Chapter 10 Chapter 9 The Coolest Game

In the Ferrari dealer's shop, Carmack eyed a cherry-red 328 with admiration, wondering how fast it could go.As a technical person, speed is an important criterion for Carmack to evaluate things.At work, he works on rendering images faster on the computer, and sports cars are the same for him—when he looks at the 328's alluring curves, what he thinks about is actually its powerful engine.To the shopkeeper's surprise, the thin-voiced young man in a T-shirt and jeans signed a check for $70,000 and drove off with the car. The 22-year-old Carmack owned his first Ferrari, but it didn't take long for him to feel that the 328 was not fast enough. He instinctively wanted to open the hood to do something, just like he once did to the Jaguar It's done, but this time it's different, this time it's not a normal car, this time it's a Ferrari, no one has messed with a Ferrari.As a brand-name car manufacturer, Ferrari has always held a sneering attitude towards those who dare to mess with Ferrari.Carmack didn't care that much. To him, this was just another machine that could be used for research.

With Romero's help, Carmack quickly found a motorcycle veteran: Bob Norwood (Bob Norwood) - he started racing and modifying cars in Kansas when he was 13 years old. The Guinness Book of World Records in Nice holds more than a hundred records, mostly based on all sorts of oddball cars, but also Ferraris.When Romero saw in an auto magazine that Norwood was running a dealership in Dallas, he suggested that Carmack call and ask. Carmack, as always, was dubious about it.Because when he talked about the Ferrari to other car guys in the neighborhood, the guys always shrugged and said, "Ferrari? Oh, we can put an exhaust on it." Carmack knew that replacing the exhaust Small fights were just scratching the surface of the problem he was trying to solve, but he decided to try again.When he pulled into the Norwood dealership, the blunt-looking boss greeted him with oil on his phone.Carmack was very cautious this time: "I have a Ferrari 328 here, I want it to run a little faster, um." Norwood glanced at Carmack's car, speaking as if this matter was easy to grasp: "Put a turbo on that engine." And just like that, Carmack made a new friend.

It cost Carmack $15,000, and now, when he puts the pedal to the floor, the turbo kicks in, and it's so powerful that Carmack was immediately impressed by Norwood's experience. Rich racing veterans have the feeling of meeting each other late.The day the conversion was done, Carmack planned to take the Ferrari 328 to Missouri for his brother's graduation to celebrate, and his trip was something else - despite the success of the Keen series and Wolfenstein 3D The gap between him and his mother has been gradually weakened, but if he can drive such a beautiful sports car back to see her, he will be able to settle the previous suspicions.

Carmack came to the Norwood garage, threw the duffel bag in the trunk, and started on his way home.As soon as he got out of Dallas, the highway became more open. His foot on the gas pedal began to press down slowly and little by little. As the gas pedal got lower and lower, he began to feel the accumulation of power, and then , just as the car bottomed out, the car raced forward at twice the speed, and the dashboard hit 140 miles per hour. The best thing in life is to realize your dreams through struggle.Just like Carmack now: he works for himself, he writes programs all night long, he can dress as he likes, and those long, difficult years without computers and like-minded partners have all drifted away like clouds in the past. Behind him... Contrary to what everyone thinks, Carmack is actually a person with emotions, just now, when the wheat fields and cows speeding backward on both sides of the road become blurred, he feels extremely happy, and the following He had a big smile on his face all the way.

﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡ The Ferrari's engine was just one of those that Carmack was trying to make faster, along with Doom.Although Doom is fast, it's not enough by his standards, and the game still faces great speed challenges, such as those textured floors and ceilings, and those walls that vary in height.In the process of porting Wolfenstein 3D to the Super Nintendo, Carmack came across an article describing the Binary Space Partitioning (BSP) algorithm, which a programmer at Bell Labs used to make the game faster. Draw a 3D model on the screen.In the simplest terms, this algorithm is to divide a model into a large number of fragments, and the data of each fragment is used as a leaf node in the global tree structure, and then the program can quickly filter out the polygons that need to be drawn. Avoid needlessly redrawing the entire model, thus improving the speed of drawing.When Carmack read this, he suddenly thought, what would it be like to use this algorithm to draw a huge virtual world instead of a small model?

