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aldiboronti

Was Doom designed to be played at walking speed?

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I seem to recall when Doom first came out there was no option to keep Run on. Is this because it was meant to be played at walking speed, just running occasionally when circumstances warranted? It would certainly make the game more difficult, Doomguy's speed is his greatest asset. Has anyone ever completed Doom without using Run at all?

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The original commercial games, maybe yes... But on most modern megawads, that spells certain death... It would still be funny to see Ultimate Doom and Doom II completed that way, though.

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4 minutes ago, aldiboronti said:

Has anyone ever completed Doom without using Run at all?

I beat E1 back in the day without knowing you could run (or even strafe). For years I couldn't beat Heretic's E1M5 because of this. A friend of mine in school had Doom 2 (I didn't) but could never get inside the brown building in MAP02 due to the same thing. We were clueless kids.

 

Fun times.

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I remember almost never using strafe or run when I played it back in 1994, but then again I probably played it most often on Hurt Me Plenty. Nowadays I blaze through Doom on UV with running on, slaughtering monsters left and right, but at the time it felt more slow-paced and a little bit tactical - the kind of game where you had to remember the monster placement so that you could shoot them before they got you.

 

I wonder if that's why Doom 3 had such a different tone. In that game you're much slower and the gameplay is a lot more measured.

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1 hour ago, aldiboronti said:

Has anyone ever completed Doom without using Run at all?

Original 3 episodes aren't much of a problem to beat without running, they're even doable with "-turbo 1" parameter.

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I beat the shareware without run or strafe, but I was on ITYTD. Even at walking speed though you're still able to outmaneuver the monsters, so it's interesting if you think of the run as an "oh shit" button.

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I was playing keyboard only back then, and used Shift to run. I don't think it's designed to play with walking speed, but keyboard only is less controllable for me (of course, there are experienced keyboard only players who don't have this problem).

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Back when doom came out it was pretty much the most fast pace game out there in terms of movement speed of the protagonist. When you consider that some people back then didn't even have a mouse it stands to reason that it would have been pretty difficult for people at the time to control doomguy properly, and without dropping into nukage-pits just about everywhere.

 

As for what's "doable" without running, I'd say beginner is pretty much on point, and I'll only add that speedrunning categories like "stroller" exist, where you're not allowed to run at all. Basically "not running" in Doom even made its way into the competitive scene that surrounds it.

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3 minutes ago, rdwpa said:

(walk only, AA Map14 UV Max)

This boulevard is not blazing at all. It's Lazing Boulevard!

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I play Doom without autorun on, though I have recently switched to playing Heretic generally with autorun on due to the bug of holding shift and pressing the use inventory item button. The shift key is my pinky's security blanket. I think it's good to be able to fluidly alternate between running and walking speeds.

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The OG Doom games are definitely doable walking only, sometimes when I want to admire Doom's maps I tend to not run at all, notably in KDITD and Inferno.

 

However, I think some secrets in the games require running in order to reach them, so while they can easily be beaten without running, it might not be possible to UV-max all maps.

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35 minutes ago, Fonze said:

playing Heretic generally with autorun on due to the bug of holding shift and pressing the use inventory item button.

That's actually intentional by Raven as seen on the F1 screens in vanilla. It's pretty annoying if you play without autorun though.

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Personally, I generally do not favour autorun in a game unless the player's core movement is especially slow. To me, it makes more sense to apply the speed in a moment of need rather than slow down when needing to fine tune one's movement for precise footwork or to admire the view. Given that the original executables did not have an autorun option (at least I can't recall one) then it stands to reason it was intended to be a mixture of both as opposed to running hard out more often than not. 

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I don't think Doom was designed to be played any particular way. I think Carmack, Romero, and company made the game very flexible, so that it could be played in any number of different styles.

 

Playing the games back in 1994-95, I play keyboard only, rarely ran, and didn't strafe. I still remember them being very fluid and running all the time seemed unnecessary.

