Background song now available on Bandcamp: decino.bandcamp.com/album/pumpkin-beats-to-analyse-to

Romero cameo nice

This is what makes Romero a legend in gaming. He's a gamer's game designer. Outside of some level design, Romero was just an idea guy that understood his customers. But to this day, Romero has stayed humble and a gamer first guy. The fact that he responds to emails and does a ton of free stuff for the community is what makes him a legend.

You know you are doing something right when one of Doom's creators goes through the trouble of sending an actual voice reply. That was awesome!

12:26 This textual inconsistency was, of course, fixed in the Game Boy Advance and iOS ports of Doom, changing the shotgun shell pickup text from "Picked up 4 shotgun shells" to "Picked up the shotgun shells" and "Picked up shotgun shells", respectively (the latter iOS fix being made by Carmack himself, as indicated by his comment in the source code), hence not specifying the exact number of shells in the message. And that's why all true Doomers today regard the GBA and iOS ports as being the definitive way to play Doom.

"Oh really? Ok then. You're all dead." Great response John Romero

Nightmare difficulty always intimidated me as a kid. When cheat codes didn't work, it felt like the difficulty itself was overriding the game rules, like the monsters were just too powerful to be affected by the cheats.

That was a really cool backstory. I had heard rumors that Nightmare was added in as a joke difficulty in future editions of Doom after 1994, but never actually got them confirmed until right now. I think I'm gonna give NERF a run through. It looks fun.

Man, decino. Why are so many of your patrons in such agonizing pain? What did they do to deserve such a fate??

5:50 - Pinkie got lockjaw. How tragic. Also, I thought Nightmare difficulty was already fairly popular. I typically threw it on passively sometimes at one point.

The Diablo 2 sounds when explaining the instant death pinkies are a fitting touch. It was absolutely awesome of Romero to give a detailed reply like that. The man is one of the coolest people to ever be in game development.

Gzdoom currently has an option for monster nightmare reflexes, meaning you can play "two thirds nightmare", fast monsters and reflexes without the respawning bit. Can be interesting for those who want an "in between" challenge between uv-fast and full nightmare.

Nice, a voice message from Romero! That cool cat is a huge credit to the community, I swear. 3:39 I should note that this proper Nightmare fast reaction speed is achievable in GZDoom by activating the "Monsters Nightmare Reflexes" gameplay option. "Fast Monsters" is just regular -fast. JIC this is useful to someone.

After playing on NIghtmare it's amazing how fairly-balanced it is. Definitely not a joke at all. The need to juggle moving forward before enemies respawns while also clearing out faster-firing demons works incredibly well.

Great job as always. The John cameo was the best. Now, let the nightmare runs through!

iD Software really immortalized this game. We might never see any folks like Romero and Carmack in this industry ever again.

1:38 Gotta appreciate Romero for answering a yes or no question with a several-paragraphed, detailed recollection.

I find it really cool when game devs respond to fan questions and messages like John Romero did here. I once sent Frank Klepaki an email right before the Command and Conquer remakes came out, just wanting to tell him that his music was well over 50 percent of the reason I enjoyed Command and Conquer so much, and was shocked beyond belief to get a multi-paragraph response from him

One way I tried mixing up Nightmare Difficulty was by adding a new difficulty setting via MAPINFO that also enables Total Infighting, creating a much more chaotic nightmare scenario where even the demons are fighting each other - and I think they remember who they were fighting when they died, too.

The informative content in decino's videos is well-known and deservedly lauded, but it must also be said that the humour sprinkled here and there is just great. Always a treat.

Your historical research into the topic was immaculate. So proud of you :)

I was laughing way too hard at the pinky eating the shotgun zombie XD

Can I just say how awesome it is Romero cameo'ed in this! I'm glad he appreciates this channel. I've always thought his departure from iD was really the death of the original company. John Carmack was the brains. Adrian Carmack was the looks. John Romero was the heart, American McGee the soul and Sandy Peterson was all the other necessary organs to keep the greater whole alive. That specific mix was lightening in a bottle and since they went their separate ways, I've always felt something was lost.

