John Carmack on id Tech 6, Ray Tracing, Consoles, Physics and more

[BrownTown]

Concerning story, I don't think it *has* to be there for a good game, but it deffinitely can add an extra something. I enjoyed Doom and Quake and Half Life and all those shooters and TBH the story is not much in any of them. But I also enjoyed a game like Deus Ex which has a good story and the story actually adds to the game play and gives you a feel of purpose. But I also think the statement that "story is a game is like story in :banana::banana::banana::banana:" because TBH I don't play games for the story I play for the gameplay and I want just enough story to tell me what I'm supposed to do, but not so much that it gets in the way. If I am looking for great storytelling a book or movie would be the place to go.

[saaya]

very nice read... very interesting...

and the funny thing is, yet again i got the impression hw mfgs try to push a standard without even checking with the people who have to work with this standard if it makes any sense to them

[Syn.]

John Carmack is also pretty much a rocket scientist, and was once considered by microsoft to be their biggest threat as their games pretty much ran in their own operating system. He pretty much does single handedly what it takes other companies years to do with a full crew.

How is he NOT a genius?

Because as much he is good at programing he is just as bad at everything else. iD engines where something years ago, today none cares much as people are able to make their own engines that fit their needs better. As the most famous OpenGL developer his other ideas to do with games are making things worse for overall game industry plus the OpenGL groups. Sure games look better but the gameplay hasn't evolved since Quake 1. I am sorry but no matter how you look at it "Pretty colours" will only keep me entertained for few minutes the rest of the time gameplay has to keep me hooked. I completed both Doom3 and Qauke4 and i wouldn't be able to tell you what happens in them, the story line was so entertaining that i forgot it completely.

So yea he is a good programmer but that is not that impressive these days. When he made his name IT industry was quite small compared to what it is today. He is yet to do anything impressive these days, all interest in iD Tech5 is that it is platform independent.

[-thc-(cZ)]

Well, his favorite id game is Quake 3, and that is why he is making Quake Live. He likes the pure insane fast action. No other game has that. All the Counter Strike and CoD and MoH "realistic war sims" are too slow. The characters move a lot slower and die a lot easier. Before you re-equip, deploy and walk to the combat zone, it's 5 minutes later. For him it's all about going in there and killing as many mofos as fast as possible. That's why Quake 4 never really caught on, it was slower than Quake 3. That's why Quake Wars didn't work, it was too complicated. Pure and fast killing simulator, that is what he is all about. Complaining that it doesn't have much story really IS like complaining about the story in a :banana::banana::banana::banana: movie. You are there to get the action and when you are done you are done and you feel good. Who cares how the sheep got there : ) It's just a different kind of a game. Killing simulator. It's like complaining that Bioware games are too complicated and have too much talking. They are about the story, action comes second. Or complaining that "there is no way he would have survived that" in an action comedy movie. His vision of a perfect game is a pure killing skill test. That's why he likes Quake 3 the most. Besides, these days he makes the engine, and that's it. Why bash him when it's the other parts of id responsible for the story and other stuff. I remember long time ago he was so sad that he didn't study "the inner architecture of the 486 coprocessors more" because it would make Doom 2 run a little faster. That's dedication. Show some respect to the man for what he is and don't slam him for what he isn't. It's like telling Ali he's BS because even tho he can box, he might not really know how to solve e=mc2..

heh, did i just write all that? : )


and someone said he didnt post this because he thought people wouldn't think it's anything interesting.. wot? His interviews / keynotes are the definition of interesting!

(the only other game that i can think of as anything close to his style is Serious Sam.. again.. pure. fast. action. kill A LOT. big gun... and a lots of people had fun with that one too)

EDIT: and haha saaya, "hw mfgs" = hard ware mother fuggers?

[Swatrecon_]

Well, his favorite id game is Quake 3, and that is why he is making Quake Live. He likes the pure insane fast action. No other game has that.

All the Unreal Tournament games have this.

[Zytek_Fan]

Carmack is getting a little notorious as of late of being a sayer and not a doer...

[-thc-(cZ)]

All the Unreal Tournament games have this.

