5 ms·

Carmack turned red. “If you ever ask me to patent anything,” he snapped, “I’ll quit.” Wow, my admiration for Carmack just increased tenfold.

dabeeeenster 13y ago
He comes out of that book very well. Hard but fair. Romero, on the other hand...
- jrs99 13y ago
  ...made you his bitch.
- StavrosK 13y ago
  What's he like?
  - billmalarky 13y ago
    In the book he comes off as an overly confident showman. Carmack was everything behind ID software (and to Romero's credit he pretty much admits that). That said Romero's wild-side/recklessness provided the spark that ignited ID software, almost literally if I recall correctly. Basically Carmack had developed a new technology that allowed PC's at the time to handle scrolling. When he showed Romero it at work, Romero basically said "Fuck this company (softdisk), we're starting our own company right now." So starting that weekend they "borrowed" (pretty much stole, but would bring them back each Sunday night) all their workstations and began making a remake of the original Mario game for PC. So basically, ID software = John Carmack's genius/technology + Romero's recklessness = DOOM. Highly recommend this book, I don't read as many books as I like but I just couldn't put this one down.
    - StavrosK 13y ago
      Very interesting, it sounds like a good read. I'll buy it now, thanks.
      - billmalarky 13y ago
        HN has come full circle for me. I'm pretty sure that I actually heard about this book through a recommendation in a comment on HN a year or so ago. First book I purchased since the last harry potter book too.
      - theycallmemorty 13y ago
        It's a great book. I'm not a gamer and was only mildly familiar with the majority of the games mentioned in the book but I'd highly recommend it to anyone who finds HN interesting.
    - danmaz74 13y ago
      Sounds a lot like Jobs/Wozniak
      - billmalarky 13y ago
        Similar, but Jobs was a genius businessman, Romero.... not so much.
        jere 13y ago
        Romero and Jobs both get slammed on HN consistently. One of the things people like to point out about Jobs is that he couldn't program and never did any real engineering. To be fair to Romero, he could actually program, make games, and design levels. It's really hard for me to accept the claim that he contributed nothing to id: >He designed most of the first episode of Doom, most of the levels in Quake, half the levels in the Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D;Spear of Destiny. He wrote many of the tools used at id Software to create their games, including DoomEd (level editor), QuakeEd (level editor), DM (for deathmatch launching), DWANGO client (to connect the game to DWANGO's servers), TED5 (level editor for the Commander Keen series, Wolfenstein 3D; Spear of Destiny), IGRAB (for grabbing assets and putting them in WAD files), the installers for all the games up to and including Quake, the SETUP program used to configure the games, and several others. He might have made some really poor decisions, but the guy has legitimately been developing games for 30 years. Just look at how many projects he has been involved in: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Romero#Games http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Romero#Games Somehow I came out of Masters of Doom with a lot less negative opinion of Romero than others did. Carmack, while clearly a genius, actually seemed like a real jerk at points.
        billmalarky 13y ago
        I think Jobs was more extraordinary as a businessman than Wozniak was as a programmer. I don't think Carmack is a jerk so much as he's just, well, different. More like a machine than a human. I guess that could cause him to be heartless at times but he came off as fair. Romero was important for ID's success, but as the story played out, Carmack was able to find success without Romero but Romero was not able to be successful without Carmack. Read into that as you will.
    - lgieron 13y ago
      I think you underestimate Romero, the book depicted him as a main game designer for the projects.
  - AUmrysh 13y ago
    The Wikipedia article on Diakatana[1] should tell you all you need to know. 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daikatana#Reception_and_controversy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daikatana#Reception_and_controv...
- ritchiea 13y ago
  I understand what you're getting at, but how exactly does the book make Romero look bad? Sure he certainly made more mistakes than Carmack, but does that make him look bad? At worst the book makes Romero look a little arrogant. But the book is also filled with accounts of Romero doing great work and notes that when the two Johns met it was Carmack that admired Romero for having more impressive programming knowledge. Clearly things changed but implying that the book makes Romero look bad is a stretch.
NovemberWest 13y ago
There is a lot of learning by asking questions, which works well guy to guy but there are serious barriers if you are female. I have repeatedly run into the fact that most men either do not want to talk to me at all or, if they do, it is usually in hopes of getting into my pants. Neither scenario leads to professional development. They are both equally poisonous, just in different ways. It is rare for me to run into a man who will converse with me at length about something other than whether or not I might sleep with him, in essence. That is a huge barrier to networking and professional development.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- ctdonath 13y ago
  Ummm...posted to wrong [sub]thread?
  - NovemberWest 13y ago
    Yes, apparently, but too late to delete.
3327 13y ago
The arrow of time with respect to computers splits into two two distinctions: BC ( before Carmack): circa 1993 and AC (after Carmack). It is a simply game but it changed the course of history in terms of what direction gaming went, thus the heavy hardware designs to support that type of games.
- angersock 13y ago
  Quake was basically the only reason to get a 486DX--floating point support. The crazy GPU push--later culminating in CUDA and all that other nonsense--is completely due to the Quake OpenGL and 3dfx support. High-speed internet at home was mostly useful for playing on QuakeWorld, and later derivatives Half-Life, and the Unreal series (not a derivative, but you get the idea). So, yeah. EDIT: One might also point out that the death of the great workstation companies (SGI, HP, etc.) happened because they were no longer competitive in the CAD space, specifically because consumer-level graphics cards were improving driven by the demands of gaming.

