Do you feel the vanilla levels were much larger and harder years ago during your childhood?

[Hisymak]

I, and most likely many of you, who have played Doom, Heretic and other similar games during your childhood in 90s, have the feeling, that today, when you are adult and play those games under modern source ports, the vanilla levels are much smaller and easier to beat than they used to be. I very well remember struggling through Heretic levels on easy difficulty, then trying out hard difficulty and having trouble pass through levels without saving and dying. Nowadays, I can blast through those levels on hard like nothing.

I was thinking about this, and came up with several ideas and reasons why it is like that. Indeed, some of these are pretty much obvious and nothing surprising, but still, I'd like to share and discuss my feelings and ideas.

1) Getting more skilled. As growing up, I was getting faster reflexes and reactions, being smarter and using better tactics (i.e. taking better advantage of various weapons and their advantages/disadvantages against certain types of monsters, items and powerups), and most importantly, learning to STRAFE!!! Starting to use strafe caused the greatest improvement in my skills - I could dodge monsters and their projectiles and take much less damage than before. Circling around monsters (basically staying in permanent movement) and letting them infight where possible, became one of my most common tactics.

2) False memories about specific places being much harder/occupied by more monsters than they actually are. The biggest example of this is Duke Nukem 3D E2L4, and the final exit room filled with Assault Commanders. It was the first time I met this monster in this game. I was seriously frightened to death (as a small kid) and had a bad dream that night. For very long time I was extremely afraid of that room, and believed there were at least 10 Assault Commanders in there. Nowadays, when I play that level, I find at most about 5 Assault Commanders there (even on Hard), which I cannot believe.

3) Better sense for navigation. I can now better remember the layout of levels, keeping the map of level in my head, thus navigating through level and imagining its size is more precise than before. Replaying the vanilla levels many times again and again helped too. As I was small, I felt levels were huge, but I don't feel that now.

4) Much better screen resolution in modern source ports. In 90s, when playing vanilla DOS versions of the games, the resolution was only 320*200, and everything was pixelated and very blurry. Distant places were hardly recognizable and monsters in distance looked like just a bunch of pixels. It was much harder to see the layout and size of bigger rooms, especially with natural shapes and textures. The most notable example is the huge outdoor starting area in Heretic E2M7. I was feeling that room was extremely huge, and hard to navigate, as there was a big lava pool around. Nowadays, with high resolution, I can pretty clearly see the layout of whole room, and it certainly does not look so big and mysterious as it used to be.

5) Higher resolution automap and availability of tools providing top-level view of whole map layout. Back then, the automap was very low res and hardly showed the top-down view of map layout. Nowadays I can easily open a map in map editor (i.e. Doom Builder) and pretty clearly see the map layout, so I can much better get an idea about the actual size and "smallness" of vanilla levels.

6) Custom megawads and level packs pushing the difficulty and level size standards far away. Until late 2000s, I had no idea about existence of custom level packs and megawads for Doom-engine games, so I was only replaying vanilla levels over and over. When we got internet connection and I could search for some, I got to play some megawads and level packs, which contained much bigger and harder levels than vanilla games ever offered. During years, I played through many megawads, and pretty got used to their difficulty standards. When I'm returning to vanilla levels, they are unbelievably easier and smaller than what I commonly play now.

 

Edited October 13, 2020 by Hisymak

[Netuno]

I was dumber and slower when younger just like everyone, of course, even 2 years ago i was considerably worse than i am today, makes me remember playing GTA SA in 2014~ and i only made 25% of the game due to lack of skill, today i can complete it with only a few difficulties

 

Also now i notice the level design of the first two games were rather simple, but still pleasant to the eyes, working with limited software and technology can push your brain to squeeze extra creativity, i guess.

Edited October 13, 2020 by Netuno

[D4NUK1]

Well, when playing doom95, Doom was more long for me than Doom 2, maybe for the more exploration and slower pacing instead of arcade feal of some doom 2 maps that's can be beated on pretty fast

[Deadwing]

Definitely larger.

