Chapter 12 Chapter 11 Thors

Everyone has unfulfilled dreams.Maybe that dream requires too much time and money, such as driving a sports car or flying an airplane; maybe that dream is too outrageous, such as fighting aliens in Star Wars, fighting with vampires to become famous; maybe that dream will violate the law , such as beating up the boss and walking around in the middle of the night.But no matter whether they can be realized or not, they are always hovering in your mind, every day, making you daydream.That's why there's a multi-billion-dollar industry helping people realize all kinds of grotesque daydreams; that's why there's video games.

Of course, video games do not allow people to actually enter those dreams, they can only allow players to experience the dreams simulated by the game makers.This simulation is based on various digital devices, such as computers, TVs, and handhelds.Although the player only feels the simulation effect through eyes, ears, and fingers, when he destroys an alien military base in space, or dashes left and right on the highway, he will feel that he is really there, as if Breaking through the shackles of the skin, throwing aside the precepts of the mundane world, and forgetting the troubles of the world.We were just prisoners who couldn't open the sky and couldn't penetrate the earth. It was a game that allowed us to enter a beautiful new world; ; we can't live without games.

As early as in ancient Greece, people have realized the importance of games.Plato said, "Every man and woman should play in the noble game, in order to have a mind different from the present." In the fifties, anthropologist Johan Huizinga wrote Said: "Game...is a meaningful activity, it goes beyond the instinctive needs, it gives action a meaning beyond survival. All games have their meaning." He also gave a new definition of human beings: The Man of the Game (Homo Ludens: Man the Player).Mashall McLuhan wrote in the 1960s: "A society without games is like a horde of walking corpses...Games are mass art, collective art, social representations of the dynamics behind human cultures... Through the games in a culture, we can learn a lot about the people behind that culture...Games are like Disneyland or Utopia, an artificial paradise, through which we express and complete our daily life. significance."

The most fascinating utopian fantasy is undoubtedly the "Holographic Imaging Station", where the virtual world simulator is slowly turning from dream to reality.Neil Stephenson described "variants" in his 1992 novel Snow Crash, similar to William Gibson's "cyberspace" in his 1984 novel Neuromancer. In 1994, the increasingly mature Internet could connect people to that space.The soap bubble of virtual reality games began to float in the academic world. It was some half-baked machines that, through a huge and clumsy headset and five dollars, players could enter a polygonal world from the main perspective.A new generation of programmers began to work on the realization of the "holographic imaging platform", and they sacrificed their lives and youth for this.Like Carmack said: "It's a sense of mission, and we have to make it happen." His contribution will be Quake.

Every time id makes a new game, Carmack will tell everyone what the next graphics engine can do.This time, Romero's blood boiled as he described what he had in mind for Quake's tech: a game they'd been talking about for years. Quake (Raytheon) originated from the "Dragon and Dungeon" game they played before. The character written by Carmack holds a powerful Thor's Hammer, which can easily level houses. In addition, Thor's head There is also a supernatural Hell's Rubik's Cube suspended above. id tried to make a game about Thor back in the days of Keen, but they quickly gave up because they felt that the technology at that time was not powerful enough to do the desired effect.Now, Carmack says, the time is ripe for one of the most convincing and immersive three-dimensional worlds technically possible, and it will be the first fast-paced game that supports several players teaming up to fight over the Internet. Main perspective game.It will be a huge leap forward not only for id, but also for the world.

Romero's inspiration erupted like a torrent: "Full 3D engine? God! There could be forests in it, and ... that we mentioned when we were doing "Kean"-Quake, it will be The main weapon of Quake, and the Hell Cube, the one that allows you to travel through time and space! It hovers over your head, and, it has aura! It has its own thoughts and personality, and you will feel that it is a maverick For example, its happiness is based on the pain of others. When you use it to attack the enemy and cause damage and pain to the other party, it will be very happy, so it will help you, such as healing your wounds , or teleport you to another place; but if you swallow your breath, avoid fighting, and just survive, it can only absorb the pain it needs from you, and will eventually leave you, and I don’t know when it will back to you."

Romero couldn't contain his excitement. He must tell id fans the news. "Our next game is going to blow Doom out of the blue," he tapped. "Doom sucks compared to Quake: The Fight for Justice. It's like, of course, better than Quake: The Fight for Justice." Doom was a big step forward from Wolfenstein 3D, but Quake is going to be an even bigger step forward from Doom." Romero hit enter, sending the message over the Internet. However, id hasn't even finished Doom2 yet, so it's obviously too early to talk about Quake like this. "Romelo is out there telling people what we're doing," Adrian complained to Kevin and Jay. Let outsiders know our plans too early. Romero just does it because he likes the limelight, the guy always does."

