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Carmack + Romero (long)

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Yeah, I'm treading old ground here, but the Masters of Doom book sparked a recent conversation with a colleague.

Up to this point, I'm almost finished the book, but for the past couple years I've been told that the Carmack approach to business in game development is the ideal one. Every serious gamer/developer/whathaveyou wants to have the id model. I'd disagree-- not because I'd be a Romero, but because I'd be anyone but Carmack.

Having read the book and been able to take as much from it as I could without actually being there, I have a few things to say-- but with this in mind:

  • I'm not taking a side. Not to be neutral, but to disagree with both.
  • It may sound at times as if I'm taking Romero's side, but I'm more of the mind that certain issues (admittedly, contributing more to Romero's defense than Carmack's) went unvoiced.
  • My statements should be considered along with the fact that I feel Romero was irresponsible, didn't take charge when he should have, and started another company under the wrong pretenses (for revenge, it seemed, more than to construct a new paradigm).
  • I recognize Carmack for his incredible work ethic, his problem-solving ability, and his uncanny knowledge of the next steps in the evolution in gaming technology. I'm pretty sure everyone thinks the same. This should be kept in mind at all times. But as much as he rejects humanlike tendencies, he is flawed in a very human way.
I took notice of a specific passage: the point in the book where C makes a little program to log R's hours. When confronted, R said something along the lines of "That's fucked up". Maybe something more interesting, and conductive to what was going on at the time, would have been to say: "Sure I don't work as much as you do. But I have as much to show for my work as you do for yours." This was at a time when Quake was in development; C was struggling with a new type of engine, and R was overseeing projects with Doom engine licenses. The rest of the id team were faced with walls on two sides: they were unclear of what kind of technology they'd be working with, and they were unclear of what setting/universe the game would be based on.

Quake was originally going to be two things: a game built on revolutionary engine technology, and a game that offered revolutionary mechanics, concept and interaction. Here's where it gets fuzzy: all we can surmise is that C realized the design R was currently proposing would not be possible with the engine as it was. One of those revolutionary things had to go. As it turns out, C was better at throwing his weight around than R-- so the design went out the window. Quake would be a Doom-clone in 3D. Everyone agreed; why? The only logical conclusion I can draw is that C put more hours into his work and that somehow translated into being more dedicated to the company. Or maybe they felt it'd be harder to replace C, even though it would've been entirely possible that C could go into business on his own and offer his engines to id for them to work with. Whatever the reason, we all know the end result. R shuffled off, just like every "unnecessary" person before him.

And this time, C didn't even bother with the subversive "either he goes or I go"-- it seems he was also working on making his power plays more efficient.

Of course, the short of it was that R was slacking off (just how much we're not sure-- some of us don't comprehend "anything less than every waking hour" as "slacking off"). His output wasn't enough. However, I know what it's like when ideas aren't getting through. They may or may not be bad ideas. More likely, what you're working on just isn't headed in the same direction as what the other guy's working on. You both look at each other's monitors and say, "What the hell is this?" Egos clash. More often than not, it just ends up being a big-dick contest where one thing has to change or the other, and whoever is more replaceable loses. It's quite demoralizing to realize that you're a 30% shareholder employee.

I should remind everyone that I'm not taking Romero's side. His performance at Ion Storm was a tragedy-- if for nothing else, but for his compulsion to run a company, ostensibly, in the completely opposite way that Carmack would. His raving idealism bordered on manic. He screwed up in his own little way. It would've behooved (behave?) him to become more demanding, in a number of ways. You also have to wonder where all his uber1337 programming skills went during that little episode, too.

My conclusion: whenever C was involved in areas other than technology, people got fired. Tensions grew high. Effort was wasted. Creativity was stifled. The staff felt castrated and frustrated. Sure, I understand that as owner of the company, you involve yourself in other things: "Hire this guy. Fire that guy. Call this guy. Hang up on that guy." It's the nature of the beast. But as a game development team, each person should be allowed to fulfill their roles with cooperation, but not intervention, of other departments. C overstepped his bounds and felt compelled to make decisions that were outside his scope of expertise.

Moreover, he forced diplomacy upon every area of development except his own. No one was telling him how to make his engine. It took 90% of the development cycle of Wolf3D for the team to convince him to implement sliding doors (and I assume he'd decided he wasn't going to tolerate that anymore). To this day, it's the standard: anything that extends development or forces a rewrite is gone. But why? Are they trying to meet a public release date? Are they pent-up for cash? It shouldn't be his job to relegate which features are or aren't in the game. It should be the job of whoever was hired for it.

