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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.
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.
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..kind of "archeological" gaming you can always read the pretty decent The Ultimate History of Video Games
The first thought that comes to my mind is probably not the easiest solution, and I must admit I haven't tried it before, so I don't know for sure that it'll work, but it might be worth trying...
Install Bochs, and install a version of DOS onto that (I wonder if FreeDOS will work?) This will insure that the game is running on the OS it was really designed for (particularly if you use an old copy of MS-DOS rather than FreeDOS), and it will keep the game from trying to run too fast, since the emulation overhead will slow it down a bit. I think Bochs also includes a way to forcibly slow the CPU down even further if necessary.
Anyone have any experience trying this setup? I'm curious as to how well it would work...
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
In terms of the game engine, there's not a lot of comparison between Doom and Wolf3D. The Wolf3D engine was primitive compared to Doom; most of the rooms were essentially large squares or rectangles, the lighting was pretty static, the list of enemies was pretty limited, and all of the levels were flat. Compare that to Doom, with its sectors of (basically) arbitrary shape and size, its introduction of sector height so that you could create staircases, trenches, walls, etc., its vastly-improved lighting capabilities, its vast array of special line types, its long list of monster types, etc.
:-)
Wolf3D was a ground-breaking game, but not nearly as ground-breaking as Doom was. Hell, I think I have more fun playing the original Castle Wolfenstein and Beyond Castle Wolfenstein from the early 1980s.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
emulators/vm's are always the best sollution. since source for those old id games have been released in the past, there are a bunch of implementations.
and if there aren't any (like for the old commander keen games, iirc), give VDMSound a shot (under nt4/w2k/xp) http://ntvdm.cjb.net/
and some old dos games refuse to run at all under modern os's (eg weird memory manager), so have a look at http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/, and if that fails too, use bochs/vmware.
btw, i remember an old feature of doom v1.666 or something. you had to build an ipx network of 3 dos boxes and could play on all three. one screen for 90 leftview, on center and one right. woah!
I thought the book was excellent. Since I wrote the review, I figured it would be obvious that all that means is I thought the book was excellent. Did I think the writing was perfect? No. Did I think the book was overall very interesting and entertaining? Yes. I wrote this review specifically for slashdot because I thought a lot of people here would have similar interests as I did. I didn't write a literary critique of the book, I just wrote what amounts to a summary of what I thought of the book. Hey, it's not like I was being paid to write this or anything.
Good book - you can read a whole chapter of it here.. along with an interview with the author and a few other bits.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/amazon.html