Slashdot Mirror
The History of Doom On All Systems
Consolevision writes: "This news from dcvision.com -- One of our great members (Steveffs) has written a great guide to the history of Doom, right from the beginning to the very newest ports of it, it is an exceptional read for those who have followed gaming for a long time. The History of Doom will take a short while to load as it is a rather large document but you will enjoy :)" This link is unfortunately to a .doc file, but Mr. Vision continues: "I have now split the History of Doom into 5 pages and converted to html for those who are having trouble with the rather large but very impressive doc file."
Here are the pieces: Page1,
Page2,
Page3,
Page4 and
Page5
Why a history of doom ?
Some kiddies would say now: "Hey first graphical interactive 3D game" which is plain wrong at least Ultima Underworld came before and HAD A PLOT instead of shooting everything at moves (yes, you won't belive this !).
Gaming over a network ?
Done before. Even action games. Nothing new or creative.
What was really innovative of DOOM ?
Combing all these features ?
Yes that's nice, but no innovation.
I suppose DOOM's success is due to unlimited agression and violence, which was hardly found in many games before in this way (ok. Wolfenstein, but the Naziesque atmosphere was disapproved by too many potential players).
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
Anyone want to volunteer to clean this up and repost it? Sounds pretty interesting, if you can wade through the bad grammar and spelling.
"Actually, I enjoyed this in the same vague, horrible way I enjoyed the A-Team" P. Opus
I'm wondering why doom gets so much attention as the one that started it all. Wolfenstein came out before doom and was from ID.
Oh how I loved that game, with its blue bricks and grey floors. It used to run incredibly fast on a crappy old 386 - any one know if there is a version for Linux?
Carpe Daemon
Man, I love this. Doom is a probably the game that deserves a history written of it. It sparked the revolution the gaming and technology industries. And yes I know that it wasn't the first FPS (First Person Shooter), but it brought FPS to the masses of the world. And thus, earned the right to be revered in such a manner.
A great article but I noted a couple historical anomalies:
ID software was created and was composed by John Romero, John Carmack, Tom Hall and Adrian Carmack.
Adrian Carmack didn't actually join until near the end of the first Commander Keen game. Hence the difference in artwork between the first and second trilogy.
January 1993 : The first previews of Doom appeared in the press.
Actually, Jan 1993 was when the game was announced. Screenshots weren't released until Mar, 1993.
August 1993 : An unauthorized beta version of the game appeared, I don't know if it was voluntary
The first leaked alpha appeared Feb 4th, 1993 and was unintended. Another alpha was leaked Apr 2nd, 1993 a beta on May 22nd, 1993, and finally a press beta on Oct 4th, 1993. Only the screenshots of Mar, 1993 were authorized.
It sure is fun to think back on the old days!
I heard a couple of times Doom was developed on NeXT boxen. Another source claimed only the level design utility ran on NeXT. Is any of this true?
And I'm happy to say I have an unopened copy of every single Doom port, compilation, or "mission pack" ever made. Sadly the only one I don't have is the original, phone-order Doom although I have got a later CD replacement from id.
This article was informative but poorly written. It covers the main history of the game, but has some glaring date/event errors, as has been demonstrated in some earlier posts.
A worthwhile read if you don't know the background and roots of Doom/Wolf3d, but I think it is of limited value outside of that.
EC!
I just tried to open the .doc file and Norton AntiVirus told me there was a macro trying to do mail activity. Is this a virus or just a harmless macro? Oh well, I'll look at the HTMLs instread. Another vote for a MS free world I guess.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
here is another:
http://www.pandroid.zetnet.co.uk/reviews/doom.htm
do a search on google for more.
-- Wanna textmode user interface for ruby? http://freshmeat.net/projects/jttui/
Marathon Kicked it's pathetic little ass...
--
Burt "Out of my mind back in 5 minutes"
Doom was developed on NeXT machines. Id even went so far as to write a VGA emulator for NeXT computers, so that you could play it on your cube or slab.
Carmack gave one of his NeXT slabs to a friend of mine some years ago. He mentioned that he had a few he was willing to give away to anyone who would actually use them, and she fit that description. He told me that it was one of the ones he used to write the 3d engine.
I never did see Doom on NeXTSTEP with sound, though. The Omni Group eventually ported Doom II to NeXTSTEP and OpenStep, including the audio.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I would say that Final Doom has the best level design out of the 3 Doom games.
This I agree with, and a few of the add on levels created by other authors that I had d/l'ed over the years.
I think it was TNT that had one level that you had to activate an invisible bridge.
