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Carmack Discusses Delay of Q3A Source
Time Doctor writes "John Carmack moved to a blog format, and updates everyone with his thoughts on graphics and why licensing delays the (still) inevitable Quake 3: Arena source, when it was expected before the end of 2004."
Ground Control to Yoda Doll
Ground Control to Yoda Doll
Take your ass grease pills and put your helmet on
Ground Control to Yoda Doll
Commencing countdown, engines on
Check ignition and may God's love shove up you
Ten, Nine, Eight, Seven, Six, Five, Four, Three, Two, One, Shove Up
This is Ground Control to Yoda Doll
You've really made the grade
And the papers want to know whose butts you tear
Now it's time to leave the suppository if you dare
"This is Yoda Doll to Ground Control
I'm stepping through the door
And I'm stinking in a most peculiar way
And the ass look very different today
For here am I sitting in an ass can
Far inside the butt
My face is turning blue
And there's nothing I can do
Though I'm past one hundred thousand bowels
I'm feeling very still
And I think my buttship knows which way to go
Tell my wife I ream her very much, she knows"
Ground Control to Yoda Doll
Your circuit's dead, there's something wrong
Can you hear me, Yoda Doll?
Can you hear me, Yoda Doll?
Can you hear me, Yoda Doll?
Can you....
"Here am I floating in my ass can
Far inside his Moon
My face is turning blue
And there's nothing I can do."
Bleh
"Too many users... blah blah blah Probable cause: http://www.slashdot.org Try again in a few seconds... -xian@idsoftware.com"
FP
He wrote in his blog, "I'm not quite sure what the tone is going to be - there will probably be some general interest stuff, but a bunch of things will only be of interest to hardcore graphics geeks."
Uh, Yeah....
Just be thankful that they DO release the source for these games. It keeps them alive. I don't know anyone else still playing network games from 1996 except for Quake.
By releasing the code for these games it increases their worth and their life for quite some time.
Lets talk about Jon Carmack. Jon is the legendary programmer of such classic
PC games as Wolfenstein, Doom, Duke nukem 3d, Quake 1, 2, and 3, unreal, and
the upcoming doom3. Jon has single handedly created the genre known as the
first-person-shooter. He has also popularized the Direct3d 3d format over
Microsoft's competing Opengl format, as well as caused public interest in 3d
cards when he first released accelerated quake for the s3 virge chipset. Jon
carmack has redefined gaming on PC's.
Now stop for a moment and think... What would have happened if Albert
Einstein had worked creating amazing pinball games instead of creating the
theory of relativity? Humanity would suffer! Jon carmack is unfortunately
doing JUST THIS, using his gifts at computer coding to create games instead
of furthering the knowledge of humanity. Carmack could have been working for
NASA or the US military, but instead he simply sits around coding violent
computer games.
Is this a waste of a special and rare talent? Sadly, the answer is yes.
Unfortunately, it doesn't stop there. Not only is Jon carmack not
contributing to society, he is causing it's downfall. What was the main
reason for the mass murder of dozens of people in columbine? Doom. It's
always the same story... Troubled youth plays doom or quake, he arms himself
to the teeth, he kills his classmates. This has happened hundreds of times
in the US alone. Carmack is not only wasting his talents and intelligence;
he is single-handedly causing the deaths of many young men and women. How
does he sleep at night?
Carmack is a classic example of a very talented and intelligent human being
that is bent on total world destruction. Incredibly, he has made millions of
dollars getting people hooked on psychotic games where they compete on the
internet to see who can dismember the most people. I believe there is
something morally wrong when millions of people have computerized murder
fantasies, and we have Jon Carmack to thank. Carmack has used his superior
intellect to create mayhem in society. Many people play games such as quake
so much that their minds are permanently warped. A cousin of mine has been
in therapy for 6 months after he lost a eath match' and became catatonic.
It is unfortunate that most people do not realize how much this man has
damaged all the things we have worked hard for in America. Jon has wasted
his intelligence, caused the deaths of innocent children, and warped this
country forever. To top it off, he got rich in the process and is revered by
millions of computer users worldwide. Perhaps one day the US government will
see the light and confine Jon Carmack somewhere with no computers so he can
no longer use his intelligence to wreak havoc on society.
I'd be pissed if I just paid $500k and they released the engine GPL a week later too. Carmack has to keep his clients happy first, the free/gpl scene can wait. The fact that he/id is one of very few that release anything related to old software means we should hold him in very high regard.
I think its so slashdotted you can't see the humorous message anymore, something like.
