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Wolfenstein 3D
(originally Wolfenstein 3-D, commonly abbreviated to Wolf 3D) is a video game that is generally regarded as having popularized the first person shooter genre on the PC. It was created by id Software and published by Apogee Software on May 5, 1992 for DOS. The game was inspired by the 1980s Muse Software computer games Castle Wolfenstein and Beyond Castle Wolfenstein. It has been ported to a wide variety of systems, including 3DO, Super NES, Game Boy Advance, Acorn Archimedes, Atari Jaguar, and the Apple IIGS.
In Wolfenstein 3D, the player is an American soldier named BJ Blazkowicz attempting to escape from the eponymous Nazi stronghold; there are many armed guards, as well as attack dogs. The building has a number of hidden rooms containing various treasures, food supplies, and medical kits, as well as three different guns and ammunition.
Wolfenstein 3D was released as shareware, which allowed it to be copied widely. The shareware release contains one episode, consisting of 10 missions (levels). The commercial release consists of three episodes including the shareware episode, and a mission pack called "The Nocturnal Missions". Like the shareware episode, each commercial episode contains 10 levels, bringing the game to a total of 60 missions.
The game was originally released on the PC and then ported to Macintosh computers, Apple IIGS, Acorn Archimedes, Super NES, Atari Jaguar, Game Boy Advance, and 3DO. The source code of the game was published by id Software on July 21, 1995 under a non-profit EULA, starting the long tradition at id Software of opening the entire source code to an old game. Some enhanced ports to different platforms like Linux and add-ons have been developed.
Wolfenstein 3D was the first game to use the ExMx map/level identity.
The first three episodes of the game focus on the character of William "B.J." Blazkowicz's attempts to escape from Castle Wolfenstein and overthrow the Nazi regime.
B.J., an Allied spy, had been captured while trying to find the plans for Operation Eisenfaust, and was imprisoned in Castle Wolfenstein. Initially armed only with a knife and a pistol (obtained by overpowering the guard in his cell), B.J.'s initial goal is merely to escape the castle prison. Taking on SS guards, stealing their machine guns and ultimately acquiring a chain gun, he eventually finds himself face to face with the Episode One boss, the ultimate prison guard Hans Grosse.
Having defeated Grosse and escaped the castle, B.J. moves on to Operation: Eisenfaust. B.J. finds out that the operation is real, and that the Nazis are creating a mutant army of undead zombies in Castle Hollehammer. When the episode begins, B.J. has just entered the castle; the walls are covered in mulch, and the first enemies found are mutants with machine guns in their chests. The episode boss is the scientist Dr Schabbs, the creator of the zombies. His defeat signals the end of this biological war.
Die, Führer, Die! is, chronologically, the final episode. Fighting through Nazi soldiers, and attacking the bunker under the Reichstag, the major centerpiece of the game is reached in the final mission, where the boss is none other than Adolf Hitler himself (equipped with a robotic suit).
The Nocturnal Missions form a prequel storyline, focusing on the Germans' plans for chemical warfare (Giftkrieg). A Dark Secret deals with the initial pursuit of the scientist responsible for the development of the weaponry; B.J.'s task is to enter the weapons research facility and hunt down Dr. Otto Giftmacher (Poison Maker).
Trail of the Madman is a rather ornate episode taking place in clean and stylish Castle Erlangen. Ostensibly, the episode's goal is to find the maps and plans of the chemical war, guarded by Gretel Grosse (Hans' sister). Hitler's image appears throughout this episode, as posters and wall mosaics, symbolising his imminent rise to power. All levels are designed with fashion, much decoration, and opulence.
The story comes to a close in Confrontation, set in Castle Offenbach; a summation of everything that has gone before, including the mutants (in the secret level only), Hans Grosse (in the secret level only), and the overall "feel". The final battle is fought between B.J. and the leader of this war, General Fettgesicht (Fat Face).
It should be noted that, despite the presence of Hitler as an episode boss, the game bears no resemblance to any actual Nazi plans or structures. Indeed, many of the level designs are highly fanciful; at least three levels heavily feature swastika shaped room layouts and maps, going as far as having one level built entirely of a tessellation of them. However, the overall premise could be said to be loosely based on the frequent and elaborate escape attempts made by Allied POWs from such Nazi prison strongholds such as Colditz Castle.
To render the walls in pseudo-3D, the game used ray casting, a special case of ray tracing. This technique sent out one ray for each column of pixels, checked if it intersected a wall, and drew textures on the screen accordingly, creating a one dimensional depth buffer against which to clip the scaled sprites that represented enemies, powerups, and props.
Before Wolfenstein 3D, the technology had already been used by id Software in 1991 to create Hovertank 3D and Catacomb 3D for Softdisk, albeit using only EGA 16-color graphics (which the game was designed to use, early in development). Other games using the Wolfenstein 3D game engine or developments of it were also produced, including, Blake Stone, Corridor 7, Operation Body Count, Super Noah's Ark 3D, Rise of the Triad, Shadowcaster, and Hellraiser.
According to id Software programmer John Carmack, the game's engine was inspired by a technology demo of Looking Glass Studios'/Origin's first-person CRPG, Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss from 1991. Carmack claimed he could make a faster renderer. In this he was successful. The Wolfenstein engine lacks many features present in the Underworld engine, such as height changes, sloped floors and lighting, but it runs well on relatively weak hardware.
"Holo-walls" are walls created by mapmakers using a glitch in the PC version's engine. They are walls that the player can walk through, and are used in some total conversions to simulate windows that players can climb through, and hedges that players can walk through. One way of creating holo-walls is to place a dead guard in a wall.
