CVG Interview Gone Sideways

Yeah so there's a new interview on ComputerAndVideoGames (CVG) that has some incorrect information in it (this was obviously NOT an email interview) the chief offender being my alleged quote that Adrian Carmack is John Carmack's brother.

[rant]
Oh brother, do I have to answer this question AGAIN?

How many times have I had to tell people that JOHN CARMACK AND ADRIAN CARMACK ARE NOT RELATED!

My friend Lane Roathe's name was misspelled "Lain". Like how many times have you seen the name Lane spelled that way?

The start of the article mentions that i'm working on an MMO for an unnamed company. That would be MY company and the name is a secret on purpose. We'll let it out when it makes sense and there's a reason to talk about it. What i've learned over the years is not to talk about your game while it's in development. In the article it mentions 2007 as our release date. You know what the answer is? It's done when it's done, just like my .sig used to read back at id Software.

So Scott Miller's last name is misspelled, the writer said in December 1990 we started to work on some games for Scott which, in fact, is when we shipped those games.

The quote that I "stayed full-time at SoftDisk until we published our first game, made a lot of money and then left." is not like anything that I would say. I think he just summarized the situation and put the words in my mouth.

You can tell the author of the article hadn't done his homework. Anyone who is a fan of id would know that John and Adrian aren't brothers.

Can't wait to see the next butchered part of the interview next week! Fact checking is fun and not alive in the game industry press!
[/rant]

UPDATE: CVG has made some corrections on the first part of the interview and the second part has been thoroughly fact-checked which is a FIRST for online game journalism as I've experienced it. Good work CVG!

Happy 10th Birthday, QTEST!

Outside QuakeCon 96, talking with friends

Unbelievably so, it's been 10 years since QTEST (Quake Test) was unleashed upon the world a mere 4 months before the full release of Quake on June 22nd, 1996.

QTEST was a test version of Quake that we uploaded to the net to gather information on how people's experience went. At the same time we invited seven people (The QTEST 7) to come to our office and play the game in front of us and give us their honest feedback - these were all hardcore DOOM players and very sensitive to gameplay issues. It was a great time having them there and getting the feedback....I still have DoomDeity's feedback that he sent to me.

You'll see in the pics a guy named Mark Fletcher - I hired him to be my MIS guy at Ion Storm and he was at Ion for the full 8.5 years of the company and working with Warren Spector at his new company now. Also pictured is John Cash, the network coder for Quake, who went on to become the Lead Programmer for World of Warcraft! You go, John - major props!

Here's a great site about QTEST.

In the Beginning...

I get so many emails asking me development questions that I decided to just start an area where I try to answer them and hopefully the information will help.

Several readers will be commenting and giving their own opinions and viewpoints - but what you read from me is what I believe from my experience.

Here we go!

Total Beginner Programmers

Just today I got this cute email from a 13-year old:

Dear Mr. Romero,
I'm a thirteen-year-old boy who absolutely loves the games that you've made throughout the years, so much that I really want to start programming, however, I don't know where to start.
BASIC seems too small a language to aid me in what I want to do, create the games graphical engine, but C# and C++ seem a little robust for a beginner. What do you think?
I really want to program, and I know that I do want to learn C# and C++, it's just that I'm not sure if they're the best languages for me to start in. I'd sort of like to learn BASIC, but I really can't find any good tutorials online, do you have any that I could possibly use?
Anyways, I hope that you take time out of your busy schedule to reply, but I won't be absolutely crushed if you don't. Thanks.
Sincerely,
Zachary

This was an absolutely great, well-written email with an excellent question. My answer is pretty much the same every time: if you want to learn how to code, you should be learning C. You can learn C++ later but I still believe it's best to go the C/C++ route rather than Visual Basic or some scripting language.

My personal favorite environment is the Visual Studio C++ Standard or Professional Edition. The Standard Edition is around $280 online and has everything you'll need for quite a while if you're a beginner.

visual c++ expressIf you're on a budget, like, a no-money kind of budget, then you should download, for free, the Visual C++ Express Edition product by Microsoft. There's even a nice book for complete beginners on Amazon.com that will help a lot.

This dev environment can get you through PC game development, handheld development (PocketPC anyone?) and with enough tweaking you can get it to work with external compilers for special hardware.