Factorio Forums

Soooo I was thinking something that may be dumb but I think it would be so fun, to try to fuse Doom and Factorio. Yeah I know it's stupid you can leave the topic if you want. Or rather, it's a weird idea and it's probably not doable today. Yet, I'm sure it will be doable with new technologies like in some decades, or maybe the 22nd century. (After all, right now it's possible to play in fantasy games such as Hexen and Heretic, with the Doom arsenal (modded or not) but the engines of these three games is the same so of course it's so much easier to do.) Modders of the two communities are already doing amazing stuff.

I had this idea because Doom and Factorio are great games but I always thought that globally they each have one main problem :
- The diversity of what is a stake in Doom, the reason why there are monsters in the game that you have to kill. They are just "in the maps" and they just "want to kill you". In mosts maps (even fan-made maps) you only have to kill every enemies and/or run to the end of the level. It's cool but it may be repetitive.
- The diversity of the threats you are facing in Factorio. The aliens of the game are pretty easy to dominate entirely, and very repetitive to fight against once you kicked their asses once. And i'm sorry to say that to the developers of such a great game, but I think the gunfights are very repetitive, they are not very interesting (not just because of the aliens, also in PVP). (I know this is just my opinion, and that it may change in the futur.)

So I thought that it would be perfect to combine what is at stake in Factorio (which is so deep and rich) with what you fight against in Doom (hordes of various demons). So ideally, it would require to make a mod that would allow the gameplay of Doom to be in a Factorio map. They have already a similar terminology for the weapons (machinegun, shotgun, flamethrower, rocket launcher, laser turret) so it's easy to think that the weapons of Doom may be produced by the factories of Factorio. In such a "game" you would have the choice to be in a first-person view with the doom gameplay, or in a topdown view with Factorio's gameplay. In a multiplayer game, any player can switch anytime they want. If such a crossover mod was made, you would have to face enemies that would force you to think differently your base. They would be able to shoot from afar (even with bad aim like gunner zombies), some would fly (like Cacodemons), some would have a lots of HP (like Barons of hell or Cyberdemon). You would need to organize your walls in a very different way. And in the first-person view you would be able to see the buildings in a way that you would be able to go onto them. You could go on the roof of a laboratory, on the roof of the train of a wagon at full speed, you could also use belts to go faster. (It would change a lot the PVP too.)
Technically, it's probably not doable right now I guess, but it's not so undoable on the long term because after all both games are made of 2D sprites. It's not very difficult to imagine a little imp at the size of a player in Factorio, or the skin of a player in Factorio seen in a first-person view. The engines of those two games are not very consuming. (Of course it will still require some adaptation to make Factorio's stuff in 3D, even if they will mostly simply be 2D sprites that would always face the player.)

That's all I had to say. You are now free to tell me quickly how undoable it is, and then leave the topic. Thanks anyway for reading !
(I may do the same topic, more or less, in the modding forums of Doom, in a few days.)

This started as a random but plausible idea and then very quickly devolved into rewriting the entire game engine.

First-person won't happen in Factorio. Ever. Period.

Though I'm kind of intrigued by the idea of being like a combat engineer sent to investigate and repair the Mars mining/research base. You could be put through a few puzzles - first step is to restore backup power to get the doors working, fix a problem with the trams, seal and re-pressurise key rooms, disconnect the mining drills so you can restore main power and defences (side note: why are there defences???) etc. Slowly escalate into bigger and more complex problems.

There's no real reason to make it actually Doom, that would involve redrawing all the enemy sprites, just have it Doom-inspired.

