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Newell's history of porting Doom to Windows to show it can be a gaming platform

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Re: Newell's history of porting Doom to Windows to show it can be a gaming platform

#41

Post by astrodust »

pjmlp wrote: post #2

Well, those of us that were already coding for Windows back then, remember that what brought game studios to Windows was WinG, the percursor of DirectX. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinG Gabe Newell had nothing to do with it.

Yeah, Gabe's role is massively overstated here, but it's important to remember how awful a development platform Windows was for games, that compared to DOS it was far, far worse than Linux is today.

In DOS mode you could easily get full-screen, high-frame rate game graphics. In Windows you'd be lucky if you could push more than one frame per second, the Windows GDI was absolutely brutal.

Linux is a lot further ahead, so SteamOS has a relative head start. If Windows can be made into a first-class gaming platform, so can Linux.

Re: Newell's history of porting Doom to Windows to show it can be a gaming platform

#42

Post by nailer »

ambiate wrote: post #40
nailer wrote: post #11

WAIT. Newell's Windows port (commonly referred to as DOOM95 http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Doom95 ) was never popular and very few DOOM players knew it even existed. It certainly didn't prove to the masses that Windows was a viable gaming platform. Those that do recall the Windows port do so in the the context of Microsoft telling people that '32 bit Doom will be twice as fast' before finding out that wasn't true. The mo…

Quakeworld was my entry point into wanting to program. BSP, VIS, DISP, oh yeah. I remember trying to figure out the math for projectiles and the various splash damage routines. I remember bunnyhopping and attempting to figure out the glitch to alter the effect even more on sharper turns. So many 'wasted years' that resulted in a wonderful career and field of study. I emailed John a few times throughout the years. He…

Carmack's a legend - he's done good things (which I can't talk about) for the WebGL community too, ask Tojiro next time you visit a conference.

Weird Quake/Doom crossover: Doom had 'rocket jumps' (pushing yourself further off a cliff via smashing a rocket into the wall) - one was required for the E3 secret level.

Doom also had accidental wall riding but only when you were headed north. :^)

Re: Newell's history of porting Doom to Windows to show it can be a gaming platform

#43

Post by nailer »

Argorak wrote: post #31
jccalhoun wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

very few Doom players knew it even existed? really? It was the version I had when I bought it back in the day. I assumed a lot of people bought it.

Final Doom included Doom95 and used it by default on Windows, so I would expect that many players were aware.

Sure but as the other poster notes, by the time Final Doom came out the world was already onto Quake.

Re: Newell's history of porting Doom to Windows to show it can be a gaming platform

#44

Post by warfangle »

simias wrote: post #29
ekianjo wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I knew Neogaf but did not really check it very often. > and I wish there was a vibrant (and large) community for intelligent discussion like Hacker News I was thinking the exact same thing ! We really should try to do something about that. Interested?

The problem is that certain topics cater to a certain demographic. Hacking and start ups are not primary concerns of the teenage crowd on the web. Video games now... What this means is that if you plan to have a somewhat "grown up" community you'll have to find a way to raise the bar somehow.

Invite only, gmail beta style.

Re: Newell's history of porting Doom to Windows to show it can be a gaming platform

#45

Post by bluedino »

nailer wrote: post #25
bluedino wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the reason Doom95 wasn't very popular was that came along so late. It didn't come out until 1996, which was 3 years after Doom originally came out for DOS and the same time Quake arrived. I didn't have a Doom-capable computer until 1995, and it was hard to find people to play Doom/Heretic/Descent since everyone had moved on to Duke 3D and some game called Warcraft... It was nice to not have to play Doom in DO…

Yeah, it's even got Thy Flesh Consumed which was from Ultimate DOOM (the last official id DOOM 1 release, which came out years after DOOM was first released). I think Newell's comments are about showing developers that Windows games could have good frame rates. Which is reasonable. The Neogaf poster is confusing that with Newell showing the DOS version to people to prove that the PC could have awesome games.

Microsoft was throwing a ton of effort into getting developers to move to Windows. It took a while but they got here.

