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John Carmack Keynote

Carmack mentioned 'working on all next gen platforms' several times, but each time he was being specific he only mentioned ps3 and xbox360. I'm sure he's interested in revolution too but he (like everyone else) has no idea what to expect from it. I found it awkward nobody on Quakecon asked him about it either, after the interview.

Anyway, he didn't really like the hype around the next-gen consoles. I followed the live stream, here's what I remember.

The next-gen consoles are about as powerful as current high-end pc's, but their cpu power is current PC processor / 2. Yes I know.. out of order execution, but in the end game engines make heavy use of that. Carmack mentions the nextgen consoles cpu's being useful more for raytracing / ai and that sort of stuff, but for games it isn't really that useful. It might take until the next cycle of consoles before developers are a bit more comfortable with multi-core processors.

Uh it comes down to: the cpu's aren't exactly manufactered with games in mind
 
Look JC will get respect from me on the PC side, yet not on the console side. If he and the Half-Life guy want to bitch on complain about next-gen hardware then sit and watch hungry devs fly past you.

Just because they made beautiful games on the PC this gen doesn't mean they can speak out against next-gen console's choice of hardware and be right. Hungry devs like Blizzard (PGR3), Epic (Gears of War), Gureilla (Killzone), DigiGuys (WarDevil), Bandai (Gundam), and many more will spank the pants off of Half-Life and Doom games.

Keep crying, I don't care I spend my money on hungry devs. Even EA has a devs that make next-gen worthy (Just watch the Fight Night 3 demo). And JC said that games will cost $100 million dollars. Yeah Right.

My new slogan for PC devs might be. STOP CRYING!! STOP CRYING!! IF YOU DON'T YOUR NEXT-GEN GAMES WILL BE DYING!! :lol
 
celestial body said:
- 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.
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Exactly. The graphics on the PS3 and 360 will both be great so I don't care about any of this. Just announce some fucking games already!
 
Guy LeDouche said:
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.
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:D

I don't even want to think about the level of graphic excellence Team Kojima could achieve on PS3...

MGS4=Teh best grfx evar??

mckmas8808 said:
Look JC will get respect from me on the PC side, yet not on the console side. If he and the Half-Life guy want to bitch on complain about next-gen hardware then sit and watch hungry devs fly past you.

Just because they made beautiful games on the PC this gen doesn't mean they can speak out against next-gen console's choice of hardware and be right. Hungry devs like Blizzard (PGR3), Epic (Gears of War), Gureilla (Killzone), DigiGuys (WarDevil), Bandai (Gundam), and many more will spank the pants off of Half-Life and Doom games.

Keep crying, I don't care I spend my money on hungry devs. Even EA has a devs that make next-gen worthy (Just watch the Fight Night 3 demo). And JC said that games will cost $100 million dollars. Yeah Right.

My new slogan for PC devs might be. STOP CRYING!! STOP CRYING!! IF YOU DON'T YOUR NEXT-GEN GAMES WILL BE DYING!! :lol
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Yeah, see, thats the thing.....I hear all this X360/PS3 doom and glume stuff from people like Gabe, Adrien and now JC....yet *most * of the realtime X360/PS3 stuff I have seen have been just fucking jawdropping...moreover, there seems to be a good amount of developers getting good results (sofar) from next gen consoles NOW....I mean if even EA(fight night) and Bandai (Mobile Suit Gundam) show realtime stuff that some mistake for CG, then I have to call bullshit on the whole notion these next gen consoles are inferior to PCs graphic wise...

If that were *really* true, Gears of War (a first gen game, no less) wouldn't be comming on X360 and a good looking UT 2007 demo wouldn't even be possible on PS3, no?
 
Apenheul said:
The next-gen consoles are about as powerful as current high-end pc's, but their cpu power is current PC processor / 2. Yes I know.. out of order execution, but in the end game engines make heavy use of that.
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His game engine. And PC engines generally. Console-specific engines made for in-order processors are nothing new - AFAIK, OOE is the exception rather than the rule in console-land.

Apenheul said:
Uh it comes down to: the cpu's aren't exactly manufactered with games in mind
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Or his engine isn't exactly manufactured with console CPUs in mind ;) Mapping software to hardware is a reality with consoles, always has been. He can't expect his PC-centric engine to exhibit the same behaviour on a different platform.

