Interviews// John Carmack: The SPOnG interview
'The 360 really is a joy to develop on'
Is this technology going to be an integral part of the Quake engine, and can you tell us about forthcoming projects?
Our upcoming title is a brand-new IP, and we’re not talking about it yet. It’s an internally developed project which actually uses a newer version of that technology. I did the stuff for Splash Damage maybe a year and a half ago. At the time, it was only useful for the terrain, which is a special case with this kind of deformed flat surface, and you couldn’t use that technology for the buildings and the vehicles, and stuff like that. They’re still kind of struggling to get the memory requirements for that down right, because the terrain is still managed by a small block of memory for the megatexture, but everything else is still dealing with static allocations on things.
About six or eight months later, I finally had the little brainstorm breakthrough that let me write a system that gives the same capabilities, but applied to everything in the world, and that is a core piece of our internal technology.
Is the next project a joint one with other developers, as with most recent id games?
No, this is just our core title. At work right now, we have Splash Damage on Enemy Territory and Raven working on a Wolfenstein sequel that’s just under way, and this project is going to be a brand-new title. We don’t currently have anyone working on a Doom follow-on – I’m sure there will be one at some point, but it’s not in production right now. We are hoping to diversify a bit more. We have our Wolfenstein, Doom and Quake franchises, which are all very successful, but we’re trying to make a new high-end franchise. We’ve also got the cellphone work that I’m doing, which is a new franchise also.
Will that be a bit like the original Wolfenstein?
It’s going back to about that kind of level – the technology is in between Wolfenstein and Doom. It’s interesting to have the freedom to be able to go in and do something in six months, rather than four years. I miss that, because when it takes four years to make a game, like it did with Doom III, you just don’t get to learn your lessons and pay attention to them on your next title.
Do you think back to the old days, because you kicked off the whole fps thing, and now you have guys like Valve who started off modding your technology?
I don’t spend much time thinking about things like that. I think that it’s a healthy industry – there’s a lot of competition in it, and that’s good. You’ve got a lot of smart, talented people working hard and producing great products. I’m not one of the people that goes, “Ah, the good old days,” or whatever. If people from ten years ago could be transported to this E3, they would just be blown away.
Are there still bits of technology that you haven’t quite worked out how to make?
One of the big things that I’ve found regards graphics rendering, technology-wise. There are a couple of dozen things that I have tried this generation, and you look at a lot of them and they are kind of neat, but they don’t really matter. We are at a point where you can spend a lot of effort on graphics technology, and it’s not going to fundamentally change what the game does for you. I do think the unique texturing is one of the things that really will matter, but I think of the twenty-something things that I’ve tried, there’s little bits of value here and there, and they add up to a reasonably good dollop of extra features.
I am hoping at some point to hit a breakthrough for infinite geometry. I’ve got the infinite texturing, with this megatexture stuff, going well, but it still doesn’t have geometry necessarily resolved to the same level. It may just be one of those things where, when the entire fidelity of the geometry is at a level that you can effectively filter it – which may not be until the next generation – then it may be solvable in a similar manner. Or there may just be better methods that I haven’t hit on. Everybody has their own management strategy, just like everybody has a texture manager, but page virtual texturing isn’t really something that you manage – it just works. And we don’t yet have something like that for geometry, to allow you to model as much as you want and have it just work.
What’s your take on the next-gen consoles, because they are getting close to the PC in power terms?
Very much so. While it’s true that right now you can buy a PC that’s probably twice as high-performance as a 360 or a PS3 - and the hype machine has blown that all out of proportion about how it’s some radically different thing – but basically, you’re getting a really high-end PC’s power in a several-hundred-dollar console box. But you can get effectively three times the performance if you’re targeting a fixed platform than if you’re targeting the PC space. And we saw that well with Doom III – the Xbox version looks pretty darn good, and it’s running off something that’s effectively a third of the power and memory of the typical PC that you would play Doom III on.
I really do like the consoles this generation. Microsoft especially: the 360 really is a joy to develop on. I like Microsoft’s CPU better than the Cell CPU. I prefer a little bit less peak power but having them be symmetric, rather than having the asymmetry between the Cells and the main processor, but still, it’s nit-picking. They’re both great sets of hardware, they’re both extremely powerful, and they’re both going to be nice to target.