Too much traffic
probably slashdot.org
email somedude@idsoftware.com
Quake 3 has been out for nearly 6 years now.
The source for Doom was relased in 97, 4 years
after that game's release. I wonder what's taking
ID so long?
--
Bandit has a dome
http://www.mirrordot.com/stories/94b382fc4adc8812a 904c676b34b459e/index.html
- S
...who thought they are going to release a clone of Q3A on the new HL2 engine "Source"?
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
I'm not sure exactly what it is but there is some source for something in Team Arena out:
ftp://ftp.idsoftware.com/idstuff/quake3/source/
Welcome, Q3 source, Graphics
.plan file updates. There were two main factors involved in my not doing updates for a long time ? a good chunk of my time and interest was sucked into Armadillo Aerospace, and the fact that the work I had been doing at Id for the last half of Doom 3 development was basically pretty damn boring.
.plan files were appropriate ten years ago, and sort of retro-cute several years ago, but I?ll be sensible and use the web.
December 31st, 2004 | John Carmack's Blog
December 31, 2004
Welcome
I get a pretty steady trickle of emails from people hoping for
The Armadillo work has been very rewarding from a learning-lots-of-new-stuff perspective, and I?m still committed to the vehicle development, even post X-Prize, but the work at Id is back to a high level of interest now that we are working on a new game with new technology. I keep running across topics that are interesting to talk about, and the Armadillo updates have been a pretty good way for me to organize my thoughts, so I?m going to give it a more general try here.
I?m not quite sure what the tone is going to be ? there will probably be some general interest stuff, but a bunch of things will only be of interest to hardcore graphics geeks.
I have had some hesitation about doing this because there are a hundred times as many people interested in listening to me talk about games / graphics / computers as there are people interested in rocket fabrication, and my mailbox is already rather time consuming to get through.
If you really, really want to email me, add a ?[JC]? in the subject header so the mail gets filtered to a mailbox that isn?t clogged with spam. I can?t respond to most of the email I get, but I do read everything that doesn?t immediately scan as spam. Unfortunately, the probability of getting an answer from me doesn?t have a lot of correlation with the quality of the question, because what I am doing at the instant I read it is more dominant, and there is even a negative correlation for ?deep? questions that I don?t want to make an off-the-cuff response to.
Quake 3 Source
I intended to release the Q3 source under the GPL by the end of 2004, but we had another large technology licensing deal go through, and it would be poor form to make the source public a few months after a company paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for full rights to it. True, being public under the GPL isn?t the same as having a royalty free license without the need to disclose the source, but I?m pretty sure there would be some hard feelings.
Previous source code releases were held up until the last commercial license of the technology shipped, but with the evolving nature of game engines today, it is a lot less clear. There are still bits of early Quake code in Half Life 2, and the remaining licensees of Q3 technology intend to continue their internal developments along similar lines, so there probably won?t be nearly as sharp a cutoff as before. I am still committed to making as much source public as I can, and I won?t wait until the titles from the latest deal have actually shipped, but it is still going to be a little while before I feel comfortable doing the release.
Random Graphics Thoughts
Years ago, when I first heard about the inclusion of derivative instructions in fragment programs, I couldn?t think of anything off hand that I wanted them for. As I start working on a new generation of rendering code, uses for them come up a lot more often than I expected.
I can?t actually use them in our production code because it is an Nvidia-only feature at the moment, but it is convenient to do experimental code with the nv_fragment_program extension before figuring out various ways to build funny texture mip maps so that the built in texture filtering hardware calculates a value somewhat like the derivative I wanted.
If you are basically just looking for plane information, as you would for modifying things with t
of Carmack's page here
Welcome, Q3 source, Graphics
.plan file updates. There were two main factors involved in my not doing updates for a long time - a good chunk of my time and interest was sucked into Armadillo Aerospace, and the fact that the work I had been doing at Id for the last half of Doom 3 development was basically pretty damn boring.
.plan files were appropriate ten years ago, and sort of retro-cute several years ago, but I'll be sensible and use the web.
December 31st, 2004 | John Carmack's Blog
December 31, 2004
Welcome
I get a pretty steady trickle of emails from people hoping for
The Armadillo work has been very rewarding from a learning-lots-of-new-stuff perspective, and I'm still committed to the vehicle development, even post X-Prize, but the work at Id is back to a high level of interest now that we are working on a new game with new technology. I keep running across topics that are interesting to talk about, and the Armadillo updates have been a pretty good way for me to organize my thoughts, so I'm going to give it a more general try here.