When I got to that particular level, I'd asked my supervisor (who'd gone thru it) he said rather cryptically..."You'll find the answer...and you'll be sooo pissed when you do".
I got so frustrated I put that level down for a year.
I was sooo pissed when I did find the solution.
A shootable "wall" inside a little "rock window" off to the left, would activate an invisible bridge.
That is what made DooM so great...It could piss you off like that and still be just as addictive as when you last left it.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
I've put up a PDF version of the document for those who don't like Word or HTML formats for whatever reason. It's much smaller than the Word doc and weighs in at only 480KB.
First of all, the Doom engine was indeed written on NeXTSTEP. Since GCC was available, NeXT slabs made a dandy platform for cross-compilation for everything from 386 boxes to game consoles.
Secondly, the Project Builder didn't exist yet when Doom was under development. It didn't show up until NeXTSTEP 3.1 or so. Before that, some of what would become PB's functionality was embodied in the Interface Builder.
Thirdly, Carmack wrote a VGA emulator so that he could test the engine without having to copy the compiled app over to a 386 box for every change.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Doom was the first computer game that launched a genuine, world-wide community.
Doom on all Systems? I thought this was an article on thinsg like Windows, DOS 4, the Empire Monkey B Virus (you know you remember it), HTML Email and other bad things.
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
Seeing as Doom had secret levels to wolfenstein if the new RTCW had "tributes" to DooM.
Also, I don't recall seeing any snippets about the "Win-Doom" that allowed higher resolutions and the GLdoom ports (transparency, smoother grfx).
Of course I can see the GL Doom being overlooked as I don't recall it ever being "finalized".
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
Back in '94 I was posted at a research station at the South Pole. The guys at ID sent us a complimentary copy of Doom along with a note: "We hope Doom doesn't turn you guys into a bunch of axe murders and you wind up killing each other but if it does please send us pictures..."
Pre.S. Ok, before you all slam me for being a hypocrite, READ the whole paper....I'm not the best writer, but bear with me.
I just read most of the Doom history article. I have made the following observation: It's well intended, perhaps, but...bad..very bad.
I'm not an English teacher, rather I am a 22 year old college student, majoring in Fine Arts. I have had to write my share of papers, and in the realm of academia, and among my peers, this is a poorly written paper.
This brings me to question Slashdot, and their decision to post this. The paper appears at first to be a hastily written article summarizing the history of id Software, and their Doom game. It then turns into a 3 page plug for the Doom movie (most of which I did not read, after getting tired of the typos and poor grammar). Was any editorial process used in reviewing the nature of the article before deciding it was worth posting? Rather, did an editor go "oooo, Doom...too long, no time to read, must be good, post it". What this comes out looking like, however, is a disguised plug for the Doom movie...
And did anyone actually see any pictures? I didn't on either version.
Anyways, </rant>
-Doug
Q. What's it take to get a story posted on
Hmm. This seems to be missing a lot.
No mention of the rivals that were about at the time and this doesn't mention ANY game before wolf3d!
Catacomb Abyss is a much better game than Wolfenstein 3D...
From the credits:
So thats the precursor to the Wolf3d engine in a better games, with graphics done by Adrian Carmack (not relation to John) who later joined the iD crew. The same engine that was use in earlier iD game Catacomb 3D.
Oh and for what it is worth it plays a bit like Blood. Any way check out the Apogee FAQ: html & TXT
And more specifically the iD software bit http://rinkworks.com/apogee/s/2.7.2.shtml
I may be misremembering, but didn't I read in some early Doom FAQ all those years ago that "some guy" wrote a patch for the .exe to support networked multiplayer? Maybe it was over IPX, I don't know.
... arse.
Implying that id did not implement network play (possibly network play and multiplayer), initially, but adopted what was obviously a great idea.
You
he should at least link to them, but it looks like he didn't webify them
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
before approving it and posting it on the slashdot mainpage.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
I think a third grader could've written better. Seriously.. if you're going to brag about how good your paper on DOOM is, at least write it well. Lazy/stupid bastard.
You're nothing; like me.
A really useful utility.
http://word2x.alcom.co.uk/
When Doom source was released and it suddenly got ported to every machine under the Sun, and people started improving the game engine. How can a "history of Doom" leave this out?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I feel I must do this to honour the lifelong battle of the GrammarNazi, because I personally haven't seen him around here lately.
But, please, can we have more articles from people who can actually speak English?
]sv_troll 0
Other than the highly suspect grammar, the strange non-sequiteurs and exclamations ("He's alive!!!"), the bulleted list of DOOM levels and what looks like verbatim transcripts from the game documentation, was there really enough meat on this for even a mediocre slashdot news story, you think?
