This is taking on a very odd light... proceed!

Programming::~Fredric(const Annoy_Ance)

quote: Original post by Lance

Just to clear some things up.

While I will certainly admit, John Carmack is talented - he did not invent raycasting and certainly not interactive walkthrough 3D environments. The concepts behind raycasting have been around for decades in constructive solid geometry and in academia much of the concepts he utilized were described in one paper or another. Carmack was simply the first one to glue them together and get it to run on a 386...

I have to agree with Lance. I want to go a bit further though. When most of you say John Carmack created the FPS, do you mean for the PC? Possibly, but sorry he did not create the genre itself. I was playing FPS games on consoles way before Wolfstien3D came into being.

Don''t get me wrong, I admire Carmack, Abrash, etc... but lets get the history right, they did NOT create FPS, LOL...

I''m done, flame away...




-Miraj

> John Carmack also was the 1st to implement curved
> surfaces in a game engine he is why is started
> programming!!!

That actually wasn''t much of a jump. They already had the method, he was merely the first to use it is real-time. Also, curved surfaces aren''t actually worth that much... in the end they are created out of polygons anyway, because the method takes the curve and aproximates it with polygons based on the size of the object after it''s been projected onto the screen (i.e. the closer you get, the more it subdivides the polygons). You could always just start with a high-poly-res model in the first place. It''s really not a particularly revolusionary thing... sorry to burst your bubble.
However, even though that specific thing was not much of an occomplishment, I do think that Carmack has done some really great things. The main one, I believe, is the 3d engine in the first quake. Do you have any idea how complex that damn thing is? And it''s not just the portal engine, either. The way it uses the pentium chip-set is insane! It uses things in the proccessors in ways that no one had ever thought of before! In fact, Intel does some of the testing on their proccessors with quake (I know, because I have friends who get payed by intel to play Quake; no joke!).
Carmack also did a similar thing with 3d-Excel; he used the exceleration chips in ways that not even the designers intended them to be used for!
All I have to say is that Carmack is a great thinker and programmer when it comes to interacting with hardware, but I don''t think that he''s nearly as good as some people think when it comes to the more theoretical stuff.

-Whistles innocently-

Ok... I still think JediKnight was one of the most fun FPS''s there was... apart from that irrelevent comment this is what I have to say: John Carmack is a bloody brilliant coder, I don''t know much about the details.

But what about the creator of populous??? Peter molyneux!!! The guy behind Bullfrog, maker of countless excellent games!
Doesn''t he deserve credit too? Before you tell me I''ve got everything I know this is a possibility... I don''t know if he does just design or coding or both... but whatever, he is a genius in his area, and doesn''t have long hair =)

I was going to rant on for a bit but I''m getting sleepy, no caffeinated drinks apart from coffee (blergh) handy and I can''t remember what I was gonna say =)

J2xC

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About time I put something funny here? I think so too...

quote: Original post by rroach

I just finished reading the article on Romero and his employees yesterday and I cannot say that I''m very impressed. These guys have not grown up yet and figured out that life is more than programming video games for 16 - 18 hrs a day. If you are programming this much every day weeks on end, you need to get a life. (snip...)

Daikatana is an exceptionally bad case, but crunch time is a fact of life in the professional game industry.

Good or bad, there are deadlines to meet and publishers to keep happy, and you WILL work 14 hours a day for weeks on end unless you are either a) very lucky or b) writing Deer Hunter. That''s life.

I think many of you are confusing game programming with game design. As others have said, Carmack is not a game designer. He is a programmer. He can program anything he wants, and works on many projects, including Linux drivers. He and Abrash worked well together, but Abrash is more of a coder, and Carmack is more of a software/algorithm designer. Bottom line though, Carmack is always on the cutting edge of technology, getting it to work in real time where others can''t.

And whether he works 18 hours a day has nothing to do with anything. Just about every industry leader does that. Just because we would go crazy after a while of doing that doesn''t mean others will. And that''s what sets them apart. If it was contest about who''s had the most life experiences, he would lose big. But it isn''t. Parcels is one of the best NFL coaches, but he''s admitted that''s about all he knows. His whole life is football. Carmack is the same way, and anyone at the top of their field is too.

Rock

quote: Original post by rroach

I just finished reading the article on Romero and his employees yesterday and I cannot say that I''m very impressed. These guys have not grown up yet and figured out that life is more than programming video games for 16 - 18 hrs a day. If you are programming this much every day weeks on end, you need to get a life. We all need time away from the machine to let the subconcious work on the problems that we have encountered for that day. Your brain will sometimes do alot more work when you give it a rest.

You cannot expect to program like this for days and days and not introduce bugs into your code. This is probably one reason why Diakitana is still in their office and not on the shelves.

FPS games are cool for awhile, but how much can you be saturated with them before you wish someone would come up with an original idea. (Just a rant of my own.)

P.S. For a comparison, go see the latest postmortem on Gamasutra about Age of Kings and see what happens when you do things right. These guys are selling games by the millions and they are not programming their lives away.

Bear in mind that Age of Kings is barely changed from its predecessor, Age of Empires... and by some accounts, they did some 18hr days when they developed that too

Long hours are a sad fact of life in an industry where a publisher can say "Get that on the shelves by (some arbitrary date) or your funding stops."...

Peter Molyneux does indeed code on the games he creates. He is also the man that comes up with the main idea behind the game, which is then expanded upon by the rest of the development team. He now owns a company named Lionhead Studios in the UK which is making a game called Black & White which looks like it might just be the best game ever

Check out www.lionhead.co.uk for more info.

How do I know all of this information - well, last year I went to Lionhead Studios for the day and saw them all coding Black & White and shook Peter Molyneux''s hand

( we need a long-hair icon for messages. )
IT''S THE HAIR PEOPLE, THE HAIR!!
:-)
Remember Samson from the bible?

( I''ll duck the flames I''ll get for that comment hehe )
But seriously, most of the stuff that''s said here makes sense. ( apart from my posts )

Carmack is just a damn good programmer and designer. I remember reading Abrash''s book ''zen of graphics programming'' with the comment that Carmack wrote three 3D engines in two weeks just to see if they could work.

The guy is sick.. sick I tell you!
But he gets the results too (even though I think Quake3 is just Wolfenstein++ ).

Vallis:

Lucky!

I wouldn''t have mentioned his name without some information... I did know about B&W & lionhead.... just wasn''t sure I knew what exactly he did.

And I don''t in the least bit doubt B&W being a great game! Just look at the other games molyneux was responsable for: DK, populous and theme park being prime examples... the only game I can think of that wasn''t brillian he was responsible for was genewars, and even that, to many people was a good game...

J2xC

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About time I put something funny here? I think so too...