Who came up with the idea of multiplayer only maps? Romero vs. Tim Willits

[LESS T_T]

Tim Willits (currently the head of id, if you are unaware) told a story about how he came up with the idea of MP only maps while developing Quake: https://www.pcgamesn.com/quake/quake-first-multiplayer-maps

Here's how Quake designer Tim Willits came up with the first multiplayer maps

Tim Willits is the creative director of Doom developers id Software. He joined the famous studio in 1995, and after working his way up on the Quake franchise, ended up leading design on Doom 3. Now it seems that the entire concept of multiplayer maps is another thing for which we can thank him.

Speaking with PCGamesN at QuakeCon this weekend, Willits says:

"I designed the shareware episode of Quake. Multiplayer maps - that was my idea. This is a funny story. I had finished all my work on the shareware episode [of Quake] and because we had no design direction, we had all these fragments of maps. I came into the office one day and talked to John Romero and John Carmack. I said 'I've got this idea. I can take these map fragments and I can turn them into multiplayer-only maps, maps you only play in multiplayer.'

"They both said that was the stupidest idea they'd ever heard. Why would you make a map you only play multiplayer when you can play multiplayer in single-player maps? So I said 'No, no, no, let me see what I can do.' And that's how multiplayer maps were started. True story."

So, Quakecon is all his fault?

"Yes. I never thought about that. I never put those two together."

It's not the sort of thing I'd thought much about but, of course, the idea of a multiplayer map must've had a genesis. So now we know who to thank for all those happy hours in Quake III Arena, Unreal Tournament, and... well, basically every multiplayer shooter since. That's a hell of a legacy.

But John Romero refutes: http://rome.ro/news/2017/8/30/multiplayer-only-maps

Multiplayer-Only Maps

As a game historian, I know it's very important to get the facts right. Figuring out the origin of significant aspects of games is important, and to document them is imperative. So, when I read a story that said Tim Willits invented the idea of multiplayer-only maps, I felt compelled to correct it.

The story told about how he came into the office and talked to me and Carmack about his idea, and we responded with how it was the stupidest idea we'd ever heard. This never happened. In fact, we had been playing multiplayer-only maps in DOOM for years already. There had been hundreds of maps that the DOOM mapping community had made only for deathmatch by that time. The incredible DOOM community invented the idea of designing maps only for multiplayer mode, and they deserve the credit. The game owes so much to them.

Commercially, the first FPS published with multiplayer-only maps at launch was Tom Hall's Rise of the Triad (ROTT), published 18 months before Quake in 1994. Each successive release of ROTT added more multiplayer-only maps. In fact, ROTT had several multiplayer modes beyond co-op and team deathmatch. Tom was very inventive when it came to ROTT's multiplayer modes and maps, long before Quake was released. As Tom remembers, "Yes, it had a TON of multiplayer maps. Many with unique rules, ridiculous heights, etc."

Tim cannot claim this idea as his in any way.

In November 1995, we had decided on a brand-new direction for Quake, so I was determining which of the maps that had been made up to that point that could be included into the new game design. The game design went through three iterations, each one simplifying the design. When Tim joined the team, his first task was to begin working on single-player maps.

We did not have "all these fragments of maps" that were used to make the multiplayer maps in Quake. All multiplayer-only maps that shipped with Quake were original maps made specifically for deathmatch.

This sketch of DM3 (originally named JRBASE3) shows you it was designed only for deathmatch, and this multiplayer-only map was created a few weeks after Tim was hired at id Software in December 1995. By this point, multiplayer-only maps were standard in the mod community, released in ROTT, and were beginning to feature in other FPS's (such as Outlaws) in development.

