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Gamers Don't Need Vista or DX 10 Says Carmack
Freshly Exhumed writes "In an interview with Marcus Yam at Daily Tech legendary PC/Console game creator John Carmack holds forth on DirectX 10: 'Personally, I wouldn't jump at something like DX10 right now. I would let things settle out a little bit and wait until there's a really strong need for it.' and then zings Microsoft's marketers over DX10's mandatory use of the Vista OS: 'Carmack then said that he's quite satisfied with Windows XP, going as far to say that Microsoft is artificially forcing gamers to move to Windows Vista for DX10.' There are a few good tidbits on Xbox 360 vs. PS3 development, and a fairly clear disinterest in Wii as a platform for his company's products is shown."
Considering that he's got a long history of doing incredible graphics on relatively garbage hardware, e.g., real scrolling, platformer style on a PC that just couldn't do it using conventional means, using ray tracing to render a 3d looking scene in 2d, I'd think that pushing out gorgeous graphics on the Wii would be a nice challenge for him. Then again, why tackle that problem for the third (fourth, fifth?) time. It gets old hat after a while.
Interesting that he seems to praise Direct3D 9 when for so long he was a strong advocate of OpenGL.
...is DX10 relevant or not? If it is irrelevant, then the move to Vista is not forced. If the move to Vista is forced, then by his own argument DX10 is a relevant factor, and he contradicts himself.
I can't see a way that the move to Vista for gaming can be at any point independent of DX10 performance - in fact, along with overall OS performance I would say it was one of the crucial factors in whether I make a switch away from XP.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
Thank you John for saying the obvious. Wait for Vista and DX10 to be fully supported (ie DX10 video cards) before upgrading. Right now there is, what, 2-3 Video cards that are DX10 cards? Obviously the safe thing to do is wait for a bit.
What John or anyone else says doesn't matter. People who have to get the latest will get Vista as soon as they can, a lot of other people will wait. John could say never get Vista or get Vista right now and the same thing would happen.
Jobs says get a Mac. How many here are going to get one just because Jobs said so? Now how many are going to hold off on Vista because Carmack said to.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
This is a summary of an interview conducted by Game Informer.
...that just leaves Crytek as the rallying flag of DX10 (and oh what a pretty flag that is). I have to agree with Carmack though, DX10 as part of Vista is an artificial way to force the hardcore gamer crowd to upgrade and it personally ticks me off. Here's hoping someone cracks a DX10 installer to run on WinXP.
Not only does he make kick arse engines, he's a straight talker in a world a spin merchants. He's helped Microsoft improve Direct X (while supporting OpenGL), praised them for their Xbox 360 development tools, but can call a spade a spade. Objectivity. Love it, live it.
All I know for sure is Linux / OpenGL wont have an opportunity like they have now for at least 5-10 years. No DX10 on WinXP could be a real killer for DX, if developers feel the need to target both Vista and XP users, OpenGL could be the way to go.... Which AFAIK makes portability to Linux easier.
He may still be a little angry towards Nintendo because of Wolfenstein 3d for SNES. Id Software had to remove blood, Nazi stuff and more in order to port the game. I still remember he said he will never port a game to a Nintendo platform again, but then again Quake and QuakeII eventually got released for N64.
Carmack might not force you to use DX10 and Vista, other developers may.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
When "Windows 3.11 for workgroups" came, Microsoft wanted a network-oriented game to boost the networking popularity of its OS. Everybody at Microsoft was playing Castle Wolfenstein (from ID software) with their PC (under msdos). So they came with the idea of a special-networked-version of Wolfenstein under WFW. It could be a huge hit ! But the project never came to life.
Later, when WinG (the "DirectX zero" library) and Win32s (the 32 bits library) came, they had the same king of idea. Just take a popular msdos game, port it to WinG+Win32s, and show the power of the OS ! Doom (from ID) was the right choice. But the project never came.
Later, when Windows95 came, the same idea came again. Port Doom (from ID) under Win95+DirectX to show the power of the OS ! The first betas were lame (the graphics were computed as 320x200 and then upscaled to 640x480, so they weren't nicer !). The final version was fine, but slower than the msdos version (because more computed pixels mean slower framerate), so the "show the power of the OS !" part was a failure...
-- Rastignac was here.
You need to keep in mind that Id Software has made a business out of driving better graphical performance out of more and more advanced hardware, generally planning their engines to target the hardware available in the future rather than at the time of engine creation. So for them, the Wii is 90 degrees offset from their core competency while the XBox 360 and PS3 are more along the lines of what Id has long been interested in. To that end, the Wii is going to seem like too simplistic a device to be of interest to Id.
I think you'll find that it will take quite a while before the industry as a whole gets used to the idea of the Wii. It was a somewhat unexpected development (in comparison to the years of advance notice they're used to), leaving developers wondering what exactly should they be doing with this thing? If the Wii continues to deliver in the long term, however, you may see Id warm up to the idea a lot more. Not to mention that the next generation of consoles will be fought without a gamepad in sight.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
With the increase in home theater systems, and Xbox 360 adoption, Microsoft has actually moved the major drive for DX10 graphics to their console. While this move pushes them into the living room, it lowers the need for people to move to Vista and DX10. We all know that games drive the video card/driver market. With the games now on the 360, the computer OS being Vista is less relevant.
Since day one Carmack disliked DirectX and promoted OpenGL...
