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The History of Doom On All Systems 150

Posted by timothy from the since-all-systems-are-doomed dept.
Consolevision writes: "This news from dcvision.com -- One of our great members (Steveffs) has written a great guide to the history of Doom, right from the beginning to the very newest ports of it, it is an exceptional read for those who have followed gaming for a long time. The History of Doom will take a short while to load as it is a rather large document but you will enjoy :)" This link is unfortunately to a .doc file, but Mr. Vision continues: "I have now split the History of Doom into 5 pages and converted to html for those who are having trouble with the rather large but very impressive doc file." Here are the pieces: Page1, Page2, Page3, Page4 and Page5
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The History of Doom On All Systems More

The History of Doom On All Systems

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  • Why a history of doom ?
    Some kiddies would say now: "Hey first graphical interactive 3D game" which is plain wrong at least Ultima Underworld came before and HAD A PLOT instead of shooting everything at moves (yes, you won't belive this !).
    Gaming over a network ?
    Done before. Even action games. Nothing new or creative.
    What was really innovative of DOOM ?
    Combing all these features ?
    Yes that's nice, but no innovation.

    I suppose DOOM's success is due to unlimited agression and violence, which was hardly found in many games before in this way (ok. Wolfenstein, but the Naziesque atmosphere was disapproved by too many potential players).

    • Re:Is DOOM overrated ? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Actually, no, it's because Doom is actually, I odn't know, fun. It had the right mix of the right things. I still play it to this day (whereas most FPSen bore me) -because the gameplay is good.- It hasn't been matched nor has anything similar been done since. (When you show me a recent FPS that handles lots and lots of enemies at a time while letting me move very quickly, let me know. I have yet to find one.)

      In essence, screw the technical merits. :P

    • Unless I was imagining the many many hours of fun I had playing doom years ago (and indeed more recently), then no, I dont see how it can be overrated. I dont think any game since has given me the same amount of enjoyment.
    • Everything in your above post is wrong, and I assume somehow skewed by your distaste for action-based 3D FPS's. Ultima Underworld, while a fantastic game in it's own right, is hardly an action game. Doom was innovative in so many ways I hardly have the time to cover it all.

      Short list of Doom's innovations:

      Graphical: Full screen, seamless 3D graphics at a good framerate on a mediocre-for-the-time PC. Ran well on a 386DX-40 or a 486SX-25. Had a completely revolutionary realtime lighting engine, with dynamic lighting effects and light diminishing. Handled an enormous number of sprites and textures compared to other 3D games of the time. Was the only game, other than Underworld, to have texturing on the ceiling and floor, variable height ceilings and floors, walls that were not all at 90 degree angles, and was the only game to do this FULL SCREEN.

      Audio: The first game to really use realistic digital audio and stereo effects effectively, in my opinion. Atmospheric noise and volume diminishing were used brilliantly.

      Atmosphere: The audio effects combined with the lighting engine actually made Doom scary. Doom was the first game that any large number of players would have actually described as "Scary", with the possible exception of the robot voices in Berzerk.

      Multiplayer: Yes, there were network games before, but Doom truly invented the "Death Match", and man was been waiting since the dawn of time to realistically, artificially kill each other in some sort of cyberspace. Quake and the Internet really made it happen, but Doom certainly was the stepping stone. Perhaps truly the greatest thing since sliced bread.

      Mods: You'd have to have brain damage to overlook Doom's greatest contribution, which has sent a shockwave through the gaming community that has changed everything forever. Doom was dissected and reconstructed a million times over by it's fans. Now this is expected of all FPS's, as well as most computer games. Even console games are getting level and character editors these days!

      Are you crazy man? It's DOOM we're talkin' bout here? It's up there with Pac-man, Street Fighter II and Tony Hawk! It doesn't matter if you don't like those games, they are the greatest of the great, and any true gamer would poop on you for not showing proper respect. I need my medication.

      Chris Barger
      Chief Editor of
      www.gigapowergaming.com
  • Anyone want to volunteer to clean this up and repost it? Sounds pretty interesting, if you can wade through the bad grammar and spelling.
  • I'm wondering why doom gets so much attention as the one that started it all. Wolfenstein came out before doom and was from ID.