What about the supporting software with the devkits? Because a lot of people have been unkind to Sony’s.
I think they’re already unhappy with me for saying in every interview that Microsoft’s development tools are really, really nice. Because the corollary is that Sony’s aren’t.
Microsoft is always talking about cross-platform multi-play. Is that something you’ve always wanted?
I’m not so sure about that: they’re talking about everything from cellphones all the way up to 360. I’m enjoying the cellphone work, but you do have to look at that as its own thing. The people who think about it as a scaleable experience are missing the boat, and they’re the ones doing the bad design on there. But I would be thrilled to have Microsoft’s development environment also present on the cellphones. Right now, the Windows mobile platform has a tiny market share – you couldn’t really target that for a game. I’d be thrilled if Microsoft teamed with Qualcomm or someone, and made all the Brew stuff as good as Microsoft’s native development stuff.
Our upcoming title is a brand-new IP, and we’re not talking about it yet. It’s an internally developed project which actually uses a newer version of that technology. I did the stuff for Splash Damage maybe a year and a half ago. At the time, it was only useful for the terrain, which is a special case with this kind of deformed flat surface, and you couldn’t use that technology for the buildings and the vehicles, and stuff like that. They’re still kind of struggling to get the memory requirements for that down right, because the terrain is still managed by a small block of memory for the megatexture, but everything else is still dealing with static allocations on things.
About six or eight months later, I finally had the little brainstorm breakthrough that let me write a system that gives the same capabilities, but applied to everything in the world, and that is a core piece of our internal technology.
Is the next project a joint one with other developers, as with most recent id games?
No, this is just our core title. At work right now, we have Splash Damage on Enemy Territory and Raven working on a Wolfenstein sequel that’s just under way, and this project is going to be a brand-new title. We don’t currently have anyone working on a Doom follow-on – I’m sure there will be one at some point, but it’s not in production right now. We are hoping to diversify a bit more. We have our Wolfenstein, Doom and Quake franchises, which are all very successful, but we’re trying to make a new high-end franchise. We’ve also got the cellphone work that I’m doing, which is a new franchise also.
Will that be a bit like the original Wolfenstein?
It’s going back to about that kind of level – the technology is in between Wolfenstein and Doom. It’s interesting to have the freedom to be able to go in and do something in six months, rather than four years. I miss that, because when it takes four years to make a game, like it did with Doom III, you just don’t get to learn your lessons and pay attention to them on your next title.
Do you think back to the old days, because you kicked off the whole fps thing, and now you have guys like Valve who started off modding your technology?
I don’t spend much time thinking about things like that. I think that it’s a healthy industry – there’s a lot of competition in it, and that’s good. You’ve got a lot of smart, talented people working hard and producing great products. I’m not one of the people that goes, “Ah, the good old days,” or whatever. If people from ten years ago could be transported to this E3, they would just be blown away.
Are there still bits of technology that you haven’t quite worked out how to make?
One of the big things that I’ve found regards graphics rendering, technology-wise. There are a couple of dozen things that I have tried this generation, and you look at a lot of them and they are kind of neat, but they don’t really matter. We are at a point where you can spend a lot of effort on graphics technology, and it’s not going to fundamentally change what the game does for you. I do think the unique texturing is one of the things that really will matter, but I think of the twenty-something things that I’ve tried, there’s little bits of value here and there, and they add up to a reasonably good dollop of extra features.
I am hoping at some point to hit a breakthrough for infinite geometry. I’ve got the infinite texturing, with this megatexture stuff, going well, but it still doesn’t have geometry necessarily resolved to the same level. It may just be one of those things where, when the entire fidelity of the geometry is at a level that you can effectively filter it – which may not be until the next generation – then it may be solvable in a similar manner. Or there may just be better methods that I haven’t hit on. Everybody has their own management strategy, just like everybody has a texture manager, but page virtual texturing isn’t really something that you manage – it just works. And we don’t yet have something like that for geometry, to allow you to model as much as you want and have it just work.