I'd say the role of technology developers is clear-cut and simple: you tell them the type of engine the game is going to require, and you put them in their little room for 5000 hours. "See you when you get out." When they're done, you pass the engine on to the artists, tool developers, and lower-level programmers. "Thanks for the engine, we'll take it from here. Start working on the next one." They start screaming that they work 16 hours while everyone else works 10, fine. Double their pay. Congratulations, you're making hourly wages.

When a tech developer is leading the company, well... you have a whole new monster there. You have a guy (*COUGH* who worships Carmack *COUGH) with an idea of what a good game is. If he's in charge, everyone else might as well forget about what they think. The guy who made the engine certainly isn't going to be receptive to ideas he doesn't feel improve the game.

But apparently, the game can be improved. Let's revisit games running under id engines: Heretic, Hexen, Strife, Half-Life... all fantastic games with a solid groundwork and fantastic concepts, story, mechanics, whatever. Not enough good can be said about these games. They all have one thing in common: C had nothing to do with the design process. Artists were allowed to take an existing work and sculpt a larger world while the lower-level programmers upgraded and expanded the engine to meet the demands of the design. This is the way to work. These are the games I buy.

Now, one theme made obvious throughout the Masters of Doom book is C constantly cutting out the unnecessary element-- in his games, in his life, in his apartment. Whatever wasn't needed was gone. Keen didn't "need" to draw the entire column when the screen moved; Wolf3D didn't "need" sliding walls; Doom/Quake didn't "need" a story-driven plot with dialogue and interruptions; Doom3 didn't "need" a crouch key. Shit, while we're doing this, might as well go whole-hog: why did the game after Doom2 "need" to be fully-3D? Why did Doom3 "need" to have per-pixel lighting?

For that matter, why does Carmack need to dictate gameplay mechanics?

Why does id need Carmack? Why does Carmack need id?

Surely, someone who has a penchant for removing the unnecessary from his life could realize that he can have everything he wants just being an independent licenser. Surely, he should have seen his 3rd and 4th Ferrari-- bought with the money coming in from all the licensing deals Romero was hooking up during his "playtime"-- as superfluous. You have to wonder why he's sitting around at id when all he really wants to have is a fast car and a dark room with a computer in it. Licensing can and will give him that. It's time to realize that with all the pleonastic intellectualizing and justification of moneywise decisions, we are all just blubbering children who want things our way. We want to gather enough money together so we can have our own little trail of Scatterlings who hang on our every word and carry out our every demand. We want things we don't need. And we're ready to pack our bags and get the fuck out when that doesn't happen. You'll never hear Carmack or Romero say that out loud, though. Nevertheless, the story at id was nothing but a result of that.

But hey... all those guys are millionaires. My colleague tells me that becoming a millionaire brings validation to all your previous decisions and actions. I said something involving solicitation of underage children-- which he didn't understand, so I guess that meant my entire argument was invalid.

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Thank you for a good coherent point. I think you hit the nail on the head. (allthough i do not know what your point excacly is). But yes. Carmack has positioned himself as more than an engine builder. I guess he thinks of himself as the protector of id (basic) gameplay. Allthough he recently stated several times he doesn't play any games anymore, what might suggest he is out of touch with the "fun" aspect of playing games, what is confirmed (IMO) by Doom3.

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Carmack dictated the gameplay mechanics in Doom and that's enough for me.

You have to wonder why he's sitting around at id when all he really wants to have is a fast car and a dark room with a computer in it.

Actually he spends much of his time building rockets.

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Well, would I be correct in saying that we play games to have fun? Well, the same has to go for making them, if you aren't having fun, then it's just like any other job, and much like a band, you'll start tearing at the seams. Businesses need structure, and id has never had structure, which is why they think outside the box, sadly, every game id made after Romero left has been a sequal, with the exception of Quake 2 which just shared the same name. It just goes to the old saying, "You Reap what you Sew" or so to say, id will only make fantastic NEW games if they sacrifice some of their structure, but this is going to a company that started making games in a studio appartment on the side of working at Softdisk, but truly, I think Romero needs Carmack to keep remotely under control, and Carmack needs Romero to keep him sharp.

