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Ten Years Of Doom Celebrated
mmx writes "GameSpy is partway through a week-long feature celebrating the 10th anniversary of seminal FPS Doom: 'Ten years ago today, Jay Wilbur uploaded an executable to the overloaded University of Wisconsin FTP that pretty much changed first person shooter games forever. He was having trouble because it was packed with rabid DOOM fans, slavering over the demo's imminent release. Eventually Wilbur had to have them all kicked off, and only then did he manage to get the roughly two-megabyte file online.' GameSpy's Doom timeline is pretty interesting, and Doomworld has also started a special anniversary feature. Happy birthday, Doom... and thank you, id software."
Plus, in years past this December 9/10th thing was the ship date for other id Games - Quake 2, Quake 3: Arena, Quake 3: Team Arena, etc. It's enough before Christmas to make it a hot holiday item, but late enough to maximize development time.
Schnapple
I remember first learning how to lead with my rocket shots and getting a SWEET kill on my bud from across the level.
I used to use a program called DeHackEd that would let you utilize all of the information referenced in the doom.exe file. I remember spending days and days building the perfect DeHackEd patch and bringing it to my friend's dorm to try it out on him, only to be trumped by his semi-invisible "trip mines" that would sit on the ground and explode when you walked into em. They also had a negative mass so if you shot them they'd rocket towards you and you had to move the hell out of the way. Sure, we started out with the usual one-hit-kills-everything-you-see kind of weapons but they gradually got more unique and more strategic. GOD I loved DOOM hacking!
If whales learn how to use weapons we're all screwed!
I couldn't have been the only one who messed with the animation pointers so little bluod drops and big blood drops would form small and large pools of blood that would persist indefinately.
The only problem was one of the short cuts doom would use to determine what it should render could cause an enemy heavy room to lay down enough blood that stuff behind it would be occluded.
Yeah, that was a good util. The T2 "easy money" patch, and who can forget the Aliens TC patch. Badass with a capital "Mo' Fo'"
One advantage that DOOM had over later game was in using sprites, it could put TONS of enemies and projectiles on screen. Not only that, but the corpses would STAY THERE, like a gory trail of breadcrumbs marking your path...
Quake and other all-polygone games only really reflected DOOM's "survival-horror"-ish vibe, and didn't have the ability to throw tons and tons of enemies at you. And the "corpses just fade away" shtick was a throwback to 8-bit NES 'punch 'em til they blink' dynamics.
I think the currently released game that comes closest to DOOM's too many enemies, corpses stick around vibe is Halo. Serious Sam tries for some of the same vibe, but still...after all, Master Cheif looks a LOT like the Space Marine...
SO YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: The Comic for Dealing with Death
Redefining multiplayer is understating it a bit. At least for me. I will never forget the first time I played multiplayer Doom. The whole concept of playing while linked up with someone else totally blew me away. I was young, impressionable, and I completely fell in love with mulitplayer FPS games. Thanks, Doom.
:)
Doom turned me into a hardcore gamer for many years. Quake II sorta killed it for me, and I haven't played a FPS since it came out, but those glory years were amazing.
Thank you, id Software. You wasted many years of this girl's life, and many years of many other people's lives as well.
This is how Doom looked like when it was still at alpha stage.
In my opinion Doom pushed the bar higher than any video game ever in any era.
Here are seven reason why I believe this:
1.) Network play
While id Software didn't invent it they certainly made put Deathmatch on the map.
2.) Sound and Lighting
Both were used with tremendous skill to set a very suspenseful mood. You could hear the creatures but the question was, where were they?
3.) Visual Quality
It was the state of the art in video game graphics when it was released. The 2D sprite art and 3D texture maps were the best seen in that era.
4.) Level design
The level design was inspired. The player was challenged with puzzles, secrets and traps in nearly every map. When has pressing a single been a source simultaneous terror and excitement.
5.) Scary
This game was scary as hell. There were times when I would have to quit playing late a night because I was actually freaked out.
6.) Mod community
This game also set a standard for player created maps and content.
7.) FUN
Whether it was blowing away 3 imps with one shotgun blast or getting a room of demons to destroy themselves, this game was packed with fun things to do and experience.
Chew: You Nexus, huh? I design your eyes.
Roy: Chew, if only you could see what I've seen with your eyes.
So one day, this young guy starts posting about this graphic stuff he's working on for an upcoming game, and his problems and solutions, and Abrash and him start getting into deep discussions (which quickly flew over my head, couldn't keep up at all). You could tell this kid was deeply impressing Abrash, and doing things in ways he'd never thought of.
As you've guessed, the kid was John Carmack, and the upcoming game was Doom.
I'd love to find an archive of those discussions, they were fantastic.
The 100 best Doom WADs feature on Doomworld is really worth checking out. I remember playing Tei Tenga with Zdoom and couldn't believe what I was seeing - Zdoom's scripting makes it possible to have dialog, movable objects, new effects, colored lighting (ok that's maybe not scripting) and map nodes that make it possible to return to earlier "levels". Teitenga is simply one of the best single player experiences I've had and I do include all the newer games in that. Only Deus Ex is even comparable.
:)
The original doom gameplay dynamics which still are excellent combined with modern scripting features and the level of detail possible only with today's machines and source ports really make Doom a great experience.
One more great news for today is that Daedalus, formerly known as Doom2000 has finally been released. It's done by the folks that made Final Doom's levels, TeamTNT. Sadly I can't play it as it requires a 2.0.x series Zdoom and that hasn't yet been ported to GNU/Linux. Oh well, I guess I'll go celebrate with finishing The Plutonia experiment and TNT: Evilution from Final Doom.