Due to the postponement of Doom, Jay has been blamed by players on countless occasions. He fully understands Adrian's concerns. He went to Romero and told him: "Don't talk about Quake with others. It's just in our heads. If the end result is different from what you are saying now, you will do us a disservice." Romero immediately agreed, but he quickly put Jay's words behind him. "Quake isn't going to be just a game," he told Computer Player magazine: "It's going to be a movement"—and enough is enough for him. ﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡ One night in September 1994, as Doom 2 was nearing completion, Romero was sitting in front of his computer, tweaking the game's final sound effects. All kinds of monsters and ghosts are spewed out from the center, and players must kill them to pass the level.

Romero went into test mode so he could move quickly around the map without being hindered by walls.Just when he passed through "Incarnation of Original Sin", he stopped coldly: "Did I see my own face just now?" Ah, it doesn't matter, maybe it was too tired, it should be a hallucination.Romero shrugged and continued to work, but after a while, when he came behind the old monster again, he felt as if he saw his face again, "It's really weird." He slowly walked back along the way Walking, he was shocked by a picture: a bloody head hanging from a wooden stick, twitching in pain, and that head was Romero's photo. "Fuck you!" Romero raged.

He walked up to the front of the Avatar of Original Sin and fired at it with a bazooka, and the shell went right through it and into a small room hidden behind it, hitting Romero's head right on the head—aha, Romero knew it was What it means: Players think they're shooting Sin Avatar, when in fact they're shooting Romero.Romero is the embodiment of original sin. The next morning, it was known that Romero had found the Easter egg, and he had added a new one to the game.Adrian and Kevin called up the last level and started firing at the boss.Suddenly, a dull sound came, like the reversal of a certain song by Pastor Judas, vague and messy, but if you listen to it upside down, it is very clear: "To win the game," it roared: "You have to kill I—John Romero!" After another burst of heavy fire, Sin Incarnate died.

﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡ On October 10, 1994, Doom 2 came into the spotlight.LimeLight, a nightclub converted from an old church in New York City, is getting even more gothic tonight as it hosts a "Doomsday" press conference. GTI hired a PR firm called TSI to introduce Doom 2 to the mainstream media, and they used a large portion of their two million marketing budget to decorate the nightclub as a hellish mansion full of demons and blood.The projector next to the main entrance illuminates the monsters and ghosts in the game, and the chilling music echoes in the hall. A huge arena is set up in the middle of the church, and the players who came to the press conference have already engaged in the battle. Reporters from big names like The Wall Street Journal and The Village Voice filed into the venue in awe and bewilderment.Computers and the Internet have been in the headlines more and more recently, with the release of Navigator, the latest World Wide Web browser, by Netscape, the company founded by the Mosaic author.Although many of these journalists knew something about the online world and had heard of Doom, they had never felt the magic of Doom so clearly.Even Audrey Mann (Audrey Mann), who is in charge of this press conference in TSI, has never seen such a formation. Her TSI has been doing public relations for two heavyweight companies in the high-tech world: IBM and SONY for a long time. work, but id's stuff is clearly nothing like theirs, id has brought in all kinds of new PR terms: deathmatch, scoring (frag), mode, TSI also had to open up discussions about how to pronounce "bull B" correctly, or It was: "Is there another milder way to say 'slaughter'?" And when they actually got to Spotlight, they realized that the whole thing wasn't as simple as they thought. "This is no longer a PR promotion for a game," Audrey said. "This press conference is a game in