Amarande

Laid back community thanks to its age, combined with being primarily a singleplayer experience and normally (barring map bugs) no hard failure state in co-op (modern co-op games suffer especially hard from "one person can make everyone fail" design, kind of ironic since co-op had initially moved away from that after evilness like Battletoads, which tends to lead to people being extremely shy about welcoming new blood to co-op runs unless it's literally right when the game came out). Versatile enough design to make epic maps while being simple enough to work with: its 2.5D implementation feels close enough to 3D during gameplay and all you need to be able to do is draw a blueprint (the Quakes and other newer games suffered badly because they depended heavily on using actual 3D modeling tools to create for, and most of those tools were absolutely insanely expensive. Your choice was $3500 for 3DS Max or $2000 for Maya - and yet for some reason Max was actually preferred. Probably good luck buying either of them in those days even if you had the money, between credit limits, daily debit card limits, and the chance of your bank denying the transaction outright because it looks too out-there!)

Go to your automap and type "iddt" It is a three-way toggle: First time shows the entire map - note that this is different from getting a computer map or using the "idbeholda" cheat to force acquire the item: there's no grey lines to distinguish unexplored areas in iddt mode, and unlike the computer map, in iddt every linedef is shown, even if it has "don't show on automap" flagged in the WAD. Second time adds all Things to the map (how much detail you get here depends on what source port you're running; however, awake monsters are always obvious as you'll see a bunch of thing-icons milling around in places). Third time reverts to the ordinary automap. Note that unlike other cheats, you actually need to be in automap mode at the time for this one to be honored.

So, Aliens work like this. (Do I get in trouble for spoiling nearly 40 year old movies? LOL I guess I'd better spoiler tag the following just in case) In most Alien video games, getting facehugged instantly ends your run, for obvious reasons if you read the spoiler explanation. In Aliens TC, it's somewhat less dire (the facehuggers occupy the lost soul monster slot, using the same attack mechanics - although the fact that they stay in close after first attacking means they attack a lot more often than lost souls, and 3-24 damage is actually a lot with how little health the Aliens TC maps have), but if you know the spoiler explanation, there's still going to be that visceral panic even if you've got god mode on ...

At least MAP28 can be IDDQD'd past if you really get to the point of throwing in the towel (and don't want to pistol start MAP29). It's also apparently a lot less frustrating on lower difficulties because obstacle placement is actually used to effect here (the route is much more direct on skill 1-2). Too bad Doom doesn't let you dial the difficulty up or down in the middle of a playthrough like many modern games do (can you do this with GZDoom console commands maybe? Though you'd have to do it before you entered the level and object placements are set, of course). The same can't be said for many other wads, where the pain point is some stupid two-part door where you have to hit both switches and dash through the opening all in 3 seconds and catching on anything at all means you fail. (Community Chest MAP10, Speed of Doom MAP21, anyone?) (And I'm pretty sure I've even seen one or two where idclip doesn't help either because you need to hit a walkover trigger whilst entering the room in question ... you don't trigger linedefs during idclip, and you won't be able to trigger them with the doors closed after turning it off, either lol).

Especially if you've actually seen the movie or delved into the lore. Facehuggers are one of the few things that actually seriously have given me the creeps even with god mode active, let's put it this way ...

From what I've seen of one or two people using it in DWMC, basically at the beginning of each level you're forced to pick from a randomized list of modifications. Some of them will last for the current map and others you're stuck with for the entire playthrough. According to the ZDoom forums thread I found from the Doomwiki entry, you get these kind every three maps - so if you're playing a Doom 1 or Heretic episode you'll never have to deal with more than 3 or 4 at a time (since you're never going through more than 9 maps - I haven't tried them myself, so I'm not sure if ExM8 will hand you both a sticky card and a temporary one if you went through ExM9); a Doom 2 megawad on the other hand might see you stuck with as many as 11 (if you go through the secret levels, that'd be 10 permanent ones plus the per level card on MAP29 and MAP30). Imagine doing something like Sunlust MAP30 continuous with them? :)

