19 ms·

Happy 23rd Birthday, DOOM

170 points by qwertyuiop924 10y ago

dbg31415 10y ago
* RetroAhoy: Doom - YouTube || https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A4-SVUHQYI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A4-SVUHQYI * The History of id Software (Full) - YouTube || https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cv-byZAauAs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cv-byZAauAs
mars4rp 10y ago
We are getting old!
- yunolisten 10y ago
  > We are getting old! much better than the viable alternative :)
king_kerr 10y ago
This game was a classic. Used to play with my brothers for hours; cheat codes and all.
- throwaway1X2 10y ago
  Don't know if you are talking about network play or not, but our poor man "multiplayer" in that era was like this: - Let's play, I walk, you shoot. One got the arrow keys, the another got the CTRL and spacebar... :)
  - dagw 10y ago
    Heh. I thought I was the only one that did that.
david-given 10y ago
Don't forget the comic book. Rip and tear! http://www.doomworld.com/10years/doomcomic/comic.php http://www.doomworld.com/10years/doomcomic/comic.php (You are huge. This means you have huge guts.)
- teddyh 10y ago
  Reminds me of Destroy!! http://www.scottmccloud.com/2-print/older/destroy/ http://www.scottmccloud.com/2-print/older/destroy/
eltoozero 10y ago
Takes a pretty skookum[1] rig to play it, but the new DOOM is surprisingly enjoyable. Maybe it's that I haven't actually drilled through an FPS since HL2, and I went in with zero expectations, but I've been really craving opportunities to get through the main campaign. I was refreshed to get through it by reading this[2] HN article and realizing when I had grabbed it in May I had been as impressed with the visuals today as I was back in 2000 or so when the first Quake 3 beta with the metal reflections (early shader effect)[4]. Just really excellent pacing and challenge ramping, and the first DOOM plot actually worth getting through. I thought I would be annoyed by the RPG-like "upgrade" system, but it works and makes grinding worthwhile. The fatality system lifted from the fantastic Brutal Doom[3] works fine, and there is good separation between exploration and battles. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/user/arduinoversusevil https://www.youtube.com/user/arduinoversusevil [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12461896 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12461896 [3]: http://www.moddb.com/mods/brutal-doom http://www.moddb.com/mods/brutal-doom [4]: http://toolz.nexuizninjaz.com/shader/ http://toolz.nexuizninjaz.com/shader/
- Yuioup 10y ago
  I don't understand your first link. What is a "skookum" and why are you linking to a Youtube channel?
  - sikhnerd 10y ago
    Skookum is a word/phrase that the gentlemen from the linked youtube channel uses often. It's really a great channel and very fun to watch him break down powertools and explain electronics while using 'interesting' language.
    - edem 10y ago
      And what does "Skookum" mean then?
      - ska 10y ago
        It's a phrase from the west coast, from Chinook language. Roughly means good/strong/powerful in common (i.e. BC, maybe Washington state?) parlance. So OP is saying you need a good GPU for this game.
alkonaut 10y ago
To think that Q2 is a full 19 years when Doom is 23 is astonishing. The development in those 4 years there was more progress in first person shooters than in the following 19. The games I play today are 99.9% the same as the q2 I played in the late 90's
- bluedino 10y ago
  So much changed between Doom and Quake 2: Software rendering to hardware accelerated 3D DOS to Windows as the operating system Internet vs dial-up for multiplayer Cable modems and DSL becoming common for multiplayer Not to mention going from an 486/66 with poor floating point and only 4MB memory to a Pentium II 300MHz with decent floating point, a small handful of SIMD instructions, and 64MB of memory
  - coolsunglasses 10y ago
    Ahh diminishing returns. Now it takes 2gb to run a chat client.
    - agumonkey 10y ago
      That's why I keep my Pentium box. Never forget what 24MB can do. Spoilers: everything.
  - dogma1138 10y ago
    Quake 2 came out in 1997, in 1997 56K just came out without being a standard as the X2 and 56Flex and by the end of 1997 only about half the US ISP's supported 56k speeds of either variety (probably the USR X2 being the more common one in the US). V.90 which was the ITU standardized version of 56k wasn't approved until late 1998, so who the hell had DSL or cable in 1997?
    - Diederich 10y ago
      I had megabit cable modem in 1998. It was nice. (:
senko 10y ago
The book "Masters of Doom" (https://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Culture/dp/0812972155 https://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Cult...) covers a lot of the early days of id Software and is a great read, both from historical and motivational angle.
- huhtenberg 10y ago
  It's a superb book - interesting, well researched, easy to read and, above all, provides a background for understanding how Carmack and Romero each ended up where they are now.
  - mattfrasernz 10y ago
    +1 - This book actually rekindled my love for gaming and reminded me of the passion for computers that contributed to me deciding to become a developer in the first place.
  - nailer 10y ago
    Also shatters the popular idea of Carmack as a nerd (he breaks into a high school and steals computers as a youth) an Romero as a bro (he's writing a bunch of games, compression tools and other useful bits and pieces)
- robodale 10y ago
  I HIGHLY recommend reading this book. I've had it since ~2004, and read it 6 or 7 times. It's such an enjoyable experience, and if you develop software and/or software companies...still very relevant.
bluedino 10y ago
Would have been interesting to see their network and development environment back then. You have John Carmack hacking away on a NeXT workstation, John Romero doing levels on another NeXT, the file server running on a PC server with Netware, play testing on some DOS machines, and who knows what the rest of the guys were using for art and other stuff.
- craigsmansion 10y ago
