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
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?
Actually, no, it's because Doom is actually, I odn't know, fun. It had the right mix of the right things. I still play it to this day (whereas most FPSen bore me) -because the gameplay is good.- It hasn't been matched nor has anything similar been done since. (When you show me a recent FPS that handles lots and lots of enemies at a time while letting me move very quickly, let me know. I have yet to find one.)
In essence, screw the technical merits. :P
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.
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/
Not only that, but who can read that many paragraphs with all centered text?!
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'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 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
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"
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.
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.
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"
No, network play was available over IPX from the first version of Doom, head-to-head modem play was added in a subsequent patch. The "Some guy" you refer to wrote a generic tool to tunnel IPX over TCP/IP and hence Doom over the internet was finally born.
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.
Here
Enjoy.
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).
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
Sounds pretty interesting, if you can wade through the bad grammar and spelling.
My thoughts exactly--I'm almost thinking that it was originally in another language, than run through Babelfish. I mean, come on, "Doom was here, and it broke the minds."
Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?
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"
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.
Word files sometimes just get really huge for some reason. They're really bad especially at storing images.
:)
I've had Word files in excess of 100MB, and the storage is so inefficient that when zipped/rared the filesize drops to less than 5% of the original size.
But yes - I trust the Word document, because I know that big != bad
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
What's xpdf, chopped liver? PDF can be implemented by anyone ... just ask Apple.
Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."