Gaming on old systems (was Re: Twiggys [was: Re: ka... ching!])

[Peter Coghlan]

>
> >
> > As far as Doom, not long after I became a Sun employee in Mountain View
> > in '94-95, we played Doom Arena, a networked, multiplayer version of Doom.
> >
>
> I think you might be conflating 2 games here.
>
> Doom was *always* multiplayer and network aware. Doom 1.0 for DOS used
> IPX networking and allowed 4 players to deathmatch.
>

I can't remember whether it was Doom or something that looked similar
with a different name but I do remember an early first person shootemup
game for PCs which was made playable over a network by someone whose main
skills were obviously not in the area of networking.  They must not have
wanted to go to the trouble of figuring out how to address their packets
to the other players machines because they just sent everything to the
ethernet broadcast address.  That way everything would definately get
there!

This caused a lot of problems with the almost completely bridged campus
network in use at the college where I worked.  On one memorarble occasion,
the college president or some such dignitary was visiting the computer
centre and was supposed to be admiring the new network management system.
Sticking out like a sore thumb was the just turned flashing red icon
representing the sole 64K bridged link to an off-campus faculty which was
getting swamped with broadcast packets.

The network manager muttered some excuse to the president about having
to get someone to look into this fault and as soon as he departed a squad
of computer centre staff decended on the computer lab in the science
building where the offending game players were located.  The students
involved managed to hit the boss key or do whatever to make it look like
they were plausably engaged in something productive but it was clear that
they were very shocked to see so many support staff arrive together to
help them with their projects.

Regards,
Peter Coghlan