Things aren't the same as they used to be. The video game landscape has changed. Nintendo has plenty of games with blood now, and probably wouldn't stop you from killing Nazis in a game, which I fail to see anything wrong with. If you're going to have a shooter where you kill people, you might as well be killing Nazis. And not all of Carmacks games were bloodfests either. There's plenty of games that he could have ported to Nintendo without making any changes. Think of Commander Keen. Anyway, Nintendo isn't the family friendly system it used to be. Well, it's probably still the most family friendly system, that contains the most games playable by the entire family, but that doesn't stop it from having it's share of violent games.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Not really, Carmack is a polygon guru. The Wii is decidedly not about the graphics and more about the gameplay and usability. Thus, Carmack is not interested because his skills lay in making games that use traditional interaction methods.
That's a weird contradiction you've forced on him that isn't actually what he is saying.
He doesn't see much compelling about DX10 for game developers. He doesn't see anything compelling about Vista for game developers. DX10 will still be relevent -- an attribute which may or may not have anything to do with the quality of DX10 -- if game developers use it for games and because of the artificial Vista tie-in will still give gamers a reason to use Vista. He's saying Microsoft tied DX10 to Vista to try to compel you to switch to Vista for artificial reasons, not that you are actually being forced.
I can't see a way that the move to Vista for gaming can be at any point independent of DX10 performance
Um, yeah, that's part of his point. There's no reason to move to Vista for gaming outside of DX10, and there's no reason for DX10 to be tied to Vista outside of giving you said reason to move to Vista for gaming. Otherwise it would be independent. You see?
The enemies of Democracy are
I sincerely doubt that. For one thing, we talking about something that happened over a decade ago. For another, Carmack strikes me as having too much character to hold a grudge that long. Nintendo got their comeupance during the N64 and Gamecube generations. As a result, they reinvented themselves into a very different company. A company that is a bit more tolerant of Id's brand of gaming than they were in the past.
I'm sure that Mr. Carmack is still *wary* of dealing with them (they're still the most "family friendly" of the console makers), but I sincerely doubt that he's being childish in his dealings with them.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Why don't he push the graphical limits on cell phones then? Cause he's not about obsolete or underpowered hardware. This is the problem with the Wii. While Publishers might find it appealling cause lots are selling, game developers aren't going to creatively make new games for antiquated hardware. The console lends itself to ports and 'gimmicky' games (rhythm, wacky use of the control setup, etc), but no one is going teach the old dog new tricks.
I kind of look at the Wii as the dollar theatre of gaming (if they still have those). It's definitely a publsher's dream though, especially one that has a back catalog of on the PS2/XBOX, cause they are just a port/new control scheme/new levels away from having a brand new $50 box in retail.
The video game landscape has changed. Nintendo has plenty of games with blood now, and probably wouldn't stop you from killing Nazis in a game, which I fail to see anything wrong with.
Evidence - Wii Launch title: Call of Duty 3.
Having had a chance to mull on it, I probably agree with you, and as it turns out and referring to comments above, I probably misinterpreted his point slightly. No harm done, unless he hunts me down with a BFG...
i.e. All the rest of you buggers who're going to make the same point - I agree now!
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
New games developed for DX10 may not be the greatest problem, how about MMORPGs and their contracts with Microsoft? Do any corporate contracts include mandatory upgrades? Though SOE runs many of their servers on Linux, original Everquest is run on Windows servers. No idea about the other companies. I imagine many would return to real life rather then "upgrade" as many did when they switched to DX9 rather then get new graphics cards and/or computers. If you consider pressure from Microsoft and the graphics cards companies, how long till MMORPGs force a switch to DX10 for their users? How many users will this run off? Imagine there will be tons of die hard raiders switch to "the latest and the greatest", while many others tell them where to go. In fact many of those will probably insist on the switch as well.
Um... he did?
http://www.doomrpg.com/
Here's an interview with him on his role in its development:
http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=6
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
3D graphics are a lot more mature than a few years ago. Each revision of D3D has been a smaller improvement than the previous edition, and the cards have had a sufficiently wide range of capabilities that developers have primarly targetted more speed rather than more features. The new features that are available are quite nice, but a lot more specialised, and I'd imagine many games simply aren't going to use them.
Targetting DX10 simply isn't going to give a substantial enough improvement for most people to justify upgrading to Vista.
From Carmack's comments regarding DX10 and the Xbox 360, I wonder what Microsoft is really up to here. On the surface, tying DX10 to Vista, looks like a strong armed tactic to force gamers to Vista. Clearly, game developers aren't likely to abandon XP anytime soon. Carmack also had good words to say about the Xbox 360, so could the real plan be to nudge developers into more Xbox 360 development and off of the PC? I know, strange plan, but games made and sold for Xbox 360 = royalties for Microsoft, games for the PC do not. Of course, there may not be a plan at all. This could be evidence of different parts of Microsoft pulling in different directions.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
Not even DOOM music could make that cool.
Why bother.
Vista is probably going to be a better OS than XP, and it won't kill anyone to have DX10 since DX9 titles will work on it. You don't need to rush out and buy Vista, but you'll most likely wind up with a copy sooner or later and there's no good reason to not use it in favor of XP.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
I salute you for reading comments with an open mind and changing your opinion. Doesn't happen often (ever?) on slashdot! :)
Carmack strikes me as the kind of guy who wants to re-do the same game for 2009 in graphics that will seem impressive at that point in time. Working on the Wii can be like modifying a current game designed for competing consoles with lesser capabilities to take advantage of the Wii's modern features, or it can be like creating somethinig new altogether. Some like the challenge but he may simply not.
