5 ms·

The thing about Carmack in the 90s... There was a lot of research going on around 3d graphics. Companies like SGI and Pixar were building specialized workstatio

The thing about Carmack in the 90s... There was a lot of research going on around 3d graphics. Companies like SGI and Pixar were building specialized workstations for doing vector operations for 3d rendering. 3d was a thing. Game consoles with specialized 3d hardware would launch in 1994 with the Sega Saturn and the Sony Playstation (in Japan only for one year) What Carmack did was basically get a 3d game running on existing COMMODITY hardware. The 386 chip that most people used for their excel spreadsheets did not do floating point operations well, so Carmack figured out how to do everything using integers. May 1992 -> Wolfenstein 3d releases December 1993 -> Doom releases December 1994 -> Sony Playstation launches in Japan June 1996 -> Quake releases So Wolfenstein and Doom were actually not really 3d games, but rather 2.5 games (you can't have rooms below other rooms). The first 3d game here is actually Quake which also eventually also got hardware acceleration support. Carmack was the master of doing the seeminly impossible on super constrained hardware on virtually impossible timelines. If DOOM released in 1994 or 1995, would we still remember it in the same way?

hx8 1y ago
> If DOOM released in 1994 or 1995, would we still remember it in the same way? Maybe. One aspect of Wolfenstein and Doom's popularity is that it was years ahead of everyone else technically on PC hardware. The other aspect is that they were genre defining titles that set the standards for gameplay design. I think Doom Deathmatch would have caught on in 1995, as there really were very few (just Command and Conquer?) standout PC network multiplayer games released between 1993 and 1995.
- LarsDu88 1y ago
  I guess the thing about rapid change is... it's hard to imagine what kind of games would exist in a DOOMless world in an alternate 1995. The first 3d console games started to come out that year, like Rayman. Star Wars Dark Forces with its own custom 3d engine also came out. Of course Dark Forces was, however, an overt clone of DOOM. It's a bit ironic, but I think the gameplay innovation of DOOM tends to hold up more than the actual technical innovation. Things like BSP for level partitioning have slowly been phased out of game engines, we have ample floating point compute power and hardware acceleration ow, but even developers of the more recent DOOM games have started to realize that they should return to the original formula of "blast zombies in the face at high speed, and keep plot as window dressing"
  - xh-dude 1y ago
    Sort of in the middle, id games always felt tight. The engines were immersive not only because of graphics, but basic i/o was excellent.
  - Narishma 1y ago
    > The first 3d console games started to come out that year, like Rayman. Rayman was a 2D game.
    - ddingus 1y ago
      It is. I have experienced others reference it as an early 3d Title too. Great work by that team! Seriously. The graphics are great, and for the time period, excellent enough to be lumped in with the real 3d games.
    - LarsDu88 1y ago
      I'm misremembering Rayman for the Sega Dreamcast. Looking at wikipedia, I now see that there weren't many games in 1995 even on the new consoles that really leveraged the 3d hardware. The PC actually had more such games despite many PCs lacking hardware acceleration for 3d rendering or even significant floating point capabilities. There's Sega Rally Racing for the Saturn, Virtua Fighter, Tekken... Perhaps it's really 1996 that's the real turning point (with Mario 64 coming out), which makes DOOM about 3 years ahead of its time. And of course id shipped Quake that year....
