In 1994, I worked in desktop support at a large finance company. We had recently moved from dumb "greenscreen" terminals to NeXTStep computers (actually, PC hardware running NeXT OS) on everyone's desktop. It is difficult to describe just how advanced the NeXT OS was when compared to DOS/Windows 3.1 on that same hardware. The graphics were smooth and amazing-looking on a 486 CPU, the OS was intuitive, and administration across a distributed network was so easy. People were able to run multiple "greenscreen" apps in different windows -- at the same time! That was a huge timesaver for our field office staff. At headquarters, we had other things going on: it wasn't long before someone got ahold of a copy of Doom, and nightly after-hours deathmatches soon sprang up.
When I first saw Doom running, it was like someone had opened my head up with a can opener and poured copious amounts of Ritalin directly into my brain, I don't think its possible to overstate the level of excitement it generated in my tiny 10 year old mind. Our crappy 386 computer, which was only capable of displaying hideous renditions of spreadsheets and word documents, had somehow opened up a portal directly to hell just from copying a few floppy disks on to it. It was like the exact same feeling they captured in the movie TRON, of somehow physically transporting into the virtual world, except that it was happening to me personally, in my living room. Everything outside of that tiny 4:3 CRT screen ceased to exist. I've never felt anything quite like it.
I had a very similar emotion to seeing Doom for the first time as well. I’d personally played other 3D games on DOS before (Stunts by Brøderbund and Battlezone or some clone of it), but nothing that played as smoothly. And texture-mapping on DOS! I’d never been exposed to an Amiga, so I saw this technique for the first time inside of Doom. This was my Sistine Chapel, and I had just stepped into the Renaissance.
I remember too... I had played Wolfenstein... it was pretty cool... But Doom was something different... Something Magic... It was definitely a Shift in the Paradigm....kind of like seeing the original Star Wars in the movie theater, and or hearing Eddie Van Halen play Eruption for the first time... It achieved a new standard, and we have never looked back
OMG. Same here. I couldn't believe it when I saw it. It was like having a virtual reality machine that opened into a hellscape universe sat on your desk. I'd played a lot of arcade consoles and other games, but this was just another level of Wow!
@@nickk5948I had a 386sx at the time, yes the sx stands for "Sux"... all of my friends had just started college and were getting 486 PC's for CAD etc... saw a copy of Doom run on one of them and all bets were off... worked two jobs to save up to build my own 486 PC within 3 months at half the cost... NEVER looked back!
Oh yeah, I love how you call it "a portal to hell". My friend had such a portal, guarded by his angry dog 😅 I had to wait each time until he locks the dog away.
Small historical inaccuracy at 2:49. Wolfenstein 3D was not the first first person shooter, or even the first person shooter that ID even made. They released Hovertank 3D in April 1991 and Catacomb 3-D in November 1991. Wolfenstein 3D was just one of the first FPS games that became somewhat popular with mainstream audiences. The first FPS games were made all the way back in the 1970s. Maze War in 1973 and Spasim in 1974. Maze War was also the first to have online multiplayer using ARPANET almost 20 years before Doom.
2:48 it's worth noting that what became Commander Keen started out as a demo for a PC-version of another game - Super Mario Bros 3, which the developers pitched to Nintendo
The NeXT computer and OS was absolutely ground breaking at the time. For someone who up until that point (late 1980's, early 90's) had only used PC's and other comparable personal computers, the NeXT platform was mind blowing.
I still have two of them in my demo room. Great machines. So sad their legacy is disappearing. Objective-C was all fun and games until Swift hit the fan.
I could listen to Romero talk about DoomEd all day lol. That was such a crazy time where everything was new, nothing they were doing had been done before and they were just making it work. id software during that time must've been the coolest place on earth.
Yep, talking with him was a lot of fun, and we’re all looking forward to hearing more from him in the future! You should check out his book: Doom Guy. It goes into a lot of detail about not just technical details of Doom, but also much of what made John Romero into the person who created DoomEd.
My inner 13 year old that put thousands of hours creatIng Doom levels using DEU hurts when you forgot the proper command line to start the .wad file. I had almost forgot that time, thanks for the nostalgia ❤️
Us too! We’re so glad that the original id folks were so open with their level methodology and data! So many developers got their start through game modding and/or editors that shipped with the engine. While shipping DoomEd would not have been practical, we’re glad they at least didn’t kneecap the ability for others to make editors by making level data inaccessible.
DOOM(TM) requires an IBM compatible 386 or better with 4 megs of RAM, a VGA graphics card, and a hard disk drive. A 486 or better,I reckon you'd be pushed to build a machine that's going cry when running doom trying to find drivers and hardware that almost overheats
Ultima Underworld had 3d graphics in Dos and was released in 1992. Doom was a lot smoother and fast paced but used tricks to simulate a 3D space. ;) Also many Flight simulators that predate Doom for Msdos had 100% 3D environments.
Thanks for fact-checking and the correction! We also shouldn't have forgotten about Catacomb 3D, the other 2.5d game that id worked on with texture mapping before Wolfenstein! We internally had a discussion about if the data representation/movement system being 3D was necessary for it to be considered 3D, or if rendering in 3D was enough for it to be considered 3D (hence the "attempt 3D"). Definitely could have used more discussion on this point though! With everything going on at the museum, we missed some things on this first video. We've added in that correction in the description and will aim to be more accurate next time! Thank you!
Yeah, I remember playing the demo of Underworld the day it came out. The whole first level. I can't overstate how amazing it was. Ability to look up and down, walk under bridges and over tunnels. Jump. By the time the real game came out we had memorized the first level. I also remember Doom (also memorized the first level demo) and loving how it was simpler but faster paced and a very different world. Loved them both for what they represented and what they were able to do within their philosophy.
