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Good Morning, Professor Romero
The Man With The Green Hair writes: "According to this story over at The Dallas Morning News, John Romero and Tom Hall both formally of ION Storm, will be teaching a class next semester at The University of Texas at Dallas where they will be instructing computer science majors on the finer points of game programming and design."
Won't Great Teacher Romero be suprised when he finds out these classes are all male!
I hope that they'll be teaching those kids how NOT to write games like Daikatana. :)
Anachronox, maybe.
Romero?!
Those who can, do... Those who can't, teach.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.
Talisman
"Study your math, kids. Key to the universe." -The Archangel Gabriel
You need LOTS of that! And once you have a game idea, do it again and again, and again, and a bit more too, and then again, until it is considered its own genre, and then it's own industry, and nobody notices that it's all the same thing.. and sucks.. yes.. THEN you strike with the colored lighting. Catches them off-gaurd, see.. heh heh heh.. hehhehe.. .BWUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!!
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
"The blind leading the impressionable only leads to a class full of students who wear contacts but insist they can't see."
The way I see it, this is sort of like having Mao Tse-Tung teach a class about human rights.
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
Course: Theory of Game Design with ION Storm
Credits:2
Hours:2
Class Begins: Real Soon Now
"OK so to sum up...
'Dai' means 'big'
and 'Katana' means 'Katana'.
OK let's break for soda."
DD
"You can justify anything by putting it in quotes, adding a famous name and making it a sig" - Albert Einstein
This will be the first class ever to be slashdotted!
Just don't turn up late for class, these guys are packing mini-nukes and chainsaw weaponry.
This is a class where the teacher will try to make you his bitch
I hate to agree with davecrazy but...
Hopefully Romero's CS classes will be more entertaining than his business skills...
I wonder what happens if you turn in an assignment late?
I'd sign up in a nanosecond.
Say what you will about johnny boy, but if this becomes a popular trend, we might have linus teaching the finer points of Operating system programming and design, or alan cox taking a computer ethics class, (Maybe thats a good way for older computer scientists to earn money, by teaching classes?)
Regardless, im sure this will raise the popularity of the university. but remember: theres more to a teacher than raw skill, there are alot of other factors involved (marking fairly, communication abilities, attitude)
Microsoft IIS is to webserving as KFC is to healthy eating
Lesson 1: Spend millions to start with a huge company.
Lesson 2: ???
Lesson 3: Profit!
Tournament Management Online &
::sigh:: *^_^*
--- Do you believe in the day?
"At the beginning of the class, each of you will pick either Superfly Johnson or Mikiko Ebihara as your lab partner. If they fail the course, you fail the course.
Don't worry though as your lab partners are coded with an advanced "node-based AI system", and should be a valuable and innovation part of your lab experience."
An intresting use of calulating prime numbers! Its a good tutorial
Deep linking is forbidden here.
Better still... Here is the article... Thus no deep linking issue at all.
Game programmers survive the Storm
Former ION studio executives to teach classes at UTD 07/06/2002
By VICTOR GODINEZ / The Dallas Morning News
The spectacular rise and fiery crash of Dallas-based computer game development studio ION Storm were landmark events in the game industry.
Now, the two men who piloted ION Storm, John Romero and Tom Hall, have resurfaced in the most unlikely of jobs: college professors.
Starting in the fall semester, Mr. Romero, 34, and Mr. Hall, 37, will be instructing computer science majors at the University of Texas at Dallas on the finer points of game programming and design.
"We're really excited to teach because we love to teach what we know, and this is the perfect place to do it," Mr. Romero said.
During ION's brief reign atop the gaming world, Mr. Romero almost single-handedly transformed the image of the nerdy game programmer, and he was known as much for his long hair, fast cars and reportedly standoffish attitude as he was for his programming flair.
