
Doom released 20 years ago today - timmillwood
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doom_(video_game)
======
mcphilip
I still play Doom and Doom 2, I even list it as an interest in my HN profile.
It's the perfect FPS, to me. There's still a reasonably active community
making custom WADs. It's amazing what some people have come up with for this
20 year old series [1]. There's a ladder of difficulty in custom WADs that
I've been working my way up over the years before finally throwing in the
towel because of Scythe 2 Map 23 [2].

On a side note, John Romero and Tom Hall did an hour long post mortem on the
design and development of the original Doom a couple years ago [3]. I found it
interesting.

[1][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxFlWeduknY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxFlWeduknY)

[2][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guHbCtbxiEo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guHbCtbxiEo)

[3][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKg85-TXY5w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKg85-TXY5w)

~~~
swah
I would like to play it on a mobile platform - anyone knows the best way?

~~~
danbee
You can get DOOM for iOS. Plays particularly well on an iPad.

~~~
swah
I forgot to mention that I hate touch controls. Something more like
PSP/Nintendo DS/gcw-zero/bluetooth controller is more likely...

------
pavlov
I respect the mastery of the Doom creators, but for me personally, it marked
the point where computer games went downhill. Shooting at blobs through the
eyes of an anonymous virtual character just never worked for me.

I remember playing Wolfenstein 3D for about an hour, then getting bored with
the repetitiveness and lack of identification with the protagonist, and never
touching the game again.

When Doom came out, I tried it for 10 minutes, concluded it's W3D with better
graphics and aliens instead of Nazis, and never touched it again.

Of course I don't mind that others enjoyed the game. Unfortunately these games
became so popular that everything turned to first-person 3D and killed most of
the genres I had enjoyed, and so I eventually stopped playing completely.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
>Unfortunately these games became so popular that everything turned to first-
person 3D and killed most of the genres I had enjoyed

Its not like they stopped making turn based games or RPG's or other genres.
The Sierra-style hunt-and-peck adventure game died, but Sierra did that
themselves by milking franchises and delivering a sub-standard product with,
lets face it, boring and cliched gameplay. Not sure what other genre was
killed at around that time. If anything, PC gaming flourished. Warcraft,
X-wing/TIE fighter, Elder Scrolls, Sim City 2000, Command and Conquer, Mech
Warrior, 7th Guest, Civ II, Diablo, etc came out around that time.

~~~
trycatch
Lucas Arts consistently delivered (Full Throttle, The Curse of Monkey Island,
Grim Fandango) and died too.

------
drzaiusapelord
John Carmack is only 43. He was 23 when this was released. It still blows my
mind how young he is. Notch is only 9 years younger than him. Some people just
get good at a very young age. Carmack is still in his prime and his move to
the Oculus, hopefully, will bring sci-fi like VR to the masses.

~~~
terhechte
Yeah, have a look at this picture:
[http://www.idwaregames.freehosting.bg/images/legends.jpg](http://www.idwaregames.freehosting.bg/images/legends.jpg)

They're all so young.

------
NAFV_P
The chainsaw in DOOM is based on a real model: _McCulloch Eager Beaver_

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCulloch_Motors_Corporation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCulloch_Motors_Corporation)

Since I've used a professional saw (such as a Stihl 260, a 650 and a Husqvarna
395 among others), the Eager Beaver just looks lame now.

Chainsaws should have a sticker on them that says how loud they are. The three
mentioned above are around 115 decibels, three minutes of use without ear
defenders will give you permanent hearing damage.

If you want to see a really mean saw...

[http://www.southsidesales.com/stihl-ms-880-magnum-chain-
saw....](http://www.southsidesales.com/stihl-ms-880-magnum-chain-saw.htm)

~~~
deletes
Do they kill demons faster?

~~~
warfangle
Only when the demons don't fight back:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvZQKoC3vc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvZQKoC3vc)

~~~
NAFV_P
They won't fight back mate, they will be too scared.

------
cmdkeen
1/3 of the game released as shareware compared to today's pay for the game
before it is done, sell it at release and keep selling you DLC.

