Carmacks 2013 quakecon speech

[Davros]

Just to make it easy for everyone
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNWAcEu1jpU&list=PLqSz8wYk5VJTsadQnU9EId6G0AJWA6o0q

Quick summary

Part 1

- new console cycle
- AMD hardware
- game controllers

Part 2
- Kinnect
- Digital distribution
- Portable consoles
- Andriod and iOS
- Cloud gaming
- Creative vision vs technology
- Unified memory
- PowerVR and tiled rendering

Part 3
- displays
- head mounted display
- movement tracking
- sound
- large scale software development
- optimization
- OpenGL

Part 4
- OpenGL
- functional programming
- Haskell
- Lisp
- Scheme
- strong and weak typing
- multithreading
- events
- garbage collection
- QuakeC vs Scheme

Part 5
- programming
Q&A:
- space
- AMD vs Nvidia vs Intel GPUs
- CPU architectures
- GPU computing
- id Tech 5
- id Software company

Part 6
- PC and upcoming console hardware
- MegaTexture
- virtual reality, augmented reality and Google Glass
- voxel, ray tracing
- AMDs virtual texturing
- console cycle beyond Xbox One and PS4
- SSD
- strobe lighting in LCD technology
- control devices advancement
- when single person can do a AAA game like MW3?

Part 7
- id Tech5 and Tango Gameworks

 

[manux]

Good stuff, listened the whole speech and didn't feel bored at all.

 

[Rodéric]

any transcript yet ?

 

[Blazkowicz]

I watched the part about functional programming and wow, it was interesting and I think I understood!

I love how he explains he was hacking a pure functional Wolfenstein 3D, with the main function as the only exception, how it's a pain but what big benefits you have (like functions don't have to be maintained to still work even as you project evolve and age), you don't have to deal with tons of CVARs and flags and updating states and deal with all the interactions on that (he says that breaks something on a weekly basis). But you fire you gun and as he says, "you want him to die", that kind of thing so the game state has to be updated but you can't use side effects, mutable variables etc.
This seems a hard problem but he just gives us the solution, while always talking about what you need to learn, the mindset, the benefits, the drawbacks : one being game developers have all their experience built up doing their stuff with imperative languages like C++ and about no one makes games using functional programming.

Also he likes strong static typic better

 

[NRP]

Good stuff. Thanks Davros!

 

[Davros]

Where is carmack from, is there like a town or a city where everyone has that weird accent ?

 

[NRP]

I believe he's from Texas. But he doesn't have a "typical" Texas accent.

 

[Sxotty]

Wiki says

Carmack, son of local television news reporter Stan Carmack, grew up in the Kansas City Metropolitan Area where he became interested in computers at an early age. He attended Shawnee Mission East High School in Prairie Village, Kansas and Raytown South High School in nearby Raytown, Missouri.

But really it depends where his parents are from as well

 

[Raqia]

His talks are great; he approaches computer science more like one of the engaged and worldly polymaths of the past such as Leonardo, Archimedes, or Von-Neumann than many a modern academics, cooped up in an ivory tower. Someone should have given the man a glass of water. (I'm only on part 3. No spoilers if they do.)

 

[fellix]

Newsflash:

John Carmack joins Oculus VR as chief technology officer

 

[Dominik D]

This news blew my mind. I hope departures of Hollenshead and (partial departure of) Carmack are not an indication of id scaling back. They're slow but I like their games.

 

[zed]

Some great news. I tried vr about 20 years ago and loved it. the graphics were crap but could hardly wait for the future 20 years later I'm still waiting

 

[Arwin]

I listened to the whole speech like lastyear, but didn't feel I heard as deep or as much new stuff this time ... I just ended up hearing a lot of my own thoughts being agreed with, and argued very concisely. I like the bits where he candidly admits he was wrong on something - it's a quality few people seem to possess.