[Mr. Tibbs]

GamesTm interviews ex-3D Realms artist Stephen Hornack. Fun tidbit, he's considering legal action over unpaid Duke 3D royalties!

'With Duke 3D, everything seemed to go right. Apogee/3D Realms had hired a good director. I was highly motivated, as I was told that I was to receive three per cent royalty. So yes, we had an extremely talented group of individuals, everyone was working very hard, and we were trying to make the game as fun as possible. But after the project completed, things changed. I was told my royalty would not be three per cent, but only one per cent. Not only was it a slap in the face, but to me that was the same as them stealing money right out of my pocket. Greg Malone left the company, and several talented programmers, an artist, and a level designer left to start Ritual Entertainment. Chuck Jones left to work for Valve because he was unhappy with the way he was being treated. He wasn't even invited to E3 when Duke 3D was finished, and I remember how bad he felt about being left out of that. A lot of wonderful talent left then, and 3D Realms was never the same.

I certainly do not wish to take legal action against them, but they leave a person little choice.'

On leaving 3DR: 'When the in-house development of Prey was cancelled, I wasn't given much work for DNF, but I tried to get as involved as I was being allowed. Artist/level designer bonds had already been established, and I felt a bit like an outsider. Then I experienced a medical problem. While mowing the lawn, I suffered a major heart attack in April 2000. I worked hard to recover as quickly as possible. Upon returning a short time later, my contract was terminated a few weeks after my return. I was called into George B's office, and the three higher-ups were there. I was told by Scott Miller I was being laid off. Steven Blackburn (office manager) said "It's not like we're going to replace you or anything." George B made some comment like my art wasn't good enough for 3D Realms.'

[Fox]

Mr. Tibbs, on 07 October 2013 - 05:30 PM, said:

wasn't good enough for 3D Realms.'

Wow. They actually have standards? That guy must have made some drawings using excrements or something if it wasn't good enough.

[leilei]

"In our game we had the ability to look up and down; Doom didn't. So the programmers went over to id, told them about it, and that's why you can look up and down in Doom."

Ummm..........no?

[Jimmy]

Scumbags.

[ReaperMan]

leilei, on 07 October 2013 - 06:00 PM, said:

"In our game we had the ability to look up and down; Doom didn't. So the programmers went over to id, told them about it, and that's why you can look up and down in Doom."

Ummm..........no?

Yeah.... this makes me think not all the information in that article is correct.

[Hendricks266]

Maybe he had a brain fart and meant ROTT. I recall reading that ROTT had zlook added to it after said feature appeared in the BUILD Engine.

[t800]

leilei, on 07 October 2013 - 06:00 PM, said:

"In our game we had the ability to look up and down; Doom didn't. So the programmers went over to id, told them about it, and that's why you can look up and down in Doom."

Ummm..........no?

Maybe he got bit confused and meant Doom engine essentially? Because in its later incarnations it did feature looking up and down (Heretic, Hexen, Strife)?

Next time editorial board should assign writing "witty" descriptions to screenshots to somebody who actually played game itself.

By the way where is page 131?

P.S. Thanks for providing us with these scans.

[Mr. Tibbs]

t800, page 131 was just a stock image of Duke with a small cut out of JSJ saying a couple of complimentary things about Stephen's work. It really wasn't worth including.

The worst part of the article is hearing that he fired shortly after suffering a heart attack. Now this is Mr. Hornback's version of events, but even if it's remotely true, it's disgusting. People are more important than games.

Now that the dust has settled, I would love to see more people close to 3D Realms come forward and talk about their time at the studio in some detail.

[NightFright]

I think Dark Forces was the other FPS which allowed you to look up and down for a change. ROTT was still earlier (roughly 2 months before), but since DF was more popular, it is often believed that the feature was introduced there. Anyway, it is sure that it wasn't Doom - even though you can do it now with many ports, of course.

After all, still an interesting article, even though it's not nice to read about dirty backstage events in the aftermath of Duke3D - if they really happened this way. I thought the DNF story was already sad enough. :/

[leilei]

Marathon, System Shock and CyClones says hi.

Dark Forces also had a Dec 1994 demo, one hell of a busy month for first-person shooters that look. One influencing another for it is more likely coincidental - not to mention internally at Apogee where Ken coded looking in Build in Apr 1994 then 3 days later ROTT had it and he thought that was coincidental.

[gibfrag]

Thanks for sharing this!