Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Id Software

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 173 posts

Re: Id Software

#141

Post by SmirkingRevenge »

lgl wrote: post #135
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,…

At a time when pretty much every regular pc and internet connection sucked, here's what is definitely an historical moment in online gaming. The birth of Quakeworld, the internet optimized quake engine: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-ar... Note JC's comment that "this is just my pet research project". If you've ever played quake and then quakeworld online, you'll know what an understatement…

As I just posted above, this strikes home for me. For me it wasn't just the client-side prediction, it was that there was also a linux client for quake world.

Re: Id Software

#142

Post by balls187 »

Splines wrote: post #139
balls187 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You really need a mouse for first person. You did, until Golden Eye N64. And many of those early games (Wolf3d, Doom, Hexen) didn't have Mouse look on be default, you played them Closed (Arrow Keys and Right Ctrl/Alt) or Open (Arrow Keys and Left Ctrl/Alt). It really wasn't until Quake I/QuakeWorld that FPS' made the shift to Mouse+WASD. And evenstill in Quake1, mouse look was off by default.

> You did, until Golden Eye N64. Improvements in aim assist really make console FPS games more approachable. Still not up to the usability of a mouse, but if the game is thoughtfully designed it meets a "good enough" bar. Although I wasn't a big fan of Rare's cursor aim functionality, it felt very clumsy. Personally I'm a fan of sticky aim assist (halo) or snap-to-body aim assist (call of duty, gta). These kinds of s…

If the question is which is a more effective control scheme FPS, mouse+keyboard is clearly superior to a dual-analog sticks especially in competitive matches.

But, my point is simply Golden Eye 64 was a console FPS where the controls weren't clunky (for it's time).

Re: Id Software

#143

Post by badsectoracula »

ksec wrote: post #79

There used to be sort of an Engine War in the late 90s and early 00s, Id tech, Source Engine, Unreal. Now ID is basically gone. And it is interesting both Valve and EPIC manage to create a platform, valve created Steam, and EPIC made Unreal almost like de facto standard. ( Yes I know there is Unity ). I wonder why ID didn't continue to compete with Unreal in the middleware engine. Why Valve decide to leave what was a…

> I wonder why ID didn't continue to compete with Unreal in the middleware engine.

IIRC from one of his later talks, Carmack wasn't interested in tech licensing and it was mostly the other owners pushing the idea. I remember even before Doom 3 was released and the Quake 3 engine was in its apex in terms of licensing (basically the most licensed of their engines by far), their licensing page wrote that all the support you'd get was a day with Carmack to explain some bits.

> How Unreal went from some mediocre engine

Unreal was never a mediocre engine, even from its first release it had amazing tools and a very flexible architecture. I'd say that even if the rendering tech wasn't sometimes behind id (i always noticed that id would come up with a neat new idea and the next UE would polish it up - the only time this didn't happen was with Rage and UE4), their toolset and architecture is what made other devs go after them and their stance to support (you'd get constant updates and documentation and i think at some point they set up an internal "community site" for people licensing their engine) was the icing on the cake.

Re: Id Software

#144

Post by lgl »

SmirkingRevenge wrote: post #141
lgl wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At a time when pretty much every regular pc and internet connection sucked, here's what is definitely an historical moment in online gaming. The birth of Quakeworld, the internet optimized quake engine: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-ar... Note JC's comment that "this is just my pet research project". If you've ever played quake and then quakeworld online, you'll know what an understatement…

As I just posted above, this strikes home for me. For me it wasn't just the client-side prediction, it was that there was also a linux client for quake world.

Yeah I remember that. It was also at about that time that I started using and learning linux.

Back then, just managing to setup XFree86 correctly was like a huge personal victory and running quake there was really the cherry on top.

I seem to recall having to actually input a bunch of numbers/frequencies taken from my crappy CRT monitor's specsheet into the X config and basically bruteforcing it until it worked. "Good times"!

Re: Id Software

#145

Post by SmirkingRevenge »

lgl wrote: post #144
SmirkingRevenge wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I just posted above, this strikes home for me. For me it wasn't just the client-side prediction, it was that there was also a linux client for quake world.

