from Hacker News

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

by andygrunwald on 9/16/24, 8:47 PM with 2 comments

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?

by al2o3cr on 9/17/24, 1:27 AM
```
    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.
by wingi on 9/17/24, 1:01 PM
It was the first famous 3d game and the renderer was so easy to adapt to any other system.