Debunking the Myth that Doom is meant to be played keyboard-only

[Maes]

The MS-DOS startup menu was introduced in DOS 5.0, and I jumped straight into it -never went the way of making custom boot floppies or painstakingly F5/F8-ing all startup items each time I boot.

 

FWIW, Doom was pretty "spartan" in terms of the software environment -it would run even with a straight F5 (no autoexec.bat/config.sys loaded) boot. With a genuine Sound Blaster card, no mouse and no need to use the CD-ROM, no playing around with DMXOPTIONS etc.  you really didn't need anything. In fact, it was better that way: SMARTDRV.EXE, HIMEM.SYS and EMM386.EXE were not needed for Doom. In fact, they could do more harm than good, especially with just 4 MB of RAM.

[DuckReconMajor]

On 6/20/2019 at 3:31 PM, Nymbus_Hustle said:

When I worked as a computer tech and took calls, I had to be really focused because I was multitasking. Also, my boss would have gotten cranky if I started playing DOOM in the office hahaha.

 

From people I've known who've worked in them, call centers seem to range from "chill and laid back" to "Maximizing Pain For Our Employees".

[kb1]

17 hours ago, Maes said:

The MS-DOS startup menu was introduced in DOS 5.0, and I jumped straight into it -never went the way of making custom boot floppies or painstakingly F5/F8-ing all startup items each time I boot.

Ah, cool - didn't know about that! Do you remember the command that started the menu? I'd like to check it out.

 

17 hours ago, Maes said:

FWIW, Doom was pretty "spartan" in terms of the software environment -it would run even with a straight F5 (no autoexec.bat/config.sys loaded) boot. With a genuine Sound Blaster card, no mouse and no need to use the CD-ROM, no playing around with DMXOPTIONS etc.  you really didn't need anything. In fact, it was better that way: SMARTDRV.EXE, HIMEM.SYS and EMM386.EXE were not needed for Doom. In fact, they could do more harm than good, especially with just 4 MB of RAM.

For a 4 Mb machine, I agree, but my Doom box had 8 Mb, and I got some real benefit out of carefully tweaking the startup environment. In particular, SMARTDRV seemed to make a big difference, which is strange considering Doom's zone memory allocator. Had it been built a bit more carefully, that SMARTDRV memory could have been better utilized by the in-game allocator.

[DoomGater]

On 6/20/2019 at 7:12 PM, fraggle said:

Curious to see a pic of your Model M variant with the mechanical caps lock if you'd be willing to share.

Sorry, my memory played bad tricks on me. The ancient Keyboard I still have is a commodore (with DIN 5-Pin, but  NO mechanical Caps-Lock),
similar to the one on the attached pic, but back in those days it was something else. Might have been a PC122-clone from our AS400 5250 terminals,
but I can't swear. Sorry for causing confusion, but I'm just an old fart who swallowed too many rockets...

 

 

Edited June 24, 2019 by DoomGater : (addad pic)

[Gez]

Oh yeah, I remember the MS DOS boot menu. Making separate configs for max mem (no driver), just audio, audio+mouse, audio+CD, audio+mouse+CD, and Windows. Good times.

[dr_st]

50 minutes ago, Gez said:

Oh yeah, I remember the MS DOS boot menu. Making separate configs for max mem (no driver), just audio, audio+mouse, audio+CD, audio+mouse+CD, and Windows. Good times.

The better times were when I discovered that there is a single good configuration that works for 99% of the games, gives you maximum memory with audio, mouse, CD, Smartdrive and Doskey, and doesn't conflict with Windows in any way. Haven't had a boot menu since. :D

[xttl]

On 6/21/2019 at 11:21 AM, Maes said:

The MS-DOS startup menu was introduced in DOS 5.0, and I jumped straight into it -never went the way of making custom boot floppies or painstakingly F5/F8-ing all startup items each time I boot.

 

Wrong. Startup menus were introduced beginning with MS-DOS 6.0. I think the F5 and F8 key functionality was also introduced at the same time, it definitely did not exist in DOS 5.

