John Carmack is a wanker

[Slobogob]

I suppose four connect or pong doesn´t count? 8O

 

[purplepulser]

Prior to my current card i used a trusty geforce 3 card and the visual difference between that and my 6800gt in half life 2 were minimal.

however performance is a diferent matter

 

[mack_ave]

Wanker wanker bo-banker, banana fana fo-fanker, fe fi mo manker, WANKER!

 

[lexluthermiester]

First off jesse, YOU are the one out of touch with reality. DX10 is an API still in it's infancy and has yet to have many of the flaws worked out.

Second, only 43% of all game devs are using DX10 and then only a few are even trying to use it to it's full.

Third, Carmak's advice of waiting a bit for a more stable version of DX10[and Vista for that matter] is not only great advice, but is a good idea. Giving people the idea that they should just run out and grab all the latest software without giving thought as to how buggy it may be is just a morons mentality!

Fourth, Doom3 Ruled!! It may have been shorter than many would have liked, but it was fun, beautiful and didn't crash every 3 mins like some other FPS's[lets not go there...]! Quake4 was also an awesome game!

Fifth, NONE of ID's games have EVER used the DirectX API, and for the following reasons; DX has always been a buggy, difficult and expensive API. OpenGL is stable, feature rich, easier to program for and far more cost effective.

Sixth, The DX10 "Crysis" trailers show very FEW improvements over the DX9 versions. The differences are only important IF you care. The vast majority of high-end gamers will think these effects are "neat", but not critical to gameplay.

So yes jesse, it's just you. The statements you've posted show just how out of touch you seem to be. In my opinion, it is you who be the "officially irrelevant" person. But then again, what do I know...

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

The whole Dx10 thing is looking awfully similar to the Dx9 thing when the 9700 PRO was released... everyone was scrambling for Dx9 cards and 2 years later the Dx8 cards were still giving great service because the visual difference between Dx9 and Dx8 was almost undetectable from a player's standpoint.

reading this makes me wonder if you even played a DX8 game then tried a DX9..
try geting half life 2 or counter strike source and force the engine to use DX8, and we'll see "how undetectable" is.. 😛

Depends on your definition of DX8. DX8.1 to DX9 wasn't as impactful as DX8.0, you didn't lose as much of the water effects with DX8.1. And the differences between DX10 and DX9 (especially SM3.0 DX9.0C) are likely to be less visually impactful so much as performance impacting (once Vista performance doesn't SUCK).

Anandtech shows the Diff in HL2 between DX8.0 (not 8.1 which can reflect on the water) and DX9, and really it's still not that impressive even with the dull water;
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2281&p=2

the main issue will be how they implement the 2 codepaths, because with DX10 and DX9 there isn't the same way to fallback as easily as before, they both must be coded separately (although can share some resources in developing before export).

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Fourth, Doom3 Ruled!! It may have been shorter than many would have liked, but it was fun, beautiful and didn't crash every 3 mins...

Actually D3 was mediocre as a GAME. It was visually stunning, very ground breaking, but as a game just didn't have legs. Pop and shoot, pop and shoot. Many people (including myself) got so bored they didn't finish it. It was beautiful, and it has alot of ground breaking aspects, but as a game it's only mediocre. As a tech demo especially of the ability to scale effects and visuals well even down to like 800x600 it's really great.

Fifth, NONE of ID's games have EVER used the DirectX API, and for the following reasons; DX has always been a buggy, difficult and expensive API. OpenGL is stable, feature rich, easier to program for and far more cost effective.

Except now Carmack praises the development tools for DX10 and Xbox using XNA. One of the things he praised most was ease of use.

Sixth, The DX10 "Crysis" trailers show very FEW improvements over the DX9 versions. The differences are only important IF you care. The vast majority of high-end gamers will think these effects are "neat", but not critical to gameplay.

Depends on how they are used. Critical to gameplay is also a tough thing to pick, some people will compromise alot of effects to get better speed for deathmatches, but for immersiveness, I don't doubt that DX10 will be the way to go, but whether that's exposed anytime soon is another story. Some of the new replication options could allow massively complex scenes with increadible geometry loads under DX9 that would be lower impact with DX10. It's like changing grass size in Oblivion; is it a game breaker, no of course not, but it does make it more realistic than playing in what appears like fields of wheat.

The thing to me is not whther DX10 will be good or not, it's whether it will matter near term. And like you mention only some people will care even then. To me DX10 is important but really won't be exposed until the second batch of games. At first just expect tack-on stuff at first.

Personally I'm more interested in the addition of things like Direct Physics alongside the added geometry loads. That should make the feel of the environment more realistic, as for the look, that will depend IMO more on the power of the VPUs, since shiny and pretty is already done.

 

[cleeve]

reading this makes me wonder if you even played a DX8 game then tried a DX9.. try geting half life 2 or counter strike source and force the engine to use DX8, and we'll see "how undetectable" is.. 😛

lol... actually, that's EXACTLY what I did. I wrote an article about it...
Here's the comparison in Half Life 2:

The difference between Dx8 and Dx9 is pretty much undetectable.

