Preaching DOOM!

I just randomly remembered this and thought I'd just say it.

A few months ago (I'm currently going into sixth form so a few months ago = high school) I brought Doom in on a USB Key to school and decided to show my friends just what Doom was capable of doing now-a-days (since, as alot of people these days think these days, Doom is still the same low-res ultra-old crappy FPS).

I uploaded into our shared computer network (in a relatively-private area nonetheless) and was going to take it out once I finished giving my friends an introduction. But I was called away to do some sort of errand so I left one of my mates there to play a bit.

I get back and I see about 10+ computers all playing episode 1 of Doom 1. I ask my friend and he just said "oh well they looked at my screen and saw where you put it" so now all the computer guys who usually play internet chess or mini-clip all day long started playing Knee Deep in the Dead :P. Unfortunately before too long one of the IT men burst in declaring "OK everyone just STOP playing Doom we will have this cleared up in no time". I promptly re-located after deleting Doom on the network and thankfully I was never caught (or the IT guys couldn't be bothered to get off their fat asses and stop listening to Virgin Classic Rock Radio).

This is usually the thing that belongs on a blog but hey I don't have a blog so here you are... spreading Doom amongst the community :P

BoldEnglishman said:

This is usually the thing that belongs on a blog but hey I don't have a blog so here you are...

Well...actually...

Everything good, excepting calling doom "crappy". Whoever thinks that of Doom should be castrated :-)

Old yeah, crappy never.

Off-topic (but on topic at the same time):At top of page, you will see "User Profile", "New Blog", "F.A.Q." etc. Click it to create a blog entry in your name. It works.

On topic: That sounds fun. A while back in high school, I sorta brought a Demo version of Unreal Tournament (the original one) to a video game design class so I could play it with bots, cause I was bored (done with all the work, already). Eventually everyone near me wanted to play, and everyone near them, until the whole back section of class was playing it. We would all play on a LAN server and kick each other's ass. It was fun, and if the teacher saw it, we'd be like "we're testing a game" and he'd be like "ok, tell me how it works out" (he was an idiot).

EDIT: because of my long nonsensical post, I am late at my first response.

I used to have class-wide deathmatch games in Skulltag almost every day in school last year. There really wasn't a whole lot else to do in that class (the teacher was lazy and never actually taught anything), so we usually just sat around playing games. One day I brought up the idea of playing Doom with a couple of friends, and ended up putting it on one of the school's network drives (some retard didn't write protect it) so I could easily transfer it to the other computers. We ended up having half the class playing in the end. That trend went on for a few weeks. It was pretty awesome. :D

In the last year of college (high-school for you foreigners), some friends and I put Quake on the school PCs - not long after that we had a few tournaments going at lunch times.

More often than not, I came 2nd and 3rd but one guy always consistently beat me by 50 or so kills. Good fun.

Pah! I'm a teacher and way back in the day ('94/'95) I used to set up Doom DMs on the school server and let kids play. Believe me, in those days it was a lot harder to get a bunch of computers together in a school that could actually run a game as "resource hungry" as Doom, let alone have all the network drivers loaded too. ;)

Back in 94-95 we played Doom on the school's computers all the time. We first played it on the two computers we had in out classroom. Then we transfered it over to the school network computers. (not as strong as the computers in the classroom, but they all could do it well and all of them had sound card atleast, also we had 4 players option there. :D)

We even ran ROTT on 16 players a few times there. It wasn't in the same league of fun as Doom was though, since the game sucks. But it was fun for a while atleast.

Either way, the teacher that was around didn't care that we played Doom on the computers. But when he found out that we were playing over the LAN he got very upset and promptly threw us out of there.

We also played a ton of heretic DM in the classroom, and even some Descent. I only got to try Descent once though, and only for one kill. Before another more popular classmate turned up and I had to move. (it didn't really matter though, Descent wasn't an as natural DM game as Doom and Heretic.) I was pretty much unbeatable in Heretic though.. it was me and my friend who would own everyone else. We were rather equally matched, he was better at Doom. But I was better at Heretic. :D

About a year later, I was brought back to that school, by my buddy who still attended it and we installed my at that time in progress TC Hyena and I met a fan. :p

My friend about me to one of his friends: - This is the guy who made Hyena.
Swinto (nickname of the guy): -Oh my god, that game is awesome!

Anyway, we then tried to install it on a few computers to play a threeway DM on it. But it ended up in shit, cause as always back in those days, Discs was not durable and they were busted. So we just played some Doom. And I kicked their asses for a while. :p

You called DooM crappy?! Hmm... I question your ethics...

Doom DM, Quake, ROTT, Wolf3D, are all fun, but nothing compares to my awesome Unreal Tournament days. Those day were cool.

