Month: October 2017

This week I chose to speed run the same level that I toured last week — E2M2, also known as “Containment Area.” I chose this level in particular for a two reasons. For one, I was already pretty familiar with it. And two, as we watched the speed run in class, I noticed a couple tricks that Dime performed that I thought would be interesting to explore.

I started out by using the invulnerability cheat, and just getting used to the route that I was going to use. At first, I tried going the route that Dime went. However, this route meant that I would have to learn how to strafe jump, which was much more difficult than I expected. The speed runners that we watched always made it look so easy. It was even more frustrating to learn on this level in particular because if you missed the jump, there was a very long path to get back to the spot to try it again.

So I ended up choosing a different path, that involved hitting a button which brought up the bridge to the exit. Eventually I turned off the invulnerability when I got more comfortable with my route.

 

Overall I found speed running to be a pretty fun and interesting experience, and I definitely see why it is so popular, especially in the DOOM community.

This week on my journey through the subcultures of Doom took me through a familiar territory; speedrunning. Having done this in the past for a course in metagaming, CTS 172, I had experienced the trials and tribulations of playing a game repetitively with speed, rather than fun, as a primary objective. However, with Doom, I find myself using different tactics to play, as well as different skill sets. 

(Super House of Dead Ninjas, the game I speedran in CTS172)

Speedrunning SHODN involved a lot of twitch, split-second reactions, due to each run of the game being randomized to some degree, so enemy placements are never the same. Speedrunning Doom, however, depends heavily on memorization and precision, due to the level structure and enemy placement being constant. The challenge in Doom comes in developing a sort of muscle memory from playing through a level enough to perfect the optimal route through the map.

(One of my failed runs through E1M2, 3 sec over my best time)

Memorization was the easy part, since the level wasn’t too long, and the optimal route is fairly easy to understand. The difficulty for me was being precise with my movement, making sure to hit switches quickly and not hit walls. As a result, I found myself becoming very tilted after several failed runs, because the only thing stopping me from getting a better time was my own lack of mechanical skill. Eventually I was able to hit 25 seconds on my best run, which is 3 seconds away from the world record.

In conclusion, I thought the speedrunning exercise was interesting, but I would definitely never repeat it, due to it not being my preferred method of play.

To decide which level to speedrun I started off by looking at the world records on speeddemosarchive.com, I looked into the levels that could be beat really quickly. Initially, I was going to speedrun E1M4 because it looked so easy in the record videos but when I tried it myself I realized it required a strafe jump and I practiced it for awhile but I just could not make the jump from the staircase to the platform. So then, I went back to the speed demos archive website and tried E2M7 but similarly, it required a rocket jump which I also practiced for awhile but could not do. Finally I ended up speedrunning E3M3, a level that doesn’t required any special jumps or strafing but could still be completed under thirty seconds.

I chose not to straferun when I was speedrunning because I couldn’t control my movement very well when I was moving at an angle. I actually noticed I had better times when I ran with only shift because I ran into less walls and monsters. It took me around 25 runs to get to my personal best and then my times just began to land one or two seconds behind so I ended up with a PB of 30 seconds.

Looking forward to start modding next week!

Speed run totally changes the experience of playing Doom. During costless failed attempt of complete the level, speed run alter Doom from a shooting game into a chasing and running. At first, I wanted to do E2M6 as the glitch video in class really left an impression. It feels like a switch between real world and dreamlike world like Inception. However, I can not  find the right angle at the corner. On the world record video, the move to glitch is so natural as if there is a door right behind the player. All he did is simply walk back and he is in the abstract world. It did not happen to me.

After the failure, I decided to try E3M1, which is the map I did tour. Being familiar with that map, I got through the easiest level within 1 mins. However, after I finished the first difficulty, I wanted to challenge myself by choosing the second difficulty. It turned out to be much worse than I expected. Since the level has a lot of long hallways, what I planned to do is to run into the hallway so fast that the monsters are blocked by the door. It worked well for the first difficult yet not workable for the second as there are so many monsters that they just crowded into the hallway. My strategy ends up me in the hallway with monsters at both end.

