Slashdot Mirror
Masters of Doom
Virtual reality was the craze of the time, and Doom offered a glimpse into what it was all about. But this innovative game did not come from any of the "big" video game developers of the time, and it was not the built by a large team with huge resources. Although it was the product of many people's efforts, it was primarily the creative genius of two people, both named John.
John Carmack and John Romero are names that every self-respecting Slashdot reader knows. Carmack even posts here occasionally (hi John!). Until I read this book, I knew very little about the personal life of Carmack, and I thought I probably knew too much about Romero. Like many, I have been intrigued by their successes (and failures), and was interested in learning more about what makes them tick.
Masters of Doom starts off with a chapter for each John, telling stories from their childhood that made me realize they were just typical American kids, with the same kind of problems that many of us probably had. These are important chapters, and the author repeatedly references these stories throughout the book. Although the book chronologically covers the entire lives of the two Johns, most of the book details their working years, from their time at Softdisk until now.
This is where the book was most interesting to me. The details of the camaraderie that existed among the team made me feel like I was there. The author got a lot of his information from personal interviews with people, and it really shows in his writing style. First-person accounts are woven together so you get to know what each person was thinking while the story plays out. For instance when the id team met with Sierra On-Line in 1992, you get first-person impressions from both sides of the meeting, giving the reader a lot of insight that you would ordinarily never get.
For me, the book's climax was during the initial releases of Doom, when huge checks were pouring in. Things were going really well for the team at this point, and the book describes things like John C. and John R. dropping off a check for five million dollars at the bank's drive-through, while riding in one of their Ferraris. Although things were looking great for the team at this time, the future really held turmoil and disappointment.
The only negative comment I have about this book is not really a criticism of the book itself, or even the author. I believe the story was accurate, and while it didn't have any shocking new information, it left me feeling sad to see such a powerful combination of talent break apart because of personality conflict, and sad at the thought that Carmack seemed to be losing interest in id Software. The book does mention Carmack's current interests in rocketry (which are even more exciting to me than his games), and Romero seems to have settled into a life he is enjoying, but the mood of the book seemed very depressing to me in the end.
Anyone who is a gamer or a self-taught programmer like Carmack and Romero would enjoy this book. The book does not require the reader to know much about games or computer programming, but I suspect it might be uninteresting to people who aren't either gamers or interested in computers. To the average Slashdot reader though, I would definitely recommend this book.
You can purchase Masters of Doom from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Amazon has it for $2.50 cheaper!!(10% more off retail than bn!)
ah yes the good 'ol days, playing "Ultimate Doom" and "Heretic" on a 28.8 dialup. I miss those days :( Now you have to worry about some kidiot with an aimbot and wallhacks getting ready to AWP your ass through wall.
Pls No Negative Modding!
Don't try to rewrite history! Wolf 3D and Doom were great games, but Commander Keen stunk day one.
While this book was a nice read for me, it would have been terrible for most. It was written very poorly. The only thing that kept me going was learning all the little things about the people who created doom that I didn't know before. I struggled through some parts of it, and was almost embaressed by others. Great read for those who are interested in the subject, but for people who have a passing interest.. I suggest looking elesewhere.
Paint.NET, a Free Image Editor, with Source Code Available!
Is it excellent because it's a great book, or because it's being reviewed on Slashdot?
Canadian Cynic, canadian politics is less boring than you
If you bought a Gravis Gamepad in the early-to-mid-90's, you got Commander Keen (adventure 4, I think) for free. I was quite familiar with Doom and Wolf3D, but I wasn't a 'gamer,' so I didn't have developer loyalty and didn't care who "Id" was and had never heard of Commander Keen. When I bought my Gravis with the Spree-looking buttons, it changed that.
How are you going to keep them down on the farm once they've seen Karl Hungus?
John Carmack and John Romero are names that every self-respecting Slashdot reader knows.
Please, I do not respect myself for knowing them. I also respect more people who don't know them that people who do.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
is that first person shooters after Doom were called "doom like" instead of "Wolfenstein3D like."
I suppose "doom" is easier to say, but it doesn't give credit to the real first, the one that opened the floodgates.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
...how odd it must feel having people rip apart your life for dissemination to the public. I suppose you get used to it, but it would probably freak me out. I much prefer to have a separate public life and a private life, thank you. Of course, that gets into the question of why people find other's private lives interesting. Soap operas maybe?
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
When I was in High School my teacher knew some people over at ID and we got to alpha and beta test Doom in computer club. I remember the still monsters and walls you would fall through and the numerous crashes we would have. Even then the game was a total blast.
I'll wait till the movie comes out.
I hear they got John Woo.
Harder.. Better.. Faster.. Stronger
"I believe the story was accurate, and while it didn't have any shocking new information, it left me feeling sad to see such a powerful combination of talent break apart"
It saddens me that Romero ever made Daikatana. Perhaps the greatest disaster ever witnessed by man could have been avoided.
How can the fact that the two Johns split up be a negative part of the book. I mean, would the book be better if it WEREN'T accurate, and lied about it? Of course not. That is just how things worked out, so I think it can hardly be seen as a negative aspect of the book.
Canadian Cynic, canadian politics is less boring than you
I thought this book was supposed to be about the making of doom3, or is that another book?
Masters of Leisure Suit Larry!
..kind of "archeological" gaming you can always read the pretty decent The Ultimate History of Video Games
It was a pretty good read.
Interesting seeing how badly PCs lagged consoles in terms of gaming...the sidescrolling of Commander Keen was considered a technical breakthru, even though it started as a demo level of Mario Bros 3 as a proof-of-concept, and was basically the same thing the NES had been doing since the mid-early 80s...in fact, it was a while until PCs could play games that the C=64 and Apple II could, never mind the Amiga and Atari ST.
DOOM and, possibly to a lesser extent, Wing Commander really put the PC ahead of the consoles (at least for many genres) for a long while. I think the tide has turned now. (though YMMV depending on what genres you like--I'm just very glad not to have to worry about 3D cards and compatability and what not.)
