Thoughts on Pistol Start?
>doom guy wears glovesjust noticed it for the first time
I hate that damn pistol. But I love having to scramble for gear again.
The original levels appear to be balanced for pistol start, despite you actually bringing in all the weapons from earlier levels.
It’s a pea shooter no matter the difficulty, and I’d rather start with the shotgun.
>>11248182the only start
The levels are all tested and designed to be possible with it because you lose your weapons when you die. I think it's purist obsessive autism but do what you want depending on your personality type.
>>11248218Balanced around pistol start in that every level is designed to be perfectly beatable that way, yes. But in terms of general play the game was definitely designed around you using the Shotgun in 1/SS in 2 as your primary workhorse and thus encounters are built around it.
>>11248229In the entire history of Doom, has anyone ever actually died and restarted the level with pistol start?
>>11248182pistol start makes the game better
>>11248252Yes, plenty of people have played this way. It's like Gradius. If you don't die, you can get a long way in the game keeping all of your powerups. But if you do die, you gotta restart the level and build your power back up.>>11248229Also because the levels were built in insolation and they didn't know what the order would be.
>>11248234Why did you connect these statements with a "but"? Pistol starting doesn't mean you don't use the shotguns... you have to find them in the level and the regular shotgun is often close to the start.
The game was also designed to be beaten with savescumming. Save-anywhere was a PC standard and a considerate feature to include, but they didn't expect players to save before every room and reload if things don't go their way.
>>11248286>with savescummingI meant without!
>>11248286>>11248289how embarassing
>>11248275along with appreciating the level design more, the power build-up is one of the most enjoyable things about pistol starting. and finding something simple like a chaingun and box of ammo in a secret area is way juicier when you're not entering the level with a full stack
>>11248282Designing every level so that it IS beatable with a pistol start does not mean they expected you to do it. They do in fact expected you to not fucking die and carry over your shit from level to level.
>>11248303What does that have to do with my post? The guy I was responding to said>levels need to be possible from a pistol startBUT>the game is designed with the shotguns as the workhorseWhat is the logical connection supposed to be there?
>>11248315Do you really not see the byroad when I'm saying "the game is balanced to be beatable that way, but it's obviously not balanced that way for general play". Much in the same way that yes, you CAN beat the Cyberdemon by rocket dueling him....but the plasma rifle is just so much more efficient.
>>11248286>>11248289I just recently read Romero's new autobiography and he said it was designed to played that way which is why they have quicksave.
>>11248182Boring But you cant say you beat the game if you havent done UV + pistol start.
>>11248367>But you cant say you beat the game if you havent done UV + pistol start.does it say that in the manual?
>>11248252Yes because I'm a retard.>"hey buddy have you tried pistol starting?">"of course I even beat the hardest levels with it">I got rekt constantly and was forced to do it
>>11248469Do you consider reloading from a save at the start of a level to be beneath you?
>>11248286>>11248289>savescummingYou don't know what that word means
>>11248182Bro's wrists look like a scrotum wtf
>>11248571its a glove
>>11248540no I was just too dumb to do it and wanted to keep playing
>>11248182People obsess too much over it.Game flows better when keeping your weapons.If you really want players to pistol start a level on your wad you can just do a death exist on the previous map. Even sunlust does that, autists are gonna say "it's designed for pistol start" but one of the maps even has a secret exist with the sole reward of allowing you to keep your weapons for the next map.
>>11248560I grew up playing Moria so you shut your mouth. Fine, "savegame abuse", are you happy now? I was perfectly clear about the concept: saving before every room and reloading when things don't go your way.
>>11248332>it's obviously not balanced that way for general play1) false, and 2) wtf does this have to do with shotguns being workhorses. Pistol starting doesn't mean you don't use the shotguns a bunch. Of course you still do. Your argument:>the game expects you to use the shotgun most of the time>therefore, pistol starting throws off the balanceyou failed to provide the actual argument part of the connection, AND I addressed this by pointing out that shotguns are usually close to the start so it works just fine. God forbid you have to be careful with your shells occasionally instead of starting every map with 30+.
>>11248182I don't do it unless it is specifically said that the wad should be played that way. Doom and Doom 2 were not
I think pistol starting is the ideal, each map being its own self contained idea, with its own progression and arsenal. power weapons actually feel special when you find them in a level instead of coasting on ammo supplies from levels ago.how pistol starts were actually used in the iwads is a mixed bag, in doom 2 especially I think there are some conspicuous dry periods where you're stuck with the shotgun and chaingun and it can get a little boring, also a lot of trial and error early on where you feel like any misuse of your meager supplies will end up with you getting softlocked. I think it was a muddled thing ID just kind of rolled with, levels where pistol starting is superflous to levels where the balance would be made nonsensical by having a full arsenal carried over.tldr doom 1 is easy enough to pistol start, doom 2 eh whatever.
I'll play continous if I'm doing some kind of challenge ironman run, if I'm just regularly doing levels I play pistol start. a lot of the novelty is lost if I can just walk in and immediately start super shotgunning everything.
>>11248950actually if you look on the back of the floppy disk it does say that
One good argument for pistol start is that encourages you to spend plasma and rockets instead of hoarding them
>>11248182Original games + TNT and Plutonia? Pretty doable, could be a fun little challenge, and it is ONE way of beating the game, since devs clearly accounted for it by placing weapons. Though I can't say that it is THE intended way to play the game like how some autists are arguing here.But I can't beat something like Sunlust UV, I get to map15, then it is too hard for me to pistol start, because there are too many traps that you have to memorize.
>>11248182Makes it a million times faster and easier to design and balance each individual level. Generally makes the level less easy when you aren't carrying over supplies and gear from previous levels.>>11248252Yes.>>11248286Free saves are provided to the player on the honor system, and really at their own potential peril. The main purpose is simply so that you can get back to where you were in a game which is long, so that you can divide up your time with the game into as many sessions as you need.The second is also that you don't HAVE to lose necessarily a huge amount of progress if you fuck up and die, but this is also the territory where you risk getting into habits which spoil your fun with the game.Personally, I have once been at a mental place where I would save way too often, and sometimes reload just because I didn't like an outcome enough. This kind of just ruined games for me for a while and I began training myself out of that. I still make maybe a few more saves than I'd really like, but I've been able to accept outcomes and roll with punches properly again, so it's more just habitual saving than endless reloading.
