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There are a few things that I look back on as my mistakes in the early days

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Re: There are a few things that I look back on as my mistakes in the early days

#191

Post by mikeocool »

MyHonestOpinon wrote: post #188
mikeocool wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure it’s necessarily a given that what Jobs, Gates, and Carmack created are net-positives when talking on a civilizational scale. Though Carmack certainly gets credit for keeping me entertained for a good portion of my youth. And gates probably gets some civilizational credit for what he’s done with his wealth after he made it.

I am under the impression that a big part of the current AI progress is the result of the availability of chips that were created for gaming.

Also worth considering (and probably waiting and seeing) if the current AI progress is a net positive for society on the grand scale.

Re: There are a few things that I look back on as my mistakes in the early days

#192

Post by InitialLastName »

Goronmon wrote: post #125
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #3

> I pushed everyone too hard. I didn’t appreciate how maturing companies need more slack, and that running people at startup intensity constantly will wear them out. Sounds like wisdom many companies might consider...

Though it is interesting how many old-school game developer stories from the employee side can be summarized as "I worked out of college for low pay, long hours and I basically lived at the office with little/no outside personal life."

Young people often have low expenses, few external demands on their time, and poor living conditions. If they are smart, motivated and lucky they can sometimes take advantage of that situation to do extraordinary work.

Note that a growing range of professions (law, medicine, finance, journalism,, politics) have developed career paths such that they take advantage of that condition and demand that level of commitment out of their entry-level employees.

Re: There are a few things that I look back on as my mistakes in the early days

#193

Post by shadowtree »

hooo wrote: post #51

Why are folks still submitting so many twitter.com links?

Because that is where Carmack posted his thoughts, not anywhere else. Original source.

Wether you like it or not, X/Twitter is still a primary posting ground for many key people in our industry.

Re: There are a few things that I look back on as my mistakes in the early days

#194

Post by JeremyNT »

pgl wrote: post #186
JeremyNT wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rest of the context leading up to "Sorry, Sandy" has me a little confused, can anybody who knows more explain this bit? > One real problem that I don’t accept the blame for is that we were insisting that level designers be not just game designers, but also have strong visual design esthetics. They needed to make things that not only played well, but looked awesome, and it got more challenging as the technology pr…

The missing context is that he was quote-tweeting a thread by Sandy Petersen titled "How Quake ruined id software": https://x.com/SandyofCthulhu/status/2069592209645785294 > How Quake ruined id Software. > There has been a lot of praise of Quake of late, with its 30th anniversary, and it's deserved. Quake is an amazing feat of art, programming, and design. I worked on it, and everything came together almost perfectly…

Still not quite exactly following Carmack's suggestion here... is he saying on that last point that the problems with designers/artists were due to Sandy's mistakes (i.e. not a genuine apologetic "sorry" but a "sorry you're wrong" type response)?

Re: There are a few things that I look back on as my mistakes in the early days

#195

Post by kllrnohj »

badsectoracula wrote: post #156
kridsdale1 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doom 3 was pretty huge of a step forward in many ways and had no competition for being SOTA except for Far Cry (1). I remember that summer as it was when I had my first job and I saved up to buy a GPU. Not just graphics but character acting and animation, interactive world elements, deliberately dramatic scenarios in the levels (Half Life pioneered this, but Doom3 had a lot of really good ones). It was years ahead of…

Doom 3 was SOTA in terms of realtime lighting and shadows, but that's basically it. In terms of visuals, Half-Life 2 with its baked lighting in directional lightmaps (essentially calculating three lightmaps for each surface for lighting coming from different directions, then using those with normal maps during rendering) with radiosity indirect lighting did a much better job with how good environments looked (and it…

The problem with Doom 3's gameplay is it was too fucking dark and constantly having demons jump scare you or spawn behind you got stale quickly. At some point I need to give the BFG edition a try which at least addresses the "too fucking dark" aspect, but that's also now a 2012 game instead of a 2004 game.

Re: There are a few things that I look back on as my mistakes in the early days

#196

Post by blt »

tejohnso wrote: post #4

Quake III Arena was pretty entertaining. Doesn't seem like it came from a company that had been ruined for years. I definitely noticed something around the Doom 3 release many years after Quake III Arena. The new game just didn't seem to have the same industry pushing, genre changing energy. Or maybe I was just older and had moved on, and didn't care as much.

