are there near-Vanilla deathmatches out there?

[swapjim]

I'm looking for a close to Vanilla deathmatch experience. The only limitation I want to remove is the frame rate.

Is there such a thing out there?

I just tried Zandronum with Doomseeker, and it was awesome to have more weapons, jumping, looking up and down, and the such, but I'd like to experience what Doomers played back in the 90s.

I've read that the IWAD maps sucked for multiplayer, and I'm ok to play on custom maps just as long as it's a (mostly) Vanilla experience.

[fraggle]

swapjim said:

The only limitation I want to remove is

Heh, I have to admit it's really funny to me how many variants I've seen of this now. So many people want "the authentic vanilla experience, except for - ...". Usually it's one of: high resolution, freelook, uncapped framerate, although I've also seen a few more unusual variants.

If you're genuinely curious about what Doom was like to play as vanilla in the '90s, have you considered that we didn't have uncapped framerate, it was still a great game to play, and y'know, maybe just bite the bullet and give Chocolate Doom a try?

[Doomkid]

My buddy MadDog and I love to have chocolate/vanilla DM every now and then, using the -dup 2 command is great to reduce latency, but the framerate is lowered and it sounds like that's not what you're after.

Using any of the 3 multiplayer ports you can still do a decent bit of tweaking to the server to get it feeling quite vanilla. Turn off freelook, jumping, crouching, turn item respawn off, double ammo on, make actors infinitely tall and reduce air control to get a "pure" OS deathmatch.

I love to play both NS and OS. Your best bet finding oldschool dm is here: http://www.geocities.ws/doomkid/doomchat.html but you can also find some great matches by joining #deathmatch on Zandronum or #zdplayers on Zdaemon.

Hope this helps!

[swapjim]

fraggle said:

Heh, I have to admit it's really funny to me how many variants I've seen of this now. So many people want "the authentic vanilla experience, except for - ...". Usually it's one of: high resolution, freelook, uncapped framerate, although I've also seen a few more unusual variants.

If you're genuinely curious about what Doom was like to play as vanilla in the '90s, have you considered that we didn't have uncapped framerate, it was still a great game to play, and y'know, maybe just bite the bullet and give Chocolate Doom a try?

Oh yes, increased resolution too! Thanks, I forgot that!

I've played Doom in DOS. The resolution was the biggest turn off for me. I was in a bliss when I discovered Doom95, years later. I was ecstatic when I went online and discovered Zdoom: no more frame cap! Amazing!

I guess I'm a "keeping the essence" guy but not a purist.

And yes, I would settle for Chocolate Doom. I tried the servers at master.chocolate-doom.org but there are no players in there.

Hmm... Having a GUI app like Doomseeker that can put a filter and list only Chocolate and Crispy servers, and the players in them, would be VERY handy. I need to google this. Maybe there is something.

Doomkid said:

My buddy MadDog and I love to have chocolate/vanilla DM every now and then, using the -dup 2 command is great to reduce latency, but the framerate is lowered and it sounds like that's not what you're after.

Using any of the 3 multiplayer ports you can still do a decent bit of tweaking to the server to get it feeling quite vanilla. Turn off freelook, jumping, crouching, turn item respawn off, double ammo on, make actors infinitely tall and reduce air control to get a "pure" OS deathmatch.

I love to play both NS and OS. Your best bet finding oldschool dm is here: http://www.geocities.ws/doomkid/doomchat.html but you can also find some great matches by joining #deathmatch on Zandronum or #zdplayers on Zdaemon.

Hope this helps!

It does! I'll check the link and the settings later, but for now: can I join you guys?

[Marcaek]

I'd recommend something like the "brit" series of wads for vanilla dm if you're going to play it at all.

You can find them and more here http://www.best-ever.org/wads

We're not adverse to playing more vanilla styled DM on Zan btw, just need to ask

[Doomkid]

swapjim said:

It does! I'll check the link and the settings later, but for now: can I join you guys?

Oh definitely, each DM chatroom is always happy to see new faces!

