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Games Entertainment

Doom Archive Reopened 265

Posted by michael from the boom-click-click-boom-click-click dept.
Obiwan Kenobi writes "Computer game history buffs rejoice: Lee Killough's Doom Archive has been reopened at John Romero's site. Its been offline since 1998, when it was handed to Romero to look after, and has finally resurfaced. The info inside is priceless, if a bit Romero-centric, but who can deny the nostalgia of downloadable alpha versions, beta screenshots (complete with wild health meters) and the original Doom Press Release where the game tagline reads "Doom-the sanest place is behind a trigger.""
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Doom Archive Reopened More

Doom Archive Reopened

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  • What a great caretaker (Score:3, Funny)

    by Raul654 ( 453029 ) on Thursday December 19, 2002 @10:57PM (#4927704) Homepage
    Its been offline since 1998, when it was handed to Romero to look after, and has finally resurfaced.

    Oh, how reassuring.
    • That John Romero chick is hot!

    • Why Doom Sucks. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by cosmosis ( 221542 ) on Friday December 20, 2002 @02:51AM (#4928344) Homepage
      OK, I can't hold it anylong - Doom really sucks

      It has done more to ruin the state of game playing than any game in history.

      For those of you who were around playing games 10 years ago and longer, have the best chance have understanding why this is. Lets recap:

      So what do we have today?

      We have fantastic hardware and storage capacity. We have incredibly elegant graphic and AI algorithms that make the gaming experience itself very compelling. The advent of Doom was the first truly compelling real-time 3D engine. And it was precisely at that time that gaming has gone down hill. What Doom did for gaming in a positive way (fast rendering engines) it did as much or more in a negative way (dark, repetitive, single-minded (mindless) activity).

      And because of the popularity and thus (financially lucrativness) of Doom we've now had to suffer hundreds of mind-numbing shoot-em-up games since. The overwhelming majority of games on the shelves today, are first-person action games where killing is the primary activity. This isn't so bad, if it weren't for the very depressing worlds, that this mayhem takes place in. Have you ever noticed that all the worlds these games take place in our DARK, DANK, and DYSTOPIAN??

      People might counter and say what about Myst, or SIMS, or the Star Wars and Star Trek franchises. Well Myst is an exception, but whatever happened to the old-fashioned adventure games? Even the Star Trek and Star Wars gaming franchises have succumbed to the Doominization of gaming. So now you can be a starfleet office whose primary duty is to kill as many bad evil aliens as possible! Whoopee! Or be some variation of a Jedi whose primary mission is to kill as many bad guys as possible. And sure enough all of these killing sprees take place in dark, dank, and depressing settings.

      Ok, so what I am proposing?

      Bring back the adventure games!!! We have all of the hardware and software algorithms now to make adventure games light-years beyond what was available with Ultima 7 or Zork, etc. Not only could we have far-out sci-fi, fantasy adventure worlds, but also we could explore these worlds in first person 3-D now. We could even throw in some real-time shoot-em-ups to spice it up. Why can't we have a game that combines the best of the spirit of true adventure games with the best of the shoot-em-ups?

      Imagine a game, where there are hundreds of planets to explore. All of these planets are unique and compelling. Some of these worlds would have alien civilizations or spaceports and colonists, others would be hostile to life. On each of these worlds, lies mysteries waiting to be explored - pieces of a large puzzle that need to be solved. Perhaps we could just explore these worlds as part of a larger strategy of building our characters like we would in traditional RPG. And of all of this exploring could take place in full-immersion real-time 3D. And why oh why, can't we have worlds that are both compelling and beautiful and inspiring to look at?

      Has anyone else noticed? Perhaps this is why I have not bought a single PC game in at least three years now.

      Planet P Blog [planetp.cc] - Librety with Technology.

      • Re:Why Doom Sucks. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Proc6 ( 518858 ) on Friday December 20, 2002 @03:39AM (#4928437)
        Amen brother. Amen. I have felt the exact same as you for years. I love games. Yet I cannot find a single one I can stand playing for more than 2 minutes. No one makes "Games" in my opinion. Today's crap should be called "Linear, repetitive, entertainment excersizes."