Due to its use of Nazi symbols and the Horst-Wessel-Lied as theme music, the PC version of the game was confiscated in Germany in 1994, following a verdict by the Amtsgericht München on January 25, 1994 (Az. 2 Gs 167/94); the use of these symbols is a federal offence in Germany unless certain circumstances apply (see articles 86 StGB and 86a StGB (in German)). Similarly, the Atari Jaguar version was confiscated following a verdict by the Amtsgericht Berlin Tiergarten on December 7, 1994 (Az. 351 Gs 5509/94). [1]
Due to concerns from Nintendo, the Super NES version was modified to not include any swastikas or Nazi references; furthermore, blood was replaced with sweat to make the game seem less violent, and the attack dogs in the game were replaced by giant mutant rats. The dogs were removed due to complaints from animal-rights activists that it was immoral to have a game in which the player is required to kill dogs. Employees of id Software are quoted in The Official DOOM Player Guide about the reaction to Wolfenstein, claiming it to be ironic that it was morally acceptable to shoot human beings, but not dogs. Three new weapons were added as well. The Super NES version was not as successful as the PC version. Many reviewers and Wolfenstein enthusiasts believed that the censorship of elements regarding Adolf Hitler and Nazis made the title incomplete and almost an entirely different game.
Level 2-8 features a giant hidden "pushwall" maze consisting of 181 nearly identical 2x2 rooms. Depending on the path taken through the maze, the player is eventually led to treasure, an extra life, or a surprise encounter with Hans Grosse. One and only one correct path leads to a room containing a sign saying "Call Apogee Say Aardwolf." (In some versions there is also an extra life in this room.) This was to have been part of a contest, where the first person to find the sign and carry out its instructions would have won a prize. The actual prize was never decided upon.
However, because the first level editors and cheat programs for the game were released within days of the full version of Wolfenstein 3D, many players were able to find the sign with minimal effort, and so the contest was abandoned before it was ever officially announced. One of the discussed prize options was to be registered copies of all Apogee games for life, but the contest was scrapped before any executive decisions had been made. The maze and the sign were left in the game; a text file included with the registered version distributed by Apogee explained the story behind the "Aardwolf" sign and asked gamers not to call in and say it (many did anyway). A 1997 commercial re-release by Activision, however, removed the sign and replaced it with graphics depicting a pile of bones, evidently to remove any reference to Apogee.
After completing an episode, the player is given a three-letter code in addition to a total score and time. This was part of a high-score contest that was abandoned for similar reasons to the "Aardwolf" one; the code would have been used to verify that a player got that score legitimately, without use of cheat codes.
The game was ported to the Super NES, Atari Jaguar, Mac OS, 3DO, Apple IIGS, Acorn Archimedes, and GBA. Many of the ports had different sounds, graphics, and levels. Some didn't even use the DOS version's episode format.
Some of the ports were derived from other ports and not from the original game. Both the Atari Jaguar and the Mac versions were based on the code of the Super NES port. However, both were developed independently of one another; the Jaguar port by id Software under the cooperation of Atari and the Mac port by MacPlay (The 3DO port was also developed by this team, making it mostly identical to the Mac version). The Apple IIGS port was in turn based on the Mac port.
The Super NES version of the game is notable for being heavily censored and edited, due to the Nintendo of America's censorship policy at the time. Due to this, most of the blood in the game was replaced with sweat (save for B.J.'s face becoming progressively bloodier as health dropped), and nazi references were removed. Adolf Hitler, who was a character in the game, had his moustache removed and was renamed "Straatmeiser" as well.
In several of the ports (specifically, the Atari Jaguar, Mac, and 3DO versions) the game's sprites and textures are redrawn as 128x128 pixel sprites, rather than 64x64 pixel sprites, allowing more detail in the game's characters and objects. However, they are drawn from one angle, like the bosses, eliminating the stealth element of the game.
In the Atari Jaguar port, the status bar was removed, with only displays for health, the head of BJ, ammo, and keys. Since there was no score, the treasure added to the player's health. There was also a flamethrower, and the rocket launcher, and along with the pistol and chaingun were based on graphics from Doom.
The Mac port and all derivative versions are the only ones to use authentic German voices and speech, recorded by native Germans. The other versions contain broken German phrases, with incorrect article and adjective usages, mostly stemming from the misunderstanding of the gender of the nouns.
Unlike the other ports, the Game Boy Advance port closely resembled the PC version of the game. Differences to the PC version included the removal of music and a change in the save system: the player has to complete a floor before they can save, but they can have up to 4 save games on one cartridge. It also used strong mipmapping which made objects and walls in the distance very pixellated.
Wolfenstein 3D was followed by several related games:
Also, a new Castle Wolfenstein game has been announced for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360.
Wolfenstein 3D is generally credited as being responsible for the first-person shooter craze that continues to this day. Released at the height of the 'Interactive CD-ROM' era, there were surprisingly few clones until Doom's release in 1993, the most notable being Rise of the Triad in 1994 and Duke Nukem 3D in 1996. Most of these games were distributed via the same shareware strategy as the original.
The game's success ensured that id Software quickly became a high profile developer. id's development efforts were closely watched by fans of the game, and when it released its next first-person shooter, Doom, it was guaranteed a receptive audience. Rather than rely on the technology that made Wolfenstein a hit, however, Doom introduced several technological leaps over Wolfenstein 3D. Doom's technology outdid that of Wolfenstein by providing multiple levels of detail and characters with more detail and animation than those in its predecessor. Wolfenstein would later be recreated in a Doom II fan modification aptly titled WolfenDoom. id again later revolutionised the FPS genre with the release of Quake in 1996, the first FPS to feature full 3D graphics.
