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FirebrandX

The 3 styles of Death Match players:

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Back during the mid and late 90's, I was the top Death Match player in my area for PSX Doom. I made a 50-foot link cable with a soldering iron and 6 spools of speaker wire (worked great) so games could be played in completely different rooms behind closed doors. Whenever a Doom party was scheduled, I'd pack my cable up in a gym bag and do house calls. I has several Internet champs try me, but they couldn't handle using a controller. There were however, a few rivals that I constantly played against. What was cool is that each one of us had a completely different style of play, yet could rack up the frags equally fast against the many random scrubs that talked trash.

I ultimately progressed better than my rivals and seemed to feed off the intensity. My closest rival couldn't stand the pressure and started suffering headaches from the stress. I'd be out for blood and getting really into it, while he would be sweating bullets trying to anticipate my next move. It wasn't too much longer that he refused to play anymore, stating it was "getting old". We did record many of the matches on video tape and I went through over 100 hours of footage to tally all the results. I ended up with 723 frags, with the next closest rival at 400+ (all round-robin results from top players).

In looking back, we made note of the 3 key styles that made for interesting matchups. Here are the styles my rivals and I held:

Andy: Camper. I could swear this guy was the inventor of camping. He took it to a whole new level, where he would never lose patience to get that one ambush kill. The sucker never got tired of waiting, waiting, waiting for you to open that secret door or jump down a pit he hiding in. With his favorite weapon being the rocket launcher, he would often kill himself just to ensure that you died as well. Thankfully I was always ready for such camping ambushes, and handed his ass to him on a plate most of the time. He did quite well against other players and it would mess with their heads as a result. "Why am I losing to this camper??" they would ask. I'd tell them it's because he's a very GOOD camper.

Bill: Lurker. Bill was my closest rival. He would roam the halls of a level with reckless abandon, searching for an immediate gun fight. All he wanted was a boom-stick and he was good to go. Our boom-stick gun fights were legendary, with many lasting over a minute long as we skillfully dodged each other's shots. It was often like a tango dance in levels with open courtyards. You'd here several booms go off, a shout of "oh shit! oh shit!", and then a victor would emerge. Bill's only problem was he played with too much recklessness. He wouldn't make those key decisions to retreat when wounded or return better-prepared. He stayed in the fight to the bitter end, with him either winning or losing. This is how I would take advantage of him in the field.

Me: Map. My style was given the title of "map" because I was always the most prepared gun-fighter in any Death Match encounter. I had a photographic memory of every square inch of every level in the game and could instantly get any weapon available. I would make "rounds" where I would collect up all the goodies around the level in a matter of seconds, then blast the crap out of the other player and go back to doing it again. I'd always have "double-deuces" (200 health and 200 armor), which would annoy the hell out of the other players. Additionally, I had a keen sense for when to break off from a gun fight and retreat for health. The final factor was I could spot the slightest flicker of movement out the corner of my eyes. Whenever I've watched average player go at it, I would think they had tunnel vision. They wouldn't see that little flicker of green way off to the left and would go bumbling off into danger completely oblivious.


So which style would you consider yourself? The camper, the lurker, or the map? Obviously there are times these styles can overlap and I'd be a fool if I didn't use each of the other styles at one time or another. The thing is you can usually tell what your preferred style is. What say you?

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I'm an aggressive player. I grab whatever gun I find first (but if I have a choice, I go for the SSG. If I have more than one gun, I'll use the SSG. SOMETIMES I'll use the Plasma, but the SSG is my friend).

I'll hunt down people and chase them if they try to retreat. I kill anyone and everyone in my way. I shoot everything. If I happen across extra ammo or powerups on my way, I pick them up, but I rarely look for them.

If I know the map well and I'm not currently killing anyone, I'll hop off for a second to get something (In SkullTag I enjoy getting good runes). But I feel that it takes too long to get them. In the SkullTag level where you can get the triple-shot and the red sphere, it takes too long to get them and by that time, the bots will have gotten 10-20 frags in your absense.

Occasionally, I stop for a moment. Some rooms are worth pausing in. In rooms where good guns or health are, I'll stop for about twenty seconds to kill anyone who comes in. So I camp, usually in quarter minute bursts every five minutes or so.

I never watch my health. I run in with guns blazing. I die when I die, and come back for more. I love to fight against rockets, plasmas, or BFGs. Rockets are so easy to dodge. Plasma gives you a reason to circle-strafe. BFGs give you a reason to learn to strafehide. Newbies always go for the rocket launchers. They hate it when you can avoid being hit and never move more than about 5 feet.

