Ausgewählte Fragen wurden per Livesitzung an John Romero gerichtet welcher diese beantwortet hat. (quora.com/profile/John-Romero/session/2015-12-23)
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What was it like working at id Software in the 90s?
It was the greatest. We were invulnerable and could make anything. We were always leading the pack. It was great to come to work and make things no one else was making, not even close. That’s what it felt like.
How did you coin the term „deathmatch“?
I was walking from J. Carmack’s office to my own and thinking about what I wanted to call the gameplay where two players were killing each other. I thought about a Cage Match, but it was in a level. You fight to the death, to a certain number of deaths. Deathmatch sounded right.
What was it like to work with John Carmack?
John Carmack is a programmer and person unlike any you have ever met, I guarantee it. He is a true genius. His normal mode of conversation is always at the upper level of what normal people can comprehend because small talk and talk about things that aren’t interesting just doesn’t happen with him. He wants to talk about fascinating subjects and new ideas that he’s exploring. So unless you are a senior programmer it would be difficult to have a conversation with John.
Which of your games so far do you think has the best overall „feel“, and why?
DOOM and DOOM II both have a great feel to them. Quake is right after that. It’s because the player feels skillful and is given interesting tools to solve the numerous problems that keep appearing. The exploration of the world is also interesting.
Which optimization hack you are most proud of?
I didn’t come up with this one, but in Quake the entity collision with the world solution was ingenious. The way it was done was by taking all the various enemies in Quake and breaking them down into three groups. Small (Dog), medium (Player), and huge (Shambler). All enemies would have to fit into these sizes. Then, a level would be processed that contained „clipping hulls“ that each size could collide against, so there were three versions of the level geometry stored in an optimal format that were used for collision by each of these entity sizes. The actual collision check was done with a single point check. Carmack came up with that.
What was it like to work on the original Quake game?
It was really difficult. The game was very hard to make. The level editor was very simple and required so much work to make the levels interesting. With everyone working in the War Room it was just an oppressive atmosphere – we all just wanted the game done and gone. We were in crunch mode for 7 months straight until I uploaded it on a Saturday, alone. After shipping it, and moving on to co-founding Ion Storm, it was an absolute blast playing Quake for years.
