planet romero

This post was originally done for Romero but anyone else of course may also answwer .

Questions :
(“you” mentioned may be anyone in contact with the project not only “you” as john romero)

+ who made the theme or why did you choose the theme of “hell” and it seems you were very enthusiastic and knowledged about the art and theme invested in the game? ( iknow at first you were going to make an aliens game, i am happoy you didnt , but isnt that how doom 3 looks like? a forced alien uppon doom ? anyway)

this was of couse without a doubt one of the biggest things people remmember and something that had a undenying power in the immersion and atmosphere of Doom. The theme the graphics most related to “hell” related is in my opinion the original dooms originality and i havae not yet seen anyone use that in a game in this way.
Anyone knows that those symbols either being tile art or enemies animations already existed in one way or another inside religious explenations, more closely christianity , the question will be:

did you foresee or havae an idea or speculation on how the media would react to this and beside of that how religous groups would react , or if anyone would care to do anything at all?

I know that you had some feedback after the creation of wolf 3d yet you took that feedback and returned with a MUCH deeper instigation in their opposite request , you went from a swastica to the pentagram of hell , that was a very interesting choice .. you were sending a message here , there is no doubt about it , what was that message ?

second question:

+ were you desisive on the “enemy” behavour ? how they would move, reach or sound ? or did it kind of reveal itself naturally during production rather then being a decision before hand ?

I clearly remmember DOOM has the most impressive AI and gaming because monsters used to move , react and sound very fluid and “real”.
The sounds were astounding and very impressive , one could clearly imagine “dog like” zombies “reptilian demons” by their sounds.

I do not want to call them zombies, they were more like possesed soldiers very similar to the movie “Exorcist ” i forgot what it was named.

The enemies in this game were alive you heard them, they moved once you were there and kept moving and even interacted with each other by conflicting THIS WAS just how you would imagine wild beasts would live. This should remind me and all of us that you do not need overly advanced technology to make interesting enemies.

Did you guys for instance sitt and think ” lets make them move this way , sound like this ” did you mean them forinstance to fight each other? (that was as mentioned brilliant)
Did you guys have an idea about the sounds in the game? about “we should have ambient sounds from everything “? NOT only had you great music in the game which most games stop there you also had ambient from the aliens. (we all know that even duke nukem 3d did not have this sort of ambient)

(BTW the artwork also had huge impact on quake and my wish is that quake never goes the way doom 3 did . Quake 3 is one of the BEST LOOKING games to me still and has an ADDICTING gaming arcade feeling)

LETS GO further

Third question

+ Face , gunns and the beutifull work on the HUD

Why did you come up with the great idea of haivng a face , this was also on wolf3d and was such a welcome reality to me and i miss it. (?)

There is a fact that still impresses me and i do not know why games did not go that direction and that is the fact that you had HIGH QUALITY IMAGES as the art animation for the DOOM GUNN(S) animations !
this sounds more like a statement but how come duke 3d did not manage to have such high quality images for their “action art” .

what i am trying to ask is how come everthing was so top notch , so much that no other games beyond tha time did notcreate equall quality artwork . This also does go same with the doors and some walls which were perfectly steel seeming and impressive.

Fourth and last question

+ Qauke

To me quake seemed like a confusion betwen ” should we continue doom or should we make up a story ? ” and it came out being something not doom and not anything else.

why did you not continue doom in this way because clearly it is inspired by doom without a shadow of a doubt.

It is sad to say thaqt quake was no doom in game play altough i now looking back ask “why” since it did not lack any technlogy to be able to be the new doom . All that i remmembered was that quake was too dark without the excitement it also did not have real monsters , there was this watered down demon soldiers but failed and i do not know exactly why.

To me personally quake was too stiff and had no soul and having medival theme did NOT help the game, it was like old totrture because everything was unexciting and a good way to express this is

” it is as if im runnin arround with a big , stiff limited range of movement-lance and ocassionally i get a Q powerup to more often feels like meeleing my enemies down with bullets then actually be shooting ”

It was pretty silly and useless kind of like quake 4 was almost the same way two years ago ATLEAST i am happy quek now has gone for an exciting theme and choice of enemeis which almost compliments the doom concept of the past.

