What does /prog/ think about John Carmack and graphics programming in general?
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Anonymous2009-07-13 17:46
John Carmack is pretty cool and a good graphics programmer. Graphics programming is also cool. However id software did baaaad things to the world of gaming when it started pushing lame games driven by graphics alone. One could see this trend already in Wolfenstein and Quake, and especially in Doom. Then it was downhill from there. If only Carmack had been lead graphics programmer for Looking Glass or something, instead of having his own company.
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Anonymous2009-07-13 18:20
>>2 One could see this trend already in Wolfenstein and Quake, and especially in Doom.
no, it started with doom 3.
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Anonymous2009-07-13 18:44
XBox-quality graphics have been sufficient for me. I wish game companies spent more time making fun games. I'm not sure how to blame JC for the fault of the entire industry, but if you want me to, OP, I guess I will.
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Anonymous2009-07-13 18:55
Who cares about 3d games, they are crap.
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Anonymous2009-07-13 19:02
Graphic advancements aren't all bad, one good thing is larger and more open worlds without the Half-Life approach of having load-zones in every 10th corridor.
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Anonymous2009-07-13 19:16
who gives a shit games died after the first version of nethack
>>4
I blame him for leading the “forget about gameplay” trend. As an industry leader, id's lack of emphasis on gameplay suggests it's only for people who can't do graphics. Which is backwards.
>>8
He is in the BUSINESS of making GRAPHICS ENGINES to SELL. WAYSA?
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Anonymous2009-07-13 23:05
>>8
Admittedly, I haven't played any of id's games between Quake 3 Arena and DOOM 3, and nothing else since, but I think they only started to focus on graphics with DOOM 3 (or some time between the two). You just need to compare the two's gameplay to realize it. Q3A is basically a multi-player game with single player tacked on when you're alone. It's very fast-paced and perfect to play with friends. DOOM 3, on the other hand, is a graphics benchmark. Carmarck wrote the engine just to say "look what I can do!" The same can be said about anything by Crytek.
I can't think of any other public figure that can speak authoritatively on graphics programming and have everyone listen. He's the Bruce Schneier of Graphics Programming. And he open-sources his old shit, fuck yeah!
And the Commander Keen series was pretty good.
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Anonymous2009-07-14 12:24
He's a very good graphics programmer and engineer. He sucks at making games though. You should read the "Master of Doom" book, it's a pretty interesting read.
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Anonymous2009-07-14 12:40
>>23 He's the Bruce Schneier of Graphics Programming.
Overrated and mediocre?
_________________________________________________ http://xs135.xs.to/xs135/09042/av922.jpg
I can understand how they wouldn't let in those wild jungle apes, but what about those really smart ones who live among us who roller-skate and smoke cigars?
The first person shooter genre was done incredibly well in Doom and pretty much perfected by Quake 3. id sort of lost any ability at gameplay innovation at that point.
I feel like Doom 3 and all subsequent games were just demos for the game engines. They should have put about 1/10th the development time into them and made them just free tech demos, instead putting that other 9/10th of their time into tools so they could keep up with Unreal. Then they could have actually made some money on licensing, and we'd have some better games.
>>41
id's games are meant to be tech demos. The reason Unreal is more popular than idtech has to do with cost more than anything. There's no changing that; Carmack loves intense graphics programming. He seems to be the only one writing engines to give a shit about texture quality too, so I'm all for his crazy antics.
>>42
id games do not have the production value of tech demos. They spend tens of millions of dollars on them. Clearly they don't consider them tech demos.
And Unreal beat out the Doom 3 engine largely because of better tools for artists and better support for outdoor environments. id lost track of this because they were too focused on making Doom 3, which was set almost entirely indoors in shadowy hallways. They eventually got around to fixing this with MegaTexture but it was too late by that point.
>>43
I read somewhere (sorry, no ref) that id makes a lot more on licensing than on the games. Regardless, I think viewing their recent games as something other than extremely well made tech demos is a mistake. id Tech 4--sure, it was not applicable for most games.
>>44
Good thing they're not going to license their next engine then, but keep it private to Zenimax.
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Anonymous2010-08-30 10:04
I really enjoyed the high complexity and great areas of Wolfenstein 3D's Episode 2 Level 7. Hardest level ever.
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Anonymous2010-08-30 10:35
Back when the original Doom was made they were pushing a technology that could hardly support it. What were top of the line specs back then? 20mhz CPU? 8mb of ram? All 3D rendering done in software. Carmack had people like John Romero to help out on game play and Michael Abrash to max out assembly optimization. They didnt really need to hire artists back then, the bit resolution was so low you could count on your hand the number of pixels that would fit on a polygon. A character might be made of 20 polys max? So yes, it was (I imagine) an incredible game for its time, but by the time Doom 3 came out, they were very much outclassed by games already out of that genre. As much as everyone respects Carmack, his day is over as being a leader in 3D software innovation.
>>51
A dying platform that will never be able to do multitasking properly is not the future.