Must be a slow day. Having read the HTML versions of the 'article', I must say I wasn't particularly inclined to download the 3.6 megabyte Microsoft Word document, though I assume I'd be rewarded with some BMP screenshots to go with the text.
To the author. If you had to publish this as non-HTML document, you could and should have used Adobe Acrobat instead of Mickysoft Word.
If you wanted to make a list of DOOM ports, try at least to keep the list complete and accurate. I didn't see any mentioning of the unix, linux, Macintosh, BeOS, Amiga or Windows CE ports of the game. In any case, a list of ports is really not that interesting either unless you provide some back story and details for each. You could also provide download links and perhaps try and find and talk to some of the people responsible for those release. You know, try a little harder.
Until you get your piece written properly, anyone remotely interested in the subject should instead go and visit Doomworld (http://doomworld.com/ports/index.shtml) which has good FAQs, interviews, articles and links instead of just copy/paste fluff.
I don't know about the rest of the article, but the whole section regarding the Doom movie was just copied / pasted from Corona's Doom Page. Maybe I missed the credits section?
The great thing about the internet is that it eliminates the middleman. In the case of publishing, that middleman happens to be the editor.
At least you can understand why the role of the editor is necessary!
Then, I finally got the game, and stayed up 48 hours straight finishing the game on Nightmare. Got some sleep, then dragged my system to a friends house, hooked up the null-modem cable, then proceeded to spend the next 36 hours playing deathmatch. Haven't wasted so much time on a single game since (at least till The Sims and Civ III came out).
The history of Doom is an excellent topic to write about, I just wish the writer wrote more of a history, rather than just retyping the descriptions off the boxes and manuals. 3 pages cut and pasted from Coming Attractions?? Jeez! He didn't cover any of the differences between the early betas and the final released version. Nothing of the buildup of the hype (save for a brief mention).
As much as I hate saying this (and this will get the anti-Katz-ites into a frenzy), this is a subject I'd like to see Jon cover. And have him get more into the effects of the game on society. Essentially creating a new genre (yes, I know there were other FPS out before, but Doom really caused the development of so many other games). Public outcry about the violence. Colombine (there, that alone should get Jon writing about it). Maybe even cover FPS games in general, not just focus on Doom. Cover the Doom spin-offs (Heretic, Rise of the Triad), some of the more thinking FPS games (System Shock) and the modern FPS (Quake III, Unreal, etc). C'mon, Jon. Give us something that would actually be interesting to read.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
http://www.escalix.com/freepage/doomhistory/
Graphics and all, in HTML format, it comes to 478K, the HTML alone was 65k
The original word format was 3700+ K
Go figure
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
http://www.shacknews.com/screens.x/alphadoom/Doom% 2520Alpha/2/thumbs
FPS has come along way... but has it ever been as fun as it was?
What, no SGI XDoom listed in the ports?
what gives???
When encryption is outlawed, ou++1!@(93j++js-d9298yIUH(*Y24JKB!~
This aticle forget some importants ports : Atari Jaguar (may the best ever), Macintosh, TI 92 (impresive)
http://www.shacknews.com/screens.x/alphadoom/Doom% 2520Alpha/2/thumbs
o ho, it's the forum software that hoses it. It inserts a space after Doom%. Remove the space and the link works. I tried removing it for this post, but the forum software keeps putting it back.
What was most memorable about the original Doom was it's multiplayer mode. But even more memorable was the really poorly written network code which caused all machines on a public LAN to slow down(or lockup) if a Doom game was started. As I recall it used entirely broadcast packets, and this caused every computer to try to identify if they were meant for it.
At most universities Doom was outlawed from the public computing labs, similarly at most corporations.
It was quite the controversy, and they had to release a patch(or new version?) that included better networking code within a month or two.
Great article, but they forgot this:
The DOOM kodak Digita OS port
Sure its not very practical but my god, porting a first person shooter to a digital camera? Surely that deserves points just for the sheer insanity of it all.
Page 4 = Page 5
Sig: Where I'd put something witty if I could think of it.
"...the GAME was released as shareware. So everybody on the net could download it freely..."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but there really was no "net" to speak of back in 1992. The game was popular from being sold for next to nothing in every computer store around the continent and from being widely available on BBS's everywhere.
You want real information on Doom.
go to www.doomworld.com or Ledmeister's site.
Here
Enjoy.
i played doom when i was just a little lad. the other month i dug it out and started again. it never get's old. and that first faggit that posted saying that doom is over rated can suck my fat cock.
