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Eggman

Is MouseTurn Cheating?

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Hello,

I'm a newbie when it comes to Doom. I always knew about the game but haven't played it until recently and immediately got hooked.
I first played Brutal Doom but I soon wanted to experience the real Doom feeling and I switched to some ports that don't change too much.
Most of these ports (I use ZDoom) allow fine keyboard and mouse tuning. I don't like mouselook but I like to be able to turn with the mouse. Keyboard seems a bit too stiff.

But I loaded a plain Doom.exe into DOSBox and I guess that's as vanilla as it gets. I've noticed there's no controls settings and while the mouse can turn, it also moves, as in walks. Also, strafing seems to only be used with the alt key.

Was mouse used in Doom for turning like we use it today? Am I gaining an advantage the game didn't count on by using mouse like that? Also, what do you think of ZDoom as a port?

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Eggman said:

Also, strafing seems to only be used with the alt key.

No, there are dedicated keys for strafing, like in any modern game. SETUP.EXE has input settings, but it doesn't allow you to disable mouse axis Y (walking forward and backward). People used a third party utility for this.

Is it cheating? I think controls are a big deal, so disabling the Y axis is just a measure against badly implemented mouse support. Just like editing the config file to increase sensitivity.

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By the way, are enemies on ZDoom easier to kill than in vanilla Doom? I played a bit on DOSBox and they seemed to inflict more damage on Ultra Violence than ZDoom, or that's just because I didn't use mouse to aim there.

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Eggman said:

By the way, are enemies on ZDoom easier to kill than in vanilla Doom? I played a bit on DOSBox and they seemed to inflict more damage on Ultra Violence than ZDoom, or that's just because I didn't use mouse to aim there.


I don't know the specifics, but I remember reading somewhere that the damage calculation in Zdoom and vanilla Doom is slightly different.

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No, turning with the mouse isn't cheating.


Enemies are very slightly easier to kill in ZDoom because ZDoom fixes bugs that make it harder to hit enemies. Mostly it's glitches in the hitscan code, here are a few examples:
http://doomwiki.org/wiki/Flawed_collision_detection
http://doomwiki.org/wiki/Hitscan_attacks_hit_invisible_barriers_in_large_open_areas
http://doomwiki.org/wiki/Blockmap_overflow

Also (by default) you're not blocked by monsters flying ten kilometers above you, and you can't be bitten by demons lurking at the bottom of a chasm you're overlooking, and other oddities of vanilla that make the game a bit harder than it looks like it should.

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Gez said:

No, turning with the mouse isn't cheating.


Enemies are very slightly easier to kill in ZDoom because ZDoom fixes bugs that make it harder to hit enemies. Mostly it's glitches in the hitscan code, here are a few examples:
http://doomwiki.org/wiki/Flawed_collision_detection
http://doomwiki.org/wiki/Hitscan_attacks_hit_invisible_barriers_in_large_open_areas
http://doomwiki.org/wiki/Blockmap_overflow

Also (by default) you're not blocked by monsters flying ten kilometers above you, and you can't be bitten by demons lurking at the bottom of a chasm you're overlooking, and other oddities of vanilla that make the game a bit harder than it looks like it should.


I'll stick with ZDoom then.

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To the op.

No not cheating. If you are running vanilla Doom and want to change the controls, run setup.exe and
Run it in Dosbox.

Have a mouse is an advantage, not being a cheater.

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If you watch the built in demos you will notice the player is using the mouse and there's vertical movement. Also if I'm not mistaken the readme file says using the mouse is recommended.

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The mouse was absolutely used for turning back in the 90s in deathwatch and other modes. There's nothing "cheating" about it at all. If I remember correctly some of the IWAD demos were even recorded with the mouse.

EDIT: Confirmed, this is the LMPIT analysis of doom.wad DEMO1:

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Piper Maru said:

If John Romero finds out you're using mouse turn in Doom, he will make you his bitch. Truth.

False: Played against John Romero and beat him, the use of the mouse (and thus mouse turning) was allowed.

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Using the mouse to turn is not cheating, using the mouse to turn while performing SR50 is generally considered to be cheating.

