Things about Doom you just found out

[Foxpup]

Zed said:

Now I'm not sure, can somebody confirm this?

Confirm what? That there's a shotgun in the starting room of Nirvana? And that nearly every Doom 2 level has a shotgun in or near the starting room, and there's no other connection besides the name, which is more likely a reference to the Buddhist afterlife to go with all the other religious references in the game? And that shotguns in or near starting rooms and religious references were both common themes in Doom 1, which came out before Kurt Cobain killed himself? Yes, I can confirm that all of this is true.

[Zed]

Foxpup said:

Confirm what? That there's a shotgun in the starting room of Nirvana? And that nearly every Doom 2 level has a shotgun in or near the starting room, and there's no other connection besides the name, which is more likely a reference to the Buddhist afterlife to go with all the other religious references in the game? And that shotguns in or near starting rooms and religious references were both common themes in Doom 1, which came out before Kurt Cobain killed himself? Yes, I can confirm that all of this is true.

OK, so you are 100% sure that's not the case?

Just to be clear, I'm not a Nirvana fan (in fact, I think Nirvana is seriously overrated), but I was curious because, you know, the NIN references, the soundtrack, etc... there was obviously a "rock culture" in Doom creators' mind.

By the way, Kurt Cobain died in April 5, 1994. Doom II came out in September 30, 1994. Maybe doomworld.com/vb/post/1044398]this could be a possibility?

Honestly, I'm just guessing. I just wanted to ask because of Markiplier's video, which made me wonder.

[Stupid Bunny]

SLIME09-12 are just RROCK05-08 shrunk by half and then tiled. It's a dinky version of the same flat, I totally never noticed this.

I think RROCK18 is just a dinky version of RROCK17, now that I'm looking closer. I could keep scouring these but I don't want to give myself eye strain.

[Gez]

Zed said:

Just to be clear, I'm not a Nirvana fan (in fact, I think Nirvana is seriously overrated), but I was curious because, you know, the NIN references, the soundtrack, etc... there was obviously a "rock culture" in Doom creators' mind.

Ctrl-F for Nirvana in here.

On the side of "it's a Nirvana (band) reference", there is "it's called Nirvana" and "there's a shotgun and lol Cobain suicide".

On the side of "it's not a band reference", there is "there are absolutely zero other references to Kurt Cobain's band anywhere else in id-made Doom media", "Nirvana is a view of a possible afterlife", "they were a bunch of D&D-playing nerds and Nirvana is one of the outer planes in D&D, along with Limbo, Pandemonium, and Hell whose capital is Dis".

If the map had been named "Pink Floyd" or "Guns 'n' Roses" then yeah it would obviously be a band reference, but "Nirvana" is far too generic a name.

[Krazov]

Foxpup said:

[Nirvana] is more likely a reference to the Buddhist afterlife [...]

Actually, it’s not an afterlife. Nirvana is “liberation from the repeating cycle of birth, life and death,” and can be achieved during the life by meditation. It’s more like a state of mind, if anything. But still—creators might have thought that it is, in fact, some kind of buddhists heaven. We could ask, I suppose, and maybe they remember.

However, let’s not spread this misinformation about nirvana itself.

[Gez]

Nirvana as an afterlife is a gross oversimplification that comes from shoehorning one spirituality into the cultural reference frame of another; but it's a common thing. As I said, D&D has Nirvana has one of its "outer planes". (It's the Lawful Neutral one. It was renamed Mechanus and turned into a clockworky thing when they went on to rename everything that looked too much like a real world religious concept in AD&D2, giving us other gems like renaming Hell into Baator. Then in D&D3 they tried to reconcile both, giving us mouthfuls like "The Nine Hells of Baator" or "the Clockwork Nirvana of Mechanus").

Doom was inspired partly by a D&D campaign they played where the big event was a demon invasion. So when they decided not to go with an Alien license for "It's Green And Pissed", they thought about using demons, and Doom was born.

[Zed]

Gez said:

Ctrl-F for Nirvana in here.

I wasn't talking about the soundtrack itself. I mean, it's just that I thought that if ID already had a "tribute" to NIN (E4M1) and a heavily rock-inspired soundtrack, it might as well have a reference to a famous rock star blowing his brain with a shotgun just some months before the game was released. As I said in my last post, it could be as ReconMajor suggested, just some kind of "afterthought". Maybe the only way to know for sure would be asking Sandy Petersen himself.

[Foxpup]

Gez said:

Nirvana as an afterlife is a gross oversimplification

True. I just don't feel like the full explanation is worth the time to explain it, since with that map being the beginning of Doomguy's second descent into Hell, it's obviously a reference to the afterlife (and any reference to the band is far less obvious).

[Krazov]

Descending to Hell, Doomguy liberated himself from the repeating cycle of birth, life, and death. That is an interesting concept as well, I must admit.

[scifista42]

When the Pain Elemental dies, he will always throw his lost souls towards his actual killer, even if he previously wasn't the PE's target. The standard retaliation rule is that when a monster changes its target, it takes a while before it can change its target again (except archvile) - but PE's death doesn't seem to be affected by this rule either. If I fire my SSG shells or chaingun bullets into the PE, but he's finally defeated by a single sergeant's shot from his back, then the spawned lost souls will fly towards the sergeant.

Side note: In ZDoomWars (a mod where you summon monsters that fight each other), when PE dies, he throws his lost souls directly towards the player who summoned the monster that killed the PE.

[Stupid Bunny]

This isn't something I just found out about Doom, strictly speaking, but I was looking for midi versions of Alice in Chains songs, and this midi of "Them Bones" is one I'd heard before.

I lol'd, anyway.