I've been tempted to write a scenario mod for a little while now but haven't had the time or an idea. This at least gives me the idea xP

What you are suggesting is more like Factorio maps with a Doom theme, if I understand you correctly. I understand it can be cool but it's really not what I had in mind (that's why I insisted on the "undoable" aspect of my suggestion).
Like I said, I'm quite sure that we would be able to cross game engines in the 22nd century, even if it implies to have a third software that would have been coded to share the data between the 2 engines (assuming that it's too long and boring, and undoable, to rewrite Factorio and/or Doom engines). It's thinkable, and it has a real interest in terms of gaming. So, as naive and not programer as I am, I'm sure it'll be done, some day. The question is when.
Maybe the first versions of such a software would make the maps of Factorio only in a limited size, because the Doom engine tends to slow in too large maps (and with too many enemies), so if the maps are infnite that's a problem. But for the first-person itself I don't see any reasons why it shouldn't be doable on the long term : If you are on top of a structure, and therefore above the ground, Factorio's engine wouldn't probably care to know that you are not in the same Z-axis as before. Dwarf Fortress is a top-down game that has three dimensions (even if it's not really a 3D game, and even if mods to show it in 3D do exist) and it's fine. If you make a 3D map, that has a ground that shows a Factorio map in real-time, and that you make a character that is playable in first-person view on the ground of that 3D map, well that's a tiny tiny tiny little start (and I think such a simple example is already doable, when you see the VR technologies).

I'm not saying that in the perspective to say that's doable today, so I'm not saying something really new that contradicts what you wrote, anyway.

muleet wrote:to rewrite Factorio

You realise the current game engine has been in development for six years and it isn't even finished yet, right?

Apparently I need to say this again:

Deadly-Bagel wrote:First-person won't happen in Factorio. Ever. Period.

Don't try to compare it to other games, it's widely acknowledged as the only one of its class. Nothing else even tries to process so many entities all at once, let alone on an infinite map. Factorio is often mistaken for a simple game due to its 2D graphics, but in reality it's one of the hungriest and demanding games out there and only the sheer genius and determination of the devs keep it at 60fps. Computers have a long, long long way to go before it's even possible to render it in 3D (keeping in mind the current 2D graphics consume some 4-5GB of VRAM, to say nothing of the processing itself).

What you're looking for is a Minecraft mod. The Tekkit mod pack allows some automation and you can build power armour and stuff, not sure if there's a Doom-theme one but it would literally be infinitely easier to write one for Minecraft than for Factorio.

I'm not trolling, I'm daydreaming. The difference is that I'm not asking precise and directly programmable stuff like other people do in this forum, yet in my way I'm still sincere. Think of my suggestion as a thought experiment. (I'm a student in a fourth year of philosophy so the thoughts experiments are something I know well, I should have been clear of that on the beginning of my thread I guess, sorry.) It's kinda like Roko's basilisk, if you know that. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roko%27s_basilisk And another proof that I'm not trolling is that I never wanted my thread to last long.

I do understand that Factorio is a demanding game. But if there is one other demanding game that I can compare it to, it's Dwarf Fortress, you can give me that. Minecraft is a terrible game for gunfights (and a terrible game for other reasons I'd say), at the complete opposite of Doom, I'm not seeking for a random first-person shooter game. I'm seeking for a hell of a first-person shooter game.

I cannot contest what you are saying about technical possibilities, I knew that from the beginning and that's why I suggested to think for a distant future. Before leaving my thread, could you enter my thought experiment ? It is : can you imagine the logical possibility that Factorio could have Doom's gameplay as a side part of its own gameplay ? If you can, can you expect that it could happen with future technologies and hardware ? And would you want it to happen ?

Factorio and doom? Doesn't mesh for me. Factorio is a resourcing sim with a light combat aspect. The [s]Zombies Zerglings[/s] Biters attack in mindless suicidal waves, and it's usually not the player that takes care of them. I don't remember having any turret support in any of the Doom versions of the past.

Doomguy is a ball of demon-hating rage packed to the brim with weapons, who charges guns blazing into any fight.
The Factorio engineer is a mechanical problemsolver who prefers to let mechanical minions do the blasting for him.