itself." That night, it became clear that Doom 2 wasn't just a game, it was a movement.The reporters who had ignored Jay's calls were now trying to get close to id.There were also various protesters who came to the press conference.Like violent films like Natural Born Killers and Pulp Fiction, Doom is seen as a menace poisoning America's teens.When Jay gave a speech, a man stood up and shouted: "You should be ashamed of playing violent games for children!" The audience immediately fell silent, and everyone looked at Jay. "Sir," Jay told him calmly, "I have two kids, and I'm not going to do anything to hurt them. The game we're making is, in a way, just an interactive version of The Three Stinkers." Three Stooges, if you don't look at it so narrowly, there's far more humor than violence in it." But the protester was still yelling about violence and Satan and so on until Sean, who was sitting next to Jay, went to the microphone and shouted at him: "Boy! Swallow it!" The audience roared with laughter.It seems that everyone is on the side of id. At this launch event, retailers bought a total of 600,000 copies of Doom2, a figure that has made Doom2 one of the best-selling games of all time, and the first quarter's stock was sold out in the first month. Sold out.Then, the mainstream media began a litany of Doom coverage, and those who missed the first wave of Doom caught up with the trend en masse, while those who noticed Doom in the first place rushed to present themselves as visionaries pioneer. Journalists from all walks of life repeatedly talked about Doom's intoxicating effect, marketing model, violence and blood, and id software-the model of the American Dream. "The most realistic virtual reality environment you will ever experience." --Chicago Sun-Times, "Virtual carnage and real profits" -- New York Times headline, "Doom Doomonomics" - the title of The Economist, this review also academically examines "how that bloody game brought great fortune to its authors . . . the myth tells us , What a big change tomorrow's information economy will bring to the world." "The Red Herring" (The Red Herring) magazine was amazed at id: "The huge amount of venture capital and private capital in order to be able to share from id's pot Squeeze your brain out with a spoonful."—But id didn't move at all, enjoying all the profits to himself. Of course, the millions of players who really live in Doom don't care how these laymen ramble about. They just want to pay back to these reporters with a few big fireballs. The players know that the most attractive part of Doom is the death match.Also, someone has already thought of running a deathmatch as a business, and that guy's name is DWANGO Bob. ﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡ Divango Bob, born Bob Huntley, is a thirty-four-year-old Texan who speaks and acts like Woodstock host Will Wavy Gravy.Bob entered the IT field very early. He installed self-service teller machines at gas stations around Houston, but this business could only be done for a few years. Then he began to look for new economic growth points. At this time, he saw Doom. In the first few months of 1994, Bob's employees stayed in the office until two or three in the morning. They told their families that they were working overtime, but in fact they were playing Doom.Bob's partner, Kee Kimbrell, also became a Doom junkie.One night, Bob dragged Jin aside and said sternly, "If I find Doom in the office machine tomorrow, you pack up and leave." Jin didn't dare to make mistakes, and quickly replaced Doom on all the machines A name, thinking that it can hide the truth from the boss.But when Bob found out the truth, he couldn't help thinking, "Maybe there's something unusual about how they're so obsessed with a game." Bob sat down and played it, and his life changed forever. The exciting stuff, Bob discovered, was fighting face-to-face, fighting a live opponent over a LAN.With a little searching on the Internet, Bob found many like-minded people. Doom deathmatch dominates people's lives: Players use the office network to fight on weekends; they chase children out of basements to build their own arenas; In the first marathon battle, he only