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I just finished "Masters of Doom" a couple of days ago, and I've been on a sort of Doom/Quake/id/Carmack/Romero information frenzy ever since. It is beginning t

I just finished "Masters of Doom" a couple of days ago, and I've been on a sort of Doom/Quake/id/Carmack/Romero information frenzy ever since. It is beginning to consume almost too much of my time but very fulfilling since I was a huge Doom fan back when it came out (I created many levels and mods) and I also really liked the early Quake games. So in the past weeks I read up on all the early id guys, and what became of them after they were fired or left, I did quite some (probably too much) reading on the mess that was Daikatana and how it came to be. I actually find this really interesting, to learn how a project backed with so many employees and so much money can fail so badly, there're probably lessons to learn here (I've even watched somebody play through Daikatana on Youtube). While being on my search, I've found a lot of interesting or not so interesting things. So if you want to spend some time, here's an unordered list of trivia that I stumbled upon: - Somebody playing through Daikatana: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nm3b0NJzhnQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nm3b0NJzhnQ - Romero Himself on Daikatana, including a GB port of the game that actually got good reviews (never made it to the US though) http://rome.ro/games_daikatana.htm http://rome.ro/games_daikatana.htm - Awful public clash between John Romero and Mike Wilson (former Ion Storm Marketing guy): http://www.kotaku.com.au/2008/01/gamecock_head_tears_into_john_romero_its_getting_ugly-2/ http://www.kotaku.com.au/2008/01/gamecock_head_tears_into_jo... - Ravenwood Fair is a Facebook game that Romero did a couple of years ago (so that's what he's been up to recently): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravenwood_Fair http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravenwood_Fair - If you read Masters of Doom, you'll remember that it all started at Softdisk, when Carmack and Hall created "Dangerous Dave in Copyright Infringement", a Super Mario Bros copy. Romero uploaded the original game including their level editor, you can find it here: http://planetromero.com/games/dangerous-dave-in-copyright-infringement http://planetromero.com/games/dangerous-dave-in-copyright-in... - Unreleased Doom Midi Music Files: http://planetromero.com/2007/06/doom-archaeology http://planetromero.com/2007/06/doom-archaeology Sadly, the original Doom editor, DoomEd was never released. I read that it wasn't particularly good (compared to what is available nowadays) but since it was written in NeXTSTEP, I'd love to port it current OSX (or at least give it a go).

pirateking 13y ago
Very cool links, thanks. I have been on a similar journey as I also finished reading "Masters of Doom" last week. Also interestingly, John Romero made a brief appearance at the Homebrew Computer Club Reunion last month (which I attended). I would be very interested in hearing about your ideas for porting DoomEd to OS X. My contact is in my profile. I played Doom and Quake casually back in the day and followed the Daitkatana saga in the game magazines, but never got a chance to play seriously or mess around with the mods (I had a really crappy computer).
mjn 13y ago
> Ravenwood Fair is a Facebook game that Romero did a couple of years ago (so that's what he's been up to recently) More recently, he's working for the University of California, Santa Cruz, teaching in & co-directing a 1-year professional masters degree program: http://news.ucsc.edu/2013/09/gpm-directors.html http://news.ucsc.edu/2013/09/gpm-directors.html / http://gpm.soe.ucsc.edu/faculty/ http://gpm.soe.ucsc.edu/faculty/
- supersudoman 13y ago
  He also started a social gaming company called lootdrop (http://lootdrop.com/ http://lootdrop.com/) that completely failed.
thesz 13y ago
It is strange that Ravenwood Fair used Domovoi as one of monsters. The should use Leshy instead. Domovoi belongs to home, whereas Leshy belongs to forrest. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domovoi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domovoi [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leshy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leshy
laumars 13y ago
Talking about other ID software employees who've gone on to do other things, I was always rather fond of American McGee's Alice. I haven't played the sequel though.
- georgemcbay 13y ago
  Alice was a fantastic, highly underrated game. Sadly nothing else with his name attached (Grimm, the Alice sequel, Scrapland, Bad Day LA, etc) has been nearly as good. Not that they are bad (with the exception of Bad Day LA which is terrible), but they are just sorta okayish, whereas the original Alice was fantastic.
  - kbenson 13y ago
    My memory of Alice was that it was more of an excuse for them to show off interesting visuals and didn't actually have much in the way of game play mechanics to it, but I never got very far. Maybe I should look it up again and see.
    - laumars 13y ago
      It wasn't the most cerebral of games, I'll grant you that. But it did set a good atmosphere with the visuals (which you'd described) and audio. It had a weird creepy charm to it. I tend to get bored of games quite quickly but Alice was one of the few which kept me engaged to the end.
prezjordan 13y ago
Just finished Masters of Doom on the plane Sunday. Fantastic read. I highly recommend it to all software folks, even if you're not a gamer. Tons of a highly relevant stories and accounts in there. http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Culture/dp/0812972155 http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Cultu...
- WA 13y ago
  I agree. I devoured it in two afternoons and found it quite motivational in terms of a business book. Here, there were a handful of programmers, experimenting with different pricing models (shareware vs. retail), dictating their terms to publishers, starting ethical and legal discussions (Columbine Highschool shooting related to violent computer games? Export laws of software, especially violent computer games to Germany), helping Microsoft to establish Windows as a gaming platform (by making Doom a Direct X game) and so on. They not only made games, they established a genre and nobody had a clue what the future would look like.
  - laumars 13y ago
    Slight nitpick, but Doom was a DOS game and it's DirectX port (Doom95) was written by Microsoft, not ID Software. In fact the developer a MS who wrote of Doom95 is another famous name in the world of gaming; Gabe Newell (who has obviously since left Microsoft). The reason I nitpick is because ID Software have always been pro-OpenGL rather than favouring Dx3D. What's more, most of their earlier games (I've not played anything since QIII) have been ported to other platforms by ID Software themselves and often not even developed on Windows PCs to begin with. So I think Gabe really deserves the credit (or criticism hehe) for kick starting the Windows/DirectX culture we see now. Which is ironic as Gabe is now -in my opinion at least- the biggest threat Microsoft faces for the future of Windows games. But that's another topic entirely :)
- kevando 13y ago
  Incredible read. I also recommend the audio version, read by Will Wheaton
wj 13y ago
I really enjoyed Anachronox which was also released by Ion Storm around the same time as Daikatana.
azsromej 13y ago
When I read the book I found myself looking up various locations mentioned in the book and ended up making this list: http://romej.com/2012/06/places-of-doom-where-id-built-games http://romej.com/2012/06/places-of-doom-where-id-built-games
- WA 13y ago
  Very nice, thank you.
- ptr 13y ago
  Awesome! I can sit and imagine what it'd be like to work on Quake in a place like that all day long.

