Join Kaleb, Cameron, Kaleb, and Dylan as they discuss the original Doom game. Enjoy!
Doom
How do you begin to do a review on a game as iconic and game changing as doom?
Who developed Doom?
ID software
John Carmack and John Romero, game designer Tom Hall, and artist Adrian Carmack.
The company was also heavily involved in the creation of the first-person shooter genre. Wolfenstein 3D is often considered as the first true FPS,Doom was a game that popularized the genre and PC gaming in general, and Quake is the first shooter to have online multiplayer, which is a widespread feature used in today's games of the same genre, as well as id's first true 3D first-person shooter.
What is doom?
1993 science fiction horror-themed first-person shooter (FPS) video game by id Software. It is considered one of the most significant and influential titles in video game history, for having pioneered the now-ubiquitous first-person shooter. The original game was divided into three nine-level episodes and was distributed via shareware and mail order. The Ultimate Doom, an updated release of the original game featuring a fourth episode, was released in 1995 and sold at retail.
In an interview I watched about it by John Romero, he said that Doom is the most downloaded software because of how good it was, and because of it being free. In fact, Microsoft wanted to jump onto the success of doom with their release of windows 95:
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The version I played was the Ultimate Doom, the one sold on the BFG edition of Doom three on the xbox 360.
Plot
Doom, a science fiction/horror themed video game, has a background which is given in the game's instruction manual; the rest of the story is advanced with short messages displayed between each section of the game (called episodes), the action as the player character progresses through the levels, and some visual cues.
The player takes the role of an unnamed space marine ("Doomguy") who has been punitively posted to Mars after assaulting his commanding officer, who ordered his unit to fire on civilians. The Martian space marine base acts as security for the Union Aerospace Corporation, a multi-planetary conglomerate, which is performing secret experiments with teleportation by creating gateways between the two moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos. Mars is considered by space marines to be the dullest assignment imaginable. This all changes when the UAC experiments go horribly wrong. Computer systems on Phobos malfunction, Deimos disappears entirely, and "something fragging evil" starts pouring out of the gateway, killing or possessing all UAC personnel.
Responding to a frantic distress call from the overrun scientists, the Martian marine unit is quickly sent by ship from Mars to Phobos to investigate, where the player character is left to guard the perimeter with only a pistol while the rest of the group proceeds inside. The marine hears assorted radio messages, gunfire, and screams, followed by silence: "Seems your buddies are dead." The player cannot navigate the ship off of Phobos alone and sees that the only way out is to fight through the Phobos complex.
As the last man standing, the player character's mission is to fight through the entire onslaught of demonic enemies by himself in order to keep them from attacking Earth. Knee-Deep in the Dead, the first episode and the only one in the shareware version, is set in the high-tech military bases, power plants, computer centers and geological anomalies on Phobos. It ends with the player character entering the teleporter leading to Deimos, only to be overwhelmed by monsters.
In the second episode, The Shores of Hell, the marine has successfully teleported to Deimos. He fights his way through installations on Deimos, similar to those on Phobos, but warped and distorted from the demon invasion and interwoven with beastly architecture. After defeating the titanic Cyberdemon, the marine discovers the truth about the vanished moon: it is floating above Hell.
The third episode, called Inferno, begins after the marine climbs off Deimos to the surface. The marine fights his way through Hell and defeats the Spider Mastermind that planned the invasion. Then a hidden doorway back to Earth opens for the hero, who has "proven too tough for Hell to contain". However, a burning city and a rabbit's head impaled on a stake (named in The Ultimate Doom as the marine's pet rabbit, Daisy) show that the demons have invaded Earth, setting the stage for Hell on Earth. The sequel retcons the events of Doom as an alien invasion of the Mars moon bases.
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In The Ultimate Doom expansion, in the fourth episode Thy Flesh Consumed, it tells that the marine fought valiantly against the hordes of demons that the Spider Mastermind sent through that hidden doorway but ultimately the forces of Hell prevailed in the invasion of Earth. The locales of Thy Flesh Consumed are varied, including a mix of high-tech bases and demonic temples, though the atmosphere appears to be Earth.
Development
The development of Doom started in 1992, when John D. Carmack developed a new 3D game engine, the Doom engine, while the rest of the id Software team finished the Wolfenstein 3D prequel, Spear of Destiny. When the game design phase began in late 1992, the main thematic influences were the films Aliens and Evil Dead II.
Tom Hall wrote an elaborate design document called the Doom Bible, according to which the game would feature a detailed storyline, multiple player characters, and a number of interactive features.[8]However, many of his ideas were discarded during development in favor of simpler design
Technology
Doom's primary distinguishing feature at the time of its release was its relatively realistic 3D graphics. The advance from id Software's previous game Wolfenstein 3D was enabled by several new features in the Doom engine, including height differences (all rooms in Wolfenstein 3D have the same height), full texture mapping of all surfaces (in Wolfenstein 3D, floors and ceilings are flat colors) and varying light levels and custom palettes (all areas in Wolfenstein 3D are fully lit at the same brightness). The latter contributed to Doom's visual authenticity, atmosphere and gameplay, as the use of darkness to frighten or confuse the player was nearly unheard of in games released prior to Doom; palette modifications were used to enhance effects such as the berserk power-up which tints the player's vision red.
How did you feel when you stepped into a room that was lit only by a strobe effect?
Doom's primary distinguishing feature at the time of its release was its relatively realistic 3D graphics.[9] The advance from id Software's previous game Wolfenstein 3D was enabled by several new features in the Doom engine, including height differences (all rooms in Wolfenstein 3D have the same height), full texture mapping of all surfaces (in Wolfenstein 3D, floors and ceilings are flat colors) and varying light levels and custom palettes (all areas in Wolfenstein 3D are fully lit at the same brightness). The latter contributed to Doom's visual authenticity, atmosphere and gameplay, as the use of darkness to frighten or confuse the player was nearly unheard of in games released prior to Doom; palette modifications were used to enhance effects such as the berserk power-up which tints the player's vision red.
John Carmack had to make use of several tricks for these features to run smoothly on home computers of 1993. Most significantly, the Doom engine and levels are not truly three-dimensional; they are internally represented on a single plane, with height differences stored separately as displacements (a similar technique is still used in many games to create expansive outdoor environments). This allows a two point perspective projection, with several design limitations: for example, it is not possible in the Doom engine to create one room over another room in a level. However, thanks to its two-dimensional property, the environment can be rendered very quickly, using a binary space partitioning method. Another benefit was the clarity of the automap, as that could be rendered with 2D vectors without any risk of overlapping.
Another important feature of the Doom engine is its modular data files, which allow most of the game's content to be replaced by loading customWAD files. Wolfenstein 3D was not designed to be expandable, but fans had nevertheless figured out how to create their own levels for it, andDoom was designed to further extend the possibilities. The ability to create custom scenarios contributed significantly to the game's popularity (see the section on WADs, below).
Music
A heavy metal-ambient soundtrack was supplied by Bobby Prince.[6], heavily influenced by metal
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The iconic E1M1
If you want to see that interview with John Romero, look for Meet John Romero: One of the Godfathers of the First-Person Shooter