Quakecon 2008 keynote notes

[obonicus]

You need to look harder. Last year you see the character getting kicked by a mutant and gunning down a raider from FP PoV. The two scenes start around the 35 second mark.

Actually, I was referring to this year's showing, I'll take another look at last year's.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

So many people seem to be giving John Carmack these incredibly amazing programing "super powers" despite the fact that his own games have mainly been limited to the PC platform where if you have a faster rig the game is better while not necessarily having real revolutionary features as opposed to on the console the FPS genre has had games like N64 GoldenEye 007, Xbox 1 Halo CE/2 and PS3 Resistance 2 and Killzone 2 where common things like sophisticated A.I., physics, etc have made major advancements in closed spec platforms.

He invented FPS games, that's already enough for anyone.

Yeah, it won't help them to sell more games, they seem to be aware of this. While hardcore gamers roasted Doom3 and they seem to be hurt about it, they've still sold more of that game than any other id title. More than KZ1 or Resistance, too.

Personally I would be very interested to know who he considers to be his major game dev competitors but I just fail to give too much respect to someone who does not seem that much aware of other game devs, designers,

Dammit, he's a technology programmer, why the hell should he study game designs??? Go bash Tim Willits for that part.

Carmack stated it numerous times, he prefers a simple gaming experience like Quake3, and he's perfectly right that a lot of people still play it after nine years. It's still a crazy cool deathmatch experience.

So before anyone continues to perpetuate the belief that it would take a John Carmack to push a PS3 "if he felt like it" then what is going to be the argument when those mentioned game devs ship their games?

Let's see, can any of them do simultaneous cross platform development to the level that Rage does?
Does anyone have anything even remotely similar to compeltely virtualized texturing?

I'll give COD4 points for running at 60fps on both main platforms and looking reasonably similar, that's a great technical achievment that seems to be beyond the capabilities of most of the industry.

 

[-tkf-]

The problem is not Carmack professing "godlike skills" its how alot of internet forum posters (on various online forum boards) are implying this belief.

So many people seem to be giving John Carmack these incredibly amazing programing "super powers" despite the fact that his own games have mainly been limited to the PC platform where if you have a faster rig the game is better while not necessarily having real revolutionary features as opposed to on the console the FPS genre has had games like N64 GoldenEye 007, Xbox 1 Halo CE/2 and PS3 Resistance 2 and Killzone 2 where common things like sophisticated A.I., physics, etc have made major advancements in closed spec platforms.

I think he coded the jaguar edition of doom himself.
http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Atari_Jaguar
Pretty nice don´t you think?
He more or less single handed changed the perception of online gaming with FPS games.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quakeworld
And afaik he worked on Linux drivers as well, just because he could.

The only thing you can "blame" Carmack for, is that his talents isn´t really put to full use in such a small company with so few games being produced.

 

[catisfit]

...Valve...

There's noticably a bit of Quake in the Source engine, I remember seeing the Q word a lot, here's a quote from JC to back that up (regarding releasing the Q3 source into the public domain):

Previous source code releases were held up until the last commercial license of the technology shipped, but with the evolving nature of game engines today, it is a lot less clear. There are still bits of early Quake code in Half Life 2, and the remaining licensees of Q3 technology intend to continue their internal developments along similar lines, so there probably won’t be nearly as sharp a cutoff as before.

People have already mentioned that Call of Duty 4 still contains id engine code too.

The fact that you can freely download the source code to id Tech 1-3 means that even if not directly licensed, a lot of people have looked at it for inspiration in developing their own proprietary engines, for sure.

 

[obonicus]

There's noticably a bit of Quake in the Source engine, I remember seeing the Q word a lot, here's a quote from JC to back that up (regarding releasing the Q3 source into the public domain):

The HL1 engine was already a heavy-modified Q1 engine. It makes sense that Valve would build on that for source. It'd be a stretch to say that deep-down the Source engine is the Quake engine.

 

[Pete]

I don't get the hate on display. Is the crux of your sarcastic vitriol that you think Cell (since when did it become an acronym?) is more "powerful" than Xenon, and that JC's a wuss by not proving that?

I also have a hard time understanding a petty complaint like his not knowing other personalities, rather than just professionally appraising the technology they implement. He has other hobbies that might preempt any time for industry watching.

Edit: Not you, obo. I thought it was obvious that keyn was my mystery wrapped in a riddle couched in an enigma. As far as gameplay, I have no idea who's controlling what in the trailers. Id said they're realtime, though, which kind of takes this out of KZ2 territory, though I agree with your general skepticism (says I, with one eyebrow raised and one furrowed). Still, I can't remember Id yanking our chain.

