Talk:The Ultimate Doom

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Blazing doors[edit]

What are "blazing doors?" -- TheDarkArchon 12:33, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Linedef types 118, 117, 133, 135, 137, 113, 112, 111, 134, 136, 116, 115, 114, 110, 109, 108, 107, 106, and 105. Bloodshedder 16:40, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
These were listed as "blaze" in the Unofficial Doom Specs. They're the fast doors which weren't added until doom.exe 1.666, so they weren't available when Doom first came out. CODOR 17:05, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Design edit of March 2014[edit]

1. Ultimate Doom was produced as a retail version of Doom while Id software was involved in other projects. Romero and Carmack have both declared that not much thought was given to consistency of the new levels because of this,[2 <Romero>] [3 <Carmack>].

Maybe I, once again, am too touchy about factual accuracy, but I am bothered by the addition that Romero would have claimed Ultimate Doom's inconsistency with the original Doom would have been caused by ongoing projects. Romero himself said in the thread message [1] that the inconsistency was caused by the variety of level designers. It is possible that the amount of mappers was a consequence of ongoing projects, making the claim acceptable, but I still think that it is just an interpretation and it shouldn't be announced as the truth. The point is that Romero doesn't directly claim in the thread what is stated in the article, and still his post was used as the source of the content. Thus, I restored the version where Romero's thread message was used fully appropriately to solely point out that id was involved in other projects when Ultimate Doom was made:

1. Ultimate Doom was produced as a retail version of Doom while id Software was involved in other projects. [2 <Romero>] John Carmack has declared that not much thought was given to the new content because of Ultimate Doom's secondary status as a project. [3 <Carmack>] [2]


2.The plot of the new episode is indicated to occur between the events of the original game and Doom2. Though the exact location of the new levels is unknown, the ending of episode 3 implies that the protagonist is on Earth after entering the hidden doorway from Hell and the ending of the new episode declares that the Spider Mastermind had already sent forth it's legions and that the player is aware of them rampaging through Earth's cities.

I modified the wording of this a bit, but would be ready to accept the content.


3. The fact that the new episode predominantly uses Hell textures and themes could be explained by Doom2's plot declaring that Earth and Hell are merging (via the link of the mentioned doorway).

Makes sense to me, but do all allow such speculation?


4. Some have speculated that final message and screen with the rabbit Daisy arguably reinforces the acknowledgment that the designers' main concern at that point was the gameplay and not the background story or any general aesthetic considerations.

I don't consider this a good change. If it is expressed this way, there should be links that show that some speculate about this, and such links weren't offered. However, replacing "levels" with "gameplay" was an OK idea. The phrase now looks like this:

4. The final message and the screen with the rabbit Daisy arguably reinforce the acknowledgment that the designers' main concern at that point was the gameplay and not the background story or any general aesthetic considerations.


Found this one especially tough to review, so I welcome objections. --Jartapran 13:00, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

I found that most of what you didn't already fix is a bunch of pet theories and critical commentary. I have removed most of it, and reworked other parts. In particular the part Carmack was being quoted as saying was not even something he actually said. It wasn't even paraphrased from what he says in that Doomworld interview. I replaced it with something much closer in line with what he actually said. The rest just seems like idle musing and trivialities which are unencyclopedic criticism of the story. It suffices to point out once that it is not fully consistent with the Doom -> Doom 2 progression, not to keep hounding on about it for 5 paragraphs like whoever added all of this in the first place saw fit. Also, Spider Mastermind is the specific title of the boss of episode 3 so, I capitalized it. I have never agreed with it being lower cased on this site. --Quasar 06:26, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
The modification I made to Carmack's reference was insufficient indeed, and your version is the only acceptable one of all three. I did suspect the sensibleness of speculative content, but decided to leave it in, as such content had been approved before the IP editor made the change. Thirdly, I understand the capitalization of Spider Mastermind because of its special status in Doom. --Jartapran 10:09, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
Oh, btw I should probably note that a few of the sentiments that I removed here where they seemed a bit obnoxious are also expressed, but far more fluidly, on Thy Flesh Consumed. I think having them there makes more sense and apparently I already took a crack at them earlier judging by the edit history ;) --Quasar 14:20, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

"Spider Mastermind" isn't the title of the boss of Episode 3. It doesn't even appear anywhere in original registered Doom. The E3 boss is referred to as "the loathsome spiderdemon that masterminded the invasion of the moon bases" in the E3 end text; the phrase "spider mastermind" was introduced in Doom II's roll call, and then reused in the episode 4 end text. If that was a title specific to the E3 boss it wouldn't have been used in Doom II. --Gez 14:58, 10 March 2014 (UTC)

Lunacy[edit]

Has anyone considered that The Ultimate DOOM takes place on the Moon and Doomguy is fighting his way to the teleporter on the Moon to go to Earth? Or he can see what is happening on Earth but is not actually on Earth? This would better explain the bridge.

Phobos, Deimos, Hell, the Moon, and finally Earth. It would all make sense. Corporal Flynn Taggart added this comment at 3:30 PM Eastern Standard Time.

No, it doesn't really make sense, looking at the sky and environments. It'd make also even less sense if you assume the episode comes between Episode 3 (which ends with the Marine going back to Earth and finding a dead bunny) and Doom II (which starts on Earth), as hinted by the "next stop: Hell on Earth" bit in the victory text. --Gez (talk) 20:02, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Merge proposal[edit]

Opposed. Extremely significant as the only commercial release of registered Doom, with substantial added material and minor mods to the original game data. Must be covered as an independent topic. --Quasar (talk) 13:09, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Oppose.  In fact, other splits of Doom could be justified; it's getting a bit unwieldy.    Ryan W (talk) 17:12, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
Oppose. First, Doom is already too big. Since this is a wiki devoted to it, it is normal for that article to get a bit out of hand, so we must work against it. Second, this is an article of a release of that game covering things specific to the release itself which is long enough as to deserve its own right to exist. -Kyano (talk) 17:18, 4 July 2014 (UTC)
Oppose. For same reasons. --Gez (talk) 22:20, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Regarding the engine[edit]

The Ultimate Doom’s executable is not fully retrocompatible with (Registered / Shareware) Doom 1.9, because it does expect a graphic lump for the fourth episode when showing the “Which episode?” menu. If this lump (M_EPI4) is missing, it will crash. Doom II is not affected by this issue, obviously. DoomeroHispalense (talk) 12:26, 1 June 2018 (CDT)