  For historical accuracy: they also used a Sun Microsystems machine to compute the Binary Space Partitioning tree, leaving it crunching overnight (in my recollection it was the e450, but it couldn't have been).
  - bluedino 10y ago
    For Doom? I know later on they ran a 16-way SGI Origin to do Quake (2? 3?) lighting and level processing. https://github.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-archive/blob/master/by_day/johnc_plan_19970625.txt https://github.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-archive/blob/mast...
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  They were using NeXT. id was all next at the time of DOOM. The best way to track id's tech stack is to look at their level design tools: -DoomEd (not the one you're thinking of - it never made it beyond id) was for NeXT -QuakeEd - It was for NeXT: You can grab the code at http://www.gamers.org/dEngine/quake/QuakeEd/source.html http://www.gamers.org/dEngine/quake/QuakeEd/source.html. If someone has the know-how, they might be able to update it for GNUSTEP or OSX, but it's useless in its current form. -QE4 (QuakeEd v4) - id's internal Quake 2 editor. It marks the shift from NeXT to WinNT. https://github.com/id-Software/Quake-2-Tools https://github.com/id-Software/Quake-2-Tools -Q3Radiant - Robert Duffy got sick of the bad parts of QE4, and modified it into QERadiant. It was all GPLed, anyways. Then he got hired (I think) by id - QERadiant formed the base for Quake 3's level editing environment - Q3Radiant. GTKRadiant - GTKRadiant was (and still is) maintained by Timothee Besset, who was also responsible for the Quake3 linux ports. It was a (soft) fork of Q3Radiant made engine-independent, and was also based on GTK, so it could support Mac and Linux. It was dual-licensed by id (it was an internal project - god knows why) until the rest of Q3 opened up. It's also the only editor on this list still in active development (as is its fork, NetRadiant). Who knows what they're using internally now: id has closed their doors since the acquisition.
zxfjzxfj 10y ago
Will Romero ever cease milking DooM for attention?
- to3m 10y ago
  Once Doom stops being a landmark in gaming history, I'm sure he will ;)
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  I dunno. I do know when I'll actually start criticizing him for it: when he stops making new content, and providing interesting insights (his return to the DOOM mapping field earlier this year, after much deliberation, was awarded the rare 11th Cacoward - the annual Doom community awards for excellence in Doom mapping).
- rasz_pl 10y ago
  as soon as you become his bitch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daikatana#/media/File:Daikatana_infamous_advertisement.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daikatana#/media/File:Daikatan...
  - henrikschroder 10y ago
    Obligatory: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/1998/11/25/john-romero-artiste https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/1998/11/25/john-romero-ar... (Holy crap, Penny Arcade is also OLD!)
    - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
      Wrong strip: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/1999/11/22/funny-all-by-itself https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/1999/11/22/funny-all-by-i...
- dakull 10y ago
  Yes we are, indeed.
dcw303 10y ago
My hacking coming of age story involves Doom. In eleventh grade, we had a classroom with around 20 486 PCs connected in a token ring network. When the teacher wasn't watching, we used to sneak in Doom on floppies, exit Windows out to the dos prompt, and do a manual install. This was great, but it was a major hassle to do this every time we wanted to play, and to delete the files afterwards. I came up with the idea of marking the folders as hidden from DOS, and for that extra obfuscation, renaming the folder to start with an extended ASCII character. Sure enough, no one else but my friends could figure out a way in. (We all had Midnight Commander on floppies to run around such problems). This all went well for a few weeks until the class teacher must have found some way in that we didn't know about. I got dragged up in front of the principal and accused of "hacking the system", since apparently the teacher couldn't figure out a way to remove the files. I barely escaped a suspension, but that was a great lesson for me in what happens when you usurp your authority figures.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  >that was a great lesson for me in what happens when you usurp your authority figures. ...and get caught.
- mojuba 10y ago
  > We all had Midnight Commander on floppies I'm sure it was Norton Commander at the time ;)
  - dcw303 10y ago
    Of course! It was either that or some public domain clone. The commander I remember using was black and white only. I vaguely remember using "dc" to launch it? Google doesn't find much.
    - perakojotgenije 10y ago
      I think you meant "dn" - dos navigator[1] [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS_Navigator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS_Navigator
throwaway4891a 10y ago
In high school, I was an assistant manager at an Egghead in San Jose and got the employee discount on the id Anthology. It was pretty sweet. (Not to mention we borrowed nearly everything good in the store and re-shrinkwrapped it.) When the shop closed up in 1998, we were fireselling inventory to each other at "pick a number out of the ether" prices (Got Borland C/C++ 3.1 and a SCSI Zip Drive, the largest retail software package ever, for a song.) http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Id_Anthology http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Id_Anthology https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/id-anthology https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/id-anthology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_drive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_drive http://www.emsps.com/oldtools/photos/borland/c/c31afa.jpg http://www.emsps.com/oldtools/photos/borland/c/c31afa.jpg
lostboys67 10y ago
I rember when doom came out we had just had some £4k pc's delivered with 20 inch screens (for Oracle Work) Playing doom in a darkened office was quite spooky

