fate It is one of the most recognized brands in the video game industry. Created by Id Software, the saga gave a final kick to the genre previously shaped by Catacombs 3D and the first Wolfenstein: first-person shooters. A lot has happened since then, and the genre has evolved and mutated towards more diverse patterns, such as the more tactical approach of the legendary GoldenEye of Nintendo 64 and the more adventurous perspective of Turok 2: Seeds of Evil (the game that inadvertently laid the playable foundations of Metroid Prime).

But despite everything that has passed and the emergence of sagas like Quake (also from Id Software), Halo, Far Cry, BioShock, Call of Duty and some lone stars like the first Perfect Dark, the original Doom, whose It first appeared for PC in 1993is a title that has stood the test of time very well along with its sequel that came out in 1995. In other words, the original Doom has become a timeless gem that is still going strong nearly thirty years later.

One point that may be surprising is that Doom’s main character doesn’t seem to have a formal name. He is usually called Doomguy, which translates to “Doom’s uncle” or “Doom’s boy” in Spanish. The reason he doesn’t have a formal name is because the developers’ intention was to make the player more visible, but that didn’t stop him from having relatives, as he is the great-grandson of BJ Blazkowicz, the protagonist of Wolfenstein. , and the son of Commander Keen, whose original name was William J. Blazkowicz II and later Billy Blaze.

Lineage is not a theory. Reality. And I think you have a generation off there.

— • 𝚝𝚜𝚜𝚝𝚜𝚜𝚜𝚝𝚝 • ✪ (@ThatTomHall) January 30, 2018

Obviously, 1993’s Doom is a game that is outdated in many ways. The latter, at least in its default form, does not allow you to aim with the mouse, so the control system is completely based on the keyboard.

Despite the “inconveniences” with the control system and the very outdated technical part, in which a technique was used to generate a fake three-dimensional environment, the straightforward action coupled with excellent level design have made Doom a very enjoyable title even todayalthough the factor mentioned below also played a decisive role here.

Doom’s immortality lies in part in his engine

Did the name of the section surprise you? If we look only at the technical aspects, this statement sounds reckless, but who is a fan of Doom as a piece of technology, already knows where the shots will go.

The Engine source code for the first two Dooms for Linux It was released in 1997 under a proprietary license. This was modified by Id Software two years later when they decided to relicense it to give it to the company GPLv2, then the Free Software Foundation reference license and the same license used by the Linux kernel. This means that the Doom engine has become “hard” free software, allowing anyone to freely copy, modify and redistribute it. Interestingly, the original Quake engine was released under the same license in 1999.

With the release of the Doom (and Quake) engine under the GPLv2 license, Id Software limited its control to the trademarks (Doom and Quake) and game levels, relinquishing control over the released software. This movement gave freedom so that the community could make any change and take it beyond its borders.

Chainsaw, one of the weapons with the biggest personality in Doom.

The release of the source code, the very few resources it requires due to the huge technological development, and the fact that it is written in C, a low-level programming language that is very portable between platforms, allowed us to see the launch of Doom. on mobile phones, ATMs, directly in the BIOS, on the MacBook Pro 2016 Touch Bar and other non-gaming devices or computers.

In addition to seeing Doom in the most unexpected places, the release of the engine’s source code as free software it allowed the creation of several spin-off projects, including DOSDoom, Doom Legacy, DoomGeneric, and GZDoom, among many others. Spin-off projects introduced features such as mouse pointing and support for OpenGL, Vulkan and ray tracing. Later we will mention an interesting development based on GZDoom.

Mods, another factor that makes Doom immortal

In addition to the enormous freedoms that the GPLv2 license provides when modifying the game engine, mods were another factor that made the original Doom an immortal video game like the original NES Super Mario Bros. yes indeed mods are not necessarily free softwarebut they may recommend or require the use of a particular engine derivative.

When it comes to mods for the title that brought Id Software to the top, the first thing that usually comes to mind is Brutal Doom. Created in 2010, the name itself leaves very little to the imagination and the mod is responsible for making Doom even more Doom, making it much more visceral. It is compatible with the sequel, GZDoom and Zandronum.

If the engine derivatives focused on the technical aspects and modernized the control system, the mods served transform Doom towards other experiences that in some cases stray from the original design. Others try to bring things from later installments or other sagas like Doom 3, Age of Empires and Duke Nukem. Interestingly, the Duke Nukem 3D engine was released at the turn of the century, and the EDuke32 project derived from it was used to build the Ion Fury.

Cacodemon, perhaps Doom’s most famous enemy.

What is the technological limit of the original Doom engine?

Doom has established itself as the kind of tech culture that stands the test of time. Especially in this century when the community was able to get rid of the chains to do whatever they wanted with the engine, a lot of things were done with it. While it is no match for the technology giants that have been with us for a long time, it is surprising how far it has gone to break its own limits.

From 2021 (or at least that’s the year from which its existence is known) the first-person shooter called Peasantwhich has some artistic inspiration from Ion Fury due to the female lead, but tries to have its own personality and distinctive aspects in terms of gameplay. GZDoom, one of the most consolidated derivatives of the Doom engine, is used for its development at the project level and perhaps one of the most developed due to the fact that it supports OpenGL ES and Vulkan and includes the ability to point with the mouse, which allows the creation of games that are technically and playably more adapted to the current era.

If you watch a video of the Selaco in motion, it’s hard to believe that it’s built on a highly developed version of the technology we saw in Doom released in 1993. The sheer fluidity, destructible objects and amount of detail you see in the scenarios gives the impression that it’s made with a different more modern engine, but no, it’s a much improved version of the Doom engine that was released as free software. With no release date set, it will have Windows and Linux builds for now.

conclusion

Doom is not just a video game that made history, but rather it is a kind of technological culture that refuses to die and has managed to become immortal. The release of its engine and mods helped to modify the experience it offers in many ways and from different points of view, and the former also opened the door for indie developers to do impressive things even compared to more modern technologies.

Like it or not, we will have the original Doom for some time, either with further releases of the first part of the saga, with mods or projects that are based on the technology that was released from it.