John Romero on Doom: 25 Years of Rip & Tear

Fast. Brutal. Hardcore Merciless. This is Doom.

"Doom - 'nuff said!" This is how the post-mortem should look like one of the most important games in history. Doom wrote the history of games, Doom is a pop culture, Doom is a name symbolizing fast-paced, hardcore and merciless shooter fights. Everyone knows it, almost everyone has played it in at least one of many forms, be it classic, awesome mods, Doom 3, fan projects or the restart of id Software in 2016, published by Bethesda.

On December 10, 2018, Doom celebrated its 25th anniversary. This is probably the best reason to meet and chat with John Romero, one of the founders of id Software and the creators of Doom!

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Hmm ... I don't take it that way, and it's funny. Although we made first-person shooters, they were originally conceived as an advanced game about mazes. A game with a faster and smoother process, that’s how it felt at the very beginning. Action games or even RPGs to Wolfenstein 3D or Catacomb 3D, which became very smooth games about labyrinths with demons and everything else, were created as cards with corridors with 90 ° turns, in which each tile took place for only one object, be it a person or enemy. Take for example Might & Magic, Ultima, or Eye of the Beholder. However, all that these games did was improve the graphics on the walls, but the games themselves did not become smoother or faster. And I think that is exactly what we did: got rid of discrete movement,which appeared in 1974 Maze War (and there was even deathmatch in this game)!

There was also a game called Wayout. Its action took place in the same labyrinth, but there were places in it, which became a little more open, on which it was possible to move smoothly. The game was not at all fast - it worked on Apple II with a 1 MHz processor - but it felt smooth. The player could rotate 360 ​​° and I was very impressed with what I saw. So I realized that this is possible to implement.

Catacombs 3D (top) and Hovertank One were the forerunners of Wolfenstein 3D and Doom.

In 1991, Hovertank One was the first game in which real 3D was displayed on the screen and moving through the same mazes. After Catacomb 3D, we moved on to creating Wolfenstein 3D, which was very fast - as much as VGA allowed. But he really changed everything Doom and he did it thanks to the changed atmosphere. We got out of these blocky mazes and ended up in a much cooler world; this aspect was very important for the emergence of the genre.

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The only pressure we experienced at id Software was our own. We aimed to make really good games. This made sense to us, and it was not important for us what anyone else thought or what people would say; for example, exclamations like “the game is too satanic!” we are completely not worried. We never allowed this to stop us from doing what we want and putting pressure on us. Nobody makes the most perfect game every time! By the time Doom was released, I had been creating games for 14 years, and during this time, every game was getting better and better, but you can’t expect the next game to be the best in your life, it's just unrealistic. We knew this, because at that time we had been creating games for at least 10 years. And if you make a bunch of games, then not all of them will become hits, it's just a fact. Yes, we felt pressurebut it was our own desire to create something really cool! In fact, Doom was the only game about which we said from the very beginning that we want to create the best game you can imagine. And that was only once.

Week of Deathmatch GDC. 2013 , -.

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In fact, we were inspired by our D&D campaign. We played Dungeons & Dragons for a long time. Our dungeon owner was John Carmack. He had a world that has evolved over the years since we met. It had a bunch of characters and a lot of politics - an amazing game! And this D&D campaign ended when I ... did something that destroyed the world. I opened a portal into a dimension filled with demons, and they flooded the world for months, eventually destroying it. Carmack obeyed his own rules, and the world was finished ... And all this happened because of the demons that filled the world and destroyed everything in it.

After that, we did not play D&D for a long time (laughs).

When we thought about creating Doom, we decided to use this idea - the plot of the demons that got the world through a certain portal, and about a player who can stop them. Taking this idea, we began to think about the surroundings, and wanted to do something sci-fi, because we already made a game about the Second World War, and thought that it would be very cool to implement this with new technologies. After choosing a futuristic surroundings, Tom Hall came up with the idea of ​​transferring the action to Phobos, where the UAC (Union Aerospace Corporation, UAC - United Aerospace Corporation) experimented with teleportation. At the same time, she accidentally opened a portal, but instead of aliens a real hell crawled out from there, and it was something really new. None of the players expected to meet hell in space, and this made the game unexpected and very interesting.Adding our favorite sci-fi elements, we thought of science fiction films. “Aliens” were popular at that time, so we immediately remembered them. We wanted to do something similar, something terrifying. And with black humor - this is typical for us, and at that time one of our favorite films was The Evil Dead 2, so we needed such emotions and, of course, a chainsaw and a shotgun (smiles)!