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Anonymous2010-08-30 12:46
>>47 So yes, it was (I imagine) an incredible game for its time
Doom was kind of shitty, actually. Fairly fun multiplayer, but like everything else id has done since Commander Keen, it was basically a glorified tech demo.
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Anonymous2010-08-30 12:47
>>44 I read somewhere (sorry, no ref) that id makes a lot more on licensing than on the games.
They did make more on the Quake 3 engine. They didn't on Doom 3; the engine was a total flop. They should have spent more time on the engine and less on the game.
>>45
Sad but true. They are only licensing the engine to developers who publish through Bethesda, who may well want to own all IP. So no one is going to license that thing no matter how fucking good it is. :(
>>47 As much as everyone respects Carmack, his day is over as being a leader in 3D software innovation.
I definitely don't agree with that. He just needs people around him to stop making stupid business decisions, like this licensing bullshit, or these big blockbuster titles.
What he really needs is a bigger break from current tech. I don't think Rage is going far enough; it will be obsolete by the time it comes out. I want to see a demo of his SVO raytracing engine. Part of the problem I think is that the development cycle for these games is so much longer than in the Doom/Quake days that it allows time for other studios to catch up. The Rage engine could have been done two years ago.
>>55 implying Apple shit isn't made in China as well
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Anonymous2010-08-30 13:31
The tech was ready in 2002 (I know because I have the build those fucktards at Ati leaked at that time), but then the artists spent two more years doing high definition closets.
Thank you, this is exactly what I've been saying. This is what is happening again with Rage.
These games are not tech demos. They SHOULD be tech demos, but some idiot at id keeps trying to make blockbuster titles out of it, and they delay the engine for fucking years while trying to complete the game.
>>60
Doom 3 sold millions on brand recognition alone. Sales != quality.
I don't think engine licensing is necessarily a money draw. I just want them to license it so we can get better games from other studios. John Carmack can still write an awesome renderer but we haven't seen a quality game from id in a long time. Without licensing, his talent may be going to waste.
>>54 They did make more on the Quake 3 engine. They didn't on Doom 3; the engine was a total flop.
That adds up. id Tech 4 was the prettiest engine at the time, assuming your game happened to be Doom 3, more or less.
Sad but true. They are only licensing the engine to developers who publish through Bethesda
The sad part is devs won't be lining up to beg Bethesda for the opportunity. On the whole, the 3D gaming industry doesn't give a damn about texture quality and I see that as a sickness.
He just needs people around him to stop making stupid business decisions, like this licensing bullshit, or these big blockbuster titles.
I don't see what the problem is, especially now that the parent company is apparently making edicts. Hopefully one of those will be "so you're making a 3D game? You're using id Tech unless you have a bullet-proof proposal."
Besides, while $(Rage|Doom4|QuakeWhatever) is in dev. on the new tech, the other companies could presumably do the same with their own titles without having to wait for the demo title to be complete. So long as $(id_game) gets out of the pipeline first it should be fine.
>>64
I'd say they're worse. Web development and design is a very shallow pond, but there's actually some depth to game development; there's much more opportunity for gamers to talk out of their ass, and in doing so cheapen the work of people who are actually doing fairly impressive things.
Case in point: nearly everyone in this thread.
>>66
I remember when Shii wrote Shiitchan, and world4ch (including /prog/) was created. I made two of the first 10 posts on /prog/. When I see /b/ shit like Xarn, I wonder why I'm still here.
Why can't you Xarn defenders just shut the fuck up? You're as detrimental as these cretins bashing him, but I suspect that you, unlike them, can just shut up.
As much as /prog/ sucks now (and apart from the spambots, the past few weeks have been fairly decent), it's still considerably better than it was in its very early days.
>>70
Why can't you idiots who whine about Xarn discussions just shut the fuck up? You end up wasting a lot more space than either the bashers or the defenders.
>>69
Boxxy was a regular who pulled the board out of the sewer by posting good code and bringing the occasional challenges up to a reasonable standard? Boxxy saved the board's culture from being subsumed by imageboard effluent by creating /prog/scrape and enabling a cottage industry of /prog/ historians? Boxxy ensured the best posters stuck around by creating a high-quality IRC channel that kept them together even through the worst of summer?
I never knew that. Boxxy sounds like a cool person.
... ensured the best posters stuck around by creating a high-quality IRC channel that kept them together even through the worst of summer?
Yeah, that's what kept us around[/sarcasm]
>>73
Say what you will about Xarn, but the challenge threads were indeed pathetic before he came along, and /prog/scrape did improve the /prog/ experience by quite a bit. I don't think he founded #sicp, though. That was the first Christopher. He was just an early member, and the guy who kept it going when that Christopher left.
>>79
No, they were pathetic after he came along because he was the only person who didn't get them. He wrote mediocre code, which was only better than anyone else's code because they all got the point of the challenges and intentionally wrote hilariously bad code.
>>80
Try actually looking at the challenge threads he participated in, and the ones before that. I'm sure you can find them using /prog/scrape.
This vendetta of yours is getting sadder and sadder.