I love how simple the explanations of stuff that was probably hard to code originally. This channel is just calming to watch.

Yes, a video specifically about Nightmare! 😁 I really hope this causes even more people to try it out, so 2023 can truly become the year of this incredibly fun difficulty. Thanks for the great video (and the plug ) and I can't wait for NERF E3!

That ultra-turbo-za warudo pinkies thing is insane! The wonders of programming. And those barrel corpses... I learn something new with each video. Thanks!

6:28 ZA WARUDO

5:55 LOL I actually felt bad for the pinky

Really appreciate the visuals in this video. Feels like its nearly perfected

Just the fact that decino not only played deathmatch against John Freaking Romero, but also is seen as a priority in his emails is so heartwarming! He seems like a cool-ass dude. Any plans on meeting other members of Id, like Sandy Petersen, John Carmack, or American McGee perhaps? Would love to see a ‘dive into the code’ type of thing.

Decino is so historic, that he just dig up facts from beyond the grave. How many "citation needed" will be filled on later? I did not expect that Romero mail moment.

8:25 I love how the Pain Elemental after respawning is like just saying 🎶"Tadaah!"🎶while starring at you with it red eye.

I love this so much, best analysis video so far. Lets get some more nightmare LPs going!

Really cool hearing that backstory from Romero, didn't realize it wasn't apart of the base game at launch. also awesome again hearing that arrival map09 music at the end, songs so good.

Never was fan of nightmare because of the respawning enemies. So I played 90% of the time in UV :D Quality video as always, keep up the good work!

30 years later and I’m still learning and enjoying Doom. Who knew. Will always find it amazing that the team thought this was an impossible challenge and yet the game is so well balanced for it and today players are doing it.

Extremely interesting as always pumpkin man! The fact NM difficulty doubles ammo pickups already means in a way it wasn't just haphazardly thrown together but meant to be still playable. Same for the various respawn checks and the reaction time upon respawn.

I'm glad you continue to mention the minute difference between Nightmare! Fast Monsters and -fast Fast Monsters. When I was working on a mod for the original DOS _Doom,_ I noticed the difference immediately and it always bothers me (immensely) whenever someone says: "Yeah, -fast is just like Nightmare!, but without double ammo or respawns."

6:33 So what you are saying is... Pinkies can ZA WARUDO!?

The legacy that this game has built over the last 30 years is nothing short of amazing. It not only revolutionized the FPS genre as we know it today, but also Deathmatch and the modding scene. Thanks Id software, very cool.

Great video and amazing editing as always! Those cartoon running Pinkies got a good laugh out of me. Your Nightmare playthrough of Doom 1 inspired me to give it a try myself and it really does put a fresh spin on the game. I used to dislike the idea of respawning enemies, but holy heck does this get the adrenaline going. In some ways it makes levels with backtracking more interesting, because you may enter the same fights mutliple times from different positions. Coming up with smart routes and strategies is also super fun. Despite the many failed and painful attempts, I think I'm slowly falling in love with this game mode. I'm currently stuck on E1M7, but I'm determined to finish at least the first episode!

Romero always knew how to make this game more challeging. Nice cameo!

Lots of games and mods of games have a nightmare difficulty but only doom seems have gotten it right. Romero's intuition of what such a difficulty mode needs was perfect

5:50 Bro i'm crying, how goofy the piggy looks and the punch you gave it

Love your videos mr pumpkin man, congrats on beating sigil and doom1/2 on the nightmare world tour settings. Looking forward to the next set of projects!

Awesome cameo from Romero! On Nightmare, I can get pass the tough enemies and they going turbo, except they respawning. That's what makes me hate the difficulty. And I loved the Pinky that freezes time.

13:05 Never forget stimpack road. Truly the greatest of feels. Amen. Also very cool of thee John Romero to drop in again. What a guy showing up to console people in the Nightmare PSTD meetings.

Really great analysis, I love the Romero cameo too. Also absolutely lost it at the instant-death machine Pinkies.

