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Ask John Carmack About Quake - or Anything Else
John Carmack is, of course, a GameGod[tm] so famous that even stuffy, all-business Forbes.com recently noticed him and Id Software. He's been interviewed about 42 gazillion times - but not by you. So go ahead. One question per post please, and since we expect a huge response, please try not to whine too loudly if our exotic blend of moderation, editorial judiciousness, and random dart-throwing doesn't pop your question(s) to the top o' the heap, which only has room for 10 - 15 no matter how many are submitted. Answers will be posted Friday, as usual, and I'm sure they'll be great, because John's a great guy!
I know that you and id are doing simultaneous development of Q3 for Windows, Mac and Linux. Which of those is your favorite OS to use, and which to program for?
"McBane to base: Under attack by Commie Nazis!" -the Simpsons
If something strange happened in Redmond, and DirectX was for sale for $30 for Linux, BeOS and every OS under the sun, would it be possible to write games on it, that would require minimal porting effort ? Why did you get into the games business ?
I'd just like to know his thoughts on Unreal Tournament.
Just out of curiosity, does the code in Q3 use boolean strings and variables to create all the perfect curves in various different views?
My $6million question:
Is there life after gaming? And if so, what would it be for you?
I'm wondering how much(if any) time you're going to put into optimizing G4s for AltiVec. You said earlier that AltiVec wouldn't give much of a speedup, but other Mac developers have said it would.
There's even a little mini-game where reflective balls float around. It runs for 1000 frames and then gives you the avg FPS. Supposedly the G4 version is much(maybe 2x) faster.
Would it not be possible to optimize the G4 that much since you want to really have only one code base?
Thanks.
How'd you start, personally (I mean on the inside, like emotionally and morally), and how has Id software changed you? for better or worse? and what do you think of the way that the software/IS industry is headed? (greediness for example)
Dan
Do you expect it to generate serious additional income, or did you do just for the heck of it? Out of hate towards Microsoft?-)
I'm wondering how much(if any) time you're going to put into optimizing Quake 3 for G4/AltiVec. You said earlier that AltiVec wouldn't give much of a speedup, but other Mac developers have said it would.
There's even a little mini-game where reflective balls float around. It runs for 1000 frames and then gives you the avg FPS. Supposedly the G4 version is much(maybe 2x) faster.
Would it not be possible to optimize the G4 that much since you want to really have only one code base?
Thanks.
Shoulda hit "preview" the first time.
Do you play the games you make? The only reason I ask is because my friends and I think the reason that q3 isn't out yet is that all you guys at Id are to busy playing it
I once read in Wired, an article, that said you have an incredible headstart on everyone else for making "virtual worlds" on the Internet using your engine from the Quake games. Do you have any intention of doing this? Has anyone approached you about it? It would seem like a fantastic use of the technology with online gaming being so popular. Entire worlds online could be created virtually and very life-like with many different purposes.
----------------
"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." - Albert Einstein
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
Have you given thought to after Q3?
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
Do you see game programming/creating as an art, and do you consider yourself an artist, or a technician(or something else, of course)?
Many people consider you to be one of the best programmers in the game/graphics scene, based on your ability to keep pushing the limits of current PC hardware.
I was wondering what measures you use to gauge the skill of a programmer, and who, if anyone, you look up to and consider to be a "great" programmer.
Cheers,
Justin
"My cat's breath smells like cat food." - The Tao of Ralph Wiggum.
As a Linux enthusiast and a gamer, I can honestly say that playing my favourite video games on Linux is a LOT better than trying to screw around with DirectSex in Windoze. My question is this:
1) When are we going to see widespread adoption of Linux as a gaming platform?
2) What should the community focus on in order to bring about this change more rapidly? Should we write gaming engines, API's, contribute to MESA, or just lake history take its course?
3) What is the best way to encourage game companies that Linux development is a sound financial decision? Or isn't it right now?
4) Public adoption of Linux has been increasing rapidly over the past year, but I don't see a lot of games coming out of large development houses, except of course for ID and Loki, and right now I don't consider Loki a large development house. Why is this?
Thanks for your time, John, and keep cranking out the killer games!
What is your favorite game of all time ?
Vidi, vici, veni. (I saw, I conquered, I came)
How did you handle the code which takes care of the basic non-OpenGL stuff in Quake 3 Arena (creating the window, handling events, etc...) Did you write separate code for each platform (GLX, WGL, and whatever it is on the Mac) or did you write some sort of optimized compatibility library to minimize the differences in the code between platforms?
"Software is like sex- the best is for free"
The Keen games just don't play well with the new high speed video cards or dosemu. Wolf and Doom have had there source code released; any chance we can get the source for Keen to do a Linux port? Please?
So what were you planning to do with your life before you got into video games? Did you have another career choice lined up?
-- Moondog
How long did it take you to beat yourself at your own game? (re prior versions)
OFTC: By the community, for the community
I'm interested in why you feel Id made it to the top, where so many other companies like this fail,and what people getting into the business should do to capture that success?
Was it dedicted people, the way you used venture funding, the shear talent you have in the group, the product (Doom) being so unique at the time...
Thanx
As we all know by now JC has chosen to remove the Grappling hook from the default Q3:Arena installation. This move has prompted a lot of flameing and praise from the community.
I'd like to know this, did you play with the Grapple yourself before making your decision or did you take advice/opinions from other people who played with and without it then make a decision based off of that?
Secondly, Do you feel that ID is moving farther away from making the games and more towards making and licensing the engines? Is this the image you've had for the company or is it just a trend that kind of happened? Are you happy with this direction?
Assuming Q3:A isn't the last game you make will the next game be another FPS? Or do you see ID branching into other game types? Are there already plans for another game?
What has your relationship with MODmakers for Q3:A been like? Most of us have already heard about the freeze on MOD making for the tests, which is understandable since it IS a Test. Has this hurt your relationship with some of the more reputable MOD makers?
That's all I can think of right now, I may post again later if I can come up with something else...
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Way back when, you developed some pretty sophisticated calculus in order to map a bitmap onto a 3D polygon in real time. What other areas besides 3D gaming can these fundamentals be applied to?
I've seen comments about quake3 being written to support SMP systems. Do you think there is really much of an advantage to SMP games vs. just having a single faster cpu? I supposed if you did the geometry calculations on one cpu and everything else on another one, it would be rock stable in multiplayer 32-bit high res with 5 people exploding in front of you. MMmmm, sounds nice.
Knowing that you have pretty much dominated the world in creating virual reality (Quake1-3 just feel more real than the competition) what other areas of high technology interest you? (Genetic research, aerospace, nano-tech, really fast cars :), etc.)
+&x
Q3A will obviously concentrate on multiplayer action, as we all know by now. The tests that have been floating around on the net allow exactly this, with very few restrictions/usability problems. Do you think this might hurt the sales of the final game?
Do you think we'll see more "offical releases" of games for Linux, or more of the unsupported ports (like Ultima Online)?
newton62 (56617) Karma: Bad
With all the talk about violent video games causing the killing sprees in schools, offices and on the streets, I have a question for you.
The game industry's usual response to such allegations is to tone down the graphical violence. Parental controlls can allow you to limit the amout of blood, gibs, etc.
I think that displaying the visual artifacts of violence is to treat it more seriously, and removing them won't help as much as some other methods.
Do you think such content controlls are effective? I think that a more mature story and cast would be more effective in carrying a non violent message that a bunch of 'clean' deaths would be. Of course feel free to disagree with me, as I know ID has been a villian in many murders.
Yes, I'm still a junky. Are you still a bitch?
What made you guys decide to re-release the doom source under a different license?
I toggled a toggle and buttoned a button, but when I got done, I was done doin' nothin'.
Hey John,
Are you guys thinking of doing a something besides first person shooters? id mades some pretty good platform games once upon a time, any thoughts of trying to go back to something like that for variety? Does it get boring just reinventing the wheel with prettier graphics each time?
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
As of now installing quake and other ID games on linux is a dirty hack - you have to pay for a wintel installation get the binaries from somewhere, etc.
This still better than nothing of course, but the question still stands - are you going to start releasing real linux, BSD, etc distirbutions. If not yourself through the major linux or otther unix players as retailers maybe? Even with no support as now?
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
How much code/design reuse do you bring from older versions of Quake/Doom?
I've read your reasons why you chose not to use Java for Q3 and applaud them. Since then Java has made considerable improvements with HotSpot and the new Client VM in Kestrel (1.3). Have you kept up with these improvements and do you still have plans to use Java in a future game?
How much of the codebase is common across all platforms? Do you primarily design for one platform, and then effectively port to the rest, or do you start off with portability in mind, and use common codebase for all platforms?
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Hi John
I was wondering if you are thinking much nowdays about persistant worlds for your games, it seems you are nearing the grail of visual realism, but what about the things that go on behind the scenes. NPC's are obvious, will they 'get on with their lives' when you aren't interacting ( gibbing! ) with them? Social groups, natural occurances, things that make our world a rich and complicated one. Sometimes its nice to have a blas t in what seems like a realistic Wild West town facade, but I'm really hanging out for complex worlds that surprise the shit out of me when I do something different.
cheers and thanks for the cool stuff you've done so far
lcs
"Your gonna get up and burn an X in your head" - Some movie via Rob Zombie
NOTE: The caps in the subject are sure to annoy pedants, aren't they?
How is this Catch 22 problem going to be solved?:
Developer: We won't port(or develop) our games to Linux because not enough gamers run it.
Gamer: I would run linux, but the games I want don't run under it.
newton62 (56617) Karma: Bad
I read in a previous interview (some gaming mag) that you believe 3D in games will be moving to Voxel based rendering. While I love this idea because it's a more 'pure' 3D solution I imagine there are some major difficulties in moving to this type of setup. I'm curious, what are your thoughts on possible problems? and some solutions? (For example how do you create/paint/manipulate a 3D voxel model?)
---
Don Rude - AKA - RudeDude
RudeDude
Perl/Linux/PHP hacker
Now that Q3Test has proven to just be a warmed over version of Quake 2 death match with better graphics, what are you planning to do to make first person shooters interesting again? Any thoughts about adding team play like Team Fortress Classic or Tribes?
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Are you ever tempted to get a car that isn't a Ferrari (e.g., Lamborghini, Maclaren, etc.)? Which is your favourite of the cars you own (or have owned)?
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
I read a sort-of-analysis that you wrote way back comparing DirectX 3D handling to Open GL (with Open GL being far preferable to you). Do you feel that the tools that you and others will need to create the next generation of games exist now under Linux or other Open Source operating systems, or is that still a long way off? What would you recommend that we developers and developer wannabes dedicate our time to?
On an almost related point... Doom was the beginning of 3D, first-person shooters, and they have lived quite happilly in the gaming market for some time. Other games have proven to be stable formats: sports, strategy and/or tactics simulations (e.g. Myth), multi-player build-and-conquer type games (e.g. Starcraft). What do you envision being the next set of technical hurldes that will lead to what sort of new game formats?
What is your opinion of Nervana's Psi Visualization engine (the analog, post-script-type 3D environment description language, described at www.nervana.com)? What possibilities does it have for 3D gaming, and do you intend to do anything with it?
Your games are entertaining. You have nice cars. Lots of people idolize you. But...
Are you happy with your life? Do you sleep well at night? Do you have close friends? Are you content?
-Amigo
I'm a huge fan of subdivision surface representations. In my mind, they're much nicer than tensor product surfaces because they are topologically unconstrained and can have natural constraints on for sharpened edges in your geometry.
Do you see subdivision surfaces making it in to the gaming industry soon? It seems like it would be a big win for character animation at least. Would a major game need to use subdivision surfaces before we start to see direct hardware support for them? What do you think the future is for curved surfaces in games?
--
Need undo/redo for your free software app? See Libundo
What is your favorite programming language and why?
Just a quickie, do you still have any contact with Romero, either socially or professionally ?
Is it possible ID may join Ion Storm for a future project together , or are the 'artistic' differences between you too great ?
Regards
Alex
As someone considering becoming a programmer myself: How fun is coding now compared to 5 years ago? Does it still give the same excitement, or are you starting to grow tired of it? Do you plan to stay in heads-up shoot-em-up games for the forseeable future, or are you thinking of moving into other areas (other types of games, non-games, or even possibly non-computer stuff)?
You've probably already answered this one.. There was a rumor a long time abo about a DOOM movie being made. Was that for real? Was Arnold S really going to star in it? If one is made I think Peter Segal would be great as the "cook turned hero", after all, he's done it before! Thanks!
I'm not a gamer. I doubt if I ever could be because I've noticed that the most popular games have some degree of violence associated with them--even if it's just shooting aliens. I'm very sensitive to this and would like to see interesting games developed for my kind of crowd. What sort of games do you think would fit this mold? I'm not into sports, racing, movie thrillers/characters, or sci-fi and would be terribly bored by games of this nature.
Recently someone posted about their experience in determining the file structure of the Doom WADfile. How did you feel when people were discovering how to modify Doom, from building new levels, to changing the executable itself(dhacked) originally without any information from id? In your opinion, is the modding community a valuable place for creating future game developers?
;)
And, what did you think of how Nitrozac portrayed you in After Y2K?
--
My biggest question is to do with the Q3A manual. In the past, manuals for FPS games have been little more than decorations in the box. Anything that you really wanted to know about the game (i.e. a printed copy of cmdlist/cvarlist with explanations) you had to go elsewhere on the net to get. Why? Isn't telling you how to use the game the point of a manual? Why not fill it with info on how to modify the game. Point out that .pk3 files are little more than renamed .zip files. Point out how you are and aren't allowed to modify the game (to avoid another Generations fiasco), give a quick refernce guide to the client and server side API's, as well as the flavour of assembler that is used in the VM. There's so much MORE to do with a manual for this game. The question is - is id going to do this, or are we going to be left fending for ourselves again?
Huh? So I didn't really spend ages playing Wolfenstein 3D before Doom came out, then? That said, Doom was by far the better game, and not just because of the better graphics or game engine, either. This is borne out by the fact that I'm still playing Doom today, while I haven't touched Wolfenstein in years...
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Hello, John. First of all, Quake 3 is the best game ever.
Second of all, heres my question:
Is Linux in any way limiting as a game developement platform compared to Windows DirectX? If so, is Linux moving in the right direction to have a faster, better, more standard game API? (ie. Opengl, mesa, xfree86 4.0)
Thanks
ul|tma -At least we all use linux-
There has been many questions asking where you think 3D graphics will go, but here it another angle at it:
...or, should we just stick with the textured triangle until we have more than one per pixel?
Where would you like 3D graphics to go?
- Voxels?
- Raytracing/radiocity? (If ever possible live.)
-
-
__
Comment submitted. There will be a delay before you understand what you posted.
now that you have spent some time working with an open source (the glx module) do you have any thoughts as to:
the quality of code that is being produced
the rate at which it is being produced / debugged
thanks
henri
It seems _a lot_ of people always talk about what a "programming god" you are. Now, I haven't seen any of the source code to any of your works, nor played much Quake (I did play a good bit of Doom II back in the day...), nor have I read all the gaming sites every day, so I don't know first-hand about your design and optimization skills or your ability to get something shipped on a deadline, but I'm wondering if you consider yourself with or without any of the employees at ID to be the industry leader(s) in technical competency (or "programmer godliness")? And if so, if you could briefly go into some of the details of why, like anecdotes about debugging, getting a product out for Christmas, optimization, style-guidelines, choice of tools, whatever....
Remeber when you made that game? You know, the one with all the shooting and blood? That was ... umm ... pretty cool.
Hi John,
.plan files, I
Sometimes, after reading your
wonder what you could do if you applied your
intelligence, programming skills, and sheer effort
towards something else revolutionary... You've
often said that you like working on your games
because they give you a chance to work on many
different areas (networking, 3D graphics,
compression, etc).
My question is, if you ever gave up games, or if
you were to do something else entirely, what would
it be? Although I love your games, I'd give them
up in an instant without complaint if I knew you
were going to work on something revolutionary
outside the gaming arena.
-WW
I'm curious if you learned of Binary Space Partitioning before or after DOOM was conceived as a game? For example, were you aware of it when Wolfenstein was written? Did you consider and reject other rendering methods for DOOM?
And given the rising costs of making a competitive video game, do you think it's already too late for a small studio or an individual to make it big on their own?
We're on the road to Tycho.
A few months ago I remember you were interested in the problem of computer vision, citing it was "the opposite of computer graphics." Did you ever look into this? If so, did your research have a direct impact on the Q3 artificial intelligence?
In what ways could computer vision research benefeit future computer graphics development?
-Ted
You have occasionally made changes to your development efforts to accomodate non-Intel platforms; for example, making sure the latest Quake code is 64-bit clean so that it will run correctly on Alphas.
Non-Wintel markets are clearly not going to produce as much revenue as Wintel, so some people would say you're wasting time and money. What is your answer to this, and what importance do you see in multi-OS and multi-architecture development?
What are your thoughts on nVidia's new card NV10, redubed GeForce 256? Specificially the low, 120 MHz rating? Will the low fill rate that will result from this sub-standard speed be a barrier to the next generation 3D games running at high resolutions? Or will there be some workaround for this potential problem?
Finally, do you predict that OpenGL will entirely replace Glide in the future, despite the fact that certain game companies own stock in 3dfx, and have a vested interest in keeping this API alive?
Many people think that the extreme sucessfulness and longevity of DOOM and Quake was partly due to the internet communities that sprung up around them, to discuss playing them and write new levels for them.
How important do you feel a viable gaming community is to the success of a new game today?
Hi John, I was just wondering what other products might come out of the Q3 engine. Are there others from id and/or other companies lined up to use it yet?
Remove 'nospam' to e-mail
What is your opinion on the viability of commercial open source games or game engines? Is it possible that some day id software will create an open source game engine? Or would you consider building off of an open source game egine rather than starting from scratch when the Quake codebase is deemed obscelete? (not to suggest that my project would be worthy of such a thing. :)
-Kenton Varda
Will the final license (and packaging) for Q3 allow for installations to multiple operating systems on the same machine? For example, I run a dual boot W98/ Linux system at home, and wonder if Q3 will be shipped in a format which allows me to install on either (or both) operating systems? Is it feasible to package the game engine for multiple OS on a single CD, with shared texture and world files that can be read by all Q3 game engines on any platform?
Darren Schlamp
Slashdot - the place where you can look like a genius by restating the obvious
I have been following the progress of the GLX driver with interest, as I'm sure have many others here. How have you found working in an open source environment in comparison to the role you have been used to at ID?
Here it is, the question everyone wants to know, but are all to afraid to ask. (please don't hurt me, im just the messenger)
boxers or briefs??
(or panties or thongs or nothing, or whatever else. its all good here)
How about comming across to see us, well maybe not 'the' John Carmack but why not an European Bus Tour ? (I don't know what your relations are with your distributor here)
John,
;)
With so many games moving from human vs. computer to network and internet-based games, both in the FPS, and the new fad of massively multiplayer games arriving on the scene, coupled with the arrival of ever-spreading broadband access, do you think that this trend of network gaming is going to continue to increase, balance out at some point, or reverse? And what would you like to see become the 'next big thing' in gaming? (Besides Quake 3
Aqualung
You once said that you wanted Q3A running on every platform that had hardware 3D accelleration support. BeOS is such a platform. Any plans? (then I could actually do something with my batmobile)
-Kenton Varda
Very few computer games have revolutionized the industry by creating and popularizing new genres. (Wolfenstein 3D, Civilization, Myst/7th Guest, Command and Conquer, and Ultima Online are the only examples I can think of.) Each game genre became possible because of a new piece of hardware that became available (eg. decent video card for Wolfenstein, CD-ROM for Myst and 7th Guest, internet access for Ultima Online). It's clear that today's hardware advances will provide richer 3d games, but will this hardware bring us a new game genre? If so, could you elaborate on what that genre might be and how it differs from previous game concepts?
-Ted
Any plans to do games for wireless handhelds such as the Palm VII? While limited in graphic ability, the ability to play games on the road would be a huge plus and the existance of quality games will encourage improved graphics and other game enhancing features in the future.
As someone stated earlier in this thread, you used to use NeXTStep (cap?) as your development OS until you needed OpenGL, then you switched to Windows NT.
I guess I have several questions then.
1. What are your favorite features of the UI of NeXTStep?
2. Do you like anything better about Windows NT than NeXTStep besides the fact that you can use OpenGL on NT?
3. For both NeXTStep and Windows NT, which "features" do you most wish were either not present or worked radically different than they did? (_Are_ there any such features on NeXTStep?)
