

John Carmack Answers - bane
http://games-beta.slashdot.org/story/99/10/15/1012230/john-carmack-answers

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bane
Relevant portion

 _3\. by moonboy asks: I once read, in Wired, an article that said you have an
incredible headstart on everyone else for making "virtual worlds" on the
Internet using your engine from the Quake games. Do you have any intention of
doing this? Has anyone approached you about it? It would seem like a fantastic
use of the technology with online gaming being so popular. Entire worlds
online could be created virtually and very life-like with many different
purposes.

John Carmack Answers: Making Snow Crash into a reality feels like a sort of
moral imperative to a lot of programmers, but the efforts that have been made
so far leave a lot to be desired. It is almost painful for me to watch some of
the VRML initiatives. It just seems so obviously the wrong way to do
something. All of this debating, committee forming, and spec writing, and in
the end, there isn't anything to show for it. Make something really cool
first, and worry about the spec after you are sure it's worth it! I do think
it is finally the right time for this to start happening for real. While a lot
of people could envision the possibilities after seeing DOOM or Quake, it is
really only now that we have general purpose hardware acceleration that things
are actually flexible enough to be used as a creative medium without
constantly being conscious of the technical limitations. Two weeks ago, I
pitched a proposal to develop some technology along these lines to the rest of
the company. I may wind up working on some things like that in parallel with
the next game project._

