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Precursor to Doom Racks Up 30 years of Fragging

Posted by michael on from the eye-of-the-beholder dept.

VirtualUK writes "Back in 1974 the first 3D networked multiplayer first person shooter game Maze War set the ball rolling for todays games like Quake and Doom. Initially written on a Imlac PDS-1 players represented as an eyeball fought it out inside what could be considered a minimalistic graphical adventure in comparison to the texture mapped, hi-res extravaganzas on the shelves today. On November 6-7 at the Vintage Computer Festival 7.0 held at the Computer History Museum (Mountain View, CA) there's a special 30th anniversary special event for Maze War. Brude Damer's digibarn site has a great article about it here."

34 of 134 comments (clear)

  1. Anyone remember Dungeons of Daggorath? by synaptik · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Anyone remember Dungeons of Daggorath? It's not as old as this game, but it looked very much like it. The most fun I ever had on a TRS-80 Color Computer!

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    1. Re:Anyone remember Dungeons of Daggorath? by Guncrazy · · Score: 2, Interesting
      I wasn't lucky enough to have the TRS-80 Color Computer. My first PC was the TRS-80 Model III.

      I played my first 3-D game on it. It was called "Asylum", and was really more like an Infocom game, in that you had to type in commands to perform actions. Still, you moved around in a low-res monochrome environment, finding keys, solving puzzles, avoiding guards, etc.

    2. Re:Anyone remember Dungeons of Daggorath? by jonabbey · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Asylum was incredible. I played it on a 16k cassette Model I, and was amazed at the complexity the game had in it for its small size. Absolutely huge maps, full sentence parser, suspense, mystery.. best game ever on the Model I.

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      - jon

      Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
  2. Wait... there are other games? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I've been playing this game for the last 30 years and now I found out there are other options?

    1. Re:Wait... there are other games? by Jason1729 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You haven't been missing much. The eye candy's been increasing as the playability dropped.

      Download the wired CD: wiredcd.itallconnects.com

  3. Yeah but what FPS does it get on a GeForce 6800? by gatesh8r · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'm not going to consider it if it's not any faster than Doom III.

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    Karma whorin' since 1999
  4. Duke University by JabberWokky · · Score: 4, Interesting
    I remember playing this for hours in the Mac labs at Duke University around 1987-1988. Mazewars was a great game. That and the 2D action NetTrek.

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    Evan

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    "$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
    1. Re:Duke University by pHatidic · · Score: 2, Interesting

      If these games were so great why aren't they still played today? Nethack is almost this old and is still played by thousands of people daily.

    2. Re:Duke University by Monkelectric · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Because frequently "nostalgia" is remembered through the rose colored glasses of youth?

      The other day I was downloading some episodes of a TV show I love, "The Adventures of Pete and Pete" (release DVD's damnit!). In the same category was some season 1 tv rips of a show called "doug." I thought to myself, "what a waste of bandwidth, the show was ok ... but who would want the entire freaking thing?!" Then I realized, "doug" came along about ~5 years after pete and pete, and for surely someone 5 years younger then myself shared the same enthusiasm for Doug as I have for Pete and Pete.

      --

      Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley

    3. Re:Duke University by JabberWokky · · Score: 2, Insightful
      They are played today. The graphics and sound have been upgraded, and they have been ported to more modern systems.

      You might have heard of the latest incarnation of this game: Doom 3.

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      Evan

      --
      "$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
  5. Just imagine... by rune2 · · Score: 4, Funny

    how many fps that puppy gets now?

    1. Re:Just imagine... by porp · · Score: 2, Funny

      how many fps that puppy gets now?

      With Anti-Aliasing turned on or off?

      porp

  6. Ultima Underworld by 3770 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What I fail to understand is why Ultima Underworld never is mentioned in this context.

    That was the first 3d game I played and it was awesome. You'd run around in a dungeoun system and hack and slash monsters a la single player RPG. The dungeon was not limited to a "flat 2d floor" you could run arund and end up running under a bridge that you had just run over.

    I can't remember if it came before or after Doom. But it must have been at about the same time.

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    1. Re:Ultima Underworld by 3770 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Sweeeet!

      I did a search on Ultima Underworld on a whim. And I found this page with some information on the game and a map of the "Stygian Abyss" and even better I found this link where you can download a demo.

      I can't believe it. I'm going to have to download it and see if I can get it running.

      I... Think... I'm... Going... to... cry.

