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John Carmack Interview
Iconoclast writes "There is a very good interview over on FiringSquad with his holiness John Carmack. The article gives you a good look at the geek behind the coding machine, and includes some talk about his love for Linux. "
Date: Mon, 07 Feb 2000 17:09:58 -0600 From: John Carmack To: darwin-development@public.lists.apple.com Subject: X windows update
I have a good, functional X windows port running under OS/X right now. I just need to get the keymappings fixed up and test some more, then I will release a patch for public consumption.
It only works in 15/24 bit true color modes. I am morally opposed to color lookup tables for desktop environments. It uses the resolution and color depth you already are running in OS/X (8 bit will be reset to 16 bit color).
It only works on a single screen, but you can tell it to start on any screen number. The multi-screen support is pretty nice -- when you move your cursor onto the X screen it just picks up as an X cursor, and when you move it back to a mac screen, it turns back into a mac cursor.
It probably isn't a real good single screen app for OS/X, because there isn't any way to flip back and forth between X and the mac desktop, but being a mac app was never really the goal.
It will probably take me another weekend to get everything all cleaned up and ready for more general use. I will try and fix problems with it, but I am learning as I go with X windows right now, so I can't guarantee really great response times.
After that, I will be on to bare darwin development work. The last time I played with bare darwin, I saw the video driver and mouse driver code, but I never tried to actually hook anything up to it.
Has anyone read mouse events or reset a video mode from a user space app with darwin? The default video mode is 640x480x8 bit color, which I will be wanting to get out of ASAP.
If necessary, I can write my own kernel drivers, but that would probably be a waste of time.
John Carmack
I haven't played anything but Daggerfall, but I can comment on that.
:( ). The problem is that, while the game is virtually unlimited in size, it has only a few basic quests to make up the plot outside the main plot. And all the dungeons are extremely similar. So in the end, you have to follow the main plot to get any variety.
Daggerfall isn't so much free as unfocused. There is a story, but instead of following it, you can wander around all over the world, and do whatever you feel like doing, as long as it's supported by the game (like you can't burn cities
To make the rest of the game really good you would need to make sure the world actually moves on and develops, and you have to make the NPCs a lot more intelligent than they were in Daggerfall. Or you move it online.
Isn't he on his honeymoon with Anna Kang (Carmack now?) right now? Can nothing keep this man from programming? Not even sex??
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
Ohh and about the spiritual comment. First off where do you get your knowledge that he has no spiritual side? Maybe he doesn't go to church but this in no way implies he isn't spiritual. Maybe he doesn't want to tell you about his spiritual side.
Secindly what do you mean by 'spiritual'. Does he need to believe in a higher being to be spiritual? What if he sits around and thinks about the nature of the universe. Is this enough?
Now if you thought people should be spiritual because it is good to contemplate these sorts of things you might have a point. Clearly, however, this isn't the way you approach it as you claim to know Carmack does not have such a side. So why is it important for him to have a spiritual side. Why do people who are spiritual always feel the need to convince others to follow them? One would think they were ashamed/embarased and needed others to follow.
Marriage is the "pseudo-ethics" that cloaks the messy truth of sexuality in the raiment of propriety -- it's "Don't Ask,
I am really sort of curious why you say he wouldn't make a decent father. I mean most people can make decent parents (perhaps not great ones) with no trouble.
Secondly I don't understand why you, or the other posters, think he is arrogant. I was actually quite impresed by his humbleness. This is a man who is virtually worshiped by a large segment of computer gamers probably the most succesful programer in the world from a pure sales perspective (not IPOs - gates and company coded only small parts of their programs). The potential to let this go to your head must be huge.
Now Carmack recognizes he is good but that isn't the same thing as being arrogant (he is good after all). If he really was arrogant he would have been going on about how college would have been a waste of time etc.. etc.. like some previous slashdot stories. Stick up his ass? Where? Did you people read the entire interview or all you all just misconstruing that first quote about marriage?
If there was anything I found kinda strange it was critisizing his mother's raising in print. But to each his own.
Marriage is the "pseudo-ethics" that cloaks the messy truth of sexuality in the raiment of propriety -- it's "Don't Ask,
I made it to page four, and the site got slashdotted.. :(
Is interviews with 'those kind' of people, without any introduction. Talk to Carmack, or Ellison, or hell, even Gates, but don't tell anyone who it is.
Talk about things that won't immediatelly betray identity: "So, unintroduced person, how's it feel to have written Perl?" just ain't gonna do...
And then leave it to the readership to figure out who it is. Sort of like a secret Santa inteview.