It sounds like someone is still using doom.exe/doom2.exe....

doom2day said:
It sounds like someone is still using doom.exe/doom2.exe....

Cool beans; I'm not the only one, then. It was likely Doom95, though (or sound wouldn't work well without DOSBox and poweful systems).

While i was in preschool there was a event that took place during a day of the week (can't remember what it's called in english, its the day before friday) Where the school building just became open to the students at 6 a clock at evening until
10 a clock at evening and allot of students would come to eat pizza and of course.....take good use of the school computers!

The only downside was that the person in control of the computers and networks (a female about as tall as a man and with a creepy looking left eye) was a real pain in the ass for doing TO many things to upset, bug,
or piss off anyone trying to have a good time. The worst case of this took place just before i finished preschool (thankfully). During these
weekly events the students were use to playing CS on the computers over LAN. But the problem was that the computers were kind slow, and some students would lose rounds just becouse of 2 little things:

1.lag

or 2. mouse did not work like it should.

But then one day something good (or it would have bin good if it had not bin for the jackass teacher!) The school was buying new computers with 1 GB of ram and whatnot!

Students were thinking like: Well great perhaps now CS won't lag so much and I will win for once, and perhaps now we can enjoy those sweet
games that would not play on the old systems since the new computers can handle them now! BUT NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

Turns out the damn woman decided to ban CS and gaming over LAN (Something that had bin going on during these weekly events in the school for almost a decade) becouse these computers were new WTF!!!!

SHE IS THE PERSON RESPONSABLE FOR THESE COMPUTERS AND YET SHE IS ONE OF THOSE STUPID PEOPLE THAT THINK NOT PUTTING VIDEO GAMES ON NEW COMPUTERS WILL KEEP THEM FROM HARM WTF!!!!!!!!

She banned some sites from the school network without any good reasons
to, like IGN.com (a reviewer site WTF!!!!)

Hmm your pre-school days were occupied with CS? Wow at pre-school I was playing with blocks as big as my hands (sarcasm btw, as I know english is not your first language :) )

My friends think Doom is crappy ... not I (otherwise I wudn't exactly be here eh :P). They're like "Oh <insert real name here>, your playing that relic again. It's still got sprites *giggle* look at the pixels!" Then I watch 'em die fighting an Imp :P

My school bans websites but the filter blocks out by key words. So sometimes Google is blocked, and on rare occasions, my school blocks it's own website **. Oh yeah I used ZDoom when I brought Doom into school (as I do at home).

BoldEnglishman said:

My school bans websites but the filter blocks out by key words. So sometimes Google is blocked, and on rare occasions, my school blocks it's own website **.

Not to smart are they ;)

At the last high school I went to the computer tech classes would play Counter-Strike on their network when they were finished with work.

Stupid blocks also aren't uncommon anymore. Anybody who had to be subject to Websense in school knows this for a fact.

I remember how hard it was actually "preaching Doom" back in the day (1995-1996) when it was just starting to get phased out by titles such as Duke Nukem 3D or Quake.

PC Gaming magazines didn't help much either, because usually after praising Doom on its release, reviews became increasingly less favorable by the time Doom 2 and Ultimate Doom were released, and utterly negative when Final Doom was released.

Also, most magazines were over-eager to bury Doom and declare some other game as the FPS king..."candidates" included Corridor 7, RoTT, Dark Forces (the only one really having an innovative engine which was as fast and smooth as Doom's, BTW)...but this was only justified when the average entry-level system was able to run Quake at VGA resolution (this boils down to a Pentium/66 with 8 MB of RAM).

Maes said:

"candidates" included Corridor 7, RoTT, Dark Forces (the only one really having an innovative engine which was as fast and smooth as Doom's, BTW)

Isn't -- as far as I read -- Corridor 7 a Wolf-clone? Also -- too as far as I read -- isn't RoTT a height-varied Wolf-clone, too? Aren't they net inferior to Doom's polygonal engine -- excluding the base gameplay?

The engine of Dark Forces did impress me. I should play it a bit more, to expand this view. From texts, it sounds capable of stuff.

And you really forgot to put Duke Nukem 3d in that list. I haven't played that game enough to get an opinion myself, but that reference to Doom I've been reading (which sounds more like an ad than an attack, really), and a magazine brag, "Doom is dead, Long live Duke Nukem 3d!", concluded enough. ;)

BoldEnglishman said:


My friends think Doom is crappy ... not I (otherwise I wudn't exactly be here eh :P). They're like "Oh <insert real name here>, your playing that relic again. It's still got sprites *giggle* look at the pixels!" Then I watch 'em die fighting an Imp :P

[/B]

I would tell them for sprites and pixels, look what has been done with it, look how many awsome levels there are, look at a community of fans that has been going strong for years... Nuff said
No other game out there can say that!

