Chapter 6 Chapter 5 A world more interesting than reality

Romero wanted to summon the demons, or at least find a way to summon them.This is the lake house at four o'clock in the morning. Empty drink bottles are scattered on the floor. Mizi is sleeping soundly on the Carmack's monitor. The smell of grilled sausage is still lingering in the air. Everyone is gathered around the big table in the living room. , another round of Dungeons & Dragons games that have been going on for hours.Since leaving Floppy, they've had more time to devote to the world, which keeps expanding like a novel.They shape their respective roles in it, which carries their hopes and dreams, and it is not just a simple game.

The vastness of this world is largely due to Carmack.Unlike other dungeon masters, who just make short stories that end in a few hours, Carmack's world is continuous and eternal. No matter how players reorganize, they always return to this same world.The story they're playing now is the one Carmack started working on as a kid in Kansas City, and it's like musicians spend years composing a grand opera.Every time they passed by Carmack's room at night, they would see him lying on those documents, sketching the details of the world. The world that Carmack single-handedly created is a tome of forests and magic, time tunnels and monsters, with fifty pages of glossary alone, covering characters and objects such as "Thor" "(Quake): a fighter with a Hellgate Cube floating above his head; "Cup of Madness": if you drink the potion in it, you will start attacking everyone around you in a frenzy; and the artifact "Big Sword" ” (Daikatana), etc.As the lord of the city, Carmack will continue to create new environments and settings as the game progresses, and then the players will explore them and decide how to act.He likes the feeling of creating.

The team they formed is called "Popular Demand", and Romero's name is Armand, a warrior who likes to play with magic.Tom is called Buddy, Jay is a thief named Reeve, and Adrian is a big man named Rockbreaker. With each adventure, their abilities and prestige continue to grow.Their expedition is a kind of embodiment of id, as Carmack said, a game that allows a person to show his true side.And on this unusual night, Romero was about to make a deal with the devils. Carmack set up Yin and Yang in this game. The world of Yang is the world where their team lives, and the world of the underworld is the world of demons.After months of running around the underworld, Romero got bored and, for some excitement, decided to claim the most dangerous and powerful "Demonicron", through which players can summon demons to the underworld. .Carmack looked up his rulebook and told them that, if used correctly, the book would grant them superpowers and all the riches and treasures they would have.Hearing this, Romero immediately thought of the ultimate weapon—a broadsword.But there's a lot at stake here, and if the book falls into the hands of some devil, evil will pervade the world.Although Carmack is the creator of the game, he respects the setting and limitations of the game, as well as its laws.If a player does something that causes the destruction of the world, then the game can only end there.

Romero and the others discussed for a while, Adrian and Tom seemed hesitant, but Romero's enthusiasm drove them again: "Come on! We can't lose!" So they decided to go to the palace of the beast Capture the "Complete Book of Demon World".Carmack rolled the dice: the players won, they got the Ultimate Book, and what to do with it, they hadn't figured it out yet.At this time, they have other things on their hands.It was already late at night in the real world, and they had to get into id's game. ﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡ When they named the company, they took the initials of Ideas and Deep from the original "Shensi Software", which also means "In Demand". They were also happy to use Tom's words: In Freud's theory, personality is divided into three parts, id (id), ego (ego), superego (superego), and id is the instinct that makes people act according to the pleasure principle.

In 1991, their cheery Keen did well, topping the shareware charts, the first game to break into the top ten. Keen's first trilogy was bringing in them $15-20,000 a month, and it wasn't just "pizza money" anymore, it was computer money: their cabin by the lake There is a long row of brand new 386PC machines. That year, Carmack was twenty and Romero was twenty-three, and they already had their own businesses. Although the trio of Romero, Carmack, and Adrian managed to leave Floppy, Tom and Jay chose to stay.Tom is only temporary, he doesn't want to leave when the company still needs him, he has to wait for the company to find his successor.Jay feels obligated to fulfill his obligations at Floppy, and now he has a major Macintosh project in his hands, but he is also a partner of id, such as occasionally playing Dungeons and Dragons.