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
I don't recall Commander Keen being cutting edge. Maybe in the PC world where scrolling was an issue. To me it seemed like a fairly second rate platform game compared with what I'd come to expect from other platforms over the preceding yeard. Talking of scrolling... I wish I could find my copy of Xenon II Megablast. I wonder if it will run at the correct speed on my more modern hardware.
The first thing that popped in my head was that it would be great to talk to either (or better both) John's about what it took to become the programmers/designers they are, how they got involved in the wave of revolutionary games, and how it changed their lives.
/. searched showed no results for either Carmack or Romero (in case such an interview has already occurred)... but perhaps it's just being buggy. As somebody who is greatly interested in such things (hell, the games are why I started coding initially) it would be great to hear straight from the "Johns" about their experiences, mistakes, and successes.
Strangely enough,
Gee, I was going to comment on how I hardly ever game any more but used to really like Commander Keen and Wolfenstein, and played both a lot for a while when each came out. Reading this short article, flawed though it may be, reminded me of simpler days. But someone will probably attempt to create me a new orifice. Hmmm, [Post] [Delete] click one to continue...
Deathmaze 5000 by Med Systems Software, which ran on the original TRS-80 with stunning 128x48 black and white graphics. It was a maze game with overlapping corridors and horrible traps to kill you with. Most fun for a pre-teen/teen. They also put out a game called Asylum which ran on the TRS-80 and other 8-bit computers of that era. Pretty amazing that even back in 1980 or so people were pushing hardware in the attempt to display realistic 3D graphics. I absolutely loved these games. And if we're going to talk about 8-bit Trash 80 games, one can't forget Big Five Software - the originator of popular arcade clones written in hand assembly for the TRS-80. These guys were my heros as a kid. No, really! --M
John Carmack and John Romero are names that every self-respecting Slashdot reader knows.
I'm having trouble understanding everything after the 'every' and before the 'knows.'
I feel so dirty posting this.
I actually read this book while at American's house.
It was fantastic reading about the stories of how the people behind this revolution came to be and how everything happened. Reading it made me wish I was smart like that but in a good way. It's also great and freaky reading a few paragraphs and then looking over at one of the guys who was in the book.
But what was so cool was reliving the experiences that the game gave to us when we were back at the office, many years ago running around trying to get the BFG to fire before your buddy ducked around the corner.
I'm sure for all of us, this book is a must have.
Get it cheaper from froogle, the price checker from google. Its cheaper than Amazon!
Nero-burning ROM for Linux!
"Perhaps the greatest disaster ever witnessed by man could have been avoided."
Chernobyl wasn't a man-made disaster that could have been avoided? Even that I wouldn't classify as one of the greatest.
"Kevin reviews below David Kushner's Masters of Doom"
Slashdot editors are construction masters of sentences.
I can only surmise that this review was written from a hospital bed during recovery from major head surgery. OR was written by an 11-year-old who was getting a jump on his first book report of the upcoming school year. What's next, current events?
That current events report would go like this..."The Microsoft MSBlast worm really has an impact on us. Especially those people with computers and who like the Internet."
I'm still playing rouge and hack.
Command Keen? WTF? How is a crappy, side-scrolling Mario rip off cutting edge, amazing, and important? My friends laughed at the kids who used to play Commander Keen. Commander Keen blew. You probably thought Jill of the Jungle was a masterpiece.
i remember that my dad used to have commander keen (there were like 3 of them?) on one of his office computers, and i would always play it when i was little... it was black and white, but if you played it for a LONG time, it would start to look almost like it had color (really good usage of grayscale, i guess) =P.
do you become master of your doomain?
I imagine also that Smith & Wesson are rolling over in their graves, knowing that their noble invention, originally intended for killing red savages, is being used today by niggers for mugging/killing decent, upstanding middle class white yuppies.
I don't think that it is surprising that beloved games like DOOM are the product of the vision of a small group of people.
Games that really do engage us, do so at a very primal level. There is something about the game that has to click, and release your anandamides ... This syncronization of what you feel when you play the game and what the developer wanted you to feel is more pure, like it is in art, when this vicarious "anandamide" is personal ... so personal that it becomes universal ....
Corporations with big departments will create a lot of good games, but I believe the purity of the intensely personal experience can come only when the vision is personal, and concentrated in a few people rather than diffused ...
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
see also: "Masters of Living In Their Parent's Basement and Looking at Porn"
It has been years since Doom arrived on the scene, but Carmack and Romero so thoroughly quenched my gaming thirst that I've hardly played a game since. These men were (and still are) visionaries of the highest order, and proved unquestionably our collective thirst for blood and violence.
"Joan of Arc, up top!" - Ghandi, Clone High
Noone ever made a game called Daikatana. Quake 3 Arena was pulled before release when it was decided that it was just a cheap cash grab! RTCW was released without crippling bugs that made it unplayable on Radeon cards, and Doom 3 runs on mainstream hardware and was released in the first quarter of 2003.
The Johns stay together, get married, and live happily ever after!
The End.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
28.8 dial up? You call that the Good ol' days? You little whippersnappers don't know nothin' about the good ol' days.
When I was your age, all we had was seven computers in the whole world, five of them were in Nigeria, and they were connected by old loops of string. Instead of packets, you had to put a color coded ribbon on it and pull the string for 60 hours until the ribbon got to the other guy. Then he had to manually enter the data into his computer via punchcards and smoke signals, and we liked it that way!
We didn't have no fancy 3D engines, or even 2D, all we had was 1 dimensional games, lines with broken spaces in between and you had to pretend the long ones were space cowboys and the short ones were mutant trolls. It took 84 hours of processing time to draw 1 pixel, and we liked it that way!
You spoiled bratts and your instant messaging eDoom 7.0++ with real time anti-aliased bitmaps don't know nuthin about the good ol' days.
---
WARNING:Slashdot karma not redeemable in the afterlife.
And he has an account here as well.
This is the only screenshot that Google turns up, but it truly was a groundbreaking game, and it predated Wolf3D/Doom by at least 10 years.
Rich.
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
Hey, if I was dropping off a $5million check in my Ferarri, I think I could put up with some loss of privacy.