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"the last half of Doom 3 development was basically pretty damn boring."

Carmacks own words.......

http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/johnc/Recent%20Updates

I think for a game to be fun it needs a story and gameplay. Doom3 has both of these, although the original doom's go against this somewhat because in comparison to most games you could say that doom lacks a deep storyline.

I think that if carmack and romero were reunited they could do some special stuff with todays technology. Imagine what kind of ideas have been growing inside romero's head over the last 8 years. Even better imagine what a good development team could do with it. Im no expert on the two men but from what I have read I would say that romero was unfairly slated over diakatana considering all the team changes and problems that occured.........

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amberleaf said:

I think for a game to be fun it needs a story and gameplay. Doom3 has both of these....


A game doesn't need any sort of story whatsoever for it to be fun. As far as gameplay goes, Doom3 had virtually none. It did have the potential for good gamplay, but failed mainly due to level design (IMHO).

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amberleaf said:

I think that if carmack and romero were reunited they could do some special stuff with todays technology.

I think nothing would ever come of that. Even if they truly put the era of bickering behind them, they wouldn't complement each other like they used to. They disagree on certain fundamental things (for example, what a work day consists of).

Zoost said:

(allthough i do not know what your point excacly is)

There was no main point. Just a bunch of smaller ones.

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Pfft, I can't resist a comment here. I'm being highly optimistic here but I'm betting that these words will shoot you in the foot when ID reveal the game they are currently working on, which has been stated on numerous occasions to be an entirely new game universe.

Of course... having said that Quake 3 was at one point going to be called trinity and have a plot...ah well.

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LorD BaZTArD said:

Of course... having said that Quake 3 was at one point going to be called trinity and have a plot...ah well.

Both Doom and Quake were meant to have a plot...

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I never denied that. Doom was the doom bible and Quake was going to be an extensive 3D RPG. Both were canned for multiple reasons and to be honest, the gaming world would be somewhat different had doom been as detailed as the bible. I mean, doom was a step forward, but with the stuff in the bible it would of been twice the game, twice as complex but probably half as popular because it was far too complex.

Quake probably would probably of not been made either as if doom bombed id would probably of not been able to make the quake we know and love today, let alone a fully fledged FPSRPG.

Now granted I'm speaking out of my ass with most of this, but before you criticise carmack for being too harsh with some decisions, you have to remember some of the games that do try and break genre boundaries flop miserably. System Shock 2 is a murky cult classic. Battlezone is the forgotten RTS, Giants is the lost adventure game. Sacrifice is permanently missing in action from the Fantasy RTS/RPG roster and Hostile Waters drowned in it's ambitions.

All of those games are fantastic, yet never gained a wide enough audience to be considered marketable, now it's all well and good to whine that most games these days are carbon copy clones of each other, but it's partly our fault given the games that tried to break the boundaries we whine about were ignored. Doom/Quake 2/Half-life/Unreal/UT are all great games but none did anything particulary ground breaking. Hell, UT2003 tried to add a little bit of variation to the standard fare in UT and got shot down as garbage.

2003 was a great game but all the fanatics couldn't accept a little bit of difference to "Their" masterpiece which was never theirs to own in the first place. They just played the game. It's the same here too you know. Poor Doom3 gets bagged to hell and back on this forum because it's not doom.

Trinity got canned for the same reason, it was too risky. Yet Quake 3 gained a fuckton of supporters because it was a good game but equally as many detractors because it was "more of the same". It's not and the engine is insanely powerful, still today because developers got their hands on it and turned it into something else... and the cycle repeats, Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy were brilliant games but they were still more of the same, good looking Dark Forces 2 clones with new plots. RCTW spawned the World War 2 genre which is now being haunted by COD and COD2 (Dear god guys move the fuck on.)

Dear lord I've created an essay length monster. Pfft, long story becomes even longer. Don't criticise the developers for making more of the same and don't accuse those same developers of making bad decisions 10 years after the fact when you don't have all of the facts. It may seem to you like an obvious statement, but looking back always reveals things you should of done before but didn't. Numbermind made a good post, but it's working on if's and maybes and what ifs and if only's.

John Romero may be a creative bloke but he just didn't have the right stuff to be a manager. He also crammed far too much stuff into daikatana and it sunk from the weight. He hasn't produced anything remotely decent since Doom, with the exception of Hyper Space Delivery boy and that might have well as been a top down keen game.