4. What features would Linux need for you to switch to using it over NT?
Glückwünsche, haben Sie Slashdot ermordet, indem Sie zum korporativen Druck beugten und Subskriptionen einlei
You just recently GPLed Doom. Thanks a million for that. Do you have plans to GPL any of your other titles?
Do you read POKEY THE PENGUIN comics? They're great! I hear your coworker Kevin Cloud reads them every day. Please send those guys money, Mr Marmack!
John:
How do you cope with all the programming? My company has been trying to break out of the boring commercial software market and write a game. However, the optimization is killing us - we just don't know enough assembly. How did you learn it all, and how do you think out things like optimization before you go ahread with things?
Ben Stiglitz
KEScom
I'm sure there are alot of people out there who look up to you, and basically want to know how you got where you are.
How did you do it, meaning studies, previous jobs, encounter with ultra-intelligent beings from outer space?
1. What advances are needed to made realtime 3d look like real life?
2. Will the accelerator wars ever slow down?
3. Do you anticipate there ever being a time when we'll use one 3d engine?
4. Do you think hardware acceleration has a dark side? For example, the hardware acceleration of the GeForce 256 assumes you're playing with polygons, not voxels. Could the availability of certain kinds of acceleration influence people to write bad tech because bad tech would work faster than good tech?
All I have to say is that I respect John Carmack and Linus more than any other individual in the software buisness. Also, I have to say that Quake3 is by far superior to UT. I use nothing but linux and Q3 is fucking pimp in it and pimp period. Good work JC.
I, obviously, am not Carmack. However, I think we (linux users) need to ask ourself, why would a game company develop a game exclusively for linux, or develop for Linux first, when the Windoze gaming market is: a) definetly there b) definetly much larger? The only reason I can think of, is if the game has such nerd appeal that the Linux has more paying customers.... Or if the game is substandard by Windows standards (eg: doesn't have that 'look and feel' that windoze users seem to want).
I'm sure there are API and performance issues as well, but until the market is there, why risk it? Also another possible reason, I think, is that many of these game companies are becoming increasingly wed to Microsoft APIs (eg: DirectX, Direct3D...). I'm sure Microsoft does this intentionally to make it that much harder to port games to _any_ OS, regardless of how much better the other APIs may be. (though a better API would help).
Just my two cents. It'd be nice to hear what Carmack has to say about this.
-Fall
Knowing that you are (deeply) involved with this project, I was wondering how well it is doing? What percentage of Windows OpenGL speed are you able to get in Quake 3a? Any work on Matrox GLX and DRI for XFree86?
PS.
Q3demo is just pure magic.
3d gaming is obviously a specialty of yours. All the way back to Wolf3d what has driven the 3d gaming technology has been a combination between hardware technology and innovative programming. With technology advancing at a fast pace and you having a broad understanding of 3d programming issues you are in a very select position of having a good idea of what may happen for the future.
What do you see as the next major advance in 3d gaming? Something like Doom or Quake was to the 3d gaming scene when they came out? Lately it seems that all we do is get prettier graphics and cooler weapons with each new engine. What do you see as being the next advance that has an impact like those games?
Unbreakable toys can be used to break other toys.
As long as you're being picky, Wolf3d and Doom weren't 3D :) But Quake 1 was.
What are your theories on what makes a game "fun" (multi-player vs single player)?
-- Virtual Windows Project
What is your opinion of Nervana's Psi Visualization engine (the analog, post-script-type 3D environment description language, described at www.nervana.com)? What possibilities does it have for 3D gaming, and do you intend to do anything with it? Someone already asked that so I will ask it again. Id like the worlds greatest if not best 3d programmers take on the 'revoluationary' engine
Is there going to be any effort to put in some sort of anti-piracy stuff into Q3? A ask this because I know quite a few people who interperate Q2's only requiring the cd for single player as a go-ahead to install Q2 on as many friends' machines as possible strictly for multiplayer. Obviously, this attitude isn't good for a multiplayer-only game. As much as I want to see all those warez monkeys actually spend some money for a change, i'd hate to see Q3 have some sort of copy protection juggling act that needs a cd in the drive when nothing's being loaded from it.
This is a break from the usual questions from this group, but I thought it would be interesting to know.. You have a couple of exotic sports cars, one being a 1000 horsepower/750 ft-lbs of torque (insane!) ferrari, and I was wondering which one you generally drive to work?
John,
id has set the pace for years now, with revolutionary games like Wolfenstein-3D, Doom, Quake. As you continue work on Quake 3, I'm wondering where you see your efforts heading next? What will be the "holy grails" that the next id game will attain?
On a similar note, what non-id games have you been impressed with? Are there any games that you saw and thought, "Now that's an original/cool game!"
"Doubt your doubts and believe your beliefs."
"Doubt your doubts and believe your beliefs." -- Switchfoot, Ode to Chin
Though it unlikely that games will ever be free (ala beer), since so much effort goes into them from all angles (not just code, but also art, music, design etc), but that does not necessarily preclude open source game engines.
Admittedly (and I don't mean this as a slam against you) game engines today do suffer from many of the same problems that Open Source activists attack in Operative systems and other software: bugs, instability and sometimes even bloat and vaporware.
Do you think that Open Source will play a part in the future of game development?
-
This isn't a question, don't flame.
In reference to parental controls...I think these are silly sometimes. How does it help a child to see that when he murders people there are no disgusting side effects? Which is worse, actually showing the gore, or allowing the child to believe that when he axes his schoolmate, his schoolmate will just spawn in another area of the playground.
This discussion though is entirely irrelevent because it is the parents' responsiblity to ensure that their children don't play games that they have objections to in the first place. To make an analogy, censored porn is still not good for kids (depending on who you speak to I guess) even if it is censored.
P.S. I used to watch popeye when I was a child and then be horrified later when I threw my toys down the stairs and they wouldn't fly back together after they were smashed.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
John,
I've been following your exploits, grin, for the last couple of years. One of the comments that benefited me the most was your suggestiong to read the Graphics Programming Blackbook by Micheal Abrash(sp?). Could you give a list of books that you consider excellent source material for someone that is looking and doing high end programming. Both graphical and non-graphical.
Sincerely,
Kal Kolberg
aka Lando
/* TODO: Spawn child process, interest child in technology, have child write a new sig */
Well, if you're going to be that picky, then Quake 1 wasn't 3D, but Descent was. As far as I'm concered, Wolf3D, Doom, Quake and Descent are *all* 3D, just different sorts. Wolfenstein was a 3D game with 2D levels. Doom added the ability to go up and down, but not to look up and down. Quake (and indeed, Heretic before it) added that, but Descent was the first mainstream game to have 6DOF (i.e., full 3D movement).
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
The Quake community would like to fix the bugs in Quakeworld / glQuake as there are STILL a few of us hard-core quakers, i.e. CTF, ThunderWalker, Team Fortress, and Mega-TF players.
When we can expect to see the source for Quakeworld / glQuake?
i think i understand how you do voxels: either it's an octree, each node an opengl display list of an isosurface with so many polygons the seams are invisible - or it's something in software where each voxel is drawn as a single-pixel "particle" with lots of spatial coherency optimizations. which do you think will make it into the next game?
Is there any chance quake3 will be released under an open source liscense? If I recall correctly, Doom was recently released under the GPL. That was pretty cool, but releasing q3 under the GPL or something similar would be unbelievable. I doubt this will happen, but I like to pretend ;)
The FPS has been a very popular game genre since Doom. The games have advanced technically, but the premise remains essentailly the same. How much longer do you expect the genre to be popular?
Since there are already a lot of tech questions out there for you...here is an easy one:
What do you do when you are not working on Quake? What other games out there do you like? Who/What inspires you? And what kind of supersystem do you run at home for gaming ie what proc, 3d card...tech specs for your home system is what I am getting at I think.
paulcole@hushmail.com
As a gaming platform to some degree linux is lagging behind windows (though it has been getting better.) What kind of changes could be made that would better enable software developers to port their games to linux and/or make linux a more desireable platform for game development?
Shadus
"the low, 120 MHz rating"
Don't forget that this is the rating of nVidia's reference card. Nobody will use this card: it's the chipset that will be integrated into other graphics boards by the various manufacturers/integrators. These companies have the choice to play with clock settings, etc, as they see fit, and feel is safe.
Why not just interview some random /. user? You'd probably get the same amount of useful information that this so called gamegod can give.
I recently read about Brian Hook's comments concerning his departure from id software. The one that intrigued me was the one this. "Working with John was the most enlightening period of my short and pathetic programming career" It almost sounds like you are a mentor as well as the technical lead of your company. I am also aware that Mr. Hook had a large amount of knowledge concerning the OpenGL API. Do you typically hire people that have a range of skills outside of your area, or does it depend more on the person and there experience (Mr. Devine for example)? Thank you for your time..
-- Java is not a Jedi trait... "do, or do not, there is no try" --
Given that you need to design games for a broad market, not just bleeding edge systems, what do you find to be the most challenging limits to game design?
In a year or so, a typical gaming machine will be able to represent environments and characters so complex that it will take *extremely* large design teams to fill the content pipe using traditional methods. What are your thoughts on the necessity and possibility of meta-design tools? (e.g. level generators, parametric character traits, etc)
Other than on salt lakes, do you do any racing?
Or do you just play around on the streets?
Larry Colen
I've got lots of friends who work in the games industry, and they're all in huge development teams (typically 35 or more people) with all the useless (IMHO) management junk hanging on. Do you think id's refusal to go down this route (last I heard, you had 13 employees) has helped in your success? From what I've seen, you've been able to consistently keep quality high and deliver an end product without resorting to having 7 artists, 6 musicians, 3 game concept designers and countless hordes of coders. Basically, do you think staying small has helped ship a decent product in a sensible timeframe?
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Will there be cd audio tracks on the q3 arena cd and, if so, who's doing them?
Have you ever parlayed your uber-hacker skills to get some killer booty! If so, please regale us with some of your more amusing, er, exploits, if you will.
..that's the cash he would lose if he switched professions. Maybe that's why it's gone up so much.whatever.
+&x
The nature (not the quality) of Id games changed after Romero (left/was ousted/whatever) from the company. Without going into detail, I laud some changes and bemoan the loss of others.
My challenge to you is this:
Say something positive (as in 'kind', 'upbeat', 'flattering', etc.,) about John Romero's contribution(s) to the astounding success of the early Id games, up to and including Quake, and tell us what, if anything, you miss since his departure.
If you respond with something clever ("He made great coffee") or something bitter ("He never made coffee") I will surely chuckle with the rest or nod in solemn understanding, but will consider the challenge a failure on your part. If you manage to say something positive and insightful about his technical/design/whatever contributions, without retracting it or qualifying it, I will touch my head to the floor in respect and say "Wow. There goes a Man."
If you truly believe that he contributed nothing, then by all means say so and we'll call it a draw.
In any case, I will continue to be an avid admirer and follower of your efforts to continuously raise the bar of Sheer Amazingness in Computer Gaming Quality(TM).
**>>BELCH
Most of the question here center around your involvment in the gaming industry. With the exception of your love for Ferrari's, what do you do when you're not coding, playing, or turning the gaming industry on its ear?
It's 11PM, do you know where your pants are?
this issue is hotly debated on many Quake3 messageboards, what do you consider cheating and why? Changing fov's? writing communication scripts? turning the brightness up?
Back in the days, we could poke at idsoftware.com and see that they ran some form of UNIX or another.
Now, all of the machines seem to be running NT for publically accessible servers. What gives? Why the change? Any reason?
Sad but true, games will hardly ever be ported over to linux, there is no money in the linux gameing market, and that is the driveing force of most game manufacturers. If the game must be open source whats stoping Joe Blow from downloading the source code and compiling it? No monitary gain towards the game company. Simply put.
Now that you built her a new body, is there a contract saying that she needs to stay with you?
ID software has brought 3d into the forefront by developing many pseudo-3d (wolfenstein, doom) and true, polygonal 3d (quake, quake 2) environments. What do you see as the future of 3d? I have been recently playing around with voxels, and a recent slashdot article refered to an engine that generates a natural scene as a single mathmatical equation. Do you think polygons will hold onto the scene?
- Rei
This is what he said in PC Gamer (US) sept.99 "After Quake III ships, Im going to take a few months and do some research into computer vision. There are a few things I want to work on with cameras as input devices, and I want to do some work with scene extraction from video." Ive been dying to hear more from him on this subject ever since.
For a number of years, development groups (and id licensees) such as Raven Software have used another company's 3D gaming engines, adding their own unique story, art, music, etc. While their work certainly constitutes competitive intellectual property, there is a case to be made that this is not necessarily the case with the 3D engine. Many would say that the benefits of open source development could be leveraged to build a quality 3D gaming engine, and the role of the gaming developers could be reduced to what they are really good at and what makes their games unique: story, art, music, and gameplay. Do you feel that open source is a valid development model for the most technological aspects of videogame creation, such as 3d engines? Do you see yourself ever participating in a project such as this, either as part of id Software or as an individual?
Is there any chance that Id will do a port of
Quake Arena to Alpha Linux? or make it available
for others to do so?
Dual Alpha EV6 + 750Mhz + Linux + Quake Arena + TIME = Utopia?
I was wondering if you actually play any other games beside Quake and if you do what games do you play ?
John,
.plan file. I am constantly amazed at all of the various areas of computing you have knowledge on. For example, besides being a graphics god, you recently started discussing dynamic interpreters and code generation.
1) I often take a look at your
You obviously understand the ins and outs of the varous platforms you develop on, and their development tools. You're fixing bugs and working with networking issues. How do you find the time to learn all of this stuff to a useful level? Do you hire consultants to help you out for initial advice and direction?
You're the head programmer: how do you even find time to code so much when you have project management responsibilities? I find that taking on the leadership of a team can reduce coding time to 20% or less of my schdule. I find that I can't work on anything on the critical path. I find that that I am more useful if I keep myself free of coding responsibilities so that I can help others on the team and prototype high-risk or unknown tasks. Finally, on top of all this, how do you find the time for a personal life outside work?
2) Are you going to be like Bill Gates and just keep going, even though you're already extremely successful? lol! Really though, what keeps you motivated and drives you to work so hard for so long, especially now that you've earnt enough to retire, travel the world, do something else, etc?
3) I guess that this stems from 1)... how much project management and team leadership do you have to do? You have a small team of developers, do you have somebody to handle all of that for you?
Undoubtably, id makes games with cutting edge technology, and Doom and Quake were revolutionary and very fun to play.
However, IMHO the basic kill-em-all format is getting a little tired, and with the call for less violence in society, I think it's time for id to make a game that's still great to play without the supreme gore factor. It's like id is the "B" game house, not for the special effects, but for lack of a new idea in game play. I think opportunities are limitless for non-violence in games, starting with outdoor childrens games like tag, caputure the flag (without rocket launchers) and moving on to non-lethal weapons like rubber bullets and glue guns.
1 - Do you think id (a) should and (b, more importantly) can make a good and profitable game that is less violent?
2 - More development mindedly, how intertwined is the development of the game with the technology when you do the coding?
Many thanks,
Chris Schumann
Mr. Carmack -
1) You were once quoted as saying something to the effect that "Being well-rounded is overrated." I've always been interested in learning more as to how and why you have that perspective. Could you elaborate?
2) I understand that your specialization and ability to make the most of your area-specific knowledge has taken you to the heights of the game industry (and kept you there for years), but is your espousal of specialization mutually exclusive with the fact that id supports multiple platforms? In other words, given your statement, one would think id might concentrate solely on one platform and "mine" it for everything possible -- yet in reality you support other OSs than that predominate Windows (thanks for doing this, btw). Does that run counter to your original notion?
Thanks for your time.
-Lil' Billy
As "alternitive OS'es" become more popular, do you see a whole industry develop where it's not writing software, it's porting it?
Loki seems to be doing ok money-wise in porting games to linux. But there isn't really isn't anyone else(that I know of) that is doing it. Think it's possible that "porting" companies will start up and PAY the orginal company that wrote the program for porting/distribution rights? Where as then orginal company would make profit right then and there. Where as the may not port themselves due to time, money, or not even sure if there is a market.
And not just talking about porting to linux either. I'm an avid BeOS user, and I love using it. But the lack of good quality aps keeps me booting into something else for certain things. And most companies won't even port to something with the lype of linux, let alone BeOS.
I want to thank id Software for releasing the Doom source code. I don't know of other companies doing this with any other games, so this is a big step. Here's to id!
My question is: Can we expect to see the Quake source code, and, if so, what decisions must be made for the source to be released?
You guys write great games. I discovered Doom in college on our SGI network and have been a fanatic ever since. Three cheers!
"We apologize for the inconvenience."
After reading comments from you over the years about your own so-called ignorance (eg. stencil buffer defaults, polar co-ordinates in Doom, compiler technology for Quake 1), I would like to know the following: what is your attitude to learning? Is it mainly grab-the-laptop-and-retire-to-a-hotel-to-experimen t or do you actually read books on graphics algorithms?
I would be interested because you have always seemed to be a programmer who is aware of what you don't know, but don't care since what you do know is more than good enough...
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
John,
I am trying to implement a "seeking" steering behavior, similar to what is posted at: http://www.red.com/cwr/steer/gdc99/index.html
I guess I just don't understand the math enough to know what I need to implement to get this to work. Right now I calculate a stepping value at each position of the seeking object and target by taking two vectors (targetVec and objVec) and dividing by a number of steps to arrive at the target. ie: (targetVec-objVec)/stepVal But, I am getting a behavior that is more like "arrival" than "seek". Can you explain (possibly with some simple mathematics) what I need to do to implement the seeking behavior found at the page above?
As competition heats up and other companies
catch up with your lead in the first person
shooter, who are you looking at as competition
and what games are they making?
In other words, what would you play if you
weren't playing Quake?
John Lewis
The May 1999 issue of Car & Driver had an article entitled Doctor Yes and the Mad Ferarris. This article covered both your Testarossa and your F50, as well as your attempts to break the 200MPH mark.
First, let me say, I've driven by (I live in the area) and those are mighty beautiful machines. Have you managed to take either of these gorgeous rockets past 200MPH since the article?
Also, could you autograph my copy of C&D?
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
John, what are your thoughts and feelings were about Bungie Software's new game Halo? The demos I saw on: Apple's site looked incredible and supposedly were realtime vidcaps of the actual game.
Although I must praise the q3 network code (much as any quake*), I have noticed a terrible problem with weapons in a moderate lag environment. On a decent server over a 56k modem, weapon response time is terrible. The client side weapon effects are fine, but environment impact (bullet marks, rocket blasts, rail shots, etc...) is delayed a *lot*. The shotgun may be the most noticeable, but the fact is railgun firing needs to be deadly fast in order to be effective. Is this a known problem, or something that I should just accept?
-
"In the flesh, on the phone and in your account.... You shouldn't have called you know."
THIS IS PRE-ALPHA PRIVATE RELEASE CODE!!!
DO NOT USE IT UNLESS YOU ARE A DEVELOPER.
ALL IT DOES IS CRAS
Once upon a time, mode 13h was an applicable standard which really helped direct aspiring game developers learn to program. Nowadays, it seems
the same is true of OpenGL. When 13h grew
into relative obscurity, we saw a tons of
competing ideas (some good, some bad) move
in, all attemptimg to control future game
development. Today, as limits in the original
OpenGL specification become more apparent, do
you forsee a coming standards war pertaining to game api's? If so, where would you like to see
development in the future?
j. scott olsson
What is your current status and intent for supporting multiple OSes? Can ID stick with Mac, Linux, and Windows for the foreseeable future?
Justin
Looking at the jump in graphic-quality from Wolf3d --> Doom, and then the jump from Doom --> Quake, how much better do you think these games can it get?
Do you find it more difficult to work on the Linux platform than Windows or Mac? Admittedly, Linux was not designed as a gaming platform, and the audio/visual libraries available are not the best. Also, has developing for Linux increased interest in the OS among id? Are you all Linux nerds like us now?
# wrote sig.txt, 23 lines, 31337 chars
In other words: Why do you think that games attempting interactive fiction or other elements aren't as popular? Is it that they are not as well done? Is the technology not up to making these games realistic? Do most game players just prefer shooting things?
