Fuck you, John Carmack.

[Redlands]

Well, really, for this thread it should be more like:

 

[TripJack]

Yes an enemy that is good at everything is boring. Good SP play in Doom means exploiting monster weaknesses (ie. using the level to your advantage), and one that doesn't really have any makes fighting them boring. Also, what the fuck's the point if it makes basically every other monster look like shit. It's tougher and has more melee damage output than pinkys and their ranged attack accuracy and damage makes basically every other monster - exception: arch vile, for the simple reason that it doesn't use projectile attacks - look like a sucker too.
The super shotgun is also a boring weapon for the same reason, it's only weakness is against big hordes - a weakness it shares with the normal shotgun, which is rendered obsolete by the super (IT IS NOT A PISTOL FFS). Don't say 'long range' as the chaingun still exists and that is the pro's sniping weapon. Or the rocket launcher/plasma gun if you've got a clear path. NB the reason why the super is boring against pain elementals is the same reason it is boring against all enemies - that it 'works wonders' against them. Fucking rocket launcher equivalent damage output, irrelevant weaknesses, runs roughshod over existing weapons balance = decline.

fair enough bro

thankfully the shotgun's weakness, big hordes, are plentiful in doom

 

[Pablosdog]

True bros play catacomb 3d

 

[Sceptic]

True bros play (the) catacomb

 

[Catbert]

I didn't say every game had to present something completely innovative to be considered worth playing, but John Carmack using CoD as an example of something that provides value completely pissed me off.
CoD is almost entirely recycled and rehashed to the point where Bobby Kotick takes pride in the short and cheap production cycles he's created, and the fact that he doesn't even need the original studio and their vision to produce more CoD.
If this vision is what Carmack is aspiring to reach, I am severely disappointed with him.

Carmack is a college dropout who made more than his share of money because he was able to apply his intellect to develop new things. He was able to assemble the right team and work with them to make awesome games. Now he just sounds like another corporate lackey and it looks like Bethesda is trying to use his reputation to push their new agenda on the fans.

This means that the times when each successive game presented some kind of advancement is gone and isn't coming back. I lament this.

I remember that playing Doom for the first time was exciting because it looked and played much better than Wolfenstein 3D and that was because Carmack implemented a better model (afforded by better hardware) of gameplay and rendering. The same goes for DN3D, Quake and some later games.

Nowadays they're not even trying. The whole "hardware has hit a barrier" thing is bullshit. They're not changing the design of GPUs because they don't need to, because games are all the same and if they're selling, why invest in something new?

The only real hope is indies using GPU general-purpose compute resources to implement something truly new, like Carmack did with the CPU when he was young and didn't have a corporate cock in his mouth.

So yes, fuck you, Carmack.

 

[BelisariuS.F]

This means that the times when each successive game presented some kind of advancement is gone and isn't coming back.
..
Nowadays they're not even trying.

If you're talking about engines then you are wrong. For Id Tech 5 he created Megatexture. Now he works on Id Tech 6 that is entirely based on voxels.

 

[MetalCraze]

Marketing buzzwords like MegaAwsumTexture sound nice even if they don't do shit, eh Belisarius?

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

The game would have looked impressive if it was released 2007.

 

[Catbert]

It remains to be seen if this MegaTexture stuff will make any actual difference to visuals and gameplay. If it does, I'll happily admit I was wrong.

The voxel engine is something I need to see before praising, but if it does happen, it could be a major revolution for real-time 3D graphics.

I just don't see anything meaningful happening under Bethesda.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

If it turns out to be awesome, all credits goes to id.

If it turns out to be shit, Bethesda will be blamed.

Either way, id wins!

 

[ortucis]

I agree with him.

*goes back to playing Quake 2*

 

[commie]

This means that the times when each successive game presented some kind of advancement is gone and isn't coming back.
..
Nowadays they're not even trying.

If you're talking about engines then you are wrong. For Id Tech 5 he created Megatexture. Now he works on Id Tech 6 that is entirely based on voxels.

I had to do a double take..You mean voxels are coming back??? I fucking LOVE the organic look of voxels! At high resolutions they look fantastic and even at low res a game like Outcast looks phenomenally 'alien' and impressive even now compared to how 1999 polygon 3D has aged.

