Gaming Hall of Fame: Doom
Written by Dr. Gonzo Friday, 05 December 2008 01:21
Gaming Hall of Fame:
DOOM
By the early 1990's the American video game market had seen a healthy return from the Great Crash of 1983, with Nintnedo's NES leading the charge. At the same time, personal computers were seeing a greater number of sales to both businesses and homes, and game developers were eager to explore the mostly uncharted territory of PC gaming. Three developers would lead the charge into this new market. Sierra, which made itself famous with its King's Quest series, while Infocom brought its numerous text based adventure games to the table. The third company was id Software.
In 1991, id Software was founded by programmers John Carmack, John Romero, designer Tom Hall, and an artist named Adrian Carmack (no relation to John Carkmack). In 1990, the future id team would team up with game publisher Apogee Software to release its Commander Keen and Duke Nukem games. Both of these were episodic action platformers, and while they both saw a good deal of commercial success, it wasn't anything the industry hadn't seen before. After all, Nintendo and Sega had been doing the same thing in the console market for years. What id wanted was something new and unique. In May of 1991, id released Wolfenstein 3D, and while it wasn't the first First Person Shooter, it brought a great deal of attention to the genre, and PC gaming in general. Despite the title, the game wasn't in true 3D, with all the graphics being represented with sprites and pixels, and all the levels were only one floor high. However, it would serve as the technical springboard for id's next FPS game, DOOM.
 | |
 THIS IS MY BOOMSTICK!! |
DOOM was released for PCs in 1993. Unlike its predecessor, DOOM was in true 3D, with all environments built by polygonal “building blocks”, though all the enemies, items and miscellaneous knickknacks represented by pixelated sprites. Due to the limitations of the technology of the time, it was impossible to place one room directly over another, a problem that id solved by building most levels with winding tunnels and stairways. This meant that each level would feel like a multi-floored maze, with a slew of secret rooms and hidden weapons. |
The
story of DOOM
placed
you in the shoes of a lone marine stranded in a research station on
Phobos, one of the moons of Mars. The facility had been involved in
research on an alien portal discovered on the surface of the moon.
When activated, the portal opened a gate to Hell itself, and the moon
was overrun with demons. Your goal wasn't to save the world, your
goal was simply to get off the moon alive. It was a weak story, to be
sure, but nobody cared. Each of the monsters, from the lowly human
zombie to the mighty Cyberdemon were all uniquely designed and filled
with character, even if they were trying to rip your spleen out
through your eye sockets. Luckily, you had a slew of weapons to
defend yourself with, from pistols, rocket launchers and machine
guns, to your bare dukes and a chainsaw. Two of these weapons deserve
special mention. The shotgun, with its iconic pump action animation
between each shot, would become a staple of shooter games, and nearly
every first person shooter game has had a shotgun as an available
weapon since. And then there was the BFG 9000, a man-portable super
weapon that could wipe out an entire room of zombies with a single
well placed shot. The environments also oozed (sometimes literally)
with originality. Your travels took you from Phobos, to Deimos and
eventually Hell itself. As you traveled, the environments would
become more and more twisted, reflecting the evil nature of the
invaders. Rivers of flesh, faces screaming from the walls, to altars
bearing still beating human hearts. | |
 The BFG turned your enemies into paint. | DOOM
was
an instant success, not just because of its design, but also because
of its method of distribution. Its first episode, Knee
Deep in the Dead,
was distributed for free in gaming magazines and online bulletin
boards as “shareware”. Finishing the nine mission demo would
bring up a screen with a phone number you could call to order full
game (though it was probably faster to just go to a game store and
just buy it there, but hey, it was the 90's. We were still in the
“Mail Order Catalog” years.) This new method of “try before you
buy” distribution proved to be a massive success, with the
shareware version being installed into an estimated 10 million
computers by 1995. |
 Bruce Campbell would be proud. |
