Doom Training

I find myself doing things to test my skills in doom a lot. Some days I suck at doom and others I can predict monster's movement and instigate everything they do to totally have the upper hand.

Typically on my days where I suck at Doom I'll play some of the Doom 2 IWAD maps to warm up. Gets me running and choosing my shots wisely. Then later move on to tougher wads.

Sometimes I'll intentionally attack monsters with weaker weapons, like mancubuses and pain elementals with regular shotgun. Sometimes I'll SSG blast a few revenants and finish em off bare handed. Sometimes I'll set objectives for myself. When entering a room full of imps and arachnatrons, I create a fake objective that I need to kill all the imps before I kill any of the arachnatrons.

The more time I spend dodging projectiles the better I get at it. Doom is becoming less and less hard but I'm enjoying the rewards more and more. Anyone else do stuff like this?

Yeah. I like to test my skills too. What I'm doing right now is seeing how far I can get in any random megawad without saving. If I die, I restart the megawad from level 1. That's what I did originally when I got really good at Doom 1. Also, it is good training for long demos.

I prefer to keep my Doom skills at a legit level. I don't want to know of any dirty tricks such as grabbing, gliding, wallrunning, sr50ing, phasing through walls that make the gameplay too easy, easier than the author ever intended.

If I want to train I start playing a pwad without saving except if I have to go or if I continue playing tomorrow, each map with a pistol start of course and I usually train on killing skills such as fighting with fists and rarely on NM speed.

My skill a the game peaked long ago. Now, it just is.

I use Oblige generated levels to keep my Doom skills sharp.

printz said:

...that make the gameplay too easy, easier than the author ever intended.

woah. sleep calm, you really don't know how those tricks work. :P

After reading this thread I'm going to play some megawads on godmode now.

As far as I know, the only effective strategies when facing hordes:
- Keep something between you and hitscan enemies (zombies), preferably other enemies.
- Circle strafe the room to herd the enemies for max splash damage.

When I wanna practice my skillz I'd take a small fun mapset that has kickass gameplay and no distracting hyper detailing crap, like Darkening E1 (or I'll pick an episode off Alien Vendetta, Momento Mori, Requiem), and try race through it, playing aggressively and slaughtering all the enemies that get in my way as fast as possible, and crush each level in the quickest possible time. I have a blast every time I do this, and it also inspires me to build maps with gameplay on the forefront. So win win. :D

Fuck I love playing DooM.

Lately I haven't been playing much Doom aside from when I feel like recording a speedrun. Speedrunning is good training for your movement skills but I think my overall Dooming ability is actually dropping. When I'm practicing a level with the intention of running it, I'll usually just practice the ideal case, as in, I'll practice the fast route where I run past eighteen unpredictable archviles and survive due to sheer luck, rather than the slower route where I survive thanks to caution. This means that when I'm actually recording and one of those eighteen archviles gets in my way, I'm more likely to just quit the attempt than to think on my feet and find a solution to this non-ideal situation. Therefore, my ability to adapt to unusual circumstances is atrophying.

Try playing Sunder. That will sober you up ;)

I play PrBoom+ at 130% game speed so i need more concentration and reflexes and also found it more difficult and funny.

Once I played at 150% but seems way fast.

And now when i return to normal speed (100%) it seems too easy, even when playing usermade hard maps, i can even say that now normal speed seems almost like slowmotion game, so i feel that i have increased my reflexes quite a bit.

I suppose that after playing at 130% I will increase to 135% or so, and then i guess if i will reach a kind of limit where the brain can't predict or interpretate so fast information or is just an eyes limitation, where eyes can't literally send enough information to the brain to be processed.

I can manage 200% speed in some Doom maps, and my reflexes are slow compared to many Doomgods. I've found turning off autorun helps (and is pretty much required on cramped maps).

Phml said:

200% speed .. turning off autorun

Aha! Speed-strolling!

Karnizero said:

I play PrBoom+ at 130% game speed so i need more concentration and reflexes and also found it more difficult and funny.

Once I played at 150% but seems way fast.

And now when i return to normal speed (100%) it seems too easy, even when playing usermade hard maps, i can even say that now normal speed seems almost like slowmotion game, so i feel that i have increased my reflexes quite a bit.

For many years, I trained myself in a similar way. I didn't change the game speed, but instead I switched from regular UV to UV with -Fast or Nightmare. Indeed, it greatly increased my reaction, and now playing on these above-UV skill levels is one of my main strong points, as I usually beat the UV-Fast or NM world records with a larger margin than the regular UV ones.

And it seems that playing at 130-150% would be less useful for me. It would make me unaccustomed to the normal rhytm of player's moving and shooting, and I would play clumsily until readapting to the normal gameplay. Similar thing occurs to me when I spend too much time in Duke3D or Quake, and get temporarily unaccustomed to Doom dynamics.

