Slashdot Mirror
Brian Hook Interview
A reader writes:"I just read this very in-depth interview with Brian Hook on a site called Curmudgeon Gamer. Hook used to work for id Software (Quake 2 and 3) and later for Verant (Everquest) and he apparently worked on Glide for the old 3DFX cards. Now he runs his own smaller game company called Pyrogon. In the interview he talks about development styles of Q2 and Q3, MMORPGs, the lessons of 3DFX, and development of cross-platform games like his Candy Cruncher (which is available for MacOSX and Linux!). He even gets into some criticism of modern games and the life of a smaller game developer. Lengthy read, but lots of stuff to think about there since he tells it like he sees it."
Brian Hook didn't "apparently work on Glide" - he was the person responsible for initially implementing the GLIDE API.
The first 3d games were new and revolutionary and such, and the first 3d accelerators were something big. Modern "innovations" like, ooh, new 3d games, and games over the Internet, seem pale in comparison.
Give me a new game genre. Frankly, I'm bored with what I can get today. It doesn't cut it in the modern world. Why spend my spare time shooting people up when I can turn on the tv and see it for real? I'd rather do something peaceful to reinforce my feeble humanity.
Innovation in games is a great thing; has been a great thing in the past. I don't think you'll see it from Brian Hook, though. Technical advances, sure. But for something new and better we'll have to look elsewhere.
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With all due respect... what has happened to you Mr. Hook?!?
'He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.' - Douglas Adams
If you like puzzle games, Candy Cruncher is worth checking out. There are demos available. It's kinda like Sega Swirl meets Connect Four. The Linux port is very well done. It was another excellent Icculus job.
why each file for each platforms are so different? windows 2.6mb osx 2.0 and gnu/linux (don't blame me but rms) 4.2mb?
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If CandyCrusher is the best that an innovator like Hook can do for Linux, the future for Free is indeed bleak.
Anybody else suspect that "A reader" was actually Mr. Hook himself?
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Thats one of the best lines in the article...it really speaks alot about entertainment industry, gaming in particular, sometimes you gotta make the "turds" to make a living....
If the "cool" games are the ones with the millions of $$ budgets and overhead, thus they have to sell outrageous amounts of product just to break even ...someone has to make the budget titles, and the smaller titles are alot less risk...a friend of mine works in such a studio, when he they first went down that path they were all like..."ugh! F-ing budget games?!?" But they quickly realized that they can still work at them to make them as cool as possible, and they're not sweating about whether more work is coming....it always does. Simply because if one of their titles bombs completely, they're only out $100k as opposed to $2.5M....alot easier to re-coup, and alot less sour taste in the publishers mouth
Sehr geehrter Toilettenbenutzer!
I think a good issue is (re)raised here with regards to OpenGL having no one really looking after it now. OpenGL is the crux of porting games to non-ms platforms. He mentioned that it was a reasonable task to write rendering code that works across different graphics api's, and IANA graphics developer so I'd like to know what other people feel about this. And by extension, is it really that important for a game to use OpenGL to be easily portable?
-Reid
The article is thoroughly slashdot'ed now. Any word on their Stellar Deep and why it's been "hidden" on the site? I get the feeling that maybe they announced it a little too early.
Follow the link and you'll see references to other games that may or may not be in production.
Personally I didn't find Candy Cruncher all that fun.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
sort of like tetris, but with an urge to go out, and buy a bag of candy corn. ahhh, candy corn.
It's time for another interview here on Curmudgeon and this time we have with us Brian Hook, president of Pyrogon Games and former developer at id Software and Verant/Sony Online Entertainment. Before working on the seminal shooters Quake 2 and Quake 3: Arena, Brian was the original architect of the Glide API used by the 3dfx Voodoo line of video cards. After departing id, Brian worked as a Senior Technology Architect at Verant, concentrating on development of technology for next-generation massively-multiplayer online games (MMOGs). After founding Pyrogon in 2000, he created the puzzle game Candy Cruncher, which we reviewed earlier this year. Two additional Pyrogon games have appeared since then, NingPo MahJong and Letter Linker, both available for Windows and MacOS X. (A Linux version of NingPo MahJong will be shipping in the near future.)
This interview covers a wide range of topics: game design criticism, OpenGL/D3D, making money as a smaller game developer, and the importance of porting software to different platforms. Indeed, something for just about everyone. It's quite long, so you might want to bookmark it and consume it in more than one reading.