>>11249046>have common ammo like shells and bullets that you can use impulsively>have uncommon ammo you might choose to save for later based on knowledge of the gameWhy is this a bad thing?
>>11249147Because plasma and rockets are fun, and you may end up never using them at all for the sake of some hypothetical future scenario.
>>11249159There are no hypothetical scenarios if you've already played the game before and you know what you're up against. Hoarding resources for future hardships is part of the strategy of the game.
>>11249025I downloaded the shareware version for classic Mac OS from gopher thoughever
>>11248182Seems like autism but appropriately focused autism. Also why does doom man's hand look like that? Did they replace him with one of those abobo poop demons?
>>11249260It's a glove.
>>11248182Your choice. Pistol Start requires you to figure out a decent route to grab one or more weapons + ammo every single level, and that frequently is real pain in the ass for everything that's not Doom 1 first three Episodes.
Doom should have had a set of toggles on the difficulty selection screen, just for modifiers.>Pistol Start>Fast Monsters>Respawning Monsters
>>11248286That's not savescumming. Savescumming is quickloading over and over again until RNG gives you what you want.
I play pistol start, but only after I've practiced the level with quick saves, then I do a "real" run and try to beat the level single segment.
They were aware of the virtue of pistol starts 100 years ago. Here is this passage I found in an old copy of Weird Tales:'Surely sirrah, you will arm yourself well! For that which stalks the night is beyond mortal wrath.' The headman's smile died on his last syllabel for his eyes met those of Solomon Kane. The people gathered around became still as if transfixed by the wanderer's very spirit, as if it had manifested in his eyes and his silence, and wrapped about them like spiritual chains. The headman's mouth opened as if to speak, then closed again, dumbly.Spake Kane:'Do mine eyes behold feeble heartsWho quake in fear at pistol starts?Hath God not given thee all of needTo win out against evils bitter weed?Place at once thine hand upon the stockOf sturdy, fast, and chaste matchlockAnd think it meet to begin from there.Else is indulgeant sin beond compare.'Kane glared at the crowd. None among them could meet the puritan's eye. Kane thought he could detect a miasam of guilt spring into being among them. He continued.'Tis of the right-set way to start with one,One only, lone, loaded, and well made gun.Other arms I leave to providence and grace,To be taken up, spent, lain back in thier place.My heart will allow me to do naught other!Now step aside and tonight take coverFor I will risk all! Though you be knavesWho rely on loading, not guns, but saves.'Kane stood then, and strode forth, his eyes fixed to some invisible horizon. The crowd parted around him and closed again like a sheet of mist, awed at the puritan's grimly set courage. When he was gone into the night, they spoke not at all but shared a silent, secret shame and clustered together as they awaited the shot.'The Road to the Dark', 1928
Stop arguing about what was "intended".People always cherry pick interview quotes to try and pretend like their opinion (or in this case, way of playing) is "the one true law". There could be an interview saying that saving is intended, but there is also one saying they didn't realize you could OHKO the Spider Mastermind with the BFG because there is no BFG in the level (implying pistol start deving and testing).Unless you're a retard it's obvious that the two methods were "intended", and attempting to "prove" that only one method was intended to try to justify your way of playing is thinking others are just as retarded as you. The majority of levels in Doom, Duke, SW, Blood, Redneck Rampage etc were designed and balanced around fresh starts, for one because fresh starts are a possibility, and two because it's a lot more convenient that way during dev. In most cases they didn't even know which levels were going to make the cut or not and neither did they know the final level order until very late in dev, trying to balance supplies according to previous levels is already a headache, when you don't even know that level order for sure it's impossible. But that doesn't mean carrying your weapons and loading a save when you die isn't "intended" either. One key factor in old games and especially computer games is to give freedom for the player to play however he wants to.
Pistol is pretty shitty and unfun to be forced to engage with it every level
>>11249260Why would a demon need gloves?
>>11249836Meant to reply to >>11249289
I think that's a myth. Doom for a western game of that era was playtested and has very few gamebreaking bugs and egregious design decisions but I don't think it was designed for pistol start.
>>11248935>I grew up playing MoriaSo you got dumber with age. Sad! But it happens!>"savegame abuse"no such thing exists, I don't think there are any rules about saves usage in Doom manual and if there are feel free to correct me>saving before every room and reloading when things don't go your way.no one plays the game this wayyou die you reloadyou save your game after every harder part of the mapthat's it
>>11249731You engage with it for like 20 second tops, after that you should already have your shotgun with a bunch of ammo. Pistol start makes the game more challenging as in the very beginning of the map is harder and you need to check your ammo levels more often>>11249867>"western game"Nice way to out yourself as a fucking retard.>but I don't think it was designed for pistol start.Oh you don't think that? Wow, really? That's craaaazy! Guess you know better that Johnny Romero then!
I always thought it sounded tedious so I never did it. But I'm currently playing the Master Levels wad that requires pistol start as you have to select each level from a menu and I'm surprised at how much I enjoy it.I usually play conservatively and try to save ammo and pick up megaspheres/armor at the end of the level so I go into the next level well stocked. But knowing everything resets makes me feel free to play more recklessly.
>>11248354Is that worth reading? I loved Masters of Doom but don't want to read Romero's autobiography if it's just him self-fellating. I also don't particularly care about his personal life and whatever he's been doing since he started making mobile games or whatever he's been doing for the past 20 years.
>>11249351The newer rerelease added those as optional modifiers
>>11249886Every interview I read and watched has DEVs mentioning that Playtesting is a new thing and in their days they didn't do it. It seems that only Japan had QA
>>11249976Playtesting is not a new thing. Even Atari did playtesting in the 70's. "It seems" you're talking out of your ass.
>>11250069During the Driver 3 playthrough the devs comment on how they didn't have playtested games and that was in the early 2000s.
>>11249336>Doom 1 first three Episodes.you mean the best part of entire series?
