4 Common Myths about Classic Doom = DEBUNKED!

[Doomkid]

Largely inspired by fraggle's excellent thread found here, I've recently finished working on a video debunking 4 common Doom myths!

 

 

So many places seem to spread misinformation about the old Doom games so this is my attempt to correct that.

 

Also, forgive me for shilling, but I've just started a Patreon page for Doomshack.org. It's pretty expensive hosting server clusters on all of the Doom ports as well as a website which allows users to upload their WADs / mods and such, I've started this page as an attempt to cover the costs. I know money is hard to come by but if you've got some spare change, please consider donating.

 

Thanks!!

[Nymbus_Hustle]

Bro! I dig the hair, I also have long hair!

I had actually just talked multiplayer with my friend. She had thought the game was singleplayer only originally. Though, I didn't know that multiplayer was planned as early on as the alpha. It would make sense if they made the other players play as the marines at the beginning after they did the poker game.

[SaladBadger]

To add a minor thing to #1, since you bring up the alphas in the first place, this line is present in the Doom 0.4 ALPHREAD.ME file:

8       Good level for network death matches, awaiting gettable objects.

I have to assume that given this following line in the document, whoever was writing up the readme was speculating more than anything.

o  N-E-T-W-O-R-K-I-N-G (actually, it's sort of in there now, but you can't move anywhere, so...)

If this is true, apparently there was already some net work done at the time? (there's stuff in the executable's symbol tables about ACKs, comm ports, sending frames, etc which may confirm this?). But in any case, it confirms that networking was considered for a long time and that "deathmatch" as a term existed as early as April of 1993.

 

ed: a look at the strings I've found related to networking and multiplayer in doom 0.4:

Syncronizing
Communication syncronization aborted

Network sync? The comm stuff could be referring to any sort of comm device, but this seems to more strongly suggest networking

G_InitPlayer: bad player number
G_RunMap: player %i not spawned on map %s
G_WarpToMap: player %i not spawned on map %s

Referencing multiple player numbers

P_ProcessFrames: Lost input from player %i

well i dunno when this would occur. on a disconnect? I dunno

 

I poked at Doom 0.3 also, but Doom 0.3 appears to have been made with a different compiler, and looks like it was symbol stripped, so no peeks at the function names. In addition, error messages related to communication sync don't exist, but there are the lines referring to player numbers, suggesting MP was thought about when architecting things.

Edited June 22, 2019 by SaladBadger

[Doomkid]

Thanks for the extra info, that's super interesting. Even more confirmation! I wonder what date the first successful Doom network game was? I have to assume somewhere between doom0_5 and the press release beta?

[Memerz1]

Great video. I didn't know people still deathmatch now a days.

[boris]

Serial connection between your house and a friend's down the road? You'd need a pretty long cable for that :D Or dou you mean modem?

[theDia]

25 minutes ago, boris said:

Serial connection between your house and a friend's down the road? You'd need a pretty long cable for that :D Or dou you mean modem?

Exactly my thoughts. :)

I remember the first time playing Doom co-op with a friend in early 1994. It took us around 5 hours just to get the serial connection working and a game started. But after that - wow - a whole new world of dooming opened up. 

Later we also had a doom-friendly BBS, but when you have to pay the connection in minute-rates you aren´t really interested in such stuff for a long time and so we meet monthly, stripped up to four PCs together and had our Doom-Sessions. :)

[Doomkid]

7 hours ago, boris said:

Serial connection between your house and a friend's down the road? You'd need a pretty long cable for that :D Or dou you mean modem?

Oh fuck, I meant modem! This is what I get for blabbing off the cuff without checking myself before publishing the video..

[theDia]

2 hours ago, Doomkid said:

Oh fuck, I meant modem! This is what I get for blabbing off the cuff without checking myself before publishing the video..

 

Better than those Youtubers who need 4000 cuts to do a ten minuten monologue. :) Mistakes happen - this is whats makes us humans. :)

 

[seed]

Not bad ;).

 

But I think you could've expanded further on the "Doom is 2D" myth tbh. I think there's more reasons behind that myth, such as the game using sprites instead of models, and no freelook.

[Dark Pulse]

You get a like just for knowing the word "zeitgeist." And Frank Zappa of course, but anyone who's been on here long enough should know that about you.

 

Helps the video is also nice and informative. :)