Do People Own The Ultimate Doom More than Doom?

[NiTROACTiVE]

I have been thinking about this for a while, but I have the feeling that people own The Ultimate Doom more than Doom.

I'm saying this because that if you go to id Software's official website, you would see that The Ultimate Doom is there, but there is no Doom avalible to buy there.

If this is true, then was it because Doom was only avalible by mail order, while The Ultimate Doom was avalible by retail? Post your thoughts here.

[[PROTOTYPE]]

Ultimate Doom= Doom version 1.9
'regular' Doom= versions 1.0 up to 1.8

Needless to say, a higher version means more bugfixes, more stability, and in Ultimate Doom's case, a brand new episode.

So it's obvious that there's no point in retaining an obsolete version of Doom, a.k.a. the 'regular' Doom.

If you like playing antiquated versions, though, then you might want to consider playing the alphas and betas.

[HavoX]

NitroactiveStudios said:

If this is true, then was it because Doom was only available by mail order, while The Ultimate Doom was available by retail?

Yep. The Ultimate Doom marked the first time Doom was officially available for retail purchase. Before that happened, the only way to buy a registered copy of Doom legally was by phone or mail order, as you mentioned.

[Dragonsbrethren]

[PROTOTYPE] said:
Ultimate Doom= Doom version 1.9

This is not true. Doom can be updated to 1.9 without upgrading it to Ultimate Doom.

I'm sure more people own Ultimate Doom than Doom. Not only because of the retail vs. mail order thing, but also because id released a patch to upgrade Doom to Ultimate Doom if you already owned the mail order version. If you're not counting people who upgraded their mail order version, also keep in mind how long Ultimate Doom has been sold at retail vs. how long the game was available for mail order.

[Gez]

Also, anybody who owns Doom (non-Ultimate) can get a free and legit patch to turn it into The Ultimate Doom.

Given that, it'd make no sense to keep selling the older version. People prefer to get full, complete packages, that's why old games are bundled with their extensions in "GotY" versions. The few people who might want to play an older version of the game will be knowledgeable enough to find the LaDoPaTo by themselves. The rest would not necessarily find the update patch, and they'd feel gypped. Some people might also start to believe that said update patch is warez or something. It'd be needlessly confusing.



Same thing about Heretic vs. Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders.

[40oz]

Since Doom can be upgraded to Ultimate Doom for free, it wouldn't make much sense for most people to have Doom and not Ultimate Doom.

[[PROTOTYPE]]

40oz said:

Since Doom can be upgraded to Ultimate Doom for free, it wouldn't make much sense for most people to have Doom and not Ultimate Doom.

Because basically UDoom is just Doom 1.9 with one extra epidode.

Dragonsbrethren said:

...Doom can be updated to 1.9 without upgrading it to Ultimate Doom.

Why would anybody do that?

[Foodles]

Before I joined these forums I thought that Ultimate Doom was the original Doom

[Dragonsbrethren]

[PROTOTYPE] said:
Why would anybody do that?

The same reason why someone would update Doom 1.2 to Doom 1.666. Doom 1.9 predates Ultimate Doom by a couple months.

[Archy]

[PROTOTYPE] said:

Because basically UDoom is just Doom 1.9 with one extra epidode.

Wrong, Udoom makes severe changes to lost souls behavior as well as modifying various pre-E4 maps, such as E1M1. Also, Doom 1.9 (not UDoom) uses Doom 2's v1.9 executable, which is the same as the Doom shareware executable. The executable update in UDoom is the reason for the lost soul change.

[Dragonsbrethren]

Archy said:

[...]modifying various pre-E4 maps, such as E1M1.

Only E1M1, actually:

[Snakes]

[PROTOTYPE] said:

Because basically UDoom is just Doom 1.9 with one extra epidode.


Why would anybody do that?

You know, you remind me of a young yellowmadness54.

[Bucket]

Didn't they get rid of the E1 swastika in 1.9? Also, I believe there were other changes to the game not related to levels, like tweaking the music tracks.