 

[obonicus]

I don't get the hate on display. Is the crux of your sarcastic vitriol that you think Cell (since when did it become an acronym?) is more "powerful" than Xenon, and that JC's a wuss by not proving that?

I also have a hard time understanding a petty complaint like his not knowing other personalities, rather than just professionally appraising the technology they implement. He has other hobbies that might preempt any time for industry watching.

Who are you talking to? As far as I know, I'm not showing any hate. I don't hate Carmack, he's doing what he has to do, and that does involve being an incredibly smart PR guy. (And a very good programmer, no doubt.)

What I get annoyed at are the fans. I do think it's ridiculous that a place like B3D gets as giddy as NeoGAF when they get scraps at QuakeCon. I checked back on the 2007 trailer; if you look at subsequent interviews (like the last one linked by Richard) Carmack says the engine was in a very raw state in 2007, and just now is something they can show (yet the 2008 trailer shows no gameplay, strangely enough). And as such, I'd guess that id pulled a Killzone 2 on the 'gameplay' in that trailer, but then it's probably just me. You'd think that after practically every single devhouse lies its face off to us, we'd learn, but instead we're starry-eyed like schoolchildren when it comes to certain pieces of hype.

 

[idsn6]

http://www.shackvideo.com/?id=10929

I think it's very difficult to justify your groundless belief that id is suddenly lying to everybody.

 

[Laa-Yosh]

People didn't believe the first E3 showing of Doom3 either, when that shakycam footage came out.

 

[Richard]

(yet the 2008 trailer shows no gameplay, strangely enough)

Like I mentioned, this year's trailer does show gameplay as well. Getting knocked about by a mutant at around 1:05.

You can also count talking to the bartender at 0:55 and the vehicle gatling view at 1:50. Both follow the same perspective shots from when Matt Hopper showed off the engine and walked around talking to the tassel hat dude and drove the buggy around in the IGN's tech video interviews. EDIT: He also does some of that in Teh Shack video idsn6 linked to a couple of posts above.

 

[obonicus]

http://www.shackvideo.com/?id=10929

I think it's very difficult to justify your groundless belief that id is suddenly lying to everybody.

First of all, I'm not singling out id. All dev houses engage in smoke and mirrors, and it's our job as consumers to see through it, which is what makes this so aggravating. Think about it this way: do you really, really think the game will look like this on both consoles? I don't doubt it'll look really good, but thinking the game will actually look like this is just incredibly, incredibly optimistic.

I notice you cut out the first clip, which had no gameplay whatsoever (and was really just the second clip edited down). The shack one does, so I'll take it back: I've finally seen some gameplay. I still don't think the FPS footage was real, though -- as in, it was certainly rendered in-engine, and that's about it.

 

[obonicus]

Like I mentioned, this year's trailer does show gameplay as well. Getting knocked about by a mutant at around 1:05.

Yeah, but why isn't that in the Quakecon 2008 presentation? (Just saw the mutant bit. That's not gameplay.) I don't think that that is actual gameplay. There's an FPS-guy hand firing a gun at someone, too, but nothing else. I think that it was more of a killzone 2 situation: the engine can render those assets, no doubt, but what we saw ain't the game.

You can also count talking to the bartender at 0:55 and the vehicle gatling view at 1:50. Both follow the same perspective shots from when Matt Hopper showed off the engine and walked around talking to the tassel hat dude and drove the buggy around in the IGN's tech video interviews. EDIT: He also does some of that in Teh Shack video idsn6 linked to a couple of posts above.

Free-cam mode with no enemies on screen isn't gameplay, even if you have the FPS walk-bob. Maybe we're arguing semantics, but in-engine!=gameplay to me. Gameplay is when you have AI and physics and everything else that makes a game a mostly complete game, not just because you can move the camera through the world.

I'm not trying to establish some unattainable standard of gameplay. Gameplay is people actually playing the game. In the shack presentation, he does play the game for a few seconds, and I'm not going to question that, I'm even taking it back that we've seen no gameplay whatsoever. That's gameplay, that's what we have to judge games on.

 

[Richard]

I'm not trying to establish some unattainable standard of gameplay. Gameplay is people actually playing the game. In the shack presentation, he does play the game for a few seconds, and I'm not going to question that, I'm even taking it back that we've seen no gameplay whatsoever. That's gameplay, that's what we have to judge games on.

