The Rise of DOOM Chronicled on Retro Site for 'Shareware Heroes' Book (sharewareheroes.com) 26
SharewareHeroes.com recreates all the fonts and cursor you'd see after dialing up a local bulletin-board system in the early 1990s. It's to promote a new book — successfully crowdfunded by 970 backers — to chronicle "a critical yet long overlooked chapter in video game history: the rise and eventual fall of the shareware model.
The book promises to explore "a hidden games publishing market" that for several years "had no powerful giants," with games instead distributed "across the nascent internet for anyone to enjoy (and, if they liked it enough, pay for)."
And the site features a free excerpt from the chapter about DOOM: It seemed there was no stopping id Software. Commander Keen had given them their freedom, and Wolfenstein 3D's mega-success had earned them the financial cushion to do anything. But all they wanted was to beat the last game — to outdo both themselves and everyone else. And at the centre of that drive was a push for ever-better technology. By the time Wolfenstein 3D's commercial prequel Spear of Destiny hit retail shelves, John Carmack had already built a new engine.
This one had texture-mapped floors and ceilings — not just walls. It supported diminished lighting, which meant things far away could recede into the shadows, disappearing into the distance. And it had variable-height rooms, allowing for elevated platforms where projectile-throwing enemies could hang out, and most exciting of all it allowed for non-orthogonal walls — which meant that rooms could be odd-shaped, with walls jutting out at any arbitrary angle from each other, rather than the traditional rectangular boxed design that had defined first-person-perspective games up until then.
It ran at half the speed of Wolfenstein 3D's engine, but they were thinking about doing a 3D Keen game next — so that wouldn't matter. At least not until they saw it in action. Everyone but Tom Hall suddenly got excited about doing another shooter, which meant Carmack would have to optimise the hell out of his engine to restore that sense of speed. Briefly they considered a proposal from 20th Century Fox to do a licensed Aliens shooter, but they didn't like the idea of giving up their creative independence, so they considered how they could follow up Wolfenstein 3D with something new. Fighting aliens in space is old hat. This time it could be about fighting demons in space. This time it could be called DOOM.
The book's title is Shareware Heroes: The Renegades Who Redefined Gaming at the Dawn of the Internet — here's a page listing the people interviewed, as well as the book's table of contents.
And this chapter culminates with what happened when the first version of DOOM was finally released. "BBSs and FTP servers around America crashed under the immense load of hundreds of thousands of people clamouring to download the game on day one.
"Worse for universities around the country, people were jumping straight into the multiplayer once they had the game — and they kept crashing the university networks..."
The book promises to explore "a hidden games publishing market" that for several years "had no powerful giants," with games instead distributed "across the nascent internet for anyone to enjoy (and, if they liked it enough, pay for)."
And the site features a free excerpt from the chapter about DOOM: It seemed there was no stopping id Software. Commander Keen had given them their freedom, and Wolfenstein 3D's mega-success had earned them the financial cushion to do anything. But all they wanted was to beat the last game — to outdo both themselves and everyone else. And at the centre of that drive was a push for ever-better technology. By the time Wolfenstein 3D's commercial prequel Spear of Destiny hit retail shelves, John Carmack had already built a new engine.
This one had texture-mapped floors and ceilings — not just walls. It supported diminished lighting, which meant things far away could recede into the shadows, disappearing into the distance. And it had variable-height rooms, allowing for elevated platforms where projectile-throwing enemies could hang out, and most exciting of all it allowed for non-orthogonal walls — which meant that rooms could be odd-shaped, with walls jutting out at any arbitrary angle from each other, rather than the traditional rectangular boxed design that had defined first-person-perspective games up until then.
It ran at half the speed of Wolfenstein 3D's engine, but they were thinking about doing a 3D Keen game next — so that wouldn't matter. At least not until they saw it in action. Everyone but Tom Hall suddenly got excited about doing another shooter, which meant Carmack would have to optimise the hell out of his engine to restore that sense of speed. Briefly they considered a proposal from 20th Century Fox to do a licensed Aliens shooter, but they didn't like the idea of giving up their creative independence, so they considered how they could follow up Wolfenstein 3D with something new. Fighting aliens in space is old hat. This time it could be about fighting demons in space. This time it could be called DOOM.
The book's title is Shareware Heroes: The Renegades Who Redefined Gaming at the Dawn of the Internet — here's a page listing the people interviewed, as well as the book's table of contents.
And this chapter culminates with what happened when the first version of DOOM was finally released. "BBSs and FTP servers around America crashed under the immense load of hundreds of thousands of people clamouring to download the game on day one.
"Worse for universities around the country, people were jumping straight into the multiplayer once they had the game — and they kept crashing the university networks..."
It Is Still Just Shareware (Score:2)
Until I decide to pay for it. Only thing that has changed is the distribution model.
DOOM blew me away (Score:2)
I can recall my first experience of DOOM - it was mind blowing. A brilliant game, some of the things scared the sh!t out of me.
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All of those old games that did more with less were mind blowing. I had the Defender cart for the C-64. I don't think there was any way for the CPU to address more than 64k even with the cart in there. It was an amazing port, it even had a pretty good facsimile of the arcade sounds because the SID chip was also a marvel, although now that you've got me thinking about it C-64 [youtube.com] can't beat arcade sound [youtube.com] but the game play is spot on.