Doom
Doom is a 1993 computer game by id Software that is among the landmark titles in the first-person shooter genre. It is widely recognized for its pioneering use of immersive 3D graphics, networked multiplayer gaming on the PC platform, and the support for players to create custom expansions (WADs). Distributed as shareware, Doom was downloaded by an estimated 10 million people within two years, popularizing the mode of gameplay and spawning a gaming subculture; as a sign of its impact on the industry, games from the mid-1990s boom of first-person shooters are often known simply as "Doom clones". Its graphic and interactive violence[2] has also made Doom the subject of much controversy reaching outside the gaming world. According to GameSpy, Doom was voted by industry insiders to be the #1 game of all time.[3]
The Doom franchise was continued with Doom II: Hell on Earth (1994) and numerous expansion packs, including The Ultimate Doom (1995), Master Levels for Doom II (1995), and Final Doom (1996). Originally released for PC/DOS, these games have later been ported to many other platforms, including nine different game consoles. The series lost mainstream appeal as the technology of the Doom game engine was surpassed in the mid-1990s, although fans have continued making WADs, speedrunning, and modifying the source code which was released in 1997. The franchise again received popular attention in 2004 with the release of Doom 3, a retelling of the original game using new technology, and an associated 2005 Doom motion picture.
Doom has a science fiction/horror theme, and a simple plot. The background is only given in the game's manual, and the in-game story is mainly advanced with short messages displayed between the game's episodes.
The player takes the role of a nameless space marine (referred to as "Doomguy" by many fans), "one of Earth's toughest, hardened in combat and trained for action", who has been deported to Mars for assaulting a senior officer when ordered to kill unarmed civilians. He is forced to work for the Union Aerospace Corporation (UAC), a military-industrial conglomerate that is performing secret experiments with teleportation between the moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos. Suddenly, something goes wrong and creatures from Hell come out of the teleportation gates, or "Gateways". A defensive response from base security fails to halt the invasion, and the bases quickly get overrun by demons; all personnel are killed or turned into zombies. At the same time, Deimos vanishes entirely. A UAC team from Mars is sent to Phobos to investigate the incident, but soon radio contact ceases and only one human is left alive — the player, whose task is to make it out alive.[4]
In order to beat the game, the player must fight through three episodes containing nine levels each (see Episodes and levels of Doom). Knee-Deep in the Dead, the first episode and the only one in the shareware version, is set in the high-tech military bases on Phobos. It ends with the player fighting the Barons of Hell and afterwards entering the teleporter leading to Deimos, there getting overwhelmed by monsters and seemingly killed. In the second episode, Shores of Hell, the player journeys through the Deimos installation, whose areas are interwoven with beastly architecture. After encountering the Cyberdemon, the truth about the vanished moon is discovered: it is floating above Hell. The player climbs down to the surface, and the final episode, Inferno, begins. After destroying the final boss, the Spider Mastermind, a hidden doorway opens for the hero who has "proven too tough for Hell to contain", leading back home to Earth. The expansion pack Ultimate Doom adds a fourth episode, Thy Flesh Consumed, chronicling the marine's return to Earth, in other words his adventures between the first three traditional episodes of Doom and Doom II.
Being a first-person shooter, Doom is experienced through the eyes of the main character. The objective of each level is simply to locate the exit room that leads to the next area (usually labeled with an inviting red EXIT sign), while surviving all hazards on the way. Among the obstacles are monsters, pits of radioactive slime, ceilings that come down and crush the player, and locked doors for which a keycard or remote switch need to be located. The levels are sometimes labyrinthine (the automap is a crucial aid in navigating them), and feature plenty of hidden secret areas that hold power-ups as a reward for players who explore.
Doom is notable for the weapons arsenal available to the player, which became prototypical for first-person shooters. The player starts armed only with a pistol, and brass-knuckled fists in case the ammunition runs out, but larger weapons can be picked up: these are a chainsaw, a shotgun, a chaingun, a rocket launcher, a plasma rifle, and finally the immensely powerful BFG 9000. There is a wide array of power-ups, such as a backpack that increases the player's ammunition-carrying capacity, armor, first aid kits to restore health, the berserk pack (a black first aid box that puts the character into berserk mode, allowing them to deal out rocket launcher-level damage with their fists and potentially splattering former humans and imps), and supernatural blue orbs that boost the player's health percentage beyond 100%, up to a maximum of 200%.
The enemy monsters in Doom make up the central gameplay element. The player faces them in large numbers, on the higher of the game's five difficulty levels often encountering a dozen or more in the same room. There are 10 types of monsters (Doom II doubles this figure), including possessed humans as well as demons of different strength, ranging from weak but ubiquitous imps and red, floating cacodemons, to the bosses which survive multiple strikes even from the player's strongest weapons. The monsters have very simple behavior, consisting of either walking toward the player or attacking by throwing fireballs, biting, and scratching (though they can also fight each other).
Many versions of Doom (and its sequels) include secret levels which are accessed by the player discovering alternate exits, often hidden behind secret doors or in difficult-to-reach areas. In some versions of Doom II two of these secret levels incorporate level design and characters from Doom's precursor, Wolfenstein 3D.
Aside from the single-player game mode, Doom features two multiplayer modes playable over a network: "co-operative", in which two to four players team up against the legions of Hell, and "deathmatch", in which two to four players fight each other.
Some of the Doom monsters were digitized from sculptures. Here, Adrian Carmack creates the Baron of Hell in clay.
The development of Doom started in 1992 when John Carmack developed a new 3-D game engine, the Doom engine, while the rest of the id Software team finished the Wolfenstein 3D sequel Spear of Destiny. When the game design phase began in late 1992, the main thematic influences were the science fiction action movie Aliens and the horror movie Evil Dead II. The title of the game was picked by Carmack:
There is a scene in "The Color of Money" where Tom Cruse [sic] shows up at a pool hall with a custom pool cue in a case. "What do you have in there?" asks someone. "Doom." replied Cruse with a cocky grin. That, and the resulting carnage, was how I viewed us springing the game on the industry. [5]
Designer 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.[6] However, many of his ideas were discarded during development in favor of simpler design primarily advocated by Carmack, resulting in Hall in the end being forced to resign due to not contributing effectively in the direction the rest of the team was going. Most of the level design that ended up in the final game is that of John Romero and Sandy Petersen. The graphics, by Adrian Carmack, Kevin Cloud and Gregor Punchatz, were created in various ways: although much was drawn or painted, several of the monsters were built from sculptures in clay or latex, and some of the weapons are toy guns from Toys "R" Us. A heavy metal-ambient soundtrack was supplied by Bobby Prince. [7]
Doom's primary distinguishing feature at the time of its release was its realistic 3D graphics, then unparalleled by other real-time-rendered games running on consumer-level hardware. The advance from id Software's previous game Wolfenstein 3D was enabled by several new features in the Doom engine:
Doom relies heavily on contrasts of lighting in building its atmosphere.