The long hallway is where I dead as there is a pink monster right at the turn so the door can not be closed quickly enough to block monster at the room out.

Attempting to speed run is far more difficult than i thought. And I am speed running one of the easier speed runs in the game (Episode 1 Mission 1).

Looking at http://speeddemosarchive.com/Doom.html, and seeing the top speed run record of E2, E2 of 14 seconds makes my speed run record look terrible by comparison (my record so far being 22 seconds). I actually got 19 seconds as my fastest time but I forgot to press the record button so no one will believe me without proof.

You can clearly see in my strafe running isn’t refined whatsoever but it has gotten slightly better recently. My biggest issue however in this mission is lining up with the triggers hit marker so being able to strife properly will probably only save me a couple seconds. Like most speed DOOM runners I set the difficulty to medium and disabled any cheats.

When trying to record my run with the project 3 diameters, i was unable to. It would simply show its error message and do nothing. The solutions i found online, only worked for windows XP and 7. SO as of now I only have this high res GIF.

I’m probably not the only one to do this speed run but if any one beats my unofficial 19 second time, i will be highly impressed.

 

This week, moving from the shareware version, I start to play the episode 2 and 3 of Doom. This time, as the goal shifted from experiencing Doom to exploring the map of Doom, I was introduced to the cheat code and command line argument for Doom. I am familiar with cheat code and debug mode in my pervious game experience of The Sim3 and The binding of Isaac. However, I used the codes in The Sims 3 to mimic the game experience of upper class families and test the effect of different combinations in The binding of Isaac. Using cheat codes in order to explore the map, which slower, rather than speed the game, is still a new experience to me. The code I used are IDFA, IDBEHOLDV and IDDQD. I also tried to use non monster command line but gave up as I feel the monster should also be a active part of the level design. As long as I will not take damage from them, I am not distracted by them. Firstly, as I still tried to have a game experience, I used IDFA. However, as there is a possibility of being killed, I can not help but constantly killing monsters. Than I tried IDBEHOLDV, the temporary invulnerability, which is too temporary for me to pass the level, leaving me with no choice but IDDQD, invulnerability.

(The weapons, walls and monsters all turn into white. I do not know if it is a bug or not.)

The level I choose to talk about in the presentation is E3M1, Hell Help. I choose it for its simple map and distinguishing art design. As the introductory level of episode 3 which is set in hall, the color and elements of Hell Help are very different from previous level. And the beginning of the level, a meat and bone room, impressed me a lot. The previous rooms seems to be more human made while this one is made by human. By constructing a single room, the increasing danger and power of the monsters and level was implied even before the first monster is shown.

(The meat and bone room with  the eye as a trigger)

So, even though our project for this week involved many of the practices in writing this blog, I wanted to try to dive into another layer of DOOM I we haven’t touched on, but that still impacted my experience this week. While thinking about this, I came to thinking about first person shooters and why they have recently become the most popular genre in current video gaming. We have team based shooters like Overwatch and Counter-Strike, objective shooters like Battlefield and Call of Duty, puzzle and story-based shooters like Half-Life and Portal, and then we have DOOM, a strange, somewhat out of place shooters amidst the other. Sure, there is an objective, like any other game: get through the level as quickly as possible while doing as much as you can to stay alive and get the most stuff. However, in compared to more modern titles of the same genre, the game itself makes very little sense. Small details create some assemblance of a story, there are enemies to shoot, levels to get through, and yet even with the additional secrets and new enemies with every new chapter, stopping to think about why I am enjoying myself as much as I am does not produce a cohesive answer. And then it hits: it’s fun because it is a shooter. DOOM represents the fun-for-the-sake-of-fun aspect of shooters, a kind of middle ground between stress relief, catharsis, and disconnection from reality nearly everyone can relate to. With that, I am beginning to see why this game sits on its throne of obscure popularity and why so many shooters, with all of their polish and variety, still pull from DOOM. I am interested to delve more into this in the coming weeks.

