Lack of mid-game saving is ruining Doom 64 for me

So I finally obtained an old TV from a friend, dusted off my old original N64 (amazingly it still works after all these years) and obtained a real Doom 64 game. I then started playing. I was enjoying it for a while and was having lots of fun, but I am now at the point where I feel the lack of being able to save in-game is almost ruining the game. It's like the level designers did not even bother factoring in that you have to restart the whole level if you die. A great example is that arrow room in Map13/Dark citadel. Getting passed it without dying appears to just be more random luck than anything, or at best complete trial and error. This might not be so bad if I could save like in Doom 64 EX, but in order to get to that room I first have to spend a good amount of time fighting through portions of the level first, just so that I can have one more go at getting passed it. If I die, I go all the way back to the beginning. It's moments like these where I just can't help bit wonder what the hell the level designers thought they were doing. They thought this would not be seen as extremely annoying and not fun? And don't even get me started on those homing fireballs, or having to fight a cyberdemon at the end of a level which takes 10-15 min to beat in the first place.

I love Doom 64 as an actual game, but I am almost at the point of just giving up on playing the original game on the N64 because of not being able to save in-game. It just ruins the whole experience for me.

Anyone else feels the lack of mid-game saves ruins the game's fun?

Just completed doom64 ex on the pc, obviously with keyboard and mouse, and as a result the game was a walkover. Think (excluding that map where you get the ability to jump) I died less than 5 times in the entire game. But on the console, coupled with the cumbersome controller and lower frame rate the game was rock solid. Lack of saves seemed to heighten the tension for me, and also pissed me off a bit when I fell into one of the many inescapable death pits.

Give it a go on the pc, easy but fun

Hardcore gamer my ass. Recently had a co-worker (born in 1994) lamenting that there was no saves in Sonic 1. Had a good laugh at that.

All in all I just LOVE Doom 64, But your absolutely correct. Blood Keep is just a huge pain in the ass because of the lack of mid-level saves.

Which difficulty did you play on, dt_?

dt_ said:

Just completed doom64 ex on the pc, obviously with keyboard and mouse, and as a result the game was a walkover. Think (excluding that map where you get the ability to jump) I died less than 5 times in the entire game. But on the console, coupled with the cumbersome controller and lower frame rate the game was rock solid. Lack of saves seemed to heighten the tension for me, and also pissed me off a bit when I fell into one of the many inescapable death pits.

Give it a go on the pc, easy but fun

The game's difficulty isn't really the problem. Most of the game isn't that hard. It's just that some design decisions that normally would be a minor annoyance had you the ability to save mid-game turn into major annoyances. I don't want to spend 10 min fighting through a level only to die and having to restart the whole thing because of one single cheaply designed trap, or because I died to the cyberdemon at the end of the level.

Sodaholic said:

Which difficulty did you play on, dt_?

I am playing on I own Doom.

Funny, I remember completing it back when on Watch Me Die and thinking the levels in general (although maybe a couple exceptions exist) were short enough that it didn't matter if I had to restart/reload.

Don't know what to suggest, really.

hardcore_gamer said:

I am playing on I own Doom.

As one should, but I was asking dt_.

Use3D said:

Hardcore gamer my ass. Recently had a co-worker (born in 1994) lamenting that there was no saves in Sonic 1. Had a good laugh at that.

Why are there no saves in Super Mario Bros!?!?

TheNerdTurtle2 said:

Why are there no saves in Super Mario Bros!?!?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgjAt1VZBVo

A super mario bros level can be beaten in just 2-3 min so it's not exactly the same. Plus later mario games did in fact add a checkpoint system.

So, Doom 64 lacking mid-saves ruins it, yeah right, don't make me laugh, if you fell into a inscapable pit, then it's your fault, not the developers, think you can just simply run around and blow the shit outta them demons?
Well shoulda think twice, sonny jim, cuz' not having mid-saves or whatever is part of the challenge, learn with the mistakes and accept that it's your fault for falling to your death or go home and be a family man.
This is why classic games will be always superior to these easy ass difficulty modern games.
And that's cuz' nowadays, developers don't care about fans as much as they did back in the day, money now is all they care.

