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

Comments

Doom developed on NeXT?

[reynaert]

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?

Re:Doom developed on NeXT?

[BlueGecko]

It's unlikely that Carmack designed the game itself on NEXTSTEP for a couple of reasons. First, NeXT's development tools really wouldn't have been any better than vi for a video game, since you wouldn't be able to use InterfaceBuilder for the interface (there is none) and ProjectBuilder really offers nothing for a program that is written in pure C and targetted at the command line. Further, he would have had to write the game for Display PostScript instead of the VGA commands he'd eventually want to use, forcing him to eventually rewrite the game engine, and wouldn't be able to optimise anything in assembler, since NEXTSTEP at that time was 68k only and the main target platform was DOS, an x86-based OS with really nothing at all in common with NEXTSTEP. It is, however, highly believable that things like the map makers were designed on NEXTSTEP, since there you would be able to make full use of Interface Builder and the NeXT FoundationKit/AppKit to quickly develop those tools and portability wasn't a concern.

Article forgets Doom for ZX Spectrum

[jtra]

Article forgets several attempts to make Doom for ZX Spectrum, I have one on tape.
here is another:
http://www.pandroid.zetnet.co.uk/reviews/doom.htm

do a search on google for more.

Re:Article forgets Doom for ZX Spectrum

[eggz128]

I didnt see the Atari Jaguars port mentioned either.

This site also has quite an interesting feature comparison beween the various ports:

http://members.aol.com/ledmeister/doomcomp.htm

Yes, it was.

[jcr]

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

You're mistaken on several points.

[jcr]

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

It would be funny if

[A_Non_Moose]

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".

It was nice...

[Flounder]

to reminice about Doom. I constantly monitored the wustl.edu ftp site the days before Doom was released. I even skipped a few classes because of rumors that the game was being uploaded to the site and would be available.

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.