If you wanna go further into the ex-id staff escapades, lets go watch American Mc'gees Alice. Brilliant game, atmospheric well written and just all over flawlessly executed. What's he done since? He's tried to do the same to Wizard of OZ which got shot down before leaving the concept stages, he's formed and left about 3 companies. He's now put his name on a dodgy grand theft auto game with robots. The demo was fun, atleast for those that played it. It got pulled offline a week after the release and fell off the radar. The game got released a few months ago and is lurking in the budget bin.

Tom Hall joined 3DRealms to recreate the doom bible as Rise Of The Triad a brilliant game that also was loaded far too complex and was using the wolf3D engine in the era of Quake. He since tried the Quake 2 engined Anachronox. Fully fledged RPG using Quake 2 graphics in the Quake 3 era. Looked cool, played well but some odd design choices let it down.

So folks, where is ID? Still standing. Still the top of the FPS ocean with Valve. You criticise the games for being either too simple or too engine based, yet the games are actually decent games, they may not have the features of a swiss army knife, but they get the basics right, Even if you don't think so. They have several partners in Raven/Nerve/Grey Matter/Splash Damage taking care of key franchises. Quake 4 under ravens competent control and Splash Damage are looking to pick a fight with DICE's classic battlefield series with Enemy Territory 2. Both Nerve and Grey Matter have projects under top secret wraps with close supervision by ID.

You may not like ID's games or business practices, but they are still on top. Cope.

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LorD BaZTArD said:

Tom Hall joined 3DRealms to recreate the doom bible as Rise Of The Triad a brilliant game that also was loaded far too complex and was using the wolf3D engine in the era of Quake.


err Quake wasn't out in 1994 was it

Also you didin't mention how Quake2 bastardized the series basically putting id in a "ooh high tech futuer!" only theme direction ruining what id was all about.

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ROTT was 1995 wasn't it? Maybe that was the console port actually, but the point was that ROTT was a brilliant game that just came at the wrong time. I liked ROTT. It was a fun game.

Actually I was probably thinking of Duke Nukem, even though that was a sprite game like doom. Duke was something impressive at that point in time. As for Quake 2? I like Quake 2 and it's my favourite quake of all three. Hence why I'm positively buzzing for ET2 and Quake 4.

Personally though, Quake was honestly the only game that was gothic horror/cthulu mythos anyway.

Keen was Sci-Fi/Adventure/Humour/Cute
Wolfenstein was Alt-history WW2.
Doom was Sci-Fi/horror
Quake was Pure Horror/Steam Punk (There was technology, but it felt and looked strangely crude)
Quake 2 was pure Sci-Fi/War
Quake 3 was Cyber-Punk/Action
Doom 3 was Sci-Fi/Horror

Sorry but Quake was the one off of the ID games not the other way around. Doom was set on the moons of mars in the far future, the trip into hell wasn't really darkish or nightmarish like quake but rather more like an actual location with temples of flesh/lakes of lava and canyons of rock and stone corrupted by evil. If I was to imagine the Doom hell, it would be another planet on the other side of the galaxy, now as I say that I don't mean to say it made it any less of a hell but a different kind of hell, a tangible one. Doom3 kinda did the same thing. I mean when you look out into the sky of hell you saw asteroids in a starry sky of malevolent red. Felt like Xen without the irritating parts of Xen. Hell felt like a tangible place where everything we knew as right was wrong, with huge rock/flesh caverns ruined temples and dungeons of pain. To me that suited the doom hell to a tee. Seeing hell like that was awesome.

Quake felt like a twisted nightmare for our poor hero the quake guy. No temples of flesh, just absurdly alien buildings built of a logic dissimilar to ours. Murky water, purple buildings, tapestries of glass and stone adorning walls in architecture that made no fucking sense. The dimensions of Quake were areas that would of made Escher proud, piers over sunken citys, temples overgrown with weeds and churches that felt like twisted mazes adorned with propoganda both indecipherable and menacing. Trent's work on the soundtrack absolutely did fantastic work conveying a sense of deepening madness and whispering voices that seemed to taunt you as things got weirder.

Both were great games. Both were worlds apart in design and appearance and saying both games were gothic due to the fact you were not on human territory during both games just doesn't wash with me. ID excels at imposing worlds that feel unnatural, but they also happen to use a lot of science fiction environments.

