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."

Comments

And in related news:

[Schnapple]

I totally missed my prediction that DOOM 3 would ship today, on the 10th anniversary of shareware DOOM (give or take a day).

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.

So many memories

[xalres]

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!

Re:So many memories

[dpilot]

Now you cut to the heart of the matter.

Doom was FUN!

There's much lamentation about how gameplay is getting lost in the effects and realism. But we need to put in another word - FUN. A few years back, someone on Usenet mentioned coming across Doom on his computer - he'd forgotten about it, not having played it in a year or two. He turned the lights down, the sound up, and started the game. The old feel was back, and it was fun!

So with newer games, how much is 3D addiction, (a particular weakness of mine) how much is novelty addiction, and how much is fun?

My personal favorite was Hexen, a nifty combination of FPS, puzzles, and neat settings. Now that my son is old enough, I've been trying to get things set for a network game. Unfortunately none of the source ports will compile on both of my desktop machines. (old and new) It never was a popular game, and has languished.

Re:So many memories

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh. ROTT. Now there was a game. Story? Not really. Style? Sort of. Easter eggs? Out the ass.

Man some of those levels. Like the Shrooms giant trampoline level. I practically puked because the disorientation. The codes? /JOHNWOO? The gibbs? So jucie. Their God, and Dog modes. Especially Dog mode in multi-player.

The missles, the heat seeking, the flame wall and the tears. Oh the sweet sweet tears of my enemies.

And the excalibat. Multiplayer. On the baseball diamond. And hitting a heat seeker out of the park, and into the guy that just shot it at you. Funny. So funny. So very very funny.

Oddly enought, I just found my Old ROTT disks the other day. The full version was pretty hard to come by last time I looked for it too....

First look

[DrMorris]

This is how Doom looked like when it was still at alpha stage.

Doom's impact

[Castaa]

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.

Doom fan before it was cool

[Teddy Beartuzzi]

One of the cooler events in my life so far has to do with Doom. I used to call long distance to BIX, the Byte magazine online bulletin board. One of the discussion groups was graphics, and Michael Abrash used to hang out there. It was extremely cool to get help with your clipping algorithms etc from a master.

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.