Brian Hook Interview 145
A reader writes:"I just read this very in-depth interview with Brian Hook on a site called Curmudgeon Gamer. Hook used to work for id Software (Quake 2 and 3) and later for Verant (Everquest) and he apparently worked on Glide for the old 3DFX cards. Now he runs his own smaller game company called Pyrogon. In the interview he talks about development styles of Q2 and Q3, MMORPGs, the lessons of 3DFX, and development of cross-platform games like his Candy Cruncher (which is available for MacOSX and Linux!). He even gets into some criticism of modern games and the life of a smaller game developer. Lengthy read, but lots of stuff to think about there since he tells it like he sees it."
Brian Hook and GLIDE (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Brian Hook and GLIDE (Score:1)
I'm not 100% sure, but I remember them saying he was the architect to the Glide API. Wouldn't that be designing and not implementing?
/me is stupid. I closed the page and now it's slashdotted.
Re:Brian Hook and GLIDE (Score:2)
Re:Brian Hook and GLIDE (Score:1)
Re:Brian Hook and GLIDE (Score:2, Informative)
Using Glide was a good learning experience, but I switched to OpenGL soon after.
Re:Brian Hook and GLIDE (Score:2)
modern trends are too predictable (Score:5, Interesting)
Give me a new game genre. Frankly, I'm bored with what I can get today. It doesn't cut it in the modern world. Why spend my spare time shooting people up when I can turn on the tv and see it for real? I'd rather do something peaceful to reinforce my feeble humanity.
Innovation in games is a great thing; has been a great thing in the past. I don't think you'll see it from Brian Hook, though. Technical advances, sure. But for something new and better we'll have to look elsewhere.
Re:modern trends are too predictable (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:modern trends are too predictable (Score:5, Insightful)
For some reason spending hours exploring dungeons and killing monsters is seen as adolescent; but spending hours making houses and watching simulated people is 'sophisticated'.
That one has always puzzed me.
Re:modern trends are too predictable (Score:2)
spending hours exploring dungeons and killing monsters is seen as adolescent
Is at about power.
Whereas this:
spending hours making houses and watching simulated people
Is something else. Not sure what yet.
Re:modern trends are too predictable (Score:3, Funny)
One vote for "sad"
Re:modern trends are too predictable (Score:1)
Re:modern trends are too predictable (Score:2)
That one has always puzzed me.
This is especially true when Sim City 4 is such a slow POS. Maybe if it ran on the hardware kiddie's have, it wouldn't be so sophisticated.
Of course, Sim City was one of the three games originally released for the Super Nintendo lets not forget... And that was in 1992
Re:modern trends are too predictable (Score:1)
Definitely. I noticed that most games still have essentially the same description on the back of their box even after two decades of gaming, which is pretty disappointing. Any box that reads "15 levels and 40 different types of monsters!" is worth putting back onto the shelf.
Even worse, is that certain game companies seem to make the same game over and over but put a different name on it. Really, what's the difference between Final Fantasy 8, The Legend of Dra
Re:modern trends are too predictable (Score:2)
The problem is, though, trying slightly new things is a risk. People like
Re:modern trends are too predictable (Score:4, Informative)
Here ya go [gamespot.com]
Re:modern trends are too predictable (Score:2)
Stuff seems to come and go so fast nowadays, if you're not on the razor edge of technology then it seems that your stuff is outdated before it is released.
Innovation takes time, and when people get bored of crap that took 2 years to build in like 2 days, then there will not be an influx of quality products.
Re:modern trends are too predictable (Score:2, Informative)
- Animal Crossing
- Dance Dance Revolution
- SimAnything
- Sports games
Re:modern trends are too predictable (Score:1)
Bemani (a subcompany of Konami), thank you !
Re:modern trends are too predictable (Score:2)
Re:modern trends are too predictable (Score:2)
Boong-Ga Boong-Ga is the first arcade game that combines of assaulting assholes and fortune-telling. [seanbaby.com]
Re:modern trends are too predictable (Score:1)
A troll, modded up by other trolls.