In contrast to the static levels of Wolfenstein 3D, those in Doom are highly interactive: platforms can lower and rise, floors can rise sequentially to form staircases, and bridges can rise and descend. The life-like feeling of the environment was enhanced further by the stereo sound system, which made it possible to roughly tell the direction and distance of a sound's origin. The player is kept on guard by the grunts and growls of monsters, and receives occasional clues to finding secret areas in the form of sounds of hidden doors opening remotely. Monsters can also become aware of the player's presence by hearing distant gunshots.
Carmack had to make use of several tricks for these features to run smoothly on home computers of 1993. Most significantly, Doom levels are not truly three-dimensional; they are internally represented on a plane, with height differences added separately (a similar trick is still used by many games to create huge outdoor environments). This leads to several limitations: it is, for example, not possible for a Doom level to have one room over another. This two-dimensional representation does, however, have the benefit that rendering can be done very quickly, using a binary space partitioning method. Another benefit was the clarity of the automap because it could be displayed with 2D vectors without the risk of overlapping.
Another important feature of the Doom engine is a modular approach that allows the game content to be replaced by loading custom WAD files. Wolfenstein 3D was not designed to be expandable, but fans had nevertheless figured out how to create their own levels for it, and Doom was designed to take the phenomenon further. The ability to create custom scenarios contributed significantly to the game's popularity (see the section on WADs below).
The development of Doom was surrounded by much anticipation. The large number of posts in Internet newsgroups about Doom led to the SPISPOPD joke, to which a nod was given in the game in the form of a cheat code. In addition to news, rumors, and screenshots, unauthorized leaked alpha versions also circulated online. (Many years later these alpha versions were sanctioned by id Software because of historical interest; they reveal how the game progressed from its early design stages.[8]) The first public version of Doom was uploaded to an FTP run at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on December 10, 1993.
Released as shareware, people were encouraged to distribute Doom further, and did so: in 1995, Doom was estimated to have been installed on more than 10 million computers. Although most users did not purchase the registered version, over one million copies have been sold, and the popularity helped the sales of later games in the Doom series which were not released as shareware. In 1995, The Ultimate Doom (version 1.9, including episode IV) was released, making this the first time that Doom was sold commercially in stores.
Recognizing the game's popularity, Bill Gates made a video presentation to promote Windows 95 while digitally superimposed into Doom to blast zombies.
In a press release dated January 1, 1993, id Software had written that they expected Doom to be "the number one cause of decreased productivity in businesses around the world". This prediction came true at least in part: Doom became a major problem at workplaces, both occupying the time of employees and clogging computer networks with traffic caused by deathmatches. Intel, Lotus Development and Carnegie Mellon University are among many organizations reported to form policies specifically disallowing Doom-playing during work hours. At the Microsoft campus, Doom was by one account[7] equal to a "religious phenomenon".
In late 1995, Doom was estimated to be installed on more computers worldwide than Microsoft's new operating system Windows 95, despite million-dollar advertising campaigns for the latter. The game's popularity prompted Bill Gates to briefly consider buying id Software, and led Microsoft to develop a Windows 95 port of Doom to promote the operating system as a gaming platform. One such presentation to promote Windows 95 had Bill Gates digitally superimposed into the game. [9] The Microsoft 1995 release Excel 95 included a Doom-esque secret level as an easter egg containing portraits of the programmers among other things. It is speculated that Microsoft engineers took advantage of their experience working on the Doom Windows 95 port to place the code in the spreadsheet program. [10]
Doom was also widely praised in the gaming press. In 1994, it was awarded Game of the Year by both PC Gamer and Computer Gaming World. It also received the Award for Technical Excellence from PC Magazine, and the Best Action Adventure Game award by the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences.
In addition to the thrilling nature of the single-player game, the deathmatch mode was an important factor in the game's popularity. Doom was not the first first-person shooter with a deathmatch mode—MIDI Maze on the Atari ST had one in 1987, using the MIDI ports built into the ST to network up to four machines together. However, Doom was the first game to allow deathmatching over ethernet, and the combination of violence and gore with fighting friends made deathmatching in Doom particularly attractive. Two player deathmatch was also possible over a phone line by using a modem. Due to its widespread distribution, Doom hence became the game that introduced deathmatching to a large audience (and was also the first game to use the term "deathmatch").
The ability to create custom levels and otherwise modify the game, in the form of custom WAD files, turned out to be a particularly popular aspect of Doom. Gaining the first large mod-making community, Doom affected the culture surrounding first-person shooters, and also the industry. Several to-be professional game designers started their careers making Doom WADs as a hobby, among them Tim Willits, who later became the lead designer at id Software.
The first level editors appeared in early 1994, and additional tools have been created that allow most aspects of the game to be edited. Although the majority of WADs contain one or several custom levels mostly in the style of the original game, others implement new monsters and other resources, and heavily alter the gameplay; several popular movies, television series and other brands from popular culture have been turned into Doom WADs by fans (without authorization), including Aliens, Star Wars, The X-files, The Simpsons, South Park, Dragon Ball Z, Pokemon and Batman. Some works like the Theme Doom Patch even combined enemies from several movies like Aliens, Predator and The Terminator.
