Doom (sometimes spelled DooM or DOOM; lit. doom, doom, doom) is a first-person shooter video game developed and published by id Software in 1993. Doom is one of the most significant and influential video games in the history of the industry; in particular, its popularity largely determined the further development and spread of the first-person shooter genre.
The player takes on the role of an unnamed space special forces soldier. He is described as "one of the toughest, most battle-hardened and trained Earthlings" of his squad sent to Mars. After an attack on the officer who gave the order to open fire on civilians, this becomes his last task. He is under guard while his partners deal with an incomprehensible incident on Phobos at the United Aerospace Corporation (Eng. Union Aerospace Corporation, UAC). Suddenly, the main character loses contact with his partners and, breaking out from under the guard, goes in search of his squad. Later, he learns that the teleportation experiments carried out by the corporation failed, and hellish creatures climbed through the gates that stood on Phobos even before the appearance of a person on it, which killed the staff or turned them into zombies. Everything,
The hero of the game does not have a name, and the creators explain this by saying that it will be easier for the player to associate himself with the character. Players often refer to the hero as DoomGuy, Doom Trooper, or Doom marine. In the series of books based on the game, the name Flynn Taggart is used, and in the movie Doom, the name of the hero is John Grimm, nicknamed "The Demon" (Eng. Reaper - "Reaper").
The player is invited to alternately explore levels of varying difficulty, solve spatial and (rarely) logical problems, find hiding places, destroy as many monsters as possible and survive. The levels are intricate labyrinths with many doors, keys, elevators, shafts, buttons and secret rooms. Instead of a floor, there can be lava, acids of various strengths, water, toxic waste. Most levels have teleports that instantly teleport the player to another location in the current level. Some areas of the floor are able to move in a vertical direction (either at will or not by the player), others can turn from stone into acid (usually this looks like immersing the floor in the surrounding waste), others open secret doors with an ambush (technically this is done when crossing the border between the sections, and not when being in one of them). The ceilings of some tend to come down like a press and squash the player (which isn't necessarily fatal even when squeezing them down to zero height). Buttons open passages that were previously inaccessible, doors are activated, and so on. One way or another, the ultimate goal of the player is to find a way out of the level. This can be a switch (often in a room marked "Exit"), a hatch in the floor, a special teleporter, or a boss monster. The part of the level seen by the player, with the exception of some secrets and "technical" boundaries like a sky box, is applied to automap.
The gameplay is largely based on the complexity and interactivity of the environment (elevators, presses, other equipment). There are quite a few secret places in the levels that you don't have to visit, and there are also secret levels. As in Wolfenstein 3D, there are a sufficient number of “extras” rooms that are not secret, optional for passing and generally practically neutral to the gameplay, the function of which is only to create an atmosphere and introduce some variety. Navigation on the level, the choice of sequence and tactics for passing through its individual parts and the use of its interactive elements lead to the fact that in Doom, almost the entire level plays against the player as a whole, which is also a fairly characteristic feature of the game. Artificial intelligence of opponents, on the contrary, was weakened compared to Wolfenstein 3D (in which the primitiveness of the level architecture made it easier to program behavioral patterns such as the ability for soldiers to come in from behind or call for help from an adjacent room). The dynamism of the level itself, which has come to replace it, is the most interesting and innovative feature of Doom. The level can change significantly along the way, which is achieved mainly through the movement of ceilings and floors. Also very unusual for their time are various traps represented by closing doors or, for example, opponents teleporting out of nowhere. Despite a certain primitiveness and involvement in the shooter genre, the tactical tasks described above gave the game features of an adventure genre that required active exploration of the level,
The default controls are completely out of line with today's standard FPS controls, using the mouse to pan and aim, and the WASD layout for movement, but after the release of the first version of the game, many players became accustomed to this layout, despite the presence numerous settings that allow you to change the layout to any convenient for the user: unlike Wolfenstein 3D, in Doom you can set an independent simultaneous aim with the mouse (horizontally only, vertical aiming is impossible due to engine limitations) and strafe with the keys using standard funds, which allowed players to play Doom in parallel with later games in this genre, without knocking down reflexes.
As in Wolfenstein 3D, the main character's face is displayed at the bottom of the screen, which reacts to ongoing events: looks in the direction from which the player was attacked, looks around, smiles bloodthirsty when picking up useful items and weapons, becomes covered in blood when health decreases . The face pointed out to users who did not have a sound card where the danger was coming from.
engine
Main article: Doom engineThe Doom engine is a pseudo-3D engine, which is why it is sometimes referred to as a 2.5D game. Other examples of 2.5D games are Rise of the Triad, Duke Nukem 3D, Blood.
The engine was written in C on NeXT workstations on the NEXTSTEP operating system. Initially, the Intel C compiler was used, but later the developers switched to Watcom C. The utilities were written under NeXT in Objective-C. The Doom engine was quite progressive for its time.
However, do not forget that some ports of Doom (for example, ZDoom) use a different engine, which only imitates the behavior of Doom objects, and this imitation does not always correspond to the original.
Graphic arts
Some sprites were drawn by hand. Others (player sprites, archvile, spider leader) were created from metal, latex and plasticine, photographed from different angles and finished in a graphics program.The corpses of killed monsters, like other items in the game, cannot be bypassed and seen from different sides, they will always be shown at the same angle to the player.
Images of the pistol, rifle, machine gun, plasma gun and BFG9000 are photos of toy weapons. The chainsaw is real, borrowed by Tom Hall from his girlfriend. The hands holding the weapons belong to Kevin Cloud, the artist.
Textures are both drawn and photographic. Among their unusual sources are snakeskin boots belonging to Adrian Carmack and a wound on Kevin Cloud's leg.
Sound
The game's composer was Bobby Prince, who previously worked on Commander Keen and Wolfenstein 3D. Romero originally gave Prince some heavy metal records and asked him to do something similar. They also decided that this style was not suitable for all levels, and Prince made several tracks in the "ambient" style.
The voice acting was mixed partly from animal sounds, partly from the sounds recorded by Romero and Prince.