On a recent afternoon on the UTD campus, Mr. Romero seemed jovial and comfortable as he and Mr. Hall talked about life after ION and their ventures into academia. Mr. Romero's rock star mane of hair was gone, replaced by a more conservative coiffure and slight stubble.
The UTD campus is a short drive from the Dallas penthouse suite in the Chase Tower where the two worked from 1996 to 2001.
But it's light-years away from the rarified air of the multibillion dollar computer game industry that Mr. Romero and Mr. Hall pioneered and rode to fame.
ION Storm was created in 1996, largely on the reputation of Mr. Romero, who helped found id Software in Mesquite, the computer game development firm responsible for mega-hits Doom and Quake.
At ION, Mr. Romero, Mr. Hall and more than 20 other programmers toiled on a game called Daikatana, which was supposed to revolutionize the world of computer games and compete with id's best offerings.
Instead, Daikatana was plagued by delays, internal disagreements documented in the industry press and disputes with publisher and financial backer Eidos, which poured millions of dollars into ION.
When Daikatana finally hit store shelves in April of 2000, it was panned by reviewers.
ION Storm did release one more game, Anachronox, that was well received critically, but the writing was already on the wall and the Dallas office shut down last year, imploding under the weight of its own publicity for Daikatana.
An ION Storm office in Austin did survive the Dallas closure, and released the blockbuster title Deus Ex, but neither Mr. Romero nor Mr. Hall were involved with the Austin location.
Scaling back
Mr. Romero and Mr. Hall did create a small game company shortly after leaving ION Storm called Monkeystone Games.
But Monkeystone's focus is on games for handheld computers, cellphones and portable consoles like Nintendo's GameBoy Advance.
"It's a very big attempt at not taking three to four years to make a game and to get something done really fast and actually get more back into
what we like to do," Mr. Romero said. "At ION we were mainly working in management, managing people, but not able to do what we really wanted to do, and we were kind of torn between it."
"ION was just too big, and now we're back to a nice, small company where we can actually do hands-on work on everything," he added.
Mr. Hall says that while Monkeystone isn't focusing on the big-budget computer game market, that doesn't mean he and Mr. Romero have thrown in the towel.
"Handheld devices are emerging and diverging and swirling around as the exciting new place to be," he said. "Everybody has cellphones and PDAs."
Mr. Romero and Mr. Hall say that working at Monkeystone is less time-consuming than ION Storm, giving them the time to embark on outside projects, such as their courses at UTD.
Learning curve
While Mr. Romero and Mr. Hall will each only be teaching one class next semester, they both say they're already drafting syllabi.
"The overall class for programming is going to be designing a game engine, and all the components that go into the game engine; the networking, the drawing subsystem, the input system, all the major components," Mr. Romero said.
Then students will learn to paste graphics on to the frame they've built and create a small game.
Mr. Hall said he's going to focus more on the design side.
"My class is more studying the whys and wherefores of game design, what you actually do, how you reward the players, the elements that make games fun," he said. "There are a lot of things that you learn, painfully, by experience that I guess these people will get a shortcut to."
"It's kind of fun to step back and analyze your craft and maybe learn some things as well," he added.
Mr. Romero said he hopes to eventually create an entire degree program at UTD in game development and design.
"If it turns out pretty good, we can maybe talk to some of our friends that are here in Dallas that are working at game companies to maybe help out with some new classes, maybe set up some kind of a degree," he said.
"There are a lot of game degrees that are popping up all over the place," Mr. Romero said. "I actually talked to a person at Collin County Community College back when we started ION Storm about doing a degree. But since we had just started ION, we had no time to do that."
Mr. Romero said he and Mr. Hall will probably sprinkle some of the business insights they learned over the years into their classes, but he said they'll mostly stay away from formal instruction on how to create and run a game development company.
"We're not doing a business class, because that's an entire class on its own," Mr. Romero said.
"A business class will knock all the illusions out of their head," Mr. Hall added with a wry grin.
E-mail vgodinez@dallasnews.com
And no I am not karma whoring... Make me a funny.