Some addon files were also made which changed the sounds made by the various characters and weapons. Notable ones were samples from Beavis and Butthead and the famous fake orgasm scene from When Harry Met Sally....
Around 1994 and 1995, WADs were primarily distributed online over bulletin board systems or sold in collections on compact discs in computer shops, sometimes bundled with editing guide books. FTP servers became the primary method in later years. A few WADs have been released commercially, including the Master Levels for Doom II, which was released in 1995 along with Maximum Doom, a CD containing 1,830 WADs that had been downloaded from the Internet. Several thousands of WADs have been created in total: the idgames FTP archive contains over 13,000 files[11], and this does not represent the complete output of Doom fans.
Third party programs were also written to handle the loading of various WADs, since the game is a DOS game and all commands had to be entered on the command line in order to run. A typical launcher would allow the player to select which files to load from a menu, making it much easier to start.
The phrase Doom clone was initially popular to describe the style of gameplay in Doom-like games, but after 1996 was gradually replaced by first person shooter.
The popularity of Doom led to the development of a sequel, Doom II: Hell on Earth (1994), as well as expansion packs and alternate versions based on the same game engine, including The Ultimate Doom (1995), Final Doom (1996), and Doom 64 (1997). Doom became a killer application that all capable consoles and operating systems were expected to have, and versions of Doom have subsequently been released for the following systems: DOS, Microsoft Windows, QNX, Irix, NEXTSTEP, Linux, Apple Macintosh, Super NES, Sega 32X, Sony PlayStation, Game Boy Advance, RISC OS, Atari Jaguar, Sega Saturn, Nintendo 64, Tapwave Zodiac, 3DO, Xbox as a feature of Doom 3: Limited Edition, and Xbox 360 on Xbox Live Arcade. The total number of copies of Doom games sold is unknown, but may be well over 4 million[12]; Doom II alone has sold for over $100 million.
The game engine was licensed to several other companies as well, who released their own games based on it, including Heretic, HeXen, Strife and HacX. There is also a Doom-based game released by a breakfast cereal maker as a product tie-in called Chex Quest, and the United States Marine Corps released Marine Doom, designed to "teach teamwork, coordination and decision-making".
When, three years later, 3D Realms released Duke Nukem 3D, a tongue-in-cheek science fiction shooter based on Ken Silverman's technologically similar Build engine, id Software had nearly finished Quake, its next-generation game, which mirrored Doom's success for the remainder of the 1990s and significantly reduced interest in its predecessor. The franchise remained in that state until 2000, when Doom 3 was announced. A retelling of the original Doom using entirely new graphics technology, Doom 3 was hyped to provide as large a leap in realism and interactivity as the original Doom, but received mixed reactions when released in 2004.
Doom has appeared in several forms in addition to games, including a comic book, four novels by Dafydd Ab Hugh and Brad Linaweaver (loosely based on events and locations in the games), and a film starring Karl Urban and The Rock released in 2005. The game's development and impact on popular culture is also the subject of the book Masters of Doom by David Kushner.
Doom was and remains notorious for its high levels of violence, gore, and satanic imagery, which have generated much controversy from a broad range of groups. It has been criticized numerous times by religious organizations for its diabolic undertones and was dubbed a "mass murder simulator" by critic and Killology Research Group founder David Grossman.[14] Doom prompted fears that the then-emerging virtual reality technology could be used to simulate extremely realistic killing, and in 1994 led to unsuccessful attempts by Washington state senator Phil Talmadge to introduce compulsory licensing of VR use (in fact, according to a well-known graph from the USA Department of Justice, violent crime has plummeted since the early 1990s: [1])
The game again sparked controversy throughout a period of school shootings in the United States when it was found that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who committed the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, were avid players of the game. While planning for the massacre, Harris said that the killing would be "like fucking Doom" and that his shotgun was "straight out of" the game[15]. A rumor spread afterwards that Harris had designed Doom levels that looked like the halls of the high school, populated with representations of Harris's classmates and teachers, and that Harris practiced for his role in the shootings by playing these levels over and over. However, although Harris did design Doom levels, they were not simulations of Columbine High School (see Harris levels).
Doom is widely regarded as one of the most important titles in gaming history. It was voted the "#1 game of all time" in a poll among over 100 game developers and journalists conducted by GameSpy in July 2001[16], and PC Gamer proclaimed Doom the most influential game of all time in its ten-year anniversary issue in April 2004, and named it the second best game of all time a year later (number one was Half-Life). However, several game journalists have also contrasted the relatively simplistic gameplay in Doom unfavorably with more story-oriented first-person shooters such as Half-Life.
Devoted players have spent years creating speedruns for Doom, competing for the quickest completion times and sharing knowledge about routes through the levels and how to exploit bugs in the Doom engine for shortcuts. Achievements include the completion of both Doom and Doom II on the Ultra-Violence difficulty setting in less than 30 minutes each. In addition, a few players have also managed to complete Doom II in a single run on the Nightmare! difficulty setting, on which monsters are more aggressive, enemy projectiles are faster or, in the case of the Pinky Demon, move faster and respawn roughly 30 seconds after they have been killed (level designer John Romero characterized the idea of such a run as "[just having to be] impossible"[17]). Movies of most of these runs are available from the COMPET-N website.
Doom II: Hell on Earth
Doom II: Hell on Earth is a first-person shooter video game created by id Software. It was originally released on the IBM PC on September 30, 1994. It is the sequel to the popular and revolutionary game Doom, which was released a year earlier. In 1995, Doom II won the Origins Award for Best Fantasy or Science Fiction Computer Game of 1994. Unlike Doom which was initially only available through shareware and mail order, Doom II was a commercial release sold in stores.
Immediately following the events in Doom, the player once again takes the role of the nameless space marine (although named "Flynn Taggart" in the Doom novels) who has proven too tough for the forces of Hell to contain. After being teleported from Phobos, and subsequently fighting on Deimos which is hanging on top of Hell itself, the Marine is back home on Earth, only to find that it too has fallen victim to the hellish invasion.
