John Carmack's biggest mistakes?

10 hours ago, Rudolph said:

You don't have to live in a capitalist dystopia, that is the thing.

But you're literally saying it's John Carmack's fault that I do live in a capitalist dystopia because he gave us VR, and I am adamant that it would still be a capitalist dystopia whether or not he gave us VR. I don't not having VR would have brought us any closer to communism.

12 hours ago, ApprihensivSoul said:

“Story in a game is like story in a pr0n movie, it's expected to be there, but it's not important.”

What a terrible premise to exist. In all cases I am on the exact opposite side. Story is important in all cases, and is an integral part of how games should be designed. 

And Doom is better for having one.

I agree with him but I don't think he threw enough caveats and explanations in. The *story* of a game should really be the *story* of the player's actions within the game world; like when I play doom, the story that matters isn't the the ending text sequences, it's the story of how I beat each level along the way. If the three ending text screens were the important part it would have been *MUCH* easier to just write a 3 page book and you could have skipped all that meaningless gameplay in between which doesn't elaborate on the pre-conceived traditional story.

But I'd much rather doom without the intermission texts than the intermission texts without the doom.

Doom is one of those games where a barebones story is enough.  But it isn't true for other games.  Halo wouldn't be Halo without its story and backstory and history and lore.

Firing John Romero was the worst mistake John Carmack ever made. id was not the same without Romero. :-(

What's annoying about Carmack's quote about game story is how often it's shoved in when someone wants to talk about Doom megawad story. We know it already.

One ultimate mistake of his:

Declining Jim Bagley's Custom Engine for the Saturn Port!

Crippling the Saturn port of DOOM.

23 minutes ago, V.I.D.E.O. Files Entertain said:

One ultimate mistake of his:

 

Declining Jim Bagley's Custom Engine for the Saturn Port!

I never understood that.  Carmack did the Jaguar port and must have known the issues with getting the IDTech 1 running on non-x86 processors, let alone a dual RISC cpu setup.  I'm astounded that someone that technical could be blinded by his own ego that "it must be using my engine".  Really a shame.

6 hours ago, Stupid Bunny said:

Actually, I’d love to know which John contributed which bits of code to Doom in general.

Romero programmed the original level editor (DoomEd) and other various tools in Carmack's engine that were used to make the game. A task he did previously for all the Keen games and also later on for Quake 1. 

5 hours ago, Gwarl said:

But you're literally saying it's John Carmack's fault that I do live in a capitalist dystopia because he gave us VR

...No. No, I am not.

I am saying his arguments are terrible and show just out of touch the guy is with (non-virtual) reality: VR is not going to help you meet your basic needs, like food, water, hygiene, shelter and such. Heck, it is not even going to work without power, so if you cannot afford to pay your bills, you will not be able to use a VR headset for anything. If all you want here is something to help you cope with reality, alchohol and drugs are always going to be a cheaper alternative than a VR headset.

Had John Carmack stuck to selling VR as entertainment and maybe scientific research, it would have been fine, but he had to frame it as some sort of solution to real-world problems, which again strikes me as utterly baffling and downright creepy.

7 hours ago, ReaperAA said:

 

Soulless is not how I would define Quake 2. Sure, it's general setting is not really unique, but the execution is really well done. The atmosphere and level design is very well done and the soundtrack is still one of the best of its time.

 

And speaking about Daikatana, sure the game didn't do well because of the technical issues at the time of its release. But the 1.3 patch introduced a lot of bug fixes and allows to play without companions (which makes a huge difference, trust me). I actually enjoyed the game when I played it for the first time a few years ago.

I actually liked quake 2 in general, but it was definitely the way their games started to trend. I also remember that famously Trent Reznor (who did quake's 1 soundtrack) was approached to do quake 2 and refused because he thought the game lacked atmosphere. But in the book it's kind of clear that once Romero left there just wasn't a lot of creative direction left at ID.


