Here is a step-by-step walkthrough of how to get Xcode set up for programming simple console apps like you would find in any basic C book.

STEP 1: Install Xcode 4

It’s in the Mac App Store. Search for Xcode then get it. I believe it’s free. Next, after it’s downloaded, you need to run the app called “Install Xcode” (if you’re running Lion, you can find it by clicking the silver rocket ship dock icon). That is what will really install it. When that’s done, you can move on to step 2.

STEP 2: Create a New Project

This is the first thing you will see. Make sure you choose “Create a new Xcode project”.

Next, choose “Mac OS X”, then “Application”.

Then choose “Command Line Tool”. Click Next.

Now choose the options for your project, and where to put it.

Click Next.

Make sure to UNCHECK the option to create a git repository. You’re just starting to learn to code – source control can come later.

STEP 3: Set Up The Project Window

Now the project will start up in a window that will look confusing since you’re not used to this kind of information. Don’t worry — you don’t need to know about this yet, and you can get rid of it so you can focus only on your code.

First, select your main.c source by clicking on the name in the left pane.

Next, let’s get rid of all the bothersome info. Click on the View buttons so they’re all off like this.

Now you should be looking only at pure code.

Click on the PLAY button at the top-left to run the simple main() code that was generated for you. It will open up an output window at the bottom of the edit area.

Now, make the output area fill the screen from left to right by clicking the View buttons like so:

There! Now you have pure code and pure output!

To clean up the output and make it only show you your code output and no compilation messages, change the pulldown menu from All Output to Target Output.

Finally, I don’t like coding with a solid white background blasting my retinas all day, so I always choose a dark scheme.

To do this, press Command-, (comma) to bring up Preferences. Choose Fonts & Color. On the left pane, choose the theme Midnight. Your screen would look just like this…

That’s all there is to setting up a new console-only C project in Xcode with a simple environment! This is the view that my girlfriend Brenda prefers because it’s easy to just focus on her code.

                          

At GDC 2011, Tom Hall and I did a DOOM Post-Mortem, which basically talked about the complete development of DOOM in a month-by-month format. You can watch the video and the slides right here.

Tom Hall has been working with me and Brenda at Loot Drop for an entire year, and it’s been a blast! He’s been designing and running his own game team, and his game is turning out great. Brenda is busy with her own game, designing and running her team (the game is COOL!), and I’ve been working on keeping the company running smoothly. My game, Cloudforest Expedition, is on a temporary hiatus.

                          

After three months, Tom Hall officially joined us in May 1991. He wanted his transition from Softdisk to go smoothly, so he stayed to train his replacement. Our first year at id was spent mostly developing games for Softdisk’s Gamer’s Edge subscription disk – the product I started, but then left when the company could hold us no longer.

In our first year, 1991, we created Shadow Knights, Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion, Rescue Rover, Hovertank One, Rescue Rover II, Keen Dreams, Commander Keen: Secret of the Oracle, Commander Keen: The Armageddon Machine, Commander Keen: Aliens Ate My Baby Sitter!, Catacomb 3D and Tiles of the Dragon. Eleven games in one year! Not counting the Keen games, Softdisk paid us $5,000 for each game. It was a good thing our first Commander Keen trilogy was making money and gaining each month, otherwise our trajectory would have been drastically different. (In the halls of id Software, some of these games are on display in hanging frames.)

When we started creating Wolfenstein 3D in January 1992 (in Madison, Wisconsin), we still had one more game to create for Softdisk, but we didn’t want to do it. We were too excited to create Wolfenstein 3D! So, George Broussard, co-founder of Apogee Software/3D Realms, offered to create the final game for us. The result of his labors, using our game engine, was the rare and obscure game, ScubaVenture: The Search For Pirate’s Treasure! (An interesting trivia point about the game’s title: one of my programming heroes, Nasir Gebelli, wrote a game called ScubaVenture back in 1983.)

Our first year was the last time we were so prolific. As the games got more complex, and better, the time to develop them grew. Wolfenstein 3D took 6 months, DOOM took one year, Quake took 18 months. In between, our sequels took less time (Spear of Destiny, 2 months; DOOM II, 8 months), but they were using existing code we’d already written.

Twenty years, wow. That is quite an impressive accomplishment, due in large part to the torch-carrying efforts of John Carmack and Kevin Cloud, both of whom remain at id Software today. May id Software live another strong 20 years!

                          

Well, I think it’s awesome for several reasons. First, because I’ve been a huge Duke fan since Duke Nukem 3D. I absolutely loved that game. My memories of playing DN3D are as awesome as my memories playing Dark Forces, Outlaws, Jedi Knight, and Ghost Recon. Secondly, I’ve been friends for years with Randy Pitchford, the man who bought the Duke IP from 3D Realms; to carry the torch as it were. I’m really proud of Randy for doing that – Duke is a great character that deserves another major release, and I’m interested to see what directions Gearbox will take Duke in the future.