The interview questions were prepared with the assistance of regular CG authors ruffin and michael.
jvm: What kinds of games do you enjoy playing the most?
jvm: So you play mostly on a PC, as opposed to a console?
jvm: Could we get an example of a game with these egregious design flaws, complete with a breakdown of those flaws? The more popular the game, the better.
I attended a speech by Brian Hook at the University of Florida a few years back. He had once been a student there before dropping out to work at 3Dfx. As I recall he was still at 3Dfx at that time (which was well before 3Dfx melted down.) It was an interesting speech, relating how he went from a student half-way through his studies to the creator of the Glide API.
One thing that is interesting is that I think has become much less arrogant as he has gotten older (he seems quite humble in this interview.) I mean he did create Glide almost single-handedly. Of course I imagine that getting humble with age is a pretty standard trend, especially among software developers. How many developers in the audience remember how arrogant they were when younger? I know I was. Ah, the ignorance of youth...
And Oh, I played it once and scored 28581. Took a while, and I didn't get that exited about trying to beat the score.
Personally, I've been meaning to do a clone of Puzznic, just to have something to do while learning SDL. Tetris and Puzznic are my favourite puzzle-games (not that I've played that many of them).
Incidentally, "Pyrogon" is a (poorly-disguised) anagram of "Porygon," the Pokemon that gave all those Japanese kids seizures in that infamous TV show. Do I smell a conspiracy?
I know this will come across as sour grapes, but if there was ever someone in game development who made a name for himself without much to back it up, it's Mr. Hook.
He worked at 3dfx in the early days, and hats off for the Glide API (RIP), but that's not a game, of course.
He wrote a book about writing game engines in C++, but hadn't actually written a 3D game when he wrote it.
He worked at id for a bit, but he never shipped a title while there, and he never worked on a project start to finish.
Then he worked for Sony Online, but never shipped a game there either.
Then he started a little bedroom company--good for him!--and finally wrote a game: the 2D puzzler known as Candy Cruncher.
Surely there are some more illuminated people in the game industry that are more worthy of interviews? Take away Spector and Meier and Wright and all the usual gods and there are still oh so many brilliant people out there whose names aren't even known. Who worked on Metroid Prime (hint: one of them is also ex-id)? Who worked on Splinter Cell? Who worked on GTA 3? You never hear about these people.
You're not gonna have Saddam Hussein to kick around any more! to make it more related to the subject... long live Saddam, you soon will exist eternally in one of those quake clone.
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Since I seem to have gotten to the article before it was hit by the rest of you, here you go, in plain text (warning, it is pretty long):
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It's time for another interview here on Curmudgeon and this time we have with us Brian Hook, president of Pyrogon Games and former developer at id Software and Verant/Sony Online Entertainment. Before working on the seminal shooters Quake 2 and Quake 3: Arena, Brian was the original architect of the Glide API used by the 3dfx Voodoo line of video cards. After departing id, Brian worked as a Senior Technology Architect at Verant, concentrating on development of technology for next-generation massively-multiplayer online games (MMOGs). After founding Pyrogon in 2000, he created the puzzle game Candy Cruncher, which we reviewed earlier this year. Two additional Pyrogon games have appeared since then, NingPo MahJong and Letter Linker, both available for Windows and MacOS X. (A Linux version of NingPo MahJong will be shipping in the near future.)
This interview covers a wide range of topics: game design criticism, OpenGL/D3D, making money as a smaller game developer, and the importance of porting software to different platforms. Indeed, something for just about everyone. It's quite long, so you might want to bookmark it and consume it in more than one reading.
The interview questions were prepared with the assistance of regular CG authors ruffin and michael.
jvm: What kinds of games do you enjoy playing the most?
Hook: That's a tough question. I guess in some ways I just have very high expectations about software these days, so most games pretty much turn me off within the first 5 minutes when I spot egregious design flaws.
That said, the games I've played and enjoyed the most recently have been No One Lives Forever 2, which I felt had some of the best production value I've ever seen in a game, and Ghost Recon, which is a hoot in multiplayer.
jvm: So you play mostly on a PC, as opposed to a console?
Hook: I should really get some consoles and play console games, but it's hard to justify the time.
jvm: Could we get an example of a game with these egregious design flaws, complete with a breakdown of those flaws? The more popular the game, the better.
Hook: That's dangerous ground =)
But a typical example I have is what I call "simulations that think they're games". To me, a game should be fun and exciting, which means that I should be making interesting decisions that lead to success based on the data I have at that time. Too many games today STILL punish you by just killing you because that's "realistic".