From winter to spring, the people of id enjoy the free time.Even though they still have games for Floppy, at least they don't have to work 9 to 5 anymore, and they can stay in the comfort of their lakeside cabin all day long.Carmack threw himself into his next graphics engine, the previous engine's breakthrough scrolling effect, and this time, he was going to create something even more dazzling, and while he was systematically working on it, others were beginning to exploit existing Some technologies make games for Floppy Disk. That freedom, and the success of Keen, inspired even more games to be made. "Rescure Rover" tells the story of a boy who goes in search of his puppy, Rover, who has been abducted by aliens.This is an exquisite maze game. On the way, players need to witty turn a mirror to use or avoid the deadly rays emitted by alien robots through the reflection mechanism. id's style is just beginning to take shape, that is violence plus humor, the more extreme the performance, the better. On the opening screen of "Saving Rova", a fat dog with a big ear wagging its tail, and a row of muzzles on it is pressing against its skull.

Roa took a step in the direction of dark humor, and their new game, Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion, which they started working on in March, goes even further.This time, Romero put his favorite character in a sinister situation: Dave drove the pickup truck to a dilapidated building—like those in Shreveport, wearing a hunting dog on his head. wearing a denim jacket and wielding a shotgun, zombies and ghosts await him in the building. Adrian is one of the people who likes this kind of horror theme the most. Those gory scenes from working in the hospital are still haunting him, which is an opportunity for him to release.He still hates the hypocritical "Kean", but he didn't tell others. In his opinion, if he wants to make this kind of low-level game, it's better to be a vulgar and interesting one, just like the TV series at that time Like Ren and Stimpy.And now with "Dave in a Haunted House", Adrian finally found a way to vent.As Romero and Tom sat busy at their respective machines, Adrian quietly drew what he called a "death animation": three or four frames in a rapid loop showing Dave's painful death.Characters in games usually just disappear when they die, Tom left the body behind in Keen, and apparently Adrian had a mind of his own.

One night not long after, Romero saw this animation of Adrian: Dave was hit in the head by a zombie's fist, and then his eyeballs shot out with a stream of plasma.Romero laughed out of breath: "Blood! In the game! It's too fucking exaggerated!" Violent fantasies have a long history.The gore in Beowulf, written more than a thousand years ago, has captivated every generation of readers: "The devil snatched up the sleeping lord, tore him to pieces, drank his blood, swallowed him I even sucked every bone carefully.” Children like to play the game of police and thief, waving toy guns, pretending to be shot, and imagining blood flowing from the place where they were shot.In the entertainment world, early horror films "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" and "Friday the l3th" (Friday the l3th) were very popular, and the action films of the 1980s (Rambo), "Terminator" ( The Terminator, and Lethal Weapon also swept the box office.

Violence in games is nothing new—even in Space Wars, one of the earliest computer games, players were literally destroying things.However, games that display violence graphically on the screen are rare, and if there are, they are very restrained.On the one hand, this was because the technology at the time could not render realistic images, but the main reason was that the producers did not want to go into this muddy water. In 1976, there was an arcade game called Death Race, which was very different from popular games like this one. In this game, players had to drive over people scattered on the screen-a few sticks Very rough lines, when the player's car hits these screaming people, they become crosses one by one, and the chassis on both sides of the screen are painted with ecstasy and skulls.It was the first video game to be banned.

Adrian's death-themed works are so good that no one is willing to take them out of the game.Inspired by Romero, Adrian added more gory details, such as bloody flesh splattering from zombies when they were shot with a shotgun.When the Floppy folks saw the footage, they clearly didn't get the joke, and they insisted that id re-animate the death - without any blood. "Maybe there will be a day," said Adrian, "when we can play as much blood as we like." ﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡ Carmack wasn't idle when everyone else was busy.He is a person who pursues technology, and the temple in the minds of programmers: three-dimensional images, naturally became his next goal.Strictly speaking, it is impossible for a two-dimensional computer screen to hold a real three-dimensional world. Programmers can only make players "feel" that they are in a three-dimensional world from a first-person perspective through perspective drawing. .