Great vid as always, but a special shout-out to the NERF map pack!! I watched your whole run in one sitting basically, and the way you guys and gals were able to use vanilla mechanics to completely change the game is spectacular, and I particularly like the ghost pinkie surprise in e1m4!

Finally an explanation why monsters spawn outside the map in Doom II map 30! I would play ultra violence with cheats and respawning monsters running around blasting. I always wondered how/why monsters were running around in the out of bounds area. When you're 8 and play for an hour or whatever they just keep piling up and it turns into an amazing slaughterfest! Thanks for finally answering that for me, amazing

10:21 Schrödinger's Caco Demon

@6:32 This is a great explanation regarding time freeze or personally I would say it was a "Instant Transmission Kamehameha"

6:19 pinky says Za Warudo!!!!! MUDA

Epic analysis video! I love the part with the pinkies freezing time, I thought that was so cool.

I did not know that about the Pinky Demons... imagine a map based around those mechanics where you need to sneak past a bunch of Pinkys where if any of them wake up, you die instantly...

Thanks for this one, decino. I had several questions about nightmare mode mechanics that I couldn't be bothered to type out in the comments sections of your recent runs lol. This has actually answered them all quite well incidentally. Great stuff! 👍🎃👍

Really enjoyed this video. Production quality was great, loved the background music, Romero's cameo and all of your detailed analysis!

Decino is leveling up his visual presentation. The animations in this video were a treat.

fast bois, respawning bois, lots of ammo and demons in the void

I think it's cool how you dig into the behind the scenes of how the code works. I only know a little bit about programming but your explanations help make sense regarding how the nightmare changes work.

0:35 Decino: but first let’s go back in time. ( teleport effect) that was a good one. 3:22 I lost it when that demon charged at the shotgun guy.

Once again, a fantastic analysis video with some fun jokes and great music. With all the source port differences (curse you LNC) I hypothesize that NM can function a bit differently on each of them.

How you never fail to come up with new Doom content is beyond me. Great video

Was just looking through your videos for this exact video. Thanks

What a video to close the Ultimate Doom nightmare chapter ! I enjoyed all of this a lot, thank you for doing all these videos Mr Pumpkin !

6:17 pinky: "ZA WARUDO!!"

Awesome video! Loved the cold probabilistic analysis regarding respawning monsters. I think adding more randomness in a difficult game is what makes me shiver most. If everything was deterministic it would be boring and predictable. Awesome John Romero cameo too, you are a true doom guru xd. Looking forward to see that doom II nightmare run!

Thanks for all the information and inspiration Mr Decino, recently I have lost my pc but I had another one just in case and I got a backup of my doom maps, playing them again felt good because I have used some of the technical information I learned here and other fun tricks like using the change texture to turn water into blood and illusions like floating platforms.

Every time I'm starting to get bored of doom, you release a video explaining more fascinating info on the games and send me right back into another playthrough. Thanks for making my life hell on earth, decino!

Nothing hits me in the nostalerogenous zones harder than lifting the hood on Doom. Many thanks man, much love for all your coverage and for going deep into the marrow of such an exciting time for gaming 👍👍

Lol love the subtle humor. The sprite edits had me smiling. Also I remember having a doom mod where the player sprite could be changed to the actual doom guy without his mask, can't find it anymore. Love these types of videos, thanks

I am so happy to see you accomplishing your nightmare run for dooms coming of middle aged. I still remember as a kid when the first doom came out I had to use a boot disk and play it in low detail.

it's funny how a few simple changes to how the game works can drastically affect difficulty and player strategies. nightmare truly is the difficulty ever.

Hi Decino, you missed a chance to add a Doomguy ouch face along with your gasp at 1:34

...oh, so *THAT'S* why I would always get insta-killed by Pinkies way back when I played Doom95. The pre-game Windows launch configuration panel of Doom95 had checkbox options for enabling 'Fast Monsters', 'No Monsters', and 'Respawn Monsters'. When FM was enabled I could never complete the game because the Pinkies would progressively get faster whenever I came back and loaded a savegame, to the point where they'd just lightning-flash to my location and kill me instantly, through a blur of a red screen. I eventually wised up and made sure the FM option was always de-selected. You solved a 2+ decade old mystery for me. Thanks, decino.