I'm not quite sure what the tone is going to be - there will probably be some general interest stuff, but a bunch of things will only be of interest to hardcore graphics geeks.
I have had some hesitation about doing this because there are a hundred times as many people interested in listening to me talk about games / graphics / computers as there are people interested in rocket fabrication, and my mailbox is already rather time consuming to get through.
If you really, really want to email me, add a "[JC]" in the subject header so the mail gets filtered to a mailbox that isn't clogged with spam. I can't respond to most of the email I get, but I do read everything that doesn't immediately scan as spam. Unfortunately, the probability of getting an answer from me doesn't have a lot of correlation with the quality of the question, because what I am doing at the instant I read it is more dominant, and there is even a negative correlation for "deep" questions that I don't want to make an off-the-cuff response to.
Quake 3 Source
I intended to release the Q3 source under the GPL by the end of 2004, but we had another large technology licensing deal go through, and it would be poor form to make the source public a few months after a company paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for full rights to it. True, being public under the GPL isn't the same as having a royalty free license without the need to disclose the source, but I'm pretty sure there would be some hard feelings.
Previous source code releases were held up until the last commercial license of the technology shipped, but with the evolving nature of game engines today, it is a lot less clear. There are still bits of early Quake code in Half Life 2, and the remaining licensees of Q3 technology intend to continue their internal developments along similar lines, so there probably won't be nearly as sharp a cutoff as before. I am still committed to making as much source public as I can, and I won't wait until the titles from the latest deal have actually shipped, but it is still going to be a little while before I feel comfortable doing the release.
Random Graphics Thoughts
Years ago, when I first heard about the inclusion of derivative instructions in fragment programs, I couldn't think of anything off hand that I wanted them for. As I start working on a new generation of rendering code, uses for them come up a lot more often than I expected.
I can't actually use them in our production code because it is an Nvidia-only feature at the moment, but it is convenient to do experimental code with the nv_fragment_program extension before figuring out various ways to build funny texture mip maps so that the built in texture filtering hardware calculates a value somewhat like the derivative I wanted.
If you are basically just looking for plane information, as you would for modifying things with t
...id Software is going to be LATE releasing something? No way!
This sucks that Q3 code is being delayed.
Unless there is some provision somewhere in one of the licence aggreements with the companies still using Q3 code, they should just release it like they promised damnit.
The companies who have licenced it can still use it for whatever it is they are using it for without any problems.
Releasing the Q3 source code would provide people wanting to produce 3d games (well those that would fot onto the quake 3 engine and its way of doing things anyway i.e. FPS's mainly) a good base to work from.
Just look at what people have done with the previous code releases (Doom, Quake, Quake 2 etc)
But will it be released before Duke Nukem Forever?
Since when did Janet Jackson work for ID?
View the HTML source of Carmack's blog. Looks like the blog entry has been written in MS Word and exported to HTML. The HTML file generated by Word has then been copied and pasted into the blog HTML template. Just look at the source: it has one element inside another. Sure, it works and is probably displayed OK in most browsers, but...
"[...]Quake 1, 2, and 3, unreal, and the upcoming doom3."
Written ages ago...
"He has also popularized the Direct3d 3d format over Microsoft's competing Opengl format[...]"
Blatently false, trolling for corrections...
"[...]released accelerated quake for the s3 virge chipset."
Another falsehood, begging for a correction.
"[...]if Albert Einstein had worked creating amazing pinball games[...]"
Comparing Einstein to Carmack.
"Jon carmack is unfortunately doing JUST THIS, using his gifts at computer coding to create games instead of furthering the knowledge of humanity."
But instead of saving the world, all he does is write games! Awe, gee... what a jerk!
[...]
There's more of this crap, but I'm sick of reading it. Hope you get the -1 and subnet ban you deserve, trollster.
"The work I had been doing at Id for the last half of Doom 3 development was basically pretty damn boring."
The ______ Agenda
Bit of a difference from his Earlier days!.
My favourite quote from this article:
>John C. having some trouble getting the little Scrub in Keen2 to carry the player on its back and, as always, The Carmack figures the shit out and gets it done
Even with the delay, I would say hats off to Carmack and id for continuing to release code like this. As others have already mentioned, it really does help keep the fps genre in particular alive and progressing because it seeds the next generation of development talent. This is good not just for fps games, but anything where a good 3D engine is needed. It's easy to think that there may not be any need to further develop 3D engines, but with new hardware and software coming out all of the time, along with new ideas on how to do things, there's always more that can be done.
