Origin

FPS - First Person Shooter, as one of the most recognized and accepted video game genre, it was considered appeared in 1974 with the very first FPS game "Maze War".

Maze War originated the basic concept of its kind: player see through controlled character's eye wander through a maze and defeat enemies by shoot a gun-like type weapon.


And what maybe surprise you is that in this game, which released in 1974, the designer already involved some "Player Versus Player" elements into it, you could shoot another player who is seen as an eyeball.

Predecessor

On May 5 of 1992, a game shocked the entire industry.




Wolfenstein 3D, developed by the later widely-known "id software" for MS-DOS. If "Maze War" provided the concept, then "Wolfenstein 3D" is the archtype or demo of whole FPS genre games built later.


The Protagonist "William B.J Blazkowicz" is a captured American soldier who is trying to escape from the Nazi stronghold of Castle Wolfenstein. In Wolfenstein 3D, Player could revive thier "Health Point" by inject "Medical Kit" they collected, and player is offered three different types of weapons to use, each weapon has its unique firepower and ammunition.


Another feature of Wolfenstein3D is more types of enemies, player will engage different types of enemies in game progression, in each stage there is a different enemy placement. And, most important, this game has Boss! In each episode there is a Boss enemy who is totally unique and tougher than all common enemies, player must defeat the Boss in order to complete the final mission of current episode.




Another advantage Wolfenstein 3D made is designer had placed numbers of "Hidden Room" inside game area, contain various treatures and supplies.


Wolfenstein is released as a one episode shareware, consisting of ten missions. In the commercial release version there are six episodes, all consisting of ten missions as well.

id Tech

Right after development of Wolfenstein 3D, id software moved on a new project what is known as "DOOM" nowadays. During the developingof "DOOM", id software applied various of new techniques, and what all these effort came up with is the famous game engine "id Tech", also known as "DOOM Engine".

 Doom's most outstanding feature that made it a cannon game is its realistic and dynamic 3D graphics, compared to Wolfenstein 3D, Doom engine's advantages could be summaried within several reasons list below( refered from Wikipedia):



"Height differences – all rooms in Wolfenstein 3D have the same height;
Non-perpendicular walls – all walls in Wolfenstein 3D run along a rectangular grid;
Full texture mapping of all surfaces – in Wolfenstein 3D, floors and ceilings are flat colors;
Varying light levels – all areas in Wolfenstein 3D are fully lit at the same brightness. This contributed to Doom's visual authenticity, not to mention its atmosphere and gameplay. The use of darkness to frighten or confuse the player was nearly unheard of in games released prior to Doom.


In contrast to the static levels of Wolfenstein 3D, those in Doom are highly dynamic: platforms can lower and rise, floors can rise sequentially to form staircases, and bridges can rise and fall. The lifelike environment was enhanced further by the stereo sound system, which made it possible to roughly determine the direction and distance of a sound effect. The player is kept on guard by the grunts and growls of monsters, and receives occasional clues to finding secret areas in the form of sounds of hidden doors opening remotely. As in Wolfenstein 3D, monsters can also become aware of the player's presence by hearing distant gunshots.


Carmack had to make use of several tricks for these features to run smoothly on home computers of 1993. Most significantly, Doom levels are not truly three-dimensional; they are internally represented on a single plane, with height differences stored separately as displacements. (A similar trick is still used by many games to create huge outdoor environments). This allows a two point perspective projection, with several design limitations: for example, it is not possible for the Doom engine to render one room over another. However, thanks to its two-dimensional property, the environment can be rendered very quickly, using a binary space partitioning method. Another benefit was the clarity of the automap, as that could be rendered with 2D vectors without any risk of overlapping. Additionally, the BSP tree technology created by Bruce Nailer was used.


Another important feature of the Doom engine is its modular data files, which allow most of the game's content to be replaced by loading custom WAD files. Wolfenstein 3D was not designed to be expandable, but fans had nevertheless figured out how to create their own levels for it, and Doom was designed to further extend the possibilities. The ability to create custom scenarios contributed significantly to the game's popularity."

DOOM


Of course, "DOOM" isn't just about graphics. From Maze War's concept, to Wolfenstein 3D's demo, now, here comes DOOM, the typical template of all FPS games ever made from 1993 to now.




Main theme of DOOM is science fiction/horror, what remind you of that?

Half Life? F.E.A.R? Dead Space? Bioshock? Too many?


Yes, just as DOOM itself, the sci-fi horror theme has also become a typical template of FPS, for it both keep players in a high tesion and throw them into the imagine game world.


In DOOM, player take the role of a nameless marine who acts as a security in a Mars teleportation experiment base, one day the teleportation experiment opened the gate between Hell and our world, demons came out killing everyone in base, your task is fighting out a way from the entire legion of hell to prevent them attacking your hometown Earth.





For player's satus, armor and ammunition-carrying capacity is added besides the health point, and various power-up items are provided as well: power-ups, such as a backpack that increases the player character's ammunition-carrying capacity, armor, first aid kits to restore health, the berserk pack ( active berserk mode, allowing player to deal out rocket launcher-level damage with fist and potentially splattering former humans and imps), supernatural blue orbs (named soul spheres in the manuals) that boost the player character's health percentage by 100%, up to a maximum of 200%, computer maps ( show up whole area of current level), partial invisibility, and protective suits that allows the player to survive in toxic acids.


Objective of each level is escaping, there are special looking doors that marked with exit sign every level, what player need to do is simply surviving all hazards and enemies to make out the door.


What indeed remarkable is the weapon system, the available weapon in DOOM is way too high compared to its competitors: 10!


Start with a pistol and a pair of brass knuckle, player could gain chainsaw, shotgun, chaingun, rocket launcher, plasma rifle, and the invincible BFG 9000. Different from Wolfenstein 3D, every weapon list above actually IS different, from different outfit, firepower and enemy feedback, player could recognize that "This is a shotgun!". Another great detail is that when you played Wolfenstein 3D, you will find that whatever happened to William, standing, running, get hit, his hands stays in the same position forever, which makes player sometimes feel like they are floating. But in DOOM, player character's hands will keep moving when player give different orders.



WADs

DOOM's greatness didn't over yet, as many players said "Success of Starcraft is half depends on its great editor", the first giant fan-made mod community is created by DOOM.


That is "DOOM WADs".


DOOM WADs are package files for Doom and Doom II, that contain sprites, levels, and game data. WAD stands for "Where's All the Data?". Just after its release in 1993, DOOM attracted a sizeable following of players who created their own mods for WAD files.


First level editor appeared in 1994, additional tools have been created that allow most aspects of the game to be edited. Besides the original WADs contained custom levels, other new monsters and resources could be imported, and make a completely different game.

Summary

As one of the most significant milestone in whole electrical game industry, DOOM populized the great FPS and spawned its own game subculture.


DOOM was voted the "No.1 game of all time" in a poll among over 100 game developers and journalists conducted by GameSpy in July 2001, and PC Gamer proclaimed DOOM the most influential game of all time in its ten-year anniversary issue in April 2004, and named it the second best game of all time a year later (number one was Half-Life). And finally GameTrailers listed DOOM as No.1 Breakthrough PC Game. In 2009, Game Informer put DOOM 6th on their list of "The Top 200 Games of All Time", saying that it " the genre the kick start it needed to rule the gaming landscape two decades later".

There is no reason for us not to put such a game as a cannon one.