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Carmack About Q3A On Dreamcast
andr0meda writes: "C|Net's GameCenter recently interviewed John Carmack about Q3A's Dreamcast conversion. The interview was conducted after the QuakeCon talk John gave last weekend, which was Slashdotted earlier. Here are both parts of the lengthy interview: [1,2]"
Make no mistake -- the PS2 is definately more powerful than the dreamcast. For some types of things, it is easier to get a dreamcast game to look better due to a better back end filter, autoamtically working mip-mapping, and larger addressable texture space, but the second generation PS2 games should really start showing off the increased power. Dreamcast should be able to undercut the price, but I don't know how significant that will be. There are few things that I would really call "revolutionary", but that doesn't mean that Sony didn't build a good machine. It just happens to be built with a set of tradeoffs that I don't completely agree with. John Carmack
Carmack brought up a great point tho. Adding the keyboard and mouse admist all the joystick players might be deadful... Picture all the non-pc type people attempting to play on a server and having one of the "lpb's" jumping all over the place schooling everyone with his keybaord and mouse combination. People might get discouraged and not play...
OH welps, maybe there could be a setting to play against only those people or what not... never know. I'd rather play with a keybaord and mouse ANY day then a cheeey joystick. I love my Dreamcast, but I love my Quake-style games.
Who's the black private dick, who's a sex machine for all the chicks?
... if I hadn't been both a 32x and Sega-CD owner. Serves em right.
"Can you seriously imagine playing multi-management games like Civilization, Myth 2, or StarCraft without a mouse and keyboard? "
Perhaps if strategy games did not involve so many redundant repetition, and allowed you to concentrate on strategy, you would not need very many controls.
Really, why can't you tell the UI/AI you want marines in perpetutity with a 1000 credit reserve, and forget about it?
I don't think this is how Vector Quantization works. Each texture is broken down into 4x4 blocks, which is true, and then it is analyzed. Two "best" colors are picked out for each block, and then 2 or more bits/pixel are used to blend between the two colors. It is called "Vector Quantization" because you are quantizing pixel colors at points along a vector in color-space. For two good overviews of the prevailing texture compression standards, sees pecs.htm and
p rint/140/
http://www-dev.3dfx.com/fxt1 or http://linux.3dfx.com/open_source/fxt1/technical_
http://www.hardwarecentral.com/hardwarecentral/
-- Too lazy to get a lower UID.
Whoops, I mean utah-glx. This is what happens when I don't paste urls.
right at the start:
... no ... that would have been Descent by Parallax.
... no ... many people played Doom over the 'net (it was an ugly hack, especially compared with 'net games today, but it did work).
The first real-time 3D environments were pioneered by the house of id...
um
And with Quake's robust networking code, action gamers went head-to-head on the Net for the first time.
um
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
I give credit where credit is due. There are a hell of a lot of good players out there using joysticks, but I'm talking about the average Joe...
I sat one day trying to play Quakeworld online and was wondering how the hell people were killing me from every single angle in the world... Finally a friend taught me how to use the keybaord and mouse combination and I've been blowing people away ever since. I'm talking about the majority of players tho... I taught a few friends the keyboard and mouse combo and after 10 minutes they increased their skills very much...
OH well, I think it'll be intersting to see... I never even saw a Dreamcast keyboard in stores yet... of course I never really looked either. Wonder how much they're priced at...
Who's the black private dick, who's a sex machine for all the chicks?
I do not believe you guys give the 'joystick' playing mindless drones enough credit'
some of the absolutely best players I have met in Quake used a Joystick or a gamepad, not all but some.. anywhu
Jeremy
If you think education is expensive, try ignornace
You mean the next Bulky Drive...;)
if someone knows for certain, please post. it'll be really interesting if it is GPL-ed. everyone pretty much is using the BSD stack, which wouldn't make any sense if it's GPL-ed becuase corporations wouldn't be into it.
"you get hit and your head goes ping" --rocky horror picture show
Somehow, I doubt the *real* Yu Suzuki wrote it, more like some Suzuki fanboy who registered his name on /. wrote it.