dabeeeenster 13y ago

He comes out of that book very well. Hard but fair. Romero, on the other hand...

jrs99 13y ago
...made you his bitch.
StavrosK 13y ago
What's he like?
- billmalarky 13y ago
  In the book he comes off as an overly confident showman. Carmack was everything behind ID software (and to Romero's credit he pretty much admits that). That said Romero's wild-side/recklessness provided the spark that ignited ID software, almost literally if I recall correctly. Basically Carmack had developed a new technology that allowed PC's at the time to handle scrolling. When he showed Romero it at work, Romero basically said "Fuck this company (softdisk), we're starting our own company right now." So starting that weekend they "borrowed" (pretty much stole, but would bring them back each Sunday night) all their workstations and began making a remake of the original Mario game for PC. So basically, ID software = John Carmack's genius/technology + Romero's recklessness = DOOM. Highly recommend this book, I don't read as many books as I like but I just couldn't put this one down.
  - StavrosK 13y ago
    Very interesting, it sounds like a good read. I'll buy it now, thanks.
    - billmalarky 13y ago
      HN has come full circle for me. I'm pretty sure that I actually heard about this book through a recommendation in a comment on HN a year or so ago. First book I purchased since the last harry potter book too.
    - theycallmemorty 13y ago
      It's a great book. I'm not a gamer and was only mildly familiar with the majority of the games mentioned in the book but I'd highly recommend it to anyone who finds HN interesting.
  - danmaz74 13y ago
    Sounds a lot like Jobs/Wozniak
    - billmalarky 13y ago
      Similar, but Jobs was a genius businessman, Romero.... not so much.
      - jere 13y ago
        Romero and Jobs both get slammed on HN consistently. One of the things people like to point out about Jobs is that he couldn't program and never did any real engineering. To be fair to Romero, he could actually program, make games, and design levels. It's really hard for me to accept the claim that he contributed nothing to id: >He designed most of the first episode of Doom, most of the levels in Quake, half the levels in the Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D;Spear of Destiny. He wrote many of the tools used at id Software to create their games, including DoomEd (level editor), QuakeEd (level editor), DM (for deathmatch launching), DWANGO client (to connect the game to DWANGO's servers), TED5 (level editor for the Commander Keen series, Wolfenstein 3D; Spear of Destiny), IGRAB (for grabbing assets and putting them in WAD files), the installers for all the games up to and including Quake, the SETUP program used to configure the games, and several others. He might have made some really poor decisions, but the guy has legitimately been developing games for 30 years. Just look at how many projects he has been involved in: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Romero#Games http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Romero#Games Somehow I came out of Masters of Doom with a lot less negative opinion of Romero than others did. Carmack, while clearly a genius, actually seemed like a real jerk at points.
        billmalarky 13y ago
        I think Jobs was more extraordinary as a businessman than Wozniak was as a programmer. I don't think Carmack is a jerk so much as he's just, well, different. More like a machine than a human. I guess that could cause him to be heartless at times but he came off as fair. Romero was important for ID's success, but as the story played out, Carmack was able to find success without Romero but Romero was not able to be successful without Carmack. Read into that as you will.
  - lgieron 13y ago
    I think you underestimate Romero, the book depicted him as a main game designer for the projects.
- AUmrysh 13y ago
  The Wikipedia article on Diakatana[1] should tell you all you need to know. 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daikatana#Reception_and_controversy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daikatana#Reception_and_controv...
ritchiea 13y ago
I understand what you're getting at, but how exactly does the book make Romero look bad? Sure he certainly made more mistakes than Carmack, but does that make him look bad? At worst the book makes Romero look a little arrogant. But the book is also filled with accounts of Romero doing great work and notes that when the two Johns met it was Carmack that admired Romero for having more impressive programming knowledge. Clearly things changed but implying that the book makes Romero look bad is a stretch.

NovemberWest 13y ago

There is a lot of learning by asking questions, which works well guy to guy but there are serious barriers if you are female. I have repeatedly run into the fact that most men either do not want to talk to me at all or, if they do, it is usually in hopes of getting into my pants. Neither scenario leads to professional development. They are both equally poisonous, just in different ways. It is rare for me to run into a man who will converse with me at length about something other than whether or not I might sleep with him, in essence. That is a huge barrier to networking and professional development.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
ctdonath 13y ago
Ummm...posted to wrong [sub]thread?
- NovemberWest 13y ago
  Yes, apparently, but too late to delete.

3327 13y ago

The arrow of time with respect to computers splits into two two distinctions: BC ( before Carmack): circa 1993 and AC (after Carmack). It is a simply game but it changed the course of history in terms of what direction gaming went, thus the heavy hardware designs to support that type of games.

angersock 13y ago
Quake was basically the only reason to get a 486DX--floating point support. The crazy GPU push--later culminating in CUDA and all that other nonsense--is completely due to the Quake OpenGL and 3dfx support. High-speed internet at home was mostly useful for playing on QuakeWorld, and later derivatives Half-Life, and the Unreal series (not a derivative, but you get the idea). So, yeah. EDIT: One might also point out that the death of the great workstation companies (SGI, HP, etc.) happened because they were no longer competitive in the CAD space, specifically because consumer-level graphics cards were improving driven by the demands of gaming.