>>11249867Default behavior for Doom is that if you use the warp command to start at a specific level, or if you die but then choose to restart the level instead of loading a save, you will have nothing but 100 health, the pistol, and 50 bullets, just as if you started out the game on the first level.Thus, every single official level for Doom was designed and balanced around being beatable from that parameter, there's gonna be weapons and supplies available so that you can manage. This is partially motivated by how it's going to be shitloads quicker and easier to mostly balance individual levels in a near vacuum, where you can basically ignore accounting for the balancing in other levels (though there are times where you can find secret stuff which would be excessive for the current stage of gameplay, but which will pay off for later levels).Continuous play does make it overall easier, but if you forgot to save and get killed, you would have to make to choice of either going back to when you last saved, or just accepting your loss and starting fresh.It's a bit of a holdover from the arcade mindset, Doom was initially going to have a lives system and score with collectible treasure items, like Wolfenstein 3D, but they decided this was superfluous for the kind of game they were making.>Doom for a western game of that era was playtested and has very few gamebreaking bugsLol, fah. Also Doom had quite a few bugs on release, its original netcode was even thrown out and replaced fairly soon in updates because it was complete shit, and iD notoriously hated the sound library code they had licensed because it broke if you sneezed.Again, pistol starting was the focus on balancing and play testing. It's with Quake where they move away from that, and where that game actually isn't really Shotgun Startable at all, because weapons were usually only provided once per episode, and would usually not be available again later because you were expected to already have them.
>>11248946>God forbid you have to be careful with your shells occasionally instead of starting every map with 30+.Why? The game doesn't expect you to. Like I said, it expects you to simply not die and get progressively stronger with each map you complete.
>>11249886>You engage with it for like 20 second tops, after that you should already have your shotgun with a bunch of ammo.Nta but doesn't that in of itself just admit that the pistol is more than anything an inconvenience you put up with until you find a shotgun?
>>11249882>no such thing existsIt absolutely does, there do exist some people who cannot help themselves but to savescum if the saving system doesn't have some limits to it, and that is really going to make any game less fun to play (unless it's some particularly badly designed game, where savescumming is the only way you find you can put up with it, but just stop playing that game then).There's no rules for saving or anything, you don't have the devs holding you at gunpoint, it's just that you should use your saving responsibly so as to not spoil the fun of the game.>no one plays the game this wayI used to do this as a kid, and training myself out of it made games much more fun for me. I have also seen some people play this way, including to the point where they start making saves during combat, and then sometimes fuck themselves because they saved themselves into an unwinnable corner.I have a vivid memory of seeing some guy streaming Memento Mori, he was low on health and desperate, so he makes a save, which happened to be the split second before a chaingunner outside of his view opened fire on him, 'softlocking' that save.It was actually pretty funny to see, everyone laughed.>you save your game after every harder part of the mapIf you want to, Doom is a very accessible game. A lot of people like to play Pistol Start, some at all times, while others will play through a megawad on continuous, then they go " I really loved these levels, I'm gonna try playing each of them from Pistol Start to see how the challenge increases."
I'm doing a pistol-start UV run and all I can say is that it's annoying to start with the peashooter, specially when the level starts with tons of pinkies or imps, in some levels you're better off finding the berserk pack asap and kill things until you find the shotgun or the chaingun.It makes you manage ammo better yeah but desu most retro fps make you do that anyway (or at least whenever I play one).
>>11249901The Master Levels are not the most fondly received of the official classic Doom products, so I'm glad that you're finding enjoyment in them.They're not all bad, but mostly they are nothing special, with a few pretty good levels, and then a couple few levels which are kind of unfun and obnoxious.>>11249731Doom's pistol really isn't a fun weapon, so I'm glad that most people are fairly liberal with supplying the Chaingun when making their own levels.>>11248907>Game flows better when keeping your weapons.I think that varies. Doom 1 divided the game up into episodes where you would play progressively, but only for a set length of levels, then you'd start fresh for the next one, and I think that allowed for better pacing and flexibility in design.Doom 2 ditches episodes and just makes it one long 30+2 level trek, which works ok, but I feel that the game could have been a lot better if you didn't always have all the toys you wanted just from surviving, that you had to re-earn them, and so that the difficulty curve could be reset a bit a few times.
I've never understood arbitrarily gimping myself in a game just for the sake of making it harder. For one, I don't feel like I have something to "prove", it's a fucking videogame, but more importantly, there's nothing wrong with playing a game that just happens to be easy.
What about Wolf3D, that game uses lives.
>>11250393That game also has enemies that will frag you in a few shots on higher difficulties if they start shooting before you do, and 90% of them are hitscanners.
>>11248182the only right way to beat any single stage in a n old fps.access to previous weapons early is just destroying level progression in this game.especially if you have the rocket launcher in quake every level you start
>>11250392Some of them are interesting challenges (like a nocopy run on any kirby game) but its mostly e-peen bragging.I'm gonna blame Dark Souls/From Software fanboys for this rise in difficulty elitism.
>>11250418>spoilerSee I'm the opposite, I chase the biggest numbers possible in those games. It's not enough that I beat the boss, I need to grind them into a pathetic smudge of paste to be truly satisfied.
>>11250418And I say the same thing to those people you mention as I do to anyone else: if you have to play a game blindfolded with one arm tied behind your back in order for it to be a true man's challenge then maybe, JUST MAYBE, it's not actually a hard game to begin with
>>11250418Pistol Starting was a thing people enjoyed doing with Doom as far back as the 90s, back when FromSoft were nobodies.
>>11250412If they didn't like it then they should've taken my guns away.
>>11250412Quake 1 is designed pretty rigidly around progressive play, if you start in the middle of an episode like you would in Doom, you simply will not get the weapons you need because you were expected to have picked them up in a previous level.If you start fresh on each level one by one, you are going to find stuff like rocket ammo but which you can't use, because you didn't bring the launcher over, which means you quickly get fucked because you're going to be forced to rely on the base shotgun for like 90% of the game, and whatever ammo may or may not be available to you.
I generally dont pistol start just because some levels don't give you enough ammo/armor to beat them comfortably. I usually go for all kills, and there's no worse feel than being out of every ammo type and having to punch enemies with no berserk pack.
>>11250476>havent found the weapon the level is providing ammo formaybe start searching for secrets.also some weapons share the same ammo
>>11250483Secrets sometimes provide weapons early, but that stops being relevant once the episode stops providing that weapon entirely, which it will.Sharing ammo doesn't help fuckall when you have only the shotgun, it's not gonna use the rockets, nails, or cells that you find.
