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Brian Hook Interview 145

Posted by Hemos from the learning-the-game-market dept.
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."
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Brian Hook Interview More

Brian Hook Interview

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  • Brian Hook and GLIDE (Score:4, Informative)

    by barspin ( 585641 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @03:10PM (#5567632)
    Brian Hook didn't "apparently work on Glide" - he was the person responsible for initially implementing the GLIDE API.

    • 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.

      • A matter of semantics, I should have clarified. I am just about certain that he was the architect and the creator of the initial GLIDE implementation. I must admit that I used GLIDE rarely, and only around the time of the Voodoo 1 / 2, but it was clean and easy to use.
      • I did some Glide programming back in the Voodoo2 days. Glide had the flavor of a straight hardware interface. As I recall, it didn't even clip triangles around the edge of the screen. Think of Glide as a Voodoo wrapper rather than an API.

        Using Glide was a good learning experience, but I switched to OpenGL soon after.
        • If you ever take a look at the Voodoo register level specs, you'll see that it's basically Glide with registers instead of procedures. Of course, that says a whole lot about the Voodoo hardware. The hardware manual was like a "Graphics Driver Programming Tutorial" and the register interface was dead simple. Makes me nearly cry when I read an Intel reference manual and compare the two...

  • modern trends are too predictable (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 21, 2003 @03:12PM (#5567677)
    The first 3d games were new and revolutionary and such, and the first 3d accelerators were something big. Modern "innovations" like, ooh, new 3d games, and games over the Internet, seem pale in comparison.

    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.

  • Slashdot makes webserver spell not good (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 21, 2003 @03:20PM (#5567791)
    Warning: mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: Too many connections in /usr/local/etc/httpd/curmudgeon.linuxgames.com/gee klog-1.3.6/system/databases/mysql.class.php on line 104
    Cannnot connect to DB server
  • From Quake [idsoftware.com] to Candy Cruncher [pyrogon.com]?

    With all due respect... what has happened to you Mr. Hook?!?

    • They've mentioned on their site that they just wanted to make small, but fun games. At one time, Pyrogon was working on some sort of MMORPG, but I've not read much of its progress.
      • I suppose as long as Candy Cruncher isn't his new crowning achievement. It's just with those creditals I was expecting something a bit more, umm, exciting... or at least involving a chainsaw, grenade launcher or a battle axe.
        • I suppose as long as Candy Cruncher isn't his new crowning achievement. It's just with those
          creditals I was expecting something a bit more, umm, exciting... or at least involving a chainsaw, grenade launcher or a battle axe.


          Phew! For I while I thought you said "genitals"!
      • You're talking about Stellar Deep. It's mentioned in the article. (Hint Hint. Read it)

        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.

    • How the great have fallen.

      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)

      by Doc_XII ( 660802 )
      He started making games he likes. He also went from being a bachelor to someone married with a kid. And, being an owner of Candy Cruncher, it's as addictive as Tetris ever was. Personally I play games because they're fun, not because of eye candy . . . which means it'll be a while until I get DoA Beach Vollyball ;-)

    • Re:WHA?!? (Score:3, Informative)

      by treke ( 62626 )
      Candy Cruncher is actually a really fun game. Not th e sort of thing I could play for a couple hours like say quake, but fun. My preferred version of it is the http://eongames.com [eongames.com] port to Qtopia.

  • Candy Cruncher. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by 13Echo ( 209846 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @03:25PM (#5567863) Homepage Journal
    If you like puzzle games, Candy Cruncher is worth checking out. There are demos available. It's kinda like Sega Swirl meets Connect Four. The Linux port is very well done. It was another excellent Icculus job.
  • why each file for each platforms are so different? windows 2.6mb osx 2.0 and gnu/linux (don't blame me but rms) 4.2mb?

    • 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.

