@john2001plus 2 minutes ago @BigMacDavis I've been playing Doom II and Doom: Thy Flesh Consumed, on every level of difficulty except Nightmare.
My frustration with Doom II is that you need a roadmap or a script to play some of the really large levels optimally. You've worked out the best way to play these levels, but it goes against my instincts to follow someone else's pattern. I just want to explore each map randomly, which works pretty well in Doom.
One reason this is an issue is that Doom II is loaded with ambushes almost everywhere. I don't have the maps memorized yet, so I never know when I'm about to be ambushed.
I had the original Doom almost completely memorized back in the mid-1990s.
Quantum comes on my Arcade-1UP 10 in 1 Atari Arcade game. The problem is that the trackball doesn't feel sensitive enough for this game. I have to roll it too much.
I just completed Doom II on the "I'm too young to die" difficulty level. Even this is not easy. It is a bit of a slog to get through.
I was bored with some of the early levels, but midway through the levels got much more imaginative.
If they had broken the game into 3 or 4 episodes, I think that it would have been more rewarding for the player. It would have provided a better sense of progression.
The Super Shotgun is very satisfying. It has enough power that I sometimes choose it over other more powerful weapons.
I definitely enjoyed Doom 1 more. Do I find Doom II interesting enough to play it through on the other difficulties? Probably. The complexity of some levels is discouraging, but players in 1994 got a lot of gaming experience for their money. The game is bigger and more difficult.
I played the game using "Chocolate Doom", which uses the same low resolution as the original game. I didn't mind this at all, but now that I have downloaded both ZDoom and its successor GZDoom, I think that I prefer the game with the higher image quality.
I wrote a BASIC game similar to "A Pair of Zippy Road Runners" on at least one 8 bit computer. I don't remember which one but it was probably a Timex-Sinclair computer. It started with a wide road that would get more narrow as the game progressed. The road being drawn on the bottom would move randomly left or right on every frame.
I think that my best 8-bit BASIC game was similar to Snake. I filled the screen with blocks as barriers and other characters as food to be gobbled up. The goal is to get all the goodies without running into the blocks or yourself. I know that I wrote this in the late 1970s on a friend's OSI-C1P, but I wrote something similar on my high school's TRS-80.
Now that I have mostly finished the original Doom, I am playing Doom II on the easy level. With Doom, it is a good idea to play all the difficulty levels as you learn the game.
My problem with Doom II is that the levels feel uninspired compared to the original Doom. Many of the designs are boxy, relying heavily on right-angle walls, and they lack visual appeal. I found the early levels especially dull. The game could have benefited from more variety in both textures and gameplay.
The level design seems to focus on two main goals:
Pushing the graphics engine to its limits with larger maps, some featuring incredibly tall structures.
Increasing the overall difficulty.
I remember beating the game 30 years ago, but there's a reason I haven't gone back to it since. Back then it felt novel, but the experience doesn't hold up as well today.
On my computer I have copies of the old Doom and Doom II, but they no longer work. I am playing both games using "Chocolate Doom" which is a Windows port of the original Doom. I just copy the Wad files from the original games.
When I first played Doom, it had three episodes, but about the time I bought my first PC compatible id came out with a version with a 4th episode called "Thy Flesh Consumed." This is a very interesting episode. I remember playing it 30 years ago along with Doom II.
"Against Thee Wickedly" might be my favorite in the 4th episode if not the whole game. It is extremely well thought out and complex, but once you know how to play it then it is easy to understand. Everything you have to do follows a linear order.
Due to complexity, some of the levels would surprise me if they ran well on a 486-33 Mhz. This is especially true for Doom II.
@john2001plus 37 minutes ago Fortress of Mystery can be quite fun. I started the level with only 5% health and minimal amo, but was able run around enough to avoid getting hit. This encouraged infighting and I was able to pick off the monsters one at a time.
The teleport puzzles in Unholy Cathedral are annoying, but once I got used to the level there was much to enjoy.
Gateway to Limbo is a bit frustrating, but it is different enough from other levels to make it a unique experience.
E2M6, Halls of the Damned, gets my vote for the worst level in Doom 1 because of having to fight a horde of monsters in a large dark maze where you can't see anything. Much of the level doesn't seem to serve any purpose except to make you fight enemies. It can be tricky to get all the secrets because one room will lock you out, or even crush you, if you don't do it correctly.
E4M1, Hell Beneath, deserves honorable mention because it might be the most difficult level to complete in Doom 1. You have insufficient amo to fight all the monsters. If you don't find the secret room with the rocket launcher then it is hopeless. Monsters will teleport right next to you and kill you. Even the difficulty "I'm too Young to Die" is hard to survive. Using Chocolate Doom, there is a bug where you can get permanently trapped in the Red Key area. Despite doing everything I am supposed to, I only get 50% of the secrets. Also, there is a switch that seems to do nothing.
However, I think that Hell Beneath is fun. There is a walkthrough on YouTube that shows a trick to kill the 4 or 5 Barons of Hell. If you know what you are doing, then you can make it through the level, although maybe just barely.
I had not played DOOM for at least 15 years. Playing it again makes me happy. This is partly because of nostalgia, but I think that the game play is the best.
Playing on the Ultra Violent difficulty level feels a bit stressful. This used to be no problem, but I struggle to get through the levels. The game has "jump scares" where monsters will suddenly ambush you.
The resolution of DOOM is only 320x200. This wasn't much of an issue back in 1993, where standard CRT monitors were typically 640x480. But playing on a modern screen makes the game look chunky. This is similar to my vision before my recent cataract surgery. BTW, the SNES and Gameboy Advance versions ran at half this resolution, making the game look even more blurry.