What’s your take on the next-gen consoles, because they are getting close to the PC in power terms?
Very much so. While it’s true that right now you can buy a PC that’s probably twice as high-performance as a 360 or a PS3 - and the hype machine has blown that all out of proportion about how it’s some radically different thing – but basically, you’re getting a really high-end PC’s power in a several-hundred-dollar console box. But you can get effectively three times the performance if you’re targeting a fixed platform than if you’re targeting the PC space. And we saw that well with Doom III – the Xbox version looks pretty darn good, and it’s running off something that’s effectively a third of the power and memory of the typical PC that you would play Doom III on.
I really do like the consoles this generation. Microsoft especially: the 360 really is a joy to develop on. I like Microsoft’s CPU better than the Cell CPU. I prefer a little bit less peak power but having them be symmetric, rather than having the asymmetry between the Cells and the main processor, but still, it’s nit-picking. They’re both great sets of hardware, they’re both extremely powerful, and they’re both going to be nice to target.
What about the supporting software with the devkits? Because a lot of people have been unkind to Sony’s.
I think they’re already unhappy with me for saying in every interview that Microsoft’s development tools are really, really nice. Because the corollary is that Sony’s aren’t.
Microsoft is always talking about cross-platform multi-play. Is that something you’ve always wanted?
I’m not so sure about that: they’re talking about everything from cellphones all the way up to 360. I’m enjoying the cellphone work, but you do have to look at that as its own thing. The people who think about it as a scaleable experience are missing the boat, and they’re the ones doing the bad design on there. But I would be thrilled to have Microsoft’s development environment also present on the cellphones. Right now, the Windows mobile platform has a tiny market share – you couldn’t really target that for a game. I’d be thrilled if Microsoft teamed with Qualcomm or someone, and made all the Brew stuff as good as Microsoft’s native development stuff.
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Comments
phoo 30 May 2006 04:56
1/3
The problem with Carmack talking about console development is that he's not a console developer.
He's giving this impression that the tools matter more than the raw power. On a PC environment this is true. New hardware is constantly being added and it takes every last bit of DirectX and OpenGL for devs to keep on top of things. Those who use the latest tools on the latest hardware end up with the most technobabbly FPS which sells games (and graphics cards and memory and operating systems). Making the whole thing run efficiently needs to be automated becase there's no time to do it by hand before the new hardware's out.
On consoles the situation is virtually the reverse. Look at the PS2. It's situation was such that no developer could be crazy enough to ignore it despite horrible development tools. But Sony knew this. In fact Nintendo knew it before them.
The trick with console hardware is to remember it has a life cycle. Time can be spent to perfect squeezing out every last kernel of power from the silicon. Having a dynamic of development is important even on fixed hardware: games better look better at the end of the generation than at the beginning. This is achieved through archaic arcitecture and development tools. The genius is Sony spent every last transistor on raw power instead of efficient loading (etc.). Tapping it will be difficult, but by the end of the generation it will be done, and we'll constantly have a compelling (graphical) reason to buy new games. 360 hardware on the other hand has great tools for maximising efficiency from the get go. I.E. games won't ever look a whole lot better than they do now. Why'd they do it?
2 reasons:
1. Developers will only spend the time squeezing the power out if your system is dominating, which MS couldn't garantee (and Sony sorta could).
2. MS wanted to attract developers (particularly those neive PC veterans) away from Sony. Developers would like to go where the tools are. This plan may have failed - they attracted them, but did not really put them off the competition. The fact of the matter is, even though devs love nice tools, the ones that feed them know where the sales are.
As for his preference of symetric chips, of course he likes it, it's more like a PC. Cell requires a new programming mindset. Different is troublesome, but it's also better for certain things. The certain things Sony is leveraging it for.
As for buying a comercial PC to match these consoles?
Have you ever seen a comercial tri-core chip? Heck, have you ever seen a 3.2 GHz commercial powerPC chip. Or a 3.2 GHz multicore anything for that matter? unless it's called 360, I didn't think so. Further, it would take a ridiculaously wild departure for Intel and AMD to make PC chips that can do what Cell can do. GPUs and Ram may be one thing (or rather two), but nothing on the market can touch the 360 CPU for the moment, and nothing will touch Cell for a longer while.