The first shareware version for DOOM was on 12/10/1993. It will be eight years soon. :)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
For the love of God, I wish wish wish that people who write articles for the net will some day master 4th grade grammer and learn how to use a spell checker.
I go0t and played GBA DOOM (which has some modifications from the original) and got on a DOOM kick where in the last week I've replayed DOOM, DOOM II, Ultimate DOOM (original DOOM plus an extra episode), and Final DOOM is on its way. What great games.
max
"To the author. If you had to publish this as non-HTML document, you could and should have used Adobe Acrobat instead of Mickysoft Word."
--No, it should have been RTF so it could be opened with non-proprietary software.
the best game based on the doom engine ever was made: ChexQuest!
"...broke the minds."
Ah, the good old days. Back when id actually attempted to create a backstory, before they dropped all such pretenses with Quake 3. Now (Quake 4) they've gone and hired someone else (Raven) to take care of that nonsense for them, so they can devote their precious time to making the arm in the gib effect so realistic you can make out the individual fingernails and tell what the person had for dinner! Hooray!
What the fuck does "systematic oppression" have to do with learning grammar and spelling???
It's not like you can't pick up a magazine or book and see firsthand what the standards of professional writing are. The only excuses I would accept are that the author has a learning disability, or is a young student who has only been writing for a couple of years.
If anything, you're part of the problem by making excuses and saying things like "your grammar rules." They don't belong to anyone in particular, black or white.
Your post is also an insult to every poor, disadvantaged or oppressed minority writer who worked hard to become successful by producing quality work.
I'm only hoping you're trolling with this bullshit.
In the document, it lists Doom 2 as only adding one additional weapon. It added 2:
#1 - Double-barrelled Shotgun
#2 - Chainsaw
It is a Console dev site, and the whole reason for the article is the new version of DoomDC, hece why Wolfenstein or Ultima was not posted....
but Marathon by far has a more interesting page, background, history, etc. that people are still going over. http://marathon.bungie.org/story/
This friday was the 7th anniversary of it's demo release. A few months after Doom was released. Pathways into darkness, their previous game was out in 93 or so. With marathon bungie brought in tons of stuff to FPS also. Like mlook, rocket jumping, easy netplay (voice over lan also...), and awesome graphics. And to top it off, people are still playing it, porting it, and working on it (with a lot more success compared to what i have see for doom recently).
Check it out, then play halo for a bit at a compusa or something, and drool.
The chainsaw was in Doom from the very beginning, in the Nuclear Plant level of Episode 1.
Um, where did the RTF specification originate?
If you were on Usenet, waiting for Doom to arrive, you got bored. SPISPOPD was the result.
A tribute site Richard Ward created... On the net, nothing ever dies, it's enshrined forever by someone.
Seth (yes, that original idspispopd cheatcode/FAQ guy)
Help achieve Liberty in your lifetime - join the Free State Project - http://www.freestateproject.org
This looks like it has passed through the babel fish sideways.
Whats this? A new translator or the latest mindfuck?
Youre damn right... Marathon sitll kicks ass.. just look at Halo!
I coverted the doc to HTML. Scroll done the page and look for the mirror link.
What is funny is the size drop when converting to HTML. the original doc was 3.7 meg with graphics, and the html is 65k without graphics, just under .5 meg with the graphics.
all in all not bad.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
12 seconds to download! I love bandwidth!!! ;)
Now, I will read it.
I can't read any more...the article breaks my mind!
It looks like one big cut and paste. And not even from many sources.
IIRC, didn't ROTT come out before Doom? Whatever happened to it? It had better graphics, better gameplay, better weapons, true 3D movement, and a better multiplayer system. If I had found it first, I probably wouldn't have played more than the first level of Doom. Doom was great, but I still see ROTT in my dreams. I can't say that about Doom.
I have to say that if I were going to distribute a virus/trojan horse, the *best* way of doing so would be to find (yet another) security flaw in Word and post a link to the .doc to slashdot.
.doc is so large, doesn't it?
Probably just me being paranoid, but it does seem odd that the
Ah, well. There's a nice PDF now...thanks!
Okaaaayyy...you could argue that PDF is propriatary somehow, but not software to open it...I mean, you can get a *GPL* version of ghostscript. I'm not seeing your argument.
Doom and Marathon were both ground-breaking FPS games.
The big difference was in the actual gameplay. ID makes game engines (darn good ones, but still game engines). ID can make totally kickass game engines. Carmack amazes me every time he pulls out a new effect and makes it run at the speed he does. I can't *imagine* what tricks he's pulling.