The performance is there to be reaped if the dev puts the investment in - performance that simply wouldn't be possible on current PC processors (more than the 2x difference he claims in the opposite direction too). I appreciate not all can do that - iD isn't in a position to do that now with deadlines looming. But perhaps in time. Console's, and console developers, also benefit more in terms of accumulated experience, which may make things easier - you're dealing with the same fixed hardware for 5+ years, so over time, over multiple titles, you build and build.
 
gofreak said:
Or his engine isn't exactly manufactured with console CPUs in mind ;) Mapping software to hardware is a reality with consoles, always has been. He can't expect his PC-centric engine to exhibit the same behaviour on a different platform.

The performance is there to be reaped if the dev puts the investment in - performance that simply wouldn't be possible on current PC processors (more than the 2x difference he claims in the opposite direction too). I appreciate not all can do that - iD isn't in a position to do that now with deadlines looming. But perhaps in time.
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True dat...

I could only imagine the kind of things a brilliant coder like JC could do on a next gen console (take your pick) if he forgot about PC development for just one generation of his engines...

The fact he gets so much performance with his engine on an open platform like the PC just makes me wonder what crazy action he could perform on a closed platform.....I would buy the console his game ran on just to see that....
 
What another PC developer has to say:

Finger: The Xbox 360 is quite a unique piece of hardware when compared to modern PCs, since it basically has three CPUs working at all times inside a single chip. What challenges does this multiple-core architecture create for Bethesda and what is it like working with the Xbox 360 versus the PC?

Todd Howard: We see it more of an opportunity than a challenge. Multi-threaded code is not a new concept, you can do it on the PC easily too. But having a console now, that takes advantage of that, and is built for speed around that, it really opens up the possibilities of what you can do. 360 is a great system with great dev tools. We love it.
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http://www.telefragged.com/interviews/oblivion/
 
Sp3eD said:
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.
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but he said something bad about 360 :lol
 
As great a person/influence/coder/creator/rockstar Carmack is to the world of PC gaming...

mckmas8808 said:
Wake me up when a dev like Hideo talks about next gen hardware.
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This ^^ pretty much sums up my feelings. For me this console generation truely arrived when I popped in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty for the first time. I had played a lot of pretty games on both the Dreamcast and Playstation 2 before then, but none had the same kind of impressive scope that MGS2 did.

A lot of people used to piss and moan about how difficult the PS2 was going to be to develope for, hell Lorne Lanning and Oddworld Inhabitants jumped ship because of this, but do you hear anyone griping about it now? There's most certainly gonna be a learning curve to the hardware, but then Kojima and crew or someone else will show everyone how it's supposed to be done.
 
# 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.
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That's not what I heard.
Unless he's talking about using open-source toolchains, which isn't really making the environment open by itself.

Anyway, the other side of the coin of making development more like a PC is to take away the biggest advantage consoles have over PC - being able to work close to hardware. If that happens, he'll be right on all the doom and gloom predictions about performance, but not because it would be any fault of hardware...
 
I hope its not an hour and a half of fuck the next-gen consoles. Really for Doom/Prey lovers this is the shizznitt. But for me a console only gamer I could care less. Sorry.
 
Just finished watching it. He seems pretty happy with Microsoft's development tools for X360. I think he was more annoyed by the trend of frivolous physics processing than anything else. The only thing he really asked of hardware devs was that they improved virtual texturing.
 
It's funny how he bitches about how the marketing people are directing the technology (eg. every X360 game running in HD mode.) He says he'd actually prefer to run in lower res, with more effects and higher FPS. I can't say I disagree with him, although maybe it's because I don't have an HD set. :lol
 
>>>I'm amazed at how little love Carmack gets on GAF. :(

I think people just dont like what he is saying ;)<<<

Love the guy, but he just came across as a pussy this year. Console programmers are going to shove his comments back where they came from, and harder than that horse in WA.
 
blackadde said:
I'm amazed at how little love Carmack gets on GAF. :(
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As much cred and influence as Carmack has...

I think I'll have to throw in my lot with the likes of MS and Ken Kutaragi here...

at least in terms of knowing how to make uber console hardware.

He might have his preferences, but I think ultimately opinions like the ones expressed by Carmack will be forgotten while we savor the graphics of the next gen consoles for a good few years...
 
Pimpbaa said:
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.
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Before you talk too much you should look at Carmack's history. He has eexperimented with multi-processing alot and even used SMP in a retail engine. He just feels that the complexity/performance ratio isn't good enough to warrant multi-processor. That coupled with an in order chip and the crappiness of compilers generating good code for them and you have his statements today.