In my group of friends, 3 of us have e-mailed you on occasion to ask something for our pages (one runs a gaming page, I run an anti microsoft page, etc) Im the only one that has ever gotten a response.. i was wondering if it was because I put in a line of flattery in every message :o)
Oh.. by the way.. you are awesome and you set the rules for 3d games with every release!
-K
Ken Mitchner PHP/SQL Programmer Currently Seeking Employment
You'd have to live in a deep, dark cave to not hear the buzz over Sony PlayStation2. I've seen reports that studios are complaining that PSX2 is so powerful, they don't really know how to take advantage of it all. It seems like whining to me, since I come from the world of PCs with their ever-expanding memory/hard drive space. Do you think game studios can fall that far behind hardware, are these studios thinking too short-term, or are they just not accustomed to having that much power at their disposal? Do you think that PSX2, and Dreamcast and Nintendo "Dolphin," for that matter, have reached parity with PCs, from a developer's standpoint?
Keith Russell
OS != Religion
This sig intentionally left blank.
Have you ever dated that John Romero chick? I hear she's pretty hot.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/idea.shtml
Anybody know where these shirts can be had?
e s/11.jpg
http://www.firingsquad.com/features/q3abus/imag
i know this is sorta offtopic, but i don't think i can get any closer : )
Where can someone with C experience learn about how to make a 3d software engine? What good books are there on the subject of 3d rendering? (Not OpenGL/Direct3d books)
might I suggest scrabble, or perhaps yahtzee?
My question relates to Wolfenstein. I grew up playing this game and have always hoped I'd see a new release of it. I've always imagined a truly 3D rendered Wolfenstein on Linux. Do you plan on bringing new games about that are based around the same concept but with more realistic human characters?
Thank you for your time.
With it becoming increasingly obvious that computer games are going the way of Hollywood blockbusters and costing somewhere in the eight digit range, and involving increasingly expensive detailing, do you see any chance for first timers to produce their own games with any hope of market acceptance? Or are we stuck with computer game 'productions' instead?
-m.d.
and I would think Designer Dragon (Ultima Online) or the chaps from Everquest would be better to ask about.
I can't remember Quake1 NOT having full movement in any direction. :)
I didn't say Quake1 was the first truly 3D shooter, it's just *A* 3D shooter
Board games have been a very popular genre back though the ages. With all the technical advances (ie plastic pieces, printed money, n-sided dice) the premise remains essentially the same. How much longer do you expect the genre to be popular?
My question is: Do you feel that the high visibility of Id employees within the industry hurts you because they leave for other opportunities and are you tempted to offer ownership to keep people around?
I still remember playing wizard of war (old video game) at the neighborhood strategy shop where they also sold D&D along w/ lead figures.
- Ah nastalgia
Is it spelled "COM"?
Hi,
What do you think of having to upgrade your
PC every 12 months to acctually get a worthy framerate on the hottest games? Do you think that this will end, or will we be upgrading, upgrading and upgrading?
It seems that every game that comes out these days needs top of the line hardware (it really has always been this way). How much thought in the game design goes into getting every ounce of speed possible, is assembly still used for the code withing critical loops? Or are games just getting to large to optimize at an instruction level?
---- aut viam inveniam aut faciam
If it's not imprudent, considering the lawsuit, would you share your thoughts on the politics of gun control?
When in college, I was somewhat addicted to playing in MUDs. At the time,and that is quite a while ago, I hoped that MUDs would inherit the first person 3d interface of wolfenstein. To date I still haven't seen something like this. Are there plans to create an online role playing game that evolves and expands based on the Quake3 engine ? The ability to walk through a teleporter which transfers you to an other server, logging out without loosing your inventory and being able to learn new skills come to mind.
John,
.plan that SMP in Windows was working nicely. Are you still planning full SMP support for Linux, or is this a better question for Zoid?
You've stated in your
I read about a new TurboGL driver for the Matrox G400 that provides unbelievable speed increases on various games, if you're using a Pentium III or an AMD Athlon. I'm assuming that this TurboGL driver makes a lot of use of the new instructions in these two chips. As one of the developers of the Mesa3D/XFree86 4.0 G400 drivers, can you tell us if you guys are also going to be making use of these new instructions for the G400 drivers? What about the normal 3DNow! instructions in the K6-2 and K6-3? Cody Russell
Free with every viral infestation of Windows*! Any other non-violent, non-sports, non-racing, or non-movie-related game is out there? Geeze, even when a piece is "captured" in chess, it can be assumed that it's being held against its will -- which is, in it's own right, an act of "violence." Arghh! heh heh
Hi JC!
Do you think that the gaming industry could ever embrace free/open source software, in terms of the engine? A friend of mine has oft claimed that eventually game engines will become open-source projects, and games will be distinguished by the data that is created for them. What do you think?
--- Dirtside
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
As a lot of Q1/Q2 players are painfully aware, is the level of cheating that is possible in the online games.
what do you define cheating? Creating scripts to enhance your gameplay is one thing, but if no one else has these scripts are you just cheating in that game?
All Brights is a good example of changing your environment (and for some unknown reason considered legal). Cl_nobob, Rate bombing, hacked water, see thru walls, aim bots. The list goes on.
Doe's iD plan to enforce a method to stop people from having to play someone at a disavantage? Prehaps a method to allow you to read another players loaded script?
Its my opinion that, in general, games and game makers seek to establish a name with a spectacular first effort and then seem to just cash in on that name with some followup games of debatable progression or quality. For example, AOE and AOE2 or C&C and any of its sequels or Doom2 and anything that followed it.
What's your opinion?
Will the next iD game feature large dynamic texuring as seen in Starsiege: TRIBES and Unreal? Why?
no text
John, what do you predict will eventually dominate the online multiplayer service market? Will more software companies have to start providing the service for their own games ala battle.net and westwood chat? Will broader thirdparty services like mplayer takeover? What about the very basic services that do the bare minimum such as kali and gamespy?
I remember (it seems like it was years ago) when wolf3d came out. I spent hours playing it. It was revolutionary, and fascinating. Then Doom. Then Doom 2. Now they all look like repeats. Different weapons, different plot line, but the same game. When can we expect something as revolutionary as wolfinstien was? What do your foresee this game being like, and what technology will be involved?
How do you go from a game like Keen, where hardly anything dies and you need to be home by bed to something like Quake?
You've been responsible for the pushing the limits of first person 3d on the PC in many ways, but this is only video. What are your thoughts on 3d positional audio and their place in games like Quake1/2/3? I'm referring to general positional stuff like plain stereo and specifically to API's like Aureal's A3D. Do you think it's integral to the ultimate FPS experience? A diversion that isn't as important as visual reality?
Bart "My account was the wrong size so I had to send it back" Grantham
Do iD plan to fix it so it's possible to put advertising into the game. For example say a level has a large banner in one of the arenas, that banner space could be used by the admin to help pay for thier server.
Do you think the players would mind?
What are your thoughts on HALO both graphically and what is claiming to offer gameplay-wise and what do you think of Tom Barbalet's efforts w/ his nervana project (Psi engine)? Do you see id's next game as perhaps being what we all dreamed the original quake would be, a game in a huge world populated by players that can roam freely among various landscapes (ie: realistic forests, rolling hills, lakes, etc...maybe even w/ the planned quake hammer too hehe). Hardware is at the point that you can implement these landscapes/features...so why not? capsule
With video card that can transform and light far more polygons than the fastest CPU, we're looking at hardware that will enable a significantly different game design. 18 months from now, we'll have hardware out there that can easily handle 2-5 million polygons per frame and maintain a reasonable framerate. Knowing this, how would you begin designing a game now, knowing it would be realeased in 18-24 months? Obviously scalability is very important, and the demands for art asset creation are greater than ever, but what are the NEW challenges for game design? Will the most "impressive" game still be the one with the best engine (as in the past), or the one with the best art?
I SERIOUSLY think this is a MAJOR asset to the game. I WISH you would seriously think about implementing it. This would take TEAM games to the next level. I've always known id for being very innovative, but if you release Q3 without voice communication, I feel the innovation will stop here. I'll be honest, i'll still buy it without voice communication. However, I really really really really really wish you would put it in. It would be so much fun to trash talk. It makes me think of the movie "White Men Can't Jump."
"It's hard, so hard, to make you look so bad."
And if you're a player that feels you don't want to hear a bunch of people screaming into a mic while you play, you can just goto the option menu and turn voice communication off. There's no reason why the rest of us should do without.
"dude, I only have 5 rockets."
"ok, what impulse is it again?"
"22"
Mr. Carmack, Releasing the source codes to classics such as Wolfenstien 3-D, Doom, and TED5, is what I admire most. Why not release the source code to all your old games in like an anthology? From Dangerous Dave, to Commander Keen 6? That would be rather cool.
Way back when, when John was still doing preliminary research on Quake 3 he mentioned that he ported the first level of Quake 1 to a voxel format but that it was way too big in file size to be useful. I was wondering if voxel technology is something John is still interested in and if voxel engines may or may not have a future in action games and games in general. -Brad Mallett
I saw it at PC Expo this spring. Not yet ready for release, but Q3Test was running on the BeOS.
I have quite a few monitors and graphics cards. Is there a possibility of being able to use two or three monitors at once in the future? I'd love to see someone firing at me in my peripheral vision (hear it too with surround sound). That would make for a more engrossing experience.
If it's a hardware limitation issue, would SMP help with this?
Thanks for your time
_damnit_
_damnit_
It's my job to freeze you. -- Logan's Run
I'm a long-time OS/2 user and would like to know:
- OS/2 will have hardware OpenGL support(via the Sci-Tech drivers)
- OpenGL apps port extremely easily
- and Id is behind OpenGL big time
what is the possiblity(In light of the response to 1) of seeing future products ported to OS/2?I also run Linux and BeOS(my Thinkpad 1452 is set to Quad-Boot 98[for DVD movies], OS/2, BeOS, and Linux), but I prefer to use OS/2.
It's well known social theory that who you know can get you places.
How important do you think social networks are in the computer world and have they been useful to you in your career? If so, who has been most helpful to you?
Thanks
-Matt Miller
Dear John,
I know it's too early to ask this question, since q3a is still not finished and all. But, is there plans to continue the quake series? Beyond q3a that is. If so what would we expect in your next quake based game? If not, what other type of game(s) are you planning to make? Lately there has been a lot of interest on first person based adventure games (eg: halflife and Thief), would ID concider making one?
Thank you.
--
I don't have the numbers. However, I doubt it is significant enough. The difference between proportion of warez'ing *nix users and windows users is probably more than offset by the proportion of Linux users who're simply opposed to non-GPL, non-open source, or commercial software.
That being said however, in some regards they're very different markets. A linux user is probably more likely to be impressed by good game play, than the newest eye candy....
Technical Purity: Labarynthine API's and kludges bug programmers who know better. Challenge: It's more fun that way. Because He Can: John's a person who's fame and wealth alow Him to Call The Shots. If he got an inexplicable yen to port to the TI-99, he could get away with it. His virutal Midas Touch assures his publisher that, so long as there is a Win32 port, Yea, The Money Shall Flow. I'm guessing a response would fall into one (or some combination of) these categories.
John, your games are amoung the most popular pieces of pirated software ever. What I find intriguing however is why you never attempted to really fight piracy? While many companies have spend a great deal of money on copy protection, serial numbers, online authentication and countless other anti-piracy schemes, ID continues to do nothing to stop pirates. Even Quake 3 which is basically (all bots aside) an online-only game, why not try something similar to what sierra did with halflife? Is it because to date every single game ever produced has been cracked and pirated? Will there ever been a way to combat this? What should future software developers do?
I believe that it may be a bit rude to ask directly about another product, however I would like to know what possibilities that you believe exist on dynamically stored map/landscape that changes as the game progresses (ex: a rocket blasts a piece of rock from a celing and the rubble crushes someone else and remains a barrier while providing a hole in the celing to the sky and level of the map above). I would also like to know how hard it would be to implement somthing along these lines with respect to programming time and any potential hardware limitations of the current market. Additionally there was a facinating article about a graphics technology that was invented/developing in Austrailia on slashdot a couple days ago that involved 3D imaging I was wondering what you though of this technology from a viability and implementation (if viable) prospective and how it could change both the hardware and software markets for products based on visualization?
- Sig
I just wanted to help out by giving the answers to some previously answered questions. :) I read through some of the more highly-moderated questions for things that I, through various Carmack interviews, already knew. I would hate for /. to send him some questions that have been asked of him a million times. Hopefully others will follow suit, and the moderators will notice and not mark these questions up. You just recently GPLed Doom. Thanks a million for that. Do you have plans to GPL any of your other titles? When the last Quake licensee finishes their title (*cough* ION Storm), Carmack has stated he will release the source of Quake. I'm not certain if he'll GPL it or not, but the source will be available. Are you guys thinking of doing a something besides first person shooters? Assuming Q3:A isn't the last game you make will the next game be another FPS? Or do you see ID branching into other game types? Are there already plans for another game? Carmack and others at id (read: Mr. Devine) have stated that the next game probably will not be an FPS (first-person shooter), but there will be a next game from all signs.
"My works are like water. The works of the great masters is like wine, but everybody drinks water."
"My works are like water. The works of the great masters is like wine, but everybody drinks water."
--Mark Twain
Mr. Carmack, My name is Gary and I've read in perhaps one of your .plan files that you had toyed with the idea of having marks be overlaid on curves, but didn't want to mess with the math. I was wondering if perhaps now, since the test was released back in August, if you've had the time to implement dynamic curve texture overlays? Since Epic in the Unreal Tournament was able to get textures to conform to non-uniform brushes such as cylinders and interior corners, are you trying to come up with a way to make curves overlay properly on curves to up the level of 'realism' to the levels that UT has acheived in its demo? I realise that the two map formats are different, but could you possibly extrapolate the equation for the curve the texture would be sitting on from the .bsp file and then 'bend the plane' of the texture to that angle and apply it? Also, is this the same limitation that prevents marks from showing up on brushes with curves in them or subtracted from them, such as the upper level plats in Q3Test2?One last thing, are we going to see different types of marks, such as small 'craters' left from bullet impacts, instead of just one scorch mark resized (I'm assuming) for each bullet mark?
The lack of proper 3D accel support under Linux- there's currently no accel support for 3D on Alpha or PPC. Zoid said as much on one of his finger updates.
John's been working on something in his spare time that will remove that restriction along with others in the Open Source community- it's the G200/G400 GLX driver. I don't know if the ATI chips will work right in the Alpha motherboards (they should, but you never know until you try...), but if they do, the ATI driver which has recently started will also fit that bill.
As soon as Zoid has a stable version of acceleration support to work with, I'm pretty sure that Zoid will be right at it making an Alpha version of Q3 (which would rock!).
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Please please tell me, this had been keeping me up late at night for years! I can't eat, I can't sleep, I have no social life at all. What does the message that DOOM gives after typing idchoppers MEAN? For the love of god please put me out of my misery and tell me!
1. Will NIN be contributing to the soundtrack of the game again if ther eis even a soundtrack? 2. Are any map from Q1/Q2/Doom being remade for this game? 3. Minimum Sys requirements in the final version?(i cant find an exact desciption of this anywherE)
I was never any good at this whole celebrity thing, even in this bailiwick.
--
Recently this thought had been discussed in a review of Epic's Unreal Tournament, but was either not submitted or not responded to by the parties involved ( Epic and id Software ).
Is there a conscious effort to present an attitude of "refinement" in the Quake/Doom series, instead of innovation? Or, to elaborate: The Quake/Doom series has changed very little in actual terms of gameplay mechanics - instead, the code has been refined and tuned to create what one imagines must be the ideal 3d FPS environment. Is this on purpose? And, to continue that line of thought, will the next id project be radically different from what has been created so far, or will it stick to the same formula as the previous games?
"I could float off the floor if I wished to. But I do not wish to because the Party does not wish me to." - Abridged,
Have you ever considered writing another commander keen game? Maybe a 3D FPS. Or are their problems with licensing and Apogee? It would be great if you realeased another Keen game. I grew up on them and have been waiting for a new one.
A rabbit in the hand is worth 4 in the cage
Well, chess is, by nature, a 'violent' game. It's basically a game of medieval conflict and wartime strategy.
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Do you think it would make sense to create an university degree (or at least an "emphasis" within a computer science curriculum) for game development? Why or why not? If you think it makes sense, would you be willing to devote some of your precious time to actually teaching courses?
BTW, I used "computer science" as an example above, but I think that such a "program" would have to be much more interdisciplinary, maybe requiring cross-departmental cooperation big time.
Signed, Dr. Mabusa
Hello I believe that for an application to be universally accepted one must have some form of universal compatability with all levels of hardware. Is there a possible implimentation of a low end option for crappy terminals or processors like say a 486 ala ttyquake?
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
Why are your games so damn successful? I mean, is it just clever marketing, or luck or can you see into the future or what? unit6 www.glubco.com/zach
For the children: I agree with Hard_Code, it is up to the parents to monitor what their kids do, not the game industry, not the schools, not the government, ad infinitum... :-) But I digress...
/. :-)
I often point out the medical 'fact' (can't remember where I heard this, maybe it's an urban myth) that the chemical/hormonal soup in kids prior to age 9-13 is equivalent to an adult on acid. If you watch kids play, thinking, 'hey, they're tripping!', it makes perfect sense.
My question for the Guru: I consider myself a pretty savvy chick - I played Q3 test on a Linux machine, I know, no big deal for most of the guys on
Has it been your experience that the types of women/girls who play games like Quake are generally more knowledgable about computers? I would certainly (but humbly) place myself higher on the tech ladder than a doughy secretary who thinks the ultimate computer game is Solitaire...
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
the posibilities of cybersex in such a world.. :) And the how about those ping-idiots/haX0r kids who want to nuke you all the time. Well in such a world, you'd be able to take your BFG, aim and blow them to netherland. Oh wouldnt it be nice if there was a death period.. Like if you die, you cant log in for 10 mins or something. That would get some homework done.
--
If all the worlds computers and cars stopped working on January 1, 2000, and were irreversably broke, what other interests would occupy your time?
Is it just me or should all the employees of 3DFX and epic be beaten to death with their own shoes? How do you feel about a 3D chip company sponoring a demo so that it works only on their cards? Would you consider doing something similar if 3DFX or Nvidia made a similar proposition to ID for Q3test? Did either one of those companies try it?
The licencing of Quake looks to have changed. The other software developers are getting the source/software before Q3A is released (FAKK,Voyager.) Ar'nt you worried that other games comming out soon after your initial release will impact sales? How ready is it ?
Hello john, I've heard about the SMP-optimization of Q3, and Mesa. Do you think it could be a major improvement for games, and is it really more fast than usual engines?
Are there any plans to develop a no-shooter 3D game within iD, something "else" and "new"?
regards,
xype::samo korosec
It is true that alot of effort goes into making a game, but for many people, that effort is fun. As long as it is fun, there will be people that will do it for free. IMHO, the free mods made for current commercial games are often more fun to play than the original games. Some of these mods use very little of the original game data. The only thing that is holding them back from being completely free is the fact that the game engine itself is not free. So, all we need is a good 3D game engine, which the Open Source community should be able to handle.
-Kenton Varda
Really, this is all one question about how ID achieves portability, timeliness, and profitability all at the same time.
ID has consistently brought great technology to the market well before the competition, made it available on many platforms roughly simultaneously, and even made the products fairly stable.
Consider Unreal as a foil--Unreal is slow, unstable, and only runs tolerably well on one OS with one graphics chipset (in my experience).
Also, it was incredibly late, and even the bugfixes are late. This seems to be a somewhat extreme example of the norm in the games industry.
How do you explain ID's ability to accomplish all portability, timeliness, and profitability all at the same time? Does the chronic inability of
other game companies to achieve any of this disgust you? How does ID make economic sense of portability, or does ID worry about economic sense?
Do you see the market for Linux as a gaming platform growing substantially over the next one to two years?
What would you say to a Linux programmer who wants to help the Linux gaming situation?
When are you going to continue the Commander Keen series, I've been waiting to jump on that pogo stick again for years!
I've been dying for this for a long time. Voice is essential for a complete game. It's especially needed in team situations. Communication with the team is an absolute necessity be it team DM or coop (Q2, etc.) and, quite frankly, typing just doesn't cut it.
Anyway, just had to agree with you.
John,
:) Anything would help.
We know that you found a way to get to where you are by going through many obstacles, but what kind of things would you recommend for someone to do that is looking to someday acheive even half of what you did
Thanks.
