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.
Warning: mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: Too many connections in /usr/local/etc/httpd/curmudgeon.linuxgames.com/gee klog-1.3.6/system/databases/mysql.class.php on line 104
Cannnot connect to DB server
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?
[self dealloc];
They've mentioned on their site that they just wanted to make small, but fun games. At one time, Pyrogon was working on some sort of MMORPG, but I've not read much of its progress.
How the great have fallen.
Don't get me started on Teamfortess, at least Brian is doing what he wants, not selling out to Valve and banishing TF to a carbonite slab hanging over Jabba.
Yes I'm a geek and so are you!
I suppose as long as Candy Cruncher isn't his new crowning achievement. It's just with those creditals I was expecting something a bit more, umm, exciting... or at least involving a chainsaw, grenade launcher or a battle axe.
'He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.' - Douglas Adams
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?
/* No Comment */
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.
He started making games he likes. He also went from being a bachelor to someone married with a kid. And, being an owner of Candy Cruncher, it's as addictive as Tetris ever was. Personally I play games because they're fun, not because of eye candy . . . which means it'll be a while until I get DoA Beach Vollyball ;-)
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.
Candy Cruncher is actually a really fun game. Not th e sort of thing I could play for a couple hours like say quake, but fun. My preferred version of it is the http://eongames.com port to Qtopia.
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...
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.
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.
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.
In any case, I'd much rather hear Brian Hook speak than, say, Seamus Blackley... now THERE is a bloated ego for no reason.
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.
Phew! For I while I thought you said "genitals"!
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
It's a (I'm coining a new term) KMMOG. Kinda Massively Multiplayer Online Game. It's geared at about 5000 subscribers rather than 400,000 like other online games.
Sounds pretty cool.
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
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!
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.