        My definition of a game is something where a rather simple set of rules can turn into an almost unlimited possible outcomes. Think of chess. Chess is like Langston's Ant [samskivert.com], where just a few rather trivial rules are pitted against each other, yet the tree of possible outcomes and strategies is absolutely insanely difficult to calculate. You could learn to play in an hour, you can spend the rest of your life reading and practicing and always improve. It's truly beautiful.

        So with all this powerful hardware, where are the games like that? Where are the carefuly setup rulesets that provide constraints, yet a chaotic, non-linear equation type amount of freedom? Not this "run, run, jump, jump, duck... ooops slipped. Try again. run, run, jump, duck... oops, slipped, try again." Or "kill everybody in a row, run to the exit. Kill everybody in a row, run to the exit." That is embarassingly idiotic.

        But, maybe we shouldn't expect otherwise. Games have fallen into the same trap as movies. The demand for payoff is larger, thus the budget must be bigger, because the audience must be wider. The wider the audience, the more dumbed-down the game must become. Ridley Scott said, in Future Noir [amazon.com], the same thing will continue happening to movies till you just can't even break even anymore. Then ... maybe ... the industry will start over and start nichifying again.

        It's sad too. You can see a "hint" of it, like in games like Diablo or Age of Empires, or the Grand Theft Auto series. Give people freedom. That's what they want. Don't setup the path, setup the rules, and people will breathe the kind of life THEY want into the game, by playing it THEIR way. And look what happens, those games become wildly successful. But it's like the idiot game designers miss the point, they give the credit for success to the graphics, so, like for Age of Empires, rather than in the next one, building on the chess like attributes they decided to spend all their time and money on a 3D engine which did exactly nothing for the game. So now we have the exact same ruleset, in fact, dumbed down as compared to AOK, but a glorious new tileset that does nothing for the playability. Its frustrating. Look at this recent Slashdot post and you'll see why the situation isn't going to get any better anytime soon. [slashdot.org]

        Anyway, that's my rant. Sorry, I just agree with the original poster 100% and I hope that one day all the people forwarding the success of the clone army of Quake-style games will taste the true satisfaction of an open/world, Langston's Ant type game, and demand more of it from the game makers.

        • Re:Why Doom Sucks. (Score:5, Interesting)

          by cosmosis ( 221542 ) on Friday December 20, 2002 @04:02AM (#4928481) Homepage
          Fantastic post Proc6, and thanks for the compliments. I went to Langstons Ants, and I can assume and hope this is the same Langston who attended my Alma Mater (U of Az) and is the pioneer of Artificial Life?

          I discovered Chris Langston back in 1987, when he gave a talk at UofA about his work and his new book Artificial Life (of which there are several volumes now). A few weeks after his talk, I had this huge intuite leap, and started to develop an entirely new Game Engine for Adventure games. The idea, is that there would be a large number of n-variables - people, chain-of-events, scenarios, etc. That way as you played the game it would through various degrees of strength effect the rest of the world in obvious and very subtle ways. Like cause and effect, the rest of the game world would could continue to morph and change on one side while you were playing on the other. Then about 18 months later, the original SIMS game came out, and they beat me to the punch. Oh well.

          My original idea for this game, and I would still like to see something like it develop an adventure game where you started out a someone in 1987 earth (now 2003), and your goal was to reach the center of the galaxy. That means that you had to live long enough to make it there, or discover some kind of FTL drive sooner than that. So in the game you would a nearly unlimted number of ways to make it there - make millions so you could have yourslef cryonically frozen, or afford the best longevity medicine, invest in the right technologies such as nanotechnology, allie yourslef with the right syndicates so that you were on the winning side, etc, etc. Anyway, it was a great idea back in 1987, and I would love to see something even remotely close to it now.

          I will re-iterate:

          The state of gaming today is totally pathetic.

          Planet P Blog [planetp.cc] - Liberty with Technology.