At least with Steam the more obnoxious DRM has died a death for many games
(Ubisoft I'm looking at you).

~~~
petercooper
It was a pretty good system because I wasn't good enough at games to easily
complete the first episode of DOOM so my parents never needed to buy it for
me. Indeed, perhaps 80% of my gaming experiences as a kid were off of cover
disks and shareware with very few games bought.

------
ColinWright
See also "Doom as a SysAdmin Tool" :
[http://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/doom/](http://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/doom/)

Submitted here, but no discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6881099](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6881099)

~~~
deletes
_Certain processes are vital to the computer 's operation and should not be
killed. For example, after I took the screenshot of myself being attacked by
csh, csh was shot by friendly fire from behind, possibly by tcsh or xv, and my
session was abruptly terminated._

I wish there was something like that in windows.

------
jimwalsh
Wolfenstein 3D played a large part of driving my interest in computers and
learning how they really work under the hood when I was young. Plus the
release of MapEdit really made you feel powerful and a young kid getting
involved in computers.

Doom is the point where I became interested in programming and it got me
looking to how you actually made these games. id Software eventually open
sourcing Wolf3D really helped spur that on. On top of that, Carmacks talk and
his always interesting .plan file (a blog before blogs) made him seem very
accessible and really opened up the world of game programming. I still enjoy
going back and reading parts of the Wolf 3D or Doom code to see how they
handled certain problems/limitations.

I'd agree with the other poster that 'Masters of Doom' is a great read and
worth it to grab if you haven't read it already.

~~~
fdej
Ditto! Making Doom mods was the main reason that I taught myself programming.
And I probably learned more about development (in a general sense) from making
Doom maps, than I ever did in school...

~~~
azmenthe
Almost same exact story although I never got into Doom modding but did make my
own games in high school because of doom. Actually reading "Masters of Doom"
truly planted the seed for my entrepreneurial spirit, the first time I
realized "I can get good at something and create something just for me. I can
value just from sheer will"

------
sergiotapia
John Carmack to me is the closes thing to a real Rock Star programmer in the
world. He's one of the best software engineers and I follow him on Twitter to
see what he's up to. Almost always it's something crazy and new.

Here's a video of John choking someone out:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X68Mm_kYRjc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X68Mm_kYRjc)

He's a great role model to aspire to as a software engineer. :)

~~~
dgesang
Ha, and I though I've seen everything about Carmack ... great footage, thanks!

------
terhechte
I just finished "Masters of Doom" a couple of days ago, and I've been on a
sort of Doom/Quake/id/Carmack/Romero information frenzy ever since. It is
beginning to consume almost too much of my time but very fulfilling since I
was a huge Doom fan back when it came out (I created many levels and mods) and
I also really liked the early Quake games.

So in the past weeks I read up on all the early id guys, and what became of
them after they were fired or left, I did quite some (probably too much)
reading on the mess that was Daikatana and how it came to be. I actually find
this really interesting, to learn how a project backed with so many employees
and so much money can fail so badly, there're probably lessons to learn here
(I've even watched somebody play through Daikatana on Youtube).

While being on my search, I've found a lot of interesting or not so
interesting things. So if you want to spend some time, here's an unordered
list of trivia that I stumbled upon:

\- Somebody playing through Daikatana:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nm3b0NJzhnQ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nm3b0NJzhnQ)

\- Romero Himself on Daikatana, including a GB port of the game that actually
got good reviews (never made it to the US though)
[http://rome.ro/games_daikatana.htm](http://rome.ro/games_daikatana.htm)

\- Awful public clash between John Romero and Mike Wilson (former Ion Storm
Marketing guy):
[http://www.kotaku.com.au/2008/01/gamecock_head_tears_into_jo...](http://www.kotaku.com.au/2008/01/gamecock_head_tears_into_john_romero_its_getting_ugly-2/)

\- Ravenwood Fair is a Facebook game that Romero did a couple of years ago (so
that's what he's been up to recently):
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravenwood_Fair](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravenwood_Fair)

\- If you read Masters of Doom, you'll remember that it all started at
Softdisk, when Carmack and Hall created "Dangerous Dave in Copyright
Infringement", a Super Mario Bros copy. Romero uploaded the original game
including their level editor, you can find it here:
[http://planetromero.com/games/dangerous-dave-in-copyright-
in...](http://planetromero.com/games/dangerous-dave-in-copyright-infringement)

\- Unreleased Doom Midi Music Files: [http://planetromero.com/2007/06/doom-
archaeology](http://planetromero.com/2007/06/doom-archaeology)

Sadly, the original Doom editor, DoomEd was never released. I read that it
wasn't particularly good (compared to what is available nowadays) but since it
was written in NeXTSTEP, I'd love to port it current OSX (or at least give it
a go).

