Game Developer's Conference 2004: Carmack Addresses the Masses
by Derek Wilson on March 30, 2004 3:34 PM EST- Posted in
- Trade Shows
Coding Reality
Aside from organizational and time-to-market issues, cutting edge game engine developers must obviously deal with the technology. Writing the software to actually produce the type of games that current hardware is capable of is definitely the most daunting task. Where are we now, and how are we going to get to real time "Lord of the Rings?"Apparently, John thinks that perfect audio can be done now. Carmack says that we've got the computing power to fully model aural environments and create honest-to-goodness real world sound in games. The focus of id Software's current game development efforts aren't in the aural area because the gap between reality and what we have on the physics and graphics side of the issue is much larger (and therefore more important to fix). One of the main themes of John's speech was that the most important things to do are the ones that have the largest impact on end users.
In fact, John mentioned that he had enough time to go back, clean up code, polish the interface and really put some effort in trying to make the game as close to perfect as he could get it. His verdict after the experience was that it generally sucked. Ultimately, the end user won't get as much value out of a really highly polished interface as he put into it. Of course, being a real "craftsman" with games (as John likened his experience) will satisfy a developer's desire for perfection, but Carmack's motivation, he found, is in delivering satisfaction to the gamer. He said over and over that the focus should be on value to the end user, which is a stance we take when looking at hardware as well.
Game physics are very CPU intensive, and John lamented the sheer volume of physics engines that do many things well but are easily breakable. Computing power and research are the main tools in improving this end of game development, and fluidity is the key to the future here. Mechanical and rag-doll physics are becoming ubiquitous, but things like having real wind, weather, and water affecting all the hair, grass, trees, clothes, and dust (or other particles) in the environment in a real way is a very big problem to solve.
The most difficult issue to tackle in game engine development as outlined by John Carmack is AI. John admits that their games feature very little character interaction because no matter how good a character looks, if it acts retarded or unnatural it will only serve to tear down the experience of the gamer.
On the plus side, academic research has become very relevant to games. In the past, academic research projects were way beyond what could be implemented in realtime. Now though, John sees academic and real world AI research merging in a gaming environment. Rather than requiring all kinds of sensors and inputs, a game world synthesizes all of its data so that core AI algorithms can more easily be tested.
Of course, the final problem with games is content and asset creation. Artists and designers slave over every model animation and texture that goes into a game, and just about every game engine requires that these artists and designers be familiar with its specific tools and idiosyncrasies. This means that artist have less mobility in the market place (and even within a company between projects), and more time has to be spent training people to use very specific tools that may end up becoming outdated when the next engine is released. Unlike the movie industry who can hire hundreds of carpenters to build sets immediately, the gaming industry can't go out and just get assets created fast enough. As with graphics engines in general, John sees the solution to this problem being generality in graphics hardware and APIs. As programmers can do more and more with graphics engines, development tools should more easily accommodate what artists want to do, which should also help speed up the development cycle.
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BenSkywalker - Thursday, April 1, 2004 - link
IMO Carmack is a nigh deity in his field. His engines have always been beyond reproach and the level of polish they ship with in Alpha build state still exceeds most EA titles after a year of patches. His impact on the PC gaming industry is undeniable, his concepts for general 3D rendering are still what drives almost all real time 3D today- PC or otherwise. As an engine coder, Carmack is very easily in a class he shares with noone and I don't see that changing any time close to soon.That said, his influence in the gaming market is a pittance at best compared to Miyamoto. Anyone here old enough to remember 1984 and the post Bushnell Atari along with the resulting fallout will recall that video games were about to be placed in history alongside the likes of Rubik's Cube, Pogo Balls and the like. They were a quick fad that was now over with. Miyamoto rescued the entire industry from ruin- and in the process he created, revolutionized and refined a good deal of the genres that are still around today. Without Carmack we would very likely be without FPSs, without Miyamoto Carmack very likely wouldn't have gotten the chance to be "John Carmack". That says nothing about the man's enormous talents, but without gaming he may have ended up some boring NASA stiff ;)
iwantedT - Thursday, April 1, 2004 - link
#24umm...wolfestein 3d, doom, heretic, hexen, duke Nukem 3d umm....AREN'T 3d.
I get what you are trying to say tho. And i also get what #21 is trying to say. Wouldn't it just be easier to say that both JC and SM make influential products?
Personally, i think that Id makes more tech demo's than games, but maybe thats just me.