>>11250486weird. i always find a nail and explosive gun in the first few rooms in every level i play. cell weapons are supposed to be for high tier enemies that should only appear mid or endlevel. its an old game and they want you to suffer a lil bit
The game literally lets you keep your weapons between levels, while warping to a level is only accessible with a cheat or a command line option.Pistol start if you want, just don't pretend like it's "the intended way to play" and not a Youtuber meme that only got popular in the past 10 years.Yes, some people have been playing with pistol start (eg compet-n) but generally in the specific context of speedrunning. These people would also replay the same level hundreds of times. It's not the intended way to play.>>11250393Fun fact: that rocky wall texture is also in Doom and in Quake
>>11250504>Pistol start if you want, just don't pretend like it's "the intended way to play"Basically. I think however they should have directly facilitated pistol starting and fast monsters as an option within the game, just to provide people with the ready option.>and not a Youtuber meme that only got popular in the past 10 yearsMy man, balancing your own levels for pistol starting has been the enduring standard with Doom .wads since the early 90s, with very few notable exceptions, and thus this is part of why playing pistol start has been a thing which people have been doing forever.You can go an dig up old Newstuff Chronicles reviews from like 2001 where people would harshly criticize levels for not being balanced for pistol start. This predates YouTube.
>>11250392>I've never understood arbitrarily gimping myself in a game just for the sake of making it harder.strawman. pistol starting gives each level its own sense of progression and allows for resets in encounter design that might otherwise be snowballed over without a second thought with a carried over arsenal. if epeen bragging was the only relevant thing you could just triple the monster health or whatever.
>>11250530>and allows for resets in encounter design that might otherwise be snowballed over without a second thought with a carried over arsenalBut right there, you agree with me that it's mainly because it makes it harder. And to me that is antithetical to how I play, I don't play games to challenge myself, I play games to break them wide open and make the most overpowered setups possible.
>>11248182It's a necessary habit to play/design maps with pistol start in mind, because it makes playing/revisiting individual maps first-class.If mappers won't design maps around pistol start it means they either have to be forced to provide a separate configuration for startup inventory for those who idclev or idclev can be unviable at all because map is too hard with just pistol and can have no pickups for weapons from previous maps at all.Basically you can take any map like this out of its containing mapset and it still works perfectly, without balancing around pistolstart it might be impossible.
>>11248182I have a better proposal.
>>11248182I don't care for it.Doing pistol starts kills my motivation for finding secret areas.
>>11250540no I don't agree with you. it can represent a different gameplay design altogether rather than just being harder. shooting things with a rocket is different than shooting them with a bfg is different from shooting them with a chaingun.
>>11250569I have the best proposal.
>>11249886Now why exactly are you getting on that guy's case for referring to Doom as a Western game. He's not wrong, the last time I checked it designed and developed in the USA and made by people that hail from the USA.
All I can say is that pistol starting all of Doom 1 and 2, and trying to beat every level without saving, taught me more about FPS level/encounter design than any of that stuff you can watch on youtube. I learned to "see" games a little differently than before, probably because I was fighting through it, and because I fell for the traps now and then. I'm not saying those games are the best at it (they aren't, not by a long shot) but the relatively simple engine and mechanics, and short, compartmentalized levels lets you experience a bunch of room/fight/trap ideas in quick succession with a certain amount of purity and few distractions, and then reset and go through it again. Nothing mindblowing but it was a fun crash course.
>>11250571Why? The items in secret areas are more rewarding when you pistol start. I suppose if you find the BFG right before you hit the exit switch that's a bummer but the secrets are usually to help you beat the challenges within the map, not an end-of-map reward. And it's hard to get excited about finding, say, a secret chainsaw if you already have one.
why does pistol starting feel more natural in doom than duke?
>>11250713to be honest I don't even really like doom that much, the shooting and enemy designs, they're fine, it's the philosophy of relatively short brisk levels that are unique stand alone experiences which can be completed in one go that keeps me coming back. wish more shooters and games in general would follow that approach.
>EvErY sTaGe Is BeAtAbLe WiTh PiStOl StArTYeah no shit retard, did you just walk out of game design 101 with that nugget of knowledge. Because guess what? If that wasn't the case then it would mean dying softlocks your playthrough, which is just objectively bad design. Why the fuck would you make an FPS game where a level is impossible to beat without the resources obtained in said level? No one who isn't an idiot would do that, you're saying literally nothing by making that statement.
>>11250868>Yes that's how this game works and that's how most of classic FPSes worked, you start with a shitty gun that you never use once you find any other gun in the gameI appreciate how Quake and Duke 3D diverted from this. Quake's starting weapon is outright a shotgun, and while not a very powerful one, it's fast and easy to hit with even at range, so it's never a useless weapon.Duke's pistol shoots really fast, but it makes you do a real quick reload every 12th shot so that it doesn't intrude on the chaingun's role (that weapon being faster, having a separate ammo type, and not needing to reload).I think those approaches are neat ways to make the starting weapon less of an absolute drag.
>>11250781You could just load the last save when you die.Automatically restarting the whole level with just a pistol isn't even the default action on death in most sourceports.
>>11248182It's fun.
>>11249351Nugget Doom has that now.
>>11250903>save in a shitty situation>have to restart the entire gameThat's why they did it.>Automatically restarting the whole level with just a pistol isn't even the default action on death in most sourceports.GZDoom isn't "most" sourceports.
>>11250903I think only ZDoom family ports are set up to load the last save when you press a key on death, but recent versions of GZD I think let you choose which behavior to use.Most ports use Doom's original behavior for this.>>11250909Sounds like I need to check out that port.
An autist's attempt that impresses no one. Your weapons are carried between levels for a reason.
>>11248182Pic related on pistol start makes the game absolutely better, a bit harder yes but more fun, otherwise you feel overpowered during 92% of the levels
>>11250868>Just play couple of levels with pistol start and you'll get it. Game because noticeably more challenging. Unless more challenge means more inconvenience to youI repeat myself >>11250540, I don't play games to be challenged, I play games to utterly destroy their difficulty. I use the strongest, most overpowered cheese builds in every RPG.
