/vr/ - Retro Games

>>8565473
nah too much biopic bullshit. Doom: Scarydarkfast is better

why did carmack kill his cat

carmack is boomer. all he does now shitposts on twitter really dumb shit and does questionable decisions like working on ai that will kill us all in future

>>8565498
why did people in olden times kill their kids they couldn't feed?

>>8565498
why did people in olden times kill newborns they couldn't feed?

I really dislike the author's writing style. He's too pop-gamer-culture like. The way he opens chapters with describing gameplay in the first person is absolutely atrocious

>>8565578
if he wrote like an autistic gamer, no-one but autistic gamers wouldve bought the book

>>8565530
seeing how human leaders have fucked everything up, i wouldnt mind overlord AI taking over

>Id is a good example of how not run a company.
I think they're still doing pretty well lol. Also I don't really see how the licensing prevented them from doing more doom sequels for op. There's plenty of examples of companies who hold their shit hostage and that pretty much just kills their ips.

>>8565473
Ive had this on my dresser for months now. I should really get to it.

>>8565498
Computer logic, not human

>>8565473
It's an entertaining book, not gonna lie, but I feel like a lot of it is made up stories.
If you got a problem with "source: TRUST ME BRO" then don't read it.
And yes, all of the id guys were a bunch of autism cringe lords, but they made great games

>>8565473
>Then he a total idiot with Ion Storm. He blew threw over $10 million and failed to produce anything meaningful.
Deus Ex? Guess that wasnt Romero personally, but still, he was the one getting Spector on board

>>8565498
>>8565554
>>8566874
The fact that a cat can be seen lounging on top of his monitor in Quakecon footage from years afterwards suggest that the cat may not have been put down after all. Aside from no-kill shelters, the cat could have ended up with a relative or something like that.

This is discrepancy which one would have to ask some of the iD guys about to verify.

>>8565818
>I think they're still doing pretty well lol.
At the cost of rapidly hemorrhaging key talent. Carmack stuck because he had the most leverage with his brain and talent for programming, but lots of designers and mappers were just shoved out the door, often for not very good reasons.

Eventually he left too, and while the company itself is around, the old core team is basically gone. Of the OG staff, Kevin Cloud and Donna Jackson manage to remain today, with Donna's job being plain office logistics, and Kevin being an artist. No offense to Kevin, but he's not even half the artist Adrian Carmack is.
Tim 'Two-Face' Willits was around until pretty recently, but he's largely talentless, and was in fact the source of a lot of problems the company and original devs endured, his manlet ass should have been tossed out the window after Quake was done given the sheer damage he did during the development of later titles.

>>8565473
Some guy wrote an article at salon seething about this book for not mentioning LGS games lol.

>>8567682
There's a lot of complete losers out there in the world, yeah, people like game journos and icycalm.

Was an interesting book

Check out Hackers by Steven Levy. Part 3 is about Sierra.

Got the audio book to listen to while I work. It's really good, but it's read by Wil Wheaton. He reads it perfectly fine, and is nice to listen to, but he's massive faggot IRL and I don't like that.

How was early ID Software so based?

>>8565473
>Romero does in fact have programming skills but nothing on the level of Carmack
what is interesting is that Carmack has implied that Romero's talent matched his own, but that he surpassed Romero by continuing to work hard while Romero did not. Carmack is a legit genius and programming savant so maybe he was being polite, but it's still interesting to hear that from him. Romero is also brilliant though in seemingly different ways. If you listen to his podcast and interviews he has done, he has an incredible memory and can recall tiny details from decades back such that people are often impressed with how he can recall details pertaining to them that they themselves forgot.

A lot of people get into the dick measuring battle of which one was the better dev. The truth is that they needed each other to do their best work. Carmack was extremely autistically focused on the technical details, and Romero was more focused on the design and gameplay. During the time that they created their best and most innovative work, they were sharing an office, sitting right next to each other, working together as a single mind for dozens of hours per day.

