John Carmack resigns from id

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Tchernobog
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John Carmack resigns from id

Post by Tchernobog »

"Doom coder and notoriously clever graphics programmer John Carmack has left id Software to focus on a virtual reality gaming startup Oculus Rift. The departure was announced on Friday and will see Carmack focus full time on his role as chief technology officer at Oculus Rift." - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/22 ... ulus_rift/

"Carmack’s departure from id gives yet another boost to Oculus VR, which has gone from upstart to industry darling without releasing a finished product yet, but it leaves id in a strange position. After being purchased by Bethesda Softworks’ parent company ZeniMax in 2009, id has only put out one completely new game, Rage, which saw only moderate success; a sequel was recently cancelled. In April, it was revealed that Doom 4 would need a complete overhaul, which could take years. Despite Willits’ assurances that this won’t affect any current projects, this will certainly cause some reshuffling at id, at the very least." - http://www.digitaltrends.com/gaming/co- ... -software/

So does anyone here have any thoughts on this? In my opinion, the writing has been on the wall for id for awhile, as Carmack is not the only one to have left the company over the past few years, and Zenimax has been increasingly dictating policy at id and seemingly not for the better.
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Re: John Carmack resigns from id

Post by N0t_mINe »

This story had me wondering if the ego shooter, maybe pc gaming as a whole, is a fading genre.

Perhaps the modding scene in general would actually benefit from such a predicament?
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Re: John Carmack resigns from id

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PC gaming is doing just fine, if you are willing to dive into the ever growing independent gaming market. In fact, that is simply what is needed, more independent shooter developers.

The problems facing id have more to do with them embracing the notion that the PC is dying than anything else. Under Zenimax's watch the games have gotten more console focused, they have banned the practice of unsupported binaries for their games, became completely tied to services such as Steam, and have gone through all of the big commercial motions. Source code releases only remained due to Carmack's belligerent insistence, and with him gone we will probably never see any more source code out of id. I would not be surprised if the company eventually turns against mod support at some point to.

What is needed is a new generation of shareware shooter developers willing to embrace what the id of old used to stand for: modding, experimentation, multi-platform support, source code releases, and a strong PC focus. The shareware spirit is far from dead, and is actually having a strong resurgence in the independent market. Problem is too few shooter developers have joined the bandwagon, and when they do they use Unity 3D which for all of its advantages has terrible modding support or UDK which limits them in terms of available platforms and control of their code.

But I am confident this situation can, and probably even will, correct itself, just as it has been doing for other plagued genres. There once was a time when platformers where considered dead, now they are a dime a dozen. We just need more shooter developers to catch on.
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Re: John Carmack resigns from id

Post by Tchernobog »

A Doom 20th Anniversary retrospective from Carmack that I feel can also be considered a decent retrospective of id Software in general at this point:
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/12/j ... -doom/all/
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Re: John Carmack resigns from id

Post by dosgamer000 »

Quite miffed about Doom 4 and it's development. Carmack says one of the things holding them is what the true interpretation of what Doom should be. Spending a fair amount of time in Doom communities myself, this is incredibly true: there are TONS of opinions about what Doom is. Some say it should only be straight up bad-ass action with a heavy metal soundtrack while others say the 3d environment and interactivity make the game. Then you have the guys who love Doom 3 and the horror aspect and then you have the guys who hate it.

I'm honestly indifferent all ways, they should just overview what made all the Doom games successful (and maybe by extension Wolf/Quake) and try to get a little bit of everything in there. Listening to the fans is nice but you'll get no where trying to please everyone. They honestly should just wing it and risk the possibility of upsetting some fans, experimenting might be good and it's not like there is this huge hype for Doom to be anything else other than, well...Doom.

Here's a quick list about what Doom 4 could benefit from using:

• Demonic "quick-fire" spells that are fueled by a slowly charging mana bar that refuels quickly by collecting dead demon souls. Arcane sub-weaponry to support your conventional firearms.
• Inventory items ala Quake 2.
• Dual wielding for Pistols and a new SMG-style weapon.
• Railgun and Nailgun appearing from Doom's successor series, Quake (2).
• No reloading for that classic, quick-paced, run-and-gun feeling. No need for slowdown.
• Hordes of enemies at a time as seen in maps like MAP29: The Living End.
• Music-wise, if you wanna go the horror route or want a tune to fit a scary scene, enlist the wonderful Aubrey Hodges. For awesome ambient, action, old-school shooter feel-type music, get Michiel Van Den Bos or Alexander Brandon.
• Perhaps hub style gameplay like Quake 2/Hexen? If not, epic adventure ala Unreal 1.
• Keep the story black and white, it's about killing demons with awesome weapons, not wondering if the Hell Knight is forced to fight/respects humans/whatever. Save that for a spinoff, not a main game.
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Re: John Carmack resigns from id

Post by Tchernobog »

From what I heard the main problem was that they handed Doom 4 to a new inexperienced team while the settled id people (which have been slowly but surely emigrating from id in the mean time) focused on finishing Rage. Upon Rage's completion, they went to see what the new guys had come up with, and were horrified to discover that it was just a Call of Duty ripoff with demons.

