This is where I get confused. The entire premise is talking about commander keen as if that was Carmacks big achievement when it wasn’t even close to wolfenstein or doom or quake. Although I loved the game as a kidI do believe theres an argument id helped RPGs and racing games become the leading genre in advancing PC graphics forward by having W3D and DOOM go the 2D raycasting method. After W3D was inspired by an action RPG with dynamic npcs with texture mapped 3D.
Never made sense to me.
But Command Keen is inconsequential. It was considered another Apogee platformer back then that most never really played or cared about, so the poster saying it's regarded as a legendary franchise is wild imo.
Most people don't even remember Apogee platformers. Duke Nukem didn't get popular until he was in an fps.
It was considered an achievement because PCs at the time couldn't render a sidescrolling game as smoothly as they could on consoles.
Underpowered for this specific task I guess, the hardware was quite different between the two. Different processors, architecture etc.OK, that makes a lot of sense.
Why was IBM/DOS in the 80s so underpowered in comparison to Amiga though?
The Amiga and Macintosh used dedicated graphics processors to draw and accelerate graphics rendering, which made them popular for games and desktop publishing. DOS/PC didn't support this very well and if it did, it was limited to certain video cards, and there was alot of variety of video cards beck in those days.OK, that makes a lot of sense.
Why was IBM/DOS in the 80s so underpowered in comparison to Amiga though?
OK, that makes a lot of sense.
Why was IBM/DOS in the 80s so underpowered in comparison to Amiga though?
I assume you mean that the Amiga was not an IBM-compatible PC. Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, Apple II, Apple Macintosh, etc. etc., all PCs.the Amiga is not a PC my dude.
your whole argument is therefore completely irrelevant.
Commander Keen was a technological breakthrough because IT WAS ON A PC
Carmack has done very little to move graphics forward unless you pretend his contemporaries don't exist, he mostly makes advanced for the time compromises/alternatives for something he hasn't figured out yet, such as polygons.
I also find it funny Carmack the genius didn't realize SMB3 can't play on a standard NES and works because of hardware enhancement by the ROM.
The irony of this story is incredible. Wants to prove PC hardware can do something without help, by trying to recreate levels from a game that can't run on an NES alone and needed help.
I assume you mean that the Amiga was not an IBM-compatible PC. Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, Apple II, Apple Macintosh, etc. etc., all PCs.
Edit: Already mentioned I see.
I never had a Speccy myself, but you're missing the forest for the trees.youre gonna hate me for this but the ZX spectrum honestly seems like a torture machine.... the colors, sound, everything feels more primitive than even the C64. I can't imagine having used that machine as a primary gaming device back then, the 16 bit computers in the mid 80s were so much better
Just because he choose bad examples in op doesnt mean commander keen was better than amiga.that being said, despite the graphics commander keen looks like it'd be a much more fun game to play than the other 2 PC 1990 scrollers he listed so... yea
Actual footage of OP playing his peasant Amiga games:Disrespect commander keen and get banned.
Anyone who watched John talks knows the dude is a genius.Amiga was awesome, fantastic machines to dive into as was their midi support early on etc. However Carmack's PC achievements probably sparked gaming on PC/DOS/Windows in general.
everything else looks incredibly basic and boring gameplay wise. Commander Keen has much more open levels. Plus the later trilogies would have graphics about as good as the earlier games on amiga.Just because he choose bad examples in op doesnt mean commander keen was better than amiga.
The answer is the smoothness with which it scrolled, which even comparing these two gifs and not the real games is obvious, but far more so in actual gameplay. There was no tile based scrolling hardware in PCs at the time so getting the kind of smooth scrolling we saw on consoles like Genesis and NES was thought to be impossible and most games that scrolled did it in a much choppier way.Commander Keen is seen as a legendary franchise that 'proved' computers could have colorful scrolling platformers and is considered the series that launched ID Soft into celebrity status, leading to their work on Wolfenstein and Doom.
It's often considered one of the biggest technical achievements in gaming and an important milestone.
My question is: why?
Were there some DOS users who locked themselves from the outside world? Have these last few decades of poor journalism allowed this story to go unchallenged so long it stuck?
Let me show you why this shocks me in an extreme way.
Here is Commander Keen:
Here is an Amiga game from the same time:
What exactly are people saying that Carmack accomplished with Commender Keen?
I just saw a history video on a big game site that talked about how important Commander Keens impact was on the industry, and how Carmack used his magic fingers to produce something that no one else was able to do. It's a very common tale that's been around for decades.
But how do you look at Commander Keen next to a contemporary and still honestly believe that?
I don't see a single advantage Keen has over Spellfire. Keen looks like something a college kid threw together in his bedroom overnight for a college project. Due the next morning.
