Doom1
Days: December 10, 1993 - October 10, 1994
Doom1 was released on December 10, 1993. People at ID Software had
already been deathmatching in Doom1 at this point, and a number of the
players began to do so as well.
Several doom related USENET newsgroups
came into existence. The AOL
chatroom "Doomroom" chat room came into use, and was disbanded after
EFnet IRC #Doom came into being.
The typical way for players to connect and play was modem-to-modem. The
standard deathmatch maps of the time were e1m4 and e1m5.
John
Romero was known to be a regular in the deathmatch scene at this time.
Information on this period is a bit sparse at present, as only a few
people can be located today who were active at this time.
Old
School: October, 1994 - November, 1996
On October 10th, 1994, Doom2 was released.
The EFnet IRC network was being used for primarily US players to
chat. The first channel to be used, #doom, experienced a channel
split that resulted in the majority of the IRC Doom2 deathmatch scene
moving
to #deathmatch. #doom2 was started late in the period as a dedicated
Doom2 related channel.
#deathmatch had an internet "homepage"
for a
while, which was run by a player known as "phook". The page contained
an archive of deathmatch recordings. The demos were initially thought
lost, but were eventually retrieved by Adam Williamson through direct
contact with Phook..
IRC
#deathmatch logs from
October 1996- September 1997
(early segments are from
Old School period) |
Index of demos
from Phook's #Deathmatch homepage
|
Various IRC logs from
June 16, 1995
(contains John Romero joins
and discussion. Source of text:
www.quake.cz)
|
|
Dial-up bulletin boards (BBS's) became a popular means
for playing Doom2 deathmatch. Many towns and cities had local BBS's
which would charge a nominal fee for a user to maintain a membership,
and the BBS's used a variety of client/server software packages, such
as APCi, to
enable Doom2 to be played multiplayer via the BBS.
Modem-to-modem games remained popular as well.
Dwango (which stands for Dial-up Wide Area Network Gaming Operation)
was a large scale gaming BBS with servers in a number of large urban
areas
across the United States and Canada. Players would use DOS-compatible
software provided by Dwango to dial into the Dwango BBS of their choice
(hopefully but not always a local phone call), and they could either
hang out in a chat lobby or enter a multiplayer game. At its peak of
popularity, there were around 26 dwango servers in operation in
different regions. Dwango charged a
monthly fee for access to the BBS, plus additional credits would be
purchased for time spent in-game with other players. A few regular
players would be chosen by the Dwango server owner to help oversee the
daily operations of the BBS; these players were known as Moderators.
Dwango
Doom became playable over the internet for the relatively few people
who had access to high speed internet connections, such as those
present at colleges, ISPs, and some businesses. The best known tool for
this was Ifrag,
although other tools named iDoom and Kali were able to be used by some
people.
Ifrag performed the functions of a DOS IPX/SPX to TCP/IP encapsulator,
a client side launcher and chat client, and utilized regional master
servers known as "trackers".
Doctor Funfrock, known IRL as Bill Campbell, did a lot of work
coordinating Ifrag players and developing his Ifrag website,
known as Doctor Funfrock's Ifrag HomePage. He did interviews with
players, coordinated tournaments, and provided demos, wads, and
information.
For years after Ifrag fell into disuse, he maintained these pages
on his webserver as a historical archive. The direct link to this site
is http://www.ifrag.com/ifrag/ifrag_home.htm
.
Ifrag
Doctor Funfrock's Ifrag pages, archived locally for preservation. Some
links do not work due to the files being missing on the Ifrag site at
the time of archival.
Other
In October of 1995, Dwango and Microsoft hosted a large tournament
in Seattle known as Deathmatch95, and flew the top player from each
Dwango BBS there to
participate. The tournament was broadcast on a cable television
station. It remains famous today because it was the first highly public
tournament in which Thresh became widely known as a champion player.
This tournament has been incorrectly described as having shown Thresh to be
the lead Doom2 player in the
United States at the time. This determination does not take into
account two important details regarding the tournament circumstances.