Tournament Management Online &
If I recall correctly, (and I've just woke up so my memory isn't fully warmed up), the University of North Texas (And others in the UT system) has been experimenting with game programming and development classes and content in other classes for a few years now.
:-)
I believe several of my co-workers at Ensemble Studios (located in Dallas) have responded to inviations from UNT/UT and have gone to the campuses to speak or otherwise give presentations.
As game development has matured from the garage band to the full fledged studios, it only makes sense that the instructors would want to show their students the combination of programming, project management, art, music, and magic mojo that game development really is.
Maybe they can have one of the classes dedicated to "show & tell".
Because, what? You think she looks pretty? Are you interested particularly in Romero's girlfriend? Or would any woman do? Or just well-known women? Do you know any women? Are you being funny or just being sad?
These guys are only 34 and 37.
They're not old enough to be teaching programming. Everybody knows you need to be at least 45 and have a grey beard!
The guy does seem to be a favourite target for piss taking with many comic writers/drawers...
Hate me!
Game programming is not by itself a subject. It's just sections from math, computer science elements and maybe management and buisness. There is no cohesive set of general theories and ideas that define game programming but a bunch of ideas from other subjects and some set of tricks. To learn something like that, you don't really need a professor and a class.
Reminds me of some of the CS classes. 3 credit semesters of nothing. Long long lectures that just reiterated the super-obvious.
If they aren't telling you about the days of programming in COBOL with punch cards they haven't fully learned to appreciate programming. Thus their experience will impart no true knowledge to the students. With the exception being, find excellent programmer, latch on to him and become rich, start other over hyped company, burn through all VC funding, get hot ladies, teach at shitty Dallas campus (trust me it's shit compared to any real university), retire satisfied you made a difference in the world.
Dr Ian Parberry at the University of North Texas (about thirty minutes away from UTD) already has a course teaching fundamentals of game programming. Three programmers team up with an artist, and you learn to make a GAME (as opposed to a graphics demo). Parberry also has a book based on the class here.
:) ), and he has already put the years into refining the syllabus. You'll get a lot from it, including a preview of the game industry's 80-hour work week.
Given the history of Parberry's class (which used to be called the Laboratory for Recreational Computing (LARC)), it's not surprising at all that Mr. Romero would fail to mention it. Back in '94 some of the students met him and came away...very unimpressed. The consensus then was that Carmack must have really written Doom and Romero came along for the ride -- Romero didn't know half the 32-bit asm as the students, and in the '94 gaming environment that was pretty shocking.
For those in the Dallas area who really want to learn games, try Parberry's course. He's an excellent teacher and a real coder (even though I hate his brace style
Kevin Lamonte
LARC class of '94
CSCI 4050 class of '99
Getting John Romero for game design is like getting Bill Gates for OS design - in times gone they did it themselves and produced good work (Bill Gates: anyone remember the Radio Shack Model 100?), now all they produce is crap...
It is against my philosophy to moderate down,
but this just deserved it. Moderators clearly
screwed up here. This guy should not have so
many points. Definitely redundant. I am sure
I'll get nailed in meta for this for not
following the group-think.
So don't keep us in suspense - post a link to a picture of her!
Hrmm.....so when does your girlfriend Stevie Case stop by?
Honestly, what has Romero got to teach anybody? How to be a success in the early 1990's and then live off of it for the rest of your life? What does he know about creating games in 2002, other than how not to do it?
He deserves a little respect for Doom, but that doesn't mean that it's sensible to listen to anything that he has to say now.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
You've got give some credit to Ion Storm because they're the makers of Deus Ex and are almost ready to roll out the sequel, which will be a big hit.
both formally of ION Storm
No, they're both formerly of ION Storm. [insert usual rant about how ./ editors never proofread peoples' news postings]
"Wow, you're like some kind of superhero able to ward off happiness and success at every turn."