SAV88 said:

And it seems that playing at 130-150% would be less useful for me. It would make me unaccustomed to the normal rhytm of player's moving and shooting, and I would play clumsily until readapting to the normal gameplay. Similar thing occurs to me when I spend too much time in Duke3D or Quake, and get temporarily unaccustomed to Doom dynamics.

Yes, I also feel clumsy when returning to normal game speed.

I think that increasing game speed is COMPLEMENTARY to Game Difficult, as you state, since game speed trains reflexes and game difficult trains reaction to uncommon situations.

How about playing Sunder/DV/AV/... at 200% speed, Nightmare and Fast Monsters? 8)


About Quake I, i think it's a slower pace game, without much less monsters on screen, so it's like playing Doom@150% and Doom@100% speeds.

Karnizero said:

How about playing Sunder/DV/AV/... at 200% speed, Nightmare and Fast Monsters? 8)

Or with the latest Diaz, on "Wepon Modz R 4 Noobz!1" difficulty? I guarantee you will not leave the starting room alive.

I've gotten really good at Doom from playing Newgothic a lot. I can evade the missiles from just about any number of revenants.

My biggest threat at this point are mancs. I can take them on when I can pay attention to them, but when I'm dealing with hordes of various other monsters at a time, the mancubi firing stray shots all over the place are a real killer. I feel like I can dance with a medium sized group of any monster in the game (with the exception of hitscan monsters) for many minutes at a time completely unscathed.

I've gotten in the habit of seeing how long I can maneuver around monsters without taking damage or firing a single shot.

40oz said:

I've gotten in the habit of seeing how long I can maneuver around monsters without taking damage or firing a single shot.

Doesn't this get boring though? round-and-round-and-round-and-round-and-round-and-round-and-round-and-round-and-round-and-round-and-round-and-round-and-round-and-round-and-round-and-round-and-round-and-round-and-round-and-round-and-round-and-round

with enough monsters its intense.

Mr. Chris said:

I use Oblige generated levels to keep my Doom skills sharp.

I also do this - without saving. And because of the way Oblige does things, it means death if you fall into acid/lava.

Hmm,. I haven't tried increasing the speed before. Interesting.
(I remember doing this several times in Probotector for Gameboy on emulator and mastering it at 200% speed. Then going back to 100% felt sooooo slow and boring)

But every time I load a new WAD, I have this challenge. I try play very cautiously and count how much minutes (if not seconds) might have passed before I get the first hit.

Of course, playing tyson, pacifist and all those modes is another way to challenge your play. Strafing is fun too. I love strafing in such away pass the revenant rockets so that I stay at a place and them being satelites.

I use to run DOOM2 or any good wad with only shotun or chaingun
if I run over a berserk pack I go knuckleduster only.

also, fighting lost souls with RL is a good training for keeping distance/dodging lost souls

always BFG vs Pain Elementar

I'm currently practicing my keyboarding skills by playing some Doom95 UD on Nightmare. No saves. It's pretty fun.

E_O said:

I'm currently practicing my keyboarding skills by playing some Doom95 UD on Nightmare. No saves. It's pretty fun.

you're doing it correct ;)

Mr. Chris said:

I use Oblige generated levels to keep my Doom skills sharp.

Same. I also use Oblige Heretic evels too for different challenges.

Doom Training? Simple. Have me wake you at 4:00 am sharp each day, with 5 minutes to make your bed, dress and shave. Then running, about 193 about-facing, chores, inspections etc. etc. and ONLY at the end of the day you'll get to play Doom for 1 hour, before lights out. See if you don't get damn good at it and savour each instant of it.

Play the levels in Scythe2 with plasma dicks (especially MAP31). That'll shape up anyone's reflexes.

Like Artem, I find increasing game speed to not be useful at all. Similarly, playing on NM or -fast are useless as well. Honestly, I find that most of my limitations nowadays are with movement, not with aim. Doom's movement is by far the hardest area to master, imo.

letsgogiants98 said:

Try playing Sunder. That will sober you up ;)

Sunder seems to only increase your skill in dodging, infighting, and knowing how to use the BFG, oh and also those stupid platforming bits.
(biased opinion and debatable)

You would need to practice on different mapsets to obtain a certain skill.

Try short maps and see how fast you can beat them (UV-Max style). While doing this practice on slight monster movement, fade away kills, etc.

Medium sized kustra like (or AV like) will help you with monster behavior easily and you will end up predicting what they'll do next. Also try to practice on aligning your shots especially with the SSG.

Also watch demos (a lot of demos) and learn from them. That's how I got good at doom. I just watched how other players moved and attempted to mimic them and then try to better it.

TBH it all depends on what skill you are trying to improve. NM imo doesn't boast aggressive skills because it restricts the player into a hit and hide tactic, only sometimes does a player need to be aggressive to get through nightmare.
Make your own training wad. Find out what skill you need to get better at and create a map according to the skill in which your are trying to "perfect".