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I love how Carmack is constantly pushing the industry forward. He made raycasting engines when everyone else was still doing 2D stuff. He made fully 3D games w

I love how Carmack is constantly pushing the industry forward. He made raycasting engines when everyone else was still doing 2D stuff. He made fully 3D games when everyone else was still using raycasting. He built a game engine with completely dynamic lighting, when everyone else was still relying on lightmaps and some cheap hacks. Arguably Duke Nukem 3D looked better than Quake, but polygonal was the future. Half-Life 2 looked better than Doom 3, but dynamic lighting was the future. While everyone else keeps iterating current technology (often to astonishing results), Carmack does something new - something that may have a lot of drawbacks initially, but will be the future. I see the same happening in other industries - take Tesla vs. any other automobile industry out there for an example. I haven't been this excited about a new piece of gaming hardware since I got the N64 for my birthday back in 1996. I'll buy it! (Of course it's not only Carmack who is doing research in that department. This post isn't so much about praising him, as to praise innovative thinking.)

pestaa 14y ago
Exactly. First I didn't understand why MegaTexture was implemented in a production-ready game (Rage) because it made lots of texture look like a decade old, but I guess Carmack sees the future in it.
- Negitivefrags 14y ago
  Rage was a huge shame (tech wise). They needed to be able to ship more data to make the tech really shine. The game was 3 DVDs as it was but it needed to something more like 8 or 9 DVDs. It just feels like such a shame for the graphics to look bad for want of the ability to ship data to the customer.
  - piechlediech 14y ago
    while rage did not push the state of the art of graphics cards, it runs well on older hardware and there is nothing that comes close to it there.
  - zanny 14y ago
    I don't know how they did texture compression for Rage, but the pc version was 24gb. Skyrim came out a month later and was 7gb. They had "some" reasonable texture quality on character meshes and such, but a lot of the world textures were pixelated garbage - I have no idea where they had the game become so bloated it was 24gb like that. Reminds me of the Force Unleashed, which was another game that took up 25gb for no reason whatsoever, when the texture quality and game size were no larger than War for Cybertron that took up 8gb. It has to be their texture compression in use, but they should figure that out early on! (note, I have no idea what I am talking about).
    - Negitivefrags 14y ago
      Rage uses a new rendering approach in which every surface has a unique texture. In a normal game, textures are reused all over the place. The texture compression Rage uses is actually very good, it's just that the data set is massive. Their raw data set is much, much larger than what they shipped. Carmack has given out figures like 300gb per level. In order to cull that down to a game that can fit in 24gb, they had to drop a huge amount of detail. The way they did it was quite interesting as well. They get telemetry on clients playing the game, and then they build a weighted set of textures at each mip that were actually loaded by real clients. Then they take the highest weighted 24GB of them, and that is what they ship.
      - Tycho 14y ago
        Maybe in future games, textures will be loaded and stored on a P2P basis, like how Spotify streams songs from the machines of other users.
        heretohelp 14y ago
        Please. No.
        freehunter 14y ago
        Why are you so opposed to this idea? I think it would work well if implemented properly. It's similar to how games like GTA IV work. They don't load a level, they load the immediate area you're looking at. As you drive around, the new maps are streamed from the DVD. Other games have played with loading a small first level, and as you're working through the first level the rest of the game streams into cache behind the scenes. It would be nice to get a game on a 4GB DVD and have the rest of the data get pulled down as you're playing. Guild Wars did this. While you're in one zone, the next zone is being downloaded in the background. It would only work for geographical regions which don't have caps on Internet traffic (for example, Americans on Comcast, but not Canadians on Rogers), but it'd be a nice option.
  - Argorak 14y ago
    Hm. I only played the PS3 version, but was actually impressed by the graphics. Not only does it look great, it runs smooth as butter, especially when moving. I don't think the Rage engine was ever built for still shots, but in movement, it think it is gorgeous.
    - Aldor 14y ago
      Yeah, if looked really good, but all the textures (on PC at least) were extremely low-res, and it was distracting.
gouranga 14y ago
Let us not forget Unreal which was arguably better than quake at the time from a technology standpoint... However, I find that the gaming experience peaked with Unreal Tournament. Its been about appearance over substance since (apart from tribes 2). Stop whinging about the tech and make something fun again!
- neutronicus 14y ago
