Old Doom multiplayer footage

[SirJuicyLemon]

Does anyone has footage of an old multiplayer match? Like in the old DOS days where you needed to use the internal server browser (I suppose) or a third party or just go LAN.

 

I've always played in the modern way with ZDaemon, IDE or Doomseeker but I've always been interested on how it worked before. I'd love to have had gone through all the slow process of looking for a match that required to play online erstwhile.

 

 

Things like this picture really interest me. I've never seen that screen before.

[Marcaek]

Here's a couple videos:
 

 

 

 

[Dark Pulse]

>Old DOS days
>Internal server browser

 

 

[Doomkid]

Here’s a few more authentic oldschool DMs from way back when:

 

 

 

 

 

An ancient build of ZDoom from 2000 was used for this one

 

 

Originally recorded in vanilla but is being played back in an OGL port of some kind.

 

Just for fun/for the sake of comparison, here are the only two surviving demos from SNES Doom deathmatch over XBand. Really makes you appreciate how awesome the DOS version of Doom was by comparison.

 

 

 

[Dark Pulse]

59 minutes ago, Doomkid said:

Just for fun/for the sake of comparison, here are the only two surviving demos from SNES Doom deathmatch over XBand. Really makes you appreciate how awesome the DOS version of Doom was by comparison.

 

 

 

At the same time it makes you completely impressed at the hacking wizardry that went into a totally third-party, online-enabling patch for a game that never had that from the start, and that had next to no free room in the ROM for them to take advantage of.

 

Its probably why SFX got the axe. Maybe the player sprite too, but that could just as easily be they only had room for one, since again, no multi-player intended, so Doom guy sprites wouldn't have normally been needed.

 

And needless to say, since SNES Doom was my first Doom, if I would've had that as a kid, I still would've been blown away.

[SirJuicyLemon]

5 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

>Old DOS days
>Internal server browser

Yeah, sorry. I didn't know how to say it properly. Obviously it wasn't an internal server browser.

[Dark Pulse]

1 minute ago, SirJuicyLemon said:

Yeah, sorry. I didn't know how to say it properly. Obviously it wasn't an internal server browser.

Or any server browser at all, unless it was third-party stuff like DWANGO. You needed to know the IP of where to connect and to type all the stuff you'd need to connect there.

[Edward850]

31 minutes ago, Dark Pulse said:

You needed to know the IP

Phone number. Doom only originally came with IPX, Serial and Modem support. Dwango was a partyline lobby, and there was eventually a TCP driver made, but direct modem and Dwango were more commonly used.

[Doomkid]

2 hours ago, Dark Pulse said:

At the same time it makes you completely impressed at the hacking wizardry that went into a totally third-party, online-enabling patch for a game that never had that from the start, and that had next to no free room in the ROM for them to take advantage of.

 

Its probably why SFX got the axe. Maybe the player sprite too, but that could just as easily be they only had room for one, since again, no multi-player intended, so Doom guy sprites wouldn't have normally been needed.

 

And needless to say, since SNES Doom was my first Doom, if I would've had that as a kid, I still would've been blown away.

 

Oh yeah, XBands support for Doom DM is definitely impressive from a technical standpoint. There were thousands of players DMing this way for a brief window of time, I’m glad the option was there for those with no PC.

 

Interestingly, Doomguy sprites are actually included in the base rom, including other rotation angles that never appear! I’m guessing the people who patched it for XBand found the internal location of one sprite and used it despite it being unseen/inaccessible.

 

 

Other videos show evidence that a good chunk of cart space was totally wasted on the inclusion of many sprites/angles that are never seen. Despite being technically impressive, the port was pretty rough and dirty in many ways that I feel are totally unnecessary. I’m convinced that the huge input delay could have been avoided with cleaner programming and that it’s not a result of hardware constraints, at least not entirely. I’m sure all the dirtiness was a result of time constraints though, with more time im sure the port would have been a bit cleaner. This is getting a bit off topic so I’ll quit rambling now!

Edited March 10, 2019 by Doomkid

[Kira]

Check the demos there: http://doomedsda.us/deathmatch.html

 

You can play them with PrBoom+ or such. I reckon most of it was the second (?) generation of Doomers, think #nightmare crowd, and it shows you legit oldschool LAN deathmatch.

[Dark Pulse]

2 hours ago, Edward850 said:

Phone number. Doom only originally came with IPX, Serial and Modem support. Dwango was a partyline lobby, and there was eventually a TCP driver made, but direct modem and Dwango were more commonly used.

Right, it was direct modem calling and whatnot. Forgot that it was just before TCP/IP stuff really took over, as it would by '95 or so.

