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

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

#31

Post by lazyllama »

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?

You could pretty much say the same thing about Carmack. He just kept making the same doom and quake game over and over with better and better tech. Carmack's space company venture didn't work out, then he went to work at Oculus where he couldn't get anyone to listen to him and got frustrated and left. Now he's at some AI startup.

In some ways Romero actually saved ID software and made everyone a ton of money by working out licensing deals for their game engines. Carmack wouldn't be able to continue to work on his tech and hire Abrash (who optimized Carmack's code) without the money coming out of these deals so he unfairly complained that Romero wasn't pulling his weight for the current project and treated him like crap until he got fed up and left.

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

#32

Post by mlyle »

fooqux wrote: post #29
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…

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!

Maybe it was Quake. Doom didn't use math coprocessors.

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

#33

Post by aidos »

bentcorner wrote: post #28
rvanmil wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In the original Doom you could use IDKFA and IDDQD for infinite ammo and godmode (from memory!)

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

#34

Post by mrob »

fooqux wrote: post #29
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…

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!

Doom used fixed point math, not floating point math. It didn't run well on a 386 SX simply because 386 SXs were slow, but it would run without FPU emulation, and at better than 1 FPS.

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

#35

Post by inopinatus »

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…

Thirty years ago, computers were magic. Forty, too. Haven't you noticed, though? They're still magic.

I do not miss the nonsense with unreliable media, however. Loading Elite from tape took five minutes and if humidity or temperature were unusual or the moon occluded Santraginus or whatever it'd be spewing endless CRC check errors. Some hardships are valuable learning experiences, but this one is just trauma.

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

#37

Post by yowzadave »

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 think with creative work, there’s a huge amount of luck involved in what achieves popular success. And in a collaborative medium like video games, the success of the enterprise also depends on the team working well together. I think in many cases we see a great success and assume the artist behind it is a unique genius; it’s possible that we’re just seeing survivorship bias, and that there are many others who are equally talented, and could achieve the same level if they had the opportunity, the right collaborators, the right motivation, etc.

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

#38

Post by Vecr »

atrettel wrote: post #25
lambda wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Also regression to the mean, pretty much all successful products are unlikely in some way or another (i.e. required "luck").

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

#39

Post by jonathanlydall »

aidos wrote: post #33
bentcorner wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In the original Doom you could use IDKFA and IDDQD for infinite ammo and godmode (from memory!)

IDKFA: I Did Kill Fucking Alien

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

#40

Post by bombcar »

aidos wrote: post #33
bentcorner wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In the original Doom you could use IDKFA and IDDQD for infinite ammo and godmode (from memory!)

IDSPISPOPD!

Got it right!

Back then cheat codes were hard to find, especially if you found doom on shareware floppies and didn’t have BBS access to the DooM FAQ.

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