The second big unknown was what kind of game would we make? We had just spent way to much time working on Abuse and didn't want to even think about Abuse II. The first idea we had was to make something like Gauntlet 3D. Gauntlet, for those of you who don't remember, was a multiplayer arcade game where you could pick between 4 characters and run around and kill, kill, kill, eat food, and collect treasures.

The way we were going to approach Gauntlet 3D was by letting the artist model the world in extremely complex detail and we would render out movie quality frames along a preset branching camera path. This idea is similar to an arcade game Area 51, except we were going to store a Z-buffer which would allow characters to be drawn into the scene freely and also we would have much more camera angles making the game less linear.

A problem we encountered was that modeling a realistic environment was a huge task. Adding to the difficulty of the task, our artist had no experience in the field. I remember in a particular level we wanted to have a dungeon. A certain artist begin by creating a single brick, then duplicating it several thousand times and building a wall out of the bricks. He kept complaining that his machine was too slow when he tried to render it. Needless to say this is not the best way to model a brick wall.

Another idea we entertained was a game called "Assassin" in which you play the part of an assassin who gets a mission to kill some famous person. You get the blueprints to their house, a list of weapons, and maybe some information about their bodyguards. We thought it would be great if we could have a mission where you could actually kill a certain famous political figure. We figured the publicity for such a game would be very strong and more importantly, free. But, it posed a number of burning legal questions. It is very illegal to even talk about killing the president of the United States. If we were to make a game about it, could we be arrested, or even worse, everyone who played the game? I called the FBI, CIA, secret service, the defense department, the pentagon, and several lawyers, but I couldn't get a straight answer. We quickly decided maybe it wasn't a good idea!

About this time we got hooked on playing a little game called Command and Conquer (C&C). This game was fun! Very fun. We wanted to make a game just like it, but we also wanted to make something 3D. The only fun 3D game I had ever played was Doom. This still holds true today for me. Naturally the thought occurred "Doom meets Command and Conquer". But what does this mean actually? Do you play first person driving in one of the vehicles, or maybe you can switch to any vehicle at anytime and take control. We played with many combinations of these ideas, but they never seemed to be what we were looking for. The problem boils down to : In Doom you are single character only concerned about your health and what's behind the corner, In C&C : you are a mastermind global strategist where everyone is expendable and you only care about how you are doing overall. The two don't work together. It seems obvious now, but we thought there had to be a way to make it work.

After discovering we couldn't make it have the level of fun we were looking for with "Doom meets C&C", we considered two options. One options was to make the game more action (Doom) based, the other was to make it more strategy based (C&C). First we tried the C&C approach, but the theory was that without fancy camera angles, it's hard to compete with the 2D strategy games coming out because of they can have more characters and better artwork. Then, we tried an action version, which is what you see in the final release. To make the game more action oriented we had to simplify the strategy aspect. This meant not spending all of your time "micro managing" units by clicking on them and then their destination/target. We setup up a system where all the paths that a vehicle could travel on where predefined by the level designer and you could only select a current path and then build a vehicle. Once built, the vehicle would travel down the path, fighting all the way, until it reached it's destination or was killed. This concept is similar to an old Apple game called Rescue Raiders. So, since you were not tied up planning strategy all the time, the world was your to explore in the first person. The problem that occurred here, is that all the vehicles would travel in straight lines and it was like shooting ducks at the county fair.

While all this planning, designing, and throwing away of ideas was occurring, money was being spent. Lots of it. Salary, rent, and other expenses took a ~$30K chunk out of bank every month. We had grown from 3 to 9 people and moved into a bigger office. To keep up with cost, we signed a deal to publish in Europe and Australia with TeleStar, and a deal to publish a Linux version with Red Hat. We also inked a deal with AMD to add AMD-3D acceleration, and we were in the process of talking with 3D sound card people, and specific 3D card people. Each time we signed a deal we put money in our pockets to keep us going, but we added more time to the project by having to promise certain things. As the water treading continued, the world was changing around us. Now, the minimum spec machine was not a P-133, 3d acceleration was a must, and other similar games had come out (Uprising & Battlezone). The games that came out didn't offer us any clues on how to make this genre fun. They also sold really poorly which was a signal to publishers that we would have a similar fate. This made finding the great publishing deal we had been holding out for for so long a near impossible task.

Around July, Crack first missed payroll. August came and we moved out of the office. September offered no new news, so we decided to call it quits. Rather than letting all that hard work sit around and rot, we released it to the public domain. After doing the same with Abuse and getting a tremendous response, we had to. Some people have said "Aren't you worried someone else could pick it up, finish the game and sell it". The answer is no. I don't mind if someone makes a profit off this work, which is a definite possibility. I think the engine can be used to make many different games, and I hope someone does just that. The soundtrack could be sold to a record, game, or movie company for 100k or more, and the textures have a fair value as well. But with debt that Crack dot Com accrued, even these sales would not have helped. We would much rather see other people learn from our work and our mistakes.

The experience gained by going through this process has helped me understand the business world in a way that I could never learn by reading about it or studying it in school. Personnel, management, accounting, and planning are skills just as important as the required technical skills in the computer industry. The only real way to learn these skills is through practice. Once you see how it all works and that you can do it, you are not afraid to try again.

Almost a year ago, I had an idea for some new networking technology that I felt could change the software industry in a big way. When Crack first missed payroll, I saw it as an opportunity to develop this technology and start a company that uses it. I have been working on it non stop since, pausing only to package up the data from Golgotha and place it at http://crack.com/golgotha_release. Because of the nature of the business I'm not able to discuss the details yet, but I am soliciting resumes and investors at http://crack.com/startup2.