I remember Downtown being an immense map with lots of buildings and stuff and now everything looks so smaller lol

 

Same for plutonia map 29

[Maes]

They "felt" larger for a variety of factors, including clunkier controls (remember, not everybody had discovered WASD + novert on their own back then), lower resolution (which suggested there was more going on in the distance than there actually was) and crappier machines/lower framerates, which could make playing a chore, sometimes.

Edited October 13, 2020 by Maes

[Pirx]

and me being a noob back then. as for the recurring question "what was your first doom experience", i should have written somewhere how i saw doom running on a friend's pc, and iirc that version had a demo on e3m6, which felt enormous, and the handful of imps and cacos assaulting the player seemed a slaughter map to me. 

[seed]

Yes, mainly because the setup was different back then, and so were the standards.

 

In retrospect, looking back at vanilla maps and their difficulty makes them look amateurish in comparison with what the community is pumping out these days.

[printz]

I would always get lost in the levels with the "Demons on the Prey" music (Computer Station, Command Center and Unholy Cathedral). The low-voice music didn't help.

 

I was also afraid to use the automap because I would lose all sight. I first got introduced to a newer game than Doom, Dark Forces, which had a better, overlay automap, so the one in Doom felt dumb and dangerous in comparison.

 

Otherwise I don't consider the levels smaller now. It still takes a hell of a time to finish maps like Containment Area with 100% kills, items and secrets. They're just trivially easy now (except for Nightmare! mode).

[Doomkid]

One thing I've noticed is that most video game worlds that took place in 3D environments, including that of Doom, felt much larger than they do today.

 

As a kid, everything feels larger, since it is larger relative to you. You wouldn't think that same sensation would translate to the realm of 3D games, but at least for me, it certainly did.

 

When I tried to remake maps I had last seen when I was a kid, the main thing I would always get wrong is the scale. When I found JFL18.WAD during my hunts that I talked about in this thread, it was in many respects just as I remembered it, but the levels feel downright tiny to my adult self compared to how I remembered them when I was little. All the visual aspects were right, the one thing I didn't adjust for was the sense of scale.

 

In that same thread Andromeda showed me Eternal Deathmatch which was another wad I'd been seeking for years, and once again the maps felt so much shorter and thinner to my adult self than they did as a youngster.

 

Anyway, this is just my way of saying yes, the IWAD maps and wads I played when I was about 10 and under definitely felt much larger and more difficult back then. Due in large part to the sense of scale, but also other factors people have mentioned such as crappier controls, worse resolutions, less familiarity, and all that other good stuff.

[Omniarch]

Heh, I first played Doom this April and I still get a similar feeling for some reason. Maybe since I first played the steam port, some small degree of 90's clunkiness remained intact? Or maybe it was because the experience was totally alien to me, since I generally only play strategy games with the occasional action rpg like Dark Souls or Hollow Knight. In fact, the only shooters I ever played were the first five CoD games, and even then only the campaigns. That and S.T.A.L.K.E.R, which is more survival horror than anything else.

[pcorf]

When I first played Vanilla, the maps felt large especially MAP15 and MAP24 of Doom 2. I also played some custom PWADS such as UAC_Dead, Sungod, Uacpen and was blown away by how large they were. Some of the maps in TNT and Plutonia was crazy big too (like that MAP29 city map in Plutonia)

 

Then when limit removing source ports were introduced in the late 1990's maps certainly got a heck of a lot larger especially when it comes to detail and this enabled map designers far more flexibility. But even before limit removing there were some very difficult maps such as the maps of Hell Revealed for example. Yes, maps have certainly gotten a lot more difficult today, even non slaughtermaps as the best map designers demand perfect gameplay balance.

