Development of Doom
"Doom"s original release date was the third quarter of 1993, which the team did not meet. By December 1993, the team was working non-stop on the game, with several employees sleeping at the office; programmer Dave Taylor claimed that working on the game gave him such a rush that he would pass out from the intensity. Id began receiving calls from people interested in the game or angry that it had missed its planned release date, as hype for the game had been building online. At midnight on December 10, 1993, after working for 30 straight hours, the development team at id uploaded the first episode of the game to the internet, letting interested players distribute it for them. So many users were connected to the first network that they planned to upload the game to—the University of Wisconsin–Parkside FTP network—that even after the network administrator increased the number of connections while on the phone with Wilbur, id was unable to connect, forcing them to kick all other users off to allow id to upload the game. When the upload finished thirty minutes later, 10,000 people attempted to download the game at once, crashing the university's network. Within hours, other university networks were banning "Doom" multiplayer games, as a rush of players overwhelmed their systems.
Doom (1993 video game)
At the start of 1993, id put out a press release, touting Hall's story about fighting off demons while "knee-deep in the dead". The press release proclaimed the new game features that John Carmack had created, as well as other features, including multiplayer gaming features, that had not yet even been designed. Early versions of the game were built to match the "Doom Bible"; a "pre-alpha" version of the first level included Hall's introductory base scene. Initial versions of the game also retained "arcade" elements present in "Wolfenstein 3D", like score points and score items, but those were removed early in development as they felt not in keeping with the tone of the game. Other elements, such as a complex user interface, an inventory system, a secondary shield protection, and lives were modified and slowly removed over the course of development.
Soon, however, the "Doom Bible" as a whole was rejected: Romero wanted a game even "more brutal and fast" than "Wolfenstein", which did not leave room for the character-driven plot Hall had created. Additionally, the team felt it emphasized realism over entertaining gameplay, and they did not see the need for a design document at all. Some ideas were retained, but the story was dropped and most of the game design was removed. By spring of 1993 levels were being created for the game and a demo was produced. John Carmack and Romero, however, disliked Hall's military base-inspired level design. Romero especially felt that the boxy, flat level designs were uninspiring, too similar to "Wolfenstein", and did not show off everything the engine could do. He began to create his own, more abstract levels for the game, which the rest of the team felt were much better.