Commander Keen, Doom 3, Quake, Quake 2, Quake 3 Arena, Quake 3 Team Arena, Wolfenstein 3-D, Doom, and Doom 2 copyright © ID Software
Heretic © Raven and ID Software
Unreal Tournament © Epic Software

ABOUT | The Beginning | Commander Keen | The Void | Wolfenstein 3-D | Spear of Destiny | Doom | Doom 2 | | Quake | Quake 2 | Quake 3 Arena | Quake 3 Team Arena | Doom 3 | The Beginning                 1989-1991       The founders of Id Software met while working at a small software company called Softdisk in the early nineties. This is where John Romero and Tom Hall met. John Romero, wanting to start a gaming division of Softdisk, wanted to recruit another programmer. John Carmack, a freelance programmer at the time, was found and hired. John Romero, John Carmack and Lane Roathe started the Gamer's Edge division of Softdisk, whipping up small games that were to be shipped via floppy disk to Softdisk subscribers. Tom Hall came in every now and then to work on the design of the games.       Super Mario Brothers 3 was very popular at the time. Something Nintendo had accomplished was smooth scrolling, which was necessary for platform games, which were selling very well. No one had accomplished this with PC's. John Carmack discovered a technique to make smooth scrolling possible for PC's, and Romero, ecstatic at the finding, decided that the guys in the Gamer's Edge department of Softdisk were simply too damn good not to work indepently. John Romero, John Carmack, Lane Roathe, and eventually Tom Hall broke off and started Ideas from the Deep, later shortened to id. The first implementation of this smooth scrolling technique can be downloaded here.       With their new scrolling technique, id started work on their first game, Commander Keen. Commander Keen                 1991 Screenshot © 3D Realms Screenshot © id Software       Commander Keen was id's first game. There were two trilogies, totalling six games. The game had no actual sound, all sound was played through the PC speaker (the speaker in a computer's case that makes hilarious beeps and squeals). Commander Keen was a platform game, that is, a 2-dimensional game in which the player's character would jump around on platforms, avoiding obstacles like enemies and spikes. Commander Keen sold very well. This is because of id's revolutionary smooth scrolling technique. It actually wasn't really revolutionary, id just figured out how to do what Nintendo could. The Void                 1991 Rescue Rover 2 Screenshot © id Software HoverTank 3-D Screenshot © id Software       There was a period in id's history between Commander Keen and Wolfenstein 3-D when they made a few games that didn't get popular. Two of these were 3-D games. One of id's pre-Wolfenstein games that was 3-D, HoverTank 3-D, didn't have texture mapping. Texture mapping is applying graphics (pictures) to objects in 3-D software. The graphics are manipulated as the viewer changes viewpoints to represent objects in reality. The difference between a texture-mapped 3-D game and a game that isn't is that a non-texture-mapped game would have walls that were just solid colors. One of id's big accomplishments was texture-mapping.       If you want a less half-assed description of these games, go here. Wolfenstein 3-D                 1992       Wolfenstein 3-D was a game where you would walk through a Nazi castle killing SS guards. The goal was to escape the castle. It was lacking a lot. There were no varying floor or ceiling heights, there were no varying light levels, there were four weapons, and only a few different types of enemies. Wolfeinstein 3-D was pretty much the same through the whole game, and it gets old pretty fast. Also, the player had lives. When they ran out, the game was over. You also had a score. Spear of Destiny                 1992 Screenshot © Mr. Lowe's Wolf 3-D Page       Spear of Destiny was the sequel to Wolfenstein 3-D. It was pretty much the same except that it had new textures and it didn't have seperate episodes as Wolfenstein 3-D did. The game is about the Spear of Longinous, which (in reality) was in possesion of Hitler and is said to have stabbed Jesus. Doom                 1993       Doom was revolutionary in comercial software. As soon as you start the first level (see above screenshot) you can see how much more realistic it is than Wolfenstein 3-D. It's graphics were a huge leap from Wolfenstein. Also, Doom had varying floor and ceiling heights, something that allowed the game to have much more variety. Here is a list of things that made Doom a huge step in commercial games: * Varying floor and ceiling heights * Varying light levels * Floors and ceilings (sectors) move up and down * Texture mapped floors and ceilings * Network / internet play * Walls of any angle * Texture mapping of animated textures       Doom was also extremely fun for a 1993 game. The 3-D engine gives it a realistic feel, like you're really there. And the varying floor and ceiling heights lets the game have a lot of variety. It didn't have a number of lives or a score, as did Wolfenstein. Doom was revolutionary, and will always be a classic. Doom 2                 1994       Doom 2 was not very different from Doom. It had the same 3-D engine and a lot of the same weapons. It did, however, have a lot more enemies than Doom, and it had different music. The only weapon added was the super shotgun. Doom 2's level design was different. It had a lot more huge, open landscapes (see above screenshot). In my opinion, Doom had better levels. Also, Doom 2 didn't have episodes, as Doom did.       