Kazlehoff - Thursday, April 1, 2004 - link
screw doom3, Quake 2 remix! WOO!TrogdorJW - Wednesday, March 31, 2004 - link
#21... Come on, you can't be serious. Super Mario 64 as the chief influence for all 3D and FPS game interfaces? Not hardly.Super Mario 64 - released 1996
Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - released 1998
See any problem with that? No? Okay, let's just list a *few* of the PC games with 3D interfaces that came first.
Wolfenstein 3D - released 1992
Doom - released 1993
Heretic - 1994
Hexen - 1995
Descent - 1995
Duke Nukem 3D - 1996
Quake - 1996
That's only a small portion of the 3D games that came out on the PC *before* Mario 64 and Zelda: OOT were released. In fact, you could make the argument that the only reason consoles started to pursue 3D graphics with Nintendo 64, Sega Saturn, and Sony Playstation was due to the incredible success of the early 3D PC gaming market.
Let's not even mention persistent worlds that have been in PC games long before consoles even had the capability of storing that much "state". Here are a few examples, though: Bard's Tale, Wasteland, Ultima III-VIII, Might and Magic I-VI, etc.
It's not a question of buttons. Doom could be played with six or seven buttons if you wanted, and Quake requires six buttons and a mouse. Mario 64 and Zelda require at least as many buttons, and because they lack a mouse, inventory management is much more of a pain in the ass then on a PC. They did the best they could with the console gamepad controllers, but that doesn't make it a model of perfection.
Anyway, you're right that story telling isn't necessarily innovative in and of itself. The thing is, if the story isn't innovative, the graphics aren't innovative, and the user interface isn't innovative, there's not much left. Which is why I said that Mario and Zelda are not innovative games. At least Carmack has the 3D Engine to be innovative with.
PrinceGaz - Wednesday, March 31, 2004 - link
One good thing I can take away from that article is that he thinks graphics-technology will be able to render photo-realisitic scenes in real-time in ten years or so. That has to be excellent news.The reason that cheers me up so much isn't the prospect of how pretteh games could look then as I'm fairly happy the quality we have now -- its because making even better quality graphics will no longer be worthwhile and developers will be forced to concentrate instead on *gameplay* which has been sadly neglected by many for several years!
Brickster - Wednesday, March 31, 2004 - link
TOO funny!Sahrin - Wednesday, March 31, 2004 - link
#9, #10It never ceases to amaze me how little respect PC gamers have for the console scene. If only because it was Nintendo who single-handedly made the modern gaming industry a reality, you should treat Shigeru Miyamoto and Nintendo with a little bit more respect. I?m not going to say Carmack and Monoleuyx aren?t great developers because they are. But there were no games like those that existed at the beginning of NES-era. Every played a 3D Shooter of any kind? Control mechanics borrow heavily from Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Ever played a 3rd person game? Same answer. Ever played a game with a persistent world? The Zelda series birthed that idea as well. There is not a game today that is not subject to Miyamoto-san?s all-pervasive influence. Even games that are called truly innovative like GTA and MGS are, in fact, evolutionary products of the games that were designed by Miyamoto and Co. What bothers me the most about your comments, however, is that you seem to adhere to the FPS-er stereotype that ?more buttons is better.? The mechanics of a Zelda, Mario, Pikmin etc. aren?t as complicated as your CS?s, HL?s, et al and so you dismiss them. But true innovation is not restricted by the use of a controller with a whopping total of 11 buttons. And true innovation isn?t found in great stories either (which is why the modern Final Fantasy series is such a joke).
asapin - Wednesday, March 31, 2004 - link
Icewind:Programming isn't for everyone. I started with Qbasic in high school. I taught myself web design, asp etc. to get me through college where I learned VB, C++, and my arch nemesis Cobol. I'm trying to train myself for a career in the game industry at the moment. I would recommend checking out a few websites for information about the industry, job profiles and answers to questions you might have:
http://www.gamasutra.com/
http://www.mary-margaret.com/Resources/articles.as...
http://www.igda.org/Forums/
Try writing press releases for games you like or even games that you think suck so that you have something to show a potential recruiter what you can do.
Icewind - Wednesday, March 31, 2004 - link
Unfortuantly, I just didn't get into programming. Visual Basic made me wanna cry and C++ about made me wanna commit suicided. Which is sad, cause I had the heart to develop games but just not the know how of programming.Been wondering how I can get into the gaming market as a PR representative or something, cause I love telling people about games, technology and upcoming tech.
Cat - Wednesday, March 31, 2004 - link
The Doom 3 engine *is* up and running now, and has been for some time. The content is not there, however, because it takes far longer to create than previous games' content.