No one has ever tried—probably no one even thought about it—to try, and, after all, not many people are trying to build virtual worlds.By dividing the geometric data of the Doom level into a huge BSP tree, the computer does not have to redraw all the leaf nodes every time the player changes the perspective or position, but only those objects that the player is facing.When this change is made, Carmack's already fast Doom is ready to take off. In order to keep Doom going, id also faced a pressing problem: finding someone to fill the void left by Tom.Of course, Tom is irreplaceable as a friend, especially to Romero - no one can play tricks with him like Tom, but in the face of this cruel parting, they can only distance themselves.In any case, Tom is about to start a new life: Scott, who was also abandoned by id, offered Tom a job as a game designer at Tianji, and Tom accepted it with mixed joy. After all, he might be able to do what he really did. The game I want to make.

The people at id started looking through resumes, looking for Tom's successor, and Kevin noticed a nice looking guy who was also a player: Sandy Petersen.The 37-year-old Sandy is a relic compared to id, but he has an admirable experience in the game.He created a paper role-playing game called Call of Cthulhu in the early 1980s, featuring various cannibal zombies and hairy-legged aliens, which went viral and sold a total of More than one hundred thousand copies.After the rise of computer games, Sandy joined a Baltimore-based game company: MicroProse, whose founder was Sid Meier, the legendary figure who later produced the historical strategy game "Civilization".

But Romero was a little worried. At the bottom of Sandy's resume, he noted that he was a Mormon. "I said, man," Romero said to Kevin, "I don't want to recruit religious people, we're making a game about demons and hell and all kinds of crap, and this kind of person will only come in Against us." "Maybe," Kevin said, "we'll meet him first, maybe he's cool." "Up to you, but I don't think I'll hire him," Romero sighed. A few days later, Sandy came.He's a stocky, bald man with glasses and suspenders, and he's easily agitated, especially when it comes to games, and when he gets aroused, his voice grows louder.Romero thought this guy was interesting, so he took him to the computer and asked him to try to make a Doom level.Within a few minutes, Sandy was drawing a mess of lines on the screen.

"Um..." Romero asked Sandy, "What are you doing?" "Oh, I want you to come here," Sandy said hurriedly, pointing at the screen, "then the wall next to you will open, monsters will pour out, and then you can only go along this road , and then I will turn off the lights around you, and then..." Yes, Romero is very satisfied.Sandy became a game designer for id, and Romero was able to free up his hands to do all kinds of things he loved, such as writing programs, recording sound effects, building levels, and running a business. Sandy has one of his paychecks, but he needs more to support his family.To this end, he approached Jay, the administrative director of id, and asked him for a salary increase.Coincidentally, later that same day, Carmack walked up to Sandy and said, "What you do is really cool, I like your work, and I think you'll be useful to the company." And then On the second day, Carmack stopped Sandy at the door again: "I told you yesterday that what you did was great. At that time, I didn't know that you asked Jay for a raise. Don't think I praised you. My job is to make you ask for less money, um.” After finishing speaking, Carmack walked away, leaving Sandy there, and Monk Zhanger couldn’t figure it out: “Does he think he praised me a few words, so I don’t want to add Salary? God, this guy has no idea what other people are thinking."

Soon, Sandy's work won Romero's appreciation for his speed, his creativity, and his all-encompassing knowledge of the game.For example, the effect the player gets when blasting a monster's chest with a gun: "In several steps, first there is the sound of shooting, then, the thick barrel stands upright, and then, the monster flies out backwards, or there is a sound Explosions, etc. When the player does a good job, he can feel good through these effects." These, and the blood pouring from the monster, are exactly what Romero thinks of Doom.After the laughter, Romero decided to try to talk to Sandy about religion.

