Deathmatch

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"DM" redirects here. For id Software's bundled launcher (DM.EXE), see, see DeathManager!.
Fighting another player in E1M1: Hangar in Doom.

Deathmatch is a competitive multiplayer game mode pioneered by Doom in which players face off against one another in the levels of the game, their computers connected to each other. It is one of the principal modes of playing the game in an online setting, with the other being Cooperative. While Doom was not the first game to feature player-versus-player combat in a first-person shooter, it is undoubtedly the game to have broadly popularized the concept, leading to most Doom competitors released in its wake to also feature deathmatch or variants thereof.

Functionality[edit]

In the original Doom games, deathmatch can be activated with the -deathmatch parameter, and allows for up to four players to compete in the game on any given map, provided it contains deathmatch starts. By default, deathmatch follows these rules:

  • A point, called a frag, is granted to a player whenever they kill an opponent.
  • Frags are deducted when a player commits suicide, or dies in a crusher or damaging floor.
  • Upon death, players restart at a random deathmatch start.
  • Players spawn with all keys, and keys are never placed on the map.
  • When the level ends, the intermission screen gives each player's frag count. Deathmatch then continues to the next map. (Note that many PWADs specialized for deathmatch play do not contain exits.)

Under normal conditions, ammunition and power-ups do not respawn and weapons remain but can be picked up only once per player life, much like in cooperative games, however picking up said weapons will give the player the same amount as a large ammo pickup for said weapon (that is, either 50 bullets, 20 shells, 5 rockets, or 100 energy cells). When playing deathmatch, monsters are typically disabled altogether using the -nomonsters parameter, however they can be left enabled, in which case they will attack all players in sight much like they would in a cooperative game. The -timer command can also be used to automatically exit levels to the intermission screen after a number of minutes have passed.

Additionally, the -altdeath parameter enables an alternate deathmatch mode (called deathmatch v2.0 in the documentation) added in version 1.5 where most items picked up by players respawn after a while after being picked up. This also applies to weapons, which (unlike in normal deathmatch mode) also disappear for a while upon being picked up, and provide the same amount of ammo as they do in single player and cooperative modes.

History[edit]

While the term deathmatch has previously been used in other video games and other media, the term as it is understood today was coined by game designer John Romero while he and lead programmer John Carmack were developing the LAN multiplayer mode for Doom. According to Romero, the deathmatch concept was inspired by fighting games. At id Software, the team frequently played Street Fighter II, Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting during breaks, while developing elaborate rules involving trash-talk and smashing furniture or tech. Romero stated that "Japanese fighting games fueled the creative impulse to create deathmatch in our shooters." The ability to fight player-controlled opponents who could strategize and fight unpredictably was seen by the developers as an excellent alternative to complement the single player campaign against monsters featuring much more simplistic artificial intelligence.

Doom was id Software's first game to feature competitive online multiplayer, as Wolfenstein 3D did not support any multiplayer modes. The mode became extremely popular, widely played not only at home but also at universities and workplaces, spawning a cultural phenomenon. Indeed, deathmatch served as the main way of playing the game for a substantial portion of the playerbase. Although the game did not ship with dedicated deathmatch levels, all of the single player levels present in the game supported the mode by virtue of having deathmatch starts and multiplayer-only weapon placement. Subsequent Doom competitors, such as Marathon and Rise of the Triad, would instead supply dedicated maps for deathmatch.

One consequence of the popularity of the game mode was the creation of many maps meant for deathmatch soon after the appearance of the first Doom level editors such as DEU. Very quickly, thousands of such maps would be created, many of them from amateur creators to play with their friends, while others ended up acquiring a notable following. By the mid 90s, established and celebrated deathmatch mappers included Brian Vannatta (Stragenl), Bob Boyer (The Dweller in the Cellar), Cole Savage (Mancer), Andrew Gate (XeNoS), Richard Jaspars (Styx), Tom Sanner (Mr.DooM), Danny Lancashire (DemonSlayer), Stuart McKendrick (Yeti), and Ian McPherson (FraGMarE). Most of them released individual maps that would be later grouped up as compilations. For its part, id Software began shipping dedicated deathmatch maps with their follow-up FPS, Quake, culminating in deathmatch and other player-versus-player game modes being the centerpiece of Quake III Arena and its main competitor, Unreal Tournament.

At around this time, one of the most popular ways to play Doom online was the DWANGO internet service. DWANGO's legacy includes the semi-official DWANGO map packs created by various authors. Compiled until DWANGO6 into collections by Lance Lancaster (Aikman), an employee of DWANGO's hosting provider Interactive Visual Systems, they are still used today by DM players, and some of them, notably DWANGO5, are among the most popular PWADs ever made. Other popular mapping teams included Team Onslaught, the British Doom League, and TeamTNT.

Multiplayer source ports[edit]

Following the Doom source code release on December 23, 1997, source ports quickly began appearing on the scene, allowing for more advanced features in mapmaking, something that was quickly taken advantage of by deathmatch mappers. Thus, projects like Reclamation, FragFest Initialized, SlaughterDM and many others began to be made for the nascent Boom and ZDoom source ports.

One fundamental aspect of the source code release, however, ended up being the creation of source ports specialized for multiplayer. The first of these was csDoom, created by Sergey Makovkin (Fly). Based off ZDoom, the port attempted to replace the peer-to-peer multiplayer code from ZDoom with a client/server system using code from QuakeWorld. The attempt was successful, but the port's development stalled from 2001 on, leading to the emergence of a new port based off its codebase: ZDaemon, created by Sean White (Nightfang), which was the first multiplayer port to reach massive popularity. It was later followed by Skulltag by Brad Carney (Carnevil) and Odamex by Ralph Vickers (Ralphis) and Sean Leonard (Dr. Sean).

These ports featured, beyond the extended mapping capabilities, far greater multiplayer support including support for more than 4 players, multiple and new game modes, the introduction of DMFlags, and in the case of ZDaemon, a leaderboard to gauge people's progress and ability in deathmatch games. The scene bloomed further and saw the release of even more popular deathmatch sets, such as Unidoom Deathmatch, The Last Strike DM series, the Skulltag DM set, Onslaught Deathmatch, Lazarus Deathmatch, and many others.

Deathmatch in other versions of Doom[edit]

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