hex11
Senior Member
Posts: 1996
Registered: 09-09 |
Graf Zahl said:
I was speaking of the original releases from the 90's. The Final Doom CD I bought in 1995 got Doom95.exe as its main executable on it. The DOS EXEs are hidden in some subdirectories inside install packages but this is not what the average user will see: They will be directed directly to the hi-res Windows version. To ecen install the DOS version you have to search the CD manually.
But anyway, this glorification of the DOS-EXEs from a 'meant to be played this way' attitude is ridiculous. This sure has its place but most definitely not as the one and only genuine Doom experience.
I think you can make a small case for the Doom95 port, because it may have been fairly popular back in the DOOM heyday, but in reality developement ceased after DOOM II and they moved onto Quake. The recent BFG edition is a joke. Not only is it completely disconnected from the early development by decades, but it wasn't even made by the same team. It's like if a record label hired some random guys to do cover songs of a once-popular metal band, but they also told them to tone it down a bit and take out the swearing and other possibly offensive stuff. It's not at all the same as if the old band got together after a couple decades and started jamming together again of their own volition.
But anyway, Final DOOM is still just a 3rd-party spinoff and not the main attraction. The vast collection of PWADs were originally made for DOOM v1.2, and later for DOOM or DOOM II v1.666 or v1.9, but eventually id stopped working altogether on DOOM and the final product was v1.9, and that remains as the historically most signficant version of vanilla DOOM.
This is not a "glorification" of the DOS version so much as a statement of its authenticity. If you want to go back in time and experience DOOM the way it was played by millions of people when it was the most popular game, then that's how you'll play it. There's nothing wrong with using advanced ports, even with extra mods loaded if that's how someone enjoys playing, but you're fooling yourself if you think you're getting the genuine DOOM experience. The fact is, I doubt many people want or like that experience these days, just like many people don't like playing Pong for hours on end every day. They would only play Pong so much if it was an enhanced version with 3D gfx, BFG's, online deathmatch arenas, gory death scenes, and all that shit. But if you do that, are you still playing Pong? Not really, it's a descendant of Pong for sure, but it ain't Pong.
And I personally don't care what port others use to play vanilla maps. That's their business, and what they do has no bearing whatsoever on my experience. The only time it affects me is when I download a "vanilla" map and find it's unplayable in a vanilla engine because it wasn't tested properly, because the author only plays with ZDoom or whatever. There has been a lot of that in the past couple years though. It's at the point where I hesitate to download those so-called vanilla maps unless I recognize the author and can vouch for his ability. And before someone tells me to "just play those maps in a port", well don't. If someone made a vanilla map, I want to experience it exactly that way in the original engine, and if it doesn't work then I simply discard the map (unless author is receptive to bug fixes). That's right, I don't have to compromise here, it's just a game and I'm entitled to play it however I wish. Too many thins in life I have to compromise with, but this isn't one of them.
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02-04-13 05:29 
