Classic Systems Emulated: Doom
The Deathmatch Started, And The PC Isn't Going To Show Mercy
There were these two developers, John Carmack and John Romero, who wanted to push PC hardware to there limits. They found a way to perfected side scrolling in 2D games (similar to Super Mario Bros.) using EGA, a task which many considered impossible due to hardware limitations of the EGA video standard. Yet, they pulled it off. Commander Keen became a staple for DOS gamer in the early 90’s. As many realized, nothing was impossible for the two Johns. There dreams didn’t stay in the second dimension for long though. The third dimension was became the heart and soul for id Software. After a few experiments (Catacombs 3D and Hovertank), id released Wolfenstein 3D and the FPS (First person shooter) was born. Wolftenstein 3D was quickly hailed as a tech marvel as one could transverse though a castle in the first-person perspective. Shooting Nazi’s was just an added bonus! The game made powerful use of the Creative Labs SoundBlaster as well. Stereo channels were used for great effect. If an enemy was on your left, the audio would come out of the left channel of the speaker. The game ran well on a 286-class system. For the id team, why stop there?
The id team began to develop Wolfenstein's follow-up on recently
purchased
Next Turbo Workstations. A killer game needs an killer development
environment, right? These epic workstations symbolized raw, unrestricted
power in the early 90’s. These computers were the Ferrari's of there
day.
Not a pure coincidence as Next was founded by Steve Jobs after being
removed from Apple. Jobs was obsessed with European sports cars, both in
performance and in design. Jobs wanted his engineers to build computers
the same way Ferrari built there cars.
Not only does one
need a epic workstation to develop Doom on, one needs a powerful
computer to run it too. That 386 wasn't going to cut it. It was time to
go into overdrive! Doom needed that 486, no questions asked. It also
wanted that Creative Labs SoundBlaster and SVGA adapter too!
Hell was unleashed on the PC platform on 1993 with the introduction of Doom. Within a short time, there were already more Doom installations than that of Windows 3.1! Doom became the cornerstone of PC gaming. Every OS was begging for a port, from Amiga to OS/2. This became the must own game for PC gamers. To put it in modern perspective, Doom was the early 90's equivalent to FortNite. To say that Doom is awesome is like saying that dogs bark or that the sky is blue. This was a given assumption. That shotgun becomes your Cross and ammo rounds become your Holy Water as you battle against demon possessed people and Hell-spawn creations unleashed by a devious corporation with very questionable ethics and nefarious plans.
Doom was the first major PC game that supported multiplayer using either a modem or LAN (Local Area Network). Doom help legitimized Ethernet as this was also the time when the WWW and Internet were coming of age. John Romero coined the term “deathmatch”. For many years, the PC was largely dismissed, and now it would seek revenge in a bloody rampage. The deathmatch started and the PC would show no mercy. Hell would reign supreme as PC gaming went from the Abyss to being at the forefront overnight.
Judgement Day Arrives (For The Consoles)
The consoles became envious. The Sega Genesis needed the 32X attachment for its port. That port was largely dismissed. While the SNES port of the game was a technological marvel (considering the fact that the SNES shouldn’t have been able to run the game at all considering its weak hardware), it was still largely unplayable.
It wasn't until the 32-bit/64-bit console generation that playing such games could be accomplished much more competently. The Atari Jaguar port of Doom was very well received. This was one of the few Jaguar games that was critically acclaimed. The Jaguar port was used as the basis for the Sony PS/1 port as well. However, the number of on-screen enemies was scaled back on the PS/1 version. The greater number of onscreen enemies placed a heavy load on the PS/1 hardware.
It’s amazing that the console that had the most family-friendly image was the one that had the most epic and baller version of Doom. Doom 64 became a must have for any N64 owner. Using an entirely different game engine, that port, along with Golden Eye 64, legitimized FPS's on the consoles. However, a PC user with a mouse and keyboard still typically has much more precise control over there environment than someone using a joystick or D-pad. The fact that the N64 could not only run Doom, but play it well with decent controls was a triumph for gaming. And gullible idiots have the nerve to call Halo the greatest game every made! Get the Hell Out! Doom Guy is the OG. He was the original space marine! Doom 64 was actually ported back to the PC because the game was so popular.