 

[MetalCraze]

Nobody is making any voxel engine. Unless Carmack also invented magical superpowerful videocards that can draw voxels and is using them.

id hasn't made a good engine or any new impressive graphical tech for 12 years now. Carmack is just shit. All talk and no action.

When your new game looks like something from XBox1 era you should shut the fuck up about engines and graphics

 

[Catbert]

A voxel engine might be feasible with today's hardware, MetalCraze, though with a lot of limitations.

But limitations are GOOD. Limitations are what made Doom and Quake awesome, because the developers couldn't deliver an over the top, realistic experience and had to focus on fun and interesting gameplay and level design.

 

[Sceptic]

He was able to assemble the right team and work with them to make awesome games.

This always makes me twitch when I see it. Carmack didn't assemble the team. Romero is the one who got the team together, who realized the potential of Carmack's engine, who got contacted by Scott Miller (them big boss at Apogee) and who took Carmack, Carmack and Hall with him to start id. Carmack was just the code monkey. The guy never had any social skill, as evidenced by him duking it out with every single one of the original id people. He also sucks ass at making games, as evidenced by everything id released after Quake 2; he's, again, just the coder. An incredibly talented coder, probably the most talented in the industry, but Doom 3 is shining proof that's not enough to make a good game.

 

[MetalCraze]

A voxel engine might be feasible with today's hardware, MetalCraze, though with a lot of limitations.

Yes like voxel graphics looking like 3D from '99 unless you have 1000-core CPU being able to draw voxels just as fast and on the same level as polygonal graphics from 2005.
There is no hardware that is able to draw voxels with any kind of accelleration in existence.

But limitations are GOOD. Limitations are what made Doom and Quake awesome, because the developers couldn't deliver an over the top, realistic experience and had to focus on fun and interesting gameplay and level design.

Consoles are full of limitations. And look the games there are not realistic at all. Must mean limitations are awesome.

 

[BelisariuS.F]

Nobody is making any voxel engine.

Carmack is making a voxel engine. If you don't agree with it, the you can mail him and tell him that. I'm sure he will be grateful that you want to share your knowledge about what he is working on and what he isn't working on.

Unless Carmack also invented magical superpowerful videocards that can draw voxels and is using them.

It isn't being made for the current hardware. Actually, people doesn't even have enough memory on their computers to store the game level, which, being described by voxel octree, needs some insane amounts of GB. That's why Carmack also works on new techniques of compressing level data.

He also sucks ass at making games, as evidenced by everything id released after Quake 2; he's, again, just the coder.

Well, compare that to Romero's creations after Quake. He made mediocre Daikatana, and...

 

[MetalCraze]

Carmack is making a voxel engine. If you don't agree with it, the you can mail him and tell him that. I'm sure he will be grateful that you want to share your knowledge about what he is working on and what he isn't working on.

If Carmack says something that means it's true!
It's like MegaTexture - such a technological breakthrough, except QWET looked like shit.

It isn't being made for the current hardware. Actually, people doesn't even have enough memory on their computers to store the game level, which, being described by voxel octree, needs some insane amounts of GB. That's why Carmack also works on new techniques of compressing level data.

Carmack is awesome just like that, bending reality and physics with a mere thought. Probably learned something from Steve Perlman.

 

[ortucis]

If Carmack says something that means it's true!
It's like MegaTexture - such a technological breakthrough, except QWET looked like shit.

Carmack is awesome just like that, bending reality and physics with a mere thought. Probably learned something from Steve Perlman.

 

[Catbert]

Sceptic: I am not as well-informed about internal id social hierarchy to comment. If you say so, I believe you. The simple fact is that Romero couldn't make things work well without the rest of the id team either.

MetalCraze: You apparently have no idea how current-generation GPUs work and what they're capable of, and it's most certainly possible that GPUs capable of rendering voxel-based scenes are being developed as we speak.
The purpose of MegaTexture was to enable huge outdoor maps, which it did. The fact that the developers failed to harness this new technology to create a fun game with a unique look and feel is another matter. Maybe some other dev can.
And no, consoles are not "full of limitations". The only real limitation on current generation consoles is memory, and that hardly matters when you're developing for the lowest common denominator in hardware. What I'm saying is that developers aren't trying to be creative with the hardware like Carmack was back in the day because they're aiming to develop for multiple systems that are too different, so hardware doesn't need to evolve significantly. Back in Quake's day it they were all just various configurations of a PC.