~~~
prezjordan
Just finished Masters of Doom on the plane Sunday. Fantastic read. I highly
recommend it to all software folks, even if you're not a gamer. Tons of a
highly relevant stories and accounts in there.

[http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-
Cultu...](http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-
Culture/dp/0812972155)

~~~
WA
I agree. I devoured it in two afternoons and found it quite motivational in
terms of a business book.

Here, there were a handful of programmers, experimenting with different
pricing models (shareware vs. retail), dictating their terms to publishers,
starting ethical and legal discussions (Columbine Highschool shooting related
to violent computer games? Export laws of software, especially violent
computer games to Germany), helping Microsoft to establish Windows as a gaming
platform (by making Doom a Direct X game) and so on.

They not only made games, they established a genre and nobody had a clue what
the future would look like.

~~~
laumars
Slight nitpick, but Doom was a DOS game and it's DirectX port (Doom95) was
written by Microsoft, not ID Software.

In fact the developer a MS who wrote of Doom95 is another famous name in the
world of gaming; Gabe Newell (who has obviously since left Microsoft).

The reason I nitpick is because ID Software have always been pro-OpenGL rather
than favouring Dx3D. What's more, most of their earlier games (I've not played
anything since QIII) have been ported to other platforms by ID Software
themselves and often not even developed on Windows PCs to begin with. So I
think Gabe really deserves the credit (or criticism hehe) for kick starting
the Windows/DirectX culture we see now.

Which is ironic as Gabe is now -in my opinion at least- the biggest threat
Microsoft faces for the future of Windows games. But that's another topic
entirely :)

------
redbonsai
There's a wonderful post on Metafilter about this very subject:
[http://www.metafilter.com/134597/Twenty-Years-of-Ultra-
Viole...](http://www.metafilter.com/134597/Twenty-Years-of-Ultra-Violence)

------
neovive
I still remember playing Doom on my 486 DX2. It was a big step up from
Wolfenstein 3D and really paved the way for the FPS gaming genre.

------
agumonkey
Funny how very very creepy this game was and yet there was no problem with
that. More than gore and 'biological' lets say, it had ingredients more
haunting than Indiana Jones Temple of Doom (NPI) : corpses hanging, skulls,
metal chains, spikes ... It didn't require effects to scare you, no hidden
monster suddenly revealed through thromboscopic lights as in Doom 3. You just
sink in this filthy space.

------
MichaelTieso
This is very fitting since I started reading "Masters of DOOM" book just a
couple days ago. Haven't been able to put it down. Great read about the two
Johns and the story of id Software.

[http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-
Cultu...](http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-
Culture/dp/0812972155)

------
aaronetz
An anecdote: One of my professors, Dan Gordon, authored a paper [1991 Gordon
and Chen] which was used in Doom's engine implementation of BSP [1]. He was
quite happy to learn about it from me, some 15 years later :)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_space_partitioning](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_space_partitioning)

------
rzt
I was a Mac kid, so my world was Marathon, but I think a lot of the lessons
are the same. I remember building my own custom worlds, really screwing up the
physics, and then deleting en masse.