The player progresses through 30 levels (32 including two secretly accessed levels), and on the way he learns that the remaining survivors of Earth's population are being held on Earth and the only means of escape is the space port with massive ships that can carry the remains of Earth's population into space. However the demons know this and have placed a fire force field over the space port, so that ships cannot land or leave. The marine must battle his way through the infested space port and deactivate that fire force field. Once humanity is finally evacuated from the ravaged, infested planet, the Marine is the only human left on Earth. He sits and waits for death, content in the knowledge that he has saved his species, giving them a chance to continue on elsewhere. Only minutes pass before the Marine receives an off-planet transmission - humans in orbit have managed to find out where the armies of Hell are spilling from. If the Marine can reach this gateway, he can thwart the invasion once and for all.
The Marine wearily pulls himself to his feet and moves off to the portal, cutting a swathe through the demons in his path before finally arriving at the gateway. He sees no way to close it on this side, and so he grits his teeth and dives through to find a solution. In the game's own words, "what do you care if you have to go through Hell to do it?"
The Marine finally reaches the home of the "largest demon (he has) ever seen." Once the player fires enough rockets into the exposed brain of the demon, dodging constant attacks from lesser demons the larger one summons, the demon (known as the 'Icon of Sin') explodes, devastating Hell in its death throes. When the chaos finally ceases, Hell is in ruins, the invasion permanently halted. The Marine wipes his brow and begins the long journey home, looking forward to helping to rebuild Earth.
Doom II was not a dramatically different game from its predecessor. There were no major technological developments, no major graphical improvements, and no real changes in fundamental gameplay. The game still consisted of the player negotiating non-linear levels, picking up keys to unlock new areas, and of course shooting down hundreds upon hundreds of monsters.
The main additions to the game were the additional monsters available for the player to fight. The new enemies are as follows:
The SS trooper from Wolfenstein 3D appears in the two secret levels, which are throwbacks in design (and music) to the Wolfenstein 3D game. Also, a hung Commander Keen figure makes a cameo in the second secret level.
The only new weapon addition was the double-barreled shotgun, which could fire out 20 pellets instead of the regular shotgun's seven, making it very useful in dispatching Demons, Cacodemons, and any form of medium-sized monster.
There was also one new item created, the Megasphere, a tan sphere that could give the player 200% armor and health. 3-4 of these are found on the final level, The Icon of Sin.
A small change in gameplay was instituted. Instead of the player playing through three related episodes, gameplay takes place over one giant episode, albeit there are interludes for when the story develops. Instead of watching the player's progress on a map (as in the original episodes of Doom), the screens between each level simply show a background. It also meant that the player would not have to start over with a pistol every eight or nine levels (as was the case in Doom, since each episode consisted of nine levels, including bonus levels).
In general, Doom II was well-received and went on to sell 2 million copies, making it the highest-selling id Software game to date.
Quake
Quake is a first-person shooter computer game that was released by id Software on June 22, 1996. It was the first game in the popular Quake series of computer and video games.
The majority of programming work on the Quake engine was done by John Carmack. Michael Abrash, a program performance optimization specialist, was brought in to help make the software rendering engine fast enough to be feasible. The sound effects and music for the game were composed by Trent Reznor, of Nine Inch Nails (within the game, the ammo box for the nailgun has the Nine Inch Nails logo on it in reference to this). Reznor's work was one of the first major efforts to bridge the gap between "mainstream" musicians and gaming, and his title screen song has become famous even among the most casual fans of the game. Quake was released just as the Internet was commercially coming of age, and gamers were graduating from local bulletin boards to the global online community. id Software recognized, before anyone else, that the future of competitive gaming lay with the Internet, and so Quake was the second game[citation needed] whose multiplayer could be played against many people on the Internet rather than with only people on a local network without some kind of local network emulation.
Quake and its three sequels, Quake II, Quake III Arena and Quake 4, have sold over 4 million copies combined. In 2005, a version of Quake was produced for mobile phones.
In single-player mode, players explore and navigate to the exit of each level, facing many challenging monsters and a few secret areas along the way. Usually there are buttons to press or keys to collect in order to open doors before the exit can be reached. Once reaching the exit, the game takes the player to the next level. Quake's single-player campaign is organized into four individual episodes of about eight levels each (each including a secret level, one of which is a "low gravity" level — Ziggurat Vertigo in Episode 1, Dimension of the Doomed — that challenges the player's abilities in a different way). As items are collected, they are carried to the next level, each usually more challenging than the last. If the player dies, he is restarted at the beginning of the level. However, games may be saved at any time. Upon completing each episode, the player is returned to the hub Start level, where he can then enter the next episode. (Before the start level, there is also a set of three pathways with easy, medium, and hard skill levels; in order to reach the Nightmare skill level, the player must drop through the water before the Episode 4 entrance and jump into a secret passage.) Each episode starts the player from scratch, without any previously collected items. Episode I (which formed the shareware or downloadable demo version of Quake) has a boss in the last level. There is also an End level after all four episodes are completed, containing the final boss.
In multiplayer mode, no monsters are normally present. Players on several computers connect to a server (which may be a dedicated machine or on one of the player's computers), where they can play against each other. Typically in multiplayer mode, when a player dies he can immediately respawn, but loses any items he has collected and so must start collecting them again. Similarly, items that have been picked up previously respawn after some time, and may be picked up again.
The multiplayer modes included in the game are all forms of deathmatch. Deathmatch modes typically consist of either free-for-all (no organization or teams involved), one-on-one duels, or organized teamplay with two or more players per team (or clan). Teamplay is also frequently played with one or another mod.