 

^{(perhaps some other DOS than MS-DOS did these at a smaller major version number? I am not familiar at all with those...)}

[Maes]

6.0 it was, indeed. Not that it mattered much to me since I started with 6.2 anyway. FWIW I picked up the trick from a PC magazine of the time, which actually had it in its "hints and tricks" sections. However, the existence of this feature seems to be unknown to the many (and even to the Internet), and appears vastly underutilized. It would have sucked not to even have had F5/F8 though....I guess then it was really only floppies or maybe some third-party program.

[DoomGater]

Floppies were the USB-Bootsticks of that time!

[Pirx]

On 6/4/2019 at 12:43 PM, Doomkid said:

The best DM players of 1994 and 1995 were already using “proto WSDA” controls that allowed easy strafe running and generally versatile control. For some people it was ESDF, or other variations, but the idea was already there. I don’t think WSDA was the norm until Quake, but it was invented for Doom DM initially.

 

I’m not sure if it was novert or not, but there existed several tutorials on various old geocities sites and such on how to reduce/turn off vertical mouse movement, so it was at least somewhat common practice in the mid 90s.

 

Maybe this was the common way back then. When I was looking through a bunch of old Doom sites some years ago I remember people describing how to do it in Win95 and Win98 as well. I’m sure it was only deathmatchers or super hardcore players bothering with it in the olden days but it was definitely a thing.

 

 

 

Duh, haven't been here for 2 months or so, too busy, so excuse me for bumping this thread, sitting with my phone here at the airport:

 

I've used such a mouse driver mod too, Google a little program called cpanel  (if it runs on win 10 today...) , it simply gives you 2 axes to set your mouse sens, and we disabled vertical sens completely for our death matches,  since it made it possible to turn without moving, for example falling off the ledge in entryway. Iirc novert.exe was older, but I preferred cpanel for its graphical interface.

 

That was in the days of vanilla doom of course, as later doom's source ports and quake accustomed me to mouselook, and tbh I find playing without it weird today.

 

But whatever, I remember I downloaded the first dm demos recorded by mouse players in 1995 or even late 1994, notable some by noskill who used a very high sens, which is obvious from his flash turns, and these demos made me wonder how I could move like this. So I found cpanel, and it was really useful (I still preferred doom dm over quake's )

[cybdmn]

On 6/21/2019 at 10:21 AM, Maes said:

HIMEM.SYS

 

Wasn't neccessary at all, because Doom used DOS4GW. HIMEM.SYS was used to free as much as possible conventional memory by load mouse drivers and such into upper memory for real mode DOS stuff like Wolfenstein 3D.

[Ashley_Pomeroy]

I can still remember the first time I played Doom, back in 1994 - shareware episode one, on computers at college, with no sound. As pointed out extensively the fact that the mouse made you go forwards and backwards was offputting. WASD + mouse seems obvious now but it was a mental leap at the time and sadly my mind wasn't flexible enough.

 

I became fixated on the idea that you were supposed to use the mouse by itself, and that the "keyboard + mouse" option in the setup screen meant that you had a choice between either of the two input methods, but you weren't supposed to mix them. I remember assuming that the chaps at iD had special virtual reality mice with masses of buttons.

 

Also, at the time 3D games tended to be incredibly fiddly. Stuff like Cybercon III, Infestation, and the Freescape games that no-one remembers nowadays. Before playing Doom I assumed that every level was going to be like "The Chasm" - narrow catwalks with precise platform navigation, in which case having the mouse nudge me forwards all the time was going to be impossible.

 

System Shock was basically keyboard-movement, mouse-interacting, wasn't it? And it was incredibly aggravating. You have to remember that a lot of PC games in the 1980s and 1990s generated their "gameplay" not from being entertaining, but by being aggravating and irritating - escort missions in X-Wing and those horrible Sierra point-and-click adventures where you died if you clicked the wrong thing. I think back in 1994 I assumed that Doom was going to be like that.

[TriTT]

Don’t mean to necropost but I thought this could add to this, see for yourself around 0:48...

 

 

Yes, that’s Wolfenstein 3D, but if it wasn’t true in ‘92, I don’t think it would’ve suddenly become true in ‘93. 