Well, fair enough; then when Matt Hopper says right at the begining of that Shack presentation that him shooting those those raiders is all actual gameplay that they recorded for the trailer. So unless you have any specific evidence of mishaviour by id or believe Matt is outright lying I don't know why you can maintain your position.

I can understand if you've been burnt by the PS3/XBOX 360 launch game trailers (heck, even the PS2 "Emotion Engine" game launch trailers) but in those cases you had pretty much platform exclusive titles where Sony/MS were funding those developers (if not directly then with co-marketing deals) so they made the respective console look fantastic. Those devs had a vested interest in making their games look better because that would mean Sony/MS were happy and willing to continue their business relationship.

Not just with trailers but every platform exclusive dev would tell you their respected console rocked. And then came JC and other cross platform developers and their "whining". Who would you rather believe?

One could even debate if that relation ship was legit, moral or otherwise but id is not in that position. They're targeting all platforms (except the Wii) so they're not in anybody's pocket. They don't have anything to gain by making Rage look better than it actually is because at sometime people are going to play that and find out for sure; unlike the exclusive platform devs that got short term benefits even if, once the games were out, got a bit of a lashing from the community. Being skeptical is all good but don't be pessimistic without any direct reason.

The whole "I don't belive the game will look this good at 60fps on the consoles" also tells me that people haven't quite grasped what MT is and what benefits it brings, especially for consoles. I suppose they belive that it's a somewhat better streaming solution and that's it. I've even seen comments wrt Rage needing 3 DVDs that perhaps JC should just use a better compression method, as if anyone can code a compressor with a higher ratio than the current MT (10:1), handles real-time (de)compression as good as MT does and preserves just as much quality. Forget armchair generals, pave way for the armchair programers.

 

[obonicus]

Well, fair enough; then when Matt Hopper says right at the begining of that Shack presentation that him shooting those those raiders is all actual gameplay that they recorded for the trailer. So unless you have any specific evidence of mishaviour by id or believe Matt is outright lying I don't know why you can maintain your position.

Ah, I saw it. I don't know what to think. I'm paranoid by nature, so my initial response is: I think everything Matt Hooper says is true. Still, because of what he's not saying, I don't think he was actually playing the game in those shots. The animations and mechanics might even have been in, maybe even the scripting, but I don't think that the game was playable other than in a very crude prototype fashion. My big question, to myself is: why didn't they show more in 2008? (My second big question is: what are they hiding?)

BUT: it's not good to feed this paranoid side, so I'll give the game the benefit of the doubt. Let's say it's absolutely true: why haven't we seen more of it in 2008? Actually, why was the old footage entirely cut out, in fact?

Not just with trailers but every platform exclusive dev would tell you their respected console rocked. And then came JC and other cross platform developers and their "whining". Who would you rather believe?

I'd prefer if us, the supposedly informed gaming public would stop, take a minute to think it over and then comment. I mean, just look at B3D. This place has had an excellent multiplatform discussion thread, that's gone on for what, a year? Two? We've had devs give their opinions, we've had tons of theorycrafting, we've had tons of material. And then when Carmack says that the Cell's not providing and advantage to him, all of a sudden we have a lot of people going 'well, that cinches it, argument's over, Cell's lame' or 'STFU Carmack, lazy-ass dev!'. I KNOW I'll see people on this very forum bring up Carmack's words next time a bullshit semi-disguised console wars thread pops up. No one even really stops to consider it. That maybe Carmack doesn't see an advantage is because his engine is multiplatform: he can't use the Cell for optimizations the way say, Guerilla or Insomniac are because that sort of optimization doesn't fit into his design, perhaps exactly because of portability -- it doesn't speak to the power of the chip. But instead we take his word as gospel, and not just the opinion of one more (very good, as I said before) developer.

One could even debate if that relation ship was legit, moral or otherwise but id is not in that position. They're targeting all platforms (except the Wii) so they're not in anybody's pocket. They don't have anything to gain by making Rage look better than it actually is because at sometime people are going to play that and find out for sure; unlike the exclusive platform devs that got short term benefits even if, once the games were out, got a bit of a lashing from the community. Being skeptical is all good but don't be pessimistic without any direct reason.

Actually, they do have a reason to make people believe the game looks better than it will: they want to sell it. Gamers have proven to have very short memories and we don't get to return games we don't like, usually. As long as the game is within an acceptable margin, only the most anal-retentive fans will complain (see MGS4). You could argue the same of epic: but they constantly overhype their own engines. I remember early UE3 previews, showing what were probably GeoW assets. The game did not look like that on 360 (hell, it didn't look that way on PC, either). It looked good, very few people can complain about the graphics, but it didn't look like that.

