Acert93 said:
Says who, you? A developer working with the system is much more in the know than us--lay fans. EVERY developer has noted the issues of multi-core processing--even the devs in this thread. Some welcome the challenge, others think it was unnecessary at this time. So we have fact (difficulties surrounding multi-core designs) with opinion (whether now was, or was not, a good time for consoles to make that transistion). His facts (comments) are correct; his opinion (complaints) is his perception based on years of PC & Console development.
Again, I think YOU are reading too much into what he is saying AND being too defensive. Obviously he did not just drop the Q4 code right onto Xenon and expect it to work.
We all knew multi core development would have its hurdles, however the way he is presenting himself is as a dinosaur that is used to x86. As randycat said, if his point with his Q4 comparison was that OoO code would run not all that well on 3 In order CPUs, well, wouldn´t that be pretty obvious?
I very sincerely doubt both Sony and MS would bother with multicore CPUs if they could be dwarfed by a current single core CPU. The lazyness (or ineptitude) is on someone´s side, and I doubt it´s on the console maker´s.
As an aside, Q4 is still in development. It was noted it was running at half the speed of a desktop. Compared to the hit many games took going from the Alpha to Beta kits on the 360 or the fact some PS3 games were running at about 5% of their final framerate, 50% sounds pretty good for a game in development that just recieved final Beta kits in the last couple months (and, as Todd noted, they are STILL replacing chips and stuff with final spec parts). Obviously he is not as dumb as you are portrarying him or lazy. But as I noted before there has been a lot of sentiment that the consoles are going to "cream" the PC. Yet
Hannibal has had reservations
Devs who spoke to Anand had reservations
John has reservations
And yet that does not negate that the immense mayority of his work (and of many other PC developers) has been done on a single plattform, the PC. The developers who work on that plattforms have had it very easy for a very long time, having the fortune of creating bloated, memory demanding code and the benefit of not having to research and understand a single architecture, due to an abstraction layer.
What validity Carmack´s opinion on consoles really has, when he has never done any significant work on consoles? I would say it´s very obvious he would complain, wouldn´t you?
They are not saying the consoles suck, just that they are more labor intensive platforms that take MORE TIME to get the same power out of them compared to a PC. They have more theoretical Floating Point performance, but as we all know (or should!) is that FP is not the end-all be-all in game development. It is important, and developers who design specifically around the STRENGTHS of a single platform will be greatly rewarded. Most 3rd party-cross platform companies, especially those who branch out to the PC, do not have that luxery. They need to be cross platform to make a profit, which means many of the special features and performance bonuses are not available without re-writing large portions of the game.
This is why devs have been SCREAMING for the last year about the rising development costs. There is not only the art assets and juggling more game code, but to get competitive looking games with 1st party titles they need to invest significantly ontop of what they have already done.
And how exactly is that different from this generation? Look at Xbox, it was pretty much the only console that recieved PC-based games due to it being almost a standard PC itself. PC developers didn´t bother with PS2 and GCN most of the time. That proved to be a mistake, since market conditions change, and the PC one isn´t in a state of bonanza. In my humble opinion, now that they want a more significant presence on consoles, then they should take the challenge with a good attitude, since that challenge comes with the territory. Some do it properly (Epic), some do not.
False.
The Quake 3 engine was very popular during the last gen (Call of Duty, Return to Castle Wolfenstien, Medal of Honor, 007:tWinE, SoF2, Jedi Knight 1&2, etc). Further id IPs like Doom and Quake have appeared on many consoles.
The Quake 3 engine had to be very heavily modified by development houses in order for it to work properly on consoles. It also wasn´t exactly displaying the most enthralling visuals either when compared to proper engines made for a specific console. In any case, John Carmack´s involvement in those was pretty much nill.
I´ll reply to the rest later, I´ve gotta go to class.
