Why are the walls in Doom fully 3D, but enemies can only be rendered as 8-directional sprites?

Question

I’ve read that enemies in Doom are rendered as sprites because of hardware limitations. But why is it that walls, stairs, etc. appear fully 3d by contrast?

[example](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDmf9dgso84)

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In: Technology

Answer 1

There are lots of great answers already. I just want to comment that if you want to see an example of a real 3D world with sprite enemies, you can look at the Duke Nukem 3D – [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nP34zCaRHHE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nP34zCaRHHE)

But it came out much later, around Quake time.