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What NEW questions would you ask John Romero?

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In a hypothetical interview with John Romero, what brand new questions would you ask him? I.e. avoid the usual questions.

Idea from this thread.

To start things off:

- If the original Daikatana could have had two episodes more, what time and place would they have been placed in?

...any good subjects from the forums we might put to him?

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I feel like all the important questions have been asked many times over. I keep coming up with questions that were either previously answered or too trivial or silly.

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"Aren't you tired of people bothering you about that thing you did over twenty years ago?"

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-Have you played Adventures of Square?

-What is your favorite Doom mod (besides Brutal Doom)

-Do you think the Doom engine has the potential to be used for indie projects?

-Will you ever make another Doom map/Episode/Project?

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- Do you have any unused stuff from Heretic and Hexen you'd like to share?

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-What Doom monster you think is the most formidable enemy?

-What is your favorite Doom monster?

-Of all levels you designed, what is the level that you would consider to be your best?

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* Which color soap do you use to wash your hands, that is if you wash your hands?

* Which type of gasoline do you put in your vehicle?

* Do you like oak trees?

* When looking out the window of a vehicle, do you keep your eyes straight or do you follow the scenery?

* What is the favorite sound that you have heard from a mocking bird, assuming you have heard one?

* Which type of grill (charcoal, gas, electric, etc.) do you prefer to cook on?

* Do you have any 20" box fans in your structure of residence?

* Have you ever attempted to plug in a USB recepticle incorrectly?

* When reading a book do you lick your fingers before turning the page or do you just turn the page?

* Do you sleep on your stomach, side, or your back?

* If you have to wear a belt, how many notches down from the end do you usually buckle into?

* When you go food shopping, do you use paper, paper and plastic, or just plastic?

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- How did you maintain such a lush set of hair ?

- Do you still own those round glasses you wore during the 1997 E3 where you did the Gamestar Promo ?

- Do you want to be more than one of "the" names behind Doom ?

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*cracks knuckles*

  • ​ Why were the missing enemy rotations removed from the game?
  • If it was for space reasons, why were they never re-added in a later patch or something?
  • What was your process for adding new line actions to the game? Was it ad hoc as you came across a situation where you wanted them, or did you ever draw up a list of a bunch of things you knew you wanted to put it?
  • What was the motivation behind adding fast doors in Doom 2?
  • What was with the scrapped blob monster that jumped out of walls or whatever? How far did its implementation get?
  • On that note, were there any other monster ideas that got thrown around but ended up being scrapped? Did any others get so far as to have artwork or code made for them?
  • What was the story behind the Lost Soul’s drastic redesign near the end of development?
  • Whose idea was it to remove “gamey” elements like one-ups, a points counter, etc, in the middle of development?
  • I’ve read that Sandy Petersen’s first ever Doom map was E3M6. Is this really true?
  • Where did the donut pillar action come from? Was it first inspired by E1M2 or E2M2?
  • In one of the early alphas, Tom Hall’s levels all had boundary markers drawn around the outside. Was there a specific reason for doing this? Was it important to keep the levels inside a defined space for some reason?
  • We know that before production began, Carmack experimented with voxels a bit. How far did that go?
  • Why was the rifle replaced with a pistol during development?
  • There’s a very specific and somewhat arbitrary subset of line actions that monsters can activate. What was the process behind deciding which ones were included?
  • Why a line special for scrolling walls in only one direction?
  • Was there ever any discussion about making the rules of armor more clear in the game? (I.e. green takes ⅓, blue takes ½, although most people never figured that out.)
  • Why was the max health limit changed from 199 to 200? Was it when you conceived of the megasphere for Doom 2?
  • Why wasn’t the armor max originally capped? Was it never really noticed, or not considered important?
  • Surely id noticed that the pitched sound effects were broken in later versions. Why was this not fixed? Did you just not want to deal with the sound code guy more than you had to?
  • On that note, was there a specific reason for adding support for 22050 hz sound effects? Was it just something the sound guy added in, or did you specifically request it?
  • Why did the Final Doom executable preserve player height when going through a teleporter? There must have been some reason why the code was changed like that. Was it left in by mistake?
  • You’ve said on previous occasions that the Doom monster AI runs at 10hz, which isn’t true, at least for the final version. Was that the case at one point during development?
  • You have also mentioned a timer running at 140hz, pushing sound to the sound card four times per tic. Was that a DMX thing, or what?
  • Did you seriously have a cell phone in 1994?
  • Who was responsible for cutting down the maps for Jaguar Doom?
  • Beyond that, why were the maps retextures to look more, Doom 2-esque? Mt. Erebus doesn’t even have a shred of FIREBLU in Jaguar Doom which is a travesty.
  • Who came up with the new monsters for Doom 2? Were any scrapped ideas from Doom 1, or were they all totally original?
  • So you were executive producer for Heretic during 1994. What did that entail, exactly? Were you on location in Madison a lot? I’ve never really read much about that arrangement.
  • How and why was the 20 Lost Soul limit added?

