
OK Doomer - DyslexicAtheist
https://aelkus.github.io/games/2020/01/30/doom
======
matthewaveryusa
The early versions of counter-strike had a famous bunny-hopping bug where you
could cover 40% more ground than simply walking (jumping had a bug where the X
and Y coordinates were individually calculated, so if you moved in both
directions at the same time you would cover sqrt(2) ground)

It was a skill honed and part of the fun of the game. Then in version 1.3 they
removed it because it was a 'bug' \-- they basically removed the mini-game of
bunny-hopping and the first 30 seconds that were all about perfectly executing
bunny hops to get into position were replaced by a monotonous boring walk.

Such a shame that the monotony of real-life is added to games.

Anyways, I think the author should try Overwatch -- it's one of the few
contemporary widely played FPSs that doesn't take realism too seriously.

~~~
Vax45
On the opposite spectrum of simple exploits by jumping, we have Tribes. In the
original game, people quickly realized you can exploit the physics engine by
jumping, allowing you to quickly traverse the terrain. It became known as
"skiing".

The devs, rather than patching it, incorporated skiing into Tribes 2 and has
been a staple ever since. And also, while Counter Strike has become a massive
success and has thousands of players today. Tribes (while it was successful at
the time) has become a niche game that quickly weeds out newcomers and hardly
anyone plays it anymore.

Not saying that there's a correlation, I just find it amusing.

~~~
lasagnaphil
It's just a bummer that Tribes: Ascend (the last installment of Tribes) went
downhill quickly and became dead. No other FPS game can match the sheer joy of
shooting other players with projectile weapons while skiing midair at
200km/h...

~~~
bovermyer
Tribes: Ascend was really good. It was a labor of love for the developers who
worked on it.

Sadly, it was abandoned and taken over by cheaters. Also, it was never as
moddable as the original Tribes was, and since there were no private servers,
there was no way for the community to pick up the slack after Hi Rez abandoned
it.

------
strogonoff
Contrary to my expectations, this article is about the venerable game Doom and
not about
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomer).

~~~
cosmojg
I'm pretty sure the pun is intentional.

~~~
Schiphol
The main pun is with 'OK Boomer', though
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK_Boomer](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OK_Boomer)

~~~
willis936
There are zoomer, doomer, and even bloomer variants of the “OK Boomer” meme.
The author is likely riffing off of those riffs.

------
Andrew_nenakhov
When the shooters moved from 2.5D sprite-based (Doom 1&2, Duke Nukem 3D) to 3D
ones, something important was lost: restriction on performance many that no
longer you could fight hordes of enemies, because computers of the day
couldn't display them all fast enough. So, enemies got fewer, but tougher, and
no longer you could experience the same sheer carnage as fighting hundreds of
imps at once.

It was quite a while since I last played a 3D shooter (likely, HL2 Episode 2),
so I don't really know if there is something out there that has a similar feel
to good old Doom games.

~~~
wishinghand
The newest Doom released in 2016 brings back that onslaught in a modern 3D
engine. I forget the exact name but I think Mount and Blade had a lot of
enemies on screen. It’s a medieval combat game. I’m not sure if Devil Daggers
counts because it looks so primitive it might be an engine running 2.5D.

~~~
zentiggr
I have the original Mount and Blade, never got a chance to delve deeply. Does
it handle well on Win10?

~~~
glouwbug
Checkout Expanded Gameplay 3 for the original Mount and Blade. It's probably
the most fun gaming experience I've had (second to Brutal Doom though).

