DOOM: Classic or Dud?

DOOM

For me this is no question, so, so classic. Ever since the day I got that floppy from a friend in 7th(?) grade it changed my world. I remember that day. The smoothness of the scrolling was unprecedented, combined with the texture mapping and drop-off lighting. SO SMOOTH. Well maybe Wolfenstein 3D ran smoother on my 386 but DOOM was the first game that made me want to upgrade my computer. I learned more about what makes them work how to build them. I got into DOOM mods via BSS and pirate CDs (one of which I still have....somewhere....one of my few remaining rare CD artifacts.) after downloading Starwars Doom earlier one morning before school. I got into making levels, even total conversions.

DOOM II

I got DOOM II when it came out and it was a big deal it was on CD(!) and in stores(!!!) and I loved that one too. I like the levels even more in fact. Double shotgun somehow sounds MORE satisfying than the original DOOM shotgun. Maybe? The original DOOM shotgun sound is classic...

A pack of DOOM II levels I made is still up on the wad-archive.
http://www.wad-archive.com/wad/DOOM-2-THE-ETERNAL-WICKED

That's about it for me. I never played DOOM 3 or any of the non-PC versions. I hear there are some really cool ones, some of which look more like Quake to me. Quake really kind of turned me off, it looked too brown and grey. The art in DOOM was really good and a large part of what drew me in.

REQUIRED READING

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/53/Masters_of_doom-Book_cover.jpg/220px-Masters_of_doom-Book_cover.jpg

Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture is a book by David Kushner about id Software and its influence on popular culture, focusing chiefly on the company's co-founders John D. Carmack and John Romero. There is version online (just google it) right now. There is also an audiobook read by Wesley Crusher himself.

I am re-reading this sort of just skipping around. It is full of tales of early 90s hacker bros buying expensive sports cars and having this epic Lennon-McCartney sort of falling out. It's really insane to imagine only a handful of people independently making a game this huge but it's true and this is one of the best examples of the phenomenon. What iD achieved with DOOM and their shareware DIY game studio was done entirely on their own terms. They are one of the few examples of artists I really respect who seem like genuinely cool people.

http://www.classicdoom.com/maps/d1secs/e1m1s.gif

Love these animated maps from DOOM.
http://www.classicdoom.com/maps/d1secs/d1.htm

http://www.classicdoom.com/maps/d1secs/e2m1s.gif

Did anyone ever play multiplayer? I did Deathmatching using a serial cable and it was so much fun. You could do co-op as well.

Dud

classic - spooky too!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=el72n7U4Pos

I never played this until last year (on PS3, good use of the hardware). Pretty fun. It pales a bit in retrospect because I played the shit out of Quake back in the day.

if you don't think doom is classic you don't deserve videogames

actually, no: if you don't think doom is classic, you and videogames deserve each other

Classic obv. I have the fonder memories of DOOM II because that’s the one we got first. The family PC didn’t have a sound card early on so when we finally threw a SoundBlaster into that thing, holy shit. Game blew my mind initially, but that really put it over the top.

i don't play video games anymore but from ages 11-18 or so i played doom a lot, many many hours, the free version of doom 1 a lot and then doom II all the time

The family PC didn’t have a sound card early on so when we finally threw a SoundBlaster into that thing, holy shit

haha same with us

i think that was why doom II stands out so much more for me, the first doom i just had that shitty pc speaker thing and then we upgraded to a new packard bell or something w/ real speakers and a subwoofer and doom II was the main reason i was excited to have better sound

played the free version countless times, still remember some of the cheat codes (IDDQD, IDSPISPOPD). being able to run around and try to play in the map view was cool.

i think at some point later on i got my hands on the second episode, but it was hard and didn't have the comforting familiarity of the first part, so i gave up pretty quick.