I also think there's an important distinction between story and plot; a game like DOOM benefits greatly from a 'story', meaning that you are on tech bases on Mars where experiments have gone horribly wrong and now demons have infested the works. But DOOM really didn't need a plot, i.e. a level-by-level series of goals and progressions

16 hours ago, ApprihensivSoul said:

“Story in a game is like story in a pr0n movie, it's expected to be there, but it's not important.”

If I understood the Black Book on Doom's engine correctly, then technically it's because Carmack understood how to write code that utilized the processor and RAM hardware in ways they weren't designed for that allowed for a lot of the technical advancements that amazed everyone and pushed the industry for a decade and a half or more. I mean, technically COD was still running a heavily modified Quake III engine until very recently, right? So basically Carmack's own work made his honest for the time comment not obsolete but definitely dated it lol.

17 hours ago, Rudolph said:

3. His out-of-touch, frankly creepy arguments in favor of VR technology.

I'll admit, his description of a VR dependent future sounds more depressing than even the empathy system in Do Android's Dream of Electric Sheep? But with the way people are with their smart phones and attention spans these days, we're technically already there anyway.

But at the same time I love exploring the concept. Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex did a good job of showing a more positive spin on the otherwise dystopian idea. One episode in particular featured a home for severely autistic children that couldn't function unless they were fully plugged into the internet. And in the net, their minds functioned so well that they were capable of great things, including building unbreakable online security barriers. So while on the surface a safe place for these kids where they can also be productive was good, but then you have private and military interests poking their nose into it as well as the question of "are the kids being treated well or abused and taken advantage of?" to consider.

Anyway, much like Philip K. Dick, Carmack is one of those rare guys who's mind works in a way that can see and accomplish things normal people wouldn't even consider, but because of that they also see other concepts in a different way too and often say or create crazy stuff as well. Like my previous paragraph implies, you have to take the good with the bad on everything lol.

What was the topic again? Oh right.

I think Carmack's focus on his engine work in the last half of his career with iD is what hurt Doom 3 and Rage the most. A lot of iD engines are best utilized in expansion packs and licensing. D3's engine in Prey and Quake 4 was phenomenal, and Rage would not have received so much flak IMO if more time had been spent on content and the ending instead of megatextures (because I'll be honest, I absolutely loved Rage on the PS3, and the driving segments were amazing ((especially considering iD had never done proper vehicles in an engine before.)))

But by that time Carmack was too big to fail in a lot of people's eyes, so there was nobody to ground him. Instead of building crazy code to implement new gameplay ideas, it became building crazy code to show off flashy tech tricks.

So maybe not a mistake so much as missed potential due to ego and focus?

John Carmack's Biggest mistake imo is not listening to other people, There was plenty of times where people offered advice to him and he flat out rejected them because his ego and pride wouldn't allow it.

And one thing is how he worked with ID, he would make a new engine then demand people make a game off of it, which for the most part made some good games, but i feel like having a game idea FIRST is alot more practical then just trying to show off what the engine can do

@Dillar I don't disagree with most of what you said. I do agree that id Software became less creative after Romero (and Sandy and McGee) left the company.

but...

2 hours ago, Dillar said:

I also remember that famously Trent Reznor (who did quake's 1 soundtrack) was approached to do quake 2 and refused because he thought the game lacked atmosphere.

This statement is only a rumor and there is no actual proof that Trent ever said that. On the other hand, Sascha Dikiciyan "Sonic Mayhem" (who did Quake 2's ost) said that Trent didn't decline because he found the game soulless. Trent was just busy at that time.

Sonic Mayhem stated this on Civvie11's Quake 2 video. His comment is at the top of the comment section

20 minutes ago, ReaperAA said:

@Dillar I don't disagree with most of what you said. I do agree that id Software became less creative after Romero (and Sandy and McGee) left the company.

 

but...

 

This statement is only a rumor and there is no actual proof that Trent ever said that. On the other hand, Sascha Dikiciyan "Sonic Mayhem" (who did Quake 2's ost) said that Trent didn't decline because he found the game soulless. Trent was just busy at that time.