Portability
Doom was quickly ported to
various systems. Because of the game's popularity, port begging quickly
became a thing as people wanted the opportunity to blast away
hell-spawned demons on there preferred platforms. id still wasn't the
biggest of companies though, so various ports were either contracted to
other software companies or independent developers.
Windows 3.1 got an unofficial port of Doom. When Windows 3.1 was first released, no thought was given about high-performance gaming under Windows. That was until Doom was released. WinDoom used the WinG graphics libraries, which was basically the precursor to DirectX. WinDoom didn't have any sound though. Performance wise, it wasn't the best of ports either due to the performance overhead of Windows. However, Microsoft and Bill Gates personally was so eager for Doom to run on there up-and-coming Windows 95 that for some time, they considered buying id Software. They dropped the idea of the acquisition after Carmack stated that they were going to port the game to Windows 95 anyway, so being brought out by Microsoft wasn't necessary. It's ironic that this has actually happen eventually in 2020 when MS acquired Bethesda software, which owned id Software.
This was the case of the OS/2 port of Doom as well. The OS/2 port of Doom was based on the DOS one. However, the ports were handled by independent developers. As noted in my article about OS/2 Warp 3, the Doom ports were not that good. They had no sound, which is essential for the Doom experience. The DOS port couldn't run under OS/2's DOS Session either. Now, Windows NT didn't get a native version of Doom and the DOS version ran under it without sound as well. However, Windows NT was a server OS geared towards the corporate environment, as as such, there was never any pressure for that OS to run Doom. However, OS/2 Warp was geared towards home users, and not being able to run that game fully worked greatly against OS/2's favor.
The Macintosh got a port of Doom as well. It's based on the MS-DOS port of the game, except conforming to the Macintosh environment. While the Mac port of Doom didn't run as well due to the overhead of the Mac GUI, it still ran well enough with sound. Doom continued to solidify MS-DOS as THE gamers platform through the 90's. The overhead of graphical environments like Windows, the OS/2 PM, and the Macintosh meant that the DOS port would always have the upper-hand when it came to performance. It wasn't until the Pentium and PowerPC processors that Doom could run under GUI's without that overhead or performance hit brought on by those environments.
One of the reasons why Doom was ported to so many
platforms was that it was very well-written from a programmers point of
view. The code was written in C. However, it was very well-documented
and the code is very clean and easy to understand from a programmers
perspective. Because of how well organized the code is, it was possible
to quickly port the game to various platforms, both then and now. The
Commodore Amiga got its port a few years later when the game-engine
itself was open-sourced in 1997. Android got a port as well. Various
Doom ports are regularly updated for Linux, Windows, and MacOS with
relative easy. Not only that, when the game-engine was open-sourced, it
was possible to add new features into the game, like 3D acceleration in
the form of OpenGL support and anti-aliasing, taking advantage of the
latest GPU's. Doom is showing its age. However, it's also been able to
remain relevant in light with changing tech trends because of its
open-source nature and dedicated fan-community.
Performance
Using the PCEM emulator allowed me to
benchmark Doom on multiple CPU configurations. I first tried Doom on a
386 running at 25MHz. This is the lowest required specs for game. It was
unplayable. Doom was still unplayable on the 33MHz Intel 386. The game
was playable on the 40MHz AMD 386 as long as the graphical detail was
set to low. This was the same case with the 25MHz Intel 486 DX. Using a
386 motherboard with the 486 upgrade made the game much more playable.
It wasn't until I reached the 50MHz 486 DX that Doom became playable at a
decent frame-rate with the detail set to high. Doom recommended a 66MHz
486 DX2 for best performance. However, the game flew once Pentiums
entered the equation.
I could spend multiple articles talking about how epic Doom is. However, I decided it’s easier to just simply leave game-play footage of me killing Hell-spawn creations in-mass. I know no mercy!
The Early Days Of id Software - GDC : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2MIpi8pIvY
Play Value - The Two Johns : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3LQsPT_zlE
Wikipedia - Video Graphics Array : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Graphics_Array
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