I've watched some of this Celebrities Uncensored show, and I'll never get over how these fuckers feel violated in some way. They live a life of exceeding priveledge, giving back essentially nothing in return. Any one of them could be easily replaced (and there are plenty of losers waiting to pounce, should the opportunity arise). Don't go seeking to be famous, and then shun it once you get it. Take some responsibility.
Admittedly, John Carmack is quite a different case than Shannen Dougherty. He didn't necessarily seek fame. He's not excessively famous either, but I could see it getting to be a bit of a pain-in-the-ass for him. The same goes for Romero (although I think he enjoys fame more). I've never met either of them, but Romero and I have a friend in common, so I'm basing my opinions on what I've heard from that source.
Anyway, I'm rambling a bit... the point is, it might not be so great to have everyone peering into your life, but they've certainly been compensated for their discomfort. The same goes for Bill Gates, George Clooney, Princess Diana, and whoever else.
Down with Saudi Arabia!!!
My favorite snippet (paraphrasing): "It was 1991, and John Romero wanted to program in a hot new programming language called 'C'." (emphasis mine)
If I may paraphrase an old truism: If you play a game called "Ride a Bike" can you ride a bike? No. The idea that Doom somehow trained Kliebold and Harris to go shoot up their school is ridiculous. About as ridiculous as blaming Marilyn Manson. In reality, the ones to blame are, a) the kids themselves, and b) the people that made them feel so angry and disenfranchised that they believed they had no alternative. Instead of everyone laying blame, perhaps somebody needs to take responsability (mom and dad, the jocks that beat the hell out of them on a regular basis, etc.).
" Gobble gobble!"
Obviously you have never seen the movie "Gigli" .
[Grammar Nazi = ON]
Less is used for amounts of a continuous stuff, fewer is for discrete items or people. For instance, you would use less flower in the next batch of brownies to serve fewer people. If you can count them, use fewer. [/Grammar Nazi]
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
Even more entertaining was the one expansion they made to ROTT where El Oscuro was not dead and you had to go at him again, only this time it was a LOT harder than the first time, which was no cake walk.
Having things like ludicrous gibs and the funny things the characters would say when they got gibs was neat too. Not to mention, the first game that let you pick a character that you wanted to play, and each character had it's unique starting stats like hitpoints, accuracy, etc.
All in all, my favorite FPS games rank like this:
1.) ROTT
2.) Blake Stone
3.) Wolfenstein 3D
4.) Doom/Heretic
ROTT gave the very first totally friendly map maker, not to mention one that would randomly generate maps you could compete with. The CD was loaded with all kinds of goodies..
Fun to look back and reflect on the time spent playing the true classics...
This person's got their amazon associates name in the URL...they're trying to make money off you!
I have the original floppies of these games, then later I got them on CD when a 2x reader has a hot item to have.
Even better and farther back in time, I have most of my old Sierra games on 5 1/4" floppies, like KQ1, Space Quest, etc...
I have an old IBM XT (a real one) and one day I'll get around to playing them again, just for nostalgia sake. Hey, back then those games were FUN! I even have Zork 1 and THHGTTG in text only versions, they are about 50-60k IIRR.. I used to play them on a Compaq luggable (8086) with a 10meg drive. WOW! 10megs in a portable PC! And it had 640k via an AST SixPack..
Yep, spent a lot of time playing those old games, doom was really cool, but I liked Wolfenstein better..
IDKFA
I am the master of doom.
0110100100100000011000010110110100100000011000100
I think that was the crack kicking in.
Let me suggest the IEEE graphics and animation conference proceedings, which were published back in 1985, if I remember correctly (or was it 1983?)
It was in this book that there was published a chapter (an article, really) that dealt with a new mathematical device, the binary spatial partition.
When I read that, I perked up. I was alert enough to realize that this was a major breakthrough, and if realtime animation would ever be possible, that this was how to do it. I even went so far to learn how to do it, but, alas, my 8 Mhz IBM PS-2/80 was just too slow. Note that I read this in 1987, not 1983 or 1985. Nonetheless, if you want a really good read, that book is worth buying, if you can figure out which one it is.
Anyone want to pipe up and say what it is, I'd appreciate it. I was motivated to go out and buy it, but then another programmer borrowed it, and never returned it *sigh*.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Ahhh asylum!
That was a great game, though really more of a text adventure with 3D visuals than a moving interactive environment.
I'd trace it back further to the BASIC written game "Labyrinth" I used to play on my C64, back when I had nothing but a tape drive to load software with. 3D maze, you moved about in realtime. The graphics were all in PETSCII.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
that's my candidate for "send-up of a cranky old grognard of the month" comment.
ed
Perhaps this Kevin shares a bunk bed with David Kushner or held this book above his head while dictating his review.
I remember having a neighborhood kid bring his box over to my place, hooking it up to mine with a laplink cable, and then dialing-up my buddy's PC in the next apartment so we could play 3-player Doom - we thought that was amazing. Internet? Internot.
666-607: 6th floor apartment of the beast
...you know, I miss the days of Softdisk.
And the old 8-bit mags, COMPUTE! and it's computer-specific variaints, Antic for the Atari 8-bits...
the concept of getting sent a monthly issue with plenty of odd little programs to type-in or if you were lucky enough to get it all on disk...that was pretty cool.
I mean, not as cool as the web, which is one of many reasons that these things won't be coming back anytime soon, but still cool.
Anyone remember the "Adventures of Alfredo" series? This tiny little stickfigure would have all sorts of random little adventures in his stick figure world. Back in the old black-and-white Palm Pilot days, I thought it would be cool to try and remake those, though I couldn't get hold of the original programs for comparison (and would likely need to mo'slo the heck out of any computer to see 'em). You could probably remake them as java applets...it probably wouldn't be hard (or that inefficient, really) to do 'em as animated GIFs...it was kind of a precursor to that brief "stick figure death theater" minifad that was kicking around for a bit.