 

Sonic Mayhem stated this on Civvie11's Quake 2 video. His comment is at the top of the comment section

 

Interesting; TIL!

13 hours ago, Gibbon said:

Yeah, just open the original sources to Doom, Quake, Doom 3.  Especially D3, so many areas that he could have written beautiful object oriented template-based code but no, while it certainly is cleaner than Doom and Quake, it is still under par.  White space, variables that aren't used, minimal class inheritance..

 

GZDooms code in comparison blows it away, I'm guessing a big part of that is that for each new engine he just ripped out stuff and started again.

I'm a bit confused. I don't want to get off topic, but I was under the impression that Doom source code was neaty than Duke Nukem 3D source code. If you know the issue. Is that true?

33 minutes ago, user76828904 said:

 

I'm a bit confused. I don't want to get off topic, but I was under the impression that Doom source code was neaty than Duke Nukem 3D source code. If you know the issue. Is that true?

Duke is cleaner because all the engine stuff was an api header going to build whereas Doom had everything lumped into one source rather than engine code separated from game code.

6 minutes ago, Gibbon said:

Duke is cleaner because all the engine stuff was an api header going to build whereas Doom had everything lumped into one source rather than engine code separated from game code.

What about this? https://fabiensanglard.net/duke3d/notes.txt

I'm still confused.

2 minutes ago, user76828904 said:

 

What about this? https://fabiensanglard.net/duke3d/notes.txt

I'm still confused.

Meh, that guy.  I'm not the best one to judge really.  I've spent years with the Duke code and NBlood stuff so I'm used to it.

If you're confused, learn it :)

4 minutes ago, Gibbon said:

Meh, that guy.  I'm not the best one to judge really.  I've spent years with the Duke code and NBlood stuff so I'm used to it.

 

If you're confused, learn it :)

2 computer programmers have different perspectives about the same source code. For the layman, it can be confusing. Right? :)

Which source port do you recommend to start study?

Megatextures.

36 minutes ago, Gibbon said:

Duke is cleaner because all the engine stuff was an api header going to build whereas Doom had everything lumped into one source rather than engine code separated from game code.

Really? I am no programmer, but everywhere I went, I read that Doom's code (while not perfect) is much cleaner than the build engine and particularly Duke3D's code.

17 hours ago, Rudolph said:

In action games, that is.

 

Story-driven adventure games were also all the rage. In fact, the same year that Doom came out, you had The 7th Guest and Myst, which both took advantage of the CD-ROM format capabilities to feature live-action video clips and tell elaborate stories.

Yeah, fair point. I even remember reading in Masters of Doom that id 'hated Myst' and wanted to do everything the opposite of what it did. In any case, I would maintain that Carmack's 'story in a game is like story in a porn movie' approach was appropriate for Doom. I wouldn't call it a mistake (though I don't think you said it was), as I think Doom's singular focus on action and atmosphere would have been bogged down by cut scenes and more frequent stops for exposition.

I think you could certainly argue that in their later games they could have gone a more story-driven route. Quake II could certainly have benefitted from a few more of its 'StarCraft'-esque cinematics.

@Caffeine Freak Eh. I do not know. Quake IV had a much greater emphasis on story and it was not a particularly good game.

Then again, I did enjoy Doom 3 for its story presentation, so maybe it was just a matter of Raven not being as talented as Id Software.

17 hours ago, Gibbon said:

White space, variables that aren't used, minimal class inheritance..

 

Minimal class inheritance is considered a good practice nowadays, so one could argue that JC was a visionary ;)

Unused variables - good point, compilers reported those even in 90s.

White space - I am not sure if automated C/C++ formatters existed in 90s, but they certainly existed in 2000s.

I read that John Carmack was a complete dick to Apogee Software by revoking their license to use the Wolfenstein franchise at the last minute, forcing them to rework what would have been Wolfenstein 3D II into Rise of the Triad. Maybe I have the benefit of hindsight, but there is simply no way a Wolfenstein 3D sequel could have taken the spotlight away from Doom; it would have been like pitting a second WarCraft II expansion against StarCraft! It seems so petty of John Carmack to try to undermine a non-competitor like that.