The gameplay in Quake is considered unique because of the different ways the player can maneuver through the game. For example: bunny hopping or strafe jumping can be used to move faster than normal, while rocket jumping enables the player to reach otherwise-inaccessible areas (or just move faster), at the cost of some self-damage. The player can start and stop moving suddenly, jump unnaturally high, and change direction while moving through the air. Many of these non-realistic behaviors contribute to Quake's appeal. The nature of the gameplay is often fast and frenzied, and has gotten considerably faster over the years as players mastered advanced movement techniques.
The game consists of around 28 separate "levels" or "maps", grouped into 4 episodes. Each episode represents individual dimensions that the player can access through magical portals (as opposed to the technological Slipgate) that are discovered over the course of the game. At the start of each episode, the player is deployed in a futuristic military base and he has to find a slipgate that will take him to the alternate realm. The various realms consist of a number of gothic, medieval, as well as "fire and brimstone"-style caves and dungeons with a recurring theme of hellish and satanic imagery reminiscent of id Software's earlier game Doom. The latter is inspired by several dark fantasy influences, notably that of H.P. Lovecraft; most notably, the end game boss is named Shub-Niggurath and the end boss of the first episode is named Chthon, although there is little resemblance between the game's portrayal and the original literary description. Originally, the game was supposed to include more Lovecraftian bosses, but this concept was scrapped due to time constraints. It is debatable whether the four dimensions under Shub-Niggurath's rule are truly the spiritual Hell or whether they are simply other physical realms, with the Hell theme used merely for horrific effect.
Although the moniker "Quake" originally applied to the protagonist, the final story describes Quake as simply being "the enemy". It has been implied by other sources that Quake is a master antagonist, possibly leaving open the option for a direct sequel in which this person or creature is a boss character. This has neither been confirmed nor denied by John Romero or id Software.
Partly due to the internal power struggle surrounding the game design, Romero resigned from id Software soon after the game was released. He went on to co-found the ill-fated development company Ion Storm. Half of id Software's staff left the company in the six months following Romero's departure, including Jay Wilbur (CEO), Sandy Petersen, Mike Wilson, Shawn Green and Michael Abrash.
The unnamed hero of Quake reappears as one of the selectable characters in Quake III Arena, where he is known as "Ranger". However, Quake is one of the only modern id games not to have a true sequel - after the departure of Romero, the remaining id employees chose to change the thematic direction substantially for Quake II, making the design more technological and futuristic rather than dark fantasy; Quake 4 followed the design themes of Quake II, whereas Quake III Arena lacked a standard single-player campaign entirely as this episode was meant for multiplay only. PCGamer, in its recap of the mixed settings throughout the Quake series in its fall 2004 preview of Quake 4, stated that Quake II actually began as a totally separate product line. Unfortunately, due to the failure to gain rights to the title they wanted, id designers were forced to fall back on the project's nickname of "Quake II." Since any sequel to the original "Quake" had already been refused, it became a viable way of continuing the series without actually continuing the storyline or setting of the first game.[citation needed]
It is also worth noting the huge number of custom maps that have been made by users and fans of the game. Custom maps are completely new and original maps that are playable by simply loading them into the original game. Custom maps of all gameplay types have been made, but the most custom maps for Quake have been in the single-player and deathmatch genres.
There been thousands of third-party single-player and deathmatch maps made for Quake. They vary in quality enormously, but the best custom maps are generally accepted to be better than the id Software maps in the original game. Some of the best and most ambitious single-player custom maps are episodes like Nehahra, Insomnia, Zerstorer, IKSPQ and Beyond Belief by Matthias Worch, and single maps like Marcher Fortress, Cassandra Calamity and Bestial Devastation. Two of the most popular multiplayer maps are Aerowalk by Preacher (popular strategy guide here) and Blood Run (ztndm3) by ztn.
In addition, new maps continue to be made into 2006 for the game, over 10 years after it was originally released.
As an example of the dedication that Quake has inspired in its fan community, a group of expert players recorded speedrun demos (replayable recordings of the player's movement) of Quake levels completed in record time on the "Nightmare" skill level. The footage was edited into one continuous 19 minutes, 49 seconds demo called Quake done Quick (QdQ) and released on 10 June, 1997. Owners of the game could replay this demo in the game engine, watching the run unfold as if they were playing it themselves.
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Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil (PC)
It seems like just eight months ago that Doom 3 was finally released to a rabid PC community slavering with anticipation. Wait, it was just eight months ago. Nevertheless, id Software has collaborated with longtime partner Nerve Software to bring us Doom 3's first expansion pack, Resurrection of Evil. The new add-on doesn't muck with the horror-movie presentation and run-and-gun gameplay laid down by the original, though it adds enough new weapons and enemies to make the expansion feel like a solid companion to the original. If Doom 3 left you wanting more, you'll find what you're looking for in Resurrection of Evil.
Something has once again gone very wrong on Mars...and you're the only marine who can fix it.
Resurrection of Evil picks up about two years after the hellish catastrophe of the original game. The Union Aerospace Corporation, in its infinite drive for profits, has established a new base to continue the study of an ancient Martian civilization uncovered by the original science team. During an exploratory mission, your character--a different marine than the one you played in Doom 3--unwisely picks up an evil artifact that just happens to open another portal to hell, which leads to the deaths of almost everyone on the base, as well as unleashes a new wave of demons, led by the demonic Dr. Betruger (who wants his toy back). With the help of Dr. Elizabeth McNeil, who acts as this game's Sarge, you'll have to blast your way through hordes of enemies as you attempt to reach hell to seal the artifact there, hopefully ending the threat of invasion forever.
