Doom The Way it Was Meant to Be Played - v1.1 Multi-monitor

[erek]

Awesome video here. Retro-tech news. A blast from the past worth revisiting.

"Doom originally supported multimonitor gameplay through the most overkill method possible by using a separate computer for each monitor. Even if you have the hardware, it's a lot of work to set up, but I've always wanted to give it a shot. So today I finally did!"

 

[sfsuphysics]

ahhh the awesome example of why nostalgia isn't always a good thing.

 

[Zepher]

That was pretty cool for such a long time ago.
Forza on the Xbox 360 was the same, you ran multiple Xbox 360's and a copy of Forza in each and you can set each machine to a certain view, so if you had four 360's you could have left, center, and right and then rear view's.
I tried it with 2 for front and rear view but one was in my brothers room so it wasn't usable but it worked which was awesome.

here is a vid I found,

 

[erek]

ahhh the awesome example of why nostalgia isn't always a good thing.

What’s bad about it? I found the video interesting

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Awesome video here. Retro-tech news. A blast from the past worth revisiting.

"Doom originally supported multimonitor gameplay through the most overkill method possible by using a separate computer for each monitor. Even if you have the hardware, it's a lot of work to set up, but I've always wanted to give it a shot. So today I finally did!"

That's nuts. What a crazy way to make multi-monitor work.

I played networked DOOM over IPX in DOS back in the day with my friends, but I never even heard of multi-PC multi-monitor Doom.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

I haven't done multi-monitor gaming since I had a PLP setup with my 30" 2560x1600 Dell U3011 in the center, and the Dell 2007FP's (which I still use) in 1600x1200 on the side.

I used SoftTH and tested it on a few games. Most were a bust, but Counter-Strike Source actually worked pretty well:

4960x1600 ~28:9 wide screen gaming


It's been over a decade though.

 

[toast0]

Huh, I read a lot of READMEs back then, and I don't remember reading about that. I probably could have made it work, poorly. I definitely tried Descent in 3d with my friend's headache inducing shutter glasses, and with the option to split the screen for each eye which you were supposed to somehow rig up so each eye only saw half... We definitely could have rigged up a three monitor setup if we knew about it.

Reading the title, I thought it was gonna be something about a hercules mono monitor plus a VGA monitor. That's how you used to get multi-monitor. Run the cad terminal on the mono, and the rendered output on the color screen. Couldn't run two VGAs because they used the same I/O and memory addresses.

Edit: I guess this was only available in version 1.1 and earlier, but I was pretty late to Doom, in 1994, I had a Tandy 286, which wasn't going to play that, and couldn't even support high density floppies (also, my dad broke the connector and we were stuck with 5.25" double density, which was a big setback from 3.5" double density)

 

[sc5mu93]

impressed with dude's patience. i built one retro PC and getting drivers was teh suck. good for him and i hope he gets a lot of views for it.

 

[erek]

I haven't done multi-monitor gaming since I had a PLP setup with my 30" 2560x1600 Dell U3011 in the center, and the Dell 2007FP's (which I still use) in 1600x1200 on the side.

View attachment 546743

I used SoftTH and tested it on a few games. Most were a bust, but Counter-Strike Source actually worked pretty well:

View attachment 546742

4960x1600 ~28:9 wide screen gaming


It's been over a decade though.

nice rig

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

nice rig

Thanks,

That was ~2010. It' has changed A LOT since then.

 

[blackmomba]

How come you need a seperate computer for each monitor? How do each of the machines stay in sync?

Man Id were ahead of their time.

 

[lopoetve]

How come you need a seperate computer for each monitor?

Video cards only had one output for a VERY long time. Multiple monitor support from a single card started arriving in the late-90s, unless you had one of the specialty Matrox cards (or all-in-wonders, where you could output to a TV). The framebuffer was tied to a single set of IO addresses - put data here, video goes out - can't do that with more than one screen.

How do each of the machines stay in sync?

Most likely a null modem cable.

Man Id were ahead of their time.

 

[Absalom]

Most likely a null modem cable.

The day Doom 2 hit the shelves, I went out and bought it. Hauled my PC over to my friend's house and we co-op'ed it together using his (cheap!) null modem.

This was multiplayer co-op via separate machines in 1994 without annoying dialup lag.

Man Id were ahead of their time.

You're damn straight they were ahead of their time.

 

[toast0]

How come you need a seperate computer for each monitor?

Multiple VGA cards wasn't possible, they used the same addresses and it wasn't configurable. I think Win98SE started making it possible, with special hardware. (Other than mono + vga)

QUOTE="blackmomba, post: 1045570170, member: 314518"]How do each of the machines stay in sync?
[/QUOTE]

IPX with 3 or 4 computers connected, I think. Multiplayer doom ran in lockstep.

 

[sfsuphysics]

What’s bad about it? I found the video interesting

The video was interesting getting a (multiple) retro systems getting up and running. I'm just saying the nostalgia of "how good it was" doesn't always scale up to expectations.

 

[Nasty_Savage]

I still use nvision to this day. Was thinking of one of those ultra wide samsungs but for now i can’t live without it

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Video cards only had one output for a VERY long time. Multiple monitor support from a single card started arriving in the late-90s, unless you had one of the specialty Matrox cards (or all-in-wonders, where you could output to a TV). The framebuffer was tied to a single set of IO addresses - put data here, video goes out - can't do that with more than one screen.

Most likely a null modem cable.

The day Doom 2 hit the shelves, I went out and bought it. Hauled my PC over to my friend's house and we co-op'ed it together using his (cheap!) null modem.