Both game types are fun but both for different reasons. Doom scratches that power fantasy itch. Factorio is more of a mental efficiency exercise.

By the time this is possible, likely both games will be long forgotten.

If you were after a thought experiment you should have posted in General Discussion, but alright then. I think, exactly as you've described, it's a terrible idea. The two games are nothing alike and totally incompatible with each other - Doom is, as Aeternus said, a power fantasy of running around blasting monsters, it tests your reflexes, coordination, and perception. Factorio is about bunkering down and designing, it is the embodiment of being an engineer - "I'm sick of doing this manually, how do I automate it." Therefore successfully pulling this off would be along the lines of automating the process of running around, killing things and finding stuff. But that's... basically what Factorio is already, or part of it anyway.

And no, unless you can show me it moving around tens of thousands of objects at 60fps over a practically infinite map (to say nothing of the logic behind some of this stuff) running with perfect determinism, Dwarf Fortress still doesn't come close. Closer, maybe.

A philosophy major you say? Well, why not reflect on the actual game you're proposing. You can't just take Factorio and add Doom, to quote, "that would be like trying to stir diarrhoea with your dog's sense of humour." There is simply no way for the two to interact directly. It looks like you're basically after Doom's gameplay in a Factorio map, well like I said such a thing would be possible with a Minecraft mod. You can create factories with the Tekkit mod and even have them doing stuff and allow the player to build and expand on them, then add monsters to run around and kill. Tekkit also adds plasma cannon and other cool power-armour weapons. By the time you're done it would hardly feel like Minecraft. And, unlike trying to somehow use anything from Factorio, you can be done in a single lifetime.

I agree with you two : Doom and Factorio are both different games, with different an incompatible reasons to be good. You said it well.

But let's admit it anyway : what would happen if we were to combine two things totally different ? Dwarf fortress x Candy crush ? Tetris x Worms world party ? Super Smash Bros Melee x Rollercoaster Tycoon ? Heroes of Might and Magic 3 x Bomberman ? You know the earth wouldn't explode. Such games are still giving something if you combine them. Even if it is something that requires parts of these games to either be removed, or to stay in the game but while having less importance than they had in their original version. What i am saying is, if you combine two different games, something new comes up. And there are a lots of different and incompatibles things that can come up. There are a infinite number of ways to fuse Doom and Factorio, and most of them are certainly terrible, most of them would also favor one game towards the other. But some of them could be good and balanced if they were designed by people who really like both of the original games.
Tetris x WWP may be a worms game where the bazooka and grenades have been replaced by pieces of tetris that you can shoot at other people, they may come the worm you control and you can move the pieces like you would in tetris, after you fired them like you would in WWP. Or it could be more like a Tetris screen where you have worms at the bottom, and they shoot at each other with normal weapons, while pieces of tetris controlled by other players (under some set of rules) are falling down on them, trying to crush them. I'm not saying these ideas are good, I'm simply trying to say : to make a good crossover game is possible, it simply requires time to think of what parts of 2 games are goods if combined with the others, and to think on how to balance the result to make it fun.

In the case of a "Factoom" or "Doomorio", the experience I had on the mod of Doom "Project Brutality" tells me that you can't have all the time you want to be a nice engineer that always automates everything and just do that in at the very least 90% of your game time, like in Factorio. There should be attacks of doom monsters that are more frequent than they are when done by the biters of Factorio, and that they should happen for other reasons than if you are causing high level of pollution, or not. But if we suggest that the monster may come anytime from any direction (and there may be a lots of good other possibilities, but let's admit this one) I think the Doomguy won't just have time to build factories, he'll be running everywhere all the time. One solution other than reduce the frequency of monster, is to reduce the sizes of the factory, to make them tinier than the player, so he won't have to move to much to build them, or to protect them. Depending on their size, turrets may become useless. And Aeternus, I don't know for official Doom versions, but in Project Brutality there is a rare item that is a turret with a machine gun, that you can place or pick up anytime you want.
And since this game would be experimental for a while, it could be a possibility for a start, to just totally forget the energy aspect (or simplify it very much), in order to allow the player to focus on killing monsters and building factories that directly produces weapons, turrets, and the essential elements of the factories themselves. So he won't have to manage the steam engines, which is a whole mechanic in itsel. (I don't say that they should never come back in the long term).

