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John Carmack's QuakeCon Keynote Video

Posted by timothy on from the 300-shakin'-megs dept.

Donnie D writes "Video of id Software's John Carmack is available from his address to QuakeCon 2006 last week. It was comparable to his down to earth speech presented last year when he focused on next generation console gaming. This year, he focused on multi-processor support in games. Mentioned in his address are interesting details such as NVIDIA's sponsorship of Armadillo Aerospace for the X-Prize competition, vague details on id's next game, and topics related to his cell phone games. The video includes 1 hour and 20 minutes of Carmack's address."

27 of 44 comments (clear)

  1. How's he been lately? by Rob+T+Firefly · · Score: 1

    I heard he wasn't feeling too well a while back.. has Carmack's condition improved?

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    Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
  2. Torrent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    torrent here, if anybody is interested

  3. I just watched it ... by neonprimetime · · Score: 1

    The video includes 1 hour and 20 minutes of Carmack's address.

    So, I just got done watching this video, and I had to post this comment on /.
    No, but seriously, since it contains 1hr 20 minute OF his address, does that mean it went even longer? I would never spend that much time listening to what he has to say.

    1. Re:I just watched it ... by friedmud · · Score: 1

      "I would never spend that much time listening to what he has to say."

      Interesting, since you state that you DID just watch the video...

      "does that mean it went even longer?" YES... much longer. He always sticks around for an extended question and answer session. This year's session went on for quite a while. There were a lot of good topics (like the Wii which I posted on down below) that came up in the question and answer session.

      I actually didn't stay until the end of the QA session myself... I mean, I was at Quakecon... and there were games to be played! I am glad that I went to hear him speak though, this was my fourth Quakecon... and only the first time I've heard him speak live (I missed last year's speech, and one of the year's he gave his address via DVD as his child was being born).

      Why is there so much hatred toward Carmack? Are most of these people just trolling? I'm not sure what he's done to offend anyone lately... and I thought most people around here atleast respected him for his Armadillo Airspace work. Can someone point me to a recent falling out between Slashdot and Carmack? I mean Carmack even mentioned Slashdot in his speech and posts here frequently.

      Friedmud

  4. Re:I would by neonprimetime · · Score: 1

    and pay an admission fee to go to a convention

    AC, You win. If I had to pay for it, then I would be ok with it going 1hr 20min +

  5. Is Carmack still relevant? by bunbuntheminilop · · Score: 1, Interesting

    There must be a fair number of slashdot's readers who don't even know who Carmak/Romero etc were.

    1. Re:Is Carmack still relevant? by bunbuntheminilop · · Score: 1
      Now you're just being a grammer troll.

      Nice way to convince me that Carmack IS still as relevant as he was 6 years ago.

    2. Re:Is Carmack still relevant? by Mdentari · · Score: 1

      Touché!

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      Morality, filters both ways.
    3. Re:Is Carmack still relevant? by Mdentari · · Score: 1

      Who said anything about trying to convince you...

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      Morality, filters both ways.
    4. Re:Is Carmack still relevant? by Ant+P. · · Score: 1

      Firstly, he's not a grammar troll, he's a spelling Nazi.
      Secondly, you misspelled grammar.

    5. Re:Is Carmack still relevant? by Rakshasa+Taisab · · Score: 1

      That should be written "you're weakly trying to bash," as in "you are", not "your weakly."

      If you are going to throw stones from within a glass house, make sure you throw them consistently in the same direction.

      --
      - These characters were randomly selected.
    6. Re:Is Carmack still relevant? by bunbuntheminilop · · Score: 1

      I must say, your punctuation is magnificent!

    7. Re:Is Carmack still relevant? by bunbuntheminilop · · Score: 1
      lol :)

    8. Re:Is Carmack still relevant? by mshurpik · · Score: 1

      I wish I had an opinion of John Carmack, but I mostly play 3D games, and he has yet to make one. Doom 1 & 2 were fun, what's he done since? Even Quake Arena is too old to install on this computer. I was going to try and get multi-head working, but the game itself rapes my computer like a piece of spyware.

    9. Re:Is Carmack still relevant? by orasio · · Score: 1

      You are wrong. Lots of people know them.
      For instance, Romero made me his bitch, there's no way I did't know who he was.