Bill Gates is that you?Commander Keen is seen as a legendary franchise that 'proved' computers could have colorful scrolling platformers and is considered the series that launched ID Soft into celebrity status, leading to their work on Wolfenstein and Doom.
It's often considered one of the biggest technical achievements in gaming and an important milestone.
My question is: why?
Were there some DOS users who locked themselves from the outside world? Have these last few decades of poor journalism allowed this story to go unchallenged so long it stuck?
yada-yada, yakity-schmakity …
Missed the:You couldn’t scroll like Mario bros on pc’s.back then. but carmack figured out how to. Id you ported mario 3 to the pc. In hopes of doing official Nintendo ports Nintendo said no. Id said fuck it. Id Used the tech in their games which they distributed using share ware and later the internet. (They had used the shareware method before) It made money for Id Carmack made tech for wolf 3D then doom then quake. Inventing the FPS. Allowing people to make their own maps and mod the games (CoD used the quake engine.) Things like graphics cards became essential. A little company called epic didn’t want to use id tech so made something called unreal engine.
Id got sold and then that company got bought out by Microsoft. Nintendo got ports of Doom and quake games.
Thank you for coming to my well researched and thoroughly detailed presentation.
No questions please.
Yes that too plus mr gates made a special video of him in the doom game to hype windows gaming up.Missed the:
Doom port onto Windows 95 and started Windows gaming as we know it, the guy called Mr Newell who headed the porting project at Microsoft used the money he got to fund the creation of Valve and Steam.
The game itself was created on a PC which was considered impossible at the time. The dude is a rocket scientist.. literally a rocket scientist.Not even close to 60 fps scrolling. It barely works, that was the achievement . And even gameboy and c64 had 60 fps scrolling...
Carmack is a legend, of course, but this is not about him, but the game itself.
Ok, I was not so much in gaming back then (mostly programming in assembly ), so I never heard that this is considered a big technical archievement before.[Commander Keen] It's often considered one of the biggest technical achievements in gaming and an important milestone.
And yet the same guy who argued Amiga was doomed to be behind the curve and fail no matter what in the other thread. How can one be so contrarian is beyond me.Commander Keen is seen as a legendary franchise that 'proved' computers could have colorful scrolling platformers and is considered the series that launched ID Soft into celebrity status, leading to their work on Wolfenstein and Doom.
It's often considered one of the biggest technical achievements in gaming and an important milestone.
My question is: why?
Were there some DOS users who locked themselves from the outside world? Have these last few decades of poor journalism allowed this story to go unchallenged so long it stuck?
Let me show you why this shocks me in an extreme way.
Here is Commander Keen:
Here is an Amiga game from the same time:
What exactly are people saying that Carmack accomplished with Commender Keen?
I just saw a history video on a big game site that talked about how important Commander Keens impact was on the industry, and how Carmack used his magic fingers to produce something that no one else was able to do. It's a very common tale that's been around for decades.
But how do you look at Commander Keen next to a contemporary and still honestly believe that?
I don't see a single advantage Keen has over Spellfire. Keen looks like something a college kid threw together in his bedroom overnight for a college project. Due the next morning.
As someone who loves the DOS era, I have to say that PC platformers were absolute trash.
Even the ones that have some sort of cult status (Keen, Jackrabbit, etc) are simply horrible, horrible garbage games down to every element of their design. They are also among the ugliest games in history in any genre, not just with the technical limitations but with the amateurish pixel art and garish colors.
There was no value to any of these games, at all.
It was a solution looking for a problem. CK wasn't needed as the Atari ST in its original form wasn't much better than a PC with way less raw power and it was able to, infrequently, match some Amiga games graphically, otherwise had serviceable versions of those games. Ports of Commodore games that were inferior on the ST performed better on the PC (than the ST) depending on how much effort the developer put into the port. Why the platform genre was skipped I have no clue.
ST and PC both had:
Low colors (until VGA)
No hardware scrolling
No GPU assisted blitter
No general blitter
Zero hardware sprites
No custom graphics modes for games
No copper list
That doesn't mean that Commodore had the better machine, the way it was build froze it in time without a way to account for changing times. PC and later ST models would be able to do everything Com could do in a few years just with raw power and both were already superior for polygonal and 3D applications aided by the same strengths. Once the 1980's decade was over the Commodore went right into the trash can.
But since home gaming consoles were where most game players were gaming, and it was being dominated (to the industries detriment) by scrollers the desire to get that audience to seek that same type of game on PC was a logical goal. It's also why the Amiga is much more known for gaming to the masses before CK than ST or PC, because it was filled with scrolling platform games including exclusive ports to and from home gaming consoles that were covered by the same press. It wasn't entirely necessary but CK was one of those games that helped more console gamers and press take more interest in PC games.
