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Carmack: Lord of the Games
seer writes: "This article on Red Herring is a nice look at the interworkings of id software, most specifically their famous employee John Carmack. It delves deeply into the fact that id has stayed a very small company and dabbles with other topics such as Carmack's tendency to stay away from Microsoft 'standards' and the whole DooM ]I[ debacle. An interesting read."
"He told a faithful crowd that the new Doom will have images comprised of 250,000 polygons, compared with only 10,000 or so in Quake III. That's not far away from the 1.5 million- polygon characters in the animated film Shrek, which set a new standard for realism for computer-animated cartoon characters."
So basically they only need a six-fold increase in polygons to reach what Shrek had- not to mention that the environment is constantly changing as characters interact with it, whereas Shrek was always the same. Oops.
No sig for you.
This article is the most motivating article I have ever read. He not only tries to write code that will port well in order to insure his product gets to as many people as possible, but unlike other stupid software companies he refuses to overextend his company to more the 17 people.
I've worked at alot of companies and one thing is for sure. Everything starts to go to shit when you can't walk over and talk to all the other developers.
This would be the ideal company to work for and they make the ideal product. Then they let the community do the beta testing. I love this man. His ideas are harsh on the MS way to do things which is probably why they work so well. Instead of employing rediculous amounts of people inefficently turn a mediocre product and then either market it to hell and back to make everyone think they need it, or force all of their existing customers onto it.
They keep a small number of really smart people in one room and turn one of the best products out, and let the product practically sell itself. This is how things would be in an ideal world, but the idea of making the best product so that people will pick it over others is wearing thin, esspecially now that Microsoft has bought most of the GL patents from SGI.
He obviously wants other things more than he wants to get richer than he already is. I'm not a mind reader, but I'm guessing those things include personal satisfaction, public recognition, love, health, and probably the ability to maintain his current standard of living. This is just an example of how money can only take you so far on the road towards happiness.
Make love, not sigs
Even thou FPS games dont make the level of sales of everquest or pokemon, ID game engines are the best for FPS shooters.
The norm at Lan parties are mostly ID engines based games. RTCW, MOHAA Demo, Q3A, Q3A Urban Terror, Action Quake2, the only 2 games that wasnt, where Counter Strike and Ghost Recon. The main game for money was CS, but we had so much fun playing Q3A UT, we had to push back the CS tourney.
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Amiga OS is out for your x86
Take a look at the FTP site: Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, and Quake 2 are all available. You still have to have the map files and other game data from a "real" copy of the game in order to play it, but all of Carmack and Co's magic is up there for study.
In short, they have quite a history of "giving back to the community." Even for games (such as Q3) where the full source isn't released, id always releases SDK's (for lack of a better term) to allow anyone that wants to the chance to create add-ons, extensions, and "total conversions" -- new games based on the existing code.
Very, very, cool.
" I mean, I can respect the technical achievements of Quake III"
You just answered your own question: Carmack is a programmer, so probably he just enjoys the "technical achievements". No small thing to me.
It's sort of what OS people does, but making a bit more money.
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
Well, I think the article alluded to Carmack being more focused on building a great game ENGINE, rather than a great GAME. In theory, if someone licenses the next-gen Id game engine, then all their development time is spent building a good game, and not something that puts shapes on the screen (which, to do well, is itself a major project).
It's about specialization, people doing what they are really good at, instead of trying to do everything and selling mediocrity.
-If
Run a pencil-and-paper RPG campaign with your far-off friends: Gametable!
Its obviously a tease, sheesh. Gates probably does not code much, John does every day. If you ask me (not that you did) it shows that Mr. Gates has a pretty good sense of humor. Yeah he may have billions in the bank but its an obvious jest. Heh, I would feel pretty good if the leader of the commercialized software world complimented me so.
Jeremy
I actually thought Adrian Carmack was Johns brother as I remember reading it somewhere, one of the articles was obviously wrong. I'm sure someone will give an autoritive answer on that one.
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a brutal anal raping at airport security
"Microsoft tried to launch a graphics standard for PC hardware in the early '90s" We'd be talking 96 here, not early 90's.
"is sticking to his own graphics technology" It's called opengl.
I didn't bother to read further, obviously the article is written by someone who is clueless.
DirectX has won the 3D standard wars
The "won" in your sentence makes it seem as though there was ever a question. It was less a war than it was "ramming down the throat" of the developer.
OpenGL is a niche market
That may be true, but in my opinion, Carmack is the reason there's even that niche market. If he didn't choose OpenGL in the Quake1 days, no 3D chip/boardmakers would have given supporting the spec a second glance, and now non-Windows users would be left in the cold, software- and hardware-wise.
