This is what makes Romero a legend in gaming. He's a gamer's game designer. Outside of some level design, Romero was just an idea guy that understood his customers. But to this day, Romero has stayed humble and a gamer first guy. The fact that he responds to emails and does a ton of free stuff for the community is what makes him a legend.
For sure. Every good company needs that charismatic "face" and personality of the company and Romero always fit that role (a little "edgelord" sometimes, but it is Doom, satanic references, demons, etc.) , even if others on the team were more technically savvy.
12:26 This textual inconsistency was, of course, fixed in the Game Boy Advance and iOS ports of Doom, changing the shotgun shell pickup text from "Picked up 4 shotgun shells" to "Picked up the shotgun shells" and "Picked up shotgun shells", respectively (the latter iOS fix being made by Carmack himself, as indicated by his comment in the source code), hence not specifying the exact number of shells in the message. And that's why all true Doomers today regard the GBA and iOS ports as being the definitive way to play Doom.
What a load of crap. Everyone knows the definitive way to play Doom is in the Doomsday Engine with every single "Modern Graphics" mod you can find! The 3D models and dynamic lighting definitely don't look just like shovelware!
An even better solution was implemented in DOOM 64 which dynamically changes the message between "Picked up 4 shotgun shells" and "Picked up 8 shotgun shells" based on what difficulty you're playing on.
That was a really cool backstory. I had heard rumors that Nightmare was added in as a joke difficulty in future editions of Doom after 1994, but never actually got them confirmed until right now. I think I'm gonna give NERF a run through. It looks fun.
John Romero's version of Kenshiro's "Omae wa mou shinde iru" ("You're already dead.") around the time of that famous manga when it first appeared in the 90s. Great minds think alike, apparently. 😆😆😆
@SaviourV I feel like it's more of a call back to the OG Leisure Suit Larry games when you enter "cheat" in the text command box. The game says, "Ok then, You win. (game over)" And it exits to DOS
@@garuelx8627 Ouch. Still, I think that the Leisure Suit Larry reference you mentioned is a slap on the wrist compared to John Romero's response here. On a side note, aside from decino's battle against John Romero (multiplayer deathwatch), have you seen Coincident's final "Corruption Cards" battle against a Romero super-boss yet?
@@garuelx8627 There's a similar game over in Space Quest 4 (another Sierra game) where if you delete the Space Quest 4 Application from the Pocket Pal Device you find in the game, It also dumps you back to DOS, but not before playing an audio clip of a toilet flushing. (The Pocket Pal's Trash Bin has a toilet icon. You just have to click and drag the SQIV game icon to it, like you would on any other computer,)
Nightmare difficulty always intimidated me as a kid. When cheat codes didn't work, it felt like the difficulty itself was overriding the game rules, like the monsters were just too powerful to be affected by the cheats.
I unironically love that feeling when a game goes "No. You must suffer." The trepidation you feel, that if the difficulty mode takes away the tools that makes you feel safe, what other horrors is it hiding under its cloak?
5:50 - Pinkie got lockjaw. How tragic. Also, I thought Nightmare difficulty was already fairly popular. I typically threw it on passively sometimes at one point.
Gzdoom currently has an option for monster nightmare reflexes, meaning you can play "two thirds nightmare", fast monsters and reflexes without the respawning bit. Can be interesting for those who want an "in between" challenge between uv-fast and full nightmare.
After playing on NIghtmare it's amazing how fairly-balanced it is. Definitely not a joke at all. The need to juggle moving forward before enemies respawns while also clearing out faster-firing demons works incredibly well.
It definitely was a joke, and given strategies and tactics of the time, it was deemed impossible by many players. But as we know, gamers adapt to any challenge and the advent of circle strafing, better use of a mouse, and optimized strategies have made it very doable. It just happens the joke was very well designed that it works out as an asset to the game rather than being just a joke. Now Wolf3d with respawning enemies would be a joke.
The Diablo 2 sounds when explaining the instant death pinkies are a fitting touch. It was absolutely awesome of Romero to give a detailed reply like that. The man is one of the coolest people to ever be in game development.
I only recognized the Weaken Curse sound. The other one just before it was new to me. A more fitting sound for that explanation would have been Decrepify though, since you know, it slows you down.
Nice, a voice message from Romero! That cool cat is a huge credit to the community, I swear. 3:39 I should note that this proper Nightmare fast reaction speed is achievable in GZDoom by activating the "Monsters Nightmare Reflexes" gameplay option. "Fast Monsters" is just regular -fast. JIC this is useful to someone.
One way I tried mixing up Nightmare Difficulty was by adding a new difficulty setting via MAPINFO that also enables Total Infighting, creating a much more chaotic nightmare scenario where even the demons are fighting each other - and I think they remember who they were fighting when they died, too.
I find it really cool when game devs respond to fan questions and messages like John Romero did here. I once sent Frank Klepaki an email right before the Command and Conquer remakes came out, just wanting to tell him that his music was well over 50 percent of the reason I enjoyed Command and Conquer so much, and was shocked beyond belief to get a multi-paragraph response from him
The informative content in decino's videos is well-known and deservedly lauded, but it must also be said that the humour sprinkled here and there is just great. Always a treat.