Hey Rob!! You listening?? Can we have mystery guest Slashdot Interviews?? With beanie-prizes for the first person to correctly identify the interviewee?
And what a challenge it would be to come up with interview questions... Heh!
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
This struck a chord with me. I remember at eleven to fourteen or so thinking that to be a great hacker I'd have to have produced something by sixteen, and feeling genuinely worried about it. It makes me laugh now, particularly seen I never put in the work to be a junior uberhacker - I was far more interesting in looking than doing at the time, and the hacking I did (C64 display interrupt tricks and the like) was far more investigative than doing. But at the time, it looked like you had to have done something by the time you were sixteen or eighteen to be a great hacker. I hope no one ever felt like I did and got put off hacking because they couldn't measure up to the super high standards. Some people must feel the same way looking at Anna Kournakova (sp?), or worldclass youngsters in their fields of interest. Our Western media cult of celebrity means we often get hellishly high standards shown to us.
postmoderncore - art and creation are a higher purpose
The programmers that worked on the stunning FreeSpace 2.
Anyone who was writing fully 3D PC games five years before Quake, like Stunts! and Stunt Driver or numerous other 3D games that were released for the C64, Amiga, and Atari ST.
Remember Bruce Artwick? The guy who was writing flight simulators for 2MHz home computers back in 1981?
The programmers behind either of the Gran Turismo games for the PlayStation. Damn! And in only one megabyte of memory and one megabyte of vram!
All the people who've written engines for great 3D games released in the last few years: Motocross Madness, Crazy Taxi, Hydro Thunder, San Francisco Rush, Zelda 64 (Miyamoto designed it, but who did the coding?), etc., etc.,
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
I don't still have the press release, but I recall it well..
You're not a god, but you are the most powerful mortal. You have a hammer, and it's no more of this point and click bullshit - blam! your opponent 90' away falls over dead - killing things with the hammer is hard work, so roll up your sleeves and get started.
Sounded interesting.
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
Are you sure you aren't thinking about John Romero? Romero is far more proud than John Carmack is. And Carmack is the better coder. I guess that's the difference between loving publicity and loving programming...
-Ted
I don't think John Carmack dislikes story games. Remember that he played Ultima a lot in the past, and all ultimas have pretty detailed plots. He's just saying that if you have a good story but bad gameplay, your game still sucks. And if you have a bad story and good gameplay, you still have a good game. Naturally, you want both a good plot and good gameplay.
Personally, I think the game that has come closest to this idea is "Thief: The Dark Project". The story is gripping, but never got in the way of the gameplay. Playing that game was quite an experience. (And I can't wait for Thief 2!)
-Ted
What you have to understand about John Carmack is that programming is his religion, and he won't let anything else get in the way of it. Programming is the most important priority in his life.
I think this is the reason I admire him without wanting to _be_ him. There are parts of my life which are more important than programming, and I'd give up programming for them if necessary.
-Ted
FS: I've read some earlier interviews where you said you were into bombs and stuff. You were a miscreant kid, right?
John: Yeah in a lot of ways...I looked back and I was an arrogant little jerk when I was a teenager. I matured over the years and when I look back now, I don't think THAT highly of myself as a teenager. I mean, I was really smart, I was already programming computers in a lot of ways. But I was amoral at many times.
This doesn't exactly HELP those of us who are in school and being prejudiced against because of our geeky ways...
It's also nice to see that the money can come not only to a diabolical, evil, Bill Gates type, but also to the cool, small-team programmer type like Carmack, just so long as you have good ideas and pull them off well.
In fact, the original story of Quake was supposed to be an RPG, well not an RPG exactly, but a fantasy game.
Heehee, think about how THAT would've changed the world of first person shooters as we know them today...
Right now, I'm spending more of my time in this lull or break, working on some things in Linux. One of the things I've done is written two 3D drivers for Linux or done a good chunk of the coding on them.
...
There are a lot of zealots in the Linux space that just don't have rationality in their viewpoints, but there is some truth behind the hype on how good it [Linux] actually is.
Comments like this, and programmers like Carmack bode well for the future of Linux as a desktop OS.
All in all, this was a very thorough and interesting article. I suggest anyone who hasn't clicked through the link yet to do it. You'll find it interesting, even if you aren't a hardcore, or even casual gamer.
---------------
Yes! That guy!
This was the point I was trying to make when /. had the recent article about Marathon being Open Sourced. (Which I got reamed for).
Another post below somebody said they can recall details of death matches more than one-player "stories". Well, I don't think that holds true over time. I played a LOT of multiplayer marathon, and while I can recall favorite maps we downloaded and played, I can't recall details of the matches (this was four, five years ago), but I can cite parts of the plot story that was spread out over three parts of Marathon. I can also talk about Sim Cities I built for days. That's the kind of game I like (but I also don't have time for these days, which I guess is why I don't play many games these days).