  The orignal UT was so fun. The later ones tried to be Halo and suffered for it.
  - moe 14y ago
    I liked UT in its day, but isn't TF2 the current gold-standard?
    - gouranga 14y ago
      Depends if you like hats :) I don't :( Actually I was a little disappointed by all the upselling when they made it free to play on Steam. UT was "buy CD for 20 quid" and then waste 4 years of my life (and many vodka and dominos soaked attendances as Multiplay i-series events in the UK).
      - frou_dh 14y ago
        The UT and Q3A days were a classic time for competitive PC gaming! I loved them both but Q3 (specifically duelling) had an extra touch of class in my eyes. TF2 is a weird one. I think it's undoubtedly a 10/10 game, but all the evolution since release has made the experience a bit "bloated", to use a normal software term. It's almost as if the game has had too much support for its own good.
        OmegaHN 14y ago
        I can see where you are coming from, but those extra stuff does add depth to the game once you learn all the new weapons. Granted, this is coming from somebody who plays a lot of TF2, but the "too many options" problem goes away certainly after 30 hours of playing, and often much less.
johnchristopher 14y ago
> Arguably Duke Nukem 3D looked better than Quake, but polygonal was the future. Half-Life 2 looked better than Doom 3, but dynamic lighting was the future. Maybe so but almost 10 years later and half-life 2 is still more enjoyable than doom3. Quake1 and quake3 are the only id games that are remembered not only for their tech advancements (and of course, commander keen). Now if we had had source engine facial and body animations combined with doom3 engine from the beginning (and of course the much better story-writing of hl2): http://www.nofrag.com/2004/nov/24/15016/ http://www.nofrag.com/2004/nov/24/15016/
- MikeCapone 14y ago
  > Quake1 and quake3 are the only id games that are remembered not only for their tech advancements (and of course, commander keen). I would say that Doom belongs at the top of that list.
  - johnchristopher 14y ago
    I don't know, maybe. In my mind doom1 was too much of a "superwolfenstein", only 2 players max., no immersive ambiance (that is subjective of course). But it's a given fact doom1 was a major stepstone. As far as I am concerned I don't remember a lot of good moments with doom1 (on the other hand Q1 MP did :) Maybe I was playing too much console games at that time though, or maybe replaying kirandia or flashback for the 23d time. Disclaimer: I always disliked dn3D, didn't like the mood of it.
    - maggit 14y ago
      This is definitely subjective. I recently replayed Doom 2 with a couple of friends, and for us this is definitely a legendary game. I have lots of fond memories of Doom 1 as well. While I also spent a lot of time with Duke Nukem 3D, I never found it as enjoyable as Doom. I'd put Doom in the list before Quake. Wolfenstein 3D should also be there. Luckily for me, you are the one making the sweeping statement, so I only have to provide a counter-example: I remember Doom and Wolfenstein for the enjoyment they gave me. You are too quick to dismiss them :) (And just as a matter of factual correction; Doom 1 and 2 both supported four players over IPX)
bookwormAT 14y ago
I agree with every bit you wrote about John Carmack's contribution to gaming hardware and computer graphics. But it should also be noted that both these topics are not that important in the gaming industry as they used to be when Carmack started. Graphics have become "good enough" for 3D in 2004 or so, and much earlier for 2D. The bottlenecks in todays video games are in Artificial Intelligence (for simulations), game mechanics and story telling (which is on a all time low if you ask me). The latest Game from Carmack I know of, Rage, was just more or less the same as every other "AAA" shooter released within the last 6 years.
- tluyben2 14y ago
  Yes; that's why I like Indie games more now; they are more creative with game mechanics + story telling. I think the current next-gen hardware is not enough of a leap to make enough difference; if you just take the Unreal engine it'll all look nice now. Complex AI or actual realistic human + animal movement of body/face (no, currently they are not) would require a lot more advances in hardware/software. For a big jump in AI I would say memristors would be something. But after HP shouting that they would be selling them last year, the hype died down :)
Aldor 14y ago
Didn't Half-Life 2 have dynamic lighting?
- BlackAura 14y ago
  Not really. The lighting in Half Life 2 was based on static lightmaps. They were very fancy lightmaps, which enabled them to use techniques such as normal mapping or specular reflections, which are normally incompatible with lightmaps, but they were static lightmaps nonetheless. It has some dynamic lighting effects, the same way Quake did them (modifying the lightmaps). It could also do projected shadows and self-shadowed objects using shadow maps, but not on world geometry. I believe that the current source engine has some kind of dynamic lights. Either that, or Portal 2 did a fantastic job of faking them. Still, that was 2011. Doom 3 came out in 2004, and exclusively used dynamic lighting, without a static lightmap in sight.