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
Tim Mann puts out a TRS-80 emulator for X that compiles easily on x86 Linux and which runs these Trash 80 binary image files. Included in the list is Deathmaze 5000, Labyrinth, and Asylum. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find any screenshots for comparison with yours. I'm seem to remember that Deathmaze first came out in 1979, and then the other two games came out in the years thereafter. I think Deathmaze actually does predate 3D Monster Maze, but only by a couple years. Excellent screenshot, BTW. Thanks! --M
I can still remember laughing off my butt, when a friend asked my, what does BFG stand for. I said damn, I don't have that problem.
Commander keen delayed a progect I was working on for AT LEAST 2 months. It was a smooth running game, the graphics where amazing!
Come the revolution, the Bourgeois, Capitalistic, "A PARKING STICKER HOLDERS", will be first against the wall!
Masters of Doom - $15.71 - ISBN 0375505245
Fellow Slashdotters, prepare to be dazzled! [walks to the front of the room] Well, as timothy already mentioned, the name of the book that I read was Masters of Doom. It's about these... [describing the book jacket] games developers. Games developes... with patches over their code... and... shiny red ferraris... and long goofy hair on their shoulders... [pause] Did I mention this book was written by a guy named David Kushner? And published by the good people at Random House. So, in conclusion, on the timothy scale of one to ten, ten being the highest, one being the lowest, and five being average, I give this book... a nine. Any questions? [hands go up] Nope? Then I'll just sit down.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Is this book really that good, important, or have enough new useful information to warrant buying it?
It's up there in usefullness with a book about NT's development (Showstopper).
Here's the Med Systems Software page. It's got a tiny blurb about the original TRS-80 version of Labyrinth, but nothing special. The trash 80 game was definitely hand assembly, there's simply no other way to push the graphics out fast enough with it's onboard BASIC interpreter. Fun games. :) Cheers. --M
... for Columbine.
Manson is just a cheap rip-off of Alice Cooper, except Manson sucks at golf, while Cooper is a scratch golfer.
If those kids just took up golf instead of listening to Marilyn Manson, Columbine would never have happened.
Wrong again! Wolf 3D wasn't the first or second first-person-shooter game. The first game in the genre was Battlezone which was released in the arcades in 1980. It had everything that a first person shooter needs. The game is 3D and the player's view is first-person. Your objective is to navigate through the 3D world and shoot things, blow them up, and kill stuff.
Battlezone was huge when it was released, and the USA military was even working with Atari to make a version that could be used to train their recruits.
Here is the KLOV listing for Battlezone. Definitely a classic that younger gamers should familiarize themselves with. However, I still to this day play Quakeworld (Quake 1 with efficient network protocol), and I believe it is the zenith of FPS games. After 1996, FPS games have been completely derivative.
Man, those were the days. I was bored in college, and my friend sent me a great gift via email one day -- the full version of Wolf 3D. Those were the days before copy protection, and when games were small enough to email. My roommates and I spent much time on that, and remember how smooth it ran when I upgraded to my 486.
Sigh...
I know this may be off-topic to the story, but does anyone have quick tips on how to play these DOS-age games on modern day OS's and hardware?
Don't try. Just get another computer. I have a K6-2/300 [that I picked up for next to nothing] sitting at my right that I use for all my old games. Keen, Wing Commander, Raptor, Tyrian, etc. 256 megs RAM, 8.4 gig drive, SB AWE32, all for next to no time or money.
The most expensive part would have been a KVM switch, except that I have a dual-input monitor, so I just needed a KM switch.
if the answer isn't violence, neither is your silence / freedom of expression doesn't make it alright
I remember seeing Doom on my buddy's crappy Packard Bell PC and being really jealous that there was nothing like that for the Mac. Fortunately the good folks at Bungie came out with Marathon and I could take out all my frustrations by killing nasty Pfhor and saving witless BOBs.
Are there any plans to upgrade or re-issue? Can we still get the originals? Will they work on newer widows operating systems and Linux?
"Science is like sex: sometimes something useful comes out, but that is not the reason we are doing it" Richard Feynman
Doom and the original Quake were, to me, phenomenally entertaining games. I was completely addicted to multiplayer Doom over the now defunt DWANGO network. At the time, I was sure that Quake's built-in TCP/IP multiplayer capability helped jump-start internet usage in many homes. I recall with fondness reading Blue's Quake Rag, and Redwood's, and the original incarnation of PlanetQuake.
But I hold id software personally accountable for the current state of "release early, release often" game development. Their unending succession of Point Releases justified other game developers doing the same: releasing a buggy product and fixing it after the fact (oftentimes LONG after) with updates and patches.
Certainly I recognize the need for continuous quality improvement, and I respect companies that provide support for their products. But it seems to me that ever since Quake (or, perhaps more fairly, Quake II) the initial release of most games have been plagued with faults, and we the consumers have been lulled into accepting this as somehow "okay" or "the norm"! After all, a Point Release is just around the corner...
Damn, and I thought all those "Make money trolling on slashdot" spams were a shuck!
his brownies contain special flowers, better known as "buds", which may explain the confused gibberish he wrote. Can I have one of those?
The big question I have is - when did Stevie 'Killcreek' Case and John Romero split?
Stevie is no longer listed on the staff at Monkeystone and she hasn't done any interviews in well over a year. Her website is also down...
Or "Glitter".
Actually I think one of the greatest man-made failures in the history of mankind was the point where you somehow missed the boat on that post :)
The phrase is "for all intents and purposes". Think about it for a minute.
Let's not even get into your interesting and creative sentence structure.
I know this is flamebait, but consider what a breakthrough Doom was.
I remember the first time I saw it running... some guy at work had it running on this machine, and I was like, "woah!", I had never seen anything like it... fully 3D, and smooth. Mario, on the other hand, was 2D at that time... had a high fun-factor but absolutly zero "woah" factor.
Then I realized that even if I could sneak one of those CD-R's from the supplies closet (kept under lock and key, because they were $10 apiece then) and even then it wouldn't run on my machine (I was running an XT at home at the time).
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
idol worship was responsible. Deprivation, slander, induced repression, etc, etc, etc; you know the bit... They constitional rights were compromised and the people they were suppose get help from were laughed in their face. The response was predictable.
