Why did romero leave id

That is sad. What happened? Artistic and personal differences. Nice doublespeak, JXT. I almost didn't catch it. Romero LEFT id?! He left right after Quake, about 8 years ago. Master Cilander said:. Quasar said:. Posted September 2, Didn't Atari mess with it's developers?

I seem to remember that. Will do. The Master's of Doom book sounds awesome. Is it sold at most majopr book retailers? He had sex with Carmack's wife, that's why. Clawt said:. Amaster said:. Posted September 3, Foofoo said:. Why did they hate him? So, when that decision was made, I basically decided that I was going to be leaving when the game was over.

But far from letting this decision sour his approach to Quake's design, Romero instead tried to inject the maximum innovation possible into the project's best level designs, all while respecting the framework established by previous id first-person shooters. But after a month or two of us cranking out levels, I had to simplify it even further because of how long it was taking us. So I basically had to ditch the RPG stuff and just make it a pure shooter. Of course, without the story elements that Romero had intended to connect Quake's wildly differing levels together with, the developer was left with something of a design challenge, which he ultimately resolved by making his game's hero an inter-dimensional, time-travelling soldier.

Can you make textures that fit this? Undeterred by the back-to-basics approach forced on Quake's design process, Romero opted to focus on the innovations made possible by the game's highly impressive engine, and in particular its ability to render truly three-dimensional environments.

That was a massive change from anything that we had done before, so designing vertically was really important. I had a rule for the designers that if they created a room in Quake and it could be replicated in Doom then they had failed. Every room needed to show the dimensionality of the engine. We were forcing the player to worry more about the environment on multiple planes, instead of like with Doom where your plane was always the horizontal.

We were pushing players into the next dimension by enforcing a vertical design. Equally cool creatures were also being created for Quake, with aesthetics inspired by the macabre imagination of author H. Lovecraft, including a living thunderstorm that id dubbed the shambler. The shambler was still really tough in the other episodes, but we gave him away in the first episode, not as a boss but as a mini-boss.

We gave the player the shambler to go against because maybe they would think that it was the boss, but then we really showed them what a boss was in Chthon.

One of the most obvious outcomes of Quake's vertical level design came in the form of platforming challenges, which Romero and his team integrated into their game's core objectives of continually powering-up and completing levels by finding their exits.

There was another level with a room that had these pieces of stone that came out of the wall that you had to jump up the sides of the wall on. It was like going up stairs, but you had to platform jump to get up and out of the room. More sophisticated platforming standards followed as the Quake team implemented impressive set pieces spanning everything from retracting drawbridges to deadly elevators. Register Don't have an account?

John Romero. Edit source History Talk 0. Archived from the original on I almost finished a level named Sludge Factory. Cancel Save. Universal Conquest Wiki. It would take around a year for the engine to be completed, and the Quake team already felt exhausted due to the lack of progress.

The director had hoped to do something new and unique with the game, but his vision would not come to pass. Development on Quake was brutal and challenging.

Romero focused on injecting as much innovation as possible to the title, prioritizing new-level designs with enhanced verticality and other features that were impossible in the DOOM engine. Following the disappointment he suffered during development, Romero chose to leave the studio he co-founded when the project was complete, exiting id Software as soon as Quake was released and seeing zero profit from the title.

However, Romero would not be the last departure. Liam Evans Articles Published.