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
This was an article written for Red Herring magazine. While we all know that the author is referring to OpenGL, I thought it was an appropriate editing choice to keep the number of technical terms down to a minimum. The focus of the story is not the technology, but the man himself.
Also, you have to think about the readers of Red Herring. An article written for that magazine would be best targeted toward the average business professional that likes learning about different businesses, industries, and methods - to be somewhat familiar with them. OpenGL is something that would be fairly obscure for them to learn about while reading on a couch in the reception area.
All in all, it would have been nice to see them give direct publicity to OpenGL, but I thought the article was very readable without its mention. Hence, it's a well written article partly for that fact.
...if I can find multiple things they got wrong on things I know about, then I seriously doubt they're getting the stuff right that I don't know about.
Mr. Carmack, cofounder and lead programmer at Id Software, is sticking to his own graphics technology. He is an absolute techno-purist who seeks to produce a common code that can run on Windows, Linux, and Macintosh operating systems--something he can't do with Microsoft's technology.
It's not his own graphics technology, it's OpenGL, which is used by many programmers around the globe. And he doesn't do it because he wants to have portable code. That's a part of it, sure, but he uses OpenGL mainly because it's easier to code, which means less development time and less debugging time. Also, it allows for greater flexibility. Not to mention, with Direct3D, can we say, "namespace pollution"? I thought so.
And by being such a purist, he delights hard-core gamers and graphics experts.
Oh yes, I get every id game simply because he "sticks to his own graphics technology". Did the author actually consider that he delights hard-core gamers simply because he creates realistic games that have fun gameplay and stunning visuals?
The new Doom likely will require a no less powerful chip than the soon-to-be-released Nvidia GeForce3.
Newly released about a year ago...
He told a faithful crowd that the new Doom will have images comprised of 250,000 polygons, compared with only 10,000 or so in Quake III. That's not far away from the 1.5 million- polygon characters in the animated film Shrek, which set a new standard for realism for computer-animated cartoon characters.
Notice he said "images comprised of 250,000 polygons", and "That's not far from the 1.5 million- polygon characters in...Shrek". This isn't like comparing apples to oranges, it's comparing apples to Mack trucks.
No comment.
Id can produce an action game with a minimum of man hours. I think once you start to move into say, the RPG genre the man hours increase significantly.
Think of all the media that comes with a Square game. CGI movies, voice acting, the presence of a script with dialogue, a plot, the list is very long. In order to do something like this Id would have to expand, which they're very much against. In short, don't expect Id to change genres anytime soon!
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Money not a major motivator? I wonder how honest that statement is.
You left out a word there. It's not that money isn't a major motivator. He said that "more money" wasn't a major motivator. There is a difference.
Carmack is already a multi-millionaire. More money would only make him more of a multi-millionaire. Which is better, being a multi-millionaire or a bigger multi-millionaire? How are any of your basic needs being fulfilled any better if you have $40 million in the bank versus $20 million?
It sounds to me like Carmack has already realized that Id gives him all the freedom and financial security he could want. The thing that he seems really interested in is writing "better code" and a "cooler 3D graphics engine." How does having more money help him there?
Ummmm... nope. She's actually an ex-id employee. Who had quite a hand in their business development. And now runs a production company.
I'd write more, but I'm sure Carmack could correct this himself. You did know he reads this site, right?
I suppose if you insist on bashing KillCreek's not-so-impressive surgical augmentation, that's your thing. But ripping on Carmack's wife, in a thread about him? Man, that's low....
"It legitimized the shareware movement, starting in 1993 with progressive releases of the Doom franchise, which generated more than $100 million in revenue (even though roughly 15 million copies of the original were downloaded for free). "
Now if only the RIAA and other places would read that and understand that sometimes when done properly that such things do work in a internet world.
-THIS SPACE FOR RENT!
Ummmm, I really don't see how you can call UT something new and great in game play and Quake 3 the same old. I own both and really, find them to be the same thing. Ya, the maps are different, weapons are different, etc but the core of the game is the same. I don't ever play either of them in their default mode, as you said, it's old. It's the mods I like.
But seriously, what does UT (in an unmodded state) offer that Quake 3 doesn't? I'm talking signficant gameplay things here that are NEW. I am well aware of the differences, I just don't think UT is new and revolutionary.
this article does have a bit of a point. If GLQuake never came out we'd have seen an onslaught of Software REndered crap. GLQuake made the relatively big push to hardware rendered3D which gave us 3D chips in even the cheapest piece of junk today.