Picked up I Am Sakuya on the Steam summer sale. Tested the WAD out in the stock GZDoom (g4.10.0) on Debian and it seems to be working properly so far, so props for multiplatform friendliness right out of the gate. Might wanna use god mode for this one though unless maybe you find things like Sunder too much of a stroll, it's exactly as bullet-hell as you'd expect of Touhou and even though virtually every non-boss only takes one shot from basically anything to kill, there's also far as I've seen only the one health pickup at the start of each level and absolutely no armor to speak of. Note also that the time-stop ("weapon" #4 with a 1 ammo max) is purely of defensive utility, you can't seem to use it to set up any kind of big wins like you can in, say, Baldur's Gate II (and given that there doesn't seem to really be any cover in most of these maps, it's not of a lot of use to avoid enemies either, lol). On Sakuya's end, at least every weapon pickup seems to come with a maximum load of ammo. Even Cirno Dolls drop so often that being basically a chaingun with a 50 ammo limit doesn't really annoy. Pretty fun TC, I'd say :)

Nice thing about this: I'm presuming you can just buy most of these games and use them with your normal copy of GZDoom (like the classic RPGs that you can use with your regular copy of Dosbox). Which automatically makes every single one of these a permanently Linux-friendly title, I'm presuming :)

Ahhh, old school stuff that doesn't need anything more than Boom-compatible? Let's see ... Besides stuff that's been mentioned, a few things are comfy old standbys. Memento Mori series (including Requiem, which is kind of a successor). TeamTNT stuff. (Icarus, Eternal Doom) Community Chest series. It's also a fun stress smasher to stomp out some slaughter wads (with iddqd of course, I'm not really actually that good at Doom, better at mapping and exploring than actually doing the combat fairly LOL ... so I actually use iddqd a lot, though I draw the line at needing to use idclip) like Sunder or Hell Revealed. I've also seen a few other here-and-theres too, like some Doomer Boards stuff (Lilywhite Lilith was a fun one, to name one in particular). OP: you might want to omit "pk3 or ipk3" there BTW as I'm pretty certain that these formats are inherently specific to ZDoom-style engines :)

Part of it is because, I think, of the unique culture Doom has about speedrunning: a, essentially all glitches, sequence breaks, and exploits are accepted as long as they can be done in the vanilla game (or the intended source port). About the only thing universally considered a crime in Doom speedrunning is attempting to pass off a TAS run without disclosing the fact; b, "category" runs aren't considered to matter unless they break the previous record. In fact in COMPET-N days I'm pretty sure a recording wasn't even accepted unless it set a new WR at the time or was the first submitted for that level and category. The upshot is that if there's a huge enough sequence break, there's effectively an obligation for everyone else to use it everafter - because you can't beat the previous time (and thus even have a valid upload in some circles) without it, and there's really no "no glitches" category short of happy accident of, say, a map15 or map31's other exit not admitting the use of the break (due to each exit being treated as a separate level for competition). If you wanted to see somebody run pell mell through the enemies of the likes of, say, Plutonia map18 or MM2 map23 (one of my favorite maps of MM2)? You're out of luck now, as every serious UV Speed demo will now be a regulation archvile jump or 32-unit-glide five second instawin respectively. That's what I'm getting at, there. UV Max/Fast runs usually aren't subject to this problem, because in most cases, sequence breaks don't really benefit you much there, if at all (if anything they are likely to be a setback, because you still have to go back for all those things you skipped ... which you either may not be able to do at all, or is likely to require you to sequence break back since level mechanics tend not to normally work very well in reverse). As for people excluding Max: it's likely much the same as traditional game speedrunning, where Any% and 100% are also considered separate, and most mainstream speedruns are the former for, IMO, a few reasons: a, game length making it impractical to do a 100% run (especially if you want single-segment): in many cases, the fact that a lot of stuff can be skipped (sequence break or not) is the only reason a recorded speedrun is even a reasonable endeavor in the first place; b, this is aggravated by most games having a lack of convenient recording formats like we're spoiled on here in Doom (imagine how different a world it would be if id hadn't decided to do things like ingame demos or the AVG deathmatch event and thus didn't need the .lmp feature?) so you are compelled to do video recording (which wasn't really all that easy until fairly recently gaming history speaking, and even nowadays is still not all there e.g. some modern titles having DRM embargoed content that the game actively prevents you from recording/streaming); c, lots of games having enough random factors that even deciding just what qualifies as "100%" can be a problem in and of itself. Thus the robust division into categories we have here is pretty unique to Doom (even Heretic didn't really get it for the most part, largely IIRC because of the Heretic demo code having a certain jankiness that Doom's didn't), so I can figure a lot of people only think about any% when it comes to "speedrunning."