 

 

Edited October 13, 2020 by pcorf

[The Lone Wolf]

All I know is when you are a toddler, video games makes you much more excited and curious. Even today, I can not get the same taste from the games compared to my childhood experiences with them. I don't know, it might be about when we were little, and we knew a few things about life. Those video games were something interesting for us, reason is there are things you can not see in real life, also combine it with your lack of experience. I mean, you don't even know what to do, how to do when you are playing them. Back in the days, Youtube and game forums are few and not eveyone get to know about them to get information for games. Even if your mother tongue is not english. Oh boy, I can not count how many times I put different meanings to those world on texts. :D

[magicsofa]

I think it has a lot to do with being physically smaller, and less sure of yourself. I remember being so scared of playing doom the real way, I would use god mode so that I could just explore the levels and shoot demons without opposition. The idea of being able to die in the game terrified me, even knowing I could save. I think it was the uncertainty of having a life total that could easily be reduced to nothing. Eventually my dad and older brother convinced me that it's actually more fun if you don't cheat, probably with the help of lower difficulty settings. 

 

5 hours ago, Hisymak said:

In 90s, when playing vanilla DOS versions of the games, the resolution was only 320*200, and everything was pixelated and very blurry. Distant places were hardly recognizable and monsters in distance looked like just a bunch of pixels. It was much harder to see the layout and size of bigger rooms, especially with natural shapes and textures.

 

I still often play in 320x200, to me it doesn't make things look "bigger." It just makes everything blend together at a distance, helping to disguise the sharp edges of the simple geometry. I do feel that it's a little more immersive with low res, since it's not so painfully obvious where the limitations of the engine/maps are...

[P41R47]

No matter how big and old i get, E3M7: Limbo still feels awfuly big and obscurely puzzley. May be the quintessential puzzle map, but even knowing ir from memory, it still feels a slog to play.

Usually my run of Ultimate Doom ends on E3M6 and cotinues on E4M1.

Those are the only maps i skip when i replay UD.

Oh and some maps of Doom2 over map20, not remember exactly wich, i think i skip directly to map29 hahahaha.

 

The map that was gigantic and still is for me, a great achievemet, is TNTmap20: Central Processing.

Remember thinking "when this fucking map will end?", the first time i played it.

Also, the exit up there with just a sign at the side, make it more difficult to find it.

[The Lone Wolf]

@P41R47 you are not the only one, friend. I still wonder about what were they thinking when making that map. Was that on a purpose or id team made it up in an hour.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

The skill gap is too much. Kid me thought difficulty 2 was crazy after trying skill 1 because the monsters deal a lot more damage. Teenager me thought UV was challenging and fun.. Me 5 years ago think UV was still a lot of fun although a bit on the easier side. Now I can't imagine replaying without speed running the maps like a headless chicken without picking weapons or playing on nightmare without getting bored 5 levels in. 

Edited October 13, 2020 by Pegg

[Firedust]

Absolutely. Limbo felt like it was this gargantuan labyrinth chock full of monsters. Imagine my surprise when I checked the level stats and automap as a grownup...

[Kokoro Hane]

Honestly I think it's just getting used to the maps. Any game, things seem much longer and complex the first time around, but once you've beaten it so many times and know it like the back of your hand, doesn't seem as large, or complex, or scary anymore. That's at least how I feel playing the game as an adult vs. when I was a kid.

[Scypek2]

My weirdest childhood memory is E3M8 actually being exciting. I specifically remember going into the central structure and panicking when all the doors opened leaving me exposed again, but somehow that felt... not like the only noteworthy place in the entire level. It felt like a whole hellish city full of stuff, as if all the interesting parts of Dis were transplanted into Mt Erebus. I think part of it is because I could only reach that level by loading someone else's save, which dropped me in the middle of the arena without being able to see how empty the upper parts are.

