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Id Software

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Re: Id Software

#101

Post by snarfy »

superflyguy wrote: post #92
cubano wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always dislike it when the Amiga 1200 is mentioned as a forerunner to modern computing and the wonderful, albeit buggy, Atari 1040ST, released in 1985 , is totally forgotten about Using the Motorola 680000 with 32 bit internal/16 bit external buses and color bit-mapped graphics, my ST, hardware wise, totally blew away all other PCs from a technical POV and it just annoys me when the Amiga gets all this love the and…

The ST was not as good as the Amiga, that's why. The only advantage it had over the Amiga was the slightly higher CPU speed, because the Amiga's was reduced to keep in sync with the hardware it had. The hardware being what it needed to trounce the ST. You only have to look at the range and quality of games for each to see what I mean. ST ports always had that muddy look to them.

Ah, the nostalgia. I haven't heard a good AtariST vs Amiga fight in years.

Re: Id Software

#102

Post by cmyr »

robohoe wrote: post #84
a008t wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Video games have gone Hollywood. Largely because of improvements in graphics, game budgets have gone way up and studios are afraid to take risks. Hence you get mostly sequels, online cash cows, linear on-rails shooters/cinematic experiences that are easy to sell. Content is expensive to produce so studios are afraid of "wasting" it. Yet I was still discovering hidden things in the original Deus Ex 10 years after I fi…

Maria 1 was the Grand Theft Auto of 2002/03.

Wasn't Vice City was the Grand Theft Auto of 2002/03? ;)

More to the original point, the first GTA remains along with Age of Empires one of my all-time favourite games. It's easy to forget in light of the franchise it became what a novel and crazy little game that was.

Re: Id Software

#103

Post by [deleted] »

dfxm12 wrote: post #97
barrkel wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a golden age for the first person immersive simulation game. Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, Thief, System Shock II, Half-Life, Deus Ex - there was a period of classics with large improvements and innovation from one game to the next, where game design space was explored just as the technology to render it became available. First person immersive sims are generally best played on the PC. When consoles that were a…

first person immersive simulation game FPS stands for First Person Shooter . The games you're listing don't simulate much, even if some of those games have RPG elements.

[deleted]

Re: Id Software

#104

Post by dmschulman »

CaliforniaKarl wrote: post #10

For some of the history of that time, I suggest checking out "Masters of Doom : how two guys created an empire and transformed pop culture", by David Kushner. The book is 15 years old (!!!) at this point, but I think it's still a compelling read.

Never read Masters of Doom but this excerpt about id Software in John Craddock's new book Rocket Jump was a fascinating long read:

http://www.shacknews.com/article/101156/rocket-jump-quake-an...

I grew up in this era so I'm certainly enamored by the nostalgia trip but I have a lot of respect for the team at id, it's fascinating to read about all of the mundane aspects of ray tracing and compressing color palettes enough such that a game like Doom or Quake could actually work. id probably did more than any other company at the time to make programming seem like an alternative subculture instead of a science and to make games these dark and moody experiences that were a blast to play (especially with friends via LAN).

Re: Id Software

#105

Post by newest_user_ »

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,…

Is there documentation on the structure of the contents? Why is it a list of * followed by + and then a list with no prefix? See https://github.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-archive/blob/mast... as an example.

Re: Id Software

#106

Post by Bluecobra »

a008t wrote: post #80
pizza234 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Video games have gone Hollywood. Largely because of improvements in graphics, game budgets have gone way up and studios are afraid to take risks. Hence you get mostly sequels, online cash cows, linear on-rails shooters/cinematic experiences that are easy to sell. Content is expensive to produce so studios are afraid of "wasting" it. Yet I was still discovering hidden things in the original Deus Ex 10 years after I fi…

I agree, luckily we have games from indie developers to fill in that gap. The tradeoff is that you have to sacrifice good graphics and a perpetual alpha/beta development cycle for gameplay. There’s been so many great indie games, such as Minecraft, Rimworld, Stardew Valley, Terraria, Prison Architect, Rust, Undertale, etc. In the good ‘ol PC gdays I used to buy 10-15 AAA titles per year on release day. Now I only buy a couple only on a heavily discounted Steam sale.

The last AAA game I bought on release day was SimCity (5). That was a huge disappointment for me and I wouldn’t do that again. I should have knew better.

Re: Id Software

#107

Post by badminton1 »

newest_user_ wrote: post #105
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,…

Is there documentation on the structure of the contents? Why is it a list of * followed by + and then a list with no prefix? See https://github.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-archive/blob/mast... as an example.

Does not seem to have a particular structure, but it's a .plan file, which is a file that is displayed when a user is "fingered" (see finger protocol)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_protocol

Re: Id Software

#108

Post by LambdaComplex »

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!

> Half-Life

I think you mean Team Fortress? Although Half-Life does use a modified Quake engine, it was a commercial game that used none of the assets of Quake, so I don't think calling it a "mod" is really appropriate.

(Side note: my username is a Half-Life reference)

Re: Id Software

#109

Post by barrkel »

alias_neo wrote: post #91
barrkel wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern video games too often have far more linear gameplay, because AAA budgets means assets get wasted if they don't get consumed. See the entire CoD series, for example - tedious to play if you're used to a different kind of game. Many people want a movie-like experience from their game, but that isn't what I played games for. It was more about emergent situations, rather than scripted. That was also what made game…

Can I ask, what does "assets get wasted if they don't get comsumed" mean? Also, I agree with emergent situations, as a gamer, I'd call myself an "explorer" I'll check every nook and cranny, often, with modern games, I end up breaking things because I go places I shouldn't yet, instead of following what the developer expected of me. As for replayability, I agree that it has mostly been lost, but, I don't feel it's a b…

Fallout 3 and Oblivion were two of my favs, New Vegas and Skyrim sit in their plastic wrap since day one, as I haven't found the time to commit to them. Fallout 4 got some 60 hours of my time compared to Fallout 3 in which I spend over 400 hours.

None of these games are scripted in the same way CoD is. RPGs certainly have a lot of scripting, but they're at the other end of the spectrum - broad scripting rather than deep scripting. CoD has scripted experiences, where almost every detail of a scene is pre-planned, so that if you have two players in two different rooms, and they meet up later to talk about the game, they'll have had similar experiences and the same sequence of events.

It's the deep scripting, for complex cinematic scenes, that the game directors are afraid of players missing. These are what the players are buying. If the players miss out, they get a substandard play experience.

Re: Id Software

#110

Post by barrkel »

dfxm12 wrote: post #97
barrkel wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a golden age for the first person immersive simulation game. Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, Thief, System Shock II, Half-Life, Deus Ex - there was a period of classics with large improvements and innovation from one game to the next, where game design space was explored just as the technology to render it became available. First person immersive sims are generally best played on the PC. When consoles that were a…

first person immersive simulation game FPS stands for First Person Shooter . The games you're listing don't simulate much, even if some of those games have RPG elements.

I know what FPS stands for, but Thief most definitely isn't a shooter, and System Shock II is less of a shooter than a creepy exploration game. Deus Ex is half an RPG.

FPS is too reductive. I'm using the phrase immersive sim in the same way as these articles:

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/06/29/dark-futures-par...

https://www.pcgamer.com/history-of-the-best-immersive-sims/

See also Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immersive_sim

HTH

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