I visited 3D Realms in May 2000, right after shipping Daikatana. I went over to check out the latest on DNF. George Broussard showed me the game, and it was seriously awesome. Granted, I was seeing the best stuff they had available at the time, but what I saw was really great. I was excited to play the game. Alas, development of the game went through many changes, and not having a dedicated producer early on took its toll. When I heard 3D Realms had halted development of the game, I was half surprised, and half not. It had been 12 years, and that’s an incredibly long time to be in development – I mean, it’s really incomprehensible. I can’t fathom what it must feel like working on a game that long, then not releasing it, especially if you were there at the start of development.

But now we can all breathe a sigh of relief, those of us who kept the excitement at bay for so long. The Duke Nukem Forever development team that continued creating the game, even after being laid off, without being paid, for the pure love of the game, deserve an epic amount of applause and attention. These guys are the heroes. And I’m still excited to play DNF.

                          

There are some other great articles inside, such as Ensemble Studios’ development transition from Age of Empires 1 to 2 (Age of Kings), a short interview with my friend Randy Pitchford, and an article with ideas about how to you can spend your time if your game has been canceled.

The people who put this magazine together are a great bunch. They have many, many years of experience in the industry and want the magazine to be only the highest quality. I worked with Jessica Tams and Jake Simpson, and they are both very kind and generous to include me here. Gamesauce is only for professional game developers and those in the game industry.

You can read the entire magazine right now.

                          

There’s a down arrow on me, and an up arrow on Will Wright, suggesting that I used to be ranked higher than #5. Wow. Thanks, Geek-O-System guys!

It’s great to see 10% of the list from id Software. Plus, Warren Spector from Ion Storm, at one point. Tom Hall should be here, though. He’s brilliant and under-appreciated.

                          

Next year will be two decades of Keen, Wolfenstein, Doom, and Quake. How many game companies still standing can boast 20 years? Not many. And most companies that live past 20 years are so far removed from their origins that they’re not even the same company.

John Carmack and Kevin Cloud, two of id’s earliest team members, and John as a co-founder, are still with the company, and working hard on RAGE and Doom 4. John is right down in the pit with the development team, where all the action happens. Kevin manages, as always, exceptionally well on multiple fronts. I salute their efforts to continue the dynasty.

It all started on February 1, 1991. John, Adrian and I left our jobs at Softdisk (R.I.P.) and began work immediately on Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion at the id lake house in Shreveport, Louisiana. Tom Hall needed to stay a few months longer at Softdisk, to help them ease his transition out of the Apple II team. But after work, he’d come over and help out.

Those were prolific years. The years 1990 and 1991 saw us develop almost 20 games with wildly different play styles and themes. The Keens, The Dangerous Daves, the Rescue Rovers, the Catacombs, and more. There were a lot of them and all were fun. Wolfenstein 3D begat the first-person shooter genre in 1992, and id hasn’t looked back.

Congratulations on 19 years, id!

                          

Published and developed by Valve (well, really, developed by their newly-acquired studio Turtle Rock Studios in LA) and using the very beautiful and speedy Source engine, Left 4 Dead does very right what i was attempting with Daikatana – going through a story with sidekicks. There have been some great decisions made with the way the L4D sidekicks are handled (some learned from MMORPGs like having character names above the sidekicks and being able to run through them) and the very limited options for interacting with them because they basically do all the things you’d want them to do without telling them. In Daikatana, commanding the sidekicks could become a hassle, especially when they didn’t do what you told them! LOL.

Aside from Painkiller being a decent attempt at DOOM-for-the-21st-century, L4D does the best job i’ve ever seen at being able to recreate the DOOM atmosphere and insane action of hordes of enemies coming to destroy you. The pacing of the gameplay is perfect with lots of slow and fast sections, a lot of that determined by how observant you are to your surroundings. The AI Director system in L4D is also a major help for replaying the game over and over. I’ve already blasted through the entire demo twice in a couple hours and loved seeing the gameplay change the 2nd time through.

And for me the most awesome feature is the CO-OP gameplay that i’ve been waiting for since Duke 3D and Quake in 1996. FINALLY! The sidekick AI is already excellent but playing CO-OP online is going to really make this game stand out. In the demo you can check it out – it’s really cool.

I also wanted to close with a quick note about Portal – if you haven’t played this short game, you absolutely need to. It’s a breath of fresh air in the FPS genre and tells a great story without actually telling it. The final level and credits are just …..wow. You have to play this game. Even when you’re finished, there’s more to do with Advanced Maps and Challenge Maps. Made me feel the same way after finishing Resident Evil 4 and unlocking a bunch of new content that felt like the dev team really put a lot of love into their game.

Oh, and Far Cry 2 and Fallout 3 are tons of fun as well. Ok so now you know all the games i’ve been playing LOL.

NOVEMBER 13th!!!!!!!

                          

If you ARE a citizen, just look at the results. BE GOOD!