Yeah, not being able to save in the levels themselves was a bit of a downdsidee to Doom 64 and PSX Doom.
A lot of console shooters were like that back in the day, Duke Nukem: Zero Hour on the N64 was even worse than Doom 64 with long, long levels and really cheap deaths at times.
I loved Duke Nukem: Zero Hour back in the day but I problably wouldn't have the patiënce to play through it these days.

I don't understand complaining about games that were released during an era where save states were still mostly a PC thing. Sometimes it's justified. There's a game I used to play as a kid, from the late 80s; it was an action platformer that was extremely difficult, had 16 levels, no save states of any kind, and ONE life.

Sodaholic said:

Which difficulty did you play on, dt_?

'I own doom', on both platforms. I spent a good couple of hours on the n64 doing that 'cat and mouse' map. IIRC doom was the first game I ever played with proper mid level saves

Doom 64 on Watch Me Die is not that difficult casually.

If spending another 10 minutes on a level because a cyber demon got the best of you near the end is such a deal breaker then this game probably isn't for you anyway.

Hardcore Gamer... lol.

I hear what he's saying about bullshit traps though- there's one map, just before the exit, where about 8 lost souls (by far and away the most dangerous bad guy in the game) spawn in 8 sort of 'pillars', and when you kill them, all the floor apart from a bit in the centre just drops away and becomes an inescapable death pit. There is no way of knowing this beforehand, which is a bit cheap. Good for the mapper I suppose- its a win win; the player either by chance survives by being in the right place at the right time and feels awesome, or dies and has to play the level again, kind of a 2 for 1 where the mapper gets double the playtime from the player

ReFracture said:

Doom 64 on Watch Me Die is not that difficult casually.

If spending another 10 minutes on a level because a cyber demon got the best of you near the end is such a deal breaker then this game probably isn't for you anyway.

Hardcore Gamer... lol.

Sorry, I meant to say 'watch me die' was the skill I played on- it was the most difficult one available

The Cyber's a joke in Doom 64 with any upgrades on the Unmaker. Dies in like 10 seconds while getting stunned from a long-ass distance.

dt_ said:

I hear what he's saying about bullshit traps though- there's one map, just before the exit, where about 8 lost souls (by far and away the most dangerous bad guy in the game) spawn in 8 sort of 'pillars', and when you kill them, all the floor apart from a bit in the centre just drops away and becomes an inescapable death pit.

That has to be the most BS trap in the game. Literally zero counterplay on the part of the player.

rileymartin said:

The Cyber's a joke in Doom 64 with any upgrades on the Unmaker. Dies in like 10 seconds while getting stunned from a long-ass distance.

There's only three of them in the main game anyway I think

dt_ said:

I hear what he's saying about bullshit traps though- there's one map, just before the exit, where about 8 lost souls (by far and away the most dangerous bad guy in the game) spawn in 8 sort of 'pillars', and when you kill them, all the floor apart from a bit in the centre just drops away and becomes an inescapable death pit. There is no way of knowing this beforehand, which is a bit cheap. Good for the mapper I suppose- its a win win; the player either by chance survives by being in the right place at the right time and feels awesome, or dies and has to play the level again, kind of a 2 for 1 where the mapper gets double the playtime from the player

That would be Blood Keep and I myself fell victim to this trap on my first run. It is bullshit, but it's only bullshit once. After that it's your own fault if you ever die from it again.

^ true, only fall for something like that once. The only other one that's a bit mean was in an early map where if you're not moving fast enough the floor drops away and you're in a pitch black pit full of spectres ( but this is survivable for a skilled player, and there's a water thin staircase to get out)

Really, there should be no excuse for death pits or sudden death traps in a game with no in-game saves. That shit was brutal back in the day, especially when you'd get right to the end, only to have something unexpectedly fuck you up.

This is another case of younger people trying to play old games and missing the point of how things worked back then.
IThey had a lot of limitations in the early 90's. For example Zelda Ocarina of time, you can save whenever you want, YET when you load the save, you will start at the starting point of the game and not in the same spot where you saved.

hardcore_gamer said:

I love Doom 64 as an actual game, but I am almost at the point of just giving up on playing the original game on the N64 because of not being able to save in-game. It just ruins the whole experience for me.