A little over a year later, id Software took us back to Hell in DOOM II: Hell on Earth. Once again, players took control of the lone marine from the first game, only now, the demonic invasion had made its way to Earth, and had seized control of the entire world. Your goal was to blast through the hordes, back into Hell, and destroy the source of the demon army. Again, a weak story, but nobody cared, it was more DOOM. All the same monsters and weapons returned, along with a few new ones, and even a new weapon: the double barrelled Super Shotgun. Though it took twice the ammo of the regular shotgun, the super shotgun was far more powerful able to take out multiple enemies in a single shot (my personal record for “zombie blasting” is 4 in one shot. See if you can do better!). Unlike the episodic nature of the first game, DOOM II was a single continuous game. This meant that no shareware versions of the game were released, but it didn't really matter. Gamers snatched it up anyway. DOOM II also contained a few hidden tips of the hat to the company's past. A bonus level modeled after the Hans Grosse level of Wolfenstein ended with players blasting a Commander Keen hanging by a noose, and use of the IDCLIP cheat on the final boss revealed that the final boss was nothing more...than John Romero's head on a stick. |
|
Its character and design alone would be enough to gain DOOM entry into the Hall of Fame, but id would go several steps beyond the call of duty in its masterpiece. Probably the most important innovation in PC gaming would spring from DOOM: multiplayer. DOOM was the first PC shooter to allow cooperative and deathmatch styles of multiplayer gaming. This small addition, which was placed in almost as an afterthought, would wind up becoming a central focus of PC gaming, with online multiplayer almost being a REQUIREMENT for a shooter to get good marks. The online deathmatches would prove to be so popular, that businesses and schools would have to have special blocks installed on their networks designed SPECIFICALLY to block DOOM from being installed on their computers. | |
 Holy Jesus, you're even bigger in 3D!! | DOOM
would
also pioneer another important aspect of PC gaming culture. After
learning of fans who tried (And mostly failed) to create fan levels
for Wolfenstein.
Romero and Carmack decided that they would build DOOM
in two parts: the main graphics engine, which was the framework for
the game, while all data on monsters, weapons and graphics went into
seperate WAD filed, short for “Where's
All
the Data?”
These easy to manipulate data packets meant that it was incredibly
easy to create additional level, mods, and even total conversions and
graphical updates for DOOM.
One of these deserves special mention: jDOOM, a program that allows
players to transplant the DOOM
WAD
files into a completely new graphics engine, allowing players to play
their favorite shooter with 3D graphics, as opposed to sprites. |
DOOM's popularity ensured that while its main presence would be on the PC, console ports were inevitable. DOOM is one of the most ported games ever made, with AT LEAST 20 official ports to various consoles and computer systems, with homebrew ports for just about any system you care to name. For the Nintendo 64 port, DOOM would receive a makeover and a new story, but DOOM 64 is regarded as the weakest version of the game. A turn based RPG based on DOOM (yes, you read that right.) would be released for mobile phones in 2005, and a boardgame would be released by Fantasy Flight Games in 2004. Though it took its design aesthetic from DOOM 3, its frantic play style was more akin to the original PC shooter. Despite, and party because of, its success, DOOM became the subject of much controversy. In 1999, after the Columbine High School shooting, it was found that Eric Harris and Dyan Klebold, the perpetrators of the shooting, had been fanatical DOOM players. Contrary to popular rumor, although Harris DID design levels for the game, he did NOT model any on Columbine High School. DOOM is frequently blasted by religious groups for its demonic imagery and intense violence. | |
Despite
these controversies, DOOM
is
widely regarded and one of, if not THE most influential PC game of
all time. Its popularity endures to this very day, with professional
gaming leagues holding DOOM
tournaments
every year. The game is also one of the most popular Speed Running
games ever, and its mod community continues to crank out new and
interesting mods even now. DOOM
showed the world that PC gaming was its own beast, distinct from
consoles and almost birthed an entire wing of the gaming industry.
It's clear that, without DOOM,
the gaming landscape would be a wholly different industry than what
we have today. If you haven't played DOOM
yet,
download the shareware version, rack up your shotgun, and begin your
journey into Hell itself. | |
 There is a word for men in your situation and that word is BONED! | |
-
12.05.2008 - 11:37 | Spectere
Nice article. It's ridiculous how popular Doom still is, 15 years after its inception.