P.S. I used to watch popeye when I was a child and then be horrified later when I threw my toys down the stairs and they wouldn't fly back together after they were smashed.
:) :) :)
Wow. What an idiot.
Joking!!!
:)
I don't remember the episode where Popeye threw his toys down the stairs. I was too busy trying to figure out exactly who/what 'the Jeep' was, I reckon.
I *do* remember my disappointment upon realizing that the whole spinach thing was just a sham to get me to 'eats me vegetables'. I became a very jaded young man that day.
Is there a support group, forum or mailing list for 'Adult Child Victims of Popeye'?
**>>BELCH
Actually,
:)
3d support on Alpha AXP arch is almost as good (or better) than 3D support on i386 archs. What we are waiting is for xfree86 and it's non-platofrm based 3d/2d modular driver support. This would be the point when 3D would finally be a reality on all free OS platforms that use xfree86 4.0.
I strongly believe ID and other Linux game software companies should try to limit arch based code from sneaking too much into their source balls. That would indeed be a problem. Sure you can write a magnificiant game in i386 assembly that would be faster than any other game, but how easy would it be to port? I'm sure John knows this and would make his code as portable as possible. The only thing we need to tell/show him is that Linux is not just the i386 arch, and also we need to let him know that there are many free OSes that runs his games pretty well (with a hack or two).
Crow's GLX module for g200/g400 is a patch to let ppl run opengl till glx is offically part of the xfree86 distribution. Till then we can enjoy and advance it
Frag well
--
As much fun as it is, the frenetic white-guy-kills-everything-in-site theme is getting old. Any plans to turn your optimized vr combat engine skills towards something else, say a full-on flying superhere simulator or rabid bunny wars or something along those lines?
3D Action Planet had this from QuakeCon:
The Doom Movie?: id Software took a look at one script and decided it was terrible. Then they looked at another script and agreed it was pretty mediocre. Nobody moved on it and the option on the movie rights expired, so the project is -- for the time being -- dead in the water.
/. killed my HTML formatting... here goes again. This is obviously "redundant" but it is worthwhile, I think.
:) /. to send him some questions that have been asked of him a million times. Hopefully others will follow suit, and the moderators will notice and not mark these questions up.
I just wanted to help out by giving the answers to some previously answered questions.
I read through some of the more highly-moderated questions for things that I, through various Carmack interviews, already knew. I would hate for
You just recently GPLed Doom. Thanks a million for that. Do you have plans to GPL any of your other titles?
When the last Quake licensee finishes their title (*cough* ION Storm), Carmack has stated he will release the source of Quake. I'm not certain if he'll GPL it or not, but the source will be available.
Are you guys thinking of doing a something besides first person shooters?
&
Assuming Q3:A isn't the last game you make will the next game be another FPS? Or do you see ID branching into other game types? Are there already plans for another game?
Carmack and others at id (read: Mr. Devine) have stated that the next game probably will not be an FPS (first-person shooter), but there will be a next game from all signs.
"My works are like water. The works of the great masters is like wine, but everybody drinks water."
"My works are like water. The works of the great masters is like wine, but everybody drinks water."
--Mark Twain
There has been some speculation that the reason you brought an AI coder on board is because you were not pleased with John Cash's efforts. I believe it is more likely that John's responsibilities go beyond bot coding alone and since one of your programmers left the company, you did not have the freedom to help out with bot coding. Therefore you brought Mr. Elusive in to help finish the bots. The finished bot code will probably be a combination of Cash's and Mr. Elusive's code and will contain the strengths of both to provide the best AI to the customers as possible. Is this the case, or was the bot programming just not going well?
On Oct. 8, a thread on /. addressed a new graphics engine, that supposedly left "everyone from the designers at Nintendo to programmers at Apple" in shock. It eschews traditional polygon/texture-based rendering in favor of what the /. post called "build[ing] it up from a molecular level, with apparently amazing results." Do you see computer/game graphics straying from the polygon-based model we see today? If so, what do you see replacing it? -brennan
I'm not agame developer. But I am familiar with MS tactics. Obviously having to change APIs makes any porting effort significantly tougher. I doubt MS did this to make a quality product, or to improve the windows experience for the sake of improving it. They do it to make it that much harder for developers and users to switch. Thus I doubt the quality is all that good. It may be sufficient, it may be a good idea. Though from what little I've heard from other developers, and Carmack's
Even if it is a good today. Do you really think MS is going to keep improving on it? Another product such as *GL* can be better in the future, but because the developer base already has so much committed to MS APIs, the advantages of switching aren't sufficient to merit an actual switch. MS will continue to get away with "good enough" (aka: mediocre), with just enough development or hype to prevent an exodus. Meanwhile precious dollars and resources that could have been spent on other efforts never make it...
No matter what you personally feel about MS's ethics, it can't be good in the long run to have one company with all the balls in their court. If for no other reason; you kill the threat of up and coming players developing their "skills", and thus nothing to keep MS on their toes.
Game 'intelligence' is currently lousy, whether you're talking about chess programs, fps, or rts. By intelligence I'm talking about somthing fun for humans to play with or against. Do you see a time where 50% or more of the cpu time is spent on computer 'intelligence' instead of bookkeeping? Will there ever be a place for a AI researcher with a Ph.D. to contribute directly to video games?
Hey John,
Ok there is a holy war in the quake world of what is better...using the keyboard and a 3/2 button mouse or a trackball? what type of setup do you use?
JediLuke
JediLuke
-Do or Do Not, There is no Try
Do you think that polygon/voxel hybrids (i.e. polygons for detail, voxels for the landscape or some other such combination) will be used to eliminate the problem of "Zoning" -- seen in games like Unreal, Quake or EverQuest where large environments must be broken into smaller chunks to facilitate rendering speed -- or will some other technology/technique be used to implement future immersive virtual worlds?
To be sure, Wolfenstein was a sort of 2-D raytracing (for wall discovery and texture selection). A separate ray was shot on the 2-D map grid for every column of the display. Where the ray hit determined the texture column and height to draw in that column of the display.
Personally, I feel that full 3-D Povray-style texture mapping will probably not be feasible until special parallel raytrace processing units. By that time, general processing should be fast enough to do something better anyway (such as radiosity-based rendering).
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
What is your view on allowing the various major distributions (redhat, debian, suse, etc) and groups (ALSA, etc) to have the code before hand?
And, in a related question, what do you see your place, and ID software's place in the free software community to be? And what would you personally like it to be?
Zephaniah E. Hull.. (A debian developer, FWIW)
Wouldn't it be more fun if the starting weapon
in Q3 death match was something simple like a knife or shot gun?
The reason I ask is I've
jumped into several Q3 game servers with anywhere
from 20 - 50 players and with everyone firing a
machine gun (the default weapon) and it's just
total chaos, which is fun for a few minutes, but
get's boring very quick because nobody survives
more than a minute -- everyone just runs blind and
holds down the fire button -- it's ridiculous --
there's no time to savor each kill because everyone is getting mowed down anyway.
BTW: If any other Linux/q3test users out there
have figured out how to stop the mouse from freezing when you run up against a wall, please
reply to this message. (I'm using glibc2.0, xfree 3.3.5, Matrox G200)
It used to be that a model was broken up into 4 parts (legs, torso-arms, head and gun) and each part had animation sequences relevent to that part. Then you switched to skeletal animation and fused the parts together with a large database of every combination of movements. Why couldnt you do both? Have 4 body part models, each with it's own seperate skeletal animation data structures.
It's free too!! http://www.rogerwilco.com
What will you use when BSP trees and calculating potentially visible sets doesn't do it anymore?
...with the call for less violence in society...
From who? Those who never have and never will play those "violent" games anyway. I like to play Quake2 (especially since I got all my new gear.. yummy) and shoot up some bad guys. It's a stress releaser. Probably the only thing that keeps me from ACTUALLY shooting people.
If you want to play tag, or shoot people without killing them, go play tag, or paintball, or something like that. Those are things that can quite easily be done in real life. Like the current generation of kids don't have their brains glued to TV and computers enough - great, let's have them take all their outdoor activities onto the computer instead.
Sorry, but this seems kinda ridiculous to me. If you wanna play non-violent group games, play non-violent group games.
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
In the past, you've stated that you had a good deal of technical respect for Linux.
Technically, what changes need to be made to Linux to make it the fastest PC gaming platform available to developers? Where do the bottlenecks exist? Mesa? The kernel?
"My works are like water. The works of the great masters is like wine, but everybody drinks water."
"My works are like water. The works of the great masters is like wine, but everybody drinks water."
--Mark Twain
With games such as Ultima Online and Everquest being so popular, what do you think the future of these huge online worlds will be? These games all have there good and bad points but millions of people are completely addicted to them and at least Ultima Online is making a ton of money for Origin so I would think many gaming companies have to be taking notice of this. Thank You, Descartes LOA (Lost Order of Akalabeth)- Atlantic Shard - Ultima Online
One of the lines the marketers are feeding us on the GeForce 3d card by NVIDIA is that their T&L will free up the CPU for other tasks such as artificial intelligence, and Sega's Dreamcast ads repeat the line 'It's thinking'. Although some games styles like fighters, side scrollers and sports games have had sufficient AI for many years, some of the newer game styles like FPSs and RTSs demand a higher quality of AI and gameplay can suffer without it. What direction do you think games will be taking in the near future [2 years] with regards to AI? Do you think that the explosion in popularity of on-line multi-player style play will reduce the demand in the short term for decent AI? Do you see the more complex types of games which need the advanced AI playing a major role in the future game market, or will we all be playing Deer Hunter and NHL 2002? :)
Part of the interview was a question of whether a Quake-like environment could/should be used as a complete GUI to interact with an OS.
There seems to be incredible potential in the worlds that are created by you and your crew, and by the dozens of amateur map editors out there for something beyond the scope of run, jump, shoot (and die!)...
My question for you is, what needs to happen for the average desktop environment to move away from boring, rehashed 2D ideas, and into the amazing 3D worlds that have consumed gamers for the past 10 years?
Also, if this ever happens, do you have an interest in getting involved??
Tom
First off, You are the reason I got into computer programming, from the first release of Wolf3d, I just thought "Wow! This guy is good" For the question, I am currently taking Applied/Math and computer science at the University of Waterloo (in Canada) and while I know we have 4th year courses in Computer Graphics, I was wondering what maths you would recommend as being useful. I am looking at taking some differential geometry, geometrical optimization, numerical computing, linear and geometrical optimization, among others... will these provide a useful addition to standard CS courses?
five fingers make a fist amalgamate and resist
Hi John,
Any tips for people who are interested in
taking the road of the game developer/programmer?
There is quite a bit of in way of resources out
there for people who want to code their own games
but what about inspiration and determining how
best to pick a direction to take a company and a
team?
In short, where would newbie game developer/programmers
best be able to find their coding compass to
guide them?
- Wing
- Reap the fires of the soul.
- Harvest the passion of life.
- Wing
- Reap the fires of the soul.
- Harvest the passion of life.
In a recent artice from Computer Gaming World, you said that what you have made (in Q3) is basically a very efficient triangle pusher. And as great as Q3 is, one can still tell that the images are rendered; fake, if you will. Do you see current polygon based rendering as a possible limitation in modelling reality, or do we just need to keep pushing up the fill rates and polygon counts?
Dirk
I keep trying to pick fights, but I can't shake this Excellent karma.
What considerations go into choosing the music for your games, and can my band submit a demo?
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
You've stated in the past that you're developing Q3:A on NT because you want to use MS Visual C++.
:)
Have you tried KDevelop or any of the other Linux GUI IDEs? What is your opinion of these IDEs? What do you think could be done to make them better for developers?
CVS vs. Visual Source Safe?
Aren't you sick of NT crashing on you?
"My works are like water. The works of the great masters is like wine, but everybody drinks water."
"My works are like water. The works of the great masters is like wine, but everybody drinks water."
--Mark Twain
I noticed the Doom source code is now GPL'ed. It would be really great if ID-software could follow the Ghostscript pattern of re-releasing software under the GPL after a certain time as expired. I'd be that much more happy to buy Quake 3 if I knew that in, say, three years the source code for Quake3 would be released under GPL. What do you say? (I understand artwork may not be included, but that would be nice too.)
It is well known that you have a deep interest, "love" if you will, of computers, chips, graphics and most things related. It is also _fairly_ well known of your love and respect for the machines called Ferrari. You have been quoted in the past stating that their power, your tinkering, and their natural art form/craftsmanship all contribute to this desire of yours. I ask: what else fascinates you both technically and imagination/appreciation wise? Any certain authors, artists, music, country, foreign architecture? With the limited time you have (apparently), is their anything more than food, sleep, Ferrari, and computers that you witness? :)
What are you favourite programming books?
"My works are like water. The works of the great masters is like wine, but everybody drinks water."
"My works are like water. The works of the great masters is like wine, but everybody drinks water."
--Mark Twain
If you were stranded on a desert island, what ten albums and ten books would you want with you?
pronoblem
I understand you need to make a living, but have you ever considered do a free software project on the side. There are very few programmers of your ability and you could contribute on a time available basis (low-priority).
Dear Mr. Carmack,
Please excuse my spelling. Considering the rescent events, such as the implamentation of T&L into mainstream graphics hardware, the now shown resorsefullness of linux in the gaming community, S3 now owning Diamond Multimedia (which gives Creative Labs a wide birth), Direct X 7 vs OpenGL debates, and the newly released Unreal Turnament Demo, I figured all this boiled down to one question:
How much wood would a wood chuck chuck, if a wood chuck would chuck wood?
The original answer of "a chord a day" is no longer valid due to the new T&L graphic cards coming out this cristmas, and the more detailed answer of "A wood chuck would chuck as much as a would chuck could chuck if a wood chuck would chuck wood," is null and void due to Direct X 7. A new answer is needed, so please, Mr. Carmack... Without an answer, thousands of Slashdot readers will loose sleep, and the open-source movement around the world will collaps. We need answers.
Thank you for your time.
Pathway
I personally guess the answer is one of the following: He's already happy with his income level, and he realizes that Doom etc. wouldn't be nearly as popular (at the retailers) without the level of exposure the piracy has gotten him.
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
Will the final game use different gibs for different players? I refer to the difference between organic and robotic bits. it would a small but nice touch to be able to specify in the anim.cfg for each model which types of gibs to use. this could help model authors further customize their own player model creations.
Although I'm a fellow geek, I still get lots of ass... how do you measure up? when's the last time YOU scored?!! eh ?!
Tell us about your cars. How many do you have and when did you buy them? What are some notable modifications on them? What do you plan on buying or modifying next?
Have you seen/looked at the source of Crystal Space (http://crystal.linuxgames.com)? If so, what do you think about it?
It appears that idSoftware has stressed portability since about the Doom era. I recall John Carmack stating that Doom ported to Jaguar in a weekend (although it wasn't terribly efficient at first). I've even ported Doom to one of TI's DSPs in my copious free time. How's that for portable?
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
Hi,
what do you think would be the best device to
play ego-shooters like Quake? Keyboard just
can't be the solution, kbd+mouse is dumb be-
cause there's never enough space on the mouse
pad.
Maybe keyboard plus trackball? Or do you have
ideas for a special input device that would fit
exactly to the needs of your ego-shooters?
.sig: SEGV
Will ID's next engine be implemented in C++?
Why not?
How did you feel when you learned that the Quake 1 source had leaked and that people were using it to create unauthorized ports for previously unsupported platforms? Outraged? Interested? Amused? Litigous?
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I must say I'm very happy with this product, it includes Quake as well as 2 mission packs. Soundtrack and all. Installation on Debian/GNU/Slink was a breeze.
Thanks a bunch Carmack, and thanks Macmillan!
Be honest John. You're not challenging the rest of the id developent staff by making 1 3d FP shooter after another. I really would be interested to see what the combined talents of your staff can do if you ordered them to make another kind of game based on your technology.
If, so. Why oh Why can't you make an RPG?
PS. I'm a big fan for great movie directors, great musicians and songwriters, and for the last 7 years, Kickass programmers. John is on the TOP of that list.
-Oy Vey
http://www.gunk.com? have you ever considered doing some kind of RPG thing as a project? (is hoping the answer is yes becuase then there will probably be a mac version..)
have you ever considered putting those graphical skills to work in creating or contributing to any non-game graphics programs?
now that, with Quake 3, you have released what will surely be the best-looking FPS ever.. is there anywhere left to go from there?
http://www.gunk.net? have you ever considered doing some kind of RPG thing as a project? (is hoping the answer is yes becuase then there will probably be a mac version..)
have you ever considered putting those graphical skills to work in creating or contributing to any non-game graphics programs?
now that, with Quake 3, you have released what will surely be the best-looking FPS ever.. is there anywhere left to go from there?
Hi john,
When you did DOOM you created a new isometric 3D engine.
When you did Quake you created a new 3D engine (polygonal this time).
Do you think this technology will be able to look as close to the reality as possible (I mean, not looking "plastified") or do you thing we will need to find a new technology to achieve a quasi perfect looking world?
If you think that we will need a new technology, how do you think it will look like (technically)?
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Obviously, Jon is talented in creating great code and hyper-first person action. I was wondering if you have thougth about working with any of todays sci-fi author/giants or any other writer you like, and taking your craft to the next level?
i didn't mean to post it twice, sorry, and the the URL is www.gunk.net not gunk.com
i feel stupid
Doom wasn't 3d. It had ceiling and floor height, but it was all planned from a blue-print, seen-from-above perspective. You could never have a bridge, because that would create a space that went floor (of river), ceiling (bottom of bridge), floor again (of bridge), and ceiling again (sky). This was the same in Heretic. It wasn't 3d. You could look up and down, but no bridges.
Duke Nukem was a kind of hack on the original concept. They had a kludge that allowed you to have multiple levels, and stack those levels. Well done, but a kludge never the less.
Quake actually had a real 3d engine. You just create a 3D box, and float it in a room. MUCH HARDER to level-edit, but truely 3D.
Descent didn't have any huge differences from Quake. Again, you can change your view in a new way, but that doesn't change the dimensions.
Quake was one of the earliest examples of a commercial software house doing open development. By allowing the general public to create mods and to pass them around freely on the internet, Quake created a worldwide community of users/advocates/junkies. In a sense, this is why Microsoft has spent so much effort developing Visual Studio and various APIs. This trend toward catering to your most important, affluent customers is evident in many successful companies. As Kevin Kelly says, "in the network (new) economy, the companies with the smartest customers win."
Linux empowers users with increased uptime and stability, available source code, and Unix-style functionality (not to mention zero cost). It is obvious that these qualities are most important to sysadmins, hackers, and old school programmers. These qualities do not appeal to the unwashed masses- and certainly do not outweigh the difficulty of use to these folks.
What are some things the Linux community can do to create an environment that empowers the Windows API junkies and clueless masses?
"My works are like water. The works of the great masters is like wine, but everybody drinks water."
"My works are like water. The works of the great masters is like wine, but everybody drinks water."
--Mark Twain
this may be getting slightly offtopic, but i think Tribes has got to be the only example of a creative 3d shooter type game in a long time.
every other has been the same idea, the only thing that has been any different at all is just some different prettier maps, some different gun combinations, some prettier graphics and light effects and explosions.
Tribes, on the other hand, was working off something totally other: huge landscape maps, bases, teams, 128-person games.. it would be nice to see such innovation more often.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I am a new linux user and I cant find any documentation on how to set up linux for the TNT2 so I can play Q3A. If someone can point me in the right direction or assist me please post a reply or email. [also please dont just respond with a RTFM! thanks :)]...Btw Im running SuSE Linux 6.2 with XF86 3.3.4 and the SVGA server.
What would I want a closed source game for? To have it crash randomly (as nearly every other game does nowadays) and then not being able to fix it? All software I bought in the last three years (total worth over $100) was spent on open source software. :)
Any chance we are gonna see id back [or make themselves] some sort of Wolfenstein 2000 or DOOM 2001 using the Q3 engine? I know a whole legion of us old skoolers would just pee our pants
Thus is sligtly off topic, but does anyone know what the status of OpelGL for the Permedia 2v chipset is in linux?
I would like to make a little soap box for you to preach on one way or another. Being a native of colorado (and living quite close to columbine), I can't help but notice the extreme amount of violence in our culture.
Over time, the media has begun to blame this on the game industry in general, and first person shooters in general.
