1. The Doom engine is arguably a work of art. Not for the faint of heart, surely, but well done, very well optimized and carries a simplicity that only a few of us (ie John Carmack) can achieve.
2. It was also open sourced a very long time ago by id software, which enabled a lot of tweaking by the community, and, therefore, a lot of knowledge.
3. Doom is a very famous game, having made a lot of success during it days. Everyone with even the smallest interest in games or computers that was alive back then probably played it.
4. Both Wolfenstein and Quake are also open source but the former is too simple when compared to Doom and Quake is too complex. As others have stated, Doom has 2.5D maps whereas Quake have full fledged, 3D maps.
All of this together surely makes it a good candidate for this type of experiment
2. It was also open sourced a very long time ago by id software, which enabled a lot of tweaking by the community, and, therefore, a lot of knowledge.
3. Doom is a very famous game, having made a lot of success during it days. Everyone with even the smallest interest in games or computers that was alive back then probably played it.
4. Both Wolfenstein and Quake are also open source but the former is too simple when compared to Doom and Quake is too complex. As others have stated, Doom has 2.5D maps whereas Quake have full fledged, 3D maps.
All of this together surely makes it a good candidate for this type of experiment