What Carmack didn't realize was that he was trying to realize a dream that has so enamored so many people for thousands of years: a realistic, convincing, interactive experience.In the eyes of some people, this is even the most fundamental desire of human beings.The 15,000 BC murals in the Lascaux cave in southern France are the earliest attempts by humans to "immersive environments" (Immersive Environments). Another world. In 1932, British novelist Aldous Huxley described a multi-sensory medium similar to future movies in his novel "Brave New World", which synthesized three-dimensional images After effects such as sensibility, smell, touch, etc., this multi-sensory medium "feels more harmonious, more perfect, more colorful than daily life, far more real than the real world." American writer Ray Bradbury (Ray Bradbury) In his 1950 short story "African Grassland" (The Veldt), he also wrote about similar things. A family has a special room that can show people's imagined scenes on the surrounding walls. In the book, Trouble ensues when an African savannah appears in the room with uncanny verisimilitude. Soon, technologists were working to turn these dreams into reality. In 1955, a Hollywood videographer named Morton Heilig began what he called "the cinema of the future": "It will far surpass Huxley's multi-sensory medium." Heilig created a bustling street market through the images, sounds, and smells brought by his novel device called "Sensorama". Bring the audience a "truly immersive feeling". Simply combining various multimedia effects cannot create a convincing immersive environment, and interactivity is also an essential part, and interactivity is the charm of computer games.Myron Krueger, a computer artist at the University of Wisconsin, studied interactive immersive environments as a beloved project, and in the 1970s, by bringing participants—even remote Participant - Projected onto a giant screen, he created Bradbury's prairie. "Such an environment suggests a new art form based on the real-time interaction between humans and machines...In this artificial reality scenario, artists can fully control various causal relationships...The difference in the results is this art.” In one experiment, for example, viewers tried to find their way through a maze projected onto the wall. By 1980, this immersive environment had a new name: Virtual Reality.William Gibson coined the term "CyberSpace" in his 1984 novel Neuromancer, the interactive world that exists within a network of computers. In the late 1980s, Scott Fisher, an engineer at NASA's Ames Research Center, managed to achieve a digital glove and a display device fixed to his head. Prototype of virtual reality.Through these tools, users can manipulate various objects in the virtual world presented by three-dimensional images from the main perspective.Finally, Fisher wrote in 1989: "There will be interactive theaters and interactive games, with objects of everyday life and things not in reality, and digital avatars of people with different appearances. Eventually, there will be configurable virtual reality servers on the telecommunications network, and users can log in remotely to interact with other people's digital avatars... The virtual world will be as colorful as the real world, and in it, people can even pass through Some portals disappeared in an instant, entering another virtual world." Although Carmack is also a fan of science fiction and is fascinated by the holographic imaging platform in Li, he did not pile up grand virtual reality design solutions. He is more focused on solving current technical problems, such as how to display three-dimensional images on the computer. . Carmack got a taste of 3D graphic programming long ago when he was making that MTV logo on the Macintosh.Since then, there have been some 3D games from the main perspective. In 1980, Richard Geliott used perspective in his first role-playing game, Akalabeth.Two years later, Sirius Software (Sirius Software) produced a first-person perspective maze game that was both popular and well-received: "Wayout", which is a flight simulation category. The feeling of flying in the world. In 1990, Richard Geliott's Viking company produced a space-themed fighter game: Wing Commander, which quickly became popular in id's lakeside cabin. Carmack felt he could do better.In his opinion, three-dimensional flight simulation games are too slow, and the complicated graphics make players feel like a snail flying in the air.He and the rest of id prefer arcade-like fast-paced action games like Defenders, Planet Impact, and The Golden Glove, while others are busy with Saving Rova and Dave in the Haunted House. At the time, Carmack was trying to do something no one had done before: a fast-paced 3D action game. However, he soon discovered that a PC wasn't powerful enough to run a game like that.Carmack scoured books and periodicals, but found nothing of value.He is the same as when he was doing the scroll effect: try the most direct method first, and if it doesn't work, then broaden his thinking.One of the reasons