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Well, yes ... I would like to do a lot more levels ... You know, I created only the first episode and did not even do the level with the boss, Sandy Petersen was involved in it, because everything was done at the last minute. It was a very busy year. We started to create a game with Tom, but in August he left. In September, Sandy came to us and first rummaged through all of Tom’s work, began to re-texture and correct it, trying to create many levels. This was done by Sandy, and at first my task was to create a level editor, because without an editor you cannot create a single level. I had to write this tool, and it was very difficult to come up with levels unlike Wolfenstein and what we saw in our entire lives. Therefore, the creation of an abstract level design and the development of this style in order to move as far away from Wolfenstein as possible took time.Then I had to do all the level programming: everything that happens at the Doom level, that is, stairs, doors, flickering lights, and so on. I wrote all this code, plus the save and download code, as well as external tools, such as the installer, settings, and DM. All this took a lot of time, which I would like to spend on creating additional levels.

This is the only thing I regret. In all other respects, I think the game turned out great - but it could get even better!

The film "Doom" (2005). "Aliens" and the character Ash Williams from "The Evil Dead" became the sources of individual elements of Doom: the atmosphere of the game, chainsaws and shotguns.

If you had a chance to create Doom on modern technologies, what would it look like? Or such a question: are there any aspects that you were not able to implement due to technical limitations?

Hmm, if I had the same technologies as then, then I would practically not change anything, except for additional levels.

On modern technology? Obviously, he would be completely different (laughs). As for the impossible functions, then no ... No, in fact, we managed to fit everything we wanted into the game - at that moment in time! After her release, when we saw what other people were doing with her, we, of course, had all kinds of ideas that would be really cool to implement. But all of them did not exist when we worked on the game. There simply wasn’t any other similar game in the world, so we couldn’t say: “Yes, we made a mistake here”, “We didn’t realize a lot because we didn’t have enough time”, simply because until the game came out, these ideas did not have. The whole world was the world before Doom.

In Germany, Doom I and II set a tough age rating, which was revised only after 19 years. In October 2012, Bethesda released Doom 3: BFG Edition, which included (uncensored) Doom3, as well as the previous two parts. It is amazing that after two decades the games are very well preserved and this is impressive.

Yes exactly. This is similar to Super Mario or Donkey Kong. The game still seems superb. Nobody knows how to create real classics. For this to happen, you must first gain a lot of experience. Today, Doom source ports seem smoother than itself. Now they work smoothly and very, very fast!

If you look at many other games in different genres, many of them are very old. In your opinion, what elements of Doom did not allow their fate to be repeated?

Number 1: I think that one of the most important aspects when you start programming a game with a timer is that you must have control over the timer chip. This will mean that the game will not be too fast on any computer of the future. When we wrote our games, even before the formation of id Software, John and I separately wrote games with timer chip control. Therefore, as soon as the game starts, we set the refresh rate for the timer chip, with which the game should work, so that it does not work faster. If it worked more slowly, then we wrote a code correcting the character’s speed so that it corresponded to where it should be, for example, if the CPU was a little slow. That is, you need to write code to handle too slow work on a slow computer, which also guaranteesthat code will never be too fast on the computers of the future. This is incredibly important.

If you look at the games of that period, they fly on the screen with great speed, because they are too fast, because today the CPUs are insanely powerful. Those games that are still playable had full control over real hardware. None of the Origin games had timer controls, because they squeezed the most out of the fastest computers at the time of release (laughs).

Can shooters be your favorite genre?

I think yes. They provide a high degree of immersion, look amazing, in this area there are many elements of puzzles. I love the physical puzzles of Half Life 2 - being in such a space allows you to immerse the game much deeper than any 2D puzzle. But this is a completely different way of thinking. Before creating shooters, I created many different games. For me, Wolfenstein became the game at number 87! Before him, I already created 86 games - and these are only those that have been published. That is, yes, I had the opportunity to practice before Doom (laughs). To date, I have created only about 150 games.

For example, less than a year ago I spent a 10-hour game. It turned out to be a very cool little game called "July 4th 1976". I worked on it with a friend, a programmer, and she was very scary and different. I posted it in the App Store, and the boom is a new game (laughs). Next weekend there will be another gamejournal in which I want to participate. Perhaps we’ll create another game.

When was the last time I participated in a gamejam, my son joined me. He flew from the USA to Ireland on Father's Day. We participated in a game game in the city with a whole bunch of other people, and we did something cool, but the idea turned out to be too large for such an amount of time. But I still wanted to finish it, because the idea was really cool. I always work on something. Now I am simultaneously making three different games.

In 2016, id Software released a Doom restart - fast, hardcore, brutal, real. Its continuation called Doom Eternal is scheduled for 2019.

Are there any other genres or genre mechanics that you like to mix with FPS?

