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Ask HN: What makes the game Doom that special in a Software Engineering context?

2 points by andygrunwald ↗ HN
E.g. What groundbreaking logic it had implemented?

E.g. Why it is ported to various platforms and always used as a test game to run in the next (fascinating) engine?

3 comments

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al2o3cr 

    What groundbreaking logic it had implemented?
We consider a lot of what it introduced as "just videogames" nowadays, so it can be hard to spot. Comparing can help - consider Doom (1993) versus Wolfenstein 3D from the previous year:

* walls at angles besides 90 degrees

* floor and ceiling textures

* multiple kinds of ammunition

* lighting

    Why it is ported to various platforms
It was open-sourced in 1999, so it's partly about availability. I suspect it's also because it's _possible_ to port to lots of things; it benefits from specialized hardware for graphics acceleration but doesn't require it.
wingi
It was the first famous 3d game and the renderer was so easy to adapt to any other system.