Doom 2, in my opinion, is funner than Doom. Doom and Doom 2 are some of the best-selling computer games in history, and for good reason. In the mid-nineties, the ratio of computer sales to Doom sales showed that about half of the computers in the U.S. had Doom or Doom 2. Quake                 1996       Quake was a great game to come out after the Doom games, because like Doom, it absolutely shocked people. Just as Doom's biggest advancement (varying floor and ceiling heights) gave it huge variety over its predecessor, Quake had three: multiple floors at one point, slopes, and 3-D models.       The multiple floors was definately the best new feature of the Quake engine. A level could be made that represented an office building, for example, with ten floors and a realistic elevator.       Slopes also made for a lot of variety. This means a surface could be slanted as opposed to only horizontal or vertical.       All objects in Quake (enemies, weapons, etc.) were 3-D models. In Doom, every object had no depth, that is, everything was flat. In Quake, however, the player could look at an object at any angle and it would be displayed as it would in reality. Some objects in Doom, like a dead body, would always face the player.       Quake also had dynamic lighting, which means that if you were to fire a rocket, the walls, floors, and ceilings around it would brighten and darken as the rocket moved.       Some people were much more attracted to Quake's multiplayer elements than its single player. The game had many advancements in this area, such as team deathmatches. Also, players could find opponents all over the world by browsing servers as is done in games today.       Something that made Quake so huge was that as far as the engine, it was as close to reality as computers as we know them could get. In the past, 3-D games always lacked something, whether it was slopes or multiple floors. After Quake, there was nothing left to be done in the first-person-shooter genre but graphics and gameplay advancements.       During Quake development, tensions mounted in the id office. John Carmack was putting himself in the position of the company's owner, as opposed to the laid-back, fun person he was before. Carmack started giving some people better paychecks than others, as a way of showing who he thought was working harder. It was shortly after Quake's release that John Romero, already planning to quit, was fired by Carmack. Quake 2                 1997       Quake 2 took huge advantage of the time's graphics technology. New graphics technology was available to anybody, so id could really go nuts with Quake 2. They took dynamic lighting to the next level, with lighting that could be any desired color. Also, Quake 2 had trasparency, as you can see in the above screenshot. Also, 3-D models could have a lot more polygons than those of Quake could. Quake 3 Arena                 1999       Quake 3 Arena was id's first game with no progressive story-based single player mode. The game revolved almost entirely around multiplayer. The single player mode was just multiplayer-type games (deathmatch, capture the flag, etc.) in which the player would play against bots (fake players with artificial intelligence that is meant to make them play like a human would).       Quake 3 Arena had some new graphics advancements like more colors and higher-quality textures. Quake 3 Team Arena                 2000       Quake 3 Team Arena was an expansion pack for Quake 3 Arena. It had several built-in teams that you could be in, and your team would compete for rank. The maps were more complicated than in Quake 3 Arena.       Quake 3 Team Arena was almost certainly made to compete with Epic's Unreal Tournament, which came out just a week before Quake 3 Arena. People had criticized Quake 3 Arena for not having enough team-based play when compared to Unreal Tournament. Doom 3                 2004       The long-awaited sequel to Doom 2. Doom 3 is a great game. The graphics are nothing but absolutely astonishing, and the game has enemies and weapons from old Doom. Doom 3 was meant to be a much darker, more serious game than Doom or Doom 2 was. Doom 3 follows the same plot as Doom and Doom 2. See the Doom 3 page, with a hell of a lot more information, here. Background Music From Doom 2 -- Story Text

Copyright © Jake Gilbert 2003-2007