John Carmacks Quakecon keynote

[Nagorak]

I just hope with them "concentrating on the SP storyline", the game is actually good. If we end up with another Quake 1 I'll be disappointed. It was a great multiplayer game and had great graphics for the time, but the single player game was a major let down. Especially the immobile end boss?????!!!

I also really hope they include a Coop mode in Doom3. Am I the only one who thinks playing a game coop is great fun? I mean, sure it's great to DM, but it's also cool to team up against the comp from time to time.

I liked this part too:

Q - Doom III when?

A - We don't want to be one of the companies who continues to show the product year after year at E3 and never ship it.

 

[John Reynolds]

I just hope with them "concentrating on the SP storyline", the game is actually good. If we end up with another Quake 1 I'll be disappointed. It was a great multiplayer game and had great graphics for the time, but the single player game was a major let down. Especially the immobile end boss?????!!!

I also really hope they include a Coop mode in Doom3. Am I the only one who thinks playing a game coop is great fun? I mean, sure it's great to DM, but it's also cool to team up against the comp from time to time.

I love coop. The first time I multiplayed Quake 1 (via a null-modem cable), my friend and I spent 8 straight hours fighting our way through the entire game, staying up until about 4-5 in the morning. It was a blast.

 

[Sharkfood]

Great little monologue here! I enjoyed every last bit of it.

Of key interest in the first quarter or so where he goes into detail concerning the realism of going from dark/dimly lit indoor areas and contrast into brighter/outdoor areas... and the science behind the "realism" of making this be more life-like.

This was one of the more notable features of ICO. I was taken aback how the game blinds you a bit when you step outside from the darker, dimly lit indoors to the *blaring* bright outdoors. The same transition J.C. talks about on the return (reduced color saturation when going from bright to dark.. for a time) also occur in ICO. I'm really looking forward to DOOM to see J.C.'s version of these nice little nuiances of emulating a more realistic experience.

 

[MrSingh]

I also really hope they include a Coop mode in Doom3. Am I the only one who thinks playing a game coop is great fun? I mean, sure it's great to DM, but it's also cool to team up against the comp from time to time.

I only played Doom I/II in co-op mode. Didn't care for deathmatch. Lost interest in Quake series due to no co-op mode. Love Halo because of the co-op mode.

But unfortunately, seems like they have confirmed there won't be any co-op mode in Doom III. Looks like I'd have to look towards Serious Sam series and Halo 2 for my co-op fix.

 

[Saem]

I love coop. The first time I multiplayed Quake 1 (via a null-modem cable), my friend and I spent 8 straight hours fighting our way through the entire game, staying up until about 4-5 in the morning. It was a blast.

I've always said, I like playing with my friends, not against them.

I only played Doom I/II in co-op mode. Didn't care for deathmatch. Lost interest in Quake series due to no co-op mode. Love Halo because of the co-op mode.

Quake had a coop mode, I know, I've played it.

 

[LittlePenny]

I believe Q2 had a co-op mode after one of the later patches.

 

[Ichneumon]

I'll second the co-op hoping... I much prefer playing *with* my friends than against them. DM has never really done it for me as a style of play.

 

[Saem]

I'll second the co-op hoping... I much prefer playing *with* my friends than against them. DM has never really done it for me as a style of play.

What's annoying is that soooo few games seem to cater to this thinking. I know a lot of folks who enjoy this mode of play, but it doesn't seem to get enough attention.

This mode of play made Serious Sam an absolute blast, mind you the armies of bad guys is hella kewl.

 

[Typedef Enum]

Check out Slashdot, as John made a couple of interesting posts. I've provided the quotes over @ nvnews, but I'm frankly too tired to copy them over right now

Time to crawl into bed...

 

[multigl2]

I'll second the co-op hoping... I much prefer playing *with* my friends than against them. DM has never really done it for me as a style of play.

What's annoying is that soooo few games seem to cater to this thinking. I know a lot of folks who enjoy this mode of play, but it doesn't seem to get enough attention.

This mode of play made Serious Sam an absolute blast, mind you the armies of bad guys is hella kewl.

I also agree, nothing at any recent lan parties i've held has been funner than beating thru some of the more "enemy rich" levels in SS with 8 of my pals. Co-op mode in Doom3 would make me consider paying for it.

 

[Saem]

Well the original had it, so I'm guessing it'll be the same here. I'm almost curious enough about whether it has that or not, I might actually fire off an email to the appropriate id employee.

 

[Ichneumon]

The absolute *MOST* fun i've *EVER* had gaming... was the 1 (yes one... i'm not truly hardcore i know hehe) lan party i've been to in the last few years.

I was a hardcore ActionQuake2 player. I founded a clan and we competed for something on the lines of 2+ years on the OGL boards (clan ExiT). well, anyway i went to the lan party and we (mostly a bunch of AQ2 junkies from about a 300 mile radius) played a mod of AQ2 and we had about 12 or so folks on each team playing AQ:Espionage. heh... having rougly 30 people across a couple of rooms hollaring and hooting at each other about how to capture the damn building for damn near 4 hours was unbelievably fun. (AQ:Espionage, the style we were playing is sort of like UT:Assault in some ways).