My qustion to you, do you feel that there is any link between violence and first person shooters, or is this link something the media is creating or popular awareness. Further, do you think that self regulation is still effective even w/ games such as Q3 and Half Life? (Or do you even think that there should be self regulation?)
Thank you for your time.
first, some small questions:
1. i was wondering about the railgun texturing.
in 1.05 it was animated, and now in 1.08 it's not. please bring it back!
2. do you have any positions available at id? (i would love to work in a company with jc telling me what to do. )
3. how about the satanic textures? what does it really add? i know you must be asked that alot. why in the world would aliens worship "our" devil?
4. do you play online ever. (or lan-parties even, you know just show up and surprise people)
5. what kind of connection do you have? atm? (if you have 4 ferraris shouldn't you be able to have an atm?)
6. oh yeah... the grappling hook should at least be a server side option... and be able to see it on the sever search screen
7. are you addicted to slashdot? read it ever?
8. what is your preference in video cards? aka v3 v. tnt2
9. what kind of hardware do you have
one more quick one...
10. what ide do you use to write q3 - on all three platforms
http://www.fsckin.com/
john;
is it true that the man on the moon wears pink fuzzy flipflops?? just figured you'd know. thanks.
--bc
--------------------------
the amazing bc
just another guy doing IT
webnaut, music junkie, holes-in-head
I was just wondering if you are going to do anything that would give hpb's an equal chance against an lpb. I have tried cl_timenudge, are you having any plans on possibly having a Ping Equalizer as an option when you start up a server?
On many occasions you've spoken highly of NEXTSTEP. Do you think that technology (which lives on in MacOS X and GNUstep) will gain wider acceptance? How can advocates help push it forward?
Neutron
I get my kicks above the
Hi,
I am wondering if there are any plans to implement server hopping in the future.
Something like gates in a level or doorways that lead to another server somewhere else. I can understand that this will cause latency issues, but it would be kind of cool if you could leap through into another game and play there and then bring back players to the other server.
It could also allow for multiple servers at the same location to host pieces of a larger level each with a high amount of complexity without overloading a single server by rendering the whole level for everyone playing.
Cheers
When shit hits the fan get some of these https://youtu.be/pY-GncsZ-UE
To date all of id's 3d-shooters have been dungeon-esque, with the emphasis being on in-door scenes (even though Quake 2 had some minor outdoor action.) I'd like to ask whether this is to change in your upcoming projects? A proper outdoors-capable engine would be really nice because most of real armed combat takes place in outdoors. Fractal landscapes, polygon buildings. One thing that has been bugging me for some time now, is the weapons in your games. It's nice to have all those cool looking future guns, but with the arrival of such great mods as Action Quake2 and Counterstrike for H-L, I've become a realism convert. Realistic weapons and damage add so much to the general atmosphere. Hunting someone down with a rocket launcher capable of launching one rocket per second and having to hit him a couple of times to frag him really pales as an experience after using your trusty SOCOM Mk.23 pistol to drop someone with one shot in the head. Is id still following the good ol' arcade action mantra or will there be added realism in your games? That's just my two cents, of course. p.s. man.. writing about fps games always gets so violent.. shooting ppl and stuff :S -Point me the error in my ways.
Hey I've asked CliffyB about his opinion of Q3 and he said "I like it, it's solid fun!"...so, John, what do you think about UT???
Recently UTDemo was released, a demo of a game competing for the same market as your upcoming product. According to most accounts, it is a very impressive, polished game, even for a demo. So my question: Has the release of Unreal Tournament Demo by Epic caused any change in the features that will be included in Quake 3 Arena, and/or will Quake3Arena be delayed to add further features in response to Unreal Tournament?
Do you believe the computer gaming industry will continue on it's current path, or will console videogame system eventually equal and/or overtake computer gaming sales? Consoles are becoming more PC like and their power is close to computers. Of course there will always be a market for computer games, but do you see it growing or shrinking?
I am sure you know about Timescaling, (speeds up the game, and yourself) but what about bots? when I say bots I mean bots like Zbot For Quake2, it is obvious that there will be a large number of attempts to make an Autoaim Bot for Quake3, and it will ruin the game for all the people with some skill, not only does it not give them a chance, but it can give good players bad reputations, rumors.. stuff like that, I know cause I had rumors spread about the clan I was in on Heat.net, but anyway, are you taking extra steps on making sure that no one is going to be able to cheat in Quake3?
I read in an interview with Chris Peterson that Front Line Assembly is doing at least some of the music.
I hope they contribute a lot...
What sort of enjoyment do you derive from driving your really fast cars? Why is that fun for you? Are there any custom cars you envy/still want to get?
hey man, you got nice cars.
which is your favorite?
u a grease-monkey? or just like the drive?
-bob
zorgok@flashmail.com
bobx11@hotmail.com
---bob
I for one would like to see the amazing talent at id go into something a little more intellectually challenging and visual impressive (with time to look) that anything quake and it's like have to offer. Don't get me wrong I love quake but I think there is a gap for something similar in concept to myst (except now with better graphics and more dynamic gameplay) anything like this is the works?
just a long shot
Since most people consider you a deity, or at least a demi-god, I was wondering what design and documentation tools you use to create these wondrous games that captivate the gaming world.
I think we all figured out in High School that any programming task over one or 2 days or one or 2 people needs incrementally more and more thorough organization, but keeping up the fervor of the one or two day hack job is tough.
So How do you do it, any secrets?
Or do you actually have the entire Q3A codebase resident upstairs??
What is YOUR favorite gaming platform?? (Linux, N64, ....) and why??
// Witty Signature On Backorder
Is q3a's railgun going to remain one color as in the test or are you going to be able to colorize the inner core as well and the outer core?
How do you like your eggs? Sunnyside up, scrambled, over hard, etc.? And do you like Salsa/ketchup on them?
Previously you have claimed that client side and proxy bots violate your software license. If autonomous bots are going to be included in the final release of Quake 3 Arena, will 3rd party Bot coding also be encouraged?
What does he think about "hot new stuff" such as weighted vertices, voxels, 3d textures, NURBS (non-uniform rational B-spline) and Farenheit?
Will Q3A be y2k compliant?
---
Mike Hunt
MCSE - Microsoftie for life!
---
NT REWLZ!
-R2-
Despite all the Satanic references throughout the Doom games and Quake, do you subscribe to a particular religion? If so, what made you choose that one? One more: How happy would you say you are?
If he could have one month for free (with the clock standing still) what would he implement/improve in the Q3A-engine?
Given your fame (among Linux geeks anyway), any areas you identify as needing improvement should be taken very seriously.
Are you satisfied with trying to improve on the algorithms required to make a 3d video game (rendering, networking)? Or do you sometimes wish you could drop it all and tackle something completely different. Like speech recognition or any other rising technology that hasn't been quite perfected. (unlike real time 3d on PCs which is mostly just reapplying techniques already known and used in pre-rendered 3d). hmekhsia @ tufts . edu
Q:When will users be able to play true VR games? OR When do you think you'll be supporting head & hand tracking devices in your games? Seems like most 3D games today wouldnt need little if not no modification to work with 3D Glasses or VR with head tracking systems. Playing games on monitors can only go so far, with envirnmental audio and choice video cards out, who wants to play on a screen that gives you cancer (heh, or are LCD glasses worse?). No offense, but Quake3 has yet to "Wow Me" Last time i checked, Virtual I/O went "tits up" for chapter 11. 500$ 320x240 resolution and that was the cheapest game in town! Shutter Glasses dont work well with opengl games and depend on your monitor for good 3d.
looking at newer games in general they all seem to be going more towards faster/better graphics. I was wondering if you where planning on making laps that could be modified in real time (ie. "creating" your own enterences with rockets) and even in this you could have different walls be harder to get through.
When you and your team go out to create a game, for example quake 3 coming out now, what do you take in consideration most, gameplay, graphics, AI or overall fun?
Tell the children the Truth- Bob Marley
What disadvantages does instant weapon switching bring to the dynamics of gameplay in an FPS?
Weapon switch times impose a significant penality on a player for changing weapons in the middle of a battle. This tends to force players to stick with a particular weapon during a battle, which lowers the complexity potential of the battles. If players choose to switch weapons, the action stops for a small amount of time.
Instant switching weapons create the possiblity for a faster paced more complex game, which is in my view more desirable.
What, in a very general sense, do you look for when hiring a programmer? (Yeah, I'd love to work for Id, but don't worry, I know I'm not qualified.) Obviously, to work on games, one should have a sense of what is fun, and experience and training in the field are always a plus. But in a more general way, what talents, personality traits, habits, etc - that is, what characteristics besides experience and training - do you feel are important for a member of a high-achieving software team?
I can't think of anyone more qualified to answer, so I'd like to ask John Carmack:
How do you anticipate 3D computer graphics techniques and hardware will change in the future? How would you like them to change?
If I may elaborate:
Are you happy with continued evolution of current technology (faster fill-rates, more effects, faster triangle rates, more acceleration of the graphics pipeline), or should there be a change of focus? Are other approaches than texture-mapped polygons (eg. voxels) valuable, or potentially valuable? Should they be hardware accelerated?
Could (eg.) parametric representations, fractals, procedural textures, etc. ever replace static model data in polygon-based engines, or only complement it?
Looking at current games (and the space they take up), I'd guess the work involved in building the virtual worlds in 3D games is becoming more intensive. Do you anticipate this becoming a serious problem, or are current modelling techniques scalable?
Will there be a use in games for mathematically modelled worlds (generated in real-time), rather than sampling the real world and/or using artists to create world data? (Tom Barbalet's work comes to mind.)
How much input to you have into the game design process at id Software, and what is that process like?
With the coming release of Q3A, GeForce, and Voodoo4, I have wondered what card will be prefered. Should we all wait till the voodoo4 is released next year, or should we shell out the biggin's for a Geforce?
Are you familiar with any of the other projects that are(/will be) using the Quake 3 engine? Can you comment on any of the likelihood of any of these titles being supported under Linux, especially the Activision titles like STV:Elite Force?
Will Q3A be Y2K compliant ?
Yes, that's my problem. I'm bored with chess, solitaire, free cell. And, as I mentioned I can't do the violence. Believe it or not, there is a small portion of the population in the world who suffers from this "syndrome". I don't know what it is but I thought that perhaps some one as creative enough to invent Quake could help those like myself with this rare "disease". I don't watch TV, go to the movies, or rent videos. The web is as much as I can handle. It helps a great deal because I can pick and choose what I want to read. I'm quite serious. Please don't laugh or make fun of me.
I have to ask this, even if it's not considered a 'serious' question.
Can you please give us an Official List of Carmack's Ferraris(tm)?
-jfedor
My friends and I have had several design conversations around how you could integrate FPS and RTS (real-time strategy) games into huge (hundreds of players) grand-scope internet games. Imagine if you will...
To take a "real-world" example most everyone has seen, think back to the APC in Aliens. The lieutenant had a viewscreen for each squad member showing vital stats, location, etc. Since watching tens of video feeds would be both information overload and network death, I envision one spotter per squad that would sit back, maintain watch over the squad, and provide two-way communication back to the command post. Perhaps this is the squad leader, or maybe more along the lines of the radio carrier from wars past.
The real challange will be creating an architecture that can run over the net and include hundreds of players in a single world. With judicious use of segmenting the world, showing less detail for far-off battles, etc, this should be doable soon, if not now.
My question, then, is when, if ever, do you see this occuring? Not necessarily FPS and RTS games, but larger games with tens or hundreds of players?
And it would be incomplete without: Thank you thank you thank you! I have enjoyed many a game of Wolf, Doom, and the Quake trilogy. Love ya!
- P0
Freedom to fear. Freedom from thought. Freedom to kill.
I guess the War on Terror really is about freedom!
How many lines of code make up the complete game of Q3A (engine, networking, etc.)?
It goes without saying that I don't want exact numbers, just the order of magnitude. Oh damn, I did say it.
Many people consult with John Carmack, hoping to tap into his great intellect with regards to computer technology. Will any of this ever get collected into one book? Will we ever see a "Mythical Man-Month" or a "Code Complete" type book from John Carmack. He has so much REAL WORLD experience, as far as software development goes. It would be a shame to lose something so valuable, when he retires. PEACE
I'm getting quite bored of looking at 3D rendering on a 2D display. What do you think the feasiblility of a 3D display, a holographic display, perhaps, entering the Home user market?
I remember seeing something kinda like this on an old episode of that Futuristic Submarine Drama NBC had going for a while...what was it...SeaQuest? Something like that? Like a 3D one-on-one Street Fighter clone... I'm wondering if we'd be able to get a Quake on to a platform like that ^_^
Kagenin
"All warfare is based on deception."
Sun Tzu, "The Art of War"
Please ask John the following:
When will the sourcecode for Classic Quake be released? Are there any licensees who still haven't released their game? (Btw Anachronox switched to the Q2 engine)
I was wondering if it would have the same features as Q1 and Q2.
In otherwords, is it finally safe to run on a server open to the world?
Whatever happened to Commander Keen episode 7: the Universe is Toast?
hey, John iD has always stated that you make games that you like to play. this focus has kept the company small, private, and immensly profitable. have you contemplated using your technology to develop other types of applications (beyond fps) (eg 3D desktop environments, 3D chat clients, etc.)? to that end, when do you think 3D acceleration tech will become ubiquitous so that such apps will be commonly used? --burnitall--
Cheers
Whybot
Hi Mr. Carmack, I'd like to know what you think about Appeal's job on the Outcast software engine. Like, could this be good for the future with voxel acceleration cards, what could you make out of it, do better, and what features did you like about it. Tamas Varga aka Laa-Yosh
http://slashdot.org/features/99/08/20/143215.shtml That's a rather controversial article by a former game industry employee... Do you agree with him? I mean, your point of view must be totally different than someone just entering the field, but since you are so "in", you must know how experience is respected, or more about the publisher-developer relationship, etc. I know a few people who've "made it" and have good titles out, and they tell me stories of how sometimes a publisher or large developer might assign underachieving employees to a bum project, as an excuse to drop them. This could explain the "ship and you're fired" comment. Like how many employees are actually let go for releasing a title? Clearly no one from a successful game, but take a Battlezone, Heretic II, System Shock (1) or other good game that didn't sell well - would anyone be dumped over that? :/
IMHO most people would agree that the market for 3D first-person shooter games has been saturated for some time. What, in your opinion, is the next big genre, and where will you and id Software be focusing your talent in the years to come?
Hey John (If you read this), Quake3, at least in the test version, has nothing that is really new, the weapons are from previous Dooms and Quakes. The biggest difference is the new levels in the arena with improved graphics and many small changes here and there. The Doom/Quake series should have ended with Quake, maybe Q2. Not that Q2 or Q3 are bad, but your talent could have been put to some better use with an original idea. I heard rumors about Doom 2k...don't say it will be true! When will there be something new???
At present the only way to play glquake is on a voodoo2 equipped machine. glquake has never been released compiled with glibc.
Glide has only been compiled against glibc for banshee & voodoo3.
Since only 3dfx has allowed ONE guy (Daryll Strauss) to build Glide, and he hasn't been able to build Glide for libc, will quake be released compiled with glibc or (better yet) GPL'd?
Without drifting too far OT... the new graphics engine referred to was just a case of extremely poor ( == lazy/gullible ) journalism. The engine had some interesting aspects, but it was neither new nor impressive nor suitable for general-purpose 3D rendering. I'd also be very interested in what John has to say about next-gen rendering technologies, particularly since he's active in pushing the OpenGL standard, but couching the question in these terms is inviting a sarcastic reply at best.
John,
What are your future plans for your F50? Is there any future tuning and tweaking to be done? Also, are you interested in the new F360 Modena and seeing what it can do if tweaked a bit more?
(Note to /. Please post this question! We need some question-diversity here. Besides, John's a renowned Ferrari man!)
Sincerely,
bAz
My question exactly!
I remember reading an interview (several months ago) wherein Carmack discussed the future of game engines...
He said that he played around with NURBS and other "imposter schemes" before deciding that triangles were best--for now. The next evolution, in his opinion, is having one, big, continous texture.
I'm really anxious to hear him talk more about what's ahead. This guy plays a big part in DEFINING the future of game engines. I want to know what direction he's going!
I read somewhere that you did Apple DOS hacking for Infocom back in the golden days. And that you left an Easter egg or two behind. Is this true? Which games were you involved with? Where are the eggs? Infocom is dead. Long live Inofocom!
Do you or anyone who works for/worked for idSoftware worship Satan?
;)
I know you people include a disclaimer, but it's good to hear it from the mouth of the incubi...errr.....horse.
"If it is broken, fix it. If it is fixed, improve upon it. This becomes one helluva cycle."
The direction taken by today's games (full on, no-holds-barred 3D) has almost singlehandedly been determined by your work in the field of game development. It has reached a point where the "common" hobbiest programmer cannot even hope to develop a game of similar richness, due to the inherent need to understand how to develop and implement the (sometimes complex) algorithms involved in creating a quality 3D engine.
Furthermore, it seems that in order to get into the field of 3D game development, the prospective individual still needs to have more than a passing knowledge of 3D systems/math, physics and world modeling, if he wants to do more than level design (don't get me wrong here - I know that level design is a very important aspect of a complete project, for it is what brings the entire game together, much like the plot of a book. However, I am a programmer, and level design isn't something I am good at - yet).
I have looked from time to time into beginning a career in the field of game development - not for money or fame (indeed, I would be willing to take a pretty large cut in pay to work at Id, which I am sure many would), but because I love games. Looking at what employers seem to want, I have come away from these lists thinking "These guys want the next John Carmack." - which in retrospect, they probably do!
I don't begrudge a company wanting the best and brightest for their development team, however it seems to have gotten to a point where a "newbie" in game development can't get their foot in the door of a company, nor can they "demo" their way in due to the fact that by the time they learn enough of the basics of 3D game development, they are woefully behind the curve.
Are these views of mine valid? What is the best way for a person to begin a career in 3D game development when the amount of needed knowledge is so vast? More importantly, would a person who has no degree in advanced math or physics (but a working knowledge of both, as well as a strong desire to learn more) be able to compete, and if so, how?
Thank you for any answers to these questions you may have, and for inspiring me and many others in the fields of game and 3D graphics development via the engines you have created.
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Hello John,
We have all witnessed the massive improvement of the visual realism of the first person shooters in the last few years. However the means of interaction is not only limited by crude I/O devices like screens and mice, but also be the shear complexity it takes to really simulate a world with convincing interaction that goes beyond running around, pushing buttons, riding elevators and shooting shootable stuff? Do you see any solution to these problems? How about massive parallel systems? I know you are a multiprocessing believer - do you see any signs of the industry moving towards mp systems?
Personally, I believe the SMP support in Q3A will do the same for SMP systems as glquake did for OpenGL support. Do you plan to put further effort into exploiting mp systems in your next project(s)?
The Geforce 256 and further generations of accelerators (will) allow a great increase in model details in terms of texture detail and in particular in terms of polygonal detail - Wont this mean that future games will require many more artists and modelers? I mean, if the model complexity increases with an order of magnitude wont this increase have a severe impact on the time it takes to create a single model? How will this reflect on Ids development model with so few artists? Creating highly complex models and textures seems like an extremely scalable task suitable for open source development. Do you see Open Source projects as a potential competitor in the future? Do you see a way for Id to make business and use the wast potential of open source development for art and perhaps code?
With the increasing speed of cpus and 3d cards, isn't it about time to eliminate prerendering of models and incorporate real time animation kernals into games? Kernals which would simply animate any model put into an environment based on descriptions of its makeup combined with the physics of the environment. As it stands now, a length of developement time is wasted on rendering the creations of artists in as many ways as allowed to give illusions of variety. Wouldn't it save enormous amounts of time being able to toss practically any model into game environments and have it animated with descriptor and personality files?
Neutron
I get my kicks above the
*What interesting effects have Brian and Michael's departures affect past and current development? During a turnover time at id Software, you made posts about trying to hold on to Michael Abrash, expressing how you enjoy "bouncing ideas off of him" and how losing "one of the best assembly programmers in the world" was going to "suck" (I thought that was the world you used...). While some other posts originating from id postulated that remainents(sp) of the team were transformed into a focused machine, Abrashe's departure likely had an impact, as does the recent loss of Brian Hook and his developer relations duties.
*How will you fill the gap left by Abrash and Brian's departure? Could you comment on the following choices without offending anyone?
