John Romero Plays DOOM

Big thanks to JPL and Romero, I really enjoyed this series of videos, there truly is something special about Doom.

It's also nice that JPL knows a lot about the Doom gameplay, mapping and internals and has gamedev experience. Romero was visibly surprised a few times and actually asked him how he knows all that :-D

I'd like to see a Kickstarter for Doom engine content. A new game
based on an unencumbered by licenses engine, like Eternity. With a goal of 50,000 maybe.

I wanna see the Sandy version of Dead Simple that American said was so ugly they couldn't ship the game with the level included as-is. Considering how ugly some of the final Sandy maps were it must have been a real stinker!

Yeah, eapecially considering dead simple isn't a great looking map on its own. At least compared to underhalls or the inmost dens. What's with that random BROWN1 pillar column anyway?

For some reason I pictured sandys version to be a square map with less than 10 sectors textured entirely in grayvine.

Educated guess at Sandy's original map07:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/sf84b6k7g8vmvv6/petersen.wad

Doomkid said:

Educated guess at Sandy's original map07:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/sf84b6k7g8vmvv6/petersen.wad

Doomkid said:

Educated guess at Sandy's original map07:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/sf84b6k7g8vmvv6/petersen.wad

Nice, is it really just a wild guess, or did you base it on some footage or information we don't know? Anyway, the tag 667 doesn't work properly, it raises 128 units high in both ZDoom and PrBoom-plus. :)

I'm surprised Romero still won't directly admit that Daikatana was a mistake.

EDIT: Dear god it's like WOOO all over again.

All you wankers ripping JP a new one get a life. Step outside your basement once in a while and do something worth criticising. "Boohoo he was overly complimentary"; he's an affable guy with John Romero playing Doom for Chrissakes. I'd like to see you do the same and keep cool. Actually no I wouldn't, because it would be the most awkward thing on the internet. Was a cool video with some neat info, no idea how some people manage choke on their own bitterness at it.

Jaxxoon R said:

I'm surprised Romero still won't directly admit that Daikatana was a mistake.

I think it still hurts him a bit. After all, it was supposed to be his masterpiece and it turned out to be a game which removed him from the spotlight. I believe in the video where he talks about E1M1 he says something along "when I was making Daikatana..." and then a pause follows :D Perhaps a coincidence, but it really looks like he still has some emotions towards the game and I can't blame him. Had the game been more polished and released a bit earlier it might have actually been good.

EDIT:

found the moment. Go to 10:42

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rV6HlBa88js

He mentions how people are still hosting and playing daikatana today, and that it has some amazing air control. I didn't catch anything else about it though. I doubt he's really dissappointed by it. I read an article a while ago about how he didn't really have much control over the advertising, and he's more hurt that that is what everyone remembers about it.

vadrig4r said:

Shit!

It would be really sad if you were him. Which I hope you are not.

Obviously he isn't. Just a random stranger too dense to pick up on the irony of him raging hard about some forum posts not written the way he wished, all because some of us complained we can't enjoy the videos due to JPL not speaking the way we wished.

Wow, that was great! Awesome series of videos that sheds more light into Doom's development. Although I still don't know which source port John Romero was using. Is it Doomsday? Does anyone know?

EDIT: Never mind it says right in the video. Fuck I'm an idiot.

I loved the bit about E1M2 and everyone using ALWAYS the same door to access the red card area - it's the same for me :D I can't remember using the other door ever :D

I've always used the door closer to the start.

Left door, always. I prefer to move clockwise around circular areas, so that I encounter this door first and enter the loop clockwise as well. Also because, for some reason, my keyboard can't handle straferunning left. Really, if I try to hold Up Arrow, Left Arrow and Alt at the same time, the last pressed key refuses to work. On the other hand, I can freely straferun right, using Up Arrow, Right Arrow and Alt. That's probably how I've came to the habit of going clockwise around levels.