Although I think that's more of Romero's fault IIRC.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
I can agree that a business publication would want to avoid technical discussion, I think you're missing the tone that the article presented. Read it again:
The message is plain. Carmack avoids an industry standard developed by Microsoft called DirectX. Everybody else uses it. Instead, Carmack is some kind of technological religious zealot who uses his own system.
Granted... the article does go on to point out that his decission allows his software to run on many platforms. Something Microsoft's technology does not allow. But its possible that someone unfamiliar with the industry might miss this message and attribute Carmack's refusal of microsoft as another aspect of his ecentric personality.
It would be different if the writer had reported Carmack has adopted an open graphics standard over a more restrictive standard provided by Microsoft... despite Microsoft's professed incredulity over the choice.
As much as these (and many others non cited in your post) are giants of science, they discovered fundamental principles. Most fundamental science today is still shared in much the same way.
Would Newton and Einstein have been so generous to the world if their discoveries had been readily exploitable for commercial use and financial gain? I'm not so sure. Look at another giant - Edison. On the one hand, he did a tremendous amount of research, but on the other hand he tried to aggressively market his work and was a heavy user of the patent system.
Imagine if Einstein's discoveries led him directly to the design of the first atomic powerplant. I suspect he would have patented the sucker as fast as he could have.
The real issue is that fundamental discoveries (like gravity and E=MC squared) typically aren't the same as applied ones (like OpenGL, Java, and almost anything in computing since the early days). The fundamental discoveries lay the groundwork for the applied discoveries - but the applied discoveries are where the money is.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
I am utterly sick of these silly, superficial and sycophantic articles. There is simply no reason for them to exist. It seems that a pragmatic analysis of id and its employees has yet to be written. It's one thing to see stupid 'fanboyism' (E.g "UNREAL SUX0RZ!!!111") posted by the shallow morons who buzz around the VoodooExtreme comment boards like flies around shit, but another thing to see it on supposedly reputable and objective news sites.
I strongly disagree that John Carmack is id. What he is is a very intelligent and motivated individual that has been in the game industry for a very long time. Thus, he has a great deal of power and leverage over other companies. The fact that id created a great many 'firsts' (or at the very least evolved previously foetal genres to an acceptable level) compounds this. However, there are many other people in the game industry who are equally skilled. They, however, may not be in the position to fully exploit their talents. They may be employed by a company that has the technological ability to make 'quantum leap' titles, but a lack of inclination. Managerial oppression is epidemic wherever you look, much to the detriment of many companies. When you are management, things are much easier (Granted, id is more of a 'flat pyramid' than most companies. So, things aren't as simple as one might assume).
Indeed, the real 'computer graphics experts' don't work in the game industry. The best opportunities are actually found in disciplines like professional flight simulation or non-real-time graphics technology development (E.g Renderman), not game creation. People like Alan Watt, Jim Blinn and Eric Haines (Slap yourself if you said "Who?") work at companies like Pixar, SGI, Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, IBM and Autodesk. It is these people who develop new techniques, publish them at SIGGRAPH and provide game developers (among others) with algorithms with which to implement in their engines. That isn't to say that game developers simply perform implementations, innovation is essential for any kind of specialised task, but it is the work of many hundreds of individuals (most of whom the average Quake player has never heard of) that has produced the plethora of techniques that the game 'Gods' rely on.
When articles assume that 'John Carmack is id' blame and praise are grossly misattributed. Of course, there is a great deal of overlap in the roles of team members, but praising John Carmack for the finely balanced weapons in Quake3 is utterly ludicrous. In this case, id's creative team (Robert Duffy etc) miss out on the recognition they deserve. If John Carmack were really the hyper quick, hyper intelligent polymath that people make him out to be, id's employee list would be one person long. It isn't. id is (take a deep breath, this may shock you) a team of highly skilled individuals that when working in concert have the ability to produce great games. Each should receive the recognition they deserve.
Consider this, would people idolise John Carmack if id's games were terrible?
Yeah, totally. I've worked for companies who were started by a techie and yet whose whole raison d'aitre was to IPO and make loads of money. woo-hoo. As soon as the suits get involved, you lose control, and if you're a techie, you soon lose interest at having to compromise to dumb-asses who really don't have a clue. Now if you can do both (i.e make money and stay technically pure) then that's got to be the ultimate goal in my book. (God that last sentence sounds so lame, but you get my point). Carmack's one of the few who's managed to do both. Full respect to him, despite the unwanted attention that it brings to him.