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    2. Re:Ultima Underworld by 3770 · · Score: 4, Informative


      It actually works but you have to right click on the executable, choose properties and allocate some EMS memory for it. It then creates an old style .pif file and if you double click on that the game will actually start.

      If you download this, just make sure that you put it in its own folder first because it self expands to the folder it is in.

      It does look somewhat dated. But it is actually quite similar to todays 3d rpgs.

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    3. Re:Ultima Underworld by 3770 · · Score: 2, Funny

      OK,

      I'm going to stop rambling about Ultima Underworld after this post. But 3 minutes into this game I "angered a giant rat with my actions". I just find it hilarious that I've spent so much time killing rodents in modern MMORPGs and yet it isn't a "new concept". No wonder that killing rodents feels "old".

      I really hope that WoW and EQ2 will innovate in some way.

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      The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
  7. Richard Garriott by pHatidic · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Richard Garriott, the creator of the Ultima series of CRPGS, has cited this game as an inspiration of his first commercial game Akalabeth in an interview on the Ultima Collection CD. He says this game was the current 3D state of the art at that time.

  8. sniping by Hollins · · Score: 4, Insightful

    from the article:

    Dan tells us that this was a "heart pounding game" when compared to the otherwise dull environment of the Xerox document/desktop metaphor. He noted that you could "shoot" your opponent if they did not see you (their eyeball character was facing away from you). He also notes that you could "hide" in parts of the maze and wait in ambush.

    Wow, so sniping in FPS can be traced all the way back to the 70s. I wonder if other players complained about it back then, also.

  9. Play Maze War online? How about on your Palm? by DoorFrame · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'm trying to find a site to play the game today online. It seems like it would be a simple game to recreate in a multiplayer form online. If I can play Joust online with shockwave, why not Maze War?

    The best I could find was this Palm Pilot version available for download. Good, but not multiplayer like I want. Also, as I have a pocket pc it's not much use for me.

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    RumorsDaily
  10. FPS, circa 1987: MIDI Maze by dstone · · Score: 4, Interesting

    FPS on Atari STs, networked with MIDI cables in a ring configuration. Now that's a nice little hack.

    Maybe today's equivalent would be an FPS on cell phones with Bluetooth or IRDA. No, too obvious.

    1. Re:FPS, circa 1987: MIDI Maze by headLITE · · Score: 2, Informative

      I actually remember bugging my dad to lay a "MIDI line" between my brother's room and mine, so we could play MIDI Maze on our STs ;)

      Mind you, you couldn't only play games over MIDI, there were also other networking tools, you could even mount shares on other Ataris over MIDI. Now isn't that cool, built-in LAN interfaces in a home computer in the mid-80ies! PCs got that 15 years later.

    2. Re:FPS, circa 1987: MIDI Maze by SillyNickName4me · · Score: 2, Informative

      > Now isn't that cool, built-in LAN interfaces in a home computer in the mid-80ies! PCs got that 15 years later.

      Definitely cool. Just wanted to say that Atari was kindof 5 years late with it, Commodore's IEC bus allowed the same, with the added advantage that floppy drives and printers conencted to it directly.

      (On the other hand.. I still have a ST doing something usefull here, while the C64 I also have is mostly gatherign dust except for the few times I want to play Traz)

  11. Re:Yeah but what FPS does it get on a GeForce 6800 by mog007 · · Score: 3, Funny

    I'm sure it allows for more than four people! HA!

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    Learn something new.
  12. C'mon... by Lee+Tacker · · Score: 4, Funny

    You mean this little gem hasn't been ported to Windows? I already feel like I'm runnin' around in a maze all day. It's the perfect fit!

    --
    Just so you know, I like to start signatures with the phrase, "Just so you know."
  13. PLATO: Moria, circa 1975 by RealProgrammer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I spent many nights in junior high "hacking" in the PLATO labs at the University of Illinois (UIUC). One of the grad students there at the time, the unspoken Hacker King, was one Rob Kolstad. We wrote (ok, so the other guys wrote and I pretended to write) software for student instruction, and were rewarded with computer time.

    Anyway, back on topic: we used that time mostly to play a game called "moria" ("MOR-ee-uh" or "mor-EYE-uh"). It was a multiplayer, 3D action game drawn in bitmap graphics and text. Wireframe walls and corridors. You formed teams, managed your resources, fought battles to gain experience, and the rest.

    Ah, nostalgia.

