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Tim Willits Interview: Lead Doom3 Designer
Joe writes: "PlanetQuake3.net has a interview with id Software's Tim Willits who is the lead designer and project manager of Doom 3. Tim talks about the new generation of level editing in Doom3, his favorite maps of all time, how designers and coders work together, and many other subjects. One of the most interesting parts of the interview was this question: 'PlanetQuake3: Will it be possible to adjust the speed of the game for between single player and multiplayer play?' 'Tim Willits: Yes, most of the game logic is outside the main executable, this gives us great flexibility in changing basic game parameters between single and multiplayer.'"
I *refuse* to play new online games like Q3. I hate the way lag "feels". No longer do I actually seem like I am moving slower. In fact you feel as if nothing has changed yet to other players you are in fact standing still.
It is VERY annoying to have sudden lag and see players hopping around on the screen. Explain to me how the hell you are supposed to compensate for that?
We need to go back to the way Q1 felt as far as lag was concerned. At least that way you could at least learn to adjust to the speed of your connection and change your aim accordingly.
PlanetQuake3: How much does it help you to be able to edit the game in real time? Did you request that feature be added?
Tim Willits: It is great for aligning textures and working with the lighting. Yes, we requested that feature be added, it is an example of the designers working with the programmers to make the best possible editing environment for the game.
This sounds surprisingly like the Build engine, which was used to create levels for Duke Nukem 3D and a few other 3DRealms games. The editor had a complete instance of the engine so that a level designer could go in and build levels around himself, aligning textures and specifying shading levels all the while. It was surprisingly intuitive once you figured out which keyboard key was responsible for which editor action.
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So you've played Doom 3 then? How was it?
Conserve Oil, Recycle, Boycott Walmart
Thanks to Loki (RIP) I've had a chance to do both on my Linux box:
Quake
Quake2
Soldier of Fortune
Quake 3
Descent 3
And to be honest, I found the "Quake-alikes" to be a lot more fun; a lot more immersive, than Descent.
I've run for my life from a Shambler, gotten totally creeped out when I found a lab full of my fellow space marines begging for death, and laid patiently behind cover while scouting an area with the scope on my sniper rifle - great fun, all. I could suspend disbelief enough to make me care about what was going on in the game.
Descent... left me cold. Robots drifting around endless corridors? Why? Where's the motivation?
Story can really change a FPS into something much more than "run amok shooting baddies" - Bungie's Marathon is a prime example. Done well, it can really hold your imagination. And isn't that what fun is all about? Not every game needs an original play mechanism, if the story is gripping enough.
That's why Q3 didn't do much for me either - pretty engine, awesome control, gameplay that left me flat after a little while (no story) But hey, lots of other people love the game, so I don't have any problem with it. To each his own.
DG
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"80 MB for ONE texture!"
In a word : no.
Education is the silver bullet.
We get it. Doom 3 is same old same old, a lot of you are bored with the FPS genre, blah blah blah.
:)
Doom 3 is a single player (our 4 player co-op) FPS game that is doing something most of you dorks haven't figured out yet. It's time for PC games to move beyond the Charlie Chaplin -> Talkies phase and into the Studio Picture phase. Doom 3 doesn't seem to aim for the blockbuster game of the year. Essentially, it's time for games to seperate the technology from the story and art. Every once and a while, a new game will be the first to showcase new technology, in the same way Star Wars recently started hitting up digital theaters. But, by and large, this is just a project to showcase some new technology which will not only try to tell a good story and make a nice profit off of it, but also to pimp the technology that powers it.
What makes this different from the projects like it in the past is that they are making no bones about what Doom 3 is... Doom 3 is to the game industry what "Harvey" was to the film industry. I guess.
Anyway.
Funny, I've always been the exact opposite. Although Quake (particularly 1) had potential, it was always "gee, another level, it's kinda weird, but what's the point? Why am I playing this?" Although Q1 felt something like Doom, which was nice to start out with, it wasn't carried through.
Quake 2 was infinitely worse in my book. "Another factory on another alien planet with... aliens to kill. *yawn*" It was all the same, all the way.
We won't discuss the lacking of Quake 3.
Oddly enough, I've been playing Doom 1 again lately, and it's been great. I really, really miss Doom's automap in new games (like everything after Doom), and even the quick story they have, coupled with the wonderful level design, makes it a much more interesting game in my book.
(I picked up Doom 2 recently too, and unfortunately it seems to suffer from some of the same problems as Quake did; nicer technology, less reason for me to play the game. And no, just shooting demons/aliens/whatever is not enough motivation for me to play something, particularly in things like Halflife where even if you turn things up to the hardest mode there are very few things to shoot. Red Faction was kinda fun though, decent if slightly bland story, but good level variety and lots to shoot at.)
Descent 3 also had a story coupled with gameplay that let you actually feel like you were part of the mission, at least for me. (Plus, it had lots to shoot at, and even an automap, woo hoo. Although I liked Descent 1's map better.)
Anyway, hopefully Doom 3 will bring back the old days of Doom 1, and it sounds like they're trying to flesh out the story, which will be cool. "Ultimate single-player FPS experience" someone said, and that'll be a nice break in a long line of bland deathmatch clones.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
it is a great time to be in games!!
I'm not so sure that I agree with this.
Is it really a great time to be 'in games'?
As a lone programmer, I say not. How many even slightly successful games these days are produced by single programmers or even small teams? Sure, there are a few very successful examples but they're all lo-fi or Shockwave games.. and not the typical 'computer games' we're used to.
It might be a great time to be in games for the coders like John Carmack who have about 20 art guys behind them, or for individual members of their teams who get control over a tiny aspect of the game (like Tim Willits), but on a personal level, it kinda sucks right now.
Games have taken the same track as movies. In the early days of movies, a small team would make a simple enjoyable film of 10 minutes or so.. but then as time went by, the land of Hollywood came in and hundreds of people were required to make a single movie. In the 90s, we had indie efforts like the Blair Witch Project that took movies back to small teams again.. could we experience the same with computer games one day?
I know I just sound cynical, and I am ready for the 'Troll' and 'Flamebait' moderation points, but I just don't feel it's such a great time to be in the gaming industry right now.
Even as a -consumer- many of the games now are unoriginal and not as good (relatively) as they were in the 80s. Why is now such a good time?
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