I can just imagine Yu Suzuki thinking "What to do...Virtua Fighter 4? Shenmue 2? Daytona on DC? nah, I'll write an amusing article on slashdot!"
.. YOU would prefer being able to take code and
use it anyway you want.
The author doesn't, and therefore uses the GPL.
I just don't understand your argument.
It is like saying that the author of a book
is an asshole, because he doesn't allow you to
copy it. Tough luck. You have to respect the authors wishes.
If YOU creates opensource software, then YOU get
to choose.
The GPL and BSD -license caters for different kinds of wishes. Neither is better than the other,
they are just different. Can't you people accept
that?
Yes, the keyboard and mouse are already around. I don't know when they will be in (or if they are already) in stores, but I've used one on my set5 (Dreamcast dev box) for the last few months.
I believe a prototype ethernet adapter has been in some developer's hands for a while now also, although you have to jump through quite a few hoops to get it to work. As I recall, you can't just hook it into an existing LAN - you have to set up a box running a tunnel connection (PPP) as its gateway. Linux or FreeBSD are recommended for this task.
I'm a bit confused about Carmack's apparent show of support for the x-box. It seems to me that the x-box is just another attempt by Microsoft to lock people into their (usually pretty bad) APIs, so that they won't go and do nasty things like port their games to Dreamcast or Be or anything else.
Does the x-box claim to support OpenGL, or is Quake going to become a DirectX-only game now?
"PS, what sort of storage system will the Dolphin have when it ships?"
The Dolphin will have near identical storage (DVD), memory (32), and speed (200mpoly) as the PSX2.
Source: games.ign.com
"Quickly clicking can queue up far more units than you'll ever use. "
But the game is still so stupid it will consume all my resources and time in order to pump out 100 marines and nothing else I want.
Prioritization! Intelligence!
"If the most complex part of the game is the sequence of triangles and circles I push to get my unit to perform a complex move, I'm not interested. "
Sid Meier's recent game civil war game, Gettysburg, has no resource management and only 10 buttons.
10 buttons for formation, attacking, regrouping and retreating.
Fun games are simple and deep, not complex and shallow.
Anyway, I agree with the rest of it.
History :) :)
This OT post is just to cool to let die...
Normally I dislike trolls but this one did a really good job
Thhht!
I don't actually exist.
Well. The PS2 might be a bit more powerfull, but it lacks texture filtering and fullscene AA and the fullscene AA makes the DC games look very cool. Also, reports from my collegues around the world suggests that the PS2 is harder to program than the Saturn and that's baaaaaad. The flickering in the textures on Tekken Tag Team is also horrible to behold :)
We want XBOX now!!!!
Best Regards :
Odin Jensen
R&D Programmer
ITE ApS, Denmark.
Last time I looked Carmack was one of the main developers on the utah-glx project. I believe that he's been involved in bringing GLX support to Linux, writing an X server for MacOS X and releasing games under the GPL.
Wolfenstein, Doom and Quake 1 are all released under the GPL.
Many people don't realize that:
- There will be a keyboard and a mouse that you can attach to Dreamcast, they were shown at QuakeCon (here is a pic of the mouse and you can see the keyboard here).
- Sega does plan to release a "LAN adapter" that will allow LAN/DSL/cable modem connection, as stated in this interview.
Just wanted to clarify on that.
-jfedor
It looks like you need to change the post drop down box next to "preview" from Extrans to Plain Old Text.
If you do that, your line breaks will be preserved.
As well, Sega will be releasing a mouse for the Dreamcast. The Japan mouse was used for the Q3 Dreamcast Demo. They were a little smaller than what were used to, but North America will get a larger version to accomidate our hands.
I wasn't sure if it was flamebait or genuine stupidity. But, never forget the old maxim, Never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to stupidity.
You can hear Carmack say all the same things, sometimes nearly verbatim, in the recordings of his QC workshop (especially in recording #1). Beware the murky sound quality, though it's a vast improvement over the first attempt to release these .mp3s.
EOF
In conclusion,
sarcasm: YAI! fake people: BOO!
