The AI of DOOM (1993)
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DOOM is the archetype of the first-person shooter genre and helped define an entire generation of games in the 1990s. While not the first of its kind, nor even the first by developers id Software, it was a game that changed the landscape of the industry. And it's an important topic to explore not just because of its popularity, but because - much like other games from the 90s we've explored to date - it achieved so much using limited hardware and without many of the tools and standards game developers and players now take for granted.
DOOM is, in essence, a dungeon crawler with guns, in which players must navigate a myriad of complex non-linear environments to find keys and activate switches that will move them one step closer to the exit. Along the way, players fight a myriad of hellish and demonic creatures, ranging from possessed gun-wielding soldiers to fireball tossing imps, flying enemies such as the cacodemon and lost souls and the brute strength of the pinky Demon and Baron of Hell. The sequel DOOM II, released in 1994 added even more variation, with Hell Knights, Revenants, Arachnotrons, the Mancubues, Pain Elementals and the Archvile. All of these characters move through the world, respond to player behaviour and attack using their own internal logic. Perhaps the most impressive aspect is the sheer number of enemies that the game can accommodate at once, all the while handling pathfinding, line of sight tests, collision checks, interactions and more.But DOOM was no slouch. The game capitalised on
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