Was it ever explained why doom originally used the mouse to move?

[sefus]

In older ports of doom, steam, and even zdoom the mouse is automatically bound to controls. I've always wondered why this was the case? Is it merely a product of the time? Or is there another technical explanation for it?

[DynamiteKaitorn]

DooM was built to use the mouse right from Day 1. I'm guessing back in the day, some peeps may have preferred to only use a keyboard so camera/aiming keys were added (I believe a lot of 80's and very early 90's games also played keyboard only as an option).

I'm guessing they kept this feature for

A: those who prefer to play OG FPS games without a mouse

or B: those who didn't have one (DooM originally ran through DOS).

Why the steam version doesn't bind mouse-look/mouse movement is beyond me... :l

Edited March 11, 2021 by DynamiteKaitorn

[Aaron Blain]

I've always wondered about this too. Mouse movement is extremely powerful in Wolf3d, where the player accelerates and stops instantly. I've tried a few times over the years to make use of mouse movement in Doom, but I've never been able to turn it into an advantage.

 

Does anyone out there play with mouse movement?

 

Note: we're not talking mouselook, we're talking 'mousewalk'.

[P41R47]

4 minutes ago, Aaron Blain said:

I've always wondered about this too. Mouse movement is extremely powerful in Wolf3d, where the player accelerates and stops instantly. I've tried a few times over the years to make use of mouse movement in Doom, but I've never been able to turn it into an advantage.

 

Does anyone out there play with mouse movement?

 

Note: we're not talking mouselook, we're talking 'mousewalk'.

Well, all the original demos were recorded by John Romero himself playing with mouse... and there wasn't anything like ''novert'' at that time.

So, i don't know now, but at that time, it was a way to play it, and some people even master it.

[BoxY]

Back in 1993 the fps as a genre barely existed and it was looong before there was any consensus for what was considered a "normal" control layout, so devs and players were both still in the stage of just trying anything to see if it worked, including experimenting with what the purpose of a mouse actually was in an fps. So if you look at it from that perspective, it's actually a miracle that vanilla doom's mouse handling didn't end up being way more crazy than it is.

 

As for whether anyone plays with vertical mouse always on, Zzul does and he has some of the best movement skills of anyone I've ever seen, so there's that I guess. Maybe vert mouse is actually overpowered and we're all just too plebeian to unlock its potential.

[Diabolución]

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/post/2000450/