It is also important to address the issue of the map credits in the shareware version of Quake. In the article, Willits claims, "I designed the shareware episode of Quake." As one can find by looking at quake.wikia.com, the levels included in the shareware version of Quake are:

• Start (beginning map; available in deathmatch, too) – John Romero
• E1M1 (The Slipgate Complex) – John Romero
• E1M2 (Castle of the Damned ) – Tim Willits
• E1M3 (The Necropolis) – Tim Willits
• E1M4 (The Grisly Grotto) – Tim Willits
• E1M5 (Gloom Keep) – Tim Willits
• E1M6 (The Door to Chthon) – American McGee
• E1M7 (The House of Chthon) – American McGee
• E1M8 (Ziggurat Vertigo) – American McGee

There are 9 levels in the shareware release and 4 were made by Tim. Less than half.

As a final note, I remain incredibly proud of our work at id Software and on Quake. It was a challenging project with challenging technology and this resulted in design changes, not uncommon in bleeding-edge game development. At no time was there “no design direction.” In discussing this article last night with Adrian, American, Shawn and others, and reviewing my own complete archive and design notes, Quake didn’t happen by accident. It happened by design. And that design was powered by Carmack and Abrash's ground-breaking tech with which the industry is well familiar.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

When it comes to gaming history, always bet on Romero.

 

[LESS T_T]

Yeah but he also once corrected by someone about historical facts. A commentor on his another oldtime story about supercomputers in Quake: http://rome.ro/news/2015/12/13/gametales-cray-ymp

John Carmack 4 months ago

It was the SPARC based Cray 6400 series that we were looking at possibly using as a shared resource, because it might have been able to run OpenStep. YMP generally didn’t run GUIs at all.

I benchmarked our map gen tools on the YMP and T3E. The YMP was slower than the Alphaserver we were already using on the non-vectorized codebase, and it wasn’t clear to me how the potentially visible set generation could be effectively vectorized to take advantage of ir. The Alpha based T3E was still slower than the DEC Alphaservers, but would have been able to scale as much as we wanted. It just wasn’t as cost effective as the NUMA SGI systems we settled on for 16 processors.

We moved development to Windows NT 3.1 on Intergraph workstations, not Windows 95.

 

[Maggot]

Always take what Tim says with a grain of salt since he really likes making claims like that. DM6 and Q2DM1 are god tier though.

 

[skacky]

Romero puts revisionist Willits in his place feat. a journalist who didn't do his work and did no research/verification that should've taken him a grand thirty seconds.http://rome.ro/news/2017/8/30/multiplayer-only-maps
http://rome.ro/news/2017/8/30/multiplayer-only-maps

As a game historian, I know it's very important to get the facts right. Figuring out the origin of significant aspects of games is important, and to document them is imperative. So, when I read a story that said Tim Willits invented the idea of multiplayer-only maps, I felt compelled to correct it.

The story told about how he came into the office and talked to me and Carmack about his idea, and we responded with how it was the stupidest idea we'd ever heard. This never happened. In fact, we had been playing multiplayer-only maps in DOOM for years already. There had been hundreds of maps that the DOOM mapping community had made only for deathmatch by that time. DWANGO was a multiplayer-only service that had many multiplayer-only maps that are legendary today. American McGee even released a multiplayer-only map in November 1994 named IDMAP01. The incredible DOOM community invented the idea of designing maps only for multiplayer mode, and they deserve the credit. The game owes so much to them.

Commercially, the first FPS published with multiplayer-only maps at launch was Tom Hall's Rise of the Triad (ROTT), published 18 months before Quake in 1994. Each successive release of ROTT added more multiplayer-only maps. In fact, ROTT had several multiplayer modes beyond co-op and team deathmatch. Tom was very inventive when it came to ROTT's multiplayer modes and maps, long before Quake was released. As Tom remembers, "Yes, it had a TON of multiplayer maps. Many with unique rules, ridiculous heights, etc."

Tim cannot claim this idea as his in any way.

In November 1995, we had decided on a brand-new direction for Quake, so I was determining which of the maps that had been made up to that point that could be included into the new game design. The game design went through three iterations, each one simplifying the design. When Tim joined the team, his first task was to begin working on single-player maps.

We did not have "all these fragments of maps" that were used to make the multiplayer maps in Quake. All multiplayer-only maps that shipped with Quake were original maps made specifically for deathmatch.

