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

Sigil II, a Doom WAD from J.Romero, has been released

doomwiki.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 75 posts

Re: Sigil II, a Doom WAD from J.Romero, has been released

#21

Post by fsniper »

aidos wrote: post #10
prvc wrote: post #3

Also, today is the 30-year anniversary of DOOM's release.

What a time to be a kid. Computers and games were absolute magic . Some of us were lucky enough to have a 386 and if we squished the screen down far enough we could get a reasonable framerate. Some of us were lucky enough to have mates with a 386. I was particularly lucky in that my mates dad had a small pc store in his shed. So we also had a laplink cable for transferring software and a serial cable for multiplayer…

Another part is the reach for hardware was harder/impossible. At a far far later time I recall waiting for 1 year to upgrade my pc to 4mbs of ram so I could play Mortal Combat 1. I kept the MKI floppies more precious than Gollum's. If I am not mistaken it was a 386dx or 486.

Re: Sigil II, a Doom WAD from J.Romero, has been released

#22

Post by Waterluvian »

theyinwhy wrote: post #2

Romero is a strange figure. Why wasn't he able to really make it after id? From Daikatana to Empire of Sin, everything was a flop, more or less. Who is John Romero?

Reminds me of Notch. He took his incredible Minecraft success and pitched this new game where you’d have a space ship and a CPU with limited resources. I downloaded some tech demo and… it was just another janky Java-based FPS engine. He had that adequate but short-lived card game but that’s about it.

I’m not sure there really is any surprise here. We all know that being a success doesn’t imply generalizable skill, whether it’s a one-hit-wonder song, game, app, or business.

Re: Sigil II, a Doom WAD from J.Romero, has been released

#23

Post by karaterobot »

charcircuit wrote: post #12

$75 for just levels. The game doesn't come with it. That's asking more than a AAA game.

There's this expectation for how much a AAA game should cost, which seems entirely cultural and not based on an accounting of the resources that went into it. Remember when the standard price of a AAA game was raised by $10, and there was a bit of outrage (from some camps), despite the fact that the previous standard price dated from a time when game budgets were less than half of what they are today?

Clearly, many gamers don't consider the amount of work and resources that go into a game being the decisive factor in its price!

With that framing, Romero's pricing makes perfect sense. It doesn't much matter if he's designing levels for a game rather than developing a game, because the resources that go into the game's production are irrelevant to the cost.

What matters more is that he's selling to an audience that doesn't need to be convinced to buy his product. Unlike AAA games, who are targeting the marginal player—that is, the person who isn't necessarily going to buy the game anyway—Romero is selling to true believers (in him, in Doom, in their nostalgia for their childhoods, whatever). The cost is extra irrelevant to that group.

Re: Sigil II, a Doom WAD from J.Romero, has been released

#24

Post by kristofferg »

leetrout wrote: post #4
theyinwhy wrote: post #2

Romero is a strange figure. Why wasn't he able to really make it after id? From Daikatana to Empire of Sin, everything was a flop, more or less. Who is John Romero?

I was just reading or watching something about this last week. I will see if I can find it. Horribly paraphrased: Carmack was able to pull off impressive tech without impressive level designers was the gist of it. Romero is talented at the design side but at the time that didnt translate into better games / companies like the fundamental tech did.

Sounds like you are paraphrasing Carmacks perspective. I am pretty sure all Ids 3D games would have been duds had Carmack been in charge of game and level designs.

Re: Sigil II, a Doom WAD from J.Romero, has been released

#25

Post by atrettel »

lambda wrote: post #16
theyinwhy wrote: post #2

Romero is a strange figure. Why wasn't he able to really make it after id? From Daikatana to Empire of Sin, everything was a flop, more or less. Who is John Romero?