When creating FPS, I don’t think about merging genres, because it seems artificial to me. When I want to create a new shooter, I rather think about what I want to implement in the gameplay, which nobody did and did not see. Take for example the original Prey, in which you could walk on the walls, and this completely changed the whole game. The developers did not mix genres, but simply added a very cool feature.

Actually, I have some cool ideas, but I can’t talk about them because ... well, you understand ... (laughs)! But seriously, there are so many more things that no one has done in FPS so far. And it's amazing to see how the genre has evolved. Take, for example, a first-person view. The very fact that in Quake we created a smooth and fast first-person view in full 3D. Even games like World of Warcraft began to build on that. In fact, the lead WoW programmer was working on Quake. Therefore, when we talk about sources of influence, Doom definitely became the beginning, but Quake's influence was also significant. Overwatch's production director wrote the 3D engine code for Star Wars: Dark Forces in 1995. It's funny how everything eventually converges to Doom, even when we talk about a fully three-dimensional world.

We helped Valve when they started working on Half-Life. They came to our office, we gave them a license for Quake Engine, and I told them what team is needed to create FPS, after which they founded the company. But this is not just about FPS - Marcus Persson, who created Minecraft, once told me that Doom was the reason he became a programmer. Therefore, we can say that without Doom today there would be no Minecraft (laughs).

Of all the first-person shooters released in recent years, which is your favorite?

Mmmm ... (long pause). You know, I really like the new Doom! It has the right worldview, there is speed. Today the problem is to create a quick gameplay, but you can’t just release 50 superfast demons against the player, he will not survive. You need exactly the right amount. In the first Doom, there were often a lot of monsters on the screen, but they moved slower. And modern Doom feels like a very good hardcore shooter, it inherits the very essence of hardcore shooters and how we wanted to make them.

... in the initial scene, the Executioner of Doom takes a screen on which he is informed what is happening, and then simply throws him away. In general, it seems that the developers are handling the material with the right approach and due respect.

Yes! He kind of says: “I don't care. There is no plot. Tear and destroy! ”

And you're right, they really grasped the essence of what Doom was, and did it right. That is exactly what we would do if we had the right technology. They went in the same direction we were moving. They worked on the game for seven years - a very long time, but they spent time not in vain and did everything right. He is hardcore, and really gorgeous!

What do you think of Doom Eternal?

This is unbelievable! This grappling hook is a great idea! (laughs) But seriously, everyone is already delighted, because thanks to Doom, the developers have already proved that they know what Doom is and how to do something amazing. And in the second part, they will do what we did in Doom 2: Hell on Earth. We did not spoil anything, but took what everyone liked and improved. This is exactly what they did with Eternal: they took what everyone liked and improved. At the same time, they did not spoil anything that was already in the game. So you need to do the sequels!

And you know what? I'm more interested in knowing what will happen after Doom Eternal (laughs). I mean, I really want to know where Doom is going, because after Doom 2 we did not see anything. This is the fifth Doom, and I'm waiting for the next Doom 3 - the real one, not a remake! If you look at Half-Life 2, then it was a great game. It is more extensive in scale and more scientific, amazing adventure with a changing environment and everything else. But Doom ... Doom is a spinal cord, and that is the main difference.

From left to right: John Carmack, Kevin Cloud, Adrian Carmack, John Romero, Tom Hall, Jay Wilbur.

What do you think of easter eggs? For example, about the Doom character figure with which the player pounds, the Icon of Sin, the Commander Keen helmet and a skull on a stick?

(Laughs) A figure is an excellent move, and it is not so difficult to find. It's very funny that they wrote the word Doom on Keen's helmet, because the only mention of this is in Doom 2. At the very end, there is a secret level where the Commander Keen hangs and can be shot at.

Speaking of secret levels: “To win the game, you need to get 100% at level 15 of John Romero” - the first to gain 100% of all secrets at this level was Zero Master. Seriously? More than 20 years later? And what is the story behind this?

Yes, that's right, no one has done this before (laughs). In fact, it was a special sector that I added when creating this level. I put a secret teleport behind the wall, transferring the player to another place. But instead of being a secret, I did not mark the destination where the teleport takes the player, but the teleport itself. Usually when a player enters a teleport, the player never touches the sector inside the teleport - he crosses the line and immediately teleports. But in this small space, there are also oddities with the movement. To take a secret, you need to be at the same vertical height as the sector itself, and this sector is higher than the player. In this case, the players touch the line before they can reach the height of the sector, and therefore do not fall into the secret.

The player who discovered the secret used the elemental of pain to visit the secret, who pushed him into the teleport. Before him, no one had done this (laughs) and it is known that this guy did it on purpose, because for this he pushed the elemental of pain along a very long corridor. Sometimes it’s surprising what the players are able to come up with; they are doing absolutely crazy things (laughs)!