Presented: A slightly different viewpoint.
Also:
Although interesting, there are plenty of games that simply will not work well on the Wii. Probably games Carmack are very interested in working in.
FPS would not work well with directional controls in the left hand and a multi-button pointing device in the right??
Besides, the "bleeding edge" on the Wii is the HMI where the rest of the hardware is old and somewhat undesirable to work on.
With the competition, everything is old except that the maximum graphics detail potential has increased.
Then again, why tackle that problem for the third (fourth, fifth?) time. It gets old hat after a while.
This is Id. "Old hat" is their motto.
"You can get ten times the graphics power, and you can make a prettier picture, but when somebody makes a new IO device that really changes the way that people interact with the game, that's going to have a larger benefit there.
"So I'm really pleased with what they're (Nintendo) doing with the Wii and with the DS-and they're doing innovative things,"
"But our current generation of game technology is not targeted at the Wii. Maybe that was a mistake on our part originally, but we have been looking strictly at the 360, PS3 and PC as what we want to simultaneously develop on. We probably aren't going to be able to hit the Wii with the same technology platform."
I think he is very interested in the Wii. Just the projects and engines they have are not a fit for the platform.
Personally I believe the GFX on the Wii are grand. I luv the controller and the who package is sweet.
That's not going to stop Microsoft from REQUIRING it, though... Then we won't have a choice.
- Just my $0.02, take with a grain of salt, your mileage may vary.
Carmack's style of games don't fit the Wii. His games aren't known for innovative game play. Making a game for the Wii is uniquely different from making a game for anything else. So even if Carmack ports games to the Wii, they are going to be just that: ports of games.
Source.
This is actualy a dupe of an older
So yes. Carmack (and thus ID) have stayed away from Nintendo because of bad dealings, and no real NEED to work with them. This time around he is thinking it might have been a bad idea to stay away from the Wii.
My bet is that once they have the current Tech that they are working on up and running he will look into making stuff for the Wii. And I for one look foward to it.
Also, he is looking to port Orcs and Elves to the DS. Source
Do Or Do Not, There Is No Spoon, There Is Only Zuul. Everything in the above post is probably opinion.
...and suddenly, all users of Linux, Mac OS X, PS3, and whatever platform that isn't Windows or XBox started to scream "Oh noes !"
The Use of OpenGL is what have enabled games from Id to be ported to almost any powerful enough platform under the sun.
Should he switch to DX, fans will be stuck to Windows and XBox (and maybe a couple of WinCE compatible device).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
What if he had said DX10 was absolutely necessary and that everyone should go out and buy Vista on Jan 30? How many people would have listened to him? (This is not intended to be flamebait or trolling. This is a genuine question as I am not an graphics savvy geek)
I'm glad your not a game developer. It's people like you who immediately jump to the conclusion that everything about the Wii HAS to be 'gimmicky' who are trying to spoil the experience for everyone else you tell this garbage too. I bet years ago you were probably saying the same thing about more buttons, rumble features, and dual analogue sticks.
NO MORE FOOD FOR YOU TROLL!
Not to dick on the submission but what slashdotter really thinks this is an issue today?
An OS that hasn't even been released to the home market yet has a LONG way to go before it has enough of a market-share to be competitive. It has nothing to do with the technical aspects of DX10 but rather commonsense economics.
It's suicidal to put out software that has such a high system demand that only the upper crust of users can run it.
Infact, I'd even predict that DX10 is going to be such a non-issue that DX11 (or a next gen technology replacement) will be out before DX10 (and Vista) have enough of a market-share to be considered a series developmental arena for game producers.
Stick with DX9. It's not a big deal. It probably won't be one in the near future either, if ever.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
In the past iD has had very bad business relations with Nintendo and at one point vowed never to work with them again. So they didn't even think about supporting the new nintendo console when they started development on this new game.
However, as this article points out, Carmak has stated that he is very interested in what Nintendo is doing on the Wii and DS in terms of pushing the boundry on user-interfaces. Furthermore, in other interviews he has made it clear that the reason they is not supporting the Wii in the next iD game is because they are fairly far along in the development process and don't want to change gears half way through. He would rather continue to focus on the PC and XBox versions instead (plus a half-assed PS3 port).
Remember that most of the Wii games that have been released so far are from developers with strong gamecube experience, and many of the games are basically quick ports from projects originally targeting the gamecube. Changing gears half way through a project is not something that you normally want to do, and so I think it is predictable that iD was not going to do so for the Wii.
The impression that I have gotten from various interviews with Carmak is that he is very much considering targetting the Wii on one of iD's latter projects - either his next big project after the one in development, or one of the farmed out projects done by Raven etc - provided that Nintendo treats them decently. Given the shift in leadership at Nintendo and their supposedly better focus on third-party developers, this could very well end up working out.
I can understand John's sentiment. I just started doing Wii development this week. It doesn't have stencil support, pixel shaders, or vertex shaders -- even the PS2 had vertex shaders; which I'm already missing the general "funkiness" of the PS2. Faking the stencil with such hacks as the alpha buffer is getting kind of tiring.
One of our other developers jokingly called it a "GameCube 1.5" -- which is very appropiate.
The nunchuck (controller) is cool, and while it would be up to design to come up with some innovate uses, the hardware by itself, just isn't that impressive. Of course, it is always the games (or lack of them) that make (or break) a platform.
Cheers
No harm done, unless he hunts me down with a BFG...