Hitman 2 is a good example of this. Starting with the very first mission, you can pretty much expect to go through and play that mission 20 times before you complete it, because there are timed events that you don't know about a priori. Which is a shame, because the actual mechanics in Hitman 2 were extremely fun. It was probably the one game in recent memory that I really wanted to like but which ended up being so frustrating and tedious that I couldn't enjoy it. Obviously it's a popular game, so I'm in the minority on this.
I think the games that really got a lot of this down were the 1980s LucasArts adventure games like Loom and Secret of Monkey Island.
Those games were fun. When you were frustrated it was because you couldn't figure something out, not because you felt the game was just arbitrarily screwing with you.
Another example are games that go into "inverse feedback loops".
Hitman 2 does this as well. The better you are, the more cool stuff you get, and thus the easier the game. If you make "Silent Assassin" on the first mission, you get some really nice weapons that make much of the rest of the game easier.
But the problem is that if you're a good enough player to get those weapons, you don't need the bonuses as much as the guy that was struggling like mad to complete the mission at all
We can kick around his body doubles for a few years before it gets old, I'm sure.
Surely there are some more illuminated people in the game industry that are more worthy of interviews?
Why the either-that-or-that position? I've read the interview now, and others, and Brian comes across as one who Gets It. That's actually enough for me to find an interview with him interesting. You can pick up Game Design: Secret of the Sages
and read stuff by Spector, Molyneux, Wright, Gilbert, etc. I've done so, and I'll tell you what; They mostly say the same thing!I think Brian is cool because he understands the reason for writing portable software, for instance, which was hardly mentioned by any of the "luminaries" in your list.
While Spector and the rest still work with giant teams and foster (well, their companies certainly do) this aura of "they're gods that should be looked up to", Brian is out there doing things mostly on his own.
I'd like a little less focus on the "man" and a little more focus on what the "man" says.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Maybe because that URL doesn't go anywhere.
Al-Qaeda can do what it wants when it wants. It doesn't matter how many rights you give up because there is nothing you can do about. They can strike whenever and where ever they fancy.
From what I've heard, he's been going through his entire life as a BS artist. He's been been brought up in converstation as an example of the marketroid-wanna be programmer type to be wary of. I don't know these as true first hand, but from what I've heard, in school he cheated, at 3dfx he took credit for other peoples' work. At Id, they realized their mistake and fired him - same thing at verant.
HAHA! Joke's on you! You can't put him on trial for warcrimes and hang him by his neck!
You won't even have the satisfaction of dragging his corpse through the streets!
If I might go ahead and speculate (which I love to do :-), then I'd say that Stellar Deep is Brian wanting to do something really big, but understanding intellectually that it's almost impossible to pull off.
He's not out to create something as grand E&B, but he's trying to compress the essence of what makes those games fun, into one small product just large enough to realistically be pulled off by his small team.
The problem might be that in his mind the game is still a little too large, and as more and more features are peeled off, the whole might not look as interesting any more. There's a certain reality to being a small developer that you must face.
But I think it's great that he's trying. He's out there doing what I'm only dreaming about, doodling away my time with books and mailinglist, deluding myself into thinking that maybe one day, the game of my dreams will "spring" from my fingertips.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
I wasn't there! Curse you neverland misfits! I'll get you Peter! And as soon as I do, I'll fuck Tiger-Lilly silly and break Tinker-Bell's Bell 'till she screams in bloody diahreah!
Where do I look for a job. Carnegie Mellon apparently doesn't offer job placement. I have a degree in scientific computing... Basically making programs for scientific research. I'd like to do genetic research algorithms, but I'd be down for some physics modeling or whatever.
God spoke to me
don't trash the guy for not working on a gamee from start to finish - indeed it's hard to do that in places likd id and sony - think about those development cycles!
If you don't think writing the Glide API, writing books about 3d engine design and a multitude of other public works is worthy of your respect then so be it. For me, hats off to the guy.
In any case, I'd much rather hear Brian Hook speak than, say, Seamus Blackley... now THERE is a bloated ego for no reason.
How is maintaining that little catastrophy, Deus Ex feeling today? What's that? You haven't maintained it? Oh of'course, you didn't touch it with a heppititis-tainted needle... It was Carmack that did that, right...
Why would you graduate from a ficticious university, and now think you are worthy to post on slashdot.org?
That's saying somthing...
Scientific Computing - oxymoron
Scientific Research - oxymoron
Genetic Research Algorithms - oxymoron
Physics Modeling - oxymoron
You are what you do, not what you say
One of the best reasons for porting to alternate platforms I've ever heard. More Linux ports == Fewer bugs
Black jelly beans are my favorite...
sig.
