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 (1993 video game)
Unlike "Wolfenstein", which had flat levels with walls at right angles, the "Doom" engine allows for walls and floors at any angle or height, though two traversable areas can not be on top of each other. The lighting system was based on adjusting the color palette of surfaces directly: rather than calculating how light traveled from light sources to surfaces using ray tracing, the game calculates the "light level" of a small section of a level based on its distance from light sources. It then modifies the color palette of that section's surface textures to mimic how dark it would look. This same system is used to cause far away surfaces to look darker than close ones. Romero came up with new ways to use Carmack's lighting engine such as strobe lights. He also programmed engine features such as switches and movable stairs and platforms. After Romero's level designs started to cause problems with the engine, Carmack began to use binary space partitioning to quickly select the portion of a level that the player could see at an given time. Taylor, along with programming other features into the game, added cheat codes; some, such as 'idspispopd', were based on ideas their fans had come up with while eagerly awaiting the game.
Adrian Carmack was the lead artist for "Doom", with Kevin Cloud as an additional artist. They designed the monsters to be "nightmarish"; their intent was to have graphics that were realistic and dark as opposed to staged or rendered, so a mixed media approach was taken to the artwork. The artists sculpted models of some the enemies, and took pictures of them in stop motion from five to eight different angles so that they could be rotated realistically in-game; the images were then digitized and converted to 2D characters with a program written by John Carmack. Adrian Carmack made clay models for a few demons, and had Gregor Punchatz build latex and metal sculptures of the others. The weapons were toys, with parts combined from different toys to make more guns. They scanned themselves as well, using Cloud's arm as the model for the player character's arm holding a gun, and Adrian's snakeskin boots and wounded knee for in-game textures.