Love legolas
i've looked at love from both sides now. from win and lose, and still somehow...
You gotta love somebody who's willing to REWRITE the networking code for a console game system just to eke out better performance. Question is, will John ever get tired of writing games and turn that brain of his towards writing something like a financial planner package or some other business-oriented software?
Hell, if he can port X Window System to Mac OS X in his spare time, why couldn't he work for a few weeks on StarOffice and turn it into an Office-killer?
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
Heheh, its funny... While I'm a longtime PS fan, Squaresoft RPGs and EA Sports games are the two largest categories of games that I avoid like the plague. Long live esoteric oddball deathmatch games (Armored Core, Unholy War, Critical Depth, ect).
I would doubt an N64 port would be very fruitful. Getting all those textures to fit on one cart would be hell.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
That's an interesting comment. What real advantage does m/kb have over an analog controller? You can get quite good with those things, and in many ways the cross-pad is better for moving around than the standard ADWS keys.
//rp
FPS comic
Yeah! AC scores a well deserved 5 thanks for the lesson. dw
The PC has been repeatly touted to "merge" with television, but it just doesn't happen. I don't think it ever will. The ultimate computers of the future will be like X-Box or PS2: a centralized box that can serve as entertainment, internet, and eventually a server for the whole home.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
been there, done that.
i still have it in me to be very sarcastic and/or cynical and/or pessimistic.
but all it ever did for me was alienate myself from others.
sarcastic humor is ok sometimes, but it's all too easy to get carried away with it. if you're not careful you could end up criticizing everything around you, which accomplishes one thing:
it alienates you from everyone else.
luvv,
warren
btw, what makes you think that non-sarcastic people are "fake"? sarcasm is the only way to be honest? hah! you have a lot to learn.
VQ is used in a lot more area's than graphics, and in general it just means that you approximate multidimensional vectors by taking one set of vectors (the codebook) and approximate all the others by whichever one in the set closest to them.
If 3dfx is using the term to describe their S3TC (which was itself an offshoot of a small part of MPEG-2 BTW) offshoot they are bastardizing the term, it wouldnt be the first time.
heh... no, i didn't say that non-sarcastic people were fake. i just indicated they were a better target to say 'sux' then the poor, poor sarcastic cynics.
personally, i find sarcasm a great way to express what i really feel, instead of being fake on the outside. yes, it is easy to be carried away, but people can know that when i say something, i'm not lying to them.
and, also, sarcastic conversation (between many people who enjoy it) can be quite enjoyable. it turns a bland business meeting into exciting free-for-all. i have to pay close attention to make sure i'm not suckered into the sarcasm. good fun.
my conclusion (this time): :( :( :)
boring conversation =
fake people's conversation =
exciting, sarcastic conversation =
love legolas
(ps argh... apple must die for the crappy keyboard on this ibook. the shift, ctrl, and apple keys are barely working. must ship it back to tx =^/ )
i've looked at love from both sides now. from win and lose, and still somehow...
Again, I wonder if we could get Rob to start a "best of /." archive for this kind of stuff.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I just don't see why the future of entertainment is supposed to converge on ANY single do-it-all device, either for geeks or for average folks.
Geeks will have computer(s), game console(s), TV and DSS, while regular folks'll have their entertainment centers with TV, VCR, DVD, DSS and all manner of audio, plus their console(s). Only big diff is that geek DVD will be on the computer.
Who the hell is likely to consolidate to one box for everything? I think it's nothing more than a marketeer's dream to sell everybody new devices all over again, just now with the supposed convenience and coolness of all-in-one. BS. Unless it's designed by B&O and engineered by McIntosh (not Apple) and costing two or three months' pay, it's gonna inflict its compromises on ALL your devices now instead of just the one. There always have been good reasons for separates.
Carmack didn't say that; he admitted that PS2 may well be the most powerful console. He said he was disheartened by Sony's huge marketing push for PS2 and that that encouraged him to develop for others.
Surely if you....have.............dvdonacomputer......you`ll .....get.......that......shitty........u neven.....frameratetodealwith ?
well, how much is your Psx worth compared to your Saturn?