        • Re:Why Doom Sucks. (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Chris Carollo ( 251937 ) on Friday December 20, 2002 @09:53AM (#4929520)
          Out of curiousity, have you played Thief 1 or 2, System Shock 2, or Deus Ex?

          Much of your rant lines up pretty well with the design philosophies we had at Looking Glass (and I know Irrational shared), and that we have currently at Ion Storm. So I'm curious as to your take on how well we've accomplished our goals.

          Chris Carollo
          Deus Ex 2 Lead Programmer
          • Buddy, Desu Ex ROCKS!

            I'm replaying the GOTY Edition for the umpteenth time. Each time has been a new experience. Should I play stealthily? Should I go full out fragfest? Will I sell out to the dark side? Will I try to get zero kills, or just pop 'em from afar?

            I haven't tried the Thief series, but I have to say that Deus Ex was the biggest diversionary FPS (if you can call it that) since Duke Nukem 3D and Nocturne.

            Everything else just seems to be shiny replacements for Wolfenstein.

        • People love to bitch about the "current state of gaming."

          You think there weren't shit games when Doom came out? I know; I was there. Crappy puzzle games, endless side-scrollers, bad shooters, and mediocre RTS games.

          Have you not played Deus Ex? Or Black and White? How about taken a look at the next SimCity? Do you remember Half-Life? Or, as mentioned before, the Sims?

          There have always been good games and bad games. Don't fall into the trap of "things were better back when..."
        • " Chess is like Langston's Ant [samskivert.com], where just a few rather trivial rules are pitted against each other, yet the tree of possible outcomes and strategies is absolutely insanely difficult to calculate. "

          Are you kidding? Chess is BORING. At least it was until the modding community got a hold of it. Chess Rally Capture the Duck is awesome!

      • Re:Why Doom Sucks. (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Negatyfus ( 602326 )
        What's wrong with dark, depressing and dystopian? I like dark, depressing and dystopian!

        It is true that many mind-less first person shooters have spawned into existence since the release of Doom, but certainly this is not the only sort of game that is unleashed upon humanity today.

        As for 3D adventure games, I liked Under A Killing Moon [mobygames.com] a lot. It has a compelling storyline, great graphics and yes, a dark, depressing and dystopian 3D environment. It's awesome!

        More recently, I finished Sierra's Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned [sierra.com]. It too has beautiful 3D graphics (for its time) and a great in-depth plot. Lots of things to explore and figure out, and I think it does justice to the old adventure genre in that respect.

        As for RPG's since Doom, you may have forgotten about Baldur's Gate [interplay.com], which is-- God forbid-- a 2D game, as is it's successor Baldur's Gate II [interplay.com], but if you want 3D exploration, let's have a look at Neverwinter Nights [neverwinternights.com] or maybe you've got more interest in mindless hack & slack ala Dungeon Siege [dungeonsiege.com]. Let's not forget the more recent hits in mindlessness; I think good fun can be had with Grand Theft Auto 3 [rockstargames.com], despite it being mindless, but if you want something more intelligent in that vein, have a look at Mafia [mafia-game.com].

        So, no. I don't think the gaming industry is totally down the drain. It could be better, it always can be. There's no such thing as the perfect game for everybody.
      • This isn't so bad, if it weren't for the very depressing worlds, that this mayhem takes place in. Have you ever noticed that all the worlds these games take place in our DARK, DANK, and DYSTOPIAN??

        Sounds like home to me. But then again, not everyone is from the Slums of South Durham.
      • > Has anyone else noticed? Perhaps this is why I have not bought a single PC game in at least three years now.

        I bought a few : Q3 Team Arena (not that dark) and Unreal.

        BTW, Doom was really playable and fun, just compare it with "Prince Of Persia" 1 where you had to minutiously hit your keyboard to walk (not run) or just fall in the first hole...

        I only know one game which had a better gameplay : Commander Keen (4 to 6) by the same team.

        So, I have to say your comment is quite trollish but you explain why : you're not addicted to this genre bvut rather to adventure games.