I think you're safe. For one, he's not the vindictive type. For two, the BFG is still hypothetical, unless Carmack has been diverting resources from Armadillo Aerospace to Armadillo Armaments.
The enemies of Democracy are
Carmack throws a lot of light on PS3 that was missing from the previous article's summary:
The good news is that they have their games ported and they are going to be on the platform. The superiority of the DX tools is to be expected over a brand new system, but that does not mean the new system is broken. I'd like to know more about that design decision, after all the PS3 has more raw processing power than most consoles and completely shames the average PC. I expect most of the problems to go away as Cell development matures and takes over general purpose computing.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Not only that, but he's said in an interview that he enjoys programming for phones, that working with the limited resources is fun. He also codes ordinary hardware drivers to "Ground" himself if I remember correctly. So yeah, he does everything from drivers to simple games to brain liquifying 3D awesome. I would not put coaxing a little more Uberness out of a Wii past him.
...I got nothing.
not to mention that he's been talking about doing many other mobile games and also potentially DS titles as well...
Gekido's Lair
Only twitter can take an article that commends Microsoft and criticizes Sony into a "praise of M$" one-liner and "wow, the PS3 is cool". It just hurts like hell, doesn't it twitter?
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
One is bringing the PC in line with the 360 and making ports easy. Apparently it's pretty minimal effort to port from the 360 to a Vista/DX10 system (I say apparently because the information is second hand to me, I'm not a game programmer I just chat with them).
However the main thing is just new API with new features for new hardware. Graphics card companies want to keep pushing forward with more features, game devs need an easy way to use those, DX10 is the answer. The biggie is unified shaders. The idea is rather than having discrete pixel and vertex shaders, which are kinda two sides of the same coin, with different APIs you unify all that. In the case of nVidia's 8800 card it's not just unified in the API but the actual hardware. There's just general shaders on the card, that can be tasked to do whatever's needed. That means that if you have a scene that's geometry heavy but pixel effect light you get more shaders working on that, and you can swap around in teh very next scene.
So it's just more new shit, like all the past DirectXs. DX7 brought hardware T&L, DX8 brought programmable shaders, DX9 brought fully programmable shaders (there were more advances in them as well) this is just the next step.
Nintendo should make a second generation Wii that's packed with all the multiple core processors and powerful graphics cards, as well as the cool features of the original Wii. They could call it Wii++.
Abaddon: An Xbox 360 Indie game
dupe.
I don't have a link for the original on hand, but this was linked a few days ago...
Carmack, shmarmack.. I used to hold him in high regard but luckily had my wayward opinion was straightened out by this thread on a PS3 forum full of knowledgable graphics gurus.
Due to circumstances beyond my control, I am master of my fate and captain of my soul.
I think Nintendo is finally realizing that they might sell more games if the rest of the family (read: not the kiddies) had something to play too. They might be adopting something that Disney has started doing recently and that's attaching it's name to stuff other than "G or PG" material (Pirate of the Carribean and Kingdom Hearts).
There was an interview with Suda 51 (head of Grasshopper) basically stating they were making No More Heroes for the Wii because it'd stand out more from the usual "kiddish" games and might be something an older crowd would enjoy. http://wii.ign.com/articles/749/749899p2.html
Insert Sig Here
That video in your signature is awesome. Thanks for the laugh.
Yeah, but people keep buying new version of Quake.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Yep, I kill Nazi's all the live long day with my little white remote.
I'm not really sure what you mean by "Carmack's style of games" since he doesn't write games.. he writes game engines. I don't think even back in the days of the original Doom did he actually do much in the way of game design. His views of games and game systems has always been primarily focused on the graphical capabilities of a system and how to make a really good game engine that others can then place their own games inside of.
I'm sure he could probably find a way to pull a lot of power out of the Wii, but I doubt that's what he's interested in. Working with advanced graphical hardware and being able to pull out all of the power of the newer and underutilized systems is probably more in line with what he prefers to due, hence the focus on the 360 rather than the Wii.
I've configured, Hacked, Tweaked, and messed with Windows XP and DX 9 including all of the registry until I got my Computer exactly where I want it. Vista is more resrouce hungry, and DX 10 isn't all that appealing to me. I'd rather stick with the perfect configuration I have now, then have to upgrade hardware, and reconfigure an entire OS just to get the same preformance with little return for the effort I would have to put in.
It's not -1 Flamebait! It's +5 Funny. You just didn't get the joke...
I'm not convinced that the Wii signals the end of the game pad. I suspect that we will see the game pad as the primary interface for the Wii before it comes to an end. Physical interaction with the video game is a neat idea, but I'm not convinced that it will hold players attention enough to be the dominate interface in the long run. I really suspect it will be a little like DDR pads. Popular, having long term popularities, but definitely not the interface you would want to use for every game, or even most games.
I could be wrong, as I didn't expect the game pad to kill the joystick either. One thing is for sure though... over the next few years, I will find out.
Its bad enough to post dupes, but this one is terrible. Its basically twice-chewed information, an article about an article about an interview. Not only that, but this article seems to carefully choose which parts of the original article to leave out, presenting a biased, if not untruthful, view of the original information. Then they go one further, in traditional slashdot fashion, and give it some alarmist title to grab attention.
At least the title doesn't twist the article, but the context is more that he's happy as-is with XP, believes that they could back-port DX10 to XP, and that Vista isn't yet widely distributed enough to make business-sense to migrate development to it exclusively. DX10 isn't worth porting to for a game thats based on the Doom 3 engine and has probably been in development for 1-2 years? Big suprise there.