You can argue about what Doom is until you are blue in the face, but "Call of Doom" is not it by any stretch of the imagination.
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Re: John Carmack resigns from id

Post by dosgamer000 »

Tchernobog wrote:From what I heard the main problem was that they handed Doom 4 to a new inexperienced team while the settled id people (which have been slowly but surely emigrating from id in the mean time) focused on finishing Rage. Upon Rage's completion, they went to see what the new guys had come up with, and were horrified to discover that it was just a Call of Duty ripoff with demons.

You can argue about what Doom is until you are blue in the face, but "Call of Doom" is not it by any stretch of the imagination.
Really? They were working on Doom 4 and it ended up being a COD clone? That's just unforgivable. To each his own but the saturation of FPS games mimicking COD/Halo is really aggravating me. Its even worse when I watch these "gaming shows" hyping up all these so called awesome games when they look so unbelievably generic and uninspired. Those people probably don't even PLAY video games. :(

Damn shame the old school FPS genre is pretty dead, just LOOK at how DNF came out! Utter travesty. People call me pessimistic but it's just the truth, everything is a lazy clone of everything. It's like devs are afraid that if their game isn't like this game or has this game's feature, it'll never sell. No one tasks a risk anymore and they all just want the almighty dollar. We're all forced fed to accept this as the "standard of gaming". Oh please, sit down.

Off the top oft head, a somewhat half-decent DooM 4 in my eyes would have the frantic, hordes of hellspawn gameplay ala Painkiller with the atmosphere and "treking" of the very first Unreal.
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Re: John Carmack resigns from id

Post by Tchernobog »

Tracked down a source for it:
http://kotaku.com/five-years-and-nothin ... -468097062

And as I said, the answer to the industries current woes is simply that we need more independent shooter developers. Many other video game genres that had fallen off of the mainstream's radar, such as adventure games, platformers, and classic survival horror titles, now abound in the independent market. I can not help but feel that it is only a matter of time before the Doom generation starts to pull off the same stunts that the Mario one already has and start making a new market for classic styled first person shooters again.
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Re: John Carmack resigns from id

Post by BEAST »

I've been really disappointed with how id sells their games now. Yes, you get them kind of alright on Steam (even though they removed the freaking music from the Quake games), but when it comes to selling their games from their own store, they suck. For instance, I got all the Wolfenstein and Doom games from Id's store, and the files don't even come with DOSbox installers. They just install outdated ports of their games. id makes 3D Realms look good in this department. True, 3D Realms may have made some poor decisions, but at least they sell their classic games with DOSbox installers, and they even sell backup copy disks of their games to those who order. They couldn't sell Spear of Destiny, but at least they could sell Wolfenstein 3D with a DOSbox installer. Well, the Wolfenstein part of id is not too bad. I can play their files on DOSbox without trouble. But with Doom and Doom II, id sold an old port which allows you to chose any level you want to play, but the colors get distorted. Thankfully, Zdoom helped me play the game as I wanted to play it (with the nice addition of mouselook), but still...

I wrote once to John Romero, and told him that I wish that id Software would do better in the department of how they sold their games, like not only selling ALL of their titles, but also equipping them with DOS emulators (or maybe I didn't mention the DOS emulator part). He wrote back, and agreed with me, which was a touching moment for me.

From I could guess from Doom IV, I think it's probably supposed to be a direct sequel to Doom II, because one of the id guys said that it's not a sequel to Doom III (Doom III is it's own game different from the first two Dooms, so that means they're going back), and that it's not a reboot (meaning that they're not doing a remake of Doom II, but a sequel to it). At least, that's what I hoped they intended, but considering the state of id, I'm a little pessimistic about Doom IV.
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Re: John Carmack resigns from id

Post by Tchernobog »

As long as the game data was still easily available I would not be too upset about it - why would you not want to play the games in your own customized source port anyway? Even if you want to be conservative to the original release you can always use something like Chocolate Doom. Part of the reason for releasing source code was to make their older games no longer such a big maintenance burden for id after all. That being said, shipping them with broken ports is still problematic; I would much rather they just sold the straight DOS versions than a kludged port.
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Re: John Carmack resigns from id

Post by BEAST »

I take it back. I managed to get those Doom ports working. I just wished I was able to buy their Heretic and Hexen ports before they decided to not sell them anymore. Bethesda totally changed the site, and there store is no longer what it was. I had still held out hopes that id would sell their full catalog of games on their site again. Bethesda has mess it up somewhat.
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Re: John Carmack resigns from id

Post by Tchernobog »

BEAST wrote:Bethesda has mess it up somewhat.
I think we can just apply that to id generally. :P
Tchernobog wrote:What is needed is a new generation of shareware shooter developers willing to embrace what the id of old used to stand for: modding, experimentation, multi-platform support, source code releases, and a strong PC focus. The shareware spirit is far from dead, and is actually having a strong resurgence in the independent market. Problem is too few shooter developers have joined the bandwagon, and when they do they use Unity 3D which for all of its advantages has terrible modding support or UDK which limits them in terms of available platforms and control of their code. But I am confident this situation can, and probably even will, correct itself, just as it has been doing for other plagued genres. There once was a time when platformers where considered dead, now they are a dime a dozen. We just need more shooter developers to catch on.
I am sorry about quoting myself, but I just realized that Unreal Engine 4 might just solve a great deal of these issues. It feels odd for me to suddenly be in Tim Sweeney's camp, but for the moment I am willing to fly the UE4 banner high.
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