Not surprised at all to see you make a video on this ;) I really like all the points you make and I note you must've recorded this before I responded to your reply. So, in case anyone was interested I'll leave my follow-up comment here as well. I actually agree with the vast majority of what you say on this subject. I can see how you took my original comment to mean what you thought but I don't think I represented my opinion accurately. I didn't mean to say that no freelook instantly = "not Doom", just that the lack of freelook is a pretty big part of the "classic Doom feel" that I personally like to experience. I think that comment by "dvide" says most of what I was trying to say better than I did. Anyway, here was my follow-up response: "I actually think we have extremely similar positions on this. I like the term "vanilla enthusiast" way more than "purist"! Also, I definitely didn't mean to come across as saying even a slightly modded version of Doom is "not Doom". Even heavily modded Doom is still Doom, it just might not feel (in a gameplay sense) similar to playing classic Doom anymore. What I was trying to say is that what makes a particular game feel like itself is an experience made up of a variety of components, and the more you alter each of the individual components the more different the experience and therefore becoming less like itself and more like a different game. It depends on which components are altered and by how much before it doesn't feel like the same game anymore though. Freelook is an obvious example that might alter the experience when talking about classic Doom. That's not to say changes necessarily make for worse experience by any means, just different. It's all about what kind of game experience you want to have. I really like the feel of the 'vanilla' classic Doom game mechanics and, to me the more they're changed, the more it rapidly feels like I'm not "playing Doom" anymore. It's all totally subjective to each person though. I don't necessarily mind WADs that enable freelook if they're designed for it, but if it's paired with a lot of other changes (e.g. in this video) it's something I try to avoid in Doom because I'm personally big on "feeling the engine mechanics" (for want of a less pretentious term). To me, the heavily modded Doom in this video looks more like Quake and I would probably rather play Quake than Doom with all these mods. But that's not to say this modded Doom is bad or invalid, it looks fun/cool in its own right. If people want to play it then they should!" Final side note: as hopefully I've made clear I really put a lot of stock in the feel of engine mechanics. So, PWADs that make quite a lot of graphical changes, or dehacked modifications, still feel very much like Doom to me :)
BeefGee, thanks a lot for taking the time to respond with such detail! Your position on things absolutely makes sense to me. I hope it didn’t feel like I was coming down on you, by the way. It’s all in fun! :D
I'm the author of Chocolate Doom, probably the purest of purist Doom source ports. I fully support people playing Doom however they like. If you want to play with freelook, go right ahead. One of the most beautiful things about Doom and what's kept it alive for 28+ years is that people have modded it and reinvented it in infinite different variations that keeps it fresh and exciting. Do whatever you want and fuck anyone who wants to gatekeep Doom and tell you that their way is The One True Way.
Yes it is and it's EMBARRASSING how it's turned on by default. If I want any filtering, I'll go for "None (trilinear)" to pair with NormalNx high quality resize... and nothing else.
yeah i only recently got into doom in the past year or so and i absolutely couldnt stand how it looked. the purists are right about that one but thats about all the leeway ill give em on telling other people how to enjoy a game. if ive learned anything since getting into doom its that gzdoom's lead dev makes some really stupid decisions and then just sticks to them for what almost seems like not wanting to admit hes made a bad choice and have the hit to his ego.
There's no wrong way of playing Doom as long as you enjoy it. Auto aim or no autoaim? Good. Freelook or no freelook? Good. Mouse or keyboard? Good. Widescreen or 4:3? Good. Doom is one of the most customizable games ever so everyone can enjoy it. Everyone has its own experience.
"Doom is one of the most customizable games ever so everyone can enjoy it." its open source for a reason and that's not because Carmack just said screw it want to open source everything
I'm no purist, and I've been using hardware renderer + freelook ever since that became an option. But people who replace Doom sprites with fugly 3D models need to be whipped naked through the streets.
Am I the only person that actually didn't mind Doom Remake 4? I mean.. it's a travesty but in a kind of funny way, like Turkish Star Wars or The Room. It's just so goofy looking. I thought the mod author stole peoples work and maybe tried to charge people? But I don't know, I wasn't involved with all that and barely even knew about it. From a purely outside perspective it was sorta fun, the shotgun was pretty punchy.
I wouldn't mind 3D models as much if anyone knew how to make ones that weren't so amateur-looking.. I mean I guess Total Chaos counts, but that's pretty far removed from Doom. Lol
Once you start playing with freelook, without auto-aim, I feel like it’s really hard to go back. I really began to dislike the auto-aim in doom, especially with elevation variety of your target.
Yo Br0leg! I definitely know what you mean. I’ve been switching between both for so long that I’m used to it, but I think most people wouldn’t want to go back after having that full control.
I'd always choose freelook over no freelook, having autoaim is better only without freelook, but whole doom w/o freelook still feels 'right' the same can't be said for Quake engine on!
My first ever playthrough of Quake was back in 2013 on DosBox and with autoaim and no freelook. Worst of all, NO SOUNDTRACK! Thankfully Bethesda made a kickass port recently with those issues amended!
For GZDoom I got keybinds so I can easily switch between classic controls (no freelook, auto aim on, no jumping, crouching, etc., disable crosshair, statusbar HUD) and modern controls (freelook on, auto aim off, jumping allowed, crouching allowed, enable crosshair, fullscreen HUD) depending on the type of mods I wanna play. If you too would like them, simply copypaste these lines into your GZDoom config file where your other binds are listed: ,=echo Switched to Classic Mode; centerview; crosshair 0; screenblocks 10; freelook 0; autoaim 35; bind space +attack; dmflags 4521984 .=echo Switched to Modern Mode; crosshair 1; screenblocks 11; freelook 1; autoaim 0; bind space +jump; dmflags 0 Sometimes I also add variations of Modern Mode for specific mods. It comes in handy not having to redo settings over and over again!
11:50 freelook may not be as gamebreaking as jumping or crouching in maps that weren't intended for it, but although I can't speaker for other mappers, I know I've certainly designed maps that intentionally place monsters beyond the reach of auto aim so the player can't kill them yet. Being able to take out monsters that are supposed to remain a threat for the rest of a scenario seems like the same kind of sequence-breaking as jumping to skip a section to me, am I wrong? And that's great if the player wants to do that, it just seems odd to say that sequence-breaking through one non-vanilla gameplay addition is a positive while sequence-breaking with similar non-vanilla quality-of life-additions is a negative. And it might just be my poor mouse control, but I also find that being locked to the horizontal axis makes close-range fighting easier to manage. The fact that everyone can play the way they want is part of beauty of Doom and I'm certainly not saying people should not use freelook if they prefer it, but it does alter the gameplay experience somewhat, which is why it is always great when the WAD info txt specifies whether the maps are intended for freelook or not
I’ll be honest The entire reason I like auto aim is aesthetic, playing with auto aim kind of gives me this weird arcadey feeling, it makes things feel simpler and that’s a feeling I enjoy a lot, with free look it honestly feels just like a modern shooter with sprites for enemies, and well that’s cool it’s not really why I go to Doom, so there, I know it’s not a good reason but it’s mine, and I hope it’s respectable
In my head I've always thought of doom as a top down shooter from the first person (not sure if I came up with this or read it). A game of movement, target prioritization and weapon selection and not about precise aim (just point the gun at the right direction). I think having this philosophy actually makes the "classic" games so good to me, I don't get frustrated with infinitely tall monsters or that pain elemental camping behind that baron, it's just part of the game. (not to mention really good mappers use these mechanics to create scenarios on purpose that abuse the fact that the game has autoaim, and that creates situations where you have to think outside the box) I think people can and should enjoy doom in any way they can but when people start saying shit like "the way ID actually wanted it to be" when including jumping etc is when I have to give an eye roll
Spot on. Of course, use freelook if the wad is designed around it, but for wads old and new meant for the classic gameplay; you will be severely compromising the gameplay with freelook and autoaim off. I have a button assigned for freelook in Prboom+ to look around at the scenery, but that doesn't effect where the shots will go. It still has full vanilla demo support. With freelook, the rocket launcher becomes a sniper rifle.
Caution: Strong Language :) (LOL I couldn't help myself) Response to @Kes Gaming, and many of the commenters on his video. Hope you get some entertainment out of this!
It does. I eat a _lot_ of dirt when I play trickier slaughtermaps because I'm a stubborn consummate freelooker and step where I shouldn't be stepping like a pit or lava, which wouldn't happen with vanilla autoaim.
Purists should learn that not everyone will be on their super high standard and just enjoy playing games the way they want and not treat it like a religion..
honestly i just kinda like how the locked view angle feels. it puts a lot of emphasis on the rest of the movement. that's the best i can come up with, aside from the lack of vertical aim letting mappers get away with all sorts of midtex hacks. i've actually come to enjoy playing with a "mouselook" key that i can hold if i want to look around and take in scenery and springs back to center on release.
I always bind a "center view" key in ports with freelook for the same reason! In some maps that have really tall geometry going on, it's really nice to look way up and down just to take in the scale. I actually do love playing with freelook off too, my one *true* gripe (that wasn't just me rambling on) are those darn gaps in its effectiveness, that and horizontally auto-aiming rockets - SO many deaths..
I generally prefer to use freelook because whenever there's a Pain Elemental on screen, I want to make it as dead as possible as quickly as possible, and freelook facilitates that when there's other enemies in the way. Nothing quite so annoying as seeing my rockets or volleys of plasma decide some Zombiemans on the ground are a better target than the flaming-skull-spitting evil meatball from Hell.
I feel like there's a balance to be had between modern ports and old vanilla jank. I try to play Vanilla whenever I can because it's a baseline that gives me an appreciation for modern ports and mods. I also love that Crispy Doom's crosshair actually lets you see where your autoaim will hit before you fire. It's probably "cheating", but it also makes things feel more intuitive without totally changing how the game controls. At the end of the day it's up to the player to decide how much they want to hold true to what "vanilla" is. (As a side tangent, it does weird me out using Freelook and having to pick between enemies turning into paper or enemies pivoting as you look around)
@@DinnerForkTongue It definitely depends on the port and the settings. I've seen a few cases where sprites will point directly at the camera instead of facing parallel to the camera. Though I'm pretty sure GZdoom has a setting to change how that works.
@@EngineerKappa Ooooh, yes. That, in GZDoom, is the "sprites face camera" setting. I think it's intended for VR...? Anyway, I keep that off ever since I found out about it in BuildGDX. Hideous effect on a flat monitor. Still in GZDoom, there's this option called "sprite billboarding". It's set to Y axis only by default. Change it to X/Y axis and see what you think. I myself love it, except for how it distorts the apparent positioning of tall things like the tech pillar in Doom. So I replace the sprites of these tall decorations with voxels.
Thanks in addition for reinforcing the fact that DooM is 3D. I had to fight the world because of it, and almost had to compromise and say, "Yeah well, it's 2.5D" just to avoid losing to the "DOOM IS A BACKWARD 2D SUBALTERN GAME REEEEEEEEE" mob, but deep down I always knew that there's no way 3 dimensions weren't involved in the game.
Whatever feels good to you, that's how you should play Doom. Never truly understood the "right or wrong way" stuff. Personally, I think if everyone played the exact same, the Doom community wouldn't even be half as inventive and interesting as it is now.