Doom always a classic. I ordered the floppies directly from id, still have the weird long skinny box somewhere in my attic. LAN multiplayer was pretty mind-blowing back in 1994, had lots of fun messing with my school library's new computer network to get it working

so, so, so fucking classic

i was thrilled over the holidays when i noticed, thanks to the new backward compatibility, i could now play the 360 version on the xbone. i loaded it up and immediately lost an hour blasting through some levels which i realised i knew like the back of my hand from 20 years ago

i still vividly remember reading pc gamer's review of the game in a friend's bedroom and being utterly mindboggled at the screenshots. even although it looks clunky nowadays it's still got an amazingly well-defined aesthetic and everything about the way it plays is pitch-perfect. it really is one of the greatest games of all time.

also, let's not forget edge magazine's timeless 7/10 review:

https://entropyismygod.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/edgereviewofdoom.png?w=623&h=233

I loved it at the time, then I hated it for some time as the genres of PC games I liked fizzled out and first person shooters became more and more ubiquitous, but I think I'm about ready to say it's classic again

its Lovecraftian Horror In Space/Hell/Hellspace vibe seemed strangely unremarkable at the time (to me, as an unquestioning teen, anyway; video games happen in strange universes, no need to think about that) but compared to the You Are A Soldier Blow Shit Up of modern FPSes it's p. interesting I guess

lol @ that edge magazine review, that is the complete opposite of what I recently have been hankering for

hell, I'd like to go back to having just a 'fire' button and no 'use' button, just give me movement, weapons, and the shooty button

obvious classic, 10/10

lol yes i remember that review. "if only we could talk to them..."

i think at some point later on i got my hands on the second episode, but it was hard and didn't have the comforting familiarity of the first part, so i gave up pretty quick.

i can feel this. episode one is burned into the back of my brain. playing through it again, i was taken by the level design. there are a lot more jump scares than i remember. loved the environmental storytelling in the final level of Knee Deep in the Dead. that giant star, the evil face you step into, the Hell Barons, etc.

its funny to go back and discover not only can you not look up/down, you can't jump either =)

the limited range of motion means this has the only great control scheme any first person shooter has ever had: wads to move and strafe; left and right arrow keys to turn; ctrl to shoot; that's it. (well, except for space for activate, a bit of excess quake would cut away, but in quake of course you need a mouse.) your hands never leave the keyboard and you fly twirling through hell.

yeah the control scheme rules. i never used WASD, just used the arrow keys and alt to strafe. strafing has never been topped, basically enabling cover-based shooting mechanics without cover. dodging shots from a cacodemon while you empty a shotgun into them will never not be fun.

lots of great engines for this available these days: doom retro on the conservative experience-preserving end; brutal doom on the gorehound end. they both still get play for me. invisible beasties still capable of extracting late-night yells.

strafing has never been topped, basically enabling cover-based shooting mechanics without cover.

and it was the standard way of moving in 3d for something like 15 years so it was weird when designers all simultaneously decided it would be cooler if you stood in the secret spot they were thinking of and pressed a button to watch a lil movie

i've been using GZDOOM. it is nice but i do miss the pixelation. there is probably a setting somewhere to turn off AA.

Brutal DOOM looks fun! never tried it tho. they just released a Total Conversion with new levels, i hear...

Did anyone ever play multiplayer? I did Deathmatching using a serial cable and it was so much fun. You could do co-op as well.

dad and i used to play serial cable co-op: extremely fond memories. i remember it like it was a place we went of course. (it was.) gf and i worked through first episode a couple months ago, i think using chocolate-doom. i've beaten the second episode but not the third, with the fucking flocks of flying skulls.

yes, walking through the levels, it really is like visiting a place.

i played through half of episode 2 yesterday. really stingy with the ammo for the first couple of levels! those flying skulls truly are SOBs.

xps IDKFA, too

classic one of only two i think fps i ever got into

http://www.writeups.org/img/inset/Doom_cacodemon_h1.jpg

http://www.writeups.org/img/inset/Doom_cacodemon_h2.jpg

anyone got any good wads

i remember when we got our first 90mhz pentium and to strut it for my friends i showed them how fast i could fire the bfg in doom 2 now

another reason why DOOM never quite captured me like DOOM 2: no super shotgun. sickest fps weapon ever.