170 points by qwertyuiop924 10y ago

* RetroAhoy: Doom - YouTube || https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A4-SVUHQYI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A4-SVUHQYI * The History of id Software (Full) - YouTube || https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cv-byZAauAs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cv-byZAauAs

mars4rp 10y ago

We are getting old!

yunolisten 10y ago
> We are getting old! much better than the viable alternative :)

king_kerr 10y ago

This game was a classic. Used to play with my brothers for hours; cheat codes and all.

throwaway1X2 10y ago
Don't know if you are talking about network play or not, but our poor man "multiplayer" in that era was like this: - Let's play, I walk, you shoot. One got the arrow keys, the another got the CTRL and spacebar... :)
- dagw 10y ago
  Heh. I thought I was the only one that did that.

david-given 10y ago

Don't forget the comic book. Rip and tear! http://www.doomworld.com/10years/doomcomic/comic.php http://www.doomworld.com/10years/doomcomic/comic.php (You are huge. This means you have huge guts.)

teddyh 10y ago
Reminds me of Destroy!! http://www.scottmccloud.com/2-print/older/destroy/ http://www.scottmccloud.com/2-print/older/destroy/

eltoozero 10y ago

Takes a pretty skookum[1] rig to play it, but the new DOOM is surprisingly enjoyable. Maybe it's that I haven't actually drilled through an FPS since HL2, and I went in with zero expectations, but I've been really craving opportunities to get through the main campaign. I was refreshed to get through it by reading this[2] HN article and realizing when I had grabbed it in May I had been as impressed with the visuals today as I was back in 2000 or so when the first Quake 3 beta with the metal reflections (early shader effect)[4]. Just really excellent pacing and challenge ramping, and the first DOOM plot actually worth getting through. I thought I would be annoyed by the RPG-like "upgrade" system, but it works and makes grinding worthwhile. The fatality system lifted from the fantastic Brutal Doom[3] works fine, and there is good separation between exploration and battles. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/user/arduinoversusevil https://www.youtube.com/user/arduinoversusevil [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12461896 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12461896 [3]: http://www.moddb.com/mods/brutal-doom http://www.moddb.com/mods/brutal-doom [4]: http://toolz.nexuizninjaz.com/shader/ http://toolz.nexuizninjaz.com/shader/