Doom is 3D because you move in the X,Y and Z axis. Even if it's using this weird in-between 2d and 3d rendering techique for speed. Doom is 3D but with limitations I would say. :D
Minor Nit (4m45s): Objective C was developed by Brad Cox and Tom Love at Productivity Products International (aka StepStone Technologies.) I used their VAX/VMS compiler throughout the mid-80s and it was wonderful. The story I heard was NeXT licensed either their compiler or the rights to use the language definition and Objective-C trademark. I know that we had the StepStone compiler source (I don't know how common that was) and the VMS compiler looked quite different from the version that was eventually integrated with gcc to make objc. Again... minor nit. Objective-C was almost exclusively associated with NeXT and Apple in the late 90s. And the last time I heard of anyone using the StepStone compiler was in the early 90s. So saying Objective-C was developed by NeXT is close to being true from a modern perspective, but the reality is it was developed in Sandy Hook and not Redwood City.
Thanks for the background! You seem to know a lot about this; would you be interested in being on our podcast if we did a deep dive into something related to this topic in the future? A lot of folks take it for granted that this history is easily accessible, but it really isn't. For instance, this is the first time I've heard about the StepStone compiler. As time passes, the folks who've used it become rare, and crucial links to the past are lost. Either way, I appreciate you providing us with one more connection point to the past!
The first time I saw Doom in the early 90's I was blown away. I was immediately transported into another world. I was hooked... I wish i could find a game that could do the same today. Some have been close, but not quite to the same degree.
Too bad that human expectations scale with the environment. 3 dimensions are the end of our plane of existence, so there wont be a next step to get excited about in this term.
Very interesting to hear about the development of Doom and the tools used. Very nostalgic for this game! Was mind blowing when it first came out. I just started re-playing it recently and still just as fun!
Fun little video, I would have also loved to have seen some footage (even if not official) of the other tools used by Adrian (Deluxe Paint II and the custom made Graphics Digitizing Scanner) and Bobby Prince (Sequencer Plus Gold) too. Unfortunately it feels like this video just kinda ends out of nowhere Looking forward to the next one!
Thanks for the feedback! There's so much about Doom that we wanted to talk about, but not enough time. We'd love to explore those in a future video (especially DPaint)!
I've visited the MADE several times in its various locations in Oakland since 2014- so stoked to see y'all making content!! Keep it up! A series like this should definitely have 'made' in the name 😋
There are so many fascinating things about the NeXT. While RenderMan was developed at Lucasfilm prior to being purchased by Steve Jobs (what later became Pixar), it found its way into NeXTSTEP as a framework called 3DKit: www.nextcomputers.org/NeXTfiles/Docs/NeXTStep/3.3/nd/ReleaseNotes/3DKit.htmld/index.html. If you’re into 3D graphics, it’s really fun doing some header diving and finding references to technology that would finally be implemented decades later.
Very professionally made. I thought I was watching someone with 200k+ subscribers! The fact you have less then 1,000 subscribers is CRIMINAL! Instant sub.
Very cool. It was useful having video that matched what John Romero was saying. It's so interesting having programs with a bunch of distinct windows like that. It seems like these days programs are generally single window, or one window per document, but I remember even older Mac OS X programs, like Photoshop, consisted of multiple distinct windows. It's nice because you can arrange things exactly how you want it, but it can feel pretty cluttered and it requires you to manually rearrange them if you want to move stuff around or introduce new windows. One cool feature of NeXTSTEP that I wish made it over to Mac is the ability to tear off the menu bar sub-menus and keep them on screen as their own windows.
Hate Steve Jobs or Love him, even his critics like myself must admit it's pretty bad ass to get fired from your own company (because your own damn fault btw, Steve) and then straight up go back to bringing great products to the market starting another company to get right back into the game. Jobs isn't like the other pompous self important hacks like Musk or Branson. He actually can deliver despite his major personalty flaws, begrudging even I must admit he's good at what he did. RIP Steve.
It is definitely quite compact! On top of that, there are some interesting hardware design decisions you'll spot if you have the chance to use one. (For instance, the keyboard and mouse plugging into the monitor, a single proprietary cable that delivers all power and I/O communication from the main board to the monitor, and a single power cable that extends from the main board's power supply.)
I'm pretty sure Elite was even earlier than that, although it may have been ported to DOS, but I dunno. I only know about it being a Commodore 64 game or something.
@@costelinha1867 oh yes, the original version was for the Acorn Electron and BBC Micro in 1984 before being ported to just about anything, including the NES.
What I find fascinating having read "Masters of Doom" 20 years ago was the claim that the NEXT computer sat unused during development and was instead used to write the documentation. Then the story changed over the years.
We’ve been reading John Romero’s “Doom Guy” over here, and it goes into a lot of detail over the use of Interface Builder on NeXTStep to very quickly build user interfaces. If you’re familiar with macOS development (pre-SwiftUI) you would definitely notice some of the similarities! The UNIX networking capabilities and their influence are also evident in the quick note about Carmack’s exploration of distributed objects in the book prior to implementing IPX within Doom. I highly recommend this book from both a narrative and technical standpoint; it’s such a gift to get the story straight from one of the creators!
Having been a pretty active NeXT user (who worked for a NeXT 3rd party developer that shipped SW for NeXTSTEP) at the time, I can tell you that id definitely used NeXT systems as a part of the development process, and they actually produced a version of the game running on NeXTSTEP--which likely wouldn't have happened if it had sat unused in the corner. I fondly recall running DOOM on my NeXTstation Color back in the early 90s.