There was a spirited debate about Quake III Arena versus Unreal Tournament. Both were praised, but UT had more creativity in game modes (Assault, Domination) and weapons, better bot AI, and more polished sound/art assets. Reading the Gamespot reviews (below) is fun.

Each had standout maps that made you want to own both, such as Q3A's Longest Yard and UT's Facing Worlds. I ended up playing more hours of UT because I had slow internet and its bots were better.

Point being: Q3A was great, but in 1999 it became clear that id Software had lost their head start over other FPS developers. They were still elite, but in the early-mid 90s they were alone at the top.

https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/quake-iii-arena-review/1900...

https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/unreal-tournament-review/19...

Re: There are a few things that I look back on as my mistakes in the early days

#197

Post by wlesieutre »

JeremyNT wrote: post #194
pgl wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The missing context is that he was quote-tweeting a thread by Sandy Petersen titled "How Quake ruined id software": https://x.com/SandyofCthulhu/status/2069592209645785294 > How Quake ruined id Software. > There has been a lot of praise of Quake of late, with its 30th anniversary, and it's deserved. Quake is an amazing feat of art, programming, and design. I worked on it, and everything came together almost perfectly…

Still not quite exactly following Carmack's suggestion here... is he saying on that last point that the problems with designers/artists were due to Sandy's mistakes (i.e. not a genuine apologetic "sorry" but a "sorry you're wrong" type response)?

He is acknowledging that it was a problem and apologizing for it happening, but is not personally taking the blame for causing said problem

Re: There are a few things that I look back on as my mistakes in the early days

#198

Post by StilesCrisis »

rvba wrote: post #105
CamouflagedKiwi wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the original thread Carmack was replying to, Sandy Petersen said Q3 was the only other great game they produced after that: https://xcancel.com/SandyofCthulhu/status/206959226489744192... Honestly I think Doom is where it came together the best, Quake was technically better (of course) but it was not a better game.

The true successor of ID software is Half-life 1 with its goldsrc engine... but that simply was made by another studio. HL1 took both the engine and the genre further + continued the modding culture that brough Counter strike and other mods (Note I know very well that Half life is not an ID software game, it only took the engine that was auper heavily modified / updated- but it my opinion this is the successor)

Don't forget that the entire Call of Duty series also sits on Quake's shoulders.

Re: There are a few things that I look back on as my mistakes in the early days

#199

Post by Maxatar »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #86
logicchains wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's let GTA6 be the judge of that.

We don't need to wait for GTA 6. RDR 2 was already a serious letdown from the first game. Rockstar has lost sight of the fact that they are making games , not movies, and that games need to be fun to play. RDR 2 is significantly less fun to play than its predecessor because they are constantly trying to shove cinematic moments and immersion into the game.

Any form of media can be criticized, that's the nature of it... but RDR 2 is widely considered to be among the best games ever made.

Is there going to be someone out there who doesn't like it? Sure, take absolutely any game whatsoever and there's someone out there who will tell you it's not good... but by any reasonable measure: critical reception, awards, lasting cultural impact, influence on future games, it's almost across the board on the positive end of the spectrum. You're of course free to dislike it, but claiming it to be a "serious letdown" treats your singular point of view as if it were a consensus, when the actual consensus is overwhelmingly the opposite.

Re: There are a few things that I look back on as my mistakes in the early days

#200

Post by Dilettante_ »

lobf wrote: post #180
bluedino wrote: post #150

ID dominated the PC shooter scene for 4.5 generations in a row. Insane. Wolf, Doom, Quake, Quake II, Quake 3 Arena Dark Forces was great, but that tech was too late so it never went anywhere. Duke3D showed up, and while it was entertaining, it was clearly a level below what ID could do. 3D Realms fumbled that tech, then got caught up with the ultimate vaporware, Prey, and it took Epic stepping in with Unreal that fin…

Prey was vaporware? It sold a million copies on release and got a sequel... Are we talking about the same game?

You actually aren't: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prey_(2006_video_game)
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