He is not talking out of his ass and he's probably the the one and only mostly PC developer who has a right to talk trash about next generation consoles because of his track record.
 
Guy LeDouche said:
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.
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Uhh. Alot of PS2 developers RIGHT NOW wouldn't know what a pixel or vertex shader was if it bit them in the ass. Every developer is has a bit of fear about going to a different platform...
 
Quake 3 Arena had multi-processor support before the Playstation 2 was even released, did it not? You still think it's an issue of the guy "not wanting to adapt"? C'mon....at the end of the day there's going to be a hard way to do things and an easier way to do things. It's not always a matter of adaptation.

I downloaded the video and it's an NSV file. What the hell is this? Video? Audio? How do I play it?
 
border said:
Quake 3 Arena had multi-processor support before the Playstation 2 was even released, did it not? You still think it's an issue of the guy "not wanting to adapt"? C'mon....at the end of the day there's going to be a hard way to do things and an easier way to do things. It's not always a matter of adaptation.

I downloaded the video and it's an NSV file. What the hell is this? Video? Audio? How do I play it?
Click to expand...
Protip: NSV stands for Nullsoft Streaming Video.
 
ddkawaii said:
Uhh. Alot of PS2 developers RIGHT NOW wouldn't know what a pixel or vertex shader was if it bit them in the ass. Every developer is has a bit of fear about going to a different platform...
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Something tells me the likes of Polyphony D and Kojima Prod. aren't trembling in fear over the prospect of finally having programmable shaders at their disposal. :)

Anyhoo I thought this was one of the more interesting snippets of Carmack's...

Switching back to Sony he believes they have made a mistake in believing that graphics have gone far enough, and that AI and physics should be the focus. He believes that in gaming AI and physics have been cutting edge, but graphically he can still not do what he wants to improve the gameplay experience. He does not expect improved physics to improve gameplay much as it is a very CPU intensive process, and the physics you see will be non interactive that will not be core to the gaming experience. Even if much more realistic physics is incorporated the gameplay will not improve enough. He would rather see a full 60 frames per second on the next gen consoles than see this focus on physics.
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Outside of the 60fps bit (which can improve gameplay) I think he's just being a graphic whore here. :) As someone who admittedly only plays games (rather than write code for them) I think its safe to judge that AI and Physics at this stage are in their infancy compared to the cutting edge of real time visuals. And they certainly have a lot more to gain toward innovating and improving gameplay than further sophistication in rendering. I dont see Sony pointing their R&D guns with Cell at these problems as a bad thing at all, even if they dont hit their intended mark.
 
Outside of the 60fps bit (which can improve gameplay) I think he's just being a graphic whore here. As someone who admittedly only plays games (rather than write code for them) I still feel its safe to say AI and Physics are in their infancy at this stage compared to the real time visuals. And they certainly have a lot more to gain toward innovating and improving gameplay than further sophistication in rendering.
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I agree and that is one of the reasons Doom 3 failed to impress a lot of people. Also, to me there is a little sour grapes in there over the HAVOK engine's "frivolous physics" :lol
 
ddkawai said:
Uhh. Alot of PS2 developers RIGHT NOW wouldn't know what a pixel or vertex shader was if it bit them in the ass.
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I think it's pretty safe to say that most devs don't wear blinders on - anyone that wants to stay competitive in software industry has to make an effort to continually educate themselves.

Every developer is has a bit of fear about going to a different platform...
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I disagree, most people I know in the field(including myself) like playing around with new toys, so we'd be excited rather then fearfull of something new.
That said most will also find plenty of things to bitch about on each new platform, but that's a normal part of any adjustment period. It's a vicious cycle of love hate relationships :D
 
Switching back to Sony he believes they have made a mistake in believing that graphics have gone far enough, and that AI and physics should be the focus. He believes that in gaming AI and physics have been cutting edge, but graphically he can still not do what he wants to improve the gameplay experience.
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Considering how weak the AI in id's in-house titles has generally been, Carmack's probably the last person who should be making remarks like that. As visually impressive as they are, his games leave more room for improvement in the FPS AI department than most. :p
 
i thought doom3's a.i was perfect on the hard setting but then again i didn't expect the demons to act like a covenant or a combine soldier. it played exactly like an old school shooter should have and was obviously a design decision.
 
Anyone who calls Carmack a PC developer is seriously ignorant. Nobody's written for more platforms than he has.

