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Doom Archive Reopened
Obiwan Kenobi writes "Computer game history buffs rejoice: Lee Killough's Doom Archive has been reopened at John Romero's site. Its been offline since 1998, when it was handed to Romero to look after, and has finally resurfaced. The info inside is priceless, if a bit Romero-centric, but who can deny the nostalgia of downloadable alpha versions, beta screenshots (complete with wild health meters) and the original Doom Press Release where the game tagline reads "Doom-the sanest place is behind a trigger.""
I think little handheld thingies from Tiger do this now :)
So when can we get a full daikatana archive? What? nobody else want the alpha's for that?
---- Anyone can act smart, but it takes a smart person to act stupid. ----
It's been close to 9 years since I first played doom and I still find myself strafing around corners from time to time.
Does anyone know if the beta and alpha versions had any features that were cut out of the final version of Doom? I noticed two such features just reading the documentation.
The most interesting thing about this version is the different BFG -- it causes many fireballs to come out in many directions. See screenshots.
Fireballs ricochet off of floors and ceilings.
aus.music.scrapbook
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"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
You know you have been playing DOOM too long when...
...going to sleep you open the bedroom's door and instead of turning lights on you fire a missile into the room.
...you sleep with a chainsaw under your pillow,and justify it with 'you never know what lurks in the dark'.
...going into a room or getting off an elevator, you run in and out quickly to see what follows you out.
...you don't worry so much about getting hurt, since you'll probably pick up one of those blue spheres somewhere.
...watching someone come out of an elevator makes your mouse finger twitch.
...the dog growls and you dive over the couch while reaching for a shotgun.
...you find yourself strafing around corners from time to time.
...you push on a wall as you walk down the hall looking for secret entrances.
...you rush for a neon-blue down vest in K-Mart.
...you reach for your chainsaw when your wife's cold gives her the sniffles.
...you search for a radiation suit before going into a swimming pool.
...you instinctively target trash cans while walking around campus/work.
...you look for sniper spots above you when getting in an elevator.
...you can't stop squinting as you walk around your house.
...you think you can actually walk through walls.
...you start making chainsaw noises if you hear a strange noise.
...you wish you had a chainsaw, just in case.
...you buy a radiation suit and Infra-red goggles, just in case.
Sign the petition to get IDSPISPOPD in Doom 3!
"This is the first game to really exploit the power of LANs and modems to their full potential. In 1993, we fully expect to be the number one cause of decreased productivity in businesses around the world."
Yep, my small little ISP in '93 was brought to its knees because of this program..
The old versions of DOOM won't run under modern OS's... anyone know how to get them running under, say win XP ? Or do I need VMWare or similar?
It might be a demo, full version, or a test version. It would be a good way to celebrate 10 years of DOOM. ;)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Not just a landmark in the gaming community, but in my life. It sculpted me into what I am today.
Suddenly, fast hardware was important. Getting friends around to deathmatch was important. Writing my own levels and sound effects files was important. I was shelling open the machine, squeezing out as much performance as possible. I was learning about graphics, about 3D design.
My reflexes became honed. I surprised people with my ability to notice pencils rolling off the table and catch them before they even had time to register something was happening.
Out of sheer time at a keyboard, both in and out of the game, I started typing at over 100 words per minute. I could mouse around a GUI quicker than people thought reasonable.
I discovered the internet. I payed $9 per hour to access it in Australian dollars, and that didn't include the timed STD calls I had to make to get to the ISP. I consumed every map file I could lay my hands on. I discovered porn, e-mail, gopher, the web, FTP, IRC in that order. I started making friends with people I had never seen in real life. I used Kali because Doom lacked TCP/IP support.
Now I am an I.T. professional, still as passionate as I was the first time I layed hands on the Doom I shareware installation floppies (that a thoughtful person in a Canberra computer games store copied for me). I still get shivers when I hear the Doom I map 1 music (it's my polyphonic mobile phone ring).
Without Doom, my passion for computers would not have developed, and I would probably not be posting to slashdot today.
May Cthulu bless ID and all their works.
