LogFAQs > #895985788

- QuickTime was a huge issue for Microsoft. Thanks to the way Mac's were designed compared to windows they didn't really have a way to compete. Their answer to that issue? Video games. Apple were ignoring this area
- Windows simply was an awkward experience for games development however. OpenGL was the overall standard. But it had issues. John Carmack was a critic for example. Microsoft wanted a solution.
- WinG was Microsoft's first crack. A Doom demo using WinG turned heads at the time. 60fps! 24 games in 94 used this including Lion King
- Doom was only a demo recreation. They wanted to try out a port with WinG. They made a deal with Carmack to handle the port. St John didn't have any engineering resources so he asked Gabe Newell (who was working on set-top box UI at the Advanced Technology Group) for some staff. Gabe Newell gave him an engineer to handle the port.
- This guy locked himself in an office to work on the port. He was hard to reach. His office was often hot and he was sweaty. He'd get angry if you interrupted him. Anyway this guy ended up overdosing on drugs and died during development. St John was hit with a negative performance report thanks to the delay
- Using the mouse for aiming in Windows 3.1 Doom was slow. There was input delay. It was not a good experience. This lead to the creation of DirectMouse (and eventually DirectInput for Joysticks)
- Windows 95 wasn't designed to play games off the CD-ROM drive. Windows 95 was feature complete too. Luckily they managed to sneak in some extra code to make the AutoPlay CD functionality. Freddi Fish was the first AutoPlay game
- The Doom port was a failure. It couldn't live up to the DOS version. It was filled with audio and network issues. It wasn't published
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Kind Regards,
Darmik