18 hours ago, hybridial said:

 

No, there's plenty of fucking great games that don't need much in regards to story to work. ...

And in Doom's case, no it's not better for having one, Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal have lackluster stories at best...

I actually completely agree that you don't need much of a story, actually, where I stand is that you still need some form of story, and the Doom one, while silly, overly macho, and very minimal, is actually pretty well written, even back in the 90s. It's a dumb comic book at best, but it plays to the strengths of the gameplay. Compare it, for instance, to Quake 1, which has a much less consistent narrative, with characters having unclear roles and such. (Quake being a game that is largely carried by its atmosphere, I have never enjoyed its meatshieldy gunplay.) 

So my point being that the story has to exist in some form to add meaning to motivate most players, even if the story is pointless and barebones. There are certainly games like Minesweeper (which still has an excuse premise) and solitaire that have a largely "no plot, no problem" approach to the content, but the mindset of people who get good at them is much different than those who get good at Doom or something like that. Doom had a quite developed premise, even at the time, and its influence has stuck around til now, with only a fraction of mods (Ancient Aliens, Icarus, possibly Tei Tenga) taking liberties with the concepts.

So in short, I agree with you on your descriptions, I just disagree with whether the plot was important. I think it was, and it stuck, and still influences fanworks today. (Meant respectfully, of course.)

EDIT:
Double post due to connectivity issue, feel free to delete this, Admins!

14 hours ago, Gibbon said:

Halo wouldn't be Halo without its story and backstory and history and lore.

Let's take a look from the perspective that Halo actually is in pop culture rather than in the Halo fandom. IIRC Halo was praised for its graphics and gameplay by most, if not all people. I never heard anyone praise Halo for its story because the premise of Halo is somewhat unoriginal when you strip it down to its barebones. Also personal anecdote: I played Halo in the early days on Xbox and me and my friends had no clue what the story and lore was outside of "aliens are bad". The multiplayer was fun, and the story mode was also fun. But we found it fun because of how it played, not because of the lore. Of course that doesn't mean that Halo is a bad game just because me and my friends personally don't remember the story. Other people can appreciate certain things in different ways.

8 hours ago, Gibbon said:

Duke is cleaner because all the engine stuff was an api header going to build whereas Doom had everything lumped into one source rather than engine code separated from game code.

8 hours ago, user76828904 said:

What about this? https://fabiensanglard.net/duke3d/notes.txt

I'm still confused.

8 hours ago, Gibbon said:

Meh, that guy.  I'm not the best one to judge really.  I've spent years with the Duke code and NBlood stuff so I'm used to it.

 

If you're confused, learn it :)

Your response... I can appreciate that you're aware that your opinion is highly biased and subjective, similar to John Carmack's opinion on story in video games, I  guess? But telling someone to learn it doesn't mean that they don't have the right to think it's still more confusing than they initially understood it to be, if they do actually decide to take your advice and "learn it".

Using your remark, someone else can easily tell you to "just learn it" if you're confused about Doom's API being lumped into one source. "Just learn Doom LOL". See how highly subjective and insensitive that is?

17 hours ago, Gwarl said:

“Story in a game is like story in a pr0n movie, it's expected to be there, but it's not important.”

What a terrible premise to exist. In all cases I am on the exact opposite side. Story is important in all cases, and is an integral part of how games should be designed. 

And Doom is better for having one.

The same can be said for other games, so that argument goes both ways. Games have strengths and weaknesses, and sometimes its story (or lackthereof) can be a strength or a weakness, if it does or doesn't have any qualities to make up for the story. There's people out there that just don't care about the story at all, for better or for worse.

However, both ways of thinking: the story being extremely important, the story being unimportant... are both valid ways of thinking. There's obviously people out there who only play for the story. There's also people who only play for the gameplay. Neither group is wrong in appreciating either value over the other because they have their own objective reasons. In the end it's meant to be fun. Some people find the mechanics more fun than deep lore, and some people find exploring the deep lore and the message behind the game to be equally fun as well.