pirateking 13y ago

Very cool links, thanks. I have been on a similar journey as I also finished reading "Masters of Doom" last week. Also interestingly, John Romero made a brief appearance at the Homebrew Computer Club Reunion last month (which I attended). I would be very interested in hearing about your ideas for porting DoomEd to OS X. My contact is in my profile. I played Doom and Quake casually back in the day and followed the Daitkatana saga in the game magazines, but never got a chance to play seriously or mess around with the mods (I had a really crappy computer).

mjn 13y ago

> Ravenwood Fair is a Facebook game that Romero did a couple of years ago (so that's what he's been up to recently) More recently, he's working for the University of California, Santa Cruz, teaching in & co-directing a 1-year professional masters degree program: http://news.ucsc.edu/2013/09/gpm-directors.html http://news.ucsc.edu/2013/09/gpm-directors.html / http://gpm.soe.ucsc.edu/faculty/ http://gpm.soe.ucsc.edu/faculty/

supersudoman 13y ago
He also started a social gaming company called lootdrop (http://lootdrop.com/ http://lootdrop.com/) that completely failed.

thesz 13y ago

It is strange that Ravenwood Fair used Domovoi as one of monsters. The should use Leshy instead. Domovoi belongs to home, whereas Leshy belongs to forrest. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domovoi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domovoi [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leshy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leshy

laumars 13y ago

Talking about other ID software employees who've gone on to do other things, I was always rather fond of American McGee's Alice. I haven't played the sequel though.

georgemcbay 13y ago
Alice was a fantastic, highly underrated game. Sadly nothing else with his name attached (Grimm, the Alice sequel, Scrapland, Bad Day LA, etc) has been nearly as good. Not that they are bad (with the exception of Bad Day LA which is terrible), but they are just sorta okayish, whereas the original Alice was fantastic.
- kbenson 13y ago
  My memory of Alice was that it was more of an excuse for them to show off interesting visuals and didn't actually have much in the way of game play mechanics to it, but I never got very far. Maybe I should look it up again and see.
  - laumars 13y ago
    It wasn't the most cerebral of games, I'll grant you that. But it did set a good atmosphere with the visuals (which you'd described) and audio. It had a weird creepy charm to it. I tend to get bored of games quite quickly but Alice was one of the few which kept me engaged to the end.

prezjordan 13y ago

Just finished Masters of Doom on the plane Sunday. Fantastic read. I highly recommend it to all software folks, even if you're not a gamer. Tons of a highly relevant stories and accounts in there. http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Culture/dp/0812972155 http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Cultu...

WA 13y ago
I agree. I devoured it in two afternoons and found it quite motivational in terms of a business book. Here, there were a handful of programmers, experimenting with different pricing models (shareware vs. retail), dictating their terms to publishers, starting ethical and legal discussions (Columbine Highschool shooting related to violent computer games? Export laws of software, especially violent computer games to Germany), helping Microsoft to establish Windows as a gaming platform (by making Doom a Direct X game) and so on. They not only made games, they established a genre and nobody had a clue what the future would look like.
- laumars 13y ago
  Slight nitpick, but Doom was a DOS game and it's DirectX port (Doom95) was written by Microsoft, not ID Software. In fact the developer a MS who wrote of Doom95 is another famous name in the world of gaming; Gabe Newell (who has obviously since left Microsoft). The reason I nitpick is because ID Software have always been pro-OpenGL rather than favouring Dx3D. What's more, most of their earlier games (I've not played anything since QIII) have been ported to other platforms by ID Software themselves and often not even developed on Windows PCs to begin with. So I think Gabe really deserves the credit (or criticism hehe) for kick starting the Windows/DirectX culture we see now. Which is ironic as Gabe is now -in my opinion at least- the biggest threat Microsoft faces for the future of Windows games. But that's another topic entirely :)
kevando 13y ago
Incredible read. I also recommend the audio version, read by Will Wheaton

wj 13y ago

I really enjoyed Anachronox which was also released by Ion Storm around the same time as Daikatana.

azsromej 13y ago

When I read the book I found myself looking up various locations mentioned in the book and ended up making this list: http://romej.com/2012/06/places-of-doom-where-id-built-games http://romej.com/2012/06/places-of-doom-where-id-built-games

WA 13y ago
Very nice, thank you.
ptr 13y ago
Awesome! I can sit and imagine what it'd be like to work on Quake in a place like that all day long.