Totally agree, I find playing with freelook without autoaim more natural personally, but I can understand why someone might prefer the original control style, especially if they only play vanilla
To be fair, the angle shearing in the original Duke3D Freelook is really bad, haha. But nah, Freelook is great. If there are obvious shootable switches, you can just opt to not shoot them until you're supposed to. Same goes with jumping, there's a difference between jumping to get up a small ledge that you can get up by taking a staircase that's like 2 seconds away, or jumping through a window that will sequence-break, but people act as if jumping being enabled means you will always sequence break and have no restraint. Disabling autoaim also means if a Lost Soul floats down from the top of the screen juuuust enough and you're shooting rockets at something ahead, you won't instakill yourself because the game thinks you want to aim up. Although I'm also the person that will use idclip/fly to do stuff like skip long elevators, or get past some weird platforming jumps, but only if I know it won't sequence break, if there are no enemies actively attacking me, and if there's no penalty for failing. If there's a slime floor at the bottom of the platforming bit, I'll do it without cheats cause the damage you take is part of the challenge. But if it's just for padding out time, 100% gonna skip it after the second fall. You're not alone with Icon of Sin though, I even go back to classic arrow controls and holding alt to toggle between turning/strafing when those fights start in most cases, if the encounter is obviously designed for non-freelook. It's fun! But in the end, the best part about all these is that they are options. Can just go with whatever you like, and the game doesn't dramatically change into something unrecognizable. Hallmark of great game design.
The first time I sat down and decided to properly play through Doom I decided to do it with Crispy Doom, no freelook, etc. Just a resolution bump and modern WASD controls. I was kinda miserable by the end of it. I'd already been playing Doom for years through ZDoom and Zandronum but mostly I'd just load up whatever map or mods I felt like playing and play for 10 minutes without saving or I liked to play online for a few maps of horde mode. So I was shocked by how rough a time I had because I thought I had a good grasp on the game and I heard this was the best way to play it. And then I learned about the blockmap bug, and then the RNG in OG Doom being rather insane compared to Boom derivatives, and now I'm learning about these blindspots in the autoaim and it's just this holy shit moment because I ran into these things many many times on that one playthrough but I just convinced myself I was just doing bad because the game never felt like this in the past. So now for my Doom 2 playthrough I'm playing on GZDoom with Beautiful Doom (I just love the way it adds some flair to the look of the combat) and no freelook or autoaim and god it feels so good. Being able to precisely hit enemies at different heights is fantastic. I still do try and make sure I can at least see the enemies when looking directly forward because looking too far up or down to aim makes me feel guilty. Only thing I'm still anal about and will tell other people to turn off is jumping and crouching, was genuinely surprised to hear Carmack advocated for that considering how they can break the OG levels. It is a useful thing in modern levels tho. And I also still think no freelook and autoaim has it's perks. Like with controllers. Having the ability to only have to focus on one axis of movement when it comes to aiming makes Doom feel really good on consoles imo. Means your thumbs which can be hard to move precisely don't have to be terribly on point, you can just full force your thumb into a corner to aim slower instead of very gently moving your little thumb muscles ever so slightly while the resistance of the joystick fights it. Whenever I wanna play a shooter on a portable system I usually play Doom for that reason, or I disable the Y-axis on the stick and use gyro for the X-axis. But that's just my opinion, when you pay for the game you can play it how you freakin want. And the fact Doom is so customizable honestly makes it so easy to tweak it to your liking, that it's kinda sad more people don't take advantage of it.
X2. Some people dont understand what the word "personal preference" means. Some of the hate comments in the chat of both videos are making me crazy, lol.
I've always preferred mouse horizontal freelook but no vertical freelook, because the perspective looks extremely smooth and artful when looking straight on. The skybox isn't distorted either.
The biggest reason why I return to Doom over and over is because the simple nature of it. Here's a level, here are your guns, now go shoot your way to the exit. It's fantastic if you want to turn your brain off after a long day and just have fun. Not being have to worry about a crosshair that you have to position exactly to the enemy makes it more fun for me. Just aim at the direction, shoot and watch the bullets / projectiles find their way to the enemy. This is why I don't care for freelook or any modern features. They take away from the delightfully simple gameplay.
I'll play with freelook when I'm playing WADs that require it, especially ZDoom (and perhaps some Legacy) WADs. Whenever I play a WAD not meant for freelook, then I play in a port that doesn't have freelook like Chocolate, ReBoom, Pooch or RUDE, or at least disable it in PrBoom+, DSDA-Doom, Woof, etc. But I can have some fun playing with freelook WADs designed specifically for freelook, like most ZDoom WADs.
At 17:32 you read off a comment by "TheGrayMysterious" that talked about shaky hands, and that's actually why I use it, and keyboard only instead of keyboard and mouse for all the games where that's viable. It's just better for me because pressing keys is easy and binary, you press it, or you don't, but more fluid input methods like a mouse or joystick just leads to my troubles with fin motor control coming into play, and often leads to me to being just off my aim enough that I whiff. It's very noticeable when I'm playing any game where I'm aiming quickly with a mouse at things far away from me, or just trying to aim with a joystick at all. Often times I feel like it's just not my fault in games where I'm trying to aim with something fluid like a mouse or joystick, because my shakiness either causes last second movements right before I fire in the case of a mouse, or just rules out anything but full tilt with a joystick unless I'm actively devoting a large chunk of my attention to holding it steady between 100% and neutral in the case of a joystick. At least with something as binary as a keypress I feel like missing is 100% my fault, but if you've ever tried keyboard look, you know it's just too slow and awkward most of the time to be viable, and so the vertical Aim-Assistance provided by the Doom engine games is just that extra help I need to allow me the potential to grow my skill in these games beyond what it already is, because the main limiting factor of "this is just how precise my hand/thumb can move and there's nothing I can do about it" is removed from the equation.
I'm fine with locked view and autoaim when playing a vanilla map, but I turn it on when playing with mods that change the gameplay. Doom is a game of endless possibilities.
I used to play Doom with freelook on 99% of the time. Than there was a period where I stopped using freelook because I felt peer-pressured not to. Kinda dumb looking back.
Great video, but I still prefer sticking to autoaim when possible, even more with the new port that has the crosshair that turns red when aiming at something, here are my thoughts on it: 1: Autoaim opens the possibility for more alternative control methods, like keyboard only and controllers: If Doom already had freelook many console ports like SNES, Jaguar, 32X and GBA wouldn't have been possible, and this is probably the reason why Heretic and Strife didn't got console ports, and why Hexen only got ported to consoles with analog sticks and shoulder buttons. 2. Freelook adds another layer of complexity to the game: If you ever tried to teach a person how to play FPS games one of the most common mistakes is how many just look at the ground or the ceiling instead of looking forward, and Doom doesn't have that problem. 3. In some specific situations the autoaim is better: Imagine there's a group of zombies right at your front, and you have your shotgun aimed at them, having freelook and shooting the ground or above their heads is the only possibility of missing that at normal conditons. The other case where freelook is worse would be melee, because if you'd need to get closer to the enemies than what would normally be necessary if you are not looking at an angle parallel to the ground.
I personally love how autoaim makes actual character movement more important part of the gameplay, there is much more focus on dodging projectiles and controlling space instead of aiming. This makes Doom play more like 2d shooter or even 2d fighting game like Street Fighter because both feature projectiles as big part of the gameplay and avoiding them one of the most important skills you an have, many ways even more important than aiming. Also I feel that it is strange that so many people seem to think that if we are talking about first person shooter, manually aiming must be most important part of it's gameplay. Even aim assists are often seen as crimes against the nature of the fps genre, especially when we are not talking about playing on console or using gamepad on pc. When game puts focus on free aim and being accurate with it, it takes focus away from other things like character movement, game can do many more complex things if aiming becomes less important. This is why Doom Eternal is so great, it has freeaim but there is so many other things also going on that there is far less focus on just regular aiming and shooting than normal FPS games. Classic Doom's autoaim mechanics together with game's speed, enemies, projectiles and other hazards create really fun and unique gameplay feel with their balance. Freelook is fine and sometimes more practical like when used in multiplayer but it does break that original balance in many ways. While being technically pretty small change, does create very differenct experience. This of course isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I know that I want for myself the experience that autoaim and the lack of freelook gives to me.
Truth be told, I’m actually pretty fond of playing with freelook off too, and I think the points you raise make total sense. My one wish is that auto-aim didn’t have those darn “gaps” in its effectiveness! (I wouldn’t mind if the projectile throwing baddies had some limit in their vertical auto-aim too!)
That's actually the reason I find the new Doom games very difficult. There's so much going on at once while I'm just trying to focus all my attention on hitting enemies in the first place, and my working memory is not great. Doom Eternal is absolutely an amazing game, but it's hard for me to take everything in. Maybe eventually I'll get good enough at classic Doom and Quake that I can progress lol.
Looking up and down in Doom encourages players to be able to stand in one place and kill everything in an area from a safe distance no matter how wide open it is, being limited with autoaim will encourage players to run around the area to kill enemies at various positions, making it more fun. I do agree that the enemies' extreme vertical aiming is a bullshit encounter, but I see that less of a reason to bash the autoaim, and more of a bug that should've been fixed.
To me, this is the strongest argument against freelook in classic Doom. What the developers "intended" is irrelevant to the execution of their intentions and the gameplay that actually results. Of course, careful enemy placement and level design is a huge part of this, and some maps are better suited for one style over the other. Doom games with freelook in vanilla have to resort to very intentional level designs to discourage players from standing still, and the fact that they are designed this way so overtly suggests to me that any designs or mechanics that encourage "run and shoot" over "stand and shoot" are going to be more true to the core of the game, and it doesn't matter so much exactly what those designs or mechanics are in isolation. So while id may have wanted to have freelook but couldn't, they definitely designed their early games to encourage constant movement taking 2D aim into account. That's precisely why I play classic Doom without freelook. It would be absurd to say that it's better in any way, but it does in many cases encourage movement where freelook would not.
I honestly prefer auto aim but if a mod/wad requires it I typically will still play with auto aim but will have a key mapped to freelook so all I gotta do is hold it down to freelook
Frankly, i really like mouselook without autoaim, just because i like crazy mods and modern conveniences in my doom. Playing your maps have kinda changed my mind a little, though. Its nice to play a snappy wad that isn’t completely off the chain from time to time.
People who claim Doom had no mouse never installed the original game because there was no way around the mouse configuration menu. If your PC had no hard drive you'd see the mouse configuration every single time you launched the game. Wolfenstein was 3D & had mouse support before Doom. The fact you couldn't look up or down always gave the mouse superior movement to the keyboard & joystick.
The original Doom mouse directional axis' is identical to most console shooter analog stick controls (Goldeneye, Halo, GTA etc etc), which is basically why move/aiming with 2 analog sticks feels like it isn't optimized. The optimal input control really should be analog movement with mouse aim (joystick & mouse).
Rowdy Rudy 666 when Doomkid? On a more serious note I usually leave freelook off since I like to play DOOM in prboom+ and I’ve just never turned on freelook. The closest I usually get to freelook is when I turn it on for play throughs of HeXen. I know that freelook is used in Heretic but I just never find myself turning it in. Usually I just use “pgup” and “pgdown” to look down and up in Heretic and Dark Forces. I will never deny that when deathmatching with my friends freelook is way more fun but for most wads in DOOM I just leave it off.
god memfis's little autoaim clip really is such a perfect example of the hot garbage that is vanilla autoaim like you not only have the sidegaps on full display, but also the fact that ... hitscans only autoaim vertically, yet _still_ autoaim at stuff that isn't directly in front of you. like, sure, it's not _entirely_ useless because it still lets you clip things with the shotguns or with chaingun spraying, but even then hitscan spread is weighted towards the center, so ... edit: actually "weighted towards the center" is ... not _exactly_ true with vanilla rng? i mean there's two p_random calls in the standard p_gunshot attack for determining hitscan angle, so it's naturally less likely to shoot a hitscan off to the side ( where there are fewer combinations of random numbers that will result in such an angle ), but ... the p_random calls are sequential, and i don't think there's a single instance in doom's rng where a number is followed by itself, so it's _literally impossible_ for a hitscan to fire dead center if it's subjected to bullet spread
For me, I will only play with freelook without auto-aim if the game renders in proper 3D and doesn't use billboard sprites. I remember at the end of Slith.wad (v1.08) my strat was to unload as much plasma as possible on the Spiderdemon or else that section just becomes a nightmare, but 60% of my attempts auto-aim just decided it didn't want to shoot at the spider standing in-front of me, and I think it was because of the few hitscanners around her (now I feel like they were placed there on purpose). That's when I first learned that auto-aim can fuck you.
the thing with autoaim in doom, is that enemies are also interlinked with it, hitscanners and projectile monsters have a range, and so does your auto aim, if you play free look you can shoot enemies far away without retaliation, and most megawads were made with this in mind so if you just Freelook you can mostly out shoot enemies out of their range. this also applies to switches, and jumping will also sequence break / script break things, since most megawads are made with classic / vanilla rules, aka no jumping or freelook.