Agreed! We hope to have more opportunities to explore Doom more deeply in the future. That being said, we highly suggest Fabien Sanglard's Game Engine Black Book that goes into much more detail than our video here: fabiensanglard.net/gebbdoom/
i had the pleasure of playing against Romero 1 on 1 in Doom II Map 7. I was not allowed to use the BFG. He was an absolute beast with the rocket launcher.
Too bad the video didn't include the NeXT booting or running! 😄 I have two pizza boxes that still run (I put a SD to SCSI adapter in one) and I still occasionally boot them just because I can. 😎
Aw, thank you! We hope to have more time to explore our topics in the future. In the meantime, we have to get consoles working in our museum so that people can spend less time watching us, and playing the actual systems!
The NeXTStep footage was taken from a VM, so there is some lag. However, if you try to run Doom on the physical NeXT hardware, it’s actually pretty slow as well. From our conversation with John Romero, it makes more sense to compile a FAT binary to a location on a network file share, copy it to a DOS machine, and then run it directly on the target hardware. As for the lack of color, the NeXT box that we had didn’t support color graphics. Most likely, the folks at id would have had a NeXTCube with NeXTDimension cards in them. So they would have been able to at the very least visually check that everything was working directly on their machines. I highly recommend Fabien Sanglard’s: Game Engine Black Book DOOM. It goes into incredible technical detail, and served as the inspiration behind this video. There’s so many more game development nuggets to mine from this!
@@peterfireflylund Ah! Yeah, it must have been running on the NeXT Cube. That one was specced out better than the NeXTStation we have in our collection. According to Fabien, the NeXT Cube was what John Carmack/John Romero used (along with the card supporting full color), so it makes sense that the machine you saw had a better frame rate. Thanks for the input! We'd love to get one of those in our collection and see the differences.
Doom runs fluidly on my OPENSTEP 4.2 Mach PC (I.e. white hardware), but it uses a 800 MHz P-III processor which is much faster than anything that existed while id were developing the game (on black hardware)
Hello. Just subscribed. I really enjoyed the video. It would be nice if you could go further and explore more of the Doom making process. I understand some people are already into the modding scene, but I think DOOM inspired not only game makers but filmmakers, comic artists and more. Also creative feedback. If the person is reading off a cue card, I suggest the editor cut to some B roll. Having the person look down while speaking is a bit distracting. Otherwise, great vid! Cheers!
Thank you for your feedback; we'll take that into account! And thanks for watching! Hopefully there's more time to explore our source material in the future to go into more detail on the other aspects.
When Doom came out we had a NeXT workstation at work and later played a variation on PC I called pacifist doom. The idea was to last as long as possible on hiding and medicine packs (medikit) alone without using any weapons.
@05:30 wow this explains a lot just to see some demo video of workflow... comparing to using plain DOS 486 in 1995 as kid, this is way more productive GUI. What timelines Carmack, Romero told in books and interviews of development, no way it is possible without powerful tools and smooth workflow. From book I couldnt grasp why Carmack was wanting this nextstep workstation but this tells a lot more.
I'd imagine having an actual OS where you could debug in one window and see your game in another was a million times better than dos where you have to exit your editor environment to run your game. I don't know how anyone did anything as complicated as game development in DOS.
If you must have a crib sheet, get or make a teleprompter or do it all by voice over. Your constant looking up and down got me from the start, so I couldn't stop watching it. Hence I missed a lot of what you were saying.
Friend of mine bought one, very expensive. I don't know if it was 5k or 10k, or whatever. For some reason, sold it maybe year after buying it. I wonder, had he held onto it, what it would have been worth now?
Jobs was a salesman. Don't give too much credit there. The NEXT team really took a risk and pushed the envelope, while standing on the shoulders of UNIX. I remember working in a lab to evaluate NEXT. Didn't love the UI, but the dev platform was really cool Devs like Carmack were able to take what NEXT had to offer, and really push it far. His development of game engines along with Romero and team's level design really helped ID open up the video game industry on the PC. Hate to guess where it would be without ID's accomplishments. SO many dev shops used their game engines.
@@litjellyfish not a product designer, at least from a technical level, but had great input for what consumers wanted, like your said, for sales. He wasn't your ordinary sales exec.
@@martin1b a product designer is usually not a dedicated technical person (still Steve was quite technically knowledgeable ) - then we are talking about software engineers. I would not really call him a sales exec as most of his things was not sales but product design / creation / ideation. Steve Balmer was more of a sales exec. Also one of the key statement by stage was that costumers often did not know what they wanted. He was plainly a guy with great knowledge in many areas. A t person. A bit obsessive and thinker outside of the box. Then as many of those a complete non compromising asshole
Hello. I enjoyed your video. However your voice sound muffled compared to the rest. Please invest in a proper microphone and a teleprompter (there is cheap ones that are not perfect but can already do the job). Voice is very important, especially in informative videos like that.
I saw Romero streaming some doom map he was making or something just a few weeks ago. I wouldn't be surprised if anyone making a video like this could just ask him questions these days and get a response like that.
Yep! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_binary#:~:text=Fat%20binaries%20were%20a%20feature,%22Multi%2DArchitecture%20Binaries%22. On NeXTSTEP, the compiled binary could immediately run on both x86 and on Motorola 68k platforms. That’s why it was as simple as compiling to a networked file share and running directly on a DOS machine! The editor code didn’t intermingle with the engine code, so there were no issues with library dependencies. With Apple’s acquisition and adoption of much of OpenSTEP, this style of development can continue to be seen today (develop on one chip architecture to be deployed to multiple chip architectures).
Yep! A bunch of us at the museum are the same as well--that's why we're so thrilled to have the chance to learn from folks like John who readily share their knowledge and source code with the world!