      • Re:Why Doom Sucks. (Score:2, Insightful)

        by geekster ( 87252 )
        Actually, if you look at the games from 10 years ago you'll see a lot of side scrolling shooters and platform games.

        But I agree, more adventure games! Good thing that Sam n' Max 2 and Full Throttle 2 is coming.
      • Mario Sunshine is certainly not dark and distopian. It gives you worlds to explore. I haven't played anything else from the Gamecube, but given Nintendo's history, I'm sure that there are many other bright, cheerful games.
      • I think you got the chicken-and-egg problem solved the wrong way. Remember the 60s to 80s? Post-nuclear apocalypse was all the rage, from Wasteland to Mad Max. Why? Because real life threatened the entire world with sudden thermonuclear destruction, and people used movies, books, and games to cope with the issue.

        Then we hit the 80s and 90s and cyberpunk and dystopia are all the rage. Economic downturn, return to facist political systems, apathy, culture shock, corruption. Have you considered that this is what is really bothering people, scaring them, and they use the computer games to vent these fears, to deal with them in some way?

        • I think you make a good point, but during the same time period we had scores of fantastic visionary utopian fiction. We got Star Wars and Star Trek during the height of the cold war. We also gots lots of very interesting sci-fi coming out both in print and in movies during that time. But you have me thinking too about what people tend to gravitate towards depending on the current political-social climate. With are rapid slide into opressive facism, I'm curious what type of games and movies will come out in the next couple of years. Speilbergs 'Minority Report' is a perfect response to the current trends such Poindexter's TIA.

          Planet P Blog [planetp.cc] - Liberty with Technology.
      • I think Bethesda Softworks [bethsoft.com] have been creating games similar to the ones you want to see. Try playing Daggerfall and now Morrowind. I haven't played Morrowind personally, but it looks incredible :-)
      • ...that you got owned by a twelve year old with one of those 1337 h/\><><0r names?
      • > It has done more to ruin the state of game playing than any game in history.

        And what have *you* done to improve it? What games have you worked on that makes gamers think different?? (And yes, I'm a game developer, so I'm doing my [little] part.)

        Blaming Doom for *all* of the problem that publishers (and developers) want to maximize profits at the expense of gameplay shows an extremely ignorant view of gaming history. The obsession with presentation over substance has been going on for the past 10+ years!

        While I agree that many developers/publishers have "sequelitis" (I feel the same as you but in the movie industry - I don't go to theaters anymore to see the same plot/explosions retold), and also agree that by and large, more games are just last years games repackaged with better graphics & sound without much thought to improving gameplay - there *are* developers/publishers trying to be innovative - both commercial games (Sims, GTA3, Morrowind, Majesty, Halo, Animal Crossing, etc), and indie games (TreadMarks, etc) There are gems out there, you just have to look.
      • Ok, so what I am proposing?

        Bring back the adventure games!!!

        Yeah - no doubt. A modern day Kings Quest game done as an FPS!! That would rock!
      • It isn't Doom's fault that there have been a hundred imitators. Doom was a very pleasant change and the imagery was fresh and exciting at the time. It was just one game, and it was damned good in its niche.

        You can bitch about the legacy (that Doom's niche has somehow perversely become so dominant), that's understandable. But don't blame the one who started it. Your real problem is that people suck (not Doom), because they're so imitative, trend-following, and formulaic.

  • Oh to look back at history... (Score:5, Funny)

    by inteller ( 599544 ) on Thursday December 19, 2002 @10:59PM (#4927707)
    The game runs fine on a 386sx, and on a 486/33, we're talking 35 frames per second, fully texture-mapped at normal detail, for a large area of the screen.

    I think little handheld thingies from Tiger do this now :)

  • Ok. Time for the +1 funny comment (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 19, 2002 @11:00PM (#4927712)
    ... And now thanks to /., it's offline again!