Damn, a simple statement and I write another essay in response. Christ I'm bored.

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Your game is only as good as the technology that can run it, or cant run it- is it? i remember reading a statement carmack made back in the early 3dfx era stating that the "problem today is that 3d accelerated hardware is too powerfull" or was it to much of an "intimidation" for his ego? having to program to keep up with hardware technology before someone else shows up your work? or to have hardware technology run after you? i think carmack has tried a little too hard to distance himself from harware advances thru his programing ability. designed for the "long run" engine? so it runs like crap on todays hardware is bs. thats his ego. the days of doom/doom2 tech are long gone. the game was grounbreaking for its time. doom3 is not. the same does not apply today to equal the same methodolgy used in his over bloated game developments for "tommorow" a lot of gamers would be happy just to have the game run smooth on todays (and pre-gen) hardware so they can have fun and enjoy the experience "today". per pixel shading? honestly on most common hardware the game looked like crap. why do we have to wait 3 years for the (average gamer) hardware to run the game as promised and look fantastic? oh yeah i forgot about the game play, or should i say "tech demo" play. it'll run smoother all right by then, and look fantstic as promised, but it wont be any funner. and it will be three years later and an entire gaming generatrion will be lost to "quakewars" rinse and reapeat. (just a little "rantish" i know -sorry)

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Regen said:

rant

Agreed. I have read several remarks from Carmack that people expect him to come up with shooters. And that they need the money. I guess that if you do something just for the money it becomes (boring) work. I think most fans would like to see some more sense for adventure from carmack. And have id develop something against the mainstream. For crying out loud, they are privately owned by themselves! The can pretty much do as they like. Unlike the corporate owned development houses.

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Hah!

It's a damn useful word; more people should know it.

Regen said;
"tech demo"

That's exactly the word I had in my mind the whole time, I just didn't have room to put it anywhere.

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Linguica said:

The word "pleonastic" has been used exactly twice on the DW forums and both times by you

I think you just used it too (though, to be accurate, you only mentioned it).

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Numbermind said:
Surely, someone who has a penchant for removing the unnecessary from his life could realize that he can have everything he wants just being an independent licenser. Surely, he should have seen his 3rd and 4th Ferrari-- bought with the money coming in from all the licensing deals Romero was hooking up during his "playtime"-- as superfluous. You have to wonder why he's sitting around at id when all he really wants to have is a fast car and a dark room with a computer in it. Licensing can and will give him that.

John Carmack seems like a lead guirtarist that takes care of most of the composition, but doesn't have a developers eye, in the sense where you put the game together as a finished product. But naturally, when the finishing work comes he'll be there as a technical advisor so that the groudwork he laid won't be lost in the overall product. That does tend to make the games more conservative, but also much more solid. It (id back then) worked very well in respect to DOOM, in my opinion... too well, or else I'd be playing more games.

It's time to realize that with all the pleonastic intellectualizing and justification of moneywise decisions, we are all just blubbering children who want things our way. We want to gather enough money together so we can have our own little trail of Scatterlings who hang on our every word and carry out our every demand. We want things we don't need. And we're ready to pack our bags and get the fuck out when that doesn't happen. You'll never hear Carmack or Romero say that out loud, though. Nevertheless, the story at id was nothing but a result of that.

You aren't saying anything special... these two guys have been called "rock stars of the gaming industry" for years now. And that saying is similar to what you're implying, yet perhaps somewhat more accurate.

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LorD BaZTArD said:

Of course... having said that Quake 3 was at one point going to be called trinity and have a plot...ah well.


Minor factual fallacy. The Quake III engine was known as Trinity. Never the game.

EDIT: Was Trinity also a code name for Quake III before the official announcement (you know... Whistler [Windows XP])? Or was it a full-out game and for some weird reason they decided to turn it into a deathmatch game?

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"Trinity" was just as a code name for "the next thing" Id was working on. Guess they needed a tag for their hourly declarations, just like I do :)

Anyway, to put it simple: John Carmack is a codemonger. Period. He makes solid, consistent game engines. Arguably, they don't come better. But he is not a game designer. He should not be involved in the game design at all. Example: if game designers want a crouch key, they get a crouch key and not have the codemonger flatly refuse them because "it's not needed". You can refuse because of time contraints, the request being unfeasible, etc etc but not because "it's not needed".