Just in case you haven't, check this out for even more info: https://www.doomworld.com/vb/post/1549272

[duh]

fraggle said:

Heh, I have to admit it's really funny to me how many variants I've seen of this now. So many people want "the authentic vanilla experience, except for - ...". Usually it's one of: high resolution, freelook, uncapped framerate, although I've also seen a few more unusual variants.

Freelook breaks vanilla gameplay rules. If the player wants to see what is above, the player has to step back, not looking up or down.

If that rule was set due to hardware limitations or not, that have yet to be found out. The former seems to be the case about framerate and resolution.

[Decay]

Other than a very very very small number of people (ie Doomkid and a couple of his friends) nobody plays real vanilla DM anymore, for the main reason that most vanilla limitations (or features I guess) suck. Tears flow strong with vanilla blood-brightness, automatic weapon-switch, apparently uncapped framerate is a big-thing now (wasn't up til now for whatever reason), BLOCKMAP, lack of crosshairs, etc, etc etc. In general the closest thing you'll get to vanilla across ports is the pretend-vanilla "old-school" 1v1 servers that add many features to original Doom 1v1. If you're okay with free-look, you'll find a good "os" style with most ffa-dm servers too. If you're okay with jumping, even more DM servers will catch your eye. I'd also recommend giving ctf a go as well, since that's pretty old school too

[Doomkid]

Oh yeah Vanilla blood brightness shits me off badly, I actually made a bloodfix.wad that makes it translucent in vanilla/choco because being blind 60% of the time is frustrating as hell. Same goes for auto weapon switch, honestly, especially in maps where the author didn't have the courtesy to put them near walls/out of the way. RL on the floor in the middle of an open room = Doomkid killing himself then raging hard. The tears flow strong indeed.

[capodecima]

Decay said:

Other than a very very very small number of people (ie Doomkid and a couple of his friends) nobody plays real vanilla DM anymore, for the main reason that most vanilla limitations (or features I guess) suck. Tears flow strong with vanilla blood-brightness, automatic weapon-switch, apparently uncapped framerate is a big-thing now (wasn't up til now for whatever reason), BLOCKMAP, lack of crosshairs, etc, etc etc. In general the closest thing you'll get to vanilla across ports is the pretend-vanilla "old-school" 1v1 servers that add many features to original Doom 1v1. If you're okay with free-look, you'll find a good "os" style with most ffa-dm servers too. If you're okay with jumping, even more DM servers will catch your eye. I'd also recommend giving ctf a go as well, since that's pretty old school too

bla bla
pretty sure there is many ppl playing chocollate/vanilla doom online, we just dont know.

[Doomkid]

capodecima said:

bla bla

How was a helpful post deserving of a "bla bla" response? Nothing he said was untrue or rude or anything. What gives? Edit: wait, was it because he said some aspects of vanilla suck? I mean I wouldn't describe it that way, but he's not wrong, blood brightness is something that's genuinely good to be able to toggle.

You can see all active online Choco games through its built-in browser and there are rarely (but not never) people online. Maybe some LAN games going on across the world, but rarely net play that wasn't set up by myself or another OS doomer from #dmstuff or perhaps #nightmare.

I've told you countless times man, being rude for no goddamn reason is not a good look.

XCOPY said:

Freelook breaks vanilla gameplay rules. If the player wants to see what is above, the player has to step back, not looking up or down.

If that rule was set due to hardware limitations or not, that have yet to be found out. The former seems to be the case about framerate and resolution.

I forgot where I read it, but I think it's because John Carmack thought the "stretching" that happens where you use freelook in software was ugly so he disabled it. I think I read it on TCRF but if anyone has the exact sauce I'd be grateful.

[kuchitsu]

Decay said:

Tears flow strong with vanilla blood-brightness

?
Wait, are you saying that the red screen damage effect is weaker in ZDaemon or something?

[Doomkid]

It depends on the server flags, but vanilla deathmatch has very intense blood brightness that lasts a longer duration.

[Decay]

kuchitsu said:

?
Wait, are you saying that the red screen damage effect is weaker in ZDaemon or something?