[DNSKILL5]

I used to assume areas that were inaccessible by any means other than cheating, like the windowed area outside of E1M1 where the green armor is found as an example, had more to it than it did. Then I found the no clip cheat and actually got to see what was down there, and what wasn’t down there as well. Then I learned how the levels are made and the limitations of the game when I got older, so a lot of those fantasies I had of areas I thought might exist within the maps, I was able to put to rest for good. 
 

also, e1m8 is the reason I say anyone who doesn’t think Doom was intended to scare you, weren’t playing the same game as me at the time when I first experienced that level. That level ensured I’d never forget it nor the experience of making it to that level. 
 

the game felt larger and harder when I was younger, but with repeat playthroughs, year after year, you learn the maps better and how to deal with the tough enemies better as well. 
 

also, my first experience with Doom took place when we found the shareware on our Heretic disc. I remember the game looking much more realistic than it does to me now, and I remember physically attempting to dodge Imp fireballs. 

Edited October 13, 2020 by Gerolf

[nostalgia]

How could I forget the tremendously bigger secret are outside E1M2. I was blown away by that when I was a kid. Also the dark maze at the same map was a torture.

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

9 hours ago, P41R47 said:

No matter how big and old i get, E3M7: Limbo still feels awfuly big and obscurely puzzley. May be the quintessential puzzle map, but even knowing ir from memory, it still feels a slog to play.

Usually my run of Ultimate Doom ends on E3M6 and cotinues on E4M1.

Those are the only maps i skip when i replay UD.

Oh and some maps of Doom2 over map20, not remember exactly wich, i think i skip directly to map29 hahahaha.

 

The map that was gigantic and still is for me, a great achievemet, is TNTmap20: Central Processing.

Remember thinking "when this fucking map will end?", the first time i played it.

Also, the exit up there with just a sign at the side, make it more difficult to find it.

You certainly aren't missing much by skipping e3m8!

[Mr. LBN]

I can definitely say it was a much much harder experience for me growing up as I didn't know you could strafe, played only on a keyboard, and I would always stop shooting my gun when DOOMguy's face got aggressive as I thought he was getting angry at me.

[Egg Boy]

Maybe they WERE actually larger, you're just in a different dimension. Have you heard of the Mandela effect? In this twelve thousand word essay I will

[Zillah]

Of course. Anytime you reach something new it seems so vast.... so unknown.... But the truth is that's how our first impressions are. I felt the same way about Minecraft, or for a """mature""" example; Team Fortress 2. The limits they had, I didn't mind, probably because I was just a kid and my imagination filled the blanks for me, and since it was unfamiliar, it all seemed that more grand and new. Once you've gotten familiar with something, that first time magic disappears and instead a fond humbleness (or hatred), takes it's place. Same can be said for people too... I suppose.

[Linguica]

I can still remember playing the Doom shareware in the summer of 1994 and feeling like E1M3 was enormous, with the multiple-stage secret to get into the area with the soulsphere pillar, and then with the window overlooking the secret area leading to the secret exit, and even later with the secret with the invisibility sphere etc overlooking an outdoor area with the enigmatic mountain peaks in the distance. Could I go there? At the time I had no idea what the "scope" of Doom was exactly and the multiple layered secrets of the level made it feel potentially unlimited.

[SilverMiner]

When I finally got registered Doom, I remember episode 2 felt really scary and different from the first episode, especially E2M6 and E2M8

[Scypek2]

I don't even really remember specific levels, only vague memories I can only now map to some levels... the central area of The Pit might have been where I tried the IDBEHOLDI cheat, which gives the blur sphere but was mistranslated as "untouchablity" on the cheat sheet I had. The end of Bloodfalls was probably where I fought an Archvile with a rocket launcher, and was surprised to find out they can be killed without a BFG.

[whirledtsar]

On a similar note, the Cyberdemon originally seemed much larger than he really is. My impression was that he was a giant that towered over everything. But really hes only as tall as a typical 128-unit room. 

[Kyukon]

I played a lot of Doom as a kid, and often got frustrated but kept trying, and would frequently cheat to get through different places, especially in Final Doom.  I never did learn how to circle strafe until the Metroid Prime series taught me how.  It was a whole new experience coming back to Doom after getting that down!