Pistol Start

[ChickenShred]

Does this game have pistol start or not really?

[Emberheart Games]

Pistol start? You get Spellstriker in the 3rd level, which is a gun-like magical artifact.

[ChickenShred]

Originally posted by Emberheart Games:

Pistol start? You get Spellstriker in the 3rd level, which is a gun-like magical artifact.

Could you elaborate?

[geekstee]

I think @ChickenShred, meant if we can have a setting where you start each map with no upgrades and/or additional weaponry. (I would like this aswell) Lots of Doom players do pistolstart runs of the maps..

[ChickenShred]

Originally posted by geekstee:

I think @ChickenShred, meant if we can have a setting where you start each map with no upgrades and/or additional weaponry. (I would like this aswell) Lots of Doom players do pistolstart runs of the maps.. :tdasw:

Correct, though hearing that this game has upgrades does that make pistol start hard to implement?

[Vesperas]

No, it doesn't have pistol starts. You begin levels with whatever weapons you would have normally collected prior to starting the level, including upgrades. Only your inventory items and ammo for each weapon is reset.

That said, pistol starts really make no sense in Wizordum anyway. You won't ever really be able to accomplish a fresh level start (or true pistol start) due to the inventory system, weapon upgrades and how spells are learned as you progress through the game.

Defeating the Baron in Stormkeep Spire with a pistol start, which is--without a full arsenal, inventory items, weapon upgrades or abilities / spells, would likely be close to impossible.

The only reason it ever existed in Doom was because of game engine limitations and because it was initially released as shareware. In many cases, level designers would just place a bunch of weapons and ammo in the starting area of their level to overcome it.

The bottom-line is, for experienced players, Doom is just a very easy game. This is the only reason things like pistol start or Tyson runs ever really became a thing.

[Dead]

Originally posted by Vesperas:

snip

Yeah pretty much this, the inventory system in this game pretty much makes the idea of "Pistol Starting" being abolished anyway.

But, that alone won't stop if the devs wanting to add such feature and update the level design so it would support the idea of "Pistol Starting"

Hence I would like if it can be a thing for Custom Levels (Or Episodes for that matter).

[ChickenShred]

Originally posted by Vesperas:

No, it doesn't have pistol starts. You begin levels with whatever weapons you would have normally collected prior to starting the level, including upgrades. Only your inventory items and ammo for each weapon is reset.

That said, pistol starts really make no sense in Wizordum anyway. You won't ever really be able to accomplish a fresh level start (or true pistol start) due to the inventory system, weapon upgrades and how spells are learned as you progress through the game.

Defeating the Baron in Stormkeep Spire with a pistol start, which is--without a full arsenal, inventory items, weapon upgrades or abilities / spells, would likely be close to impossible.

The only reason it ever existed in Doom was because of game engine limitations and because it was initially released as shareware. In many cases, level designers would just place a bunch of weapons and ammo in the starting area of their level to overcome it.

The bottom-line is, for experienced players, Doom is just a very easy game. This is the only reason things like pistol start or Tyson runs ever really became a thing.

Understood. Thank you.

[Snake]

There is a lot of misinformation about pistol starts in this thread.

Pistol starts were a design choice and a conscious decision in Doom, and levels were made, balanced and playtested to be winnable from a fresh / pistol-start, starting with just the starter pistol and bullets.

I am not saying Wizordum should be balanced against pistol starts (even though it would be a nice option to have), but the original concept was absolutely not something related to shareware or technical limitations of the engine (???), quite the contrary.

[Uncle Rusty]

Game starts with the mace, which is okay but hard to use without taking damage especially against faster enemies. Fireball spell is next and will be your main ranged damage that's easy to find ammo for.

The game wasn't really designed with a 'Pistol Start' style of balance as doom was, as most levels don't actually contain duplicates of the main weapons, though a few do. I don't think it's a huge deal for gameplay though, you can always just start off on a higher level of difficulty for more challenge.

[Snake]

Originally posted by Vesperas:

Originally posted by Snake:

There is a lot of misinformation about pistol starts in this thread.

Pistol starts were a design choice and a conscious decision in Doom, and levels were made, balanced and playtested to be winnable from a fresh / pistol-start, starting with just the starter pistol and bullets.

I am not saying Wizordum should be balanced against pistol starts (even though it would be a nice option to have), but the original concept was absolutely not something related to shareware or technical limitations of the engine (???), quite the contrary.

Doom II: Hell On Earth - Map 30: Icon of Sin would like to have a word with you. :laughing_yeti:

Any level featuring the Icon of Sin, whether it be in Doom II or either episode of Final Doom, literally requires a rocket launcher to defeat. It cannot be completed with a pistol.

Per Sandy Peterson, maps in Doom were designed the way they were to start with because the maps weren't created with previous level progress in mind. They were each designed and play tested individually, then stitched together into a cohesive episode via the world progress screen. The fact that you're forced to pistol start E2: The Shores of Hell and E3: Inferno but NOT the levels within each episode clearly demonstrates this, and how being initially promoted via demos and released as shareware further influenced and reinforced it.

The belief it was done this way intentionally to begin with, purely for an added challenge or bragging rights, is nonsense. It was done this way because it was more convenient to do so. It only stuck for Doom II because there were multiple level designers working on maps independently simultaneously, and in the instances where a pistol start is impossible, such as with the previously mentioned Icon of Sin example, the player is just immediately given everything needed to complete it.

