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              <p><font color="#0000FF"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000CC">volume 
                1, issue 16</font></b></font></p>
              <p><font color="#0000FF"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#0000CC"> 
                </font></b></font></p>
              <p>  <p><font face="Courier New, Courier, mono"><b><font color="#339900" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Today 
                in loonygames:</font></b></font></p>

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        <p align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="+3" color="#0022A8">Good 
          Evening, and Welcome to Hell<i> </i><font size="+1">(five years of Doom)</font></font></p>
        <p align="LEFT">&nbsp;</p>
        <p align="RIGHT"><font color="#804000"><b><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">By 
          Rowan &quot;<a target="_self" href="mailto:sumaleth@frag.com">Sumaleth</a>&quot; 
          Crawford </font></b></font></p>
        <p align="RIGHT">&nbsp;</p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Dave &quot;Zoid&quot; Kirsch, 
          who currently maintains the <b>Quake</b> and <b>Quake 2</b> code base, 
          remembers that penultimate boss; "I remember just about wetting my pants 
          the first time I met the Cyberdemon. We were playing four player coop. 
          Imagine all four of us appearing on the Cyberdemon level; we hear the 
          footsteps, "What the fuck is that?" "I dunno?" "Holy shit! You guys,look 
          at this!" "What?" "Aggghghhhhhh!!!!!" </font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">I'm sure we can all identify 
          with that scenario, most people I spoke to remembers their first encounter 
          with the Cyberdemon above all else. T. Elliot &quot;Myscha (the sled 
          dog)&quot; Cannon, level designer at Epic MegaGames, remembers him well. 
          "...the time me and a buddy played <b>Doom 2</b> map 15 co-op and we 
          lured the Cyberdemon (who only appears in CO-OP on that level) into 
          the elevator and into the player start room which is a small room with 
          gray stone textures and a window that looks out over the level. We did 
          this for total mayhem; we'd respawn, then POW, a 5 foot rocket would 
          totally splooge us - blow ours gibs all over the room. You could get 
          about 2 pistol shots off before he nailed ya. We kept re-spawning and 
          doing it over and over until he finally died. It was the funniest damn 

          co-op session I ever played!!! </font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The pride and joy moment 
          was when I got blown out that window and landed some 80 feet below in 
          the courtyard (umph) only to see, from my own death perspective, my 
          buddy Hitman get spleeeegged out the same window a moment later. I watched 
          as his splattered corpse flew across the level and landed on some ledge. 
          It was awesome. We laughed like little kids so hard our sides hurt."</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">If <b>Doom </b>had one universal 
          effect on people then that effect was to bring the child out in people. 
          It didn't matter if you were a 13 year old at home sick or a 30 year 
          old professional lawyer; once <b>Doom</b> started, <i>everyone</i> was 
          a hyperactive kid. Even grandpa would be using four letter words and 
          throwing his teeth at you if you fragged him. Fun for the whole family. 
          Sean &quot;Redwood&quot;Martin remembers, "going across an outdoor walkway 
          with the mountain backdrop and into a room that turned pitch dark after 
          you picked up the key. I then heard multiple Imp hisses and panicked! 
          Things like that gave me chills, they were so creepy." Creepy indeed, 
          as our esteemed editor, Jason &quot;loonyboi&quot; Bergman, can attest 
          to, "..any one of those late nights I stayed up playing <b>Doom </b>with 
          the lights out...I must have scared myself stupid like a million times."</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Hands up if you ever had 
          a <b>Doom</b>-related dream? It's hard to get an exact count from here, 
          but chances are that just about everyone has dreamt about walking through 
          strange 3D environments trying to work out how to get past the next 
          bit. id Software mapper Xian &quot;Disruptor&quot; Ankow, took it one 
          step further, "...playing a 12 hour straight stint of <b>Doom</b>, then 
          getting into my car and in my exhaustion I hallucinated a pink demon 
          running towards my car..."</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Not all memories were directly 
          related to the released game, some, such as Ryan &quot;Ridah&quot; Feltrin 
          who is currently coding <b>Kingpin</b> for Xatrix, remembers; "my favorite 
          memory is probably making my own levels. As crap as they were, I found 
          it amazing that I could create a world of my own, and place in monsters 
          that would come to life (so to speak)". </font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">It probably comes as no surprise 
          that Levelord, a Ritual mapper who's past work includes <b>Duke Nukem 
          3D</b> and <b>Sin</b>, has a similar story. "…[T]he night I first downloaded 
          DEU [a <b>Doom</b> map editor] from CompuServe, made a copy of </font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">E1M1, loaded it into DEU, 
          cut a hole in a wall allowing access to that otherwise unaccessible 
          outside area, and nearly dropping to the floor with the feeling of supreme 
          power when I loaded the level into <b>Doom</b>. I simply could not believe 
          that I had control over levels and, although I did not completely realize 
          at the time, that I was an addict. From that moment on, I spent every 
          waking minute designing levels. I still remember that night as though 
          it was last night."</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Creating maps was a past 
          time picked up by many of the more 'creative' <b>Doom</b> players (have 
          a look at the <b>Doom</b> map archive on cdrom.com to get a feel for 
          <i>just</i> how many), and looking around the employee lists for any 
          number of game companies these days reveals a surprisingly large number 
          of those same hobby <b>Doom </b>map makers now working <i>in</i> the 
          industry. In fact, the sub-industry that has built up around the first 
          person shooter (FPS) genre is largely filled with people that got into 
          the editing side of things for fun. Whether it be models, maps, textures, 
          code, or whatever, so many people have found what must be <i>the</i> 
          ultimate career as a result of <b>Doom</b>. These are people that <i>have</i> 
          to play games at work! The game playing community was presented with 
          <b>Doom</b> in one devastating blow; there was none of the softening 
          (or spoiling, depending on your viewpoint) that we get these days where 
          we know the plot, how it looks, all the cool features, and the opinion 
          of every magazine (online and offline) in the world prior to release. 