He's giving this impression that the tools matter more than the raw power. On a PC environment this is true. New hardware is constantly being added and it takes every last bit of DirectX and OpenGL for devs to keep on top of things. Those who use the latest tools on the latest hardware end up with the most technobabbly FPS which sells games (and graphics cards and memory and operating systems). Making the whole thing run efficiently needs to be automated becase there's no time to do it by hand before the new hardware's out.
On consoles the situation is virtually the reverse. Look at the PS2. It's situation was such that no developer could be crazy enough to ignore it despite horrible development tools. But Sony knew this. In fact Nintendo knew it before them.
The trick with console hardware is to remember it has a life cycle. Time can be spent to perfect squeezing out every last kernel of power from the silicon. Having a dynamic of development is important even on fixed hardware: games better look better at the end of the generation than at the beginning. This is achieved through archaic arcitecture and development tools. The genius is Sony spent every last transistor on raw power instead of efficient loading (etc.). Tapping it will be difficult, but by the end of the generation it will be done, and we'll constantly have a compelling (graphical) reason to buy new games. 360 hardware on the other hand has great tools for maximising efficiency from the get go. I.E. games won't ever look a whole lot better than they do now. Why'd they do it?
2 reasons:
1. Developers will only spend the time squeezing the power out if your system is dominating, which MS couldn't garantee (and Sony sorta could).
2. MS wanted to attract developers (particularly those neive PC veterans) away from Sony. Developers would like to go where the tools are. This plan may have failed - they attracted them, but did not really put them off the competition. The fact of the matter is, even though devs love nice tools, the ones that feed them know where the sales are.
As for his preference of symetric chips, of course he likes it, it's more like a PC. Cell requires a new programming mindset. Different is troublesome, but it's also better for certain things. The certain things Sony is leveraging it for.
As for buying a comercial PC to match these consoles?
Have you ever seen a comercial tri-core chip? Heck, have you ever seen a 3.2 GHz commercial powerPC chip. Or a 3.2 GHz multicore anything for that matter? unless it's called 360, I didn't think so. Further, it would take a ridiculaously wild departure for Intel and AMD to make PC chips that can do what Cell can do. GPUs and Ram may be one thing (or rather two), but nothing on the market can touch the 360 CPU for the moment, and nothing will touch Cell for a longer while.
YBQ 30 May 2006 06:03
2/3
I believe Carmack is completly right here, tools are very important part of devlopment and when it comes to Microsoft no one does a better job, why do you think we have so much devlopement on Windows than any other operating system.
Having said that its developers who can can squeeze everything out of a harware, just look at the games on PS2 6 - 7 years ago, there is a hell of difference. I think Carmack is talking about the first impressions here, when I started developing on PS2 it was a pain in the ass, however for X-Box, there was not much change from PC (though Xbox is just PC).
So in my opinion its the tools, tools and tools which can decrease the devlopment time, and it always the delopment time /cost that matters for any project.
Having said that its developers who can can squeeze everything out of a harware, just look at the games on PS2 6 - 7 years ago, there is a hell of difference. I think Carmack is talking about the first impressions here, when I started developing on PS2 it was a pain in the ass, however for X-Box, there was not much change from PC (though Xbox is just PC).
So in my opinion its the tools, tools and tools which can decrease the devlopment time, and it always the delopment time /cost that matters for any project.
tyrion 30 May 2006 08:01
3/3
YBQ wrote:
why do you think we have so much devlopement on Windows than any other operating system.
For exactly the same reason there are so many games on the PS2? The market is huge!
Great tools on a marginal platform will not cause huge numbers of developers to write huge numbers of software packages.
Developers will still write large amounts of software for a dominant platform even if it has s**te tools. See the PS2, which, as you point out, had awful tools to start with, but large numbers of games none the less.
In the end, you have to weigh up the development costs against the potential sales. If it takes 20% longer to develop for PS2 over XBox, but the market is four times the size then it's not an issue.
Please note that I'm not a console developer and that 20% figure was pulled out of the air as an example. However, I do write software for a living and can understand the basic parameters of console development.