pestaa 14y ago

Exactly. First I didn't understand why MegaTexture was implemented in a production-ready game (Rage) because it made lots of texture look like a decade old, but I guess Carmack sees the future in it.

Negitivefrags 14y ago
Rage was a huge shame (tech wise). They needed to be able to ship more data to make the tech really shine. The game was 3 DVDs as it was but it needed to something more like 8 or 9 DVDs. It just feels like such a shame for the graphics to look bad for want of the ability to ship data to the customer.
- piechlediech 14y ago
  while rage did not push the state of the art of graphics cards, it runs well on older hardware and there is nothing that comes close to it there.
- zanny 14y ago
  I don't know how they did texture compression for Rage, but the pc version was 24gb. Skyrim came out a month later and was 7gb. They had "some" reasonable texture quality on character meshes and such, but a lot of the world textures were pixelated garbage - I have no idea where they had the game become so bloated it was 24gb like that. Reminds me of the Force Unleashed, which was another game that took up 25gb for no reason whatsoever, when the texture quality and game size were no larger than War for Cybertron that took up 8gb. It has to be their texture compression in use, but they should figure that out early on! (note, I have no idea what I am talking about).
  - Negitivefrags 14y ago
    Rage uses a new rendering approach in which every surface has a unique texture. In a normal game, textures are reused all over the place. The texture compression Rage uses is actually very good, it's just that the data set is massive. Their raw data set is much, much larger than what they shipped. Carmack has given out figures like 300gb per level. In order to cull that down to a game that can fit in 24gb, they had to drop a huge amount of detail. The way they did it was quite interesting as well. They get telemetry on clients playing the game, and then they build a weighted set of textures at each mip that were actually loaded by real clients. Then they take the highest weighted 24GB of them, and that is what they ship.
    - Tycho 14y ago
      Maybe in future games, textures will be loaded and stored on a P2P basis, like how Spotify streams songs from the machines of other users.
      - heretohelp 14y ago
        Please. No.
        freehunter 14y ago
        Why are you so opposed to this idea? I think it would work well if implemented properly. It's similar to how games like GTA IV work. They don't load a level, they load the immediate area you're looking at. As you drive around, the new maps are streamed from the DVD. Other games have played with loading a small first level, and as you're working through the first level the rest of the game streams into cache behind the scenes. It would be nice to get a game on a 4GB DVD and have the rest of the data get pulled down as you're playing. Guild Wars did this. While you're in one zone, the next zone is being downloaded in the background. It would only work for geographical regions which don't have caps on Internet traffic (for example, Americans on Comcast, but not Canadians on Rogers), but it'd be a nice option.
- Argorak 14y ago
  Hm. I only played the PS3 version, but was actually impressed by the graphics. Not only does it look great, it runs smooth as butter, especially when moving. I don't think the Rage engine was ever built for still shots, but in movement, it think it is gorgeous.
  - Aldor 14y ago
    Yeah, if looked really good, but all the textures (on PC at least) were extremely low-res, and it was distracting.

gouranga 14y ago

Let us not forget Unreal which was arguably better than quake at the time from a technology standpoint... However, I find that the gaming experience peaked with Unreal Tournament. Its been about appearance over substance since (apart from tribes 2). Stop whinging about the tech and make something fun again!

