[PokeThePower]

I've never actually written about the true inspiration for the Chair Story.

To be honest I don't even know how specifically true this is anymore, but the basic gist is George Broussard was having an argument with Brandon Reinhart about physics and in a moment of frustration threw one of the chairs in the office down one of the 3DR Halls to demonstrate the "real" way a chair would land. (The hall in the linked image is the one this would have happened in).

This was before "physics engines" existed, so most games, including Duke at the time, did a very rough approximation of physics. Our approximation was pretty limited. Essentially every object that the player could grab and throw would land "right side up". It would do some relatively believable tumbling but when it came time to come to rest, it would always end up standing upright.

This was my real first impetus to start scripting, as I added support to say true/false for the up/down and north/south/east/west orientations of individual objects designating whether they could "land" in that direction. This meant objects could land in much more realistic positions, but it required going into hundreds (possibly thousands) of objects and setting which of the 6 directions were viable landing angles. For an obsessive compulsive person like myself, this wasn't so bad. However once things like Havoc and Karma physics engines came along, the effort became void.

That said it was an interesting transition time for the industry as we were ahead of the curve in terms of believable physics long before "physics engines" became the norm, and it came about largely due to George tossing a chair down the hall.

[OpenMaw]

Well that's one way to solve an argument.

[Mr. Tibbs]

Very cool insight into the original physics system and life at 3DR. I remember being blown away by the physics in Thief and Deus Ex being able stack objects or even move props, though it was a little janky, was still very cool at the time. Wish we could see your work from that time. Pc Gamer's 1999 cover story was the first magazine I ever bought and the shots still look great 13 years later.

Was it a natural progression for you to move from level design to scripting, like personal curiosity in trying something different, or 3D Realms multitasking?

[DavoX]

In the end the violent part we thought of George was actually true, just on a different situation

[zwieback]

awesome post charlie, like always

[PokeThePower]

CommandoNukem: In all honesty it was more of a funny "argument" than a heated one.

DavoX: George was definitely not a violent guy. We got into some intense arguments, especially by 2005/2006 but it was still pretty civil all in all. I'm probably responsible for more slammed doors. At least two in one situation (office door and front door), heh.

Mr. Tibbs: Before we switched to "real" physics stacking was pretty powerful. Could cause issues in some maps where players could stack things and escape. We added some support for crushing things on the bottom as the stack got too high, but it was still rather gamey.

I've always straddled coding/scripting and level design. Even at Sunstorm I was originally hired as a programmer and just wound up doing levels "in addition". At Ritual on Sin being an LD meant you were also a scripter. As a modder before working in the industry I released as many programs as I did levels. So the transition was pretty natural at 3DR. The Lake Mead level was almost entirely developed via "scripting" as most of the geo was pretty basic.

[PokeThePower]

Forehead slap! I understand what you were referring to about the violent George being true after all... haha... yeah. Now you can see how the "real" story was able to morph into the fake story.

zweiback: Thanks! Entertaining 'tis my favorite activity whether it be with fiction or fact.