[Dragonsbrethren]

Bucket said:

Didn't they get rid of the E1 swastika in 1.9? Also, I believe there were other changes to the game not related to levels, like tweaking the music tracks.

1.666:

[Technician]

If it weren't for Ultimate Doom, I wouldn't have owned Doom in any hard-copy fashion. Doom 2 was my first paid-for Doom game.

[Grazza]

Another engine difference between Doom(2).exe 1.9 and Ultimate Doom is the altered tag 666 behaviour in E1M8, E2M8 and E3M8, which broke some wads, most notably uac_dead and AliensTC (the latter easily fixed with dehacked).

In terms of owning actual disks, I'd guess that most people who play Doom nowadays own the Ultimate Doom CD, rather than the mail-order disks, though that may well have been different in the Doom community in the mid- to late 1990s. (For about a year and a half, the only way to get E2 and E3 was by mail-order.) Personally, I first played E2 and E3 when Ultimate Doom came out (and thus after Doom2), as E1 hadn't sufficiently inspired me to want to buy the next two episodes.

[NiTROACTiVE]

Bucket said:

Didn't they get rid of the E1 swastika in 1.9?

According to this page, The swastika from E1M4 was changed to a different shape in v1.4.

Or maybe the video above this post is the one that's right.

[Vordakk]

Threads that ask questions with obvious answers are starting to become quite frequent these days.

[Dragonsbrethren]

NitroactiveStudios said:

According to this page, The swastika from E1M4 was changed to a different shape in v1.4.

I'm sure that's accurate; nes's videos don't include the beta patches.

[hex11]

[PROTOTYPE] said:

Why would anybody do that?

Bug fixes without the heresy that is E4. :P

[Darkman 4]

It's been so long since the original Doom was offered that I'm sure most Doomers have The Ultimate Doom. I bet the amount of people that bought it The Ultimate Doom from Steam alone are more than the amount of people that still have the original Doom.

[Grazza]

Unlikely. I don't think you appreciate just how huge Doom was in the mid-1990s.

[Darkman 4]

Grazza said:

Unlikely. I don't think you appreciate just how huge Doom was in the mid-1990s.

I should've clarified; I meant the amount of copies of original Doom that are still being used compared to the amount of copies of The Ultimate Doom that have been sold on Steam. I'm sure that the original Doom sold a lot more than Ultimate Doom has on Steam.

[printz]

HavoX said:

Yep. The Ultimate Doom marked the first time Doom was officially available for retail purchase. Before that happened, the only way to buy a registered copy of Doom legally was by phone or mail order, as you mentioned.

What a weird, obscure way to distribute copies. Back then I couldn't imagine games being sold otherwise than retail. So if Ultimate Doom hadn't appeared, I would have been left without Doom 1.

[DoomUK]

Vordakk said:

Threads that ask questions with obvious answers are starting to become quite frequent these days.

After 19 years, we're not doing too badly on the "stuff to talk about" front. ;)

[Grain of Salt]

[Gez]

printz said:

What a weird, obscure way to distribute copies. Back then I couldn't imagine games being sold otherwise than retail.

That was the point of shareware. Let people distribute the game as much as they want (using BBS, or just copying floppies for friends who'll do the same and so on; the Internet wasn't as big as it is now), then if they liked it they find out they can order more of the same this way.

Of course, if you were, say, a European kid with barely enough English notions to understand the Doom menus and text screens, the idea of making an overseas phone call in a foreign language to buy a game was completely ludicrous. So you kinda asked your friends who had a pirated version of the full game instead.

[GreyGhost]

Vordakk said:

Threads that ask questions with obvious answers are starting to become quite frequent these days.

Which is more fun - browsing the wiki or watching fanboys argue over minutiae?

[purist]

For a long time I only had Doom 2 and the Jaguar version of Doom so E4 (and the different versions of PC Doom levels) was relatively new for me.

[Maes]

Vordakk said:

Threads that ask questions with obvious answers are starting to become quite frequent these days.

What is your opinion on threads that appear periodically or that every newb asks, e.g. what's the most used source port, or preferred IWAD, or episode, or control method, or weapon?