    Oh how I loved that game, with its blue bricks and grey floors. It used to run incredibly fast on a crappy old 386 - any one know if there is a version for Linux?
    • Umm, yes [uoregon.edu]
      Although, I will say being able to run Doom on anything simply rules. It's one of my favorite games of all time. I remember typing in the code for my TI-85 [brownell.edu] (cuz I broke my uplink when I dropped it) and playing it in Math class. I wish those things had IR ports for LAN parties. I wonder if someone would be able to somehow port it into a Lego Mindstorms hack?
    • I read somewhere that Wolfenstein's illusions of 3d were done by stretching textures whereas Doom acutally tiled them or whatever to create a real 3d space.

    • The reason Doom "started it" and Wolfenstein 3d didn't was:

      • Doom was fun to play and Wolf wasn't.
      • Doom's filespecs were quickly documented so there were lots of addons. Very few addons for Wolf.

  • History of Doom (Score:2, Informative)

    by torqer ( 538711 )
    Man, I love this. Doom is a probably the game that deserves a history written of it. It sparked the revolution the gaming and technology industries. And yes I know that it wasn't the first FPS (First Person Shooter), but it brought FPS to the masses of the world. And thus, earned the right to be revered in such a manner.

  • A couple corrections... (Score:5, Informative)

    by coupland ( 160334 ) <dchase@hotmailCHEETAH.com minus cat> on Saturday November 24, 2001 @12:21PM (#2606904) Journal

    A great article but I noted a couple historical anomalies:

    ID software was created and was composed by John Romero, John Carmack, Tom Hall and Adrian Carmack.

    Adrian Carmack didn't actually join until near the end of the first Commander Keen game. Hence the difference in artwork between the first and second trilogy.

    January 1993 : The first previews of Doom appeared in the press.

    Actually, Jan 1993 was when the game was announced. Screenshots weren't released until Mar, 1993.

    August 1993 : An unauthorized beta version of the game appeared, I don't know if it was voluntary

    The first leaked alpha appeared Feb 4th, 1993 and was unintended. Another alpha was leaked Apr 2nd, 1993 a beta on May 22nd, 1993, and finally a press beta on Oct 4th, 1993. Only the screenshots of Mar, 1993 were authorized.

    It sure is fun to think back on the old days!

  • Doom developed on NeXT? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by reynaert ( 264437 ) on Saturday November 24, 2001 @12:21PM (#2606905)
    I heard a couple of times Doom was developed on NeXT boxen. Another source claimed only the level design utility ran on NeXT. Is any of this true?
    • Well, considering NeXT was Carmack's primary development platform at the time I would assume the vast majority of development took place on NeXT, not just map-making.
    • It's unlikely that Carmack designed the game itself on NEXTSTEP for a couple of reasons. First, NeXT's development tools really wouldn't have been any better than vi for a video game, since you wouldn't be able to use InterfaceBuilder for the interface (there is none) and ProjectBuilder really offers nothing for a program that is written in pure C and targetted at the command line. Further, he would have had to write the game for Display PostScript instead of the VGA commands he'd eventually want to use, forcing him to eventually rewrite the game engine, and wouldn't be able to optimise anything in assembler, since NEXTSTEP at that time was 68k only and the main target platform was DOS, an x86-based OS with really nothing at all in common with NEXTSTEP. It is, however, highly believable that things like the map makers were designed on NEXTSTEP, since there you would be able to make full use of Interface Builder and the NeXT FoundationKit/AppKit to quickly develop those tools and portability wasn't a concern.

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Saturday November 24, 2001 @12:46PM (#2606962)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • Are you sure? How would you write a VGA emulator for Display PostScript? VGA essentially is just an area of memory where you use a bit blitter to draw. Display PostScript is, well, the display version of PostScript. So for every single bit you blitted onto the VGA memory area, you'd generate three DPS calls: a moveto, a setrgbcolor, and a drawpoint (sorry if that last one's off, I haven't used DPS in a looooong time). And that's not even taking into account the context switching. That's a HUGE amount of overhead, especially for a game.....
      • NeXTSTEP had calls to allow you to bypass the DisplayPS and directly access the screen buffer.

  • Doom and ports (Score:3, Funny)

    by coupland ( 160334 ) <dchase@hotmailCHEETAH.com minus cat> on Saturday November 24, 2001 @12:25PM (#2606914) Journal
    And I'm happy to say I have an unopened copy of every single Doom port, compilation, or "mission pack" ever made. Sadly the only one I don't have is the original, phone-order Doom although I have got a later CD replacement from id.