Can I just say how awesome it is Romero cameo'ed in this! I'm glad he appreciates this channel. I've always thought his departure from iD was really the death of the original company. John Carmack was the brains. Adrian Carmack was the looks. John Romero was the heart, American McGee the soul and Sandy Peterson was all the other necessary organs to keep the greater whole alive. That specific mix was lightening in a bottle and since they went their separate ways, I've always felt something was lost.
Yes, a video specifically about Nightmare! 😁 I really hope this causes even more people to try it out, so 2023 can truly become the year of this incredibly fun difficulty. Thanks for the great video (and the plug ) and I can't wait for NERF E3!
Decino is so historic, that he just dig up facts from beyond the grave. How many "citation needed" will be filled on later? I did not expect that Romero mail moment.
That ultra-turbo-za warudo pinkies thing is insane! The wonders of programming. And those barrel corpses... I learn something new with each video. Thanks!
Beaten to the ZA WARUDO reference. 😅 Saw a different video yesterday about that glitch. Almost thought that the close-up Pinkie was a Photoshopped attempt, but since I watched this video, I've no doubt that those turbo-Pinkies in Nightmare have mastered the art of controlling time. 😅
Just the fact that decino not only played deathmatch against John Freaking Romero, but also is seen as a priority in his emails is so heartwarming! He seems like a cool-ass dude. Any plans on meeting other members of Id, like Sandy Petersen, John Carmack, or American McGee perhaps? Would love to see a ‘dive into the code’ type of thing.
Really cool hearing that backstory from Romero, didn't realize it wasn't apart of the base game at launch. also awesome again hearing that arrival map09 music at the end, songs so good.
30 years later and I’m still learning and enjoying Doom. Who knew. Will always find it amazing that the team thought this was an impossible challenge and yet the game is so well balanced for it and today players are doing it.
Lots of games and mods of games have a nightmare difficulty but only doom seems have gotten it right. Romero's intuition of what such a difficulty mode needs was perfect
I'm glad you continue to mention the minute difference between Nightmare! Fast Monsters and -fast Fast Monsters. When I was working on a mod for the original DOS _Doom,_ I noticed the difference immediately and it always bothers me (immensely) whenever someone says: "Yeah, -fast is just like Nightmare!, but without double ammo or respawns."
The legacy that this game has built over the last 30 years is nothing short of amazing. It not only revolutionized the FPS genre as we know it today, but also Deathmatch and the modding scene. Thanks Id software, very cool.
Extremely interesting as always pumpkin man! The fact NM difficulty doubles ammo pickups already means in a way it wasn't just haphazardly thrown together but meant to be still playable. Same for the various respawn checks and the reaction time upon respawn.
Great video and amazing editing as always! Those cartoon running Pinkies got a good laugh out of me. Your Nightmare playthrough of Doom 1 inspired me to give it a try myself and it really does put a fresh spin on the game. I used to dislike the idea of respawning enemies, but holy heck does this get the adrenaline going. In some ways it makes levels with backtracking more interesting, because you may enter the same fights mutliple times from different positions. Coming up with smart routes and strategies is also super fun. Despite the many failed and painful attempts, I think I'm slowly falling in love with this game mode. I'm currently stuck on E1M7, but I'm determined to finish at least the first episode!
13:05 Never forget stimpack road. Truly the greatest of feels. Amen. Also very cool of thee John Romero to drop in again. What a guy showing up to console people in the Nightmare PSTD meetings.
Love your videos mr pumpkin man, congrats on beating sigil and doom1/2 on the nightmare world tour settings. Looking forward to the next set of projects!
Great vid as always, but a special shout-out to the NERF map pack!! I watched your whole run in one sitting basically, and the way you guys and gals were able to use vanilla mechanics to completely change the game is spectacular, and I particularly like the ghost pinkie surprise in e1m4!
Awesome cameo from Romero! On Nightmare, I can get pass the tough enemies and they going turbo, except they respawning. That's what makes me hate the difficulty. And I loved the Pinky that freezes time.
Finally an explanation why monsters spawn outside the map in Doom II map 30! I would play ultra violence with cheats and respawning monsters running around blasting. I always wondered how/why monsters were running around in the out of bounds area. When you're 8 and play for an hour or whatever they just keep piling up and it turns into an amazing slaughterfest! Thanks for finally answering that for me, amazing
I did not know that about the Pinky Demons... imagine a map based around those mechanics where you need to sneak past a bunch of Pinkys where if any of them wake up, you die instantly...
I made a fun mod once that involved nightmare mode called "Nightmare Conquered" Basically you started with a special gun that, if you killed an enemy with it, would disable their ability to respawn. It required a special ammo that dropped from any monster that was killed, but took a lot of ammo to fire, and had a very slow reload time. It gave/gives a very methodical "conquering" aspect to the game, as you had the choice to very slowly, eventually clear out an area completely of enemies, to give yourself some breathing room, allowing you to slowly work your way out if you wished, or to use the gun to specifically take out stronger/more annoying enemies to make certain areas more tolerable. It was strong, it could one-shot a pinky, but took around 3 shots to kill a cacodemon, so if you remembered enemy's health and the damage guns deal by heart, you could just wittle them down and finish them off with the special gun to take them out.
