From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action

Been playing PW's "Put your tongue on the mule's anus"
Its a documentary type game of what fishing guides really
do in the backwater cuntry.
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On Wed, 06 Aug 2025 20:43:28 -0600, PW
<iamnotusingonewithAgent@notinuse.com> wrote:

I think just Oblivion Remastered, and a LOT! I wouldn't be playing it
if Justisaur didn't give me a link to the lockpicking cheat!!!!!

How annoying are they! They are everywhere in this game. Never ends!

I admit, I did the same with my play through. I found a mod (I don't
know if it was the same one that Justisaur linked to) that let me open
locks automatically. It wasn't that I found the lockpicking mini-game
that hard (or, at least, not any more difficult than in the original),
but it got /really/ annoying having to do it over and over again. I
think the original conceit was, of course, that some chests would just
be beyond your ability to lock-pick until you leveled up, and that
you'd come back to them later on after you improved your skill, but I
knew that was never going to happen. So I used a mod instead.

It's not like the rewards were ever worth the effort and I got better
gear. You'd struggle with an extra-hard lock for ten minutes and get
three bones, six gold and a potion of minor healing.

While I can't remember exactly HOW, I do remember that this was one
area Skyrim improved on Oblivion; they made the lockpicking less
annoying (though whether this was by changing the mechanics, making
the lockpicking more rewarding, or just changing the frequency, I
don't really remember. Just that it was better in Skyrim).


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On Thu, 07 Aug 2025 10:48:11 -0400, Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, 06 Aug 2025 20:43:28 -0600, PW
<iamnotusingonewithAgent@notinuse.com> wrote:

I think just Oblivion Remastered, and a LOT! I wouldn't be playing it
if Justisaur didn't give me a link to the lockpicking cheat!!!!!

How annoying are they! They are everywhere in this game. Never ends!

I admit, I did the same with my play through. I found a mod (I don't
know if it was the same one that Justisaur linked to) that let me open
locks automatically. It wasn't that I found the lockpicking mini-game
that hard (or, at least, not any more difficult than in the original),
but it got /really/ annoying having to do it over and over again. I
think the original conceit was, of course, that some chests would just
be beyond your ability to lock-pick until you leveled up, and that
you'd come back to them later on after you improved your skill, but I
knew that was never going to happen. So I used a mod instead.

It's not like the rewards were ever worth the effort and I got better
gear. You'd struggle with an extra-hard lock for ten minutes and get
three bones, six gold and a potion of minor healing.

***--

**EXACTLY*** I have found nothing of worth ever except for small
amounts of gold coins in the chests and boxes. And, I don't find the lockpicking puzzles easy whatsoever. I have watched multiple videos on
how to do it and they haven't helped. Simply annoying. Maybe if I was
playing a theif character that would be relevent but as a
fighter-class I should just be able to whack them and open them once I
get to a certain level of strenght attribute! Like in the Wells Fargo stagecoach days in the west - just shoot the lock off for cripes
sake!! :-)

While I can't remember exactly HOW, I do remember that this was one
area Skyrim improved on Oblivion; they made the lockpicking less
annoying (though whether this was by changing the mechanics, making
the lockpicking more rewarding, or just changing the frequency, I
don't really remember. Just that it was better in Skyrim).

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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action


I played Hunt Showdown a lot in July, and still, so far in August.

As I mentioned in a prior post, it is difficult even for seasoned
competitive MP gamers to get started in. It's worth it, I think to
stick it out.... it's one of the crown jewels of the extraction
shooter genre, and even for those who don't know or care what
extraction shooters are, it's probably one of the best examples of
in-game sound design I've seen, ever.... and once you understand HOW
to play properly, it can be an incredibly immersive experience.

There's another reason to know what this game is though:

https://www.reddit.com/r/pcgaming/comments/1ino2cd/cryteks_sad_announcement_on_twitter/#lightbox
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candycanearter07 wrote:

- Final Doom:
Chocolatey Doom + Community Midi OST + Sound Blaster Audigy with 90s
E-MU soundfonts makes for pure bliss for your ears. The levels
difficulty is absurd, and yet it feels more fair than Thy Flesh Consumed

So is it a WAD for DOS Doom?

It began as a community WAD, then ID Software licensed the work before
it was finished and it became an official retail episode, along with The Plutonia Experiment. The Community OST is an addon WAD that needs to be
added on the command line when launching the game.

It's a WAD for any client, but I try to stick to as close to the DOS
original as I can possibly tolerate. Other than the 2X rendering
resolution (still pretty pixelated, but not as hard on the eyes as the original 320x200) and not having to load a custom mouse driver to
disable the Y axis movement, it's nearly identical to the original, even keeping the 35fps limit (playing at 144fps gives me motion sickness).
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Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

As H1M3M specified, they are playing it using Chocolate Doom, an
open-source port of the engine whose goal is to maximize compatibility
with the original game while still getting it to run on modern
hardware. It's been a while since I tried Chocolate, but as I recall
it avoided all modern amenities such as (modern) mouse-look, and
limited itself to all the original limitations of the 1994 game.

