Blue's News: Comments - Morning Q&As

Morning Q&As

[Jan 31, 2006, 12:12 pm ET] - Share - Viewing Comments

John Carmack
John Carmack Talks Graphics on Next Generation is a brief teaser for a print Q&A with the id Software Technical Director discussing consoles and PCs, including his widely publicized quote about the Xbox 360 possibly becoming id's primary development platform: "The Xbox 360 will probably will be id's primary development platform. As it is right now, we would get the game up on the 360. When I would do major hack-and-slash architectural changes it was back on the PC, but it’s looking like the Xbox 360 will be our target. All of our tools are on the PC, and we’re maintaining the game running on the PC, but probably all of our gameplay development and testing will be done on the Xbox 360. It’s a really sweet development system."
World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft 1.10 Patch Details on 1UP is a Q&A with Blizzard's Jeff Kaplan about the upcoming World of Warcraft patch: "It's not a matter of spending points in certain ways; we simply felt there was room for improvement in the class. The talent reviews take place to ensure that the talent trees are balanced when faced with today's playstyles and encounters. The face of the game has changed significantly since launch, and these reviews help to update the classes along with this content."
SpellForce II
The SpellForce II Q&A on PC Gameworld is an in-house conversation about the game's delay, though the Q&A was also delayed, as it refers to 2006 as next year, so it was conducted more than a month ago.
Zoic Studios
Gamecloud's Zoic Studios Q&A talks with the founder and creative director of this company that specializes in prerendered cinematics for games as well as movies and TV shows.
Razer
Gamecloud's Razer Q&A talks with Razer's Robert Krakoff about their gaming peripherals.

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27.	Re: Chill.	Feb 2, 2006, 10:20	MacD
	"Are they making an FPS?" Probably, considering that id started with a few platformers and then switched to FPS' exclusively. Appart from the last two cellphone games (which also happened to be shooters), id does fps'. So it would be a decent guess that their next game is going to be an FPS too. And let's face it, id doesn't have what it takes to make anything else, really (and more than half of the gamers would say that, having played doom3, id doesn't even have what it takes anymore to do a decent fps!). Could you imagine an id RPG? Ugh!

26.	FPSPC	Feb 1, 2006, 16:08	kxmode
	There's a reason awards are routinely give to PC shooter. Insert your reasons here: _______________ now take those reasons and equate them to the Console vs. PC debate and apply it to ALL PC games. ----- latest track: http://www.kxmode.com/media/music/kxmode_-_driftwood.mp3 more free music: http://music.download.com/kxmode This message was edited at Feb 1, 16:09.




	end-of-line

25.	Re: Chill.	Feb 1, 2006, 09:31	Enahs
	Plus, hasn't Halo & Halo 2 shown that an FPS can be great on a console? No. Halo was one of the worst FPS games ever for the PC (developed by a studio with a budget). Halo 2 is no better. They are only good on consoles because that is all they have, nothing to compare it too. http://www.frappr.com/bluesnewsmembers Show me where you live! I promise it will only hurt the first time.




	I am free of all prejudice. I hate everyone equally. - W. C. Fields

24.	Chill.	Feb 1, 2006, 01:34	Pretzel
	For those that didn't bother reading the article, Carmack has not given up on the PC. In fact, he says they're doing simultaneous development on PC's and console, and planning to release them all at once. This makes perfect sense considering how long it's taken to port their games in the past. Having a console game come out 6 months to a year after the PC version was release means that you lost any momentum you got from your marketing. Plus, hasn't Halo & Halo 2 shown that an FPS can be great on a console? Also, check out this quote from the article: "The difference between theoretical performance and real-world performance on the CPU level is growing fast. On, say, a regular Xbox, you can get very large fractions of theoretical performance with not a whole lot of effort. The PlayStation 2 was always a mess with the multiple processors on there, but the new generations, with Cell or the Xbox 360, make it much, much worse. They can quote these incredibly high numbers of giga-flops or tera-flops or whatever, but in reality, when you do a straightforward development process on them, they’re significantly slower than a modern high-end PC." Sounds to me like Carmack still believes in the PC. Also, people complaining about the controls on the console not being good for an FPS. Are they making an FPS? They haven't said yet. Everyone always complains that id never makes anything different. Maybe this time they are. It's funny that people give Carmack a lot of crap for wanting to develop for both PC and console, but Epic gets applauded for doing the same.

23.	Re: No more OpenGL for id?	Jan 31, 2006, 20:29	nin
	I'll check it out when I get home... No pick your render options... -------------------------------------------------------------- GW: Nilaar Madalla, lvl 20 R/Mo / Tolyl Nor, lvl 20 E/Mo / Xylos Gath, lvl 13 W/Mo http://www.goldfrapp.co.uk/




	http://www.ninja2009.com/

22.	Re: No more OpenGL for id?	Jan 31, 2006, 19:31	SirKnight
	OpenGL is NOT dead on windows and will work perfectly fine on Vista. What's going to happen is the Aero stuff will turn off on the window that is using OpenGL so you will still get full speed OpenGL through the IHV's driver (ie NV and ATI). I know first hand there is nothing to worry about and OpenGL has a very bright future that isn't slowing down any time soon.