Slashdot makes webserver spell not good (Score:4, Funny)
Cannnot connect to DB server
Re:Slashdot makes webserver spell not good (Score:2)
Re:Slashdot makes webserver spell not good (Score:2)
Re:Slashdot makes webserver spell not good (Score:2)
Re:Slashdot makes webserver spell not good (Score:3, Funny)
Server: What happened? Incoming message. Main screen turn on.
/.: How are you gentlemen? All your connection are belong to us.
Server: What you say?
/.:You are on the way to destruction. You have no chance to survive, make your time. Ha ha ha.
Re:Slashdot makes webserver spell not good (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Slashdot makes webserver spell not good (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Slashdot makes webserver spell not good (Score:1)
Does that joke count as retro already? :)
WHA?!? (Score:1)
With all due respect... what has happened to you Mr. Hook?!?
Re:WHA?!? (Score:2)
Re:WHA?!? (Score:2)
Re:WHA?!? (Score:2)
Phew! For I while I thought you said "genitals"!
Re:WHA?!? (Score:2)
It's a (I'm coining a new term) KMMOG. Kinda Massively Multiplayer Online Game. It's geared at about 5000 subscribers rather than 400,000 like other online games.
Sounds pretty cool.
Re:WHA?!? (Score:2)
Don't get me started on Teamfortess, at least Brian is doing what he wants, not selling out to Valve and banishing TF to a carbonite slab hanging over Jabba.
Yes I'm a geek and so are you!
Re:WHA?!? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:WHA?!? (Score:3, Informative)
Candy Cruncher. (Score:4, Interesting)
yep...neat, simple game (Score:1)
candy cruncher file sizes... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:candy cruncher file sizes... (Score:3, Informative)
The windows version is coded for DirectX/Direct3D or whatever. The Mac version is coded for Carbon. Both of those are native Windows APIs. Their Linux port is made in SDL, and is probably statically linked, as opposed to the other two.
Re:candy cruncher file sizes... (Score:1)
Err... Native APIs for their relative OS's, that is. Carbon isn't a Windows API, but you knew that already. ^^
Re:candy cruncher file sizes... (Score:1)
Re:candy cruncher file sizes... (Score:3, Informative)
Also for your information Ryan "icculus" Gordon did the initial SDL porting and I am the current maintainer of the SDL as well as Qtopia ports.
Re:candy cruncher file sizes... (Score:1)
Of course, you're welcome to spend your time on writing platform specific, low-level code - that's fine by me. I, however, prefer to concentrating on the more interesting parts.
Re:candy cruncher file sizes... (Score:1)
Or something.
Don't ask me, I know about as much as you do about game development.
Re:candy cruncher file sizes... (Score:1)
- Fullscreen support (not a huge deal but still much more complex than the simple one line command in SDL).
- Abstracted audio support for OSS, Alsa, ESD, Arts (shall I go on?).
- Rendering support using X11, dga2, svgalib. fbdev (and so on).
To sum it up, SDL gives you support for MULTIPLE platforms. Implementing ONE backen
They can do THAT on Linux?? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:They can do THAT on Linux?? (Score:2)
Exactly. Plus remember that Hook is not an innovator. Candy Cruncher is the first game he ever worked on start to finish.
This Post (Score:2, Troll)
Re:This Post (Score:1)
Grayswan
Someone is gotta do them (Score:5, Interesting)
Thats one of the best lines in the article...it really speaks alot about entertainment industry, gaming in particular, sometimes you gotta make the "turds" to make a living....