And I guarantee you that the next six months he spends futzing with the 360 will result in more than what other devs will come up with in the entire lifecycle. When he complains that a lot of the processing power won't get used, it's because years of experience (his own and academics as well) back him up. There's some things that are able to run fully parallel, but game code isn't one of those things. There's too many interdependencies. Like he said, the game-specific application that can best be made parallel is rendering-- and there's already a separate processor for that.
 
How many of you critiquing Carmack actually watched the video? And how many are just harping about out-of-context, bulleted summary points? Something tells me I won't get an answer, but it's worth pointing out where your judgements are coming from.

His comments about performance, AI, and physics are a good deal more justified in the video than in this half baked Cliff Notes version. This is already out of control...by tomorrow we are going to have people thinking he said that X360 and PS3 are half as powerful as a PC. I know these fansites are trying to make a nice digest for ADD-afflicted FPS nuts, but they kind of do Carmack a disservice by quoting controversial stuff and then omitting his logic and motive for saying the controversial stuff. It's not even that controversial -- it just looks that way when you totally remove the justification for his conclusions.

For the record, I've never heard anyone make a convincing plea for better physics in games. Well other than simulation games, of course. As to why Carmack thinks the current emphasis on physics is unnecessary, well just watch and learn ;)
 
tenchir said:
Actually, the first FPS is Maze War(developed in 1973). Not Wolfenstein or Doom.

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

Carmack did not invented FPS, but his games makes it popular.
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Maze War is NOTHING like the modern FPS. If anything, it is the precursor to "corridor, one frame at a time" games like Legacy of the Ancients and Shining the Holy Ark.

The only thing they have in common is that they are both first-person 3d games.

Heck, even Space Harrier could fall into the category if you stretch the definition that far.

Wolfenstein 3-D IS the original FPS. No ifs, ands or buts. A static 3d view is not an FPS. It requires the ability to move around in true 3D, etc. Heck, it's not even a shooter as you can only attack one enemy at a time.

And we're not even talking about Carmack's earlier games like Hovertank 3D and Catacomb 3D.

From wikipedia...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-person_shooter

"A first-person shooter (FPS) is a computer or video game where the player's on-screen view of the game world simulates that of the character, and there is a high percentage of combat involved. According to this simple definition, a game like Battlezone, or many flight simulators would be included. However, in the early 1990s, the term came to define a very specific genre of game with a first-person view, almost always centered around the act of aiming and shooting with multiple styles of weapons and limited ammunition."
 
CaptainABAB said:
Maze War is NOTHING like the modern FPS. If anything, it is the precursor to "corridor, one frame at a time" games like Legacy of the Ancients and Shining the Holy Ark.

The only thing they have in common is that they are both first-person 3d games.

Heck, even Space Harrier could fall into the category if you stretch the definition that far.

Wolfenstein 3-D IS the original FPS. No ifs, ands or buts. A static 3d view is not an FPS. It requires the ability to move around in true 3D, etc. Heck, it's not even a shooter as you can only attack one enemy at a time.

And we're not even talking about Carmack's earlier games like Hovertank 3D and Catacomb 3D.

From wikipedia...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-person_shooter

"A first-person shooter (FPS) is a computer or video game where the player's on-screen view of the game world simulates that of the character, and there is a high percentage of combat involved. According to this simple definition, a game like Battlezone, or many flight simulators would be included. However, in the early 1990s, the term came to define a very specific genre of game with a first-person view, almost always centered around the act of aiming and shooting with multiple styles of weapons and limited ammunition."
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I wish I still have the issue Computer Games magazine with the 3-4 page article about Maze War. According to CGM, it's the first FPS. They even discuss what's the definition of a FPS too.

Oh yeah, about that wikipedia page you posted, you should read the whole thing... such as the "History" section:

History
The first-person shooter, as the phrase is currently understood, emerged in the early 1990s. However, the modern genre is a logical extension of earlier games, particularly those involving 3D graphics. While these early games are not First-Person Shooters in the modern sense, many of them come very close in gameplay terms, and many others contained ideas which later influenced the modern genre.

Beginnings

It is not clear exactly when the first FPS was created. There are two claimants, Spasim and Maze War. The uncertainty about which was first stems from the lack of any accurate dates for the development of Maze War — even its developer cannot remember exactly. In contrast, the development of Spasim is much better documented, and the dates more certain.

The initial development of Maze War probably occurred in the summer of 1973. A single player made their way through a simple maze of corridors rendered using fixed perspective. Multiplayer capabilities, with players attempting to shoot each other, were probably added later in 1973 (two machines linked via a serial connection) and in the summer of 1974 (fully networked).