very visceral feeling on firing for sure. it's funny, but even with the force feedback and vibrating controllers of today, that thing really seemed more.. tactile?

i like DOOM II's levels more. DOOM has a lot of good marine base on mars-style levels where you are working through these weird techno mazes with the occasional weird room with demonic symbols in it. DOOM 2 really felt like you had entered these other realms. the final levels of DOOM II are some of my favorite ever. level 26 might be my favorite just based on style. you are in these industrial-style weird caged walkways constructed in these weird caverns and maybe built to cross pass the boiling lava that bubbles beneath.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGYbwJYB3xg

yea those final doom ii levels are amazing

not to be confused with Final Doom :)

def not lol

i don't even know what that is lol

Final Doom is a first-person shooter video game released in 1996. The game uses the engine, items, and characters from Doom II: Hell on Earth, and was distributed as an official id Software product.

Final Doom consists of two 32-level megawads (level files), TNT: Evilution by TeamTNT, and The Plutonia Experiment by the Casali brothers. TNT: Evilution features a new soundtrack, while The Plutonia Experiment uses music from Doom and Doom II. In addition to the PC version, Final Doom was also released for the PlayStation; that version included a selection of Final Doom and Master Levels for Doom II levels combined into one game.

Final Doom is levels not made by the iD team but by modders and DOOM fans who were contacted by iD in part as a response to the rampant bootlegging of DOOM add-on CD-ROMs.

http://cdn.overclock.net/a/af/af203014_972067336-00.jpeg

Maybe the most famous of the unofficial DOOM add-ons.

morbid 90s kid post: inhumanly, columbine shooter eric harris' late-period single-player doom wads replace the gun sounds, i guess because they weren't enough like ejaculating death. the wads are also, i can report, unfair.

great point about doom ii's levels. knew exactly what you meant about the caged walkways before even seeing the youtube thumbs. i do think there were some great ones sprinkled in the later doom episodes but i didn't replay those as much and they're not as vivid. the skimpy 'story' attached to doom ii also did a surprising amount of work in cementing the sense of a real journey to more and more disturbed, unsettled and dangerous places, combined with the evocative level titles. "i'm descending through the Underhalls," i'd think. i do think both I and II struggle a bit to keep the momentum/intensity going throughout - in particular i remember the "city" levels of Doom II feeling a bit draggy, or there were just too many of them. i like everything they did to try and play different cards through different level design... some slow slogs, some intense onslaughts, etc. but i feel like they should have saved up a few more suprises - more monsters that you don't see until a certain point, etc. final boss is also 50/50 with me, cool concept and definitely 'bigger' than anything else but too much of a nintendo-boss puzzle/gimmick kind of thing.

music also an enormously important part of why these are so awesome, obviously. pretty sure i've posted about that many times on other threads - very formative to a lot of my music tastes later on.

oh man, that "D! Zone" cover! so evocative of a very particular period in packaging/design.

i didn't expect to find myself stoned and watching playthroughs of Eric Harris' DOOM levels tonight but here i am

Shareware you would see at the local Wal-Mart/Target in a vertical software slice

the city levels in DOOM II were draggy yes. it was an odd dip towards a kind of RPG or open world approach. a modern comparison may be the ruined city shells in fallout.

i made a DOOM level based on my school's floorplan. i didn't put enemies in it tho. i didn't really texture it either cos mapping it was a lot of work and it was not very interesting for a DOOM level. i know there are lots of kids that did the same. at the time I was taking an architecture class and had access to this amazing customizable 3d tool and was making all kind of levels based on movies and things. my big project was Stargate DOOM. i had this Stargate CD-ROM that was basically an interactive encyclopedia with images i was taking right from the movie for the game. the bad guys were the hawk-headed soldiers, you shot bolts of light with a magic staff, and the levels were the pyramid and various tombs. i had some sand textures and was trying to make sand dunes with lots of sectors going up like steps but there were a lot of limits to what you could do with those old tools.