  • daikatana? (Score:5, Funny)

    by 3Y3 ( 302858 ) on Thursday December 19, 2002 @11:05PM (#4927735)
    So when can we get a full daikatana archive? What? nobody else want the alpha's for that?

  • 9 Years Later (Score:5, Funny)

    by hoagieslapper ( 593527 ) <hoagieslapper@gmail.com> on Thursday December 19, 2002 @11:06PM (#4927737)
    It's been close to 9 years since I first played doom and I still find myself strafing around corners from time to time.

    • That's on the list! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 19, 2002 @11:27PM (#4927810)
      You know you have been playing DOOM too long when...

      ...going to sleep you open the bedroom's door and instead of turning lights on you fire a missile into the room.

      ...you sleep with a chainsaw under your pillow,and justify it with 'you never know what lurks in the dark'.

      ...going into a room or getting off an elevator, you run in and out quickly to see what follows you out.

      ...you don't worry so much about getting hurt, since you'll probably pick up one of those blue spheres somewhere.

      ...watching someone come out of an elevator makes your mouse finger twitch.

      ...the dog growls and you dive over the couch while reaching for a shotgun.

      ...you find yourself strafing around corners from time to time.

      ...you push on a wall as you walk down the hall looking for secret entrances.

      ...you rush for a neon-blue down vest in K-Mart.

      ...you reach for your chainsaw when your wife's cold gives her the sniffles.

      ...you search for a radiation suit before going into a swimming pool.

      ...you instinctively target trash cans while walking around campus/work.

      ...you look for sniper spots above you when getting in an elevator.

      ...you can't stop squinting as you walk around your house.

      ...you think you can actually walk through walls.

      ...you start making chainsaw noises if you hear a strange noise.

      ...you wish you had a chainsaw, just in case.

      ...you buy a radiation suit and Infra-red goggles, just in case.

    • Yeah I remember playing this in the computer room at high school after hours. When finally getting out again i found myself looking at both directions before going out from the room. The feeling of it all was complete when there was this one light in the halls that were broken so it was blinking.

      But what is just as bad is that when I played Doom, I also found myself moving around with the chair (which had wheels) and when sneaking around i shifted my position in the chair to get a better look around the corner. Sad, really...

    • Strafing around corners isn't actually that bad an idea, so you can see if someone is going to run into you. The time to worry is when you run diagonally and never jump, step up more than 6 inches, or try to move objects.

  • Service Temporarily Unavailable- Here's the index (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 19, 2002 @11:08PM (#4927746)
    Contents

  • Features in the alpha / beta versions (Score:4, Interesting)

    by galaga79 ( 307346 ) on Thursday December 19, 2002 @11:08PM (#4927747) Homepage
    Does anyone know if the beta and alpha versions had any features that were cut out of the final version of Doom? I noticed two such features just reading the documentation.

    The most interesting thing about this version is the different BFG -- it causes many fireballs to come out in many directions. See screenshots.

    Fireballs ricochet off of floors and ceilings.

  • Yikes (Score:3, Interesting)

    by vasqzr ( 619165 ) <vasqzr@nosPAM.netscape.net> on Thursday December 19, 2002 @11:09PM (#4927749)

    Most of the improvment seems to be in the 'lighting' that made the retail game so scary and not so cartoonish.

    There doesn't seem to be any lighting in these screen shots, and the game looks VERY amatuer.

    Look at some of the other screens. This just shows ID released the game when they had everything looking right, in a 'Doom' sort of way.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Yikes (Score:3, Insightful)

      by dameron ( 307970 )
      the game looks VERY amatuer.

      No, the game looked state of the art, even without the lighting and level changes. At the time only "Ultima Underworld" was remotely close to what Doom would become.

      For a quick kick in the pants to your favorite Luddite show them a screenshot of alpha doom, then show them a movie from the lastest Doom beta while chanting: "It's only been nine years, it's only been nine years..."

      Take a close look yourself and realize what the future holds. FPS games in 2011 should make Doom III look like these "amateurish" screenshots. We'll probably have Carmack to thank even then, or in 2022 when Doom VI looks like crap in comparison to Doom III. Should be fun...