[Dark Pulse]

1 hour ago, Doomkid said:

 

Oh yeah, XBands support for Doom DM is definitely impressive from a technical standpoint. There were thousands of players DMing this way for a brief window of time, I’m glad the option was there for those with no PC.

 

Interestingly, Doomguy sprites are actually included in the base rom, including other rotation angles that never appear! I’m guessing the people who patched it for XBand found the internal location of one sprite and used it despite it being unseen/inaccessible.

 

 

Other videos show evidence that a good chunk of cart space was totally wasted on the inclusion of many sprites/angles that are never seen. Despite being technically impressive, the port was pretty rough and dirty in many ways that I feel are totally unnecessary. I’m convinced that the huge input delay could have been avoided with cleaner programming and that it’s not a result of hardware constraints, at least not entirely. I’m sure all the dirtiness was a result of time constraints though, with more time im sure the port would have been a bit cleaner. This is getting a bit off topic so I’ll quit rambling now!

Well from what I know, this port was done pretty much on the down-low and then shown to id when nearly complete. Either way, the guy knew his stuff and cut his teeth on hardware like the Amiga.

 

It's definitely possible that it could have used cart space better. Maybe someday, someone will try an improvement project or something.

 

EDIT: D'oh, sorry for the double post.

Edited March 10, 2019 by Dark Pulse

[betabox]

Somewhat related, there's a prototype version of SNES Doom which is missing a lot of assets, but has the cut levels. That might explain why the game's data has 27 level slots.

[Dark Pulse]

3 minutes ago, betabox said:

Somewhat related, there's a prototype version of SNES Doom which is missing a lot of assets, but has the cut levels. That might explain why the game's data has 27 level slots.

Where? That's not mentioned at all on The Cutting Room Floor.

[betabox]

For the level slots, just use a cheat device/patch codes. For example, since Computer Station is the sixth map of E1 (there's no Central Processing), you'd expect it to load if you set the level select value to 6; instead, it hangs the game on a black screen. Computer Station loads when you set it to 7. Same goes for the values of the maps in the other episodes that have levels missing before them.

EDIT: The level values may actually start with 0, but the point still remains.

Edited March 10, 2019 by betabox

[Dark Pulse]

37 minutes ago, betabox said:

For the level slots, just use a cheat device/patch codes. For example, since Computer Station is the sixth map of E1 (there's no Central Processing), you'd expect it to load if you set the level select value to 6; instead, it hangs the game on a black screen. Computer Station loads when you set it to 7. Same goes for the values of the maps in the other episodes that have levels missing before them.

EDIT: The level values may actually start with 0, but the point still remains.

Oh, you made it sound like there was a prototype version floating around that had all the cut levels. That's disappointing.

[betabox]

There is a prototype as what I said, it's just not "floating around", which is why it won't be on TCRF any time soon, if ever.

[Dark Pulse]

1 hour ago, betabox said:

There is a prototype as what I said, it's just not "floating around", which is why it won't be on TCRF any time soon, if ever.

It'll make its way there when it's obtained and dumped then. Hoarding stuff like that is a stupid idea, especially with stuff that's almost 25 years old, is fragile and rare, and is a window into development of a product.

[Doomkid]

Where did word of this prototype with cut assets come from? This is the first I’ve ever heard about it but would like to know more.

[betabox]

You don't really hear about this (or any interesting dev stuff, really) because unfortunately these kinds of things are almost always just circulated among private collectors who have no actual interest in the items. I got the tipoff from a huge prototype collection list and it became a bit of an obsession to find that proto. Later I got in contact with another collector who had a SNES Doom beta/dev version. He only did a quick comparison with a youtube video and some info I provided about the full game. It had 27 working levels already accessible in a list; no music, menus, difficulty selection, probably sounds missing. He just checked a couple of levels, but didn't look in detail. I couldn't get him to check further since he didn't really care (and the classic "no time"). He traded it and some other betas for 1st party Nintendo dev stuff.

 

If anyone considers tracking it down, good luck with that. After spending so long and especially more money than I should have in hopes of acquiring this build, I gave up. It's one of those things where it's more likely to turn up on eBay or the like if the owner wants to do that, rather than you finding it yourself (unless you got dumb money to burn).

[Job]

This is all very fascinating to me, what a shame that it's likely lost to the ages.

[Doomkid]

Thanks for the info regardless, betabox! Interesting to know that it is floating around out there somewhere..

[Kristian Nebula]

I remember the days of hanging out at my friend's place in the summer of 1996, playing through a 28.8k modem connection and ipxsetup.exe through 2 computers. So much fun :D :D :D too bad none of it was recorded.

[SirJuicyLemon]

On 3/10/2019 at 4:57 AM, Doomkid said:

This is getting a bit off topic so I’ll quit rambling now!

 

Don't worry! Actually it wasn't off-topic at all! And it was really interesting! :D