-- Ryan Stiles
What will happen to cheaters in his class...
Because they're kind of ubiquous in FPS. And don't come up with that "No, seriously, I'm that good, I'm no cheater" bullshit.
If someone uses a sniper and kills 100% on the first shot, going just for his individual frags and giving a rat's ass for teamplay in CTF... well, this is *cheating* big time.
I'm not blaming him for human nature, but somehow I sense the climate of the game are not exactly attracting the best of mankind.
Yeah, I know, hot kitchen... still, it sucks!
Calling Romero a professor is going too far, even in jest. It's bad enough that every numbskull who can code Visual Basic calls himself an "engineer", and anybody who knows that Cisco makes routers is suddenly an "architect", but it takes a shitload of hard work combined with an incredible intellect to become a professor. Giving a couple of lectures doesn't warrant that sort of honorific.
This could actually be a good experiment for the university... Hiring well known names to teach classes and drive up admissions for that school...
It would be like (insert famous person) teaching a (insert a university school) class.
Next thing you know their entire school of (x) is swimming in applications... and $$$ (..and you thought they wouldn't raise their tuition... shame on you...at least they have a ready made excuse to give you this time.)
> "thats" is spelt "that's".
Unless you are one of the greatest writers that the English-speaking world has ever produced.
(yeah, offtopic, i know. so sue me.)
Will Romero's surgically-enhanced mapping-doll be teaching the special session "Boobs and Gaming"?
>Unless you are one of the greatest writers
Bah, Shaw's rubbish. If his evil scheme had triumphed, we'd all be speaking Esperanto and our textbooks would be full of errors.
Nae bother
Now, won't one of you bitches please just suck my dick?
I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants
Computer entertainment programming skills, advanced design techniques and project management will be covered. And John Romero will make you his bitch.
Yes, Professor Romero will make you his bitch.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I go to an art school. Our studio professors are all working artists, and inevitably in every semester, somebody will ask to see a sample of the professor's work. Oftentimes you'll see a very good, very impressive body of work, typically the product of the sort of values and ideas the person is trying to impress upon his or her students.
In my experience, though, there have been a few teachers who have shown work that is thourougly underwhelming or even out-and-out weak. And from that point on, it's impossible to learn from the person, because you just don't respect what they do.
I imagine this will be the same in this programming class for anybody that's played Daikatana.
There are no fundamental, time-honored principles to game design, because it hasn't been around long enough to establish the same sort of rules you find in, say, graphic design. So in a class like this, you'll be entirely dependent on what the teacher has to say. There really won't be an authoritative accompanying text from which you could choose to learn instead of the professor.
All of Slashdot is going to post here that Daikatana sucks, and all of Slashdot is right. If John Romero knew anything about good game design, he would have taken the seemingly unlimited resources afforded him and been able to produce a good game.
I never played Anachronox, although I read that it was very good. Maybe Tom Hall's got some worthwhile things to say. But is there anybody out there that really respects the work that John Romero's done since he left id? The class is obviously the university's way of getting some press (and, in turn, enrollment and tuition) by taking advantage of a celebrity name, regardless of worth.
"Oh, no need to worry about that. Things are coming along fine."
"But it's March! Your class was scheduled to conclude in December, like all the other fall semester classes!"
"Well, Dean, you can't rush quality work."
"And speaking of quality, that's another thing! You syllabus stated that you would be covering ten programming modules, the final one of which was 'Creating a Game Engine,' but your students are still working on Module 2, 'Creating Cool Cinematic Cutscreens."
"Well, I felt spending extra time on cutscreens was the most important thing we could do to generate hype over the class and ensure funding for next year."
"And that's another issue! You were given a fixed budget of $500 for class supplies for the semester. So far you've spent $156,000!"
"Dean, you just can't put a price on quality."
"Actually, I can. As Dean, managing the budget is part of my job. Moreover, Professor Spector at UT Austin managed to finish his class on time, on budget, and with five times as many students as yours...."