I started with an illegal beta of Knee Deep before the Shareware was ever released coming off Wolf3d. The beauty of Doom is the mods. People can tailor the game to their specific tastes. Let people play the way they want. Not everyone has the 386/486 needed to play it in it's purest form.
for me, i think that auto aim can be perfect for hit-scan, but i hate how you can """cheat""" with it too, like activating the bfg rays too soon when shooting the projectile directly at the ground, or creating splash damage anywhere on the ground/ ceiling with the rocket launcher (like in quake), these things change how you play with these weapons... i don't really like that because it is too powerful. but i'm fine when the level/mod designer wants you to use it! it's all about the "design intent" with the limitations of the game. and i agree that the horizontal auto aim sucks, the way that the angle is fixed is really really bad and it will get you killed, they should had made it more dynamic like how the vertical works, or just disable it.
What’s awesome in multiplayer Doom ports is that they don’t allow BFG free-aiming! I’m so glad they do that, because like you said, the BFG is way too op otherwise
I didn't realize that mouse look was something controversial, I get jumping in the original being so (because as stated in the video it can breaks some maps), but mouse look!? granted, this is coming from a modern gamer that's mostly interested in modding the game.
For the longest time, i always played with freelook whenever possible. Nowadays though, i like playing old school with auto aim, lower resolution etc. It makes it feel "gamey" in a good way. Without that 3rd dimension of control, i feel a perfect zen with the movement.
The main reason i play doom over other fpses is autoaim. I absolutely suck at aiming, having to worry only about left and right makes me shoot a lot easier, it's kinda like an accessibility setting only this game has.
Hell yeah, Team Freelook represent! Besides the very obvious cheese you can pull on the Icon of Sin, I've never found freelook to be particularly advantageous when playing any of the IWADs or any community-made WADs. I've found auto-aim to be too unreliable and much like you mentioned yourself, it's even gotten me killed at times! Much like Kes, I too much prefer to be the one in control of what I'm targeting. Shout-out to all our sourceport devs who so valiantly give their time to create the plethora of options we all take for granted today! Good video, my friend. ;^) Fun and informative with chill vibes as always!
When I discovered GZDoom at 13 years old I started playing with freelook, jumping, crouching and crosshair, becuase I thought it's so cool to defy intended gameplay with these modern mechanics, even outright skipping levels I didn't like by jumping to the exit. Fast forward a decade later, I've learned so much about the Doom engine, with all its mechanics, quirks, bugs and glitches that I started appreciating its depth tremendously. Not a speedrunner, but playing Doom like one just hits different. It's exciting. It's rewarding. Sometimes it's frustrating but that's the beauty of it. While I have no problem with people playing through GZDoom or using freelook, it is repulsive for me to see such gameplay footage from creators, unless it's Brutal Doom. Ultimately, gatekeeping sucks, but playing Doom in the vanilla way encompasses its own skillset which I don't consider artifical difficulty.
DooM's auto-aim pretty much constantly fights me when I'm playing with a controller or playing the mobile versions of the game. Heck, I straight up wont touch Episode 4 since the auto-aim is so wonky.
Hey man. Loved the video and commentary. I definitely think you should do some more reaction videos and stir up some healthy conversation. You’re a great facilitator. I like doom the way it was intended if I have a choice. Think shitty Memento Mori type WADs. However, when I started following your channel, I have a new appreciation for changes like dehacked enemies and changes to weapons, etc. I’m not sure I’ll ever hop on the mouse look bandwagon, but it’s fun to hear peoples opinions.
Good comment from you, just like I always expect, Tony D. Seems like you took the video just as intended! (As you can tell, I’m not particularly committed to either way of playing, I just felt the urge to rant 😂)
@@DoomKid I think middle ground is the place to be. Doom is about enjoying it and having fun or forgetting about your life for a bit. However you want to do that, you have the freedom to do so. Seeing both arguments is cool as well. It was also amusing seeing a non-rated G video where you give an honest opinion with a few F bombs and such!
Downtown alone proves how bad the auto-aim in DOOM really is. For hitscan it's mostly fine, but when it randomly decides to track an enemy right next to to you with the rocket launcher because of the game's horizontal auto-aim, it's pain. Problem for me is that I got "used to crap" as you put it x) so now it doesn't bother me at all.
I do dislike autoaim. To me it just feels like a limitation, in a similar way the infinitely tall monsters or the lost soul limit are. If a map isn't made for it, whatever. If i care about the intended path, i'm just not going to jump over stuff or shoot switches i shouldn't be able to reach. If i don't care about the intended path and just want to shoot shit, then guess i'll break the map. But then again, i'm not a run&gun type of player and also enjoy mods like Hideous Destructor and Brutal Doom more than unmodded Doom, so my opinion doesn't count at that point, eh? Haha
I prefer the original aim behavior. Say you're shooting rockets out a window up toward a cacodemon... Then the autoaim goes wrong and shoots one straight ahead into the wall below the window. Then the rocket blows up in your face. It's a vanilla quirk and challenge that goes away when you can aim the rocket yourself. It's instinctive then when I"m strafing and shooting rockets upward out a window that I keep my distance from the short wall below the window.
Classic doom fans: Doom is so great it’s such a timeless classic Also classic doom fans: IF YOU DONT PLAY WITH 30FPS A 480p CRT MONITOR A BALL MOUSE AND NO VERTICAL AIM THEM YOUR NOT GETTING A FUN EXPERIENCE. my point is a bit unclear. doom is a fantastic game, vertical aim doesn't ruin the experience, its not so poorly made that something like that could ruin the experience
I remember when my dad brought home the shareware version. Yes, I am old. It is still my all time favorite games, specifically Ultimate Doom. I am not a purist at all. I love GZDoom. Infact, that is why I still play it and love it. As you said "At a glance" you can tell it is Doom. The updates give it new life to a nearly 30 year old game. I agree, the heavily modded ones that look nothing like Doom I will pass on, but I love free look, 3d Models, HD textures, sloped surfaces, and limited level over level. It takes something familiar and adds a modern twist to it. I would love to see a good revamp of Ultimate Doom maps that fixes the issues with the new features, gives a face lift to the architecture, but keeps true to the original layout (the ones i have seen dramatically change the lay out with occasional sections similar to parts of the original) Though I would not complain about more monsters as the original out side of nightmare is too easy at times, and nightmare can be too extreme at time for a relaxing but challenging play thought
I’d use freelook if it didn’t make me feel like a nauseous goldfish. The scaling is just hideous and I cannot handle it at all. In some ports it is ok (the ones that render the levels as GL polygons) as it isn’t so bad then. But when I’m playing vanilla then I’m playing on purest mode on.. otherwise it’s gonna get messy!
If you think Doom's toxic purists are bad... oh boy. Half Life 2's toxic purists are 10 times worse. That aside, another great video from ya! I mostly use freelook but sometimes I just don't because I feel like it. But still, I prefer freelook in the end. Oh, one more thing, you should have a "debate" about your opinions on the Icon of Sin to someone who hates it, probably MtPain. But it would be fun to watch none the less.
As someone who's been playing Doom on DOSbox since the age of 4 and has eventually gotten to enjoy all from ripping & tearing in Death Foretold to finessing in Hellrider to clusterfucking in 12-player Complex survival, I'd say that one of the main lasting legacies of Doom is the customizability of EVERYTHING. It's possible for anyone dedicated enough to pick up and make content from vanilla compatible maps to flamboyant ZScript gameplay mods and whatever in between. There's no other game that's as easy to express as much creativity with as Doom is, and I think the arguments against using freelook are counter to that - the belief that your enjoyment holds more value and you need to share it or make others understand it. Now I'll just go back to my Crispy-doom epic 2 playthrough. Like it or not, we're all nerds who love the same game.
I agree, since Doom was released it has been modified to potentially fit ANY tastes a person might have. That’s why it always bothers me when people get elitist about their preferred method - it’s Doom, there’s no “right” and “wrong” way to play!
To me this is equivalent as asking if I like to play with custom weapons, I play with freelook, not because it's the intended way or not, it's the way I like it, but I can understand why people like to play with it off, the game was really made without freelook and other features in mind so playing with those on sure gives a different experience than what was firstly envisioned but if that experience is good or not is all up to you to decide.
The first time I knew Doom was in Doom95, later in Zdoom, and here I experienced freelook, but I find extremely ugly the way the maps distorted when I look up and down. So I really l really start to like the autoaim more. Then I got to know gzdoom, and freelook didn't distort maps. So I started playing with freelook again. ... Today I think newbies should play Doom the way they want. If they happen to like Doom and want an extra challenge, I don't think it will hurt to play a map or two with autoaim. "But I really hate autoaim" It's simple, just play the way you like. I think playing Doom should be fun, not a frustrating experience.
Locked freelook + autoaim is a specific style of Doom play, the original style even, but not the only way to enjoy it by any means. Heck the first game Raven released using the idtech engine was Heretic, which had a clunky first iteration of freelook. Hexen even made looking up or down a necessity at times, and *gasp* jumping. There are old-school maps made for (close-to-)vanilla Doom - these designed around the lack of freelook for combat encounters, as well as the distance limitations and quirks of autoaim. And of course, autoaim is in itself a mechanic which has it's own tactics and cheeses. For such maps n mods, I prefer to play "as intended" even if they work perfectly fine with freelook or even (gasp!) jumping enabled. By the same token, maps and mods targeted at freelook + fully manual aim, or that use the expanded features of ports like Zdoom, aren't ruining anything - they're just built for a different playstyle which one can enjoy equally. Although I'll always consider keyboard-only players a mite mad.
Personally I think the models in Doom Remake 4 are actually pretty decent since they seem to remind some of us with the whole "what would the demons and other monsters look like in 3D" thing. Don't tell me that you didn't try to imagine what an imp or zombie sergeant would look like without the pixels.
Showing D4R the whole time, just strips the video of all credibility. xDDD Anyway, I just play freelook whenever the wad in question says so, if not, I default to hor+autoaim :P Not being able to hit the shotgunner behind the caco was part of the game.
Thats the great thing about Doom now. You can do whatever you want with it. If you wanna design a wad thats meant for vanilla controls you can do that and put in a readme best ways to play it. If you wanna paly with some crazy weapon pack that breaks the game, you can do that too. Why people gotta hate?
y-shearing has only ever been a problem for me in radix, which is a flight-based game in a similar sector engine. lots of looking wayyy up and wayyy down with the perpetually parallel vertical lines is kind of hard to stomach for extended period. i personally play doom with autoaim because it's just one less thing for me to think about, especially if i'm rocking it keyboard only or with a controller set up like psx doom. i tried to play quake with autoaim, keyboard only 2 years ago and it is absolutely not possible after a point. there is so much more this world to get miffed over, and how someone looks around in a virtual world of cartoon demons is the last thing anyone should be getting upset over. it was ultima underworld that had the ability to look up and down in 1992. underworld didn't have any y-shearing but it absolutely did have loads of texture warping like on the ps1 and saturn. from anecdotes i've heard (not from that time) it didn't get great framerates until pentiums came around. i heard you mention the elder scrolls: arena having it and as far as i know, arena did not have the ability to look up and down (or much else to enjoy lmaooo). i can see how one easily could confuse one of those for the other, especially if you're not well versed in the sort of games looking glass helped to bring to light.