[axdoomer]

If you pick up 4 shotguns shells on skill 1 (I'm too young to die) or on skill 5 (Nightmare), it will give you 8 shells, but it will still say "You picked up 4 shotgun shells".

[Platinum Shell]

axdoom1 said:

If you pick up 4 shotguns shells on skill 1 (I'm too young to die) or on skill 5 (Nightmare), it will give you 8 shells, but it will still say "You picked up 4 shotgun shells".

Should have been a pack of shells.

[William Blazkowicz]

The one Shotgun Guy in the Underhalls of Doom II that is found outside that area where you drop down the holes to get the blue key and is standing right next to a barrel is actually stuck in the wall, making him unable to attack or see you.

Krazov said:

Descending to Hell, Doomguy liberated himself from the repeating cycle of birth, life, and death. That is an interesting concept as well, I must admit.

So, DoomGuy was alive then he died and was rebirthed?

[Zed]

William Blazkowicz said:

The one Shotgun Guy in the Underhalls of Doom II that is found outside that area where you drop down the holes to get the blue key and is standing right next to a barrel is actually stuck in the wall, making him unable to attack or see you.

That's actually one of the best-known bugs in Doom II. See the third point here.

[Foxpup]

Zed said:

That's actually one of the best-known bugs in Doom II. See the third point here.

Fun fact: this bug was introduced in version 1.9, in which MAP01 and MAP02 were shifted southwest for no good reason (and not even by a multiple of 64, hence the blatant flat misalignment), and many Things were not shifted by the same amount, with a few Things ending up stuck inside walls.

[Koko Ricky]

There has to have been a reason for that.

[scifista42]

GoatLord said:

There has to have been a reason for that.

For shifting the maps? Probably trying to move them closer to the [0,0] coordinate, because the further from the origin a map is, the higher is probability of BLOCKMAP problems. Though I don't know if this was the actual id's concern back then.

[joe-ilya]

I remember Romero mentioned somewhere that he was strict about missalignments but I see one on the first screen of E1M1! Talk about fake remarks.

[scifista42]

joe-ilya said:

I remember Romero mentioned somewhere that he was strict about missalignments but I CAN SEE MISALIGNMENTS IN HIS MAPS!

This was also my first thought when reading Romero's design rules for the first time, I was confused, because I immediately recalled multiple texture misalignments in pretty much each of his D1 or D2 maps.

[Gez]

I don't see what ilya's screenshot is supposed to illustrate. There's a zone of untextured, solid-colored washed out gray that's circled in red.

[esselfortium]

Yeah, some of Romero's "design rules" have to be completely disregarded if you're trying to mimic Romero, because he didn't follow them himself. (And many of the others are just very vague, unless you pick apart his maps to a degree that reading the guidelines isn't necessary anymore.)

He made some inconsistent attempts at texture alignment in some of his Doom 1 maps, but eventually he just figured out it was a lot less effort to just use low-contrast textures like ZIMMER and METAL2 that would make it harder to notice the 0,0 alignments on every wall.

[joe-ilya]

Gez said:

I don't see what ilya's screenshot is supposed to illustrate. There's a zone of untextured, solid-colored washed out gray that's circled in red.

For some reason the pallete got screwed up after I edited it with MSpaint, see it for yourself then.

[BaronOfStuff]

The problem with ilya's screenshot is that it doesn't show.. well, anything. Yes, the area is misaligned, but if you check all the walls in that area you'll see that he had to align the texture several times on several lines.

It doesn't actually look bad at all in Doom.exe (it's barely noticeable).

[scifista42]

BaronOfStuff said:

It doesn't actually look bad at all in Doom.exe (it's barely noticeable).

And we're back at admitting that low resolution makes every map imperfection look better. :)

[Krazov]

William Blazkowicz said:

So, DoomGuy was alive then he died and was rebirthed?

As I’ve written before, you don’t have to actually die to liberate from the cycle—you can “meditate” yourself out of it. (It’s a shorter version, but for the sake of the conversation let’s leave it at that.)

I myself am fond of this interpretation where Doomguy dies at conclusion of the [1st] episode. (That’s how I put it in my story, which is in Polish so might not be very useful to link it here—but maybe there are some Poles here.) Later it's him in Hell or somekind underworlds of a different kind; perhaps it’s all so called dying dream—which I don’t like as a concept, but it’s a game from 1993 so I can forgive that, as it was not so cliché like nowadays. Which means he’s not on Earth in “Doom II,” but still trapped in this dimension/his mind, hence he don’t need to die anyway—he’s already dead or dying.

But since “Nirvana” Doomguy descends into the hole in a floor. This could have some meaning attached. I’m thinking about writing a hard-boiled fictionalized solution of “Doom II” in a future, and then I will try to put it all together.

[The_MártonJános]

scifista42 said:

And we're back at admitting that low resolution makes every map imperfection look better. :)

So that's why my overwhelming aesthetism came as soon as I've first tried a port (like Jan-Feb 2010).

[_bruce_]

Romero & Co. didn't have any auto align feature as far as the interviews revealed - at their release these maps were top of the line and some still are.

[The_MártonJános]

The Doom 2 maps which use the track "The Dave D. Taylor Blues" all end in pressing a switch, regardless which episode they're in.

[Magnusblitz]

Cell said:

The Doom 2 maps which use the track "The Dave D. Taylor Blues" all end in pressing a switch, regardless which episode they're in.

I was gonna say that's just weird happenstance, but MAP14 and MAP22 really are outliers - MAP1-11 and the two secret levels are switches, and every other map from 12 onward is a teleport exit except for the two other maps with DDTBLU (and MAP30, of course). Interesting. They're also the only two McGee maps outside of the first 'episode', so maybe he just really liked the music track?