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All things classic Doom
When I made my post about Chex Quest, it got me thinking about the classic Doom games released from 1993-1997, and I thought it would be great hearing some fellows Tilders thoughts about these classic games that can run on just about anything.
I thought of some questions, but please share anything Doom related! I think it's awesome seeing how this game has had such a lasting impact over the last 30+ years and how people continue to push this game in new and surprising ways.
- When did you first play/"get into" Doom?
- What is your favorite source port of Doom?
- What are your favorite WADs?
- What are your favorite total conversions of Doom/games built on the Doom Engine?
- What are your favorite mods for Doom?
- Do you still play Doom regularly?
- Have you introduced anyone who plays more modern shooters to Doom, and how did that go?
I certainly know my favorite WAD!
For another interesting one, see: MyHouse.WAD - Inside Doom's Most Terrifying Mod
For anyone here interested in this video yet turned off by it's length, give it a shot anyway. I had no intention of watching the entire thing when I first found it, but it locked me in start to finish.
There is also some discussion about the video here on Tildes, from when it was first posted by @mat, for those interested in seeing that too:
https://tildes.net/~games/15hr/myhouse_wad_inside_dooms_most_terrifying_mod
Does anybody remember qcrack.exe?
For those who don't, there used to be a CD you could buy for a dollar that had shareware versions of Wolfenstein, Quake, Doom, etc. on it. In order to unlock the full version, you had to call a 1-800 number and pay over the phone for whichever specific game you wanted, then you would give the guy a code generated on your PC and he would give a response code to unlock that game. Qcrack would just take the generated codes and give you the response, essentially giving you every id Soft game for free.
I passed that CD around to all my classmates, along with qcrack on a 3.5" floppy. It was my first foray into piracy, and I've been sailing the seas ever since. Ah, the good old days!
Chocolate Doom. I like that it feels like the original with no tweaks. I prefer vanilla games in general, but also appreciate making things run well on modern hardware, and Chocolate Doom does so while offering no opinions of its own.
D4V.wad, upgrades classic Doom to a Doom 2016 style
BTSX: I like the balance, the ammo amount feels tight but fun without being hardcore on easy difficulties
Sigil (haven't touched Sigil II despite having the collector's box)
World of Square, a bright, fun, non-horror original game
Hedon: Bloodrite: which takes all of the features of the games GZDoom supports and made a game with stellar platforming, excellent puzzles, and Quake-style arena rooms. AFAIK it was one of the first commercial GZDoom-based TCs recently on Steam.
See D4V.wad. I separate TCs out and wads as map packs.
Yes, I still need to go back and finish BTSX.
Yes, they didn't bite. The things that make Doom good are also not everyone's cup of tea.
I don't know a whole lot about the series nor would I call myself a superfan, but my first experience with the game was pretty memorable.
My only friend with a computer in the early 90s had Goblins Quest, Kings Quest and a disk full of other keyboard based games that we'd play at his house. At 7 or so years old, I was in that sweet spot of impressionability and amazement at new experiences at tech.
One day his dad brought home Doom - a game that used the mouse and keyboard and we couldn't stay away from it. One of us operated the mouse, the other the keyboard. It was a crazy fun experience - one that even pushed me to read the Doom novels back in the day.
Don't remember when I first played a Doom game, but it was either a demo of Doom E1M1 on a PS1 demo disc or (very briefly) Doom 64 when my brother borrowed it from a friend.
The first time I actually purchased and played through both Doom 1 & 2 was about two or three years ago, when I discovered Civvie 11 on YouTube and the magic of source ports.
GZDoom is the only source port I've tried, and it basically makes the game playable on modern hardware with standard keyboard & mouse controls, absolutely mandatory unless you're a masochist who loves keyboard-only controls on MS-DOS.
Only one I played was Sigil and I agree with both the Civvie and Gmanlives reviews of them. It should've been a Doom 2 WAD, but also John Romero made good use of the baseline Doom 1 assets and monsters.
Only one I definitely played was Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart, and for a Sonic themed kart racer spinoff, that was actually really well-made.