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
I think he was quite obviously being funny?
"How on earth did you spend four years and millions of dollars to make the Worst Game of the year?"
:)
Who cares about passing when you can piss the teacher off
It's the Goatse guy again.
And those who can't teach, teach teachers.
The key to successful game design is having a ridiculous 1970's black stereotype named "Superfly"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"Those who can, do; everyone else teaches."
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Please do something so that this is no longer marked as "+1 funny".
This class sounds awesome!
"Yeah, well, Dracula called and he's coming over tonight for you and I said okay."
The inititation rite? Playing Daikatana and fragging Stevie Case.
I thought it was the preparation for the next soccer world cup .. No .. yes. YES
And now I'm going to make all you nubile coeds my bitches!
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
...inlcuding UNT (hey, my wife went there) and schools in the UT system.
:-)
Remember, I had just woke up from playing too much war 3 when I posted that
I think he was quite obviously being funny?
If it was so obvious, why are you asking us?
As my father lik@(munch munch)...
this is really funny. Normally slashdot posts are not this funny.
The Slashdot Effect: A new for
... so give the guy at least a bit of credit. From the "Giant List of Classic Game Programmers" Romero, John [co-founder of id Software, Ion Storm, and Monkeystone Games] [T] Scout Search (June 1984, AP2, inCider) Cavern Crusader (1984, AP2, A+) contest winner Bongo's Bash (1985, AP2, inCider) [T] Major Mayhem (Dec 1987, AP2, Nibble) Evil Eye (1987, AP2, UpTime) Asteroids-like Subnodule (1987, AP2, Keypunch) Jumpster (1987, AP2, UpTime) Pyramids of Egypt (1987, AP2, UpTime) later (1989, PC, Softdisk) Lethal Labyrinth (1987, AP2, UpTime) Krazy Kobra (1987, AP2, UpTime) Snake Byte-like Wacky Wizard (1987, AP2, UpTime) Neptune's Nasties (1987, AP2, UpTime) Space Quarks-like Zippy Zombi (1987, AP2, UpTime) Q*Bert-like [N] GraBasic (1987, AP2, UpTime) [T] City Centurian (Dec 1988, AP2, Nibble) Dangerous Dave (1988, AP2, UpTime) later [G] (1990, PC, Softdisk) [G] Space Rogue (1988, AP2, Origin) [P] Might & Magic II (1988, C64, New World Computing) [T] Treasure Dive (1989, AP2, Nibble) later (1989, PC, Softdisk) as Twilight Treasures Sub Stalker (1989, AP2, Softdisk) Zappa Roids, with Lane Roathe (1989, AP2/GS/PC, Softdisk) Asteroids-like [P] Magic Boxes (1989, PC, Softdisk) Alfredo's Stupendous Surprise, with Tom Hall (1989, AP2, Softdisk) [P] How To Weigh An Elephant (1990, PC, Merit/Softdisk) [P] Dinosorcerer (1990, PC, Softdisk) [P] Same or Different (1990, PC, Merit/Softdisk) [G] Dark Designs (1990, AP2, Softdisk) level design only Double Dangerous Dave (1990, AP2, Softdisk) [G] Catacomb II (1990, PC, Softdisk) [G] Slordax (1990, PC, Softdisk) [G] Commander Keen: Marooned on Mars (1990, PC, id/Apogee) [G] Commander Keen: The Earth Explodes (1990, PC, id/Apogee) [G] Commander Keen: Keen Must Die! (1990, PC, id/Apogee) [G] Shadow Knights (1991, PC, Softdisk) [G] Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion (1991, PC, id/Softdisk) [G] Hovertank One (1991, PC, id/Softdisk) [G] Rescue Rover! (1991, PC, id/Softdisk) [G] Keen Dreams (1991, PC, id/Softdisk) [G] Rescue Rover II: Return of the Robots (1991, PC, id/Softdisk) [G] Commander Keen: Secret of the Oracle (1991, PC, id/Apogee) [G] Commander Keen: The Armageddon Machine (1991, PC, id/Apogee) [G] Commander Keen: Aliens Ate My Baby Sitter (1991, PC, id/Apogee) [G] Catacomb 3-D (1991, PC, id/Softdisk) [G] Wolfenstein 3-D (1992, many, id/Apogee) [G] Spear of Destiny (1992, PC, id/Apogee) *[G] DOOM (1993, many, id) [G] DOOM II (1994, PC/MAC, id) [G] Heretic (1994, PC, Raven/id) [G] The Ultimate DOOM (1995, PC/MAC, id) [G] Hexen (1995, many, Raven/id) *[G] Quake (1996, PC, id) [D] Daikatana (2000, PC, Ion Storm/Eidos) [G] Anachronox (2001, PC, Ion Storm) [P] Hyperspace Delivery Boy! (2001, PPC, Monkeystone Games) There's no question that the whole Daikatana thing was a fiasco, and I wouldn't hire Romero to manage a company, certainly, but the guy HAS made a lot of games, and many of them are quite good.
