Re: More Doom (Sigil II)

On 2025-04-19, Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

On Sat, 19 Apr 2025 09:47:37 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man
<rotflol2@hotmail.com> wrote:
>

On 2025-04-18, Zaghadka <zaghadka@hotmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, 18 Apr 2025 12:45:56 -0000 (UTC), in
comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action, Borax Man wrote:
>

On 2025-04-18, Mandrake the Perihelion <jfwaldby@gmail.com> wrote:

Borax Man wrote:

On 2025-04-17, Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

On Thu, 17 Apr 2025 11:19:09 -0500, Zaghadka <zaghadka@hotmail.com>
wrote:
>

On Thu, 17 Apr 2025 10:12:26 -0400, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>

Quake was impressive tech for its day, and it featured some many ideas
that have since become de rigeur for FPS games nowadays, but it was
too focused on arena-combat gameplay and its lore was a mess. Bleh.
;-)

>
You also *had* to buy a Pentium. I remember throwing my AMD 486DX4-100 at
it and still getting "Mr. Turtle."

>
You didn't HAVE to buy a Pentium (but boy did it help!)
>
Some of us were playing Quake on x486 chips. It was... rough, even for
me (and I'm really tolerant of low FPS). But I endured it until I got
that super-fast 100MHz pentium (and, eventually, a 3DFX card).
>
Not that any of that really made the gameplay more _fun_... but it
made it more _tolerable_ ;-P
>
>

 
I've tried it on my 486 DX4 100.  Barely playable.  The first machine I
ran Quake on was an AMD K5 100MHz, and it ran it OK at 320x240
resolution, and satisfactorily at 400x300.
 
That Pentium instruction set and faster cache/memory sure made a
difference.
 

I'm sure that's what it was.  The 386 was good for the game 'La
Cucaracha'.  Basically you would eat the cheese minis cracker and
hurgender cheese.  Then you fart and they have cracker aesctetic.
Cockroaches will stare at the moon before acknowledgigabyte drives,
carefully stored gigabyte they tell you boards of ca.

>
I used to run Doom on a 386 DX running at 20MHz.  Now that was
SLOW. Even in low detail mode, but I perservered because it was better
than not experiencing the game at all.

>
I just put on Wolf3D in those cases. Scratches the same itch.
>

>
Runs great on them, but Doom is so, so much better.

>
I played Wolf3D back-in-the-day, and was excited as anyone by its
'novel' first-person action, but equally found its mazelike maps
aggravating, and playing the game too long always gave me splitting
headaches. I didn't like its reliance on points, or its use of lives,
and there was a dull sameness to many of the levels thanks to the
limited number of textures, tricks and enemies.
>
In fact, one of the most exciting things that kept me going through
the game was the soundtrack; not that it was so great (it was okay)
but it was one of the few things that changed from level to level.
What will the new tune be? That's how low the bar was.
>
My experience with "Doom", though, was completely different. Just the
elevation changes made things entirely different. The lighting added
atmosphere and character to each map. There were so many more monsters
and weapons too! And the soundtrack; it wasn't just okay, it was
GREAT.
>
Wolfenstein 3D pretty much dropped off my radar after 10 December
1993. The few times I played it after that date, it was mostly just to
remind myself how much better Doom was than its predecessor.
>
Although, if I had a 386/20, Wolf3D would be a better fit. Doom could
run on a machine that slow, but you'd have to sacrifice a lot to get a
usable frame rate (detail level low, screen-size = postage stamp).
Wolfenstein3D ran a lot better on a computer of that calibre.
>
>

I ran Doom with a larger sreen, in fact, as big as it could be with just
the status bar.  Maybe shrunk down one level.  It ran like crap, but I
preferred that over looking at tiny, tiny screen.  AFter a while, you
got used to it, and only some levels, like E3M6 really became a major
headache.

I first saw Wolf3D in the school computer lab, and like you found the 3D
first person perspective exciting.  Nothing like anything else I saw
before, but I only got to play it during school breaks, ie, every 6
months just for an hour or so.

When I got a 386 in February 1994, with an Adlib sound card, I got
Wolf3D and really enjoyed it.  It had FM Synth sound effects and music.
The music I kind of liked, and the game was good, but I did find the
mazes frustrating, and there was a bit of sameness.

When I first saw Doom, early April 1994 I think, it looked next
generation, something phenomenal and clearly for a far more powerful
computer.  It was like watching black magic, how these "realistic"
scenes were rendered.  But I didn't quite get drawn into the aesthetics,
the demons, the shotgun, and found it to be like a Wolf3D rip off.  A
couple of weeks later, after playing it a little and deleting it, I
suddenly realised the game was pretty good and got the shareware version
again and finished it.  I was hooked from then on in.  More immersive
levels, flowed and played better.  No huge mazes!

Later, when a SoundBlaster was put in, I was blown away by how it
sounded.