neutronicus 14y ago
The orignal UT was so fun. The later ones tried to be Halo and suffered for it.
- moe 14y ago
  I liked UT in its day, but isn't TF2 the current gold-standard?
  - gouranga 14y ago
    Depends if you like hats :) I don't :( Actually I was a little disappointed by all the upselling when they made it free to play on Steam. UT was "buy CD for 20 quid" and then waste 4 years of my life (and many vodka and dominos soaked attendances as Multiplay i-series events in the UK).
    - frou_dh 14y ago
      The UT and Q3A days were a classic time for competitive PC gaming! I loved them both but Q3 (specifically duelling) had an extra touch of class in my eyes. TF2 is a weird one. I think it's undoubtedly a 10/10 game, but all the evolution since release has made the experience a bit "bloated", to use a normal software term. It's almost as if the game has had too much support for its own good.
      - OmegaHN 14y ago
        I can see where you are coming from, but those extra stuff does add depth to the game once you learn all the new weapons. Granted, this is coming from somebody who plays a lot of TF2, but the "too many options" problem goes away certainly after 30 hours of playing, and often much less.

johnchristopher 14y ago

> Arguably Duke Nukem 3D looked better than Quake, but polygonal was the future. Half-Life 2 looked better than Doom 3, but dynamic lighting was the future. Maybe so but almost 10 years later and half-life 2 is still more enjoyable than doom3. Quake1 and quake3 are the only id games that are remembered not only for their tech advancements (and of course, commander keen). Now if we had had source engine facial and body animations combined with doom3 engine from the beginning (and of course the much better story-writing of hl2): http://www.nofrag.com/2004/nov/24/15016/ http://www.nofrag.com/2004/nov/24/15016/

MikeCapone 14y ago
> Quake1 and quake3 are the only id games that are remembered not only for their tech advancements (and of course, commander keen). I would say that Doom belongs at the top of that list.
- johnchristopher 14y ago
  I don't know, maybe. In my mind doom1 was too much of a "superwolfenstein", only 2 players max., no immersive ambiance (that is subjective of course). But it's a given fact doom1 was a major stepstone. As far as I am concerned I don't remember a lot of good moments with doom1 (on the other hand Q1 MP did :) Maybe I was playing too much console games at that time though, or maybe replaying kirandia or flashback for the 23d time. Disclaimer: I always disliked dn3D, didn't like the mood of it.
  - maggit 14y ago
    This is definitely subjective. I recently replayed Doom 2 with a couple of friends, and for us this is definitely a legendary game. I have lots of fond memories of Doom 1 as well. While I also spent a lot of time with Duke Nukem 3D, I never found it as enjoyable as Doom. I'd put Doom in the list before Quake. Wolfenstein 3D should also be there. Luckily for me, you are the one making the sweeping statement, so I only have to provide a counter-example: I remember Doom and Wolfenstein for the enjoyment they gave me. You are too quick to dismiss them :) (And just as a matter of factual correction; Doom 1 and 2 both supported four players over IPX)

bookwormAT 14y ago

I agree with every bit you wrote about John Carmack's contribution to gaming hardware and computer graphics. But it should also be noted that both these topics are not that important in the gaming industry as they used to be when Carmack started. Graphics have become "good enough" for 3D in 2004 or so, and much earlier for 2D. The bottlenecks in todays video games are in Artificial Intelligence (for simulations), game mechanics and story telling (which is on a all time low if you ask me). The latest Game from Carmack I know of, Rage, was just more or less the same as every other "AAA" shooter released within the last 6 years.

tluyben2 14y ago
Yes; that's why I like Indie games more now; they are more creative with game mechanics + story telling. I think the current next-gen hardware is not enough of a leap to make enough difference; if you just take the Unreal engine it'll all look nice now. Complex AI or actual realistic human + animal movement of body/face (no, currently they are not) would require a lot more advances in hardware/software. For a big jump in AI I would say memristors would be something. But after HP shouting that they would be selling them last year, the hype died down :)

Aldor 14y ago

Didn't Half-Life 2 have dynamic lighting?

BlackAura 14y ago
Not really. The lighting in Half Life 2 was based on static lightmaps. They were very fancy lightmaps, which enabled them to use techniques such as normal mapping or specular reflections, which are normally incompatible with lightmaps, but they were static lightmaps nonetheless. It has some dynamic lighting effects, the same way Quake did them (modifying the lightmaps). It could also do projected shadows and self-shadowed objects using shadow maps, but not on world geometry. I believe that the current source engine has some kind of dynamic lights. Either that, or Portal 2 did a fantastic job of faking them. Still, that was 2011. Doom 3 came out in 2004, and exclusively used dynamic lighting, without a static lightmap in sight.