This all becomes even more blatantly obvious if you attempt to beat par times for any number of levels in either Doom or Doom II, or just complete levels in Final Doom's Plutonia from pistol starts. While technically possible for especially seasoned or veteran players, I'd hardly call it properly balanced since they often rely on exploiting wall glitches or other engine quirks to do so.

Personally speaking, as someone that spent countless hours designing levels for Doom myself (back in the day), I can confidently state that it's actually much easier to balance levels around pistol starts than not, and I always naturally found myself doing so because it's far more convenient for the sake of play testing. As such, I can readily see what Sandy Peterson meant.

Regardless, Wizordum has far more in common with Raven Software's Heretic or Hexen than the original Doom, and in the case of those games (Hexen, in particular), pistol starts were no longer a thing, primarily due to the level / world design and inventory system.

That's a lot of words to tell people to believe your version instead of what one of the people who made Doom claims.

I hope you understand how it's all very silly.

[Vesperas]

Originally posted by Snake:

There is a lot of misinformation about pistol starts in this thread.

Pistol starts were a design choice and a conscious decision in Doom, and levels were made, balanced and playtested to be winnable from a fresh / pistol-start, starting with just the starter pistol and bullets.

I am not saying Wizordum should be balanced against pistol starts (even though it would be a nice option to have), but the original concept was absolutely not something related to shareware or technical limitations of the engine (???), quite the contrary.

Doom II: Hell On Earth - Map 30: Icon of Sin would like to have a word with you.

Any level featuring the Icon of Sin, whether it be in Doom II or either episode of Final Doom, literally requires a rocket launcher to defeat. It cannot be completed with a pistol.

Per Sandy Peterson, maps in Doom were designed the way they were to start with because the maps weren't created with previous level progress in mind. They were each designed and play tested individually, then stitched together into a cohesive episode via the world progress screen. The fact that you're forced to pistol start E2: The Shores of Hell and E3: Inferno but NOT the levels within each episode clearly demonstrates this, and how being initially promoted via demos and released as shareware further influenced and reinforced it.

The belief it was done this way intentionally to begin with, purely for an added challenge or bragging rights, is nonsense. It was done this way because it was more convenient to do so. It only stuck for Doom II because there were multiple level designers working on maps independently simultaneously, and in the instances where a pistol start is impossible, such as with the previously mentioned Icon of Sin example, the player is just immediately given everything needed to complete it.

This all becomes even more blatantly obvious if you attempt to beat par times for any number of levels in either Doom or Doom II, or just complete levels in Final Doom's Plutonia from pistol starts. While technically possible for especially seasoned or veteran players, I'd hardly call it properly balanced since they often rely on exploiting wall glitches or other engine quirks to do so.

Personally speaking, as someone that spent countless hours designing levels for Doom myself (back in the day), I can confidently state that it's actually much easier to balance levels around pistol starts than not, and I always naturally found myself doing so because it's far more convenient for the sake of play testing. As such, I can readily see what Sandy Peterson meant.

Regardless, Wizordum has far more in common with Raven Software's Heretic or Hexen than the original Doom, and in the case of those games (Hexen, in particular), pistol starts were no longer a thing, primarily due to the level / world design and inventory system.

The bottom-line is, it makes no sense in Wizordum. As I've already stated, many levels would be prohibitively hard, if not impossible, so the designers would need to entirely rebalance levels or take the cop-out approach and just give the player a bunch of weapons starting out.

It also doesn't jive well with the upgrade or spell systems.

I don't think it would add much, if anything, to the game beyond making it less enjoyable to play.

[Vesperas]

Originally posted by Snake:

That's a lot of words to tell people to believe your version instead of what one of the people who made Doom claims.

I hope you understand how it's all very silly.

I find it silly that anyone would argue otherwise.

Sandy Peterson worked on and designed levels for both Doom and Doom II, and those were his words.

I'm inclined to think he knows more about why the game was designed the way it was than some random guy on the internet that says otherwise.

The point is, pistol starts, Tyson runs, etc., are ultimately the inventions of players. Both require the player to enforce self-restrictions via command lines or level warps.

There is no "pistol start" mode in the original game that allows you to progress through episodes normally but forces you to start the next level over with a pistol. The only way to achieve this without cheating is to intentionally kill yourself and restart the level without loading a prior save, which behaves like a level warp due to engine limitations related to it being a MS-DOS based program. The game wasn't capable of retrieving save data unless you explicitly outlined the correct pathway to the save file.

Obviously, when your distribution for a game relies on physical media such as floppy disks and your game is sold as episodic shareware, you can't reasonably expect players to have prior save files for carrying specific weapons over from E1 to E2, or E3 to E4, so the logical solution is to simply start every episode over from scratch.

This is was a huge part of what drove the popularity of IDDQD (god mode), IDFA (firearms and ammo) and IDKFA (key cards, firearms and ammo). As someone who played the original Doom games as a kid, I knew a lot of people firsthand that hated "starting over," so if they died, the first thing they'd do was use the IDFA cheat.

Everything I've said is factually accurate. To proclaim otherwise is honestly just straight-up ignorance.

[Snake]

This makes no sense, I'm sorry

[Vesperas]

Originally posted by Snake:

This makes no sense, I'm sorry :lunar2019laughingpig:

No worries. It's clearly beyond your ability to understand.