 

[MetalCraze]

You apparently have no idea how current-generation GPUs work and what they're capable of, and it's most certainly possible that GPUs capable of rendering voxel-based scenes are being developed as we speak.

So they are not there yet and it's only "possible" (meaning they are not being developed) they are in development but Carmack already develops a voxel engine?

The purpose of MegaTexture was to enable huge outdoor maps, which it did.

You call maps in ETQW huge? Are you joking?

And before MegaTexture it was impossible to do huge outdoor maps. Not even on shitty PS2 hardware. No no.

The fact that the developers failed to harness this new technology to create a fun game with a unique look and feel is another matter.

Sounds like the same retardation from DX10/11 apologists. The tech is awesome but nobody in the whole universe managed to use it! Not even original devs of DX10/DX11/MegaTexture/SuperAwesomeShit5.0! I just know it's awesome because marketing told me so!

And no, consoles are not "full of limitations". The only real limitation on current generation consoles is memory, and that hardly matters when you're developing for the lowest common denominator in hardware.

And a shitty CPU.
And a shitty GPU.
And a shitty HDD size.
Meaning everything is limited there.

 

[sea]

That's not exactly what MegaTexture is. Most games tile textures over geometry, which is often plainly visible and generally doesn't look good. Developers do a few things to get around the limitations of tiling - better texture work with fewer obvious seams, vegetation, convenient placement of objects in a game environment to hide repetition, decals, blending with other textures, etc. With a lot of work and raw horsepower you can get around those problems, but it's more demanding because you have to load tons of individual objects into memory (and it's also why texture pop-in, as seen in Unreal Engine games, is so common).

MegaTexture, though, creates one giant texture for the world rather than thousands of individual ones, and streams that data in and out of memory as needed. The clear advantage is that it's possible for artists to hand-paint details over textures uniquely, meaning that environments can have a more unique, less copy/paste feel to them, effectively reducing what would be the need for. According to Carmack, there's also a lot of back-end performance optimisations and data management systems as well that people will never see, but make development much easier (for instance, textures start out as high-res as possible and then are dynamically mipmapped down by the engine rather than the developer). As I understand it, Enemy Territory used a fairly early version of the technology, and didn't fully show it off as it is in Rage.

 

[MetalCraze]

MegaTexture creates nothing. It's just one big pre-made texture put over the polygonal map which is nothing new.

No different from creating 1000 unique textures. They will use the same amount of resources because it doesn't matter whether you load 1000 bits of 1024000x1024000 texture into the memory or 1000 of 1024x1024 textures.

As I understand it, Enemy Territory used a fairly early version of the technology, and didn't fully show it off as it is in Rage.

Why does Rage look so fucking fugly then?

There are dozens of games using evil "copy pasta" textures (which are not copy pasted in a non-Carmack world of course) and look much much much much better

Looks like Carmack cannot into his own MegaShit?

http://www.ag.ru/screenshots/rage_2011/389259#show
http://www.ag.ru/screenshots/rage_2011/389263#show
http://www.ag.ru/screenshots/rage_2011/382365#show

I mean wtf? It looks worse than even what PS3 can do, let alone XBox360 (not mentioning PC).

(for instance, textures start out as high-res as possible and then are dynamically mipmapped down by the engine rather than the developer)

You do know that mipmapping is done by videocards since forever? No need to do that for artists or engines for a long time now.

 

[Sceptic]

The simple fact is that Romero couldn't make things work well without the rest of the id team either.

True. I wasn't trying to claim Romero was perfect either, just that, from a historical POV, he's the one who set it all up. That he completely failed to repeat this with Iron Storm is another matter, though it certainly doesn't work to his advantage as it makes the id success look like a one-time thing rather than something he's good at no matter the circumstances. In all honesty I have to say the id guy I like most was Tom Hall anyway. He never quite let things go to his head, and while he left before id released their best games, a LOT of his level design went into the best Doom levels. And when both Romero and Carmack were declining hard he went and made Anachronox. That says it all really.

 

[BLOBERT]

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