relied on the little cake to maintain his physical fitness, trying not to leave the table and chairs, and he was finally pulled in his crotch. If there were a computer server that could, like a community basketball court, allow players to easily play games against strangers in another house, another state, or even another country, Bob and Kim mused. How incredible it would be!But the problem is that Doom only supports local area network, and serial port direct connection, or modem interconnection, that is to say, if two players sitting in their own rooms want to play against each other, one of them must dial up to connect to the other person's machine, and once the connection is established, they can start the game.Kim looked at Bob: "I think we can do a server connected by a phone line." Bob knew that this was a good opportunity to make a fortune: "Okay, I'll give you six weeks, if you can get it out, then I'll be responsible for introducing our products to id." It doesn't matter, in his opinion, the boys from id are from Texas, so they should be easier to talk to.But, id let him down: Bob's calls in the past, like everyone else, went nowhere.Five weeks later, King arrived on his bike and told Bob out of breath, "Okay, you wait ten minutes." Bob sits in front of his machine while Kim clacks away at the keyboard in another room. Ten minutes later, Bob fires up the program, and he sees that Kim has made exactly what they wanted: various intricate setups for a multiplayer game. It's all gathered into a simple interface, players can dial in to the server, enter the chat room, and start Doom battles with other users who dial in.Jin smiled and said, "Okay, we can go find the id." Bob frowned and told Kim, "id didn't talk to me, my God, they didn't answer the phone at all." He even tried fax, mail, email, but nothing worked. Just when they were feeling hopeless, Bob came across an article about an upcoming "End of the World" launch party at the Spotlight nightclub in New York.Bob immediately dialed the number of the public relations company: "I must participate in this event, I have a very good idea to tell id." The person from TSI on the other end of the phone told Bob that people from all over the world wanted to participate This event: "Forget it." But Bob stalked him so nicely that the man finally said yes: "Well, if you can fly over from Houston, I might be able to get you Get in." Bob hung up and told Kim, "Let's go! New York!" Bob and Kim booked frequent-flyer discount tickets and a room at a cheap hotel in New Jersey.Their self-service teller machine business is now dying, and the balance of the company's books is running low. This time, they are betting all on the so-called DWANGO: Dial-up Wide Area Network Games Operation. belongings.A few hours before the press conference, they finally arrived at the Spotlight Nightclub. At the door, someone from TSI handed over two black T-shirts: "Put them on!" With Doom's Iron Blood logo printed on the front and the words "Contestant" on the back, Bob and Kim barely pull it on. The people from TSI told them that the only way to enter the venue was to pretend to be a Doom player.Bob and Kim looked around, only to see that they were full of people wearing these T-shirts, except that everyone else was kids half their age.Bob's throat moved - yes, he and Jin have also played Doom battles, but compared to these hardcore players, they are just immature rookies, and now, they are going to fight these masters who are eager to fight On stage—in front of the national media—to play tricks? ! Bob and Kim thanked the TSI receptionist, and immediately went to the bar across the street.After a while, they staggered back to the door of the nightclub. As soon as the TSI people saw them, they shouted: "Quick! Everyone else is already lined up, go in!" It was repaired clean within minutes, and King was not much better than him when he went into battle.Game over, time to get down to business.Bob and Kim found the CEO of id: Jay, but he just glanced at the two middle-aged men who smelled of alcohol and had a fat body, and told them: "No time, no interest, please let me go." Then disappeared into the crowd. The two of Bob