And no, unless you can show me it moving around tens of thousands of objects at 60fps over a practically infinite map (to say nothing of the logic behind some of this stuff) running with perfect determinism, Dwarf Fortress still doesn't come close. Closer, maybe.

You know very well that no computer can manage an infinite number of data. When we say that Factorio has an infinite map, we don't say that your computer manages that infinite map when you're playing to Factorio, we're saying that it's always possible to expand what you have discovered of the map. But you cannot discover the entirety of the map, that conceptually impossible, just like it is impossible for an immortal being to live the eternity itself, for conceptual reasons (it's always one day after the other, even if you've become immortal).
"Factorio is a demanding game" means that you can always add up something new to the memory managing the game. And that's precisly what is inevitable to do in Dwarf Fortress. Each time I made a Fortress in DF, after like several weeks of gaming, the game tends to go to 10 fps or something like that. Because it has to manage hundred of levels filled with complex beings that lives their own lives, that has thoughts, happiness, and that has thousands ands thousands of specifics pieces of equipments, food, books, etc. Just like in factorio, there are always new stuff added to the memory of your computer when you play DF. There are many different reasons for a game to be demanding, you should know that.
(And what i am saying here about DF concerns my experiences with the 4x4 version of a map, which is the default size. But you can play a map with a size of 6x6 or 10x10, and I wish you good luck to make it run better than Factorio.)

And yes I am in a philosophy major (we call that a "master de philosophie" in France, don't ask me why it's an english word I don't know) and it's no surprise if I'm the one to post that thread. I'm working this year on an essay of 60 to 80 pages about the subject "How to represent conceptual systems, with video games" and it implies to answer to many large questions, such as "what is a video game", "what is a game", "how do we understand a game as a conceptual system", "are there more authentic ways to play a game, like the way the developers imagined it VS emergent gameplay". I'm using the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein to try to answer these questions, he never played any video games since he died in 1953, but hell that guy knew a lots of stuff about the definition of games, that any of us didn't think of yet. His philosophy is not based on games themselves, his philophosy is about languages, which he sees as "language games".
To make it short, we ordinarily sees the language of a country as a set of rules more or less coherent, and we think that's more or less a mistake not to know them while using the language. According to Wittgenstein, that conception is naive and wrong. He thinks that when you say a sentence, you are using your own representation of the rules of a language, in the exact same way as when you're playing chess. You can move pieces in many ways in chess, as long as you respect the rules, but the entierety of the way to move the pieces according to the rules is totally unknow because it is too vast for the human mind. So you do a little "what you want" with the chess rules, in a chess game. With the languages it's the same : the english language is a set of rules, but no one really knows them entirely, not even grammarian people. It's something ordinary to say sentences in a language, that are incoherent the official set of rules of that language, and to be able to understand each other anyway. The human mind don't really care about the official rules, he is making all the time his own rules and his own interpretation of the rules for each new sentences he hears or he says.
According to Wittgenstein, if you represent yourself a language (and I'm talking here about any form of languages here : video games, cinema, architecture, dance, etc) you are also representing yourself a "form of life".

So what would be Factorio x Doom ? A form of life, something that you can't just classify easily in a huge board representing the totality of the genre of video games (because there are no real genre of video games, unless you have a very large conception of what is a "genre"). It may be a degenerate form of life that won't live long, but it's still something whose you don't know the content till you have played it for some time. And it's not something that shouldn't live because it's against the norms that are Doom and Factorio themselves. Anyone who likes to mod these two games already knows that.