I just finished "Masters of Doom" a couple of days ago, and I've been on a sort of Doom/Quake/id/Carmack/Romero information frenzy ever since. It is beginning to consume almost too much of my time but very fulfilling since I was a huge Doom fan back when it came out (I created many levels and mods) and I also really liked the early Quake games.
So in the past weeks I read up on all the early id guys, and what became of them after they were fired or left, I did quite some (probably too much) reading on the mess that was Daikatana and how it came to be. I actually find this really interesting, to learn how a project backed with so many employees and so much money can fail so badly, there're probably lessons to learn here (I've even watched somebody play through Daikatana on Youtube).
While being on my search, I've found a lot of interesting or not so interesting things. So if you want to spend some time, here's an unordered list of trivia that I stumbled upon:
- Romero Himself on Daikatana, including a GB port of the game that actually got good reviews (never made it to the US though) http://rome.ro/games_daikatana.htm
- If you read Masters of Doom, you'll remember that it all started at Softdisk, when Carmack and Hall created "Dangerous Dave in Copyright Infringement", a Super Mario Bros copy. Romero uploaded the original game including their level editor, you can find it here: http://planetromero.com/games/dangerous-dave-in-copyright-in...
Sadly, the original Doom editor, DoomEd was never released. I read that it wasn't particularly good (compared to what is available nowadays) but since it was written in NeXTSTEP, I'd love to port it current OSX (or at least give it a go).
Just finished Masters of Doom on the plane Sunday. Fantastic read. I highly recommend it to all software folks, even if you're not a gamer. Tons of a highly relevant stories and accounts in there.
I agree. I devoured it in two afternoons and found it quite motivational in terms of a business book.
Here, there were a handful of programmers, experimenting with different pricing models (shareware vs. retail), dictating their terms to publishers, starting ethical and legal discussions (Columbine Highschool shooting related to violent computer games? Export laws of software, especially violent computer games to Germany), helping Microsoft to establish Windows as a gaming platform (by making Doom a Direct X game) and so on.
They not only made games, they established a genre and nobody had a clue what the future would look like.
Slight nitpick, but Doom was a DOS game and it's DirectX port (Doom95) was written by Microsoft, not ID Software.
In fact the developer a MS who wrote of Doom95 is another famous name in the world of gaming; Gabe Newell (who has obviously since left Microsoft).
The reason I nitpick is because ID Software have always been pro-OpenGL rather than favouring Dx3D. What's more, most of their earlier games (I've not played anything since QIII) have been ported to other platforms by ID Software themselves and often not even developed on Windows PCs to begin with. So I think Gabe really deserves the credit (or criticism hehe) for kick starting the Windows/DirectX culture we see now.
Which is ironic as Gabe is now -in my opinion at least- the biggest threat Microsoft faces for the future of Windows games. But that's another topic entirely :)
Very cool links, thanks. I have been on a similar journey as I also finished reading "Masters of Doom" last week.
Also interestingly, John Romero made a brief appearance at the Homebrew Computer Club Reunion last month (which I attended).
I would be very interested in hearing about your ideas for porting DoomEd to OS X. My contact is in my profile. I played Doom and Quake casually back in the day and followed the Daitkatana saga in the game magazines, but never got a chance to play seriously or mess around with the mods (I had a really crappy computer).
It is strange that Ravenwood Fair used Domovoi as one of monsters. The should use Leshy instead. Domovoi belongs to home, whereas Leshy belongs to forrest.
Talking about other ID software employees who've gone on to do other things, I was always rather fond of American McGee's Alice. I haven't played the sequel though.
Sadly nothing else with his name attached (Grimm, the Alice sequel, Scrapland, Bad Day LA, etc) has been nearly as good. Not that they are bad (with the exception of Bad Day LA which is terrible), but they are just sorta okayish, whereas the original Alice was fantastic.
My memory of Alice was that it was more of an excuse for them to show off interesting visuals and didn't actually have much in the way of game play mechanics to it, but I never got very far. Maybe I should look it up again and see.
It wasn't the most cerebral of games, I'll grant you that. But it did set a good atmosphere with the visuals (which you'd described) and audio. It had a weird creepy charm to it.
I tend to get bored of games quite quickly but Alice was one of the few which kept me engaged to the end.
So in the past weeks I read up on all the early id guys, and what became of them after they were fired or left, I did quite some (probably too much) reading on the mess that was Daikatana and how it came to be. I actually find this really interesting, to learn how a project backed with so many employees and so much money can fail so badly, there're probably lessons to learn here (I've even watched somebody play through Daikatana on Youtube).
While being on my search, I've found a lot of interesting or not so interesting things. So if you want to spend some time, here's an unordered list of trivia that I stumbled upon:
- Somebody playing through Daikatana: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nm3b0NJzhnQ
- Romero Himself on Daikatana, including a GB port of the game that actually got good reviews (never made it to the US though) http://rome.ro/games_daikatana.htm
- Awful public clash between John Romero and Mike Wilson (former Ion Storm Marketing guy): http://www.kotaku.com.au/2008/01/gamecock_head_tears_into_jo...
- Ravenwood Fair is a Facebook game that Romero did a couple of years ago (so that's what he's been up to recently): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravenwood_Fair
- If you read Masters of Doom, you'll remember that it all started at Softdisk, when Carmack and Hall created "Dangerous Dave in Copyright Infringement", a Super Mario Bros copy. Romero uploaded the original game including their level editor, you can find it here: http://planetromero.com/games/dangerous-dave-in-copyright-in...
- Unreleased Doom Midi Music Files: http://planetromero.com/2007/06/doom-archaeology
Sadly, the original Doom editor, DoomEd was never released. I read that it wasn't particularly good (compared to what is available nowadays) but since it was written in NeXTSTEP, I'd love to port it current OSX (or at least give it a go).