Then you have people who's standards are so high that they play and enjoy a game for both gameplay and story, and you have people who just don't care about either the gameplay OR the story. It's a big world out there.

In general, about this thread: I'm disappointed that the "story in games is like video games in a porn movie" line is being said without either "side" taking into account of the context of what was said behind that line. Doom was praised, rightfully so, for its innovations and breakthroughs regarding PC gaming as a whole, not for its story. That's an objective fact. It's only logical that John Carmack would say such a thing, because Doom wasn't praised for its story. But Doom released over 20 years ago. Standards will naturally only get higher from there with today's crowd. People who think Carmack's statement is foolish in hindsight is correct, but can you really say that at the time, it was wrong? There are also examples I will not name, purely because I don't want to derail the thread, but we can't deny that there are times where the story actually hindered certain series just because of how frustrating they can be to comprehend (or that it's an obvious cash grab that will keep ending its stories with cliffhangers to make an excuse to make more money into another entry to milk its fans).

You have people fail to recognize an important message behind a game that's all about story and teaching life lessons because they blindly follow what Carmack said. It's sad to think about, life lessons and messages falling on deaf ears, because some games are like art in different ways. On the other, you have people that think a game without any meaningful story behind it is less fun just because they put more effort into the gameplay rather than having to try and painstakingly explain everything with tropes, without just appreciating the mechanics and fun absurdity they still put into the game. At the end of the day, people will still enjoy a game that doesn't really have much story, and different people will do the same for games that don't focus too much on gameplay. Every game, with or without effort into its story, is still (hopefully) made with love.

It's probably a mistake to offer my two cents in this thread, but I just felt like I had to get it out there. We all need to focus better on seeing the big picture here, and learn to try and view it from another person's perspective. That includes John Carmack's perspective as well. It's obvious that no one here, even John Carmack means ill-will and it's okay to vent about it. I just think it's concerning if we just paint him and other people as being bigoted and close-minded when we ourselves don't take a moment to understand another perspective.

On 11/19/2021 at 11:48 PM, Gibbon said:

It's like 3D glasses..  remember those :) hopefully VR will go the same way.

Why? It does't force People to use it, as Movie Theaters do with 3D or the Wii "forced" many to implement some kind of Motion Control, and it has a very different Approach for Games.

So if somebody doesn't like it, don't buy and use it.

Carmack is VERY into it, but you need Dreamers to bring some Stuff forward, even if it isn't the Villa Replacement in the End  ;)

But having a VR Headset for myself, he's right in some Points.

Played the Mega Drive Collection for Example and it is pretty cool to play those Games on a "Screen" as big as in a Cinema Screen.

Experience Worlds and Situations that you can't in real Life are also neat.

Also because the Immersion is a complete different one compared to sitting infront of a Screen.

And no, i am not disliking my "small" TV because of that and hating my Life beause i can't fight Dragons in a foreign Land.

It is just a really nice Addition.

Social media does here the Job, telling People their Life is bad ;)

15 hours ago, V.I.D.E.O. Files Entertain said:

One ultimate mistake of his:

 

Declining Jim Bagley's Custom Engine for the Saturn Port!

You are right, but imo difficult to judge without knowing why Carmack came to that Thinking.

I mean, the Super Nintendo Port was allowed to use a own Engine.

35 minutes ago, UndeadRyker said:

Halo was praised for its graphics and gameplay by most, if not all people. I never heard anyone praise Halo for its story because the premise of Halo is somewhat unoriginal when you strip it down to its barebones.

 

...

 

Didn't like Halo back then, haven't got into it :P

But every Story is boring / the same if striped down to the Bones.

It is HOW a Story is told :)

(In Games as Doom, Super Mario Bros. or even Chess the Way in Form of Gameplay and Design tells the Story.)

But you wrote it so nicely well down, i can't add anything useful to it :)