walked towards the door dejectedly. At this moment, Jin saw a man wearing a "producer" T-shirt with long black hair——Romelo!They waited nervously for their moment, then approached Romero. "We wrote this software!" Kim said eagerly. "You can dial into a server and play against other players! Here, this is the only copy, don't lose it!" After the party, Romero told Jay about the disk.DWANGO is not a new idea, id themselves have thought of a similar dial-up server, but they didn't do it, because, Quake will have built-in support for Internet multiplayer games, they want to pass a new game to drive this innovation.But now Jay has new considerations, he doesn't want to see this matter being used by some people who don't know the so-called, especially now-even big companies such as America Online and Time Warner are constantly looking for id to cooperate. "So," Romero said, "I'll go back for a few minutes and see what's on this disk." Romero plugged in the disk at his home in Texas, the program connected to a number in Houston, and when the modem's buzzing ended, a message from Blonde appeared on the screen: "Come on, let's try to play. "The next thing that happened was, King was in Houston, Romero was in Dallas, and the two of them started fighting in the game.Romero grabbed the phone and called Kim: "It's so fucking cool! This is what I want, and I want someone to hack at any time, no matter how late, but I don't want to be in the middle of the night. Wake up my friend at 3 o'clock and tell him: 'Hey...do you want to die twice? Hey!' That's so stupid, I want to be able to find someone to play with 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, this is what I want , I can just dial the number and fire!" Neither Carmack nor anyone else was interested.From Carmack's point of view, this is just a new entertainment for Romero-like media interviews, Raven's production, and day-and-night battles, it will only make him more distracted and forget about it. His real job: making games.But Romero believes that if the online game becomes popular, then the Doom community will grow stronger, which can only be good for id. After Jay and Bob Divango negotiated a 20% commission, Romero devoted all his time to Divango, which he planned to include in the demo version of Heretic, which was his A game supervised by Raven. On December 23, 1994, Romero called Bob and Kim: "I'm going to put this online soon, are you sure you can handle it? Because once it is released, it will overwhelm you ’” Romero was right this time. Word of Divango quickly spread throughout the Doom world.By January 1995, 10,000 players had used the service. They paid $8.95 per month per person, and then they could connect to the servers set up by Bob and Kim to start fighting. Italian, some even from Australia.At that rate, a single Divango server was bringing in a million dollars, and they had to expand, and, for this kind of business, expanding wasn't a difficult thing to do.The Divango server is actually a computer with dozens of modems and dozens of phone lines.All they have to do is buy the parts, find people all over the country to join them, and put the machine in their office or at home. Bob, Kim, and Mike Wilson, Adrian's childhood buddies, embark on a carnival across America: setting up the Divango network.It was a wildfire movement where anyone could pay $35,000 to become a Divango agent, have a server set up, and count the money. "That's," said Mike, "a surefire money machine." Lawyers, programmers, musicians, all kinds of people, even Adrian Carmack, joined the Divango network.It's all over the country: in a loft somewhere in New York, in an apartment in Seattle, in a warehouse in San Jose.They set up 22 servers in the first four months.Usually, they go to the station and unpack the racks and cables, go to a house somewhere, put them together, and walk out the door with $35,000 in their pockets—cash.They spent $10,000 at a strip club one night, and the dancers were intrigued by these high-spending guys who were said to be in the "death match" business, and whatever it was, they figured, it It must be exciting. ﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡ With deathmatch