I`m not sure i see the connection between features and success in the marketplace? Care to help me out here?
This is great. Let's post the link again so we can Slashdot them another time.
kwsNI
It's because the product with the most bells and whistles tends to succeed in the consumer-level high-tech marketplace. Companies hype features because they sound cool, reviewers focus on features because feature comparison charts look neat, and consumers focus on them because they're features! The Software Conspiracy, a book often-mentioned here, goes into some more detail.
Personally, I'd rather that good, solid products succeeded. But what can you do? Well, funding education properly might be a start, but anyway...
-RickHunter
The net effect of these two issues was that there were a lot more good games for the PSX first. Remember folks, it's ALL about the software.
The real question is, when will the first silicon ship that supports VQ and something like S3TC or FXT1 (or whatever it is)?
Well, i think theres some truth to your statement, but i`d tend to disagree too. I would draw a distinction between `bells and whistles` and the actual technical ability of the device. I mean, i can see what so called hifi equipment can come with flashing lights and all sorts of crap, and be totally outclassed by proper equipment, which will generally just have an on/off switch (talking about amps here, for example, or cd players).
But i was talking more about consoles, and the fact that its more down to marketing and reviews and god knows what else, not how many triangles it can draw in a second. The saturn/psx isnt the best example, as it was pretty close, but i`d say that it doesnt matter how close it is, it`ll make little difference in the long run if the marketing/cost isnt right.
Each Q+A is on a different page. It's sad how some companies try to get banner impressions. As far as play on dreamcast goes, I wouldn't be interested until Sega gets off their asses and gets us an Ethernet module (yay 30ms ping on SDSL) for network/internet games. Also play on the gamepad could be difficult, but couldn't you use the dreamcast keyboard that sega.net/AT&T provides? If I buy a DC, it will be for games like Crazy Taxi, not Q3A.
Shine on, you crazy diamond.
---------///----------
All generalizations are false.
--
I like to watch.
Game design for joypads is different. For one thing, driving and flying simulators are nearly unplayable on joypads.
Well, judging by your UID, you've been reading /. for about a week, so give it a while. ;-)
---------///----------
All generalizations are false.
--
I like to watch.
Ahem.
As awesome as Carmack is, I wouldn't bet the future of a gaming platform on one man's opinion. PC games are what bought Carmack's Ferrari's, not console games. I mean, no offense to Carmack, but I don't think he's the most qualified person in that arena. I seriously don't think Sony has anything to worry about WTR Microsoft. Sony will have a very profitable two years (at least) before they should start worrying about marketshare, and what then? How many gamers are going to buy into a completely new platform from a completely new console maker? And who knows what form(s) Microsoft will be in two years? Even if by some chance Redmond managed to take half of the Sony's console market, Sony has years of experience in other markets: music, electronics, computer hardware, entertainment, and of course, AIBOs. Put it this way: I'm sure Sony will still be a big deal in ten years. And I'm not so sure about Microsoft.Aside: I thought those Dreamcast screenshots looked pretty weak. Looks like the models use about half the polys of the real Q3A. I guess you get what you pay for; you can buy the console and the game for the price of a modern top-o-the-line graphics card. But then again, the Dreamcast and PC versions probably have a largely overlapping target audience. If you have both a semi-decent PC and a Dreamcast, is there any question which you should run Q3A on? If you want a good Dreamcast game, wait for the domestic release of Shenmue.
Maybe Carmack will help write the inevitable bundled Xbox game. (Which would of course be... Xtreme Minesweeper 2005.)
---------///----------
All generalizations are false.
--
I like to watch.
And how exactly will I know who it is stomping mudholes in me? You got a big mouth for such anonymous jellybean balls.
(I know it's a troll, I just don't understand what satisfaction there is in such a no-content post, even for lemurs like this. I guess for some people, clicking "Submit" and having others read your drivel contitutes a life.)
That's why you need the N64 controller. It's great for flight sims and racing games, infinately better than a keyboard. The analog stick is the best, I can barely play those games on anything else anymore, it just feels too unresponsive. But I will give it to you that it's not as good for first person shooters. You can aim far quicker with a mouse than with the analog stick.