Dispite some bad dealings with Nintendo in the past, he's actually interested in doing some DS/Wii stuff, acording to the original article.
My understanding is that slashdot has editors, perhaps they should make some editorial decisions on what (not) to post.
RayCASTING not rayTACING. Big difference. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_casting
I think most people skipped over this because the primary focus of the article was about Carmack discussing why they would rather develop for the XBox360 over the PS3, but this was still a gem. In fact, this article seems to be a reiteration of this very quote.
And for this reason alone, I am very disheartened at the thought of the Wii becoming the dominant game platform. Not everyone who plays video games is physically capable of using the Wii.
If you want impressive hardware, you're going to go for a cutting edge PC, not a console at all. Buying a console is always about price, convenience, and game availability. The average person buying a console doesn't know what a gigahertz is, much less how many each console has.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Indeed. Check out these Japanese hentai games for the Nintedo DS. One of them turned out to be fake, but the other one is a real game by Tecmo!
Virtualization software takes care of that problem. As CPUs get faster and faster, this becomes less of a problem, and might even be a way to put those extra cores to use.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
This post will probably get ignored because I'm way, way too lazy to register an account, but I'll summarize the concept for you.
Under DirectX 9 (and Windows XP) all drivers run in kernel mode. Vista moves them back into user space. You see, - in DX9 - every single API call you make gets escalated into kernel mode before it even touches the graphics driver. DirectX 10 lets the hardware vendor essentially "split" their driver down the middle, with one part of it running in userspace and the other running in kernel mode. The idea is that the graphics driver would be able to batch and optimize API calls, doing as little computationally-expensive kernel IPC as possible. The immediate consequences of the Usermode Driver Framework in Vista are thus:
1.) It breaks EAX, so if you own a Creative card you're boned.
2.) It makes Direct3D look a lot like OpenGL.
Now, in terms of the actual featureset of Direct3D (which will be supported in OpenGL, under even Windows XP if Microsoft hasn't paid them not to), it adds a new kind of virtual shader - the geometry shader. I say virtual because the card actually throws all shader code on a series of general-purpose vector processors in an architecture called the Unified Shader Model, and the divide is purely artificial.
Anyway. DX10-level features allow a lot of cool stuff, like hardware physics acceleration and better instancing. Isosurface generation. All sorts of nifty stuff. It's cool, but honestly if they put better (and by better I mean "existant") hardware caps enumeration support in OpenGL there wouldn't be any reason to use it.
Actually, it's the other way around. If you've got enough mobility to use a gamepad, you've got enough mobility to use the small motions that the Wii requires. (The whole "standing up and jump around" thing is just for fun.) Since many games only require the Wiimote and not the Nunchuck, it represents the first time in history that one-armed players can use a video game console - with some footnote exceptions like light guns.
I forget exactly where I saw it, but there was a fellow doing charity work who saw a one-armed kid get a Wii to play with. He said that the kid enjoyed it immensely, and that it was the first time he had ever been able to actually play video games. The problem was that Gamepads and Joysticks had been inaccessable to him because they required two, fully functional arms and hands.
Something to think about, anyway.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Game makers who think they can't make good games without best available graphics and/or CPU power aren't giving very convincing image of their self esteem.
They may say that gamers won't buy their games without good graphics or that boobs sell and 1k poly boobs sell even more. Well... I don't know about other gamers but I have GC with GB adapter so that I can play modern 2D games and I'm buying Wii because it has the ability to surprise me positively. It doesn't even try that fake realism that supposedly sells so many games these days.
Take Gears of War on XBox360 as an example of typical teenager shoot'em up: its graphical realism is so high that I might as well be watching Platoon or Full Metal Jacket or Apocalypse now.. And you better believe I'm going to choose those movies any day over a game which targets teenagers as its main audience.
Why? Because its realism is sadly only graphical and the story is... uhhh, compare the story of any graphically realistic game to some classic war movie, let's say Saving Private Ryan, and you'll get what I'm after here. Graphics is all nice but unless the game has same level of realistic intensity as a classic war movie, forget it. Or try sell it to teenagers, they don't care if the story is crap as long as there is boobs, guns and monsters.
Preserve old classics: copy your collection onto all hard drives.
He may still be a little angry towards Nintendo because of Wolfenstein 3d for SNES.
It goes back much further than that, all the way back to the NES, SMB 3, Commander Keen and the founding of ID Software. See the Wikipedia Article for more details, quite an interesting history.
I don't know, Dedazo, it sounds a bit to me like you're a little overly defensive of Microsoft. All the GP was really stating is that he was encouraged that ID Software was still planning on developing games for the PS3. As gamers, we should be hoping that all three platforms succeed. I, personally, don't want to see another platform become hugely dominant, no matter what company is behind it.
Now, what was that old saying about removing the log from one's own eye before pointing out the splinter in someone else's?
There's not enough hardware or software support at the moment to make VistaHP64 (64-bit is a necessity, IMHO, for the ability to utilise 4gb+ of RAM) a viable proposition for me, yet, at least. I see no point in having DX10 (the main reason for gamers to upgrade) if there's a limited choice of games to take advantage of it. Likewise with limited support, at present, for 64-bit drivers. Neither do I like the idea of a full hardware upgrade until SSDs (Solid State Drives, i.e. flash drives) are available, on the SATA2 bus or better, & relatively cheap compared to standard HDDs. Neither the software or hardware for VistaHP64 has come together to make it ready yet. I won't be upgrading for any purpose other than gaming. I'll quite happily leave any webserver & media creation needs to be done on XP &/or Kubuntu for the foreseeable future. For now, I'd rather save up for an AGP 7600GT (for the dual-link DVI & yup, still on the old bus!) & a 2560x1600 Monitor.
any chance we could redirect some of your free time to pcsx2 (the quite-advanced-now ps2 emulator)?
people with hardware experience are in very short supply.
