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Doom Turns 25: The FPS That Wowed Players, Gummed Up Servers, and Enraged Admins (theregister.co.uk)
On December 10, 1993, after a marathon 30-hour coding session, the developers at id Software uploaded the first finished copy of Doom for download, the game that was to redefine first-person shooter (FPS) genre. Hours later IT admins wanted id's guts for garters. The Register: Doom wasn't the first FPS game, but it was the iPhone of the field -- it took parts from various other products and packaged them together in a fearsomely addictive package. Admins loathed it because it hogged bandwidth for downloading and was designed to allow network deathmatches, so millions of users immediately took up valuable network resources for what seemed a frivolous pursuit to some curmudgeonly BOFHs.
The game was an instant hit -- so much so that within hours of its release admins were banning it from servers to try and cope with the effects of thousands, and then millions of people playing online. It spawned remakes and follow-up games, its own movie (don't bother) and even a glowing endorsement from Bill Gates.
The game was an instant hit -- so much so that within hours of its release admins were banning it from servers to try and cope with the effects of thousands, and then millions of people playing online. It spawned remakes and follow-up games, its own movie (don't bother) and even a glowing endorsement from Bill Gates.
I still tend to go through unfamiliar museums by keeping right and working my way around that way so I do not miss anything. I call that the "Doom Technique" because that's how I would explore various levels in Doom, way back when. Vaguely-related note: I still have the original 3.5" floppy containing its predecessor, Castle Wolfenstein.
TANSTAAFL
Played it.
Over IPX.
With multiple players.
Over a parallel port cable.
I kid you not.
There was an old DOS TSR (that I have never been able to find since) that was a packet driver that operated over either a parallel port or serial port daisy-chain from one machine to the next. Wasn't fast, but it was fast enough. Better than serial alone as you could have several machines connected and it was faster. And everyone had parallel ports - I have no idea if EPP or whatever was an option that long ago, but it was faster than the available serial. And you had several of serial/parallel most likely so you had the ports to daisy-chain.
Back when nobody had network-cards in their machines and kid's budgets didn't run to even 10Base2 to play their games - Oh, but dad! - we improvised. I don't even remember how we found it (no Internet for us back then), or what it was called, but we used that little TSR for an awful lot of things that weren't otherwise possible without a proper network card.
The only bit we bought was an ever-increasing daisy-chain of serial and parallel cables using whatever people had discarded or we could find. To this day, I could literally make any combination of 9/25pin M/F to 9/25pin M/F cable for tens of meters of length just from those old cables in my bits box.
I remember it was a faff with whatever the packet driver was, and then having to load some (Novell?) TSR to allow IPX etc. all in a DOS boot config (we had DOS 5, I think, and 4DOS utilities and a bunch of PC Magazine freeware - AMENU - to make a menu just to load up that config and play networked).
Hell, I even remember playing Quake over the same link, but that was only temporarily as only our friend had another machine powerful enough to run that, and then we upgraded to 10Base2 and then 10BaseT not long after.
But I have gamed IPX over parallel port via DOS. People always thing I got it wrong whenever I say that.
IDKFA IDDQD.
I can't remember my mom's birthday but I still know those two codes. :-/
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Quake had true 3D levels that can pass over one another. Quake had 3D adversaries. Quake had network gameplay with Quakeworld. Quake had OpenGL support with GLQuake that launched the GPU world, really starting with the Voodoo 1. Quake had translucent water, which was amazing the first time I ever saw it. And lastly, Quake is still the bar that any small platform must aspire to by answering the question, "Does it run Quake."
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Really, it only *seemed* like a frivolous use of network resources? In exactly what way is playing Doom, or any game generally, not *actually* a frivolous pursuit?
Not that I'm opposed to frivolous pursuits, far from it - but if you're making the implied claim that playing a game *isn't* completely frivolous, a little evidence would be appreciated. Or at least a decent argument. Heck, even an anecdote would be a big step up from making such a ridiculous claim completely unsupported.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
What fell the Amiga was clinging to the A500 long after it has passed its prime, and the incompatibility to newer models. Not its 3D-capabilities, or lack thereof. The PCs of the time were not any better at displaying 3D graphics, dedicated 3D cards came much later when 3D actually became a thing.
Furthermore, A500s were sold as "as is", hardwired and hardly upgradeable. You could plug a memory extension into it, you had an "expansion port", where upgrading it with anything cost way more than it was worth and you could basically only use Amiga hardware to do either, much as you do with Apple today (granted, back then this was not so uncommon), but Commodore simply didn't offer anything worthwhile for way too long. When they finally woke up, the ship had already sailed and people were turning towards the PC for gaming because it caught up quickly, sound cards became cheaper and while it was a bit more of a hassle to get the hardware to do what you wanted it to do (the older ones here may remember the worries of setting DMAs, IRQs and IO ranges so they don't conflict between various cards, usually with jumpers that deserved their name mostly for jumping from your fingers into the depths of the case), you at least could get it to do what you wanted it to do.
Amiga still sold the 500 long into the times of 386 and even 486 when VLB graphics cards came out that had more video memory than the A500 had in total. And games for the Amiga were also still built to run on the 500 instead of targeting 3000 and 4000 machines, mostly because of a nonexistent market.
The time simply passed by Amiga. That's all. It fell for the same reason the C64 eventually fell: Technology surpassed it and while it was technically possible to upgrade the A500, few people did and hence few games supported it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
amgia stuck to custom chips to much and os in (non flash) rom
Doom is what got me to buy a Soundblaster back then. It blew me away.
Anyway, John Romero will be releasing 9 new levels to commemorate the 25th anniversary.
Got a tricked-out 486 from Gateway mail order, computers from cow country.
It didn't run Doom. Called their customer service, "We don't consider Doom an essential application to support."
Back it went. I'm sure that attitude changed shortly.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Don't forgot that Doom also gave us:
* Total Conversions or "themed" levels, such as Aliens, Barney, etc. /gamerule keepInventory true
* Mods -- the ability to change core gameplay rules. e.g. Minecraft allows "house rules" such as:
* In-game map which was also awesome. (Looking at you Vermintide 2!)
I'm reminded that the entire FPS genre seems to have regressed. This commentary of FPS map design 1993 vs 2010 succinctly summarizes the problem of how everything has being script / trigger driven. In some games the dam loading screen takes ages (Gran Turismo 6).
It is also pathetic that FPS no longer ship with map editors. Worse, DLCs only come with ~3 maps. Hell, even Age of Empires 2, a 19 year old game STILL has new maps being made. e.g. The "Nothing" theme is currently popular.
And then game devs wonder why no one plays their game after 5 years. /sarcasm But ooh, shiny!
--
Enlightenment, noun and verb; The Journey is more important then the Destination of becoming aware of a higher perspective.
The reason the first versions of DOOM brought down networks was its use of broadcast packets, it was patched out in later versions.
Those packets would repeat across routers to other locations over wan links and more, total network mayhem back then. I dont recall the game using any special amount of bandwidth at all beyond the broadcast packet problem.
Once it was patched it was mostly benign on a local segment.