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LakiSoft

Stupid Question! Doom 1 or Ultimate Doom?

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LakiSoft said:

I mean, episode 4 was made later, so may developers lost ideas. So that's way Episode 4 are not good as a first three. Do you guys more prefer Doom 1 to Ultimate Doom? Because Ultimate one are more expansion pack than a game.

I think there's a number of factors in play. The biggest is probably that the E4 levels were made by different authors (the exception being that Romero made a couple of the levels). That naturally and inevitably leads to a different feel.

There's also less consistency to the levels - it's more of a mixture of levels by different authors. I actually had to look up E4 on the wiki to know what the plot is even supposed to be. It's nice that in E1-3 (and Doom II, to a lesser extent), even though the plot is thin there's some coherent idea of where you're supposed to be and what you're trying to do. There's nothing like that with E4 - it's just an expansion pack and Id make no real attempt to hide it (the biggest example being the fact that there's no intermission screen map).

The "era" in which they were made almost certainly has some effect - remember that the E1-3 levels were made while the Doom engine was still under construction, and evolved as it evolved. The level authors were less experienced and probably had to work within the restrictions of more primitive versions of the engine. The E4 levels are a lot more elaborate in their design by comparison.

Personally I'm not a fan of E4 and I'd much rather play the original three episodes. I have copies of the registered and ultimate versions of the game and tend to pick one arbitrarily, without putting any real thought into it.

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fraggle said:

I think there's a number of factors in play. The biggest is probably that the E4 levels were made by different authors (the exception being that Romero made a couple of the levels). That naturally and inevitably leads to a different feel.

There's also less consistency to the levels - it's more of a mixture of levels by different authors. I actually had to look up E4 on the wiki to know what the plot is even supposed to be. It's nice that in E1-3 (and Doom II, to a lesser extent), even though the plot is thin there's some coherent idea of where you're supposed to be and what you're trying to do. There's nothing like that with E4 - it's just an expansion pack and Id make no real attempt to hide it (the biggest example being the fact that there's no intermission screen map).

The "era" in which they were made almost certainly has some effect - remember that the E1-3 levels were made while the Doom engine was still under construction, and evolved as it evolved. The level authors were less experienced and probably had to work within the restrictions of more primitive versions of the engine. The E4 levels are a lot more elaborate in their design by comparison.

Personally I'm not a fan of E4 and I'd much rather play the original three episodes. I have copies of the registered and ultimate versions of the game and tend to pick one arbitrarily, without putting any real thought into it.


Agree with you. Some times i play Doom v1.0 FULL VERSION to feel original form and these fixed bugs. :P

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Eris Falling said:

Didn't need to, and Xaser didn't know that.


Sorry my stupid keyboard writen wrong. Once i writen "I can't demo to be released" instead of "I can't wait demo to be released." :P

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Xaser said:

Hmm, keeping old versions like that might be kinda fun for glitch-hunting, I agree.


Like 199% health cap, uncapped armor, variable-pitch sounds, getting HOMs and visplane overflows on the simplest PWADs, monster barrel suicide and pinkies/spectres that can infight and bite each other to death with invisibility mode on ;-)

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Xaser said:

"when you think of Doom, so you think of 3 episodes or 4?"


When phrased like this, I prefer Doom as 3 episodes. I know this completely contradicts that I like Ultimate (and that E1M1 switch, sorry Eris :P) but E4 is a thing I have to feel in the mood for. You know, slightly masochistic and wanting to waste an afternoon. E4M2 really is the standout map for me, and I seem to have mentioned how it's a masterpiece about a hundred times this week. It is.

But yeah, I like the three episode structure.

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ComicMischief said:

and that E1M1 switch, sorry Eris :P


Breathing fire here...I know it was helpful for multiplayer, but they made a secret area mind-numbingly easy by doing that...

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I get that. Ideally, the areas should be opened up with the pool's linedefs being tripped; that's how I'd have done it.

But as-is, the switch raises the amount of playable DM levels from zero to one. That's more than a 100% improvement. :P

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All levels of E4 should be in an map E3M10. :P
EDIT: and also did you guys know that E2 and E2 originally suppossted to be vice versa. You can see that in Doom Press Beta.

E1-Knee-Deep
E2-Inferno
E3-The Shores of Hell

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Xaser said:

On topic, I'm of the "why NOT Ultimate Doom?" opinion. Love or hate E4, I don't see the advantage of sticking to an older IWAD unless you're a port developer or super-hardcore collector type. UDoom's got everything that Doom the First has got, so you're not missing anything. :P


If you want to play with vanilla doomsrc or sdldoom (a "port" that changes almost nothing), then you need IWAD v1.8, or else you'll get problems with demo playback, and there are also some minor graphical glitches in E4 (but it's still playable).

Originally the LinuxDoom binaries released by id only worked with v1.8 IWAD:
http://www.gamers.org/dhs/helpdocs/Linux-DOOM-FAQ.html#compat
Then when E4 was released, someone made an "unofficial" patch (hehe) so you could play that in LinuxDoom:
http://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/games/doom/udoom-1.1.lsm
But I'm pretty sure it also had demo problems, etc.