Spasim was originally developed in the spring of 1974. Players moved through a wire-frame 3D universe, with gameplay resembling the 2D game Empire. Graphically, Spasim lacked even hidden line removal, but did feature online multiplayer over the world-wide university-based PLATO network.
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Maze Wars > Doom > Quake > Modern FPS

Modern FPS are just logical extension of Doom/Wolfenstein, which are logical extension of Maze Wars. Just because it doesn't resemble(of have features of) modern FPS doesn't mean it's not a FPS, what other Genre does it fit into?
 
border said:
As to why Carmack thinks the current emphasis on physics is unnecessary, well just watch and learn ;)
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Except that he's somewhat contradicting his own words with that.
He asserts early on that improving visuals will work to improve the game experience - and physics has TONS of uses for improving the eyecandy that haven't been seen in games yet.

There's of course the other off-chance use for non-conventional games with play-mechanics designed around physical interaction, but yeah, those are the games mainstream never cares for and critics usually rave about.
 
In terms of Carmack....

- first person to do a side-scrolling platform game on the PC (Commander Keen). No one else at the time could duplicate what super mario could do on the Nintendo. All platform games at the time were one screen at a time on the PC.

- Wolf3D - was there anything else like it at the time?

- Same for Doom, Quake, etc.

- First one to add networked deatchmatch - and he coded that himself.

His focus was always on the engines for PC FPS games - but he could still squeeze considerable performance out of x86 unlike anyone else. To call him a "PC developer" shows a good amount of ignorance.

He has ported the games to multiple OS himself at times(Dos, Windows, Linux, Mac) and hell, he even has experience with PowerPC already....

"So, I got a mac and started developing on it. My first weekend of
effort had QuakeArena limping along while held together with duct
tape, but weekend number two had it properly playable, and weekend
number three had it brought up to full feature compatability. I
still need to do some platform specific things with odd configurations
like multi monitor and addon controlers, but basically now its
just a matter of compiling on the mac to bring it up to date."

"As some of you may know, a port of Quake was demod at apple’s WWDC. Here is the full info:

A couple weeks ago, I got an email saying: “Hey! We heard you are porting quake for WWDC!".
I replied: “Uh, first I’ve heard of it… I was planning on supporting Quake 2 on it late this year…”

Well, I stole some time and went ahead and did it (mostly last weekend – running tight!). I’m quite happy with how it turned out, and I’m glad it made it for the demos.

It is actually a port of the current research QuakeWorld-merging-into-Quake2 codebase, so it only plays network games at the moment.

It is running through 24 bit display postscript, and doesn’t have the assembly language compiled in, so don’t believe anyone that says it was running faster than under windows. It was a fast demo system. There is a good chance that it will be a bit faster then win32 when I am done with it, because the direct-to-screen API doesn’t require all the locks and unlocks of Direct Draw, and the sound access will avoid the DirectSound penalties, but basically they should be the same.

98% of the support I need for games is present in rhapsody, and now that there is an existing game for it, the remaining decisions can be rationally guided.

I am still going to press the OpenGL issue, which is going to be crucial for future generations of games.

I am definately going to support Quake 2 on rhapsody. I may make a public release of the QuakeWorld demo, but I will probably wait until we get the full screen api working. Omnigroup has a little qspy-like openstep program that we can use with it."
 
I thought Carmack's point was more along the lines of:

--accurate physics simulations require more horsepower than we currently have
--designing an accurate physics simulation is VERY difficult, and arguably not worth the manpower
--current physics solutions can only provide better non-interactive physics (grass swaying, realistic smoke, etc)
--physics is a problem because it's not scalable like graphics (there's no way to cheat like with LOD - everything must be constantly running at full-fidelity)
--the performance hit with advanced physics is too big to justify it. He directly likens the situation with problems with early 3D cards where the visual fidelity was improved but the game actually ran slower than a software renderer. That seemed to be the best point. He wants "faster and better" rather than just "better".

It's not a matter of him saying that "physics are useless" like some hyper-reactive people are claiming after reading a one-line summary of something he took at least 5-10 minutes to explain. He just seems to think that the performance tradeoff is currently not worth it, and that it's better to concentrate on the graphics side of things while physics tech improves behind the scenes.
 
CaptainABAB said:
- First one to add networked deatchmatch - and he coded that himself.
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Hate to correct you again, but Maze Wars also had networked deathmatch. It was in there at the beginning too, not added later on.
 
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