Guns don't kill people, people do.
....He said the negative wasnt part of the book, but rather the fact that they did this in RL.. he specifically made it clear it wasn't the books fault.. Ish.
Or "Ishtar" for that matter.
If you want to read some of those old magazines online, go here. They have all the Antic issues online plus a whole lot more of the other computer magazines of the time.
Shh.
Doomsday Engine - Windows only, but my personal favorite.
It's amazing how a little OpenGL in the right places can make an old game look so much better.
What's even more amazing is how well DOOM has aged. I can't think of any other game from its era that I can sit down and play for a while, and end up totally forgetting that I am playing a retro game.
Trivia: DOOM got its name from the movie "The Color of Money" when Tom Cruise is about to open a pool stick case, and someone asks what is in there... his reply? "Doom."
Oh, more trivia... DOOM was originally going to be a game based on the movie Aliens, but that idea was scrapped since the developers wanted total creative control over the project. Likely a very good choice, since we're still talking about DOOM today, and it's still on the charts over at download.com.
Trivia source: mobygames
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
Did violence exist before doom?
Was our society less corrupt before doom?
Does simulating an sinful act constitute a sinful act? If so then does playing the part of a murderer in a play constitute a sin, or does it depend on your intentions?
Will a bible study reading app bring me closer to God? If so, Why? Do I need guidence in interpreting or studdying the bible? If I do, why wouldn't I find a book from a the group thats been studing the bible the longest?
Think about that for a while and get back to me.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Wolf3D? That was just about the most groundbreaking game I've ever seen. I remember walking into a computer store one day, and seeing this game that blew my freaking mind. Felt like a friggin' acid trip.
So are there a bunch of yougin's around here who have never played wolf? I think anyone who calls themselves a geek and never played Wolf is a poser, but that's just me. It's like required reading.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
I'm only 20 and I can remember playing commander keen as a young child, and Wolf3D that seems like just yesterday!
The Good Life
It's not flamebait, he's comparing mario to Commander Keen, which even the authors dont deny was a mario clone.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Everyone who was into computers 10 years ago knows about Doom. Less people are familiar with Wolf3D, and even fewer people ever played any of the Commander Keen games.
;)
Check. Check. And check again.
Let's push this a bit further back, shall we?
- Prince of Persia
- Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards
- Alley Cat
By now we fell off the PC's time of existence, and if I wanted to go on I would have to mention Apple II games like Karateka, Conan, or Swashbuckler. But I won't.
Sorry folks not every slashdotter is a Doom Gamer..
From the depths of the ship Marathon....
Marathon and Myth Gamer..when Bungie games did not suck because they were not Microsoft///
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Well, I can understand getting older hardware for those games and the thing is, the friend with Win98 is running it all on a Pentium II 233 with 160MB of RAM and the games crash more often than when I play them on my Athlon XP box. He's also tried just running the machine in DOS-mode with little success.
Also, thank you to all who replied to above. I downloaded the Doomsday Engine and ZDoom and will try them out soon.
Back in 1993/1994 Doom was forbidden in the student's computer lab of my university, because it troubled the Netware III network bigtime. Had something to do with broadcasting for connections in multiplayer mode.
The admins actively hunted down some of the players. Of course, this didn't hinder most of the players, some of them were the admins themselves.
Doom and Descent(?) recall some remembrances of my old university days. I'm not a FPS player myself. I played Wold3d once and got sick after half an hour, so I played never again a FPS. It caused a certain kind of nausea to me, I simply couldn't follow the movements with my eyes after a longer time.
But I was an avid player of internet chess for some time. This was great!
I used to do DOOM I and II technical support. id outsourced it to a Colorado company called StarPak. For the first few days, I was doing the support practically alone, along with hundreds of other products with different companies. I'm proud to have recieved the first phone calls.
id provided an excellent knowledge base, and we were able to solve 90% of the problems people called in with. I felt really good enabling thousands of people to play this game - back then, everybody wanted to play it due to it's explosion of popularity and controversy, and people knew little about computers, just like today, with the difference that they were dealing with DOS and Win31, which was even harder for them.
I'll never forget the many times I heard kids scream "hooray!" in the background after I spent an hour on the phone with a very tired mother or father trying to make it work.
I believe that I received the first phone call ever of someone reporting motion sickness as a result of playing a video game due to the realism of 3D movement, since DOOM was the first game that had "bobbing". id thankfully had the insight to provide a switch to turn that off.
Another interesting call I recieved was from a guy who claimed to have produced (or maybe directed?) My Cousin Vinny, and said he wanted to make a movie out of DOOM. I put him in touch with id, and I'm glad nothing ever came from it. It would have made a crappy movie - the plot was a razor thin excuse to provide a setting for thousands of monsters to attack you relentlessly.
I also simultaneously operated on the 900 Hint Line. People would call up and ask the location of a particular key on a particular map. If you recall, the location of secrets was different between single player and multiplayer. We were encouraged to play the game while we worked (research! bwhaha!) and we always played multiplayer of course.
People thought it was amazing that me and my colleagues could rattle off the location of a secret on a map in single player mode while simultaneously playing multiplayer on a totally different map, all without checking the book.
Ahh, good times.
# Erik
The real problem is that these young men were not properly instructed in firearms operation. If they had been shown the proper technique for speed clip-ejection and the value of pre-loading spare magazines (it pays to plan ahead!), they woulnd't have wasted so much time reloading and could have easily doubled their kill count.
Jesus Fuck people, every time I think about Columbine I feel a wave of shame and regret at how much greater it could have been.
Battlezone was originally an arcade game by Atari. Like many Atari games of that era it used vector graphics and not a bit mapped display. There were many Battlezone clones for various 8-bit computers (such as the Apple II, Atari 400/800, and later the C-64). Given that it was originally released as a standup arcade unit, I don't think it applies to the personal computer gaming market (though this is a minor nit pick and certainly Battlezone was an amazing game that sucked far too many of my quarters in when I was a kid). As I pointed out in a previous post Deathmaze 5000 predated Battlezone by a short time, and was released for the TRS-80. so it was both 3D and ran on a personal computer beforehand. Battlezone looked bunches more cool at the time, though. --M
History seems to have forgotten the _real_ prototypes of modern, first-person shooters: the "Freescape" series of games that Incentive software developed in the eighties. These games featured a fully featured 3D environment and point-and-click shooter action.