Are you going to go to school tomorrow and brag to all your friends about how cool you are because you corrected John Carmack's spelling? Just remember, before you get too cocky...his car is a hell of a lot faster than yours. He gets more hott chix. He can probably beat you at Quake. And his mom can kick your mom's ass.
That means he's cooler than you, and will remain so until the heat death of the universe renders us all much cooler than we want to be.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
N64 has no memory, and no mass storage, which I think makes it almost impossible to port a game from the PC (which is really what the article was about...the way Carmack can use his PC programming expertise on the next-gen game consoles). Right wrong or indifferent, the N64 programming and playing environment is a Very Different Thing. It's a very very different type of console than the ones being discussed. Don't get me wrong, there are some brilliant N64 games out there (I for one LOVE Diddy Kong Racing, and Crash Team Racing is a pale imitation), but switch-hitting between N64 programming and PC programming would be like switching from baseball to sailing.
And I hate Nintendo's business model, but that's neither here nor there.
PS, what sort of storage system will the Dolphin have when it ships?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
How good is John Carmack's quake-ness? I mean, does he usually win in office tournies, or beaten to the ground by the textures guy on the G3?
Simon
--
Computers are useless: they can only give you answers. -- Pablo Picasso
I'd let him beat my ass at Quake all day if he'd let me drive his car. It takes MOXIE to take your Ferrari F50, say it's not fast enough, and install turbochargers. Here's an interview with the car.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
What do you think has been happening since the days of the NES? Nintendo was VERY strict in keeping developers only on their console. They even went to court over this a few times. Nothing new.
Regardless, Square goes where Square wants. Same goes for EA, who have developed N64 games in the meantime. Sure, it sucks for Sega and I feel for them, but its business as usual...
Does anyone know where the advantages of vector quantization compression are when it comes to storing textures for a game (as mentioned on page 2 of the article)? Can they be decompressed very fast? Can different levels of detail be accessed easily to be mapped to surfaces at varying distances?
As it seems to be implemented in hardware in this case, is there a software package of some VQ compression algorithm that comes close to wavelets or similar state-of-the-art compression? I just wonder because lately anyone seems to use wavelets...
I don't know how often this happens, but this is the first time I've seen a post actually acknowledge that there is such as a thing as the "slashdot effect".
Thanks Hemos, you're OK in my book.
The Xbox does not yet exist.
2.5 million B.C.: OOG the Open Source Caveman develops the axe and releases it under the GPL. The axe quickly gains popularity as a means of crushing moderators' heads.
/. "gets it".
100,000 B.C.: Man domesticates the AIBO.
10,000 B.C.: Civilization begins when early farmers first learn to cultivate hot grits.
3000 B.C.: Sumerians develop a primitive cuneiform perl script.
2920 B.C.: A legendary flood sweeps Slashdot, filling up a Borland / Inprise story with hundreds of offtopic posts.
1750 B.C.: Hammurabi, a Mesopotamian king, codifies the first EULA.
490 B.C.: Greek city-states unite to defeat the Persians. ESR triumphantly proclaims that the Greeks "get it".
399 B.C.: Socrates is convicted of impiety. Despite the efforts of freesocrates.com, he is forced to kill himself by drinking hemlock.
336 B.C.: Fat-Time Charlie becomes King of Macedonia and conquers Persia.
4 B.C.: Following the Star (as in hot young actress) of Bethelem, wise men travel from far away to troll for baby Jesus.
A.D. 476: The Roman Empire BSODs.
A.D. 610: The Glorious MEEPT!! founds Islam after receiving a revelation from God. Following his disappearance from Slashdot in 632, a succession dispute results in the emergence of two troll factions: the Pythonni and the Perliites.
A.D. 800: Charlemagne conquers nearly all of Germany, only to be acquired by andover.net.
A.D. 874: Linus the Red discovers Iceland.
A.D. 1000: The epic of the Beowulf Cluster is written down. It is the first English epic poem.