Thanks for this one, decino. I had several questions about nightmare mode mechanics that I couldn't be bothered to type out in the comments sections of your recent runs lol. This has actually answered them all quite well incidentally. Great stuff! 👍🎃👍
I think it's cool how you dig into the behind the scenes of how the code works. I only know a little bit about programming but your explanations help make sense regarding how the nightmare changes work.
Once again, a fantastic analysis video with some fun jokes and great music. With all the source port differences (curse you LNC) I hypothesize that NM can function a bit differently on each of them.
Every time I'm starting to get bored of doom, you release a video explaining more fascinating info on the games and send me right back into another playthrough. Thanks for making my life hell on earth, decino!
Thanks for all the information and inspiration Mr Decino, recently I have lost my pc but I had another one just in case and I got a backup of my doom maps, playing them again felt good because I have used some of the technical information I learned here and other fun tricks like using the change texture to turn water into blood and illusions like floating platforms.
...oh, so *THAT'S* why I would always get insta-killed by Pinkies way back when I played Doom95. The pre-game Windows launch configuration panel of Doom95 had checkbox options for enabling 'Fast Monsters', 'No Monsters', and 'Respawn Monsters'. When FM was enabled I could never complete the game because the Pinkies would progressively get faster whenever I came back and loaded a savegame, to the point where they'd just lightning-flash to my location and kill me instantly, through a blur of a red screen. I eventually wised up and made sure the FM option was always de-selected. You solved a 2+ decade old mystery for me. Thanks, decino.
Awesome video! Loved the cold probabilistic analysis regarding respawning monsters. I think adding more randomness in a difficult game is what makes me shiver most. If everything was deterministic it would be boring and predictable. Awesome John Romero cameo too, you are a true doom guru xd. Looking forward to see that doom II nightmare run!
I am so happy to see you accomplishing your nightmare run for dooms coming of middle aged. I still remember as a kid when the first doom came out I had to use a boot disk and play it in low detail.
it's funny how a few simple changes to how the game works can drastically affect difficulty and player strategies. nightmare truly is the difficulty ever.
Nothing hits me in the nostalerogenous zones harder than lifting the hood on Doom. Many thanks man, much love for all your coverage and for going deep into the marrow of such an exciting time for gaming 👍👍
Lol love the subtle humor. The sprite edits had me smiling. Also I remember having a doom mod where the player sprite could be changed to the actual doom guy without his mask, can't find it anymore. Love these types of videos, thanks
Awesome video, Pumpkin Man! Nightmare is a bit out of my league right now, I only barely managed to scrape myself through Doom 2 on UV with pistol starts only. I'd love to hear what levels you think are the most difficult in Doom, perhaps another tier list in the future? Keep up the great vids, man
I have to say: The part from 12:50 to 14:20 is very inspiring and comforting(especially with that bgm by the way!)! I've played and adored the Doom franchise ever since I first played it in '94, but I never went for wads that went too much out of the original two games. I accept UV for being the ceiling of fair gameplay for us "mortals" but, despite the video section said above, no thanks!😅 Few tries in the distant past, but nope, can't stomach Nightmare, with respawning monsters being the primary reason. Only a few years ago I discovered the deliciousness of the pistol start(a whole brand new gameplay experience!) and UVed all main wads with it(Sigil included), but Nightmare will always be that bogeyman within me that I'll never be able to defeat. Thank you for yet another "yellow-background" video which I pleasantly watched!🙂
His way of handling monster speed on nightmare is a horrible hack though. Its pretty obvious to any programmer that this kind of thing can lead to bugs. I wonder why he did it like that.
@@amunako Likely: the game was already released, they were steaming toward the retail version and spending more than a day or a few hours to add a joke (that was never meant to even be playable) would be silly. J. Carmack almost certainly would have understood the possible failure modes of his implementation, but it was also never expected that the player would even get into positions where those failures would apply. Point being, it would not have added value to the product to do more than a quick hack job of it, so Carmack went with the least-cost option. This is, by the way, the exactly correct thing to do.
@@kkutani It would take less than 10 minutes to do it in a safer way. He could have stored the state durations for UV and NM as constants and set it at new game without even checking the previous difficulty. You could still break the game by loading saves, but the worst you would get is nightmare pinkies on UV and UV pinkies on nightmare.
It's kind of funny, most other ports didn't have fast monsters but did have respawning instead; I think the SNES version was the only one that had it the other way around.
It's weird to see a hard difficulty that doesn't just turn the enemies into damage sponges who hit harder. Instead it's a quite creative difficulty with changes that I wouldn't have ever thought about.