While DooM is remembered for uniting groundbreaking technology, unlimited playability and innovative marketing, it _has_ not invented the genre.
To me, failing to credit this company and these games, which undoubtly inspired Looking Glass Studios (and therefore inspired John Carmack), lowers the journalistic value of this book. Games like Total Eclipse or Dark Side should have been mentioned, because these games, even if they ran on now obsolete hardware like the Amiga and the C64, provided the inspirational vision that made all Quake, Unreal and Thief possible.
Hack your mind out of its sandbox.
I'm a little over halfway through the book and I've stumbled upon an interesting passage. In it, Kushner is discussing DirectX's beginnings as a tool to bring developers and games to Windows (and keep them there).
The Microsoft agenda was to make an impressive display of the new API's strengths, and the solution was to port DOS-bound Doom to Windows. John Carmack said he'd allow it (but not do the porting).
This seems to place Carmack, long an outspoken proponent of OpenGL as the superior API (for a number of reasons), as one of the reasons for DirectX's acceptence.
Is this the real deal, I wonder, or is there a palpable spin being had here?
Of course, Carmack is right to favor the open, robust and carefully oversighted OpenGL over the proprietary and hasty DirectX, but did his actions play a part in the success of DirectX?
njord
I found Wolf3D, Doom, Quake, Unreal, and Half-life all to be very boring. I found Descent to be a lot more fun.
social sciences can never use experience to verify their statemen
Zork (all 3) and does anyone remember HardHatMack ?
wanted: one clever sig,apply within
I think this book should be made governor of California.
As far as Commander Keen and Wolf3d go, your best bet is the open source dos emulator DOSBox. There are ports for Windows, BeOS, and Linux and I'm sure the source will compile on other *n?x systems.
The problem is that DOSBox doesn't support protected mode as needed by DOOM. But that is not a problem because there are plenty of open source DOOM engines. A quick search of sourceforge turns up DOOM Legacy. It has netplay and should work on all varieties of OSes.
I loved the book. Carmack's work ethic has inspired me to work harder and code better.
One thing that was strange was when I went to Barnes and Noble to pick up the book I walked all over the place looking for it. I checked the game section, the computer section, the biography section. Could not find it. Then on my way to the bathroom I found it, in the Crossword puzzle section. How stupid of me for not checking there before.
An excellent program that I've had great success with for playing DOS games in Windows with sound is VDMSound. It hasn't been able to run everything (System Shock and Crusader: No Remorse are two that haven't worked for me), but for the most part, games play pretty much the way they were meant to.
IDSPISPOPD
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Mine Uncle is in that thar book. He becomes CEO yadda yadda yadda. He told me that Romero is a putz, and seein's how Romero worked for my Uncle, you can clearly see who's wearing tha pants.
Yay for democracy. Arnold Schwortzenhoger.
I got nothin'.
Commander Keen let PC users play a Nintendo-quality side scroller.
Wolfenstiend ran blazingly fast on a 286, 256 color graphics, great sound, and it was violent.
Doom upped the ante with much better graphics, monsters, network play. Plus you had the WAD files!
Quake included Internet play, true 3D levels, 3D accellerator support, and they licensed the engine and Valve made Half-Life. Add-on city!
Good book - you can read a whole chapter of it here.. along with an interview with the author and a few other bits.
Wasn't there a Wolfenstein on Apple back in the 80's? I spent many hours playing Wolfenstein and have played all of id's stuff since. My wife saw me playing Quake III and said, isn't that the game you were playing back in '92? I guess other than the pretty graphics, it's basically the same game to the uninitiated, but I'll continue to play FPS as a stress reliever :-)
Emulating the CPU alone is easy. But even an older system, when employing a lot of coprocessing, can be quite a task to emulate by a strictly serial processor.
Hardware, software, and blinking lights!
CK was one of the best sidescrolling games for the PC (at least the later ones... the early ones sucked)...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places
You know, to this day I still have no idea what the sounds in that game were supposed to be. I didn't get a sound card until a year or two later.
As far as feeling your age...I'll second that. ;)
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
they wouldn't know about shareware if it slapped them in the face! i remember this little 2d tomb game on my 286, don't remember the name tho. good times. commander keen was just amazing for its day. i couldn't get enough of it
Carmack has no heart! He's a user and abuser of people. He cares for no one but himself.
Hot 3-D EGA Action!
-William Shatner can be neither created nor destroyed.
I have to agree with your judgement of the writing quality. However, according to his blog, he's actually 30 years old.
Obviously you have never seen the movie "Gigli" .
I've been hearing about how badly that movie sucked, I'm gonna have to go see it just so I can experience the suck first um... hand... J-Lo is in that, right??
Ascalante: Your bride is over 3,000 years old.
Kull: She told me she was 19!
Battle Zone was a great game. Multiplayer was fun in deathmatch and strategy modes. Sniping pilots and commandeering their vehicles was cool as hell.
Ouch. I just wrote what I thought of the book in a way I thought would help people decide if they wanted to read it or not. It actually takes guts to submit something like this to /., knowing how many people will be more than willing to criticize you.
Now, if you will kindly provide your true identity, I'd be glad to refund your full purchase price you paid for this review.
If you have any constructive criticism however, I'd love to hear it.
oh man..
the 4 games you listed right there, they were all i played for years and years.
Type one of the following codes:
APPLEIIGS : Tells you where all the secret doors are; on the map, a secret door is labelled with a picture of your head
BURGER : Full weapons, full ammo based on how much you can carry
GROAN : Select a stage.
IDDQD : Turn off ledoux.
ILM : give you a life, all the keys, 100% health and 99 ammunition
JESUS : Tells you where all the secret doors are; on the map, a secret door is labelled with a picture of your head
LEDOUX : No damage to you, and no loss of ammo
MCCALL : Advance one level
PEACOCK : Regain full life
SEGER : Gives you all the keys
WOWZERS : Increase bullet capacity to 999 for bullets, and 99 for others
XUSCNIELPPA : No damage to you, and refills weapons to maximum capacity
Type a code again to turn it off.