HDR makes a bit of a difference though, but that's not strictly a DirectX 9 feature...

Reading your post makes me wonder if you even played a DX9 game then tried a DX8 codepath...

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

The funny thing about 'multi-core' is that Quake3 had SMP support long before it involved multi-core, those of us with DUAL CPU pasts experienced that.

It's surprising that he'd be the one to criticize multi-threading when one of his offspring was the first to make good use of more than one cpu/thread.

 

[mpjesse]

The funny thing about 'multi-core' is that Quake3 had SMP support long before it involved multi-core, those of us with DUAL CPU pasts experienced that.

It's surprising that he'd be the one to criticize multi-threading when one of his offspring was the first to make good use of more than one cpu/thread.

right! i forgot about that.

i dunno... i don't get how he thinks clock speed is more advantageous than multicore. in older games that's absolutely true, but only because developers weren't writing games for dual core. everything happening in the industry says just the opposite. i think if he were right sony and M$ wouldn't have spent so much time on multicore processors.

here's an article that somewhat contradicts carmack:
http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/976/valve_talks_about_multi_core_cpu_processing_in_source/index.html

They admit it's harder, but the also say it's ultimately advantageous and that they can do things w/ multicore that they couldn't do with single core.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

i dunno... i don't get how he thinks clock speed is more advantageous than multicore. in older games that's absolutely true, but only because developers weren't writing games for dual core. everything happening in the industry says just the opposite. i think if he were right sony and M$ wouldn't have spent so much time on multicore processors.

Well from experience I'd simply say because games never have been ideal for multi-threading. I agree with him in general that a faster single core CPU like 5+ GHZ FX55 would do better than a quad core 2ghz CPU like the QX6700. Only because it's hard to offload the tasks, and there's alot of very linear work. Now if games were better designed to focus around the new multi-core reality, then we'd see the advantag to multi-core. But to me he's talking about the direction of the industry and it seems pretty myopic to be looking at raw speed, it seems to be shifting the burden onto the CPU builders who were running up against physical barriers to performance imporvements, the new CPUs are great for most thing, and the ability to multi-task is awesome IMO, hence my former dual CPU devotedness. No matter what at some point the GHZ train was going to end, better now when there's still the advntage of both, rather then when people aren't ready for it. X2s have been around for almost 2 years now, it's time to start building from the ground up for them. But if games take as long as stalker to develope I'm surprised we're not still playing games only optiized for MMX not even MMX2. :twisted:

They admit it's harder, but the also say it's ultimately advantageous and that they can do things w/ multicore that they couldn't do with single core.

Certainly, some things will only be realistically possible/playable with multi-core, but I think the issue was ease of programability and current benefits. I also wonder how much of the automation now has to be re-worked because coding with multi-thread in mind really is a completely different departure from the first in first out approach.

It's weird, I understand what he's saying and agree with it, I just don't like his focusing on the drawbacks due to current design, he of all people should be thinking , well we really need to exploit this, and we still aren't there yet. It's not like a 10ghz P4/XP was realitic.

 

[mpjesse]

from the article:

This is a challenging, exciting, scary and expensive exercise for Valve but they see it as an important key for the future and success of their gaming titles. Gabe mentioned that this is the “most significant development to PC games since the advent of the 3D card...” The hardware is here to make games more realistic and true-to-life, right now game developers need to catch up and implement cool new features and effects into their games to make use of the hardware that is available. During our time with Valve, it is clear to see that they understand this point and that they are willing to put mega investment dollars into making sure that games based on the Valve engine properly and effectively make full use of Multi-Core processors.

Right now i've got more respect for Valve than anyone else. Few can argue that HL2 is/was the most groundbreaking games ever. All Doom3 did was popularize shaders... big fcuking deal. As far as gameplay is concerned, it didn't do anything new.

 

[Blacken]

the thing i like is people were im at have known that this was coming.
and they still cant drive. i have seen cars in ditches all day long
one car behind my shop, you could walk up to it and the rear bumper was at head height 8O and only one wheel on the ground :lol:

that makes my day :lol: :lol: I HAVE TO LAUGH!!

and then there are those with 4x4,s who think (ICE)
no problem i can still drive in this. WRONG :twisted:

after this $hit thaws i will have a bunch of window motors to fix.
and wiper motors to replace, and front end work to do :twisted:

and yes we still have geniuses who throw hot water 8O on their
widows to try and thaw the ice off.

if you look at gw,s pic you will see no footprints.
thats not snow its ice :lol:

First snow storm of the year and 2 wemon over gaurd rails, 1 woman in an SUV rollover, and a box truck slamming into a vans as. end. Woops... was I just being bias?
Heh. Most of em' are chicks. As for my little run-in, I was turning in as wide as posible and with summer slicks, a 1250lbs cavalier doesn't exactly grip the road :roll: :lol:

 

[Blacken]

Nevermind the snow, how's ur PC's temps in weather like that? The closest we get here where I live is like -2C... I saw snow twice in my town, when I was 1 year old (1981 - can't remember though - i've got one shot memory) and then in 1996 - and it's the once off snow not thicker than 1cm. Both of these days, the town came to a halt...