Unglaublich zu dieser Zeit derart tief einen softwarerenderer herzustellen, der ganze 2D Karten in 3D Visualisiert , später sind die verwendeten 3D Methoden in Voodoo karten zu Hardware Funktionen umgeschrieben worden die es bis zum heutigen tag gibt, ein Pionier wie er im buche stehe. Wie das möglich war zu dieser Zeit ist mir unerklärlich, spreche da aus Erfahrung.
How doom levels are made hasn't changed with the past 30 years, of course UDB can automatically launch zdoom instead of having to change to A different computer bit...
Yep! And if you download DoomEd and run it on NeXTSTEP, you’ll find that it uses a similar file/directory structure to the way that macOS applications are structured today (except without code signing so you can mod the app in very insecure ways :) ).
@@TheMADEOakwell next step was turned into macOS after they was bought by Apple so it should not come as a surprise :) MacOS is kind of a reskin of Next Step
The audio interview comes from our podcast with John Romero, I’ll link them in the description as well! art19.com/shows/the-madecast/episodes/e3ebf894-1be0-40ea-a726-47a0f55968e6
Did you are able to deep dive in that proccess (i mean doom develop) on that machine? I am really curious how was work going on NextCube computer, none of emulators give that feelings ;) Practically buying this machine is expensive as on that days when was invented...
Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to compile the game from source! As far as the computer goes, I personally feel like VMs are close; if you’ve never used UNIX before (like I hadn’t before using a Mac) and are developing software, the change is dramatic. There are some quirks with the hardware itself (power button on the keyboard, proprietary cable from the box to the monitor), but the experience outside of the operating system is generally the same. We definitely recommend trying to program an application on the emulator to get a feeling of what it was like!
Quite true! The elegance of the wad format was partly informed by its need to be portable across platforms (Motorola 64k/x86)--ie the level data needed to be separated from game logic. While not completely novel, the distribution of this practice to modders really helped proliferate this as a best practice! Great notes on this from John Romero's "Doom Guy" book.
You'd get a lot more hits on your video if you mentioned Next and Jobs in the title - tools that built doom - lack any context which happen to be topics people are interested in beyond Doom itself.
In 1994, I worked in desktop support at a large finance company. We had recently moved from dumb "greenscreen" terminals to NeXTStep computers (actually, PC hardware running NeXT OS) on everyone's desktop. It is difficult to describe just how advanced the NeXT OS was when compared to DOS/Windows 3.1 on that same hardware. The graphics were smooth and amazing-looking on a 486 CPU, the OS was intuitive, and administration across a distributed network was so easy. People were able to run multiple "greenscreen" apps in different windows -- at the same time! That was a huge timesaver for our field office staff. At headquarters, we had other things going on: it wasn't long before someone got ahold of a copy of Doom, and nightly after-hours deathmatches soon sprang up.
i had no clue they licensed NeXT OS on PCs, that's awesome info.
What are you doing now?
When I first saw Doom running, it was like someone had opened my head up with a can opener and poured copious amounts of Ritalin directly into my brain, I don't think its possible to overstate the level of excitement it generated in my tiny 10 year old mind.
Our crappy 386 computer, which was only capable of displaying hideous renditions of spreadsheets and word documents, had somehow opened up a portal directly to hell just from copying a few floppy disks on to it. It was like the exact same feeling they captured in the movie TRON, of somehow physically transporting into the virtual world, except that it was happening to me personally, in my living room. Everything outside of that tiny 4:3 CRT screen ceased to exist.
I've never felt anything quite like it.
I had a very similar emotion to seeing Doom for the first time as well. I’d personally played other 3D games on DOS before (Stunts by Brøderbund and Battlezone or some clone of it), but nothing that played as smoothly. And texture-mapping on DOS! I’d never been exposed to an Amiga, so I saw this technique for the first time inside of Doom. This was my Sistine Chapel, and I had just stepped into the Renaissance.
I remember too... I had played Wolfenstein... it was pretty cool... But Doom was something different... Something Magic... It was definitely a Shift in the Paradigm....kind of like seeing the original Star Wars in the movie theater, and or hearing Eddie Van Halen play Eruption for the first time... It achieved a new standard, and we have never looked back
OMG. Same here. I couldn't believe it when I saw it. It was like having a virtual reality machine that opened into a hellscape universe sat on your desk. I'd played a lot of arcade consoles and other games, but this was just another level of Wow!
@@nickk5948I had a 386sx at the time, yes the sx stands for "Sux"... all of my friends had just started college and were getting 486 PC's for CAD etc... saw a copy of Doom run on one of them and all bets were off... worked two jobs to save up to build my own 486 PC within 3 months at half the cost... NEVER looked back!
Oh yeah, I love how you call it "a portal to hell". My friend had such a portal, guarded by his angry dog 😅 I had to wait each time until he locks the dog away.
Small historical inaccuracy at 2:49. Wolfenstein 3D was not the first first person shooter, or even the first person shooter that ID even made. They released Hovertank 3D in April 1991 and Catacomb 3-D in November 1991. Wolfenstein 3D was just one of the first FPS games that became somewhat popular with mainstream audiences. The first FPS games were made all the way back in the 1970s. Maze War in 1973 and Spasim in 1974. Maze War was also the first to have online multiplayer using ARPANET almost 20 years before Doom.
Exactly. So tired of this really. Especially from self-proclaimed "historians"
2:48 it's worth noting that what became Commander Keen started out as a demo for a PC-version of another game - Super Mario Bros 3, which the developers pitched to Nintendo
The NeXT computer and OS was absolutely ground breaking at the time. For someone who up until that point (late 1980's, early 90's) had only used PC's and other comparable personal computers, the NeXT platform was mind blowing.
I still have two of them in my demo room. Great machines. So sad their legacy is disappearing. Objective-C was all fun and games until Swift hit the fan.
