Hell is filled with sewer levels and made for space marines. Let's play DoomRL!

Moons cause all kinds of problems. Sometimes they're turned into massive spaceships which get attacked by aliens and then eventually cause the collapse of the universe, or not (it depends on whether or not weaponized cyborgs obey the computer that opens doors). Occasionally they'll house a gigantic domino with no dots that causes people to fly to Jupiter and then become giant space babies. Maybe they're filled with Sam Rockwell. Sometimes, there's a trap. But most of the time, they're a haven for sewer levels and demons. That's right, it's time for Let's Play


And welcome! Upon completing unreasonably popular let's play Let's Play Angband, a handful of loyal readers decided that I should play DoomRL next, despite having never played it before or, in fact, knowing anything about it beyond that it existed (and was based on Doom). I've even been good and not read a single spoiler for the game, meaning that I know exactly what's available in the instruction manual and nowhere else. So as we go along on this magical journey, I'll be trying to find out more about the history of the game and its mechanics (it's closed-source still, so nothing too deep) to bring you, dear reader, up to date on the latest and greatest in the world of DoomRL.

First, a very brief primer. Were you alive in the early 1990s and had access to a computer? I'm sure that you probably played Doom. Just in case you didn't have access to Doom, you can watch this to learn about it. DoomRL is Doom, in roguelike form. This means that it's a very strange game on a number of levels: It's a turn-based version of an action game, and it's a roguelike which is focused on long-range combat instead of melee.



Because at this point I know quite literally almost nothing of the game's mechanics, we're going to get a brief tour of the first level. With that, it's time for...


Private Goofus has always had a lot of bad luck, which started the day that he was born with only four fingers on each hand and a face so ugly that not even a mother could love it. In fact she didn't love it, so Goofus was sent to the orphanage, where he had recurring dreams about being an even more hideous monster that was at the beck and call of some malevolent god whose only purpose was to toy him. In these dreams he was repeatedly stabbed, poisoned, bit, lost in a maze of twisty passages all alike, and once even died simply from drinking what looked like rotten milk, or possibly old mayonnaise. Not that this wouldn't kill you anyway.

It made sense in the dream. Sort of.

Growing up, Goofus had so little sense of self-worth that he decided he needed to one day prove to the world that he was better for something than constantly editing the wikipedia pages of Chrono Trigger characters. He would totally do the Charles Atlas thing and go from being a 90-pound wuss to being a giant muscly wuss, and what better way to do that than join... the UAC! He never quite understood what the acronym stood for, but it was sufficiently military-y enough and they had some pretty great literature about how rad he would be, so upon turning 18, Goofus enlisted. His first assignment: Outer space. Which meant cleaning the space-toilets on the transport that all the real marines took to Mars. After all, it turned out that Goofus was barely able to finish basic training and was deemed unfit to serve, but he was just so gosh darn determined to make it the UAC decided to keep him around to scrub toilets. Their bases, after all, had a lot of sewers.

Little did Goofus realize this was going to be his big chance!



That sounds awfully exciting! thought Goofus. If I can go down there and save my squadmates, they're sure to upgrade me to just sweeping the floors! And so with dreams of a parade and maybe even a broom in his head, Goofus grabbed one of the "big boys" guns, some ammunition, and a couple of medical kits, and headed down to the surface of Phobos.



The surface of Phobos looks rather boring, and devoid of any sort of interesting life. Where could all of those crazy gunshots and things have come from?

First, let's cover what's going on here. (1) is Goofus, our heroic @-symbol. (2) is the message buffer, which will tell us when Goofus dies. (3) is the health and experience meter; you might notice that these aren't in your standard current/max denominators, but rather percentages, keeping in line with the proper DOOM (Doom? DooM? Who knows) experience. (4) is the type of tactics you're currently using; we'll discuss these later when I have a better idea of what, exactly, they do. (5) is where your armor and weapon are; weapons are always given by their name, damage, and clip capacity. Goofus' standard-issue pistol (which was taken away from him on the ship because everyone was afraid he'd shoot himself, or worse, somebody else, and then it would be like that scene in Starship Troopers) holds six shots, which is going to be enough to deal with some of the earlier bad guys, but sooner or later he's going to need better weapons. Probably sooner. (6) tells us our current location - and you guys might be seeing a lot of the Phobos entry level, because it's apparently not an autogenerated one, but rather the same layout and same enemies each game. No idea if the other floors are this way or not.



Goofus scouts around the entire perimeter of the base, but can't find anything. But what are all those weird moans coming from inside the base itself?

One of the neat things about DoomRL is its use of sound. Because the game is based on ranged combat, you often need to know where enemies are even when they're out of your line of sight, so that you can prepare adequately - the game does this with sound cues to let you know where enemies are relative to your current position. There are also charming MIDIs of the original Doom music to help set the mood.



Entering the base, Goofus spots his friend Jim. Jim has always been kind of a dullard, sort of like Goofus, except that he's less accident-prone and therefore allowed to carry a gun. So it's almost no surprise when Goofus gets shot by him. Remembering his training to always point the narrow end of the gun away from himself, Goofus returns fire.