As for Doom, I think that was a product of bad timing. The dev team had been taking steps toward Doom since Catacomb 3D, but it's obvious they were expecting polygonal graphics to remain slow and cumbersome and not a fast smooth experience for a lot longer then reality.
Tech for PC was evolving so fast after 1991 no one could really tell where the industry was heading. You had Doom with it's pseudo 3D workaround, you had Ultima Underworld 2 which was the sequel to the 1992 game that controlled near as fluid and fast as Doom, and you had Novalogic and their Voxel engine which was fully 3D but didn't use any polygons, damn impressive for the time.
Doom and Novalogics solutions were trying to solve a problem that no longer existed but there wasn't a way for either developer to know this until it happened. Novalogic did release Comanche in 1992 (CD ver was 1993) a year before Doom and Ultima, and in 1992 with Cybercon 3 behind it Comanche was probably the fastest & smoothest 3D game ever at the time, but when Doom came out in late 1993 X-wing, TFX, 486 compatible Stellar 7 Remake and Nova 9, CD version of World Circuit and several other fast polygonal games released. Including Ultima Underworld 2 which was much faster than the first game with a higher poly count and more texture detail.
I can't fault either i.d. or Nova though. 3D games before 1992 on almost every gaming platform ran like shit. Even racing games had no sense of speed and would lag, and Novalogic and i.d. saw this and came up with some very impressive solutions to recreate the visuals of 3D graphics but without the polygons managing to increase performance substantially.
I still am taken by surprised at how amazing the Novalogic voxel engine worked. It made the game graphics look far ahead of it's time close to cutscene quality! And you may even believe it's a cutscene when you first see gameplay, but when you watch the below video you will see you have free control to move where you want, because while Voxel graphics aren't polygons they are still solid-state 3D:
Imagine this engine with a higher resolution and Dreamcast tier detail and image clarity. Could have had GTA IV graphics (in appearance) in the 90's.
Doom and Underworld 2 for comparison:
I don't fault anyone though, there's no way a person even with a lot of inside knowledge could possibly predict how fast PC gaming would evolve and whether alternative solutions were really necessary. All of these games and engines were made by the best development teams out there.
Mods just made OP their bitch.Op was either Tom Hall or John Romero
You aren't wrong. As a kid, I loved those shareware games. Commander Keen, Jazz Jackrabbit, Jill of the Jungle, Halloween Harry, Duke Nukem, etc. In retrospect though, NES games from years before wiped the floor with them. None of PC platformers could hold a candle to games such as Ninja Gaiden, Castlevania, Contra, or Batman, as a handful of examples.As someone who loves the DOS era, I have to say that PC platformers were absolute trash.
Even the ones that have some sort of cult status (Keen, Jackrabbit, etc) are simply horrible, horrible garbage games down to every element of their design. They are also among the ugliest games in history in any genre, not just with the technical limitations but with the amateurish pixel art and garish colors.
There was no value to any of these games, at all.
Yeah younger people don’t understand how shitty most dos games were before around the mid 90s.You aren't wrong. As a kid, I loved those shareware games. Commander Keen, Jazz Jackrabbit, Jill of the Jungle, Halloween Harry, Duke Nukem, etc. In retrospect though, NES games from years before wiped the floor with them. None of PC platformers could hold a candle to games such as Ninja Gaiden, Castlevania, Contra, or Batman, as a handful of examples.
The only sidescroller from that era that I have a long lasting fondness for was Monster Bash.
western developed games in the 80s and early 90s in a nutshell lol
there were rare gems among them, but they were few and far between.
3d accelerators becoming economically viable, which Nintendo did with the SNES before PC.
You got lucky this time, but this is a reliable metric of genius.Anyone who watched John talks knows the dude is a genius.
Western developed games trashed Japanese ones. Basing this on platformers is ironic because the NES reintroduced platformers to young kids in a devolved form that removed the fast action, multidirectional, and rpg elements for a simple run and jump to the right of the screen.
All innovation in genres were on dos or other computers while consoles were oversaturated with the same type of game until 3D.
If you grew up with the NES, SMB3 to Mega Drive Sonic may look like innovation or evolution but if you were old enough or had a finger on industry information, you knew it wasn't.
All hardware postNES had been designed with scroll platform games in mind. Every other genre was horrendous and way behind the curve only seen as evolution by those growing up on those consoles.
One of the reasons why even some Japanese developers were hesitant to leave NEC PC-88, PC-98, and FM Towns.
Most people don't know that consoles were heading toward a casket fast in revenue in the early 1990s' prompting reports that PC would kill console gaming. 3D luckily broke the cycle.
PC had 3D accel before SNES.
there's almost no western developed game that was as good as even the worst Capcom had to offer at the time. Let alone Nintendo.
innovation is all nice and dandy, but an innovative game that plays like shit is still not a good game.
You're basing this on platformers. Try other games.