Ash OS durbatulk, ash OS gimbatul, ash OS thrakatulk, agh burzum-ishi krimpatul! Uzg-MS-ishi amal fauthut burgulli.
"Its been offline since 1998, when it was handed to Romero to look after [...]"
He's a crappy webmaster too!
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
John Romero is secretely a woman.
That's actually an interesting comment, since Blizzard recently announced they're making their pretty ancient games for Gameboy's.
:-)
I guess the low system requirements make them easier to port without cutting down on features.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
It has done more to ruin the state of game playing than any game in history.
For those of you who were around playing games 10 years ago and longer, have the best chance have understanding why this is. Lets recap:
So what do we have today?
We have fantastic hardware and storage capacity. We have incredibly elegant graphic and AI algorithms that make the gaming experience itself very compelling. The advent of Doom was the first truly compelling real-time 3D engine. And it was precisely at that time that gaming has gone down hill. What Doom did for gaming in a positive way (fast rendering engines) it did as much or more in a negative way (dark, repetitive, single-minded (mindless) activity).
And because of the popularity and thus (financially lucrativness) of Doom we've now had to suffer hundreds of mind-numbing shoot-em-up games since. The overwhelming majority of games on the shelves today, are first-person action games where killing is the primary activity. This isn't so bad, if it weren't for the very depressing worlds, that this mayhem takes place in. Have you ever noticed that all the worlds these games take place in our DARK, DANK, and DYSTOPIAN??
People might counter and say what about Myst, or SIMS, or the Star Wars and Star Trek franchises. Well Myst is an exception, but whatever happened to the old-fashioned adventure games? Even the Star Trek and Star Wars gaming franchises have succumbed to the Doominization of gaming. So now you can be a starfleet office whose primary duty is to kill as many bad evil aliens as possible! Whoopee! Or be some variation of a Jedi whose primary mission is to kill as many bad guys as possible. And sure enough all of these killing sprees take place in dark, dank, and depressing settings.
Ok, so what I am proposing?
Bring back the adventure games!!! We have all of the hardware and software algorithms now to make adventure games light-years beyond what was available with Ultima 7 or Zork, etc. Not only could we have far-out sci-fi, fantasy adventure worlds, but also we could explore these worlds in first person 3-D now. We could even throw in some real-time shoot-em-ups to spice it up. Why can't we have a game that combines the best of the spirit of true adventure games with the best of the shoot-em-ups?
Imagine a game, where there are hundreds of planets to explore. All of these planets are unique and compelling. Some of these worlds would have alien civilizations or spaceports and colonists, others would be hostile to life. On each of these worlds, lies mysteries waiting to be explored - pieces of a large puzzle that need to be solved. Perhaps we could just explore these worlds as part of a larger strategy of building our characters like we would in traditional RPG. And of all of this exploring could take place in full-immersion real-time 3D. And why oh why, can't we have worlds that are both compelling and beautiful and inspiring to look at?
Has anyone else noticed? Perhaps this is why I have not bought a single PC game in at least three years now.
Planet P Blog - Librety with Technology.
www.enthea.org
The thing that made DOOM, and no other game since has managed to recreate (apart from the Alien DOOM mod, which was basically DOOM again) was the atmosphere.
DOOM was a favorite on damp winter afternoons. I would play it wearing headphones so as to not disturb others in the house. It felt _creepy_. You felt a bit of anxiety as you could hear another Imp shuffling around the place, but couldn't tell exactly where he was. You'd jump when you went around a corner and suddenly heard one of those half-man-half-goat things shout "Wwooooooooooooooo!!!" and start hurling fireballs at you.
I've not found an FPS since that does that for me. ID got the atmosphere absolutely right on that, and I hope they can recreate this in DOOM 3 - to a bigger extent with the graphics capabilities they should have.
One afternoon, I was playing DOOM and got the fright of my life. I was playing along, headphones on, volume up, creeping around one of the levels when my housemate sneaked up behind me and threw one of those beanbag frogs that were used to prop open doors. The frog landed on my shoulder JUST as a room erupted with Imps. I almost died of fright!
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows