QuakeCon 2010: Carmack Ushers in the Age of Optimization

[N. Evan Van Zelfden]

QuakeCon 2010: Carmack Ushers in the Age of Optimization

If you're industry legend John Carmack, porting a gorgeous high-definition game like Rage to the iPhone in mere weeks is just a question of knowing how to optimize.

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[Aenir]

...Seriously? A YEAR before the console version releases? That's just hilarious. Usually its the other way around.

 

[Dogstar060763]

Speaking as an Englishman, you guys should be proud of Carmack. He's a US National Treasure. This guy is a bona fide genius. Anyone know, for those of us who missed the livestream, if we'll ever get to see a video of the full unexpurgated keynote..? I'd happily settled down with a nice cup of tea to listen to him thinking out loud for a couple of hours.

 

[NLS]

Watched the keynote. Damn, that guy has done a lot for the industry. And to him it almost seems as if it's "just something I did on my spare-time".

 

[razer17]

I have figured it out. Carmack is a time lord, and his "evenings and weekends" actually means thousands of hours. OR he is a wizard. That's te only explanations.

 

[Jared]

...Seriously? A YEAR before the console version releases? That's just hilarious. Usually its the other way around.

Yeah...thats, something almost like from a mirror universe...intriguing

 

[wastaz]

John Carmack is a friggin genius. Does anyone have a link to an online video of his keynote? Watching that sounds like a couple of well-spent hours.

 

[oktalist]

Agreed. Carmack is a god. I would also have liked to catch the keynote in full.

"Let's stop rasterizing, let's ray-trace everything."

If he can pull that off, I really would be speechless.

Personally I'm just waiting for idTech4 to be open sourced next year, after Doom 4 and Rage come out. Imagine the possibilities for indies.

 

[Delusibeta]

Wait. He's got idtech5 running. On an iPhone. Wut.

 

[Cynical skeptic]

"Optimization" is how things used to need to work. Limited resources meant if you wanted to do more, you had to figure out how to fit it all onto a floppy diskette. It wasn't until this recent explosion of multi-cores and unreal3 (a name thats always been synonymous with shit optimization) that it started looking like things could/should be done any differently.

People got lazy. Carmack didn't.

 

[Booze Zombie]

I think this man is very smart, but there can be great innovation in chaotic diversity... look at our biosphere, for example.
I'm not saying people should't specialise, I'm just glad not every single one of us has.

Anyway, it's great that he managed to get a version of RAGE going on what is essentially a high-end phone of all things.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Ya right....Carmack needs to retire.......IDtech5 the new engine is not going to be modifiable most likely due to allowing only Bethesda access to it. I thought the only way they made money was from selling the game engine not the test demos they call games.(come on people the last good ID game was RTCW and it was made by Gray Matter Interactive and Daikatana was almost better than that). ID only makes the engine if they have anythign to do with the game it becomes a watered down corridor shooter.... tho I guess rage will be the exception since its riding the sandbox trend...but I bit its just a bunch of corridors connected to sand box areas.....

Doom 3 was a horrible game that could not sell enough titles to get a decent expansion and the multiplayer was a joke all because Carmack had to make a cinemaagic based engine...... bah humbug on Carmack....

 

[fenixkane]

Has anyone found the video of the keynote anywhere?
I've been looking for it for about an hour and if it's there it's hiding well.

 

[Weaver]

I bow to you, Lord Carmack.

 

[Irridium]

The man is truly an amazing person. Companies for entire teams of people and still don't come close to what Carmack can do.

Seriously, he got Rage on a damn phone. And he considers it a "side project".

If anyone can find his keynote, please let me know. I really, really want to watch it.

Hell I bet if you give him enough time he'd get Crysis onto a DS.