If you could choose a game that you have always loved or continue to love for your participation in it (with the exception of your own games), what kind of game would it be and why?

Minecraft! This is the best game in the world, unlike anything else. She is absolutely incredible! I would also choose World of Warcraft; WoW became a derivative of Everquest, which became a derivative of Ultima Online - heredity is traced here. But WoW eventually becomes a recurring grind, and Minecraft is just unlimited scope for creativity, it’s simply an amazing game, and we will continue to feel its impact on the gaming industry to an even greater extent. Take Fortnite for example, or rather, its construction aspect, which Minecraft apparently influenced.

In what aspects, in your opinion, has the game industry changed most strongly over the past 25 years, both in the positive and negative directions?

Hmm ... there were so many things. For example, the heyday of Facebook and games on Facebook turned out to be interesting and completely unforeseen, like the situation with Minecraft. Such serious events just happen. Bam - and here they are, already changing the Internet.

But if you are a child in love with Minecraft, then you will have to try to download mods for it, because the mod pages and download sites are absolutely disgusting! They are terrible and just trying to convince the children to install a bunch of other things. Which download button should I click? If there are ten buttons on the site, then nine of them install malware, and only one allows you to download the mod - this is crazy! Especially given the curiosity of the children.

And look at the games for Facebook. Millions of people make and play these games. I myself created a game for Facebook, and every month 25 million people played it. This is complete insanity! It was very interesting to watch how all this develops and gains popularity. And it affects everything around. It influenced many creatively, others financially, they just wanted to capitalize on this idea, which caused a gold rush in the industry.

After 24 (!!) years, Zero Master finally managed to discover the last undisclosed secret. Watch the video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=irNoHfnLXRM

Do you think this is more likely good or bad?

Oh no, I think it's great. The similar gameplay developed on Facebook using a network of friends was not like anything else. Nobody had such a network before, and it was very interesting to watch how designers will use this network honestly or dishonestly, as well as expand it to strangers, because these people also play the same game. Thanks to this, they even meet new people through the game. It is very interesting to see such a development; it showed how a platform like Facebook can strongly and scale influence game design.

... and something negative?

In general, I feel a strong positive. But if you recall ... then #Gamergate, which should never have happened. And lootboxes (laughs). Lootboxes are still changing the game. But it depends on a lot: if they allow you to only boast of a new skin, this is one thing. If you need them for pay to win, then this is completely sad!

What do you recommend to young developers who are trying to get into the industry and survive in it today?

Find something you like to do and create a game mod with this skill. Create mods for different games, gain experience in this, and if you like it a lot, then create a portfolio page and contact the companies you would like to work for.
And if you want to create games, then start to create them in any way possible. The Internet is full of any information you need. If you want to create, then there are no excuses!

Over the years, you probably have been asked the same questions many times, and today is no exception. Now you have a chance: if you could choose one never asked question that you would like to answer, what would it be?

(Laughs) Ha ha ha, god! Well ... what was it like creating games for the Apple II?

And now you have to answer it.

It was incredibly fun. Apple II was a limited computer, completely incomparable with modern computers that have unlimited possibilities, and we must constantly learn them. This computer was limited in what it could and what it could not. But even with these limitations, there was an incomprehensible amount of information that needed to be mastered: switch from BASIC to assembly language, and then learn everything that is possible in assembly language. This was very different from the 8-bit computers of that time, which had hardware systems for working with sprites and the like - Apple II did not have anything like that. It was necessary to use many software techniques to display the image on the screen manually. An interesting “problem” is that programming a game in assembly language requires a lot to keep in mind. And when one person does it,it’s very difficult to focus on the big and cool new design of the game, because in your head there is so much that is needed to create even a simple game.

There were almost no big games at that time. And if, for example, there were games of the Ultima and Wizardry series, then it happened because their programmer was better than most people. He had more practice before creating a great cool game, so he could focus more on design than on its implementation. He had already spent several years in coding experience, so he could design. And at first it was difficult to find time, because the industry appeared only in 1977, and it was in a state of constant race. But it was an amazing time and we liked to share information with people, everyone then became pioneers. There were almost no books, so it was even cooler to learn new information from someone, or to find interesting tricks in magazines. It was the most exciting timebecause it coincided with the explosive development of arcade machines and creative discoveries that took place on these machines. There were completely new games that no one had seen before, plus at last it was possible to come up with any idea and implement it on a computer.

There is no limit to what you can do and what you want to do.

Let's get back to your time at id Software: despite what happened between you and John Carmack, are there still any moments today that you would never give up?

Almost all the time until mid-1995.

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John Romero is a legend! Not to mention the fact that he became the co-founder of id Software and the creator of such classic games as Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom I / II and Quake.