Yes, or at least it was when I played. IIRC it was like 90% vanilla or something.

[capodecima]

Zdaemon has lowered the blood brightness. But its not possible disable it nor there is flag for it. :)

[fraggle]

swapjim said:

And yes, I would settle for Chocolate Doom. I tried the servers at master.chocolate-doom.org but there are no players in there.

Understandable, but Chocolate (and Vanilla) game setup works differently to the purpose-designed multiplayer ports like Odamex and Zandronum. You have to find people to play with and coordinate to set up a game - you can't just "hop into" a game while it's already in progress. You could connect to one of the dedicated servers and sit there to see if someone else joined but it's probably not a very good strategy.

This is how it worked in the '90s too, except back then you had to find IRL friends to play against, or dial up to BBSes or DWANGO with your modem and pay for every minute of expensive phone time you were using :)

capodecima said:

bla bla
pretty sure there is many ppl playing chocollate/vanilla doom online, we just dont know.

I'm actually able to give some statistics about this. Every time you create a new server, unless you specify -privateserver, it tries to register with the Chocolate Doom master server. Yesterday I received "add server" requests from 48 different unique IP addresses. Those are all servers people started. Most "add server" requests get rejected because the people running the servers have not made them publicly available (ie. they're behind firewalls etc. - possibly just run to set up LAN games).

In the same day, 295 people sent "Query" requests, presumably viewing the server list from the browser in chocolate-setup. Probably some of those are people looking for other players to play against!

Longer term: in March I received add requests from servers at 669 unique IP addresses, and query requests from 4007 unique IP addresses.

[Doomkid]

Thanks for sharing those stats fraggle, it's nice to know that Choco Doom does have a fair amount of people interested in multiplayer. Where the heck are all these people - They need to get on IRC and get in on some fragfests!

[kuchitsu]

Wow, I wasn't aware of the blood thing. Kind of a shocking revelation.

[fraggle]

Doomkid said:

Thanks for sharing those stats fraggle, it's nice to know that Choco Doom does have a fair amount of people interested in multiplayer. Where the heck are all these people - They need to get on IRC and get in on some fragfests!

In all honesty I was surprised the stats were this high too. I don't actively track them. I've not put a lot of effort into Chocolate Doom's multiplayer side and maybe I should do more work to encourage more people to play. There are a couple of things I could potentially do to improve it.

[swapjim]

We're not adverse to playing more vanilla styled DM on Zan btw, just need to ask

Where do I ask?

Doomkid said:

Just in case you haven't, check this out for even more info: https://www.doomworld.com/vb/post/1549272

I read this post and I just realized that the Choco setup program has a menu driven way to find servers that are listed on the master server. A lot easier than pasting the address on the command line! Would be convinient to be able to see the number of players in each server, so I wont have to try them all to see where there might be a player.

Decay said:

Other than a very very very small number of people (ie Doomkid and a couple of his friends) nobody plays real vanilla DM anymore, for the main reason that most vanilla limitations (or features I guess) suck. Tears flow strong with vanilla blood-brightness, automatic weapon-switch, apparently uncapped framerate is a big-thing now (wasn't up til now for whatever reason), BLOCKMAP, lack of crosshairs, etc, etc etc. In general the closest thing you'll get to vanilla across ports is the pretend-vanilla "old-school" 1v1 servers that add many features to original Doom 1v1. If you're okay with free-look, you'll find a good "os" style with most ffa-dm servers too. If you're okay with jumping, even more DM servers will catch your eye. I'd also recommend giving ctf a go as well, since that's pretty old school too

Even if I don't like crossairs (vanilla Doom has auto-aim), jumping, and freelook, I'd probably don't want the screen to be red all the time. Nor switch to any weapon I walk over.

Freelook breaks vanilla gameplay rules. If the player wants to see what is above, the player has to step back, not looking up or down.

If that rule was set due to hardware limitations or not, that have yet to be found out. The former seems to be the case about framerate and resolution.