~~~
zentiggr
Might be too late to get a response but do you have a TLDR of the differences?

~~~
glouwbug
It's so much faster paced. You feel powerful. Weapons feel real. Horses have
real inertia. It's more arcadey, but that's the premise. It's just plain
brutal fun.

Give it a whirl, and make sure you choose The Olde Knight or the Steppe
Prince. And please reply if you do try - it's a lost masterpiece that the
original mount and blade should've been

------
dvasdekis
I disagree with the point that as a pure carnage simulator, "Doom is the
closest thing you will be to a pure instrument of destruction whose sole
function is to search and destroy", and that it stands the test of time as the
greatest in the genre.

The Serious Sams, Bulletstorm, Painkiller (and others) have taken the Doom
experience of finding a horde of somethings and killing them into the modern
era, each with their own take.

Serious Sam expanded the levels and monster counts to a grotesque scale,
allowing for perverse satisfaction in watching and killing off a distant and
vast sea of fodder running towards you.

Bulletstorm lightened the mood, and as a precursor to the Gears of War series,
was the first in my mind to make the action movie tropes of kicking and
punching things, coupled with cheesy banter, genuinely pleasing.

Painkiller took the heavy metal influences, and merged them with some of the
great settings from the previous century of horror novels and coupled it with
immersive and creative level and weapon design.

I definitely believe that Doom was the original seminal piece in the genre, a
Tolkien-esque work. But mankind has improved on the experience in the years
since. Try those out too.

~~~
boomlinde
I've played the Serious Sam games and I don't see them as improvements on
Doom. They take a rather narrow aspect of Doom and make an entire game out of
that. Sure, there are times in Doom where you need to clear out big rooms
filled with monsters, but Serious Sam is _only_ that. One of the strongest
points of Doom IMO is the level design, and that's entirely lost in the
Serious Sam games, because at best they're just a sequence of arenas, and at
worst there is some obvious collect-four-things "puzzle" in the way of an
entirely linear progression.

That's not to say that I didn't enjoy them, but they're definitely different
beasts rather than improvements on Doom. In my view that's kind of like saying
that Gauntlet is an improvement of the experience in Ultima.

~~~
test1235
Serious Sam shifted into a whole new dimension with co-op multiplayer, huge
outdoor spaces and huge end of level bosses.

Playing with a few friends, the atmosphere of watching your team mates far
away in the distance, launching salvos of rockets up at some giant monster,
which is even further away in the distance, while running non-stop from hordes
of screaming enemies, to the tune of mad techno beats and endless explosions
has yet to be beaten in my mind.

~~~
rangibaby
It obviously doesn’t matter now but at the time Serious Sam ran GREAT on
toaster PCs

------
hrktb
Looks to me like the author should try Splatoon 2

\- moving fast in non realistic patterns? check

\- not being dragged down by realistic limitations? check

Its network stack is garbage, but from any other point of view (speed,
strategy, system, weapons, visuals and music) it’s I think the best FPS we
have in this generation. And personally I’d say ever.

~~~
Razengan
Splatoon also has some of the cutest style and fashion aesthetic in any media
ever.

We could really use more bright and colorful future-fi, as opposed to the
usual bleak and dark dystopian “cyberpunk” aesthetic.

~~~
ascagnel_
Cyberpunk aesthetics tend to include splashes of bright neon color
counterbalancing inky blacks -- a game like the 2009 Syndicate still looks
pretty flashy.

On the other hand, games that seem to take visual design cues from metal
albums (looking specifically at games like Dark Souls and Bloodborne) tend to
have an all-grey look that quickly bores me.

------
ggambetta
Periodic plea to Splash Damage (or whoever holds the rights) to re-release
Enemy Territory, gameplay and maps unchanged, with a modern renderer and high-
resolution models and textures. Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeease?

~~~
Insanity
Oh man, that brings back memories. ET was a great game, one of the first
multiplayer games that I've "really" played so there's a heavy dose of
nostalgia attached to it.

I was particularly fond of the 'trick jumping' maps. Spend hundreds of hours
just on those.

~~~
ggambetta
Same here :) It was my first online game, and I sunk a massive amount of time
on it. It ruined FPSs for me. Haven't enjoyed another FPS, online or not,
nearly as much since, with the possible exception of Heroes & Generals which
I've been playing a bit recently, and has a similar vibe to it.

I used to play the standard maps, mostly. So elegantly designed, so
beautifully balanced. Just loved playing an engineer.

~~~
Insanity
Yeah - modern FPS games don't do it for me either, mostly the "realism"
bothers me. Especially in the map design or the physics. Plus the million
choices you need to make. If you play any of the new CoDs you have to choose
between a million perks, weapons, add-ons to those weapons. Same for
BattleField.

I've enjoyed the 2016 rendition of DOOM though, also the multiplayer with
silly game-modes like "football" / freeze tag. I'd have liked an
"instagib"-style game mode though, that was my favourite in JK2

------
disordinary
I prefer the original Quake to Doom as the best arcade style FPS. Doom is too
limiting to me in it's movement and level design. Quake still has the abstract
level design and that makes it the only 3d FPS that I've ever played to make
true use of 3d space. It's almost like parkour as you're flinging yourself
from surface to surface, doing rocket jumps, all while spinning in the air and
destroying hordes of creatures. It's Doom but more agile.

