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Face23785

how much do you exploit quirks and bugs during normal play?

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If you configure doom.exe (or vanilla ports like Chocolate Doom) for autorun, you just end up running 100% of the time, with no way to toggle it off during the game. I used that hack for a little while, but found it more trouble than it's worth.

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I played Knee-Deep in The Dead in 1993 or 1994. I'm Too Young To Die. I treated the game's physics the same as Wolfestein's. It was basically strolling through the levels and shooting. I knew the key responsible for running existed, but I didn't find it too useful. OTOH, I was well aware of strafing.

Then came Doom II, version 1.666. In Underhalls I had to run for the first time - it was necessary to jump across a gap. Since then I began to use the run funcion more frequently; I was interchaning walking and running.

[digression]
I disagree with Catoptromancy, as I don't think strafe running (SR40) is a "basic movement from standard control setup". id guys didn't know about SR40, as there is not a single gap in Thy Flesh Consumed or Doom II which would require anything more than just running. You can even access that soulsphere/blur sphere secret in The Gantlet by just running at a right angle.
[/digression]

Doom wasn't an attractive game for me. Not aware of Final Doom or awesome custom PWADs, I only occasionally played the game until around 2006 maybe. I did however see "Doom done quick" video and on level 5 I noticed the "player" to fire his rocket launcher against a wall. The screen turned red and after a fraction of a second he found himself on the opposite side of the map, jumping through a window. Well I did try to repeat it myself, but I gave up after a few hundreds of times. Now I'm not sure if I had enough health/armor to do this jump, to be honest, so no wonder I failed.

The first time I saw an arch-vile jump was probably through watching a demo on Requiem MAP15. I was discovering Doom mods like crazy, I got to know Ledmeister's site, Andy Olivera's Visions of Doom (great classic WADs and demos, some of them TAS, though I still didn't quite know what "manufactured demo" term meant). I discovered tricks such as pressing buttons which has not raised from the ground (z-axis abuse). I never really liked it, and until today I feel like a cheater when exploiting quirks while playing 1994-1997 WADs, whose authors were unaware of them. I also got to know there existed "gliding" which I never learned as a keyboarer and I virtually hated seeing. Shortcuts using rocket jumps or arch-vlie jumps were OK - not because these tricks were ancient, but because you had to sacrifice something (your health). Glides were not exciting to watch at all - a speedrunner performing a glide to finish the map quicker did finish it quicker, but some action was missing.

Well, now I know about virtually any quirk and use many of them. To finish the story, I also found a ZDoom-specific one, didn't find any mention about it (but I don't read ZDoom forums). Running into the spot where a barrel has just exploded gives you vertical boost. It may be exploited for example in Caverns of Darkness, MAP04, near the super shotgun, you jump above a ledge which normally blocks you.

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I learned both rocket jumping and arch-vile jumping by accident. The former in Doom 2, and the latter in Plutonia when an arch-vile blasted me up onto a ledge I didn't know I could get to. At that point I realized I could actually use it to my advantage.

My first encounter with strafe-running isn't so clear-cut, though. My earliest time realizing that I could outrun my own rockets was on The Factory, with the wide-open spaces and all. I don't remember conditioning myself to constantly SR40 until after my switch to mouse+keyboard, where it was pretty much essential to keep up with other players online.

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Maes said:
In the end, it all boils down to whether you believe that online games should be more like a regulated sport or more like a spontaneous street fight (and we all know there can be no rules in a street fight).

It's both more or less both but if you join a public server it's always the latter, short of reports on real cheating that can get people banned. You can't impose a "weaker" rule set unilaterally, it can only be possible if involved players agree to it beforehand.

A lot of the complaints, from what I've seen, are brought up when losing, giving more incentive for people to call them whining. Like some guy losing 40 to 20 at DM and stating that the opponent is "so gay he has to rely on the BFG to win" or is "speedhacking" after better use of sr40, sr50 or wall running.

Creaphis said:
There's just something about these old gameworlds that makes the line between "playing" and "cheating" extremely hard to see.

There's room for it all, although personally I've mostly been playing in a more exploratory fashion lately, recording FDAs or similar demos on WADs I hadn't played in a long time. I do use the more obvious hacks like sr40, pain elemental hindering or some item grabs, but rarely more obscure ones. Yours is a more analytical or objective approach, mine is more about experiencing an action and suspense packed environment or being absorbed in an environment, which to me is heightened and made more unique by the antique rendering in the game. For realism, there's the real world, the game is something different to "chill" with.

hex11 said:
If you configure doom.exe (or vanilla ports like Chocolate Doom) for autorun, you just end up running 100% of the time, with no way to toggle it off during the game. I used that hack for a little while, but found it more trouble than it's worth.

I like to walk too, so I don't use it, and have running assigned to Space where my thumb tends to rest. I do have a setup that uses the palm of my hand to press Control to activate "use", which saves me a finger, but even if that were not the case double-clicking the right mouse button is still an option.

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I usually rocketjump to BFG's that are supposed to be reached by hard regular jumps in multiplayer. I also use barred switches that still have a small unbarred part that unlock BFG's. In jumpmaze I SR50. In freelook competitive modes I use both freelook and autoaim (unless based solely on projectile weapons).

Offline I chaingun tap, beat PE's to death, wallrun.

I also sometimes use freelook to take baddies that are straight down, but I am trying to limit this as it I don't really like it. I don't skip parts of levels, only rocketjumping or archvilejumping when it is intended in SP.

EDIT:I also press switches that are way up/down, both online and during online play. I especially like standing on top of a switch and hitting it from there. Also, I will jump on something if it makes the way easier (only if it was already cleared and using the normal method would only consume more time). I also stand in doors or close-open them from time to time so they don't close behind me during a fight. Also,forgot the silent BFG trick. I use that one a lot whenever possible.

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I don't consider chaingun tapping to be a quirk, because it comes naturally to anybody who's been in the military (well at least in a branch or MOS where you actually fire machine guns). With a real MG, you almost always fire in small, controlled bursts to conserve ammo and also avoid overheating the barrel (okay that's less of a problem on actual chaingun, but those are really vehicle-mounted weapons). So that was also my approach in Doom from day one.

It wasn't until later that I realized how unreliable the autoaim feature is on vertical axis (and thus came to dread the chaingunners on high ledges, as they seemed to have no such problems...) And it wasn't until much, much later that I learned about how the engine calculates damage.

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I like to walk as well, especially in maps I haven't played before. It let's you take in the atmosphere and appreciate the aesthetic value of the map. I've long suspected this was a problem for people who claim that all the techbase levels in Doom 3 look the same: they were obviously rushing through them and not paying much attention. Probably the speedrunning from the classic dooms burned into their head. To this day I still find myself trying to straferun occasionally in modern shooters and for a while I think I'm actually gaining speed when I'm not. We all have our bad habits.

Can someone explain SR50 to me?

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