I love the Damn I'm Good (Nightmare equilevant) in Duke Nukem 3D because enemies respawn but they don't respawn if they are gibbed, even corpses can be gibbed. So you have to carefully manage your explosive weapons to gib as much enemies as possible, which creates a very stratetic different gameplay!
I can appreciate the hustle and skill required for Nightmare, but it's just not for me. My playstyle has always been slow and methodical. I prefer the stuff that die to stay dead. With that said, I still appreciate some difficulty, but I just go for the more difficult WADs for that. Besides, I just can't play the old Doom maps anymore. Pretty, modern maps have utterly spoiled me.
I made a new difficulty for PrBoom called Tranquillity. It's Nightmare mode without respawning, and is named for the feeling you get when everything is finally dead. 😎
Background song now available on Bandcamp:
decino.bandcamp.com/album/pumpkin-beats-to-analyse-to
why now
Yooo is level E1M3 possible on nightmare?
Romero cameo nice
A Romero cameo is always welcome. Love hearing insight about the game and its development from the guy. Absolute legend.
Nice.
Nice.
Nice.
Romero is so fucking cool. Archvile!
This is what makes Romero a legend in gaming. He's a gamer's game designer. Outside of some level design, Romero was just an idea guy that understood his customers. But to this day, Romero has stayed humble and a gamer first guy. The fact that he responds to emails and does a ton of free stuff for the community is what makes him a legend.
He made me his bitch tho
For sure. Every good company needs that charismatic "face" and personality of the company and Romero always fit that role (a little "edgelord" sometimes, but it is Doom, satanic references, demons, etc.) , even if others on the team were more technically savvy.
... except for that short stint when he said "he was going to make you his biatch."
yeah he stayed so humble that the marketing campaign for his last proper commercially released videogame involved making me his bitch
@@TheTrueNorth11 Everybody does!
12:26 This textual inconsistency was, of course, fixed in the Game Boy Advance and iOS ports of Doom, changing the shotgun shell pickup text from "Picked up 4 shotgun shells" to "Picked up the shotgun shells" and "Picked up shotgun shells", respectively (the latter iOS fix being made by Carmack himself, as indicated by his comment in the source code), hence not specifying the exact number of shells in the message. And that's why all true Doomers today regard the GBA and iOS ports as being the definitive way to play Doom.
Good to see you around, Marph!
Please post more nerdy HL videos! 😊
Ridiculous. DooM was always meant to be played on Nintendo Wii.
What a load of crap. Everyone knows the definitive way to play Doom is in the Doomsday Engine with every single "Modern Graphics" mod you can find! The 3D models and dynamic lighting definitely don't look just like shovelware!
Now its your turn for another half life lore.
An even better solution was implemented in DOOM 64 which dynamically changes the message between "Picked up 4 shotgun shells" and "Picked up 8 shotgun shells" based on what difficulty you're playing on.
You know you are doing something right when one of Doom's creators goes through the trouble of sending an actual voice reply. That was awesome!
Romero was always a cool dude.
I thought it might be AI, but nice to hear it's real!
@@oz_jonesCool enough to ride Carmack's coattails and dickride Bethesda's fanfiction?
It's almost like they're normal human beings too rather than some mythical unknowable god
obviously not sparing a chance to make someone his bitch
That was a really cool backstory. I had heard rumors that Nightmare was added in as a joke difficulty in future editions of Doom after 1994, but never actually got them confirmed until right now.
I think I'm gonna give NERF a run through. It looks fun.
NERF arena? the game.
I'd watch that. BigMacDavis and Decino are the RL bruiser brothers.
you
YOOOO its BigMacDavis! The legend.
100% items?
"Oh really? Ok then. You're all dead."
Great response John Romero
John Romero's version of Kenshiro's "Omae wa mou shinde iru" ("You're already dead.") around the time of that famous manga when it first appeared in the 90s.
Great minds think alike, apparently. 😆😆😆
@SaviourV I feel like it's more of a call back to the OG Leisure Suit Larry games when you enter "cheat" in the text command box. The game says, "Ok then, You win.
(game over)"
And it exits to DOS
@@garuelx8627
Ouch.
Still, I think that the Leisure Suit Larry reference you mentioned is a slap on the wrist compared to John Romero's response here.
On a side note, aside from decino's battle against John Romero (multiplayer deathwatch), have you seen Coincident's final "Corruption Cards" battle against a Romero super-boss yet?
@@garuelx8627 There's a similar game over in Space Quest 4 (another Sierra game) where if you delete the Space Quest 4 Application from the Pocket Pal Device you find in the game, It also dumps you back to DOS, but not before playing an audio clip of a toilet flushing. (The Pocket Pal's Trash Bin has a toilet icon. You just have to click and drag the SQIV game icon to it, like you would on any other computer,)
Nightmare difficulty always intimidated me as a kid. When cheat codes didn't work, it felt like the difficulty itself was overriding the game rules, like the monsters were just too powerful to be affected by the cheats.
I unironically love that feeling when a game goes "No. You must suffer."
The trepidation you feel, that if the difficulty mode takes away the tools that makes you feel safe, what other horrors is it hiding under its cloak?