Kevin,
/. for almost 6 years. At first I thought we had a lively, young group of posters who were full of energy, and that's why they were so mean-spirited. Well, here we are 6 years later, and the 15 year olds are still acting like they're 15. Because it's fun, apparently. Meanwhile, I try to make relevent commentary on the source of an editorial article yesterday, and lost 4 karma points in the process. One of the downsides to being a moderate in a leftist thread, I guess.
I respect your courage in submitting the review. If other people could have written it better, why didn't they?
While I recognize that I would have written the review differently so as to attempt less criticism from the trolls, I think you did a fine job, and added you to my "freinds" list... mostly because of how you're sticking up for yourself now.
I've got a low UserID because I was an "early adopter," and have been reading
I'm starting to wonder if I shouldn't just give up and go with my friends who did the "Quit Slashdot!" thing. Christ, I have more intellectual postwars on Fark.com anymore, and they are the total bastard trolls of the universe!
The only thing keeping me here is the occaisional insightful remark or link, but they get fewer and farther between every time I open the page.
Sorry to be so long-winded, I just wanted to make sure you know, we're not all asshats. Yet.
put black men in jail and get incapable women jobs in critical areas.
Anyway, I had this opinion of these two guys; and life was good. Then I read this book. Apparently the truth is that Carmack is this total asshole and it's Romero that's the genuinely cool guy.
Look at all the people Carmack dropped kicked to the curb throughout this book. Sure Romero showed some of that early on at SoftDisk but Carmack is way ahead on people he's used and abused and then cast aside.
In fact if I were Anna, I'd be formulating my exit strategy right now. It's only a matter of time when he deems her "...a negative influence..." (or however he said it...about his cat) and kicks her to the curb.
Anyway...just my
If you're running an SMP Windows box OR a P4 with "hyperthreading" turned on (and an OS that supports it) you will have serious problems playing most shooter games written for the 16-bit windows era.
This is what you need to do:
- Start your distraction of choice.
- Alt-tab to Windows and open the task manager.
- Select the "Processes" tab and right click on the process that corresponds to your game.
- Select "Set Processor affinity" and select CPU_0 (the first processor - sorry, I'm going from old neurons here).
That should do it - note this trick will not work with ALL games, but it does for some.
On the same off-topic note, there are a number of DOOM engine enhancements since the engine code has been opened. Google JDoom for starters.
-- Cheers,
-- RLJ
When I was your age we didn't even have a symbol for zero. All we had were ones!
And we liked it that way, no new fangled eastern math to mess with.
The arrow on the hammer means it goes in the other direction.
BTW, what does it take to get you to admit that your wrong. The only time any rational sense is practiced is when your in mourning (I'm kind of dense when it comes to idiot speak but what are you really trying to enourage??).
Sounds like Transvestite Vikings or something...
ahh, the day's
Perhaps the greatest disaster ever witnessed by man...
You obviously never played Tresspasser.
I once read about a dude that proposed to his fiance on slashdot?!?!
Some ppl just can't get enough...
- Cancer research is important.
- Curtailing nuclear proliferation is important.
- Feeding the hungry is important.
- Equality is important.
- Halting global warming, pollution, and abuse of our resources is important.
Games are just games. Entertainment. A way to spend a few minutes (or hours or days for those with no life or responsibilities). Games provide jobs for a few folks, but they are hardly the cornerstone of western civilization (well, 'cept for Sid Meier's stuff). Now you can quote how FPSers are the training grounds for future pilots, but not everyone who blasts a virtual opponent joins the Navy, and not all fighter jocks are former sofa-dwelling thumb wrasslers. A game is no more than an interactive fantasy. The inflatable love doll of GenX+. Nobody every saved the world by playing Pacman.The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
"The universe did not pop into existence just a few short years ago. There was even a before computers. I know, I was there."
Wow - that makes you older than Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace, I guess... roughly 150 plus as Ada died in 1852 & Charles in 1871...
Sorry, couldn't resist!
(speaking as one whose father-in-law worked on ENIAC...)
Tell me about it. My first was a 2400. When it died, I picked up the phone and started whistling. My baud rate went up.
I will say, I do miss the days of old-school BBS's - watching ANSI graphics slooooowly scroll across the screen...
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Red Baron was out in '76 and is considered by many to be the first FPS game.
User and abuser...that's all I'm saying.
ah, yeah!! that screenshot r0X0rzz!
cpeterso
Think about this for a moment. You've just made a neet new FPS game. Which game do you compair your new baby to? The older, less technologically advanced game, or the newer, sexier, technological wonder?
Yeah, I thought so.
And you're wrong, anyway. Before Wolf3D there was Catacomb as well as that Ultima game. But even further back there was an old first-person version of Pac Man that ran on CGA or Monochrome IBM PCs.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
When you know what they stand for.
ID Delta Q Delta
ID Kicks Fucking Arse
ID Smashing Pumpkins Into Small Pieces of Putrid Debris
And why - which you can read in the Doom FAQ.
Not ROTFL, but definitely LOL. Consider yourself +1, Funny.
I have to say that Im reliveing the addiction all over again each day on the train into work.
Theres nothing like the sound the chaingun makes to wake up and really piss-off other passengers early in the morning. - I love it!
Gordon Staines
Here: http://suprnova.qlogix.com/torrents/masters.of.doo m.ebook-nirv.pdf-rar.torrent
It might not be legal though, but IANAL, right?
you all went through in the past..
In the present I have to sift through many comments on slashdot of geeks spouting Monty Python referances over, and over, and over again.
General rule of thumb:
If a Anonymous Coward posts a comment like this, you can generally disregard it. Most moderators realize this and mod them down. It is either just their nature or they are trying to troll, whichever is true you can safely ignore them.
Klingon programs don't timeshare, they battle for supremacy.