I could listen to Romero talk about DoomEd all day lol. That was such a crazy time where everything was new, nothing they were doing had been done before and they were just making it work. id software during that time must've been the coolest place on earth.
Yep, talking with him was a lot of fun, and we’re all looking forward to hearing more from him in the future! You should check out his book: Doom Guy. It goes into a lot of detail about not just technical details of Doom, but also much of what made John Romero into the person who created DoomEd.
I saw you looking at your script you sneaky pete
We’ll be less sneaky next time, we promise! Thanks for the feedback :)
🙂🙂😔🙂
At least put your notes/script next to the camera. It's still often noticeable but not as obvious.
There's teleprompter apps on mobile devices, at least.
great video but mount your phone above the camera my guy.
We’ll give it a shot! Thanks for the feedback!
These guys were really advanced considering the limitations of the hardware back then. Super interesting thanks!
My inner 13 year old that put thousands of hours creatIng Doom levels using DEU hurts when you forgot the proper command line to start the .wad file. I had almost forgot that time, thanks for the nostalgia ❤️
Those were the days. Doom hackers guide, poorly documented editors, and the enthusiasm of a 13 year old. Doom is perfect.
Us too! We’re so glad that the original id folks were so open with their level methodology and data! So many developers got their start through game modding and/or editors that shipped with the engine. While shipping DoomEd would not have been practical, we’re glad they at least didn’t kneecap the ability for others to make editors by making level data inaccessible.
DOOM(TM) requires an IBM compatible 386 or better with 4 megs of RAM, a VGA graphics card, and a hard disk drive. A 486 or better,I reckon you'd be pushed to build a machine that's going cry when running doom trying to find drivers and hardware that almost overheats
By 90s standards Doom was playable on a higher end 386 in low detail.
Look-up the word "boss" in a dictionary and a photo of John Romero will appear
Ultima Underworld had 3d graphics in Dos and was released in 1992. Doom was a lot smoother and fast paced but used tricks to simulate a 3D space. ;)
Also many Flight simulators that predate Doom for Msdos had 100% 3D environments.
Thanks for fact-checking and the correction! We also shouldn't have forgotten about Catacomb 3D, the other 2.5d game that id worked on with texture mapping before Wolfenstein! We internally had a discussion about if the data representation/movement system being 3D was necessary for it to be considered 3D, or if rendering in 3D was enough for it to be considered 3D (hence the "attempt 3D"). Definitely could have used more discussion on this point though!
With everything going on at the museum, we missed some things on this first video. We've added in that correction in the description and will aim to be more accurate next time! Thank you!
Yeah, I remember playing the demo of Underworld the day it came out. The whole first level. I can't overstate how amazing it was. Ability to look up and down, walk under bridges and over tunnels. Jump. By the time the real game came out we had memorized the first level. I also remember Doom (also memorized the first level demo) and loving how it was simpler but faster paced and a very different world. Loved them both for what they represented and what they were able to do within their philosophy.
Doom is 3D because you move in the X,Y and Z axis. Even if it's using this weird in-between 2d and 3d rendering techique for speed.
Doom is 3D but with limitations I would say. :D
you should set your camera to manual focus and not auto focus, it was constantly trying to focus on you while you talked
Thank you for the note! We’re constantly seeking to improve!
(1:23) Pro tip: cut away from pausing to check cue cards. 😉😎🤘☮
another pro tip: Record the audio with a microphone not a potato.... good content though..
@@tokero5199 Indeed! 😉😎
@@tokero5199 Agreed! 😎👍☮️
@@tokero5199any specific recommendations, or...?
One of the most influential games of all time
Minor Nit (4m45s): Objective C was developed by Brad Cox and Tom Love at Productivity Products International (aka StepStone Technologies.) I used their VAX/VMS compiler throughout the mid-80s and it was wonderful. The story I heard was NeXT licensed either their compiler or the rights to use the language definition and Objective-C trademark. I know that we had the StepStone compiler source (I don't know how common that was) and the VMS compiler looked quite different from the version that was eventually integrated with gcc to make objc.
Again... minor nit. Objective-C was almost exclusively associated with NeXT and Apple in the late 90s. And the last time I heard of anyone using the StepStone compiler was in the early 90s. So saying Objective-C was developed by NeXT is close to being true from a modern perspective, but the reality is it was developed in Sandy Hook and not Redwood City.
Thanks for the background! You seem to know a lot about this; would you be interested in being on our podcast if we did a deep dive into something related to this topic in the future? A lot of folks take it for granted that this history is easily accessible, but it really isn't. For instance, this is the first time I've heard about the StepStone compiler. As time passes, the folks who've used it become rare, and crucial links to the past are lost. Either way, I appreciate you providing us with one more connection point to the past!
@TheMADEOak sure. I'd be happy to. If I have any memories that are useful, I'm happy to share.
The first time I saw Doom in the early 90's I was blown away. I was immediately transported into another world. I was hooked... I wish i could find a game that could do the same today. Some have been close, but not quite to the same degree.
Too bad that human expectations scale with the environment. 3 dimensions are the end of our plane of existence, so there wont be a next step to get excited about in this term.
Very interesting to hear about the development of Doom and the tools used. Very nostalgic for this game! Was mind blowing when it first came out. I just started re-playing it recently and still just as fun!
This Chanel with this video should just rump up
We hope so! Thanks for watching!
nostalgia from the old days aside, it's videos like these that make me think we are currently in the coolest era of the internet
Fun little video, I would have also loved to have seen some footage (even if not official) of the other tools used by Adrian (Deluxe Paint II and the custom made Graphics Digitizing Scanner) and Bobby Prince (Sequencer Plus Gold) too. Unfortunately it feels like this video just kinda ends out of nowhere
Looking forward to the next one!