Actually, I'm using Crispy. As much as i try to embrace chocolate,
320x200 blown up to 24" was a bit too much, and it gets worse the bigger
the maps and the detail are, specially with Hexen. But other than the 2x rendering and the limit removal / increase (for stuff like Legacy of
Rust and Sigil), I'm staying as close to the source as possible. And at
least the mouse feels right. With the KEX engine releases the mouse
always feels messed with some weird acceleration and inertia, even if
you disable them.

Zdoom feels like something enterirely different that reuses maps and
sprites, it was simply too weird for me.
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Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote at 21:34 this Wednesday (GMT):

On Wed, 6 Aug 2025 19:30:03 -0000 (UTC), candycanearter07
<candycanearter07@candycanearter07.nomail.afraid> wrote:

- Final Doom:
Chocolatey Doom + Community Midi OST + Sound Blaster Audigy with 90s
E-MU soundfonts makes for pure bliss for your ears. The levels
difficulty is absurd, and yet it feels more fair than Thy Flesh Consumed

So is it a WAD for DOS Doom?

Yes, and no.

"Final Doom" was a commercially released product (as in, it had a box
and disks and everything!) released in 1996 as an expansion for Doom
II.

But essentially it's just two .WAD files ("TNT: Evilution" and "The
Plutionia Experiment") which added another 64 levels to the base game.
The core gameplay was exactly the same, and while there may have been
a few new textures, there were (IIRC, it's been 30 years) no new
weapons, monsters or power-ups. There was, though, a new soundtrack.

"Final Doom" was noticably harder than the original games. You'd often
face off against multiple cyber-demons, for instance. I also remember
a lot more platforming/navigating over narrow beams. It didn't have
the same jump-in-and-play accessibility of the first game (at least as
far as I was concerned), and was seemingly aimed at people who lived
and breathed "Doom" and thought "Ultraviolence" difficulty was too
easy.

As H1M3M specified, they are playing it using Chocolate Doom, an
open-source port of the engine whose goal is to maximize compatibility
with the original game while still getting it to run on modern
hardware. It's been a while since I tried Chocolate, but as I recall
it avoided all modern amenities such as (modern) mouse-look, and
limited itself to all the original limitations of the 1994 game. H1M3M
did upgrade the music using an improved soundtrack/sound-fonts.

ChocolateDoom is available here:
https://www.chocolate-doom.org/wiki/index.php/Chocolate_Doom

This seems to be the soundtrack update H1M3M used:
https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/119301

with the addition of the Audigy soundfonts, which you can pull from
the SoundBlaster Audigy driver CD, available here:
https://archive.org/details/cd-sb-audigy

The WAD files themselves are still proprietary, but if you get pretty
much any version of classic Doom as a digital download*, you'll get
the Plutonia/Evilution files included. Just pull them from Steam or
GOG and you can use them with Chocolate Doom.**

Me, I'll just stick with ZDoom, the Brutal mod, and the original 1993
game ;-)

--- --- --- ---
* including the "Doom + Doom II" remake on Steam; even though it uses
a completely different engine (KEX) it still uses the original .wad
files! https://www.gog.com/en/game/doom_doom_ii
** yaaarrrr, it's possible you may find the WAD files elsewhere on the Internet too, but I'm not providing any links for that option. But if
you _do_ go that route, remember you'll also need the Doom2.wad file
as well. ;-)

I have ChocoDoom installed, I just barely use it

did you say 64 levels??
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On Mon, 11 Aug 2025 19:50:03 -0000 (UTC), candycanearter07 <candycanearter07@candycanearter07.nomail.afraid> wrote:

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote at 21:34 this Wednesday (GMT):

On Wed, 6 Aug 2025 19:30:03 -0000 (UTC), candycanearter07 >><candycanearter07@candycanearter07.nomail.afraid> wrote:

- Final Doom:
Chocolatey Doom + Community Midi OST + Sound Blaster Audigy with 90s
E-MU soundfonts makes for pure bliss for your ears. The levels
difficulty is absurd, and yet it feels more fair than Thy Flesh Consumed >>

So is it a WAD for DOS Doom?

Yes, and no.

"Final Doom" was a commercially released product (as in, it had a box
and disks and everything!) released in 1996 as an expansion for Doom
II.

But essentially it's just two .WAD files ("TNT: Evilution" and "The
Plutionia Experiment") which added another 64 levels to the base game.
The core gameplay was exactly the same, and while there may have been
a few new textures, there were (IIRC, it's been 30 years) no new
weapons, monsters or power-ups. There was, though, a new soundtrack.

did you say 64 levels??

Yup. Each WAD is 32 levels long. This matches the length of the
original Doom2.wad file. And since you get two WAD files, that's 64
levels total.