why 3D games are slow is that there are too many surfaces to draw, but Carmack also thought about whether it is possible to let the computer draw less surfaces each time, like putting a blindfold on a horse, for example, when drawing When walking, omit the floor and ceiling, and only draw the walls on both sides. In perspective, they are two simple trapezoids.In addition, Carmack used the so-called "ray tracing" algorithm (raycasting) in a unique way. After removing objects outside the player's perspective, the speed of the game has been greatly improved.At this point, there is only one last challenge left: adding characters to the three-dimensional world. The solution is to simply draw images and animations that represent these characters. Dynamically scales the size of the image by distance.After combining techniques such as polygon reduction, ray tracing, and dynamic scaling, Carmack can already make a smooth three-dimensional world. The entire research work took Carmack six weeks, and he had only needed four weeks at most before.When Romero saw the results, he again marveled at Carmack's genius.They then discussed what kind of game should be made to take advantage of this engine.They finally decided to create a future post-nuclear world where players drive tanks to rescue survivors. Hovertank was released in April 1991 - id created a first-person shooter. Although "Hovertank" is an innovative game, it is not as good as "Kean". style of.When the xenomorphs produced by nuclear pollution died, Adrian turned them into a blood glue; just like Yopo in "Kean", they also continued to linger in this world, so when the player returns to his When visiting the place where he once slaughtered, he can still relive the misfortune he brought here. id was constantly experimenting with new techniques and games, and soon into May they were back to the original Keen.To fulfill their deal with Floppy, they decided to make a chapter called Keen Dreams, and although they had already experimented with 3D technology in Hovertank, they chose to continue working on Keen. The expression of the flat scroll is still used in the world. Of course, some new things have been added, such as making the movement of the scene more realistic-making the foreground and background scroll at different speeds. This is the so-called "parallax scrolling".In the past, when Keane passed through a forest, the trees moved on the screen at the same speed as him. If it was "parallax scrolling", the trees in the background would move relatively slowly, which created a sense of depth. The sense of layering makes people feel more real. Once again, Carmack was overwhelmed by the performance of the PC, and after a few tries, he realized that there was no neat way to achieve the "parallax scrolling" effect. The speed of the PC simply couldn't handle both the background and the foreground.Carmack decided to make do with it. He had saved a cache of a certain area on the screen in the program, so that he didn't need to recalculate the picture every time. In order to show the sense of depth, he thought, he could save two areas at the same time. Cache, such as a small section of sidewalk in the foreground and a small patch of trees in the background, so that they can be moved quickly.Once again, he achieved unmatched speed on PC. "Kean's Dream" was completed at the end of May. In June, id began to produce the second trilogy of "Kean" for Tianji, which is the fourth, fifth and sixth chapters. As before, one of the chapters will be released as shareware for free, and players need to buy it The remaining two chapters.At this time, Tianji's game is not only the leader in the sharing game market, but also the leader in the entire shareware market. "Kean" is still at the top of the list, bringing about 60,000 US dollars to Tianji every month. Income.If they continue to use the previous distribution method, Scott assured them, the income will only be higher than in the past. Tom wrote the synopsis for the Goodbye Galaxy trilogy.This time, Keane discovers a plot to destroy the galaxy, and he must immediately take his spaceship to save the world, before taking care of his parents, who were accidentally stunned by him with a stun gun.Tom added the stun gun as a new gadget to the game after some disgruntled letters to id from concerned parents after the release of the previous trilogy, they didn't like the way characters died in the game, they didn't like Yupu who remained on the screen after death: "Why can't these characters just disappear? Just like in other games?" Tom still wanted to stick to his approach, but he didn't want to cause unnecessary trouble. Had to add this new weapon, the characters don't die, they just faint when they get hit, with a string of gold stars hovering above their heads. In August, they completed the prototype of the fourth chapter, "Secret of the Oracle."Just then, Romero got a call from Canada, a player named Mark Rein, a huge Keen fan and a good talker, who asked Romero Did Romero need game testers? Romero then sent him Chapter 4, which ends with