Ep 3 > Ep 2 :p 

i actually prefer the tim willits maps for layout/structure... 

Maybe my favorite map.

That or the UnderHalls or whatever it was called, that was good too. 

If qexpo will happend I need to finish the map I got in progress that I dont touth since November 2010 :(

I'm getting lazy to :| 

I also prefer the Tim Willits maps.

A free Quake wouldn't look like Quake anymore - that's exactly what the legal issues hinge on, the artwork and monsters etc. I don't want any C&Ds coming my way, that would be most undesirable. Quake is pretty cheap as well, so I don't see the need.

I think with Romero, as far as I understand, the whole Daikatana thing was a result of certain frustrating experiences with the development of Quake. This short interview is kinda telling:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pq__3XNvvHI

It sounds like a lot of time went into engine testing when it should have gone into level design etc. 

interesting video. he makes them sound like a bunch of kids. american just fucks off and isn't heard from and willits has to finish all his levels? what an idiot. sure i loved alice, but he's done crap since then. hopefully alice 2 is a return to glory.

romero can whinge all he wants about carmack taking too long to create the engine, but he never made anything decent again after quake.

in fact willits is the smart one for staying with carmack!

interesting to hear romero just threw it together one weekend and put the game online. if only game design was so easy nowadays! 

Art from adversity perhaps? :p

tbh I'm glad. We might have missed out on something awesome in Romero's eyes, but on the other hand, we might have ended up with a proto-daikatana... no thanks.

It's hard not to agree with him that the spark left iD however. Quake 2/Quake 3/Doom 3 don't have the same feel. They're a bit too, hmm clinical perhaps? 

Romero looks really nerdy in that video. What year was that? He looks like a kid. Probably younger than I am now. I guess that this "elder gods" view I have of id designers is about done, and it's probably also time to realize it isn't 1998 anymore. I was really surprised by the picture of Sandy Peterson, lol, but then not surprised, it seemed pretty appropriate. Out of the original team, it seems to me only Carmack has had any success, and that's just milking the name (I agree, post-Quake id games were clinical). Only 9 guys! Carmack wouldn't hire more! Jesus. Things aren't so cool now, suits run everything and id's become a publisher. 

...a Saturday according to Romero, and the day that he put the finished game on the net. 

Watched all the others as well. Kinda feel sorry for him with all the Daikatana crap - he really just seemed to want to make a fps for skilled players.

First thing I would have suggested is not splitting the team in half with Anachronox being developed at the same time. Why would any brand new studio who's never released a single game, go and split their team in half? 

There wasn't really any blue print or process for them to follow - hindsight is great. 

What wasted potential there too. Great graphics for its time, good music, genuinely funny voice acting, an engaging script - but the gameplay was just mindnumbingly tedious and. I played about a third of the way through until I realized that the same pattern was just repeating over and over. Enter new area, walk around a bit, get quest, go to dungeon, fight boss, go to new area - repeat ad nauseam. To some extent the same could be said of any Japanese style RPG, but the games the developers were trying to emulate, such as Chrono Trigger, make the formula fun and interesting.

In the end I just watched the movie-length cutscene film, and even that was bittersweet because the story just ends on a ridiculous cliffhanger that the developers obviously never got to tie up due to lack of time/money.