In one of Paul Steed's realaudio interviews, he mentions your high praise of Corinne Yu, how she's "one of the smartest people [you've] ever met", through quoting what Brian Hook overheard you say. (www.allgames.com) When asked who you'd like to get on board, after your reassurance that there are many qualified brilliant people in the industry you'd want, you went on to say that the Build engine creator was one target due to his experience as engine , editor, and level creator. He was off limits because he's back finishing school while 3dRealms has a hold of Corinne after her departure from Ion Storm.
*Did you ever try to get those two characters? Or try to get Abrash to return? Did you hold back from contacting Corinne because she was an employee of a previous workmate, and engine licenser, John Romero?
*Have you ever had second thoughs about your small team approach? Numerous times, you emphasize preference for small development teams, in both interviews and .plan updates expressing agreement with books like "_The_Mythical_Man_Month_" which analyzes problems with large development teams.
*But, like programs that have parts ideal for parallelization, aren't there parts of game design that would benefit from larger teams, without all the problems (ie level design research/photography; not engine coding?)
-vchen(at)micron.com
"'Try' or 'Try Not' there is no Yoda."
A few months ago I read a comment by you stating, basically, that developing a multiplayer-only first-person-shooter was pretty much an entire new paradigm for the gaming industry, and that you wouldn't be surprised if iD did not turn a profit on Q3A, or only a marginal one. Now that situation has changed a bit - Starsiege: Tribes is out, and Unreal Tournament will be out when Arena is released, among others. Q3A now has a lot of competition from games like those. Do you still see Quake 3 as catering to a niche market or do you think that the world has warmed to the idea of multiplayer-only gameplay? Do you think that the release of other games such as the aforementioned will help/hurt sales of Quake 3?
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
In the past, I and many others such as L-Fire in the Quake2 multiplayer community have felt that id has not done enough to stop people from creating autoaim bots. Are you doing anything in Quake3 to prevent people from writing autoaim bots (ie: packet encryption, packet checksums, etc.)?
Hi John...
A shot in the dark but would you consider helping Raster and Mandrake code the DR.0.17 Enlightenment release?
Oh well...could've been cool.
Dreadn0ught
Well, I have two questions, but one more important than the other:
1. Who's the best at id? What kind of frag counts can one expect to see in a 20 minute deathmatch among id programmers?
2. What does it take to get to id? I mean, what skills are a *must* to make it to id as a programmer?
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
What do you have to say to those who criticize Q3A for being just a tired, albeit beautiful, rehash of Quake 1 and Quake 2? Do you feel that with games like Unreal Tournament coming out, with tons of new weapons, powerups, even moves (like built in strafe-jump), people are going to want to go back to playing the the same old, shotgun, same old rocket launcher, same old lightning gun, and same old quad?
Going hand in hand with this, what made you choose to try to balance gameplay versus stick in lots of cool new stuff? To be sure, Q3A is almost perfectly balanced when I play it - no more respawn instafrags, a rocket launcher without too much splash or speed, even a decent spawn weapon. However, I can't help but feel a little bored when playing Quake now - it's more challenging and fair, but not as exciting as firing five rockets at a time in UT or egonning nineteen people in a row in Half-Life. Do you think that, given a choice, people will choose balance over excitement?
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Hi John,
I would like to know who you see as a threat to you as the #1 game programmer and to id as the #1 company in FPS's? Any comments on Tim Sweeney(Unreal/Unreal Tournament fame) who has made amazing progress in this genre very quickly. Any others?
Forgive me if this gets lengthy. I see electronic games as an art form that hasn't yet come into its own. Yes, it's big business, but only on a few, very rare occasions have I ever found a game that moves me or makes me stop and think (not about my next move, of course). When I can sit and watch overblown commercials for the latest game alongside overblown commercials for the latest Hollywood summer blockbuster, I wonder if gaming hasn't reached the point technologically and socially to begin exploring what is possible. With movies and music, the best stuff is often what is hidden from the public eye. Because it's too daring, too different, too... anything. Now, the question is... do you feel the same thing will ever happen with games? I realize that there are people making their own games (viva Megazeux), but the technical side of it seems to interfere with the artistic side (that's my view, anyway) so these tiny developers have a hard time expressing their visions. With Quake especially, it seems that the way games are viewed has changed to allow this. I just want to know your general thoughts on the subject.
Thanks,
Evan
I almost guaruntee this won't be asked :) but, i'd like to know if John Carmack would ever plan to add Glide support into Quake 3? Everyone who has Unreal/UT or any game that supports Glide and Open GL knows that Glide runs almost 30fps faster (especially in the case of Unreal). With the upcoming (?) t-buffer capable 3dfx card, it'd be nice to see Quake 3 showing off anything, especially the new shadow effects, because only Glide will support them for a while.
From a development standpoint, what do you see as the greatest hurdles to Linux becoming a viable gaming platform?
Which have been your greatest Linux development hurdles, and which of these still stand?
I would like to know what JC:s thoughts are on games using voxel based engines like Outcast or Delta force. Is there a future for this type of 3d representation and others like true realtime raytracing as processors gets faster?
With all your experience in 3d programming would you consider making a 3d interface or even a 3d operating system, basically id is the benchmark of the game market so why not develop a 3d operating system that is made specifically for the future users of pc's? I am sure vendors would be happy to hop on a bandwagon that has the knowledgeable programmers programming a totally new operating system from scratch made for performance and 3d interfaces.
If we cut your hair, do you lose your coding powers? Bwahahahha
Did anyone else notice that they mentioned Team Fortress in the same breath as a clan; as if it was a clan? For those who are unfamiliar: Team Fortress is a game, or rather a modification of a game. A clan is a group of players ie team. In them in the same light, like Team Fortress is a team that was sold to Valve.
This does seem a bit petty, I just wanted to make sure there was not mistake.
/me readys a flame retardant cape.
Thanks.
Wanted: A Bauhaus reformation of society.
Improving computer graphics technology, along with a host of other technological advances (such as tactile feedback), is pushing us towards a date with "total immersion" virtual reality systems.
Do you think this statement is true, and if not why not?
And more importantly (from a sociological perspective), do you think it's desirable?
Will id still be producing gibfests when the marines look, feel and act real?
Thanks, Goodpint.
With the extensive (and preferred) use of lightmaps in Q3, how much support will GeForce (with its hardware vertex acceleration) have in the final release of Q3? We all know that GeForce is nice for handling a large amount of polys in Q3, but what else can we expect this chip to do for Q3?
Surely you're looking ten, twenty years, perhaps even further down the line. What do you see as the coming fundamental changes in gaming? Five and ten years ago, I don't think anyone could have believed that 3D or networking could become ubiquitous gaming concepts. What's next?
Being a guy with long hair, I've gotta ask you what shampoo + conditioner you use on your hair.
I'm just curious what kind of math background you have. I know that it takes some prety deep calculus and algebra to pull off all of the lighting effects in your games and I wanted to know how you went about aquiring these skills (college, random text books, etc).
Does ID plan to do simulation games like flight simulators?
Mr. Carmack,
You kick a lot of ass. How did you get to the point where you could kick so much ass?
Thank you
It's not "3D" support that's an issue. It's accelerated support that's the issue here. Intel's not the only Linux platform, yes. But this stuff's so sophistiated that software only GL, even on the Alpha, will bog the game down to 10 or so FPS- it NEEDS acceleration support.
Realize that Macs HAVE Q3:Arena- but LinuxPPC does not. Why? It's not because of magic hand-tuned Intel assembly code as you imply- the machine language and framebuffer access is largely the same under both OSes. It's because accelerated GL support's not there under LinuxPPC. When we have the modular drivers ready for XFree86, etc. then Zoid is likely to make the ports to Alpha and PPC, but not before.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
If you could change one thing about the direction of the software industry as a whole, not just the gaming industry, what would that be?
Are operating systems keeping up with the fast growth of hardware technology, or is there something fundamental that's got us throwing away potential?
A few months ago Brian Hook and some other id people were interviewed on IRC and they said that q3a is going to be totally configurable in terms of gameplay, so noone would bitch about anything - footsteps, air control, knockback, run speeds and so forth. Is it still planned for Q3 full, or have you guys decided to leave it out?
thank you
// FiXXXer
How do you justify the fact that explosives still only do half damage to the person who owns them? Doesn't this gameplay 'feature' only help average players? Zeku gungnir@bga.com
I'm just curious, what is your game making 'approach'? Let me clarify:
:)
Most ID games I play have a near flawless engine, and very simple but effective gameplay rules. They're not 'complex' usually. Don't take that the wrong way though, but most ID games put emphasis on action, not story. Is this because you feel that's the most fun kind of game to play, or because you prefer to focus on the game engine, or something completely different?
Whatever you do, it works
shaft
How about the SimCity series, or the Civilization series?
Can you see a time when different providers offer different portions of what me might now term a game, using interchangeable components?
Networking and distributed object technologies seem to make this feasible. Quake might have only been simple rules for movement and scoring for a game played in an existing online environment.
Where would this technology come from? Have you heard of suitable standards efforts under way?
Discounting your own projects, what's your favorite game of all time?
What games have strongly influenced you?
In your daily work, where outside of the game industry do you draw the most inspiration, the most fresh ideas?
John,
I've been playing your games since Keen. Thanks for the good times! Anyhow, my question is as follows..
As new technology is becoming available, more radical engine improvements can be made to create better games. This in combination with the fact that there is a demand for large scale internet games, how far off do you see virtual 3D worlds indefinately large as far as the software is concerned, but Quake3-like or better in detail (i.e. modularized servers/worlds on multiple machines)?
Thanks for concentrating on DM for Q3!
--
Mike Cumings
a.k.a. Mojapo
Games are fast approaching Hollywood scale.
In the long run, can you see a merger of Hollywood and the game industry? As television and movies (in the long-term) strive to become more interactive and games struggle to become more real, what's left to differentiate these forms of entertainment?
To break a bit from most of the posts on here, I'd like to ask a question about software engineering.
I'm sure you've read The Mythical Man Month; personally, I love it but I think it misses the biggest factor in speed of software development -- motivation on the parts of the programmers. A motivated programmer can achieve ten times the amount of real work done than one who is demoralized, or is forced to spend too much time in meetings, etc.
My question for you is, how do you maintain your motivation level on a day-to-day basis? You churn out an amazing number of feature points in the same time it takes most programmers to check their email and peruse slashdot. And how do you maintain the motivation factor of your coworkers -- not to keep them from becoming lazy, but from becoming burned-out?
Bill Kerney
UC San Diego
(I was the guy that ported the quake2 map tools to the Tera MTA supercomputer and found that it didn't work)
Now that Quake 1&2 exist "officially" for Linux, and given the open-source nature of Linux, have you ever thought about doing any specific OS tuning for gaming?
I think it would be really cool to have a Quake Linux distribution (QuakeUX? GibUX? FragUX?) with nothing but finely forged code to make you the baddest LPB on the net!
I'm an RPG fan, sort of. Two Fallouts are among my most favorite games. Unfortunately, it seems that most RPGs with first-person view have ludicruous engines, even compared with old classics like Doom. I'm talking about Daggerfall, M&M6 - 2 most notable fps RPGs. Question: have you thought about using your first-rate engines for anything other than first person shooters?
-- ATTENTION: do not read this sig. It doesn't say much.
I believed I tried it once. And, if I recall correctly, you can actually destroy cities. Is this correct? I find this too "violent" for me. I don't want anyone to get hurt. Again, please don't laugh or make fun of me.
Let it be a warning to all of you guys using the 'preview' function of this board :) I used it and didn't see that my password isn't entered anymore after previewing my message. That's why my previous post is 'by Anonymous Coward', not 'by me' :)
Guess I have to be more careful next time. And let's see if this works this time...
Cheers!
// FiXXXer
With so much money being spent making games today, and so many games coming out, no one can possibly buy them all, do you foresee a Gaming market crash like the one in the mid 80's?
I think that the portal rooms should include active server information on the walls that are player specific, that way you can decide if you want to chase someone onto their home turf. I'd also like to be able to send a rail across a few servers. What are the overlapping portal rooms going to be like?
--Nick Hogle
Could we please put these hero-worship celebrity things into some separate category so those of us interested in the actual news can filter them out?
All the id titles I've played have followed a basic plot; find a key, open a door, find the way out, kill some denizens of hell/aliens on the way. In Doom, this was fairly novel. But with Quake I and II this type of plot was surely just a hook into the more important world of deathmatch.
In this context, multi-player gaming is more akin to sporting competition than the traditional videogame ethos of adventures/interactive storytelling ala Zelda or personal skill improvement ala Tetris (both pretty extreme examples of each genre).
My question: Considering the small size of your company - less than 20, compared to the 100+ at Shigeru Miyamoto's* disposal - do you consider your company's business to be building technically advanced gaming engines (graphics/networking), with heavy plot development best left to others. Such as Sierra/Valve using the Q2 engine in half-life or Ion Storm using the Q3 engine in Daikatana?
* S. Miyamoto - Nintendo's goose that laid the golden egg - responsible for both Mario and Zelda.
> Descent was the first mainstream game to have 6DOF
Ultima Underworld came out around the same time as Doom.
Any chance that we will see another Commander Keen in the future? Now that was a great game!
In the past you have suggested that after the final licensee of the Quake engine had shipped, you might release the source. As far as I can tell, Daikatana is the last, and we ought to see that on the market by Christmas.
Do you have any idea when we might see a GPL release of Quake1?
--Conquering the Earth Since 1978.
What is your favorite secret hack (or optimisation)? By this I don't mean 'getting root on w2k boxes' or anything like that: 2 1/2D (Wolfenstein) is a great hack, adding the ability to look up or down with a raycasting engine is a great hack etc. A hack would be some detail related to doing a seemingly impossible task in a very clever and insightful way, and odds are you have some pet hacks in q3test (for instance, one known example is running almost everything through one key OpenGL call which can then be optimised). :)
So what is your favorite pet hack that you haven't yet revealed to the world?
I'll make it short, I'd like to be your competiton in 5 years :)
:).
,reverse qq;):zrekcahzlrepzrehtonaztey; );"
It's not one of those things where everyone would like to do it. I intend to do it. I've already incorperated, and have a group of people working with me. What we'd like is your input.. how did Id make it's beginnings? Were there any pitfalls you hit? Were there any things you did that worked especially well (besides the games, I mean
Thanks,
paradox(at)hushmail(dot)com
- Paradox
Man of the C!!!
perl -e "print join q( ), split(q.z.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
There is already large industry developed around porting games to the Mac.
Westlake,MacSoft,MacKiev and a number of others churn out quite a few ports a year.
As man id-ites know, you developed Quake on NeXTStep and then ported it to DOS (then Windows and Linux). Since Quake2, however, you've been developing natively on Windows NT, which I remember you lamenting at one point because it made you a bit lazy in your programming habits...
Anyway, what I'm wondering is, "what would it take for Linux to become your preferred development platform?"
Obviously, better 3D hardware support is paramount, but what other issues are there? Would you need a feature-full, cohesive IDE? Better support for the vector instruction sets (MMX, 3DNow!, SSE)? A simpler GUI?
At the time of Quake's development, Linux as a game (development) platform would have seemed pretty silly, but with Quake[123], Kingpin, and Unreal Tournament making Linux appearances, as well as Loki's ports of Civ:CTP and Railroad Tycoon, Linux-as-game-platform is starting to seem quite viable...
MoNsTeR
At present FPS games have one server, less than 100 players and a fixed landscape less than a virtual mile across. (your milage may vary) How possible do you see these limits being pushed out? Allowing endless dynamic landscapes, users, rules (physics), load sharing, etc? The intention being to create a Metaverse/alphaworld style place where anyone could create and offer a reality. And would you be interested in building it?
There's no question that the DOOM environment was cooler than any other FPS, but it just didn't have a full 3D engine with OpenGL. So, how about it? DOOM with the Quake3 engine!!
John,
Since the early days of Quake, and with nearly every FPS since, I have always wondered "why isn't the model that you see the same as what everyone else sees?". Or more simply "why can't you see your feet in games?".
I figured it had something to do with poly counts - you want more detail on your weapon than what you want to see on every other player. But in these days of GPU's (geforce) and MRM (multi-res mesh - see TF2), poly counts are going to be increasing by a huge amount anyway.
What I would ultimately like to see is firstly, my own feet, and secondly, the same animations on other players that they see on themselves, eg reloading sequences. Is this ever going to happen?
Thanks,
nick
After Q3:A is in stores, what kind of game(s) should we maybe be expecting? Is Id still going to stay with the FPS genre? Or should we be expecting something in the line of a Q4 with different game play or some new graphics? Thats it... Thanks.
LeprMesiA
I've heard that id may persue a single player only game for its next project. My thoughts are that id should do what it is really good at, and persue new ideas in the multi-player niche, i.e. pro-level virtual sports, etc. What are your thoughts?
Question: Why should I care that you're remaking Wolfenstein again, without really adding all that much to the gameplay? I mean, how many times can you remake the same game and have it still be interesting?
I was just playing Unreal Tournament, and the only thing that I see that's better in it is Detail textures (a.k.a. Negative mip-mapping, fractal textures, infinite detail textures...). If you haven't seen it, I suggest you do. It basically applies a "rocky" texture in a tiling pattern multilple times, getting smaller with every pass. It results in walls that look like they're real (not the typical blocky ones). I think it would be very cool if you could implement this it Q3A.
What ever happened to mulitplayer? My fondest memories are of 4 player co-op Doom.
I have a few misc. questions for you:
a) I'm a first year CS student... any suggestions?
b) I've been reading quite a bit about physics simulation recently, as it is a topic which interests me. A number of people I've heard from consider it the "next frontier" (now that it seems 3d graphics has been soundly conquered.)What are your views on physics simulation in games?
c) I've also been learning about machine learning via neural networks and genetic programming... Have you toyed with these at all? What were your impressions of them, especially with regard to fesability in computer games?
Thank you in advance for your time.
The BFG is far too powerful. In Quake2 it was somewhat acceptable. In Quake3, it's just a skill-less killing machine that leaves its target defenseless. In Quake2 it was dodgeable, it had a strategic feel to it (the warm-up). In quake3 it's a newbie weapon that kills the target without question. In Q3A, it has too many benefits, and no handicaps. It should be DRASTICALLY changed, if not removed.
...that you guys at id don't have enough creativity and are primarily a platform company. You spend all the time on the engine, and not enough time making cool virtual worlds, and cool characters and stuff. Basically he said that anyone who wants an engine can just buy yours.
How do you respond to that? Do you forsee a time when id will concentrate more on making unique games than on just building the next cool engine? Do you see building first-person games that are more like RPGs with more involved in strategy and puzzle solving, ala Heretic only with things like NPCs and more role-playing and interaction than "attack-and-slash."?
My journal has hot
i read somewhere that you build your models in 3DSMax. out of curiosity, how do you translate those into OpenGL? did you write the filters yourself, or is there an spec for such a translation?
Does it not worry you that all over the Internet gaming community people are saying that Quake 3 "sucks"? I am firmly one of this particular ilk and it will take a massive turn around to convince me. Of the Half-Life players specifically Counter-Strike I have only managed to find 2 people who actually like the game.
How come you chose NeXT as your development system
for Doom[1,2] and Quake 1? Will you ever be releasing the source for DoomEd?
That's what would be so much fun. You'd have to build towns, defence. Know who to trust and who to expell. If the world had defined boundaries (with use of drawbridges,moats,e-drawbridges[tm]) you could keep kiddies out - ensure tests before letting people in.
A Real World situation would be too anarchic but with certain environmental laws you could benefit those that work together and choose not to be violent. That would be the basis of creating an online world that didn't just irritate the masses
So perhaps moderation points for players? meta moderation? Expressed by how tall you are?
As for real world situations I think the lessons learnt from Ultima Online would have the jump on most.
-Docvert converts MSWord to OpenDocument, clean HTML
I, too, am curious to know if you have any more general, far-reaching goals for your life than to continue writing games. At 29, you've certainly got a lot of time left. What's next? Pixar? Microsoft Research? The restaurant business? (from http://www.gamersdepot.com/interview_roberta_b.htm ) GD: What about John Carmack? Roberta Williams: He's still a baby! (Laughs)
John I have read that you constantly get berated over the fact that you using Visual Studio as your editor. On this same line you often get asked to slam DirectX, Win32, and everything else related to Microsoft.