  - HKH2 1y ago
    > but even developers of the more recent DOOM games have started to realize that they should return to the original formula of "blast zombies in the face at high speed, and keep plot as window dressing" There's still a lot of chatter breaking the continuity. In the original, the plot was entirely made up of what you were experiencing directly.
    - LarsDu88 1y ago
      In the ending of the original game, you kill the demon spider brain robot thing and the demons kill your bunny rabbit. That's the plot
- deleted 1y ago
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CamperBob2 1y ago
If DOOM released in 1994 or 1995, would we still remember it in the same way? I think so, because the thing about DOOM is, it was an insanely good game. Yes, it pioneered fullscreen real-time perspective rendering on commodity hardware, instantly realigning the direction of much of the game industry, yadda yadda yadda, but at the end of the day it was a good-enough game for people to remember and respect even without considering the tech. Minecraft would be a similar example. Minecraft looked like total ass, and games with similar rendering technology could have been (and were) made years earlier, but Minecraft was also good. And that was enough.
gjadi 1y ago
Hardware changes a lot in the time it takes to develop a game. When I read his plan files and interviews, I realized he seemed to spend a lot of time before developing the game thinking about what the next gen hardware was going to bring. Then design the best game they could think of whike targeting this not-yet-available hardware.
andrepd 1y ago
> So Wolfenstein and Doom were actually not really 3d games, but rather 2.5 games (you can't have rooms below other rooms). The first 3d game here is actually Quake Ultima Underworld is a true 3D game from 1992. An incredibly impressive game, in more ways than one.
leoc 1y ago
But also, he didn't do the technically hardest and most impressive part, Quake, on his own. IIUC he basically relied on Michael Abrash's help to get Quake done (in any reasonable amount of time).
- sturob 1y ago
  Realizing that he needed Abrash (and aggressively recruiting him) could easily be seen as the most impressive thing he did to make Quake happen
  - CyberDildonics 1y ago
    I would say his multiple technical feats and phenomenal output are more impressive.
- deleted 1y ago
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muziq 1y ago
The world seems to have rewritten history, and forgotten Ultima Underworld, which shipped prior to Doom..
- Narishma 1y ago
  I think that's because it had such high system requirements that very few people could run it, unlike Wolfenstein 3D and Doom.
  - foldr 1y ago
    It was just about playable on a 25MHz 386. We used to put up with frame rates that would make your eyes bleed back in the early 90s. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VdRXgWoShM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VdRXgWoShM
    - momocowcow 1y ago
      Exactly, I played through underworld on a 386 16mhz. Being an rpg, the lower fps was much more tolerable than in Doom, which was in fact unplayable.
    - Narishma 1y ago
      I'm sorry but that is not very playable even when it only renders to a quarter of the screen, especially compared to Wolfenstein 3D on similar hardware. It was also quite clunky in terms of interface. The guy on the video spends like 3 minutes trying to pick up a sack on the floor before just giving up.
- zeroq 1y ago
  Couple "3D" games shipped before Doom. Battlezone comes to mind. The difference is that id owned the natural progression (from Wolf3D through Doom to Quake) and laid foundation to what we call today a FPS genre.