all the rage and id's popularity growing, Doom 2 didn't just break the retail market, it conquered it.Ron Chaimowitz and GTI were delighted to watch Doom 2 skyrocket on the sales charts. A few months after Doom 2 came out, Romero and Jay went to deposit their first royalties at a bank counter, and the teller nearly fainted when he saw the number, which read "FIVE MILLIONS." After she came to her senses, she couldn't help muttering: These two guys who drive Ferraris may be from some gangster. When Romero returned to the arcade in Austin, players learned to yell at each other and banged walls and tables.Deathmatch is now a way of life.People were yelling at each other: "Eat it!" or: "Fuck you monkey!" The floor was littered with smashed keyboards, broken mice, and one loser even sank his fist into a wall .It was during this tournament that Romero got his first taste of failure in a game he made himself. But it won't be the last time.The success of Divango and Doom2 made Romero enthusiastic, and he dragged Sean to fight together at any time.Finally one day, Carmack had had enough. He was tired of Romero wasting his time all day. He was tired of screaming, insulting, smashing walls, and broken keyboards flying to his door every now and then.So, behind Romero's back, Carmack plotted his revenge. The next day, Sean strutted into Romero's room and asked him if he dared to give it a hand. "Lord Jesus," said Romero, "I beat you so badly yesterday, and you still look so good? Come on! I'll be here anytime!" Everyone gathered around, Romero opened the Coke and took a sip before entering the game.He chases Sean around the map, but every time he misses it by an inch, Sean, with a little help, always swerves behind Romero and shoots him in the head. "Fuck you!" Romero yelled, "What's wrong with this bird mouse?!" He slammed the mouse on the table, and accidentally knocked over the Coke bottle. "Oh! Damn it!" Everyone laughed. "What's the matter?" Romero asked while busy wiping his pants.Everyone told him that it was designed. Carmack added a secret skill to Sean's machine, and Sean could fly across the map at ten times the speed as long as he typed a few letters.Romero glanced around and, as expected, saw Carmack, standing in the hallway.Carmack rarely smiled, but in this moment, he looked clearly happy. ﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡ If deathmatch is a relief from work, chores, stress, exhaustion, etc., then this relief is not needed by Carmack, and it is even incomprehensible.In fact, he never really got a taste of what so-called entertainment was all about. He saw people going out to bars, outings with friends, and weekends at the beach on TV, none of which appealed to him.Clearly, too many people in the world don't like what they do. Carmack knew exactly what he loved—programming—and he organized his life so that he spent most of his time doing it.Ever since he was making Doom, he's decided to start adjusting his biological clock to a more solitary, more focused state, to avoid Romero's screams, reporters' calls, and all the everyday stuff that keeps him distracted. things of the heart.He began to force himself to stay up an extra hour before going to bed every day, and then arrive at the office an hour later the next day.By the beginning of 1995, he had developed what he thought was the most ideal schedule: arriving at the company at 4:00 pm and leaving at 4:00 am.For Quake, he had to give it his full attention. And Carmack soon realized that the challenge he faced was far more difficult than he had anticipated.His goal is to create a real three-dimensional world on the Internet. At the beginning of the project, he collected and read a lot of research materials as usual. He spent thousands of dollars on books and papers, but all of them were just paper. There has never been a computer program that can simulate an interactive, real-time, fast, and true three-dimensional game world. To realize such a virtual experience, not only must exhaust his talents, but also squeeze out the performance of current PCs.To make matters worse, at this critical juncture, Carmack discovers that his longtime comrade-in-arms, Romero, has disappeared. Of