I have worked in games at various points in my career. One of the reasons you don't hear about a lot of game developers is that the bulk of people writing games are the same sort of professional developers who could just as easily be writing Oracle or Windows. In fact, it is not uncommon for people to migrate between such assignments.
The idea that game programming is somehow a different field run by rock stars or teenage geniuses is largely an illusion. It is like thinking that the film business consists soley of small quirky indie filmmakers.
Brian Hook, for better or worse, is a personality. That is why he makes a good interview.
I don't believe it's sour grapes at all, you bring up a lot of very valid points. I was primarily known for having a big mouth and a lot of opinions, and those aren't the types of things you base a career on.
In fact, in my defense, if you look at publicity for "Brian Hook", there has been none, because I've reached the point where building something on my own is more important than self-aggrandizement and promoting a name or personality.
At 3Dfx I was ancillary -- and, just to clarify, while I was a major influence on Glide, the Glide that everyone knew was actually significantly cleaned up and fixed by people after I left 3Dfx, so associating it strictly with me is a disservice. 3Dfx was about the hardware.
At id, I came in late on Quake 2 and left early on Quake 3, and in hindsight, it was a blown opportunity for me because I didn't contribute as much as I could have. But then again, trying to code around John Carmack is fairly demoralizing because he makes everything hard seem too easy.
I consented to this interview -- my first in THREE YEARS -- because I figured CG was a small enough site that no one would really notice. The questions that were asked I thought were extremely good and insightful and, frankly, I wanted to slowly start building awareness within the Linux community as we start pushing out more products.
But anyway, I think you're pretty accurate on your assessment, but I feel obligated to post just so you (and others) understand that this isn't a typical washed up, pathetic developer who has lost his relevance looking for one last moment in the sun.
I fully intend to build up Pyrogon into something important and fun. This is what is most important to me at this point, because the quasi-fame I had before was fleeting and, in the end, irrelevant to my own enjoyment of developing games.
And when Pyrogon is successful, no one will be able to make a post like yours saying it wasn't earned, since only two people work at Pyrogon, and it's 100% self-funded. It lives or dies by our abilities.
Of course, until Pyrogon has reached that stage, comments like yours will continue to be made, as they probably should.
-Hook
Slashdot inserted a space on him. HERE is the actual link. Personally, I would take anything comeing from gulufuture with a whole SHAKER of salt, but it SEEMS credible
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
Sure does seem credible!
They can't even spell Baghdad correctly on the site you linked to. Color me skeptical!
Hi, Brian. I think what you're doing is very cool. Too many businesses are distorted by the need to please investors - in fact, I think the most potentially successful businesses are prematurely killed by pandering to investors' ideas of what's profitable. This is especially tragic in creative fields.
I didn't like Candy Cruncher at all, but it shows a high level of professionalism and polish. I probably don't have a very clear picture of what "puzzle game" means - I loved Crystal Caves and to some extent that's a puzzle game. If you made that type of game for $15, I would probably buy it.
I sense that CC may be a trial balloon, testing the channels of development, distribution, support etc. and that therefore you may have wisely chosen to bite off the smallest possible chunk, rather than get mired neck-deep building something too ambitious. I hope it succeeds and spurs you on to more interesting stuff.
Good luck!
You fucking brown-noser. Try a bit harder -- scratch that -- a LOT harder next time.
What ever happended to John Romero? Did he ever actually code a game?
Hi brian.
.plan et al, while you were working at id.
I recall reading a lot from you in gamedev lists,
You had many opinions about things you obviously didn't know much about, and were overly proud of yourself and your achievments.
Nice to hear about you again. Nicer to see that your head got smaller, and definitely look like a much better guy today.
Good luck.
I can't remember which magazine it was in, but I remember reading an interview with you an J. Carmack which talked about OpenGL vs. DirectX. A very good read.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
A novice asked the master: "I have a program that sometimes runs and
sometimes aborts. I have followed the rules of programming, yet I am totally
baffled. What is the reason for this?"
The master replied: "You are confused because you do not understand
the Tao. Only a fool expects rational behavior from his fellow humans. Why
do you expect it from a machine that humans have constructed? Computers
simulate determinism; only the Tao is perfect.
The rules of programming are transitory; only the Tao is eternal.
Therefore you must contemplate the Tao before you receive enlightenment."
"But how will I know when I have received enlightenment?" asked the
novice.
"Your program will then run correctly," replied the master.
-- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"
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