hx8 1y ago

> If DOOM released in 1994 or 1995, would we still remember it in the same way? Maybe. One aspect of Wolfenstein and Doom's popularity is that it was years ahead of everyone else technically on PC hardware. The other aspect is that they were genre defining titles that set the standards for gameplay design. I think Doom Deathmatch would have caught on in 1995, as there really were very few (just Command and Conquer?) standout PC network multiplayer games released between 1993 and 1995.

LarsDu88 1y ago
I guess the thing about rapid change is... it's hard to imagine what kind of games would exist in a DOOMless world in an alternate 1995. The first 3d console games started to come out that year, like Rayman. Star Wars Dark Forces with its own custom 3d engine also came out. Of course Dark Forces was, however, an overt clone of DOOM. It's a bit ironic, but I think the gameplay innovation of DOOM tends to hold up more than the actual technical innovation. Things like BSP for level partitioning have slowly been phased out of game engines, we have ample floating point compute power and hardware acceleration ow, but even developers of the more recent DOOM games have started to realize that they should return to the original formula of "blast zombies in the face at high speed, and keep plot as window dressing"
- xh-dude 1y ago
  Sort of in the middle, id games always felt tight. The engines were immersive not only because of graphics, but basic i/o was excellent.
- Narishma 1y ago
  > The first 3d console games started to come out that year, like Rayman. Rayman was a 2D game.
  - ddingus 1y ago
    It is. I have experienced others reference it as an early 3d Title too. Great work by that team! Seriously. The graphics are great, and for the time period, excellent enough to be lumped in with the real 3d games.
  - LarsDu88 1y ago
    I'm misremembering Rayman for the Sega Dreamcast. Looking at wikipedia, I now see that there weren't many games in 1995 even on the new consoles that really leveraged the 3d hardware. The PC actually had more such games despite many PCs lacking hardware acceleration for 3d rendering or even significant floating point capabilities. There's Sega Rally Racing for the Saturn, Virtua Fighter, Tekken... Perhaps it's really 1996 that's the real turning point (with Mario 64 coming out), which makes DOOM about 3 years ahead of its time. And of course id shipped Quake that year....
- HKH2 1y ago
  > but even developers of the more recent DOOM games have started to realize that they should return to the original formula of "blast zombies in the face at high speed, and keep plot as window dressing" There's still a lot of chatter breaking the continuity. In the original, the plot was entirely made up of what you were experiencing directly.
  - LarsDu88 1y ago
    In the ending of the original game, you kill the demon spider brain robot thing and the demons kill your bunny rabbit. That's the plot
deleted 1y ago
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deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

CamperBob2 1y ago

If DOOM released in 1994 or 1995, would we still remember it in the same way? I think so, because the thing about DOOM is, it was an insanely good game. Yes, it pioneered fullscreen real-time perspective rendering on commodity hardware, instantly realigning the direction of much of the game industry, yadda yadda yadda, but at the end of the day it was a good-enough game for people to remember and respect even without considering the tech. Minecraft would be a similar example. Minecraft looked like total ass, and games with similar rendering technology could have been (and were) made years earlier, but Minecraft was also good. And that was enough.

gjadi 1y ago

Hardware changes a lot in the time it takes to develop a game. When I read his plan files and interviews, I realized he seemed to spend a lot of time before developing the game thinking about what the next gen hardware was going to bring. Then design the best game they could think of whike targeting this not-yet-available hardware.

andrepd 1y ago

> So Wolfenstein and Doom were actually not really 3d games, but rather 2.5 games (you can't have rooms below other rooms). The first 3d game here is actually Quake Ultima Underworld is a true 3D game from 1992. An incredibly impressive game, in more ways than one.

leoc 1y ago

But also, he didn't do the technically hardest and most impressive part, Quake, on his own. IIUC he basically relied on Michael Abrash's help to get Quake done (in any reasonable amount of time).

sturob 1y ago
Realizing that he needed Abrash (and aggressively recruiting him) could easily be seen as the most impressive thing he did to make Quake happen
- CyberDildonics 1y ago
  I would say his multiple technical feats and phenomenal output are more impressive.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

muziq 1y ago

The world seems to have rewritten history, and forgotten Ultima Underworld, which shipped prior to Doom..

Narishma 1y ago
I think that's because it had such high system requirements that very few people could run it, unlike Wolfenstein 3D and Doom.
- foldr 1y ago
  It was just about playable on a 25MHz 386. We used to put up with frame rates that would make your eyes bleed back in the early 90s. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VdRXgWoShM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VdRXgWoShM
  - momocowcow 1y ago
    Exactly, I played through underworld on a 386 16mhz. Being an rpg, the lower fps was much more tolerable than in Doom, which was in fact unplayable.
  - Narishma 1y ago
    I'm sorry but that is not very playable even when it only renders to a quarter of the screen, especially compared to Wolfenstein 3D on similar hardware. It was also quite clunky in terms of interface. The guy on the video spends like 3 minutes trying to pick up a sack on the floor before just giving up.
zeroq 1y ago
Couple "3D" games shipped before Doom. Battlezone comes to mind. The difference is that id owned the natural progression (from Wolf3D through Doom to Quake) and laid foundation to what we call today a FPS genre.