Also, I know this thread is old but I saw someone talking about Quake in the 3rd page I think and I don't know if anyone said this but... open console and type (without quotes) "+mlook" then press enter, close console, and it should turn mouselook on by default even on the DOS version of the game.

Edited August 2, 2020 by TriTT

[Pirx]

Heh I wondered what I posted from an airport since there's no airport for me this year... Anyway, nice find! I definitely tried and played wolf3d with a mouse, as there was mouse input already in the menu. squeezing myself through a door often got me shot by guards by the door' sides, so peeking and then letting them come was cheap but effective. It bored me though so I tried the mouse.. But iirc it only worked with a rather low sens, which I didn't like, and then I didn't have my own pc yet, and others found it weird to see me rowing with the mouse. so I stayed with keyboard only for a few years. 

[wheresthebeef]

16 hours ago, TriTT said:

Don’t mean to necropost but I thought this could add to this, see for yourself around 0:48...

 

Ahh, so Wolf3D and Doom were meant to be played with a left handed mouse.

[mammajamma]

How about controllers? Everyone says FPS can't work on a controller because the movement's too limiting, but Doom itself singlehandedly proves that wrong. It had native support for the Gravis Gamepad, which was the most popular PC controller at the time, it was ported to basically every major home console of the 90s, Doom 64 proved that you can have a good console-only Doom experience, the current-gen ports have multiple modern megawads that were hardly tested on controllers yet play just fine on them, and Martin plays using a controller (with inverted axis, no less!)

[Doomkid]

Someone who says you can't play well with a controller is a goofball. It physically does not allow for the direct precision and speed that a keyboard and mouse does, but I've still seen some hardcore pros at various FPS games using controllers, usually something based on the design and concept popularized by the 360, where the left stick is your WSDA and the right stick is your mouse, essentially.

 

There are plenty of people who would easily stomp me despite that I'm using the technically superior input method, which to me says it's all about putting in the practice time and learning how to use your controller - whatever it may be - to it's fullest potential.

[Maes]

You see, the thing with controller methods is that they're kinda like the techniques used in the High Jump athletic event. Once the Fosbury Flop was invented it pretty much revolutionized the sport, and very few -if any- professional athletes went back to the other techniques used before it.

 

 

To the best of my knowledge there aren't any "technique restricted" events where you can only use e.g. the older "scissor cut" technique, and no interest in creating such -effectively- handicapped leagues just for the sportsmanship of it.

 

And in Doom Land, my "appeals" (well, more like relaxed suggestions) to create "Technique vs Technique" deathmatch leagues, or "Input method Χ only" COMPET-N categories didn't receive much interest after all those years. Not a single one, die-hard supporter of alternative control methods stepped in and said "Yeah, that's be an interesting and highly competitive idea, I'm game". And not for the lack of people that are competitive/like a good challenge in general.

 

There are exceptions though, like the Women's Sidesaddle riding style. A remnant of a more "modest" era, there's no deny that it's a handicapping way of riding yet some choose to specialize in it. The catch? The events are "technique restricted", unlike High Jump events.

Edited August 5, 2020 by Maes

[Zolgia108]

well since i was a kid i always played keyboard only, these days i tried adding the mouse but i really can't do it, i feel like an old man because i can't switch to this "new" feature. What settings do you guys use? I tried w s and mouse but it's so confusing when you are used to another thing for like 20 years :(

[Maes]

25 minutes ago, Zolgia108 said:

well since i was a kid i always played keyboard only, these days i tried adding the mouse but i really can't do it, i feel like an old man because i can't switch to this "new" feature. What settings do you guys use? I tried w s and mouse but it's so confusing when you are used to another thing for like 20 years :(

 

I switched to WASD + mouse in Doom only after being introduced to the feature by more modern FPS games, simply because that's what they had as their default control scheme. And yet, for a period, I played other FPS with this "new" scheme, and Doom with its "traditional" keyboard only scheme, before it dawned on me that the "new" one could work just as well, if not better.

 

Interestingly, I never thought of switching any of the other FPS games to Doom-like keyboard-only controls. The only other FPS I played with such controls was Quake I, but only because that's what it had out of the box. Maybe it all boils down to defaults/unwillingness to change what already works in either case. The only occasion where I was really anal about controls, was with driving games: nothing short of Test Drive/Need For Speed-like controls worked for me (arrows and A/Z keys for manual shifting).

