Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Demophobe]

[rocklee]

Carmack is a fan of the API in DX9, not quite there with DX10. MS has done a great job progressive DirectX to this point where OpenGL, despite all its promises, have been languishing behind. Surprising considering that Carmack's games are usually evolved on OpenGL. He once demonstrated the key features of Quake3 and Doom3 at a Mac exhibition with Jobs trying to kick start the gaming community for Apple.

He is great at what he does but the competition is intense (see Crysis) and the attachment of video accelerators+games on the PC has become evident on Vista. In a sense the PC is becoming more console-like.

[Demophobe]

Well, I agree with JC on Vista; it's has almost nothing new to offer in terms of gaming. DX10 will be ready for WinXP; it has nothing to do with Vista.

Carmack has always done things first. Doom3 was a milestone and we have yet to see Crysis retail. All of that aside, Carmack is an industry giant who has constantly moved pc graphics forward and now has a very loud voice in who does what. Nvidia practically used his words to design themselves out of the whole 5xxx series mess.

I enjoy listening and reading his take on things because there really isn't a more well-informed opinion out there. Too many times the enire industy has moved in the exact direction he said they would or should and it's always a safe bet to put stock in his insights.

Interesting was his take on multi-core (parallel) computing. He is stating what I thought when the multi-cores were first introduced; the industry has hit a wall, be it financially or inspirationally (perhaps too FAB, power, die size) with single-core CPUs. Programming for a multi-core environment at this point is still in it's infancy (see Ars: Valve goes multi-core ) and it's implementation is actually quite thoughtless.

Valve chose to mix the easy way (offload entire subsystems on different cores) with the difficult way (a kind of division of tasks) and their method is seen as the most complex to date. Valve seems to be running with it, and it seems to be working out, but IMO, the idea of delegating cores to specific functions is really crude. I expect that Carmack's new project will deal with the multi-core environment in a more efficient and simpler way. Any move he makes away from OGL will be for these reasons. If he chooses to employ DX, it may be because MS is working hard on making tools for devs in a multi-core environment to ease programming. (Yes, MS sleeps with Intel in a money-stuffed bed called Vista.)

Anyhow, while there are some great engines being developed, not a one has Carmack behind it, and they will all play into DX, a.k.a., MS, the Big Fish. They will be listening to MS, whereas MS listens to Carmack. He pretty much singlehandedly brought gaming to a higher cinematic level with his insistence that lighting and shadowing were where Nvidia and ATI should start focusing their energies, and sure enough, pixel shaders and vertex shaders are now advertised right on the front of the box.

While I agree that he isn't alone in creating beautiful games with a lot of eye-candy, what he means to the industry goes way beyond that; he has become an elder spokesperson for the graphics/gaming industry as a whole and remains as level-headed, insightful, revolutionary and creative as ever.

[corroonb]

I don't doubt his technical aptitude but he's been basically making the same game since Doom. Doom 3 did nothing new and compared to Half-Life 2 was quite dissapointing. Carmack is limited in a creative sense when dealing with gameplay or story. Half-Life did more for gaming than Carmack or ID have. Doom 3 is a primative and old fashioned FPS, with rubbish AI and simple objectives and tools. Half-Life and Valve introduced a cinematic and immersive style to games which everyone has sjnce imitated. As I said he is mostly a graphics engine designer and does great work with graphics. But Epic with the Unreal engine and Valve with the Source engine have also made very important contributions. Coincidentally Half-Life 1 was built on a modified Quake 2 engine.

[rocklee]

Damn I wrote a long reply to Demo but accidently closed it! Doh!

[rocklee]

[Demophobe]

I'm not sure you understand what Carmack really does. His games are legends, ones that people still enjoy playing, and he simply creates new, improved versions of them with each new game engine he writes. He has created a franchise, built upon unarguably classic themes; people still love it, buy it, and look forward to the next one.

He has never said, promised or delivered anything besides what he likes to do. While some may see it as lacking innovation, I see it as building on a great franchise; a franchise that embodies the true essence of what a FPS is all about, from the guy who invented the genre. It's like accusing Ray Charles of never playing metal.

Q3A is a forever classic and in terms of flat-out deathmatch (gameplay and level design, it remains unparalleled, as also is the Doom 3 series. While I will agree that Doom 3 was limited in it's scope, it was nothing that Doom isn't. It was perfect Doom, as promised, but with a pioneering engine and state of the art technology behind it.

[corroonb]

[rocklee]

Easy Demo!

Corroonb had a bit there, I do agree that Q3 and subsequent releases were more about graphics than gameplay. Epic and Valve did have games with substance but I don't like either (UT was too colourful and the physics weren't as good as Q3, HL looked too "primitive" in my eyes).

I for one am an avid Q3 gamer. I haven't even touched counterstrike due to the fact that one can't respawn quickly compared to Q3

I'll respond tonight.

[corroonb]

[Demophobe]

Remember: Facts don't involve thinking.

Wolf3D was the first FPS (not exactly, but certainly the first featuring the elements of what we know as FPS today), set in as real an environment (a Nazi prison) as HL, albeit rendered only as well as computers could render in the day. Carmack made Wolf3D in 1992. Doom, 1994. Duke 3D, 1996.

"Doom clone". Google it.

Carmack made the genre a household word.

To say it's more difficult to render reality is again, ridiculous. Pure conjecture (though, from a creative standpoint, one could easily refute your claim), and not worth any more time than it takes to chuckle.

[corroonb]

Whatever...

[mindmetoo]

Who is the one who married the Serbian teenager?

[corroonb]

Romero, Romanian.