The format change has a lot to do with it. It's a lot more work for both the designer and the engine to produce all that 'true 3d' rather than the 1.5D that Doom used.

And the id1 levels did have plenty of areas that '99% of people' ((which I hear a lot and seems to lack the second half of the sentence - 99% of people who buy into the product during first week of sales)) there was an entire secret level in each episode, for example, and various other mapping doodles scattered about that had no real functionality.

When you think about it, most secrets are the same thing, but justified by that secret counter going up. Modern day, those cool areas would be replaced by a cupboard that you need a code to open or some crap :> 

Development time is inherently development costs, so yeah, these things are literally more expensive. I do recall some interview with Romero where he spoke of how Quake is different in terms of ambushes and such simply because it takes more work to build one than in Doom. In Doom you can draw 3 lines off of the hallway, draw another inside of that, Make Sector twice, declare the thinner one a door, tie it to a linedef in the hall, put monsters in it. When you know the editor, that is such an incredibly quick thing. You also don't have to worry about the Z placement of anything, just keep monsters and items away from the walls.

Granted, negative brushes like in UnrealEd would be okay here - place, subtract, add a barrier, tie it to a trigger volume... and in theory one could do a "snap to floor, adjust by bbox" logic in an editor so you could more easily toss items and monsters in... But in my experience tool dev is always scoped to "Does it work well enough to complete a release?"

I will say that Quake does have a lot of "nonsense" areas compared with contemporary games though, multiple paths to get things done, or water routes underneath the level. We all get a chuckle at videos like "If Quake Were Made Today", but those are obviously simplistic. No, if Quake were made today the player would be too heavy to swim, making water a decorative surface - and thus a barrier. No taking the side routes through e1m2, that is just to look nice. (e1m4 would be cut completely). I know the main routes are more polished, but I do find there to be a rate of diminishing returns on polish.

I'm fine with cost effective concerns in game design, I just wish they would find another method than golden path hallways with nicely polished details that are effectively depictions of more interesting places than what I am currently playing. I like experiencing things in a manner other than having it being placed before me on a plate.

And from this, I get the increase in pseudo-sandboxes, procedural systems, and XP unlock systems. It allows a slow trickle of content, it is more controllable, and it allows for reuse of content. Which really adds up monetarily when you think of the cost behind a new monster or a new room for any major release.

I get it. I just... don't like it, and thus I go and play more Quake and Doom and other such games, because ultimately, they are doing a better job of amusing me as a gamer. 

"I like experiencing things in a manner other than having it being placed before me on a plate. "

As games get more realistic, more details are necessary. That's the cycle. You can't call your game realistic if the world is devoid of the details that your brain expects to find.

Something abstract - like Quake levels - can be whatever you like. The brain doesn't have expectations other than the basic laws of physics apply. 

No taking the side routes through e1m2, that is just to look nice. (e1m4 would be cut completely).

This is a profoundly depressing thought. 

One interesting thing I've observed regarding this when working with idTech5:
The designers have to explicitly define the areas the player can walk to so that the megatexture can be optimized and areas that are far away receives less resolution than up close areas. The consequence of this is that it's often cheaper (for the disc size) to open up the sides of the walkable corridor and have a huge-ass vista there instead of just walls. So having grand open halls and outdoors areas, but just being able to walk around in a narrow corridor in the middle is the best thing for the game tech-wise.
The illusion of openness, but in reality highly linear. 

 

Fortunately, we're seeing more titles play with non-realistic approaches to world rendering, so there may be room for more tools that support a faster brain:screen transition for level design. Straining for realism is a good technical goal, but it certainly isn't a defining trait intrinsic to FPS design. 

I think maybe the solution is not to lower the detail but to update the level design tools. Instead of level designers laying in every mesh by hand, we need tools to lay in ... I dunno, proxies that are filled in at compile time or something.