After the many and long delays of Daikatana, I hope that he'd be nice enough to accept late assignments.. ;]
Start here
John Romero...Mmmm she's HOT!
Crap 101 The Power of Hype
As an EE major here at the wonderful school of UTD (Go fighting comets!), I checked my class selection, and it looks like they are teaching an Arts and Humanities class on Computer Game Design. The teacher is listed as STAFF, as they have a teacher that already does it and probably don't want students to choose this class over that one. (NOTE: This is the only class that looks even remotely like it may be it....)
AP -4370 COMPUTER GAME DEVELOPMENT 3 Hrs R
Call 13550 Sec 501 W 7-9:45PM JO 3.114 STAFF
Written Permission of Instructor Required
Call 972-883-4379
Call 13551 Sec 502 R 7-9:45PM JO 3.114 Dochtermann M
Written Permission of Instructor Required
That you can't leave class without your pal, SuperFly.
You can only drink 30 or 40 glasses of beer a day, no matter how rich you are.
-- Colonel Adolphus Busch
But at least Romero isn't a priest.
sporadic
heh maybe john romero will also teach home ec. on how to bake a diakatana.
MoRe... LaTeR... -=PJK=-
or maybe he'll teach sex education on how to be made his bitch.
MoRe... LaTeR... -=PJK=-
To ace the class, you must first kill me, John Romero...
(if you don't get that, play the final level of doom 2)
$ make love
make: don't know how to make love. Stop
dear GOD
they look totaly retarded
http://www.stevana.com/new_fampix.htm
ION Storm had a burn rate over a million dollars a month. Eidos had to squeeze the life from a couple of other game companies to maintain John-boy's Ferrari for him. Among those was Looking Glass, the group that made Flight Unlimited, Thief and System Shock. Wow! What a great decision that was.
It isn't just the crappy game that JR made, but the wake of destruction he left behind him was incredible and did great harm to the gaming industry.
Check out TTLG, SShock2 and GameSpy for info on the people hoping to keep these games alive.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
Now you too can learn how to make quality cinema.
in case you were wondering, much like I was, John Romero's very attractive GF is the famous Killcreek (who i always thought was a dude). Her real name is Stevie Case. Here's an interesting interview with her.
Urgo: "I want to live. I want to experience the universe and I want to eat pie!"
Jack: "Who doesn't??"
The University of Texas Dallas is the ugly little sister of the University of Texas Austin -- you know, the one that smiles at you with her cowboy hat and her two chipped front teeth, the one that no one really wants to date.
I rode through the UTD campus on the way to and from work for about seven months while working for Convex Computer Corporation (now part of HP), located on the north side of campus.
Teaching there is about the equivalent of teaching at the local community college.
Here you go:
Hot for Teacher