If you are playing Chocolate Doom and you dislike vertical movement moving you forwards and backwards you can disable it. Note that back then, disabling vertical movement might have been considered cheating (back in the old days of Vanilla deathmatch).

Gentlepoke said:

False: Played against John Romero and beat him, the use of the mouse (and thus mouse turning) was allowed.


Was it John Romero who cheated via shift+iddt?

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There were dedicated strafing keys and mouse turning ever since DOOM.EXE v0.99. Ah you meant turning without that pesky forward/backwards movement...well, the oldschool "solution" was to put your mouse between rails and constrain movement to the X-axis alone.

Or remove the Y-axis tracking sensor from inside the mouse (it was easy, with the old opto-mechanical ball mice).

Or condition/train yourself to move the mouse only horizontally.

But NOVERT.EXE? That's cheatin' on puttin' in the hard work, son!

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I remember reading in some science & consumer electronics news magazine for kids a "how to" put axis toggles on a mouse. You'd use an x-acto knife to fit your two new mouse buttons (this basically invented thumb buttons) and wire it so that when the button was pressed, the contact was cut between the tracker and the rest of the mouse.

Instead of being presented as a way of playing Doom like a boss, the pitch was that it'd help draw perfect squares in Paintbrush! :)

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I wonder if anyone actually used the mouse for precise movement. It seems like the strangest idea ever, at least for a game like Doom.

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Da Werecat said:

I wonder if anyone actually used the mouse for precise movement. It seems like the strangest idea ever, at least for a game like Doom.

It helps a lot compared to the left and right keys. The keys build up speed slowly at first, but the mouse turning speed is your choice, and when playing Doom, precise and fast movement is an advantage.

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Da Werecat said:

I meant walking, not turning.

Oh. Well that lookspring is really annoying though, so yeah. It is weird.

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Eggman said:

I'll stick with ZDoom then.


Well, ZDoom is not the only port that fixes those things. For example, infinitely tall actors/things can also be disabled in Eternity, 3DGE, Risen3D, Doomsday or PrBoom+. Just saying.

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I'm curious if anyone has ever actually used y-axis walking.

When you get the hang of mouse-walking in Wolf3d, the player becomes astonishingly fast and powerful. So much so that the original maps become very easy and tedious. BJ accelerates instantly, so moving him feels like just flicking a mouse cursor around.

Witchaven becomes pretty interesting when you use y-axis walking to dance in and out of melee range with enemies. That game had so much wasted potential.

I wonder if this could be a part of tyson technique.

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Mastering Y-axis walking with a proportional control to the point of turning it into perfectly controllable Y-axis running and performing comparably to speedrunners or deathmatchers would require a major adjustment effort, compared to standard "video game" instant controls.

I'm not saying it's impossible (certainly more possible than trying to match mouse + keyboard performance with a gamepad...), but it would require the very least someone proficient in flight sims or R/C heli flying.

However, on helis the cyclic control controls aft/forward movement and strafing (actually, "rolling"), while turning requires another set of controls (pedals), so you'd still need an additional set of controls for strafing or turning (depending on which one you mapped to the mouse).

It's no wonder that the very few attempts at producing a pure FPS in arcade form experimented with a lot of weird and complicated control schemes. IMO, that's telling us something about the simplicity + efficiency of mouse + keyboard.

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- My mouse is acting weird. I think it's time to replace it.
- I'm sure fixing it would be easier than trying to match mouse + keyboard performance with a gamepad!

- I wanna grab a lunch.
- I hope no gamepads are involved, they're so inefficient!

- Wishes are hopping and trees are wet.
- Why don't you try and beat some speedrunning records with a gamepad first?

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I use Y-axis movement to move very slowly. It's useful when backing off from Demons just 10 centimetres. I first saw it in some nightmare demos where the player was moving very little to avoid the bites.

I find it a nice feature and I don't get why it's so disliked. I do however choose to use just the keyboard when I have to move on a thin bridge. It's a small handicap but it doesn't happen all the time.

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Ribbiks said:

can it?

VGA said:

Nope.


Mmmh, I always thought it could. Thanks for the correction.

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