 

How do you play other FPS games?

Edited August 5, 2020 by Maes

[Zolgia108]

52 minutes ago, Maes said:

 

I switched to WASD + mouse in Doom only after being introduced to the feature by more modern FPS games, simply because that's what they had as their default control scheme. And yet, for a period, I played other FPS with this "new" scheme, and Doom with its "traditional" keyboard only scheme, before it dawned on me that the "new" one could work just as well, if not better.

 

Interestingly, I never thought of switching any of the other FPS games to Doom-like keyboard-only controls. The only other FPS I played with such controls was Quake I, but only because that's what it had out of the box. Maybe it all boils down to defaults/unwillingness to change what already works in either case. The only occasion where I was really anal about controls, was with driving games: nothing short of Test Drive/Need For Speed-like controls worked for me (arrows and A/Z keys for manual shifting).

 

How do you play other FPS games?

i play everything with wasd plus mouse, doom is the only one that feels weird, strafe is probably the most annoying thing with that setup for me (left alt)

[Maes]

1 hour ago, Zolgia108 said:

i play everything with wasd plus mouse, doom is the only one that feels weird, strafe is probably the most annoying thing with that setup for me (left alt)

With standard WASD + mouse mappings, you shouldn't need a separate strafe button unless you're trying to pull SR50 all the time: A/D should be strafe left/right already, and turning should be done with the mouse. Playing with just W/S (forwards/backwards) and using just the mouse + alt for switching between turning and strafing...yeah, that'd suck.

[Zolgia108]

 

17 minutes ago, Maes said:

With standard WASD + mouse mappings, you shouldn't need a separate strafe button unless you're trying to pull SR50 all the time: A/D should be strafe left/right already, and turning should be done with the mouse. Playing with just W/S (forwards/backwards) and using just the mouse + alt for switching between turning and strafing...yeah, that'd suck.

yea in fact i was doing the latter, and it sucked. After last post i tried with wasd and mouse and it was really better. Freelook is annoying though so i disabled it, also i still can't understand if strafe is still useful or not (i have it on the right click now, but i can't understand if i need it, i've got some problems with revenants to be honest, i know we all have but in this case i have more than before^^)

[Bauul]

19 minutes ago, Zolgia108 said:

also i still can't understand if strafe is still useful or not (i have it on the right click now, but i can't understand if i need it,

 

If you have strafe left and right bound to A and D, you don't need the strafe toggle button at all (unless you are doing some crazy SR50 speedrunning stuff, but you very rarely need that in everyday play). 

[Hellektronic]

I honestly think it was designed for a keyboard, because with a mouse you can pretty much run circles around any enemy in the game. Monsters are slow, like... really, really slow. Same with fireballs. I'm not so sure that's a coincidence.

 

And if you play with a keyboard for even a few minutes, you start to realize that if they weren't that slow, you'd get your ass kicked and wouldn't be able to dodge fireballs... it makes the game a lot harder. I think monster speed was slowed on purpose to give people using keyboard a chance to react and strafe, you know. So in a way, yeah, I think it was meant to played on keyboard. Or it was, at least, deliberately balanced for people using keyboard, making monsters slower moving.

 

Obviously you get a huge reaction and aiming boost from a mouse, so the slow enemies are pretty much helpless. I'd almost go so far as to say fastmonsters is the only way to get a challenge in Doom 1 using a mouse, otherwise you shred even the hardest enemies in the game on ultraviolence. Thy Flesh Consumed and Doom 2 are a bit of a different story though- I think the new Doom 2 enemies were made precisely for people using mouses, and hordes of enemies reduce how weak the other individual monsters are. So as a result, Doom 2 is obviously better suited to people playing with a mouse.

 

 

I mean, this is purely just my own speculation here, but it makes a lot of sense if you've tried playing both ways. Try an experiment for me here: fire up you favorite sourceport and switch your dedicated key strafes to "turn left" and turn right" instead. Bind a strafe key. Then try to play that way without moving the mouse, lol. I guarantee you'll be glad those fireballs move at the speed of smell.

