The WIRED interview with John Carmack
a snippet:
At the stroke of midnight on December 10, 1993, an executive at id Software uploaded a file to an FTP site on the University of Washington’s network. The filename was doom1_0.zip. Thus did one of the great revolutions in the world of gaming begin—not with a spectacular launch party and a multimillion-dollar ad campaign, but with a 2MB file transfer.
From there, gamers picked up the ball; they downloaded the shareware file and immediately uploaded it to other FTP sites and local bulletin board systems. Download by download, Doom started to make its way around the world. It would become nothing short of a cultural phenomenon, popularizing the first-person shooter genre of games and shifting the predominant aesthetic of games from “Saturday morning cartoon” to “Saturday night horror double feature.”
Id’s previous games like Commander Keen and Wolfenstein 3-D were technological marvels that were starting to make personal computers a viable alternative to game consoles for fast-paced action games. At the heart of these innovative games was the technology created by id’s programming genius and co-founder John Carmack, who in the years since Doom‘s release has continued to create increasingly stunning graphic engines for id’s games. On November 22 of this year, Carmack left id to become CTO of Oculus VR, a company developing a head-mounted gaming virtual reality display.
To commemorate the 20th anniversary of his most momentous game release, WIRED spoke with Carmack about the creation of Doom, the game development world in 1993, and his thoughts on the future of the series. (Carmack’s responses have been edited for space and clarity.)
id Software's Doom 4 is plagued with development troubles ever since it was announced that the game went into production in 2008. However, Kotaku reported that its development was trapped and the game suffered from mismanagement and its development was completely started form the scratch from 2011. So seeing John Carmack here have trouble defining, or figuring out what Doom is supposed to be, where its heading, a tad troubling if not honest and provokes discussion. I'm kind of liking John Romero's take on what he thinks Doom 4 should be like. The sort of innovation I would take on board is trying to make the game more non-linear, but still have a clear defined path ie one way to "finish" the map. Either way taking inspiration from the original doom and other thinking-outside-the-box FPS's should be a priority I think.
agreed
Yeah, that sounds like it would be good. In my opinion certain levels of Dishonored should be a good concept for that- big levels that rewarded you for exploring but still fairly linear. However, perhaps a better example is Bioshock Infinite.
John Carmack sadly left id Software officially and he become a CTO of a team called "Oculus".
Imagine how awesome it would be to play Doom with John Romero!
Thanks for these. :)
John Romero has always been a favorite of mine from Doom Series to Ion Storm! And while people knocked Diakianta it was the first game to have companions and the vids were great in camera direction. With the release of Thief 3, Ion Storm hit a stumbling block as it was their last released project, but still a good installment to the series. Hoping Romero returns to Doom! And the crazy level design in Quake 1... both titles need a reboot. Now that ID is with Zeni Max will we see a Huge open world concept with RPG elements?
I'm not understanding how you guys can say that John Romero is good. He has ideas but he has a lack of understanding how to get a game to stand out from the generic. Ion Storm is crap. Daikatana was generic. Quake 1 was I'm sorry to say boring. Quake 2 is where it's at. Romero did nothing to keep my interest. Carmack is a key part in Doom. I hope he still gives his 2 cents in the development of the game. Hate me if you want but Doom 4 needs Carmack all the way. He understands that great tech means better gameplay and innovation. And I'm not talking about graphics.
I agree with you on Doom 4, it was a generic station n zombie game that could have been made with FPS Creator. But it did spawn 2 expansion and BFC edition and movie staring The Rock. But Quake 1 was far from generic, take a look at the level design which has been repeated in a game since Daggerfall. And Quake 2 was very boring in the Cyborg green levels, which were all straight with small levels, the game did not find it's own until Quake 4! As for Diakanta everyone hates this game. But for Thief 3, it was a good installment to the series, not as good as The Dark Mod project. But John Romero has been given a bad rap for Diaktana and Ion Storm.
you mean Doom 3 XD