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[gofreak]

Preliminary info is popping up:

http://www.filerush.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=11114#11114

Full transcript should be up soon.

Re. next-gen consoles/x360:

- 3:30: Carmack not happy with Microsoft's stance on OpenGL vs. D3D
- 3:34: Carmack warns that Xbox 360 technology is not "as powerful as it sounds"
- 3:35: In comparison to high-speed AMD/Intel system, X360 runs about half as fast
- 3:36: Multi-processing isn't easy to work with despite access to powerful VGA cards
- 3:38: The "return" from multi-processing on X360 won't be as glorious as some originally thought
- 3:40: Parallel programming = tough, even on consoles; performance benefit vs. extra time
- 3:41: Questions use of multi-processors; thinks out-of-order processors would've been better for this generation; expects next-gen to be better for parallel processing

Seems he's not enamoured by the next-gen console CPUs, or X360's (which isn't wholly suprising given the comments of others, especially in the PC community - I'm assuming his issues would apply pretty much as equally to Cell/PS3, so I wonder if he touches on it at all). The specific comment comparing to Intel/AMD is surprising. His full comments should be interesting.

 

[Borys]

Preliminary info is popping up:

http://www.filerush.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=11114#11114

Full transcript should be up soon.

Seems he's not enamoured by the next-gen console CPUs, or X360's (which isn't wholly suprising given the comments of others, especially in the PC community - I'm assuming his issues would apply pretty much as equally to Cell/PS3). His full comments should be interesting.

B3D's wackos say he is working on DX9 engine for 360 right now, I hardly believe'em.

And to the fanboys:
say what you will but he always created masterpiece, state-of-the-art engines. Yes, UE3 is looking better but the hell Doom 3's engine will be 2 or 3 years OLD when first UE3 game hits the streets. No direct comparison. That's OLD technology vs NEW technology by PC standards (2 generations of GFX cards).

 

[celestial body]

- Carmack seemed to side with Microsoft more than Sony; seemed to "shrug" off Cell processor for design reasons
- "There will be the developers that go ahead and have a miserable time and do get good performance out of some of these multi-core approaches, and the Cell is worse than others in some respects here"

You're right - he doesn't think much of cell.

Shame that we didn't hear anything about their next game.

 

[Redbeard]

He's no fan of Cell either:

- Carmack seemed to side with Microsoft more than Sony; seemed to "shrug" off Cell processor for design reasons
- "There will be the developers that go ahead and have a miserable time and do get good performance out of some of these multi-core approaches, and the Cell is worse than others in some respects here"

 

[gofreak]

More:

# Much of the keynote speech was about Carmack's opinions of the next generation consoles, specifically the Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360 (the Revolution wasn't even mentioned). Carmack said that the original Xbox was easy to develop for thanks to solid dev tools and the Xbox 360 is the same way but that the PS3 will allow developers to get closer to the hardware performance. Carmack admitted that he has been spending some time working on developing id's next game on the Xbox 360 and said that their next internally created title will be released for the PC and consoles at or close to the same time.

# Carmack said that Sony is making some noise about having their PS3 be more of an open enviroment for development for making games much like the PC is. Carmack does not see Microsoft doing the same thing, however.

http://www.gamecloud.com/article.php?article_id=1068

He certainly doesn't seem to like the CPUs in the new systems. He's not unique in that, at least in some quarters. It basically does require a very different way of thinking than one would be used to on the PC. Probably doesn't help when you're trying to port a PC game, vs a from-scratch design (the latter, IMO, is really needed to make these CPUs work for you). I think that difference will certainly show, between games made for the consoles vs games made initially or primarily for PC before coming over.

 

[Kroole]

Yeah the thing is Carmack creats engine when they are actually needed. I mean, I don't see the big thing about producing an engine that can't be run until after 5 years or so when the HW has gotten fast enough.
My stance on the UE3 is that it's just a PR thingy, successful but still mostly PR. I wouldn't be surprised if the new engine id is developing for their new IP is going to trumph the UE3 one.

 

[VictimOfGrief]

Yeah, because John Carmack made such a great game called "Doom 3" his opinion matters in the industry!! :lol :lol :lol

EDIT: Back by popular demand!!