Pretty sure you can carry all of them at once and there are > 8

Going for a return to FPS basics, which is exactly what I've been wanting.

Well, plenty of new stuff like upgrading yr weapons and armor and flashy melee, but a return to no regenerating health, no cover mechanics, no reloading, no carry limitations, etc.

Listened to some of the soundtrack today at work and it's pretty righteous.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ua-f0ypVbPA

yes this is getting lots of praise for the singleplayer, comparisons to Wolfenstein new order, so i caved and just ordered it... if its genuinely that fun i have no idea what bethesda are doing marketing wise

if it's half as good as the new order i'll be happy - that was one of the most pleasant surprises of the last few years for me

looks dope but im pretty sure im not cut out for fast twitchy fps :(

Just put in 2 hours. This is a blast. Kinda regretting making plans to go out tonight.

ahahaha i love this

feels like it was dropped in from an alternate reality where plodding military man shooters never took over. modern gameplay amenities (3 different types of upgrade tree, for example) mixed with fast movement, wide open level design, colored keycards, and crunchy industrial metal.

map creation/community content stuff seems ok, only messed with it a little. played a couple rounds of multiplayer which felt better than the beta but is definitely more chaos than skill (for me, at least). fun tho.

pretty good shotgun too

ahahaha i love this

LOL OTM. Was by myself grinning, laughing, and saying "aw fuck yeah!" to nobody like a total dork weirdo. This is crazy fun. Exactly what this genre needs.

The ~synergy~ of the melee to get health, chainsaw to get ammo, rush-n-attack to survive is really brilliant and satisfying. After a full on brawl your hands are shaking.

lol at the calm robot voice intoning 'demonic presence at unsafe levels' over and over

this is fun as hell so far, but getting a lot of distracting screen tearing on my ps4 - maybe the giant patch i'm currently downloading will help?

Yeah, I think the patch should solve all of that. Also playing on PS4, really impressed with the graphics overall.

the melee kill for health mechanic is swiped from the (also excellent) SPACE MARINE, the chainsaw-for-ammo balancing mechanic is a pretty brilliant addition

patch fixed the screen-tearing, seems rock-solid now

this is amazing - can't understand why review copies weren't sent out ahead of time. I can already see myself doing levels over again to get bonuses.

also super-glad you can widen the field of view

admit with no pride that i find the concept of an old-school twitch shooter played with thumbsticks heretical (hexenal?) but uh stop making me wanna drop $$ on the pc version of this

glad this stuff is coming back. the free, community-reliant new unreal tournament is not bad at all despite (because of?) not seeming to have much corporate attention paid it.

(adam+i talked abt this upthread i think but the original doom's control scheme is flawless in a way even mouselook, let alone thumbsticks, never managed to become -- but of course you can't have the original doom's controls without the original doom's strange, illusive approach to the z-axis.)

Original DOOM control, like that of its predecessors, is so elemental and unrealistic but so playable - it's like Galaga or something in that the movement and shooting of these enemies turns out to work really well with two hands at the board and your brain never once is troubled by not being able to look up or down, and your aim automagically correcting for enemies above and below your line of sight. It might as well be played in Flatland and if the map mode showed enemies and their attacks it could almost be played as such.

Not quite related, but I was also thinking how smart the theming was, over and above the designers' obvious affection for horror and scifi cliches; a fairly detail-free, nonfunctional level design just glides right by as weird space or demonic places. You're a grunt, they're just spaces to be in; a different theme that demanded more window-dressing to be convincing would just induce a whole lot of wasted effort and probably overstrain the technology re: the number of sprites and textures onscreen at any one time.