Whew. Must be nice. 3 feet here in the late 80's and at least 10 large storms a year. Infact snow drifts lined the tops of houses in the 50 supposively. Lotta white crap in this state.

Driving in snow here doesn't persuade anything to stop. It's hella fun though. Slide around, merely missing street signs, other cars, pedestrians. Yeah man. I bet the people who live here could run midget dirt races and all place in the top 5.

 

[monkeymanuk]

It's all very well saying we've got multi-cores now so bring on the multi core games. But when you have invested millions in developing a gaming engine for single core processing you want to make the most out of your investment. It's the same as designing any new architecture. You make your investment and then reap the rewards. You then tweak your engine and make a bit more. It's a long process and if you get it wrong nobody will ever hear from you again.

I don't see how multi-core would have helped F.E.A.R. I played the game on my mediocre system and I have to wonder how multi-core would have improved things. A better video card would have allowed higher resolution and high frame rates but that's about it. The extra core on my CPU did allow my other applications in the background to work without degrading my gaming experience.

The other issue is the size of the investment. How many billions did M$ invest int their multi-threaded OS? How many games publishers have been lost by the wayside over the years because they invested too heavily in a game that never saw the light of day. 🙁

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

The thing that's a little strange is that Carmack added SMP support to Q3, when next to no-one had dual CPUs like I did, and now that everyone is buying new dual core rigs he doesn't support it anymore.

While I respect alot of his work to me that shows a lack of vision.

Of course it could be a case of once bitten twice shy, where he didn't want to invest the effort after the last waste of time.

The main areas this would be helpful would be for system management (networking, etc) as well as for AI. with the linear nature of the typical FPS there's little place for it to go without serious division of tasks and interchange. Games like FS-X and even RTSs have alot of places where they could make use of additional procs, heck if it weren't for the emmergeance of PPUs there would be a perfect place for multi-core, right now they're too weak, and by the time they are capable PPUs or VPU-physics will already have taken hold.

 

[dean7]

Well, that doesn't take into account what you have to pay for developers, graphic artists, marketing, sales, accounting, benefits, etc.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Remember though that $240mil doesn't all make it to the developper, if anything maybe 10% does. And likely at least half of those sales were discounted.

 

[mpjesse]

Id and others used to make the majority of their money off of licensing. But these days so many companies are making their own engines that licensing isn't as popular. I think Id thought Doom3 licensing would be very profitable, but to my knowledge it hasn't. In fact only 2 other titles based on Doom3 engine have been released... Quake 4 and Prey. That's a far cry from Quake 3's amazing licensing empire.

This is what I'm talking about with Carmack. In the Quake days he was a god, but with the flop of Doom 3 he's now irrelevant.

Now any given developer can make an amazing game. Look at all the great games coming out of the Balkans and Russia. No one praises those dudes. And Valve doesn't get nearly the amount of praise it deserves.

 

[dean7]

Well, it seems like he does understand the benefits of multi-core CPUs, but I think he's saying it's a shame because it would be a hell of a lot easier for him to develop games for single-core systems.

 

[dean7]

This is what I'm talking about with Carmack. In the Quake days he was a god, but with the flop of Doom 3 he's now irrelevant.

Now any given developer can make an amazing game. Look at all the great games coming out of the Balkans and Russia. No one praises those dudes. And Valve doesn't get nearly the amount of praise it deserves.

Well, I agree that Quake 4 wasn't an amazing game, but it is visually stunning, and it is extremely efficient (it runs great on my so-so gaming system with everything cranked at extreme resolutions). Plus, AFAIK he was actually the first to start adopting dual-core support (odd that he's bashing it now, I'll admit).

Anyway, just food for though. 😀

 

[monkeymanuk]

Man this forum is sloooow today!

I agree that big games make more money than most big movies, but like the music business. But how much of that $50 does the designer earn? I would guess less than 10%. Also, how many games are blockbusters? Again, I'm guessing at 10%.

If you run a software house with 20 developers each earning $50,000 and it takes 3 years to produce a game then it's easy to see where it can all go horribly wrong.

 

[I]

Do you always get your panties in a knot over what someone else says? Move on already.

 

[The_Abyss]

A small but decent developer with a half decent publisher will probably earn more than the 10%. Earn much more than that however and EA start sniffing around...

 

[GeneticWeapon]

Of course 3 weeks ago it was a little warmer. 8)

Where in the FUK did you go again??? 8O

 

[GeneticWeapon]

Nevermind the snow, how's ur PC's temps in weather like that?

I just had central heat and air installed in my house so I've been pimpin' my heater a bit. I haven't seen any admirable temperature drops