I would've said Ion Fury, but that was the Build Engine, which Duke Nukem 3D was built from. Also, Rise of the Triad was a modified version of the Wolfenstein 3D engine, and I never got that to work with any source port until I purchased the Ludicrous Edition that Nightdive worked on.
Other ones I only experienced via YouTube videos, were either one-off experimental ideas (i.e. The Thing You Can't Defeat), or were so outrageously offensive and off-putting (i.e. Grezzo 2, and one based on a warped racist 4chan caricacture of a McDonalds mascot which I won't name directly) that I wouldn't touch them with a barge pole.
Not really. I appreciate Doom, and I think the level design is actually pretty genius, but I'm not hardcore enough to attempt levels on Nightmare or pistol-starting on Ultra Violence.
Doom was the game I played the most in my middle school years, right up until I got Star Wars: Battlefront.
My first exposure to it was one of those CDs that had 999 games on it, with Doom on the case art. Of course, it was Doom 95, and I immediately got my hands on the full game and started spending as much time hunting WADs as I did playing the game. I got my hands on every copy of Doom that I could, even the press release beta from before all the weapons had been finalized, as well as the very first WAD ever uploaded after the game's release. It blew my mind when I found software that gave you free-look capability, I was walking around all the maps looking up for the novelty of it lol.
Some of my favorite mods were reskin packs for weapons and interior expansion packs that would add more rooms and enemies to the levels for Doom/Doom II. I haven't played the original titles in almost a decade, but I could still tell you every cheat code and what it meant from watching/reading countless interviews of John Romero/Carmack. I was super proud of a screenshot I had for awhile of being the $1,000 bid on ebay for the original master copies of the game on a 5.25" floppy (which I absolutely could not have afforded and knew I would be outbid immediately for).
FWIW, I enjoyed Doom 64 just as much as the two original titles, I still have all the level codes sitting somewhere, written on a piece of lined paper from when I played it on N64.
Thank you for reminding me of all the time I spent having fun in these games :)
For my podcast on roguelike games, we covered the classic DoomRL open source game as well as its commercial 3D remaster Jupiter Hell.
I’m still very impressed by its spin on the OG DOOM formula with traditional roguelike mechanics. More than just that, though, I’ve come to realize just how tight and focused its gameplay is when compared to something like Nethack.
Fun fact: the demake of Jupiter Hell that released recently has a steam workshop mod that you can load to just straight up play DoomRL with controller support and Steam achievements.
I remember looking at DoomRL years ago and seeing Jupiter Hell Classic pop up recently. I'm hoping to pick it up eventually. I'm glad DoomRL is still free, and plan to give it a go again sometime soon.
I enjoy your podcast! I keep an episode in my playlist and give it the occasional listen when I want to scratch that roguelike itch.
I was 7 when I played it (and Duke Nukem 3d). There wasn't much else to do with the family computer, and then I was doubly hooked when I discovered the level editor included with Duke 3d and then later user-made maps on the internet. I remember watching sub-1mb map files slowly downloading from Geocities over 28k dialup.
GZDoom. I used to use ZDoom for its support for custom enemies, weapons, and level scripting, and then switched to GZDoom when it was new for its support for 3d floors and proper 3d rendering with good mouselook. I can't imagined going back to a port without 3d rendering: looking up and down in the old vanilla renderer stretches the world grossly and doesn't let you properly look around.
Anyway, public service announcement while we're on the subject of GZDoom: in Options -> Display Options, set "Texture Filter mode" to "None (linear mipmap)". This fixes the terrible blurry default rendering of the game and makes it actually look like the official release! GZDoom's terrible opinionated default texture filter mode is the single worst thing about GZDoom. (I really don't understand how there aren't any popular forks of GZDoom yet dedicated just to fixing this one issue.)
I hadn't touched Doom much in years until I saw some posts online about MyHouse.wad, and then I got back into it after that. I even contributed a few bugfixes to GZDoom recently. I've been playing Neon Overdrive lately which is pretty good.