40oz
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Post by 40oz on Apr 3, 2021 15:19:39 GMT -5
I have this lingering thought that the iconic midis that we now know as Doom music was never really the ideal music for doom.
I like dooms midis a lot. I listen to them a lot and I have a bit of an attachment to them since theh represent that familiar feeling of Doom.
Bobby princes music kinda all sounds the same in most of his work. It follows a very formulaic structure and I know it when I hear it. Sometimes I hear tracks I never heard and can tell they were by bobby prince before I've even looked it up, and have been right most of the time.
Consider the massive transition in thematic tone and presentation between Doom for PC compared to Doom for playstation. Is that the ideal doom sound that Id software wanted? Is that what Doom was supposed to be like?
Since bobby prince was already an employee at Id software, maybe the Id software didn't have much of a choice. Sure, they gave bobby direction but in the end, he does the job and we get what we get. Id was a small company with a pretty small budget, they didn't really have much of a choice.
Looking at Dooms sound design impartially, while discarding all the feelings I have for it, it's not perfect. Many sounds are recycled from the same barrel explosion sound. The monster sounds are original and memorable, but also kinda overly noisy and whacky. I wonder if during development of Doom, they had a more modern idea in mind for how Doom is meant to sound, and Bobby just wasnt on the same page for all of it?
If not then why the big transition in Playstation Doom and Doom 64? Didnt Aubrey Hodges know the source material?
As much as I like Dooms midis and wouldn't change the sounds now that I'm used to them, they don't really feel like they are a perfect fit for Doom. Am I alone in this?
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joe-ilya
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Post by joe-ilya on Apr 3, 2021 16:22:19 GMT -5
Classic Doom has two sides, a dark-side with atmospheric and dark, twisted design, and a light-side with upbeat rock music and fast-paced gameplay.
These two sides help make the game not as repetitive as the console's one-sided dark atmosphere where every level is dark and there's only a few enemies at a time. Though that design was pretty much a necessity because consoles aren't as powerful as PCs, even at the time
Stock plasma gun sounds like shit BTW.
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40oz
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Post by 40oz on Apr 3, 2021 16:59:10 GMT -5
joe-ilya Yes that's very true, the duality of the two types of doom make it a really exciting and dynamic experience. The player picks what style they want to lean in to. I think along those lines with Sandy Petersen's level design too. Sandy is not a great level designer, but the weird abstractness of his levels and the way it doesn't take itself too seriously (tricks & traps, barrels o fun etc.) is the perfect foundation for what became the doom modding community. Doom has incredible range because for that reason that games like Duke Nukem 3D or Quake can never have.
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Lobo
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Post by Lobo on Apr 4, 2021 0:51:47 GMT -5
I always prefer the psx soundtrack to the PC Doom one.
Doom for me, when I first played it, was a scary game. The psx music accentuates that
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Apr 4, 2021 1:33:38 GMT -5
joe-ilya Yes that's very true, the duality of the two types of doom make it a really exciting and dynamic experience. The player picks what style they want to lean in to. I think along those lines with Sandy Petersen's level design too. Sandy is not a great level designer, but the weird abstractness of his levels and the way it doesn't take itself too seriously (tricks & traps, barrels o fun etc.) is the perfect foundation for what became the doom modding community. Doom has incredible range because for that reason that games like Duke Nukem 3D or Quake can never have. Depends what you mean by Level Design. Do you mean aesthetically? If so, I think they are not necessarily ugly, but an acquired taste. His gameplay, inventiveness and especially weirdness are what define his style. He made lots of maps that are very different from each other. I think one of his best is Mount Erebus and although John Romero is my favorite mapper, my all time favorite Doom level is E2M7. I love how he turned a bunch of Tom Hall rooms into something so atmospheric. It is circular, non-linear and while individual rooms might be a bit ugly, due to their sheer variety, they end up being more than the sum of their parts. There is no area that looks the same in the level and that contributes greatly to the atmosphere, sense of adventure and scale. You have sci-fi panels with blue lighting (made by Tom Hall), a hellish altar with an Invulnerability Sphere, caves, a space for cargo, some nukage, a cool hallway with strobing lights, some kind of server area with the blue armor and last, but certainly not the least, a vast (by 1993 standards), non-linear layout with tons of really cool exploration. It really has everything. These are all traits I try my best to put in my maps. These days, there are lots of really good mappers that make MegaWADs with levels that sort of blur with each other. BTSX is a great example of this. Aside from the first level, I can't really remember anything beyond it. I think modern mappers have a lot to learn from Sandy Peteresen. So while most of his levels are ugly, the are often ugly in a "cool" way. |
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Apr 4, 2021 11:55:53 GMT -5
