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| Doomworld: As long as you were creating entirely new "looks" for the Doom monsters, why didn't you go the whole nine yards and make them polygons as well? |
| Harry: That
would radically affected gameplay (like I said before, decisions don't
happen in isolation.) One of the major gameplay differences between
Doom and Quake, was, for me, large numbers of monsters vs smaller numbers
of monsters. We wanted the Doom gameplay, which meant situations
where you could be mowing down dozens and dozens of demons and lost souls
with the plasma gun.... you can't get dozens and dozens of (good-looking)
polygonal demons and lost souls on screen at once, with lots of plasma
gun effects.
At least, you couldn't at the time: it takes some time for coders to get familiar with a console, familiar enough to pull off really sophisticated tricks. The first generation of games on a platform are never as technically accomplished as subsequent generations, because it takes a lot of experience with the hardware to learn what it can do. |
| Was an entirely new engine used for Doom64 or was the Doom source code used? |
| Same setup as the PSX: much was new, much was culled from the original source and optimized specifically for the N64 hardware. |
| One level in particular that impressed me was the third level 'Engineering'. In it, there is a central room in which the blue key appears, then the red key, and finally a weapon. Historically, you can only have monsters teleport in. Why did you choose to let items teleport as well? |
| I didn't do that map, so I can't comment on that situation specifically, but I recall when we talked about doing things like teleporting other objects. We thought it would be a good way to change the players' expectations, changing the rules about the way things happen. |
| Why was there no Archvile in PSX Doom? |
| The archvile had twice as many frames of animation as any other monster, and we just couldn't do him justice on the PSX. Couldn't lose his attack, and couldn't lose his ressurecting power. He was just too big to include. |
| Why were new enemies and weapons introduced into the PSX/N64 versions of Doom, such as the "Nightmare Spectre" in PSX Doom and the "Nightmare Imp," "Mother of all Demons," and a laser weapon in N64 Doom? |
| To add variety, give veterans something new to see, and to take advantage of some capabilities of the platforms we were using. |
| What prompted the decision to create all-new artwork in Doom64? |
| There were a lot of versions of Doom out there, and the N64 was a new console that really wanted to stand out as unique. We felt that we took and extended the artwork of the original Doom in the PSX version as far as it would go, and that to make the N64 version something truly new and exciting, we would need a new look. |
| Do you feel that your work on two separate Doom ports was responsible for your landing a job at Valve Software? |
| I think they helped. I got a lot of experience working on the various aspects of each game, and more than having each game on my resume, I think Valve was more interested in the things I learned and the experience I brought because of those games. |
| During the creation of Half-Life, were there any aspects of Doom that the team wished to incorporate into the game? |
| Most definitely: we wanted to scare you like Doom did. Doom was a huge influence on most of us, and we really look on Doom as a brilliant achievement. It fathered the first-person shooter industry. |
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