If you haven't heard by now, shareware Doom for the Mac is officially out. In fact, MacDoom Review, through clever ingenuity, hard work and planning, and careful networking with just the right folks engineered its early release.
OK, it was dumb luck. But we sure as heck were happy to be partly responsible for getting Doom for Macintosh to the masses!
It happened like this. id Software did not want to release a shareware version of Doom II -- not now, not ever, on any platform -- and, as Lion Entertainment's president, Douglas Grounds, will tell you in an exclusive interview we have with him later in this issue, the Mac ports were done in the order that the software was delivered to them by id. For this reason, Doom II came before Doom I.
That meant no shareware edition could be released until Ultimate Doom (a.k.a. Doom I with a fourth episode) was ready. So mid-October arrives and we're anticipating a pre-Christmas release for Ultimate Doom -- maybe -- and I get this CD-ROM in the mail. Not e-mail, but snail mail, you know, the kind where you actually have to get up, open the front door, and open that little box where paper stuff comes? Yeah, yeah. Anyway, this CD-ROM is from Apple Computer's new and improved evangelism program (the church of Guy Kawasaki), and it's a collection of game and education demos. And, lo, there's the Doom logo on the cover! I'm thinking, "Yeah, right..." so I don't even check it out until I get home from work that evening. I find the disc in my briefcase, where it's been all day long, forgotten, and pop it in my CD-ROM bay...
Whoops! It's on there!! So, the deal is this. id Software must think nobody on the Internet wants the shareware edition of Doom. (Guess they don't hang out on comp.sys.mac.games.action, eh?) So, I stuffed that puppy up and sent it out on its way. By the way, the quasi-official explanation is that Lion wanted to put out an updated version on the 'Net, but folks have been waiting for this sucker for ages, so I figured, why wait? You'll get the enhanced stereo sound and PowerPC optimization code when you register, eh? (If you have Doom II v1.0.2, you can do this now: Just make a copy of the Doom II engine, rename it "Doom," and put it in the same folder with the DOOM1.WAD file.)
Moral of the story? When you go to Macworld Expo, sign up for everything you can get your hands on! Anyway, that's my shareware Doom story. I'm sure it's one I'll be telling the grandkids someday.
Oh, one more thing. I've heard some talk about a hack that lets you buy the PC version of Ultimate Doom and play it with Lion's Doom II engine. At first I thought it was cute, but then I thought about the implications and I'd like to discourage this practice for one important reason. Lion won't see a dime of your money if you buy the PC version. And we want to reward Lion for its hard work and encourage them, and other companies, to support the Mac platform.
Hey, we waited this long for Doom II and then a few months longer for shareware Doom. It won't hurt to wait a little bit more for Ultimate Doom, will it? Frankly, I'm too busy downloading PWADs for Doom II to care much about Ultimate Doom, although there are a few patches for Doom that I'm dying to try!
(And, no, Lion didn't ask me to say this. This is my opinion, and I developed it without anyone else's prodding.)
Well, enough babbling. I'd like to welcome you back to MacDoom Review and thank everyone who wrote in about MDR#1. I think I managed to reply personally to nearly everyone who sent me e-mail. I don't know if I'll be able to keep up if it picks up much more, though. So I'd like to suggest a few things:
1) If you have a letter to the editor, contribution, or suggestion by all means write me! Please put the letters "MDR" somewhere in your subject line and my Eudora mail filter will bring it immediately to the top of my mailbox. (Hey, I love Doom-related mail!)
2) But, keep in mind that I don't know everything. So if you have a general question about Doom, I ask that you check a few places before bugging me. There are other people who know more about some aspects of the game (e.g., modem play). Check the usual Web pages (URLs are in the Doom Online column and the MDR home page), or ask on comp.sys.mac.games.action. Don't bug Lion or id Software with idle questions; they've got better things to do. And tech support is available from GT Interactive. The number is in your manual.
3) And if you learn something that's just too cool not to share, send it in -- either as a Tricks & Traps column contribution or a letter to the editor. Right now we need all the help we can get.
Well, enough chatter from me. Let's move on to the juicy stuff.
