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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

#231

Post by urbnspacecowboy »

JeremyNT wrote: post #179
starkparker wrote: post #36

"Sorry, Sandy" Sandy Petersen's side of it comes out in a few interviews, like https://medium.com/@unkndoomer/back-to-the-past-e3c421fb2e70 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUeu96TKQwU (especially 14:17 onward)

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…

Seems to me Carmack's saying that Romero had a better grasp of visuals than Sandy Petersen, and that Petersen was needlessly disparaged for this.

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

#232

Post by sidewndr46 »

georgemcbay wrote: post #230
sidewndr46 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

unless I'm mistaken John Carmack is unbelievably wealthy. Like give away a Ferrari and start a rocket company for fun wealthy. There's a number of people who read this and conclude that the message is you can't push someone hard enough, it's impossible to fail if you just push hard enough.

> unless I'm mistaken John Carmack is unbelievably wealthy. Depends upon how you define unbelievably wealthy, which has rapidly expanded in recent years. According to "the internet" (which is, of course, going to be wrong, but probably not by orders of magnitude) he's worth ~$50 million, which is an awful lot of money from my perspective, but still places his net worth a lot closer to us plebs than it is to all of th…

Lifetime earnings in the US is less than $2 million for most individuals. John Carmack is all of 55, he potentially has decades of life ahead of him. It's important to realize that Carmack was very wealthy even back in the late 90s. He doesn't have insane multi-billion dollar empires because he seemed to just shift to trying to enjoy life rather than pursuing more wealth. My general analysis here is that while money certainly can help buy some happiness, you can really only use so many yachts.

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

#233

Post by zasz »

aurareturn wrote: post #87
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...

Many founders/bosses often think that their employees are lazy because they don't work as hard as they do. They usually forget that their employees are usually paid a lot less or have magnitudes less equity. Not everyone owns 15% of the company. I will grind too if I'm paid well enough and the potential reward is worth it.

That and also employees don't have the same power. Employees fundamentally have less autonomy. If you have to work inside someone else's box all the time, you're not going to want to work as hard.

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

#234

Post by vor_ »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #147

Carmack is a godly programmer, but he's largely a technical guy. Everything he releases is a feat of technical engineering ("real 3D!"; "curved surfaces!"; "realistic lighting!"; "the Megatexture!"), not so much artistic achievement. We could really see that after Doom 2 when all of the creatives at Id started jumping ship. The level design that you need to reinforce the technical leaps just wasn't there anymore.

The technical innovations also began to have no impact or even an adverse one. Doom 3's push for 100% real-time stencil shadows was practically ignored by the industry when HL2 and other competitors came out. MegaTexture was actually removed from the engine in Doom Eternal.

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

#235

Post by _doctor_love »

Upvoter33 wrote: post #176
_doctor_love wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I say humanities, I mean having a humanistic attitude. Looking at the social and environmental dynamics before looking at any specific technical issue in detail. Not necessarily anything to do with academia. Strong agree that everyone would benefit from having a shitty service job or two when they're young to learn what life is really like for most people. I worked a bunch of different service jobs in high schoo…

Which Hamming quote, btw, do you refer to? I think he mostly talks about talking with other "smart" people, and communicating what you are working on a lot (like giving talks, etc.). But, this doesn't read like much of a case for the humanities, per se.

I don't remember the exact quote verbatim but the most likely candidates of where I got it from would be: You and Your Research, How Do We Know What We Know? (if indeed, we know it), and/or Artificial Intelligence I and II.

You can find these easily on YouTube, there's a channel securitylectures which hosts them, and there are also official resources from the US Naval Postgraduate Academy in Monterey.

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

#236

Post by arjie »

modeless wrote: post #211
blt wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

Both The Longest Yard and Facing Worlds can now be played instantly on the web: https://thelongestyard.link/q3a-demo/ (instant, even works on phones) https://dos.zone/mp/?lobby=ut (scroll down and click Create on CTF-FACE) They even have multiplayer support. I hope someone ports UT2K4 someday so I can play ONS-Torlan.

Jumping right into The Longest Yard was amazing. What a site.

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

#237

Post by vor_ »

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?

Prey was infamously in development in various forms for over a decade.

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

#238

Post by vor_ »

LarsDu88 wrote: post #152
ibejoeb wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. Can anyone recommend a good write-up on that history? 41%... I suppose these were non-voting shares. Imagine owning nearly half the company and being denied access to company documents.

John Carmack slaved away writing super optimized ground breaking realtime 3d game engine code that created a multibillion dollar industry. Adrian Carmack mostly took photographs of clay scultures (and in some cases actual plastic toys, in the case of the chainsaw and pistol used in the original Doom), and digitized them in Corel. Something any half-way decent art student could do (not to discount the iconic visual st…

It was people like Michael Abrash who did the groundbreaking optimization work at that time. He single-handedly doubled Quake's framerate.

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

#239

Post by _doctor_love »

palmotea wrote: post #167
_doctor_love wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We never learn. To my mind, the key is that it's leaders who never learn. The sad thing is that the system gives them no incentives to do so. If you look into the work of Bob Emiliani, this seems to be the tragic conclusion he's come to in recent years. We "know" all the right things to do, but time and time again, management dehumanizes the floor staff and refuses to listen. It's often not even out of malice but b…

> We "know" all the right things to do, but time and time again, management dehumanizes the floor staff and refuses to listen. It's often not even out of malice but because that leader simply has no reason whatsoever to change. There's another possibility that the people who gravitate to "leadership" have certain personality problems that cause those behaviors, e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/22/opinion/office-w…

I am of many minds about this. I fully believe in the ego problem, but that's so universal that I don't think it's the only answer.

Software engineers and especially architecture folks tend to have very healthy egos themselves that get in the way of the right thing happening. The worst-case scenario is when someone has a big ego and is technically correct. That can be a very tough nut to crack, and even worse if you pile on emotional and historical baggage.

I don't think we can ever eliminate the problem of bad leaders. I am not even convinced that it is desirable to do so. Everybody has to have room to grow and sometimes a person who later becomes a great leader has to learn what that means by royally fucking up early in their career. People need room to fail and that's true for leaders as well. It's problematic obviously because leaders have outsize impact relative to the general population.

Ultimately I think the real problem is much deeper than work or industry. If you go back in history, bad leaders have always been a problem. Pharaoh blamed the builders for his bad pyramid (or at least didn't think he was part of the issue). The Vasa sank because no-one could contradict or push back on the king -- when people rule by divine right, pushing back on the king is equivalent to pushing back on God. The cathedral collapsed because the bishop insisted it be the tallest one around, then later the roof collapsed, killing many people.

Challenger, Columbia, Chernobyl, the Quebec Bridge, Deepwater Horizon, etc. all these disasters, it's basically an infinite list. We humans have these problems with each other because we have issues with power and authority and control.

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

#240

Post by vor_ »

stephc_int13 wrote: post #145

The trajectory of id software is interesting. The company was successful, had one of the most prestigious brand in the game industry, was early enough to capitalize on the rise of PC gaming, incredible talents and tech. Yet it didn't transform into a Blizzard or Epic. And it seems that both the early success and stall were the responsibility of one very talented but somewhat obtuse nerd.

The loss of the original team was a tremendous blow. After Quake, a common criticism of id was that they put out tech demos instead of games.
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