This sketch of DM3 (originally named JRBASE3) shows you it was designed only for deathmatch, and this multiplayer-only map was created a few weeks after Tim was hired at id Software in December 1995. By this point, multiplayer-only maps were standard in the mod community, released in ROTT, and were beginning to feature in other FPS's (such as Outlaws) in development.

It is also important to address the issue of the map credits in the shareware version of Quake. In the article, Willits claims, "I designed the shareware episode of Quake." As one can find by looking at quake.wikia.com, the levels included in the shareware version of Quake are:

• Start (beginning map; available in deathmatch, too) – John Romero
• E1M1 (The Slipgate Complex) – John Romero
• E1M2 (Castle of the Damned ) – Tim Willits
• E1M3 (The Necropolis) – Tim Willits
• E1M4 (The Grisly Grotto) – Tim Willits
• E1M5 (Gloom Keep) – Tim Willits
• E1M6 (The Door to Chthon) – American McGee
• E1M7 (The House of Chthon) – American McGee
• E1M8 (Ziggurat Vertigo) – American McGee

There are 9 levels in the shareware release and 4 were made by Tim. Less than half.

As a final note, I remain incredibly proud of our work at id Software and on Quake. It was a challenging project with challenging technology and this resulted in design changes, not uncommon in bleeding-edge game development. At no time was there “no design direction.” In discussing this article last night with Adrian, American, Shawn and others, and reviewing my own complete archive and design notes, Quake didn’t happen by accident. It happened by design. And that design was powered by Carmack and Abrash's ground-breaking tech with which the industry is well familiar.

 

[Infinitron]

Not just Romero: https://www.pcgamesn.com/quake/quake-first-multiplayer-maps

Update August 31, 2017: John Romero, John Carmack, and American McGee have issued contradictory statements to Tim Willits' anecdote on the creation of multiplayer maps.

Since we published the article below - which remains in its original form for clarity - John Romero has written a follow-up article on his blog denying various elements. In it, he claims that the proposed interaction between him, Willits, and Carmack never happened, and he also points out some factual inaccuracies.

In Romero's account the mentioned meeting "never happened." He also points out that they had "been playing multiplayer-only maps in Doom for years already." Credit for multiplayer-only maps goes to "the incredible Doom community" and in paid-for games, to Rise of the Triad and Marathon, both of which included them in the years before Quake's release.

He also disputes the specifics of Willits' statements, denying the existence of "fragments" of single-player maps and saying "all multiplayer-only maps that shipped with Quake were original maps made specifically for deathmatch." He goes on to give a full layout of who made what in the shareware version of Quake, and where the game's design direction came from, having spoken to Adrian Carmack among others.

Shacknews reached out to Carmack and got a denial about Willits' anecdote. American McGee had similar thoughts on Twitter. We've reached out to Bethesda for further clarification.

http://www.shacknews.com/article/10...ary-opinions-between-romero-mcgee-and-willits

Update: 8/30, 9:22pm ET

Shacknews reached out to id Software co-founder John Carmack for comment. Carmack said he could not recall the interaction with Willits either, in line with the account detailed on Romero's blog.

 

[Lazing Dirk]

Ah, DM3. Always fun getting the pentagram of protection and jumping into the water with the lightning gun to zap people. IIRC for some reason it killed people who were out of the water too, like it was just a spherical explosion. I'm sure I ended up changing some qcc files to fix that.

(Also, I say "people" but really I mean Zeus bots, since I didn't have an Internet connection back then)

 

[LESS T_T]

Willits responded with a video showing an old map file:




And now McGee refutes, calling him "the game industry's version of Al "I invented the Internet" Gore.": https://www.facebook.com/americanmcgee/posts/10155061007237075

A map maker I discovered and brought into id back in the day who's gone on to become the company's creative lead has recently managed to make himself into the game industry's version of Al "I invented the Internet" Gore.