>>11251154Yeah thing is vanilla doom gets pretty boring by level 4 because you have all the ammo and all the guns
>>11251145>otherwise you feel overpowered during 92% of the levelsDuke3D is literally a power fantasy where you're the 80s action hero that wrecks everyone's shit and gets all the babes, I think you might be missing the point.
>>11251160If I wanted a difficult FPS I'd just play Blood on a higher difficulty, not gimp myself in Doom.
>>11251162You can wreck them just fine with the pistol, besides every level has more than enough hidden supplies to stock up on.
>>11251162You can play it that way, sure, and it works, but Douk offers even more than just that.
>>11251145Agreed. Duke also has a solid pistol so that helps.
>>11251162>literallyweak writing from a weak man. you are not qualified to speak on such matters.
>>11248182It's the actual game.Carry-over weapons and items from level to level is casual-mode.
>>11248182I don't recommend it for first playthroughs, that's retarded. But after you've gone through beaten the game on Ultra Violence, you should absolutely start doing pistol starts. It bring a new dynamic to every map and you'll really start to appreciate some of the level design a lot more, particularly in the middle of Episodes 2 and 3, or around or around Map 12 in Doom 2, where things usually get a little dull as the games start pulling their punches to save them for the final levels.
>>11251240>It's the actual game.Yes and no.Back in the day, when you died and realized you forgot to save at the start of the level, you felt like an idiot.Nobody did pistol starts for their first playthrough of the game if they could help it.
>>11251225Not only is picrel much more powerful than doom's pee shooter, what happens is that doom's monster programming is much smarter than duke's. The enemies in it are much easier to cheese, add to it the powerful pistol and its logically much easier(and much more fun) to pistol start on duke3d
>>11251320the pistol is the only thing i actually like more about duke than doom. very satisfying weapon.
>>11251229I don't pretend I'm tough because I chose to play a videogame on a higher setting.
Ok but why does the pistol have to suck? They could've chosen to not do that (as said above, like Douk did) and did it anyway. The reason everyone defaults to shotgun (SS in Doom 2) isn't just because the shotgun is satisfying as hell to fire, it's also because the pistol is fucking garbage and every level is just a countdown to tossing that thing and never looking back.
>>11251674The pistol is the absolute bare minimum to make you want to get out there and find something else. It's a continuation of Wolfenstein's weapons all being a straight upgrade to the last.
>>11251682Wolf3D also only has what...4 guns?
>>11251252>I don't recommend it for first playthroughs, that's retardeddisagree. your first playthrough where you are most primed to experience the campaign, you should experience it in the optimal way. doing so afterwards would be a trifling thing you'd likely quit early on.
As far as the official WADs go, I don't like it. E1 and E2 on UV are perfectly beatable with pistol starts, but fuck E3 and E4 with that handicap. On the harder levels you have to race past demons a lot just to get all the right pickups to competently blast your way through. I understand that there's an enjoyment to be had with micromanaging all the enemy locations and working through in a certain order as you spend as little ammo as possible. But to me, that sort of thing exists alongside pacifist playthroughs, where its an extra challenge for highly dedicated players looking to squeeze more juice out of the game. Putting more effort is scrounging around for ammo and running past demons until you get enough to return and kill them just isn't as much fun as running and gunning.Continuous play on Ultra Violence is my preferred way to play anything official. The best community WADs often have better balancing for pistol starts though.Honestly, the majority of the Doom community is fucking exhausting to engage with. They have repulsive autism where they spaz out if anyone plays anything other than the exact way they play, despite the fact that Doom was designed to be a highly scalable and customizable experience from the day it launched.
>>11252630TLDR
>>11252651>Thoughts on Pistol Start?>Provides answerYour pic is accurate because right now you're acting like a real nigger
>>11248182NuDoom's pistol was an unironic improvement.
>>11252662Yeah, so I play those wads with pistol start. In my post I clarified about 4 times that I'm specifically referring to pistol starting official wads, which often aren't very enjoyable on UV. Learn to read dickhead.
>>11248182playing continuous is a nonsensical slopfest. no a previous level having bfg and rocket ammo for a particular monster closet in that level should not bleed over and completely invalidate the start of the next. that ID didn't mandate pistol starts is just a marketing convenience, every element of the levels was tailored around a particular weapon progression.
>>11250781They need to say it because of the thousands of morons that claim it "isn't intended".In other words what you are doing is saying that someone explaining something to a retard is the retard. Well guess who's the real retard now? I guess according to you that would be me.
>>11252679The reason levels were tailored to be completed starting with a pistol is because that's the penalty for dying in the original DOS version. That's the only reason, and there were FPS games before Doom that had the same penalty. It has nothing to do with convenience, it's makes more sense for the player to retain their resources in-between levels because each episode is one continuous experience continuity-wise. In fact, there's some instances where it's preferable to die on purpose near the start of a level if you exited the previous level at like 8% HP.
>>11252763>They need to say it because of the thousands of morons that claim it "isn't intended".It's intended in that it's beatable, not that they expect you to do it. If the latter was the case then they'd just take your guns away after every level.
The original idea of Doom was to have a single hub-based map rather than individual disjoint levels.They scrapped it for technological reasons but kept the sense of progression by letting you keep your weapons.The concept of physically connected levels returned in Hexen and Quake 2 and eventually came to completely dominate FPS games after Half-Life and Unreal. It just makes sense. Pistol start doesn't make sense and never did. You are fetishizing a technological limitation that wasn't supposed to be there.Moreover, Doom literally includes a pistol start mechanic in having separate episodes that have you start with the pistol. Those are the times it's explicitly intended by the game. In Doom 2 they got rid of episodes, to enhance the sense of progression even further.Do not pretend like pistol start was ever "intended", except in E1M1, E2M1, E3M1, E4M1 and MAP01.
>>11252961>They scrapped it for technological reasonsI'm pretty sure the technology existed at the time, they just didn't know how to do it yet.>The concept of physically connected levels returned in Hexen and Quake 2 Surprised you didn't mention Strife.
>>11252961>make senseDoom is well-known for its emphasis on sensibility>intendedYou are attempting sophistry by making "intent" the focus rather than the more common (and accurate) claim of "that's how the levels were tested and balanced". The question is what the best way to play is, or rather, a discussion of the pros and cons of various methods.