      Hell, I'll probably be playing FPSs until advanced age makes it too difficult, sometime around 2035... then I'll camp...

      -dameron
      • Doom III? I'm not a doom obsessive (:-)) but wasn't there a game released called something like 'Final Doom' - signifying the last Doom installment?

  • Console Programming (Score:3, Interesting)

    by VoidEngineer ( 633446 ) on Thursday December 19, 2002 @11:11PM (#4927756)
    You know... Doom is just the right level of game play, nowdays, for entry level console game programmers. Wanna design a 3D engine for the Playstation 3? A 3D engine for the X-Box 2? I'd bet that those Doom screenshots could be the perfect beginning of a major game manufacturing group for the next generation of gaming consoles. A group of nerds needs to sit down and reverse engineer the mathematics of that 3D engine. Perhaps approach the problem as a programming challenge to design and code the new engine entirely in fractals and menger spaces.

  • Mr. Romero,

    Puting aside all the splattered corpses, deranged vertebrae, snarling beasts of death, and moppy hair, what inspired you to be the the man to control the immortal death-spawning machine of E1M30?

    Will I meet you again, some form or another, maybe even in a healthkit, somewhere within the scope of Doom3? It wouldn't be the same without you...Carmack thinks a good game is moreso implementation than creativity. You are the creativity, Carmack was the implementation; separate, we would see somthing less.

  • Stencil Shadows? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Nasheer ( 179086 ) on Thursday December 19, 2002 @11:18PM (#4927780) Journal
    The source code of Doom was released a long time ago.
    Wouldn't it be sweet if Stencil Shadows [apple.com] were implemented, just like it was in Quake 1 [sourceforge.net]?

    God, I am felling weird again. Just like in the old times of Doom 2...

  • Wow 10 years (Score:3, Informative)

    by RumpRoast ( 635348 ) on Thursday December 19, 2002 @11:19PM (#4927786)
    It strike anyone else that this seems like sort of a long time? It's been almost that long since the original release.
    Revolutionary Programming and Advanced Design Make For Great Gameplay


    DALLAS, Texas, January 1, 1993-Heralding another technical revolution in PC programming, Id Software's DOOM promises to push back the boundaries of what was thought possible on a 386sx or better computer. The company plans to release DOOM for the PC in the third quarter of 1993, with versions planned for Windows, Windows NT, and a version for the NeXTall to be released later.
    • Yikes, makes you wonder what you're doing with life. :-P

      I mean...

      1993: Playing Doom to death.
      2003: Eagerly awaiting Doom III.

      That's kinda disturbing... :-(

  • "Its been offline since 1998" (Score:3, Funny)

    by Superfreaker ( 581067 ) on Thursday December 19, 2002 @11:22PM (#4927799) Homepage Journal
    And now again in 2002.

  • Hrm, his site may be down (Score:3, Informative)

    by dethl ( 626353 ) on Thursday December 19, 2002 @11:33PM (#4927830)
    But hes teaching for the Arts and Engineering program at the University of Texas at Dallas (where I'm hoping to go, major in computer science however)... Why yes [utdallas.edu] this IS John Romero's name on the faculty list :P

  • smashing pumpkins (Score:4, Informative)

    by WilyKit ( 68796 ) on Thursday December 19, 2002 @11:39PM (#4927853)
    Sign the petition [idspispopd.com] to get IDSPISPOPD in Doom 3!
  • It's not a coincidence that the screencaptures are all exactly the same resolution as my Casio E125 Pocket PC. Carmack and the boys were way ahead of the curve waaaay back then, coding for my PDA.

    Good job!

  • ID hit the nail on the head on this one.. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cowmix ( 10566 ) <mmarch@g[ ]l.com ['mai' in gap]> on Thursday December 19, 2002 @11:46PM (#4927874) Homepage
    "This is the first game to really exploit the power of LANs and modems to their full potential. In 1993, we fully expect to be the number one cause of decreased productivity in businesses around the world."