"Um...you're a Mormon?" Romero asked. "That is." "Oh? But you don't look like that, Mormons have a lot of kids or something," Romero said with a smirk. Sandy, who was typing on the keyboard, paused: "I do have five children." "Oh, it looks like this," Romero began to stammer a little: "It's okay, some of you believers have more than a dozen, er, how should I put it, five is indeed not a small number, but, er, at least Aren't you the kind of pious believer who carries a church card with you?" "Oh, mine's stuck here." Sandy took it out of his pocket and shook it. "Then..., then at least you're not wearing that kind of teaching gown?" "My teaching robe is..." Sandy lifted his jacket: "This!" "Come on, I know I should shut up." "Hey, actually, you don't have to worry. I don't have any problem with those bloody monsters and ghosts in the game. They're just cartoons, and——" Sandy said with a smile, "They're all villains." ﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡ In 1993, while id was still perfecting Doom, Rand Scott and Robyn Scott, the sons of a Spokane missionary, released (Myst): An adventure puzzle game on a CD-ROM. Its gameplay and content suitable for all ages made it popular quickly, and rushed to the top of the sales charts, and eventually sold out Four million copies.It also allowed the CD-ROM format, which was still in its infancy, to enter thousands of households. This storage medium, which is equivalent to the capacity of hundreds of floppy disks, immediately became the first choice in the eyes of game developers, because the massive storage space can bring better Another scary and eerie puzzle game "7th Guest" (7th Guest) even used discs to bring dynamic video to players, and this game once dominated the list. With near-photo quality graphics, the player is transported to a mysterious deserted island, where the player will pass through various strange rooms and machines, until finally revealing the secret of Atrus, the man who is Designer of all these puzzles and mechanisms on the island. Similar to Doom, it also presents the world to the player from a first-person perspective, but in it, the player cannot run or even walk, but can only enter the next position by clicking on items or areas on the screen. The player's movement is It is expressed by fading in and fading out of the picture on the screen. The editor of "Connection" magazine (Wired) couldn't help saying: "Its beautifully designed and rendered gorgeous graphics, as well as those interesting worlds composed of mazes and puzzles, will undoubtedly set a new standard for adventure games." .” The people at id hate it, there's nothing they like about it - no real-time interaction, no fast movement, no fear, no combat.If it was Shakespeare, Doom would be Stephen King.Carmack is still tweaking the engine, and the rest of the crew is taking pre-built items out of the game and re-polishing them.Adrian and Kevin's dark and sinister art style has matured, and their corpses are impaled on pickets and twitching (like the farmer Adrian saw in the hospital all those years ago), or chained Bound to the wall, blood splattered everywhere.The death animations of the monsters have also been carefully crafted to be more vivid, with some staggering a few times and then splitting their skulls in the middle, and others lying forward while spreading their intestines all over the place. Weapons are in place: rifles, pistols, chainsaws, bazookas, and the Big f**king Gun affectionately named BFG.In the previous Wolfenstein 3D, when the player ran out of bullets, they still had the default knife, but in Doom, the player has to fight their way through with fists - they sent Kevin to a blue screen Shake your fists and then digitize the recorded tape for use in the game.These deadly weapons and monsters also have deadly voices to match, and they have Bobby Prince again.At Romero's behest, Bobby made a metal-style electronic synthesis soundtrack for Doom, oh, it's a hodgepodge of moans from various monsters in the game. Weapons, monsters, gore, all there, Sandy and Romero began to bury themselves in the production of the level. Romero seems to have found himself in Doom. He loves every aspect of the game, its speed, its tension, its scariness, and he wants to make all these elements in Doom to the extreme.He intentionally designs the levels in a very rhythmic way. As a level designer, he not only has to consider the terrain, structure and environment, but also decides where to place monsters, where to place weapons and prizes. It’s like being a haunted house designer. At the same time, he also serves as a director.And Romero loved it.In one of his levels, when the player enters one of the rooms, he can see through a window, but doesn't know how to get there, so he keeps going, going...going...suddenly!At just the right moment the music played, the sliding door opened, a howling imp rushed over, Xiaocai, put it down, and marched on confidently, through a stained hallway, opened another door, and—boom!Monsters flooded out from behind the door.Romero has a lot of experience with this kind of design that stages the battle: let the player win the small one first, and then push him to the corner when the player feels that it is not enough. Romero is a bit more blunt and brutal in this regard, while Sandy is more calculating.He placed some green explosive cartridges seemingly randomly in a level, and the player who wants to kill the monster