Free look is a comfort thing for me. Doom’s default vertical angle is uncomfortable for me, it makes me weirdly anxious. Being able to look up and down helps alleviate that. I had a similar problem with SMITE. My ‘comfortable’ look angle is higher than the maximum vertical look angle in that game. But, fun fact, free look (in GZdoom, at least) still has auto aim unless you disable it. I figured that out when I was playing Golden Souls and my shots were hitting closer enemies that weren’t directly under my crosshair. I actually can’t stand the ‘vanilla doom’ experience. I hate the vanilla levels and gameplay feel. I love Doom because of all of the sick mods. Golden Souls, Simon’s Destiny, Ashes 2063/Afterglow, etc.
I don't use freelook for the same reason I don't like GZDoom room-over-room geometry. Restrictions make the game more interesting to me and easier to understand for me. I also think the restrictions allow a certain class of creativity in mapping that can't exist with total freedom. But I have nothing against people who use freelook. Play Doom how you like. :)
2.5 d is a little ambiguous. The 2 most common definitions i've seen are 3d gameplay in a 2d renderer, (like how most pre-quake games are 3d but don't use polygons) or 2d gameplay in a 3d renderer (look at stuff like the dkc reboots [dkcr/tropical freeze]) Anyways, I'm more in favour of auto-aim, I'll use it in mods/games made around it (heretic, hexen, gzdoom mods) but in all the classic style maps I'll use auto-aim with strict compatibility, especially with how things like icon of sin can be cheesed with it. I mainly come from classic style mods which are designed more for this so mouselook kinda feels like cheating on those wads, will agree that the classic aim specifically isn't good so outside of the wads designed for it, i'm using mouselook. Sadly for me, I pretty much only play those challenging wads so no weapon mods/freelook for me. (I'm fine with the added challenge though)
i always kind of like getting an insight on other gaming communities and the gameplay drama that can arise.. kinda gatekeeping type stuff like 'your not playing the REAL Doom' type stuff. tbf im not against gatekeeping. i just like the heartfelt arguments and frustrations that occur over what is ultimately a trivial issue also what's the best wad you've released?
i've been using freelook ever since it was available in doom and i won't ever go back. i don't care if it breaks the level. especially after playing quake, i realized that it feels much better.
Well, personally i've never got used to free-look in Doom, for some reason the motion makes me sick to look up and down and seeing the flipped sprites too lol. In other games just feels fine but for Doom it doesn't made it for me. As a mapper, i don't mind auto-aim since i do like putting enemies in high ground, so if someone has some trouble dealing the auto-aim, so be it, it is the player's choice after all. Crouching and jumping too, although for some parts i tend to use a low barrier which is not posible in vanilla Doom but it's possible in GZDoom, it really does feel like cheating. Might just well enabling iddqd at this point. Also the purist and etilist that "Doom should be played in Ultra-Violence" or "Doom should be played with keyboard only" and etc, i'm just a bit tired about it, everyone should play it the way they want, Too young to die, Hurt me plenty, free-look, auto-aim, doesn't matter anyway. Everyone we should be fine with it. But still it's a fun topic to talk and discuss.
I tend to play Doom on Crispy with autoaim and no freelook, but not so much out of a "this is the TRUE WAY of enjoying these games" but more bc as a general habit I like to stick with the original control schemes of retro games if I can help it. Same reason I play old gen Armored Core with the weird non-analog camera setup they had going on, less about elitism and more bc when I have a lot of options in games I lean towards the vanilla "original" ones. I do have another reason though and it's a bit sillier: Crispy is my favorite source port due to how lightweight and simple it is compared to something like Gzdoom, but also it only has software renderer and I really dislike the weird warping you get when using freelook with it lmao. If I'm playing some Boom or Zdoom mod/map that requires me to play on a source port I'm a lot more likely to go with freelook (assuming the maps allow for it) purely bc those usually have hardware rendering.
Been playing Doom since the beginning. I dropped the "purist" style of play as SOON as source ports came out with free look. Hell, for a long stent I was only playing with weapon wads. I haven't played vanilla(meaning no DOS box and the like) in years and I don't see a point in doing so. GZDoom makes the game much more convenient and fun especially with mods and megawads and options like free look. Now I don't use crouch jump to skip parts of the map but I love crouching under fireballs as another direction to dodge, so I use it for that. And yeah P.S. IOS sucks :P
When I hear 2.5d my mind instantly goes to games like Diablo, marble madness and a bunch of other titles, it's kind of weird people see Doom as such. I never thought about it that way, even though I guess I can kind of see why? Really dope SMK poster in the back!
one thing to consider is that what is considered cheating depends on what gameplay mod your using. hideous destructor fully embraces sequence breaking with giving the player multiple options for dynamic destruction (door kicking, chainsaw cutting, HEAT rounds, and doorbusters) all with different levels of effectiveness. not to mention that movement for the player is dramatically different (jumping to the side and jumping upwards are two different contextual actions, the latter which is used a lot more for ledge climbing.)
Doom is hacky 3D where some aspects are done and calculated in 3D, but some stuff just doesn't care, like explosons (basically anything that doesn't care about height is 2D like)
I consider auto aim a "rule" that must be followed in single player unless the map author says otherwise. If I start turning off all the things that bother me I'm going to change the game too much. For example, infinite height sucks and I wanted the game to work like Heretic at this point, but that's not how it works and if I turn it off I'll gain a lot more mobility which will unbalance some maps.
This is definitely a solid point - anything that isn't possible in -complevel 2 (vanilla physics, in other words), I try to avoid for my SP playthroughs, just because it's "authentic" and I don't want to cheat at all. I just don't like the idea that freelook makes it "no longer Doom". It's all still Doom at the end of the day, Doom's code runs through the veins of all source ports, and I feel like any modification - from levels to freelook, to even crazier things - are, in their own way, part of Doom's mod-friendly DNA. It's all part of the family.
I understand that. I personally play with a mix of settings, for making it close to the original but not 100% accurate. For example i activate things like autoaim or limited lost soul spam for playing Doom 2 campaign but deactivate things like infinite height since it can make some levels unfairly frustrating.
I'm a bit late to the party, and I'm probably going to repeat what some people already said, but here are my thoughts: - Great video first of all, I agree with most if not all of your points and I was sometimes speaking out loud your response at the same time as you paused Kes' video to say the same :D - Out of all of doom's quirks and engine/input limitations, auto-aim is probably the one that annoys me the least (and I'm easily annoyed (not proud)). I agree that the auto-aim sucks but imo it's a very minor discomfort compared to other things (hello there, blockcrap!) - At 13:23 you mentioned Morrowind; did you mean Ultima Underworld from '92? Because that one had looking up and down, as well as jumping and swimming. That, in a pre-doom gaming world, WAS impressive. Yet the game never got very popular. I wonder if the folks at id knew about Ultima Underworld's existence. - I understand the hate for maps that place monsters where you cannot hit them due to auto-aim. But personally I disagree. If used right, it can be a really clever mapping technique: they're projectile turrets, continuously shooting at you so that you cannot camp: keep on the move, or die! The culmination of this mechanic are the un-killable Evil Eyes from Ribbiks' Magnolia that continuously shoot arachno-projectiles at you from a strategic position. So, early maps that used monster placement instead of complex dehacked techniques to achieve this same goal get a thumbs up from me! Super clever. Important note: this does NOT apply to hit-scanners. Placing chaingunners on platforms out of auto-aim range is like putting PINEAPPLE ON PIZZA I MEAN COME ON!
Hey Coin, really glad to hear your thoughts on this one! As for what annoys me most about vanilla, it’s a tossup really. Infinite height, limited range and “holey” auto-aim, automatic weapon switch even to inferior weapons/in DM, and probably the fairly low visplane limit are all “tied for second” behind that damn POS blockmap bug (which I only understand “in full” thanks to you!) but I have to admit that hole-filled auto-aim *and* the shitty blockmap bug in conjunction make it feel like the engine is straight up gaslighting you when you supposedly “miss a shot” 😂 For some stupid reason, I was thinking of Daggerfall - and even then I’d have been wrong as shit. You’re correct of course, the pre-Doom game I was *actually* trying to think of with freelook was Ultima Underworld. I feel so damn sure I’ve heard Romero give mention to Ultima at one of his many talks.. but don’t quote me on that. You know, I was absolutely thinking of hitscanners specifically when I made that point, but I just ranted like an idiot and didn’t make that clear at all. I disagree that placing hitscanners out of range is like pineapple on pizza though, because placing hitscanners annoyingly like that is NOT delicious and mouth-watering! 😄 Great comment, man.
Not surprised at all to see you make a video on this ;) I really like all the points you make and I note you must've recorded this before I responded to your reply. So, in case anyone was interested I'll leave my follow-up comment here as well. I actually agree with the vast majority of what you say on this subject. I can see how you took my original comment to mean what you thought but I don't think I represented my opinion accurately. I didn't mean to say that no freelook instantly = "not Doom", just that the lack of freelook is a pretty big part of the "classic Doom feel" that I personally like to experience. I think that comment by "dvide" says most of what I was trying to say better than I did.
Anyway, here was my follow-up response:
"I actually think we have extremely similar positions on this. I like the term "vanilla enthusiast" way more than "purist"! Also, I definitely didn't mean to come across as saying even a slightly modded version of Doom is "not Doom". Even heavily modded Doom is still Doom, it just might not feel (in a gameplay sense) similar to playing classic Doom anymore.
What I was trying to say is that what makes a particular game feel like itself is an experience made up of a variety of components, and the more you alter each of the individual components the more different the experience and therefore becoming less like itself and more like a different game. It depends on which components are altered and by how much before it doesn't feel like the same game anymore though. Freelook is an obvious example that might alter the experience when talking about classic Doom.
That's not to say changes necessarily make for worse experience by any means, just different. It's all about what kind of game experience you want to have. I really like the feel of the 'vanilla' classic Doom game mechanics and, to me the more they're changed, the more it rapidly feels like I'm not "playing Doom" anymore.
It's all totally subjective to each person though. I don't necessarily mind WADs that enable freelook if they're designed for it, but if it's paired with a lot of other changes (e.g. in this video) it's something I try to avoid in Doom because I'm personally big on "feeling the engine mechanics" (for want of a less pretentious term). To me, the heavily modded Doom in this video looks more like Quake and I would probably rather play Quake than Doom with all these mods. But that's not to say this modded Doom is bad or invalid, it looks fun/cool in its own right. If people want to play it then they should!"
Final side note: as hopefully I've made clear I really put a lot of stock in the feel of engine mechanics. So, PWADs that make quite a lot of graphical changes, or dehacked modifications, still feel very much like Doom to me :)
BeefGee, thanks a lot for taking the time to respond with such detail! Your position on things absolutely makes sense to me. I hope it didn’t feel like I was coming down on you, by the way. It’s all in fun! :D
@@DoomKid no dramas whatsoever. I love these kind of discussions, they're fun!
I'm the author of Chocolate Doom, probably the purest of purist Doom source ports. I fully support people playing Doom however they like. If you want to play with freelook, go right ahead. One of the most beautiful things about Doom and what's kept it alive for 28+ years is that people have modded it and reinvented it in infinite different variations that keeps it fresh and exciting. Do whatever you want and fuck anyone who wants to gatekeep Doom and tell you that their way is The One True Way.
So well said, fraggle!