2nd Article:

Silverman: The End of Crack dot Com

DWIGHT SILVERMAN
c.1998 Houston Chronicle

         Imagine a business shutting down and giving away its product.

         Picture a homebuilder stacking mortar, bricks and lumber by the side of the road next to a big sign that says ``Take me.'' Or consider a defunct automaker letting folks cart away pistons, tires, gas tanks, fuel gauges and bucket seats, for free.

         In the case of Dave ``DDT'' Taylor, the stock-in-trade was software. And when his Austin, Texas, game company, Crack dot Com, went out of business, he literally gave away the store.

         Taylor recently posted on the Internet the unfinished pieces of the game that he and his staff had been building. Golgotha was to be a battle strategy game in which players marshal armies against each other, rendered in a 3-D, first-person style.

         Anyone with enough time on his or her hands can download the game's source code -- its raw programming -- as well as sound effects, original music and artwork. Because these components are now in the public domain, prospective game developers can use them in their own programs, or even complete Golgotha if they choose.

         ``I've heard from one group calling themselves Golgotha Forever who want to make it a goal to complete the game like I intended it to be, as though I had this grand vision,'' said Taylor. ``I told them they really ought to do their own thing with it.''

         Taylor's largesse is both a matter of practicality and consistent with his approach to dealing with the audience that plays his games. Taylor used the Internet to keep fans informed about the game's progress, as well as the health of his business.

         Unlike a lot of companies that keep their business dealings close to the chest, Taylor wore his on his sleeve. He regularly posted updates on how Crack dot Com was doing, and those reading his musings could literally watch as his business withered and died.

         Taylor, 29, is a former employee of id Software, the games company that pioneered the 3-D shooter genre with hits like Wolfenstein 3-D, Doom and Quake.

         While at id, he began posting his thoughts on the Net in what's known as a .plan file. This is a kind of calling card or greeting that pops up when a function known as a ``finger'' is performed across a network, or the Internet. For example, if you used an Internet finger program and entered ddtcrack.com, you'd see Taylor's current .plan file.

         Taylor's .plans became popular among those awaiting id's next game, and soon his colleagues began writing their own .plan files. These postings have since become an important way for game companies to keep their audiences up to date on the development of highly anticipated games. (To see a good selection of game-industry .plan files, go to http://finger.stomped.com or http://finger.planetquake.com on the Web.)

         He started Crack dot Com in 1994 with Jonathon Clark, and left id two years later to work full-time as its chief executive. The company had a cult hit with a 2-D, side-scrolling game called Abuse, but Golgotha was going to be its masterpiece, the title that put Crack on the map.

         Clark and Taylor set up shop in Austin and hired a staff of designers, artists and even a sound effects/music specialist. Securing enough funding to keep it going was a problem almost from the start as the company relied on some income from Abuse and small deals worked out as advances on Golgotha.

         As early as May 1997, Taylor was expressing concern in his .plan file about Crack dot Com's tenuous nature: ``Unfortunately, my work logs will be a bit more sparse than the others because most business/press work is supposed to remain confidential until things are finalized. Maybe this will change. Maybe I will be the one to change it! Hm. Maybe I don't want Crack to fold.''

         Taylor's .plans talked about the most basic aspects of running his company - meeting with publishers, working with press, even hiring temporary workers: ``Yummy. We've got a temp in here doing filing and paying bills. I've never hired a temp before. `I'll do whatever you like!' This rocks.''

         Taylor partly blamed Crack dot Com's problems on the fact that publishers were not willing to strike a deal with a new developer until a finished game was in hand. Throughout his postings, he discussed many deals that never came to fruition: ``Forsooth, it is Sunday, and Publisher X did not fax an offer on Golgotha NA (North America) rights on Friday. Dave suspecteth Publisher X is trying to string Crack along, perhaps not for the first time.''

         At one point, after a verbal agreement was undone by language added to a written contract, Taylor expressed his frustration: ``Still doing publisher/investor discussions. Would love to go into sordid detail, but if you knew what makes the business world tick, you'd curl up in a ball and ask for your mommy. I know I do.''

         Crack dot Com ran out of money in July, and Taylor posted this remarkably candid announcement in his .plan: ``Conventional biz wisdom says you shouldn't announce this sorta thing, but I do so because of an annoying decency streak. So before the rumors start to fly, I should announce that Crack is in deep financial ----. We're not in debt and refuse to enter debt, but we just ran out of cash and are not making payroll. Those of us financially stable enough to weather some time without being paid will stay on. We're all confident the money will come in, including those of us who can't afford the loss of income. There is just too much value in the project, it's inexpensive to complete, and there are too many opportunities even outside Golgotha. But two of us, Gene & Stephen, don't have the reserves to miss a single payroll, so I'd like to help place them at other companies.''

         Taylor said that announcement got job offers for both employees, though one is still looking for work.

         Later .plan files talk about disconnecting phone lines and moving out of the company's high-rent offices. But Taylor never actually said in his .plan that Crack dot Com was gone. But his partner, Jonathon Clark, did: ``Welp, I'm 25 years old now! Time to do something different with my life. If you haven't heard yet, Crack.com is dead.''

         So why, after four years of work on Golgotha, did Taylor decide to give away all that work?

         ``Code rots,'' he said, referring to the programming code. ``Game code rots even faster. If you're not keeping it up to date with all the advances going on out there, it becomes worth less and less. We weren't going to be around to support it, so we're just giving it away.''

         He's now looking for work, hoping to find a job as a programmer or designing hardware. The job interviews are coming regularly, he said. And how will he feel about no longer being the boss, and going back to being just another employee?

         ``I will be thrilled,'' he said.