>>11252970Strife came out too late so no one bought it (Quake was already out), and the hubs were derivative of Hexen, so I didn't think it was worth mentioning.>>11252975You're moving the goalposts, a large portion of this thread is discussing intent.
>>112517103 guns and a knife
>>112532494 guns actually if you played the SNES version, it added a flamethrower
>>11253251Rocket launcher too, so 5.
>>11253251Nice, was it fun to use?From what I remember playing Wolf3d, a powerful short range weapon is not very useful. Maybe decent if powerful/stunable enough so it could get rid of mutants before they could fire.
>>11253282You should play Brutal Wolfenstein 7.0 if you ever replay Wolf 3D. The weapon roster additions alone really liven up the gameplay and none of the additions feel out of place.
>>11253282>Nice, was it fun to use?meh
>>11251682You could argue that the reason games like Duke3D have a good pistol is a direct response to Doom's pistol being utter shit and everyone hating it.
>>11253424Meant for >>11251674
>>11248182Its great and leads to better level design.
>>11248218Sandy Peterson has said this on the record. He said he played and beat all the levels from a pistol start prior to release to ensure that they were beatable if you died.
>>11253770They would also have to be because the levels weren't designed in the order you played them.
>>11252679Progressive play makes perfect sense, they just shouldn't have abandoned episodes for Doom 2.
>>11252970>>11252995Carmack's initial idea for Doom having hubs of levels was something about trying to make fully seamless transitions without stopping to load anything, that things would just gradually load and unload in the background of the world.He very quickly came to realize that this would be a massive fucking bother to try to implement (at least the way he envisioned), so he scrapped that and they went with isolated level instances.>>11252846True also, Doom is still an adventure, so it makes sense to find stuff and holding on to it as you go. Doom 2's Map01 hides a Rocket Launcher in a secret area, for a whopping two shots of that powerful weapon, but there's nothing in that level which comes close to needing that damage output.So why is it there? First of all for Deathmatch, second, so that the player gets a small reward for exploring, that thing will come in handy later.
thoughts on e4m2 pistol start?
>>11253850Doesn't make a huge difference for me, because if I play continuous I'm coming over with a shotgun, but then only a few shells and if I'm lucky, 80hp.E4M1 is such a bitch, though I love it for that.
>>11253850Perfectly (heh) doable but you're a fucking masochist for doing so and quite frankly, anyone who pistol starts TFC levels either desperately has something to prove or this is the last challenge left in their life.
>>11253839Doom 2 continuous is insultingly easy, you get almost every gun by the end of map 2.
>>11253862>>11253861I'm doing pistol-start E4 and I'm on M2 and its such a bitch of a level, the Caco spam at the beginning is so annoying.
>>11253870Exactly.
>>11248197>it's not hairwtf?
>>11253938That's hair, Kevin Cloud modeled for the arms and hands of Doomguy, and he has hairy arms.
>>11250697kek
>>11252916>It's intended in that it's beatableno. it's intended in that it's what the level is, what every single design decision is geared toward, every single tweak from playtesting. they weren't designed to be beatable with pistol start they were designed pistol start.
>>11253870This isn't Doomguy's first rodeo, he's taking the fight back to earth.
>>11254065The continuous play isn't just there by accident either.
>>11248950Such .wads will almost always enforce that by just using death exits, so you're killed right before the level ends and thus start the next level fresh.More commonly, death exits are just used to make pseudo-episodes for Doom 2 sets, because UMAPINFO wasn't a thing until a few years ago (for some stupid reason). So every 5th or 10th level or so you get wiped and forced to pistol start the next map.>>11248962Is the game designed to be saved or not?If it is, are you saving responsibly, so that you don't ruin the fun of the game?
>>11249906>I loved Masters of Doom but don't want to read Romero's autobiography if it's just him self-fellating.I haven't read it, but I know that when addressing Masters Of Doom, he only mentioned two things about it as being in error, one of them was clarifying that it wasn't John Carmack himself who was monitoring his work hours, it was actually a guy working at Rogue Entertainment who did that.Given that Masters Of Doom depicts Romero in an unflattering manner at times (like many others there), I find it somewhat reassuring that someone who's generally kind of egocentric to then correct the record about a guy who he was on really bad terms with at that time, and that he then basically concedes all the less nice stuff he himself did and said.I think the other detail was that he wanted to clarify that the Suck It Down ad for Dai-Katana really was not his idea. That may or may not be true, but that's also something he said in an interview in the late 2000s, where he also said something like "Because that's gay, and I'm not gay." which he probably wouldn't add these days.
>>11249976This is a completely fucking ridiculous statement and I'm baffled at why you feel so confident to be making it.All kinds of western games had play testing done to them back during the 1980s at the least, and probably further. Just with iD Software themselves, there's alpha and beta builds of Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, and Commander Keen, which were leaked by outsourced testers, and that happened with other devs too, some under Apogee.>>11250167That reflects much more strongly on them than anyone else.
>>11248182I like it a lot. Used to reserve it for community wads like the DBP ones but now it's the sole way I play Doom. As many have pointed out already it keeps the balance as intended, but it also saves you from those awkward moments where the author felt dickish and placed enemies at the very start of the map.It provides much more incentive to secret hunt as well imo.
>>11250336surprisingly nice forearms on carmack
>>11253895I did it dudes, took me 2 days to beat it on UV Pistol-Start.
>>11254316Dude works out. During his teenage years he decided he should train his body in addition to his mind, and supposedly he would fuck with school bullies with that. Either by beating them up, or him "agreeing" to do all the work when on a paired assignment with them, to then actually having done nothing at all, to make sure they would fail.>>11250504>that rocky wall texture is also in Doom and in QuakeThey got a lot of mileage out of it. I actually went and looked to see if might even date back to like Catacomb 3D, because that would be funny to me, but it seems Wolfenstein 3D is when it first appeared.By Quake 1 & 2 it's transformed a lot, and it actually looks really good in a way which fits Doom's graphical style more if you just tweak the thing to work with Doom's palette. The MAC one with a filter or translucent overlay on it, which is what it is in its Doom incarnations, never really sat right with me and it and looks off when used for Doom.