and move forward can only shoot at one of the explosive cartridges at a precise moment to detonate it.From an aesthetic point of view, most of Sandy's levels are inferior to those made by Romero. In fact, some people in id think that Sandy's levels can only be described as "ugly", but they have to admit that Sandy's The levels are cleverly designed and a lot of fun to play, which fits perfectly with Romero's levels. In the fall of 1993, gamers couldn't wait, clamoring for Doom to be released soon.Despite id's great efforts to prevent the release of the promotional demo, a copy has surfaced on the Internet.A few fanatical players started asking id non-stop via phone calls and emails.Meanwhile, the mainstream media didn't know -- and didn't care -- that Doom was coming.A cable station showed some footage of id employees playing games and working, but that was about it.Jay called some of the big newspapers and magazines, but each time he got nowhere. As a last resort, just like what they did in the game, Jay decided to make some innovations in the business model.He turned his energy to building a marketing network and market development.He first applied for a tax exemption number to accept orders, and then he negotiated a company that provides business services.This time they will publish Doom themselves, rather than being distributed by Tianji like Wolfenstein 3D.All those intermediaries eat up half of their revenue: if a customer buys a game at CompUSA, the retailer gets a cut of the profit, next comes the publisher, then the publisher, and finally the company that makes the game. hand.And if it is distributed directly as shareware, id can bypass them all. Doom sold for about forty dollars, and they collected eighty-five cents for every dollar sold.Jay also realized that, like in Wolfenstein 3D, player-to-player communication would be the main way Doom spread.When Nintendo and other industry giants spend millions of dollars on hype, id only needs to publish a small advertisement in a magazine. The real thing to do is to send Doom to as many people as possible through the way of shareware . At that time, retailers still distributed shareware in the form of sales, because the creators of the software had to extract royalties from it.I have made several successful shareware ids, and this time I have adopted a new method: give the trial version to the retailer for free, without charging any royalties, and all sales proceeds belong to the retailer.The more retailers sell, the more potential customers. "You can price the trial version at whatever you want, and we won't take a cent," Jay told the retailer: "You just sell, sell a lot, the more the better!" The retailers couldn't believe their ears—— There has never been a developer that didn't charge royalties.But Jay reassures them: "That's it, I'm giving you Doom for free, and all the profits go to you, I just have to give this stuff away, and Doom is going to be bigger than Wolfenstein 3D, and I want you to make as much of it as possible." , spread it as far as possible, in fact, I hope you will advertise it yourself, because the money earned is yours, use the royalties to advertise it, and treat it as your own Come sell it!" The respondent said. Wolfenstein 3D and Doom's momentum also brings out some former characters.Al asked if they could re-sell the games they used to make at Floppy under the id name, and he told id that the company hadn't recovered since you guys left.But id declined him.There was one more special man, Romero's stepfather, John Scudeman.On one trip to Dallas, he approached Romero, and at a table at a steakhouse, Scudeman confided to Romero: "You know, I used to be rough and stubborn. I told you once, If you want to be successful, you have to make commercial software, but you see, I'm not that stubborn, I admit to you that I was wrong, I think you are doing a good job, I hope you can know that I was wrong gone." Romero accepted his stepfather's apology. After all, time has passed, why bother with the past, Doom is almost finished, and better things are still ahead. ﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡ On Halloween in 1993, Romero stood alone in a small dim room, the barrel of the pistol was shining with cold light, and the surrounding walls were covered with dark red stains. The disturbing melody was echoing, and after a noisy chord, Ushered in the deathly short drumbeat.There was a shotgun right in front of him. Romero stepped forward to pick it up, and rushed into a gate like a whirlwind. A deep sound came from all directions, like something snorting or belching, or moaning unbearably tortured. Suddenly, a big, red fireball hits him, and the explosion sends waves of heat through the air, and he has to move fast! While dodging, Romero hit a monster in the chest with his rifle, and the monster flew upside down, a stream of blood spattered, but a fireball hit Romero's side, his eyes were blood red, and then he Hearing his own gasping, another fireball, Romero tried to move out of the way, but he could barely see, was hit again, and the gasping became harder.Another little demon walked out of the shadows. Romero was almost powerless to fight back, but suddenly he saw two green explosive cartridges in front of him, and the little demon almost walked to them. At the very moment, Romero hit the explosive cartridges, and the little demon The demon was blown to pieces and scattered all over the place. Another