This is a common pattern in a lot of creative industries; some people have early, groundbreaking success, but once they're successful have a tough time replicating that. Some combination of now that they're rich, no longer really the pressure to succeed as they already have, they were in the right place at the right time and no longer are, they have less pressure from other people telling them "no", they no longer ha…

This phenomena is sometimes called the "sophomore slump" [1] in some creative industries and "second-system effect" [2] in software development. To add to your excellent list of reasons why this happens, I'd also add that early success may be the result of spending much more time on the first creative effort than subsequent ones. Some musicians spend years making their first album but then have only a year or two to try to repeat the success for a second album, especially if a label wants them to release another album while they are riding high and before their fame fades (supposedly). Second-system effect refers more specifically to feature creep in second projects in a series, but you can imagine the same thinking applying to creative industries too.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophomore_slump

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect

Re: Sigil II, a Doom WAD from J.Romero, has been released

#27

Post by JASchilz »

theyinwhy wrote: post #2

Romero is a strange figure. Why wasn't he able to really make it after id? From Daikatana to Empire of Sin, everything was a flop, more or less. Who is John Romero?

Romero recently released a book, _Doom Guy: Life in First Person_, if you'd like a long-form answer to that question.

Other commenters give more substantial answers, but I can vouch for the book as having a lot of history, clearly being written by Romero himself, and having a lot of self-reflection on the questions you're asking.

Here's some additional HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37649594

Re: Sigil II, a Doom WAD from J.Romero, has been released

#28

Post by bentcorner »

rvanmil wrote: post #19
aidos wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a time to be a kid. Computers and games were absolute magic . Some of us were lucky enough to have a 386 and if we squished the screen down far enough we could get a reasonable framerate. Some of us were lucky enough to have mates with a 386. I was particularly lucky in that my mates dad had a small pc store in his shed. So we also had a laplink cable for transferring software and a serial cable for multiplayer…

I fondly remember playing Doom with my brother. Our dad had made a serial cable for us. One of us was playing on the PC and the other one on a laptop with a grey scale display and terrible ghosting. We had so much fun and it felt like magic indeed :)

My dad had a similar laptop. Playing video games on it was pretty trippy with all the ghosting.

Back then a cousin and I found a cheat exe on some BBS that gave you infinite ammo in Doom 2, it also gave us a virus (Michaelangelo, I think?). My dad somehow disassembled the exe to remove the virus so we could keep our infinite ammo cheat. I'm spoiled - I would struggle to do the same without online resources.

Re: Sigil II, a Doom WAD from J.Romero, has been released

#29

Post by fooqux »

aidos wrote: post #10
prvc wrote: post #3

Also, today is the 30-year anniversary of DOOM's release.

What a time to be a kid. Computers and games were absolute magic . Some of us were lucky enough to have a 386 and if we squished the screen down far enough we could get a reasonable framerate. Some of us were lucky enough to have mates with a 386. I was particularly lucky in that my mates dad had a small pc store in his shed. So we also had a laplink cable for transferring software and a serial cable for multiplayer…

Hah, while I had a 386, it was an SX, as in without a math co-processor. I managed to find a TSR program on a local BBS that would emulate a math co-processor though, allowing me to play Doom.

It was not a playable experience. Even at the smallest screen size, it still ran at about 1 FPS.

But, I was playing Doom!

Re: Sigil II, a Doom WAD from J.Romero, has been released

#30

Post by Shorel »

k__ wrote: post #6
theyinwhy wrote: post #2

Romero is a strange figure. Why wasn't he able to really make it after id? From Daikatana to Empire of Sin, everything was a flop, more or less. Who is John Romero?

I was surprised too. When I talked to fellow gamers about the awesome stuff Carmack does, they were all like "he's just a engineer, Romero is the real genius!" But somehow I didn't see anything impressive from Romero, while Carmack was doing cool stuff all the time. Sure, it wasn't artsy like Romero's work, but it was still impressive.

I always perceived the opposite. Carmack is the real genius, Romero is just a lucky level designer who happened to be in the right place at the right time.

Many other level designers rapidly surpassed Romero.

Carmack was doing a great job until he started building rockets.

Post reply on HN