Wow! I haven't seen a PWEI quote EVER, I thought I was the only person in the country who'd ever heard them :-)
Good choice of quotes though. I had that line as my AIM profile for quite some time last year.
Trampled underfoot by the rise of the right
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Get your hands on a DOS Emmulator such as FreeDos.
Download here: http://www.freedos.org/freedos/files/
If I helped you, why not drop me an email: send2randy[at]hotmail.com
If space or money are an issue, another obvious solution is simply dual booting to a FAT16 drive (Via a lovely program such as Partition Magic, which happens to be a lot more fun than most of the games coming out these days).
I regularly enjoy my DOS games in true DOS off this drive.. And, of course, whenever I need to pull something off the network to that drive, my Windows 3.11 install sure comes in handy =)
I have run into absolutely no conflicts or issues with this setup, once I got everything set up. Some old generic SB drivers will work with the majority of newer cards in DOS, and I've yet to have a video card complain about anything other than Relentless ("Twinson's Odyssey" in some markets), but I'd like to emphasise that I actually had an easier time getting it to work on my modern gear than I did Back In Tha' Day.
I still have a 28.8 dialup!
Ishtar was not a horrid movie in the same class as Glitter or Gigli. It was famous because it was a medicore film that was hyped, and had an outrageous budget, but didn't make half what smaller movies made. Not because it was notably awful (it's not great, not painful, just blah)
id's old games run beautifully and there are a lot o open srouce projects that make Doom/DOom 2/ etc. look great. Personally, I really like jDoom http://www.doomsdayhq.com/
If any of you remember CDC's Plato terminals, there was Oubilette, Mines of Moria, Krozair, all first person games, a few multiplayer games as well. This was 1978 , folks. "Wizardry programmers Andy Greenberg and Robert Woodhead were both users of PLATO in the late 70's and were inspired to try and create a single player version of Oubliette on the Apple II." Another Plato tidbit, Bruce Artwick's Microsoft Flight simulator was inspired by dogfight and airfight, the 2d and 3d flight battle games that ran on Plato. 1975, hardcore gamers. Lots of old school geeks know about the Plato terminals. I was lucky enough to use them as a curious 12 year old in the basement of the Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley, CA. Before we got our first home computer (TRS-80), My father used to take me up there to rent time by the hour on these beasts. Before that I rented time on the fabulous teletype terminals. Plato terminals also had touch sensitive screens. They were slightly ahead of their time. A little bit of history that many don't know about. http://www.classicgaming.com/features/articles/com putergaminghistory/index5-3.shtml
music lover since 1969
My first modem was a 110-baud, and I had to solder it together myself with, uhh, lead, yeah, lead from a car battery. Sometimes the battery acid would spill and melt the modem and I'd have to start all over.
SORRY, THE COLOSSAL CAVE IS CLOSED. ONLY WIZARDS MAY ENTER.
ARE YOU A WIZARD?
>yes
PROVE IT. WHAT'S THE MAGIC WORD?
>dwarf
THAT'S NOT WHAT I THOUGHT IT WAS.
DO YOU KNOW WHAT I THOUGHT IT WAS?
>yes
37703 (a totally-random octal string that thwarted us for months)
The correct 2nd answer is:
dwarg
GREETINGS, WIZARD (or something like that)
It's been called the world's first interactive first-person 3D adventure game. It was a 1st person shooter -- situated in an abandoned space station. Must have been around 1989. The graphics were pretty crude, but it was real-time 3d...
Memory address of top left corner of screen.
Scanline where the screen resets to address 0 on the card (screen split).
The benefit of these two were that you could scroll the screen downwards and sideways "for free" by messing with the address while only having to draw tiles in your border zone (twice the tiles for vertical scrolling -- think about it for a while and it'll come to you).
The vertical split could then be used to paint a scoreboard.
I would call the first time programmers look beyond the tools everyone else uses revolutionary, yes.
In the Amiga era, a similair problem existed, and unless someone corrects me, I believe it was Team17 who uses something quite similair to the above to implement full framerate scrolling using the Amiga's Copper Chip. Now there is a second thing at play here which is that on the Amiga I can reset vertically to Any address, not just 0. This benefits scrolling considerably and was used in their SuperFrog title (if anyone has an Action Replay, hit the button and do a screendump -- you'll see the copper split).
This eventually ended up in an interesting little white lie in an interview about Team17's first AGA scroller, which, according to one of T17's artists (iirc) "did not need more than 128 colors" so they didn't move it up to 256 colors.
That, I believe, to have been a lie. The problem instead is that, for 256 colors, there were a full *8* 32bit bitplane registers that needed to be set in the horizontal blank (the time when the last pixel is drawn on the right and the next pixel on the next scanline starts on the left). However! here wasn't enough time to do this! Through some hand testing at the time with manual copperlists I managed to do 7, but you couldn't fit any more without cropping the screen (making it look rediculous).
Anyway, I think that roughly was why id Software (and Team-17) deserve the credit they get for Commander Keen (and SuperFrog if that was the first one).
I think if you typed idclev31 and 32 you could play 2 of the wolfy levels in doom or was it doom2....
S
Kingdom of Loathing (www.kingdomofloathing.com) Addicted is me
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What about "Fishtar"? Most folks hated "Waterworld" but I personally thought it was okay...
Masters of Doom
Chapter 1
DOOM goes online.
Chapter 2
OMFG jeh hax0rzd!
First mistake ... taking anything anyone posts on Slashdot personally. ... sticking your head up for round two.
Second mistake
Use a DOS emulator. Works great for many DOS based games while in Windows XP.
s =1
http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/news.php?show_new
You are only popular on the Internet.
You don't have to buy a KVM switch just buy a small monitor, a nice IBM keyboard that clicks with mouse and it will be really old school!
A better question is why anybody would want to play crap like Keen, Wing Commander, Raptor or Tyrian in this day and age. Good god man, there are side-scrollers, space sims and shooters a million times better than those. Get out and smell the consoles!
The screenshots look encouraging, and the Mandrake people reckon it's much easier to compile, and its main focus is running Very Old (dos) Games On New Systems (-: nice acronym :-).
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing