beautifully on modern hardware.
Come play with us. http://descentchampions.org/new_player.php (current version: retro 1.3)
What a coincidence, I mentioned Descent's notorious nausea inducing properties on HN a few days ago.
The version I played was on the Playstation One. Because I was resident in Britain I was playing an incomplete NTSC to PAL conversion. This resulted in noticeable object warping if you did a barrel roll. I swear it intensified the effects.
By contrast DOOM on either PS1 or PC wouldn't make me sea-sick at all.
And my experience of playing Dark Souls was all about "dodging around like a maniac and not being where enemies were putting their weapons".
I mean, if you want to constrain it to FPSs, yeah, there's not much like it. But there are a hell of a lot of games whose primary strategy is "Be Where The Bullets Are Not".
On the other hand, you can parry much more reliably in 1 and I've killed dark knights simply by parrying them 4 times successively. Or you can backstab, since the enemies don't turn as quickly as they do in 2.
I'll agree that a lot of strategy in DaS 1 and 2 comes from careful positioning, given that replenishing your health puts you at a considerable danger while you sit immobile drinking estus and can be interrupted at any time by an attack. However, I find that the two games have a definitely different feel to them, even though they're woven from the same cloth. Another thing is that the camera in DaS2 is much, much faster, due to being truly mouse controlled - you can turn as fast as you can swing your mouse (I still recommend using AutoHotkey to bind mouse buttons to keyboard buttons because otherwise you get lag on attack, due to the game waiting a frame or two to check if you're not double-clicking, since you can bind different actions on single and double click; it's not the end of the world, but it's annoying). In 1, not only is m+kb absolutely unworkable, the mouse has a negative acceleration applied and you can't turn any faster than with a joypad.
I like both, but if you play a long enough time these small differences start getting really obvious.
Also, I haven't seen someone mention the Serious Sam games, so there.
Er.. I'm not expecting an answer to all of those, but I am curious how you pull off the playstyle in general. Do you mostly use ranged attacks?
I'm not saying it's impossible. Heck, there's speedruns where you can see people just rushing past every enemy and then stabbing the boss in the butt (i.e. the one true strategy for every boss in DaS) with some minmaxed weapon.
I guess I'm just noting it won't be fun for me to play that way at all. Well both not fun and nearly impossible.
I also haven't played in a while; I got to a point where I couldn't make serious progress in any of the avenues currently open to me, and then the keeper of the initial bonfire got killed, and I accidentally used what the internet tells me is the only item that could bring her - and the flame - back. I really didn't want to continue and I also really didn't feel like starting fresh.
Also use the environment! Pull gangs of mobs into a place where there's room to pick them off one by one, or just circle around and lose them. Aggro a mob, vanish around a corner, and beat heck out of it as it rounds the corner and tries to figure out where you are. Hell, I cleaned out ALL the dragons in the dragon valley by cheerfully abusing having an arrow range longer than their aggro distance...
Duke Nukem 3D and the Build engine were pretty interesting for level creation. The game engine included the editor so you could actually drop into a mode where you walk through the level and directly modify textures, floor/ceiling height, etc. Was a very cool experience at the time.
Granted Wolfenstein was a much simpler game. But man I spend hours with that editor.
I think I missed the meeting that established the criteria for a "programming idol" :P
The guys back in the old id were rockstars - plain and simple. They were trailblazing an entire new industry and setting a lot of firsts. Now that the gaming industry is more "mature", the major players are more relaxed, trying to show their artistic side, and no one's smashing keyboards or putting their coworker's bloody heads on sticks as easter eggs[0].
http://theportalwiki.com/wiki/Puzzle_Creator
Of the user-made levels, it's surprising how many used the full level editor anyway--even though, as the post notes, building levels ain't quite as simple as it was in the Doom days. User-made level gallery:
http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/browse?appid=620&browseso...
There is one level with a Cathedral.... you walk in through the entrance to see a few dozen imps standing at pews, and there are a couple of Knights of Hell and a Baron on the front stage giving a sermon.
The mock up was pleasingly realistic, then I noticed that the crucifix on the front wall was inverted.