Doom (1993 video game)
Doom (typeset as DOOM in official documents and stylized as DooM in other media) is a 1993 first-person shooter (FPS) video game by id Software. It is considered one of the most significant and influential titles in video game history, for having helped to pioneer the now-ubiquitous first-person shooter. The original game was divided into three nine-level episodes and was distributed via shareware and mail order. The Ultimate Doom, an updated release of the original game featuring a fourth episode, was released in 1995 and sold at retail.
Doom WAD
Immediately after the initial shareware release of "Doom" on December 10, 1993, enthusiasts began working on various tools to modify the game. On January 26, 1994, Brendon Wyber released the first public domain version of the Doom Editing Utility (DEU) program on the Internet, a program created by "Doom" fans which made it possible to create entirely new levels. DEU continued development until May 21 of the same year. It was made possible by Matt Fell's release of the Unofficial "Doom" specifications. Shortly thereafter, "Doom" enthusiasts became involved with further enhancing DEU. Raphaël Quinet spearheaded the program development efforts and overall project release, while Steve Bareman lead the documentation effort and creation of the DEU Tutorial. More than 30 other people also helped with the effort and their names appear in the README.1ST file included with the program distribution. Yadex, a fork of DEU 5.21 for Unix systems running X, was later released under the GNU/GPL license. (Carmack additionally released the source code for the utilities used to create the game, but these were programmed in Objective-C, for NeXT workstations, and were therefore not directly usable for most people, who were PC users.)