If the "cool" games are the ones with the millions of $$ budgets and overhead, thus they have to sell outrageous amounts of product just to break even ...someone has to make the budget titles, and the smaller titles are alot less risk...a friend of mine works in such a studio, when he they first went down that path they were all like..."ugh! F-ing budget games?!?" But they quickly realized that they can still work at them to make them as cool as possible, and they're not sweating about whether more work is coming....it always does. Simply because if one of their titles bombs completely, they're only out $100k as opposed to $2.5M....alot easier to re-coup, and alot less sour taste in the publishers mouth
OpenGL's parents (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:OpenGL's parents (Score:4, Informative)
If you design your plug-in system well, it isn't surprising that you could write plugs for various API to make the most out of them.
A normal Windows PC game would go like this: Game Engine -> Direct X -> Display Driver -> Graphics Card Internal Code
A plug-in system would be: Game Engine -> Plug-in (DirectX,OpenGL,etc) -> 3D API (DirectX,OpenGL,etc) -> Display Drivers -> Graphics Card Internal Code
This way when you are porting to another OS you don't have to worry about all the features your using be supported by OpenGL patches. With this system it would be possible to develope an engine that contained output plug-ins for the Windows (DirectX), Linux(OpenGL), OSX(OpenGL), PS2, Xbox, and Gamecube. The only place I see issues with running it on the PS2 due to having to stream textures rather than loading everything into video RAM.
Why, you may ask this isn't done more? It's Simple. Most game are designed for a target platform and coded directly for it. Later when it is decided to have the game go multi-platform, then the issues appear. If you plan on going multi-platform from the start you can design more your routines more efficiently.
Why not just plan to make all games multi-platform? Developing for multiple platforms is more difficult and takes more time and money. It's alot easier to say "I'm creating a Windows game" and then just have your engine output to DirectX. Later when you want to port to Linux or OSX and need to use OpenGL, you run into the difficulties.
Re:OpenGL's parents (Score:2)
You have obviously not done any 3d programming for games... or anything else. Don't spout about what you don't know.
Oh wait... this is slashdot. My pardon, spout away... everyone else does.
Re:OpenGL's parents (Score:1)
I'm not saying that the display cannot be optimized for the specific API being used. I guess my describing it as a plug-in system was thoural enough. The game engine just needs a standard interface that the various renderers support. There is nothing stopping you from optimizing a specific DLL. Sure most of yo
Re:OpenGL's parents (Score:1, Interesting)
Any word on Stellar Deep? (Score:5, Interesting)
The article is thoroughly slashdot'ed now. Any word on their Stellar Deep [pyrogon.com] and why it's been "hidden" on the site? I get the feeling that maybe they announced it a little too early.
Follow the link and you'll see references to other [pyrogon.com] games [pyrogon.com] that may or may not be in production.
Personally I didn't find Candy Cruncher all that fun.
Re:Any word on Stellar Deep? (Score:1)
Hopefully this smaller crew can get it right, I know EA is going to cancel E&B eventually with it's 5.95 price tag at walmart heh.
Too large? (Score:2, Insightful)
If I might go ahead and speculate (which I love to do :-), then I'd say that Stellar Deep is Brian wanting to do something really big, but understanding intellectually that it's almost impossible to pull off.
He's not out to create something as grand E&B, but he's trying to compress the essence of what makes those games fun, into one small product just large enough to realistically be pulled off by his small team.
The problem might be that in his mind the game is still a little too large, and as more
Re:Any word on Stellar Deep? (Score:1)
"Stellar Deep is something we really want to do when we have the financial resources to do it"
So I'm guessing its been places on the back burner for a little while, waiting for the right amount of money to come scurrying towards it.
Re:Any word on Stellar Deep? (Score:5, Informative)
So with that in mind, we're trying to build up a revenue base so that we can take 6-12 months to sit down and do something with Stellar Deep. It was originally mentioned on the Pyrogon site when we launched because it was a "Wouldn't it be cool if?" type of thing. Unfortunately it came off as a product announcement, and I hate vaporware, so we pulled it but kept it in the forums.