>>11248182Do you mean in Doom only or just in general? Because I was raised on a steady diet of the Rare shooters - Goldeneye, Perfect Dark and Timesplitters, which are generally spawn without weapon in multi.I'm born 92. I have a zoomie lil half brother born 2002. In about 2017 or so I showed him PD, he'd never seen it. He was utterly and comprehensively filtered by the lack of a weapon at spawn. Like he actually couldn't function with it and stopped playing.>Aww, you need the game to hold your hand ? Want the game to kill the enemies for you too?>*Laughs in Millennial*
Having to fight your way to the shotgun is based
>>11255130That's fine, though I prefer if you're getting a shotgun and just a scant amount of shells, where you have to make do with that little supply against greater numbers and greater strengths, until you can get your hands on some rockets.
>>11248182>>11248204Pistol needs a faster firing rate
>>11250392I guess it's more impressive if you are showing off a run on youtube
>>11254358jesus christ I never knew there was a SNES version of wolfensteinthat shit looks horridI am always amazed when companies shit out these dumb ass ports, especially to handheld consolesit makes me realize that gaming has always been shit and that I shouldn't get high expectations
>>11256497The SNES port was done in-house too.
>>11256503in-house? you mean like someones basement?
>>11256517I mean Carmack worked on it.
>>11256497The SNES port of Wolfenstein 3D was... well it was what it was. iD Software had outsourced it to Burger Bill, known for his reliability in knocking out ports, who then shows up one day to tell them he hadn't actually gotten anything done on it (for whichever reason that was).The guys are kind of pissed about this and fire him from that job, because they are right in the middle of developing Doom, and now they need to drop everything on that and hammer together an emergency port of Wolf3D for the SNES, as the deadline draws closer and closer.The SNES is a great console and I love it, but it wasn't ever greatly suited for 3D stuff beyond some Mode 7 shenanigans, so it was some effort to get that working. To help optimize things, SNES Wolf was actually first to use a variant of Binary Space Partitioning, before Doom on DOS itself.The end result is rough, but it's about as good as you'll get without a SuperFX chip to help, and you can play the thing. It's like a chopped down and bitcrushed version of the Macintosh port, using much of its revised art as a base. iD were not too happy to censor the blood, nazis, or German Shepherds, but Big N dictated it at the time.Burger Bill would work on the 3DO and I think Jaguar port of Wolf3D later, which he did basically fine, but a fluke mastering error when producing the 3DO one meant they had to recall and replace everyone's discs because it would just hard crash on a late game level.
>>11256682Jaguar port of Wolf3D was made by Carmack as a testbed for Jaguar Doom tech.
>>11256682Also, I'm pretty sure that the MacWolf was based on SNESWolf and not other way around. Bill worked on that one.
>>11256728That's correct.>>11256739I did not state otherwise?
>>11256739Oh, wait, now I see what you're saying. And actually I think you're correct in that SNES Doom came out first, but I'm pretty sure that the higher def assets which were used for 3DO, Jaguar, and MAC, were already in progress in some aspects (some being based on Doom assets also), which is probably what I'm thinking about.
>>11256753Yeah, I remember something about assets possibly being done beforehand. I'd assume that at some point SNES, Jaguar and Mac ports were done somewhat in parallel. (though Jaguar got some unique ones too, like weapons)Mac code was attributed to Carmack's SNES code by Bill which is obvious as it also uses BSP.
For whatever reason I always thought Adrian Carmack did the weapons for Doom, but he said that all the weapons and HUD elements were done by Kevin Cloud.I guess that makes more sense, given that it's his arms.
>>11248182The pistol is such a piece of shit I have to wonder why it's even in the game. I guess you can kill weaker monsters with it and build momentum to better weapons, but just shooting it feels so awful, they really could've made a better starter weapon.
pistol is fine on hitscan enemies till you get the chaingun or the shotgun. you cant just hold m1 like the other weapons since it'll fuck up the spread.
>>11258121for >>11257702
on every start i mostly used the pistol to save shotgun ammo.
>pistol fires twice as fast >chaingun is inaccurate from the very first shotthere I fixed it
>>11248252>In the entire history of Doom, has anyone ever actually died and restarted the level with pistol start?YES me as a kid.
>>11254358>The MAC versionWHAT THE FUCK!Did they get like a superior graphics version on the mac or what?Help! I was under the impression that the DOS version was superior!?
>>11258540>drop the pistol and chaingun>give the player a rifle that works like the chaingun>replace slot 4 with a grenade launcher or something
>>11258672I think it had the flamethrower and rocket launcher too.
>>11258672Yes. Mac version was done later on, after release of Doom 1 even, so assets were remade for it. Not only that, it also got the remixed level set and two additional weapons from the console versions.
>>11258540Wrong.
>>11258672They halfassed the sprites a bit though, you can see some mixels here and there where they didn't finish redrawing the low res parts.
>>11259083tapping with the chaingun for perfect accuracy is lame, will you at least agree with that?
>>11259376It's a necessity from the lack of shaft (LG) in the weapon roster.
>>11259406I think Doom works just fine without any sniping or laser precision weapons.
>>11259413Yeah, well, I disagree.On that note, if you want to make pistol relevant, just steal wand from Heretic, it's perfect.
Is the chaingun/pistol tapping technique (first shot has perfect accuracy) intentional or a programming oversight?
>>11259643Nevermind, checked the source code and it's completely intentional
Oregano Doom released when I was in grade school. It's a pretty short game and every few years I get the urge to run a clear. Only now have I learned most people don't habitually pistol start when they know a level.
>>11259413>or laser precision weapons.Rocket launcher exists. It's your real sniping weapon.
>>11250336>It's with Quake where they move away from that, and where that game actually isn't really Shotgun Startable at all, because weapons were usually only provided once per episode, and would usually not be available again later because you were expected to already have them. Huh. I've always felt something was missing from Quake's levels, but only reading this made me understand what.
>>11250336Am I misremembering, or does Quake also give you some health automatically if you end a level with too little?
>>11248639I did the same shit bro. Solidarity. I'd just keep forgetting to save so my last save would be like 3 levels back. "Fuck that shit, I'll make it work," and after a fuck ton of trial and error, I did.
>>11259727original Doom has mild left/right autoaim for rockets, not just vertical. makes it hard to lead moving targets. hardly laser precise.
>>11260536>makes it hard to lead moving targetsNot really.