21.	Re: No more OpenGL for id?	Jan 31, 2006, 18:40	Rolphus
	I'd be amazed if the XBox360 supported OpenGL Same, but they ported Q4 in short order, so... shrug. I'd suspect that it's easier to port from an abstracted graphics API to something like DirectX when you only have to worry about a single GPU architecture. All you'd essentially have to do is replace all the OpenGL calls with their relevant DirectX ones and away you go - don't forget that, at the moment, the XBox 360's Xeons GPU supports just about everything any released GPU can do. Here's the deal. By default any OpenGL support in Vista will be software emulated. If you install drivers that have hardware accelerated OpenGL (non-emulated) then you're free to do so -- but you will lose the 3D desktop and all 3D widgits. This is either a slight misunderstanding or a deliberate attempt at slanting the data... I'm not sure which though. To my knowledge, no version of Windows has ever supported OpenGL in hardware out of the box. It's always been the case that, in order to have some sort of OpenGL hardware-acceleration, you've needed to have an installable client driver (ICD). The big difference in Vista is that the nice eye-candy effects you see on the screen are rendered using Direct3D, and as such, OpenGL can't be active at the same time. This isn't a new restriction. You can't (to my knowledge) have an OpenGL game running windowed, and pull up a Direct3D game and get that to run at the same time. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, you can't even have two OpenGL or Direct3D games running at the same time - binding to the GPU effectively "locks" it to that application for the time being. None of this would be a problem, except, as mentioned earlier, the pretty Vista effects are now using the GPU in D3D mode. So, if you fire up a windowed OpenGL application, the GPU has to make a decision to either stop using D3D and lose all the shiny widgets, or not allow OpenGL. As we know from experience, this process doesn't have to take long in physical terms - say, half a second - which is a hell of a long time in computing terms, and you wouldn't want to do it often. The same will apply to fullscreen OpenGL games. You run them, the Direct3D code gets flushed out of the GPU and all the shiny widgets stop working. You don't care, because you're watching an OpenGL game. You alt-tab, and, for half a second or so, the OS stops rendering OpenGL, initialises D3D, and you get your shiny widgets back, no doubt with some standard Microsoft flickering and weird corruption in the first version None of this should really cause anyone's panties to get in a wad, as far as I can see. The act of installing an OpenGL ICD can't, as far as I can see, make any sort of difference to the machine. I will however test Doom3 on my Vista build tomorrow.

20.	Re: Id	Jan 31, 2006, 17:48	hubricide
	I cannot bring myself to play shooters on a console. After playing shooters on a PC I'm amazed when I see console players who say the framerates of their shooters are 'fine' when they are clearly far chunkier than their PC cousins.. and the crappy control is just salt on the wound. But hey, whatever, it's worth the $500, right, uhh, wait, no, no it isn't. Microsoft not really supporting OpenGL with Vista is a shame. I think OpenGL is bigger in the application market than the game market, so whether it really matters I guess we'll find out. Maybe MS's OpenGL emulation will be just as fast as Direct3D. A ha ha. Could happen.

19.	Re: Id	Jan 31, 2006, 15:49	famished
	I cannot bring myself to play shooters on a console. Every video I see that comes from a console is immediately obvious. It simply looks painful to control with large sweeps in direction that slowly ramp up in speed and quickly ramp down. Horrible IMO.

18.	Re: No more OpenGL for id?	Jan 31, 2006, 15:42	nin
	If it did then wouldn't they use the D3D path on ATI, since ATI has traditionally had a crappy OGL ICD? I don't have D3 installed, but I do have Quake 4 (D3 engine)... I'll check it out when I get home... -------------------------------------------------------------- GW: Nilaar Madalla, lvl 20 R/Mo / Tolyl Nor, lvl 20 E/Mo / Xylos Gath, lvl 13 W/Mo http://www.goldfrapp.co.uk/




	http://www.ninja2009.com/

17.	Re: No more OpenGL for id?	Jan 31, 2006, 15:36	Zathrus
	I always assumed the Doom3 engine had both an OGL and D3D render... If it did then wouldn't they use the D3D path on ATI, since ATI has traditionally had a crappy OGL ICD? I haven't found anything that indicates that the Xbox360 supports OpenGL though... it could be that someone did rewrite the entire graphics engine (gack) in DirectX 9. Which would explain why it apparantly plays like crap on the Xbox360.

16.	FYI - This is already appearing in	Jan 31, 2006, 15:27	Elvis
	the March issue of PC Gamer (US).

15.	Change is Good...	Jan 31, 2006, 15:25	Devster
	I didn't read into that they were working on an FPS for a console, unlike other folks; maybe I missed something. Didn't see a genre singled out. <shrug> In any case, change can be good; force 'em to think out side the PC box... and into another, ummm.... box. Use your head, don't lose it - Don't feed the trolls!




	Use your head, don't lose it - Don't feed the trolls! Boycott Belligerent Boycotters!