Man, decino. Why are so many of your patrons in such agonizing pain? What did they do to deserve such a fate??
They were horny,needed to be punished.
We were put on this Earth to suffer and die.
At least they also may enjoy the sight of beaks.
@@user-kw4qx4qu8c they make me coom
_BEAKS MAKE ME COOM_
5:50 - Pinkie got lockjaw. How tragic.
Also, I thought Nightmare difficulty was already fairly popular. I typically threw it on passively sometimes at one point.
I don’t feel sorry for him getting lockjaw.
@@iguana9173 Should've gotten the vaccine
@@iguana9173 why
@@ratfarmerhehe pinkies are annoying
@@iguana9173 No
Gzdoom currently has an option for monster nightmare reflexes, meaning you can play "two thirds nightmare", fast monsters and reflexes without the respawning bit. Can be interesting for those who want an "in between" challenge between uv-fast and full nightmare.
You can also activate double ammo pickups for 3/4 of the experience.
@@DinnerForkTongue without respawning monsters, double ammo pickups feel "cheap" IMO
@@ravagerslb
Understandable. Just throwing the idea out there.
haven’t played with the ammo setting, i imagine that could enable one to play 4/3rds nightmare by disabling the bonus ammo.
After playing on NIghtmare it's amazing how fairly-balanced it is. Definitely not a joke at all. The need to juggle moving forward before enemies respawns while also clearing out faster-firing demons works incredibly well.
The difficulty game mode is a joke. It's just a very well crafted one.
It definitely was a joke, and given strategies and tactics of the time, it was deemed impossible by many players. But as we know, gamers adapt to any challenge and the advent of circle strafing, better use of a mouse, and optimized strategies have made it very doable. It just happens the joke was very well designed that it works out as an asset to the game rather than being just a joke.
Now Wolf3d with respawning enemies would be a joke.
It is, but not by design. It's the gamers that adapted, overcame and grew to enjoy it.
Monsters going from set dressing, to constant and persistent threats is why I love Nightmare, as well as routing which is super fun.
@@DinnerForkTongue You guys didn't adapt to shit. You can't use a source port and call it adapting.
The Diablo 2 sounds when explaining the instant death pinkies are a fitting touch.
It was absolutely awesome of Romero to give a detailed reply like that. The man is one of the coolest people to ever be in game development.
I only recognized the Weaken Curse sound. The other one just before it was new to me. A more fitting sound for that explanation would have been Decrepify though, since you know, it slows you down.
Personally, I would have gone with Dragon Ball sound effects. Make it a Super Sayian Pinky. :p
Honestly, I was hoping for Za Warudo sounds.
@@XenoSpyro just checked. It's the curse that no one uses :P Attract.
1:38 Gotta appreciate Romero for answering a yes or no question with a several-paragraphed, detailed recollection.
And now that wiki entry can have a PROPER CITATION FROM A PRIMARY SOURCE
I hope the Wiki gets updated. Don’t forget the email response was also narrated by Romero.
@@USSMariner Source: John Freaking Romero
Pretty sure the email in the video was made just for comedic effect and the real one was worded different
Are you a furry , fucking weirdo
Nice, a voice message from Romero! That cool cat is a huge credit to the community, I swear.
3:39 I should note that this proper Nightmare fast reaction speed is achievable in GZDoom by activating the "Monsters Nightmare Reflexes" gameplay option. "Fast Monsters" is just regular -fast.
JIC this is useful to someone.
You just saved me the trouble of looking to recreate nightmare difficulty without respawning monsters so yes this was useful!
@MaxDickings ... I was gonna say "who would ever find that useful?" lol
iD Software really immortalized this game. We might never see any folks like Romero and Carmack in this industry ever again.
The early version of Notch. Jonathan Blow. ToadyOne.
We don't need tricks to make 3D games render at all, any more
You might want to check our ghost ship games, they actually care about the games they make, like romero does
@@greendesignerDID I HEAR A ROCK AND STONE?!
@@alexc4924Not fully, notch didn't really make many notable games after minecraft, but the johns were involved in quake and deus ex
@@lewisspring35STONE AND ROCK
Wait a minute.....
Great job as always. The John cameo was the best. Now, let the nightmare runs through!
One way I tried mixing up Nightmare Difficulty was by adding a new difficulty setting via MAPINFO that also enables Total Infighting, creating a much more chaotic nightmare scenario where even the demons are fighting each other - and I think they remember who they were fighting when they died, too.
Did they stop their infighting long enough to notice Doomguy in the middle of the chaos? 😅
I find it really cool when game devs respond to fan questions and messages like John Romero did here. I once sent Frank Klepaki an email right before the Command and Conquer remakes came out, just wanting to tell him that his music was well over 50 percent of the reason I enjoyed Command and Conquer so much, and was shocked beyond belief to get a multi-paragraph response from him
Nice! What'd he reply?