Thanks for the feedback! There's so much about Doom that we wanted to talk about, but not enough time. We'd love to explore those in a future video (especially DPaint)!
Agreed, stopped quiet suddenly. Really cool video. Ready for more!
There's videos of Fuzzy Pumper Palette Shop. Also the book "Doom Black Book" has pictures.
@@TheMADEOakif you arent dead you still have time
This is so cool, I love learning about these ancient computer systems and the ingenuity of the programmers.
Amiga Intern! - Nice book :)
I've visited the MADE several times in its various locations in Oakland since 2014- so stoked to see y'all making content!! Keep it up!
A series like this should definitely have 'made' in the name 😋
Thanks for your support over the years! I'll take your branding notes to the volunteers making the videos!
Doom was designed down the road from my house in Garland, Texas. Many trips by that building.
I had heard it was made on NeXT, just like the WWW. Good video.
There are so many fascinating things about the NeXT. While RenderMan was developed at Lucasfilm prior to being purchased by Steve Jobs (what later became Pixar), it found its way into NeXTSTEP as a framework called 3DKit: www.nextcomputers.org/NeXTfiles/Docs/NeXTStep/3.3/nd/ReleaseNotes/3DKit.htmld/index.html. If you’re into 3D graphics, it’s really fun doing some header diving and finding references to technology that would finally be implemented decades later.
Great video, brings back memories
More 'tools that built' series please!!!!!!!!! Thumbs up this comment if you agree.
Noted! Thanks for the feedback!
Very professionally made. I thought I was watching someone with 200k+ subscribers!
The fact you have less then 1,000 subscribers is CRIMINAL!
Instant sub.
Thank you! We'll do our best to make more videos as we make our way through our physical collection and bring more artifacts to life!
I thought he meant the guys were tools lol
This video came out so good! Fascinating to hear about the NeXT's role in Doom.
Thanks! And thank you for all your advice + support!
Very cool. It was useful having video that matched what John Romero was saying.
It's so interesting having programs with a bunch of distinct windows like that. It seems like these days programs are generally single window, or one window per document, but I remember even older Mac OS X programs, like Photoshop, consisted of multiple distinct windows. It's nice because you can arrange things exactly how you want it, but it can feel pretty cluttered and it requires you to manually rearrange them if you want to move stuff around or introduce new windows.
One cool feature of NeXTSTEP that I wish made it over to Mac is the ability to tear off the menu bar sub-menus and keep them on screen as their own windows.
Hate Steve Jobs or Love him, even his critics like myself must admit it's pretty bad ass to get fired from your own company (because your own damn fault btw, Steve) and then straight up go back to bringing great products to the market starting another company to get right back into the game. Jobs isn't like the other pompous self important hacks like Musk or Branson. He actually can deliver despite his major personalty flaws, begrudging even I must admit he's good at what he did. RIP Steve.
Super interesting! I love seeing how tools are made, especially for really influential project like Doom.
Nice to know the workstation used to create Doom
Also, nice Morgana plushie
Good video.
This video shows great potential for similar content.
Looking forward to more of your awesome work! Subscribed.
Thank you!
That's a lot of effort to make a game that has the crunchiest pixels known to man. Respect to these folks here.
A film covering the making of Doom is looong overdue IMHO. The Next box looks quite compact. Nice video - sub'd!
It is definitely quite compact! On top of that, there are some interesting hardware design decisions you'll spot if you have the chance to use one. (For instance, the keyboard and mouse plugging into the monitor, a single proprietary cable that delivers all power and I/O communication from the main board to the monitor, and a single power cable that extends from the main board's power supply.)
Great video, I've played Doom 1 so many times.
Love me some Doom knowledge
Great background information!
It's kinda distracting when you look down to read your notes :S
Thanks for the feedback! We’ll be looking into different ways to prompt our presenter to be less distracting!
Good video, thank you!
Great video. Loved seeing the original development environment for Doom.
Thanks! It was a lot of fun for us to get it working both in a VM as well as on the original hardware.
Though Doom was far from the first MS-DOS game to 'Attempt 3D graphics'. Elite's PC port came out over 5 years earlier, for example.
I'm pretty sure Elite was even earlier than that, although it may have been ported to DOS, but I dunno.
I only know about it being a Commodore 64 game or something.
@@costelinha1867 oh yes, the original version was for the Acorn Electron and BBC Micro in 1984 before being ported to just about anything, including the NES.
Thanks for the fact-check! We’ve added in a correction in the description to reflect this at 2:50, and will review more closely in future videos!
What I find fascinating having read "Masters of Doom" 20 years ago was the claim that the NEXT computer sat unused during development and was instead used to write the documentation. Then the story changed over the years.
We’ve been reading John Romero’s “Doom Guy” over here, and it goes into a lot of detail over the use of Interface Builder on NeXTStep to very quickly build user interfaces. If you’re familiar with macOS development (pre-SwiftUI) you would definitely notice some of the similarities! The UNIX networking capabilities and their influence are also evident in the quick note about Carmack’s exploration of distributed objects in the book prior to implementing IPX within Doom. I highly recommend this book from both a narrative and technical standpoint; it’s such a gift to get the story straight from one of the creators!
Having been a pretty active NeXT user (who worked for a NeXT 3rd party developer that shipped SW for NeXTSTEP) at the time, I can tell you that id definitely used NeXT systems as a part of the development process, and they actually produced a version of the game running on NeXTSTEP--which likely wouldn't have happened if it had sat unused in the corner. I fondly recall running DOOM on my NeXTstation Color back in the early 90s.
It would be interesting to see of their original development tools for Doom.
Agreed! We hope to have more opportunities to explore Doom more deeply in the future. That being said, we highly suggest Fabien Sanglard's Game Engine Black Book that goes into much more detail than our video here:
fabiensanglard.net/gebbdoom/
I was there back in the day. I remember Castle Wolfenstien 3D when it came out in the very early 90s.