- The tournament functioned as a Doom2
tournament only until the end, where the final round was required to be
played in Hexen (Hexen had not officially been released until the
actual day of the tournament; the players had access to a beta for a
few weeks beforehand). The match that gave
Thresh this famous tournament win was a Hexen match with Stoney, not a
Doom2 match.
- Only people who participated in the
Dwango BBS were eligible to participate in this tournament. Notable
modem-to-modem and Ifrag-only players were by definition excluded. To
the best of the author's information, that would have included such
legends as NoSkill and Chunkk.
On the weekend of September 22 - 23,
1996, Sslasher's dad hosted a
netparty known as DMcon1 in his place of business in Montreal. A Map1
and Dwango5 Map1 tournament was held. Sslasher was the winner of the
Map1 tournament, and Ronbob was the winner of the Dwango5 Map1
tournament.
DMcon1
On the weekend of October 19 - 20, 1996, a netparty known as
DMcon2 was hosted in a conference room of a local ISP in Ames, Iowa
named Amesnet. A Map1 tournament was held, and Galiu was the surprise
winner, beating Sslasher in the final round.
DMcon2
DMcon2 recording of
Sslasher vs. BahdKo
on Map1, Sslasher as green,
score 100-32.
|
Picture showing one side of
DMcon2 conference room.
BahdKo and Ismail in foreground
setting up PCs.
|
Picture showing Galiu standing over
Konax' shoulder.
|
Picture showing Linx sitting at his PC.
|
Picture showing PVP at his PC
|
Picture showing Sslasher sitting at his
PC. The person behind Sslasher is NOT his dad.
|
IRC log of
EFnet #deathmatch during week of DMcon2.
|
|
Dead
Zone: November, 1996 - December, 1997
Quake1 was released in mid-1996, and it utilized internet playability
which was improved as time passed. The majority of the Doom2 deathmatch
players (or at least, the majority of players in the North American
scene)
abandoned Doom2 within several months of Quake1's release, and
others who at first were holdouts for Doom2 eventually moved to Quake
due to the lack of local players that resulted from the earlier mass
exodus.
The number of new players entering the Doom deathmatch scene decreased
dramatically,
but did not stop entirely.
In part due to an earlier channel authority structure collapse, EFnet
#deathmatch (which was otherwise an old and established channel) began
to decline as both a Doom2 and Quake channel. By the end of the period, it was close to inactive. #doom2 remained steadily in attendance by
Doom2-specific players. BahdKo maintained a fileserver bot in
#doom2 named FileSv^QS which distributed demos, wads, and other
doom-related material.
IRC
#deathmatch logs from
October 1996- September 1997
(late segments are from
Dead Zone period) |
#doom2 logs showing
croatian
player Mihha joining EFnet #doom2
and downloading from the
channel fileserver.
|
Some of the long-term holdout players participated in a mock Quake clan
named Clan Quake Sucks (QS). The group was organized by BahdKo, and the
website contained critical commentary regarding Quake's deathmatch
inadequacies as written by each of the members.
Clan QS
Segment from
Xenos' critical commentary writeup comparing Quake to Doom.
|
Anti-quake
artwork from
the Clan QS website (map1hi6.jpg)
|
Anti-quake
artwork from
the Clan QS website (qsux1.jpg)
|
Anti-quake
artwork from the Clan QS website (qtoilet.jpg)
|
Anti-Quake
artwork from
the Clan QS website (noquake.jpg)
|
|
In April of 1997, BahdKo released a deathmatch informational package
known as the Deathmatch Training Facility. This was a zipfile with a
lot of helpful information
about how to learn to deathmatch well in Doom2. It was named
Facility.zip,
and included:
- a wadfile (doom2 level) named Facility.wad,
- recordings showing how to use Facility.wad (it is
not a deathmatch map, it is a practice map),
- several documents that explained a lot about Doom2 deathmatch,
- a bunch of recordings of various doomgods playing
on their respective maps, and
- two discussions with doomgods regarding their gameplay
on certain maps.
Even though there were not many active
players at the time, the distribution of this information seemed to
help the people within the small Doom deathmatch community. It was also
downloaded by some of the new people who entered the scene during this
period, and helped to bring them up to speed in a deathmatch
environment that otherwise was not very active.