 

[Discordian_taco]

I went to Gamefest with the ID guy's and NO they are not working on a D3D engine for x360. Infact, all they did was write a wrapper for opengl to d3d calls. Expect performance to be crappy as any function call has huge overhead on the 360 hw. Thats right, wrappers to functions are deadly slow on 360...so much for virtual functions...why are they making us write in C++ again?

 

[element]

someone needs to mirror the keynote

 

[Sp3eD]

yes because Carmack made such a great fucking game called Doom 3, his opinion matters in the industry. :lol

ummm, Carmack made a fucking brilliant scalable engine for Doom 3 and is probably the greatest coder in the industry.

If there was ANY one person that I would take opinion to be truth in the game industry, it would be his.

 

[Kroole]

yes because Carmack made such a great fucking game called Doom 3, his opinion matters in the industry.

TOOL?

A. He does the engine. He's not a lvl designer, not an artist, not a musician.
B. The engine is more capabal than the HL2 one
C. Yes I think his opinion matters as there aren't many better programmers out there, which he has shown several times. Doom->Quake->Q2->Q3->Doom3. We're talking about graphics here.

 

[mediabiz]

2VictimOfGrief: Carmack created the industry, so shut up.

 

[Doom_Bringer]

he's not a fan of muti core cpu's! couple of years ago he was complaining about it and said that he wanted to focus on single core cpu's

I think he said that 2 years ago.

 

[Tain]

yes because Carmack made such a great fucking game called Doom 3, his opinion matters in the industry.

You honestly aren't arguing that Carmack isn't qualified to talk about programming, are you?

 

[Shompola]

MS should really support Open GL on Xbox 360. I can understand then not doing so but still a lot of potential is wasted IMO.

 

[Borys]

yes because Carmack made such a great fucking game called Doom 3, his opinion matters in the industry. :lol

:lol you are truly clueless and a moron.

Let's see:

Wolfenstein, Doom, Doom 2, Quake 1, Quake 2, Quake 3, Doom 3

Best engines created in their lifetime. Licensed to hell and back again. Spawned hundreds of clones.

Carmack INVENTED the FIRST PERSON SHOOTER thingy, you know. That Halo game? Rings any bell? That's FPS.

Hate the Doom 3 *game* but don't be so fucking blind on its technical merits.

Carmack's a genius coder - a genius engine not *game* designer.

He influences graphics card MANUFACTURERS and DESIGNERS, driver coders and other engine coders.

His word IS important in the 3D industry.

 

[element]

MS should really support Open GL on Xbox 360. I can understand then not doing so but still a lot of potential is wasted IMO.

why DX9/WGF is just as good, just not open sourced. Most shaders, which really make the difference aren't open sourced, but fairly easy to write.

John is probably talking about coding directly to the metal, which Sony is fine with and jumping over the established API to help developers. MS wants all developers to do stuff the same way.

 

[Shompola]

why DX9/WGF is just as good, just not open sourced. Most shaders, which really make the difference aren't open sourced, but fairly easy to write.

True that. Just saying that more options would be better for developers.

 

[sangreal]

I went to Gamefest with the ID guy's and NO they are not working on a D3D engine for x360. Infact, all they did was write a wrapper for opengl to d3d calls. Expect performance to be crappy as any function call has huge overhead on the 360 hw. Thats right, wrappers to functions are deadly slow on 360...so much for virtual functions...why are they making us write in C++ again?

Well, his comment seems to indicate that he is working on a D3D engine for 360

Could you explain a few of the technical reasons for sticking with OGL instead of D3D9? Specifically with your previous mentions of considering moving to D3D because of shadow buffers, and the lateness of a better render-to-texture extension.

John Carmack, id Software - "I'm happy working with D3D9 on the Xbox 360 platform. We did seriously consider going D3D only on the PC, but there are still some mitigating factors. OGL will probably still be slightly higher performance on the PC pre-longhorn. ATI and Nvidia both still like the idea of being able to do more focused optimization work in OGL. We also still care about the Mac and Linux platforms."

but the comment is pretty vague and open to interpretation

 

[Pimpbaa]

He is sounding just like the other pc developers who don't wanna adapt to multi processing. It is the wave of the future, for consoles and PCs. Sure a super powerful cpu might be more appealing than multiple lesser powered cpus, but it just isn't becoming anymore feasible anymore.

 

[dorio]

MS should really support Open GL on Xbox 360. I can understand then not doing so but still a lot of potential is wasted IMO.