Me reading this while eating chocolate
Me reading this while eating Doom
Me Dooming chocolate while eating this
Me
Even casual Doom fans and Doom purists can agree that GZDOOM texture filtering is dogshit
I just turn it off, because I like my crispy pixels. The freedom of choice and customization is what makes Doom source ports so powerful.
Yes it is and it's EMBARRASSING how it's turned on by default. If I want any filtering, I'll go for "None (trilinear)" to pair with NormalNx high quality resize... and nothing else.
yeah i only recently got into doom in the past year or so and i absolutely couldnt stand how it looked. the purists are right about that one but thats about all the leeway ill give em on telling other people how to enjoy a game. if ive learned anything since getting into doom its that gzdoom's lead dev makes some really stupid decisions and then just sticks to them for what almost seems like not wanting to admit hes made a bad choice and have the hit to his ego.
There's no wrong way of playing Doom as long as you enjoy it.
Auto aim or no autoaim? Good.
Freelook or no freelook? Good.
Mouse or keyboard? Good.
Widescreen or 4:3? Good.
Doom is one of the most customizable games ever so everyone can enjoy it. Everyone has its own experience.
You forgot something:
Source port or IBM PC? Good.
Hdoom or no Hdoom? Good.
@@scoundrel8440 👍
Correction:Mouse & Keyboard or Joystick?Good
"Doom is one of the most customizable games ever so everyone can enjoy it."
its open source for a reason and that's not because Carmack just said screw it want to open source everything
I'm no purist, and I've been using hardware renderer + freelook ever since that became an option.
But people who replace Doom sprites with fugly 3D models need to be whipped naked through the streets.
Lmao!
Am I the only person that actually didn't mind Doom Remake 4? I mean.. it's a travesty but in a kind of funny way, like Turkish Star Wars or The Room. It's just so goofy looking. I thought the mod author stole peoples work and maybe tried to charge people? But I don't know, I wasn't involved with all that and barely even knew about it. From a purely outside perspective it was sorta fun, the shotgun was pretty punchy.
Models can look good if they are made for a total conversion or for decorations.
Church
I wouldn't mind 3D models as much if anyone knew how to make ones that weren't so amateur-looking.. I mean I guess Total Chaos counts, but that's pretty far removed from Doom. Lol
Once you start playing with freelook, without auto-aim, I feel like it’s really hard to go back. I really began to dislike the auto-aim in doom, especially with elevation variety of your target.
Yo Br0leg! I definitely know what you mean. I’ve been switching between both for so long that I’m used to it, but I think most people wouldn’t want to go back after having that full control.
@@DoomKid ;)
Freelook is more fun on a mouse and keyboard, but if you’re playing on a dual analog controller I’m auto-aim all the way.
I keep trying to turn auto aim off, but it doesn't work. Any advice?
@@mikeg2491 people play doom on dual analog controller ? 💀💀💀🗿🗿🗿
I'd always choose freelook over no freelook, having autoaim is better only without freelook, but whole doom w/o freelook still feels 'right' the same can't be said for Quake engine on!
I agree, both feel "right" to me in Doom. But only Doom!
My first ever playthrough of Quake was back in 2013 on DosBox and with autoaim and no freelook. Worst of all, NO SOUNDTRACK! Thankfully Bethesda made a kickass port recently with those issues amended!
For GZDoom I got keybinds so I can easily switch between classic controls (no freelook, auto aim on, no jumping, crouching, etc., disable crosshair, statusbar HUD) and modern controls (freelook on, auto aim off, jumping allowed, crouching allowed, enable crosshair, fullscreen HUD) depending on the type of mods I wanna play. If you too would like them, simply copypaste these lines into your GZDoom config file where your other binds are listed:
,=echo Switched to Classic Mode; centerview; crosshair 0; screenblocks 10; freelook 0; autoaim 35; bind space +attack; dmflags 4521984
.=echo Switched to Modern Mode; crosshair 1; screenblocks 11; freelook 1; autoaim 0; bind space +jump; dmflags 0
Sometimes I also add variations of Modern Mode for specific mods. It comes in handy not having to redo settings over and over again!
That's incredibly helpful!
Huh, didn't know you could do all that in a single bind, neat
11:50 freelook may not be as gamebreaking as jumping or crouching in maps that weren't intended for it, but although I can't speaker for other mappers, I know I've certainly designed maps that intentionally place monsters beyond the reach of auto aim so the player can't kill them yet. Being able to take out monsters that are supposed to remain a threat for the rest of a scenario seems like the same kind of sequence-breaking as jumping to skip a section to me, am I wrong? And that's great if the player wants to do that, it just seems odd to say that sequence-breaking through one non-vanilla gameplay addition is a positive while sequence-breaking with similar non-vanilla quality-of life-additions is a negative.
And it might just be my poor mouse control, but I also find that being locked to the horizontal axis makes close-range fighting easier to manage. The fact that everyone can play the way they want is part of beauty of Doom and I'm certainly not saying people should not use freelook if they prefer it, but it does alter the gameplay experience somewhat, which is why it is always great when the WAD info txt specifies whether the maps are intended for freelook or not
I’ll be honest The entire reason I like auto aim is aesthetic, playing with auto aim kind of gives me this weird arcadey feeling, it makes things feel simpler and that’s a feeling I enjoy a lot, with free look it honestly feels just like a modern shooter with sprites for enemies, and well that’s cool it’s not really why I go to Doom, so there, I know it’s not a good reason but it’s mine, and I hope it’s respectable
It is!
Good take!
In my head I've always thought of doom as a top down shooter from the first person (not sure if I came up with this or read it). A game of movement, target prioritization and weapon selection and not about precise aim (just point the gun at the right direction). I think having this philosophy actually makes the "classic" games so good to me, I don't get frustrated with infinitely tall monsters or that pain elemental camping behind that baron, it's just part of the game. (not to mention really good mappers use these mechanics to create scenarios on purpose that abuse the fact that the game has autoaim, and that creates situations where you have to think outside the box)
I think people can and should enjoy doom in any way they can but when people start saying shit like "the way ID actually wanted it to be" when including jumping etc is when I have to give an eye roll
That's a very interesting way to think of Doom. It makes a lot of sense actually!
You were right. It IS a top-down game being raycasted and stretched to appear 3d. Though this is only true for the original software renderer.
Spot on. Of course, use freelook if the wad is designed around it, but for wads old and new meant for the classic gameplay; you will be severely compromising the gameplay with freelook and autoaim off. I have a button assigned for freelook in Prboom+ to look around at the scenery, but that doesn't effect where the shots will go. It still has full vanilla demo support.
With freelook, the rocket launcher becomes a sniper rifle.
"adapt to crap" 😂
Totally using that one.
Caution: Strong Language :) (LOL I couldn't help myself)
Response to @Kes Gaming, and many of the commenters on his video.
Hope you get some entertainment out of this!
Honestly while I prefer Freelook on DOOM, i think Doom with AUTOAIM has a odd & magnificient charm to it, kinda makes it more strategic and tactical
It does. I eat a _lot_ of dirt when I play trickier slaughtermaps because I'm a stubborn consummate freelooker and step where I shouldn't be stepping like a pit or lava, which wouldn't happen with vanilla autoaim.
Freelook turns The Chasm into a good level, fight me.
Purists should learn that not everyone will be on their super high standard and just enjoy playing games the way they want and not treat it like a religion..
honestly i just kinda like how the locked view angle feels. it puts a lot of emphasis on the rest of the movement. that's the best i can come up with, aside from the lack of vertical aim letting mappers get away with all sorts of midtex hacks. i've actually come to enjoy playing with a "mouselook" key that i can hold if i want to look around and take in scenery and springs back to center on release.
I always bind a "center view" key in ports with freelook for the same reason! In some maps that have really tall geometry going on, it's really nice to look way up and down just to take in the scale. I actually do love playing with freelook off too, my one *true* gripe (that wasn't just me rambling on) are those darn gaps in its effectiveness, that and horizontally auto-aiming rockets - SO many deaths..
I generally prefer to use freelook because whenever there's a Pain Elemental on screen, I want to make it as dead as possible as quickly as possible, and freelook facilitates that when there's other enemies in the way. Nothing quite so annoying as seeing my rockets or volleys of plasma decide some Zombiemans on the ground are a better target than the flaming-skull-spitting evil meatball from Hell.
Free look is good as long as it doesn’t have that weird warp effect.
I feel like there's a balance to be had between modern ports and old vanilla jank. I try to play Vanilla whenever I can because it's a baseline that gives me an appreciation for modern ports and mods. I also love that Crispy Doom's crosshair actually lets you see where your autoaim will hit before you fire. It's probably "cheating", but it also makes things feel more intuitive without totally changing how the game controls. At the end of the day it's up to the player to decide how much they want to hold true to what "vanilla" is.
(As a side tangent, it does weird me out using Freelook and having to pick between enemies turning into paper or enemies pivoting as you look around)
Honestly, the ugliness of sprites when freelook is on is absolutely something I should have acknowledged.
Voxel Doom anyone?
By "pivoting" you mean X/Y billboarding? I only really notice that at extreme angles, like looking perfectly down.
@@DinnerForkTongue It definitely depends on the port and the settings. I've seen a few cases where sprites will point directly at the camera instead of facing parallel to the camera. Though I'm pretty sure GZdoom has a setting to change how that works.
@@EngineerKappa
Ooooh, yes. That, in GZDoom, is the "sprites face camera" setting. I think it's intended for VR...? Anyway, I keep that off ever since I found out about it in BuildGDX. Hideous effect on a flat monitor.
Still in GZDoom, there's this option called "sprite billboarding". It's set to Y axis only by default. Change it to X/Y axis and see what you think. I myself love it, except for how it distorts the apparent positioning of tall things like the tech pillar in Doom. So I replace the sprites of these tall decorations with voxels.
Thanks in addition for reinforcing the fact that DooM is 3D. I had to fight the world because of it, and almost had to compromise and say, "Yeah well, it's 2.5D" just to avoid losing to the "DOOM IS A BACKWARD 2D SUBALTERN GAME REEEEEEEEE" mob, but deep down I always knew that there's no way 3 dimensions weren't involved in the game.
I’m late to reply, but thanks for this comment, I’ve felt the same before
Whatever feels good to you, that's how you should play Doom. Never truly understood the "right or wrong way" stuff.
Personally, I think if everyone played the exact same, the Doom community wouldn't even be half as inventive and interesting as it is now.
That’s a damn good point!
Totally agree, I find playing with freelook without autoaim more natural personally, but I can understand why someone might prefer the original control style, especially if they only play vanilla
To be fair, the angle shearing in the original Duke3D Freelook is really bad, haha.
But nah, Freelook is great. If there are obvious shootable switches, you can just opt to not shoot them until you're supposed to. Same goes with jumping, there's a difference between jumping to get up a small ledge that you can get up by taking a staircase that's like 2 seconds away, or jumping through a window that will sequence-break, but people act as if jumping being enabled means you will always sequence break and have no restraint. Disabling autoaim also means if a Lost Soul floats down from the top of the screen juuuust enough and you're shooting rockets at something ahead, you won't instakill yourself because the game thinks you want to aim up.
Although I'm also the person that will use idclip/fly to do stuff like skip long elevators, or get past some weird platforming jumps, but only if I know it won't sequence break, if there are no enemies actively attacking me, and if there's no penalty for failing. If there's a slime floor at the bottom of the platforming bit, I'll do it without cheats cause the damage you take is part of the challenge. But if it's just for padding out time, 100% gonna skip it after the second fall.
You're not alone with Icon of Sin though, I even go back to classic arrow controls and holding alt to toggle between turning/strafing when those fights start in most cases, if the encounter is obviously designed for non-freelook. It's fun!