Very interesting, I hadn’t realised this at all… also quite satisfying making the 486th like on the video.
Congrats! I’m personally looking forward to the 68040th like!
i had the pleasure of playing against Romero 1 on 1 in Doom II Map 7. I was not allowed to use the BFG. He was an absolute beast with the rocket launcher.
Too bad the video didn't include the NeXT booting or running! 😄
I have two pizza boxes that still run (I put a SD to SCSI adapter in one) and I still occasionally boot them just because I can. 😎
Lol, learning that WAD stood for "Where is All the Data" is my biggest takeaway from this video 😁
this is a great video!
Thank you! There will be more!
If I were asked the question "which game deserves to be called game changer the most?" Of course I would answer "Doom".
Tools that built doom: finite list of things
Tools that run soom: everything.
"Thing Inspector", "Update Thing data". Classic.
The worst part about this video is it ends.
Aw, thank you! We hope to have more time to explore our topics in the future. In the meantime, we have to get consoles working in our museum so that people can spend less time watching us, and playing the actual systems!
Was the NeXTStep footage taken in an emulator? 640x480 and terrible framerate does not seem kosher. I notice the monitor you pose with is monochrome.
The NeXTStep footage was taken from a VM, so there is some lag. However, if you try to run Doom on the physical NeXT hardware, it’s actually pretty slow as well. From our conversation with John Romero, it makes more sense to compile a FAT binary to a location on a network file share, copy it to a DOS machine, and then run it directly on the target hardware.
As for the lack of color, the NeXT box that we had didn’t support color graphics. Most likely, the folks at id would have had a NeXTCube with NeXTDimension cards in them. So they would have been able to at the very least visually check that everything was working directly on their machines.
I highly recommend Fabien Sanglard’s: Game Engine Black Book DOOM. It goes into incredible technical detail, and served as the inspiration behind this video. There’s so many more game development nuggets to mine from this!
@@TheMADEOakI’ve seen a video of Doom on NeXT (one with colours). It had a pretty good frame rate, actually.
@@peterfireflylund Ah! Yeah, it must have been running on the NeXT Cube. That one was specced out better than the NeXTStation we have in our collection. According to Fabien, the NeXT Cube was what John Carmack/John Romero used (along with the card supporting full color), so it makes sense that the machine you saw had a better frame rate. Thanks for the input! We'd love to get one of those in our collection and see the differences.
Doom runs fluidly on my OPENSTEP 4.2 Mach PC (I.e. white hardware), but it uses a 800 MHz P-III processor which is much faster than anything that existed while id were developing the game (on black hardware)
Hello. Just subscribed. I really enjoyed the video. It would be nice if you could go further and explore more of the Doom making process. I understand some people are already into the modding scene, but I think DOOM inspired not only game makers but filmmakers, comic artists and more. Also creative feedback. If the person is reading off a cue card, I suggest the editor cut to some B roll. Having the person look down while speaking is a bit distracting. Otherwise, great vid! Cheers!
Thank you for your feedback; we'll take that into account! And thanks for watching! Hopefully there's more time to explore our source material in the future to go into more detail on the other aspects.
When Doom came out we had a NeXT workstation at work and later played a variation on PC I called pacifist doom. The idea was to last as long as possible on hiding and medicine packs (medikit) alone without using any weapons.
I can't believe I missed out on seeing black hardware again! NeXT time I'm in town I have to stop by!
@05:30 wow this explains a lot just to see some demo video of workflow... comparing to using plain DOS 486 in 1995 as kid, this is way more productive GUI.
What timelines Carmack, Romero told in books and interviews of development, no way it is possible without powerful tools and smooth workflow. From book I couldnt grasp why Carmack was wanting this nextstep workstation but this tells a lot more.
Awesome.
I'd imagine having an actual OS where you could debug in one window and see your game in another was a million times better than dos where you have to exit your editor environment to run your game. I don't know how anyone did anything as complicated as game development in DOS.
If you must have a crib sheet, get or make a teleprompter or do it all by voice over. Your constant looking up and down got me from the start, so I couldn't stop watching it. Hence I missed a lot of what you were saying.
Thanks for the note! We'll work to correct that in the next video.
I was born in 1982. This the game of my childhood along with wolf
TIL wad = where's all the data
Friend of mine bought one, very expensive. I don't know if it was 5k or 10k, or whatever. For some reason, sold it maybe year after buying it. I wonder, had he held onto it, what it would have been worth now?
Jobs was a salesman. Don't give too much credit there. The NEXT team really took a risk and pushed the envelope, while standing on the shoulders of UNIX. I remember working in a lab to evaluate NEXT. Didn't love the UI, but the dev platform was really cool Devs like Carmack were able to take what NEXT had to offer, and really push it far. His development of game engines along with Romero and team's level design really helped ID open up the video game industry on the PC. Hate to guess where it would be without ID's accomplishments. SO many dev shops used their game engines.
Yes he was a sales man AND a great product designer AND visionary AND a had a great mindset for consumer analysis
@@litjellyfish not a product designer, at least from a technical level, but had great input for what consumers wanted, like your said, for sales. He wasn't your ordinary sales exec.
@@martin1b a product designer is usually not a dedicated technical person (still Steve was quite technically knowledgeable ) - then we are talking about software engineers.
I would not really call him a sales exec as most of his things was not sales but product design / creation / ideation.
Steve Balmer was more of a sales exec.
Also one of the key statement by stage was that costumers often did not know what they wanted. He was plainly a guy with great knowledge in many areas. A t person. A bit obsessive and thinker outside of the box. Then as many of those a complete non compromising asshole
@@Bebtelovimab yeah like a totally noob
Yeah man whatever helps you sleep at night
Hello. I enjoyed your video. However your voice sound muffled compared to the rest.