They also want to sell the engine: studios know (or they should know, anyway) that UE3 doesn't look nearly as good as was promised, but they license it anyway. They undoubtedly know that Rage won't be the magic silver bullet of multiplatform console development, but if you build up a layer of hype up around an engine (like Epic did) you get the customers (us) to build a layer of hype up around games, by association. Nowadays UE is more tarnished, but Epic already got what it wanted, probably -- to have tons of studios who are used to using their engine, and are used to the toolset.

The whole "I don't belive the game will look this good at 60fps on the consoles" also tells me that people haven't quite grasped what MT is and what benefits it brings, especially for consoles. I suppose they belive that it's a somewhat better streaming solution and that's it. I've even seen comments wrt Rage needing 3 DVDs that perhaps JC should just use a better compression method, as if anyone can code a compressor with a higher ratio than the current MT (10:1), handles real-time (de)compression as good as MT does and preserves just as much quality. Forget armchair generals, pave way for the armchair programers.

The presentations we've seen have remarkable amounts of AA. Are you claiming that the current consoles can pull off what we're seeing in the video? I'm not questioning textures. I'm taking JC on his word that MT works the way it does. He's deserved that. If he can do that IQ on both consoles (or, to be fair, even one of them), I'll very happily eat crow.

 

[Richard]

BUT: it's not good to feed this paranoid side, so I'll give the game the benefit of the doubt. Let's say it's absolutely true: why haven't we seen more of it in 2008? Actually, why was the old footage entirely cut out, in fact?

I don't have any answer for that. Could be EA strategy.

No one even really stops to consider it. That maybe Carmack doesn't see an advantage is because his engine is multiplatform: he can't use the Cell for optimizations the way say, Guerilla or Insomniac are because that sort of optimization doesn't fit into his design, perhaps exactly because of portability -- it doesn't speak to the power of the chip. But instead we take his word as gospel, and not just the opinion of one more (very good, as I said before) developer.

Actually (and I agree with you btw) JC did mention quite a while ago that he stopped using MEMEXPORT for the xbox version because he wanted to have the least amount of platform dependent code as possible. Once again trading performance for easier (and therefor faster) development time. This isn't even unique. Tim Sweeney has gone on the record saying he'd gladly trade 10% performance for 10% cleaner code. In one of this year's interviews JC also said that someone could make a real power house PS3 game if they designed around it.

Actually, they do have a reason to make people believe the game looks better than it will: they want to sell it. Gamers have proven to have very short memories and we don't get to return games we don't like, usually. As long as the game is within an acceptable margin, only the most anal-retentive fans will complain (see MGS4).

While you do have a point, I still remember that Unreal 2 had photoshopped dynamic shadows in the first screenies. Someone is bound to remember this kind of stuff.

You could argue the same of epic: but they constantly overhype their own engines. I remember early UE3 previews, showing what were probably GeoW assets. The game did not look like that on 360 (hell, it didn't look that way on PC, either). It looked good, very few people can complain about the graphics, but it didn't look like that.

I think I remember the video you mentioned. It showed a PA city and they had a buggy running across the landscape to show streaming. IIRC they never put a game name to that presentation. It's not uncommon for certain scenes to evolve or be removed completely. For instance, the pinky bathroom scene in D3 was significantly changed between the QCon 2002 presentation Laa-Yosh alluded to and the retail game but for gameplay reasons: they removed the cutscene because they didn't want the player to get an interlude before the pinky attacked.

You can't fault game devs for this. You can (and we should) keep them honest when it comes to the technical features used like counting pixels to determine the actual resolution and framerate. I think overall, GoW (I only played the PC version) represents pretty much what Epic was showing back then.

They also want to sell the engine: studios know (or they should know, anyway) that UE3 doesn't look nearly as good as was promised, but they license it anyway. They undoubtedly know that Rage won't be the magic silver bullet of multiplatform console development, but if you build up a layer of hype up around an engine (like Epic did) you get the customers (us) to build a layer of hype up around games, by association. Nowadays UE is more tarnished, but Epic already got what it wanted, probably -- to have tons of studios who are used to using their engine, and are used to the toolset.

True but Epic got ton of licensees because of their tool-chain. A lot of people deride the D3 engine only being licensed once (by an outside studio) and while public critique of "plastic skin", "too dark", "can't do outdoors" factored into the decision, the primary reason is that the D3 engine has crappy tools. They barely evolved the editor from Q3 (which already by then was inferiour to UnrealEd). That's why id is constantly talking of having hired a tools guy and focusing more on having great tools to exploit the current engine.

