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To add on to the other comments of games being more simple back then, most of the games released in 1991 by them were sequels and/or shared codebases and toolin

To add on to the other comments of games being more simple back then, most of the games released in 1991 by them were sequels and/or shared codebases and tooling with other games. Three of those releases were Commander Keen games; Shadow Knights and Danger Dave shared engines; as did Catacomb 3D and Hovertank; Rescue Rover I/II were simple puzzle games built on an old demo code base. I'm not trying to take away from their accomplishments, merely pointing out that they didn't start from scratch every time. I think id was trying to get out of come contractual obligations from Softdisk.

mulmen 5y ago
If anything else this makes the achievement that much more impressive. They built tools instead of just hammering out assembly. The five games in six months was just collecting on that previous effort. But knowing what tools to build and how is the real achievement.
- kqr 5y ago
  It's not just about knowing what tools to build ahead of time. That might well be impossible. It's about finding the intersection in the design space between "the game I want to make" and "the capabilities of the tools I have" that allow you to adapt your tools to make something 90 % of the way there with 10 % of the effort. This goes for any fast product development! Lockheeds' Skunk Works were amazing at repurposing tools and parts to invent completely new planes with few components that were actually new.
  - mulmen 5y ago
    Right. That's what's impressive. They built the right tools, presumably during previous projects. The tools they built were useful enough to enable future work. You may not know what tools you will need in the future but when you need a new tool you can build it in a way that it is reusable. In other words a good tool solves an abstract problem. I don't need an Ikea-Bergmund-chair-leg-attacher. I need a screwdriver. Once you have a toolbox full of these basic tools you are better prepared to tackle those future projects.
    - kqr 5y ago
      While you are technically correct and I agree completely, I think your emphasis on abstraction might lead to higher (or at least more variable) cycle times rather than lower. It sounds like you're suggesting that one spends, say, 80 % of one's creativity coming up with general, abstract problems to tool for, and then 20 % of the creativity on finding ways to apply general tools. That absolutely works, I think, if you're fine with high variability in the time you spend between each release. What I tried to suggest is that instead you spend 40 % of your creativity on finding abstract problems to tool for, and the other 60 % of your creativity in finding ways to apply your distinctly less general tools to new situations, despite their lack of generality. What concerns me about the high-abstraction route is that people, in my experience, have a tendency to over-abstract. To try to predict every future use case ahead of time, instead of accepting their ignorance and building for ease of change. That is why I want to emphasise modding non-general tools rather than future-proofing tools at the design stage. Because you can't know at the design stage in which direction future innovation will go.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
Melatonic 5y ago
Commander Keen is super super underrated - many know of it but I rarely here it come up in casual convo. And there has never been a reboot.
- ch_sm 5y ago
  There was going to be! But it looked terrible, IMHO https://www.vg247.com/commander-keen-mobile-vanished https://www.vg247.com/commander-keen-mobile-vanished
  - leeoniya 5y ago
    oof. has a very Worms aesthetic to it.
    - Melatonic 5y ago
      Looks like a lot of people are enjoying a project called "Commander Genius" however - gonna test it out myself soon!
joshcryer 5y ago
It should not be understated though how good the toolset was for the time. The original idea for Keen came after they (Carmack and Tom Hall) recreated the first level of Super Mario Bro's 3 in one night. They had to break from Softdisk under Romero's suggestion, because Softdisk would claim proprietorship over the engine. They actually "borrowed" their work computers from Softdisk over a weekend to work on Keen and created the first level in 72 hours. After the success of the first Keen it was a no-brainer to keep making more and milking it for all they could.

mulmen 5y ago

If anything else this makes the achievement that much more impressive. They built tools instead of just hammering out assembly. The five games in six months was just collecting on that previous effort. But knowing what tools to build and how is the real achievement.

kqr 5y ago
It's not just about knowing what tools to build ahead of time. That might well be impossible. It's about finding the intersection in the design space between "the game I want to make" and "the capabilities of the tools I have" that allow you to adapt your tools to make something 90 % of the way there with 10 % of the effort. This goes for any fast product development! Lockheeds' Skunk Works were amazing at repurposing tools and parts to invent completely new planes with few components that were actually new.
- mulmen 5y ago
  Right. That's what's impressive. They built the right tools, presumably during previous projects. The tools they built were useful enough to enable future work. You may not know what tools you will need in the future but when you need a new tool you can build it in a way that it is reusable. In other words a good tool solves an abstract problem. I don't need an Ikea-Bergmund-chair-leg-attacher. I need a screwdriver. Once you have a toolbox full of these basic tools you are better prepared to tackle those future projects.
  - kqr 5y ago
    While you are technically correct and I agree completely, I think your emphasis on abstraction might lead to higher (or at least more variable) cycle times rather than lower. It sounds like you're suggesting that one spends, say, 80 % of one's creativity coming up with general, abstract problems to tool for, and then 20 % of the creativity on finding ways to apply general tools. That absolutely works, I think, if you're fine with high variability in the time you spend between each release. What I tried to suggest is that instead you spend 40 % of your creativity on finding abstract problems to tool for, and the other 60 % of your creativity in finding ways to apply your distinctly less general tools to new situations, despite their lack of generality. What concerns me about the high-abstraction route is that people, in my experience, have a tendency to over-abstract. To try to predict every future use case ahead of time, instead of accepting their ignorance and building for ease of change. That is why I want to emphasise modding non-general tools rather than future-proofing tools at the design stage. Because you can't know at the design stage in which direction future innovation will go.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]

Melatonic 5y ago

Commander Keen is super super underrated - many know of it but I rarely here it come up in casual convo. And there has never been a reboot.

ch_sm 5y ago
There was going to be! But it looked terrible, IMHO https://www.vg247.com/commander-keen-mobile-vanished https://www.vg247.com/commander-keen-mobile-vanished
- leeoniya 5y ago
  oof. has a very Worms aesthetic to it.
  - Melatonic 5y ago
    Looks like a lot of people are enjoying a project called "Commander Genius" however - gonna test it out myself soon!

joshcryer 5y ago

It should not be understated though how good the toolset was for the time. The original idea for Keen came after they (Carmack and Tom Hall) recreated the first level of Super Mario Bro's 3 in one night. They had to break from Softdisk under Romero's suggestion, because Softdisk would claim proprietorship over the engine. They actually "borrowed" their work computers from Softdisk over a weekend to work on Keen and created the first level in 72 hours. After the success of the first Keen it was a no-brainer to keep making more and milking it for all they could.