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cathoderaydude
@cathoderaydude

The history of Apogee and 3D Realms is a convoluted one. The histories of Rise Of The Triad and the associated Developers of Incredible Power are even moreso.

In short, DIP was a self-applied name for a group of developers at Apogee, including Tom Hall, the doofy guy who designed Commander Keen, then got ousted from id Software immediately afterwards in the cruelest possible way - they basically just worked around him, refusing to actually fire him for months, while still letting him do work that never got appreciated.

Rise of the Triad was a game with a very strange history. The Wolfenstein 3D engine was abandoned almost as soon as it was released, as John Carmack went right on to begin creating Doom without a second thought about it (except to quickly bang out the SNES port due to the incompetence of their contract developer.)

An interesting footnote is that the Wolf3D engine was licensed more than Doom, in the fullness of time. With Doom immediately becoming id's sole focus, and Wolf being outdated pretty much the second it hit the pavement, it probably didn't cost as much to license, despite being, essentially, the first "engine" in history. There were five third party Wolf games; Doom was only used for four.

Still, this "popularity" was probably only because Wolf existed during a hot second in time when high-framerate 3D games on the PC were suddenly possible, but outside of most peoples (and most computers') capabilities. It was the quickest way to make it happen at all, in a form sufficiently optimized to run on computers that had not yet been turned into Gaming Rigs, since the concept of a Gaming Rig would not exist for about another year or two.

The reason I say that is because Doom was the last cutting-edge game to run acceptably well on a 386, and up through 1995, it was still possible to get by with a CPU that old. There were very few reasons to upgrade. Virtually no 2D game could thrash a 386, and Doom would run acceptably in low-quality mode. Besides that, there were very few contributing reasons for most people to get a faster machine prior to the release of Windows 95.

The explosion of 486 and Pentium-class machines that 95 brought would not have been totally universal. The internet wasn't around yet; that was the real driver that put a PC in every household. So some number of people were content to keep their 386 machines even if they were enjoying Doom.

They could not, however, play Duke Nukem 3D, or Quake. I doubt that people upgraded en masse to play Doom, but I bet they did upgrade specifically to play these new games.

Still, in 93-94, that event was years off. So Wolf enjoyed some success as a low-end, runs-on-anything engine even before Doom stole that crown.

In that tiny space between eras, there was a moment - just one split second - when it was possible for Wolf to look like the best option for a next-gen experience, even when Doom was already out.

Rise of the Triad

I won't tell the entire story of RoTT, which is covered elsewhere, but in short, Tom Hall tried to make Wolfenstein 3D 2 after getting fired from id, made significant progress, and then id pulled the license, forcing Apogee to make the plot and content more generic.

At some point in the process, Hall told everyone "if we can pull this off, we will be the Developers of Incredible Power." As a footnote, they were supposed to go on to create Prey, but of course it went into development hell for a decade before being sold off. DIP never made another game, and most of the staff ended up at 3D Realms, the sorta-rebranded Apogee.

RoTT extended the Wolf engine by leaps and bounds, adding a mix of features that would show up in Doom and Duke Nukem, but was still limited to very basic concepts: 90 degree walls, a tile-based map format, no varying ceiling or floor heights, no slopes, etc.

For this reason, I found it far more engaging than Wolf, and while I could tell it was somehow "lesser" than Doom, it was still fascinating to me. The most intriguing element of it was the music.

My god, the music.

Rise of the Triad's music is phenomenal. It's arguably the most interesting soundtrack to any PC game of the 90s, composed by Lee Jackson who also worked on half the songs in Duke Nukem 3D, but invoking a completely different tone.

If I had to pick adjectives to describe Duke Nukem's music, they would include things like "cyberpunk," "80s", "action" and "military." RoTT's soundtrack, however, is incredibly hard to pin down. As a kid, I couldn't make heads or tails of it, except that it fascinated me, in addition to being Hell Of Bangers.

I submit: The very first thing you hear upon starting the RoTT demo. Buckle up.