Please invest in a proper microphone and a teleprompter (there is cheap ones that are not perfect but can already do the job).
Voice is very important, especially in informative videos like that.
Thank you for the note! We’ll work on that for next time!
Amazing video. I’d suggest a compressor on your audio though - it goes from loud to quiet, thin to fat way too much.
Thank you for that constructive criticism! Seems easy enough for us to do!
good stuff
An old saying about UNIX:
UNIX is like sex: people who have used it can't live without it, those who haven't don't know what the fuss is all about.
where are the explanations from Romero sourced from?
I saw Romero streaming some doom map he was making or something just a few weeks ago. I wouldn't be surprised if anyone making a video like this could just ask him questions these days and get a response like that.
We had him on our podcast!
art19.com/shows/the-madecast/episodes/e3ebf894-1be0-40ea-a726-47a0f55968e6
Check it out for the full audio.
@@delphicdescant Yep, John Romero is awesome and truly wants to inspire the development of video games as an art form!
so... there was an x86 compiler for Next?
Yep!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_binary#:~:text=Fat%20binaries%20were%20a%20feature,%22Multi%2DArchitecture%20Binaries%22.
On NeXTSTEP, the compiled binary could immediately run on both x86 and on Motorola 68k platforms. That’s why it was as simple as compiling to a networked file share and running directly on a DOS machine! The editor code didn’t intermingle with the engine code, so there were no issues with library dependencies.
With Apple’s acquisition and adoption of much of OpenSTEP, this style of development can continue to be seen today (develop on one chip architecture to be deployed to multiple chip architectures).
Interesting! I was just starting to game on PC when all this was happening and I never knew that Id used NeXT.
Yep! A bunch of us at the museum are the same as well--that's why we're so thrilled to have the chance to learn from folks like John who readily share their knowledge and source code with the world!
Where's the data. That is so cool. Great video, and thank you.
Unglaublich zu dieser Zeit derart tief einen softwarerenderer herzustellen, der ganze 2D Karten in 3D Visualisiert , später sind die verwendeten 3D Methoden in Voodoo karten zu Hardware Funktionen umgeschrieben worden die es bis zum heutigen tag gibt, ein Pionier wie er im buche stehe. Wie das möglich war zu dieser Zeit ist mir unerklärlich, spreche da aus Erfahrung.
So these tools come down to: Next and DoomEd (written in OC).
How doom levels are made hasn't changed with the past 30 years, of course UDB can automatically launch zdoom instead of having to change to A different computer bit...
Wow really cool, had no idea Objective-C was used to help make doom :o
Yep! And if you download DoomEd and run it on NeXTSTEP, you’ll find that it uses a similar file/directory structure to the way that macOS applications are structured today (except without code signing so you can mod the app in very insecure ways :) ).
@@TheMADEOak that is so awesome :) thanks for sharing this info
@@TheMADEOakwell next step was turned into macOS after they was bought by Apple so it should not come as a surprise :) MacOS is kind of a reskin of Next Step
Old Doom builder 😊
Where did you get the audio interviews? Did you record them?
The audio interview comes from our podcast with John Romero, I’ll link them in the description as well!
art19.com/shows/the-madecast/episodes/e3ebf894-1be0-40ea-a726-47a0f55968e6
@TheMADEOak That's awesome! Thanks for sharing, and for your whole mission. Great stuff.
these people invent the world
Great video. One correction-Objective-C wasn’t invented at NeXT
Thanks for the note! We've added in a correction at that time in our description. We'll work much more closely on accuracy on our next video!
You have 666 subs. I hate to ruin it but...
Woot! We have to get unDoomed at some point ;)
Was Doom 2 also made on the NeXT? Guess they moved on to Win95/NT eventually?
Did you are able to deep dive in that proccess (i mean doom develop) on that machine? I am really curious how was work going on NextCube computer, none of emulators give that feelings ;) Practically buying this machine is expensive as on that days when was invented...
Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to compile the game from source! As far as the computer goes, I personally feel like VMs are close; if you’ve never used UNIX before (like I hadn’t before using a Mac) and are developing software, the change is dramatic. There are some quirks with the hardware itself (power button on the keyboard, proprietary cable from the box to the monitor), but the experience outside of the operating system is generally the same. We definitely recommend trying to program an application on the emulator to get a feeling of what it was like!
👏👏👏!
So that's what WAD stands for!
❤🎉😮 0:14
🌌
Bro you gotta put your script up by the camera so you don't have to look at your desk all the time 😅
I had no clue they were made from clay
Nah what made doom was they made the wad format that allowed average creators to make add on maps. And that really is what made doom popular
Quite true! The elegance of the wad format was partly informed by its need to be portable across platforms (Motorola 64k/x86)--ie the level data needed to be separated from game logic. While not completely novel, the distribution of this practice to modders really helped proliferate this as a best practice! Great notes on this from John Romero's "Doom Guy" book.
You'd get a lot more hits on your video if you mentioned Next and Jobs in the title - tools that built doom - lack any context which happen to be topics people
are interested in beyond Doom itself.
Doom is not the first FPS... There was at least Wolfeinstein 3d before.
Thanks for the checking! We’ve added in a note for 2:50 that addresses that, and will work to be more accurate in our following videos!
@@TheMADEOakTrue, I reacted to the introduction, and saw after that you talk about Wolfenstein.
WAD: where’s all the data. 😂
What's about DOS4GW ??
the team was the tool, nothing else. and something that never can be repeated. rip humankind
ever heard of audio normalization ?
Thanks for the feedback! We’ll work on improving our audio for the next video!