The presentations we've seen have remarkable amounts of AA. Are you claiming that the current consoles can pull off what we're seeing in the video? I'm not questioning textures. I'm taking JC on his word that MT works the way it does. He's deserved that. If he can do that IQ on both consoles (or, to be fair, even one of them), I'll very happily eat crow.

I can't talk about AA and I'm certainly not claiming anything. I'm just saying that there's not a lot to fuel any kind of distrust. And last year a journalist got to see all four platforms running side-by-side. Perhaps he just wasn't looking too closely for aliased pixels or whatever but he said they all looked the same. (unfortunately can't find the article now).

 

[AlNom]

My big question, to myself is: why didn't they show more in 2008? (My second big question is: what are they hiding?)

Why show more than necessary? The game isn't being released in the near future. They might have actually learned something from Doom 3's development and PR.

 

[betan]

One could even debate if that relation ship was legit, moral or otherwise but id is not in that position. They're targeting all platforms (except the Wii) so they're not in anybody's pocket. They don't have anything to gain by making Rage look better than it actually is because at sometime people are going to play that and find out for sure; unlike the exclusive platform devs that got short term benefits even if, once the games were out, got a bit of a lashing from the community. Being skeptical is all good but don't be pessimistic without any direct reason.

I would have a lot of problems with this (hypothetical?) argument. First, even multiplatform devs release bullshots and bullshots make games look better than they actually are. Second (not that I'm arguing id did this), a developer may release footage from ultra high-end pc and almost get away with deception.

The whole "I don't belive the game will look this good at 60fps on the consoles" also tells me that people haven't quite grasped what MT is and what benefits it brings, especially for consoles.

Would you care to explain how unique texture streaming solves geometry and dynamic lighting/pixel shading, or LoD issues?

I think I'm one of those people who don't get the benefits as much as you do, though the things (I think) I get, are still awesome techwise.
For example, I can see how it can enable realistic environments with prebaked lighting.

 

[obonicus]

I'm going to skip over most of your post because while I'm still skeptical, you're not going to convince me any further, and I don't think I'm going to convince you.

You can't fault game devs for this. You can (and we should) keep them honest when it comes to the technical features used like counting pixels to determine the actual resolution and framerate. I think overall, GoW (I only played the PC version) represents pretty much what Epic was showing back then.

I could be wrong, maybe I didn't play the PC version on a strong enough rig, but there are very early GeoW screenshots (I think zed had a few examples in either the GeoW2 or the upscaling thread) out there with incredibly complex lighting and extremely dynamic scenarios that didn't quite match my experience with the game. It's close enough, though.

I can't talk about AA and I'm certainly not claiming anything. I'm just saying that there's not a lot to fuel any kind of distrust. And last year a journalist got to see all four platforms running side-by-side. Perhaps he just wasn't looking too closely for aliased pixels or whatever but he said they all looked the same. (unfortunately can't find the article now).

That doesn't sound right to me, but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe JC will do magic; if he does give us the same graphics at 60fps, it does spell doom for the PC.

Why show more than necessary? The game isn't being released in the near future. They might have actually learned something from Doom 3's development and PR.

Well, for one it'd shut up naysaying pains in the ass like me.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Well, for one it'd shut up naysaying pains in the ass like me.

And then it generates later noise of people saying 'why are we waiting!'. Plus what you show now, people expect to be in the final game, and if you make changes, you'll get complaints of 'where's my doohickey you showed 2 years ago that I was really looking forwards to?!'
Finally these trailers aren't gameplay demos, but advertising to get people excited. They're not going to show 2 minutes of someone walking around dark corridors when that doesn't give an impression of the entire scope and feel of the game.

It perplexes me why some people feel compelled to believe what they see is exactly what they'll get, while others are adamant that what's shown now won't be what plays on their console. The game is years away. They've shown some great looking stuff, obviously with an eye on PR. It could be good, could be a bit of a disappointment, but unless you're actually looking to invest lots of your own money into id shares on the strength of this game, what does it matter now what they achieve? I would hate to call out someone as a liar only to be proven wrong. I would also hate to get suckered into believing in this super product only to find it was all smoke and mirrors. So I'll just form no opinion and wait and see!

 

[obonicus]

Actually, never mind. I've lost interest in this argument. I just think that of the things devs show, the only thing I'm interested in is gameplay. Anything less and I reserve the right to cry shenanigans.