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From: Borax Man <rotflol2@hotmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action
Subject: Re: More Doom (Sigil II)
Date: Sun, 20 Apr 2025 12:40:32 -0000 (UTC)
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On 2025-04-19, Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 19 Apr 2025 09:47:37 -0000 (UTC), Borax Man
><rotflol2@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>On 2025-04-18, Zaghadka <zaghadka@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Fri, 18 Apr 2025 12:45:56 -0000 (UTC), in
>>> comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action, Borax Man wrote: 
>>>
>>>>On 2025-04-18, Mandrake the Perihelion <jfwaldby@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> Borax Man wrote:
>>>>>> On 2025-04-17, Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>> On Thu, 17 Apr 2025 11:19:09 -0500, Zaghadka <zaghadka@hotmail.com>
>>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On Thu, 17 Apr 2025 10:12:26 -0400, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action,
>>>>>>>> Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Quake was impressive tech for its day, and it featured some many ideas
>>>>>>>>> that have since become de rigeur for FPS games nowadays, but it was
>>>>>>>>> too focused on arena-combat gameplay and its lore was a mess. Bleh.
>>>>>>>>> ;-)
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> You also *had* to buy a Pentium. I remember throwing my AMD 486DX4-100 at
>>>>>>>> it and still getting "Mr. Turtle."
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> You didn't HAVE to buy a Pentium (but boy did it help!)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Some of us were playing Quake on x486 chips. It was... rough, even for
>>>>>>> me (and I'm really tolerant of low FPS). But I endured it until I got
>>>>>>> that super-fast 100MHz pentium (and, eventually, a 3DFX card).
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Not that any of that really made the gameplay more _fun_... but it
>>>>>>> made it more _tolerable_ ;-P
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> I've tried it on my 486 DX4 100.  Barely playable.  The first machine I
>>>>>> ran Quake on was an AMD K5 100MHz, and it ran it OK at 320x240
>>>>>> resolution, and satisfactorily at 400x300.
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> That Pentium instruction set and faster cache/memory sure made a
>>>>>> difference.
>>>>>> 
>>>>> I'm sure that's what it was.  The 386 was good for the game 'La 
>>>>> Cucaracha'.  Basically you would eat the cheese minis cracker and 
>>>>> hurgender cheese.  Then you fart and they have cracker aesctetic. 
>>>>> Cockroaches will stare at the moon before acknowledgigabyte drives, 
>>>>> carefully stored gigabyte they tell you boards of ca.
>>>>
>>>>I used to run Doom on a 386 DX running at 20MHz.  Now that was
>>>>SLOW. Even in low detail mode, but I perservered because it was better
>>>>than not experiencing the game at all.
>>>
>>> I just put on Wolf3D in those cases. Scratches the same itch.
>>>
>>
>>Runs great on them, but Doom is so, so much better.
>
> I played Wolf3D back-in-the-day, and was excited as anyone by its
> 'novel' first-person action, but equally found its mazelike maps
> aggravating, and playing the game too long always gave me splitting
> headaches. I didn't like its reliance on points, or its use of lives,
> and there was a dull sameness to many of the levels thanks to the
> limited number of textures, tricks and enemies. 
>
> In fact, one of the most exciting things that kept me going through
> the game was the soundtrack; not that it was so great (it was okay)
> but it was one of the few things that changed from level to level.
> What will the new tune be? That's how low the bar was.
>
> My experience with "Doom", though, was completely different. Just the
> elevation changes made things entirely different. The lighting added
> atmosphere and character to each map. There were so many more monsters
> and weapons too! And the soundtrack; it wasn't just okay, it was
> GREAT.
>
> Wolfenstein 3D pretty much dropped off my radar after 10 December
> 1993. The few times I played it after that date, it was mostly just to
> remind myself how much better Doom was than its predecessor.
>
> Although, if I had a 386/20, Wolf3D would be a better fit. Doom could
> run on a machine that slow, but you'd have to sacrifice a lot to get a
> usable frame rate (detail level low, screen-size = postage stamp).
> Wolfenstein3D ran a lot better on a computer of that calibre.
>
>

I ran Doom with a larger sreen, in fact, as big as it could be with just
the status bar.  Maybe shrunk down one level.  It ran like crap, but I
preferred that over looking at tiny, tiny screen.  AFter a while, you
got used to it, and only some levels, like E3M6 really became a major
headache.

I first saw Wolf3D in the school computer lab, and like you found the 3D
first person perspective exciting.  Nothing like anything else I saw
before, but I only got to play it during school breaks, ie, every 6
months just for an hour or so.

When I got a 386 in February 1994, with an Adlib sound card, I got
Wolf3D and really enjoyed it.  It had FM Synth sound effects and music.
The music I kind of liked, and the game was good, but I did find the
mazes frustrating, and there was a bit of sameness.

When I first saw Doom, early April 1994 I think, it looked next
generation, something phenomenal and clearly for a far more powerful
computer.  It was like watching black magic, how these "realistic"
scenes were rendered.  But I didn't quite get drawn into the aesthetics,
the demons, the shotgun, and found it to be like a Wolf3D rip off.  A
couple of weeks later, after playing it a little and deleting it, I
suddenly realised the game was pretty good and got the shareware version
again and finished it.  I was hooked from then on in.  More immersive
levels, flowed and played better.  No huge mazes!

Later, when a SoundBlaster was put in, I was blown away by how it
sounded.