On low details and PC speakers

[Sovereign One]

How common was the "low detail" and PC speakers setting among people who played Doom following the years of its initial release? What about that odd stone-frame that covered the perimeter of the screen, or the original "laborious" keyboard settings? Where those common?

 

I could ask many more questions, but it seems that most of 'em have already been answered on previous threads.

[OldDoomer]

I didn't have access to a computer with a soundcard growing up, so 'PC sounds' were how I first experienced Doom. It didn't initially bother me as most PC games I had played to that point comprised those sounds. I didn't properly "hear" Doom until I played the 32X port.

 

I don't remember my keyboard layout but I do remember being fairly terrible at movements. It took me a while to understand the concepts of circle strafing. I do recall using arrows to move, since that's what we were most all accustomed to using during the time.

 

My experience at the time was also just shareware Doom, which was traded around via me and my friends with floppies. None of us had internet (didn't get that in-home until ~1996).

 

 

[DavidN]

I played Doom on a 386 - I can’t remember if low detail noticeably helped with the speed, but I don’t recall using it very often. Shrinking the screen until it ran smoothly was common, though - I loved the note it gives you in Rise of the Triad where it tells you to “Buy a 486!” if you ever shrink the screen to its lowest possible size :)

[SMG_Man]

The first time I played doom, our sound card did not support the music playback for whatever reason, so all we had were the sound effects. It wasn't until we got the GBA ports of Doom and Doom 2 that I actually heard what the music sounded like. (A few years later our neighbor gave us his copy of registered Doom, and funnily enough *only* the music worked on that one, no sound effects.)

 

As for the original key bindings, they were very much workable... if you played without using the mouse. One hand on the arrow keys, the other handling shift/tab/ctrl/space on the left side of the keyboard. It seemed normal enough since the game didn't have free-look like Quake 2 did. (note: I did not play the original quake until just a month or two ago lol.)

[Ozcar]

pretty sure low details doesnt make so much difference, and then i remember im playing with my widescreen 1080p so that why.

[TheMagicMushroomMan]

Here is "low detail mode", for anyone curious:

 

[Jello]

That's really not even low detail Doom. Low detail was Doom with 4MB ram, booted directly to DOS, hitting F5, and pressing - four times so it would run at a passable screen rate.

[xX_Lol6_Xx]

Here's how Low Detail Mode actually looks. Just without the glitch in the specters

https://www.doomworld.com/forum/post/2504341

Take a look at the detail in the shotgun and the walls, they look chunkier that with High Detail. I remember this also being referred as Double Pixel Width and that it was added to increase performance in the more weaker PC's of the time. I think it's also mentioned in the original Doom manual

 

Edited July 6, 2022 by xX_Lol6_Xx