But in the end, the best part about all these is that they are options. Can just go with whatever you like, and the game doesn't dramatically change into something unrecognizable. Hallmark of great game design.
The first time I sat down and decided to properly play through Doom I decided to do it with Crispy Doom, no freelook, etc. Just a resolution bump and modern WASD controls. I was kinda miserable by the end of it. I'd already been playing Doom for years through ZDoom and Zandronum but mostly I'd just load up whatever map or mods I felt like playing and play for 10 minutes without saving or I liked to play online for a few maps of horde mode. So I was shocked by how rough a time I had because I thought I had a good grasp on the game and I heard this was the best way to play it.
And then I learned about the blockmap bug, and then the RNG in OG Doom being rather insane compared to Boom derivatives, and now I'm learning about these blindspots in the autoaim and it's just this holy shit moment because I ran into these things many many times on that one playthrough but I just convinced myself I was just doing bad because the game never felt like this in the past.
So now for my Doom 2 playthrough I'm playing on GZDoom with Beautiful Doom (I just love the way it adds some flair to the look of the combat) and no freelook or autoaim and god it feels so good. Being able to precisely hit enemies at different heights is fantastic. I still do try and make sure I can at least see the enemies when looking directly forward because looking too far up or down to aim makes me feel guilty. Only thing I'm still anal about and will tell other people to turn off is jumping and crouching, was genuinely surprised to hear Carmack advocated for that considering how they can break the OG levels. It is a useful thing in modern levels tho.
And I also still think no freelook and autoaim has it's perks. Like with controllers. Having the ability to only have to focus on one axis of movement when it comes to aiming makes Doom feel really good on consoles imo. Means your thumbs which can be hard to move precisely don't have to be terribly on point, you can just full force your thumb into a corner to aim slower instead of very gently moving your little thumb muscles ever so slightly while the resistance of the joystick fights it. Whenever I wanna play a shooter on a portable system I usually play Doom for that reason, or I disable the Y-axis on the stick and use gyro for the X-axis.
But that's just my opinion, when you pay for the game you can play it how you freakin want. And the fact Doom is so customizable honestly makes it so easy to tweak it to your liking, that it's kinda sad more people don't take advantage of it.
Any way people want to enjoy doom is totally ok and valid. Respect others, and do your own thing.
X2. Some people dont understand what the word "personal preference" means. Some of the hate comments in the chat of both videos are making me crazy, lol.
I've always preferred mouse horizontal freelook but no vertical freelook, because the perspective looks extremely smooth and artful when looking straight on. The skybox isn't distorted either.
The biggest reason why I return to Doom over and over is because the simple nature of it. Here's a level, here are your guns, now go shoot your way to the exit. It's fantastic if you want to turn your brain off after a long day and just have fun.
Not being have to worry about a crosshair that you have to position exactly to the enemy makes it more fun for me. Just aim at the direction, shoot and watch the bullets / projectiles find their way to the enemy. This is why I don't care for freelook or any modern features. They take away from the delightfully simple gameplay.
Well stated comment!
I'll play with freelook when I'm playing WADs that require it, especially ZDoom (and perhaps some Legacy) WADs.
Whenever I play a WAD not meant for freelook, then I play in a port that doesn't have freelook like Chocolate, ReBoom, Pooch or RUDE, or at least disable it in PrBoom+, DSDA-Doom, Woof, etc.
But I can have some fun playing with freelook WADs designed specifically for freelook, like most ZDoom WADs.
I'm a rebel, I play with freelook with heavy auto aim
Great MIDI selection, really love both Heretic and Descent
If you like Heretic, play Faithless. I'm not the biggest fan of Heretic and Faithless has been a real ball.
Great vid, contentious topics like this are as entertaining as they are trivial. Takes me back to Sega vs Nintendo.
Great comparison! It's fun having a good ole Doom nerd rant once in a while.
Nintendo are objectively better tho.
@@ikagura Yup!
At 17:32 you read off a comment by "TheGrayMysterious" that talked about shaky hands, and that's actually why I use it, and keyboard only instead of keyboard and mouse for all the games where that's viable. It's just better for me because pressing keys is easy and binary, you press it, or you don't, but more fluid input methods like a mouse or joystick just leads to my troubles with fin motor control coming into play, and often leads to me to being just off my aim enough that I whiff. It's very noticeable when I'm playing any game where I'm aiming quickly with a mouse at things far away from me, or just trying to aim with a joystick at all.
Often times I feel like it's just not my fault in games where I'm trying to aim with something fluid like a mouse or joystick, because my shakiness either causes last second movements right before I fire in the case of a mouse, or just rules out anything but full tilt with a joystick unless I'm actively devoting a large chunk of my attention to holding it steady between 100% and neutral in the case of a joystick.
At least with something as binary as a keypress I feel like missing is 100% my fault, but if you've ever tried keyboard look, you know it's just too slow and awkward most of the time to be viable, and so the vertical Aim-Assistance provided by the Doom engine games is just that extra help I need to allow me the potential to grow my skill in these games beyond what it already is, because the main limiting factor of "this is just how precise my hand/thumb can move and there's nothing I can do about it" is removed from the equation.
I'm fine with locked view and autoaim when playing a vanilla map, but I turn it on when playing with mods that change the gameplay.
Doom is a game of endless possibilities.
yeah same
Anyone who plays Doom with freelook needs to be sent to the id Software gulag where they are forced to watch impse 24 hours a day for 69 days.
I used to play Doom with freelook on 99% of the time. Than there was a period where I stopped using freelook because I felt peer-pressured not to. Kinda dumb looking back.
Great video, but I still prefer sticking to autoaim when possible, even more with the new port that has the crosshair that turns red when aiming at something, here are my thoughts on it:
1: Autoaim opens the possibility for more alternative control methods, like keyboard only and controllers: If Doom already had freelook many console ports like SNES, Jaguar, 32X and GBA wouldn't have been possible, and this is probably the reason why Heretic and Strife didn't got console ports, and why Hexen only got ported to consoles with analog sticks and shoulder buttons.
2. Freelook adds another layer of complexity to the game: If you ever tried to teach a person how to play FPS games one of the most common mistakes is how many just look at the ground or the ceiling instead of looking forward, and Doom doesn't have that problem.
3. In some specific situations the autoaim is better: Imagine there's a group of zombies right at your front, and you have your shotgun aimed at them, having freelook and shooting the ground or above their heads is the only possibility of missing that at normal conditons. The other case where freelook is worse would be melee, because if you'd need to get closer to the enemies than what would normally be necessary if you are not looking at an angle parallel to the ground.
Very solid points you raise here.
I personally love how autoaim makes actual character movement more important part of the gameplay, there is much more focus on dodging projectiles and controlling space instead of aiming. This makes Doom play more like 2d shooter or even 2d fighting game like Street Fighter because both feature projectiles as big part of the gameplay and avoiding them one of the most important skills you an have, many ways even more important than aiming.
Also I feel that it is strange that so many people seem to think that if we are talking about first person shooter, manually aiming must be most important part of it's gameplay. Even aim assists are often seen as crimes against the nature of the fps genre, especially when we are not talking about playing on console or using gamepad on pc. When game puts focus on free aim and being accurate with it, it takes focus away from other things like character movement, game can do many more complex things if aiming becomes less important. This is why Doom Eternal is so great, it has freeaim but there is so many other things also going on that there is far less focus on just regular aiming and shooting than normal FPS games.
Classic Doom's autoaim mechanics together with game's speed, enemies, projectiles and other hazards create really fun and unique gameplay feel with their balance. Freelook is fine and sometimes more practical like when used in multiplayer but it does break that original balance in many ways. While being technically pretty small change, does create very differenct experience. This of course isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I know that I want for myself the experience that autoaim and the lack of freelook gives to me.
Truth be told, I’m actually pretty fond of playing with freelook off too, and I think the points you raise make total sense. My one wish is that auto-aim didn’t have those darn “gaps” in its effectiveness! (I wouldn’t mind if the projectile throwing baddies had some limit in their vertical auto-aim too!)
That's actually the reason I find the new Doom games very difficult. There's so much going on at once while I'm just trying to focus all my attention on hitting enemies in the first place, and my working memory is not great. Doom Eternal is absolutely an amazing game, but it's hard for me to take everything in. Maybe eventually I'll get good enough at classic Doom and Quake that I can progress lol.
Looking up and down in Doom encourages players to be able to stand in one place and kill everything in an area from a safe distance no matter how wide open it is, being limited with autoaim will encourage players to run around the area to kill enemies at various positions, making it more fun.
I do agree that the enemies' extreme vertical aiming is a bullshit encounter, but I see that less of a reason to bash the autoaim, and more of a bug that should've been fixed.
To me, this is the strongest argument against freelook in classic Doom. What the developers "intended" is irrelevant to the execution of their intentions and the gameplay that actually results. Of course, careful enemy placement and level design is a huge part of this, and some maps are better suited for one style over the other. Doom games with freelook in vanilla have to resort to very intentional level designs to discourage players from standing still, and the fact that they are designed this way so overtly suggests to me that any designs or mechanics that encourage "run and shoot" over "stand and shoot" are going to be more true to the core of the game, and it doesn't matter so much exactly what those designs or mechanics are in isolation. So while id may have wanted to have freelook but couldn't, they definitely designed their early games to encourage constant movement taking 2D aim into account. That's precisely why I play classic Doom without freelook. It would be absurd to say that it's better in any way, but it does in many cases encourage movement where freelook would not.
I honestly prefer auto aim but if a mod/wad requires it I typically will still play with auto aim but will have a key mapped to freelook so all I gotta do is hold it down to freelook
Heretic and Hexen for example had by default freelook and autoaim so is not strange to have both activated ;)
We need more takes from the Doomkid himself!
I've blown myself up with autoaim so many times back in the day. I do think ID software would have done freelook if that was the norm at the time.
Frankly, i really like mouselook without autoaim, just because i like crazy mods and modern conveniences in my doom. Playing your maps have kinda changed my mind a little, though. Its nice to play a snappy wad that isn’t completely off the chain from time to time.
I’m glad you thought so!
"So i named this megawad Plutonia 3..."
Doomkid: 3:10
People who claim Doom had no mouse never installed the original game because there was no way around the mouse configuration menu. If your PC had no hard drive you'd see the mouse configuration every single time you launched the game.
Wolfenstein was 3D & had mouse support before Doom. The fact you couldn't look up or down always gave the mouse superior movement to the keyboard & joystick.
I was an early mouse adopter and played Doom 2 with a mouse and keyboard, because my parents used a mouse for windows 3.11
The original Doom mouse directional axis' is identical to most console shooter analog stick controls (Goldeneye, Halo, GTA etc etc), which is basically why move/aiming with 2 analog sticks feels like it isn't optimized. The optimal input control really should be analog movement with mouse aim (joystick & mouse).
Rowdy Rudy 666 when Doomkid?
On a more serious note I usually leave freelook off since I like to play DOOM in prboom+ and I’ve just never turned on freelook. The closest I usually get to freelook is when I turn it on for play throughs of HeXen. I know that freelook is used in Heretic but I just never find myself turning it in. Usually I just use “pgup” and “pgdown” to look down and up in Heretic and Dark Forces. I will never deny that when deathmatching with my friends freelook is way more fun but for most wads in DOOM I just leave it off.
god memfis's little autoaim clip really is such a perfect example of the hot garbage that is vanilla autoaim
like you not only have the sidegaps on full display, but also the fact that ... hitscans only autoaim vertically, yet _still_ autoaim at stuff that isn't directly in front of you. like, sure, it's not _entirely_ useless because it still lets you clip things with the shotguns or with chaingun spraying, but even then hitscan spread is weighted towards the center, so ...
edit: actually "weighted towards the center" is ... not _exactly_ true with vanilla rng? i mean there's two p_random calls in the standard p_gunshot attack for determining hitscan angle, so it's naturally less likely to shoot a hitscan off to the side ( where there are fewer combinations of random numbers that will result in such an angle ), but ... the p_random calls are sequential, and i don't think there's a single instance in doom's rng where a number is followed by itself, so it's _literally impossible_ for a hitscan to fire dead center if it's subjected to bullet spread
For me, I will only play with freelook without auto-aim if the game renders in proper 3D and doesn't use billboard sprites.