Rebound:
January, 1998 - May, 2000
On December 23, 1997, ID Software released its source code for Doom
free for non-commercial use. The DOS source was not released because ID
had used a third party sound library called DMX for DOS DOOM, and the
sound code in the DOS version of the source would not have worked when
compiled without that library. As a solution, ID software released the
Doom for Linux source code instead, which had working sound.
Doom source
Developers began to use the source from this release to develop
playable doom versions. There were initially many ports projects, some
of which were simply done and released similar to a doom clone, and
some of which experienced ongoing development.
A few of the early port versions were Boom (October 18, 1998), Dosdoom
(April 10, 1999), Legacy doom, and Zdoom. These early doom versions
were not widely utilized by deathmatch players during this period for a
number of reasons. The scene was small and had not had time to develop
a substantial playerbase that followed doom ports; the ports themselves
were still developmental and glitches were commonplace; and
internetworking abilities in doom were still being explored by the
developers.
Port developers also began to release
doom
versions with additions, enhancements, and sometimes radical
gameplay
changes. Some examples were a capture the flag port CTFdoom (April 19
1998), and deathmatch bots Doombot (February 17, 2000) and
Cajunbot
(November 11, 1999).
Some of these early doom ports did not
continue to be developed after this period.
Some doom ports were started in this period and continued development
for a long time. Examples of these include Zdoom and Legacy Doom.
Some doom ports, such as Boom and Zdoom, were used as a code base by
new development teams to create more specialized versions. These second generation and later versions proved to
be important for the future of the deathmatch scene, when
internet-played doom became much more accessible. It was in these ports
that the developers focused more seriously on the internetworking
abilities. Examples of second generation ports are Csdoom and Skulltag.
A summarization of some of the relationships between doom ports and
projects is shown below. While this list is long, it is not intended to
be exhaustive, and shows general source project relationships and not
all of the details regarding sharing between developers. It includes ports
from both this period and the subsequent Newschool period. Readers who
notice any serious errors or omissions are free to email the author
with corrected information.
* means the port remains
actively in development as of this writing.
First
Generation
|
Second
Generation
|
Third
Generation
|
Fourth
Generation
|
ATBdoom
|
|
|
|
DOSDoom
|
Death Bot
|
|
|
DOSDoom
|
Timer.exe
|
|
|
DOSDoom
|
CTFdoom
|
|
|
Zdoom *
|
Skulltag * |
|
|
| Zdoom * |
CSdoom
|
Zdaemon * |
|
| Zdoom * |
Doom Bot
|
|
|
Boom
|
LxDoom |
PRboom * |
|
Boom
|
MBF
|
PRboom * |
|
Boom
|
MBF/LxDoom
|
PRboom * |
GLboom (* ? ) |
Boom
|
MBF
|
Smmu
|
Eternity * |
Boom
|
rorDoom
|
|
|
WinDoom
|
WinDoom2.001
|
|
|
WinDoom
|
IAS doom
|
|
|
| Legacy * |
|
|
|
| Legacy * |
Cajun bot
|
|
|
| Vavoom * |
|
|
|
Doom3d (* ? )
|
|
|
|
(GLHeretic)
|
DoomGL
|
|
|
| Zdoom * |
DoomGL
|
ZdoomGL * |
|
| Edge (* ? ) |
|
|
|
Doomsday Engine
(hexen source based) and Jdoom * |
|
|
|
This period in doom history saw the development and expansion of Doom
dedicated websites. One well-known site that emerged in this period,
and remains active at the time of this writing, is Doomworld,
originally invented by Linguica (Andrew Stine). Many other large doom
sites came into being at this time, some of which also remain today.
Much of the material that forms the basis for Doom2.net was developed
as BahdKo's personal deathmatch page, although Doom2.net itself was not
created until early in the next period.
Doom sites
IRC doom expanded. On EFnet, #doom2 became relatively large. As a
normal consequence of this kind of size increase in an already
established, somewhat private channel, #doomroom was spun off by
non-ops from #doom2 (this incarnation of #doomroom should not be
confused with the two earlier "doomroom's", one of which was an AOL
chatroom, and another one which was a short lived democratic channel
comprised of #doom2 regulars that existed very early in this period).
