Somebody get this freaking duck away from me!
x7 Well sure, you didn't go into the game fresh. You already knew that to beat the Cyberdemon, you have to shoot it until it dies.
A significant chunk of the reason why the cyberdemon was such a threat was because WASD+ Mouselook wasn't how DOOM originally controlled. DOOM originally controlled strictly via the keyboard, in particular the arrow keys. I think default left and right arrows made you turn, up and down made you go forward and backwards. There were sidestep keys but I don't remember what they were by default. Shooting was left and/or right control, and activating doors was space bar if I remember right.
So circle strafing was still doable in the original control scheme, but the manual never gave any instructions to that effect and the default control settings weren't really set up in a way to make it particularly intuitive to circle strafe.
The original DOOMs became radically easier when better control schemes were invented, in particular the standardized modern of WASD + mouselook that basically every PC shooter has used since ... I don't actually know when it started now that I think about it. Probably late 90's? Or maybe it was Quake 1 when id made the jump to full 3d? I'd have to look it up I guess.
Edited by Kosjurake on Aug 22nd 2022 at 5:10:38 AM
Click Click Boom BoomApparently tho Doom was WASD friendly as early as 1993.
I mean the original Wolfenstein 3D had mouselook support.
I played Doom with the keyboard for quite some time because that's how I'd learned FPS games. I only started using WASD and mouse after getting repeatedly destroyed in deathmatches.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Same here. I still remember when a friend of mine told me you could use the mouse in Quake (it was around '97). We all laughed at him for doing something so needlessly complicated... until we played deathmatch against him. After that, we all switched to mouse.
It's quite true that playing Doom with the mouse is a very different (and overall easier) experience than playing with the keyboard only.
Whatever your favourite work is, there is a Vocal Minority that considers it the Worst. Whatever. Ever!.I don't think that it's that strafing was "not known", but rather that the control schemes made it less intuitive and fluid to enact than do modern schemes, and that in some cases it was poorly documented and thus not always discovered by players.
I recall that I played a number of games that included strafe-keys... but that doing so was so awkward that I seldom actually did. (Especially as I seem to think that in at least some cases strafing was effected via a modifier to the turning controls, meaning that one could strafe or turn, not both.)
My Games and Asset PacksI always played Wolfenstein 3D and classic Doom exclusively with the mouse; I didn't even know you could use the keyboard for anything except opening doors until I went to a friend's house and he played with the keyboard, which is weird and suboptimal.
Quake by default uses the cursor keys to move; WASD was invented by DM players to get an edge on their opponents.
I remember getting Return to Castle Wolfenstein and changing the control scheme to use the cursor keys instead of WASD on the grounds of "What the fuck kind of controls scheme is this? Letter keys aren't for moving." And having to constantly reach across the keyboard to reload, kick, or open a door. It wasn't until I played Minecraft, which doesn't let you use anything other than WASD, that I actually tried it. It was ridiculous at first, until a few sessions in it all clicked and now it makes sense.
Ukrainian Red Crosshttps://www.pcgamer.com/how-wasd-became-the-standard-pc-control-scheme/
So I did look it up.
TL; DR Half Life was the first game to have it as the baseline config, but Quake 2 did technically have it as a preloaded configuration, the config executable named after the DOOM/Quake 1 proplayer , Dennis "Thresh" Fong, who effectively started the trend even if he wasn't the original creator of the control scheme. It is unknown who can take credit for being the very first to use WASD+ mouselook.
Also some people argue for stuff like ESDF and ASXC +mouse instead of WASD. ESDF seems fine if a little strange having my fingers just like half an inch to the right. ASXC feels a lot more off.
Building off that I think I finally learned about WASD+ mouse with... I think with Dark Forces 2 Jedi Knight, but it might have been Return to Castle Wolfenstein or Unreal Tournament 2003/2004. I don't actualy remember.
Edit 2: Checking release date it was probably actually RTCW or UT. Jedi Knight was 97. So unless the article missed a big star wars game as having WASD before Half Life, it was probably the other two.
Edited by Kosjurake on Aug 22nd 2022 at 4:56:15 AM
Click Click Boom Boom![]()
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To be precise, when I said "playing with the mouse", I meant "keyboard + mouse".
I have tried playing Doom 2 with the keyboard only recently out of nostalgia, but that did not hold very long.
Whatever your favourite work is, there is a Vocal Minority that considers it the Worst. Whatever. Ever!.Fair enough.
Also, anyone remember Rebecca Heineman, the brave soul who at least tried to make Doom on 3D0 playable to the best of her ability? She got the go ahead to share more behind-the-scenes buff on it and its quite the thing so get ready.
https://www.timeextension.com/features/the-true-story-behind-doom-3dors-lmissingr-fmv-scenes
She also shared some photos of the demon costume that was later used to scare trick or treaters.
Oof, I'm reminded of those cases in which games actually did have controls for moving via mouse (I think that Ultima Underworld and Cyclones both did, for two). I think that you pressed the left mouse-button to move forward and the right to move backward, or something like that.
I am not a fan. o_o
I don't recall when I first started using the WASD control-scheme, although I think that I may have had a bit of resistance to it at first. However, I do know that by now, my left hand seems to rest on those keys pretty much by default when playing a game—even if the game doesn't use them!
My Games and Asset Packs![]()
Ultima Underworld uses the left button for all movement, with the direction determined by its location in the window; ShadowCaster uses the same scheme. Once you get used to it, it's actually not too bad for the games it's in, but any modern remakes would definitely need to switch to a keyboard and mouse scheme.
Indeed to Ultima Underworld—that is what I remember it using.
I'd forgotten that ShadowCaster had that control scheme—likely because I never use it when I play that game!
As to getting used to it... Perhaps I didn't stick with it for long enough to do so, but I always found it awfully unintuitive, and quickly went back to keyboard-based controls, myself.
[edit]
Huh. I've just discovered that we don't have a page for Shadow Caster. I'm surprised!
Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Aug 24th 2022 at 9:20:59 PM
My Games and Asset PacksI remember remapping DOS era Doom controls to a pseudo twin-stick setup (WSAD for movement/strafing, space to shoot, E to use, shift to Run, arrow keys Left and Right to turn). Still not as fast as using a mouse, but surprisingly effective.
In better news, Cheelio's Doom Voxel mod
has launched with support for Doom 1, and he's working on updating it for Doom 2 :D
Add: Cheelio now working on parallex textures for Doom
. Between the voxels and the parallex textures, Classic Doom is getting a 3d depth upgrade.
Edited by AceOfScarabs on Oct 8th 2022 at 10:17:09 PM
The three finest things in life are to splat your enemies, drive them from their turf, and hear their lamentations as their rank falls!Mick Gordon just came out with a post about the accusations director Marty posted on reddit a couple years back. Turns out working on Doom Eternal’s music was a utter nightmare.
https://medium.com/@mickgordon/my-full-statement-regarding-doom-eternal-5f98266b27ce
I remember hearing about this some time ago, but I didn't realize just how hard Mick was shafted. I feel really sorry for him.
That everything else is also a result of a team of awesome artists and programmers put through an insane crunch grinder.
Hell, even in Mick Gordon's statement he points out that the actual developers he was in touch with seemed too insecure to bother the management with their shared problems.
Edited by Adannor on Nov 10th 2022 at 4:55:41 PM