Since this is an expansion pack, Resurrection of Evil plays almost exactly like the original Doom 3. The game is extremely dark, requiring you to use your trusty flashlight to explore its many nooks and crannies to detect enemy threats, many of which lurk unseen in the darkness. The flow of the action is similar to that of Doom 3, so you'll enter a new area, clear it of enemies, and look for a key item or security upgrade that will let you meet your objective and move on to the next area. There's not as much storyline here as in the original, which means you won't spend as much time poring over old e-mails and audio logs for clues. Furthermore, the cutscenes are sparse and widely separated. So despite its similarities to Doom 3, Resurrection of Evil feels even more like the sort of straightforward action game that the original Doom was.
Upon its release, Doom 3 boasted what was probably the most amazing graphics engine ever seen, yet most of the game was set in identical-looking industrial corridors. Resurrection of Evil attempts to rectify this shortcoming by placing you in a wider variety of environments. The first few levels are set in an archeological dig site similar to the one glimpsed at the very end of Doom 3, which adds some nice variety to the action. You'll spend the bulk of the game inside the base, though most of the levels are varied enough that the scenery never gets too old. Finally, it's back to hell again at the end of the game, though the designers don't get too crazy with either the waves of enemies or the final encounter there. On the whole, the action is solid throughout.
The new weapons, enemies, and hell powers add some needed variety to the basic Doom 3 action.
Much of the entertainment value in Resurrection of Evil comes from the incremental improvements made to your arsenal. You'll find the good old double-barreled shotgun a few hours into the game, which can only hold two shells at once but will put a massive hole in anything you manage to hit with it. Then there's the grabber, a physics weapon not unlike Half-Life 2's gravity gun. The grabber is more combat-focused, though, since you won't use it to solve any serious puzzles. You can use the grabber to snag enemy projectiles and fling them back, and you can make weapons out of a lot of environmental objects, too (as you'd expect, exploding barrels work nicely for this).
Rounding out your arsenal is the very artifact that started this whole mess. As you play through the game, the artifact will grant you powers you can activate at will. At first, you'll be able to slow down time for a few seconds, giving you a speed advantage over your enemies. Later on, the berserk power will be added to the artifact, enabling you to punch anything to death with one hit. Finally, toward the end of the game, you'll become invincible when you invoke the artifact, making you a real killing machine. Using your hell powers wisely becomes important, because the expansion sometimes throws a lot more enemies at you at one time than you saw in Doom 3. You'll come to rely on the artifact just as much as you do your regular weapons.
It's a good thing you have some new toys to play with, because hell's forces have been enhanced as well. The most common new enemy is the vulgar, which is like a super-imp. It hurls green plasma at you and is generally faster and more vicious than its brown counterpart. Fortunately, the vulgar's projectile is ripe for the grabber. There's also a tall, lumbering fellow with rocket launchers for hands and a computer screen for a mouth who acts as a long-range companion to the hell knight. Finally, there are the three hunters who serve as the game's bosses. Each boss comes at you a different way and requires you to use a combination of your hell powers and the grabber to win.
Resurrection of Evil adds a capture the flag mode to Doom 3's multiplayer. The CTF here was developed by ThreeWave, the same group that essentially created capture the flag in online shooters back in the days of Quake (though ThreeWave founder Dave Kirsch has since moved on). Resurrection's CTF is straightforward, though the included maps are well put together and feature a lot of nice touches, such as graphical cues as to base direction and even the classic ThreeWave logos for those nostalgists out there. There are also a handful of new deathmatch maps set in the dig site and in hell, which at least provide some new backdrops for all your fragging. Like Doom 3, single-player is the focus here, although the new multiplayer offerings, which are built for eight players, are quite sharp.
Even eight months later, the game's graphics are virtually unparalleled.
As an expansion pack, you'd expect Resurrection of Evil to look a lot like Doom 3. And it does. That's alright, though, considering Doom 3 is still one of the best-looking games around. As mentioned, the expansion spends more time in the archeological sites, which we didn't get to see enough of in the original. And even in the Mars base levels, the designers and artists have done a good job of differentiating this add-on from the base game. The new enemies and weapons are all just as realistically modeled and animated as those in Doom 3, again adding to the impressive quality of the visuals. As with the graphics, the sounds are almost all lifted straight from Doom 3-- though the new voice actors are good--and the new shotty packs a serious punch. Like its forebear, this expansion puts forth an exceptional audiovisual effort.
Resurrection of Evil does a good job of reprising the straight-ahead shooting of Doom 3, and the new additions help to add a little depth to what was admittedly a pretty basic action game. The expansion's not incredibly long, so a dedicated player can blow through it in eight to 10 hours. However, its action is solid and entertaining throughout, without ever feeling like a chore. When it comes down to it, anyone who enjoyed Doom 3 should have an equally good time playing through its first expansion.
DOOM 3 Hardware Guide Released
Everything you wanted to know and weren't afraid to ask.
We're generally not that geeky about the hard-core details of PC hardware, but when it comes to titles like DOOM 3 which push the limits of available technology (and look to make the most of even modest technology), we admit to dorking out a bit. And we suspect you're a lot like us that way. Now that its release is imminent, the question on most gamers' minds has been (apart from, when will I have my copy?): how will DOOM 3 run on my system?
Good thing, then, that stalwart hardware site HardOCP has posted the official, incredibly detailed DOOM 3 Hardware Guide. The HardOCP guys traveled to id's Texas offices to spend 65 hours with DOOM 3 on all manner of configurations, testing, playing, and testing some more. We bet there's hardly a hardware-related DOOM 3 question which isn't covered here.
What are the basic conclusions? Most broadly, HardOCP observes that DOOM 3 looks fantastic and offers full immersive game play even on the minimum specs recommended by id -- a refreshing contrast to many company's questionable minimum requirements. Impressively, DOOM 3 features advanced effects like shadows, specular lighting, and bump mapping even at modest quality modes. Further, the report finds no significant differences between comparable ATI and nVidia cards.
Likely you'll want to hop over and peruse the full guide. You've got our permission to fully geek out here. Of course, stay tuned for full DOOM 3 updates as they come in. Meantime, you have added it to your wishlist, haven't you?
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