Stealthy Ivan said:

I would tell them for sprites and pixels, look what has been done with it, look how many awsome levels there are, look at a community of fans that has been going strong for years... Nuff said
No other game out there can say that!

I'd probably just tell them to fuck off. :D

printz said:

Isn't -- as far as I read -- Corridor 7 a Wolf-clone? Also -- too as far as I read -- isn't RoTT a height-varied Wolf-clone, too? Aren't they net inferior to Doom's polygonal engine -- excluding the base gameplay?

That's correct, but that didn't stop them from writing reviews like "There it is, this must be the new Doom-killer! What, it's not? Oh damn...well then maybe the next one...oh shit, that isn't it too...the next one then..." and so on :-)

printz said:

The engine of Dark Forces did impress me. I should play it a bit more, to expand this view. From texts, it sounds capable of stuff.

I had tried the playable demo on my 486, and I swear, it was the ONLY 3D engine I ever saw that while looking even better than doom, played as smooth and fast, something which unfortunately wasn't the case, for e.g. Duke Nukem 3D. Even at the worst possible detail, it was nowhere near Doom framerates on my system (486 DX/50, 8 MB of RAM) and ofc, unlike Doom, it could not run at all when I still had just 4 MB of RAM.

And you really forgot to put Duke Nukem 3d in that list.

Err I included it at the beginning.

However yeah, there definitively was a bias/hostility vs Doom for a while. I'd like to see those reviewers faces now, to see that Doom is still alive and kicking while their "masterpieces" are mostly dead and forgotten.

Maes said:

That's correct, but that didn't stop them from writing reviews like "There it is, this must be the new Doom-killer! What, it's not? Oh damn...well then maybe the next one...oh shit, that isn't it too...the next one then..." and so on :-)

They hoped.

I had tried the playable demo on my 486, and I swear, it was the ONLY 3D engine I ever saw that while looking even better than doom, played as smooth and fast

With the exception that the Jedi engine's player and actors move awkward in comparison with the smooth Doom environment. Dunno much about Jedi Knight.

Err I included it {Duke Nukem} at the beginning.

Yeah but I couldn't believe you didn't put it in the paragraph with games "killing" Doom.

Dookum Nookum :P was cool for a week or two, then we all went back to DooM. I never liked the story or theme, even with the cool new graphics...

Duke Nukem could have been fun, but was way too hard, virtually everything exploded and took away a load of health, and the bosses just shot endless rapid fire rockets, one of which could kill you... what where they thinking? Also you never seemed "grounded" like in Doom... great level design though. Oh and the Playstation version was bugged to fuck, you'd just die from "electrocution" when walking in a hallway

Maybe it was the electricians fault?

doom2day said:
Maybe it was the electricians fault?

Maybe the pig cops frayed the electricity cables so Duke would get fried.

myk said:

Maybe the pig cops frayed the electricity cables so Duke would get fried.

I have a hard time taking seriously any game including an enemy called a "pig cop..." although D3D is really quite fun.

Response to op:

My friend and I did a similar thing, except with Soldat instead of Doom.

printz said:

Isn't -- as far as I read -- Corridor 7 a Wolf-clone? Also -- too as far as I read -- isn't RoTT a height-varied Wolf-clone, too? Aren't they net inferior to Doom's polygonal engine -- excluding the base gameplay?

I know for a fact RoTT was based on an advanced version of Wolf3d, in fact it was going to be the sequel to it. I'm not sure about Corridor 7, but I know that it only had square corners and no height variation, so I'm pretty sure it was based on the wolf3d engine. The enemies that could change shape were kind of cool at that time though. Walk by a chair, then it turns into an assault alien with a plasma rifle. I did get the shareware version of RoTT, and right on the back it says "Doom is on the run from Rise of the Triad." Never really happened though. The only sprite engine game I can consider on par with doom is Blood. That's really one of the best game's I've ever played. Enjoyable, bloody, funny in a cheesy way, great level design, great enemies and weapons. The only sprite based game that could ever really give doom a challenge. Duke3d was okay, but it just wasn't that fun to play beyond the 4th level for me. For being as awesome and badass as it was supposed to be, the graphics just looked really cartoony. Add to the fact that it's humor and sex appeal was just playing on male machismo in a very immature fashion, and it just wasn't that enjoyable. I did have some fun with friends years back playing the deathmatch on n64 though. We would take turns being the pigeon on the level with the ship. Everyone else would pick a spot, then the pigeon would fly around with a jetpack trying to avoid being hit and trying to kill the other players. Explosive shells were your best friend.

Did any of you ever like the game Blood? I kinda liked it for a while, but then went back to Doom as always... :P Blood seemed to try too hard.