You are right. Sorry, somehow I forgot about Unreal, because I never really play them.. They come very close, since they evolved at the same time as Quake did. I hear the last one has vehicles and stuff tho, so it kinda lost it's purity too no? Anyway, another reason to thank Carmack, without Quake Unreal might have been years late : )

(also, the first Unreal mainly competed with Quake in graphics, not the story)
(AND therefor had lots of Quake in it, thank the Johnny boy : )

[Swatrecon_]

You are right. Sorry, somehow I forgot about Unreal, because I never really play them.. They come very close, since they evolved at the same time as Quake did. I hear the last one has vehicles and stuff tho, so it kinda lost it's purity too no? Anyway, another reason to thank Carmack, without Quake Unreal might have been years late : )

(also, the first Unreal mainly competed with Quake in graphics, not the story)
(AND therefor had lots of Quake in it, thank the Johnny boy : )

The past 2 (maybe 3? I only played the last 2) have had vehicles, but they don't really lose anything from it, it maintains the fast-paced action. All the vehicles are either fast or powerful or both. In UT3, they added a more epic game mode with massive maps and 64 players and vehicles, and that's pretty cool.

[DilTech]

Because as much he is good at programing he is just as bad at everything else.

You don't say... Maybe that's because his part IS just the engine programming? So what does "everything else" have to do with him?

iD engines where something years ago, today none cares much as people are able to make their own engines that fit their needs better. As the most famous OpenGL developer his other ideas to do with games are making things worse for overall game industry plus the OpenGL groups.

His engines are generally untouchable at their time of release. Technologically speaking IDTech4(doom 3 engine) wiped the floor with both cryengine 1 and source. All 3 engines weren't touched much by other companies. Most companies stuck to Unreal engine 2/2.5x due to it's console abilities while the doom 3 engine was a bit too overzealous for consoles at the time.

Sure games look better but the gameplay hasn't evolved since Quake 1. I am sorry but no matter how you look at it "Pretty colours" will only keep me entertained for few minutes the rest of the time gameplay has to keep me hooked. I completed both Doom3 and Qauke4 and i wouldn't be able to tell you what happens in them, the story line was so entertaining that i forgot it completely.

What does that have to do with the engine programmer? Again, Carmack has nothing to do with the gameplay side, only the engine. Modders have proven that idtech4 was capable of whatever you really wanted to do gameplay wise...

So yea he is a good programmer but that is not that impressive these days. When he made his name IT industry was quite small compared to what it is today. He is yet to do anything impressive these days, all interest in iD Tech5 is that it is platform independent.

You haven't paid much attention to developer buzz, have you? When carmack speaks, the entire industry listens... idtech5 is presently the most promising engines coming from ANY studio, and it's not just because it's platform independent. It's because it pretty much removes the performance block from the art team!

They can add whatever amount of detail they please, without worry of it introducing graphical or physics clipping at any point in a level. As in, IT REMOVES THE ENTIRE DEBUGGING PROCESS AFTER ADDING YOUR DETAILS! Now, that may mean nothing to you, but anyone who's ever dabbled in 3d knows how big of a pain it is to attempt to debug after adding all art to your level, you've got to go over every inch(which most companies fail to do, thus flickering textures throughout the game when you stand in certain spots) and make sure nothing happens. A tiny texture at the start of a level can cause a crash in a corner near the end that you'd never even think to stand in with most engines... Not with IDTech5.

Now, think about this.... Every inch of every map can be 100% unique, with no worry about any loss of performance due to it, at obscenely high resolutions, with every inch reacting properly to the lighting of the map and displaying proper shadowing, with only half the normal debug process as you no longer have to test with each texture added, running with no problem on current hardware REGARDLESS OF PLATFORM!... It took 10 days to make the demo for the first showing of it, and it ran flawlessly. Less than a week later that had a demo of it looking almost 3 times as clean running even smoother without issue!

They cut the development process in half(or less) and allow the art team and game programmers to work at the same time rather than one then the other. You want to tell me that's not a big deal?... To make it all the more impressive, he built the engine himself. Did what no other TEAM could do, all by himself.

Meanwhile, heralded companies like valve are still using source which still can't even compete lighting and shadows wise with carmacks LAST engine, and they have a whole team working on updates to their engine!

Carmack's still hands down the best in the industry, deny it all you want, but there isn't a single programmer in any company that can touch what he does.

[-thc-(cZ)]

DilTech - that is right on

again - you can compare - Counter Strike vs Doom 3: Doom 3 engine was far superior (esp. lighting), released earlier. The art teams did a better job with CS textures, but the bells and whistles go to Carmack, the art part is not his fault..

Or compare Crysis - Doom 3: Doom 3 needed the best gfx card at the time, but scaled well after that. Crysis, being made by many programmers compared to one person Doom 3 engine doesn't fare that good at all.. His mind was made for this and he does it the best.

Although (once again) Carmack said how disappointed he feels about having a "helper" with his last engine and "not seeing every last piece of code" for it yet after Doom 3's release.

He could just drive his ferrari aroun and not give a damn, but he cares. Most of his latest speeches have very big portions of them dedicated to mobile platforms - why? He thinks it might help the novice engine makers get their foot in the door, because he knows it's almost impossible otherwise with todays budgets and long cycles for cutting edge stuff..