Do you ever scream out the window in a fit of rage "I'm not supporting your god damn religion you bunch of bloody misfits! I'm making a game APPLICATION on any platform that'll support it, not because of any love of one or another!"?
I have massive respect for you and again with Q3Test you have set the standards by which the rest of the industry will follow. I just wonder how you feel about constantly being pulled into religious wars by zealots in the various camps (i.e. Cult of Linuxites looking for some anti-MS pearl of Windows, or Mac Lovers looking for some accolades for the great G4 as if they somehow had something to do with it).
Getting into the real world here, I liked the (C&D?) article about you and your Ferraris. How is the newest conversion's tuning going? What did you drive before the Italian invasion? And when did you realize what 'Carmack' really meant? :)
What sort of technology will the Next Gen Doom have?
when the news of quake3 going to be multiplayer-bound first came out you told us that most cutting-edge graphics features like bump-mapping and such were out of the equation because the main factor was keeping very high frame-rates(much more important in the fast-paced online world than eye-candy). ,brandon reinhart, levelord, romero, mike wilson, tom hall, hook and all the other great guys of the gaming-community probably will look at this people like at a great threat for games'quality.
,i just decided too late to get a /. account to receive my password in time.)
,feel free to modify the question like you want.
i know a LOT of people out there felt unhappy about that development direction, mainly cause there are as many eyecandy-junkies out there as gameplay-junkies. i know videogames are meant to be built around gameplay otherwise they wouldn't be called so, but 3dtechnology-demos. still many BUY AND USE them essentially as 3d-virtual-worlds or 3drealtime-technology-demos in which they enter like a sort of hitech alice (btw americanMcgee rocks;) who wander in the 3dwonderland staggering graphics just to have their jaw dropping and hitting the floor. these people usually play offline with all the cheats on and they just don't give a damn about the weapons switching time or if they can hear opponents footsteps or not. they ride on hi-end systems like the hardcore online gamer. but instead of asking for ultra-gameplay-faster-framerates they just ask for higher image quality-more polygon count-better graphics.
i know that what they seek has not much to do with the concept of videogame. but it's not their fault if the only hi-quality 3d realtime experience not meant to be a game they can get is the virtual notredame stuff.
and it's not just quake not improving much eyecandy-wise , even the once oh so cuttinedge unreal hasn't improved much aesthetics-wise since almost 2 years ago. that's a trend which is spreading day by day to make room for massive-multiplayer-games. once we were so happy when we were able to reach 12fps in doom , nowadays it seems impossible for people to play under 60fps. on the other hand a lot of people think : bring down the fps to a more reasonable 20fps and add geometric complexity and rendering kick-ass features for goodness's sake.
scott miller , you, george broussard, tim willits
but,keeping in mind also that a project take always more time to be completed, do you think that in the future games (ahem*trinity*ahem;) there'll be still room for both the hardcore-gamer and the hiquality-graphics-junkie or (given the last trend)the gameplay will prevail over the graphics?
do you see a market finally growing for the 3drealtime ''exploration'' software like virtual notredame so to please the eyecandy-guys with that stuff , and leave the gamers to frag each other in their all-gameplay all-framerates games, finally pleasing everyone?
thank you very much, bye.
raw|war
vlega@mbox.queen.it
(i didn't mean to be anonymous
p.s. sorry for my bad english (and the lenght). if you like the idea of the message but not how i said it
John,
I'd like to know what you did before you became an elite programmer of game engines. Where did you go to college? Where, if not there, did you learn how to program? What sort of things prepared you to become the best FPS creator in the gaming industry?
Thanks.
Xenogenic
"If the enemy is in range, so are you."
iD has done it all. You've pioneered the gaming industry for 10 years and showed time and time again just what iD can do. My question--for the company who's done it all, what's next? q3arena throws you into a virtual reality so real and tangible that it is unbelievable. I won't be foolish enough to say that can't be outdone, obviously it can be and will be, but will you, or will you move on to some other feature of gaming now like more intelligent AI's, etc...
What do you think of abandonware, or giving away games that are outdated to the point of unsellability? Will you be releasing quake or any other id games like this, or do you think that they remain eternally sellable?
Where are my GPFs? I WANT MY GPFS!!
We all know that you've released Q3A for Linux simultaneously with the other two ports, but by all counts, you're the exception to the rule. Linux is lucky to get maybe five quality game ports a year currently. Considering your unique position as someone that's actually done it, what were the hard parts for you as a developer? If you were in charge of the resources in the Linux community, what would you have them do to make your job easier?
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
Since I'm posting as an AC, who knows if John will ever see this...BUT:
My question is simple. With the advent of DirectX 6.0 and 7.0, it seems that everyone out there has given up on OpenGL. On the Unreal web site there is a quote from Tim Sweeney saying something to the effect of "OpenGL is too far behind, and we can do stuff in Direct3d that OpenGL just cannot do..ergo we aren't going to support OpenGL anymore." (and their latest patch for Unreal proves it...the performance stinks)
Is this true? This is an alarming trend...if OpenGL cannot rise to the task of meeting and beating the features of Direct3D then we are in danger of forever losing the 3D API to Microsoft.
John, you seem to be the 'last man standing' with respect to OpenGL...what do you see? Is the growth of OpenGL too slow? Do we have any hope at all of countering Direct3d (which we all know is inferior...I'm sure we've all read your elaborate description WHY Direct3d is such a miserable API).
Comment removed based on user account deletion
See Subject.
Mr. Carmack:
;-)
1) there was an article around here recently trying to link slight levels of autism and programmers, would you consider yourself slightly autistic?
2) do like steak or chicken? (or lettuce, I guess)
3) Do you think the attention you generate is just plain silly?
4) Can I have one of your Farraris?
On a more serious note (and I hope you see this) I get the impression that you simply love to program. So much so that you go out of your way to aid the programming community, and other various areas (such as the open sourced video driver changes).
5) will you accept my thanks?
6) *now* can I have one of your Farraris?
Short Version:
Will joystick support be returned to its former glory or are we stuck with keyboard emulation?
Long Version:
First off, I use a trackball (Logitech Marble Mouse) for looking and a joystick (Logitech Wingman Interceptor) for motion. I've tried dozens of controller configurations and a trackball/joystick is far and away my most favorite.
If the joystick's axes are treated as keystrokes (like the arrow keys on a keyboard), then all your directional movement is in forty-five degree increments... Not very good, but almost livable - if that was the end of it, but it's not. Stray even a little bit from the center, for example, and all of a sudden you're going off at a 45-degree angle from what you wanted (NE instead of N, for example). You constantly have to be correcting your direction while you zigzag though the level. With "normal" joystick support, if you stray a little bit from the center, then you'd move just a few degrees from where you'd want to go and although you'd have to eventually correct your direction, it wouldn't be such as drastic maneuver (no wild zigzagging). Widening the dead zone causes more problems than it solves.
It's not *just* eliminating slow walking as you've (JC) stated.
Unreal Tournament has decent joystick support (lots of fun!) - why shouldn't Q3A??? In fact, in UT, I'm not aware of the joystick - it just works; but in Q3A, I'm constantly fighting the joystick and it's very frustrating and not fun.
I don't care if I can't bind the joystick axis in the in-game menus. I can edit the config files just fine. Maybe you can have an option that if your willing to edit your config files, you can keep proportional joystick support (joy_advancedupdate turns off keyboard emulation and turn on proportional support?)
to build your skills? to learn from? to use? in a production game? do you support imprisonment for crackers?
I know this probably will get lost in the midst of numerous questions but I hope this do get somewhere, as I play games both seriously and for fun.
With the release of Quake, the world viewed the game as revolutionary as it kicks Duke Nukem 3D's psuedo-3D engine. However, what attracted me to Quake most was the dark gothic settings. The ambience of the sound. The growling of a monster around the next corner. After beating Quake on Nightmare, which I admit is a good challenge, I wanted to play some more.
Then came the release of Quake II. I played the test version, before I got the chance to see how it performed on a Voodoo Graphics accelerator. True the graphics has definitely improved. However, I was disappointed, somehow... The gothic setting isn't there anymore; replaced with a more high-tech Doom-like setting. But through it all, I gave it for a spin to beat the game... only once.
And now we are faced with Quake III Arena, a new game using the Quake name. So I guess now is the time to ask the real question...
Why the complete change of settings from Quake to Quake II? Quake II has so many elements that relates to a Doom game. So much that there are people who are calling Quake II a 'Doom III', like myself as an example. I played Single Player Quake since its released. I haven't got around to playing much multiplayer until Tribes came along (don't bash me now; I like Tribes and it's just preferences). Were the people wanting multiplayer or single-player to have Doom-like weapons? Or is it just a change you thought would be for the best?
Personally, I applaud for the improvement in graphics. However, the dark, scary, and gothic settings that made me play Quake entirely is missing in Quake 2. And I often find myself going through a "installation-play-uninstallation" cycle. Does anyone else have that same opinion or feeling as well? (cc: dquonjr@ccs.neu.eduNOSPAM - remove 'NOSPAM' to send)
I don't think many people who go online for a chat would want to deal with all that, RPG fans aside. Much better, and simpler, to just have no weapons
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" -Salvor Hardin
Now that the Nth Quake is almost done, would you consider heading in a new direction (with some insurance) by joining up with a team doing The Next Big Thing (tm) such as Bungie (makers of Marathon, Myth, Oni & the incredible Halo) since they have a track record of making not only technologically advanced programs, but also breaking new ground in game and story line? It would be like a dream team!
John,
:). Again, great work John. Keep it up.
What are the major ramifications for the gaming industry going to be when XFree86 4.0 comes out based on the information we have now?
nVidia promises full support and acceleration of their cards. 3dfx seems to be coming along ok. Mandrake and other excelent programmers have been working to make the Matrox cards the best supported cards out there.
Will the speedup of the free X server lead to a lot of improvement in the area of 3D acceleration or will the speedup remain confined to desktop applications? What of the cooperation between game companies, id, Loki, etc, and the Mesa/SGI team. What do these players bring to the table to help us all enjoy a fully functional, fast, reliable X environment.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this.
Best regards,
Jon Webb
P.S. Maybe you could hookup with American Magee again for some new influx of level design
Mr. Carmack I would just like to say that I am a big fan of yours and id software. I have admired you guys since Commander keen and tried to follow your technical leadership since. I have been in the games industry professionally for the past 5 years, working from one company to the next. What is your advise to anyone starting out in the games industry or wanting to become and independent developer?
Who shot the sheriff?
I was just wondering.. most gamers buy Intel chips because of their better fpu performance (at least until we can get our hands on an Athlon). But some games have been released (usually unofficial) with 3dnow! enhaced binaries which prove AMD chips can be great for gaming too. Is there any possibility that we'll see a 3Dnow! enhaced version of Q3A for linux or at least one for Q2? (i know there's one for windoze).
:)
Keep up the good work
"Luck is my middle name," said Rincewind, indistinctly. "Mind you, my first name is Bad." -- Terry Pratchett
besides endless retreads of quake? over and over and over again THE SAME DAMN GAME AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AND QUAD SUCKS!!!!!!!!!
I want the matrix.
I want the neuromancer matrix.
I want it now.
We have:
1) Great 3d engines, using precalculated binary files. Used for games, very pretty, very LARGE.
2) VRML, a text format that should REALLY be binary, to save run time calculations, but at least it plays nice with the rest of the net. Small, SLOW, used for, um, well, hmm?
When will the quake engine allow for some form of quick portal linking between servers, and nice fast loading levels? With only a few basic file io functions layered in, and a "non-game" mode of play with lower sync security, as well as texture caching and posibly room "templates", quake's engine could be THE killer app of ccyberspace.
So why isn't it? The network requirments aren't large, and the system is self ordering, like the web. This could have been done with quake 1.
Please, Please, Please give us a plugin friendly fast and caching version of quake.
I want my matrix.
-Crutcher
-- Crutcher --
#include <disclaimer.h>
would be nice.
I on occasion have used quake servers a place to go run around and chat with some friends rather than just an actual killing ocmpetition. I think this technology has uses for virtual worlds that go far beyond gaming.
Juln
Can I have it? I'll take good care of her
Are you happy?
Does it bother you that 3 billion people live in poverty? Or do you shrug it off as you race off into the sunset in your Ferrari? Would you ever do anything to help those less fortunate?
I'm curious to learn about the compassionate and humane counterpart to your intellect.
1. Does it bother you that everything you code and know becomes obsolete within a few years? You spend countless hours coding Quake, working around bugs, etc. Then everyone plays your game for a while, and then they move on to play the next Quake clone while your work becomes yesterday's newspaper. Doesn't it feel pointless?
:)
2. I graduated with a degree in biochemistry with the intention of going to medical school, but I decided that I want to follow in your footsteps. Watching what you have done for the industry has inspired and motivated me.
So, I am currently taking some programming classes, but is that enough? Should I go back to school for intensive math and computer graphics training? I am a reasonably quick learner, but am I going to be in over my head? What kind of mathematical topics (or courses) should I be learning? How do I follow the way of the Carmack?
3. Your love of cars is apparent, but why don't you write a racing game then?
4. I have a great respect for Tim Sweeney's Unreal engine. Would you ever consider collaborating with him to create the next ultimate 3D engine? Why or why not?
I attended a street race at I-35 and Royal Ln on Saturday night (10-9-99) around 2-3 AMish. Mostly I see a lot of turbo'd imports and the typical Mustang/Camaro/Firebird mix. I was wondering if you'd ever stop by sometime with the F50 and take some folks to school. Mebbe even school the Suzuki/Yamaha variety racers. If you don't see folks at Stemmons and Royal, they race at Stemmons and Northwest Highway as well. -Normstorm
Hi John,
:)
You once said you were very interested in persistent worlds and the technical challenges they presented. Rightly so, since if you take a look at Everquest or Ultima Online, these are projects that anyone would dream to work on: server programming, network programming, graphic rendering, database programming, load balancing, etc... Maybe online RPGs don't need super high frame rates and are less sensitive to latency, but other then that, it seems to me there are even more technical challanges then in q3!
On the other side, an online RPG requires a huge team of artists and level designers and 'world designers (magic system, combat system, classes, etc) and you've been known to like a small teams. But if you were entrusted with strictly technical stuff, would you feel motivated to work on an online RPG? (would you want to?)
Interdev is for websites. DevStudio is the app editor (vb J++ C++, 'foxpro' ect)
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Hi John,
:)
You once said you were very interested in persistent worlds and the technical challenges they presented. Rightly so, since if you take a look at Everquest or Ultima Online, these are projects that anyone would dream to work on: server programming, network programming, graphic rendering, database programming, load balancing, etc... Maybe online RPGs don't need super high frame rates and are less sensitive to latency, but other then that, it seems to me there are even more technical challanges then in q3!
On the other side, an online RPG requires a huge team of artists and level designers and 'world designers (magic system, combat system, classes, etc) and you've been known to like a small teams. But if you were entrusted with strictly technical stuff, would you feel motivated to work on an online RPG? (would you want to?)
NOTHING
:P
/. for the next few months for me. go ahead and click that 'off topic', because yes, it sure is. thanks for reading what i have to say.
i really don't see the difference. the source doesn't have to be posted everywhere on the net. it could be closed source development, but the source is released with the final game. i know open source dev is supposed to be done as a community, but if you want people to buy the final game, you would have to keep it closed until final, unless you had all of the developers pay for CVS access... hrm...
still, as long as the code is released with the final product, all of the "i'm mr. fixit, everyone else sucks at writing stuff, so lemme fixit" people could fixit.
another topic... "most windoze games crash and windoze crashes like mad" isn't as true any more. i use linux whenever possible, only to play games do i use windows, but windows hasn't crashed in a very very long time. usually i have problems like it doesn't shut down or colors get messed up, but it hasn't crashed. this newfound "stability" arrived along with win98 (which shouldn't have cost $100, or any amount for that matter). using arguments that linux is stable and win9x is buggy/crashey isn't very valid any longer. win95, yes... winnt, maybe (i've not used it)... but frankly, most of the stability issues of win95 were resolved with win98. another one of the common arguments is win9x is slow. at a kernel level, linux compares very favorably to win9x i'm sure. but most people use GUI's... and linux's gui (SPEED, not usability... i can't get shit done without multiple desktops) isn't as fast on the same hardware as windows (although xfree4 should help this a lot with better drivers). i'm saying this because most of the people reading this are gamers, and gamers usually have decent hardware, and most (not all) use a gui. being a quaker, look at the speed comparison of q3test in linux and windows. i (maybe a bad example, but this is how it is) can run linux q3test in low quality and shrink the screen down a little bit and it runs playable (not beautiful or smooth). in windows q3test on the same box, i run 800x600 32bpp (not even supported under linux), high quality shit... it looks and runs amazing. once again, this is a driver problem, and will be fixed some with xfree86's driver improvements and DRI, but with differences this drastic, the drivers and the addition of DRI have a long way to go.
don't misunderstand the purpose of this post. it is not to advocate m$ products or bash linux, but it looks necessary for someone to point out the invalidity of some of the arguments against those products. when you use them against the masses who use win98, they don't see any truth in your bashing of win9x, so why should they believe your advocating of linUx? linux power comes from its POWER that it gives the user. putting win9x on a box is like neutering it. it closes many opportunities with what you can do with your computer (same thing when you neuter your pet). still, many people like this neutered version of a pc because you don't have to worry about some things that you have to when you have a fully capable box. that is how it is, and it is slowly changing, but won't ever be completely changed.
ok, that's enough talking on
-helo
Actualy, all the other ports for the other games were 'unsupported' and, in some cases done by third parties. Q3a is the first one that's going to work out of the box on all three platforms.
As for why he's doing it? Well, he 'says' it's for the money, but I'd be willing to bet there's more to it than that. Remember, these guys basically destroyed Direct3d's inherent dominance. Id software is doing a lot of harm to Microsoft. Because of there use of Open GL, it's now standard. It would be much, much more difficult to port a lot of these games to anything if it weren't for the availability of GL on the windows PC.
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
How do you see bandwidth improvements over the next 10 years or so impacting on the future of Multi-player gaming ?
I think you're thinking of "PO'd", Doom had an ambigus 'space marine'
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Please, John, tell me what time it is !? ;-)
The commercial & 'e-commerce' push to build multi-terra byte servers to deliver high speed intranet seamless roaming of complete earth coverage with local hi-res dataset embedding is on for young and old. A city sized area at 1m resolution is approx 60kmx30kmx1m = 1.8e9cells. ( about 2GigCells ) Earths surface is of order 1e13 1m res cells ( about 10 TerraCells ) Is ID interested in an open source distributed data design that incorporates existing relavent data structures: 1) Earth science type map projected sat/air photo/DEM/magnetics/radiometrics/demographics/vect or data. 2) QUAKE style structures embedded in landscape 3) .. add own hooks. Yes ID is well positioned to back this stuff & so are a few other 'open interface' companies in areas outside gaming. This is a suitable 'shed' project and gets more so every day, here in Australia 100Gb of storage is about the price of an old car that has maybe 2 years left in it. ( approx $3000.00 AusDolls ) Don't let the gnomes of zurich neatly slice out free access to cool data. Go for it, extend the design to encourage the growth of a world sized user patched in landscape.
Actually, while I'm sure John Carmack knows assembly language pretty well, I think his 'godliness' comes more from his vision then his being able to tweak the code. During the quake 1 days, he actually had Mike Abrash (sorry, I mutilated the name there...), the guy who wrote 'the Zen of code optimization' and 'the Zen of VGA graphics' working to speed up the code.
In fact, with new games like q3a, they aren't even bothering to optimize there code very much at all. This is because about 70% of the CPU time is spent in the graphics driver not the game. The optimizations in quake don't come from hand-coded assembly, but from really ingenuitve ways to create the effects.
If you're making 3d games, and there running extremely slow, assembly code isn't going to help. Hire some real programmers.
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
My son is a 16 yr old programming geek. What advice can you give us in terms of what kind of education or experience it takes to be an awesome game programmer?
Okay, this question has no relevance whatsoever, but it's been killing me for the past year or so, so I guess I might as well spill my guts when I have the chance.
What the hell happened to American (McGee)?
He seemed to disappear off my radar... the last I heard anything mentioning him was when he released idmap01 to the public.
That duke nukem kludge was worse than you think. Go try to find somewhere you could see both the top and bottom parts. The level designers were quite clever in working around this.
descent was a pretty cool hack, at the time. worlds were built as a series of connected cubes, in an oct-tree configuration. certain(or all) walls in a cube could be left out.