So I was super interested in our conversation last week about the role of the user and the ability to use either cheat codes or command line arguments while playing the game to give the user god-like capabilities within the game’s universe. Mainly, we talked about the question “why would the developer include this?” . I’m going to try to answer this in my post today! (with some commentary from different presentations of DOOM touring Tuesday)

– “Why would the developer include cheat codes/command line arguments?”

For this one, I think we can largely take into account the aesthetic and tone of DOOM and its intended audience. As we talked about in Ben’s presentation about the aesthetics, the game was made for shock value and controversy (with some irony too which might be lost on its target audience).

so… yeah. With the heavy metal/satanic/gory atmosphere we have going here, the developers seem to be playing right into what their target audience would get addicted to. Another way the developers seem to play right into their target audience is with… well… the killing. The constant need to survive and kill your way through levels almost might play out like the teenage boy power fantasy, which i’m sure we’ll get into later in the class when we talk about the game and masculinity. But yeah this is where the cheat codes really amplify what the developers are trying to sell to their target audience: being a god, with complete control over the game. Even when killing your enemies, the game can make it a power fantasy OF a power fantasy by allowing you to type in some letters and instantly not be affected by enemies/have all the weapons you need. The obnoxiousness of the masculinity here is bumped up to 11, allowing players to feel like they could do whatever they wanted. But! In order for this “meta” power fantasy to work, the developers couldn’t just feed the information to its users, they had to find it out for themselves, and really feel like they unlocked some power or potential, which is (one of the reasons) why they made the cheat codes exist in this “word of mouth” culture. I think this can largely be said for other popular games with cheat codes “built in” – first person shooters and sandbox games like GTA.

 

This week’s project involved me playing through episodes 2 and 3 of Ultimate Doom, and picking an interesting level to analyze and create a presentation on. I chose to focus on the level design, aesthetics, and music of E3M1, Hell Keep.

(Map of E3M1)

This level stood out to me as having a similar purpose to the very first level, E1M1, in that the level is designed to introduce you to new core mechanics in the following levels. From the first room in the level, the player must solve a simple symmetry puzzle in which they make an object (a skull with dark eyes) match an example object (a skull with red, glowing eyes) by triggering it with the ‘use’ key. 

This serves as a simple, yet effective introduction to a theme of episode 3, which features puzzles more heavily than the previous episodes.

This episode also emphasizes a particular design choice that is one of my favorite aspects of Doom; the horror aspect. The jump scares in the narrow hallways and behind closed doors add to the experience of playing the game, which connects the player emotionally by tapping into their fear and adrenaline resulting in these sudden jump scares and dangerous, claustrophobic situations.

(An instance of jump scares, where the player is greeted with a loud roar and several monsters in their face when opening the door.)

All in all, taking a closer look at the level revealed some valuable insight in how to design my own levels and how to introduce new mechanics to players without needing explicit tutorials.

I spent a lot of time playing Doom this weekend. It’s kind of wierd/cool having to play a videogame as homework. I played episode 2 and episode 3 with the cheatcodes IDDQD (invulnerability), IDFA (full everything minus keys), and double IDDT (map and items reveal). I played in GZDoom this time, which I really liked as an emulator except for the map (the map is sad). I also customized my controls and played with a mouse which made it so much easier! I played the majority of episode 2 and 3 by looking for the keys to find the exit but towards the end of episode 3 I started to get a bit tired of the game from playing for so long so I used the walk through walls cheat (IDSPISPOPD) for 3 of the levels.

In class I presented on the secret exit in E2M5, and my favorite part of that whole secret is still the blood waterfall curtain thing because it’s decorative to the level but also is used to hide a teleporter.

After I presented on Tuesday, Steven presented on E2M9, the secret level in episode 2. Apparently, the secret exit I came across in map 5 was actually an exit that lead to a secret level.

When I toured the game I also played this secret level but the whole time I thought it was just level 6 and that the next map was level 7 and so on. The existance of the secret exit in E2M5 makes more sense to me now after learning that it’s not just another way to beat E2M5, it actually leads to an entirely different level.