I remember at the end of Slith.wad (v1.08) my strat was to unload as much plasma as possible on the Spiderdemon or else that section just becomes a nightmare, but 60% of my attempts auto-aim just decided it didn't want to shoot at the spider standing in-front of me, and I think it was because of the few hitscanners around her (now I feel like they were placed there on purpose). That's when I first learned that auto-aim can fuck you.
I mean… there’s that voxel Doom 2 mod that even makes the monsters into voxel.
@@lyokianhitchhiker I know, I recorded some footage of it in VR myself.
@@muizzsiddique was that mod "proper 3D no billboarding" enough?
the thing with autoaim in doom, is that enemies are also interlinked with it, hitscanners and projectile monsters have a range, and so does your auto aim, if you play free look you can shoot enemies far away without retaliation, and most megawads were made with this in mind so if you just Freelook you can mostly out shoot enemies out of their range.
this also applies to switches, and jumping will also sequence break / script break things, since most megawads are made with classic / vanilla rules, aka no jumping or freelook.
Doomguy broke his neck and knees
This is the reason he can't look up or down or jump
Thank you comrade
I started with an illegal beta of Knee Deep before the Shareware was ever released coming off Wolf3d. The beauty of Doom is the mods. People can tailor the game to their specific tastes. Let people play the way they want. Not everyone has the 386/486 needed to play it in it's purest form.
Well said!
for me, i think that auto aim can be perfect for hit-scan, but i hate how you can """cheat""" with it too, like activating the bfg rays too soon when shooting the projectile directly at the ground, or creating splash damage anywhere on the ground/ ceiling with the rocket launcher (like in quake), these things change how you play with these weapons... i don't really like that because it is too powerful.
but i'm fine when the level/mod designer wants you to use it!
it's all about the "design intent" with the limitations of the game.
and i agree that the horizontal auto aim sucks, the way that the angle is fixed is really really bad and it will get you killed, they should had made it more dynamic like how the vertical works, or just disable it.
What’s awesome in multiplayer Doom ports is that they don’t allow BFG free-aiming! I’m so glad they do that, because like you said, the BFG is way too op otherwise
haha I always turn on BFG aiming because tracers go brrrr
I didn't realize that mouse look was something controversial, I get jumping in the original being so (because as stated in the video it can breaks some maps), but mouse look!? granted, this is coming from a modern gamer that's mostly interested in modding the game.
For the longest time, i always played with freelook whenever possible. Nowadays though, i like playing old school with auto aim, lower resolution etc. It makes it feel "gamey" in a good way. Without that 3rd dimension of control, i feel a perfect zen with the movement.
The main reason i play doom over other fpses is autoaim. I absolutely suck at aiming, having to worry only about left and right makes me shoot a lot easier, it's kinda like an accessibility setting only this game has.
That's a great point
What Doom truly encapsulates for me is how customizable it is. You can load so many mods and do so much stuff to GZDoom, it's insane.
Hell yeah, Team Freelook represent! Besides the very obvious cheese you can pull on the Icon of Sin, I've never found freelook to be particularly advantageous when playing any of the IWADs or any community-made WADs. I've found auto-aim to be too unreliable and much like you mentioned yourself, it's even gotten me killed at times! Much like Kes, I too much prefer to be the one in control of what I'm targeting. Shout-out to all our sourceport devs who so valiantly give their time to create the plethora of options we all take for granted today!
Good video, my friend. ;^) Fun and informative with chill vibes as always!
Thanks a lot Bio! 🍻
When I discovered GZDoom at 13 years old I started playing with freelook, jumping, crouching and crosshair, becuase I thought it's so cool to defy intended gameplay with these modern mechanics, even outright skipping levels I didn't like by jumping to the exit.
Fast forward a decade later, I've learned so much about the Doom engine, with all its mechanics, quirks, bugs and glitches that I started appreciating its depth tremendously. Not a speedrunner, but playing Doom like one just hits different. It's exciting. It's rewarding. Sometimes it's frustrating but that's the beauty of it.
While I have no problem with people playing through GZDoom or using freelook, it is repulsive for me to see such gameplay footage from creators, unless it's Brutal Doom.
Ultimately, gatekeeping sucks, but playing Doom in the vanilla way encompasses its own skillset which I don't consider artifical difficulty.
imo, it's just personal preference. Choosing freelook or autoaim is completely up to you
Freelook is pretty good for modern mods and locked look is better for vanilla wads and stuff
DooM's auto-aim pretty much constantly fights me when I'm playing with a controller or playing the mobile versions of the game. Heck, I straight up wont touch Episode 4 since the auto-aim is so wonky.
Hey man. Loved the video and commentary. I definitely think you should do some more reaction videos and stir up some healthy conversation. You’re a great facilitator. I like doom the way it was intended if I have a choice. Think shitty Memento Mori type WADs. However, when I started following your channel, I have a new appreciation for changes like dehacked enemies and changes to weapons, etc. I’m not sure I’ll ever hop on the mouse look bandwagon, but it’s fun to hear peoples opinions.
Good comment from you, just like I always expect, Tony D. Seems like you took the video just as intended! (As you can tell, I’m not particularly committed to either way of playing, I just felt the urge to rant 😂)
@@DoomKid I think middle ground is the place to be. Doom is about enjoying it and having fun or forgetting about your life for a bit. However you want to do that, you have the freedom to do so. Seeing both arguments is cool as well. It was also amusing seeing a non-rated G video where you give an honest opinion with a few F bombs and such!
Downtown alone proves how bad the auto-aim in DOOM really is. For hitscan it's mostly fine, but when it randomly decides to track an enemy right next to to you with the rocket launcher because of the game's horizontal auto-aim, it's pain. Problem for me is that I got "used to crap" as you put it x) so now it doesn't bother me at all.
I do dislike autoaim. To me it just feels like a limitation, in a similar way the infinitely tall monsters or the lost soul limit are.
If a map isn't made for it, whatever. If i care about the intended path, i'm just not going to jump over stuff or shoot switches i shouldn't be able to reach. If i don't care about the intended path and just want to shoot shit, then guess i'll break the map.
But then again, i'm not a run&gun type of player and also enjoy mods like Hideous Destructor and Brutal Doom more than unmodded Doom, so my opinion doesn't count at that point, eh? Haha
Your opinion still counts, anyone who plays any game that requires doom.wad or doom2.wad to run has an opinion that counts IMO.
@@DoomKidAlright then, Freedoom users have just been permanently stripped off of their speaking privileges!
I prefer the original aim behavior. Say you're shooting rockets out a window up toward a cacodemon... Then the autoaim goes wrong and shoots one straight ahead into the wall below the window. Then the rocket blows up in your face. It's a vanilla quirk and challenge that goes away when you can aim the rocket yourself. It's instinctive then when I"m strafing and shooting rockets upward out a window that I keep my distance from the short wall below the window.
Classic doom fans:
Doom is so great it’s such a timeless classic
Also classic doom fans:
IF YOU DONT PLAY WITH 30FPS A 480p CRT MONITOR A BALL MOUSE AND NO VERTICAL AIM THEM YOUR NOT GETTING A FUN EXPERIENCE.
my point is a bit unclear. doom is a fantastic game, vertical aim doesn't ruin the experience, its not so poorly made that something like that could ruin the experience
I remember when my dad brought home the shareware version. Yes, I am old. It is still my all time favorite games, specifically Ultimate Doom. I am not a purist at all. I love GZDoom. Infact, that is why I still play it and love it. As you said "At a glance" you can tell it is Doom. The updates give it new life to a nearly 30 year old game. I agree, the heavily modded ones that look nothing like Doom I will pass on, but I love free look, 3d Models, HD textures, sloped surfaces, and limited level over level. It takes something familiar and adds a modern twist to it. I would love to see a good revamp of Ultimate Doom maps that fixes the issues with the new features, gives a face lift to the architecture, but keeps true to the original layout (the ones i have seen dramatically change the lay out with occasional sections similar to parts of the original) Though I would not complain about more monsters as the original out side of nightmare is too easy at times, and nightmare can be too extreme at time for a relaxing but challenging play thought
I’d use freelook if it didn’t make me feel like a nauseous goldfish. The scaling is just hideous and I cannot handle it at all. In some ports it is ok (the ones that render the levels as GL polygons) as it isn’t so bad then. But when I’m playing vanilla then I’m playing on purest mode on.. otherwise it’s gonna get messy!
Most of the time auto aim is good enough, but there was some times were i wanted to have more control were the shot would go
If you think Doom's toxic purists are bad... oh boy. Half Life 2's toxic purists are 10 times worse.
That aside, another great video from ya! I mostly use freelook but sometimes I just don't because I feel like it. But still, I prefer freelook in the end.
Oh, one more thing, you should have a "debate" about your opinions on the Icon of Sin to someone who hates it, probably MtPain. But it would be fun to watch none the less.
Good idea, Klaesick
@@DoomKid Yeah man, you should do it. Never really seen anyone defend the Icon of Sin before.
There are purists for Half-Life 2?
Guess I'm lucky I have never seen them.
As someone who's been playing Doom on DOSbox since the age of 4 and has eventually gotten to enjoy all from ripping & tearing in Death Foretold to finessing in Hellrider to clusterfucking in 12-player Complex survival, I'd say that one of the main lasting legacies of Doom is the customizability of EVERYTHING.
It's possible for anyone dedicated enough to pick up and make content from vanilla compatible maps to flamboyant ZScript gameplay mods and whatever in between.
There's no other game that's as easy to express as much creativity with as Doom is, and I think the arguments against using freelook are counter to that - the belief that your enjoyment holds more value and you need to share it or make others understand it.
Now I'll just go back to my Crispy-doom epic 2 playthrough. Like it or not, we're all nerds who love the same game.
I agree, since Doom was released it has been modified to potentially fit ANY tastes a person might have. That’s why it always bothers me when people get elitist about their preferred method - it’s Doom, there’s no “right” and “wrong” way to play!
It does irk me when the PWAD I try has locked freelook and yeah, I understand it but that doesn't really mean I have to like it in the context.
Lands of Lore 2... press to toggle free look. They also have a key you can hold that toggles free look too.
I finished a lot of Wads like Alien Vendetta, Speed of Doom, BTSX Episode 1, Memento Mori 2 with free look
And i have Zero regrets
To me this is equivalent as asking if I like to play with custom weapons, I play with freelook, not because it's the intended way or not, it's the way I like it, but I can understand why people like to play with it off, the game was really made without freelook and other features in mind so playing with those on sure gives a different experience than what was firstly envisioned but if that experience is good or not is all up to you to decide.
The first time I knew Doom was in Doom95, later in Zdoom, and here I experienced freelook, but I find extremely ugly the way the maps distorted when I look up and down.
So I really l really start to like the autoaim more.
Then I got to know gzdoom, and freelook didn't distort maps. So I started playing with freelook again.
...
Today I think newbies should play Doom the way they want. If they happen to like Doom and want an extra challenge, I don't think it will hurt to play a map or two with autoaim.
"But I really hate autoaim"
It's simple, just play the way you like. I think playing Doom should be fun, not a frustrating experience.
Locked freelook + autoaim is a specific style of Doom play, the original style even, but not the only way to enjoy it by any means.