In more complex levels, it can sometimes even be difficult to figure out if the jump you just pulled off even is a sequence break or not until later (usually when you suddenly finish the map having missed what seems like way too much of it. But then again how can you be so sure that the part you missed wasn't intended to be optional? Many notable maps especially in the later 00s and onward are of such complexity that even using a level editor to figure out how things work can be a difficult puzzle of itself). In older levels, the wrong strafejump can even cause a softlock (oh what's that, you pulled off the epic skip and got back to the level with your purloined later key to find out ... you're stuck behind a door that was only meant to be opened from the other side somewhere? Or in some kind of pit or other verticality mechanism that was supposed to have been triggered earlier? ... Oops!). Trying to avoid sequence breaks is something I tend to be pretty fastidious about when I make the occasional map, though. Given that I'm usually looking forward to watching people beat it after release, I'm probably too scarred from the past of seeing favorite maps be busted by unexpected sequence break discoveries that often literally mean Any% speed runs are no longer fun to watch (because said sequence break means you skip all the actually fun parts of the map, but competition essentially makes it mandatory that everyone follow the leader and do the skip) so the only recordings of interest become 100% runs or non-competitive longplay/first try videos ...

Final Fantasy XIV Online. The Azure Haired Boy quest in Endwalker. So. A bit of background, in order to activate flight in FFXIV you normally (except for the original areas, which you get flight in all of when you finish the initial level 50 storyline quests, specifically after you see the v2.0 credit roll and turn in that particular quest) have to do it on a zone by zone basis. Flight is unlocked in a zone when you "attune" all the "aether currents" in the area, which is a shorthand that means "do five specific quests in the zone and find all four - or ten, if it's the current expansion zone - green swirly clickies in the area." Finding the green clickies is actually pretty fun and relaxing. Most of the quests are pretty forgettably trivial, too. This one? Hoo boy (no pun intended). So there's this azure-haired boy in the third zone of Endwalker who's run away from his mom and doesn't trust anyone (read: you) trying to rescue him. So you find him a couple times, he runs away. Then the evil stage kicks in. You have to click a spot on the ground to initiate the quest stage, after which the boy appears and starts moving. He has an angled telegraph in front of him that lets you know his field of vision. Occasionally, he'll stop and pause and turn around to look behind him to see if you're following. If you get seen? "I TOLD YOU TO STOP FOLLOWING ME!" and he despawns, and the "you failed" sound effect (which can in and of itself be somewhat of a PTSD trigger for the seasoned FFXIV player, especially if you tried Palace of the Dead a time or two, lol) is played, and you have to go back to the spot on the ground that you initially clicked and do the whole thing over. You also fail if you fall too far behind him (more on this in a bit). The chase is somewhat long and he trolls you a lot, to the point that unless you know a specific detail as to how FFXIV's engine works, and take advantage of the fact that this is an overworld quest (in other words, you don't actually need to directly follow along his route, that is for masochists ... you just need to keep him in targeting range to avoid the fail, and be close enough to make him move through all the stages of the challenge, but if you climb through the nearby rubble craftily you can actually mostly avoid even giving him LoS at all on you, let alone when he's facing you), you will want to tear your hair out. And when Endwalker was new, there was ... kind of a problem with server congestion. Like, a severe problem with server congestion almost unheard of in gaming except when Diablo III and the Diablo II remaster came out. That meant you couldn't even take a little break to cool down after frustration (such as after trying to follow him the straightforward way over and over), because if you logged out at all it was literal hours before you could get back on (some people with 9-5 jobs found they couldn't even play at all many nights because it was literally time for bed by the time they managed to log in). It was either keep hammering at it till you got it, or give up for the day. Evil. Pure evil. Oh, and you couldn't just give up on it, because the community would expect you to have flight in every zone as basic "are you even not complete doggie doo at the game?" competence, e.g. forget about doing any Endwalker Hunt trains if you couldn't fly everywhere, and these days those are the normal way that people get their weekly gear currency, I should probably note ... So even more pure, unadulterated evil. And I remember when I was young and innocent and thought the most evil that puzzles ever got in video games was the switches gauntlet in Icarus MAP08. Oh, was I ever wrong ...

