Why is the original Doom capped at 35 fps?

[futurefields]

Seemed like an odd number or is it because this was pre-LCD's that the refresh rate doesn't need to be a strict multiple of 30/60? Does that make any difference?

 

[AyashiKaibutsu]

It's because the people who made it were console peasants and didn't know any better I don't know why but timing in the game might be tied to fps and 35 just felt right. That's wild speculation though.

 

[JeffMD]

It was probably because the games network code was synchronous, the higher the frame rate the more data it transfers back and forth.

 

[BSim500]

Seemed like an odd number or is it because this was pre-LCD's that the refresh rate doesn't need to be a strict multiple of 30/60? Does that make any difference?

Well it was an early MS-DOS FPS. A lot of other primitive DOS games had similar caps. Not sure why an exact 35fps was chosen, could be primitive "netcode" or 1/2 70Hz CRT refresh rate, etc, but modern OpenGL source ports (GZDoom, Doomsday, etc) are all uncapped, ie, they've "unlatched" and recoded the GFX renderer's speed from the original fixed 35fps core game "tics".

 

[JeffMD]

Keep in mind, doom was never 3d. Opengl/d3d ports are a %100 new engine designed around using the same assets.

 

[Scooby Doo]

Could it be it was an attempt to stop the game from running too fast on "future" processors?

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Could it be it was an attempt to stop the game from running too fast on "future" processors?

This could be the reason or one of the reasons. Didn't doom come out right before the respectable Pentium chips that were a crap ton better than anything before it?

 

[JeffMD]

yea,doom came out in the 486 era. I can't quite remember but the more I think about it, I don't think doom scaled rendering performance while maintaining game speed. If you used to big of a viewport you dropped frames and slowed down. So 35fps would be the target and rendering higher then that would speed up the game.

 

[Stuka87]

ALL ID engines are tied to FPS. Its just the way Carmack designed his engines. Quake 1 had a 72fps limit. If you hacked it to remove the limit, you could run and jump faster than anybody else.

Same goes for Quake 3 Arena. In order to be competitive online you had to be running 120fps, or there was some jumps that you were not able to make if you had a lower FPS.

Doom's limit was mostly at that level because of when it came out. The game is 21 years old.