[sjohnson]

ah, more talk of voxels.... cant believe we dont have them used more yet.

We use them in CT - Computed Tomography. That's how the radiologist can view the body in 3-D projections.

[Swatrecon_]

Does Carmack really program the engines all by his lonesome? No. He has people that work with him. You people are hailing him as some sort of god. He has a team to help him just like any other engine has a team working on it. Get over it.

[BrownTown]

Does Carmack really program the engines all by his lonesome? No. He has people that work with him. You people are hailing him as some sort of god. He has a team to help him just like any other engine has a team working on it. Get over it.

not back in the day he didn't when he...

You like FPS games? IF so you have Carmack to thank, even if he isn't on the cutting edge now what he did back then should be impressive enough to earn your respect.

[KoHaN69]

shouldnt the title be id tech 5? thats the next one, idtech4 was doom3-quake wars

[Syn.]

shouldnt the title be id tech 5? thats the next one, idtech4 was doom3-quake wars

He is talking about the next-next engine the one that is still in planning stages i.e iD Tech6.

not back in the day he didn't when he...

You like FPS games? IF so you have Carmack to thank, even if he isn't on the cutting edge now what he did back then should be impressive enough to earn your respect.

Time goes on, Cramack is now a project leader and others work under him. As i said before this is not Quake 1 era we have moved on a lot since then. I respect him when it comes to creating innovative new tech but when he taints all his work with his old-age-elitist geek attitude i loose all respect for him. Its always easy to talk about what could be or what can be, but most of the time things aren't the way they should be. He can do so much more but he doesn't because he thinks games are like :banana::banana::banana::banana:.

You don't say... Maybe that's because his part IS just the engine programming? So what does "everything else" have to do with him?

Maybe because his so quick to stick his nose in and give us his opinion about everything else?

His engines are generally untouchable at their time of release. Technologically speaking IDTech4(doom 3 engine) wiped the floor with both cryengine 1 and source. All 3 engines weren't touched much by other companies. Most companies stuck to Unreal engine 2/2.5x due to it's console abilities while the doom 3 engine was a bit too overzealous for consoles at the time.

iD Tech4 had only one impressive feature, its shadow tech. On all other parts it fell short compared to other engines out there. It was an OpenGL engine and yet it struggled to go multiplatform.

There's a good game in Quake 4, but it's buried under several layers of highly disappointing graphical performance issues.

What does that have to do with the engine programmer? Again, Carmack has nothing to do with the gameplay side, only the engine. Modders have proven that idtech4 was capable of whatever you really wanted to do gameplay wise...

What mods?

You haven't paid much attention to developer buzz, have you? When carmack speaks, the entire industry listens... idtech5 is presently the most promising engines coming from ANY studio, and it's not just because it's platform independent. It's because it pretty much removes the performance block from the art team!

Is that why he announced iD Tech5 at the all important game developer conference called Apple Worldwide Developers Conference?

Without anymore more quotes in this reply i just have to finish off with. iD Tech5 looks average and i don't really care about improved developer experience as i as the consumer, the person that will actually play the game, get very little benefit from it in terms of gameplay. Therefore if the benefits of the engine are not carried over to the consumer they are completely pointless. Which means that Carmock is one of most stupid geniuses currently working in game industry.



An example of an engine that is already available:
http://image.com.com/gamespot/images..._screen004.jpg

Source Engaget & Gamespot

[n-sanity]

F**k i hate people hating on someone they know so little about because of something another idiot said :|

Carmack, the godfather of the shooter (think doom and quake and castle wolfenstein...) as we know it today, doesn't oversee the artistic side of games (the story, art, etc) - he is the man that makes the engine.

Stick a 300hp v6 into a ferrari and you have a beautiful but relatively slow car. Stick a scramjet into a civic and you have carmack's creations (figuratively speaking ).

To clarify, the engine coming out next is tech5. The article is about tech6. That is the engine AFTER this one. The picture you see above is that of tech5.

Voxels are a nice duo together with rasterization because both are heavily reliant on pure mathematical computational power. These can be easily interfaced, which carmack knows. I'm looking forward to firing railguns at mirrors and hitting some poor dude behind me XD

And yes, i realize a railgun irl is a magnetic/pheumatic weapon which uses magnetism to accelerate ferrous projectiles, but in quake it fires a glowy green ray (well you can choose from 10 colours but green roxors teh soxors).

[Swatrecon_]

That's a picture of early UT3. Fail.

[DilTech]

Syn, the first doom 3 showing was at MACWORLD conference & expo...what's your point?

Them showing at an apple conference isn't too surprising, they've done it on a few occasions after all.

