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Comment by anandsuresh | Hacker News Reader

+100 for technical chops, -100 for usability. +10 for the trip down memory lane, and the self-realization that I now suck at playing video games.

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This is the secret level (E1M9) that you'd normally encounter after E1M3. By this point in the regular progression you'd have found a shotgun, chaingun, rocket launcher, and probably some armor. Starting this level with just a pistol (and it looks like maybe U-V or Nightmare difficulty) is just begging for a buttwhipping.

Yes, this is set to Nightmare, don't feel that bad.

This is the funniest and the most elaborate way of closing form submissions that I think I've ever seen. Well done!

I managed to pass the catcha on my on my second attempt \o/

This is why I like Doom and Doom II, you can just level skip to a level on Ultra Violence and just start blasting, It's good for a quick game compared to War Craft 2.

E1M5, E1M7 are also good levels to skip to on Ultra Violence and start blasting, Using respawn on Ultra Violence also makes it interesting for E1M5 and E1M7.

>and the self-realization that I now suck at playing video games.

Nah... No mouselook really makes this much harder. Took me over 10 attempts to pass, and I'm Diamond at Overwatch.

Didn't realize that was a thing. Was using the keyboard the whole time. Took a few tries to figure out how to strafe... and then just kept the spacebar pressed the whole time, and cleared the CAPTCHA. :)

you can strafe?

In Doom, < and > are strafe, and it works here too.

Thanks, this was impossible without strafing, and very easy with it.

Managed to complete the CAPTCHA without strafing but it took me 3 tries.

I was able to do it without this, but this made it much easier. However, it would be much better if the strafing keys were on the left side of the keyboard. You can bunch your hands together and use your left hand for <, >, and space, but it's awkward.

They are, kinda. The default Doom keybinds have ctrl as the fire key, space as the "use" key, and alt as a modifier that turns left/right arrows into strafing. So when you play like that, your left and right hands are separated.

Not sure how secure against bots it actually is either. Surely you can make an AI that can play DOOM at least as well a human now days.

Yeah, amusingly, I use a keyboard that doesn't have arrow keys. I've bound them to a different layer, but that doesn't work well with this setup.

If this implementation supported the now-standard WASD (which was absolutely used by some high-level Doom players back in the day) AND if it allowed me to fire using the left mouse button (again, like the original game), then it would have been relatively easy to prove that I'm a human. :)

Another thing that makes it "easier" is this actually does support strafe, using Option + left and right arrow keys. Still not easy, but more doable:)

Option what. I am trying to solve a captcha on a mobile phone. I have 4 buttons on left of screen (equiv to wasd) and on right I can shoot. If I go back the imp (IIRC that was its name) cannot hit me, so I can easily shoot the cannon fodder coming from the right. Gg. But no strafing!

Ah, you must need to be using a keyboard:)

what's option? you mean ctrl?

or alt?

Option is Alt on macOS.

Not sure if wasd was used by high profile Doom players. You see, there weren't many keybinds. You had ctrl and alt for shoot and strafe (fun thing to do was press del casually on a player's keyboard, like Russian roulette, then be like 'WTF crash?'), and you had the arrow keys for movement. Then you had 4 keys for weapons in Wolf3d and some more in Doom. Swapping those required travel, but IIRC swap wasn't instant. So, no crouch, no jump, no look up or down, not even reload IIRC. Games utilizing wasd were usually multiplayer games. One would sit left, with wasd. One would sit right, with arrow keys.

Vanilla Doom had a configuration file where one could redefine key bindings (there was 10 total) to anything player wanted. But, yes, I believe custom configs were uncommon (even mouselook was frowned upon amongst the players I knew[1]) and modern gold standard of WASD+M only became a thing after Descent and Quake 1.

https://doom.fandom.com/wiki/Configuration_file#Keyboard

[1]: For a childish reason - being considered not a "true" way of playing. Although maybe that had some rational roots too, because back in the day mices weren't particularly good - bulky with heavy balls and imprecise with lint-hungry rollers and simple low-resolution sensors.

> even mouselook was frowned upon amongst the players I knew

In Doom and Wolfentein 3D, it was more of a weird mouse look and move thing that wasn't very usable.

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