"Add a closet here", and you drop in some sort of room prefab that you can tweak settings on. In the editor, it's just a box. In the game, it's a randomized closet generated procedurally from prefabs.

I dunno ... something like that! Something to speed up level design iteration would allow for opening up side areas more. 

I'm always in favor of more tool development, especially as someone who hasn't made any tools =D

But yeah, materials for surfaces so you graybox an area, defining it with tags for materials, and then sub tag an area so it inherits the earlier ones and adds a few more. Say a bathroom/pool area tile bit that has some dirty grout, with cracks that widen to vines growing out, and then some of the tiles are broken with holes showing utility pipes behind it. But for the mapper this is a few brushes and tags.

...for the static artist this is a whole lot of work... Granted you can do a degree of procedural creation for foliage, piping, brickwork, things of that nature.

An aside within that: I loved the illogical never-going-to-see-much-like-it-in-real-life places like Ziggurat Vertigo. Take me to strange new places, not normal places plus aliens/zombies. 

I completely agree - toolsets have by and large only evolved in a linear fashion, while asset fidelity and complexity has increased exponentially. Hell, the Rage SDK is a pretty version of Radiant.

I think there will be some amount of concession to fidelity, and that's OK. There are several artistically valid ways of representing a world and characters that don't involve subsurface scattering.

I was present for a Q/A at Quakecon for the launch of ET:QW, and there was an obligatory question about modding tools. The answer was essentially "Yes, the tools are available, just remember that uncompressed megatextures will weigh in at about 30 to 40 gigabytes". This is a huge leap in demands for enthusiasts, compared to drawing a box on a screen and hitting a button. 

I seem to remember some dev video for the Snowdrop engine (for The Division) where the designer can specify a very primitive shape for the building and then the editor/engine will populate all the walls with windows / fire escapes / details etc and create doors and shop fronts at the bottom of the shape. It was very cool and I believe all the details are set with scripts so it is user controllable. 

You had me at "'ello guys", no need to butter me up.

Except for to prevent chafing. But still. 

Daz - Yes! That's a good example. Assassins Creed does this as well for quickly building streets in Paris. There are possibilities here for the future... 

Best story in a game?
Dreamfall: The Longest Journey comes to mind. 

My brain is SCREAMING at me to try something like this for Quake but the reality gnome who lives in my head is reminding me that this will lead to leaks that the level designer has zero chance of finding or fixing since they won't be working with the compile version of the map in the editor ... *grumble* 

you could always just port Quake to UE4 or whatever and not worry about leaks this way 

That would be fun ... you totally could too. Just import the models, animate them via blueprints ... hmm ... 

That actually sounds like a little project one could do to learn UE4.

Just need a special blueprint to count fish twice... 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQog9lkyH8k

A Skyrim TC by the same people who made Nehrim, among other things. I'm properly hyped. 

Super excited about this! Nehrim was really good. I hope it's early 2015 and not late 2015! 

And to this day I still haven't checked out Nehrim despite being on my todo list since forever. I did start their Morrowind project Arktwend a bazllion years back and forgot to continue it...

There's so many damn good project releases for different games it's difficult to keep up with them all! 

 

hm... that's cool, but you can already play strife in the vavoom engine, so... yeah, not sure if there's really any point paying for that. unless you don't have the original strife, of course.

it's one of my favourite games, so if you've never played it, i'd heartily recommend it. it was really quite ground breaking at the time it was released, with lots of fully voiced dialog, inventory, weapon mods and even some story branching, not to mention a really great atmosphere and cool level design. 

Looks exactly like more Skyrim, except, errr, different. Looks rather cool to me. 

Going back and playing Doom1/2 in Doomsday, and started looking for all the wads I've missed out on. I don't know what 'hub' site exists for Doom mapping, but I've found
http://www.doomworld.com/10years/bestwads/2001.php
and
http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_notable_WADs
so far.

As for bigger projects, Brutal Doom looks like a ton of fun and so does that Total Chaos thing.