Your historical research into the topic was immaculate. So proud of you :)
The informative content in decino's videos is well-known and deservedly lauded, but it must also be said that the humour sprinkled here and there is just great. Always a treat.
couldn’t agree more. not to mention these videos are so goddamn relaxing to me :)
This stuff is really well illustrated too. It’s a pleasure to watch and I appreciate the effort that must’ve gone into it.
5:55 LOL I actually felt bad for the pinky
I was laughing way too hard at the pinky eating the shotgun zombie XD
Me too. I almost wet myself.
that was hilarious. he's like, well I was told to attack something and doomguy is already dead...
@@jamison8929 Nom
Goofy ahh pinky
Can I just say how awesome it is Romero cameo'ed in this! I'm glad he appreciates this channel. I've always thought his departure from iD was really the death of the original company.
John Carmack was the brains. Adrian Carmack was the looks. John Romero was the heart, American McGee the soul and Sandy Peterson was all the other necessary organs to keep the greater whole alive. That specific mix was lightening in a bottle and since they went their separate ways, I've always felt something was lost.
6:33 So what you are saying is... Pinkies can ZA WARUDO!?
6:28 ZA WARUDO
I love how simple the explanations of stuff that was probably hard to code originally. This channel is just calming to watch.
8:25 I love how the Pain Elemental after respawning is like just saying 🎶"Tadaah!"🎶while starring at you with it red eye.
Yes, a video specifically about Nightmare! 😁 I really hope this causes even more people to try it out, so 2023 can truly become the year of this incredibly fun difficulty.
Thanks for the great video (and the plug ) and I can't wait for NERF E3!
Decino is so historic, that he just dig up facts from beyond the grave. How many "citation needed" will be filled on later?
I did not expect that Romero mail moment.
That ultra-turbo-za warudo pinkies thing is insane! The wonders of programming. And those barrel corpses... I learn something new with each video. Thanks!
Beaten to the ZA WARUDO reference. 😅
Saw a different video yesterday about that glitch. Almost thought that the close-up Pinkie was a Photoshopped attempt, but since I watched this video, I've no doubt that those turbo-Pinkies in Nightmare have mastered the art of controlling time. 😅
Just the fact that decino not only played deathmatch against John Freaking Romero, but also is seen as a priority in his emails is so heartwarming! He seems like a cool-ass dude. Any plans on meeting other members of Id, like Sandy Petersen, John Carmack, or American McGee perhaps? Would love to see a ‘dive into the code’ type of thing.
There was a missed opportunity for you to say “Deep into the Code”.
Knee Deep in the Code
10:21 Schrödinger's Caco Demon
Really cool hearing that backstory from Romero, didn't realize it wasn't apart of the base game at launch.
also awesome again hearing that arrival map09 music at the end, songs so good.
6:17 pinky: "ZA WARUDO!!"
Really appreciate the visuals in this video. Feels like its nearly perfected
The audio is on point as well. Was a nice surprise to hear Diablo 2 sound effects in the time freeze bit!
30 years later and I’m still learning and enjoying Doom. Who knew. Will always find it amazing that the team thought this was an impossible challenge and yet the game is so well balanced for it and today players are doing it.
Never was fan of nightmare because of the respawning enemies. So I played 90% of the time in UV :D
Quality video as always, keep up the good work!
Lots of games and mods of games have a nightmare difficulty but only doom seems have gotten it right. Romero's intuition of what such a difficulty mode needs was perfect
Romero always knew how to make this game more challeging. Nice cameo!
I'm glad you continue to mention the minute difference between Nightmare! Fast Monsters and -fast Fast Monsters. When I was working on a mod for the original DOS _Doom,_ I noticed the difference immediately and it always bothers me (immensely) whenever someone says: "Yeah, -fast is just like Nightmare!, but without double ammo or respawns."
I love this so much, best analysis video so far. Lets get some more nightmare LPs going!
The legacy that this game has built over the last 30 years is nothing short of amazing. It not only revolutionized the FPS genre as we know it today, but also Deathmatch and the modding scene.
Thanks Id software, very cool.
5:50
Bro i'm crying, how goofy the piggy looks and the punch you gave it
Extremely interesting as always pumpkin man!
The fact NM difficulty doubles ammo pickups already means in a way it wasn't just haphazardly thrown together but meant to be still playable.
Same for the various respawn checks and the reaction time upon respawn.
Great video and amazing editing as always! Those cartoon running Pinkies got a good laugh out of me.
Your Nightmare playthrough of Doom 1 inspired me to give it a try myself and it really does put a fresh spin on the game. I used to dislike the idea of respawning enemies, but holy heck does this get the adrenaline going. In some ways it makes levels with backtracking more interesting, because you may enter the same fights mutliple times from different positions. Coming up with smart routes and strategies is also super fun.
Despite the many failed and painful attempts, I think I'm slowly falling in love with this game mode. I'm currently stuck on E1M7, but I'm determined to finish at least the first episode!
13:05 Never forget stimpack road. Truly the greatest of feels. Amen. Also very cool of thee John Romero to drop in again. What a guy showing up to console people in the Nightmare PSTD meetings.
