

John Carmack demos Rage on iPhone - samlittlewood
http://kotaku.com/5611523/id-unleashes-rage-on-the-iphone

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amichail
Recommended reading: [http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-
Cultu...](http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-
Culture/dp/0812972155/)

Also check out John Romero's interview on Matt Chat (#51-55):
<http://www.youtube.com/user/blacklily8>

~~~
kn0thing
That was the book that convinced me to start a startup with Steve. He'd let me
borrow his copy of it, which is on his shelf to this day (I'm crashing at his
place this week and just saw it). Can't recommend it enough. It's not
brilliantly written, but it's written well enough - and the story, well...

~~~
loganfrederick
I have to second this. Reading Masters of Doom right after it came out during
my freshman year of high school really shaped my interests and world views for
the rest of my life. The two lead characters of Romero and Carmack were so
realistic and yet larger-than-life that I just knew I had to be a part of
something big and relevant.

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jerf
The current TV console generation has lasted longer than most, by the design
and general consent of all the console makers, and the interesting question
there has been what will convince them to do the next generation of hardware
for the Wii, XBox 360, or the PS3? And now I have my guess: A portable gaming
system that can hook up to a TV and push 720p that is effectively
indistinguishable from the current generation of console.

By "portable gaming system", I mean either a dedicated gaming console, or a
cell phone. The interesting thing about the cell phone option is that while
dedicated gaming systems come out rarely, cell phones are increasingly on the
PC-style plan of coming out as rapidly as possible with as much hardware
stuffed in them as possible. So while guessing when the dedicated portable
gaming systems will pass the XBox 360 requires reading minds, guessing when
cell phones will actually pass the XBox 360 is not so hard.

Using this logic, I think we can expect the PS4 and XBox 720 by 2013 at the
latest, not because the cell phones will be _quite_ there by then, but because
the cell phones on the horizon in late 2012 to 2013 will be able to exceed
them. And especially for the PS and Xbox line, that's an embarrassment I don't
think they can put up with and still maintain their image, no matter how
unhelpful the next generation of graphics will be to their market or how
expensive it makes the games. Unless they just throw in the towel, which,
honestly, isn't necessarily a bad bet for the PS5 or Xbox 1080, but I think
we're going to have one more conventional generation of consoles whether or
not it's a good idea, after which we may discover they don't have a niche
anymore.

~~~
pmcginn
No offense, but you're not making any sense. The current generation has not
lasted longer than previous generations, and pretty much anyone in pre-algebra
could plot you a graph that would show "we can expect the PS4 and XBox 720 by
2013 at the latest."

PS1 - 1994 PS2 - 2000 PS3 - 2006

The average works out roughly the same for Nintendo, and since Microsoft only
has two data points it's not really worth including them.

~~~
sbierwagen
Also note that the PS2 is _still in production_.

~~~
Retric
Yep, and the PS1 was discontinued March 23, 2006. So we might expect a new PS4
in 2012, and the PS2 to be discontinued that same year.

PS: The XBox was discontinued early due to licensing issues. Microsoft was
unable to drop the production costs as far as they would like so they decided
to release the XBox 360 early.

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saint-loup
Man, thoses textures.

The liveblog of the keynote, with interesting bits like "At their heart and
core Apple is not really a game-friendly company" (a thing we already knew
but, well..) : [http://kotaku.com/5611429/quakecon-2010-keynote-liveblog-
aka...](http://kotaku.com/5611429/quakecon-2010-keynote-liveblog-aka-man-i-
hope-they-mention-doom-4)

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traskjd
To get your daily fill, it seems John is now on twitter:
<http://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack>

~~~
elblanco
That's great! His .plan files were great reading back in the day.

~~~
angrycoder
Some awesome person has collected most of his writings on scribd.

interviews - [http://www.scribd.com/doc/479479/John-Carmack-Archive-
Interv...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/479479/John-Carmack-Archive-Interviews)

slashdot posts - [http://www.scribd.com/doc/470798/John-Carmack-Archive-
slashd...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/470798/John-Carmack-Archive-slashdot-
posts)

.plan 1998 - [http://www.scribd.com/doc/14192/John-Carmack-Archive-
plan-19...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/14192/John-Carmack-Archive-plan-1998)

there is a plan file for each year, just search for John Carmack on scribd.

