From: jwilbur@iat.holonet.net (Jay Wilbur)
Subject: Re: DOOM : What is it ?
Organization: HoloNet National Internet Access BBS: 510-704-1058/modem
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 14:13:18 GMT

Id Software
1515 N. Town East Blvd. #138-297, Mesquite, TX  75150
 
 
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:        Jay Wilbur
Fax:            1-214-686-9288
Email:          jay@idsoftware.com
CIS:            72600,1333
 
Id Software to Unleash DOOM on the PC
Revolutionary Programming and Advanced Design Make For Great Gameplay
 
DALLAS, Texas, December 4, 1992-Heralding another technical revolution in
PC programming, Id Software's DOOM promises to push back the boundaries of
what was thought possible on a 386sx or better computer.  The company
plans to release DOOM in the third quarter of 1993, with versions for the
PC in DOS, Windows, Windows NT, and a version for the NeXT.
 
In DOOM, you play one of four off-duty soldiers suddenly thrown into the
middle of an interdimensional war!  Stationed at a scientific research
facility, your days are filled with tedium and paperwork.  Today is a bit
different.  Wave after wave of demonic creatures are spreading through the
base, killing or possessing everyone in sight.  As you stand knee-deep in
the dead, your duty seems clear-you must eradicate the enemy and find out
where they're coming from. When you find out the truth, your sense of
reality may be shattered!
 
The first episode of DOOM will be shareware.  When you register, you'll
receive the next two episodes, which feature a journey into another
dimension, filled to its hellish horizon with fire and flesh.  Wage war
against the infernal onslaught with machine guns, missile launchers, and
mysterious supernatural weapons.  Decide the fate of two universes as you
battle to survive!  Succeed and you will be humanity's heroes; fail and
you will spell its doom.
 
The game takes up to four players through a futuristic world, where they
may cooperate or compete to beat the invading creatures.  It boasts a much
more active environment than Id's previous effort, Wolfenstein 3-D, while
retaining the pulse-pounding action and excitement.  DOOM features a
fantastic fully texture-mapped environment, a host of technical tour de
forces to surprise the eyes, multiple player option, and smooth gameplay
on any 386 or better
 
John Carmack, Id's Technical Director, is very excited about DOOM:
Wolfenstein is primitive compared to DOOM.  We're doing DOOM the right way
this time.   I've had some very good insights and optimizations that will
make the DOOM engine perform at a great frame rate.  The game runs fine on
a 386sx, and on a 486/33, we're talking 35 frames per second, fully
texture-mapped at normal detail, for a large area of the screen.  That's
the fastest texture-mapping around-period.
 
Texture mapping, for those not following the game magazines, is a
technique that allows the program to place fully-drawn art on the walls of
a 3-D maze.  Combined with other techniques, texture mapping looked
realistic enough in Wolfenstein 3-D that people wrote Id complaining of
motion sickness.  In DOOM, the environment is going to look even more
realistic.  Please make the necessary preparations.
 
A CONVENIENT DOOM BLURB
 
DOOM (Requires 386sx, VGA, 2 Meg)
Id Software's DOOM is real-time, three-dimensional, 256-color, fully
texture-mapped, multi-player battle from the safe shores of our universe
into the horrifying depths of the netherworld!    Choose one of four
characters and you're off to war with hideous hellish hulks bent on chaos
and death!  See your friends bite it!  Cause your friends to bite it! 
Bite it yourself!  And if you won't bite it, there are plenty of demonic
denizens to bite it for you!
DOOM-where the sanest place is behind a trigger.
 
AN OVERVIEW OF DOOM FEATURES
Texture-Mapped Environment
DOOM offers the most realistic environment to date on the PC. 
Texture-mapping, the process of rendering fully-drawn art and scanned
textures on the walls, floors, and ceilings of an environment, makes the
world much more real, thus bringing the player more into the game
experience.  Others have attempted this, but DOOM's texture mapping is
fast, accurate, and seamless.  Texture-mapping the floors and ceilings is
a big improvement over Wolfenstein.  With their new advanced graphic
development techniques, allowing game art to be generated five times
faster, Id brings new meaning to *state-of-the-art.
 
Non-Orthogonal  Walls
Wolfenstein's walls were always at ninety degrees to each other, and were
always eight feet thick.  DOOM's walls can be at any angle, and be of any
thickness.  Walls can have see-through areas, change shape, and animate. 
This allows more natural construction of levels.  If you can draw it on
paper, you can see it in the game.
 
Light Diminishing/Light Sourcing
 
Another touch adding realism is light diminishing.  With distance, your
surroundings become enshrouded in darkness.  This makes areas seem huge
and intensifies the experience.  Light sourcing allows lamps and lights to
illuminate hallways, explosions to light up areas, and strobe lights to
briefly reveal things near them.  These two features will make the game
frighteningly real.
 
Variable Height Floors and Ceilings
Floors and ceilings can be of any height, allowing for  stairs, poles,
altars, plus low hallways and high caves-allowing a great variety for
rooms and halls.
 
Environment Animation and Morphing
Walls can move and transform in DOOM, which provides an active-and
sometimes actively hostile-environment.  Rooms can close in on you,
ceilings can plunge down to crush you, and so on.  Nothing is for certain
in DOOM.
 
To this Id has added the ability to have animated messages on the walls,
information terminals, access stations, and more.  The environment can act
on you, and you can act on the environment.  If you shoot the walls, they
get damaged, and stay damaged.  Not only does this add realism, but
provides a crude method for marking your path, like violent bread crumbs.
 
Palette Translation
Each creature and wall has its own palette which is translated to the
game's palette.  By changing palette colors, one can have monsters of many
colors, players with different weapons, animating lights, infrared sensors
that show monsters or hidden exits, and many other effects, like
indicating monster damage.
 
Multiple Players
Up to four players can play over a local network, or two players can play
by modem or serial   link.  You can see the other player in the
environment, and in certain situation you c an switch to their view.  This
feature, added to the 3-D realism, makes DOOM a very powerful cooperative
game and its release a landmark event in the software industry.
 
This is the first game to really exploit the power of LANs and modems to
their full potential.  In 1993, we fully expect to be the number one cause
of decreased productivity in businesses around the world.
 
 
Smooth, Seamless Gameplay
The environment in DOOM is one big world.  You enter and exit buildings,
walk around outside, explore underground, take something off a table, and
so on.  Just like real life.  Everything is actual size.  You never have
to leave the game environment unless  you quit or save your first game. 
And the frame rate (the rate at which the screen is updated) is high, so
you move smoothly from place to place, turning and acting as you wish,
unhampered by the slow jerky motion of most 3-D games.  On a 386sx, the
game runs well, and on a 486/33, the normal mode frame rate is faster than
movies or television.  This allows for the most important aspect of
gameplay-immersion.
 
DOOM will be available in the third quarter of 1993. 
 
______________________________________________________________
DOOM, Id, and Wolfenstein are trademarks of Id Software, Inc.

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| Jay Wilbur  | jwilbur@idsoftware.com   | CIS: 72600,1333 |   Fidonet    |
| Id Software | AOL: Id Softwr           | GEnie: jjj      |  1:124/6300  |
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