~~~
ShorsHammer
Doom is usually called 2.5d because it's basically simulated 3d.

~~~
krige
I've seen two mildly differing explanations for this particular version of
rendering visuals being called 2.5D, one that it's 2.5D because the geometry
looks 3D, but the actors are all sprites, the other is that the geometry looks
3D but it's actually a 2D floorplan with tricks to simulate different heights.

There's also at least one another unrelated "2.5D" use, when the world is 3D,
but the player moves on a strictly 2D plane.

~~~
animal531
Also the fact that the player would just look straight forward the whole time,
so when shooting at an enemy at a higher/lower elevation you just needed to
overlap him on the X coordinate on screen.

------
emmelaich
Loved Doom, but preferred Quake. The latest iteration, Quake Live (now on
Steam, cheap) is my favourite multiplayer online game.

~~~
0xff00ffee
Man, Doom blew everyone's mind when it showed up at work. Total productivity
killer. FPS on PCs, Apples and Macs were pretty crappy prior to that. Hexen
was creepier and improved the game play. Descent (non ID) was a great
multiplayer and had better 3D. Finally everyone was itchin' for Quake because
NIN was blowing up huge in 1995. Too bad the last level at it hard. Quake 2
had a great objective with cool bosses and much better level editing than
Doom. ... And then, too many goddamn games to keep up! 1996 + Diablo I is
about when I just got overwhelmed...

~~~
Jamwinner
Most people I knew burned a copy of the cd, and proceeded to wear it out in
their cd player. Back then they just coded half the cd as audio and the CD was
basically the new NIN ep. Those were the magic and fusturating days of bonus
content on CDs. I wonder how such content will be saved in the future? Playing
"hidden track.mp3" really isnt the same as finding track 99 and hearing a song
after the 10min of silence buffer to fool you.

------
MisterTea
I still play Doom using GZDoom and use the Brutal Doom mod. Fun as hell and
there are dozens of great megawads to play. The Brutal Doom starter pack comes
with the hell on earth collection which a really good remake of the original
Doom 2. I must have played through a dozen times. One amazing WAD is the
Japanese Community Project which has some mind blowing maps. It has a level
which when viewed in the 2D map is a multi pane comic of the level you're
playing.

And the gameplay is fast. You move fast, shoot fast and die fast if not
careful. The latest Doom felt like your character was walking through deep
mud.

~~~
justwalt
I thought the speed of the new Doom was too low, too, but I think the bigger
problem is the number of screen- and movement-locking events. Every time you
pick up a key or do a finisher move, you have to wait 1-5 seconds for an
animation to play out.

I think Doom 2016 is a pretty good and especially gory Serious Sam game. But
it’s certainly not Doom.

------
geon
> Realism is moving at human speed, experiencing fatigue, reloading and hiding
> behind cover, and guns that recoil when you fire them. Well, pseudo-realism
> anyway – you really don’t want the “real” in gaming.

Sounds a bit biased. My favorite FPS (pubg) has all of that, and it is what
makes the game enjoyable. There is even bullet velocity and drop, so you need
to account for moving targets and parabolic paths.

~~~
chmod775
Compared to games like Escape from Tarkov, PUBG doesn't even get close in the
realism department.

But that is perhaps the authors point, because games like EFT are certainly
not games for everyone, while PUBG can be fun to most people.

Most people:

\- Don't want to keep track of magazines which they can _swap_ and which you
have to reload slowly bullet by bullet, they'd rather press reload and end up
with a full magazine in their weapon again.

\- Don't want to think about ammo types of which some will be utterly
impractical in certain situations or about bullet penetration. They'd rather
have 1 ammo type that fits in their gun that does 20 damage per hit.