Yeah I remember that. It was also at about that time that I started using and learning linux. Back then, just managing to setup XFree86 correctly was like a huge personal victory and running quake there was really the cherry on top. I seem to recall having to actually input a bunch of numbers/frequencies taken from my crappy CRT monitor's specsheet into the X config and basically bruteforcing it until it worked. "Goo…

Ahh yes, x11 mode-lines: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XFree86_Modeline)

Those were particularly thorny for me too, when I was getting started with linux (and was still a newbie with computers in most respects).

"Good times" indeed :)

Re: Id Software

#146

Post by Crespyl »

wilsonnb2 wrote: post #93
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…

Really? Currently, I think video games are a terrible way to tell a story. Much worse than a book, tv show, or movie. The way games are used as a narrative medium is by shoving movies inside them and forcing you to watch them instead of actually playing the game. Its like going to the movie theater, being handed a book, and told to read the book while we pause the movie between two scenes. Obviously some games are ex…

Games are certainly a different way to tell a story, but I wouldn't say "terrible".

> The way games are used as a narrative medium is by shoving movies inside them

If that's how a game is presenting its story, then yes; they likely would be better served by simply making a movie. Games are an interactive medium, but that just means that storytelling in games will be different and use different tools than other mediums, while allowing for entirely new kinds of engagement with a story being told.

The memorable video game stories in my experience have been those that were engaged, collaborative experiences that I felt physically involved in as a player. The wholly emergent stories from Dwarf Fortress, the dynamically simulated open world with a strong interactive narrative in Star Control II, or the incredible physical connection to the tightly presented stories of Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons or What Remains of Edith Finch; these are all different ends of a spectrum of interactive narrative design.

The kind of games you mention are certainly terrible examples of storytelling, but to dismiss the medium as being a "terrible way to tell a story" is to miss out on some of the most interesting interactive stories being told.

Re: Id Software

#147

Post by geocar »

parasubvert wrote: post #64
geocar wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

XQuartz is an X11 server. https://www.xquartz.org/

Carmack did the original XFree86 3.3.x port to Mac OS X Server beta back in 1999 (Which still had the OpenStep GUI!). This eventually evolved into the XFree86 mainline, and then into XQuartz

How strange. I could have sworn I was replying to Didn't Carmack himself port it to OS X? What is now "XQuartz".

Re: Id Software

#148

Post by Crespyl »

cat199 wrote: post #125
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…

> videogames matured as a narrative medium Did they really? I agree things are more 'cinematic', but text based adventures were arguably just as 'narrative' if not more so, and these are some of the earliest games in existence. Then there were the 'graphical adventure' games like kings quest, etc which were hugely popular, then things like 'tomb raider', and so on. taking these as a lineage, one can say it's really j…

I would argue that Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons or What Remains of Edith Finch are both examples of games that use inherent features of physically playing a game to deliver their stories in a really unique way.

I would say that kind of thing, finding ways of using interactivity to tell stories in ways that no other medium can, is an example of the field "maturing". (Beyond just "pass this test of skill or strategy to see the next part of the story, presented in an otherwise conventional manner").

Re: Id Software

#149

Post by lgl »

SmirkingRevenge wrote: post #145
lgl wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I remember that. It was also at about that time that I started using and learning linux. Back then, just managing to setup XFree86 correctly was like a huge personal victory and running quake there was really the cherry on top. I seem to recall having to actually input a bunch of numbers/frequencies taken from my crappy CRT monitor's specsheet into the X config and basically bruteforcing it until it worked. "Goo…

Ahh yes, x11 mode-lines: ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XFree86_Modeline ) Those were particularly thorny for me too, when I was getting started with linux (and was still a newbie with computers in most respects). "Good times" indeed :)

Aha, that was exactly it! Scary stuff.

Re: Id Software

#150

Post by kinleyd »

paradigmshiv wrote: post #127

In case anyone doubts how revolutionary some of these games were, check out these fan letters from the Wolfenstein source: As a former POW (Vietnam), I hesitated to play WOLF for over a month after downloading as I feared flashbacks. I didn't want to remember all that I had been through all those years ago, when, as POW's, my friend and I decided an escape attempt would be better than a slow death by torture and star…

As you say, that is an extremely moving letter. I would never have associated Doom with therapy - thanks for sharing. (I am a big fan of John Carmack and the id team.)
Post reply on HN