Yuioup 10y ago
I don't understand your first link. What is a "skookum" and why are you linking to a Youtube channel?
- sikhnerd 10y ago
  Skookum is a word/phrase that the gentlemen from the linked youtube channel uses often. It's really a great channel and very fun to watch him break down powertools and explain electronics while using 'interesting' language.
  - edem 10y ago
    And what does "Skookum" mean then?
    - ska 10y ago
      It's a phrase from the west coast, from Chinook language. Roughly means good/strong/powerful in common (i.e. BC, maybe Washington state?) parlance. So OP is saying you need a good GPU for this game.

alkonaut 10y ago

To think that Q2 is a full 19 years when Doom is 23 is astonishing. The development in those 4 years there was more progress in first person shooters than in the following 19. The games I play today are 99.9% the same as the q2 I played in the late 90's

bluedino 10y ago
So much changed between Doom and Quake 2: Software rendering to hardware accelerated 3D DOS to Windows as the operating system Internet vs dial-up for multiplayer Cable modems and DSL becoming common for multiplayer Not to mention going from an 486/66 with poor floating point and only 4MB memory to a Pentium II 300MHz with decent floating point, a small handful of SIMD instructions, and 64MB of memory
- coolsunglasses 10y ago
  Ahh diminishing returns. Now it takes 2gb to run a chat client.
  - agumonkey 10y ago
    That's why I keep my Pentium box. Never forget what 24MB can do. Spoilers: everything.
- dogma1138 10y ago
  Quake 2 came out in 1997, in 1997 56K just came out without being a standard as the X2 and 56Flex and by the end of 1997 only about half the US ISP's supported 56k speeds of either variety (probably the USR X2 being the more common one in the US). V.90 which was the ITU standardized version of 56k wasn't approved until late 1998, so who the hell had DSL or cable in 1997?
  - Diederich 10y ago
    I had megabit cable modem in 1998. It was nice. (:

senko 10y ago

The book "Masters of Doom" (https://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Culture/dp/0812972155 https://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Cult...) covers a lot of the early days of id Software and is a great read, both from historical and motivational angle.

huhtenberg 10y ago
It's a superb book - interesting, well researched, easy to read and, above all, provides a background for understanding how Carmack and Romero each ended up where they are now.
- mattfrasernz 10y ago
  +1 - This book actually rekindled my love for gaming and reminded me of the passion for computers that contributed to me deciding to become a developer in the first place.
- nailer 10y ago
  Also shatters the popular idea of Carmack as a nerd (he breaks into a high school and steals computers as a youth) an Romero as a bro (he's writing a bunch of games, compression tools and other useful bits and pieces)
robodale 10y ago
I HIGHLY recommend reading this book. I've had it since ~2004, and read it 6 or 7 times. It's such an enjoyable experience, and if you develop software and/or software companies...still very relevant.

bluedino 10y ago

Would have been interesting to see their network and development environment back then. You have John Carmack hacking away on a NeXT workstation, John Romero doing levels on another NeXT, the file server running on a PC server with Netware, play testing on some DOS machines, and who knows what the rest of the guys were using for art and other stuff.

craigsmansion 10y ago
For historical accuracy: they also used a Sun Microsystems machine to compute the Binary Space Partitioning tree, leaving it crunching overnight (in my recollection it was the e450, but it couldn't have been).
- bluedino 10y ago
  For Doom? I know later on they ran a 16-way SGI Origin to do Quake (2? 3?) lighting and level processing. https://github.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-archive/blob/master/by_day/johnc_plan_19970625.txt https://github.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-archive/blob/mast...
qwertyuiop924 10y ago
They were using NeXT. id was all next at the time of DOOM. The best way to track id's tech stack is to look at their level design tools: -DoomEd (not the one you're thinking of - it never made it beyond id) was for NeXT -QuakeEd - It was for NeXT: You can grab the code at http://www.gamers.org/dEngine/quake/QuakeEd/source.html http://www.gamers.org/dEngine/quake/QuakeEd/source.html. If someone has the know-how, they might be able to update it for GNUSTEP or OSX, but it's useless in its current form. -QE4 (QuakeEd v4) - id's internal Quake 2 editor. It marks the shift from NeXT to WinNT. https://github.com/id-Software/Quake-2-Tools https://github.com/id-Software/Quake-2-Tools -Q3Radiant - Robert Duffy got sick of the bad parts of QE4, and modified it into QERadiant. It was all GPLed, anyways. Then he got hired (I think) by id - QERadiant formed the base for Quake 3's level editing environment - Q3Radiant. GTKRadiant - GTKRadiant was (and still is) maintained by Timothee Besset, who was also responsible for the Quake3 linux ports. It was a (soft) fork of Q3Radiant made engine-independent, and was also based on GTK, so it could support Mac and Linux. It was dual-licensed by id (it was an internal project - god knows why) until the rest of Q3 opened up. It's also the only editor on this list still in active development (as is its fork, NetRadiant). Who knows what they're using internally now: id has closed their doors since the acquisition.