It isn't the 90's anymore and now we aren't used to and think that these weird mixes are indeed weird. Sadly I don't remember where but I recall that years ago I read a discussion aboout Final Fantasy games (and more specifically VI and VII) and how the strange and rather incoherent mesh of themes since you had magic, monster, castles, machines and technology was something that was somehow normal for that era. it was the culture of the time. To some extent that applies to Doom, weapons like the SG/SSG feel anachronistic in the supposedly futuristic setting, and wtf why is there a chainsaw on Mars? Same for the music we have badass metal songs next to elevator music and mellow atmospheric tracks. The difference of directions in the various ports is interesting though I think of Doom 64 should be taken as a deliberate different take on Doom given how much it's different. And about the first sentence in the op, what's the ideal music for Doom? RIP&TEAR HEAVY METAL WUB WUB WUB or scary psx noises? |
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40oz
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Post by 40oz on Apr 4, 2021 19:58:21 GMT -5
And about the first sentence in the op, what's the ideal music for Doom? RIP&TEAR HEAVY METAL WUB WUB WUB or scary psx noises? I can't really say. My personal loyalty lies with Bobby Prince's work because I don't know Doom to be any different than the original I played in 1993. I'm interested in knowing what the answer will be from the other id software employees. I'm not sure who really is the creative lead on what Doom is. I wanna say John Romero, but I think Adrian Carmack brings a lot to the table, as well as Tom Hall, Sandy Petersen, and probably John Carmack too. I think a fun question I'd like to ask these former id software employees is to think about what things you didn't contribute to Doom, and if you had the time, infinite budget, and the power to simply imagine them into reality, how would you do those things differently from how the end product turned out to make Doom the best it could have been? In this case, none of these guys had very much influence in the music or sound design. Bobby Prince does what Bobby Prince does. The way the sound/music/style contrasts so heavily between PC Doom and Playstation Doom, I'd be curious to know which of these two leans most truthfully towards what their vision of what Doom is supposed to sound like, and/or if either of these two really hit the mark at all. |
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dn
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Post by dn on Apr 4, 2021 20:49:02 GMT -5
You're overthinking. Doom uses midi boomertunes because dank industrial noize had barely been invented, let alone popularized yet. The rise of computer games / tech walked hand-in-hand with electronic music: see Quake for details.
And before someone screams Skinny Puppy or Ministry, the only people that listened to that shit were 1000 Homo DJs.
Also, good luck fitting Mp3 files onto a floppy disk.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Apr 4, 2021 22:05:44 GMT -5
I've always thought that Bobby Prince, while probably a very sweet person based on videos I've seen of him, and also probably a pretty good musician, was not the guy id should have gone with to compose the music for Doom. He was well suited to do music for games like the Commander Keen series and even Wolfenstein 3D, but for Doom I just don't believe that he was a good choice. On top of that, it's blatantly obvious that Prince was told to take riffs from popular metal and alternative songs and then make midis out of them. Whether this was done due to Prince's lack of creativity when presented with a game as dark and savage(for the time) as Doom, or whether it was due to John Romero's obsession with having Alice In Chains do the soundtrack to a game he made is up for discussion. Whatever the reason, I think id dropped the ball on the music for Doom and Doom II. Midis made by community members, such as those used for AKELDAMA.wad, are proof that the midi format was not a limiting factor in obtaining insanely awesome music tracks. |
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40oz
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Post by 40oz on Apr 5, 2021 10:03:50 GMT -5
You're overthinking. Doom uses midi boomertunes because dank industrial noize had barely been invented, let alone popularized yet. The rise of computer games / tech walked hand-in-hand with electronic music: see Quake for details. Yes that's true, it sounds like id software didn't know doom's target audience yet. This is especially true for Bobby Prince imo. The PC Doom sounds are just kinda dorky. People get those nostalgia feels from the sound of doom doors, but honestly after obsessive repetition, those weird space ship sounds we have for doors and lifts get really tired really fast. This is one of a variety of examples, such as the obnoxious monster pain sounds we hear on a repeating loop when we shoot them with a chaingun, or how imps and zombiemen sound like camels when they die. It's fine, but its definitely weird and not very carefully selected. I think about this a more and more as I work on Doomer Boards Project. There's often a distinct difference in the final result of Doomer Boards Project than what I expected. Often my expectations are exceeded in a variety of ways, and in some small details it misses the mark. The final resulting project is always fine despite it, and because no one who plays DBP experiences it with the same expectations I had while developing it, I almost never see criticism for that. Sometimes you just get what you get. I like it that way too. But it does make me curious because with Doom modding, we often have full autonomy of what the final product is in what we create, and at id software, there are multiple people working on smaller aspects of the complete project, and I wonder if there were challenges in Doom's development that went unaddressed during the development. John Carmack and John Romero for sure had really high aspirations for Doom. It was a new genre of gaming all in its own, and they programmed it with that in mind. On the other hand, Bobby Prince's work just seems like more of the same. There had to be some kinda slightly ambiguous frustration with Bobby Prince not necessarily 'catching up' with their bigger goals, don't you think? @vordakk glad we're on the same page about this. |