Why when they can devote all their efforts on making direct3d run well.

 

[Particle Physicist]

He's no fan of Cell either:

the rumors were true!!! Carmack on revolution!!!!!!

YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST!

 

[gofreak]

It's interesting that he has little love for extra physics chips too.

Keeping everything on one core/chip if you want performance to jump is problematic to say the least. I think he's preaching about this on the one hand, but on the other hand he knows he'll have to get his hands dirty if he wants to keep pace with others that embrace this approach fully, on the console side at least. Even in PC-land, things will get very multi-core in the next 5 years, hopefully beyond dual-core.

 

[Discordian_taco]

Well, his comment seems to indicate that he is working on a D3D engine for 360

To do a port and a complete rewrite are completely seperate things. Think of it as "porting" the opengl implementation to d3d by simply wrapping around the opengl calls. In other words nothing special will be done to take advantage of the d3d api. Of course I went to gamefest with these guys in July so they may very well have made some design changes, but given John's track record I highly doubt it.

 

[Open Source]

What PC developers have to say about programming for consoles isn't particularly useful information (see also: Gabe Newell).

The big boys have been programming for multi-processor systems since the Saturn. Leave the heavy lifting to them and go back to your 5-year projects on the PC.

 

[Tain]

- 4:48: Carmack sold his Ferrari F50 recently; using BMW X5; wife using Z8

Good thing this news got out. I can sleep tonight.

 

[blackadde]

He is sounding just like the other pc developers who don't wanna adapt to multi processing. It is the wave of the future, for consoles and PCs. Sure a super powerful cpu might be more appealing than multiple lesser powered cpus, but it just isn't becoming anymore feasible anymore.

Carmack wrote a SMP engine in Q3 back in 1999. Granted it wasn't very stable, but he has some experience dealing with multiple cores.

 

[krypt0nian]

So PS3 and x360 suck ass then?

Next gen off!

 

[dorio]

Every time a multi-cpu design comes out, there is alot of bitching. It happen with the Saturn and the ps2 and now its happening with the new consoles. When will get to a point where they just say to hell with it, I'm just going to have to get my hands dirty.

 

[Discordian_taco]

What PC developers have to say about programming for consoles isn't particularly useful information

Exactly, as a console dev nothing much is really changing on my side. Console devs have always had to adopt to the machine. PC guys will always have a hard time because they just are not working directly with hardware at such a low level. As a developer you can fight your machine and right your code your way and have lack luster performance (1st gen ps2) or you can learn to work with the machine and make kick ass titles (Ratchet and clank series, god of war, etc). Its all about knowing your hardware and working with it. PC guys will always be scared of consoles, its a different world.

 

[Redbeard]

Carmack admitted that he has been spending some time working on developing id's next game on the Xbox 360 and said that their next internally created title will be released for the PC and consoles at or close to the same time.

Is he talking about Quake 4 here? Quake Wars?

 

[tenchir]

Carmack INVENTED the FIRST PERSON SHOOTER thingy, you know. That Halo game? Rings any bell? That's FPS.

Actually, the first FPS is Maze War(developed in 1973). Not Wolfenstein or Doom.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maze_War

Maze War (also known as The Maze Game, Maze Wars or simply Maze) was the first networked, 3D multi-user first-person shooter game. Maze first brought us the concept of online players as eyeball "avatars" chasing each other around in a maze). From its humble 1973-1974 origins on the Imlacs PDS-1 at the NASA Ames Research Center in California, to its life in project MAC at MIT, on Xerox Altos and "D* Machines" running on early ethernet, to versions ported to Mac, NeXT and PalmOS, Maze started it all. Today's massively multiuser 3D games owe a great debt to Maze and those who created and kept on porting it to new systems for the past 30 years. Maze is the reason why nobody can claim ownership of the rights to the invention of a multi-user 3D Cyberspace and is another of the major gifts to innovation made by early net pioneers.

Carmack did not invented FPS, but his games makes it popular.

 

[Doom_Bringer]

Is he talking about Quake 4 here? Quake Wars?

probably a new game. Quake 4 is being developed by Raven, dunno about Quake wars though.

 

[Datawhore]

He is sounding just like the other pc developers who don't wanna adapt to multi processing. It is the wave of the future, for consoles and PCs. Sure a super powerful cpu might be more appealing than multiple lesser powered cpus, but it just isn't becoming anymore feasible anymore.