zxfjzxfj 10y ago

Will Romero ever cease milking DooM for attention?

to3m 10y ago
Once Doom stops being a landmark in gaming history, I'm sure he will ;)
qwertyuiop924 10y ago
I dunno. I do know when I'll actually start criticizing him for it: when he stops making new content, and providing interesting insights (his return to the DOOM mapping field earlier this year, after much deliberation, was awarded the rare 11th Cacoward - the annual Doom community awards for excellence in Doom mapping).
rasz_pl 10y ago
as soon as you become his bitch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daikatana#/media/File:Daikatana_infamous_advertisement.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daikatana#/media/File:Daikatan...
- henrikschroder 10y ago
  Obligatory: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/1998/11/25/john-romero-artiste https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/1998/11/25/john-romero-ar... (Holy crap, Penny Arcade is also OLD!)
  - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
    Wrong strip: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/1999/11/22/funny-all-by-itself https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/1999/11/22/funny-all-by-i...
dakull 10y ago
Yes we are, indeed.

dcw303 10y ago

My hacking coming of age story involves Doom. In eleventh grade, we had a classroom with around 20 486 PCs connected in a token ring network. When the teacher wasn't watching, we used to sneak in Doom on floppies, exit Windows out to the dos prompt, and do a manual install. This was great, but it was a major hassle to do this every time we wanted to play, and to delete the files afterwards. I came up with the idea of marking the folders as hidden from DOS, and for that extra obfuscation, renaming the folder to start with an extended ASCII character. Sure enough, no one else but my friends could figure out a way in. (We all had Midnight Commander on floppies to run around such problems). This all went well for a few weeks until the class teacher must have found some way in that we didn't know about. I got dragged up in front of the principal and accused of "hacking the system", since apparently the teacher couldn't figure out a way to remove the files. I barely escaped a suspension, but that was a great lesson for me in what happens when you usurp your authority figures.

qwertyuiop924 10y ago
>that was a great lesson for me in what happens when you usurp your authority figures. ...and get caught.
mojuba 10y ago
> We all had Midnight Commander on floppies I'm sure it was Norton Commander at the time ;)
- dcw303 10y ago
  Of course! It was either that or some public domain clone. The commander I remember using was black and white only. I vaguely remember using "dc" to launch it? Google doesn't find much.
  - perakojotgenije 10y ago
    I think you meant "dn" - dos navigator[1] [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS_Navigator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS_Navigator

throwaway4891a 10y ago

In high school, I was an assistant manager at an Egghead in San Jose and got the employee discount on the id Anthology. It was pretty sweet. (Not to mention we borrowed nearly everything good in the store and re-shrinkwrapped it.) When the shop closed up in 1998, we were fireselling inventory to each other at "pick a number out of the ether" prices (Got Borland C/C++ 3.1 and a SCSI Zip Drive, the largest retail software package ever, for a song.) http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Id_Anthology http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Id_Anthology https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/id-anthology https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/id-anthology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_drive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zip_drive http://www.emsps.com/oldtools/photos/borland/c/c31afa.jpg http://www.emsps.com/oldtools/photos/borland/c/c31afa.jpg

lostboys67 10y ago

I rember when doom came out we had just had some £4k pc's delivered with 20 inch screens (for Oracle Work) Playing doom in a darkened office was quite spooky