Carmack
John Carmack has some interesting thoughts on the state of the video game industry as it prepares to enter the next round of console wars.
Of course you all know that, as the coding genius behind "Doom", "Quake" and their various sequels, Carmack is one of the elder gods of gaming.
Here he waxes lyrical about the upcoming Xbox 360. He also takes on some of the whinging common among "serious" gamer types these days, namely, how better graphics are raising costs for the industry, squeezing out innovators, stifling competition and leaving deep-pocketed megacompanies as the only ones who can afford the budgets required to make a cool game.
Carmack calls bullshit on a lot of that, saying "This is the golden age of gaming", right here and now.
Then he then goes to say a lot of stuff that seems like rationalizations for what he did with "Doom 3".
Personally, I love "Doom 3". The graphics are phenomenal, even on a low-end machine like mine. Carmack's company, id Software, took the use of spooky lighting to the next level, like something out of "Alien". The monster design is fiendishly good. The story is actually interesting. It is one of the most cinematic game experiences you can have. These guys are artists.
That said, the game got blasted by critics for a number of areas, mostly for its weak physics engine and predictable, scripted enemy AI. In his comments, Carmack basically dismisses these things as either unimportant to gameplay or too difficult to implement. Oh, he doubtless has good reasons. For instance, physics is very CPU intensive. And there's no way to scale it. With graphics, the computer can paint stuff up close with a lot of detail while devoting less attention to stuff farther away. But with physics, a falling barrel requires the same number of CPU cycles whether it's one yard in front of you, a hundred, or even behind you.
Carmack sort of dismisses these things -- which coincidentally were integral to "Half-Life 2", the chief rival to "Doom 3" in the contest for the crown of Best FPS Ever -- shortly after he says that better graphics are really where it's at because that enhances the gaming experience. Oddly, he then goes on to dis the idea of having a separate processor for physics, saying that it would be good for things like realistic smoke, water and grass, but that gamers don't necessarily want that. Huh? You mean gamers want their grass to to look ultra-realistic, but not act realistically?
Maybe something is getting lost in translation. Maybe what Carmack was driving at was the idea of triaging limited processing resources and programmer time. That makes his comments seem a lot more sensible and defensible. He might really be saying, "Look, every gamer wants kick-ass graphics, ultra-realistic physics and great enemy AI. But we just don't have all the processing power to do everything perfectly. Game designers have to decide what gives gamers the biggest bang for the buck. I think that it is better to devote the biggest resources to awesome graphics that will make you crap your pants, and lesser amounts to physics and AI."
Oh, for a fascinating account of the creation of "Doom", I highly recommend Masters of Doom by David Kushner. You don't even have to be interested in video games to appreciate it. It really is a book I would recommend without equivocation (i.e., unequivocally) to a general reader.
Of course you all know that, as the coding genius behind "Doom", "Quake" and their various sequels, Carmack is one of the elder gods of gaming.
Here he waxes lyrical about the upcoming Xbox 360. He also takes on some of the whinging common among "serious" gamer types these days, namely, how better graphics are raising costs for the industry, squeezing out innovators, stifling competition and leaving deep-pocketed megacompanies as the only ones who can afford the budgets required to make a cool game.
Carmack calls bullshit on a lot of that, saying "This is the golden age of gaming", right here and now.
Then he then goes to say a lot of stuff that seems like rationalizations for what he did with "Doom 3".
Personally, I love "Doom 3". The graphics are phenomenal, even on a low-end machine like mine. Carmack's company, id Software, took the use of spooky lighting to the next level, like something out of "Alien". The monster design is fiendishly good. The story is actually interesting. It is one of the most cinematic game experiences you can have. These guys are artists.
That said, the game got blasted by critics for a number of areas, mostly for its weak physics engine and predictable, scripted enemy AI. In his comments, Carmack basically dismisses these things as either unimportant to gameplay or too difficult to implement. Oh, he doubtless has good reasons. For instance, physics is very CPU intensive. And there's no way to scale it. With graphics, the computer can paint stuff up close with a lot of detail while devoting less attention to stuff farther away. But with physics, a falling barrel requires the same number of CPU cycles whether it's one yard in front of you, a hundred, or even behind you.
Carmack sort of dismisses these things -- which coincidentally were integral to "Half-Life 2", the chief rival to "Doom 3" in the contest for the crown of Best FPS Ever -- shortly after he says that better graphics are really where it's at because that enhances the gaming experience. Oddly, he then goes on to dis the idea of having a separate processor for physics, saying that it would be good for things like realistic smoke, water and grass, but that gamers don't necessarily want that. Huh? You mean gamers want their grass to to look ultra-realistic, but not act realistically?
Maybe something is getting lost in translation. Maybe what Carmack was driving at was the idea of triaging limited processing resources and programmer time. That makes his comments seem a lot more sensible and defensible. He might really be saying, "Look, every gamer wants kick-ass graphics, ultra-realistic physics and great enemy AI. But we just don't have all the processing power to do everything perfectly. Game designers have to decide what gives gamers the biggest bang for the buck. I think that it is better to devote the biggest resources to awesome graphics that will make you crap your pants, and lesser amounts to physics and AI."
Oh, for a fascinating account of the creation of "Doom", I highly recommend Masters of Doom by David Kushner. You don't even have to be interested in video games to appreciate it. It really is a book I would recommend without equivocation (i.e., unequivocally) to a general reader.
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