The difference is multicore processors on PC will still support out-of-order exectution, so it will still be much easier to get good performance in 2007 on a multicore PC than on Cell.

Be that as it may, all next-gen hardware (console & PC included) will kick all kinds of ass once properly harnessed. They simply require different approaches.

 

[Sinatar]

Is he talking about Quake 4 here? Quake Wars?

Considering that id isn't developing either of those titles I would say no.

 

[Guy LeDouche]

PC devs are going to have to get over the whole "WAAAAHH MULTICORE" drama.

and they will. They will take longer than most console devs, especially devs with deep PS2 knowledge.

 

[gofreak]

The difference is multicore processors on PC will still support out-of-order exectution, so it will still be much easier to get good performance in 2007 on a multicore PC than on Cell.

True, although I'm not sure if PC chips will have matched Cell in some regards even by then, but this is 2005 and you can't put 8 OOE chips on a die

The thought is that these small simple in-order cores should be as good for many key workloads in games as full cores, if properly harnessed. Thus if you want to maximise potential performance, the sacrifice of OOE in favour of many cores is worthwhile. If your priority was ease-of-development, then sure, OOE would be more appealing.

The thing is, Sony/IBM et al know and can safely bet that game devs will meet their challenge and reap the reward. Maybe not all, and maybe not immediately, but it will be done and those games will SHINE. To do the things those games will would simply be impossible on one or two OOE chips today. In effect they're making hardware for the cream of the crop, for the best possible outcome, and not making any sacrifices. That may turn off some devs, but eventually the "average" will rise to a reasonably decent level (as it did on PS2, imo). And the cream of the crop should be simply exceptional, and I think they'll make it worthwhile.

 

[Datawhore]

The thing is, Sony/IBM et al know and can safely bet that game devs will meet their challenge and reap the reward. Maybe not all, and maybe not immediately, but it will be done and those games will SHINE. To do the things those games will would simply be impossible on one or two OOE chips today. In effect they're making hardware for the cream of the crop, for the best possible outcome, and not making any sacrifices. That may turn off some devs, but eventually the "average" will rise to a reasonably decent level (as it did on PS2, imo). And the cream of the crop should be simply exceptional, and I think they'll make it worthwhile.

The opportunity to make boatloads of cash selling the next GTA or Halo to the console horde will make sure of that.

 

[Kleegamefan]

yes because Carmack made such a great fucking game called Doom 3, his opinion matters in the industry. :lol

You are out of your mind if you think JCs words dont carry weight in the gaming industry...

Let's see:

Wolfenstein, Doom, Doom 2, Quake 1, Quake 2, Quake 3, Doom 3

Best engines created in their lifetime. Licensed to hell and back again. Spawned hundreds of clones.

Carmack INVENTED the FIRST PERSON SHOOTER thingy, you know. That Halo game? Rings any bell? That's FPS.

Hate the Doom 3 *game* but don't be so fucking blind on its technical merits.

Carmack's a genius coder - a genius engine not *game* designer.

He influences graphics card MANUFACTURERS and DESIGNERS, driver coders and other engine coders.

His word IS important in the 3D industry.

Unlike you, borys has a clue...

Ask ATI and nVidia what they think about Carmack, and you will get a *small* idea of how influential he is to 3D gaming..

 

[Wunderchu]

True, although I'm not sure if PC chips will have matched Cell in some regards even by then, but this is 2005 and you can't put 8 OOE chips on a die

The thought is that these small simple in-order cores should be as good for many key workloads in games as full cores, if properly harnessed. Thus if you want to maximise potential performance, the sacrifice of OOE in favour of many cores is worthwhile. If your priority was ease-of-development, then sure, OOE would be more appealing.

The thing is, Sony/IBM et al know and can safely bet that game devs will meet their challenge and reap the reward. Maybe not all, and maybe not immediately, but it will be done and those games will SHINE. To do the things those games will would simply be impossible on one or two OOE chips today. In effect they're making hardware for the cream of the crop, for the best possible outcome, and not making any sacrifices. That may turn off some devs, but eventually the "average" will rise to a reasonably decent level (as it did on PS2, imo). And the cream of the crop should be simply exceptional, and I think they'll make it worthwhile.