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    sigs, as if you care.
    1. Re:PLATO: Moria, circa 1975 by wayne · · Score: 2, Informative
      Moria wasn't really a first person shooter game. Yeah, you ran around in a maze with a first person perspective, but you never saw anything other than the walls. Once you "encountered" some monsters, you would go into a more traditional nethack-type battle. (Yeah, it preceeded nethack, people are more familiar with nethack.)

      I also thought that Moria wasn't created until the late 70s, and there there were more traditional nethack-like games before then. I used MinnA instead of Cerl, so maybe it just took a long time to make it over there.

      Plato was a really cool system. Back in the 70s and 80s, it was more like the modern Internet than the Internet was back then.

      A good overview of Plato can be found at www.platopeople.com There is also a group of people trying to preserve the original plato system.

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    2. Re:PLATO: Moria, circa 1975 by tricorn · · Score: 2, Informative

      There were several incarnations of moria. One was an infinite maze based on a hash of the current location, others were more limited (I think all were based on hashes, though - no data storage of the maze). The date was mid-late-70's The first one was an overhead view D&D game, at some point it became a 1st person (limited) view. There was another notable game written in the mid-70's called empire, which was the inspiration for nettrek.

      The two primary 1st person 3-D dungeon games on PLATO were oubliette and avatar. Oubliette was the inspiration for Robert Woodhead's Wizardry. The author of oubliette, Jim Schwaiger, also wrote a PC version called Micro-Oubliette, but Wizardry was much more well known. Avatar was the inspiration for Mike Kulas, founder of Volition, to do game programming.

      Jim Bowery wrote what he believes is the 1st multi-player First Person Shooter game in early 1974, called spasim ("space sim" or "spasm").

      Empire and avatar are going strong on the PLATO revival system (last I checked, the Federation was kicking butt in empire), and you can also check out the original airfight, and possibly airsim might be restored by now (Brand, you out there? Contact me!). Airfight was the inspiration for Bruce Artwick to produce the original Apple II and IBM PC flight simulators (subLogic and BAO, now Microsoft).

  14. Faceball 2000 by rayde · · Score: 3, Interesting

    don't forget the semi-sequel, Faceball 2000. it's a 4 player 3D fps for Gameboy!

  15. That is beautiful by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative
    For those of you too cowardly or too wise to click... that sends you into a bottomless pit of Javascript which will pop up hundreds of windows all over your screen. These windows will be full of nasty gay porn featuring all kinds of nasty things, and it will also play a sound file over and over that says "hey everybody, I'm looking at gay porno". You won't be able to close the windows fast enough to turn it off. If you're running Konqueror, I think it will stop itself when it detects that too many windows are open. I looked at it with Mozilla, and found that the easiest way to stop it is to open a terminal and go "ps auxwww|grep mozilla | awk '{print $2}' | xargs kill -9". But that's just me.

    If you are running on Windows, you're really in luck because IE is part of the operating system, so you get to enjoy looking at gay porno.

  16. Wolfenstein by gmuslera · · Score: 4, Interesting

    For me it is THE precursor of Doom (even III). Back in the 90's, was a true revolution what that game started. Of course, Maze Wars is even older, but Wolfenstein had all the components in the right place, not just a 3D view.

  17. Re:Play Maze War online? How about on your Palm? by Usquebaugh · · Score: 3, Informative

    Imaze baby.

    http://home.tu-clausthal.de/student/iMaze/

    I thought every linux hacker knew about this. Looks damn similar to the original

  18. Wink Murder anyone? by tonsofpcs · · Score: 2, Funny

    I wink at you, you die. Muhahaha.

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  19. Spasim, March, 1974 by Baldrson · · Score: 2, Informative
    Actually, a real 3d rendered multiplayer 3d first person shooter game, as opposed to a pseudo 3d, 2d first person shooter game, existed in multiplayer mode in March of 1974. It was only 32 players but it was nation-wide. It was called spasim.

    Rumor has it that it is being restored for Internet play on cyber1 as "0spasim". At least I've given them permission to restore the backup of 0spasim to that system, which is an emulation of the PLATO system upon a CDC Cyber 6400 emulation of one of Seymour Cray's original machines.

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    Seastead this.
  20. SuperMazaWar (PPC) by DJCF · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Never played MazaWar but I used to have hours of fun on the succesor - supermazewar. Like Mazewar, only with colour and sound. Anyone else here play it much?