As far as twitter is concerned, choice and competition are good as long as "M$" isn't involved.
And to answer your point, I don't think one platform will become dominant. Microsoft does not have the same (unfair) leverages here they have on the PC platform, and even though they might have some technical advantages, Nintendo and Sony have the brand and game ecosystems to gain enough counterbalance. So I think they'll continue to compete in a level playing field, and that's good for everyone.
But of course twitter can't deal with that concept. His infantile hatred of "M$" dictates that he must find a way to wax poetic about how we are all blind to their "technical inferiority".
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Of course it was a dupe, *all* stories on /. are dupes.
:)
They are either duping a story they have already done, or a story they plan to do.
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
Kingdom Hearts is basically PG. It's "T", but T is basically anything from PG to PG-13, and I think it's safe to say that it's at the PG end of the spectrum. Pirates is a good solid PG-13, though... but it's still of the familly friendly variety, although it did get an incredible reception from all across the board. The 12-18 year old age-range is generally very weary of anything rated familly friendly, since at that age, it's your responsibility to be as big of a pain in the ass to anyone outside of that age range (and to most inside it, as well). So anyone targetting "Everyone", is kinda shit out of luck.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
a fairly clear disinterest in Wii as a platform for his company's products is shown.
"You keep using that word. I do not think it mean what you think it mean."
Disinterest? So his company has a complete lack of bias or compulsion one way or another? I suspect the submitter meant lack of interest or uninterested.
I love my sig.
>>Nintendo should make a second generation Wii that's packed with all the multiple core processors and powerful graphics cards, as well as the cool features of the original Wii. They could call it an even more spectacular market failure than the Dreamcast
Fix'd.
It's been a long time.
I bet Richard Kimble wouldn't feel sorry for that kid...
I was very surprised to see swastikas in CoD3. You don't even see those in PC games (which is the platform I came from). I believe it's because of international laws that swastikas can't be in games, and because consoles are regional and PC games, for the most part, are not.
I haven't gotten very far through KH2 yet. Which reminds me of another complaint that I've had with the game ever since I found out what changed in the localization. What the hell is the adversion to guns in this game? I don't get it, they have alcohol references and stuff (according to the ratings descriptor) but you can't have guns... especially for Pirates of the Carribean? I understood perfectly well why Cid was missing his trademark cigarette in KH1, but apparently booze in games is fine (we've come a long way from the good old "coffee is alcohol (in America)" SNES days), yet Disney balks at guns for something that is contextually relevant in a world. I guess booze makes pirates more pirate-like than guns?
Insert Sig Here
From http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/docs/HOWTO/Advoca cy
Ummmm I'd call Alan Wake a pretty big issue. I'm running Win2k and find even XP too bloated so I find the idea of running Vista pretty abhorrent and then there's all the DRM etc... but I really REALLY want to play that game on PC if it's ever out in the not too distant future (and not massively toned down to the lowest common denominator of performance - the consoles it will be on, like Deus Ex Invisible War was).
Your ad here.
All hard core gamers need is a unix box, and serial TTY
I fear the Y2038 bug
Data Execution Protection (DEP) in WinXP SP2 has already prevented me from playing any games on my Dell Inspiron 8500. Apparently the old NVidia drivers provided by Dell are no longer digitally certified to run, so all of my games and applications crash with an error code as soon as something 3D comes up:
:/ So I think they only thing left is Games-KNOPPIX :(
http://www.updatexp.com/0xC0000005.html
Unfortunately, I can't install stock NVidia drivers with this laptop since they wouldn't tickle the special integrated laptop power and cooling management interfaces properly.
I do have Debian on another partition, but the linux partition cropped up with several bad blocks
'Carmack then said that he's quite satisfied with Windows XP, going as far to say that Microsoft is artificially forcing gamers to move to Windows Vista for DX10
This is such FUD... There are REAL reasons that DX10 requires Vista. For example the WDDM model in Vista is needed for DX10 to do what it needs with the RAM usage and multi-tasking features of the GPU introduced in DX10.
These are NOT things that can be done on XP unless MS completely redesigned the Video Subsystem in WindowsXP, which would be a long process, and utterly insane.
People please do your own research and not buy into the ranting of a fool that thinks he has all the facts. DX10 has a lot of new features pushing the envelope on gaming graphics with larger textures and other pipeline optimization techniques, but many of the DX10 features would FAIL on XP or any other OS that did not have the WDDM driver model introduced in Vista, as no other OS can multi-task GPU operations or selectively share large portions of system RAM with the GPU RAM with no performance loss.
For further reading, go check out NVidia or ATI's site for information on DX10, or even be as bold to check on MS's site on DX10 and why the WDDM driver model in Vista is EXPECTED to be there and IS USED by the DX10 framework to provide the many of the new features of DX10.
Geesh...
Slashdot definition of a troll:
Someone who says something we don't like, or fails to use the words "Microsoft Sucks" somewhere in the post.
If you currently implement something in your game that uses a DX10 only feature, it's going to hammer any When MS announce DX10 it doesn't mean games should immediately use it and therefore we should all upgrade are GPUs, it's merely an indication of what nVidia and ATI should start putting in silicon.