We played lots of other stuff too, but that was by far the coolest teamplay experience i've ever had.... teamplay was why I loved ActionQuake2, and the ability to play With my friends, against the computer or other people is still my favorite style of 'net play yet.

 

[pascal]

I remenber doing some teamplay with Doom during 1995 and some friends that dont like videogames enjoyed a lot.

For the record the links Type talked above: http://slashdot.org/articles/02/08/18/015214.shtml?tid=127

My comment specifically regards the "shelf life" of a rendering engine. I think that an upcoming game engine, either the next one or the one after that, will have a notably longer usable life for content creation than we have seen so far. Instead of having to learn new paradigms for content creation every couple years, designers will be able to continue working with common tools that evolve in a compatible way. Renderman is the obvious example -- lots of things have improved and evolved, but its fundamental definition is clearly the same that it was over a decade ago.

This is only loosly related to the realism of the graphics. I don't think a detailed world simulation that is indistinquishable from reality will be here in the next decade, except for tightly controlled environments. You will be able to have real-time flythroughs that can qualify as indistinguishable, but given the ability to "test reality" interactively, we have a lot farther to go with simulation than with rendering.

John Carmack

There are more JC´s posts in the link.

Now we know that the next game engine:
-will have DX9 level graphics as the least comon denominator
-will be written using a HLSL without any hardware specific optimization
-will have a notably longer usable life for content creation
-probably world simulation will be very important

 

[VFX_Veteran]

Btw, i thought that his talk about the next generation (or possible the one after that one ) engine was pretty interesting. That graphics programmers might move towards being more of a "technical director" instead of a programmer because the engines will be so flexible ( i guess he was concentrating more on the rendering part here) that the reason to develop a new one will be very small. This is of course connected with the advances in the coming DX9 and beyond cards.

This is very interesting as I'm now a TD and write in a HLSL everyday. Does that mean that there will be a sudden convergence between the gaming industry and the film industry as far as the definition of graphics programmers as seen by the gaming industry?

Comments?

-M

 

[Typedef Enum]

...This is precisely why I believe that, in the near future, some decisions will be made with regards to Shaders.

It's fairly obvious (at least to me) that Cg is nVidia's attempt in satisfying John Carmack, among others. Yes, there will be those who will sit here and tell you that there are business reasons for having spent the time in creating this thing...I wouldn't deny that. However, it's also very clear that nVidia does have a very close relationship to the wants/desires of Carmack, given his status in this field. Of course, he doesn't _always_ get what he wants

Anyhow, I suspect that in the not too distant future, he will end up either throwing his support towards it, or ask that the vendors arrive @ a solution that can be agreed upon...whatever it takes to get the job done. It's very clear that this issue would, in John's case, alleviate a lot of work that really should be done by the vendors.

And even then, there are some chips which might not even get specific backend support...be it due to crappy drivers, lack of features, etc. It's really obvious that all of this logic should be handled by the specific driver by way of a generalized API.

So...whether or not it ends up being Cg...OpenGL's Shading Language...whatever...It's a good thing. I'm not really sure where the OpenGL side currently stands, other than the proposals that 3DLabs has presented. Not really sure what sort of timeline that thing is looking like...

 

[Entropy]

This is only loosly related to the realism of the graphics. I don't think a detailed world simulation that is indistinquishable from reality will be here in the next decade, except for tightly controlled environments. You will be able to have real-time flythroughs that can qualify as indistinguishable, but given the ability to "test reality" interactively, we have a lot farther to go with simulation than with rendering.

John Carmack

To me, the part I highlighted is key.

Entropy

 

[Dio]

The strange thing is that John is actually having much more trouble than he would have if he was under D3D, where there would be at most 4 paths (DX7, DX8, DX8.1, DX9)..... must be a great regret to him that GL hasn't been able to unify its paths and extensions because of the competitiveness of ATI and nvidia.

 

[Saem]

Yes, D3D it's supposed to be easier, but that's been a recent thing - if at all. Besides you still have to worry about your target even though the contrary seems to be claimed.

 

[Tonyo]

The strange thing is that John is actually having much more trouble than he would have if he was under D3D, where there would be at most 4 paths (DX7, DX8, DX8.1, DX9)..... must be a great regret to him that GL hasn't been able to unify its paths and extensions because of the competitiveness of ATI and nvidia.

I don't think you will be able to do the NV10 Doom3 shading path on gf1 or gf2 with DirectX, in OpenGL Carmack has to resort to register combiners, a functionality not exposed in DX. I guess that it's significative that Doom3 has no custom path for R100 (the original Radeon, which from DX standpoint featurewise, it's the same card as a GeForce).

Besides, the fact that DirectX has a unified interface for all the capabilities doesn't mean that you can use the same path for all the cards: Even in the case where different cards support the given feature through the capbit (another thing you have to check and which breaks your "unified path dream"), you still need to validate the renderstate after every modification to it because, for example, a given card may not support a combination of texture application + texture lookup.

Standardizing at a low level is an impossible thing to do, the path forward is standardizing at a high level.