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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."
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.
...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.
"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!