Contrast this openess to a company like EA which as far as I know has never released any source code. As many here already know, EA just sewed up an exclusive deal with the NFL for NFL branded football games which essentially puts competing games from ESPN or 989 off the field since they can't use NFL players or stadiums. There has never been any source code for sports games like this released to the public, which means no mods or clones. And it also means that learning how to write these types of games has an enormous learning curve. Well I'm rambling now, but I think the point has been made. Oh, and of course EA is not the only company tight with source code, most are!
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
who would want to license Doom 3's 4-player engine? no-one.
Quake 3 is the only decent multiplayer engine they have left.
In Bolo, the graphics were very fine and had good color, the refresh was excellent, and you never had any flicker. Also I think that because Macs were natively designed with a good 16-bit sound system in them (unlike DOS machines at the time with a little beeping speaker), game designers were inspired to write software for this platform. Who wants to play Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade on a PC when you could experience the game and all its gloy with full 16-bit sound on the Mac? Sadly, game developers moved away from the Mac with the introduction of DirectX on the PC, and most of the games now-adays lack that mysterious and inspiring quality in them. And Bolo was a network game written way back before Windows was sold to the Masses. Oh well... I'm 17 now, and enjoy writing software using Visual C++ for Windows anyway.
oh, Sh*t, so in 2005, i have decide to develop a web game instead ;)
The Nethack Dev Team was founded in 1986.
BZFlag, admittedly not from 1996, more like 1986.
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our American dead!
How would JC know what's in HL2's code base?
Don't think he looked at the leaked code do you?
lets all do exactly what the appropriate authorities demand is correct because deciding for ourselves is just wrong and the "authority" always knows best.
Sir, I venture, that you are a twit.
To the new licensee, I say tough beans. While there wasn't really an official announcement, it was fairly well known that Carmack was planning on releasing the source soon. Either they decided that it was worth it to pay and have it right away (instead of waiting for it to be opened), or they somehow missed this information when they researched their purchase. In the first scenario they have no reason to complain when it's open-sourced, since they were expecting it. In the second scenario they can complain, but only that they made a poorly informed purchase.
$ make work
make: *** No rule to make target `work'. Stop.
Companies should no be allowed to make money..
Come on, the man said the code will get released, calm your asses down and wait. Or help support the company and buy a license.
[quote]
Slashdot users, the world owes them
[/quote]
As I read through the comments so far, there hasn't been a single negative reply (within my threshhold) in regards to the delay, and I also applaud Id's efforts. Funny though, 'cause when I read this, I thought it sounded strikingly similar to the licensing delays Sun has in releasing the Solaris source code, which more people than not criticize as feet dragging or worse.
Sure, they're not exactly parallels, but both Id and Sun have positive history in the open source world (thats not intended as a troll...) Why is that Id gets slack while Sun gets stiffed for attempting the same thing?
I can't make any money off the free version anyway.
Trolltec must make some money from QT, (I've got a paid up version of Kylix with a QT license for staters), it's not like there's been a OSS quake game that's taken over the world.... yet. (though UFO2k is looking good!)
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
In the beginnning of the 90s, I was a teen trying to get started in video games.
I found a BBS (I think MCI Worldcomm) in CA where John Carmack and Michael Abrash frequented. He was discussing Doom as it was being developed. Actually posted code from it as he was developing it and going into specifics of the engine. It was amazing to get that kind of perspective when your just starting out.
After a couple of months though it was removed. I take it that some people at Id didn't like him sharing the development of this ground breaking game while it was still being developed.
One of the things they looked at for Doom originally was Voxel models. I still have copies of this stuff someplace (including a primitive Voxel editor he released). I should dig it up and post it for posterity sake.
-William Shatner can be neither created nor destroyed.
Hopefully the company which licensed it will say something to the effect of:
"The Q3 GPL source release has no effect on our game(s). Go ahead with your plans Mr. Carmack!"
For some reason I don't think I'll be porting this one to Pocket PC anytime soon (can't find the slashdot story for the Q2 port).
:)
OTOH, Pocket PCs are already on the market with hardware acceleration, so who knows?
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
http://www.fuhquake.net
FuhQuake is a really great opengl quakeworld client.
Much better than quakeforge because fuhquake has support for 32bit textures AND includes 32bit textures for many, many maps as well as many other small refinements that compare to today's games. I don't know if it compares to doom3 but it does compare to quake3arena (2 years old?).
This sig space tolet, reasonable rate.
I don't see it linked or announced anywhere.
Slashdotters love John Carmack.
Slashdotters also love piracy and go to great lengths to justify it.