When they split up, things changed. Carmack continued making quality games, but the improvements were technical and iterative in nature, there were no groundbreaking innovation like happened in the Doom days. Romero had some good concepts, but his efforts were sabotaged by his unrealistic ambitions. Carmack needed Romero to guide his technical talents toward innovate game design, and Romero needed Carmack to rein in his wild ambitions and keep him focused. That's my take on it, anyway.

>>8570443
>what is interesting is that Carmack has implied that Romero's talent matched his own, but that he surpassed Romero by continuing to work hard while Romero did not
What Carmack said is that when he first met Romero, he thought Romero was a much better programmer than him. Carmack is all about programming and just kept developing and learning more and more, to scientific levels.

Romero didn't develop all that much further as a programmer, but that's because he changed his course, he was more and more about the design of the game and gameplay, than just the engine side, just as you said. With Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake, his craft increasingly became that of level design (along with general gameplay design), and he genuinely became VERY good at this.
You can still see this with Sigil, there's nothing new about those levels, it's good old Doom, and nothing about the design is revolutionary, but the levels are all extremely competent and well made, the kind of maps you'd be proud to have in your own game.

Meanwhile, Carmack was never the strongest in the field of game design or level design. He did the token stuff in early games before Gamer's Edge, and it cut the mustard, but that was never what he specialized in, and it's a field he basically abandoned, aside from incidental suggestions or turning down suggestions by others because he thought it couldn't be done (he could be stubborn about things like this, but pushwalls in Wolfenstein 3D and teleporters in Doom were things he was convinced to add after initially rejecting).

They both had their talents in these fields, but they specialized in different directions, and I would say that this was very efficient because they could play at their personal strengths. So, you're right.
As for needing each other, potentially, but more than anything I think they would be well served by just about any counterpart.

>>8569814
Edgelord autists make the best games.

>>8569814
>Chinese throwing stars

>>8565473
>chaingunner
Why did they put that asshole on the cover instead of something people actually like?

I liked this book but hate that it got popular because of all the dweebs trying to play armchair psychologist and take sides over second or third-hand information. Who knew nerds were so into social gossip

>>8567542
>co-workers say he killed his cat
>some random anons opinion about a picture
carmack killed his cat

>>8572559
Carmack finally realized cat are for fags

>>8572559
>co-workers say he killed his cat
A book framing recalled accounts like these as a story with a narrative mentions Carmack taking the cat to a shelter or pound, the other guys assume the cat is being put down because nobody wants to adopt it.
Setting aside that no-kill shelters are still a thing, consider that there's errors in this book, there's parts disputed by people featured in it, parts not told in full, and there's unclear discrepancies such as these.

Looking at this interview from QuakeWorld in 1996, three years after this supposedly took place, you see this cat jump up at Carmack's side and him petting it. So from this, there's the following possibilities:
>1. Carmack tied up Mitzi in a sack and threw her in a river while cackling maniacally.
>2. Carmack took Mitzi to a shelter or vet and had her put down.
>3. Carmack did this because he wanted revenge for his leather couch.
>4. Carmack did this because Mitzi was old and incontinent, and realized it was only going to get worse from here.
>5. Carmack changed his mind and got Mitzi back, she was never put down back in Shreveport.
>6. Carmack had it done, but regretted it, or missed the company of a pet, and got another cat.
>7. Carmack actually sent Mitzi away to a relative.
>8. The story is recalled incorrectly, exaggerated, or fabricated, partially or in entirety.

So unless this can be clarified, I'll continue to regard this anecdote as disputed.
Rather than trusting the not necessarily perfect account of an author who wasn't there, I think a better source would be to ask guys like Tom Hall, John Romero (noted for having pretty good memory), Sandy Petersen (may or may not remember correctly), or even John Carmack himself, assuming this is a topic which he doesn't find too sensitive.
All these guys are on social media.

>>8565745

Or maybe the ghost of a cat? Maybe that's what Carmack was up to all those years ago. He saw so far ahead, and knew just what we would need...

>>8567460

Anachronox is worthwile too. It's kinda broken and unfinished and couldn't match Deus Ex as a game even if it it had been properly polished, but it's perfectly playable (given a bit of patching) and is very funny!