There are alternate downloadable DOOM engines that support higher resolution and maybe more detailed graphics.
@john2001plus 9 months ago (edited) 04:00 This game appears to have been programmed in BASIC. The characters move 8 pixels at a time. The scroll is from the bottom, which you could do from BASIC.
The game is just barely better than broken.
1 reply
@chronologicallygaming 9 months ago We need more comments like this! People said I was crazy or including a broken rating in our system!
@john2001plus My first Intel computer was a 486 33 MHz in 1995. It cost $1200, and I played Doom on it. At the time, I didn't notice any problem with performance. I would upgrade the processor a step at a time to 66 MHz and later 100 MHz. I needed 66 MHz to play Descent, which was more demanding.
The recent Doom news has caused me to click on Doom videos. (Randy Linden is coming out with a new version of SNES Doom, and I briefly worked with him on the original SNES Doom released in 1995.) The more I click on Doom videos, the more Doom videos YouTube recommends to me.
This has prompted me to play Doom again. My current computer is an i7-10700K. I was a Doom fanatic back in 1995, and I am surprised at how fun it is to play the game again.
@john2001plus 1 year ago 1:14:31 I am grateful that Randy keeps bringing up my name in these interviews. My role was minor since I worked on many projects. I don't specifically remember editing levels, but it was so long ago that I don't recall. I know that we were trying to reduce the size of the game to fit on a cartridge. I believe that I was involved in massaging the data, which is something I did on multiple games, especially Dirt Trax FX.
The 1995 Super Nintendo version of Doom was full of compromises. We had to remove levels to make it fit on a game cartridge. I briefly worked with Randy Linden, but it was so short and so long ago that I didn't remember exactly what I did. Randy credits me with editing levels and game testing, so one website lists me as a level designer—although that description is a bit generous. I mostly just deleted levels, but it was enough to get my name in the credits.
The Super Nintendo hardware wasn't really up to the strenuous task of running Doom, so the game had a low frame rate. Even so, it was a miracle that Randy Linden got as much performance out of the SNES hardware as he did.
I recently saw a YouTube video calling it a terrible version of Doom.
Now, Randy Linden and a company called Limited Run Games have created a new cartridge with some modern hardware to give the game a boost. It eliminates most of the original compromises, making the SNES version almost identical to the PC game.
@john2001plus 0 seconds ago I wrote a videogame for the ST and the Timex Sinclair 2068 called Diamond Mike. The ST version was published by XLent Software in 1986. I saw it on store shelves. (There are videos of it on YouTube.) I am not aware of a downloadable version, but I have a physical copy.
I am surprised at how good some of these games look. The original ST only had 16 colors from a palette of 512.
@john2001plus 1 day ago My experience watching the home versions of Defender might differ from actually playing them, but just watching the game makes me uncomfortable. First, the music is monotonous—especially since you die so frequently, you keep hearing the same repetitive sound over and over.
My second issue is with the apparent choppiness of the game and its lower resolution compared to the arcade version. Visually, it seems like a much worse experience, although it might still be fun to play. At least twice, it looked like you didn't get hit but died anyway—possibly due to the choppy animation.
I have to admit, it is a great arcade conversion.
From what I've read, the Williams arcade version didn't use hardware sprites to save on costs. As a result, the processor had to work overtime to animate the graphics. The arcade machine used two processors: one for graphics and the other for sound. I believe the scrolling was also handled in software.
The arcade version used a 320x256, 16-color display, which could require up to 41KB of screen data. Considering that a single 6809 processor was responsible for handling all the graphics, that's impressive—though still within the realm of possibility.
BTW, 16 color graphics use 4 bits per pixel. On the Atari ST, this involved 4 parallel bit planes, which was a nightmare to write graphics code for, which I did back in 1986. However, if the video memory were arranged as two 4-bit pixels per byte, then that would be ideal. It would be much easier to code for. (I think I heard that the Apple II GS did this.) If it were me, I would only move objects in increments of two pixels horizontally, which makes the code much simpler, and the user is not likely to notice the difference.
@john2001plus 1 day ago I found another source that said that the Defender arcade had 38K of video RAM, two pixels per byte, and only a 1 Mhz 6809. It lists the graphics resolution as 292x240, which is slightly less than what I posted above. This may have been deliberate to allow for overscan, as the monitor is designed for 320x256.
@chronologicallygaming 7 hours ago That's a great analysis of the differences between the arcade and home versions of Defender! I always felt like the home version was a good compromise. Thanks for the comment!
@john2001plus 7 hours ago I agree it is a good compromise. As I said, watching and playing might be different, so I will attempt to play the home version through emulation.
I have the Arcade1up version of Defender. Having to hit a button to reverse direction feels like too many buttons to deal with.
One of the biggest limiting factors of early computers was the cost of RAM. In the late 1970s, I remember seeing an advertisement for 64K of RAM costing $1,000. Today, you can get 64 gigs of DDR4 for under $100.
This is why the Atari 2600 video game system released in 1977 only had 128 bytes of RAM.
The first TRS-80 came with 4K. The VIC-20 had 5K.
The Sinclair ZX-81 came with 1K. Its American counterpart came with 2K. Both were expandable to 16K.
The Nintendo Entertainment System, first released in Japan in 1983, had 4.25K RAM.
By late 1983, RAM had gotten cheaper, so we saw the Commodore 64 released with 64K, and the Timex Sinclair 2068 with 48K RAM.