So, do Slashdotters support pirating John Carmack's games, and if they do, what do they think his reaction is to it? What do they think his reaction was to Doom 3 being pirated for up to $1.5 million the weekend before its release?
Just curious...I don't know of any other situation in which this could be asked.
But I thought we were all about P2P warez piracy here on Slashdot? Does that mean it's okay if I rip off John Carmack's games, even though we "hold him in very high regard?"
Has nobody guessed that it's a script that automatically scans the referrer logs for the highest probable cause?
The proof is it uses Slashdot's full URI instead of just saying "Slashdot."
Mod parent up "arcane".
OGG!
[quote]
.
When Quake 3 shipped, it faced similar critisism. Most people didn't have the video resources to play it and it sucked up more cpu cycles on the servers. How soon people forget
[/quote]
Very good point. When Quake 3 shipped, folks still saw Doom as the better game.
But then something happened.
Like the internet, and high speed connections.
Suddenly Quake 3 became a world-wide multiplaying phenomenon. It changed history, really.
So why is Quake 3 still the best after so many years?
I am really puzzled why iD did not recognize multiplayer as their new focus. Valve, for instance, bought up Counter Strike and made it a new success. Counter Strike continues to be a successful enterprise.
We are playing for the consistent physics in a multiplayer game. Graphics are way far in second place as a reason to play. Many Quake 3 players turn the graphics down to favor steady frame rates.
Why, after all this time and all this success, has there not appeared the next great multiplayer game?
Unreal Tournament, Painkiller, Doom 3, are not a step forward. If there were a better game than Quake 3, I would be playing it.
For the best Quake 3 modification, one that takes its physics and game play seriously, check out:
http://www.promode.org/
Agreed. Best Q3 Mod ever in my completely unbiased opinion.
;)
- newborn
Theres a better client in development ...3 6
Oldman has released a test version of ZQuake-SDL in the last few days http://www.quakeworld.nu/forum/viewtopic.php?t=27
JC .... Jesus Christ? Coincidence? I think not.
I think he may be the second coming...
Wasn't the source code for Enemy Territory released ages ago to the public? It was based on the Quake III engine with numerous enhancements...
[o]_O
I wish more companies would work like this. Make the code available on dual-license terms. You could then legally use it to create your game, and at the time of release decide if you wanted it to be freely available or not.
So basically, it's try-before-you-buy in the sense that you can develop and then market. But to market (and make money) requires that you pay the piper first.
Instead of focusing on this, they should be focosing on releasing the game they promised over twelve years ago. We want The Universe Is Toast!
:P
Actually wait, no we don't, not if it's made by the current iD Software. Today's iD Software is a mere shadow of the former great company. The crap they've been releasing for the past ten years has focused solely on graphics, with little attention given to gameplay. The Doom and Quake games don't even compare to the brilliance that was (and is) Commander Keen.
Of course, this will be modded either flamebait or troll, seeing as there are quite a few graphics whores here. That comment probably didn't help either
That is the sound of 100,000 nerds adding a new link to their favorites menu.
Quake 3 was 1999. Having to delay a source release now because they're licencing the engine is pretty damn amazing.
Free Java games for your phone: Tontie, Sokoban
Looks like all that hard work that was going into Armadillo (which had some pretty promising-looking stuff going) is going to fade into the background again. I was afraid of this: the prize has been won, so nearly everyone who didn't win now decides it's no longer worth trying and fades into the background to follow other things.
... if they, too, don't give up. They say they won't, and knowing them I'm inclined to believe it, but I thought Armadillo was doing well enough that they'd keep going, too.
I guess we'll just have to wait to see what Scaled Composites does next
A shame. There's a nice mockup of their vehicle on public display in front of the science museum here in St. Louis. Too bad it's just a mockup.
i am a soviet space shuttle
> "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword." -- Matthew 10:34
This Matthew guy had better watch out if he doesn't want to find himself in Gitmo.
Also, it's not 10:34; it's 8:27 (A.M.).
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Speaking of Keen... You promised us The Universe Is Toast would be out in '92! What's taking so long? Huh?!
Have you not heard? Sir Richard Branson has signed Rutan up to make him some space planes, in his latest venture: Virgin Galactic
Stories:
Virgin Atlantic Licensing SpaceShipOne (27/09/04)
Sir Richard takes Virgin into Space (10/01/05)
Yahoo: 2004, The Year Space Tourism Finally Took Off
Plus, Armadillo Aerospace don't seem to have lost all hope yet either - Almost ready (06/01/05)