John Carmack leaves id!
Blimey! John Carmack has resigned from id Software, the company he helped form and push into the stratosphere. I thought he'd never leave id Software, it seemed about as likely as Martijn abandoning WOS, or WinAMP no longer being updated, or
Oh yeah.
I'm starting to think now that this is just a dream, and I'll wake up to find that the WOS news page has been updated for the seventh time today, id Software has just released another rubbish first person shooter that does nothing new but does it with a flash new engine, and WinAMP's latest version is sponsored by Woolworths.
Anyway, re: Carmack leaving id Software:
"John Carmack, the programmer responsible for Doom, Quake, and more, has left id Software completely.
?John Carmack, who has become interested in focusing on things other than game development at id, has resigned from the studio," id's studio director Tim Willits told IGN. "John?s work on id Tech 5 and the technology for the current development work at id is complete, and his departure will not affect any current projects. We are fortunate to have a brilliant group of programmers at id who worked with John and will carry on id?s tradition of making great games with cutting-edge technology. As colleagues of John for many years, we wish him well.?."
Source: http://uk.ign.com/articles/2013/11/22/doom-creator-john-carmack-officially-leaves-id-software
Personally, the only games id made that I liked were Doom, Doom 2, and Quake 3, and Quake 3 came out at the same time as the very similar, but hugely superior (IMHO) Unreal Tournament, so UT got most of my playing time, not Q3. I still play UT to this day, but only play Q3 when other people want to (i.e. over a LAN connection at work).
I didn't like Quake, or Quake 2 (though I know that they were and are very popular, Doom 3 (which I feel missed the point of Doom games entirely), Quake 4 (a generic FPS with nothing to raise it above average-at-best), and Rage is OK but nothing at all special (except graphically, but like so many games with excellent graphical engines, it 'wastes' it's graphical abilities (IMHO) by portraying a ruined, ugly world - I think that a good graphics engines is much better spent on a pretty world, such as Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, or Far Cry.
Also, I can't play Wolfenstein 3D, as when I try, it seems so primitive. I think you have to have been there at the time to appreciate it, and I was spoilt by having played Doom before I tried Wolfenstein 3D.
Oh yeah.
I'm starting to think now that this is just a dream, and I'll wake up to find that the WOS news page has been updated for the seventh time today, id Software has just released another rubbish first person shooter that does nothing new but does it with a flash new engine, and WinAMP's latest version is sponsored by Woolworths.
Anyway, re: Carmack leaving id Software:
"John Carmack, the programmer responsible for Doom, Quake, and more, has left id Software completely.
?John Carmack, who has become interested in focusing on things other than game development at id, has resigned from the studio," id's studio director Tim Willits told IGN. "John?s work on id Tech 5 and the technology for the current development work at id is complete, and his departure will not affect any current projects. We are fortunate to have a brilliant group of programmers at id who worked with John and will carry on id?s tradition of making great games with cutting-edge technology. As colleagues of John for many years, we wish him well.?."
Source: http://uk.ign.com/articles/2013/11/22/doom-creator-john-carmack-officially-leaves-id-software
Personally, the only games id made that I liked were Doom, Doom 2, and Quake 3, and Quake 3 came out at the same time as the very similar, but hugely superior (IMHO) Unreal Tournament, so UT got most of my playing time, not Q3. I still play UT to this day, but only play Q3 when other people want to (i.e. over a LAN connection at work).
I didn't like Quake, or Quake 2 (though I know that they were and are very popular, Doom 3 (which I feel missed the point of Doom games entirely), Quake 4 (a generic FPS with nothing to raise it above average-at-best), and Rage is OK but nothing at all special (except graphically, but like so many games with excellent graphical engines, it 'wastes' it's graphical abilities (IMHO) by portraying a ruined, ugly world - I think that a good graphics engines is much better spent on a pretty world, such as Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, or Far Cry.
Also, I can't play Wolfenstein 3D, as when I try, it seems so primitive. I think you have to have been there at the time to appreciate it, and I was spoilt by having played Doom before I tried Wolfenstein 3D.
Post edited by ewgf on
Comments
I love Quake, Q2 is ok, Q3 was trying to be too much like Unreal Tournament and was just multiplayer rubbish and Q4 was just as bad as Doom 3. I much preferred Gloom Deluxe, Fears or Breathless on the Amiga to Wolfenstein and Doom. I've tried Wolfenstein 3D a couple of times on the PC and the XBLA demo and just couldn't get into it.
I don’t think I have the stomach for it.
--Raziel (Legend of Kain: Soul Reaver 2)
https://www.youtube.com/user/VincentTSFP
...some deluded fools think otherwise, but those deluded fools are deluded.
Martijn isn't deluded ... maybe you're the one who is diluted, yeah, like 99% hot air, rest is a fart in the wind.
(Sorry, couldn't really come up with anything funny ... it's just too late, and I should be asleep already.)
Anyways, stop being such a Debbie Downer Mr. CScowley. It's not nice spreading rumours.
All the rest were /meh
EDIT: He was a great programmer though, and introduced the world to the BSP tree, he was ahead of his time but technology caught up with him I think. Doom 3 engine was ahead of its time (with bump mapping and polygonal shadows, noone does those anymore, it's all done with texture projection). CryEngine dudes probably the cutting edge now? (But the screen space ambient occlusion in Far Cry 3 looks bad at least on 360, like a big dark blob around everything! Lighting is good though).