@6:32 This is a great explanation regarding time freeze or personally I would say it was a "Instant Transmission Kamehameha"
Love your videos mr pumpkin man, congrats on beating sigil and doom1/2 on the nightmare world tour settings.
Looking forward to the next set of projects!
Great vid as always, but a special shout-out to the NERF map pack!! I watched your whole run in one sitting basically, and the way you guys and gals were able to use vanilla mechanics to completely change the game is spectacular, and I particularly like the ghost pinkie surprise in e1m4!
Awesome cameo from Romero! On Nightmare, I can get pass the tough enemies and they going turbo, except they respawning. That's what makes me hate the difficulty. And I loved the Pinky that freezes time.
6:19 pinky says Za Warudo!!!!! MUDA
Finally an explanation why monsters spawn outside the map in Doom II map 30! I would play ultra violence with cheats and respawning monsters running around blasting. I always wondered how/why monsters were running around in the out of bounds area. When you're 8 and play for an hour or whatever they just keep piling up and it turns into an amazing slaughterfest!
Thanks for finally answering that for me, amazing
I did not know that about the Pinky Demons... imagine a map based around those mechanics where you need to sneak past a bunch of Pinkys where if any of them wake up, you die instantly...
Imagine if you mixed them. So they would instantly move up in your face, but then chew super slowly so you could get away with just being scared.
@@linusgustafsson2629 sounds like a map info idea. I think I might add that into my wad
I made a fun mod once that involved nightmare mode called "Nightmare Conquered"
Basically you started with a special gun that, if you killed an enemy with it, would disable their ability to respawn.
It required a special ammo that dropped from any monster that was killed, but took a lot of ammo to fire, and had a very slow reload time.
It gave/gives a very methodical "conquering" aspect to the game, as you had the choice to very slowly, eventually clear out an area completely of enemies, to give yourself some breathing room, allowing you to slowly work your way out if you wished, or to use the gun to specifically take out stronger/more annoying enemies to make certain areas more tolerable.
It was strong, it could one-shot a pinky, but took around 3 shots to kill a cacodemon, so if you remembered enemy's health and the damage guns deal by heart, you could just wittle them down and finish them off with the special gun to take them out.
Really enjoyed this video. Production quality was great, loved the background music, Romero's cameo and all of your detailed analysis!
Thanks for this one, decino. I had several questions about nightmare mode mechanics that I couldn't be bothered to type out in the comments sections of your recent runs lol. This has actually answered them all quite well incidentally. Great stuff! 👍🎃👍
Really great analysis, I love the Romero cameo too. Also absolutely lost it at the instant-death machine Pinkies.
I think it's cool how you dig into the behind the scenes of how the code works. I only know a little bit about programming but your explanations help make sense regarding how the nightmare changes work.
Epic analysis video! I love the part with the pinkies freezing time, I thought that was so cool.
fast bois, respawning bois, lots of ammo and demons in the void
0:35 Decino: but first let’s go back in time. ( teleport effect) that was a good one. 3:22 I lost it when that demon charged at the shotgun guy.
nom
Once again, a fantastic analysis video with some fun jokes and great music.
With all the source port differences (curse you LNC) I hypothesize that NM can function a bit differently on each of them.
Decino is leveling up his visual presentation. The animations in this video were a treat.
How many forms of "Agonizing 'x' Pain" can Decino be in at once??? Stay tuned for future Patreon shoutouts!
Every time I'm starting to get bored of doom, you release a video explaining more fascinating info on the games and send me right back into another playthrough. Thanks for making my life hell on earth, decino!
Thanks for all the information and inspiration Mr Decino, recently I have lost my pc but I had another one just in case and I got a backup of my doom maps, playing them again felt good because I have used some of the technical information I learned here and other fun tricks like using the change texture to turn water into blood and illusions like floating platforms.
...oh, so *THAT'S* why I would always get insta-killed by Pinkies way back when I played Doom95. The pre-game Windows launch configuration panel of Doom95 had checkbox options for enabling 'Fast Monsters', 'No Monsters', and 'Respawn Monsters'. When FM was enabled I could never complete the game because the Pinkies would progressively get faster whenever I came back and loaded a savegame, to the point where they'd just lightning-flash to my location and kill me instantly, through a blur of a red screen. I eventually wised up and made sure the FM option was always de-selected.
You solved a 2+ decade old mystery for me. Thanks, decino.
How you never fail to come up with new Doom content is beyond me. Great video
2:53 - The WASD keys don't have the letters anymore...
bros's been playing much doom
Awesome video! Loved the cold probabilistic analysis regarding respawning monsters. I think adding more randomness in a difficult game is what makes me shiver most. If everything was deterministic it would be boring and predictable. Awesome John Romero cameo too, you are a true doom guru xd.
Looking forward to see that doom II nightmare run!
What a video to close the Ultimate Doom nightmare chapter ! I enjoyed all of this a lot, thank you for doing all these videos Mr Pumpkin !
Best part 3:21
he was kinda hungry
Hi Decino, you missed a chance to add a Doomguy ouch face along with your gasp at 1:34
3:01 I can never unsee the stray brown pixels.