Whenever I play shooters now, I still think, "Man, I should just get a copy of
Doom and play that instead." Too much noise in some of these games –– I just
want to blow stuff up.

~~~
wsc981
I preferred Marathon a lot over Doom. Some reviewers have called it "the
thinking man's" shoot-em-up and I think this holds some truth. Of couse
Marathon was released almost a year after Doom's release, so Bungie had plenty
of time to improve the genre in many areas. Not just in looking up and down,
the game also featured:

\- weapons with multiple modes and reload mechanics

\- advanced lightning effects

\- "5D" space (one of the multiplayer levels used this)

\- physics (e.g. grenade hopping and missile ballistics)

\- neutral and allied npc's

\- more varied elevator / switches system (e.g. in the "Colony Ship For Sale
Cheap" level)

\- motion tracker in UI

\- nifty level mechanics, like the levels without air (e.g. "G4 Sunbathing")

I still wonder if Jason Jones could have become an equal to Carmack if he kept
his focus on coding games ...

------
bstar77
I would argue that Wolfenstein 3D is more responsible for ushering in the
first person shooter genre than Doom.

Wolfenstein was original in it's technology, Doom was based on that tech. Both
were extremely popular in their time. The main difference is that iD sold
their Doom 3d tech (which produced games like hexen and heretic) and did not
with their Wolfenstein tech.

~~~
afreak
Actually Wolfenstein's tech was sold to Wisdom Tree to make Super Noah's Ark
3D (or "Super 3D Noah's Ark").

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_3D_Noah's_Ark](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_3D_Noah's_Ark)

I have the SNES version on a cartridge and it resells for as high as $300 CAD.

~~~
bobbles
"The game plays similarly to Wolfenstein 3D, but the graphics were changed to
reflect a non-violent theme. Instead of killing Nazi soldiers in a castle, the
player takes the part of Noah, wandering the Ark, using a slingshot to shoot
sleep-inducing food at angry attacking animals, mostly goats, in order to
render them unconscious."

Awesome

------
ben1040
I wonder how many people's GPA plummeted due to the fact that this was
released straight into finals season at a lot of universities.

------
js2
Lots of mentions of W3D in the comments here. Wonder how many folks played the
original Castle Wolfenstein on an Apple ][.

~~~
robodale
Me, and that game was awesome. Also Beyond Castle Wolfenstein. I can still
hear the German commands shouting at me...

------
D9u
I wasted countless hours playing Castle Wolfenstein 3D... It's hard to believe
that over 20 years has elapsed since then.

Carmack is one name I can vividly remember, but the one that stuck with me the
most is Todd Replogle, of Duke Nukem fame.

It was before _Wolf 3D_ and Duke Nukem was one of my first PC time-sinks.

Thanks for the trip down memory lane. (again)

------
yodsanklai
Maybe it was a revolution in video games. But to me, it coincided with my
forced transition from Amiga to PC. From then, I almost completely stopped
playing video games (and programming as a hobby).

On a side note, I recommend the book "masters of doom" that that tells the
story behind the game.

------
bsenftner
I was working at E.A., on the 3DO console no less, when one day in early
January of '94 one of the guys brought in a copy of Doom. That was the end of
any productivity at E.A. for at least a week while that game erupted like a
brush fire through E.A. advanced technology group.

~~~
terhechte
I always wanted to have a 3DO back then. Sadly I didn't have the money and
they were initially kinda hard to come by in Germany. I loved the concept and
idea. Too bad it never amounted to much.

------
ChrisArchitect
Some more nostalgia and retrospective over on Verge
[http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/10/5195508/doom-20th-
anniver...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/10/5195508/doom-20th-anniversary-
retrospective)

------
kjozwiak
Last week I decided to listen to all the keynotes from Carmack (2002-2013)..
So much respect for this man and what he has done for the gaming community.

------
Zoomla
Wolfenstein definitely started it but Doom was so much better. Modem to modem
connections was great. OT: Comcast is having some real issues today.

------
shire
I remember the first time I played Doom it was one of the best games I ever
played, what beautiful memories, nostalgia.

------
gnator
Wow I am currently listening to the master of Doom is an amazingly good
audiobook

------
ilovecookies
this could be interesting...

[http://speeddemosarchive.com/Doom.html](http://speeddemosarchive.com/Doom.html)

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reillyse
This makes me feel very old.

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NirDremer
Damn, I feel old now..