    Yep, my small little ISP in '93 was brought to its knees because of this program..
    • I don't think GameSpy game out till 94 or so where it encapsulated IPX packets into TCP over the net, and even then it was too damn slow to use.
    • "In 1993, we fully expect to be the number one cause of decreased productivity in businesses around the world."

      It happened to Trent Reznor (of Nine Inch Nails) too - he played so much Doom that it got in the way of his work. Unexpectedly, the record he put out after getting over his Doom addiction ("The Downward Spiral") turned out to be a smash multi-platinum hit. We (should) all know that he went on to do the sound effects & music soundtrack to Quake.

      An aside: how many of you DIDN'T know what the "NIN" stood for on the boxes of nails in Quake? (Admit it - I've caught a few people that didn't know that.) It was another iD joke - John Carmack put a NIN graphic on the boxes during beta testing, as a joke & tribute to Trent Reznor, and it make it to the final product.

  • My favorite quote from the press release... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 19, 2002 @11:50PM (#4927887)
    "The game runs fine on a 386sx, and on a 486/33, we're talking 35 frames per second, fully texture-mapped at normal detail, for a large area of the screen. That's the fastest texture-mapping around-period."

    Well, we cant argue with the facts...

  • How can I run those? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by tweakt ( 325224 ) on Thursday December 19, 2002 @11:52PM (#4927892) Homepage
    The old versions of DOOM won't run under modern OS's... anyone know how to get them running under, say win XP ? Or do I need VMWare or similar?

  • I have a theory DOOM III will be out on 12/10/2003 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by antdude ( 79039 ) on Thursday December 19, 2002 @11:57PM (#4927908) Homepage Journal
    It might be a demo, full version, or a test version. It would be a good way to celebrate 10 years of DOOM. ;)

  • Thankyou DOOM, ID, and Cthulu. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Hagmonk ( 201689 ) <luke.burton@echidna@id@au> on Friday December 20, 2002 @12:01AM (#4927923) Homepage
    Not just a landmark in the gaming community, but in my life. It sculpted me into what I am today.

    Suddenly, fast hardware was important. Getting friends around to deathmatch was important. Writing my own levels and sound effects files was important. I was shelling open the machine, squeezing out as much performance as possible. I was learning about graphics, about 3D design.

    My reflexes became honed. I surprised people with my ability to notice pencils rolling off the table and catch them before they even had time to register something was happening.

    Out of sheer time at a keyboard, both in and out of the game, I started typing at over 100 words per minute. I could mouse around a GUI quicker than people thought reasonable.

    I discovered the internet. I payed $9 per hour to access it in Australian dollars, and that didn't include the timed STD calls I had to make to get to the ISP. I consumed every map file I could lay my hands on. I discovered porn, e-mail, gopher, the web, FTP, IRC in that order. I started making friends with people I had never seen in real life. I used Kali because Doom lacked TCP/IP support.

    Now I am an I.T. professional, still as passionate as I was the first time I layed hands on the Doom I shareware installation floppies (that a thoughtful person in a Canberra computer games store copied for me). I still get shivers when I hear the Doom I map 1 music (it's my polyphonic mobile phone ring).

    Without Doom, my passion for computers would not have developed, and I would probably not be posting to slashdot today.

    May Cthulu bless ID and all their works.

  • quoth (Score:5, Funny)

    by zephc ( 225327 ) on Friday December 20, 2002 @12:05AM (#4927938)
    "Its been offline since 1998, when it was handed to Romero to look after [...]"

    He's a crappy webmaster too!
  • IDKFA hahahahahaha!

  • Similarities between Doom III Alpha and Doom ideas (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jugalator ( 259273 ) on Friday December 20, 2002 @02:29AM (#4928285) Journal
    Found some interesting stuff in the Doom Bible by Tim Willits (things not making it into Doom I):

    Bruiser Brothers
    Twin terrors at the end of episode one

    These were never used, but there are an unused "monster_demon_bruiser" in the leaked Doom III Alpha files.