But that's just me. =) Nice thread. ^_^

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ABout retreating:

Normally, You can chase the other guy down when he retreats, but we used a technique called "speed-strafing" to run away. The cool thing about it was the chaser had to be speed-strafing as well just to keep up. If he wasn't, you were long gone in a split second. If he was, then his gun would never be properly aimed for the kill. Speed-strafing requires you to run at a 45 degree angle and then hold the strafe button for an extra 25% higher top speed. One of the techniques involved with speed-strafing we called "Pulling an Ash", where the player running for his life would speed-strafe around a corner and disappear by the time you got there.

BFGs: Although I had no problem with them, many players requested a house rule of no BFG collecting. It was called the "Great Equalizer" in that all a noob needed was just one lucky shot. Never bothered me though.

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In DOOM it's called strafe running. It's a must in any type of game.

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It's a bit faster, +50% instead of +40%, but you can't turn, so it's more useful for speedrunning, and only if you have to move a long distance in a staight line. I'm not exactly sure what keys FirebrandX is using to do it, but sr50 does forward once plus strafing twice to get the enhanced effect, but that disables turning.

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No guys, I was talking about PSX doom. There's no speed cheat program on it or anything like that. I was using pure controller skill to speed-strafe. It's actually easier to do on a controller I feel.

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I play my brothers at doom all the time, 3 player, small DM maps. Even though our strafing is good the shotgun battles last only a matter of seconds, with the DBS battles lasting even less, since we can predict movement or re-aim so quickly and accurately that misses are quite rare. Thomas is almost as good as I am, but loses out because he is a total psycho in the game, its impossible to tell how much health he has, he will engage you without mercy even if he has 1 health. Jack is considerably weaker than either of us, because he runs away far too easily and finds it hard to cover his back and run while I shoot the shit out of him with a suitable weapon. I will usually always lose though, because the crafty buggers ALWAYS ally after a while, and since their computers are in the same room they have excellent communication, they know where they are, they watch each others backs, and they flush me out and kick my arse. Its good training though I suppose. :D

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Yeah, Grazza gave that link just cause it's a place where sr50 is mentioned, the cheat just makes it much easier to use. What we were discussing is that in the PC version you can use two forms of strafe running. One is a simple forward + run + strafeleft (or right) and the other is forward + run + strafeleft + left + strafekey. The latter is faster but rigid, the other can be combined with turning but is still pretty fast.

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SR50 isn't a cheat; it's just something that is difficult to do, esp. in Vanilla PC Doom, since 5 keys (e.g. Run, Move Forward, Strafe Right, Strafe On, Turn Right) need to be pressed simultaneously, and it disables the ability to turn. It's the automation of it that is a cheat (i.e. you don't need to press all five keys; the mousedriver is rigged so that what would normally give you SR40 in fact gives you SR50 as long as you are not turning). I linked to that page not because of the info about the cheat but due to the comment that PC Doom Deathmatchers tend not to use SR50 very much.

On PSX Doom is there a distinction between SR40 and SR50? Does (e.g.) Run Forward + Strafe Right give you maximum speed?

Edit: There seems to be an echo round here...

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I think for PSX doom, you can only get "sr40". I should check it to make sure as there is a "strafe on" button. I seem to remember the "strafe on" button disables the left/right strafe buttons when you use it though.


On aim: Our battles used to last in only a few seconds, but we got so good at the quick-dodge in reverse direction, it started becoming a guessing game. Clean misses with the DBSG would often result.

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Running forward is turbo 100.

S40 equals turbo 128.

S50 equals turbo 141.

S50 is NOT 50% faster.

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I've never played PSX Doom. I played SNES Doom once... Oh boy is that a joke. It's hilarious. I quit playing after about five minutes. Why did id bother?

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Well, yeah, after I posted I was wondering what the 40 and 50 values represented... but then again I assume you mean +100 turbo, etc. since turbo 100 is simply normal movement.

Edit: I see how it is now, it's 40 (or 50) units of sideways movement. The units are 1 "turbo" or 1% of the player's movement.