Heck the first game Raven released using the idtech engine was Heretic, which had a clunky first iteration of freelook. Hexen even made looking up or down a necessity at times, and *gasp* jumping.
There are old-school maps made for (close-to-)vanilla Doom - these designed around the lack of freelook for combat encounters, as well as the distance limitations and quirks of autoaim. And of course, autoaim is in itself a mechanic which has it's own tactics and cheeses. For such maps n mods, I prefer to play "as intended" even if they work perfectly fine with freelook or even (gasp!) jumping enabled.
By the same token, maps and mods targeted at freelook + fully manual aim, or that use the expanded features of ports like Zdoom, aren't ruining anything - they're just built for a different playstyle which one can enjoy equally.
Although I'll always consider keyboard-only players a mite mad.
Personally I think the models in Doom Remake 4 are actually pretty decent since they seem to remind some of us with the whole "what would the demons and other monsters look like in 3D" thing. Don't tell me that you didn't try to imagine what an imp or zombie sergeant would look like without the pixels.
Showing D4R the whole time, just strips the video of all credibility. xDDD Anyway, I just play freelook whenever the wad in question says so, if not, I default to hor+autoaim :P Not being able to hit the shotgunner behind the caco was part of the game.
Thats the great thing about Doom now. You can do whatever you want with it. If you wanna design a wad thats meant for vanilla controls you can do that and put in a readme best ways to play it. If you wanna paly with some crazy weapon pack that breaks the game, you can do that too. Why people gotta hate?
I'll always choose no freelook because I can't aim for shit.
i use freelook only when mod has been made with it in mind, in vanilla doom or wads i keep it classic
y-shearing has only ever been a problem for me in radix, which is a flight-based game in a similar sector engine. lots of looking wayyy up and wayyy down with the perpetually parallel vertical lines is kind of hard to stomach for extended period.
i personally play doom with autoaim because it's just one less thing for me to think about, especially if i'm rocking it keyboard only or with a controller set up like psx doom. i tried to play quake with autoaim, keyboard only 2 years ago and it is absolutely not possible after a point. there is so much more this world to get miffed over, and how someone looks around in a virtual world of cartoon demons is the last thing anyone should be getting upset over.
it was ultima underworld that had the ability to look up and down in 1992. underworld didn't have any y-shearing but it absolutely did have loads of texture warping like on the ps1 and saturn. from anecdotes i've heard (not from that time) it didn't get great framerates until pentiums came around. i heard you mention the elder scrolls: arena having it and as far as i know, arena did not have the ability to look up and down (or much else to enjoy lmaooo). i can see how one easily could confuse one of those for the other, especially if you're not well versed in the sort of games looking glass helped to bring to light.
Free look is a comfort thing for me. Doom’s default vertical angle is uncomfortable for me, it makes me weirdly anxious. Being able to look up and down helps alleviate that. I had a similar problem with SMITE. My ‘comfortable’ look angle is higher than the maximum vertical look angle in that game.
But, fun fact, free look (in GZdoom, at least) still has auto aim unless you disable it. I figured that out when I was playing Golden Souls and my shots were hitting closer enemies that weren’t directly under my crosshair.
I actually can’t stand the ‘vanilla doom’ experience. I hate the vanilla levels and gameplay feel. I love Doom because of all of the sick mods. Golden Souls, Simon’s Destiny, Ashes 2063/Afterglow, etc.
I don't use freelook for the same reason I don't like GZDoom room-over-room geometry. Restrictions make the game more interesting to me and easier to understand for me. I also think the restrictions allow a certain class of creativity in mapping that can't exist with total freedom. But I have nothing against people who use freelook. Play Doom how you like. :)
2.5 d is a little ambiguous. The 2 most common definitions i've seen are 3d gameplay in a 2d renderer, (like how most pre-quake games are 3d but don't use polygons) or 2d gameplay in a 3d renderer (look at stuff like the dkc reboots [dkcr/tropical freeze])
Anyways, I'm more in favour of auto-aim, I'll use it in mods/games made around it (heretic, hexen, gzdoom mods) but in all the classic style maps I'll use auto-aim with strict compatibility, especially with how things like icon of sin can be cheesed with it.
I mainly come from classic style mods which are designed more for this so mouselook kinda feels like cheating on those wads, will agree that the classic aim specifically isn't good so outside of the wads designed for it, i'm using mouselook. Sadly for me, I pretty much only play those challenging wads so no weapon mods/freelook for me. (I'm fine with the added challenge though)
Thanks a lot for adding some clarity about 2.5D. I was struggling to grok it when looking it up some time ago..
Nice to see someone else talking about this. 🙃
Hey Kes, glad you ended up seeing this! Hope you got some entertainment out of it 😂
i always kind of like getting an insight on other gaming communities and the gameplay drama that can arise.. kinda gatekeeping type stuff like 'your not playing the REAL Doom' type stuff. tbf im not against gatekeeping. i just like the heartfelt arguments and frustrations that occur over what is ultimately a trivial issue
also what's the best wad you've released?
i've been using freelook ever since it was available in doom and i won't ever go back. i don't care if it breaks the level. especially after playing quake, i realized that it feels much better.
Well, personally i've never got used to free-look in Doom, for some reason the motion makes me sick to look up and down and seeing the flipped sprites too lol. In other games just feels fine but for Doom it doesn't made it for me.
As a mapper, i don't mind auto-aim since i do like putting enemies in high ground, so if someone has some trouble dealing the auto-aim, so be it, it is the player's choice after all. Crouching and jumping too, although for some parts i tend to use a low barrier which is not posible in vanilla Doom but it's possible in GZDoom, it really does feel like cheating. Might just well enabling iddqd at this point. Also the purist and etilist that "Doom should be played in Ultra-Violence" or "Doom should be played with keyboard only" and etc, i'm just a bit tired about it, everyone should play it the way they want, Too young to die, Hurt me plenty, free-look, auto-aim, doesn't matter anyway. Everyone we should be fine with it. But still it's a fun topic to talk and discuss.
Sometimes I play keyboard only when playing portable on a laptop, but generally speaking +mlook is a must.
I tend to play Doom on Crispy with autoaim and no freelook, but not so much out of a "this is the TRUE WAY of enjoying these games" but more bc as a general habit I like to stick with the original control schemes of retro games if I can help it. Same reason I play old gen Armored Core with the weird non-analog camera setup they had going on, less about elitism and more bc when I have a lot of options in games I lean towards the vanilla "original" ones.
I do have another reason though and it's a bit sillier: Crispy is my favorite source port due to how lightweight and simple it is compared to something like Gzdoom, but also it only has software renderer and I really dislike the weird warping you get when using freelook with it lmao. If I'm playing some Boom or Zdoom mod/map that requires me to play on a source port I'm a lot more likely to go with freelook (assuming the maps allow for it) purely bc those usually have hardware rendering.
Even Wolfenstein 3D had inbuilt mouselook support.
I just dunno why some people think you *shouldn't* play with it on.
Free look+Auto aim disabled+Fast monsters=Fun
Been playing Doom since the beginning. I dropped the "purist" style of play as SOON as source ports came out with free look. Hell, for a long stent I was only playing with weapon wads. I haven't played vanilla(meaning no DOS box and the like) in years and I don't see a point in doing so. GZDoom makes the game much more convenient and fun especially with mods and megawads and options like free look. Now I don't use crouch jump to skip parts of the map but I love crouching under fireballs as another direction to dodge, so I use it for that. And yeah P.S. IOS sucks :P
When I hear 2.5d my mind instantly goes to games like Diablo, marble madness and a bunch of other titles, it's kind of weird people see Doom as such. I never thought about it that way, even though I guess I can kind of see why? Really dope SMK poster in the back!
Good eye for the poster, haha - and thanks!
one thing to consider is that what is considered cheating depends on what gameplay mod your using. hideous destructor fully embraces sequence breaking with giving the player multiple options for dynamic destruction (door kicking, chainsaw cutting, HEAT rounds, and doorbusters) all with different levels of effectiveness. not to mention that movement for the player is dramatically different (jumping to the side and jumping upwards are two different contextual actions, the latter which is used a lot more for ledge climbing.)
Doom is hacky 3D
where some aspects are done and calculated in 3D, but some stuff just doesn't care, like explosons (basically anything that doesn't care about height is 2D like)
I consider auto aim a "rule" that must be followed in single player unless the map author says otherwise. If I start turning off all the things that bother me I'm going to change the game too much. For example, infinite height sucks and I wanted the game to work like Heretic at this point, but that's not how it works and if I turn it off I'll gain a lot more mobility which will unbalance some maps.
This is definitely a solid point - anything that isn't possible in -complevel 2 (vanilla physics, in other words), I try to avoid for my SP playthroughs, just because it's "authentic" and I don't want to cheat at all.
I just don't like the idea that freelook makes it "no longer Doom". It's all still Doom at the end of the day, Doom's code runs through the veins of all source ports, and I feel like any modification - from levels to freelook, to even crazier things - are, in their own way, part of Doom's mod-friendly DNA. It's all part of the family.
I understand that. I personally play with a mix of settings, for making it close to the original but not 100% accurate. For example i activate things like autoaim or limited lost soul spam for playing Doom 2 campaign but deactivate things like infinite height since it can make some levels unfairly frustrating.
I'm a bit late to the party, and I'm probably going to repeat what some people already said, but here are my thoughts:
- Great video first of all, I agree with most if not all of your points and I was sometimes speaking out loud your response at the same time as you paused Kes' video to say the same :D
- Out of all of doom's quirks and engine/input limitations, auto-aim is probably the one that annoys me the least (and I'm easily annoyed (not proud)). I agree that the auto-aim sucks but imo it's a very minor discomfort compared to other things (hello there, blockcrap!)
- At 13:23 you mentioned Morrowind; did you mean Ultima Underworld from '92? Because that one had looking up and down, as well as jumping and swimming. That, in a pre-doom gaming world, WAS impressive. Yet the game never got very popular. I wonder if the folks at id knew about Ultima Underworld's existence.
- I understand the hate for maps that place monsters where you cannot hit them due to auto-aim. But personally I disagree. If used right, it can be a really clever mapping technique: they're projectile turrets, continuously shooting at you so that you cannot camp: keep on the move, or die! The culmination of this mechanic are the un-killable Evil Eyes from Ribbiks' Magnolia that continuously shoot arachno-projectiles at you from a strategic position. So, early maps that used monster placement instead of complex dehacked techniques to achieve this same goal get a thumbs up from me! Super clever.
Important note: this does NOT apply to hit-scanners. Placing chaingunners on platforms out of auto-aim range is like putting PINEAPPLE ON PIZZA I MEAN COME ON!
Hey Coin, really glad to hear your thoughts on this one!
As for what annoys me most about vanilla, it’s a tossup really. Infinite height, limited range and “holey” auto-aim, automatic weapon switch even to inferior weapons/in DM, and probably the fairly low visplane limit are all “tied for second” behind that damn POS blockmap bug (which I only understand “in full” thanks to you!) but I have to admit that hole-filled auto-aim *and* the shitty blockmap bug in conjunction make it feel like the engine is straight up gaslighting you when you supposedly “miss a shot” 😂
For some stupid reason, I was thinking of Daggerfall - and even then I’d have been wrong as shit. You’re correct of course, the pre-Doom game I was *actually* trying to think of with freelook was Ultima Underworld. I feel so damn sure I’ve heard Romero give mention to Ultima at one of his many talks.. but don’t quote me on that.
You know, I was absolutely thinking of hitscanners specifically when I made that point, but I just ranted like an idiot and didn’t make that clear at all. I disagree that placing hitscanners out of range is like pineapple on pizza though, because placing hitscanners annoyingly like that is NOT delicious and mouth-watering! 😄
Great comment, man.