Each WAD has its own story too (well, as much as any of the classic
Doom games had a story). IIRC, TNT Evilution has you sent to another
UAC base where they are -once again- experimenting with teleportation technology and, once again, Bad Things come out. Meanwhile, Plutonia
Experiment has the UAC doing experiments in order to try and stop
future hell-invasions, and -whaddaya know- Bad Things come out of the
portals again.

(or maybe I have the plots and WADs reversed. It doesn't really
matter; it all basically boils down to "portal open, demons come out, shooty-shooty time!")

The levels, as noted, were noticeably more difficult, but not really
BETTER... and in some cases, not very good at all. The whole thing was
released in the early days of Doom modding, and while the levels
weren't the worst, they weren't too much better than the stand-alone
stuff you'd download from ftp sites. Often, the cleverest thing about
them was shoving you into a room and launching 50 imps at you. I'm
pretty sure that -had Id not made it an official product- these WAD
files wouldn't have made any sort of mark on the industry. They're
only remembered today because they were an official Id product.

The TL;DR is that I don't think they're really worth seeking out and
playing unless you're a die-hard Doomer... and even then there's
probably better WAD files to spend your time on. Especially now; no
longer limited to the DOS-engine's limitations, Doom modders are doing
some really clever maps.

IMHO, YMMV, and all the usual caveats, of course.


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H1M3M <wipnoah@gmail.com> wrote at 08:27 this Monday (GMT):

candycanearter07 wrote:

- Final Doom:
Chocolatey Doom + Community Midi OST + Sound Blaster Audigy with 90s
E-MU soundfonts makes for pure bliss for your ears. The levels
difficulty is absurd, and yet it feels more fair than Thy Flesh Consumed

So is it a WAD for DOS Doom?

It began as a community WAD, then ID Software licensed the work before
it was finished and it became an official retail episode, along with The Plutonia Experiment. The Community OST is an addon WAD that needs to be added on the command line when launching the game.

It's a WAD for any client, but I try to stick to as close to the DOS original as I can possibly tolerate. Other than the 2X rendering
resolution (still pretty pixelated, but not as hard on the eyes as the original 320x200) and not having to load a custom mouse driver to
disable the Y axis movement, it's nearly identical to the original, even keeping the 35fps limit (playing at 144fps gives me motion sickness).

Nice of idsoftware to license it.
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On Tue, 12 Aug 2025 18:40:03 -0000 (UTC), candycanearter07 <candycanearter07@candycanearter07.nomail.afraid> wrote:

H1M3M <wipnoah@gmail.com> wrote at 08:27 this Monday (GMT):

candycanearter07 wrote:

- Final Doom:
Chocolatey Doom + Community Midi OST + Sound Blaster Audigy with 90s
E-MU soundfonts makes for pure bliss for your ears. The levels
difficulty is absurd, and yet it feels more fair than Thy Flesh Consumed >>>

So is it a WAD for DOS Doom?

It began as a community WAD, then ID Software licensed the work before
it was finished and it became an official retail episode, along with The
Plutonia Experiment. The Community OST is an addon WAD that needs to be
added on the command line when launching the game.

It's a WAD for any client, but I try to stick to as close to the DOS
original as I can possibly tolerate. Other than the 2X rendering
resolution (still pretty pixelated, but not as hard on the eyes as the
original 320x200) and not having to load a custom mouse driver to
disable the Y axis movement, it's nearly identical to the original, even
keeping the 35fps limit (playing at 144fps gives me motion sickness).

Nice of idsoftware to license it.

It was an interesting era. I'm not sure Id was doing it out of
"niceness" though.

Doom came out and modders immediately realized that -with some fairly
simple tools- they could start creating new levels, weapons, etc. They
uploaded their creations to various bulletin board and FTP sites to
share with the world. Anyone could go to these boards and download
dozens or hundreds of WAD-files. They were incredibly unpopular.

The unscrupulous saw an opportunity for profit.

They scooped up these WAD files en masse, burned them onto a CD-ROM,
and sold them for $10-15 a pop. The actual creators of the mods didn't
receive a penny (they'd be lucky if the text file they included with
their mods were included on the disc!) and the quality of the mods was
very iffy. These shovelware purveyors insisted that if they had to PAY
everyone who made a mod they'd go out of business.

Id software saw all this. They saw third-parties using their
trademarks. They saw the value of the Doom IP dropping because people
started associating it with shovelware mods. They saw their most
dedicated fans getting annoyed / stop playing/ stop making new WADs,
resulting in a potential lack of popularity with their most profitable
brand.

Id's "Final Doom" was, at least in part, an attempt to stomp on the
shovelware WAD market. They were doing it as much to protect their IP
as to reward the modders. (It also kept "Doom" on the market just a
little bit longer; "Final Doom" came out almost three years after
"Doom 2". It let Id eke out just a little bit more money from the
original games, and at minimal cost to them.


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