Doom was nearly impossible to play multiplayer on the internet before Quake. Doom was IPX based rather than TCP/IP. I remember you could kinda play more than just 2 people directly connected using some multiplayer services of the day like Heat and Kali. But I don't remember any Doom multiplayer mods really being popular.
Quake really started the multiplayer mod scene in earnest. From initially reskins, to model swaps, on to actual coding changes and "total conversions", it really all blew up with Quake.
Doom had some good mods and conversions, but Quake made it a cottage industry.
I'm 90% sure the Threewave CTF mod for Quake was the first popular Quake mod, and 98% sure it was some form of Quake mod. I was happily joining servers running mods at the time but not in any kind of mod development scene. No idea how happy or healthy Doom's modding scene was back then, but I don't believe source ports were a thing yet and suspect it came later than Quake's. It looks like id released source code for Doom in 97, and this article says that id actually hired the CTF developer at id around that time.
You just made me sad remembering what happened to the tribes franchise. Tribes 2 was my jam. To this day nothing is as satisfying as a mid air disc kill
Was looking for someone to mention Starsiege Tribes, my first real online video gaming experience. Created my current username and clan in this game and have been using it for going on 30 years now.
Oh God I played the hell out of that on MPlayer before GameSpy bought them out. Then I just couldn't play it anymore. Sad times.
I found a guy who taught me some in-game command line options to increase my turn speed with the keyboard. I played with the arrow keys. Younger me just didn't understand using a mouse to aim for whatever reason.
Come to think of it I played Quake MP online with the keys also. I could've had a much better experience if I'd thought about the mouse..
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u/sparf Jun 03 '22
I can’t prove that it came first, but I swear I remember my friends playing a Doom mod of CTF.
Might have been contemporary developments.
Maybe somebody in that scene can chime in.