 

But at the end of the day, I think it's just a consequence of how the first game was designed compared to the second. Maybe they didn't expect playing with a mouse to be such a hit? It was like the second FPS ever made, other than Wolfenstein 3D. Did people play Wolf3D with a mouse? I dunno, probably not, lol. It's just one of those things that I think only the original id people can confirm or not. I saw Robert Prince playing Doom 1 during an interview, mouse right there, but he never touched it. Not once. He was playing like a soiled diaper but that's beside the point, lol. Both hands on keyboard. Maybe he's just really bad at it, but I would assume he knew a thing or two about the game considering he scored it.

[Pseudonaut]

24 minutes ago, Hellektronic said:

I honestly think it was designed for a keyboard, because with a mouse you can pretty much run circles around any enemy in the game. Monsters are slow, like... really, really slow. Same with fireballs. I'm not so sure that's a coincidence.

 

This makes sense now, since the game is over 25 years old and the FPS genre is ubiquitous, but I don't think the game was so easy for new players in 1994, with or without a mouse, when the genre was new. Even when I played Doom for the first time somewhere around 2013 (with a mouse), UV felt like a challenge. At the time, I didn't even know that the game could be played with only a keyboard, and I had experience playing other FPS games on a console. Still, it would make sense if they had keyboard-only play in mind to some degree when balancing the game, since they probably knew most players would play that way. It would be a problem if Doom was unplayable without a mouse.

 

24 minutes ago, Hellektronic said:

Did people play Wolf3D with a mouse? I dunno, probably not, lol. It's just one of those things that I think only the original id people can confirm or not.

 

Someone posted a video in this thread (on this page) from 1992 where John Romero plays Wolf3D with a mouse.

[fraggle]

48 minutes ago, Hellektronic said:

I honestly think it was designed for a keyboard,

Designed to be playable with a keyboard, yes, I'd 100% agree. The myth I've seen pushed multiple times now though is that this is the "intended way" of playing the game, that the original game didn't have any mouse support, or that playing with a mouse is somehow inauthentic. That's what this thread is intended to debunk.

[Hellektronic]

1 hour ago, fraggle said:

Designed to be playable with a keyboard, yes, I'd 100% agree. The myth I've seen pushed multiple times now though is that this is the "intended way" of playing the game, that the original game didn't have any mouse support, or that playing with a mouse is somehow inauthentic. That's what this thread is intended to debunk.

 

Well I mean, I can see where those people are coming from- it's like I said, it was a game balanced for keyboard play speed-wise. So to some people, it may very well feel more authentic alongside the slow enemies. It's not unlike how some people regard OPL synth as like the "authentic" MIDI music of Doom, lol. There is no "authentic" way to render MIDI, lol... it was meant to versatile and modular with the instruments.

 

Just like the control style. It's meant to be played either way. Keyboard is just inherently more challenging than using a mouse, and some people like that extra challenge. *shrugs* Considering most games nowadays are built from the ground up NOT to accommodate keyboard-only players in any way, and are mostly break-neck speed action with enemies even faster than the player and such, the argument Doom is different and more keyboard-authentic holds pretty solid ground. But eh, it's all opinion.

 

Either way, its kinda fun to discuss the topic, not gonna lie.

[Dark Pulse]

2 hours ago, Hellektronic said:

I honestly think it was designed for a keyboard, because with a mouse you can pretty much run circles around any enemy in the game. Monsters are slow, like... really, really slow. Same with fireballs. I'm not so sure that's a coincidence.

This is quite literally the game that made people discover circle strafing.

[Hellektronic]

1 hour ago, Dark Pulse said:

This is quite literally the game that made people discover circle strafing.

 

I think that was more a pvp element, that's why Quake adopted it... and it became "a thing" to circle strafe. Notably because it throws people off.

 

Doom was before all of that, they didn't expect people to circle strafe, they didn't plan for it. They also didn't plan for rocket jumping in Quake, or bunnyhopping... the god-forsaken PVP community poisoned us with these nuances, haha.

Edited August 5, 2020 by Hellektronic