TODAY it seems as if doom has been sliced in two , where DOOM gets the demons and hell concepts BUT QUAKE gets the cyber-demon treatment which if you remmember in DOOM all the bigger demons were cybertechnick machines .
THIS IS VERY EXCITING and stimulating !

I am not aware of how many statements i have done and how much i have asked but i i hope in the future quake seem to have more promiss for me as to replaying doom MORE then doom games themselves.

if i did not ask but your inputt on this would be great.

Also no one managed to make the new quake engine as fluid , shiney and just addicting as quake 3 was so much that they have made a online quake to satisfy people.

Quote from Tyler523 on January 8, 2010, 16:29
John Carmack had the idea to put demons from hell instead of aliens in the game.
Originally they wanted to make a game based on the Aliens movie but they messed up with the idea because they didn’t want a film company telling them what they have to do or not to do. They wanted complete freedom with the design of the game.

It was also influenced by their last D&D campaign where Demons overran the whole world

Thank you , i hope romero will give in detail or in depth answer to the questions with comments.

I am such a fan of their approach with lair models everything was ART and then because of that TECHNOLOGY was complete , what do you do with tech if yhou dont have real art behin dit!

maybe what is more interesting then DOOM is its creation.

1. Carmack had the idea that the game could be cool with demons in it. Then we decided to go all the way and put all the evil symbolism we could in the game. We were not concerned with anyone getting upset with the game because of the graphics. They could just NOT play it (since the shareware was free).

2. We evolved our enemy AI from Wolfenstein into Doom. We added sound flooding to make it more emergent so if you shot an enemy in a room with a window, the sound would flood out through the window into another area and alert other enemies.

Having the enemies fight each other was a key aspect to making the game world seem more alive and real than every single enemy just going for the player.

We wanted every enemy the game to have a sound when they patrol. They never had idling sounds but everything else.

3. Our artwork was high quality and better than most because Adrian Carmack was and is a Master of the Pixel.

4. You seriously need to get a friend, network your computers on a LAN, turn off the lights, turn up the sound, and co-op the single player game. You will think very differently about Quake.

We have been talking about how Doom have had its excellent ellements which made it such a great game but we have not talked so much about its sucessors , more closely DOom 2

Now doom 2 , what was the idea behind it? did you gear towards havin ga story or was the intention mostly on having more levels ? (which we did love)
also the weponary was not expanded the way we expected , why the sudden choise of having just one gunn expansion which was the double sawed off shotgunn, did you REALLY consider more or just other alternatives for the SO.SHOTGUNN?

The art work
the art work of doom to me is legendary it was what i consider the last of the art of “apogeetic-id” form for frontpage and the classic type of introduction to a storyline typically remenant of the older games on the market.

The art work were really masterpieces , they do not look like – they look like- and theyare bold and clear

You did not really have any story like in wolf 3d or any real indication, it was just “DOOM” AND then you were in this hell..
i never saw any explenation or remmember anything about any real storyline.

What did you do for storyline and was the artwork the main source of communicating a plot?

What facinated me most was that you could see the marine and how he really was and he had this incomplete armor with spacegear , this buff guy looks more like a football player .

http://www.mobygames.com/images/covers/large/941443478-00.jpg

in doom 2 tought the player is depicted suddenly without spcae gear and he has normal clothin BUT HE IS NOT NORMAL as much as having strange buzz cut and have a special logo on his back .
What was the inspiraton to his style and altough it makes sence he is on earth and has to have normal military clothings.

was there a agreement between you guys on these “out of the game” arts or were they just chosen by the artist for the box art and ingame without really being concerned.
I have to add that games suchas dukenukem and others are not always very accurate in their portrait of their ingame materiale, you did this very well do not missunderstand.

To summ up it is a great inspiration for the games to see a blown out great visual welcome and tail but what happened to the textual intro like we had in wolf3d , crystalcaves etsc.

Was there really a peroid where people tought ” text” is very boring lets go with grpahics and suprise the player , let him fill in the blanks.
?

http://ui17.gamespot.com/720/comic1_2.jpg

John hasn’t abandoned anything – he’s just very busy, and doesn’t always have time to respond to questions as soon as they are asked. I’m sure he’ll respond soon.