a tantalizing introduction to the next chapter, Armageddon Machine, which promises that it will be "better than Reality is more interesting world”! Ryan was quick to send back a detailed list of what he found, much to Romero's surprise.Ryan wasn't just a gamer, he was a proactive businessman, so confident in id's game that he bought himself a plane ticket to Shreveport.And for Romero, who has been looking for business opportunities since he first saw Dave walking in the world of Mario, Ryan's arrival filled a lot of blanks, "Carmack has a leading role. Technology, there should be someone in the company who can fully explore the value of this technology.” Carmack didn’t immediately echo Romero’s idea, as he was always happy to point out, he just wanted to make great games, not to create games. Running a very large company, but he also knows that without Romero, they would not have this business, id would never have existed in the first place.Carmack finally agreed to let Ryan join id as a trial manager for a six-month trial period. Just a few weeks later, Ryan negotiated a retail version of "Kean" with a company called "FormGen". He told the people at id enthusiastically how wonderful the future of the retail market would be. Anyway, they are going to make a trilogy, just take out one and give it to the retail channel.For id, this idea seems not bad, after all, this is another way to make money, in addition to the trial version of the chapter, they can sell a chapter through the shareware model, and then retail the chapter. id and Tianji are not bound by contract, but they still called Scott.The relationship between them is very good. At the turn of spring and summer, at the invitation of id, Scott also led some game makers to visit the lakeside. Romero also hosted a meeting about the issuance of technology licenses. Meeting.From Romero's point of view, technology licensing is a good way, since Carmack's technology is so amazing, why not let other people pay some money to get it, and then they can use this technology to make their own game.Over the weekend, id improvised a PC version of Pacman using the Keen engine to show other creators.Afterwards, they spent a night working on the engine, and then sold id's first technical license to Tianji. When they told him about the retail version, Scott was confused. "This is a big problem," he told id: "You're violating the trilogy formula, if you release the first part as shareware and don't let people buy the other two in the same format, It's never going to sell as well as it did." But the folks at id told him it was too late and they had already signed a contract with the styling company. ﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡ id's ambitions are constantly growing. They are not only researching new technologies, making new games, and starting new sales methods, they are also looking for a new home. In August 1991, Romero and Tom proposed to leave Shreveport. Although the lakeside cabin accompanied them many happy times, they were tired of the depressing environment around them. To go fishing on the bridge at Cross Lakes, Romero didn't want to see such a scene again, and, for another reason, he had a new girlfriend.Beth McCall, from New Orleans, who works in Floppy's logistics department, is the girl who loves to laugh, and Romero's every silly joke makes her laugh, and their relationship is lighthearted Pleasant, which is exactly what the divorced Romero needs.Although he can still visit the children regularly, his relationship with his ex-wife is still tense, and Beth just appeared by his side at this time. What's more beautiful, Beth also wants to leave Shreveport. Tom already has an idea.Missing the atmosphere of his college town and the four seasons, he begged them to move to Wisconsin.Romero agreed to go with him to see a college town first: Madison.The word they brought back was that the place was nice.Their roommate, Jason Brockovich, just got an offer from a school there and could go with them, but everyone thinks Jason is an unmotivated guy, who once said in a conversation that programming makes money Too little, compared to his investment projects, his minivan license plate is a word: "dictator" (autocrat), but Carmack thinks that Jensen is a smart guy, a very talented program He didn't mind Jason going with them. Carmack didn't care where he was going, as long as he could keep writing code, everyone knew.But Adrian is unwilling to leave. Shreveport is the place where he grew up. Although he likes the dark world at work, in reality, he desires a stable life more.Romero kept begging Adrian and assured him that he would only rent the best house when he got there. After persuasion from his family and friends, Adrian agreed.But to everyone's disappointment, Jay decided to stay. In order to complete the "floppy disk" Macintosh software in his hand, he chose to shrink back in the face of the risk of starting a business. On a crisp autumn morning in September, the folks at id left the lake house for good, all they had were the computers in the car.