How did you play Doom in the old days?

[RetroWolf92]

Maybe on an older version of SETUP.EXE?

Mine (v1.9) lets you set whatever keys you want for whatever actions.

[-TDRR-]

I first played Doom 2 on DOSBox on my old (but still decent) Pentium Dual-Core 3GHz. The controls were the original set that came with the game, so no WASD. Until i figured out how to change controls and then:

 

Same everything but

S = Strafe left

D = Strafe right

 

A.K.A: TDRR's super-pro-player keyboard setup for total ownage of monsters but not players

[unerxai]

11 hours ago, JudgeDeadd said:

As a kid? Always with IDDQD on. I remember booting up Heretic and being afraid to leave the first room until I looked up the god mode cheat.

I think being insta-gibbed by iddqd on Heretic left me traumatized for many years afraid of using codes on that game.

[NuMetalManiak]

Keyboard-only until I discovered what source-ports were

[galileo31dos01]

Probably with default keys and a pacifier in my mouth.

[Jon]

3 hours ago, RetroWolf92 said:

I was born in '97 and started playing Doom around '01, keyboard only.

..at age 4?

 

[Vorpal]

I played with default keyboard for way too long, out of a silly sense of pride that the handicap made me a more righteous player. After losing to Toke about 50 times, I finally beat him in a duel, declared my superiority, and then promptly joined the wasd + mouse club and wouldn't let him get a rematch.

 

Doom confessions!

[Cruduxy Pegg]

2 hours ago, LordEntr0py said:

Keyboard only. Watched the demos and learned the importance of strafing from them. Got pretty good at using momentum to circle strafe with a LOT of practice.

 

 

Haha all the demos taught me is to stop hugging demons while trying to run past them. Especially the terrible ones that came with heretic that tried to rush past traps and almost always died to wizards. 

[Chow Yun Thin]

I remember using the default controls for keyboard, but looking down at them right now, I can't imagine how I ever got used to them. Especially using Alt to change the turn keys to strafe keys. It took some time to get used to the default dedicated strafe keys, and then I couldn't run and fire at the same time. And now I just realized I could have hit right Ctrl with my left thumb, but it's probably a moot point if my keyboard couldn't register all these keys at once.

 

I never used the mouse for Doom because of that irritating thing where moving the mouse up moved you forward. That and the low default sensitivity meant I was moving my whole arm to turn/move/jitter and it became a giant hassle. I shouldn't be fighting the controls more than the enemies. Well, by the time I heard of novert, I was already deep in mouse + WASD and ZDoom and then-modern FPS and such.

 

For Doom's 25th birthday, I did disable mouse y-movement and freelook and enable autoaim. It just seemed right even if I didn't like its original keyboard controls.

[Grazza]

I was shit, basically. As early as 1995, I knew from posts by good players in the CompuServe Action Games Forum about mouse + WASD being by far the best control set-up, but persisted with keyboard-only and never strafing until 1997. Oddly, I got as far as HR map16 on UV with that, but on Plutonia stalled early on (maybe map04 or map06). When I learned that HR featured routes that required strafing, I finally switched to a proper set-up. God knows why it took me so long. But I suppose non-strafing my way through HR's maps 11, 13, 14 and 15 was sort of character-building. :p

 

Some years later (2004-ish?) I tweaked my set-up to add Ctrl and Alt as turning keys for strafe-50, and the most "recent" change I made was abandoning novert (to help with fine control for stuff like glides). Even that was about a dozen years ago though.

[Doomkid]

1 hour ago, Jon said:

..at age 4?

 

I know right? Talk about late to the party! I started Dooming at 3!

[Lila Feuer]

It took me until 2012 to adopt WASD because before that mouse 2 was forward, < and > sidestep, / was backward, and L was use. Yep.

[pcorf]

Back in the 1990's during the pre sourceport era. I played on the keyboard with occasional mouse usage. But had better control on the keyboard due to the shift button. First PWAD I played was REoLWOLF, Wolfensteined by George Fiffy, good fun.

[Lila Feuer]

My first PWAD was ASDOOM][: The Final Countdown, thanks to the Doomgate website, which is where I got my initial PWADs from. Later on it was Bob Larkin's Doom WAD Station and Sir Robin's Doom Castle.

[unerxai]

2 hours ago, Grazza said:

I was shit, basically. As early as 1995, I knew from posts by good players in the CompuServe Action Games Forum about mouse + WASD being by far the best control set-up, but persisted with keyboard-only and never strafing until 1997. Oddly, I got as far as HR map16 on UV with that, but on Plutonia stalled early on (maybe map04 or map06). When I learned that HR featured routes that required strafing, I finally switched to a proper set-up. God knows why it took me so long. But I suppose non-strafing my way through HR's maps 11, 13, 14 and 15 was sort of character-building. :p

 

Some years later (2004-ish?) I tweaked my set-up to add Ctrl and Alt as turning keys for strafe-50, and the most "recent" change I made was abandoning novert (to help with fine control for stuff like glides). Even that was about a dozen years ago though.