So you end up with a great engine, and at best a moderately OK game that misses that little "pazzang!" in all the important areas. In worst case scenario's you'll end up with a engine demo instead of a game. In both cases we have to patiently wait until a third party licences the engine to make a truely nice game with id's engine.

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Does anybody know what happened to American Mcgee? He went to Rouge eh? Does this have anything to do with these opinions?

Anyway, lets hope quake 4 is what DooM3 tried to be (or meant to be, whatever). Carmack has made the base, so the company developing it (forget which one, might be Raven of my head) can implement all of their fesh ideas for the quake world.

As for me, I loved quake 2. Seemed like hexen and quake joined together without any frustrating bits. And in full 3d that doesn't burn my eyes even today. I can't wait till I turn into strogg in Q4.

One of the best things Carmack does IMO is he releases the source for his games. DooM 1 and 2 wouldn't be around today if it wasn't for that move. Quake 1 looks as good as DooM3 thanks to tenebrae which features per-pixel shadows and bump mapping.

To be honest, I, the consumer, don't give a rats ass about the affairs with the company itself, as long as they manage to create amazing engines and games on top of them.

I loved DooM3. But it does seem a bit rushed near the end. IMO, hell was pulled off rather well, but my version of hell is massive cliffs with lava flowing down into a massive pit, with monstrous beasts flying over head. But really, it would be impossible to have a perfect hell (as funny as it sounds). Everybody has a different view on hell. Mayby I should make my hell in doom2 one day...

In both cases we have to patiently wait until a third party licences the engine to make a truely nice game with id's engine.


Quake 4 hopefully should be this game.

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He's currently behind the scenes trying to make his next big thing. I think he's trying to keep the alice movie alive (although as I said before, the recent director change/cast change doesn't look like a good idea) and he's been putting out some interesting but largely forgettable budget games here and there. As far as I know as well is that rogue went out of business shortly after alice came out, because it was the company that made Alice. Which company he's with now or running now is another question.

[Update - While writing post ;)]

I was looking up any info related to McGee and it seems that EA now own the rights to any and all alice related content. It seems that when McGee left Rogue EA proceeded to tear them asunder and take all properties it could use. (Not surprising about EA really, but this info about the movie is interesting)

American MgCee currently has two companies, Carbon 6 and another company called Mauritania Import/Export (Odd name). Carbon6 is still alive to fund his other game OZ (which I thought was well and dead. Sadly not) and Mauritania is for his work in adapting films and games into viable long term properties. Scrapland was published with this company and it seems he's aquired the rights to a George Romero game based on his infamous movie series and another game called "Bad Day in LA" (pfft... that title sounds bad by itself)

To expand on my statement on the alice movie earlier in this post, It now seems that universal now own the rights to Alice. I'm basing this information on a blurb found on the Mauritania website. I'm not sure if Universal own the rights outright or if they've partnered with EA. (I don't think it's likely, I seem to recall Universal have their own game branch, not sure what it's called. Possibly VUGames, but likely not)

McGee's been busy these few years by the looks of it, trying to get back on the radar with multiple properties. He also has a personal site as well and it's fairly regular in updates, mostly about Bad Day in LA but he's also obviously watching the fate of the alice movie with keen eyes. He might actually still have a say in it's creation. (but I honestly doubt it)

Christ, what is it with me and epic posts in this thread?

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Mordeth said:

Anyway, to put it simple: John Carmack is a codemonger...we have to patiently wait until a third party licences the engine to make a truely nice game with id's engine.


I agree entirely with that whole post. I especially liked the example of the crouch key to illustrate the point.

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Mordeth said:
Anyway, to put it simple: John Carmack is a codemonger. Period. He makes solid, consistent game engines. Arguably, they don't come better. But he is not a game designer. He should not be involved in the game design at all.

There were two possible DOOM 3s; a very simple one, just a basic 1st person shooter with an enhanced (or state of the art) environment, or a more "designer" oriented product. Due to different pressures they produced something in between. I think the first option would have been best, but in many ways the "interaction" won over the action. Game design is quite time consuming and I'd agree when he sets limits to it, especially in this kind of game that even the hardware industry has an eye on.

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I have to agree with the part about genre-breaking games sinking like a stone. I've seen plenty of games pass right under the radar cause they aren't simple/similar enough to existing games. Evolution with games is always incremental .. just look how long it took for WASD/Mouse to become the standard for FPS games.