They'll be the odd game that wants DX10, they'll be the off £500 GPU that supports it, but it's just a pointer for the way the industry should go.
In a couple of years time every $100 GPU will support DX10 and so the games produced will use it. People might bitch and moan, but this is the model that's managed to pull PC graphics from DOS to what we can have today.
For the record, I never mentioned having the -best- hardware, just _basic_, functioning hardware. It's 2007, and we have hardware that _still_ doesn't support stencils?!
Supporting multiple platforms, all with features sets that vary, with little commonality, is a real PITA.
Cheers
Not sure where I'll find time between AppleWin, WoW, and the Wife, but sure, I'd love to see what I can help out with.
Cheers
One thing I am so glad we are gone from is the DOS concept of "You can only do one thing at a time." I love the fact that modern OSes allow me to have access to everything on my system all the time. I can tab out of a game and look at a website, I can have MP3s playing in the background, instead of the game's music, I can pause a game, log in to a server at work, fix a problem, then go back to gaming.
Now before you start shouting about how Linux could do all that as well it really can't off a boot CD. It won't have all my files, all my apps, or even my bookmarks. The boot CD could provide other things, but you'd be stuck with what it shipped with.
However an even bigger problem is drivers. Maybe you don't really remember the later DOS days that well but games had driver hell problems. You'd have a massive menu of SVGA cards to choose from, then sound cards, and then maybe MIDI cards. The reason was that there wasn't any drivers on the system. You had to roll your own.
That's the whole thing that DX and OGL, in combination with new OSes, are supposed to free us from. A game has to only care about talking to an API. It needn't be aware of the actual hardware. You install a driver, it handles the details. Thus you can upgrade to hardware that wasn't available when the game came out, no problem. My games aren't bothered by the fact that I have a new graphics card with a shader engine totally unlike anything in the past, it supports DirectX, that's all they care about.
You have to understand that game companies are pretty happy with MS overall. MS's dev tools are widely praised and their OS represents a platform that you can reach the majority of PC gamers on. They aren't going to make life much harder for themselves and their customers just because of an ideological pissing match.
He's probably more mad that they didn't contract id to port SMB3 to the PC (I kid you not, they cloned the basic engine, copied the first level, sent it to Nintendo, and were rejected),
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WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
But the average person does know games on their Wii look just like games on their gamecube.
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WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
RayTRACING not rayTACING. Small difference.
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WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
I'm still not entirely clear where the problem is with doing multi core stuff in games. It seems to me that there are multiple fairly independent tasks to work on. My work is writing C-based control systems that are very multi-threaded - typically a couple of dozen system processes plus however many processes are needed for user sessions. The difficulties are locking between threads and sharing information between threads. Shared information just gets put into a shared memory segment, which isn't as convenient as just declaring on the stack/heap as necessary but isn't a huge problem. Locking could certainly be difficult but generally the better the design, the less locking you can get away with. Different states in the global data just mean a particular process has control of that data. I'm a long way from an expert on games programming, but surely work on user input, rendering, physics and AI can all progress fairly independantly on separate cores. The AI results depend on user control and physics updates, but don't necessarily need to use 100% up to date information on this (kind of makes it more realistic if they take a fraction of a second to start reacting)
OGL will have support for DX10 features and cards supporting them. Most likely, extensions will be available from either card manufacturer (I know nVidia already released some limited ones) before any games really use the juicy new stuff in a meaningful way.
I'm thinking that the hundreds of thousands of dollars they made on Commander Keen more than compensated for that little issue.
As it so happened, they actually miscalculated a bit. Carmack and Romero were certain that Nintendo would want to port to computers if they just had the technology necessary. Instead, the truth of that matter was that Nintendo wanted to keep their platform locked up nice and tight, and use the exclusives to force people to purchase the NES.
C64 users recall a short-lived game called The Great Giana Sisters that was basically a clone of Mario with different graphics and mildly different gameplay. Nintendo used their lawyers to shut down the company that made it, making the game very short lived indeed. Amusingly, it ended up living on thanks to piracy, and was even hacked to use Super Mario Bros. graphics!
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
My father is disabled -- he can only walk with the aid of a walking stick, and pretty soon he'll have to rely on crutches or a wheel chair. He loves Wii Sports, because he can experience the fun of all those sports that he can't experience in real life. And my father has *never* played video games, or had any interest in video games whatsoever until now. Now, he can't stay away from the Wii. The surprise smash hit of the Wii is not Twilight Princess, but in fact Wii Sports.
Don't you mean "Gamecube#"?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
So? Ever seen Metroid Prime 2 in 480p? It's the best my television can display anyway, so screw the Xbox 360 and the PS3 with their "better graphics", because I want more details in my pixels, not more pixels with last-gen details for twice the price.
I know the Wii is basically a "Gamecube 1.5", but so what? We got better controllers, DVD capacity, backward compatibility and (finally) internet connectivity (can't wait for games to use it though). But I also only paid 280$CAD for the thing, not 500-600$CAD.
Have you done anything on the gamecube? So far as I can tell, the Wii's got about a 50% overclock and some extra memory, but is otherwise very similar to the same hardware.
I am not sure what it has for rendering; obviously, comparing GC to PS2 games, it had SOME kind of rendering features.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Fare enough. Perhaps I should look in the mirror about the overly defensive bit. Yet, I find it a shame that in many places it has become trendy to hate one company or another. These days, it seems as though the whooping boy is Sony.
