[Video] DWANGO, The Early History of online Gaming

[Doomkid]

 

I made this video recently, I hope you guys enjoy it. Let me know what you think!

 

edit: ROFL watch with CC on, the many ways it misunderstands "Dwango" are hilarious

Edited October 2, 2017 by Doomkid

[Memfis]

Nice history lesson. I looked up the DWANGO interface:

 

 

I wonder what is CPU here? And what is hero\squire\boss\titan?

[Doomkid]

I think those were player rankings, it seems to have tracked wins and losses. I'm also curious what CPU refers to - ping, maybe? I doubt it's a measurement of CPU usage but I'm not sure.. Good question!

[Jaws In Space]

Cool little bit of history Doomkid. Would be nice to see some more history on classic Deathmatch wads & other related stuff.

[UltimateDoomer1]

So many good memories... DWANGO, crashing networks since 1994. 

Edited October 3, 2017 by UltimateDoomer1

[fraggle]

I've mentioned in the past, but way back in 2009 I actually tried reverse engineering DWANGO with a view to figuring out the network protocol and writing a server for it. DOSbox has modem emulation that lets you "dial" an IP address, so the idea was to resurrect it in a way that could run over the Internet. I actually made enough progress that I was able to get into the lobby:

 

 

Unfortunately the SSD on my laptop died and I lost all my progress. Some day I'd like to give this another try, though it's probably a significant project to take on.

 

[Deleted_Account]

Great video Doomkid! It reminded me of the good old days where I would death match with my friends and family. Thank for sharing.

[Doomkid]

6 hours ago, fraggle said:

I've mentioned in the past, but way back in 2009 I actually tried reverse engineering DWANGO with a view to figuring out the network protocol and writing a server for it. DOSbox has modem emulation that lets you "dial" an IP address, so the idea was to resurrect it in a way that could run over the Internet. I actually made enough progress that I was able to get into the lobby:

 

Unfortunately the SSD on my laptop died and I lost all my progress. Some day I'd like to give this another try, though it's probably a significant project to take on.

I remember being excited by this when you mentioned it a few years ago - I'd love to see it functioning at some point but I know it's a lot of work for a little gain, so I understand if you're pretty much done with it. I just like the idea of a chat lobby and Doom game launcher that all functions from within DOSbox!

[fraggle]

10 hours ago, Doomkid said:

I remember being excited by this when you mentioned it a few years ago - I'd love to see it functioning at some point but I know it's a lot of work for a little gain, so I understand if you're pretty much done with it. I just like the idea of a chat lobby and Doom game launcher that all functions from within DOSbox!

I still want to have another try at it at some point, because I think it could be a fun project. But I already have a bunch of other projects to finish first.

[Mr.Rocket]

@fraggle 

Man, I'd love to see this happen, it would be totally retro style cool!

It just has.. a magic to it.

[Doomkid]

Argentum made a comment on the video that I thought was an excellent point which I only very briefly touched on. In the video I mentioned how heat.net and many other alternatives were more accessible and cheaper for the majority of people, but check out how crazy the pricing was:

Quote

I think it's important to note just how expensive the service was at the time. From their tech support page in early 1997: Subscription rates were $7.95 (USD) per month, giving the player 5 hours per month of playtime on the servers. Players could also buy extra hours: 10 hours for $19.00, 20 hours for $34.00, 40 hours for $59.00

This certainly was a big nail in the coffin. It's not too surprising people were willing to pay those rates when it was still a revolutionary idea, but it was a model that really couldn't have continued to work even if the various other factors that led to Dwango's demise weren't in place. I thought this was interesting and retrospectively it would have been pertinent info to include in the video