door opened—this time to Romero's office, and Carmack walked in. Romero just looked up, and continued to focus on the fierce battle of Doom.Carmack walked up behind Romero, and he was very pleased with what was on the screen. Romero's levels were always so varied in depth and height that one couldn't help but marvel at their grandeur.It was Romero's level that put Carmack's engine to work. "What's the matter?" Romero asked. Carmack told him that the engine was basically finalized and that the online part of Doom could be started immediately.Yeah, Connected, Romero thought, we told someone back in January that Doom will definitely have a multiplayer component where players can play against each other.But then I was so busy that I almost forgot about it.Carmack and Romero talked about some of the technical challenges: "First I had to figure out how to properly communicate using the IPX protocol, and also through the serial port, which also took a while..." Romero kept nodding as Carmack spoke, but thought about how incredible Doom's multiplayer would be.There were already some games that could be played on the same computer, such as Street Fighter II, and a game that just came out called Mortal Kombat, and some early multiplayer games , such as MULE, and a series based on "NetTrek" (NetTrek), these games are connected through a modem.But there hasn't been a multiplayer game quite like Doom -- first-person, fast-paced, immersive, and gory.Thinking of this, Romero's heart beat faster. Romero pressed the keyboard to walk through E1M7-the seventh level of Chapter 1-.He walked to the window of the hall, outside was a platform soaked in green plasma, and he imagined two players here holding bazookas and shooting each other, rockets whizzed across the screen, oh my god, he thought, no People have seen this kind of scene in the game.It is true that fighting monsters is also very fun, but after all, they are insensible things controlled by computers. Now, players will be able to fight against another conscious human being, one who can think, use strategy, and scream from time to time opponent.We can start killing each other! "If, indeed, we can make it," Romero said, "then this will be the most fucking game ever made on this planet called Earth!" This is what Carmack said. ﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡ For the next two weeks, Carmack kept two networked computers in the room, one for the player he controlled and one for the other player.After everything was ready, he controlled the player to move forward through the keyboard, imagining in his mind that those small data packets were transmitted to the opposite computer through the network cable, and then immediately appeared as a space warrior on the screen.The two computers just talked to each other, and Carmack knew the outcome of the conversation.He turned his head to look at the other computer screen, and he saw the player he controlled—on that machine, a spectator—run across the screen.In this way, Carmack successfully created a virtual world that can perceive each other. Romero nearly stumbled when he walked in. "Oh, my God!"Carmack restarted the game. This time, Romero connected with his machine. Romero stared wide-eyed, watching the space fighter Carmack slowly walk out of the hall, and he immediately chased after Carmack and fired a shot at Carmack. gun.Boom!Carmack flew up, accompanied by screams and blood. "Haha, swallow it! (Suck It Down)" Romero was overjoyed. Soon, everyone in id switched to multiplayer games, they chased each other and fired, the office was full of shouts one after another, it was no longer the sound of monsters coming from the speakers, it was the original voice of real people.In this arena, they fight, chase, flee, and kill.They also went head-to-head against each other and made a hands-on scoreboard to see who was the champion.But Romero thinks this is not all. Since four players can play against each other, why can't they cooperate?For example, form a team to eliminate monsters and pass the level.Carmack told Romero it could be done, and Romero couldn't hold back: "Don't tell me you can actually form a team of four and cover each other to fight your way through hordes of monsters. !" He gasped, "It's perfect!" Romero paced back and forth in the room, "This time it's a big deal! Bigger than Dave in copyright infringement, bigger than anything I've ever seen!" He walked into the hallway and heard voices from the next room Here comes Adrian's yelling, he's fighting Kevin, Carmack, and Jay in Doom, just see him swaying from side to side in his chair, twitching up and down.What is this like?Romero thought, a game?A boxing match?But this is far more than just punching each other a few times, it's like, um, taking someone's life!This is a game of life and death, this is— Romero stands still: a deathmatch. ﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡ During the first week of December 1993, id was already busy with the finishing touches on Doom, no one was home, they slept in the company, on the recliners, on the floor, under the desk.The most interesting was Dave Taylor, the new programmer who had a reputation for passing out frequently.It wasn't because he was too tired, he said, but because of Doom, the game seemed to have a magical effect on him, a physical effect, and the longer he played, the faster he went around in those mazes, he The more dizzy he felt, then within a few minutes