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The 40 and 50 indicate the speed of sideways motion, in whatever units they are in which running forwards (without strafing) has a speed of 50. Thus:
SR50: 50 forwards + 50 sideways = 50 * SQR (2) at an angle of arctan (1)
SR40: 50 forwards + 40 sideways = 10 * SQR (41) at an angle of arctan (0.8).

i.e.:
SR50: roughly 141.4% of normal running speed at an angle of 45 degrees
SR40: roughly 128.1% of normal running speed at an angle of about 38.7 degrees

I think that's correct, but I'm sure Fredrik will point out if I have slipped up somewhere. :)

Apologies if the Forum software has an equation editor that I don't know about.

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Interesting... and now I see why -turbo 101 is not considered as turbo by doom. It's that +2 = 1 unit of movement.

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Nanami said:

I've never played PSX Doom. I played SNES Doom once... Oh boy is that a joke. It's hilarious. I quit playing after about five minutes. Why did id bother?

In it's day it was a real groundbreaker.
Yep only sr40 is possible with PSX.

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myk said:

Interesting... and now I see why -turbo 101 is not considered as turbo by doom. It's that +2 = 1 unit of movement.

Oh, you mean it must round it down to 100? So perhaps when Sedlo did Doom2 Map01 with -turbo 3 (TU01-042.LMP), it was really only -turbo 2?

magikal said:

Yep only sr40 is possible with PSX.

Does it use the same maps as Ultimate Doom and Doom 2? If so, how are you meant to do E1M4 and Map14, etc.? Surely not (shudder) the standard routes? :)

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Grazza said:

Oh, you mean it must round it down to 100? So perhaps when Sedlo did Doom2 Map01 with -turbo 3 (TU01-042.LMP), it was really only -turbo 2?


I did asume that, but checking I see that doom sets turbo to 10% if the value is 10 or less, even negative, so Sedlo did a -turbo 10 recording, it seems.

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PSX doom has most all the Ultimate Doom and Doom 2 stages combined into 59 levels together. Unfortunately, You have to do E1M4 the standard route :( I'm not sure about D214 though.

Speaking of speed runs, I have one of "The Spiral" for Doom 64 I did in 23 seconds on "Watch Me Die!" setting with default pistol/no armor. Doom 64 has an extra speed trick where you can sacrifice backwards movement for 25% extra run speed on top of the SR40 technique. This actually makes it similar to sr50 I imagine. I keep trading D64 records back and forth with a Canadian game expert, but he and I both are locked in a tie on this one. Here's the link to the zipped vid (uses wmv format):

http://www.twingalaxies.com/firebrandx/video/spiral.zip

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myk said:

... I see that doom sets turbo to 10% if the value is 10 or less, even negative, so Sedlo did a -turbo 10 recording, it seems.

That does fit, given that he did it in 42 seconds, when the "-turbo 100" record (TAS/built) is just under 5 seconds.

FirebrandX said:

PSX doom has most all the Ultimate Doom and Doom 2 stages combined into 59 levels together. Unfortunately, You have to do E1M4 the standard route :( I'm not sure about D214 though.

FYI, http://ural2.hszk.bme.hu/~ha211/compet-n/index.cgi?action=nostalg&page=doomtrick lists two non-SR50 shortcuts on E1M4. I watched your demo - it's always nice to see Hissy64.

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I usually dont care what gun I have, I just go out and fight till the end with what I have, This goes for both Deathmatches and Single Player/Co-op. I generally learn maps fast so I know where to get things and how fast to move and where, and when to teleport and where, I dont know what I am, but I am definately not a camper, I have never camped and I dont plan on starting.

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Im a very defensive player, EXTREMLEY cautious of my health armor and ammo, for the most part it works out for me

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I'm a lurker. I like to play dm using only the sg or ssg whenever possible. I like to stalk people and blow them away while they deal with some one else. straight on gun fights I am 50/50. if there is an ambush spot I will use it, but not like your friend.

I hate using the bfg, but will use it if someone repeatedly goes for it and spams. I try not to use rockets, because they can be danced around very easily. chaingun to me is not very efective in dm, IMO. lately I have been making much use of the plasma rifle, since no one wants to really get into a shotgun war.

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Coopersville said:

I'm the lurker. I find it newbie-ish and cowardly to retreat from a gun fight to collect health.


That's what Bill said. That's also why I have more frags against him...

Grazza, I checked out that Doom site (had run into it before). Unfortunately, the levels are slightly altered in the PSX version. The e1m4 area with the yellow key is a bit different in distancing. I tried SRing over the green slime pool, but the jump can't be made as far as I can tell.

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