It might as well be played in Flatland and if the map mode showed enemies and their attacks it could almost be played as such.

otm

despite its Visceral Immersion there is an abstraction to doom that really stands out from this distance. controls and movement have nothing to do with being a human; environments have almost nothing to do (less and less, as hell deepens) with real places. funny to compare the moral panic over it to the distinct lack of moral panic over the numbing realism of call of imperialism. i guess novelty did most of it and satan did the rest (plus i guess everyone's been distracted by GTA).

hope the level design on this new one is great. strange to think that romero-style level design -- mazes, secret doors, "how do i even get out there?"/"holy shit i'm out here!" -- largely disappeared. dark forces/jedi knight had it, but even half-life is almost as much just-a-ride as a call of duty (and for half-life 2, drop the almost). suspect the closest thing to it at the turn of the century was deus ex, which you can play like doom, if you want; nowadays i dunno -- i'm sure there's something i haven't played.

(and really it's not in deus ex, which is too busy being Real to try for anything like the density of romero's levels -- aha.)

so it's notable+funny that

a fairly detail-free, nonfunctional level design

as a collection of textures/objects/interactivity is also such an insanely detailed design as a layout, in a way that has diminished in proportion to the skyrocketing of the other kind of detail

http://img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20061030000624/doom/images/thumb/9/96/E1M3dots.png/300px-E1M3dots.png

http://doomwiki.org/w/images/thumb/0/09/KDIZD_Map_Z1M9.png/300px-KDIZD_Map_Z1M9.png

http://static3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20070916114742/doom/images/thumb/f/f9/E2M2dots.png/500px-E2M2dots.png

sry about that hueg last one

also i lied i am not actually sure at all that there is something in 2016 i haven't played that looks like that

enjoying this convo, but making me think i should start a thread specifically for the new one. on it.

DOOM (2016)

Those maps are great. dlh's comments about level design also remind me of some threads where we've discussed old school difficulty. ?. DOOM was not insanely hard but you were at risk of dying, and might do so, a lot. Given that obstacle, getting to a new area was a real payoff in a way that it just isn't in an on-rails game that's constantly delivering you to new and novel encounters.

(Though, you can save anytime, right? That's kinda dumb tbh.)

I got this for PS4

it's fuuuun

more talk here: DOOM (2016)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Aa2K_firtI

https://www.doomworld.com/vb/post/1633143

Hellshots Golf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=133&v=7qEHK4iBiXc
Golf, but in Doom.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qEHK4iBiXc

Being able to run to your ball while it is in flight (or just run around the course whenever) would be awesome in realistic golf games.

what the
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkhXSLmRbiE

A N N T H I L A T I O N

the first doom movie, despite being basically indefensible, is kind of a guilty pleasure for me so i’m in for this

trailer does manage to capture the feeling of a cheesy 2000s adaptation of a video game tho

It looks like this adaptation, like the first one, makes the mistake of having more than one character. The only way to make a Doom film, IMO, is to have one character (Doomguy) and zero dialogue. It should be a silent horror-comedy, basically. Cast the dude from Letterkenny, he'd be a perfect Doomguy.

It seems to me like the biggest mistake made by filmmakers when adapting a videogame into a movie is that they wake up each day and decide to continue doing that instead of considering their actions rationally and doing something less terrible with all of that time and money.

Cast the dude from Letterkenny, he'd be a perfect Doomguy.

the main problem with the first movie is that they cast the rock and made him a villain when he's clearly doomguy material

the other problem, of course, is that neither movie has gone down the route of doing a straight-up verbatim adaptation of the doom comic book

https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi1.wp.com%2Fwww.dreadcentral.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F07%2FDoom-pic-1.jpg%3Fresize%3D584%252C444&f=1&nofb=1

Would watch two hours of that man's hinges coming loose.

Doom Eternal delayed to March

oh there's a different thread for the new ones isn't there

So the new one is delayed until March ... and the Switch version delayed even further past that to some yet to be determined date.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFDlVgBMomQ

good lord. humanity is capable of things