John Romero
| “ | To win the game, you must kill me, John Romero! | ” | |
| — John Romero (In DSBOSSIT) | |||
Alfonso John Romero (born October 28, 1967)[1] is an American video game developer and Doom enemy. He is a famous figure in the computer gaming industry, and was a founding employee of id Software. He designed their early games, including Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Doom II, Hexen, and Quake. His designs and development tools, along with programming techniques developed by the id programmer John Carmack, popularized the first-person shooter (FPS) genre. Romero is also credited with coining the multiplayer term "deathmatch".
In 1996, he got fired, and made his own studio, Ion Storm, and directed the FPS Daikatana, which was a critical and commercial failure.
He went on to make the Doom WADs Sigil and Sigil II.
Design rules
While designing levels for Doom, Romero documented several rules, among them:
- always changing floor height when I wanted to change floor textures
- using special border textures between different wall segments and doorways
- being strict about texture alignment
- conscious use of contrast everywhere in a level between light and dark areas, cramped and open areas
- making sure that if a player could see outside that they should be able to somehow get there
- being strict about designing several secret areas on every level
- making my levels flow so the player will revisit areas several times so they will better understand the 3D space of the level
- creating easily recognizable landmarks in several places for easier navigation[2]
In Doom II
John Romero (often informally called the Icon of Sin because of the Doom II level of which he is a part) is the final boss of Doom II, in MAP30: Icon of Sin.
- ↑ Kushner, David (May 4, 2003). "'Masters of Doom'". The New York Times. Retrieved March 25, 2021.
- ↑ Turner, Benjamin (12 Dec 2003). "DOOM: 10 Years of Hell - Creating DOOM: Romero Remembers". Retrieved 20 Dec 2017.