There are a few little technical nitpicks that I would like to make, however:
- The executable has almost everything hard coded, with the WAD files holding the levels, sounds, and graphics. It's a lot more than just a graphics engine and heavily limited modding (though at the time it was wonderful). The really complex mods all made use of executable patches, almost always using DeHackEd.
- Technically speaking, Doom doesn't use polygons outside of the internal structure for the map. That was part of the reason that creating OpenGL renderers was such a challenge. Doom basically draw the wall textures (sidedefs) as vertical columns with a given texture. This is part of the reason that the engine doesn't support properly looking up and down (as can be seen when playing Heretic and Hexen, or even when using ZDoom with software rendering). Floor and ceiling rendering is even simpler, simply flooding the appropriate area with the given texture. This is also why it isn't possible to overlap sectors and why floors and ceilings can't have slopes without heavy engine modification. But anyway, long story short, there are no polygons in classic Doom.
- One thing that Doom is very notable for is the release of its source code in 1997. This allowed people to finally change the entire game, leading to both graphical improvements as well as a ton of gameplay features. jDoom, for instance, simply wouldn't have been possible without the release. While, technically, Wolfenstein 3D's source code was released before Doom's (in 1995, to relatively little fanfare), the release of Doom's source effectively opened up a completely new type of modding community. id Software has since released the source code for Quake, Quake 2, and Quake 3, and will eventually release Doom 3's source. The release was also significant enough to spur other companies, such as 3D Realms, to open source their game engines. Rise of the Triad (released when 3D Realms was still known as Apogee) was GPL'd in late 2002 and Duke Nukem 3D's source was released in 2003.
But anyhoo, apologies for the above. I'm horribly pedantic.
-
12.05.2008 - 11:39 | DrGonzo
Shoot, Spectere, don't apologize. If I've made a mistake or left something out, I want to hear about it!! History shouldn't be written by one man alone!
-
12.05.2008 - 13:28 | Spectere
It's just nothing too significant. More clarification than anything else. Geeky stuff.
Also, you made a mention of the infamous Harris levels at the tail end of the article. Here's a link to all of the known ones, if you (or anyone else) is interested/curious: [url]http://metal.slipgate.org/Files/Doom_files/EricHarris_maps/[/url].
-
12.05.2008 - 19:14 | benzaie - That what I thoughht
about Doom being in 3d...it's called Raycasting if I remember well a sort of visual trickery but it was not in proper 3D
-
12.05.2008 - 19:35 | ScottishInsomnia
am I the only one having trouble reading the article? it looks cut off on my screen at the right.
-
12.08.2008 - 18:01 | Sigmanonymous
I'm seein the same as you are, Scottish, and it's a shame cause this looks like a damn-good article.
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Great article! It was very well researched and written. Doom deserves a spot in the GHoF. Doom is my favourite game of all time man! I mean, seriously. I'm still playing it, mostly because the community is still pushing out tons of high quality mods and maps for the game! Even I've made some in the past (They weren't that great though, in retrospect.). ID software has a really special place in my heart in gaming. I can't think of a single game by them I haven't liked. Commander Keen was the first game I ever played. Wolfenstein, the first FPS I ever played and Doom the 3rd, but it raced right up to number 1 though the others are still classics. In fact, there is a holiday for us Doomers that is right around the corner! Yes, we Doom nerds celebrate dooms release. As of December 10th, it will be 15! ;D I hope that Doomworld puts on another extravaganza like they did for the 10 years. That was an awesome Doomsday. Oh, and I also must mention the novel Masters of Doom. For fans of Doom or really anything by ID, its worth reading. Even if you AREN'T a fan of ID and like computers and eccentric characters, Masters of Doom is worth reading. It was an incredible book really, they told ID's story as well as got under the hood of all their tech and their minds, and they were some pretty cool guys. There are a lot of laugh out loud moments delivered by them.