In 1995, this was the coolest thing I had ever heard in my life, and it still kinda is. There are several other absolute club hits on the soundtrack, including STAIRS.MID and RUNLIKE.MID. And although it almost doesn't sound like it belongs in a videogame of this type at all, KISSOFF.MID is a remarkable piece. Please consume the whole OST on youtube for your own betterment.

The most interesting track however is SMOOTH.MID.

Havana Syndrome

The 3D Realms forums banner, indicating the forums are archived

In 2001, someone posted a thread on the 3D Realms forums (now closed) entitled "God, ROTT has fantastic music." It was, as one would expect, a number of fans just discussing which tracks they liked the most, but also - as was still typical at the time - some of the employees of 3D Realms replying, participating in the discussion and dispensing tidbits of inside baseball.

One individual, Crezzy_man, brought up the aforementioned SMOOTH.MID, by its full name, Havana Smooth. This is arguably the most intriguing song on the OST.

I absolutely could not place the theme of this track as a child. It's an INCREDIBLE piece of music, absolutely captivating. Here it is:

Oh man. It goes places. But what on earth IS it? It sounds like no other videogame music you've ever heard, but moreso, it just sounds like no other music I can place.

Is it a 1970s A-team-style action TV theme? A rejected track from James Bond? A military march? Well, it turns out, that last one is more or less on the money. Or, at least, Jackson thought so. As Crezzy_man states, Lee Jackson had mentioned that it was inspired by Drum & Bugle Corps - and also, that Joe Siegler, another 3D Realms employee, hated the track.

I should note that the forum is kinda messed up, and it seems that some of Lee Jackson's replies are posted as "Guest" while others are posted via Joe Siegler's account, yet Joe Siegler's responses are also under his own name. Who can say how that happened, but anyway, this first reply is actually from Lee Jackson:

Joe liked the song until he heard it had Drum Corps roots. Once I told him that, his view changed slightly. I think he does like the song, but he can't admit to himself that it has anything to do with Drum Corps.

From Lee's initial response it's clear that Joe disagrees that the music is Drum Corps-inspired at all; he asserts that he has proof to back up his claims - he also observes that, in his opinion, all his music is Drum Corps inspired.

Joe hates this.

but he can't admit to himself that it has anything to do with Drum Corps.

That's because it doesn't. There's no people marching around with instruments there. There's no "drum corps sound" in there at all. I will NEVER believe this. Not until you can actually get me video of some drum corps actually marching to this song.

This is, to put it mildly, a completely absurd point of view. First, telling a composer that they're wrong about their inspirations is just... unprecedented. Has it ever happened? Why would it happen?

It's also just wildly unprofessional. These are grown men, one of which (who is not a musician AFAIK) has initiated a bizarre creative slapfight in public. 2001 gamedev, baby!

Jackson fires back:

So, since there are no people sitting in a concert hall playing stringed instruments on "Mist Ache," does that mean it is not an orchestral piece? Does it mean that it does not have an "orchestral sound?" Similarly, since there are no people actually playing hard rock guitars, keyboards, and drums in "Grabbag," does that mean it is not a hard rock piece and does not have a "hard rock sound?" Your logic does not hold, my friend. Influences are influences, and they can be heard wherever they exist.

Lee is unequivocally correct. You cannot argue with this, and Joe has shown his ass in public. This is an L. Continuing this line of discourse will compound the L.

Before Joe can do so anyway, Lee follows up:

This never resolves in-thread, but eventually, Jackson or someone else did, in fact, do exactly this, so we can see the tape he's referring to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=87&v=BkYUyiDt3Ic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=113&v=h1jDm_UqAnk

The first video above is the exact performance in question, while the second is a MIDI of Havana Smooth. I didn't embed them because both URLs are timestamped for the exact moment Jackson is referring to, and I didn't think embeds would preserve it.

So, Lee Jackson absolutely quoted this riff, note-perfect, from that performance. That doesn't mean the whole song is truly drum corps inspired, but honestly: listen to the whole performance. There are moments of dullness if you're used to conventional modern pop music, but if you play it the whole way through, you will not regret the experience.