32-bit machines, basically never. 32-bit apps, on the other hand, you run almost every time you play a game (outside of native Linux FOSS titles and some really recent stuff - remember that it's always been in game devs' best interest to support the widest range of systems they can - Crysis notwithstanding - so games habitually released as 32-bit until well after 64-bit OS had become ubiquitous). It's why you have to do the --add-architecture=i386 thing with dpkg before you can even install steam, after all. Which really makes the big question how long OS support for 32-bit apps will be retained in the long run before a host of old games joins the 16-bit Windows game era in having to do a bunch of technological Twister to be able to run (thankfully, the latter was brief, because it is indeed a pain in the butt to run 16-bit Windows games in the 64-bit era). Most Linux distros don't actually even distribute full 32-bit installation anymore AFAIK (so the i386 repo is basically only even kept as it is just because of things like Steam and zsnes that need it). Windows has the WoW compatibility layer for 32-bits, but who knows how long they'll keep that? We're basically dependent on enterprise pressure (via old bespoke apps) for that, seeing Microsoft really wants to move into the modern age where you get your stuff from an app store (even Linux is this by default, it's really just a package manager after all) and devs in general seem to want to move things server side. In fact, I've sometimes suggested that the main reason why "full fat" consumer PCs even are still a going concern at all is pretty much because of games ... if it wasn't for that, or if Cloud Gaming ever actually worked, we'd have pretty much moved entirely to the cloud by now and it'd be painfully expensive to get anything higher end than a netbook (it's starting to become a nervous topic given the whole China situation and apparently the US wanting to have TSMC glassed before they'll let Beijing have it if it comes to that, which would likely send the prices of even the most basic electronics soaring and really pretty much mean what we currently see as a standard home PC move back to being a pricey enterprise fixture like the 80s). And app stores (Steam actually being a rare counterexample thus far) do not generally support legacy anything very well. In fact, you look at Google and Apple and the move is towards "App Store Improvement" which means that any app that isn't updated on a regular enough basis will be dropped from the store - whether or not that app actually needs updating is apparently not a concern, which in turn even means more or less an official if tacit stance that the legacy idea of a "one and done" release game might be over with (all applications are now expected to be maintained long term which means that pretty much only liveservice/social media/Gacha type games are even going to be viable going forward, in such a paradigm).

Not to mention a security issue in general, as was Java - Flash IIRC actually got a slight renaissance in its dying years even despite the Apple action, which I seem to recall actually got a fair amount of negative reception, because browser makers got together to kick Java to the curb (to the point of killing off old style Plugins altogether to do it; whether that's a good idea was debatable, especially since browser makers seem to be trying to kneecap addons in general - presumably because of Microsoft and Google's reliance on advertising and the fact that "addons" these days mostly seems to mean "uBO" ... LOL). The only sad thing about it is that Java and Flash both had to die for the same reason: you just can't have a language that can do full-featured applications and also use it as a Web applet language and expect not to have the galloping security disaster both chronically experienced (I mean, surprise pikachu face time here really ... you have a language, that has full access to the local system context, and also expects to be able to run stuff off of web pages that you don't have control over! Might as well just have browsers run embedded .EXE files on webpages!). That is indeed sad, though, because it suggests that client-side webapps are actually impossible; they HAVE to be server side, and thus further empower the Blankety-as-a-Service mentality that pushes everything into The Cloud and takes away our autonomy and puts Big Tech in control every time, all the time :(

Yeah, Doomworld seems to have always been a big exception. I'm not sure what our special sauce is though. Like go to most other games and it's ... well ... we need to do something to combat Radical Laconicism soon I think, before it devours what's left of human conversation! XD Also I don't seem to really see the IRCs around anymore. There's Discords I suppose, although Discord itself never really feels quite the same as IRC either (I've been known to blame certain aspects of how Discord handles DMs but I'm not sure if it tells the whole story lol).