Back in 1994 when I was working on Rise of the Triad, it was one of the more fun times in my life. Back then I was just two years into my 16.5 with the company. At that time, I was still fairly green, and it was really cool to me to have Tom Hall working here. I was a fan of this company's product (I'm in the ancient customer databases as having bought things like Wolfenstein, Keen, Duke 1, Crystal Caves, etc)...
Anyway, I was one of the level designers on Rise of the Triad. It was my first professional game as a developer, and it was working with a guy who was one of my heroes before I got into the industry – that was way cool. It was fun coming up with things and tech in the game, and one of the things that was an on the fly thing that I recall were “gads”.
1 They're the little silver discs which could be suspended in air.. Anyway, Rise of the Triad was done with the same editor that Wolfenstein 3D & Commander Keen (and a host of others like Bio Menace) were done with. It's name was “Ted”.
2 Was an editor that John Romero came up with way back in the day in the earliest days of id Software. It was a good little editor, but like most pieces of software it had it's own idiosyncrasies.
With gads, however, you had to figure out the proper hex values for each gad so if you wanted to make a stairwell of gads, you had to place them at the right spot. Each Gad item placement had to have it's height set via secondary (or tertiary, I don't recall right now) values. If you put them too close it looked really stupid, and if you placed them too far apart, your character would get stuck on them. Tom Hall eventually figured out a sequence of hex codes that would make a proper stairwell of Gads in ROTT. He printed it out on a piece of paper, and stuck it to his monitor. This was the general guideline for gad stairs in ROTT. It was tweaked sometimes, if you wanted a different visual look to your stairwell for some aesthetic reason, but this little piece of paper of Tom's was the defacto guideline for ROTT stair building.
So it was a surprise to me that when Tom left 3DR to go do Ion Storm in August of 1996, on his last day, he handed me the little Gad paper with his hex chart. I don't remember exactly what he said, but it was something along the lines of “You're now the official keeper of the GAD chart”. I even asked Tom today if he remembered what he said, and he doesn't, but did recall the exchange. (We're fairly sure it wasn't something involving a scroll, robes, and pinpricks of blood, however.) So from that day on until right now, I've had that piece of paper on my monitor. Whenever I'd change offices, change monitors (or even in Nov 2002 when 3DR picked up and moved their HQ), that piece of Gad paper has been with me.
I've never forgotten the thrill it was to work on ROTT with someone whose work I admired before I started working for the company that was responsible for lots of my gaming enjoyment. That stupid little piece of paper is the last remaining tie to the days of ROTT development for me. Not counting Scott & George, I'm the last man standing at the same company (for the moment) that developed ROTT 15 years ago. It's a bit stupid, but that's how I feel about that piece of paper.
As I write this I only have a few days left to work here, and I'll be out the door. When I do that, the silly lite piece of paper is coming home with me, and will live on my monitor at home.
Attached are a few pictures of the piece of paper from various times during my time here at 3DR... The last one was taken today, but cel phone cameras don't seem to do it justice. I'll have to take a good picture of it when I get the paper home and on that monitor. To me personally, THAT will be the moment I don't work here anymore. When the Gad cheat sheet goes.
FOOTNOTES:
1. "GAD. Gravitational Anomaly Disc".
2. "TED. Tile EDitor."