Carmack speaks up at GDC

[Hamel]

So the recent scuttlebutt is the following:

Carmack expects realtime LoTR(RotK?) CG quality in roughly 10 years

JC would not be surprised to see a $100 million game budget fairly soon (Wtf? A bunch of Pixar rendering farms? Has he lost his weiner?)

He says Doom III is pretty close to release, while another source suggests it's even closer than that~

The multiple processor architecture of the upcoming consoles are a big mistake, and historically has not worked well. Man, he's really dissapointed~

He was contemplating a Quake 2 remake, but dropped the idea~

All this was ripped from planetdoom, bluesnews, etc



"One hundred MILLION dollars"

[The Yosemite Bear]

And in other news John Ramero is expected to deliver a smackdown should Doom III, be just as bad as Diakatana.

[phongn]

So the recent scuttlebutt is the following:

Carmack expects realtime LoTR(RotK?) CG quality in roughly 10 years

If Moore's Law holds, then why not? Of course, actually coding that into a game is a different question entirely.

JC would not be surprised to see a $100 million game budget fairly soon (Wtf? A bunch of Pixar rendering farms? Has he lost his weiner?)

I wouldn't be surprised, actually. Games are becoming closer to movies in complexity, though it might be a ways off. Remember WC4 and the hue and cry when it was discovered it cost $10 million to produce? That price ain't uncommon anymore.

The multiple processor architecture of the upcoming consoles are a big mistake, and historically has not worked well. Man, he's really dissapointed~

He may well be right. Multiple processing machines in particular are quite difficult to efficiently program. How many games do you know of have supported SMP?

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

So the recent scuttlebutt is the following:

Carmack expects realtime LoTR(RotK?) CG quality in roughly 10 years

W00ty!

JC would not be surprised to see a $100 million game budget fairly soon (Wtf? A bunch of Pixar rendering farms? Has he lost his weiner?)

WTF?!

He says Doom III is pretty close to release, while another source suggests it's even closer than that~

Kewl that it's almost done. Not kool that I still have this Pentium 2 POS.

The multiple processor architecture of the upcoming consoles are a big mistake, and historically has not worked well. Man, he's really dissapointed~

Ha Ha!! _Maybe_ they can get it to work...

He was contemplating a Quake 2 remake, but dropped the idea~

FUCK! ASS!

All this was ripped from planetdoom, bluesnews, etc



"One hundred MILLION dollars"

And he's still Hella Cute!

[Hamel]

You've probably heard this from many other people, but when Carmack has something to say, you drop everything and lend him both your ears

[Straha]

HIs ideas are interesting, and I see no reason not to believe most of them (especially the 100 million one.)


But let me just say that the GDC had nothing to do with this.

*Chatters Excitedly as Dolphins surround Hamel and do the dirty deed*

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

HIs ideas are interesting, and I see no reason not to believe most of them (especially the 100 million one.)


But let me just say that the GDC had nothing to do with this.

*Chatters Excitedly as Dolphins surround Hamel and do the dirty deed*

I still want my Quake 4!

/me watches amusedly as Hamel is ripped to shreds from the Delphinic Hypervelocity Cumshot Attacks™...

[phongn]

The spam will cease now.

[The Kernel]

The multiple processor architecture of the upcoming consoles are a big mistake, and historically has not worked well. Man, he's really dissapointed~

He may well be right. Multiple processing machines in particular are quite difficult to efficiently program. How many games do you know of have supported SMP?

I've been saying this since we first heard about it, and I'm still not sure what the hell Microsoft and Sony are thinking on this one. Sony is just going to end up pissing off developers even more with Cell (it looks ridiculously complex to code for, even compared to the PS2) and Microsoft putting three SMT PowerPC chips in the Xbox2 (if true) is equally ridiculous.

[Xon]

The multiple processor architecture of the upcoming consoles are a big mistake, and historically has not worked well. Man, he's really dissapointed~

He may well be right. Multiple processing machines in particular are quite difficult to efficiently program. How many games do you know of have supported SMP?

I've been saying this since we first heard about it, and I'm still not sure what the hell Microsoft and Sony are thinking on this one. Sony is just going to end up pissing off developers even more with Cell (it looks ridiculously complex to code for, even compared to the PS2) and Microsoft putting three SMT PowerPC chips in the Xbox2 (if true) is equally ridiculous.

However, Microsoft has a history of very good developer support. Witness the second highest ranking Microsoft guy saying 'developer' a rediculious number of times like it was the core phrase of a rock concert.

Visual Studios is the development enviroment by which everything else is measured by. And Microsoft looks to be big in the design for multipule (Microsoft) platforms at once now with the recent announcement of XNA.

Probable the coolest thing is the availability of Xbox Live for the PC.

Sony has a dismal developer support record.

[The Kernel]

However, Microsoft has a history of very good developer support. Witness the second highest ranking Microsoft guy saying 'developer' a rediculious number of times like it was the core phrase of a rock concert.

Visual Studios is the development enviroment by which everything else is measured by. And Microsoft looks to be big in the design for multipule (Microsoft) platforms at once now with the recent announcement of XNA.

Their support of developers is not the issue here. An SMP hardware design in a system that offloads most of its processing to the GPU is silly. What would the developers for the Xbox2 possibly use these CPU's for? From a cost-benifit perspective, it makes much more sense to concentrate on memory bandwidth and GPU resources which are the primary factors in a powerful gaming machine.

Sony has a dismal developer support record.

It isn't as bad as all that. Granted Sony dropped the ball on delivering C libraries to developers at the PS2 launch, but these days they are as good as Microsoft in supporting the developers with dev tools. The real problem is that they don't seem to be listening to developers desires for simpler hardware designs (Cell is going to be very difficult to program for).

[Xon]

Their support of developers is not the issue here. An SMP hardware design in a system that offloads most of its processing to the GPU is silly. What would the developers for the Xbox2 possibly use these CPU's for? From a cost-benifit perspective, it makes much more sense to concentrate on memory bandwidth and GPU resources which are the primary factors in a powerful gaming machine.

I know the .NET framework uses a heck of a lot of threading normally, and the biultin thread pooling system is a very important chunk of the framework. Being able to push that off onto another cpu would offer significant advantages.

Anything GUI uses threads like crazy under .NET, multiplayer is also a classical threaded enviroment.

Anything with threads can benifit from having another CPU to run on.

Remember, the Xbox2 & XNA are all to push Microsoft's products. And the .NET framework ranks right up there in things they want to have massive mind-share and significant market presence.