 

Even today, I rarely run. Personally, I don't like the feeling of Doom with autorun on--I feel less in control, but I am a rather cautious player to begin with.

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Maybe the fact that the game could be done walking only was by accident or maybe because a lot of people didn't have a Mouse back then so ID could've taken this into consideration, and the vanilla keyboard controls for doom are kinda bad so it makes the gameplay a bit slower.

 

My first play-through of doom was with keyboard only (vanilla keys) and I can say that it was a bit complicated but doable, I barely had to keep running to progress

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During my first playthrough of Doom 1 (on Switch), I barely ran anywhere because I wasn't used to the tense atmosphere and didn't want to run into any monsters accidentally. In fact, while playing Episodes 1 and 2, I only ran when I was testing the run button. Eventually, as I got more comfortable, I started running more, and now running is common for me while playing Doom.

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Yes in the case of the old commercial releases.

By the way I think that's an interesting idea for a map. A map that it's better played with walking speed...

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6 hours ago, DSC said:

It would still be funny to see Ultimate Doom and Doom II completed that way, though.

Yeah someone should do a no-running Doom speed ru- uh, power walk

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Only recently I start using the auto-run feature, since holding down the shift all the time was inconvenient.

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I tend to prefer autorun on in Doom and off in Heretic and Hexen, since H/H suit a more deliberate pace. But it's annoying having to change that whenever I switch games in GZDoom, so lately I've just been leaving it off by default. But with easy access to sprinting for when I do need it: it's not never-run, just not auto-run.

Edited by Rainne : wrong level *and* not actually true, so deleting paragraph

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I walked my way through shareware and Doom 2 back in the day. I did shareware on UV but dropped to HNTR for Doom 2, IIRC.

 

When I started playing more PWADs in '96, I began to play in Turbo 255 mode, which was easily selected at startup in MacDoom. This was faster than normal Turbo 250, which IIRC was more common for PC Doomers. Turbo 255 was sort of like playing as Supersonic Doomguy, and from time to time I had trouble controlling my movement, so I'd go zooming into nukage pits, off cliffs, that sort of thing. But eventually -- and still playing keyboard only -- I grew accustomed to it.

 

Strangely, when I came back to Doom in 2010, I started playing at a walking pace again, and went through several selections of the Doomworld Megawad Club as a walker. I think I finally stopped because of the greater monster density of modern maps, but also because the rocking motion as you walk gave me motion sickness. So now it's Always Run, and yes, always keyboard only, too. 

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I've gotten so used to playing Doom with Autorun on that it now feels painfully slow not to use it.

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"Why are you running?"

 

I always used running. It was strafing that I had to learn a bit later because when I was young, I played Doom with both hands on the right side of the keyboard. Right hand for arrow keys and the left hand for right Shift and CTRL. I distinctly remember dodging Cacodemon projectiles by going backwards and to the side. It was a while later that I found out the ALT key is one of the most useful keys for Doom and as I was growing up, the space on the right side of the keyboard was becoming more and more cramped and I finally moved my left hand to the left side of they keyboard.

 

I use Shift as a resting key for some of my fingers so it is pressed most of the time anyway, lifting them only when I need to walk. I still find walking useful on certain occasions.

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I remember a post here asking what all the fuss about Doom was about and that it wasn't "that fast" when it was later revealed they didn't use run and exclusively fought enemies by waiting around corners/behind doors for them to emerge before firing

Edited by Unregistered account

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9 hours ago, jval said:

Only recently I start using the auto-run feature, since holding down the shift all the time was inconvenient.

I've gotten used to holding down shift all the time so if I use autorun I end up walking because I'm so used to my pinky being on the shift key constantly and now it feels strange otherwise.

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23 hours ago, rdwpa said:

 

Haha, thanks for the idea. 

 

 

This kinda makes Doom Guy look even more badass. Like he's got nowhere important to be and he can just kill demons all casual while out on a gentle stroll.

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