We think it'll be a fun game, with all the aspects of Elite, EV:Nova, Subspace, et. al. that people really enjoyed, and hopefully with an added social and strategy dynamic lacking in those games.
One day...
-Hook
Article Text -AC (Score:5, Informative)
It's time for another interview here on Curmudgeon and this time we have with us Brian Hook, president of Pyrogon Games [pyrogon.com] and former developer at id Software [idsoftware.com] and Verant/Sony Online Entertainment [sonyonline.com]. Before working on the seminal shooters Quake 2 and Quake 3: Arena, Brian was the original architect of the Glide API used by the 3dfx Voodoo line of video cards. After departing id, Brian worked as a Senior Technology Architect at Verant, concentrating on development of technology for next-generation massively-multiplayer online games (MMOGs). After founding Pyrogon in 2000, he created the puzzle game Candy Cruncher [pyrogon.com], which we reviewed [curmudgeongamer.com] earlier this year. Two additional Pyrogon games have appeared since then, NingPo MahJong [pyrogon.com] and Letter Linker [gamehouse.com], both available for Windows and MacOS X. (A Linux version of NingPo MahJong will be shipping in the near future.)
This interview covers a wide range of topics: game design criticism, OpenGL/D3D, making money as a smaller game developer, and the importance of porting software to different platforms. Indeed, something for just about everyone. It's quite long, so you might want to bookmark it and consume it in more than one reading.
The interview questions were prepared with the assistance of regular CG authors ruffin [curmudgeongamer.com] and michael [curmudgeongamer.com].
jvm: What kinds of games do you enjoy playing the most?
jvm: So you play mostly on a PC, as opposed to a console?
jvm: Could we get an example of a game with these egregious design flaws, complete with a breakdown of those flaws? The more popular the game, the better.
Brian Hook Speech (Score:5, Insightful)
One thing that is interesting is that I think has become much less arrogant as he has gotten older (he seems quite humble in this interview.) I mean he did create Glide almost single-handedly. Of course I imagine that getting humble with age is a pretty standard trend, especially among software developers. How many developers in the audience remember how arrogant they were when younger? I know I was. Ah, the ignorance of youth...
Re:Brian Hook Speech (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Brian Hook Speech (Score:1)
Uh-oh... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Uh-oh... (Score:1, Funny)
Sigh. Brian Hook. Sigh. (Score:4, Interesting)
He worked at 3dfx in the early days, and hats off for the Glide API (RIP), but that's not a game, of course.
He wrote a book about writing game engines in C++, but hadn't actually written a 3D game when he wrote it.
He worked at id for a bit, but he never shipped a title while there, and he never worked on a project start to finish.
Then he worked for Sony Online, but never shipped a game there either.
Then he started a little bedroom company--good for him!--and finally wrote a game: the 2D puzzler known as Candy Cruncher.
Surely there are some more illuminated people in the game industry that are more worthy of interviews? Take away Spector and Meier and Wright and all the usual gods and there are still oh so many brilliant people out there whose names aren't even known. Who worked on Metroid Prime (hint: one of them is also ex-id)? Who worked on Splinter Cell? Who worked on GTA 3? You never hear about these people.
They're not gods. (Score:1)
Surely there are some more illuminated people in the game industry that are more worthy of interviews?
Why the either-that-or-that position? I've read the interview now, and others, and Brian comes across as one who Gets It. That's actually enough for me to find an interview with him interesting. You can pick up Game Design: Secret of the Sages [amazon.com]
and read stuff by Spector, Molyneux, Wright, Gilbert, etc. I've done so, and I'll tell you what; They mostly say the same thing!
I think Brian is cool because h
Re:They're not gods. (Score:2)
And that's good, except that he's not doing anything interesting or notable. I have the utmost repsect for people who start their own small game companies, but let's be frank: Brian Hook has essentially written a clone in the vein of Diamond Mine and a dozen other games. That too, is okay, but it
Re:Sigh. Brian Hook. Sigh. (Score:4, Insightful)
In any case, I'd much rather hear Brian Hook speak than, say, Seamus Blackley... now THERE is a bloated ego for no reason.