          It was just suddenly there all at once. As David &quot;Zanshin&quot; 
          Van de Ven so neatly puts it, "OH MY GOD!"</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">There were, however, a group 
          of keen gamers that didn't have the benefit of an all-at-once revelation, 
          it was revealed slowly to them over the entire length of development. 
          I'm talking, of course, about the developers of the game. The guys and 
          gals at id Software.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Kevin Cloud, artist at id 
          Software, recounts his most memorable <b>Doom</b> moment: "we were working 
          out of the apartment and finishing up <b>Spear of Destiny</b> while 
          John [Carmack] experimented with new tech. At the time we didn't know 
          what our next project would be, we were thinking either or a shooter, 
          or a small car racing game. Anyway, John wanted us to see a small test 
          he had put together. It was a room with a hill in the middle of the 
          floor. He had taken a page of graphics from <b>Wolfenstein</b> - a page 
          with a Hitler portrait on it and used it for the floor. There were no 
          walls or ceiling, but you clipped over the slope on the floor correctly. 
          Just running up Hitler's head on the hill and leaping to the other side 
          was fun. I'd never seen anything like it on the PC."</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><b>And a Genre is Born</b></font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">There can't be many examples 
          in the history of gaming where a genre-introducing game not only introduced 
          the genre, but also so perfectly exploited the potential the new genre 
          had to offer. Examining the maps shows every feature the new environment 
          had to offer used to the full, the collection of baddies represented 
          the perfect mix of variety in visual style and attack methods, the difficulty 
          level was ramped as neatly as the introduction of new features, and 
          the weapons.. well, how about those weapons!</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">It says a lot that five years 
          on, the "classic" weapon set introduced in <b>Doom </b>is still employed 
          as the weapon backbone for so many new games. With the additional weapons 
          of <b>Doom 2,</b> they found the perfect balance of variety and power, 
          short and long range, and skill verses mayhem. From the one-shot-to-the-chest 
          kill of the double barrel shotgun, through the goose bump-inducing the 
          sound of the BFG energizing, to the perfectly balanced rocket launcher 
          reload time and flight speed, the <b>Doom</b> weapons were so, <i>so</i> 
          right. BOOM! The FPS genre literally exploded after <b>Doom</b>. id 
          Software followed it up with the enhanced, and even better, <b>Doom 
          2</b> (which introduced my all time favorite game baddie, the Archvile), 
          along with some games in partnership with other companies such Rogue 
          and Raven, with their games <b>Strife</b>, <b>Heretic</b>, and the excellent 
          <b>Hexen</b>.</font></p>
        <p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Eventually other companies 
          managed to catch up, the standout "<b>Doom</b> clones", to coin the 
          phrase, were <b>Dark Forces</b> and <b>Duke Nukem 3D</b>, both excellent 
          games that were different enough and added enough new ideas to make 
          them more than clones; they kept the genre moving forward. Whether you 
          saw either of those games as a "<b>Doom</b> beater" was a matter of 
          personal taste, but either way, id were leading the way yet again with 
          the release of <b>Quake</b>. <b>Quake</b> wasn't the show stopper that 
          <b>Doom</b> was on its release, most likely the result of major design 
          changes late in the project, but it still managed to come remarkably 
          close. Subsequent FPS games were no longer "<b>Doom</b> clones", they 
          had now become "<b>Quake</b> clones", and were trying to be "<b>Quake 
          </b>beaters". <b>Quake </b>accepted the baton passed to it by <b>Doom</b>, 
          but <b>Doom</b> was still in the back of everyone’s mind.</font></p>
        <p align="RIGHT">&nbsp; </p>
        <p align="RIGHT"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="+1">(<a href="index3.php">continued 
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    <td><i><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="-2"><b>Credits:</b> 
      Good Evening and Welcome to Hell &copy; 1998 Rowan Crawford. All other content 
      is &copy; 1998 <a target="_self" href="http://www.loonyboi.com">loonyboi 
      productions</a>. Unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited, dangit.</font></i></td>
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