*sigh* although most slashdot users usualy have a clue, you might end up with an idiot, as clearly evidenced by your post...
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
I would like to know what new features you would like to see in the next generation of 3D graphics accelerators. Curved surfaces, 3D textures, dynamic LOD of meshes, advanced algorithms for multi-pass texture mapping, skeletal animation, displacement mapping, and many other features will potentially be available in the near future. Which features would be most useful for you to have implemented in hardware?
This general question may have been asked before, but:
It's obvious the games you make are what you'd like to play. But, my question is if the hardware technology wasn't the limit, what kind of game would you make?
I'd like to get a glimpse of what's coming down the road, as far as id games are concerned.
Adam
*sneak* *gib* Adam: HI!
While I can respect that you have zeroed in on one, limited game spec, don't you ever want to explore other areas of game design? Personally, I've grown rather tired of the chaotic fragfests and antisocial, egomaniac personalities that the Quake games seem to promote with players. So, can we hope for something more interesting from id in the future?
Check out a game called Alice.
http://alice.ea.com/
It's loosely based on Alice in Wonderland, and it's his project(I do believe).
Adam
*sneak* *gib* Adam: HI!
Question for John C.:
I've been very happy to see that the project to support various 3D hardware on Linux that you have been cooperating on has progressed nicely in the last few months. Now that you have had experience writing OpenGL drivers with the Open Source model, do you think that the success the project will influence companies to release full specifications for their hardware and even open up development of their drivers? Or do you expect that the current practice of keeping programming information secret will continue into the foreseeable future?
I'd really like to know your personal motivation for coming up with (and programming) some of the most popular games in PC history. Is it the kind of inspiration you can keep up for another ten years or do you think you'll eventually move on to other forms of work while maybe keeping a hobby interest in your games?
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Oh I loved those games. Give me my Pogostick!
Quake was a huge succes with people still playing it full time, many years after it release. Quake 2 tho hugely succesful in sales, is by many concidered less succesful in the online gaming community. Not in numbers perhaps but the loyalty of the Quake and QW players and cultstatus it has achieved is unrivaled. For example you see more Q3A friendly Q2 players then you see Q2 freieldly QW players(relatively speaking). Q3A however seems to unite both scenes. Now to my question to JohnC. "If id has a focus on online multiplayergames with a product cykle of max 18 months or so, will there be a need for another Q3A-style game in that time? " Looking back at Quake here which only had 6 dm levels and nothing but DM included from the box. And thinking about the distinct possibility of a high-poly version of Q3A scaling well in to the next generation T&L games. Q3A beeing of the first generation to support such features.
If someone (like me) would make an windows Voxel accelerator with mediocre support for current technology (triangles) would youd be interested in making THE first game that is designed with its voxel acceleration in mind? Or be interested affecting (before it gets to market) the API layer between hardware and software?
Many people think it's urban legend, but yes, you actually did give away a running Ferrari to the world's best Quake player. Any similar plans to give, say, your $1,000,000 Ferrari F50 to the world's best Linux kernel hacker? :)
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
John Id software is the only major company to release source code for it's games. Most comapaines keep their interectual right's under lock and key. Do you feel there is a limited life of a game or did you decide that you didn't want to rewrite it later and let the general public have it? How do you decide to release a game's source knowing that there are still copys on the shelf that you could be leaving there forever?
I was quite surprised to learn that even given Id's amazing record of producing quality games the distributor still takes ~60% of the pie. Is there really justification for this? Why did you dicide against distributing your games via the shareware channel? Would a deal with GOD be out of the question?
to: John Carmack
I understand the inclusion of an item that is intended to be unbalancing like a Quad or BFG. Also, I believe that to keep the game from getting too centered around balancing, little features should be options even if you don't want them in standard gameplay. I don't expect all weapons to be "balanced" by causing balanced damage.
A standard machine gun could have excellent firepower, but lose some effect in bursts due to redudancy since many weapons can only wound so well. Lowering the general damage from the machine gun is almost thinking two-dimensionally.
All of the weapons need to be more functional since there are weapons and they are an important part of the game. This means the player's arms must be able to interact with weapons and objects. The choice of a weapon should atleast include the shape (or size maybe) and weight. Small weapons with pegs are more accurrate at close range because you can easily whip them around. Large weapons would need special carrying methods besides handles like straps or hooks to save energy. Part of the skill of handling a weapon should actually be handling it.
An artificial mode with a better than RPG-based system would allow a complete world through numbers until viewable interactivity catches up. Of course there will be some representation of what goes on behind the scenes. Adding a scope could add a +2 bonus by assuming a more intelligent shot even though monitors still don't simulate human eyesight closely enough. An extended stock could lower recoil when used, but at the cost of altering the player from close to long range. The aiming of a weapon is rarely linked to actually using the sight of a weapon onscreen. The sight still isn't where the projectile comes from and you could work it out from that aspect, but the virtual weapon's sight should be useable. The effect of having a gun for a head holds back the immersive experience. A vector and distance system could be shown onscreen that is bone-correct from the head to the hand. Even though full body control isn't around yet, the body in the game should actually matter more than rough collision or screen bob. Instead of seeing a little picture of a guy looking around, a little section of what he glances at would be nice. Instead of seeing the player's head, a pic of the players hand and weapon could be used to aim relatively. Your optical work could be extended with rays to create a "sense" of where the player is. The transition to a character that can do everything a human can do and more is allowed to get a little messy. Substitutes are needed until the future of 3d first-person simulations isn't going to be limited to the screens, keyboards, and mice. Your icon "feet" could "sense" explosions in a level even though you can't hear them. The rest of the time your feet could give you a little edge by not completing a step in 1v1. Tile icons are going to be around for a while, so you could create a large collection of them before finally having to do something different. The limits from sensory experience hardware shouldn't extend into the virtual world. If everything is going to be hardware limited, you might as well stop writing software.
Weapons, if balanced, could be balanced on a team basis, and then altered for single player use with secondary launchers. Energy weapons (like a rail gun) could lose energy and need to tap energy from somewhere. A single use BFG that explodes after use would still add value. The variations for gameplay should be left open in code.
I think you could do what the analytical Bruce Lee did and create a functional interface in the process.
Would you take the time to create a martial art for your own health?
Indirectly you could do better work if you take that path. I said create a martial art because study isn't the same.
I was wondering if you've got any plans for what you're going to work on after Quake3Arena is finished, and bugfixed, and patched, and totally done with? Is Trinity still going to be the next release from id, or are you planning something else even cooler than Q3A?
Do you see a near future (next 3 years) for games based on real-time raytracing hardware accelerators ?
What ever happened to the Dark, Satanic virtual worlds of old? It seems ID Games have been getting less evil with each new release. Wolfenstein = Very Evil; Nazi Massacre D O O M = Very Evil; Satanic imagary Quake = Kinda' Evil; Monsters Quake 2 = Mostly bland, but evil in places. Quake 3 = Blaaand.... Bots? If this trend continues, I see Quake-4 set in a sunday church picnic situation. Capture the picnic basket anyone?
Media has, in all aspects, become more emersive. The general public spends more time engaged with fantasy than with reality -- be it through television, web media, computer games, or the ever shrinking traditional realm of written material. I do not believe that this is due to some inherent evil in the different media types -- I think that the public is so much more enthralled with fantasy because technology is making fantasy so much more enthralling.
The question begins to loom: What responsibility do the providers of media have for the consequences the content they provide might have? It would be naive to point to a computer game or a TV show and say that it is the root of undesired behavior; however, repeated images and fantasies that come from all sides will certainly begin to change behavior. Since computer and television are taps to both the real (news, education, information sharing, etc.) and the fantasy (games, movies, sit-coms, etc.) it becomes increasingly difficult for a generation who knows no other outlets to distinguish which is which.
What are your thoughts, as a provider of cutting edge, emersive media, on where and how the responsibility lays? Is it a matter for lawyers and government through liability (a dirty word)? Or should it be incumbent on the providers to be proactive in distinguishing between the consequences of fantasy and reality (which are becoming blurred)?
Hi, what about the project of doom2000 ? Will it be out before Quake4 ? (if there is a Quake4?)
Are there any plans to port Quake3 to BeOS.
I have been using BeOS for an quite a long time now and have found it to be extremely powerful. It's unfortunate side is that it has a limited software and driver support. But with a little support from larger companies COULD become the ultimate gaming OS.
If you have no plans to port for BeOS, and even with these limitations, would you consider in the near/far future to port it.
My question involves a bit of history of id Software. Mainly this: what would happen if you ever found the person who actually broke into id's machines (Which was not tklp, but someone who actually did it and let tklp take the bragging rights and the fall) and gave the source of Quake to Dr. X who wrote a rather decent version of MacQuake from said source? You have to admit Dr. X did a rather nice job with his version of MacQuake that was passed around before the official version got out... I could diff code that was better than the original in some aspects if you doubt this post. Basically, would you give Dr. X a job or take him to court? He never meant for it to be distributed, but would like to work on some projects such as QuakeArena for the Mac. =)
I'd be very interested in seeing this happen myself, but a couple of hurdles come to mind, in terms of a distributed, mass-usage scenario or true "virtual world", populated by people and not just bots...
1. Bandwidth:- Until broadband becomes common, and I mean really common, you can probably forget about seeing wide area networked, mainstream VR any time soon. Universities could possibly handle it...a cousin of mine goes to Monash and has access to speed of around 300k/sec...which to me seems pretty fast, but even that could be slow if you have a LOT of people on it and your graphics are really high detail.
2. Hardware:- 3Dfx graphics in particular take a lot of grunt, not to mention keeping track of where everyone is and what they're doing in a largely populated, multiplayer scenario. I'd be interested to see what someone could do with a reasonable sized network of high speed Xeons or SGI machines in this area, but I wouldn't bother with anything less processor wise, if you're talking about a true *world* of large size and with a lot of people. (50-100 or more at a minimum)
They might make a more UNIX friendly version of Windows, but don't hold your breath waiting for the ressurection of Xenix. It won't happen.
Something about the Microsoft philosophy that you must understand is that they believe that they are inherently the best, and they believe this in
such a way that it completely defies logic. I remember reading somewhere online before IE 4 was released how some young snot from MS was bragging on about how much better it was going to be than Netscape. When the person who was talking to him asked him how it would be in terms of specific features, the guy took on a very smug, self-satisfied air and said, "It will simply be better."
Microsoft have exactly the same attitude about Windows. "It's the best cos it's the best cos it's the best cos it's the best."
The idea that any other OS could be superior is completely incomprehensible to virtually the entire Microsoft mindset...So it won't impinge on their consciousness.
Could you please describe the development environment you use? Do you put your source code under version control? How much of the development time is spent for coding in-house tools (like 3D-editors or other utilities necessary to get the thing done)?
Moderation points in the form of ammo?
Fear my wrath, please, fear my wrath?
Homer
We apologize for the inconvenience.
I am a major admirer of your work , but something troubles me. Consensus (in my circles) are , that you are losing your touch.
.. i recently downloaded q3test , and was distressed to find that it still doesnt have that same "fun" feeling to it.. (ofcourse im not judging the final game on the test.. but thus has been my observation).
.. but ultimately you revert back to your soul mate(s) (the aforemention masterpieces).
.. and thought it was hip, and ended up screwing everyone. Just witness the fall of the once mighty Stomped.com , and the proliferation of the generic
Let me explain. Doom might still be my fav. game ever, and can be a lot of fun to boot up and kick some demon ass, Quake (1) is still a staple of my deathmatch (and multiplayer coop) diet. But your games seem to have a downward curve in entertainment value.
I played Quake2 for a little while , then realized that it was just not as much "fun" as what had come before it.. it felt like a bastardized version of what everyone else was doing, it left the proverbial "bad taste" in my mouth
While Doom 1/2 and Quake 1 are ageless (the holy grail of gaming) , the last two are nothing more than fickle mistresses , who keep you enthralled for a short time
I do not however feel that Romero leaving has much to do with it, it might just be the fact that I'm growing out of games (not many next generation games float my boat), it might just be that I've changed...but then every ex-quake community person i know is going through the same.
PS. the community that got into the guiness book of records, is now a pale version of the extremely cool occurence that shot up in '96. Our history is almost non-existent now.. for the teeny boppers came and saw
PlanetXXXXXX.com network
I love being able to taunt other players (some nights, after a particularly vicious day at work, that's about all I do). Very early on I put a script in my .cfg so that I could taunt/talk shit about other players with out having to sit there and type it out (I tend to get killed when I type). However, this is rather impersonal. I'd like to be able to do bind something like: say "{person I'm looking at} WTF are you shooting me???? We are on the same #$@@#$% team!!!!" or say "{person I just killed} was Skulded!" or say "I will hunt {person who just killed me} down and kill you slowly" to a key. Are there any plans for doing something like this in Q3?
Also, any plans to bring back the axe from Q1? Or some sort of melee weapon?
BTW, loved Wolfenstein, Doom 1 and 2, Quake and Q2. Keep up the awesome work!
-Gandalf23
usually play Q2 as Skuld [1433] or the Horny Monk
Me and my friends run Internet Phone in the background while playing q2, q3, starsiege etc etc etc....It works on the internet or a lan It doesn't take up too much cpu either Any machine with a pII300 and a decent 3d card should be able to do this fine. Especially in NT.
Imagine your head is in place of the camera in Quake. Now imagine tilting your head to the left, so it's resting on your shoulder. The quake engine doesn't let you do that.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Hello John,
:)? If it happens to be reading what genre do you enjoy the most, and which authors do you admire/enjoy? Thanks!
I was just wondering what you do to take your mind off coding (if you do take your mind off coding
-Red
-Red
what the hell is a 'value engineer'
Back in the day, you used to do some development under NEXTSTEP. I think QuakeEd was the last app you wrote before moving to Windows/OpenGL. You said that you were moving because NEXTSTEP's display postscript system was not a good fit for your apps. That was about three years ago, and since then, Apple bought NeXT and will be releaseing a new operating system, MacOS X, with updated (Openstep/Cocoa) development tools, and a new Windowing system, referred to as Quartz, that allows for hardware acceleration with support for OpenGL. Have you considered moving to a MacOS X development environment?
ok, this is a question about how your education and mathematical knowledge has helped you code (IMHO) some of the most revolutionary visual software out there...
you often mention the mathematical basis behind how you change your algorithms - rarely have i heard developers mention positive derivatives and 4th degree equations in their sigs...
how much math does the average game programmer know? how much do feel you know? did you take calc II and linear algebra in college and end there, or did you continue up to a math degree? this is a very open question, any general thoughts on the the subject would be enlightening...
This is a very valid question, concerning the fact that some interest has been placed in Voxel technology. A question deriving from the incredible technology demo / game Outcast is a perfect question for this forum... Who cares if it was an AC... -D.Alphaeus
-- Java is not a Jedi trait... "do, or do not, there is no try" --
do you have an idea what is meant by insomnia software's "DVA technology"?
It creates very well looking shadows all in realtime, first I thought it's just the well-known portal/sector-based algorithm, because on their tech-page they say that it doesn't process any geometry that isn't on the screen, is recursive and stops automatically when the frame is done. you can create the hard-shadows as shown in the screenshots with it, too. but the page also says that the algorithm doesn't use _ANY_ space subdivision database and the world is fully dynamic.
someone in a 3d forum said that they use octrees with a coverage buffer (simplified spanbuffer), but I don't think so, it only allows dynamic areas, not a hole dynamic world.
thanks,
Sengir@gmx.net
If you could get ahold of the source code for any one game/engine out there, even one not yet released, what would it be, and why? Unreal Tournament? Messiah? LithTech? Black & White? Halo? Also, if you could get ahold of the source for one NON-GAME piece of software out there, what would it be, and why?
What advice would you give those that hope to develop games as a future career?
You and Id are renowned for programming prowess. Have you ever considered using that talent for something more than games? Is entertainment enough or do you feel the need to do something of greater benfit to the world?
Hi-
;)
I'd like to thank John Carmack for thousands of hours of fun. Oh, John, you're welcome for the last 2.5 inches of Ferrari exhaust pipe I bought you
My question is this: when do you forsee the PC platform becoming powerful enough to support enough additional physics processing to provide a "real" environment? Not just some breaking glass; an environment where someone can realize that glass melts, heat it up, and make a new exit for themselves without the programmer having had to think of that solution first. Sort of a Prolog approach to 3D shooters.
John,
.plan file for quite some time. You're a prolific programmer that a lot of
;^)
I've been following your
people can identify with. (It was so interesting, I set up a cron job to fetch it and drop it in my mailbox)
My question: How do you fight burnout?
After many months at high levels of concentration and having the whole world waiting on you, I wonder what you do to hang loose...
oh yeah, is it done yet?
What is Q3 about? I have not really understood what is more fun about it. Sure the graphics use more colors and the weapons have more eye candy, but what is more fun about it? I play a lot of Q2 and have recently been playing a bunch of Q3 and cannot figure out what the craze is about. If you could shed some light upon this i would be most interested. I am not bagging on the game at all as I would love to see it rock the house, rather I was wondering on a higher level what the method to creating game with different playability was. Other than it having great graphics, what can change the woes that I have heard from the gaming community(devoted Q2 people) that say Q3 is rather dull? I know that mods will change significantly how things interact, but what will make Q2 fun out of the box?
- Kill Yourself, spare us all! -
A while ago you there was a Next Generation interview were you talked about the future of 3D graphics and said that voxels were the way to go. I was just wondering when you think voxels will become standard (and how). You also mentioned displacement mapping in the article and ever since I read it I've wanted to know what that is. I also read somewhere that you did some research on voxels and had Quake2 running with a voxel engine. I was wondering what rendering methods you used and what books\websites\papers you got the techniques from. Also it would be pretty cool if you would release some screenshots of voxel Q2.
Hey, not that the games aren't cool, but you seem to be just rehashing the 1st pers. shooter with new graphics. When will we see full realtime, nonlevel based games that have fully descructable environments? Isn't the hardware capable yet?
John - Looking at the development of comptuer games over the past while, one can see a huge increase in the quality of play and graphics, along with the compexity and size. My question is ever plan on creating simple, but fun games ala nibbles, or will you focus primarily on the latest/greatest technologies. Thanks you! Keep on keepin' on.- -------
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The quality of the models in games is approaching or surpassing that of tv cartoons. Do you see future iterations of the Quake engine or even the present one being adapted to create cartoons. It would seem so simple to have a script with each character being played by someone on a PC. Add sound and viola!
You could have a cartoon in 20 minutes instead of however long it normally takes. And with different models, anything could happen. Could this spell the end of the cartoon industry as we know it...
How do you feel about developing network play with that other internet in mind?
Posted by cookieman.k:
Hi !
As you pointed out, Wolfenstein was a 2D Raytraced thing, but not 3D. I've never got the time to look in the source code, but I remember reading it somewhere that even DOOM II was build in the same manner, adding extra stuff to fool me (|you) that it really builds a TRUE 3D world.
So far its fine for me, but raytraced images are far beyond anything produced with poligon (triangle) renderers. It would be fine to see some realtime engines build around Raytrace. Or am I dreaming ?
Greetings from
To help prevent unauthorized client-proxies, will Q3 have any type of client/server authentication? Or encrypted protocol options? Does Id have any plans to include their own 'anti-bot' methods into Q3? If so, what are they? (I did notice your response to the kick feature on stomped.com last week..) -Dekard http://www.planetquake.com/antibotics/
John, are you Satan? Just curious...
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
Will there ever be a new Doom game?
Or perhaps he could make Quake VI fit on a floppy, and run on a 286/10 w/ 512K RAM... ;)
i've started an opensource project to create an immersive global user-created database, as you describe, at www.planet-earth.org. join us.
Hypermedia, virtual worlds, human interface, truth, beauty.
Greetings Mr. Carmack! I've read a report on Quakecon'99 regarding idsoftware's possible interest in porting Quake3 to the Dreamcast platform, given that it's going to be the first console to support online gaming. This has caused a big stir among the Dreamcast community and some have created petitions and stuff to encourage the idea. Does idsoftware have any definite intention of porting Quake3 to the Dreamcast (or at least licencing the job to any developer)? One guy claimed he read in a mag that development has in fact already started; any truth to this? And lastly, can Quake3 be written using the OpenGL API if it's going to be ported over to the Dreamcast?