  • Article forgets Doom for ZX Spectrum (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jtra ( 525331 ) on Saturday November 24, 2001 @12:32PM (#2606930) Homepage
    Article forgets several attempts to make Doom for ZX Spectrum, I have one on tape.
    here is another:
    http://www.pandroid.zetnet.co.uk/reviews/doom.htm [zetnet.co.uk]

    do a search on google for more.

  • Marathon Kicked it's pathetic little ass...
    --
  • I would say that Final Doom has the best level design out of the 3 Doom games.

    This I agree with, and a few of the add on levels created by other authors that I had d/l'ed over the years.

    I think it was TNT that had one level that you had to activate an invisible bridge.
    When I got to that particular level, I'd asked my supervisor (who'd gone thru it) he said rather cryptically..."You'll find the answer...and you'll be sooo pissed when you do".
    I got so frustrated I put that level down for a year.

    I was sooo pissed when I did find the solution.
    A shootable "wall" inside a little "rock window" off to the left, would activate an invisible bridge.

    That is what made DooM so great...It could piss you off like that and still be just as addictive as when you last left it.

  • PDF Version of Document (Score:3, Informative)

    by aliebrah ( 135162 ) on Saturday November 24, 2001 @12:49PM (#2606967) Homepage
    I've put up a PDF version [uchicago.edu] of the document for those who don't like Word or HTML formats for whatever reason. It's much smaller than the Word doc and weighs in at only 480KB.
  • Doom on all Systems? I thought this was an article on thinsg like Windows, DOS 4, the Empire Monkey B Virus (you know you remember it), HTML Email and other bad things.
  • Seeing as Doom had secret levels to wolfenstein if the new RTCW had "tributes" to DooM.

    Also, I don't recall seeing any snippets about the "Win-Doom" that allowed higher resolutions and the GLdoom ports (transparency, smoother grfx).

    Of course I can see the GL Doom being overlooked as I don't recall it ever being "finalized".

  • Doom at the end of the Earth (Score:5, Funny)

    by logandr ( 521767 ) on Saturday November 24, 2001 @01:22PM (#2607062)
    Back in '94 I was posted at a research station at the South Pole. The guys at ID sent us a complimentary copy of Doom along with a note: "We hope Doom doesn't turn you guys into a bunch of axe murders and you wind up killing each other but if it does please send us pictures..."

  • Did this deserve /.? (Score:2, Informative)

    by greysoul ( 62792 )
    Pre.S. Ok, before you all slam me for being a hypocrite, READ the whole paper....I'm not the best writer, but bear with me.

    I just read most of the Doom history article. I have made the following observation: It's well intended, perhaps, but...bad..very bad.

    I'm not an English teacher, rather I am a 22 year old college student, majoring in Fine Arts. I have had to write my share of papers, and in the realm of academia, and among my peers, this is a poorly written paper.

    This brings me to question Slashdot, and their decision to post this. The paper appears at first to be a hastily written article summarizing the history of id Software, and their Doom game. It then turns into a 3 page plug for the Doom movie (most of which I did not read, after getting tired of the typos and poor grammar). Was any editorial process used in reviewing the nature of the article before deciding it was worth posting? Rather, did an editor go "oooo, Doom...too long, no time to read, must be good, post it". What this comes out looking like, however, is a disguised plug for the Doom movie...

    And did anyone actually see any pictures? I didn't on either version.

    Anyways, </rant>

    -Doug
    • The guy obviously doesn't speak English as his first language, give him a break. Surely you realized this?

  • Hmm. This seems to be missing a lot.

    No mention of the rivals that were about at the time and this doesn't mention ANY game before wolf3d!

    Catacomb Abyss is a much better game than Wolfenstein 3D...

    From the credits:

    • Programming by Mike Maynard, Jim Row, and Nolan Martin
    • Art Direction by Steve Maines
    • Art Production by Steve Maines, Carol Ludden, Jerry Jones and Adrian Carmack
    • Quality Assurance by Jim Weiler and Judi Mangham
    • 3D Imaging Effects by ID Software

    So thats the precursor to the Wolf3d engine in a better games, with graphics done by Adrian Carmack (not relation to John) who later joined the iD crew. The same engine that was use in earlier iD game Catacomb 3D.

    Oh and for what it is worth it plays a bit like Blood. Any way check out the Apogee FAQ: html [rinkworks.com] & TXT [rinkworks.com]

    And more specifically the iD software bit http://rinkworks.com/apogee/s/2.7.2.shtml [rinkworks.com]

    • "So thats the precursor to the Wolf3d engine in a better games, with graphics done by Adrian Carmack (not relation to John) who later joined the iD crew. The same engine that was use in earlier iD game Catacomb 3D."