He claims he invented the idea of deathmatch (DM) only maps in Quake. It's an odd thing to claim since it's so easily refuted by physical records and eyewitness accounts. But it's not the first time I've seen this guy claiming credit for this particular "invention" or for other people's work in general. When the situation was first pointed out to me I responded, "History is written by the victors." I've just always assumed this is his MO and have ignored it in the past.

Once the story broke across several major game industry news outlets the guy not only stood by his nonsense claims but attempted to double-down by sharing video of what he claimed to be some of the map fragments he turned into DM-only maps for Quake... only one problem: He never contributed maps utilizing those textures to the final game. So his response has only increased people's scrutiny of the situation.

Difficult to know what's going on inside his mind. Human memory is notoriously terrible. It's been scientifically proven that whenever we "recall" a past event we actually re-simulate that event - and never with perfect fidelity. It's like your brain is playing a game of Chinese Whispers with itself. Over multiple retellings, we add details, remove inconvenient or boring elements, and re-write the resulting narrative as "truth." After a certain point, we can be "recalling" something that never happened and be completely convinced that it did.

Being aware of how bad our recollection is can help us avoid the pitfalls of "definitive recollection" and perhaps inspire us to qualify our statements about the past such that we're given an out in the event we're shown to have distorted reality. This would be especially important to remember in cases where we're claiming credit for something as historically significant as "I invented DM-only maps in Quake."

I know for a fact (as far as I know anything for a fact!) that I've fallen into this sort of trap myself. And I know it's always better to quickly admit your mistake, learn from it, and move on. Digging in your heels only makes it that much harder to get out from under the situation. We can all sympathize with someone who makes mistakes - but that's difficult to do when they won't admit those mistakes in the first place.

What's your read on the situation? Have you found yourself in this sort of hot water before?

 

[SharkClub]

So basically Tim Willits is a hack. I'm not sure how he can even begin to make that claim even though (as Romero mentions) Rise of the Triad and Marathon both released before Quake 1 with multiplayer-only deathmatch maps.

 

[Mynon]

Journalists are definitely giving some cred to Willits's side of the story, meaning that this is not as clear cut as you guys make it out to be.

 

[Zenith]

Journalists are

meaning that

Good one.

 

[Archibald]

So I take game "journalists" didn't bother to google release dates of these games? Marathon came out like 2 years before Quake.

 

[TripJack]

So basically Tim Willits is a hack.

well he's still working at id so he must be

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

To answer the original question, Satan. First, the forbidden apple, then multiplayer only maps.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Journalists are definitely giving some cred to Willits's side of the story, meaning that this is not as clear cut as you guys make it out to be.

Fact: Gaming journalists are the worst journalists on the planet, and are generally shit at their jobs.
Fact: You are such a piece of shit that the King of Poo is suing you for trademark infringement.

Problem: I honestly can't tell which is more shit: You, or gaming journalists.

 

[Sceptic]

Willits is an ass, more news at 11.

Romero's a bro in his refutation though, for not trying to take any credit for himself, for giving credit to the Doom map-making community, but especially for acknowledging Tom Hall, who is hugely underappreciated and deserves credit for so many great things.

 

[Menckenstein]

Willits has Todditis, don't believe his lies.

 

[Severian Silk]

Dunno why Al Gore gets all the hate. Through legislative powers he took the Internet from the military and universities, and helped give it to everyone. Which I sincerely hope he regrets having done.

 

[Sceptic]

Dunno why Al Gore gets all the hate. Through legislative powers he took the Internet form the military and universities, and helped give it to everyone. Which I sincerely hope he regrets doing.

If you read the whole line again, you'll see how you have yourself explained why he gets all the hate

 

[Harpsichord]

What the hell was the point of posting that 'map fragment?' It's like one of those things where he's not even wrong.

I have my own personal recollection of playing MP wads for Doom, and even if I'm somehow as mistaken as Willits is, there are documented cases of games having come out prior to Quake with MP maps.

I mean honestly, how in the fuck do 'arguments' like this even take place?