I am so happy to see you accomplishing your nightmare run for dooms coming of middle aged. I still remember as a kid when the first doom came out I had to use a boot disk and play it in low detail.
it's funny how a few simple changes to how the game works can drastically affect difficulty and player strategies. nightmare truly is the difficulty ever.
Nothing hits me in the nostalerogenous zones harder than lifting the hood on Doom.
Many thanks man, much love for all your coverage and for going deep into the marrow of such an exciting time for gaming 👍👍
Lol love the subtle humor. The sprite edits had me smiling. Also I remember having a doom mod where the player sprite could be changed to the actual doom guy without his mask, can't find it anymore. Love these types of videos, thanks
Was just looking through your videos for this exact video. Thanks
That's why I started playing on UV+. I honestly can't deal with the enemies respawning, but UV+ is still a great challenge for me.
6:26 IS THIS THE JOJO REFERENCE?!
Awesome video, Pumpkin Man! Nightmare is a bit out of my league right now, I only barely managed to scrape myself through Doom 2 on UV with pistol starts only. I'd love to hear what levels you think are the most difficult in Doom, perhaps another tier list in the future?
Keep up the great vids, man
Great content as always, love these types of videos learning more about doom. Also funny how you can turn turbo pinkies into literally Dio.
15:57 you REALLY blew past that name
LMAOOO
John Romero actually giving insight here is really awesome. Glad he clarified why they included the Nightmare mode to begin with.
I really appreciate how forthcoming John Romero is with his knowledge and stories with all that behind the scenes stuff. So cool.
I have to say: The part from 12:50 to 14:20 is very inspiring and comforting(especially with that bgm by the way!)! I've played and adored the Doom franchise ever since I first played it in '94, but I never went for wads that went too much out of the original two games. I accept UV for being the ceiling of fair gameplay for us "mortals" but, despite the video section said above, no thanks!😅 Few tries in the distant past, but nope, can't stomach Nightmare, with respawning monsters being the primary reason. Only a few years ago I discovered the deliciousness of the pistol start(a whole brand new gameplay experience!) and UVed all main wads with it(Sigil included), but Nightmare will always be that bogeyman within me that I'll never be able to defeat. Thank you for yet another "yellow-background" video which I pleasantly watched!🙂
Seeing all these mechanics broken down into bare code honestly puts into scale how much of a mad genius John carmack is
His way of handling monster speed on nightmare is a horrible hack though. Its pretty obvious to any programmer that this kind of thing can lead to bugs. I wonder why he did it like that.
@@amunako Likely: the game was already released, they were steaming toward the retail version and spending more than a day or a few hours to add a joke (that was never meant to even be playable) would be silly. J. Carmack almost certainly would have understood the possible failure modes of his implementation, but it was also never expected that the player would even get into positions where those failures would apply.
Point being, it would not have added value to the product to do more than a quick hack job of it, so Carmack went with the least-cost option. This is, by the way, the exactly correct thing to do.
@@kkutani It would take less than 10 minutes to do it in a safer way. He could have stored the state durations for UV and NM as constants and set it at new game without even checking the previous difficulty. You could still break the game by loading saves, but the worst you would get is nightmare pinkies on UV and UV pinkies on nightmare.
Fun fact, in the SNES version of Doom there were no respawns on NM difficulty. I'm guessing due to hardware limitations.
It's kind of funny, most other ports didn't have fast monsters but did have respawning instead; I think the SNES version was the only one that had it the other way around.
Just what I wanted to kick off the weekend. A new decino video!
Thanks decino :) this is exactly the kind of video i needed to see
really cool that Romero sent an email reply!
It's weird to see a hard difficulty that doesn't just turn the enemies into damage sponges who hit harder. Instead it's a quite creative difficulty with changes that I wouldn't have ever thought about.
Thanks to you decino, I started to play doom2 in nightmare difficulty with no saves! 😅 But right now, The Focus is kicking my ass!
The first major roadblock for sure!
I love the Damn I'm Good (Nightmare equilevant) in Duke Nukem 3D because enemies respawn but they don't respawn if they are gibbed, even corpses can be gibbed. So you have to carefully manage your explosive weapons to gib as much enemies as possible, which creates a very stratetic different gameplay!
Great video, just what I was looking for while watching your Doom NM playthroughs :)
I can appreciate the hustle and skill required for Nightmare, but it's just not for me. My playstyle has always been slow and methodical. I prefer the stuff that die to stay dead. With that said, I still appreciate some difficulty, but I just go for the more difficult WADs for that. Besides, I just can't play the old Doom maps anymore. Pretty, modern maps have utterly spoiled me.
6:12 Would have been funny to see what it would look like if you had invulnerability/god mode on(unless that just crashes the game as well).
Also freezes the game.
Those super slow pinkies are clearly tired. Look at how big they yawn when they get close.
I made a new difficulty for PrBoom called Tranquillity. It's Nightmare mode without respawning, and is named for the feeling you get when everything is finally dead. 😎