      Catacomb Abyss was released AFTER Wolf3D(november 1991 [mobygames.com] )and used a licenced and somewhat modified Wolfenstein 3D engine, so to say it came before Wolf3D is wrong. :)
  • before approving it and posting it on the slashdot mainpage.
  • I think a third grader could've written better. Seriously.. if you're going to brag about how good your paper on DOOM is, at least write it well. Lazy/stupid bastard.
  • A really useful utility.

    http://word2x.alcom.co.uk/

  • Seems like this is missing the biggest part (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Sloppy ( 14984 ) on Saturday November 24, 2001 @02:01PM (#2607218) Homepage Journal

    When Doom source was released and it suddenly got ported to every machine under the Sun, and people started improving the game engine. How can a "history of Doom" leave this out?

  • Oh for the love of Pete. Edit some more, resubmit. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kobotronic ( 240246 ) on Saturday November 24, 2001 @02:03PM (#2607228)
    "A great guide to the history of Doom..." - "An exceptional read" - "...but you will enjoy." -mkay, sure. So why was this item accepted?

    Other than the highly suspect grammar, the strange non-sequiteurs and exclamations ("He's alive!!!"), the bulleted list of DOOM levels and what looks like verbatim transcripts from the game documentation, was there really enough meat on this for even a mediocre slashdot news story, you think?

    Must be a slow day. Having read the HTML versions of the 'article', I must say I wasn't particularly inclined to download the 3.6 megabyte Microsoft Word document, though I assume I'd be rewarded with some BMP screenshots to go with the text.

    To the author. If you had to publish this as non-HTML document, you could and should have used Adobe Acrobat instead of Mickysoft Word.

    If you wanted to make a list of DOOM ports [doomworld.com], try at least to keep the list complete and accurate. I didn't see any mentioning of the unix, linux, Macintosh, BeOS, Amiga or Windows CE [revolution.cx] ports of the game. In any case, a list of ports is really not that interesting either unless you provide some back story and details for each. You could also provide download links and perhaps try and find and talk to some of the people responsible for those release. You know, try a little harder.

    Until you get your piece written properly, anyone remotely interested in the subject should instead go and visit Doomworld (http://doomworld.com/ports/index.shtml [doomworld.com]) which has good FAQs, interviews, articles and links instead of just copy/paste fluff.

  • I don't know about the rest of the article, but the whole section regarding the Doom movie was just copied / pasted from Corona's Doom Page [corona.bc.ca]. Maybe I missed the credits section?

  • It was nice... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Flounder ( 42112 ) on Saturday November 24, 2001 @02:10PM (#2607261)
    to reminice about Doom. I constantly monitored the wustl.edu ftp site the days before Doom was released. I even skipped a few classes because of rumors that the game was being uploaded to the site and would be available.

    Then, I finally got the game, and stayed up 48 hours straight finishing the game on Nightmare. Got some sleep, then dragged my system to a friends house, hooked up the null-modem cable, then proceeded to spend the next 36 hours playing deathmatch. Haven't wasted so much time on a single game since (at least till The Sims and Civ III came out).

    The history of Doom is an excellent topic to write about, I just wish the writer wrote more of a history, rather than just retyping the descriptions off the boxes and manuals. 3 pages cut and pasted from Coming Attractions?? Jeez! He didn't cover any of the differences between the early betas and the final released version. Nothing of the buildup of the hype (save for a brief mention).

    As much as I hate saying this (and this will get the anti-Katz-ites into a frenzy), this is a subject I'd like to see Jon cover. And have him get more into the effects of the game on society. Essentially creating a new genre (yes, I know there were other FPS out before, but Doom really caused the development of so many other games). Public outcry about the violence. Colombine (there, that alone should get Jon writing about it). Maybe even cover FPS games in general, not just focus on Doom. Cover the Doom spin-offs (Heretic, Rise of the Triad), some of the more thinking FPS games (System Shock) and the modern FPS (Quake III, Unreal, etc). C'mon, Jon. Give us something that would actually be interesting to read.

    • Then, I finally got the game, and stayed up 48 hours straight finishing the game on Nightmare.

      You probably mean Ultra-Violence here. I've been playing for years and still can't finish either Doom 1 or 2 at Nightmare, so a beginner surely couldn't.