I agree regarding your comments on PS2 programmers probably being able to get the most out of the new hardware... I seriously think that the developers who have worked their buts off tapping every ounce of power from the PS2 hardware, will have a large advantage when they start to really get into their programming for the PS3 …..

in fact, I have a theory that the devs saying that PS3 & Xbox 360 are similar in power are those who have not had extensive experience programming for PS2 .. those hardcore PS2 programmers are the most likely ones, IMO to say the PS3 is more powerful than the Xbox 360 ............

 

[deadhorse32]

probably a new game. Quake 4 is being developed by Raven, dunno about Quake wars though.

Yeah but someone need to port the engine to the X360

The art, the gameplay, the music, .... Raven

Porting the Doom3 Engine to the X360 .... could be Carmack

That's would explain why he is bitching about the lack of OpenGL in the X360.

 

[sangreal]

That's would explain why he is bitching about the lack of OpenGL in the X360.

He isn't talking about OpenGL in the X360. He is talking about Microsoft's stance on OpenGL in Windows Vista

(atleast that is my guess, not having access to a full transcript)

 

[inpHilltr8r]

You are out of your mind if you think JCs words dont carry weight in the PC gaming industry...

Fixed.

(edit: ok, that's not entirely fair, he gets the respect, but his appreciation of console hardware is understandably limited)

 

[bishoptl]

yes because Carmack made such a great fucking game called Doom 3, his opinion matters in the industry. :lol

Stupid posts require appropriate tags.

 

[deadhorse32]

He isn't talking about OpenGL in the X360. He is talking about Microsoft's stance on OpenGL in Windows Vista

(atleast that is my guess, not having access to a full transcript)

Anyway somebody need to rewrite the OpenGL gfx engine to DirectX and rewrite x86ASM to PowerPC ASM

But you are probably right too about Vista Carmack has been a big supporter of OpenGL

 

[Kleegamefan]

Exactly, as a console dev nothing much is really changing on my side. Console devs have always had to adopt to the machine. PC guys will always have a hard time because they just are not working directly with hardware at such a low level. As a developer you can fight your machine and right your code your way and have lack luster performance (1st gen ps2) or you can learn to work with the machine and make kick ass titles (Ratchet and clank series, god of war, etc). Its all about knowing your hardware and working with it. PC guys will always be scared of consoles, its a different world.

Can I respectfully ask you where you are working at and, if its possible, ask if you are working on any of the next gen consoles??

The more devs we have on this board the merrier

Fixed.

(edit: ok, that's not entirely fair, he gets the respect, but his appreciation of console hardware is understandably limited)

Yeah...that edit is more than fair

 

[gofreak]

Yeah but someone need to port the engine to the X360

The art, the gameplay, the music, .... Raven

Porting the Doom3 Engine to the X360 .... could be Carmack

That's would explain why he is bitching about the lack of OpenGL in the X360.

It's interesting to see how this goes.

MS wraps OGL around D3D in Vista (poorer performance).

iD wraps D3D around OGL in their engine for X360 (poorer performance).

Seems like natural justice perhaps, from Carmack's perspective

 

[Goreomedy]

Stupid posts require appropriate tags.

And may you never love in vain
And in my heart you will remain
Forever dumb, forever dumb
Forever dumb, forever dumb
Forever dumb
Forever dumb...

 

[Kleegamefan]

I agree regarding your comments on PS2 programmers probably being able to get the most out of the new hardware... I seriously think that the developers who have worked their buts off tapping every ounce of power from the PS2 hardware, will have a large advantage when they start to really get into their programming for the PS3 …..

in fact, I have a theory that the devs saying that PS3 & Xbox 360 are similar in power are those who have not had extensive experience programming for PS2 .. those hardcore PS2 programmers are the most likely ones, IMO to say the PS3 is more powerful than the Xbox 360 ............

I totally agree with you....in fact, one of the developers who rave about PS3 power the most is EA (EGM mag alluded to this) who have EXTENSIVE PlayStation 2 development experience..

You may be on to something there....

 

[Guy LeDouche]

I totally agree with you....in fact, one of the developers who rave about PS3 power the most is EA (EGM mag alluded to this) who have EXTENSIVE PlayStation 2 development experience..

You may be on to something there....

The nice people at Team Kojima are going to do some mind-blowing shit. I know its sooo far away, but MGS4 is already making my front pantal region moist.