A.D. 1095: Pope Bruce II calls for a crusade against the Turks when it is revealed they are violating the GPL. Later investigation reveals that Pope Bruce II had not yet contacted the Turks before calling for the crusade.
A.D. 1215: Bowing to pressure to open-source the British government, King John signs the Magna Carta, limiting the British monarchy's power. ESR triumphantly proclaims that the British monarchy "gets it".
A.D. 1348: The ILOVEYOU virus kills over half the population of Europe. (The other half was not using Outlook.)
A.D. 1420: Johann Gutenberg invents the printing press. He is immediately sued by monks claiming that the technology will promote the copying of hand-transcribed books, thus violating the church's intellectual property.
A.D. 1429: Natalie Portman of Arc gathers an army of Slashdot trolls to do battle with the moderators. She is eventually tried as a heretic and stoned (as in petrified).
A.D. 1478: The Catholic Church partners with doubleclick.net to launch the Spanish Inquisition.
A.D. 1492: Christopher Columbus arrives in what he believes to be "India", but which RMS informs him is actually "GNU/India".
A.D. 1508-12: Michaelengelo attempts to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling with ASCII art, only to have his plan thwarted by the "Lameness Filter."
A.D. 1517: Martin Luther nails his 95 Theses to the church door and is promptly moderated down to (-1, Flamebait).
A.D. 1553: "Bloody" Mary ascends the throne of England and begins an infamous crusade against Protestants. ESR eats his words.
A.D. 1588: The "IF I EVER MEET YOU, I WILL KICK YOUR ASS" guy meets the Spanish Armada.
A.D. 1603: Tokugawa Ieyasu unites the feuding pancake-eating ninjas of Japan.
A.D. 1611: Mattel adds Galileo Galilei to its CyberPatrol block list for proposing that the Earth revolves around the sun.
A.D. 1688: In the so-called "Glorious Revolution", King James II is bloodlessly forced out of power and flees to France. ESR again triumphantly proclaims that the British monarchy "gets it".
A.D. 1692: Anti-GIF hysteria in the New World comes to a head in the infamous "Salem GIF Trials", in which 20 alleged GIFs are burned at the stake. Later investigation reveals that mayn of the supposed GIFs were actually PNGs.
A.D. 1769: James Watt patents the one-click steam engine.
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A.D. 1789: The French Revolution begins with a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on the Bastille.
A.D. 1799: Attempts at discovering Egyptian hieroglyphs receive a major boost when Napoleon's troops discover the Rosetta stone. Sadly, the stone is quickly outlawed under the DMCA as an illegal means of circumventing encryption.
A.D. 1844: Samuel Morse invents Morse code. Cryptography export restrictions prevent the telegraph's use outside the U.S. and Canada.
A.D. 1853: United States Commodore Matthew C. Perry arrives in Japan and forces the xenophobic nation to open its doors to foreign trade. ESR triumphantly proclaims that Japan finally "gets it".
A.D. 1865: President Lincoln is 'bitchslapped.' The nation mourns.
A.D. 1901: Italian inventor Guglielmo Marcoli first demonstrates the radio. Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich immediately delivers to Marcoli a list of 335,435 suspected radio users.
A.D. 1911: Facing a break-up by the United States Supreme Court, Standard Oil Co. defends its "freedom to innovate" and proposes numerous rejected settlements. Slashbots mock the company as "Standa~1" and depict John D. Rockefeller as a member of the Borg.
A.D. 1929: V.A. Linux's stock drops over 200 dollars on "Black Tuesday", October 29th.
A.D. 1945: In the secret Manhattan Project, scientists working in Los Alamos, New Mexico, construct a nuclear bomb from Star Wars Legos.
A.D. 1948: Slashdot runs the infamous headline "DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN." Shamefaced, the site quickly retracts the story when numerous readers point out that it is not news for nerds, stuff that matters.
A.D. 1965: Jon Katz delivers his famous "I Have A Post-Hellmouth Dream" speech, which stated: "I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the geeks of former slaves and the geeks of former slave geeks will be able to sit down together at the table of geeks... I have a dream that my geek little geeks will one geek live in a nation where they will not be geeked by the geek of their geek but by the geek of their geek."