he had to lie down on the ground to regain his senses, and sometimes he just fell asleep like this.The others kept seeing him sprawled out, and finally, one night, they got a roll of tape and made an outline on the ground along Dave's body. The production of Doom is approaching the end step by step, and the pressure is increasing.Some players started calling them: "How's it going? Are you ready?" Or: "Hurry up, people!" Others began to complain about the extension of id, because id had said that they could play in the Doom was released in the third quarter, and one player wrote in an online newsgroup: "You guys started blowing the air months ago, convincing us what a great game Doom is going to be, and you're telling a lot of people that it's coming this fall. Done, and now, all those expectations will turn into rage and rants directed at you!" There are also some posts that can understand the extension of id.A previously released screenshot of Doom apparently entered a player's dream state: "When the alarm clock went off, I was shooting at a monster made of pixels, yes, my dream is now pixel by pixel..., I guess I should see a psychiatrist, wondering what I'm going to be like when Doom comes out." One player wrote a poem called "Eve Before Doom": It was the night before Doom in every corner of this house I set up the battle network The mouse is our butt The long network I will take good care of them Just hope that Doom can come quickly into my arms A computer magazine published an article introducing Doom in a dark tone, entitled "Parents' Christmas Nightmare", which wrote: "When you think your children are still looking forward to candy, they are probably already They got what they wanted in a fantastic computer game...that game: Doom." On Friday, December 10, 1993, a historic moment arrived. After thirty hours of continuous testing, id was ready to upload Doom to the Internet.A well-meaning guy named David Datta, a system administrator at the University of Wisconsin, provided id with the file server on their campus network.This sounds good, because the university is always the place with the most bandwidth, which can accommodate more users to download. This is what id thinks: upload it first, let players download it, and then they will continue to spread it. This is much better than other distribution methods that cost a lot of money. Players are equivalent to helping id very busy.And Jay had already announced the news to them in the chat room the day before: Doom would be released at the stroke of midnight on the 10th. Midnight came before you knew it, and the people from id gathered around Jay's computer. Various items from the Doom production process were scattered in the office; clay sculptures made by Kevin and Adrian were on the bookshelves; broken chairs Throwing it all over the floor with the broken keyboard; the kicked-up trash can sitting silent in the corner; Dave's silhouette covered in dust; Doom is in Jay's machine, ready to go. At this moment, the FTP (File Transfer Protocol) server of the University of Wisconsin is already full of impatient players. Although there is no chat and message system on it, they cleverly thought of another way to communicate. The FTP service allows users to create new files on it, and this file name can be seen by other users, so players start to create new files and name them: "When will Doom be ready", or, "We are waiting".In addition, there are hundreds of people hanging on the same chat channel that Jay posted yesterday. Finally, the clock ticked midnight and there was no need to wait any longer.Jay presses the keyboard and uploads Doom to the world, and the people in the office start to celebrate each other, except for Jay who is sitting in front of the screen, who is silent and frowning: there is a problem.The FTP server of the University of Wisconsin can only accommodate up to 125 users at the same time. Obviously, there are already 125 players hanging on it, but the id cannot log in. Jay called David, and the two discussed a solution. David adjusted the server’s limit on the number of people in the school, and then Jay synchronized with him by phone. Once he finished the changes, he would log in here, and it should be fine. went in.Everyone watched them discussing with bated breath, and they could even hear the sound of typing on the keyboard on the other end of the phone.After a while, David cleared his throat, and Jay put his finger lightly on the keyboard, "Okay!" David said, "Right now!"...Jay still failed to log in. Jay rushed into the chat room full of players, "It looks like this," he tapped, "Sorry, you have to leave the UW FTP server, because I can't upload, you choose, or you leave, I'll upload Doom, or I won't upload it." As soon as the words fell, the players scattered in a nest.Jay pressed the keys one last time, and Doom was finally on his way. The people at id exuberantly and exhaustedly said goodnight to each other and went home to bed, where they hadn't had a decent night's sleep in months.Only Jay hadn't left yet, and he had to wait for the upload to finish.Half an hour later, the last byte of Doom arrived at the University of Wisconsin. In an instant, tens of thousands of players flocked to that server, flooding it. The University of Wisconsin's network was paralyzed, and David's server crashed. "Holy shit," David stammered to Jay on the phone, "I've never seen anything like this." The world has never seen it.