>>11260831You can't lead a target if the rocket auto-aims to where the target is when you fire, rather than where you're pointing (in anticipation of where they will be by the time the rocket gets there). Which is what happens.
>>11253938>>11248197I used to think he was a wrinkly old man. To be fair, I played the doom95 version first, and that one had cropped weapon sprites, so I never saw the arm.
>>11248182I hate the sound of it, it's shit
>>11248962Have you ever spoken to a girl irl?
>>11261015Just account for that?
>>11248182I used to hate it.Now I know it's definitive and the best way to play DOOM.
>>11261263Yes. Several times.
Pistol start sucks. Berserk pack start is where it's at.
>>11261413you got me and I'm a little mad
>>11261859I'm not fucking around, just lead better.
Pistol start, with only a save at the start of the level, is what makes the game fun for me.I know I'll sound like a huge tool for saying it, but for me pistol-starting a level totally blind is almost like fighting a boss in Dark Souls for me.You die over and over, but you get a little further each time, you begin to map out a path, you devise strategies, and eventually you win.Now I grant you it's because I suck at the game, it took me a week to beat E4M6. But the dopamine rush you get when you finally beat the level can't be beat.
>>11262003I feel exactly the same as you do. there's a really pure gamey novelty to getting through a level in one go, unfortunately I am not good enough at doom for this to be viable in most wads, I gave up trying it on plutonia which is medium at best difficulty.
>>11262003In fairness, E4 is harder than the original 3 episodes.
>>11253770"Beatable with" isn't the same as "balanced for". Doom 2016 is beatable with nothing but the pistol
>>11262179It's how the levels were balanced too. They weren't designed in order and they had no way to know how much ammo or health a player would have between levels.
>>11262179Again, default behavior for Doom when you die isn't loading from a save, it resets the level and your inventory, and the levels were made to be reasonably beatable for that parameter. This is very intentional, making it much faster and easier to design each individual level, and preventing the player from hitting a wall from not having the resources they actually need (possibly from dying).For a counter example, TNT's MAP29 is not generous on UV. It gives you quite a lot of cell ammo, but the Plasma Rifle in the level isn't tagged to spawn on UV, so if you Pistol Start the level, all that good ammo is completely useless to you. The level is beatable Pistol Start, though it's an arduous fucking grind to try to get max kills because of its overall design, and particularly because the author probably expected you to use those cells, but fucked up and mistagged the Plasma Rifle.That level is a rare outlier among the original commercial games, very few of them present that kind of obnoxious chore with any level. You rarely get starved on health and ammo to even close this degree.
>>11262203>he dies
>>11248962Mental gymnastics is a convoluted line of intrinsically dependent but extrinsically invalid steps to get to a conclusion. Mental gymnastics is not several independently functional (or otherwise) arguments.
>>11253954he looks a bit like doomguy I guess
>>11262003>you get a little further each time, you begin to map out a pathIMO you are playing the game correctly and this is the aspect of old-school FPS map design that I miss most. They were inspired by Dungeons & Dragons and learning the layout of the "dungeon" is supposed to be part of the fun, as well as the see-how-far-you-can-get element. This is also why some of the secrets are set up the way they are, like E1M6's secret that lets you skip the maze and get the yellow key (if you have the blue key already). I'm not aware of any wannabe-retro FPSes that even attempt that kind of thing.
>>11262738Modern mappers expect people to only play their maps once, and will avoid having missable areas for that very reason.
>>11262781That's not true though.
>>11262738This is revisionism, Wolf3d and Doom and Quake did not intend you to "get a little further each time, map out a path" and their levels were not designed that way. That's why you can save the game. Save checkpoints are much older than FPS games, the principle of that style of gameplay was well known, and it deliberately wasn't used because it's not that kind of game.
>>11262932You are not going to find the essence of the design, or the best way to play, by studying checkpoints or whether or not you can save anywhere.
>>11248182>Thoughts on Pistol Start?I'm opposed to it on a philosophical level.
>>11263129I will add to this and say that most players, both then and now, see saves mostly as a tool for 1) not losing progress, and 2) undoing mistakes. The results are predictable but unfortunate. Pistol starting with no mid-level saves is not the intended way to play, but is a good way to unlearn bad habits and get fresh eyes.
>>11248182Too boring.Sure, most of the time you can get a shotgun in less than 30 seconds but now you have limited ammunition for it so you'll have to rely on the shitty pea shooter instead.It doesn't feel satisfying to kill with it and half of the time it's not even hard to kill with the pistol, just takes a long time.
Made the mistake of trying Refueling Base pistol start. It's doable but holy shit is there not enough ammo for the amount of monsters.
>>11263173That was one of the tougher ones for me too. Your screenshot reminds me: something I don't think has been discussed in this thread is whether to go for 100% kills. With pistol starts I don't; I'm just trying to hit the exit switch.
>>11264162to me it depends, I usually try to kill everything just in case but for some levels i might not have enough ammo or health so i just skip them, deimos lab for example i left a few enemies alive because i wasted all of my ammo, in house of pain i rushed through the last stretch because i had like 20HP but had invunerability.
>>11262003You don't need to die that much. You can generally never expect to reliably avoid death whenever playing a new level, but it's never unthinkable to beat a level without getting killed either.Keep going, you'll get better at it, you're already forced to think more on your feet because of Pistol Starting so you'll get there.>>11262738It's a workable approach, but the base game isn't so demanding that you'd have to outright grind and repeat so much, at least not in my opinion. But then, I'm perhaps too seasoned to have the right perspective on that (not that I'm a pro or anything).>I'm not aware of any wannabe-retro FPSes that even attempt that kind of thing.The vast majority have zero clues about level design theory, which is why a lot of them have settled on procedurally generated levels, which is something I think works perfectly fine for games like Diablo, but not for a first person shooter, where you're down in the game, in first person and all, and you need to put a lot more deliberate craft into all the locales and setpieces.
>>11263129>You are not going to find the essence of the design, or the best way to play, by studying checkpoints or whether or not you can save anywhere.The “best way to play” should be something that changes once faced with the variety of custom maps.
>>11264213>house of painJUMP UPJUMP UPAND GET DOWN
>>11248224That's kinda the point of it. But it would've been nice if the vanilla levels didn't depend on the shotgun so much.