Anyone else feels the lack of mid-game saves ruins the game's fun?

Part of the experience is able to beat the game like it was mean to be played. In this case beating the whole map without saving.

GoatLord said:

Really, there should be no excuse for death pits or sudden death traps in a game with no in-game saves. That shit was brutal back in the day, especially when you'd get right to the end, only to have something unexpectedly fuck you up.

Well that's how it worked back then. Hell even in some games you had to start over if you made a single mistake. That's why games lasted longer, they were much less forgiving.

This has nothing to do with "Lol new players be babies grow be hardcore." Cheap traps without some kind save are shit. As it happened, a number of console games managed to do this, so Doom 64 is technically an anomaly, or at least compared to my pool.

Quake II, PowerSlave (Actually, I don't remember if the console did, though the Hub travel served as sort of checkpoints; the PC-DOS though had legit checkpoints, though you had to find them), and Dark Forces are examples that all used a fairly useful checkpoint system (The latter coupled with lives, though) for mid level saving, thus cancelling out your need to start over after some cheap trap (Which these games all had). The Phantom menace on PSX even had a manual save mode to save anywhere in the game.

Now, I am moreso speaking of PSX titles, so maybe the cartridge restrictions on the N64 contributed to a lack of save states, even temporary ones (Though I assumed other games had some kinds of save systems).

Hexen on N64 had the ability to save anywhere, but saves consumed most of a memory card and it was a very slow process.

Powerslave on consoles didn't have checkpoints, if you died you went back to the start of the level with all your progress lost. It was definitely worse than Doom 64 when it came to deathtraps, since the latter game showed some restraint while Powerslave had some number of instant death hazard in nearly every one of the early levels.

Clonehunter: It was the same on almost 90% of the fps of that era, so is not an "anomaly"
Hexen 64 = Had the ability to save whenever you wanted but like ReFracture said, it took almost a whole "memory pak"
Doom 64= No Save mid game
Quake 64 = No save mid game
Quake 2 (N64) = No save mid game
Duke Nukem 64 = No Save mid game

Well if you couldn't even handle Doom 64's "uneven" level design. then I bet you probably would not enjoy the difficulty either.

I'm gonna be waiting for your "Doom 64's Music is not real Doom Music" thread.

Well, you can't expect a mid-90s console system to offer complete, PC-like saves. The Playstation, which pioneered the use of removable memory cards for saving games, had a standard size of just 1 Mbit (yup, not Mbyte), to be split among 15 "slots". That's 128 kB, tops.

The size of a Doom save game however, is unpredictable, esp. if there is monster spawning on a level, and in general well beyond the size of a single "save slot" on the PSX. The Nintendo 64 Memory Paks were even smaller, being limited to 256 kbit (32 kbyte) per bank.

That's why console games started using systems like checkpoints, "save spots", limited saves or, if the programmers were too lazy, type-in codes, a remnant from the 8-bit/16-bit era (Playstation Doom, I'm looking at you).

How could any of these systems be acceptably adapted to Doom? E.g. save only the level you reached, the ammo/items you have? Remember which monsters you killed (out of those initially placed on the map), and start you at your last coordinates, while spawning every other monster at your original ones? Store only the coordinates of every non-killed monster on the map without all of the fancy platform/door/sector etc. status? Dump any spawned monsters?

I'm surprised that Hexen 64 attempted a complete save, but as it was mentioned, it took an entire memory pak (and it probably had a requirement for a large/multi-bank one). Plus the inpredictability of save game sizes would make it problematic. I'd be surprised if Hexen 64 was able to save always without problems, not even on large levels. Perhaps, for a game like Doom 64 on a cartridge-based system, the best solution would be internal memory to the cart (ofc, at a price premium, and just for 1 save).

jazzmaster9 said:

I'm gonna be waiting for your "Doom 64's Music is not real Doom Music" thread.

Background noise is not real Doom Music.

The mid game save would be useful to someone like me seeing as though I explore the entirety of a map before completing it, I also tend to lose interest in the later maps and just quit midgame out of boredom because the later maps of Doom 64 suck and I hate them.

Well, I never really plan on playing it again so whatever.