Nightmare with No Respawning Monsters

[shoober]

I have been playing threw Doom right now on Ultra-Violence with Fast Monsters. I tried to play it on nightmare but couldn't get past the second level lol. So I figured I would go do it on Ultra-Violence with the Fast Monsters from Nightmare mode. What I'm wondering is, if I have my game difficulty set to Ultra-Violence with Fast Monsters, do I essentially have it set up as Nightmare mode without the monster respawning? That's what I'm going for. I tried Nightmare mode with sv_monsterrepsawn set to false, and sv_norespawn set to true but the enemies were still respawning. So, I'm trying to set up my difficulty to be Nightmare mode without the respawning. Does Ultra-Violence with Fast Monsters achieve this?

[ChronoSeth]

Nightmare skill is simply Ultra-Violence with respawning and fast monsters (in the case of vanilla, anyway), so yes, simply enabling fast monsters on UV will emulate NM without respawning.

Nightmare skill also doubles the amount of ammo you get from pickups like ITYTD, but that's hardly necessary if there's no respawning.

[shoober]

Okay cool, thanks for telling me ChronoSeth. I played threw Doom at Ultra-Violence difficulty already, but with the addition of Fast Monsters, it makes it a whole new experience. Its a lot harder. It makes it way more fun.

[SFJake]

Yes, UV+Fast monsters is a much better way to play than Nightmare (nightmare is a gimmick really.)

I always enjoyed the added challenge that doesn't feel cheap like Nightmare does. Pretty sure Doom players have been doing it since the dawn of time, as well. Everything is scary with fast monsters. I mean, who gets hit by Imps without Fast Monsters?

[The Ultimate DooMer]

It speeds up the gameplay a lot and also makes certain enemies a LOT more dangerous...to the point of moving them a long way up the order of difficulty. (especially if you play without compatflags as I do)

[Xaser]

In a recent mod of mine, I added UV+Fast to the standard skill selection menu and named it "Man and a Half!" Think I might keep doing that from here on.

[shoober]

It speeds up the gameplay a lot and also makes certain enemies a LOT more dangerous...to the point of moving them a long way up the order of difficulty. (especially if you play without compatflags as I do)

When you say without compatflags, do you mean using the "Doom (strict)" setting under compatibility options? This is what I chose so I could have an authentic Doom experience. The only thing that would be different from me playing it on Dosbox is that I enabled mouselook. I just can't stand auto aim. I also must add that playing Doom in software mode instead of OpenGL is a totally new experience. It makes it way more harder and scarier. Spectre Demons are so much harder to see in software mode.

In a recent mod of mine, I added UV+Fast to the standard skill selection menu and named it "Man and a Half!" Think I might keep doing that from here on.

I've made it to the Inferno episode. The hardest level I have come across so far is Halls of the Damned (E2M6) from The Shores of Hell. That level was a pain in the butt. I sure felt like a man and a half after beating that map lol.

[TerminusEst13]

I replaced Nightmare with a different difficulty in Samsara.
Nobody has complained about it.

That really says it all, I think. Nightmare was a gimmick mode, a cheap way to be harder just for the sake of being harder.

[NeuralStunner]

That really says it all, I think. Nightmare was a gimmick mode, a cheap way to be harder just for the sake of being harder.

It was apparently added as a joke. Naturally, it's still relatively easy to certain (insane) players.

[Blue Shadow]

Meh, Nightmare is just for "bragging rights".

[The Ultimate DooMer]

When you say without compatflags, do you mean using the "Doom (strict)" setting under compatibility options? This is what I chose so I could have an authentic Doom experience.

I play with all the compatflags turned off. The one I was mainly referring to is "limit pain elementals to 20 lost souls", which does make them even more dangerous if it's turned off.

The only thing that would be different from me playing it on Dosbox is that I enabled mouselook. I just can't stand auto aim.

If you played the original exe in Dosbox you'd also have 320x200 only, map size/detail limits and a nasty savegame bug with -fast that means you'd lose your save if you shut down the game.

[shoober]

Gameplay wise, its no different then Dosbox since I use the Doom (strict) and enabled a couple other settings after looking threw the Compatibility options wiki. Visually, I enhanced it, by upscaling the resolution to 2048x1536. But I think you can upscale resolutions in Dosbox too, as well as apply texture filters like hq2x and super eagle.

When you say map size limits, does this effect vanilla Doom's maps or just custom wads? And detail limits, does vanilla Doom restrict the maximum image quality? I always put the image quality bar all the way to the right. Does that not produce maximum image quality?

I didn't know about that savegame bug. That's horrible.

[Nightfall]

When you say map size limits, does this effect vanilla Doom's maps or just custom wads? And detail limits, does vanilla Doom restrict the maximum image quality? I always put the image quality bar all the way to the right. Does that not produce maximum image quality?

I don't think the dimension limit is very different since it's mainly a limit with the map format. UDMF might have upped it.

As for the detail limit, vanilla Doom is notorious for bombing out if there are more than 128 visplanes in view.

[shoober]

How often do stock Doom maps go over the 128 visplanes limit?

[TimeOfDeath]

One difference between -fast and Nightmare is that the monsters will take a very quick step before attacking on -fast, but in Nightmare they will attack immediately. But the difference is tiny.