This was multiplayer co-op via separate machines in 1994 without annoying dialup lag.



You're damn straight they were ahead of their time.

Back in those days I remember that the game engine was pretty flexible. It would allow clients to connect to the server using a variety of connection types.

For the mini-lan parties at my house, I had both friends who had coax 10Mbit network cards and friends that didn't, so the friends that didn't connected to the main machine using serial nullmodem cables, and it allowed us to all play in the same game. It was pretty cool.

 

[D-EJ915]

impressed with dude's patience. i built one retro PC and getting drivers was teh suck. good for him and i hope he gets a lot of views for it.

Shelby is wild and has a lot of great stuff on his channel. He actually streams a lot too on twitch.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

impressed with dude's patience. i built one retro PC and getting drivers was teh suck. good for him and i hope he gets a lot of views for it.

We used to do this kind of shit all the time. It doesn't seem like such an extraordinary effort to me.

We optimized our Autoexec.bat and config.sys files to make sure our games had enough base RAM to run, and we configured our DOS based networking to play with our friends in mini at home LAN parties, and we did it all without watching a video guide online or even reading an online article, because "online" didn't exist yet.

We kind of just had to figure it out out through a combination of reading manuals and trial and error, just like the hairy dude in this video did.

This used to be considered "normal" for a computer user before the swipe left, swipe right era, not extraordinary.

That said, back then most people weren't computer users. We were a distinct minority, so using a computer at all may have put you in the extreme category...

 

[lopoetve]

We used to do this kind of shit all the time. It doesn't seem like such an extraordinary effort to me.

We optimized our Autoexec.bat and config.sys files to make sure our games had enough base RAM to run, and we configured our DOS based networking to play with our friends in mini at home LAN parties, and we did it all without watching a video guide online or even reading an online article, because "online" didn't exist yet.

We kind of just had to figure it out out through a combination of reading manuals and trial and error, just like the hairy dude in this video did.

This used to be considered "normal" for a computer user before the swipe left, swipe right era, not extraordinary.

That said, back then most people weren't computer users. We were a distinct minority, so using a computer at all may have put you in the extreme category...

Jump started a hell of a lot of careers.

 

[KD5ZXG]

Wake me when you got colossal caves running on multiple teletypes.

 

[Zepher]

We used to do this kind of shit all the time. It doesn't seem like such an extraordinary effort to me.

We optimized our Autoexec.bat and config.sys files to make sure our games had enough base RAM to run, and we configured our DOS based networking to play with our friends in mini at home LAN parties, and we did it all without watching a video guide online or even reading an online article, because "online" didn't exist yet.

We were online back then on BBS's, Usenet, and IRC.
This is usenet, this is a screenshot from 2004 as I didn't think about screengrabbing my Amiga or PC back in the early/mid 90's,

 

[Dan_D]

I haven't done multi-monitor gaming since I had a PLP setup with my 30" 2560x1600 Dell U3011 in the center, and the Dell 2007FP's (which I still use) in 1600x1200 on the side.

View attachment 546743

I used SoftTH and tested it on a few games. Most were a bust, but Counter-Strike Source actually worked pretty well:

View attachment 546742

4960x1600 ~28:9 wide screen gaming


It's been over a decade though.

I ran 3x Dell 3007WFP-HC's back in the day.

 

[erek]

I ran 3x Dell 3007WFP-HC's back in the day.

weren't those the monitors of envy for a long time?

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

I ran 3x Dell 3007WFP-HC's back in the day.

What did you use to render on those bad boys?

Up until 2013 when I bought my first gen 6GB Kepler Titan, I struggled for years to get acceptable framers yes on just one 2560x1600 screen!

 

[Dan_D]

What did you use to render on those bad boys?

Up until 2013 when I bought my first gen 6GB Kepler Titan, I struggled for years to get acceptable framers yes on just one 2560x1600 screen!

I had that setup for years. The answer is, a pair, or even three or four of the fastest GPU's available at any given time. I had dual 4870x2's, a 5970X2, dual Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition cards, three GTX 680's, three 780 Ti's, and the last configuration was dual Maxwell Titan X's. At that point I went to a single 48" Samsung TV and dual GeForce GTX 1080 Ti's.

 

[1_rick]

This is usenet, this is a screenshot from 2004

Agent? Dang, there's a blast from the past.

 

[M76]

ahhh the awesome example of why nostalgia isn't always a good thing.

No, this is why it is a good thing. It is an adventure in of itself. And it's not like you are stressing out about it not working, there are no deadlines, on the contrary, the fun kind of ends when you get it to work.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

We were online back then on BBS's, Usenet, and IRC.
This is usenet, this is a screenshot from 2004 as I didn't think about screengrabbing my Amiga or PC back in the early/mid 90's,

View attachment 547095

DOS gaming was an 80's to early 90's thing. Doom came out in 1993.

I had technically first experimented with the internet by the time Doom came out in 1993, but those were the very early days. Most of my DOS gaming and tweaking was before that, and I'm pretty sure that goes for most people.

I was an early adopter, and even I did not have regular access or knowledge of sites that shared tech stuff. At least not in 1993.

I never was a Usenet user though. I was more of an IRC and FTP/Web user for most of the 90's.

 

[bigdogchris]

Anyone know if this is the first example of a game supporting multi monitor?

Also, anyone know of a Doom 1 remix mod using Doom 2 engine/enemies?

 

[toast0]

Anyone know if this is the first example of a game supporting multi monitor?

PC game seems likely. But arcade deluxe machines did this earlier. Here's one circa 1990 (thanks klov)