I was just about to write that freelook, jumping/ducking, and additional weapons change the gameplay rules and that's the reason I'd rather play without them, but then I thought that lower resolution and frame rate can also change gameplay rules.

Maybe freelook was out of the engine to save processing power. Duke Nukem 3D, a game that went out in 1996, and had a 2.5D engine that allowed you to freelook, jump, duck, fly, destroy things in the world, and a lot more, required a 486 and 8MB RAM. The recommented system specs were 486DX/66 and 16MB RAM. Compare that to Doom (1993), which required a 386 and 4MB RAM, and recommended a 486.

Doomkid said:

I forgot where I read it, but I think it's because John Carmack thought the "stretching" that happens where you use freelook in software was ugly so he disabled it. I think I read it on TCRF but if anyone has the exact sauce I'd be grateful.

I'll continue from my previous quote and say that I couldn't play Duke Nukem 3D because it stretched very awkwardly. I was mad at 3D Realms for releasing a game wich such an awkward feature. It would be better not to have freelook at all. Modern ports of Duke (the Build engine) don't have this problem.

Also, Doomkid, what IRC channel do I need to be in to try some vanilla (or vanilla-mostly) dm? #dmstuff?

[Decay]

swapjim said:

Where do I ask?

#deathmatch is a good start, maybe. Certain individuals like Marcaek can point you in the right direction.

swapjim said:

Even if I don't like crossairs (vanilla Doom has auto-aim), jumping, and freelook, I'd probably don't want the screen to be red all the time. Nor switch to any weapon I walk over.

I was just about to write that freelook, jumping/ducking, and additional weapons change the gameplay rules and that's the reason I'd rather play without them, but then I thought that lower resolution and frame rate can also change gameplay rules.

The good thing about these things is that they are entirely optional. If a FFA server allows freelook, that simply means you CAN use it, but you don't have to. Similarly, you don't need to set up a crosshair, etc, but I'm sure you knew that anyway.

swapjim said:

Also, Doomkid, what IRC channel do I need to be in to try some vanilla (or vanilla-mostly) dm? #dmstuff?

#dmstuff (for chocolate/odamex mostly; Doomkid himself is the main exception), #zdplayers (for zdaemon, don't mention odamex tho or you'll get banned), or #zandronum or #deathmatch (for zan and maybe some niche people will play other ports).

[swapjim]

Decay said:

The good thing about these things is that they are entirely optional. If a FFA server allows freelook, that simply means you CAN use it, but you don't have to. Similarly, you don't need to set up a crosshair, etc, but I'm sure you knew that anyway.

Yes, of course. But if I don't use those features in a server that everybody else does, I'm at a disadvantage.

Here is an extreme example to make it clear: the server has disabled the autoaim because it has the crossairs and freelook enabled. Autoaim is NECESSARY for vertical aiming and it helps considerably in horizontal aiming too, since there is no crossair. So if I disable crosair and freelook, I may not even be able to aim people!

Gameplay features are not like dynamic lights that I can simply turn off without losing the edge.

I'll check those channels and report back. Thanks for the help!

[Decay]

swapjim said:

Yes, of course. But if I don't use those features in a server that everybody else does, I'm at a disadvantage.

Here is an extreme example to make it clear: the server has disabled the autoaim because it has the crossairs and freelook enabled. Autoaim is NECESSARY for vertical aiming and it helps considerably in horizontal aiming too, since there is no crossair. So if I disable crosair and freelook, I may not even be able to aim people!

Gameplay features are not like dynamic lights that I can simply turn off without losing the edge.

I'll check those channels and report back. Thanks for the help!

Autoaim is never forced off by servers that enable freelook. That is purely clientside. There are lots of players who don't use freelook in dm servers that enable it.

Good luck!

[terminus12]

I am on doomkids irc server sometimes and I like some good vanilla style deathmatch and dueling. Unfortunately I can be a little in and out because life, for example I haven't been on a lot recently because of finals and end of school. However, that will be done soon and I'll be on a lot more so if your ever on doomkids irc channel (quakenet.org, #DMStuff) hit me up for a game or two.