The fight goes on long enough that Goofus also has to remember how to reload his pistol. This takes almost all of his mental abilities, but somehow he manages to do it without causing the gun to go off in his face. Truly evidence of divine providence!



Goofus manages to kill Jim, leaving him as a red puddle in the middle of the floor, but that doesn't mean that he's finished yet. Three more former crewmates have decided that it might be a good idea to kill their least favorite janitor ever, and so Goofus does what he was told to do in basic training if ever confronted with actual combat: RUN.



He also heals up by using one of the small medpacks that he had the foresight to bring. Down to one left, Goofus is going to have to use these very sparingly. He also can't regenerate health by just sitting around; DoomRL is pretty unforgiving about health (it is, after all, an action game).



Getting the hang of things, Goofus figures out that he can unload the pistols of the soldiers he's had to shoot. That will give him enough ammunition to survive and find out what happened on the surface, so that he can eventually get back to the ship and be given a broom. And a parade. But mostly the broom.



Within moments, Goofus comes across his old Sergeant. Instead of saluting like he's normally supposed to, Goofus instead decides that it would be a good idea to shoot first and ask questions later.



It's only with the sergeant's dying breath that he realizes that he just killed probably the only other normal human on the moon. Oops! At least there's nothing else alive (or semi-alive) on the surface of the moon now, which means that Goofus can take the opportunity to do what he does best: Goof off.



His first official act as goof: To loot the sarge's corpse and take away his shotgun and all the ammo. That's probably a good idea, because the shotgun is an extremely powerful weapon, doing between 8 and 24 damage a go, where Goofus' pistol tops out at 8. The downside being that it's a classy old shotgun and requires reloading after each round. The UAC does not approve of using the most modern military hardware.

Wait a minute. Antique weaponry? Grey uniforms?

Goofus realizes he's actually joined a group of Civil War reenactors.



However, that's no excuse to not go down the stairs and try to find the rest of his buddies. Even if they always did make fun of him.

Goofus is greeted by an ominous feeling upon descending the stairs.



Perhaps it's because of the presence of the crate's circular cousin, the barrel. Goofus has always harbored an irrational fear of cylindrical containers, although he is fine around crates. Just as long as they're not on pallets. Then they could move.



Heading into another room of the complex, Goofus discovers a computer! With any luck it'll be UNIX - he knows that.



Fortunately, it is UNIX. Goofus, knowing UNIX, decides that it would be good to maybe not find out exactly what sort of horrifying experimentation was going on in this moonbase that is inexplicably used by civil war reenactors, but rather pull up a map of the area. This gives him a much better idea of what's on the floor, although not a good enough idea since it's anyone's guess what some of those weird symbols mean. What the fuck does an & represent, anyway? Goofus decides to find out!



Well, at the very least he knows that it doesn't represent some ugly hellspawn monster thing, because those are (i) characters. Instead it throws a fireball at him, and Goofus retaliates by shooting the damn thing in the face - twice! That's more than enough to drop it, and fortunately these things seem to be much easier to kill than soldiers.



However, the fact that they're easier to kill doesn't mean that you can kill them if you can't see them. One shoots a barrel, and for once in his life, Goofus' fear of them is justified. Because it explodes. And melts his face off.

Here's Goofus' vital stats:



He does, however, score for the first time in his life.

NEXT TIME! The many stats of DoomRL. I'm also going to take suggestions for character names, because they will largely determine what kind of storytelling you get.

Poor Goofus, it looks like UNIX has failed him.

Anyways, I think it's time that John Romero receives some payback for Daikatana. Send the man to Phobos and let this show hit the road.

Ah, DoomRL is probably the Roguelike I've played the most besides Dungeon Crawl. It's a lot of fun, and some other roguelikes would probably benefit from its simplified set of command keys like "u"se or "e"quip. I haven't actually beaten it, but I could probably provide some advice if you wanted it.

Man, this seems pretty awesome!

Are there different classes of manly space soldier to choose from, or no?

Either way, I ask that Yukabacera stop playing with logbooks and scour Phobos for hot drinks.

Rowsdower.

Zap Rowsdower.

Snake Plisskin.

Anything from this page: http://mst3k.wikia.com/wiki/Space_Mutiny

DOOMGUY.

IKA.

Cut that shit...close.

No, but at the start of the game and every time you level up, you can pick a special trait that'll give you some bonus such as increased health, increased armor, increased ranged damage, or improved reload speed. Most have multiple levels, and more advanced traits are unlocked depending on what ones you put points into.

Dr. Doom.

Welcome back to Let's Play DoomRL! Today's (very short) update is brought to you by the lovely weather out. It's so nice that I'm going to go outside instead of staying indoors and writing up another update (actually, it might be a while before the next real update; I'm trying to figure out if I want to be posting videos or not).

