Waldon

          The first PC game I've ever played was Doom 2. I was at my father's workplace, and there were some guys playing this game. I played lots of games on my old Commodore 64 before, but when I saw Doom, I forgot everything about computer games. The three dimensional view was amazing, and I was just watching the others playing for hours. After they went away, I started to play. I think you can imagine how I was playing without any experience with the PCs keyboard. I died lots of times, but I started over and over. Once, I couldn't exit from map01, but I spent the whole afternoon playing Doom. I could go back a few days later, but until that somebody deleted Doom 2 from the HD. I didn't play again for a long time, but I could never forget the feeling.

        When some of my friends bought their PCs later, we played a few games at their place. When once I saw Doom on a screen, I felt exactly like on that afternoon before. We were playing all maps, everybody finished one, and then the other player did the next map. We knew about the multiplayer support, but none of us would imagine that people would just bring their PCs to a place to play deathmatch. In school there was a LAN, and a teacher let the students play 3 hours on every Tuesday afternoon on the network. The computers were pretty old, so we could only play Doom 2 there. But this never stopped us, so we used to be there on every Tuesday for a year.

        We were waiting for Quake to come out, and when I saw the shareware I decided to play that game in the future. At that time were founded the first multiplayer gaming clubs in Hungary. We played our first deathmatch game in the first club, and after lots of games the owner showed me how to play with a mouse and keyboard config. I didn't have any time to practice, the next match started, and I was there with a totally weird configuration. I got used to it in a few minutes and started to write my own. I taught this new config to my local players who accepted it. One day we formed a clan, and started to go to competitions. I have to say that we sucked bit time, but at least I realised how weak we were playing that time. When Quake 2 came out we switched to it and started to play really like a team. We were playing almost only teamplay, CTF, and a very funny mod called Catch the Chicken. Quake 2 wasn't as addictive like Q1, so we were playing less and less, until we totally stopped playing in multiplayer. At the end of November 1998. I bought my PC, and started to play Q2 against bots. But since there weren't any clan games, I didn't have much motivation to play it anymore. I found Doom 2 on an old CD, and finished on Ultraviolance on my own for the first time.

        When Quake 3 came out I didn't have Internet access, so I could only play against bots again. I think the problem was here. I fragged about 30000 bots, when I had the chance to play a 1 on 1 game for the first time in Q3. The result was a disaster, the botmatches totally screw up my play. I was beaten as badly like never before. I tried to change my tactics when arrived home, but I had to realise that the bot games themselves killed my former skills. I strongly recommend that you, even if you don't have anybody to play deathmatch with, don't even then play against bots. They are good for target practice, but they make you an easy target in deathmatch because you don't need to play smart against a bot, and you get used to this quick and stupid playing style. At the early summer of 2000 I got my Internet access, and met some of the local Q3 players on IRC. We played a few LAN games, but I could never get back those skills that the botmatches killed from me. For this, and and other personal reasons I decided not to play Quake 3 anymore (and the personal reason was the prior).

        That was the time when I met a #nightmare regular on IRC, who inited me to the channel. He showed me some of his demos, and asked me to do some. For a long time I installed Doom to my HDD again. When I heard that some people could finish map01 in five seconds, I didn't believe it. But after I watched the demo, I knew that this is what I want to do. I started to record demos, and after a few minutes I felt that old "Doom feeling" again. The engine and the gameplay was perfect for me, and I started to learn the basic tricks like straferunning, wallrunning, some basic jumps, and so.

        I was working in an office in that summer, and there were four computers we were working on. One day I brought in Doom 2 on disks, and installed it to the computers. After we finished work (ok, maybe sometimes a bit sooner), we stayed in the office playing deathmatch. I could practise the basics very well there. Soon Sedlo and fx visited our city for some Doom 2 action, and I was invited there to play with them. Well, for the first time in my life I could see how the big guys are playing. And in those games I was the cannon fodder. I didn't win a single 1 on 1 game, but I loved to play deathmatch with them. It was also very interesting to talk to those guys, who I knew only from IRC. After this we started to play LAN games on weekends with my local, Adam Hegyi. I've got some deathmatch wads, and started to explore the deeps of the Doom 2 deathmatch tactics. I learnt all of my basic skills on Facility.wad, which is a great chance for the new players to start learning.

        Today (it is the 3rd of November 2000. actually) I am recording single player demos for the Public DANG site, and I just had my first Compet-N points. In the weekends we play deathmatch and cooperative, and I like deathmatch more and more every time. Dwango5 map01, Judas23, and the classic Doom 2 map01 are our usual maps to play. I'm learning new tricks and tactics every time, and I'm lucky that I can have this good teachers. We are planning some LANs for the next year, and I hope that I can meet some people again. I doubt if I will return to play Quake again, because I have realized that Doom is the real deal :)