A.D. 1969: Neil Armstrong becomes the first man to set foot on the moon. His immortal words: "FIRST MOONWALK!!!"
A.D. 1970: Ohio National Guardsmen shoot four students at Kent State University for "Internet theft".
A.D. 1989: The United States invades Panama to capture renowned "hacker" Manual Noriega, who is suspected of writing the DeCSS utility.
A.D. 1990: West Germany and East Germany reunite after 45 years of separation. ESR triumphantly proclaims that Germany "gets it".
A.D. 1994: As years of apartheid rule finally end, Nelson Mandela is elected president of South Africa. ESR is sick, and sadly misses his chance to triumphantly proclaim that South Africa "gets it".
A.D. 1997: Slashdot reports that Scottish scientists have succeeded in cloning a female sheep named Dolly. Numerous readers complain that if they had wanted information on the latest sheep releases, they would have just gone to freshsheep.net
A.D. 1999: Miramax announces Don Knotts to play hacker Emmanuel Goldstein in upcoming movie "Takedown"
A.D. 2000: On January 1st Microsoft NZ web site is first to announce that they have survived year 21000 bug. Slashdot community rejoices and lots of people swear the new millennium starts next year. ESR agrees that
A.D. 2001: Mozilla release is expected during this millennium, although plans are to integrate it with the upcoming linux-2.4.0-test92-pre17-ac3.1-25.9, which would mean a slight delay.
i feel that consoles and pc provide different gaming experiences. there are lots of console games that would not make good pc games due to the control.(same goes for pc - console ports) games like cool boarders and tony hawk for playstation would not work on pc because of how they use controlls. fps have many gameplay difference on consoles. medal of honour(also for playstation) is a great game. it could be played on pc without many gamplay changes. the reason it is a good fps on a console is because the game was designed to be played with a simple thumb controled anologe joystick and 8 buttons, the gameplay is good becuase it is well paced for the fact that it lakes a crosshair and freelook. were as quake3 is made for a mouse and even though the dreamcast controller has enough buttons for movement and fireing location and type of the buttons is what matters. i think quake3 on dc will play different then on pc. more gameplay emphasis will be on the plasma gun,lightning gun, and shotgun becuase the other weapons need to be aimed up or down(aim rockets at feet) and the rail gun will be damn hard to aim. and fighting games are the ones most likely to hurt a non-console gamers fingers. racing is probably the easiest on fingers to play. anyways my rant is done
[20:36] wwwdot/.dotorg
since squaresoft and ea make some of the best games and there playstation franchises have huge established fan bases it shouldn't matter if they are tied down to ps2 because those two company's can make it a successful system. just look at what final fantasy 7 did for playstation. i honestly couldn't care about the xbox it is quite aways away, by the time it gets out ps2 will probably have market dominense and many top quality titles.
[20:36] wwwdot/.dotorg
...with more memory, an internet connection, hard drives and what not is an exciting development, but look at Carmacks' experience with Sega - they won't even give one of the best PC game programmers some info on a piece of peripheral hardware! He was polite about it, but they're just being silly.
An interesting side point is that whatever hacks people do manage to carry out on these consoles could end up providing a ready-made excuse for poor market performance, whether or not console hacking makes any real effect on profitability. It seems to me it's a question of whether the manufacturers have the balls and foresight to provide in a positive way for the inevitable fact that people will find ways into some of these new systems. As far as Sega are concerned the answer appears to be no. Personally, I'm hoping Sony will do a Net Yaroze-like program for the PS2! It's not implausible, considering the fact they're licensing out the CPU and graphics chips. I'd pay for one. Hobby games ahoy!
This got to be the scariest thing I've ever read on Slashdot. I feel to anger towards the person who wrote this -- I feel genuine pity. What kind of terrible, traumatic experience creates people with such warped hysteria? "BETTER DEAD THAN RED!" This person is genuinely paranoid. He must've watched the McCarthy trials to closely as a child, as he really believes that "Reds" are behind GPL and that they are out to get him. I just thought I'd comment on this, seeing as nobody else has.