\- Don't want to deal with their character having a broken leg or arm, being
dehydrated, hungry, bleeding, in pain, or suffering from some other medical
condition after a firefight that requires attention and will impair their
ability to see, aim, walk, etc. They'd rather "use medkit" and be done with
it.

\- Don't want to think about weapon/gear durability or taking their weapon
apart/changing parts in a weapon they will likely lose on their next raid
anyways.

All that stuff is something for people who enjoy more of a survival type
gameplay. For everyone else systems like gear, health, reloading, ammo etc.
are usually simplified to be fun.

On the other hand, systems you don't usually have to take away from without
sacrificing fun are noise (step sounds, reloading sounds, moving in
vegetation, moving slow, moving fast etc. etc.) and ballistics (bullet drop,
ricochet, bullet penetration).

------
cydmax
The best FPS game you can play right now is Escape From Tarkov. There is no
other game that captures the fear of screen death and the adrenalin rush that
you get, when you escape with your precious loot so well. The overall game
loop is very addictive though...

~~~
shifto
Been playing it on and off for a few years now. It's fun but far from done.

------
zeouter
One part of the DOOM portverse I have enjoyed recently is DOOM in VR with
GZDoom -
h[https://github.com/Fishbiter/gz3doom](https://github.com/Fishbiter/gz3doom)

~~~
taneq
Have you got the improved voxel weapon models working? I've tried this a
couple of times but can't get past the crudely assembled billboard weapons. I
downloaded WeaponsForVR.pk3 and another one (I think BR_VR_something?) but it
doesn't seem to load them.

I never played the Doom games when I was a kid and I've been working my way
through the whole series. Finished Doom VFR and Doom 3 BFG Edition in VR, done
most of the original Doom, and almost finished DOOM (2016). They're great fun
and the DOOM (2016) soundtrack is amazing.

~~~
taneq
(Too late to edit, but apparently I needed to set "Sprite Weapon Mode" to "Fat
Item" in the VR options.)

------
busymom0
Unrelated but I really love the CSS and design of the site!

~~~
fctorial
I went back and noticed that the first character of menu names is highlighted.
It's useless TBH since you can't alt select the menu items. Overall the site
is pretty clean though. Should probably set max-size on article, it's hard to
read on widescreen because of long lines.

~~~
wltprgm
I don't understand how to 'alt select' anything, what is it for?

I don't mind the the numbers of word/line in my full HD 15.6" laptop screen,
in fact, and I actually hated the 80 words/line pattern like articles at
medium.com. Are you on 4k wide somehow?

------
wltprgm
Doom is ported to browser

1\.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18817278](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18817278)

2\. [https://doom.fandom.com/wiki/Wasm-
doom](https://doom.fandom.com/wiki/Wasm-doom)

3\. [https://wasm.continuation-labs.com/d3demo/](https://wasm.continuation-
labs.com/d3demo/)

------
gambiting
I don't know, I've never played doom when I was a kid, and every time I try to
get into it I just get bored after few levels. On the other hand, I'm happy to
play Doom 2016 a lot and have completed it multiple times. I suspect certain
games just don't age very well, even though I can totally see why it was as
revolutionary as it was when it came out(if you haven't read "Master's of
Doom" yet, you absolutely have to).

~~~
dasil003
Can you cite a 1993 game that you think aged better than Doom? When Quake came
out, the full 3D enemies and environments blew everyone away, but the kinetic
gameplay was lost. You don't really get this in the first few levels of Doom,
but as you progress on the harder skill levels you start to face an obscene
quantity of enemies, which combined with the raw player speed and mostly-2D
aim create an intensity that was lost in 3D FPS genre.

~~~
radicalbyte
Not on PC - the point-and-clicks aside - PC gaming back then was horrible,
Doom was an absolute revolution when it game out.

Sam and Max was released in 1993 though I'd argue that it's hurt much more by
the graphics than Doom is.

On console? A fair few, with Secrets of Mana being the pick of the bunch. It's
still a fantastic game in 2020. After that you have Super Mario Kart and Super
Mario All-Stars.

~~~
tzs
If we include consoles, then I'd put "The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past"
in there, from the same year as "Super Mario Kart". That was a good year for
SNES.

