Tim Willits reminds me of Lars Ulrich. But I think he gets a lot of negativity for things he is not responsible for, just talking about them? 

He seems very, very corporate in my opinion and has always been the one at QuakeCon who appeared in a suit.

There was this one interview conducted with TW and Romero at the same time, showing how different both of them thought about games. TW insisted that using DOOM weapons and having more realistic environments was the way to go while Romero totally loved crazy, abstract stuff. 

All he needs to be doing is ensuring the team are focused on their goal and not letting them stray too far from their paths.

He was so successful with this for Doom 4, right. 

I watched a lot of that Tim Willits/Warren Spector vid last night. It was interesting.

I found it odd that he never could simply explain the difference between 2D, 2.5D, and 3D.

I had to agree completely every time he said Quake 2 should not have been named Quake 2. Even though we eventually got Quake 3 and Quake 4, there has never really been an actual Quake sequel. Which is a shame. 

Quake 2, as much as I liked it, always sat weird with me. "OK, so ... we're flying to an alien planet now? Uhh. .. sure."

I'd love to see the Lovecraft themes explored a little more and keep the abstraction. 

Eventually.

And they'll fix the too overly simple gameplay, lack of reloading, basic multiplayer and eclectic enemy design.

And add the features we've been waiting on for so long but can only now be added thanks to modern technology - chat, video recording and screenshots direct from the console while you play.

Some things of course won't fit the demands of a modern consumer market so will have to be marginalized - secret areas, satanic references, twitch gameplay and ammunition pickups.

Of course, what Quake is really about is being able to break a guy's foot off in his face, so all those awesome features will be ported from Doom4, along with unique keys (LOL only silver and gold keys am I right guys!?), introduction cinematics for each weapon pickup and enemy attack telegraphing that lasts the length of the average bowel movement.

Finally, the new and improved Snapmap V2.0 will also be included, with support for vertical gameplay and enemies that can teleport behind the player (sorry, our bad that was left out).

I'm excited. 

And they'll fix the too overly simple gameplay

ironicat.png 

Tim made some great maps, particularly in the Q1/Q2 eras (although Jacquays was their best mapper in the latter), but he's also the guy who said "the kids want CoD gameplay so that's what we're gonna do" a few years back. A huge part of responsibility for the rot at id can probly be fairly laid at his door. 

I blame whoever thought adding car racing to RAGE was a good idea. That person. Directly. 

I actually blame the one who added guns to a perfectly good racing game. 

whilst daydreaming about that garden shed project he's been looking forward too 

highlights and enemy pickups from enemies are distracting. Some of the weapons sound weak as shit. The mancubus sucks. The cyberdemon sucks 

by the way the mancubus remake was a million times better in ss3 also he was way bigger. Doom 4 feels really scaled down 

 

"Willits has, for a long time now, come across as your typical middle-aged game dev veteran who lost interest in gaming over ten years ago, ..."
Yep. He's a typical corporate type as some have mentioned.

Romero got American in, who was from the modding community if I recall. He also loved his abstract design - as can be seen in his Alice games. His levels are my favourite levels in Quake. He's the sort you want to take in. But id software is, pardon the pun, doomed. They will never innovate ever again under Bethesda. Everyone who knows business, knows that innovation comes from small business, such as when id software started. It was just a few blokes who loved D&D, Evil Dead, Aliens, Gaming and rock music. My sort of fellows.

I remember in the "Masters of Doom" book, that id recruited two corporate types to keep the business end whilst they developed. They were always pushing to prosecute people who reverse-engineered their games or released mods/maps for them. It started with Wolfenstein 3D. Wasn't Willits one of those?

"I'd love to see the Lovecraft themes explored a little more and keep the abstraction."
This. I want to see non-euclidean geometry and dirty, gritty, stinky, rusty places. Multiple headed monsters seen in no other place. Trees made out of bodies. Yummy. 

Everyone who knows business, knows that innovation comes from small business

If you're implying that innovation comes only from small businesses, then this statement is false in many cases. It's also true in many cases, but that doesn't matter. 

Well you've emphasised the word "only" in your own text, a word which I didn't use at all. Pedantic? Or just one of Willits' best buddies? xD 

 

 

Innovation in gaming is so hard to achieve now, that the big AAA+ developers can't take the risk of doing something innovative in case it flops, only the indie's can do more innovative stuff but of course they don't have the budget to do it properly and we just get some pixel art crud that has some unique idea behind it. I would hope it's the mid level player that could have a decent budget, but be small enough to want to make a big impact, and they won't do that with another sandbox clone, or realistic shooter clone, or whatever it current in gaming. So they push the envelop for something a bit different, like GSC with Stalker.

I don't want id to be innovative, I want them to be the opposite, to be old skool. Or does that actually count as innovation now? That's what everyone probably wants from them. To make old skool Doom but with current technology.

Despite that, Rage had some innovation in, more than most games in 2011. In fact, can anyone name a more innovative AAA+ title released that year? Namely the innovation being the combination of driving/shooting and the painted texture thing, whatever that was officially called. Sure they weren't major things, but they were more than most games could claim. Were they successful? No, most players disliked the driving, probably the same players that never play racing games anyway so no matter how good id did the driving, it was going to fail. It could have been better though, only 2 races in the whole game were actually necessary. The texture thing also failed because they fucked up the drivers and had the major texture popping issues, that 4 years later is still not fixed. Plus I suspect it took them so fucking long to paint everything by hand that it wasn't worth it.

Anyway Rage was a great game. You can say all these things about Willits, but he can't be that bad if he was part of Rage. Doom4 was a great game also. Not without problems, but I'm yet to play a perfect game. Quake4 and Wolfenstein 2009 were both good as well, old skool style games, sure Raven made them but id had plenty of input I'm sure.

They just have to learn from their mistakes from Rage. Don't go and market it as a game with story and rpg. If id want to make a game as an rpg, it has to be as big and expansive as Bethesda's other games Fallout and Elder Scrolls, which Doom is never going to be. So they better avoid that completely. But if they can do all the weapon upgrading stuff, maybe the crafting (building) like Rage had, player upgrades as well which Rage lacked. Then just don't make it quite so linear, and don't clip everything.

But Rage was one of the best looking games of all time at it's time of release, I'd probably say top 5 easily, the art was fantastic. The combat was all fun. If they do those things so well again and just don't screw up the rpg elements, I'm thinking Doom 4 will be fantastic. If it'll be financially successful is another thing entirely, since the media and general gamers are morons - they have to be when you rank a game like Rage under 8/10 on metacritic. 

 

pixel art crud

How dare you.

Btw Rage's "painted texture thing" wasn't innovative in a gamey way, it was just some graphics tech thing that meant nothing to 99% of players who just looked at the graphics and went "cool" in the same way they went "cool" to every other really good looking FPS they played that year. 

Megatexture killed modding on idtech5. 

http://i.imgur.com/zV4qk.jpg

One of the best looking games of all time at it's time of release, I'd probably say top 5 easily, the art was fantastic. 

Kona's post is a whole other thing to address, so I might do so after work tonight if I remember to.

I just wanted to note that Willits was a mapper from the Doom community who's work was picked up for the Master Levels, and sat with Romero during Quake from December 95 till June 96. He was assisted by his sister Theresa Chasar (her initials can be found in e2m7).

McGee knew Carmack from his mechanic work, and expressed interest in game development, joining in time to do about a third of the levels in Doom 2.

Neither has a "corporate" background. They're both mappers who became general directors.