~~~
revorad
Those scribd pages with ads are really annoying. This is much better -
<http://www.team5150.com/~andrew/carmack/plan.html>

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cubicle67
this is the same guy that also builds rockets in his spare time
<http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home>

~~~
mkramlich
Yep and the other major figure, along with Elon Musk, who first made his
fortune in software, and then later leveraged that to get into making
innovative rocket ships. Imagine Carmack and Musk getting together on some
project, maybe throw in Dean Kamen, and tremble.

~~~
lotusleaf1987
Dean Kamen....? Really?

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swah
Look at you. Now look at him
(<http://infosecurity.us/images/Dean_Kamen_IBot.jpg>). Now back to you. Now
him again. Sadly, you aren't him.

~~~
lotusleaf1987
I just don't see Dean Kamen's fit with Elon Musk and Carmack.

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Geee
They also published the sources for Return to Castle Wolfenstein / Enemy
Territory at ftp://ftp.idsoftware.com/idstuff/source/

~~~
maukdaddy
Holy crap thanks for the link! I completely missed the release amongst all the
other news.

I can't even begin to calculate how many hours of college I wasted playing
RtCW

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squidsoup
ID games have always been technically astounding, but let down by art
direction and inconsistent gameplay. From everything I have seen of Rage so
far, it looks like they've been working on these shortcomings - I'm quite
excited about playing it.

~~~
heed
I'm excited to see it up close, but I think the controlls will ultimately
leave me unfulfilled. :/

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jpeterson
Wow, someone has a Stephen Wolfram-sized ego going on there.

~~~
jameskilton
Carmack is the 3D engine GOD. There is no-one like him.

Seeing that, on an iPhone, holy crap. I'd love to see what it's like on an
iPad (as he nicely describes for us).

~~~
snprbob86
no one?

There are quite a few developers like him. Sure, he's one of the first and
most famous, but having worked in the game development space for a while, I
can safely say that there are people quietly writing equally, if not more
impressive graphics engines.

~~~
cubicle67
Carmack is the original. He's been writing class leading graphics engines
since the days of distributing software via discs in plastic bags.

He wrote the first side-scrolling engine for PCs (long before they were called
that) back when it was considered impossible.

He made people sit up and take notice of Shareware

He wrote the engines for Commander Keen (2d platformer) Wolfenstein (3d) ,
Doom (3d with variable height floors/walls), Quake (full 3d), Quake II
(coloured lighting etc) etc etc

He's one of a very small number of people who were writing groundbreaking code
right at the beginning, and are _still_ writing groundbreaking stuff.

He's constantly made his code public, as much as possible

He loves fast cars; how does a 1000hp twin turbo w/24psi of boost Testarossa
sound? (that was 11 years ago)

He founded a company that builds and flys some serious rockets. real ones.

Seriously, if that doesn't make you a coding god, what does?

~~~
potatolicious
Not only that, while he's not the only talented graphics developer out there,
he is one that has consistently brought something revolutionary and new to the
table.

id Tech 5 is going to introduce the entire _concept_ of megatexturing - the
grand unifying theory of geometry, just as Doom 3 was the first major engine
to implement a unified lighting model. This is going to have major
implications for both content production and rendering, and is exciting as
fuck.

Carmack's impressiveness is not only in his ability to write kickass looking
engines, but also his ability to lead the pack in completely rethinking the
sort of things most devs take for granted.

~~~
modeless
Nitpick: As the name implies, megatexturing solves the problem of texture
memory management and rendering, allowing essentially unlimited texture detail
on any object. The problem of unlimited geometry detail is still unsolved.
Carmack has hinted that id Tech 6 may tackle the geometry problem using voxels
instead of polygons, and id actually demoed a voxel rendering system at
SIGGRAPH 2008: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpEpAFGplnI>

~~~
moultano
Are there any good whitepapers on megatexturing out there? I've been trying to
learn about it, but the powerpoints aren't cutting it.

~~~
modeless
This is the best explanation of the technique I've found (if you need enough
detail to implement it): <http://silverspaceship.com/src/svt/>

He uses the name "Sparse Virtual Textures" instead of megatextures so it's not
very googleable. Also it's a video, not a paper, but the code is included.