------
haecceity
Does anyone else see a rendering artifact (looks like a really fast cursor)
moving through the page? Happens in my Firefox and Chrome.

~~~
Arnavion
It's not a rendering artifact; it's an actual div moving with JS.

    
    
        <div id="cursor386" style="right: 643px; bottom: 346px;">(box glyph stripped out by HN)</div>
    

Search for "cursor386" in bootstrap.min.js, there's a setInterval loop that
moves it around.

Appears to be from
[https://github.com/kristopolous/BOOTSTRA.386](https://github.com/kristopolous/BOOTSTRA.386)

~~~
haecceity
Amazing

------
darkwater
Well I do have played Doom as a kid when it was released and while I totally
get that half of the experience with it was _being_ a kid/teenager, I can
still remember as if I'm still there the fear, the dread felt and my heart
beating in my chest when playing it at night with the headphones on. And it
was just a bunch of pixels (and sounds).

------
camgunz
Odamex is also a pretty good multiplayer port.

Here's a 160 person CTF game:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rr5pA9t1Z0A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rr5pA9t1Z0A)

Here's some highlights from the CTF league:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o41hDzqaXpU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o41hDzqaXpU)

Highly encourage getting involved (www.doomworld.com), it's a blast and the
barrier to entry is basically zero.

------
29athrowaway
If you are into Doom, check out the WAD that John Romero published for Doom's
25th anniversary

[https://www.romerogames.ie/si6il](https://www.romerogames.ie/si6il)

Some coverage about it here:

[https://venturebeat.com/2018/12/10/john-romero-reveals-
sigil...](https://venturebeat.com/2018/12/10/john-romero-reveals-sigil-
megawad-for-the-original-doom/)

------
29athrowaway
At the surface level, Doom was about killing monsters. But it was also about
navigation, finding keys, and budgeting your ammo, health.

~~~
0xff00ffee
And chainsaws. Let's not forget chainsaws. I don't recall gore like that in a
game ...maybe Postal and Syndicate... but it was pre-Duke Nukem.

~~~
29athrowaway
As a player, I spent most of my time finding the key to unlock some door,
rather than killing monsters.

~~~
catalogia
I think Doom changes with subsequent replays. After a while you start to learn
the layout of the maps. They stop being mazes and start being puzzles, where
you know where all the pieces are but the difficulty is in finding the optimal
route to accomplish your objective.

~~~
29athrowaway
There are many WADs out there for Doom with extra content and levels to play.

------
spookybones
Similarly, I used to play a game called San Francisco Rush, which was all
about driving off of hills in sports cars and getting absurd amounts of air.
It was essentially a high-speed gliding game where you try not to smash into
buildings on your descent. It was absurdly fun and not at all realistic.

------
avmich
I believe 2.5D graphics is a term and it means not the type of graphics in
Doom. Rather the one in Ultima, or SimCity.

~~~
disordinary
It means something which looks 3d but is actually 2d under the hood. Doom
looked 3d through a combination of techniques but the maps were 2d, Ultima and
simcity look 3d because of the isometric perspective but are still just 2d
tiles.

~~~
BlueTemplar
Maybe the later ones, but the first SimCity doesn't even look 3D.

------
znpy
I play a lot of OpenArena and I must say it's still a lot of fun, especially
with friends.

------
czbond
Doom was fantastic. The only way I was able to complete my CompSci degree was
through lots of Doom and Metallica while I coded....

~~~
7thaccount
You played Doom, while coding?

~~~
czbond
Of course! My brain works better when highly stimulated inbound, bc coding is
rather monotonous to me. I'd use bits of quiet to plan what I was doing - then
lots of external stimuli to help me get through the many boring parts of
implementation

------
didibus
Isn't there a new ray traced version of Doom that just came out? Graphics look
amazing!

~~~
didibus
Oh I was thinking of Quake. There is also a Doom 64 re-release coming, but
don't think that'll have the RTX treatment.

------
Annatar
As someone who has finished Doom multiple times on the hardest level of
difficulty, I really see no point to first person shooters.
BOOORRRIIINNNGGG!!! Give me "Eye of the Beholder" or "Hired Guns" or "Dungeon
Master" any day over senseless, repetitive violence; the atmosphere is orders
of magnitude better.