    A short while later, a strange alien creature bursts into the room. ("What the hell?") A fight ensures.

    No monster breaks into a room in Doom I, but a strange half-machine "pinky" demon does break into a room in the Doom III Alpha.

    Just two things I noticed from a quick browse... Perhaps there are more. :)

  • Card playing marines= Half Life (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    That's the first thing I thought of when I saw that screenshot of the Space Marines playing cards before the dimmensional break. Like the scientist banging on the soda machine looking for his quarter and the Barneys walking around in the locker room and on the can (excuse me I'm in here!). That would be cool if they would re-release the game with all this cutting room floor stuff like more story line and different weapons into the game, like the Dragon in the original Quake that never made it.

  • What's in a name? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mraymer ( 516227 ) <(ten.letyrutnec) (ta) (remyarm)> on Friday December 20, 2002 @05:17AM (#4928596) Homepage Journal
    Carmack said, "There is a scene in "The Color of Money" where Tom Cruise shows up at a pool hall with a custom pool cue in a case. "What do you have in there?" asks someone. "Doom." replied Cruise with a cocky grin. That, and the resulting carnage, was how I viewed us springing the game on the industry."

    Hehe, an interesting look into history, eh? By the way, I beat Ultimate Doom on Ultraviolent. I tried Nightmare but I just couldn't get use to the damn respawning. Umm, I failed a few classes that year, too. In retrospect... of course it was worth it! ;)

  • Blood on the Wall (Score:3, Interesting)

    by katalyst ( 618126 ) on Friday December 20, 2002 @05:58AM (#4928673) Homepage
    When you do something different, it doesn't have to be special of perfect, because it is different. And that is what Doom did. It may not have been the most creative game around, but it had way to many "firsts" to disregard. Doom is STILL making waves. You will find it on your GBA, and now on mobile phones (the new Nokias)!!! That speaks a lot for its popularity.
    Meanwhile, I'm surprised that only ONE post refered to the song.. aka.. blood on the wall [www.rome.ro]. It has been sung my an ex-Nazareth group member.. and that AGAIN says a lot for the popularity of the game. It's a gr8 song, better than lotsa the **** that plays these days....

  • A somewhat predictive exert. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 20, 2002 @06:11AM (#4928694)
    From the press release,
    "In 1993, we fully expect to be the number one cause of decreased productivity in businesses around the world."
    Best as I can remember, they came fairly close to doing just that :)

  • Doomlight shadow (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Alioth ( 221270 ) <no@spam> on Friday December 20, 2002 @07:51AM (#4928913) Journal
    The thing that made DOOM, and no other game since has managed to recreate (apart from the Alien DOOM mod, which was basically DOOM again) was the atmosphere.

    DOOM was a favorite on damp winter afternoons. I would play it wearing headphones so as to not disturb others in the house. It felt _creepy_. You felt a bit of anxiety as you could hear another Imp shuffling around the place, but couldn't tell exactly where he was. You'd jump when you went around a corner and suddenly heard one of those half-man-half-goat things shout "Wwooooooooooooooo!!!" and start hurling fireballs at you.

    I've not found an FPS since that does that for me. ID got the atmosphere absolutely right on that, and I hope they can recreate this in DOOM 3 - to a bigger extent with the graphics capabilities they should have.

    One afternoon, I was playing DOOM and got the fright of my life. I was playing along, headphones on, volume up, creeping around one of the levels when my housemate sneaked up behind me and threw one of those beanbag frogs that were used to prop open doors. The frog landed on my shoulder JUST as a room erupted with Imps. I almost died of fright!

    • One of the really effective bits in Doom was the sound effects. In particular, one little trick - they would vary the pitch of the monster sounds by a bit each time they played it. Simple but very effective - when there were a dozen demons somewhere around the corner, it really sounded like a snorting snarling herd and not just one growling over and over and over.

      I thought it was strange that I haven't seen this trick in any other games. Am I wrong?
  • Its been offline since 1998
    It may not be back online until 2006 by the time it recovers from the Slashdot attack

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