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Linguica said:

What was your process for adding new line actions to the game? Was it ad hoc as you came across a situation where you wanted them, or did you ever draw up a list of


I've often wondered abot just that.

- Who played, and who won, the first deathmatch ever played in Doom?

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Linguica definitely needs to interview Romero. That would be awesome. I'm tired of seeing other people ask him the exact same questions over and over again.

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RUSH said:

Linguica definitely needs to interview Romero. That would be awesome. I'm tired of seeing other people ask him the exact same questions over and over again.


Exactly this.

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RUSH said:

Linguica definitely needs to interview Romero. That would be awesome. I'm tired of seeing other people ask him the exact same questions over and over again.

Hey, now there's an idea...

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Managed to ask his wife a couple questions about Romero over that Irish gaming stream- the one where he gave his love to Doomworld.

...what was it? ...about his hair of course!

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- In version 0.4 of the alpha version, the map E1M10 is said to be credited to you, despite the speculation that it might be Tom Hall's E2M4. If so, was it a map that was axed out, or was it one of the maps in the final version?

- To me, you're very much the Father of Doom. Would you say that it's an honour to have such a name?

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RUSH said:

Linguica definitely needs to interview Romero. That would be awesome. I'm tired of seeing other people ask him the exact same questions over and over again.

Frankly, I'm not sure why this hasn't happened yet. He'd do an infinitely better job than what's been asked in all those other garbage interviews. 90-95% of his questions were very interesting to me.

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J.B.R said:

-What Doom monster you think is the most formidable enemy?

-What is your favorite Doom monster?

-Of all levels you designed, what is the level that you would consider to be your best?


This is an easy one anyone could guess
Revenant
Revenant
E4M2 rebuilt in Doom 2 with revenants replacing everything

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RUSH said:

Linguica definitely needs to interview Romero. That would be awesome. I'm tired of seeing other people ask him the exact same questions over and over again.


Seconded. Those were all very interesting questions.



To add:

*Were there any other themes/setting explored for the early Softdisk era games?
*Were any scrapped ideas from Catacombs 3D brought over into Doom?
*Were any concepts/enemies/etc... redesigned or re-purposed for Doom?
*Did Heretic draw any direct inspirations from C3D, or was imagined and written without the game in mind (Based on the personal theory that Heretic may be a kind of spiritual successor)?
*Where are the Dildos from the Doom II convention display (that supposedly resembled a monster, with the teeth being the dildos) that was mentioned in Masters of Doom, and can I have them?

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I was just thinking about that. I don't like it when a good consistent vision gets retconned because of whatever. Humanoid masterminds are more believable than monsters, no matter how kewl (and I can't even say the final Korax looks that good).

Eidolon seemed more like what you'd expect from a demon warlord, but he still didn't actually ride anything (insert an inappropriate joke here).

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Honestly I have like no memory of planning or writing any of the 5 Years of Doom stuff and most of it was just totally pulled out of my ass.

One of the few things I *DO* remember was the idea that Doom was already incredibly ancient to be approaching its fifth birthday, and that it would soon recede into the mists of time. WELP. Can you even imagine now, after its 22nd birthday, going back in time and being like "well it's five years old, it had a good run, soon everyone will forget about it forever"

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Maybe when Soundblock has a large stack of the best questions he'll poke Romero with a pointy Imp and see what happens. Linguica's question are some of the best so far and I would certainly like to see some of those answered. My issue with coming up with questions is I have no recollection of what all the olde question may be. ;)

* Are there any exceptions to the 'always changing floor height when there's a change of floor textures' rule?
* Is Dr Sleep still missing?
* If you could design a new Doom or Quake game today which would you choose to work on and what would it be like?

Ahh dammit, got to get the hell off the internets and grab some groceries before all the New Years Eve nuts get out there looking for last minute booze and fireworks. haha.

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