What a lad. It's amazing how much he still cherishes what he helped create instead of just leaving it in the gutter. I'll give this a watch at the weekend. Also, I tend to swing more towards the left as well.

scifista42 said:

the tag 667 doesn't work properly, it raises 128 units high in both ZDoom and PrBoom-plus. :)

I figured that seemed like a glitch we'd find in an alpha version ;)

Patrol1985 said:

I loved the bit about E1M2 and everyone using ALWAYS the same door to access the red card area - it's the same for me :D I can't remember using the other door ever :D

I never used to pay attention to which way I went. Then one day I noticed I had acquired some kind of mindless auto-pilot to navigate through the IWAD maps and started consciously altering my course, just for a different experience. Oddly enough the choice of these two doors was one of the things that tipped me off ("hey why not go the other way for a change?")

It also helps to run your IWAD maps through a randomizer to jumble things around, so it's less predictable. And playing with -respawn will also help to make you reconsider your choices.

Doomkid said:

Educated guess at Sandy's original map07:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/sf84b6k7g8vmvv6/petersen.wad

It looks as if it was taken from Wolfenstein 3D. Only right angles, floor and ceiling using a unified height, etc.

That map is also broken in vanilla (exit unreachable after all monsters killed). But I still like the colors more than brownish IWAD version.

hex11 said:

That map is also broken in vanilla (exit unreachable after all monsters killed).

Oh come on, you just have to be quick :D :D :D

Memfis said:

I've always used the door closer to the start.

I mostly go right on that door, but usually by and large I mix it up. Not deliberately, just depending on how the fight went I'll slip out of the closest door to me. So I'm often going left or right. I've never noticed a set pathway I choose to go down at all really. Even in the maze in level 2 with each secret on either end, I'll go for which ever one I think of first.

I've just finished the episode concerning E1M4 and I love how Romero said literally one sentence about the level itself, spending the rest of time talking about random (but interesting) stuff.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who considers the level a bit worse than the rest of E1 :P

I also liked the bit about swastika: you guys are nazis? You were supposed to be satanic! :D :D :D

They've talked about some super early screenshots with DOOM E1M5 remade in Quake engine. Are those shots available somewhere?

Patrol1985 said:

I've just finished the episode concerning E1M4 and I love how Romero said literally one sentence about the level itself, spending the rest of time talking about random (but interesting) stuff.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who considers the level a bit worse than the rest of E1 :P

I also liked the bit about swastika: you guys are nazis? You were supposed to be satanic! :D :D :D

I figure it's because it was originally Tom Hall's level. The discussion about other games was nice, but I would've liked some insight on the alterations Romero made to it. It's esoteric (isn't everything here?), but I've always wondered why he got rid of the window next to the yellow key door that let you see the exit bridge rise up.

Touchdown said:

They've talked about some super early screenshots with DOOM E1M5 remade in Quake engine. Are those shots available somewhere?

http://toastytech.com/dooma/miscdoom.html

Dragonsbrethren said:

http://toastytech.com/dooma/miscdoom.html

http://toastytech.com/dooma/dqe1m5.gif http://toastytech.com/dooma/QE1M5-C.GIF

There's only one couple of them? That's a shame. :(

In addition, the similarity in these very screenshots is vague and not so appealing, unfortunately.

scifista42 said:

In addition, the similarity in these very screenshots is vague and not so appealing, unfortunately.

Exactly. Upon seeing I actually remembered seeing this screenshot in an old gaming magazine, but I would have never associated it with Doom's E1M5.

I'm inclined to think that the interviewer learnt it through research and perhaps other interviews than own observations.

scifista42 said:

There's only one couple of them? That's a shame. :(

Might be more, that's the one I knew of.

Dragonsbrethren said:

http://toastytech.com/dooma/miscdoom.html

Thanks.

A random thought but the The Dismal Oubliette (E2M6) has an area with a flooded structure in a cave. It always reminds me of a similiar underground structure at the end of 'O' of Destruction in DOOM II. Wonder if it's intentional.