course, it's only a matter of time, Carmack thought.Although he thought Romero was better at programming when he first met him on Floppy Disk, Carmack quickly surpassed him.Later, Romero volunteered to take on other tasks: writing the external tools he and Tom used to build the levels, thinking about the game's design, figuring out how id could take over the world.He was the ideal collaborator for Carmack during the production of Doom, as he could sit next to him, experiment with new engines with an expert eye, and make suggestions.With Quake, Carmack knew that he needed both a programmer to build the engine with him and a partner to experiment with his early work. Before, Romero could fill both roles. Now, Doom While bringing success to id, it also brought Romero all kinds of distractions, and in Carmack's view, he was no longer qualified for any of these roles. Carmack already had the right candidate in mind.When it comes to programming, his first thought is undoubtedly the great figure of computer graphics: Michael Abrash (Michael Abrash), it is his book that guided Carmack and Romero through their early games, Since then, Abrash has become a myth that programmers look up to.In recent years he has worked at Microsoft, assisting in the development of the Windows NT operating system.But like all other programmers who are committed to graphics programming, he clearly knows that the most moving results can only be born in the field of games, and in games, the one that he admires most is undoubtedly Doom. When visiting his mother in Seattle, Carmack stopped by to invite Abrash to lunch and introduced Quake's plan: that is to make the traditional computer space a permanent online world, which will have a true three-dimensional look and feel. Moreover, it will exist as objectively as the real world, just waiting for us to join or leave.Abrash's heart beat faster. Like other programmers in the graphics field, he also often described virtual worlds in theory. When he read the "variants" in "Avalanche", he thought, I can already achieve 80% of it, at least in theory.And now, sitting in front of him is a twenty-four-year-old young man full of confidence, talking about making it happen, and Abrash has no doubts that he has the ability.Later, when Abrash talked about how he always doubted whether he could make further progress after finishing a project, Carmack frowned when he heard this: "I never doubted, um. " But when Carmack asked him to join id, Abrash said he had to think again because it would affect his family life.A few days later, Abrash received an email from his boss, Bill Gates, who had gotten wind of the incident and wanted to talk to him.This shocked Abrash.You know, talking to Gates is equivalent to meeting the Pope, and id has entered the vision of the pope-in ​​order to port the id game to the Windows operating system, the Microsoft programmers under his command have dealt with id .But id is just a small company in Texas. Gates told Abrash that the conditions they can offer are incomparable with Microsoft; moreover, Microsoft will also give Abrash some interesting computer graphics. In addition, there was once a Microsoft employee who jumped to IBM and returned to Microsoft eight months later. "You probably won't like it there," Gates concluded. Between Carmack and Gates, Abrash chose Carmack.In his view, the appeal of id is simply incomparable to Microsoft.When a three-dimensional online world is about to emerge, when virtual reality technology is about to have a revolutionary breakthrough, he hopes that he can be in it, and he hopes that he can participate in this historic event.Moreover, Carmack's invitation touched Abrash: Carmack seemed lonely, without a soulmate. ﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡ As Carmack continued to expand his own team, he noticed a level designer who was working tirelessly to realize his dream: America McGee.Carmack and McGee's friendship wasn't formed through gaming, but through another shared passion: cars.Carmack met McKee by chance one day near his house, a lean, disheveled, heavy-smoking gun who was hunched over with his head buried under the hood. McKee spoke like a racing car, whirring out and whirring back.Not only the mannerisms, but the blood that runs through McKee's body seems to be some kind of strange car fuel.