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Id Software

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Re: Id Software

#51

Post by pizza234 »

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #46
DEADBEEFC0FFEE wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious that you think it was a golden age.

Not GP, but I agree. The world of PC gaming was moving so fast in the 90s - sound cards, CD-ROM, "multimedia", the internet, 3D accelerators etc. (I appreciate that most of these technologies were invented earlier, but the 90s was when they really came of age and hit mass adoption). I grew up in that era and agree that it was a golden age, but of course I'm aware that nostalgia plays a big part in that. If you look a…

I think a strictly technological view of videogames is very restrictive.

For a variety of reasons, in the last decade (or in the last couple), videogames matured as a narrative medium, which is a radical difference from the 90s. One could argue that, from an whole - including artistic - perspective, 2010s are the golden era.

I don't think there is a golden age, though. There are still radical improvements to come in the next decade(s), and it will require a long time to be able to have a judgment of what characterized video games/developemnt in each era.

Re: Id Software

#53

Post by kchr »

bitexploder wrote: post #16
movedx wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also recommend the NoClip documentary on Id Software and on the back of that, virtually any interview with John Romeo -- the guy is awesome and so willing to share his thoughts, ideas, history, anything...

John Romero for anyone looking him up.

With that fabulous hair he sported, he will always be Romeo to me!

Re: Id Software

#54

Post by kchr »

ddtaylor wrote: post #52

Here is the famed "Fast Inverse Square Root" trick: https://github.com/id-Software/Quake-III-Arena/blob/dbe4ddb1... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_inverse_square_root

Thanks for lifting this up!

Re: Id Software

#55

Post by huffmsa »

DEADBEEFC0FFEE wrote: post #44
kar1181 wrote: post #41

We owe a lot to John Carmack in many ways - but I hope one of his enduring legacies will be the amount of programmers he inspired with both the games he helped make, and the code he made available. It helped many of us to get started somewhere. I never ended up going into games myself, but in no small part I owe my career to him. As well as the Doom book, his plan files are a fascinating time capsule to go back over,…

Curious that you think it was a golden age.

Games from that era are still fun and enjoyable to pick up and play.

I spin up OG Doom and have a rocking good time. Same goes for N64 games. They're still good.

The same cannot be said for games from a decade ago. No one has a passion for COD4.

Hence, the Golden Era title.

Re: Id Software

#56

Post by crummy »

huffmsa wrote: post #55
DEADBEEFC0FFEE wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious that you think it was a golden age.

Games from that era are still fun and enjoyable to pick up and play. I spin up OG Doom and have a rocking good time. Same goes for N64 games. They're still good. The same cannot be said for games from a decade ago. No one has a passion for COD4. Hence, the Golden Era title.

Doesn't CoD4 still have a pretty large following? I think a lot of people view it as the peak of the series.

Re: Id Software

#57

Post by kchr »

chrisparton1991 wrote: post #15

There are so many interesting tidbits tucked away in the code, things the devs had to consider that have never crossed my mind whilst playing. For instance, the idclev cheat handling in st_stuff.c has to check if the game is shareware and restrict level changes beyond a certain range.

I never quite grasped how that shareware check worked. Always thought the WAD file was what you bought, not the engine/executable itself?

Re: Id Software

#58

Post by wowtip »

kar1181 wrote: post #50
DEADBEEFC0FFEE wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious that you think it was a golden age.

As the comments below observe, I think the types and number of experiences built on the back of new (to mainstream audiences anyway) technology were transformative. In 92 the Amiga 1200 came out, a wonderful computer with great hardware but unfortunately it never made it big. Four years later in 1996 mass market PCs were coming out with Pentium processors, 3dfx accelerators, high resolution bitmap displays, internet…

I wonder sometimes, what could be built using today's tech if it was focused like Amigas back in the day with a single hardware spec and a dedicated OS just for that platform. Without regard to backwards compability in OS, like BeOS at the time.

What would a revolutionary Amiga 1000 look like in 2018? With modern hardware and latest OS/system ideas.

Gaming consoles could be considered examples of this, but they are kind of single purpose.

Maybe a topic for an AskHN, for a rainy day.

Re: Id Software

#59

Post by kchr »

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #45
vertexFarm wrote: post #2

Id's move back in the day to open their software enough to allow a modding community was an early stroke of genius. I still play quake mods from time to time. It's amazing how much longevity they got out of those games, let alone the engines. Modding quake was one of my first great bursts of curiosity and creativity. I really remember those days fondly.

As an example, Half-Life and Counterstrike started life as Quake mods!

For anyone interested further, the CS precursor was called "Urban Warfare" and was a Quake 2 mod.

Re: Id Software

#60

Post by megaman22 »

ovao wrote: post #7
jameskegel wrote: post #6

This is a gift, just to have. Thanks for posting it. I have very fond memories of playing Wolf3d years ago on DOS. It will be fun to read through the source of the classics.

If you're looking for a high-level overview of some of id's source code releases, check out Fabien Sanglard's guides[0]. He's also written a book that goes into greater detail about the Wolf 3D engine. [0]: http://fabiensanglard.net

His Wolf3D book is gorgeous (full-color, lots of great screenshots and illustrations). Well worth the price. Plus a lot of great info about the vagaries of sound, graphics, and memory architectures on the machines of the era.
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