I've been wondering for a while if there were there still a market for traditional FPS's like Duke 3d, Perfect Dark, SiN and Quake?

I know a lot of critics these days slam games for not being creative, but is there still a market for such old school gameplay cause to me the level design of these older games as well as style is a lot better than most of the games we see out today, also shooter games these days seem to sell off one off gimmicks which to me wreck the gameplay, else never add anything substantial

Maybe I'm just beginning to become an oldie, but what do you guys reckon?

I think there is a market for it, but I think that whoever creates an FPS these days needs to be a bit creative with it. For example, look what Half-Life 2 did (and, yes, even now this is a bit older, but it was created in the midst of all the hype for multi-player games, 3rd person perspective games, etc). What HL2 did is add a decent story line, added "non-traditional" FPS elements (like driving a dune buggy and a boat) and some decent narrative. So, in some ways, it seems the days of a simple DOOM game are done. People seem to want more than just eye-candy. But if an FPS is done creatively, then I suppose that it would do well.

I know that I am an "oldie" as well. I still like to play the original Doom, Quake and the original Unreal.

i still value quake 2 as one of the best games ever made. the problem with sequels like doom 3 and quake 4 is what i call the "star trek phenomenon", the old fans feel betrayed because the franchise develops and gets better grafics, a new story line, new / other characters etc, while the new gamer generation only appreciates the good looks of those games, and don't identify with it too much. they want to see some up to date features, and action. see, car/tank driving and shooting turrets has never been a part of the quake franchise, but since far cry 1, it's an unwritten rule that every damn shooter needs a bloody car in it to be cool and have something on the feature list to brag about.

i still love to play quake 3 online, even though it's almost a decade old. if i ever had to make a shooter, i would have exactly 3 weapons: a rocket launcher, a shotgun, and a plasma rifle. maybe if i were better with it, the rail gun. the key to an action game is the action, that's what many popular "adventure-shooters" don't get, take bioshock for example. huge feature list, impressive grafics, story, new scenario. i liked it, but i won't play it twice. it was interesting, but it didn't draw me in, make my hands sweaty or my heart beat faster. it was a nice trip underwater, but that's about it. where has the action part been? shooting the always-the-same splicers, being revived while attacing those protector monsters? no. that was one encounter per minute, at max.

a series that grasps the concept of action and first person shooting quite well is serious sam. and i bet it sells pretty well. yes, you have cars and vehicles, but they do not interrupt the gameplay, it's just another weapon combined with a faster movement.

broozar, I agree. I was thinking about this while reading your thread, but what is an FPS really? Isn't it really just an arcade game turned on its side and brought into a 3D context? Doom was really just a super advanced version of Space Invaders. The concept of space invaders is to shoot the enemy without getting yourself shot. The concept in Doom/Quake/Half-Life is the same. New ideas can be introduced, but they should not take away from the basic idea of the game. An FPS, like an arcade game, is all about the skill of the player to avoid getting hit too often and to take out the bad guys.

So, in an arcade game, you progress through levels where the enemies get tougher and tougher until you fight a boss enemy. This was the same in DOOM/Quake. Arcade games are still fun. Doom is still fun. Therefore, I certainly think that there is a place for new FPS games. However, whoever develops it has to be smart. Why would I play YOUR FPS game when I already have DOOM/Quake? Something has to set it apart.

There have been some simple FPS shooters like you describe, some "arcade 3d games". Do you know the "Serious Sam" series? Or what about the game, where you enter hell to defeat tons of enemies, I forgot the name of it.

A very new game called Legendary might be also that way but I did not play it so far. But I also realized that these games sell good but not exceptional good like innovative but still simple games (Bioshock is a simple game, you can shoot all your way if you like).

And I agree, that the feeling of the first Doom and the first Unreal is still different, better and unmatched. I cannot explain why this is the case. But the first Unreal was a perfect mix of fantasy and sci-fi, peace and war, action and exploration, magic and science. It was amazing. Later games did not reach this (except of the action RPG Outcast, but this was not very successful, dont know why).

Yeah I've played Serious Sam, legendary and painkiller. They were good games but very focused on being more arcadey than traditional shooters by speeding up the gameplay's pace and involving only over the top weapons. The level design was a little different to the traditional shooters corridor approach, it was more of an open field which opened up to another open field on defeat of x amount of enemies.

The feeling of the first traditional games, doom, quake (thankyou quake, for without you the A7 engine would not be here! lol), unreal and duke do have that 'unmatched' feeling to them, I think that feeling has something to do with the fact that back in those days games were made 'just for fun' and the ideas were fresh along with the talent excited about experimenting in the new media. The closest I get to the feeling I get playing the original fps's would be in half life 2 and following episodes, I don't think valve have lost track of the formula they used for half life and the dynamic of their company. Each of their games use the same formula and design but each one comes out feeling fresh.

When I think about whether there is still a market for traditional fps gameplay, i think the audience never left, but a lot of new players came in wanting a different experience which retains elements from the first person shooter era but the players tended to lean more on graphics and feature lists over gameplay and good level design, which is why many traditional fps's have been adapted and substantially different to their predecessors (doom 3) or labelled as stale and uninnovative for not adapting to the new age (sin episodes). Valve are the only ones still going strong that I can think of..