    • As already mentioned. the Linux version is bigger primarily because it contains two binaries - one dynamically linked (to comply with LGPL) and one msotly statically linked (i.e no dependencies on LGPL or a specific libstdc++ for example). I should also add that the LGP retail release [linuxgamepublishing.com] includes binaries for Sparc Linux and PPC Linux as well.

      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.

  • They can do THAT on Linux?? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If CandyCrusher is the best that an innovator like Hook can do for Linux, the future for Free is indeed bleak.
    • If CandyCrusher is the best that an innovator like Hook can do for Linux, the future for Free is indeed bleak.

      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)

    by Davgeary ( 107810 )
    Anybody else suspect that "A reader" was actually Mr. Hook himself?

  • Someone is gotta do them (Score:5, Interesting)

    by curtisk ( 191737 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @03:33PM (#5567972) Homepage Journal
    Candy Cruncher isn't cool, but it makes us money.
    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)

    by reidbold ( 55120 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @03:34PM (#5567985)
    I think a good issue is (re)raised here with regards to OpenGL having no one really looking after it now. OpenGL is the crux of porting games to non-ms platforms. He mentioned that it was a reasonable task to write rendering code that works across different graphics api's, and IANA graphics developer so I'd like to know what other people feel about this. And by extension, is it really that important for a game to use OpenGL to be easily portable?

    • Re:OpenGL's parents (Score:4, Informative)

      by SScorpio ( 595836 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @03:50PM (#5568177)
      If you write your own graphics engine you can design it to support a plug-in architure.

      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.

      • The reason this does NOT WORK is because games need performance. They need to run fast. Coding to an abstract 'plugin' versus coding to the hardware can be a difference of an ORDER OF MAGNITUDE or MORE in terms of speed.

        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. :-)
        • Then how does the Unreal engine do it? If you played Unreal Tournament you would know that updates to the various video renders where just DLLs which worked much in the same way as I described.

          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

    • Kylix [borland.com] supports OpenGL on Linux out-of-the-box. Of course there's no law that says you have to use OpenGL (or D3D); you can always write your own custom renderer. They're much harder to write and I get tired of writing graphics code as, frankly, graphics just don't impress me anymore. It's the physics and scripting that are the interesting part of newer games.

  • Any word on Stellar Deep? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by eddy ( 18759 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @03:42PM (#5568089) Homepage Journal

    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.

    • Stellar Deep sounds like a mmorpg like the Earth and beyond [earthandbeyond.com] from EA (which I've heard is woefully understaffed and underfunded now that sims online is carrying the family jewels.

      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)

        by eddy ( 18759 )

        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

    • From the article:

      "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)

      by BHook ( 660857 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @07:10PM (#5570377)
      Stellar Deep really does require a certain amount of financial and time committment we can't justify at this point. We're not particularly interested in finding outside sources of income for this, since the whole point of being independent is so we can pick and choose what we work on.

      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)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 21, 2003 @03:46PM (#5568128)
    You should always post article text AC, otherwise baby Satan cries! Karma whores! - AC

    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?

    Hook: That's a tough question. I guess in some ways I just have very high expectations about software these days, so most games pretty much turn me off within the first 5 minutes when I spot egregious design flaws.

    That said, the games I've played and enjoyed the most recently have been No One Lives Forever 2 [sierra.com], which I felt had some of the best production value I've ever seen in a game, and Ghost Recon [ghostrecon.com], which is a hoot in multiplayer.

    jvm: So you play mostly on a PC, as opposed to a console?

    Hook: I should really get some consoles and play console games, but it's hard to justify the time.

    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.

    Hook: That's dangerous ground =)

    But a typical example I have is what I call "simulations that think they're games". To me, a game should be fun and exciting, which means that I should be making interesting decisions that lead to success based on the data I have at that time. Too many games today STILL punish you by just killing you because that's "realistic".