[Syn.]

F**k i hate people hating on someone they know so little about because of something another idiot said :|

Carmack, the godfather of the shooter (think doom and quake and castle wolfenstein...) as we know it today, doesn't oversee the artistic side of games (the story, art, etc) - he is the man that makes the engine.

Stick a 300hp v6 into a ferrari and you have a beautiful but relatively slow car. Stick a scramjet into a civic and you have carmack's creations (figuratively speaking ).

To clarify, the engine coming out next is tech5. The article is about tech6. That is the engine AFTER this one. The picture you see above is that of tech5.

Voxels are a nice duo together with rasterization because both are heavily reliant on pure mathematical computational power. These can be easily interfaced, which carmack knows. I'm looking forward to firing railguns at mirrors and hitting some poor dude behind me XD

And yes, i realize a railgun irl is a magnetic/pheumatic weapon which uses magnetism to accelerate ferrous projectiles, but in quake it fires a glowy green ray (well you can choose from 10 colours but green roxors teh soxors).

So you are saying he was the one that created the Quake\Doom games. But then you argue that he is never involved with anything else but the engines the game where made on. So tell me again why is he the godfather of shooters when he was not the one that created them? According to your arguments so far.

That's a picture of early UT3. Fail.

So? It still shows how much higher quality model's are compared to next gen iD tech that is yet to be released, unlike UE3. Which was just the closest example i had at the time.

Syn, the first doom 3 showing was at MACWORLD conference & expo...what's your point?

Them showing at an apple conference isn't too surprising, they've done it on a few occasions after all.

Because of what you said. Unless offcourse i am mistaken and conferences like WWDC are much more game developer oriented then ones like GDC. Show me proof of other developers bowing at Carmacks feet when he presented them with iD Tech5.

You haven't paid much attention to developer buzz, have you? When carmack speaks, the entire industry listens... idtech5 is presently the most promising engines coming from ANY studio, and it's not just because it's platform independent. It's because it pretty much removes the performance block from the art team!

Now if you don't mind to actually reply to all points that i posted so far like i have replied to yours.

[STEvil]

So you are saying he was the one that created the Quake\Doom games. But then you argue that he is never involved with anything else but the engines the game where made on. So tell me again why is he the godfather of shooters when he was not the one that created them? According to your arguments so far.

Syn: Carmack built the engines (graphics/rendering/AI mostly, sound and networking secondly). He had a hand in the content the engines ran as well but without Carmack there would have been no engine for Commander Keen, Wolfenstien, Doom, Quake, etc to run on. Nobody said he wasnt involved in their creation either, only that he was the creator of their base engines.

[strange|ife]

carmack know's his for sure, went over my head a couple of times in that article. To bad most of his games dont have good story though, they are memorable at least!

[mrkram]

Some people are really hating on Jon Carmack - meet the guy at quake con in real life and see if you have the same opinion of him. He really is a intriguing character - truly special. Everyone who doesn't have their facts straight shutup and do it better then JC. come back and talk after that. Contribute something rather then talking smack about someone who never did anything to hurt you.

[$a1Ty]

yeah i saw the vid when he launched id5, and was just blown away by how much of a true geek he really his, i love it

[Syn.]

Syn: Carmack built the engines (graphics/rendering/AI mostly, sound and networking secondly). He had a hand in the content the engines ran as well but without Carmack there would have been no engine for Commander Keen, Wolfenstien, Doom, Quake, etc to run on. Nobody said he wasnt involved in their creation either, only that he was the creator of their base engines.

So what does this mean then:

Carmack, the godfather of the shooter (think doom and quake and castle wolfenstein...) as we know it today, doesn't oversee the artistic side of games (the story, art, etc) - he is the man that makes the engine.

That's just one of the replies that state that he only makes the engines.

Some people are really hating on Jon Carmack - meet the guy at quake con in real life and see if you have the same opinion of him. He really is a intriguing character - truly special. Everyone who doesn't have their facts straight shutup and do it better then JC. come back and talk after that. Contribute something rather then talking smack about someone who never did anything to hurt you.

If you think i am "some people" then let me repeat something i said earlier. I respect Carmack for the things he comes up with none else has the balls or clue to create. However when he mixes his geekish opinion with his work all that he creates is misused and wasted away. That is when i loose all respect for him.

[THE JEW (RaVeN)]

If you think i am "some people" then let me repeat something i said earlier. I respect Carmack for the things he comes up with none else has the balls or clue to create. However when he mixes his geekish opinion with his work all that he creates is misused and wasted away. That is when i loose all respect for him.

The man's not allowed to have an opinion? Him having an opinion completely nullifies his work?


Wow.