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This is an excellent thread. I agree with the assertion that the more input Carmack has on the design of an id game - the poorer the game becomes.

I think one of the most obvious indicators of this is in Quake. You have this incredible engine being shown off, but the actual gameplay (aside from freelook and jumping) was actually more restrictive than Doom. I remember reading it was Carmack who fought to remove the "use" key from Quake because he thought "it wasn't necessary". As a result, the Quake environment felt less interactive and more autonomous.

My opinion is that without John Romero and Tom Hall around to temper Carmack's input - id will never be more than a producer of engines, releasing impressive but only adequate games.

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Right. I've come to recognize the dichotomy in the artist-programmer dynamic. Designers are always subject to the limitations programmers set upon themselves. A programmer is more quick to tell you that a feature is impossible or a waste of time. A programmer is less inclined to adapt his work around a non-technical concept. A programmer (Carmack excluded) is less inclined to pursue a new avenue of technology to handle a problem-- unless someone has already accomplished and documented it, or he's being paid to do just that.

Why? I'm not sure. A long time ago, I assumed that someone with such control over the inner workings of computers would be excited, no, compelled to extend the capability of rendering engines. But time and time again, I'm proven wrong.

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I disagree on that, the way I see it to explore in doom you basically hit use on any wall to reveal a secret or a new path where as without the use key you had to actually look around the environment for hints and clues as to opening a new area. This way instead of "hey, new area *Use* woo...I can open a 10 foot thick cave wall just like a metallic door. Fantastic" you had "hmm, this looks out of place...why? *look around* Hey that switch seems significant so how does it activate *boom* can't shoot it, there has to be a way to it somehow *move to next room* Hey what was that going up into the ceiling? *click* A pressure plate and the platform lowers. Nice *up above the previous area with switch and hidden wall visible, but switch is blocked by a blue door* So that's why that key looked out of place, it was a hint. *Door unlocks* Hit switch *hidden wall sinks to reveal steps down* "whirring sounds of mechanical things moving into place* *Jump down and move into new area to reveal a nice cache of goodies*

The fact that there was more than one way to activate a switch/panel and actually looking around for other clues led to IMO a far move active environment and satisfaction that exploration paid off. Maybe it was just me but getting rid of the wonder button and actually manipulating the environment for gain worked better.

A long time ago, I assumed that someone with such control over the inner workings of computers would be excited, no, compelled to extend the capability of rendering engines. But time and time again, I'm proven wrong

I'd more attribute that to an optimistic imagination than any fault of designers/programmers. These people have deadlines to meet and certain things to be set in stone before fancy things can be done. Don't use ID/Epic/Valve as a milestone for this as these guys are big enough to have enough respect/freedom to do what they want and not be pressured to have a demo by this date or suchlike.

Also consider that it's all well and good to keep adding and adding cool shit to an engine but you've also got the phantom bug lurking in the background and a new feature that seems cool could collide with something deep within the engine to reduce it from stable to crash ridden and ugly. You have to stop at a certain point and lock it down otherwise you'll never stop and things will spiral out of control, take 3DRealms as a rather cliched example. Remedy as another. 3Drealms just kept adding and changing things because it was cool rather than actually being able to do it and thats why they jumped ship from engine to engine and which is why they've been missing from action for years. Prey was a blatant distraction from the fact that duke is still MIA. Prey was dead, it had been for over 4 years and all of a sudden it rocks up at E3 looking badass? hmm.

Take Remedy as well, they suffered from the same fate but eventually got Max Payne done. Anyone remember the screenshots from when the game used the Quake engine? Hoo-boy they made quite a jump in detail from first to final. Why? They realised they had to do it themselves and start from scratch with a custom engine. They did that and released max payne to critical success. Max Payne is now a major franchise and Alan Wake an up and coming one (and at that, Alan Wake looks fucking AMAZING). In the time that Remedy and other companies have produced hit after hit (and I'm only going to be specific to the groups under the Take Two banner!!(figure it out yourselves :P)) and 3D realms have done nothing. They farmed all the console spin offs of duke to other companies and gave manhattan project to Arush who went broke a year later.

It's all well and good to push limits but you have to take bite sized chunks and the more you learn over a gradual time the better you'll get. Criticize ID all you want but they make basic games that look awesome and are all fun. (This is my opinion of course, but the sheer fact that each and every ID game still has a large active community (even wolf3D) is a testament to this)

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