That being said, ID does not make good games. ID games aren't detailed, have no story whatsoever, and don't try for player immersion in this lifetime.
Doom had one of the worst stories ever. Marathon had the best story of any game I've seen yet. There are still people analyzing it, years later. Despite the fact that years and tens of games have gone by since then, I have yet to see as detailed a game story.
Doom was really, really simple. Walk into room, shoot thirty enemies, get ammo, repeat. Over and over and over.
Marathon was *scary*. Nasty. It wasn't a speed game, and it wasn't a mow-down-the-enemies game. It didn't have little floating heart powerups or unrealistic gimmicks. It's lighting was...intimidating. Half-Life comes close to Marathon's lighting (remember the assimilated scientist sitting at the madly flickering laptop in the darkened room near the very beginning?), which the map makers used brilliantly. I still remember a few scenes:
Arrival!: Walking down a brightly lit, curving hallway. You know something's gone wrong -- one of the ship's AIs nearly killed you on docking. You've shot a bug-eyed alien moments before. Now you step into a darkened observation deck. Huge windows on the side of the room cast three patches of light onto the floor. Then, you just make out dark shapes moving toward you, past the light patches...
Arrival!: You're walking down tiny maintenance corridors, turn a corner and come face to face with a big floating creature, intent on fiddling with the computer terminal in front of it.
Bigger Guns Nearby: You're walking through a darkened room. A light, either damaged or controlled by one of the crazed AIs, is casting a harsh, erratic strobe through the doorway twenty feet ahead of you onto the walls, ceiling, and floor. As you approach the doorway, an alien pops around the corner.
Eat the Sheep (a later Marathon): Insane. Nearly invisible creatures floating around, strange shapes, lights all around, spinning energy discs coming from the air at you.
(I forget the name, but the map in Marathon 1 with all the lurkers): A dingy brown (like a dark Quake) level infested with small floating bugs that act like evil, floating, homing land mines.
Bungie was one of the best game companies ever. I greatly regret the fact that they chose to become part of the Borg (for the money and power they got, I suppose I can't blame them). It'll probably mean that I'll never play another one of their games.
Rest in peace, Marathon. We loved you.
no-so-random-link
why no info on GLDoom DoomGL ZDoomGL or JDoom or any other "modern" ports???
If there is a Word2k/97 "HTML" document you need to read/mirror and you are on windows95-XP, try HTML-Kit and its "clean up windows 2k documents" filter, it is quite handy.
Read my plan to save the Bengals
check this site for recordings of people completing both doom and doom2 in nightmare (and other great competition demos)
http://www.hszk.bme.hu/~ha211/compet-n/
Shut up nigger!
The article doesn't mention WinDoom (Doom running under Win 3.11/WFWg). I remember drooling over the screen shots at the end of my level editing book (can't remember the name). WinDoom eventually became Doom95 (I have a copy). Ported by our favorite evangelist, Alex St. John.
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
would have to be Doom for the GBA, which i almost bought today (decided against the NZ$119 pricetag though)
Doom in the palm of your hand.. only problem is playing it in a darkened room for atmosphere, since the GBAs screen is so f*ckin shocking in low-light conditions.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
hmmm....3.5Mb Word document.... anyway, slightly annoyed that the main part of DOOMs history was completely washed over - that of it being made
OpenSource and being ported to several systems.
I , for one, can recall countless downloads of increasingly improved ports to the AmigaOS. Now, if you go to an AmiNet site you can have many choices eg
ADoom-1.3.lha game/shoot 426K 42 Amiga port of DOOM v1.3
ADoomPPC.lha game/shoot 552K 54 Amiga PPC port of ADoom v1.7
ADoom_Ins.lha game/shoot 2.4M 192 New better MIDI-Instruments for ADoom
ADoom_Instr.lha game/shoot 1.2M 196 Music Instruments for ADoom
amidoom.lha game/shoot 196K 202 Doom port for the Amiga - v0.5
amigadoom-1.10.lha game/shoot 621K 199 Amigadoom-1.10 0.6 (26/01/1998)
deu.lha game/shoot 467K 184 Doom Editor Utilites 5.20 revision 3 (NOT DO
DoomAttack.lha game/shoot 781K 185 V0.8 Beta(!) 4. Fast doom port.
psidoom-0.8.lha game/shoot 214K 196 Yet another DOOM port
VDoomPPC.lha game/shoot 539K 198 Amiga Doom for PowerPC/ELF
zhadoom.lha game/shoot 669K 186 PPC Doom Compile for WarpOS V1.1
What's xpdf, chopped liver? PDF can be implemented by anyone ... just ask Apple.
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."