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Apr 5, 2021 12:26:23 GMT -5
But don't most of the sounds come from a sound library? It's even listed on the wiki and those made specifically for Doom are the minority in fact. And I lost the count how many times even in anime I recognized some of them, like the door or imps fireball sound for example. I'm interested in knowing what the answer will be from the other id software employees. I'm not sure who really is the creative lead on what Doom is. There wasn't a real creative lead and I think that the confusion you have about the game here it's because you are looking at it with the lens of a proper direction on. Now I'd like to re-read Masters of Doom since it's a good read but the impression that I got from the development is that id just added and did whatever they thought it was cool. Sort of like "Metallica are dope, we should put them as the soundtrack can we?" or "wouldn't be cool to have a shotgun like the one from Evil Dead 2? :DDD" (Attention this might not have happened in reality). This free for all approach doesn't go well if you want to follow a more focused vision and in part it contributed to the conflit with Tom Hall since he was the one who wanted the game to have more depth and to follow a more consistent direction. |
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good-old
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Post by good-old on Apr 6, 2021 4:00:26 GMT -5
40oz could the fact that they all sound similar be because you only listened to them using the default soundfont? The way .mid works, it is basically sheet music, it does not contain sounds. It gets the sounds from the soundfont, and the default soundfont isn't liked by many. Also, good luck fitting Mp3 files onto a floppy disk. Are you really trying to imply that music sounds better in that format?
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Post by optimus on Apr 6, 2021 8:21:11 GMT -5
These two sides help make the game not as repetitive as the console's one-sided dark atmosphere where every level is dark and there's only a few enemies at a time. Though that design was pretty much a necessity because consoles aren't as powerful as PCs, even at the time As far as I remember, most console ports didn't reduce the number of enemies compared to the original levels. The same exact types and number of enemies are there depending on the difficulty level. The only exception is that they had to remove some of the bigger enemies like Cyberdemon/Spiderboss or archville for memory considerations. Interestingly enough, the PSX version which is both Doom 1/2 together, if you start on E1M1 on UV, you even get Doom2 monsters in it. You encounter a heavy machine dude, and then on that hard to reach secret with the lift coming down, up in the tunnel you encounter a pain elemental. There is an extra secret map at some point where you get early the SSG and play some of the Doom 1 maps with the SSG before reaching the Doom 2 levels. |
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Post by optimus on Apr 6, 2021 8:26:47 GMT -5
my all time favorite Doom level is E2M7. I love how he turned a bunch of Tom Hall rooms into something so atmospheric. It is circular, non-linear and while individual rooms might be a bit ugly, due to their sheer variety, they end up being more than the sum of their parts. There is no area that looks the same in the level and that contributes greatly to the atmosphere, sense of adventure and scale. You have sci-fi panels with blue lighting (made by Tom Hall), a hellish altar with an Invulnerability Sphere, caves, a space for cargo, some nukage, a cool hallway with strobing lights, some kind of server area with the blue armor and last, but certainly not the least, a vast (by 1993 standards), non-linear layout with tons of really cool exploration. It really has everything. These are all traits I try my best to put in my maps. Oh, I thought I was the only one who loved that map! As far as I know, many people in the community consider it subpar. But I love it for exactly the similar reasons described. |
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Post by dr_st on Apr 6, 2021 15:56:51 GMT -5
I need to replay E2M7 then. I admit I don't really remember it that well...
But as the thread was originally about sound design - I do love the music of E2M7/E3M7 (Waltz of the Demons).
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joe-ilya
Hey, Ron! Can we say 'fuck' in the game?
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Post by joe-ilya on Dec 19, 2021 5:33:26 GMT -5
I don't understand this diss on Bobby's midis, he can make scary and effective music, Ominousity and In a Land of Wonderment and Awe Commander Keen 6 gave me nightmares as a child, to me it makes sense why he was selected to score an OST for Doom. |
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good-old
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Post by good-old on Dec 19, 2021 7:13:27 GMT -5
Speaking of scary music by him, "Suspense", "Demons on the Prey", "Waltz of the Demons", "They're Going to Get You" and "Sinister" might fall in that category. They're all from Doom.
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