I was a big culprit of this back in the days of the Sega Saturn and Sega Dreamcast. These days, it seems as though someone cast a Change Alignment:True Neutral spell on me. :)
I guess it really is the future of gaming then.
It's not a troll, though I did choose the wrong platform. The one that would have been relevant would be the Sega Saturn.
Sega of America first turned the Genesis into a de-facto 32-bit system with a tonne of add-ons, then the Saturn came out. The Sega market split in awkward ways, and the result was both consoles being absolutely and utterly destroyed by the playstation. The fact that the playstation was so cheap for the capabilities didn't hurt either.
For Nintendo to release a new system right now would be like taking a gun to the side of their heads and pulling the trigger. It would be the end. We'd be looking at a two horse race.
It's been a long time.
Thought they only provided engines lately...
I have to disagree with Carmack about multi-threaded coding being significantly harder. It's really easy to let different subsystems do their own thing and just share data as needed so long as those systems don't need to be tightly linked. It only becomes tricky if you're trying to split a single system down in unnatural ways. At some point maybe that'll be needed but games, and most real world apps, are so complex anyway that they naturally have several systems running at once. If you can put your graphics system on a core, your physics system on another core, your AI on it's own core, and all the nitty gritty logic that ties things together on a core then you've simplified your code (as you don't need to try to make time for each system on a single core as much) and made things quite a bit faster without needing to do anything very hard.
Possibly JC is being to ambitious with how he is using the multi-core design and that is why he considers it hard? You can squeeze more performance out that way but once we get into eight core systems I don't know how much benefit we'll actually see from that little extra speed. Is it worth the added complexity? I think I'd wait for compilers and programming languages to evolve to handle those details for me. Or sit down and make them evolve myself - it's easier than writing a bunch of really complex app code for every app I write.
Of course most programmers are bad about properly designing their code. One that has always bugged me is apps where the UI freezes up while working with data or the network. Y'know you don't have to stop updating the UI while you load that 5GB file. Just read a block of the file, update the UI, read the next block, and so on. So many apps do that wrong and I just hate it.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Please don't badmouth the Nazi party.
The sega genesis was 16bit and competed with the SNES. The Sega CD addition was marketed as two 16 bit processors... the 32x addition was a bit weak, but I loved star wars arcade and NBA Jam TE. Doom locked up on it about halfway through.
The Saturn was killed in part by the additions to the genesis. My mother wouldn't buy me one since she just spent all the money on the Sega CD and 32x. I was in high school then. I also went to buy one myself but the only store in town who sold saturns was out (Toys R US) I never did find one.
The dreamcast failure was a real bummer. Its a great console. My genesis, dreamcast and xbox are the most played systems I have. I also have almost every Nintendo system except the Wii and DS. I like the dreamcast over my xbox. Both run a form of windows.
Nintendo will sit on the Wii for 3 years or more. Graphics don't matter anyway. The playstation had terrible graphics and people loved that. Games are the most important thing. In many ways the SNES was superior to the Genesis and yet Sega had a huge following because the games were fun.
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
Have you seen gears of war? It's not "more pixels with last gen details". When I first heard of the Wii I thought of exactly what you are saying. The Wii would run with the same level of detail, just at a lower resolution. As such it would be way cheaper to manufacture and sell than the PS3 and the 360. It didn't turn out that way. Graphically, it is literally a gamecube with a few slight enhancements.
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WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
I'd also recommend reading Masters of Doom.
WHO NEEDS SHIFT WHEN YOU HAVE CAPSLOCK/ DAMN1
I know what you're saying (Sega was close to Nintendo in those days), but the light you paint it in is that the SNES was technologically superior to the Genesis but had no fun games.
I think the opposite was also true: the Genesis tech was superior to that of the SNES in some ways, but it was Nintendo's (more) fun first-party games that caused it to have a larger following. I remember a lot of the third-party games in those days being on both Genesis and SNES, but at the end of the day I was on the Nintendo side of the fence because Mario, Zelda, and Metroid were more fun to me than Sonic and Ecco :-)
Also, I, too was sad about the Dreamcast's fate. It was great hardware, and had some fun and unique games (and at the time, more so than PS2, although the PS2 in its later years far surpassed the Dreamcast in that regard (and granted, the Dreamcast didn't have a chance to fully mature and gain the library it could have)). Wow, hope you can parse my double parentheses there.
WHO NEEDS SHIFT WHEN YOU HAVE CAPSLOCK/ DAMN1
Enjoying that sparkly new washed brain of yours?
I'd love to, it sounds very interesting (Especially considering my girlfriend is from shreveport), But alas I have school and Between adhd and schizophrenia, theres not much room for reading non school related books :(
That's exactly what happened: The 32x and the SegaCD ended up coming to market so late that they ended up being a 32-bit system (The 32x contained a 32-bit processor, that was the point of it) that competed with their own Sega Saturn. Thing is, the 32x platform whas shit, and anyone who developed for the 32x/SegaCD platform was taking a huge gamble because their entire market would have to have both.
If Nintendo even started hyping a Wii++ at any point in the near future, they'd probably end up killing both the Wii, the Wii++, and possibly even a future generation of Nintendo console.
It's been a long time.
Understandable, but just know that I've only read about 5 books in the past couple years, and that was one of them (I do most of my reading on the internet). At least, it intrigued me enough to warrant a pretty much straight read-through :-)
WHO NEEDS SHIFT WHEN YOU HAVE CAPSLOCK/ DAMN1