The bottom line is that for LinuxDoom, which I consider equally legitimate and vanilla as doom.exe (because it's an Id Software release and is how I played the game between 1995-99), you ideally want v1.8, so that means E1-3, without even the small changes they introduced later (like the tech pillar shortcut switch in E1M1).

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LakiSoft said:

EDIT: and also did you guys know that E2 and E2 originally suppossted to be vice versa.

THAT'S INSANE!!!

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Snakes said:

THAT'S INSANE!!!


Agree! But that is truth. Look .WAD of Press Release Beta and you will see that E2M2 is E3M2 and E3M5 is E2M5.

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The "era" in which they were made almost certainly has some effect - remember that the E1-3 levels were made while the Doom engine was still under construction, and evolved as it evolved. The level authors were less experienced and probably had to work within the restrictions of more primitive versions of the engine. The E4 levels are a lot more elaborate in their design by comparison.

I'd agree. Personally, I enjoy the flatness of many E1-3 levels, such as E2M2 (perhaps my all-time favourite when it comes to the IWADs), I think there's an oldschool feel to them. Maybe I'm a little biased because I was a Wolfenstein aficionado for quite a while and I did NOT like the Z-axis, stairs or ledges in Doom at a time ;)

In retrospect, I greatly appreciate all the changes made to the engine, but still, packing E4M2 and E2M1 into one game feels a bit strange... Let's get this straight, id just tried to rip off the customers and made no bones about it. Romero even said that in an interview. They were in a class of their own at the time, still.

Gameplay-wise, I would say Thy Flesh Consumed had great moments but it ended up being a mixed bag as a whole. Some maps just aren't up to the mark, particularly Hell Beneath. I'm at my wits end trying to remember if there's ever been a map that annoyed me less...

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LakiSoft said:

Agree! But that is truth. Look .WAD of Press Release Beta and you will see that E2M2 is E3M2 and E3M5 is E2M5.

Counterpoint: SKY2 and 3 are clearly a moon, while SKY4 and 5 are a hellscape.

The difficulty is completely out of whack for the episodes to have been reversed, too, even at that point in development.

Feniks said:

Let's get this straight, id just tried to rip off the customers and made no bones about it.

Yeah, they wanted to rip their customers off so bad that they gave registered users a free upgrade patch.

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ComicMischief said:

E4M2 really is the standout map for me, and I seem to have mentioned how it's a masterpiece about a hundred times this week. It is.

I'd add e4m6. Both awesome maps.

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LakiSoft said:

Agree! But that is truth. Look .WAD of Press Release Beta and you will see that E2M2 is E3M2 and E3M5 is E2M5.

No, Snakes is mocking the fact that you typo'd again and this time said that E2 and E2 are swapped, not E2 and E3.

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UDoom didn't do too much for me when it was released. I liked the look of e4 but not the gameplay. e4m1 has that stupid NIN secret (should have been MetallicA!), and the three barons make getting 100% a serious pain in the ass. The difficulty curve of the whole episode sucks, with e4m1 and e4m2 being really tough, and then there being a serious drop in difficulty. The final level doesn't really fit with the established pattern, being a somewhat lengthy level. Plus it's just a spider mastermind again. A really easy-to-kill spider mastermind.

The only changes I remember beyond the new episode was the addition of the new 'secret' to e1m1, and that's mighty lame. Smashed the flow for me, and introduced a fast door on the first map. A door that disappeared into the sky no less. Weak.

I'm still glad it was released though, as it leaves me more spaces to fill with custom DOOM maps :)

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NaturalTvventy said:

I'm still glad it was released though, as it leaves me more spaces to fill with custom DOOM maps :)


Yes you can use EP4 slot for user maps if you wish for your private use. :)

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LakiSoft said:

Yes you can use EP4 slot for user maps if you wish for your private use. :)

Yes, and even more space for Oblige maps! Wow... 36 instead of 27!

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SLIGE is where it's at man! No fancy-schmancy new-school detailed designs, just a bunch of rooms and hallways with monsters for you to shoot. And the code? All in one big ANSI C file, with mile-long comments. It just screams 1994, a very fitting companion for Doom (along with DEU & friends of course).

But back to the subject... I think my all-time favorite Doom at this point is the Freedoom/Jaguar Doom TC combo, played in a vanilla port. Yup,it's only E1-3, and the maps have a simpler design but are still true to the originals. There are some unfortunate tutti-fruti bugs in some of the later maps though. One day I'll merge those into my copy of Freedoom, and that will truly be the ultimate IWAD! Guess I'll ditch the E4 slots altogether though...

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Episode 4 needed more NEW about it (how is that for English?) What I don't like about the episode as it stands: there's no linear difficulty progression. Sure, the first map is short, but it's very hard on UV, and then map two is one of the most difficult maps ever in an iwad. When I first played through those two maps, I assumed the whole set was going to be like this, and then it got boring and easy, save for one more hard map. Plus, being an official release, why could there not have been something in the way of new content, be it a weapon, a couple of monsters, or maybe a new boss? How about new music? No? New sky... okay, not good enough.

In the end I'm grateful for the new content, so I have more to play. But this was not something that id felt was a priority to make especially good. I read a John Carmack interview where he pretty said that they didn't care.

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