Great content as always, love these types of videos learning more about doom. Also funny how you can turn turbo pinkies into literally Dio.

I made a fun mod once that involved nightmare mode called "Nightmare Conquered" Basically you started with a special gun that, if you killed an enemy with it, would disable their ability to respawn. It required a special ammo that dropped from any monster that was killed, but took a lot of ammo to fire, and had a very slow reload time. It gave/gives a very methodical "conquering" aspect to the game, as you had the choice to very slowly, eventually clear out an area completely of enemies, to give yourself some breathing room, allowing you to slowly work your way out if you wished, or to use the gun to specifically take out stronger/more annoying enemies to make certain areas more tolerable. It was strong, it could one-shot a pinky, but took around 3 shots to kill a cacodemon, so if you remembered enemy's health and the damage guns deal by heart, you could just wittle them down and finish them off with the special gun to take them out.

How many forms of "Agonizing 'x' Pain" can Decino be in at once??? Stay tuned for future Patreon shoutouts!

Thanks decino :) this is exactly the kind of video i needed to see really cool that Romero sent an email reply!

Just what I wanted to kick off the weekend. A new decino video!

2:53 - The WASD keys don't have the letters anymore...

That's why I started playing on UV+. I honestly can't deal with the enemies respawning, but UV+ is still a great challenge for me.

Great video, just what I was looking for while watching your Doom NM playthroughs :)

3:01 I can never unsee the stray brown pixels.

Fun fact, in the SNES version of Doom there were no respawns on NM difficulty. I'm guessing due to hardware limitations.

Seeing all these mechanics broken down into bare code honestly puts into scale how much of a mad genius John carmack is

I have to say: The part from 12:50 to 14:20 is very inspiring and comforting(especially with that bgm by the way!)! I've played and adored the Doom franchise ever since I first played it in '94, but I never went for wads that went too much out of the original two games. I accept UV for being the ceiling of fair gameplay for us "mortals" but, despite the video section said above, no thanks!😅 Few tries in the distant past, but nope, can't stomach Nightmare, with respawning monsters being the primary reason. Only a few years ago I discovered the deliciousness of the pistol start(a whole brand new gameplay experience!) and UVed all main wads with it(Sigil included), but Nightmare will always be that bogeyman within me that I'll never be able to defeat. Thank you for yet another "yellow-background" video which I pleasantly watched!🙂

I really appreciate how forthcoming John Romero is with his knowledge and stories with all that behind the scenes stuff. So cool.

6:26 IS THIS THE JOJO REFERENCE?!

It's weird to see a hard difficulty that doesn't just turn the enemies into damage sponges who hit harder. Instead it's a quite creative difficulty with changes that I wouldn't have ever thought about.

Wonderful video Decino. also, excellent nightmare run. i want to see what the future has in store for the pumpkin man

As usual, pure pleasure to watch, man! : ) (started the 'ring' following (even if was subscribing for some time already : ) because of playing through Nightmare! DooM, looking forward to DooM II : )

John Romero actually giving insight here is really awesome. Glad he clarified why they included the Nightmare mode to begin with.

15:57 you REALLY blew past that name

it's been rough the last couple of days and this made my evening, thanks! I'DDT

Excellent video pumpkin man, great cameo from Romero!

Hey Decino. I wonder if it would be possible to code a fast-monsters exception for the Arch Vile? I've heard you say in your videos that the Arch Vile is a joke with fast monsters enabled. Perhaps in your pursuit of a challenging experience, you could set it so that Archies behave as they do in UV?

Thanks to you decino, I started to play doom2 in nightmare difficulty with no saves! 😅 But right now, The Focus is kicking my ass!

3:20 made me LOL, decino your pinky running sound effects are on point in this one.

Very informative as always! I think a nightmare monster updated tier is a must after sigil