  6. Re:John Carmack The 90s x86 PC FPS Relic by trance_programmer · · Score: 1

    Actually the id games usually support dual/multiprocessors and are thus multithreaded so please don't worry too much about John because is ahead of the curve. The hard part he discusses are the three different multiprocessor architectures he will be dealing with on the consoles.

  7. Please Post Excerpts by iridium_ionizer · · Score: 1

    If you have watched or about to watch the video, please make a bit of a transcript and post excerpts so other people can know what you are talking about and can make informed commentary.

  8. Finally... by nick_davison · · Score: 2, Funny

    Mentioned in his address are interesting details such as NVIDIA's sponsorship of Armadillo Aerospace for the X-Prize competition

    Finally a good use for all the heat NVIDIA chipsets create. A four core GPU based rocket engine. Of course, rocket engines are traditionally somewhat quieter than NVIDIA's stock cooling systems so there may be some FAA/EPA regulations to overcome.

    1. Re:Finally... by dreamchaser · · Score: 1

      They could probably just take the cooling fans from a high end NVIDIA card and use them to provide initial lift for the rocket.

  9. Re:John Carmack The 90s x86 PC FPS Relic by F_Scentura · · Score: 1

    "Awww, did I hurt the liddle Quake fanboy's feelings!"

    Antifanboyism is exactly as retarded as fanboyism.

    "Meanwhile console developers continue crank out incredible games and graphics on the new systems..."

    Based on engines developed by programmers like Carmack. I'm still missing where the developers are claiming that moving to the next-gens has been anything but a technical nightmare.

  10. Re:I would by daitengu · · Score: 1
    I was there, and it was a ton of fun. I did struggle to keep my eyes open during Carmack's keynote, but it was very interesting.

    By the way, this year, like every year, Quakecon was free.

  11. I was there... by friedmud · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Just thought that since I was there I would give my take on it....

    As a computer scientist that works on large scale parallel code... I found his comments about parallelism to be spot on. I don't think most people understand just how difficult it is to write parallel code... especially for things running in real time.

    It sounds to me like the PS3 is going to be a bitch to write for... the "acceleration engine" philosophy is just too far out there. From what Carmack was saying it seems that Microsoft went in the right direction with 3 identical cores. This gives some amount of parallelism while not being over the top... allowing for a smoother transition from the serial code that most programmers are used to writing. We'll see how this plays out in the market next year.

    I was somewhat dissapointed by his statements about the Wii... basically he just doesn't like Nintendo (because of a prior falling out)... so we probably won't be seing id software games on the Wii anytime soon (which is a bummer... because I know Carmack could do some awesome stuff with the motion sensing technology).

    Finally... I will say that I got to play with some of the cell-phone games that Carmack created... and man they were really cool. Specifically Doom RPG looked really good and played well. They are the first cell-phone games that have ever made me really want to do something on my phone besides use it to talk. He talked about possibly porting them to the Nintendo DS (probably through a third party) which sounds like a great idea.

    Anyway... that's my take!

    Friedmud

    1. Re:I was there... by Breakfast+Pants · · Score: 1

      What was the prior falling out? The rejected Mario 3 PC demo? Or was it less of a falling out and more of a clash of ideals (when id made it's fast rise to fame with bloody demonic themed games Nintendo was busy turning Mortal Kombat's blood into sweat for fear of 'the children').

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      WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
    2. Re:I was there... by friedmud · · Score: 1

      He didn't say specifically...

      Just that id had worked on doing a title for a nintendo platform... and the deal kind of went sour and left bad taste in his mouth.

      I have no idea what it was... but it wasn't just an ideological difference...

      Friedmud

  12. nowadays.... by get+quad · · Score: 1

    Today Carmack is just another programmer in a sea of much more talented and dedicated programmers.

    --
    "To err is human, to mod Funny divine."
    1. Re:nowadays.... by treak007 · · Score: 1

      even if so, that doesn't discredit his work.

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      Klingon Software is not released, it escapes, inflicting terrible damage onto the enemy as it does
    2. Re:nowadays.... by GReaToaK_2000 · · Score: 1

      and in FACT he was apart of a revolution in games. What's so revolutionary about most games these days. They depend on hardware to do much of the same thing as older games.

      We still have ...
      first person shooters (been there done that now a days we just have "juicier" games BFD)
      RTS games (same old same old, just "prettier")
      and this goes for MOST if not ALL of the games.

      Nothing really exciting except that fact that we have better graphics, actors doing voices, and movies turned into games.