      I consider myself pretty good at Doom, but I'm lucky if I survive the first few levels at Nightmare. Even the Doom Done Quick guys, who are probably among the best single-player Doom players in the world, did their Doom2 demo on Ultra-Violence. Have you ever heard of anybody who actually managed to finish Doom on Nightmare difficulty?

  • This wasn't hard. Fired up the old copy of word 97 saved it out as HTML, changed colors to something appropriate :-P , Threw together a quick freebie account, then posted the result -

    http://www.escalix.com/freepage/doomhistory/ [escalix.com]

    Graphics and all, in HTML format, it comes to 478K, the HTML alone was 65k

    The original word format was 3700+ K

    Go figure

  • As this is a trip down memory lane for most of us, I thought I would try to complete it. Here are some screen shots from the Alpha Version of Doom.

    http://www.shacknews.com/screens.x/alphadoom/Doom% 2520Alpha/2/thumbs

    FPS has come along way... but has it ever been as fun as it was?

  • What, no SGI XDoom listed in the ports?
    what gives???
  • This aticle forget some importants ports : Atari Jaguar (may the best ever), Macintosh, TI 92 (impresive)
  • What was most memorable about the original Doom was it's multiplayer mode. But even more memorable was the really poorly written network code which caused all machines on a public LAN to slow down(or lockup) if a Doom game was started. As I recall it used entirely broadcast packets, and this caused every computer to try to identify if they were meant for it.

    At most universities Doom was outlawed from the public computing labs, similarly at most corporations.

    It was quite the controversy, and they had to release a patch(or new version?) that included better networking code within a month or two.
  • Great article, but they forgot this:

    The DOOM kodak Digita OS port [slashdot.org]

    Sure its not very practical but my god, porting a first person shooter to a digital camera? Surely that deserves points just for the sheer insanity of it all.
  • Page 4 = Page 5
  • Here [stonedcow.com]

    Enjoy.
  • The first shareware version for DOOM was on 12/10/1993. It will be eight years soon. :)

  • I go0t and played GBA DOOM (which has some modifications from the original) and got on a DOOM kick where in the last week I've replayed DOOM, DOOM II, Ultimate DOOM (original DOOM plus an extra episode), and Final DOOM is on its way. What great games.

  • the best game based on the doom engine ever was made: ChexQuest!
  • "...broke the minds."

    Ah, the good old days. Back when id actually attempted to create a backstory, before they dropped all such pretenses with Quake 3. Now (Quake 4) they've gone and hired someone else (Raven) to take care of that nonsense for them, so they can devote their precious time to making the arm in the gib effect so realistic you can make out the individual fingernails and tell what the person had for dinner! Hooray!
  • but Marathon by far has a more interesting page, background, history, etc. that people are still going over. http://marathon.bungie.org/story/

    This friday was the 7th anniversary of it's demo release. A few months after Doom was released. Pathways into darkness, their previous game was out in 93 or so. With marathon bungie brought in tons of stuff to FPS also. Like mlook, rocket jumping, easy netplay (voice over lan also...), and awesome graphics. And to top it off, people are still playing it, porting it, and working on it (with a lot more success compared to what i have see for doom recently).

    Check it out, then play halo for a bit at a compusa or something, and drool.

  • SPISPOPD! (Score:2, Informative)

    by Seth Cohn ( 24111 )
    If you were on Usenet, waiting for Doom to arrive, you got bored. SPISPOPD was the result.
    A tribute site Richard Ward created... [trilobite.org] On the net, nothing ever dies, it's enshrined forever by someone.

    Seth (yes, that original idspispopd cheatcode/FAQ guy)
  • I can't read any more...the article breaks my mind!
  • The document has forgotten to include the Saturn version of Doom -- levels from Doom and Doom 2, plus CD audio tracks. Also, the 32X section is just two screen shots and doesn't include any comment on the simplified maps or other technical restrictions.

    It looks like one big cut and paste. And not even from many sources.

  • The article doesn't mention WinDoom (Doom running under Win 3.11/WFWg). I remember drooling over the screen shots at the end of my level editing book (can't remember the name). WinDoom eventually became Doom95 (I have a copy). Ported by our favorite evangelist, Alex St. John.
  • would have to be Doom for the GBA, which i almost bought today (decided against the NZ$119 pricetag though)

    Doom in the palm of your hand.. only problem is playing it in a darkened room for atmosphere, since the GBAs screen is so f*ckin shocking in low-light conditions.

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