#doomroom experienced further evolution, and #doom came into use as a
spinoff by some of the people from #doomroom. These channels
eventually expanded into other IRC networks.
Near the end of the Rebound period, a deathmatch game launcher named
"Doomserv" came into use. It used a centralized server to enable a chat
room, and the client software contained a game launcher for Zdoom,
which is a doom port that uses peer to peer networking for multiplayer.
Players could meet in the chatroom and launch games, similar to how it
had been done in the Oldschool period with BBS's.
New
School: May, 2000 - Mid-2004
New School begins a time in Doom history where
internet-played Doom deathmatch as realized in various Doom ports
became commonplace, the deathmatch scene experienced accellerated
expansion in both activity and the distribution of information, and the
doom deathmatch scene became large and healthy for the first time since
the
Oldschool period.
In May of 2000, the first client-server
implementation of Doom, CSdoom by Russian programmer Sergey "Fly"
Makovkin, came into use by internet deathmatch players. CSdoom was the
first implementation of a deathmatch doom port that combined all three
characteristics of modern internet game hosting: a master server to
coordinate and offer games to the client launchers, multiple dedicated
game servers which host games for clients, and the ability for clients
to join games that are already in progress. While this modern
deployment of game networking was not a requirement for many of the
Doom players on the scene at the time, this new ease of use led to an
overall increase in the number of players and the frequency of games.
The developments in CSdoom had made internet Doom deathmatch less
awkward to use than ever before in Doom's
history, ushering in many new
deathmatch players, and facilitating some doom-like games for returning
oldschoolers.
CSdoom
A broad base of Doom resources and informational
infrastructure had been created during the Rebound period, and when
CSdoom and the other multiplayer ports began to draw in more deathmatch
players and retain them, all of
the elements were present to support a solidification of the Doom
deathmatch scene. IRC channels were already in place, information about
Doom was easy to find on the web, and there was a lot of material
available for download. Doomworld and some other sites had
public forums which performed the same function in the Newschool period
as newsgroups did for the Oldschool: coordinating doomers of all
catagories in discussions and arguements alike.
This wide distribution of information plus easily
internet-playable doom caused the European deathmatch scene to merge
with the North American one. For the first time in Doom's history,
typical European and North American players were able to play casual,
functional
games (although admittedly not low ping games).
After a number of false starts and failed attempts
by persistant players, the original Doom2.exe finally became internet
playable again. New IPX to TCP encapsulation programs were identified
for Windows 98 through which Doom was able to succesfully connect (a
number of
such encapsulators were found that simply did not work). Microsoft's
"Zone" website was found to have an IPX "room", and worked when used
with
Windows98. Zone's IPX
encapsulation was virtually trouble free, requiring no special software
other than what Internet Explorer would install with its Zone software.
Also, software named Kahn was found to be usable for Doom networking,
although it had quirks that needed to be understood before Kahn could
be consistantly used for Doom.
IPX to TCP Encapsulation
CSDoom itself eventually fell into general disuse
after Fly announced its non-continuation, but other doom ports had
developed that were already supporting the internet doom deathmatch
scene,
including Zdaemon, Legacy, and Skulltag. Prboom version 2.2.4 is being
used by some of the people who prefer Doom2.exe in the event of an
operating system mismatch (Doom2.exe only runs reliably on Windows98
and lower).
Popular multiplayer source port homepages
IRC channels continue to expand and evolve.
IRC
Server:
irc.freenode.net
|
#doom
|
#zdaemon
|
#skulltag
|
Server:
irc.oftc.net
|
#zdoom
|
Renaissance: Mid-2004 -
A gradual shift due to the natural maturation of the doom multiplayer
scene and the ports that support it led the doom scene into a new era.
The primary player focus once again becomes the gameplay itself and
interaction between players (as opposed with re-development and
redeployment of the game itself). Multiplayer cheating becomes an
issue. Port development and refinement was still under way but it was
geared toward improvements and refinements as opposed with
functionality. The scene is punctuated by tournaments and lanparties
and is overall robust and healthy. Perceived competition for playerbase
numbers between different port developers could sometimes be high.
Too lazy to type more atm.