Oh, and while you're at it, help me pay for my Grandma's operation - Drink Pepsi!!
(sheesh...)
Actually, the system specs for the jaguar were:
;).
;)). It's a shame that the mismanagement of Atari caused it to flop so bad.
1 64bit GPU
1 64bit Blitter
1 32bit DSP
1 16bit Motorolla 68k
It had 2 megs of ram.
All processors were connected through a 64bit bus.
Each processor was independent of the other -- ie: it was an SMP like system. The people who knew how to program the system generally turned OFF the 68k (because of the way it controlled the bus (could only transfer 16bits at a time; nothing else could hit the bus while it was xfering data; bascially killed system performance); finally a use for the HALT instruction
The clock speed of everything in the system wasn't spectacular though. I think everything was slower than 20mhz. It was still good enough to do doom better than most 486's could (think back to 1996; P90's I believe were the high end gotta pay $4000 for one machines).
It was a very cool system; the games for it blew everything else at the time out of the water (well, the good games like t2k, AvP, and such
this makes me wonder if the ps2 will be worth 2x as much as i paid for my dreamcast ?
Runnin' On Empty
If I recall correctly, the original PSX had very few "revolutionary" features. But it still managed to beat out the N64 and the Saturn. Do I remember right?
-RickHunter
Come on, give Carmack a break. He spends all of his days creating the games that YOU play.
Ooh ooh! That would be so cool! Heh, I'd love to play Commander Keen on a Gameboy Color... I'd buy one expressly for that purpose. Erm, I'm sorry, got a little bit nostalgic and stuff... But I think a Commander Keen GBC game would kickass and sell a lot, too :)
Ports are cool.
-tsunakeNot be cynical or bent on criticism, but what's the big deal about q3 getting onto a dreamcast? It seems like a logical step as a software company looking to capatalize on a most likely popular gaming system. In the interview, Carmack states that porting from the DreamCast to the PC and vise versa are very simple, and to me, it seems very logical, because the DreamCast is just a PC in a smaller box with a controller.
Personally, I don't understand why people believe that the Dreamcast and furthermore, any other console will cause the end of the PC as a viable gaming system. Can you seriously imagine playing multi-management games like Civilization, Myth 2, or StarCraft without a mouse and keyboard? Or a game that requires precise placement like Quake 3 being played with a controller? I had enough trouble playing Street Fighter 2 on my SNES, and any game more challenging will just cause blisters and frustration, not a genuine challenge. Both the PC and console markets have niche games that suit both systems, and I believe that the convergence two will promote creative game design, not hinder it.
Help me through college please!
If it doesn't impress Carmack, meaning that he doesn't think it's revolutionary and that he won't develop for it, it's a sad statement for Sony. I think the Xbox is going to whup up on the PS2's ass. It's going to be easier to develop for and it offers more avenues for developers to explore.
I agree with John that it is a shame what Sony has done to the Dreamcast with its incessant and unwarranted hype of the PS2. I think Sony will get a taste of its own medicine with the torrential $500 million marketing campaign for the Xbox.
Any way this shakes out, competition is good for us. We'll get cheaper consoles faster and better games. I just hope we don' get into the stupidity that Sony began with locking down developers to one console. EA and Square made a deal with the devil. I hope it doesn't turn around to bite them in the ass. Actually, being a Dreamcast owner, I hope it does.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
Carmack commented on all the consoles in relation to his next porting job.
Dreamcast: Good thinking to include modem. Not enough memory.
PSX2: Not enough memory.
PSX: Cool architecture. No memory.
XBox: Little cramped on memory but obviously easy to port for.
Dolphin: Not mentioned by interviewer. Doh!
N64: Ditto gamecenter ignorance.
...that it's bertter than most fps console ports. I for one don't think I would play w/o a mouse and keyboard, but maybe if it works well enough...but there are few sucessful fps's on the console anywya, and ports are usually worse than the rest I'm praying they can pull it off!!!
Fight crime, shoot back.