Okay, so a question about the variety of available space marines was already fielded, so let's clue you guys in! DoomRL doesn't really have 'levels' or 'classes' or anything; just a bunch of stats that you choose to upgrade. You get one free one at the beginning of the game, and then one additional one at each level up. And the descriptions for them are hilarious because in a lot of ways they read like a seventh grader's idea of what "tough guy" talk is (which honestly fits in very well with the aesthetic of Doom, so there you have it). This means that you're going to get screenshots instead of blobs of text because (a) I am lazy and (b) I couldn't find a list online that includes the truly amazing flavor text.






So, some stats have prereqs, and the most advanced stats also require that you haven't taken particular traits. This leads to balanced characters who aren't just uberbadasses, meaning that you generally have to focus your character down a specific path unless you really really want to just grab a bunch of low-level traits for the whole game.

Because of the staggering array of traits, as well as the fact that I probably won't be getting very many of them, they'll be picked more or less based initially on the kind of character you suggest and from then on as kind of an as-needed thing.

NEXT TIME! International Space Asshole John Romero sucks it down.

Heh, I've had fun with this and even beat it a few times. Some of the challenge runs for the game require a bit too much luck though, and I'm not even going to try to beat Angel of Berserk anymore till Berserk is fixed.
anyways. You've played Doom before right? The tactics from Doom apply here. Corners are your friend, and always zig-zag around enemies.
And stay away from barrels if you're not sure the room is completely empty.

It's also how the Doom manuals and strategy guides were written, addressing the reader as "maggot," describing the Berserk Pack as "better than sex," etc.

Most of those lines are quotes. Many are from the amazing Doom Comic.

I always go Finesse>Juggler for the initial skills. Makes some things easier in my mind.

I had completely forgotten about this. Thank you so much for bringing it up, because the Doom comic is one of my all-time favorite things. It's right up there with Johnny Turbo.

Now that you mention it, I recognize the Triggerhappy quote.

How the hell did I ever miss this? I can't stop giggling like a schoolgirl. Also, if I stop and ruminate too long on the idea that this shitfest required 2 authors, my brain might go all melty. MIGHT MAKES LIGHT!

Let me also nominate Flynn Taggart for another name to use, as this was what the Doom Guy was christened in the 4 novel series.

Man, when I was a kid I read those novels so many times they practically fell apart. I did book reports on them in sixth grade.

Now I kinda wish Mrs. Murray had recommended me some good stuff from the library, but I imagine she was happy that she had at least one student who was positive about reading.

Hudson, sir. He's Hicks.

Mine DID! I guess they were just too awesome for the binding glue.

Ahh, DoomRL. I'm actually playing it right now, attempting to finally conquer Angel of Marksmanship. I'm excited to see if the strategies you develop are similar to mine.

You're starting out on Hurt Me Plenty? It took me some twenty-odd games to get anywhere even on I'm Too Young To Die. Hopefully you're a quicker learner than I am.

I suggest that you give the cyborg from Marathon (or Durandal) a run at Phobos; I'm sure that they would love a chance to relive their '90s FPS battle.

Heh yeah. We have to give Gheritt White a chance. Too bad you can't double wield shotguns in DoomRL.

So I was doing pretty well on the TINY BABY MAN difficulty.

Then I got to the level where a barrel of napalm was spawned one tile to my right, and two arch-viles and six revenants were to my left.

I don't think I've ever seen a roguelike try to kill me that badly.

I apologize in advance for what the Gheritt White writeup will look like. Marathon nerds, you will have your day.

Next update is coming this weekend, and I'll try and keep a regular Saturday/Sunday schedule. Somebody will need to pick up the slack when Zombies Ate My Neighbors! ends.

(By the way, you should be reading the Zombies At My Neighbors! LP if you're not. It might be one of the best ones yet!)

Stiv, I am hurt by the lack of support towards your fellow Saturday/Sunday Roguelike LPer.

You update Saturday/Sunday? I haven't noticed a regular schedule yet, but I fully endorse all roguelike LPs. Especially since you're doing an Angband variant.

So I was gonna update that last post with this, but was slightly preempted! Guys, here's the current character queue:

John Romero
Yukabacera
Zap Rowsdower
Snake Plisskin
BIFF ROCKHARD or whatever, I didn't actually read the list and am going by memory
DOOMGUY
IKA
Dr. Doom
Hicks (or is it Hudson?)
Flynn Taggar
Leroy Jenkins (NOTE: I reserve the right to change this character to Big Leroy's Momma unless google tells me who the fuck this person is)
Gheritt White (I SUBSCRIBE TO THE THEORY THAT THE GHERITT WHITE TERMINAL REALLY HAS TO DO WITH BLABERLGBALRGHRBLGBARLGHRGH NERD RAGE) (anyway the point is that I am only doing one character based on Marathon because no way could anyone who is not a serious Marathon nerd read more than one of them)

I will play this LP at least long enough to get through all of these! Hooray!

Well ok. Saturday/Sundayish.

I just want to say that I fully endorse Marathon nerd shenanigans. In fact, I would support more than one of them. I suggest a run as a remotely-controlled extension of Durandal. He's fun and games!