Re:Sigh. Brian Hook. Sigh. (Score:3, Interesting)
The idea that game programming is somehow a different field run by rock stars or teenage geniuses is largely an illusion. It is like thinking that the film business consist
Re:Sigh. Brian Hook. Sigh. (Score:4, Informative)
In fact, in my defense, if you look at publicity for "Brian Hook", there has been none, because I've reached the point where building something on my own is more important than self-aggrandizement and promoting a name or personality.
At 3Dfx I was ancillary -- and, just to clarify, while I was a major influence on Glide, the Glide that everyone knew was actually significantly cleaned up and fixed by people after I left 3Dfx, so associating it strictly with me is a disservice. 3Dfx was about the hardware.
At id, I came in late on Quake 2 and left early on Quake 3, and in hindsight, it was a blown opportunity for me because I didn't contribute as much as I could have. But then again, trying to code around John Carmack is fairly demoralizing because he makes everything hard seem too easy.
I consented to this interview -- my first in THREE YEARS -- because I figured CG was a small enough site that no one would really notice. The questions that were asked I thought were extremely good and insightful and, frankly, I wanted to slowly start building awareness within the Linux community as we start pushing out more products.
But anyway, I think you're pretty accurate on your assessment, but I feel obligated to post just so you (and others) understand that this isn't a typical washed up, pathetic developer who has lost his relevance looking for one last moment in the sun.
I fully intend to build up Pyrogon into something important and fun. This is what is most important to me at this point, because the quasi-fame I had before was fleeting and, in the end, irrelevant to my own enjoyment of developing games.
And when Pyrogon is successful, no one will be able to make a post like yours saying it wasn't earned, since only two people work at Pyrogon, and it's 100% self-funded. It lives or dies by our abilities.
Of course, until Pyrogon has reached that stage, comments like yours will continue to be made, as they probably should.
-Hook
Re:Sigh. Brian Hook. Sigh. (Score:2)
I didn't like Candy Cruncher at all, but it shows a high level of professionalism and polish. I probably don't have a very clear picture of what "puzzle game" means - I loved Crystal Caves and to some exte
Has it been 3 years? (Score:2)
Re:Has it been 3 years? (Score:1)
> remember reading an interview
archived copy [archive.org]
Reasons to port (Score:2, Insightful)
One of the best reasons for porting to alternate platforms I've ever heard. More Linux ports == Fewer bugs
Re:Reasons to port (Score:2)
I've found that while the core code on a single (usually the primary) platform becomes more stable due to well frankly more testing by more people. Overall you end up with MORE bugs total and of course the coding requirements are higher overall.
So is still may not be a good thing depending on your development schedual. Sometimes it may be good, other times it can impact you pretty hard...
Re:Reasons to port (Score:1)
I do lots of Mac game ports, and the largest issue I face is not the API differences, but the endian issues.
For most people, Linux == Linux x86, so from my standpoint, if you port your game from Win32 to Linux, it will not have nearly as big a positive effect as porting from Win32 to MacOS X (or for that matter Linux PPC). If you really want to use porting to another platform as a means to work the
Re:Reasons to port (Score:1)
Class *c = new Class();
delete c;
if(c->something) {
}
Naturally, it's never as easy as above but accessing deleted/freed memory on Win32 wo
Re:Reasons to port (Score:1)
The release of the port was six weeks late, and most of the people working on it hated my guts because "Linux was so unstable".
The end result though, when they back-merged their fixes into the main tree was a highly reduced n
I'm not very good at Candy Cruncher... (Score:1)
Re:I hope you're happy! (Score:1)
Re:PENTAGON THREATENSTO KILL INDEPENDENTREPORTERS (Score:1)
They can't even spell Baghdad correctly on the site you linked to. Color me skeptical!