They had 'bad' demos like Hover! but there were some pretty nice games like Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure, Earthworm Jim, and Fury^3.

Once it got OpenGL and Direct3D, Win32 ruled the gaming world. It already had 32-bitness, virtual memory, TCP/IP... Apple dinked around with things like QuickDraw3D and GameSprockets but they just couldn't get it together for some reason.

Re: Newell's history of porting Doom to Windows to show it can be a gaming platform

#46

Post by ebbv »

nailer wrote: post #11

WAIT. Newell's Windows port (commonly referred to as DOOM95 http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Doom95 ) was never popular and very few DOOM players knew it even existed. It certainly didn't prove to the masses that Windows was a viable gaming platform. Those that do recall the Windows port do so in the the context of Microsoft telling people that '32 bit Doom will be twice as fast' before finding out that wasn't true. The mo…

But did you ever play SPISPOPD? :)

Re: Newell's history of porting Doom to Windows to show it can be a gaming platform

#47

Post by Mikeb85 »

ekianjo wrote: post #3

OMG, the comments below that first post are full of ignorance. It's just so painful to see what people think and say of Linux (even the ones who defend it).

So true. So much FUD, even by so-called Linux advocates. Guess many haven't played AAA games on Linux (Oil Rush, X-Plane 10, Valve games for native titles, and many run great on Wine), or tried to develop games for Linux.

Fact is, performance on Linux is fantastic, graphics drivers are a non-issue unless you're on AMD graphics (Intel is decent, Nvidia is great), OpenGL is up to the latest version on Nvidia, 3.0 on Intel, and sound is the weak point, but still not that bad.

For developing, you have pretty good, easy tools like Maratis, Irrlicht, Panda3D, SDL, Blender, etc... Not to mention commercial engines like Unreal, Unigine, and others I'm sure...

Linux isn't perfect, but it is pretty good, and it can run AAA games just fine, right now.

Re: Newell's history of porting Doom to Windows to show it can be a gaming platform

#48

Post by simias »

warfangle wrote: post #44
simias wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that certain topics cater to a certain demographic. Hacking and start ups are not primary concerns of the teenage crowd on the web. Video games now... What this means is that if you plan to have a somewhat "grown up" community you'll have to find a way to raise the bar somehow.

Invite only, gmail beta style.

Heh, I guess that could work, but then it's about who to invite!

Re: Newell's history of porting Doom to Windows to show it can be a gaming platform

#49

Post by mrschwabe »

lazyjones wrote: post #4

That's a bit simplified. More details about this story can be found in the very entertaining book "Masters of Doom" (about John Carmack and John Romero).

Loved this book. Bought a few copies for friends to hopefully inspire them about what a small, scrappy team of talented individuals can achieve (and the fun... and pitfalls along the way).

Re: Newell's history of porting Doom to Windows to show it can be a gaming platform

#50

Post by AlexMax »

nailer wrote: post #42
ambiate wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quakeworld was my entry point into wanting to program. BSP, VIS, DISP, oh yeah. I remember trying to figure out the math for projectiles and the various splash damage routines. I remember bunnyhopping and attempting to figure out the glitch to alter the effect even more on sharper turns. So many 'wasted years' that resulted in a wonderful career and field of study. I emailed John a few times throughout the years. He…

Carmack's a legend - he's done good things (which I can't talk about) for the WebGL community too, ask Tojiro next time you visit a conference. Weird Quake/Doom crossover: Doom had 'rocket jumps' (pushing yourself further off a cliff via smashing a rocket into the wall) - one was required for the E3 secret level. Doom also had accidental wall riding but only when you were headed north. :^)

North and east.

It's due to the 'sliding' check on walls, if the player is moving fast enough, the movement path is divided in half and each is checked for obstacles...but if the obstacle happens to be in both segments of the path, you're slid twice.

And the reason the bug only happened when you're moving north and east is due to...another bug, the check is done only if your movement is greater than X or Y, not if it's less than negative X or Y.

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