14.	Re: No more OpenGL for id?	Jan 31, 2006, 15:18	nin
	I always assumed the Doom3 engine had both an OGL and D3D render... -------------------------------------------------------------- GW: Nilaar Madalla, lvl 20 R/Mo / Tolyl Nor, lvl 20 E/Mo / Xylos Gath, lvl 13 W/Mo http://www.goldfrapp.co.uk/




	http://www.ninja2009.com/

13.	Re: No more OpenGL for id?	Jan 31, 2006, 15:14	Zathrus
	I'd be amazed if the XBox360 supported OpenGL Same, but they ported Q4 in short order, so... shrug. I heard that Microsoft had decided to allow users to install OpenGL drivers. Here's the deal. By default any OpenGL support in Vista will be software emulated. If you install drivers that have hardware accelerated OpenGL (non-emulated) then you're free to do so -- but you will lose the 3D desktop and all 3D widgits. Sure, at the start, I expect most of that to just be eye-candy, but it's almost certain that switching between a 3D app and any-other-app will be slower than it would be with the 3D stuff enabled. And sooner or later there will be 3D widgits that have no 2D replacement (or perform horribly w/o 3D enabled). So then you'll have to choose between the extremely small number of OpenGL games/apps (there are a few apps) and functionality in other apps. Not to mention that any game that uses OpenGL is going to have to explain why Vista looses all the bling-bling everywhere in order to play the game. So, yeah, OpenGL is pretty well dead on Windows.

12.	Re: No more OpenGL for id?	Jan 31, 2006, 15:07	hubricide
	If OpenGL wasn't dead as a 3D library for PC games before, it is now. Well, are you sure that the Xbox360 doesn't support OpenGL as well? They ported Quake4 to it and that was OGL based. I don't think the XBox supported OpenGL, and with MS dropping OpenGL altogether, (and they never really liked OpenGL in the first place) I'd be amazed if the XBox360 supported OpenGL (out of the box.. you could probably mod it if you wanted to). I haven't actually searched out any technical specs, though. That said, OpenGL is dead as of 6 months ago. When MS announced that OpenGL would only be emulated under Vista and DirectX 10 that pretty well killed it. Sure, you could install your own driver, but then you kill all the desktop graphics -- that's just a stake in the heart. I heard that Microsoft had decided to allow users to install OpenGL drivers. It would be officially not nice of Microsoft to force everyone to use Direct3D (in lieu of any other 3D layer, not just OpenGL), but that's never stopped them before..

11.	No subject	Jan 31, 2006, 14:52	kxmode
	Consoles are stale technology the moment they're launched. PCs are a continually evolving technology. Nextgen might be more powerful than PCs, but in the end PCs will ALWAYS be more powerful. Fine let iD go off and be all console-y. Sooner or later they will be back. They always come back. If they don't then iD Software is the biggest bunch of sells outs in gaming history. Turning your back on the platform that made you who you are today? This would be like a famous sports athlete thumbing his nose at his friends that helped him get out of the ghetto. I'll wait and see... I give iD three years tops in the console market. One other nugget of info... most games (including console only) are developed on a PC and tested on the platform! So there! ----- latest track: http://www.kxmode.com/media/music/kxmode_-_driftwood.mp3 more free music: http://music.download.com/kxmode This message was edited at Jan 31, 14:53.




	end-of-line

10.	Who REALLY cares?	Jan 31, 2006, 14:25	Com
	When was the last time id made a good game? Doom3 took 4 years to make and turned out to be either garbage or a nice 15 hour romp, depending on your point of view. Either way, it didn't provide anything integral to the PC platform. I'm sure his engines will still be used for PC games, so not much loss on that front either.

9.	Re: No more OpenGL for id?	Jan 31, 2006, 13:32	Zathrus
	If OpenGL wasn't dead as a 3D library for PC games before, it is now. Well, are you sure that the Xbox360 doesn't support OpenGL as well? They ported Quake4 to it and that was OGL based. That said, OpenGL is dead as of 6 months ago. When MS announced that OpenGL would only be emulated under Vista and DirectX 10 that pretty well killed it. Sure, you could install your own driver, but then you kill all the desktop graphics -- that's just a stake in the heart. Once id released Doom 3 I realized they were done, though Yeah. After reading Masters of Doom I was concerned about how good Doom3 would be... and the game pretty well confirmed the book's assertations (as has Romero's continued inability to produce anything worth a crap).

8.	No more OpenGL for id?	Jan 31, 2006, 13:19	hubricide
	How quaint, Carmack used to hate Microsoft's anti-OpenGL stance, and now he wants to develop games only for the XBox360, which uses DirectX 9.0 (or is it basically 10.0?). If OpenGL wasn't dead as a 3D library for PC games before, it is now. Once id released Doom 3 I realized they were done, though.. Whatever magic they had with the arcade-like simplicity of Doom 1/2 and Quake 1/2 has long since disappeared. Give me HL2's more engrossing story and 'less advanced' engine over Doom 3's pointless nonsense and 'super high tech' engine any day.

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