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DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
If I did something better than 99.44 of the population, I'd not get married if I thought my marriage would seriously detract from my work.
The man deserves an ego. He has done great things and he should get and claim every single bit of credit for them. Most people read "ego" as "liar" and call liars egomaniacs... real egomaniacs are great people or at least have done great things and they recognize how great those things are... if they overstep how great those things are, then they turn into liars ;)
Esperandi
Mine is better then yours because its mine
Just so you know, Anna Kang perfectly understands. She had final say on what gets posted. She knows John and what she got into - after all, she let him take a workstation to their honeymoon.
That's John for you right there - a completely dedicated and driven individual. Anna, on the other hand, is a tough, caring and understanding woman. He might come off as a prick there if you don't know him, but he's just dedicated.
-*-*-*-
I'm a little segfault short and stout
this is my handle, this is my spout!
I'm a little segfault, short and stout.
<sigh> - true love...
...that the difference between an engineer and a non-engineer comes down to a single point.
Namely, anyone can build a bridge that will stand up.
But it takes an engineer to build a bridge that will barely stand up.
If that old cliche has any truth to it, then most programmers I've met deserve the title of "engineer" as much as any bridge-builder who ever walked the hallowed halls of Harvard.
-- jm
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
There has to be something that you wanna just go out and do. People don't play softball because they want to beat the game of softball; it has to be an action that's fun by itself. I think that we succeeded in a lot of ways there. We expected and did receive a lot of feedback from the incestuous core of our fanbase.
Now, while I agree with these statements at face value, and also disagree with them, I felt it was a rather interesting way to paint a picture of the difference between what Halo will be, and what Quake (is and) will be.
Carmack's 100% accurate in the first sentence in that second paragraph. A game *has* to be fun from the get-go. One needs to be able to dive in, be it via a tutorial or a skirmish mode, and be able to get something done in the game. That's what games are for; entertainment. If one has to work too hard at it, it's no longer entertainment.
He goes on to explain how a certain percentage of folks like complication; that makes sense too. At a few points in my gaming past, I've nudged into that field.
Therefore, on the surface, Carmack is 100% accurate. Yet, he's also obviously missing something. He claims that putting a story in the game is "imposing" it on the player. He suggests that it's a burden, and you have to beat the game in to submission to get the story out of the way.
I suppose that's a valid view, but look at it as a question of longevity. Humans are pretty well known for enjoying a good story; we like watching (or reading about) a protagonist battling an antagonist (of whatever form) and solving a problem. Tragedies are popular, too.
Look at it this way: What sticks in your head longer? A day watching a baseball game, or reading a good book?
Five years after the fact, I'm still pondering plot elements of Marathon. Doom, in my memories, is just a game with a lot of monsters running around that you get to shoot. Both obviously have managed to stick in my head, but I value Doom far less than Marathon.
I'm not suggesting Carmack was stating that "dear god games with stories suck and they need to die." He was actually pretty fair in his statements; he's just expressing his feelings. However, I did want to counter that by saying games that "impose" a story on us tend to be held a bit more dearly in a person's thoughts.
They just have more staying power.
Yeah, but without a little background, We'd all be a little dull. The thing I liked most through the interview is that from end to end you can allways sence he is thinking outside the box, Always thinking about the future. Pretty cool to be able to keep perspective through all the noise.
More race stuff in one place,
than any one place on the net.
I met Carmack once too. He seemed cool, I shook his hand and said that it was an honor to meet him, he seemed a little embarassed. I don't remember his head seeming unusually round or his ego being big or whatever, he seemed pretty friendly especially considering I kinda just wondered into his office (the door was open!). He is short and skinny I guess, this might sound weird but he seemed very snake-like to me. His face made me think of a snake for some reason. If he does have a really big ego, I think he's probably earned it.
It is rare for someone to be so open and honest in an interview about everything including their relationships and upbringing.
I already thought of him as a master coder, but now I get the impression that if I knew him personally I would genuinely like him.
His story about open source was right on the mark and now I have a real world example for people along with a name they might recognize.
His comments on how you can still learn from anyone is a pretty good philosophy. I wish I had understood that when I was younger.
Another way to not get picked on is to carry around a female collie
C.Villopillil
no sig
I think you're getting the wrong idea from that comment - Anna is very supportive of John. I think she realizes that his passion for his work is what makes him who he is. I'm happy that he found a companion who didn't see the need to "change him" as many women might want to do.
She was sitting right there when he said that, so obviously there's an understanding there.