他才二十一岁的时候，就经常和朋友开玩笑说要写本扭曲的自传，并一语双关地把它命名为《美利坚的成长》。出生在达拉斯的他不知道自己的父亲是谁，他母亲是一名刷墙工，脾气乖戾的她以一己之力把麦基抚养大。她这个独生子很早就表现出了惊人的创造力，当然，也可以说是古怪：他在学校里会眉飞色舞地和臆想出来的朋友聊天，他会在空气中比划出一道门，然后跨进去，假想自己由此进入了另一个世界，他在数学和自然方面也很有天赋，并很快对计算机编程产生了兴趣，最终他进入一所职业高中学习计算机专业。 这位母亲在给麦基走马灯般换了好几个继父后，终于和一个觉得自己是女人的男人建立了稳定的关系。麦基有一天放学后走进家门时，仿佛走进了一场噩梦：家里空空荡荡，只有他的床、书、衣服以及卡曼多64计算机还在原处——为了给男朋友做变性手术，麦基的母亲变卖了所有家产。那一年麦基十六岁，此后，为了养活自己，他只有从高中退学，打起各种各样的零工，直到进入大众汽车公司的维修部。在卡马克看来，麦基是个和他一样对计算机和汽车都感兴趣的朋友，当时Doom才发布不久，卡马克问麦基愿不愿意到id来做技术支持，麦基毫不犹豫地答应了。 当麦基走进id办公室时，他不由得被那里的气氛所震撼，他可以清晰地感受到一股动力：这些叛逆的年轻人就是这个时代的弄潮儿。尤其是罗梅洛，他的作品总是散发着一股魔力，他就好像是集建筑师、工程师、灯光师、设计师、艺术家于一体的全才，他似乎天生就知道如何才能给玩家以惊奇，如何使游戏峰回路转，然后再柳暗花明；不管怎么说，他就是酷——住着大房子，开着法拉利，总嘻嘻哈哈，不停开玩笑，并且，不像卡马克，他乐于享受名望和财富。麦基和罗梅洛很快也成了好朋友。在id，麦基就像游子找到了停泊的港湾。 Doom2开始时，罗梅洛和卡马克一致同意把麦基提拔为关卡设计师。麦基没有让他们失望，他既像卡马克一样工作起来不知疲倦，又像罗梅洛一样创作起来妙趣横生。随后，他成为了id最耀眼的新星，作为关卡设计师，他的作品不管是从审美性还是从娱乐性来衡量都令人赞叹。在Doom2一个名为Crusher的关卡里，麦基在房间正中放了一个机械恶魔，当玩家走近它时，屋顶上一大片天花板就会像锤子一样碾压下来；罗梅洛觉得这是个绝妙的点子。此外，麦基那不眠不休的劲头也给卡马克留下了深刻印象。Doom2完成时，麦基制作的关卡数量甚至超过了罗梅洛。 Quake项目启动后，麦基不再只是id的天才设计师，他还成为了卡马克最要好的朋友。当罗梅洛忙于他自己的那些杂事时，坐在卡马克身边的人是麦基，他和卡马克一起试验引擎，直到深夜。卡马克开始跟麦基谈起罗梅洛，他现在拿罗梅洛毫无办法，这个人的热情似乎已经从制作游戏上转移到了玩游戏上。 尽管麦基很理解罗梅洛，但为了调节气氛，麦基附和道：“说的是，我也觉得罗梅洛最近做事情很不上心。”但当卡马克听到这话时，他的情绪变了，“这个麦基以为他是什么人？”他绝不是罗梅洛，在卡马克看来，尽管罗梅洛有这样那样的不足，但他仍然是公司里最优秀的关卡设计师，Doom里最棒的关卡出自他的手，Doom2里也一样，没有道理他在Quake里会做不到最好。“罗梅洛是个雷厉风行的大师，”卡马克告诉麦基：“在你真正领教到他的厉害之前，你是不会明白的。” ﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡﹡ 罗梅洛了解卡马克。他知道，当卡马克在项目之初展开研究时，他没有什么事情好做，他可以去忙点别的，直到卡马克完成新引擎。而且罗梅洛也注意到，麦基已经接替了他的角色：每天陪卡马克坐到深夜。但他没有往多里想——就让麦基去做好了。 因为罗梅洛自己要忙于拓展Doom的版图，狄万戈和死亡竞赛的热潮正一浪高过一浪，Raven制作的《Heretic》大受欢迎，罗梅洛已经开始了续集《Hexen》的工作，他脑海里还有一个宏伟的计划：利用Doom的引擎再推出一款名为《Hecatomb》的续集，合成一个三部曲。此外，他还是另一个Doom类游戏《Strife》的监制，它的制作公司是Rogue Entertainment。 这些游戏都非常符合罗梅洛心目中id的发展方针：榨干引擎里的每一滴油水。卡马克的技术越来越复杂，研究周期越来越长，那为什么不趁这功夫去做些其他项目呢？id不该只是一家游戏制作公司，它可以是一个游戏帝国。尽管卡马克对此持怀疑态度，但罗梅洛觉得《Heretic》的成功已经说明了问题。在Doom成为流行文化的今天，扩展公司业务最快捷的方法就是发布更多的Doom产品，譬如：那不计其数的Doom模式。 每一套公寓、每一间办公室、每一所学校，都有使用计算机的人，而他们中的许多，现在都在忙于制作Doom模式。成千上万的玩家开始在网上免费发布他们的作品，Doom迷们完全通过因特网互相协作，他们中的大部分都没有见过自己的合作伙伴，甚至没有通过电话。这些虚拟的团队有着自己的名称，譬如“TNT”，或者“无辜者”，成员们有具体的分工，各司其职。 从而，玩家们制作的模式越来越像模像样，出现了很多所谓的“全新”（Total Conversion）版本，譬如建造出电影《异形》中的飞船等等。新的对战模式也层出不穷，譬如在“速冻”（Freeze Tag）里，玩家要试图把敌方全部队员冰冻起来，同时要帮助队友解冻；还有“山大王”（King of the Mountain），最后的赢家是在地图中心的山顶上停留时间最长的人。玩家们把公寓、办公室、学校都搬到了Doom里，英格兰的一名学生制作了照片般精细的三一学院（Trinity College）关卡，还有一个玩家则直接把他的作品叫做“Doom校园”，他介绍道：“为什么，你最要好的朋友是你的计算机？没有人知道……那些人只会嘲弄你……你考虑过自杀，但你知道你不想这么做，应该受罪的是他们，而不是你自己！……你会把他们都干掉！你要把这学校从地球上抹去，就像它从未存在过……也许这就是生活，没有正确也没有过错，这就是你的命运，这就是你的地狱，这就是你的——Doom校园！” 这些模式的初衷仅仅是为了好玩——毕竟，它们只是游戏。但有些人觉得可以把游戏应用到现实生活中。1995年，维吉尼亚州昆蒂冈市，美国海军陆战队模拟训练部的项目员斯科特·巴内特（Scott Barnett）制作了一个名为“Doom陆战队”的模式，里面有穿着军服的敌人、布满铁丝网的战场，以及海军陆战队的标记。这个模式非常适合用来训练士兵们的团队配合，巴内特在征得上司同意后，联系了id。尽管id觉得拿他们的游戏去做真实的军事训练简直就是在开玩笑，但既然有人就是要这么干，那么，id告诉巴内特，他们很荣幸能够通过这种方式来支援国家建设。此后，“Doom陆战队”在网上风靡一时，而且还将被陆战队员们使用若干年。 明尼苏达州一家名叫Wizard-Works的出版商甚至收集起玩家们制作的九百多个Doom模式，在零售市场上推出了他们命名为《D!Zone》的扩展包，它以敢把皇帝拉下马的气势超过Doom2，跃升至排行榜首位，销售额高达几百万美元。这在id造成一阵惊慌，这无疑就是凯文和杰伊一直以来所担心的事情，但这样做并没有侵犯id的版权或许可，id只能以自己的产品作为反击。罗梅洛开始和一些模式制作者们联系，计划发行一部叫《关卡名作》（The Master Levels for Doom II）的官方任务包，此外，他还草草启动了《Doom结局》（Final Doom）的制作，接着，id又把最早共享模式下的注册版以《终极Doom》（Ultimate Doom）为名在零售市场上发行。 战线越拉越长，但一个问题始终盘旋在所有人的脑海里：Quake怎么样了？玩家们早被罗梅洛以前透露的信息撩拨得急不可耐，甚至连麦基、杰伊和戴夫都开始在网上和别人谈论起Quake，一个热心的玩家为此专门建立了名叫“Quake闲聊”（Quake Talk）的网页，里面搜集了所有id员工透露的只言片语。罗梅洛把游戏开发初期的图片放到网上，向玩家们展示这个世界会是什么样：“在图里你可以看到紫红色的天空，”罗梅洛写道：“你可以想像一下那清风拂耳的感觉……这就是游戏运行时的画面，你将在这片天空下战斗。:）” 1995年已经过了一半，而id的办公室里几乎见不到Quake的踪影，工作一片混乱：卡马克和亚伯拉什忙于编写引擎，罗梅洛则把越来越多的时间花到其他项目上，剩下的人群龙无首。新婚不久的艾德里安不愿就这么看着前进的路标左右摇晃，他和凯文，这个他最亲密的朋友和美工同事，开始绘制起各种中世纪哥特式的贴图，以用于游戏中的一段时空穿梭旅程。凯文还着手学习起如何制作三维角色，他们以前游戏里的角色都只是二维动画，艾德里安则被飞速发展的游戏技术弄得心灰意冷，决定不再参与角色制作，凯文肩上的担子更重了。 后来加入id的那些员工们也一样心灰意冷。麦基和其他人都认为Quake的工作已经变得步履维艰：罗梅洛这个项目领导看起来更乐于领导他自己的生活，而不是领导大家制作游戏。当罗梅洛被催促着写一份Quake的设计文档时，他大笔一挥，拿出一份两页纸的草稿，其他人觉得他这是偷工减料，但罗梅洛立刻告诉他们，id从来就不依赖于什么设计文档，id也从来没有过这玩意，id甚至从来没有写下任何东西，惟一干过这事的人叫汤姆，是他的好朋友，那人写完文档后不久就被炒掉了。 大伙开始怨恨起罗梅洛和卡马克。前者现在是一个摇滚之神，后者则是技术之神，其他人都被晾在一旁发愣。几个月过去了，卡马克的引擎依然遥遥无期，《德军总部3D》的引擎只花了他一两个月，Doom的是六个月，而这次已经进行了半年——还望不到头。更不要提他们还曾给玩家许诺过将于1995年圣诞节拿出Quake，都去它的吧，id决定，从现在开始，如果再有人问起下一个游戏什么时候发布，那么id的答复将是：等它完成的时候（When it's done）。