How do you manage to not fall from platforms with novert off, especially in maps like The Chasm? Lots of practice?

[magicsofa]

13 hours ago, Lila Feuer said:

I also played in Doom95 for 2-3 years, with my first source port being Boom.

Love me some Doom95, which provided me with my first multiplayer experience when my brother and I figured out how to connect our computers via SERIAL port! By that time we were using mouse, but I do remember using keyboard only when I first played in DOS. I definitely IDDQD'd a fair amount so I doubt I had any use for the alt key...

Anyway doesn't Doom95 count as a source port?

[Kleetin]

Ha.... my first introduction to Doom was the flash game shareware port of all things. Used the keyboard and died all the time...

[kb1]

For years I used an analog joystick. Yep. It had to be aligned and cleaned often, to avoid drift and debounce issues. It had 2 buttons. The top button I had set to fire. The bottom button was set to both strafe and open door, which actually worked pretty well.

[ReaperAA]

6 hours ago, Doomkid said:

I know right? Talk about late to the party! I started Dooming at 3!

 

Damn u were truly a "Doom kid"

 

Anyways I started playing doom in 2001 (I was 6 at that time) and played till 2003. At that time I had no knowledge about source ports, pwads, mods etc. I used default doom controls. I stopped playing doom after 2003-ish.

 

I didn't come back to doom until around 2015 after witnessing the various mods and source ports available for it. By this time I was already a WASD player. So I use WASD now and I have never looked back.

[ketmar]

"r" to run, ctrl to shoot, and i heavily used numpad: arrows to turn and move, end/pgdn for strafing (and later slash and star for looking up and down -- i finished q1 with this keyboard-only setup, and half of q2). also, the same for duke3d. i bet i still will be able to make a decent run with this.

[seed]

11 hours ago, Jon said:

..at age 4?

 

What, I was also 5 or 6 back when I first played Doom :D.

[Capellan]

Back in the day, arrow keys for movement, ALT to toggle strafe, CTRL to fire, SPACE to use and SHIFT to run.  There would inevitably be times when I'd try to press four or five keys at once (usually shift+alt+ctrl+two arrows) and whatever key I hit fifth wouldn't register because the keyboard could only detect four simultaneous key presses.

 

I didn't switch to WASD+mouse until ... 2007-ish, I'd say.

 

[Pegleg]

Way back when I used.

 

Up arrow: Forward

Down arrow: Backward

Left arrow: Turn left

Right arrow: Turn right

Space: Use

CTRL: Fire/Punch

SHIFT: Run

 

I didn't strafe back then (and I still have to consciously think about doing it to do it while playing).

 

I don't recall ever even considering using the mouse until I made my way back to Doom in 2016.

[Ziad EL Zein]

First time i played Doom was on a Dos operating system using the default controls ! I was trying to discover them! 

It was too scary and a bit complicated for me couldn't really finish it ... finding out that the space key opened Doors was a major discovery ! I became able to progress and ultimatly finish the first level ! I tried out every single keyboard key but i still couldn't open the door ! then my sister opened it for me ! Later 

I played & finished Doom 1/2 and Final Doom using a controller on the PS1 

[nrofl]

I dont even remember because I first played doom on the N64 at my friends house when I was, 5 I think? Funny thing is I havent been to his house since. But I do remember good old Doom64. But whatever were the normal 64 controls thats what I played on.

[Hellbent]

On 3/6/2019 at 1:17 PM, Empyre said:

W = Forward

S = Backward

A = Strafe Left

D = Strafe Right

SPACE = Use (in Doom, but many games use E for Use and Space for Jump)

 

 

Back in the 90s, I used a Gravis 4-button controller, with the buttons set to Fire, Use, Run, and Strafe.  It was actually less awkward than using the mouse to move forward.

 

EDIT: I just remembered that it was called a Gravis Gamepad.

What do you use the right mouse button for?

[insertwackynamehere]

I used to use the Ctrl/Arrow/Space no-strafe no-mouse setup too, and I remember back even in the early 2000s it was still argued about and I’d defend keyboard only to the death until probably 2004 or 2005.

[Korozive]

On 3/6/2019 at 7:19 PM, Doomkid said:

I know right? Talk about late to the party! I started Dooming at 3!

ZeroMaster started at age 2. Read the manual while he was in the womb. :o)

[Empyre]

8 hours ago, Hellbent said:

What do you use the right mouse button for?

I don't use WASD myself.  I now I should, but making the transition would be hard after 20 years of using the arrow keys.  I was just answering a question about how it works.  I use Mouse 2 for Use.

[Maximum Matt]

On ‎3‎/‎7‎/‎2019 at 10:07 AM, pcorf said:

First PWAD I played was REoLWOLF, Wolfensteined by George Fiffy, good fun.

I just got thru the first level of that bastard today.  Now THAT'S how you do an annoying switch sequence.