    Hitman 2 [hitman2.com] is a good example of this. Starting with the very first mission, you can pretty much expect to go through and play that mission 20 times before you complete it, because there are timed events that you don't know about a priori. Which is a shame, because the actual mechanics in Hitman 2 were extremely fun. It was probably the one game in recent memory that I really wanted to like but which ended up being so frustrating and tedious that I couldn't enjoy it. Obviously it's a popular game, so I'm in the minority on this.

    I think the games that really got a lot of this down were the 1980s LucasArts [lucasarts.com] adventure games like Lo [mobygames.com]

  • Brian Hook Speech (Score:5, Insightful)

    by MrCode ( 466053 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @03:47PM (#5568137)
    I attended a speech by Brian Hook at the University of Florida a few years back. He had once been a student there before dropping out to work at 3Dfx. As I recall he was still at 3Dfx at that time (which was well before 3Dfx melted down.) It was an interesting speech, relating how he went from a student half-way through his studies to the creator of the Glide API.

    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...

  • Uh-oh... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 21, 2003 @03:55PM (#5568236)
    Incidentally, "Pyrogon" is a (poorly-disguised) anagram of "Porygon," the Pokemon that gave all those Japanese kids seizures in that infamous TV show. Do I smell a conspiracy?

  • Sigh. Brian Hook. Sigh. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Junks Jerzey ( 54586 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @03:57PM (#5568257)
    I know this will come across as sour grapes, but if there was ever someone in game development who made a name for himself without much to back it up, it's Mr. Hook.

    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.

    • 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

      • While Spector and the rest still work with giant teams and foster (well, their companies certainly do) this aura of "they're gods that should be looked up to", Brian is out there doing things mostly on his own.

        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)

      by MisterFancypants ( 615129 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @05:16PM (#5569196)
      Quake2 shipped while Brian Hook was still at id, he was even around during a lot of the Quake3 development.

      In any case, I'd much rather hear Brian Hook speak than, say, Seamus Blackley... now THERE is a bloated ego for no reason.

    • I have worked in games at various points in my career. One of the reasons you don't hear about a lot of game developers is that the bulk of people writing games are the same sort of professional developers who could just as easily be writing Oracle or Windows. In fact, it is not uncommon for people to migrate between such assignments.

      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)

      by BHook ( 660857 ) on Friday March 21, 2003 @07:06PM (#5570335)
      I don't believe it's sour grapes at all, you bring up a lot of very valid points. I was primarily known for having a big mouth and a lot of opinions, and those aren't the types of things you base a career on.

      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
      • Hi, Brian. I think what you're doing is very cool. Too many businesses are distorted by the need to please investors - in fact, I think the most potentially successful businesses are prematurely killed by pandering to investors' ideas of what's profitable. This is especially tragic in creative fields.

        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
      • I can't remember which magazine it was in, but I remember reading an interview with you an J. Carmack which talked about OpenGL vs. DirectX. A very good read.

  • Reasons to port (Score:2, Insightful)

    by IceDiver ( 321368 )
    But I really think the reasons to port software are more subtle. First off, it really does help you spot bugs. Getting something running on multiple platforms really stresses code, and forces you to fix sloppy things.

    One of the best reasons for porting to alternate platforms I've ever heard. More Linux ports == Fewer bugs

    • Not exactly...

      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...
    • One of the best reasons for porting to alternate platforms I've ever heard. More Linux ports == Fewer bugs

      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

      • Although endian issues are great when doing ports from x86 to ppc, those aren't specifically "bugs" in the x86 version of the code. If anything, lack of planning / forsight. Rather the bugs you DO find when porting to Linux from Win32 are cases of sloppy memory management which win32 simply ignore. It's not at all uncommon to see code, which in essence looks like this:

        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
    • A year ago I convinced my management (of a large semiconductor company) to port a huge application to Linux, not only because I saw Linux as an emerging ECAD platform but also because I knew that the Linux memory management was much more sensitive to memory overruns, stray pointers etc.

      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

  • Black jelly beans are my favorite...

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