EDIT: lol, I do sound like an oldie when I re-read this

Nope. The Ack engine was a raycasting engine like Doom and predates Quake. Later Ack became Acknex (still a raycasting engine) and then, in A3, became a Quake-like 3D engine. So you can thank Doom and not Quake for our engine's existance .



I think part of it was that ALL of this was so new. Home computers, while having been around for quite some time, were a fairly new thing to many people. I mean Doom was out in the days of the DX series of Intel chips (even before?), which predated the Pentium, and was distributed as Shareware on three 3.5" floppies. The internet, while also having been around for a while, was also "new" to many people. Top games where things like Commander Keen, etc. The computer in general seemed to be a fresh thing to many people. People were running DOS and, in some cases, Windows 3.1. Computing itself, for many people, was simply a big adventure!

I remember when the original Unreal was being developed. The developers had a web site where they would discuss their engine, post development screen shots and the like and devote followers would go there and watch the development of the game in awe. The developers were just like the rest of us. It was not being developed by some big game company with a multi-million dollar budget. It was being made for fun by people who were having a good time doing it. To some degree, we all felt involved even if we were just watching it be developed! So when the game was released, we had to get it ... just had to! After all, many of us had spent many nights pouring over the Unreal web site watching the game be born like it was our own baby .

So, yeah, you are right! Games like this were developed for fun more than profit (or so it seemed) and their development included those of us that wanted to play as well as those of us that had dreamed of being a part of it somehow. Today that indie spirit seems to be dead or, if not dead, most people, having grown up with 3D games all around them, don't view the development of such a thing as any big deal. And that is a shame.

Speaking of sounding like an oldie ... I miss those days .

lol yeah miss those days too. I had always had the opinion the Ack engine was based off of Quake's engine, interesting to realise it was before that and was a fake 3d raycasted one!

It would be an interesting experiment to have a community driven game created in today's environment like unreal as you mentioned and see how it will fare in terms of following, support and 'freshness'. I have a feeling there would be a few already out there but none spring to mind when I think about it.

The original unreal was a great game, it's multiplayer was the beginning to the ut2000 series but the singleplayer was fun and had very memorable puzzles.

Another thing I noticed between older games is interactivity, in Duke 3d and SiN, you could turn on a tap and water would come out, comments would be made if you looked at posters on the wall, I remember running around the game pressing 'use' on all the walls to find secrets and extra health. Interactivity has turned more into physics these days, the worlds feel a little more static because of this, I don't really understand why they can't mix physics and interactivity together.

I doubt there would be much of a reaction. Back in the days of the original Unreal the Internet was a lot smaller (i.e. not everyone had it). The gaming community was a bit different (in my opinion) and the companies that were creating games were a lot smaller and, as a result, they wanted those outside of their team to be a part of what they were doing (at least to some degree). This is just not the case any longer.

The market for 3D engines was fairly new and many were looking for alternatives. I can remember working with a couple of brothers from another country. They were in university at the time and developing a 3D engine on the side. They needed an artist to help them make levels and textures and I volunteered to help them. I even created a web site to show off their engine. Soon I was contacted by some guy that wanted to find the developers. It turned out this guy was from the company that developed the original Duke Nukem and they were in the market to pay for developing a 3D engine. They ended up hiring these two brothers, who now own their own small company:

http://www.scssoft.com/

This was the nature of things back in those days. Today the Internet (and the market) is FLOODED with both 3D games and engines. I can only see the type of excitement happening (as it happened back in the days of the original Unreal) with some new technology.



There have been some threads on the origins of GameStudio here on this forum. I don't remember how old they are, though. Somewhere I have a CD with all the versions of GameStudio on it (Ack, AckNex, A3, etc). Here is a link to Ack:

http://www.eledar.net/programming/ack3d/ack3d.htm

A Wiki page with some GameStudio history:

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

And GameStudio's own wiki timeline:

http://www.coniserver.net/wiki/index.php/Timeline

Just read the links and found myself distracted by the linked page of JCL's quotes lol. Tryed to down the first ack engine but the site is down, I would be interested in seeing how ack 1 handled compared to the first acknex engine I used (4).

You're right that the internet and gaming community was smaller and has changed. It still would be interesting an idea to have an opensay project but on a much larger scale to the ones that requect feedback on our gamestudio projects and showcase forums.

I think the indie scene is the place to innovating within traditional boundaries and time constraints doom and the likes had for first person shooters.

Professional titles have to move forward and can't just refine the basic idea into a well-crafted piece, sales will drive them to do things different, like add vehicles and third person sequences to the game (deus ex 3) to add innovation.

But whether there would be an audience to play an first person shooter which is basic, but well crafted is a question I think about. Free or a commercial venture, it'd be interesting to see if you people would play it to the same level of enjoyment of more new school shooter gameplay mechanics, even if it's limited by the original gameplay from the first shooter titles

I hope this post made sense, haven't got time to proofread lol as I have to head off to the shops to grab mirrors edge half price!