If I still had that system with the cart, I'd probably still play it and suck
It blew everyone away, but... (Score:2)
... DOOM - it was mind blowing. ...
DOOM blew everyone away. It was innovative and timed perfectly for the market. But this book isn't DOOM. And our fondness for DOOM is unlikely to translate to financial success for a work chronicling something we all watched happen. Because those who would be interested in the subject matter are those who don't need an education in it, because we watched it happen. Those who weren't around yet for that won't care. I don't see this as being a very successful book.
Who eventually made the Aliens game? (Score:2)
Was it on Jaguar or something? I'm having a hard time figuring out which of the umpty zillion games based on the franchise it was, but it was a very dark, very low framerate FPS around that era that I'm thinking of that sort of reminded me of Doom because of the enemy graphics.
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You are likely talking about Aliens: Total Conversion by Justin Fisher [fandom.com]. That was a freeware mod that turned out to be totally awesome. I used to play the game with the lights out and enjoyed getting terrified by the many jump-scares.
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Indeed. Alien vs Predator [wikipedia.org] was a pack-in game with the Atari Jaguar.
And then there have been better sequels on other platforms.
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That's the very one, thanks. It wasn't great, but it was fairly impressive at the time.
shareware was awesome for gaming ... (Score:2)
... back in the day.
It's how many first got to play doom - however they obtained it. ... at work.
I was late to the game, 1994 - by which time, I was already a daily internet user, so I got Doom shareware via FTP
I still didn't have a continuous internet connection at home, because I didn't have a telephone line.
Instead, I'd use the wiring in the flats I lived in to steal other people's phone connections in a very brute force manner to hook a modem up to a computer I "appropriated" from work. 14.4k modem spee
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Instead, I'd use the wiring in the flats I lived in to steal other people's phone connections in a very brute force manner to hook a modem up to a computer I "appropriated" from work.
Jesus, what a twat you were. I hope you've matured since then. If not, I hope you've been caught.
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It sounds like the UK, where everybody in the country was so poor that they paid by the minute even for local calls. I think this lasted until like 2007 or so when Elizabeth finally pulled the sword from the stone.
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It sounds like the UK, where everybody in the country was so poor that they paid by the minute even for local calls. I think this lasted until like 2007 or so when Elizabeth finally pulled the sword from the stone.
Didn't some people in the UK have a coin slot in their home electric meter? If they didn't keep putting a the Shillings in, the lights went out?
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Instead, I'd use the wiring in the flats I lived in to steal other people's phone connections in a very brute force manner to hook a modem up to a computer I "appropriated" from work.
Jesus, what a twat you were. I hope you've matured since then.
If not, I hope you've been caught.
I was a kid - I did stupid things.
We can't all have been total saints like you probably were as a teenager, right?
id started with Castle Wolfenstein (Score:2)
Downloaded it and Doom from BBS.
Soon I was a moderator on AOL to play and review Doom levels. Free unlimited to AOL for that.
Then I created a couple of Heretic Levels that published by SAM'S Books.
The created the Hexen Scripting Tutorial which had the first iteration to Quake-C.
I was busy with work and finally got the Hexen Scripting Tutorial out.
And then a couple of months later they released Quake, and that rocked the World.
Moved on from AOL and helped start the 2nd ISP in Summit County, CO.
Soon I was pl
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Honestly, I always found Heretic and Hexen to be better games than DOOM. Especially that damn chicken weapon.
I miss Ambrosia Software (Score:3)
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King of Mac Shareware. Ares, Darwinia, Escape Velocity....
EV was so much fun on my old SE/30. Don't forget Avara; it was like BattleTech.
Re: I miss Ambrosia Software (Score:2)
DOOM Darksynth (Score:3)
In case anyone is interested, there is a darksynth/synthwave song of DOOM [youtube.com].
SPX packets.... (Score:2)
A fuller shareware history than I'm used to (Score:3)
I was pleased to see that this book is not one of those sources that seem to credit Apogee with inventing shareware.
Just as people who started with the NES may not remember the Atari 2600, Intellivision, or Colecovision, people who first started getting shareware games by FTP are likely to know nothing about earier shareware. But the book covers it.
My first assembler was CHASM. The only word processor I used from 1985 to 1993 was PC-Write. [wikipedia.org]
When I got a modem in 1988, my friend gave me a copy of ProComm. [wikipedia.org] That was my only way to get online until late 1992, when I got my hands on Commo, [wikipedia.org] which was so much superior. Commo had a wonderful macro language for controlling just about every aspect of the program, and importantly, it had the ZMODEM [wikipedia.org] protocol built in.
Literally the first program I ever downloaded was PKXARC (technically, the self-extracting PKX35A35.EXE). You needed it in order to extract anything you downloaded. I was one of the users who got a misinformed version of the story of the battle between SEA and PKWare, and was an early adopter of PKZIP--even though it started out with worse compression.
By the time I heard about DOOM in 1996, I was completely used to shareware. From my point of view, it was the dominant form of software publishing.
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misinformed version of the story of the battle between SEA and PKWare
What's the informed version vs. the misinformed version? I thought this dispute was pretty well documented.
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At the time, good information was very hard to come by.
I would say the majority of the casual BBS crowd believed that poor Phil Katz was the innocent victim of the evil litigious SEA.
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After looking into this, it turns out both companies were just one guy and somehow SEA got the bad rap. Katz stole and/or copied the software and file format and when SEA tried to be made whole they somehow became the bad guy.