I am not sure I will ever be Hella Into Drum Corps, but I would absolutely go to a performance of this particular piece. It's a really neat piece of music with some super cool moments, and I bet it's a force of nature to experience all that brass firsthand.

Anyway, if you have any doubt that Lee Jackson is a huge fan of drum corps, he goes on to Name Five Of Their Albums:

Can there be any doubt at this point? I mean, it is the god given duty of someone with an Obscure Interest to try to shove it in everywhere they can, to get other people baited into it. I don't think there's any question that Jackson was quoting this stuff all over the RoTT soundtrack, and probably everything else he worked on, too.

I assure you, Joe Siegler had been shown this tape. These men worked in the same office. Do we think he relented and admitted that Maybe Drum Corps Had Some Good Ideas?

Probably not, given that they also get into a spat about Philip Glass:

Yes, I scoff at Glass is the most Forum sentence I have read in my life.

In conclusion:

  1. Men

  2. Men in game development

  3. Men in game development in 2001.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.


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in reply to @cathoderaydude's post:

A worthy sequel to The Dumbest Boy Alive, but with actual reputations involved and some dang good music recs.

Gotta admit I would have agreed with Joe at a certain point in my life, which I've thankfully grown past, but marching bands terrorized me through most of high school. In hind sight, it was the only excuse to tie the music budget to the skyrocketing football budgets of rural Arkansas, so their prevalence was completely understandable, but at the time I couldn't help but be proud we were the only school around with a jazz ensemble instead of a marching band. I tried to calm my hackles and sit through the performances of the visiting marching bands, and they just consistently rubbed me the wrong way. I tried to quantify it: was it the fact that the musicians were so spread out that there was a measurable speed of sound delay between the farthest instruments, causing the facsimile of an echo in the driest possible environments? Or was it the sheer mechanical nature of the tempo, that felt like an army of clockwork soldiers that accidentally tripped over some musical instruments on their march and kept going anyway? Or did I just hate their guts because of tribalism, being the tenor sax in the jazz ensemble?

That said, I've only had the pleasure of attending an actual drum corps performance once, as the drum corps acted as the percussion section of a high school orchestra I was able to perform in, playing clarinet, and got a brief performance by themselves midway through. (I was in I think 7th grade at the time? the conductor went around teaching instrument lessons at a few of the feeder schools for the high school and let us play with the high school orchestra one show a year.) Anyway, that aside, I have to admit: that drum corps kicked ass. Maybe it was that they weren't arrayed across an entire football field, maybe there was just enough living mass in the audience and orchestra to actually deaden the echoes in what I remember to be a basketball court, but beyond all of that, there was actual talent involved, jaw dropping precision and flair, these men (all boy's school) didn't stumble around the beat, they fell right in the pocket with confidence and panache.

But still, at one point I would have cried if confronted with glorified marching band influence on an inspired track like this one, and I can see that seething in Joe's replies here. This is proper Latin music, this is our domain, I remember one particular attempted marching band performance of Tito Puente's Oye Como Va, and I was cry-laughing in pain and amusement by the end of it. no, no drum corps played a significant part in this, they'd sooner have inspired the Mona Lisa. And I recognize that was wrong, now, but I get it lol

Anyway, I do think that unprofessionalism of this kind was better tolerated back then. It was a much more collegial environment, and with that comes the confidence to sometimes leave your entire ass hanging out. I miss it in some ways, it's important in my friendships sometimes that my friends just let me be wrong, if it matters I'll come around sooner without the pressure, and if it doesn't, who am I hurting anyway? Now it feels like absolutely everyone has to stay clean enough to run for office, when who are we kidding? there's not a single one of us who doesn't have their most embarrassing moments scribed somewhere on the internet. let people be wrong, IMO. (of course let loose the dogs of war on actual bigots tho, thx)

i do not know these people but it seemed more good natured ribbing between friends than an actual fight, i mean, we could dig up some truly intense flame wars from that era where the vitriol is still palpable all these years later

in any case, the music is incredible, Lee Jackson is a laudable composer