A Short Interview with John Carmack

The Guardian Gamesblog had the chance to pick John Carmack's brain about mobile gaming's first official doom title: The Doom RPG. From the article: "Q: On your blog you talked about getting into Java programming as a means of resetting some assumptions and habits after working on Quake III. So did Doom RPG help? How? A: It wasn't so much the Java aspects as the mobile platform that is the diversion. It has been worthwhile, but I didn't get to go all that far down the detour before my primary responsibilities asserted themselves. I did three major blocks of coding on the project and regular design review meetings, which was all I could spare the time for. The crew at Fountainhead did a great job of following up on the direction and turning my rough project into a polished product."

Comments

design flexibility

[6350']

A hint of hope for the future, perhaps: "There is so much flexibility and power available now that there aren't a whole lot of beneficial trades that we can do to make something radically better by restricting the game design in a particular way, so the game design is a lot less technology driven than it used to be."

For anyone who hasn't played it

[88NoSoup4U88]

I highly recommend DoomRPG to anyone who loved Doom back in the days, and who likes to see viable alternatives to playing first-person shooters on a mobile:

The designteam clearly noticed the limitations on a mobile phone, and instead of playing the game 'real time', it's now turn-based.
This obviously makes aiming not to be important, and instead the player is given different stats as he levels up through killing monsters/fullfilling objectives.

As said, get this game: It's been worth its money for me for sure.