EDIT2: Oblivion had a pretty world? Yikes! Mr. Potato Head in overbloom world meets terrible level scaling enemies?
I liked Quake too, but remember feeling somewhat underwhelmed by the small amount of baddies on screen at any one time; after the loads you could have in the Doom 1/2. I know this was down to technical limitations. Also on one of the early demos there was a end of level baddy like a big dragon; as you'd go up a spiral staircase. Wonder what happened to that?
I know, I liked the way in Doom 1 and 2 you'd sometimes come upon an area with lots of different enemies, and you could try to get them to hit each other accidentally, which led to them killing each other. To me, Quake was several steps backwards from Doom, with only the graphics engine being superior, though even there I prefered Doom, as Doom's engine (or at least the finished game) had more colour and variety than Quake.
BTW, the dragon does appear, in one of the two official expansion paks, Dissolution of Eternity.
Oh he's a great programmer, no doubt about it. It's not the technical side of id's games that I didn't like, it was the gameplay side of so many that I never took to.
I think it looks great! And yes the game had many problems, such as scaling enemies, but that's nothing to do with the graphics, which is what I was commenting on.
But surely Martijn delegated a few trusted members of WOS to carry on in his absence? He must have considered the (horrible) possibility that he might one day get hit by a bus or something, and so make provisions for someone else carrying on if he couldn't? And even if he didn't (and I don't know why he wouldn't, given how he was so dedicated to WOS) the fact is he's abdicated (temporarily or permanently) of his own choice, so he's certainly had enough opportunity to hand the reigns over now. Even if he's met the woman of his dreams, then I fail to see how he can go from working on WOS almost obsessively to dropping any and all contact with it - you think he'd still spend an hour or two ever week on it, or at least authorise other people to fill in for him.
To be honest I'm surprised there's not more discussion on these forums about how WOS will manage in the future. If Martijn doesn't pay the server fees, will WOS close down sometime soon?
This may be a daft idea but couldn't a temporary 'WOS new bits' site be created that in some ways mirrors the structure of WOS to just add any *new* content. That way if future updates start happening again it should be easy to update WOS from merging the other site as it already follows the same structure?
All the existing WOS archive stuff wouldn't be mirrored/copied/duplicated; that's not what I'm getting at? Its purely the new stuff that can be added if copyright allows.
The longer it goes on, the more work will be involved in coming back. In engineering terms, Martijn's a single point of failure. Them's facts, sir, not rumours.
It's dead, Dave.
BTW, when I say "freeware" above, I mean whatever the source code's status means (freeware/public domain/GPL/etc), so please don't start that discussion again (the 'net is full of arguments about open source licensing, and most people on WOS (well, the 'net) neither know nor care about the ins and out, really).
I wish other companies would release the source codes to their various games, so many great games deserve to be ported to other machines, and even to have their engines made fully compatible with modern PCs and OSs (and even improved upon, such as the way various Doom and Duke Nukem third party engine upgrades have been).
All I'm (and ZnorXman & Foggy) doing is keeping the forum the going. The rest of WoS pretty much runs itself.
The only concerns I have is updating the archive which hasn't been done for a while.
We will find a solution but it may take a while. Martijn maintains a vice-like grip on things and has obviously been working out!!
( Err, I think you mean it is. -Ed )
*In the grand scheme of things.
No, simple as.
Just because forumites and others who frequent the "What's New" page aren't getting their near-daily fix doesn't mean WoS is being closed or that the plug is being ... err ... un-plugged.
I would be upset if this website closed down, this is the first site i visit every day. I love the banter between the wossers on here.
You don't have to worry about the WoS Forum. It's not getting closed down, nor is it anywhere near getting closed.
What the other WoSsers are referring to is the shortage of updates on the frontpage of WoS, which includes updating the Archive and such. Everyone here knows that once Martijn gets back from travelling, he will tend to the updates. Some of the comments here kind of give off the vibe that people are addicted to WoS (No worries, you will get your fix), or that some are putting an overly negative slant on something that isn't really for them to worry about, if there is a need to worry at all.
That's the point. I was lucky to play Wolfestein 3D back in 1993, some time before playing Doom. Ok, Doom is far better, better graphics, sound, gameplay etc but when I first played Wolfestein was shocking (never played Driller and others first person games for the Spectrum, so I was impressed with that 'revolutionary' concept).
It's too scary.
Doom wasn't really scary and I could probably play it more often than Wolf.
Games List 2016 - Games List 2015 - Games List 2014
The points are:-
1) that the archive hasn't been maintained for 5 months: no games, no maps, no utilities, no books or magazine scans, no inlays, no anything released since June 2013 is in the WoS archive.
2) That ZNorXman and none of the other WoS mods can tell you when or if it will ever be updated again, because they simply don't know. There might be an update tomorrow. There might be one in a couple of years time. There might never be another update.
3) The longer the archive's left to rot, the harder it is for anyone to bring it back up to date.
Some people have their heads buried in the sand (or elsewhere) and are trotting out this "lalala everything's going to be just fine" line, when they don't actually know whether that's the case or not.
cole's idea from earlier in this thread about "a temporary 'WOS new bits' site be created that in some ways mirrors the structure of WOS to just add any *new* content" is a fine potential solution to the problem. The only issue is it needs somebody to implement and maintain, and somebody to supply the probably not inconsiderable bandwidth.