Carmack - once and for all

[Logic]

I'm sick of hearing John Carmack flaming so lets clear this up right now:

Once apon a time there was a company called Softdisk who created, with funding from a company called Apogee, the Commander Keen series of games. One member of Softdisk who worked on these games was John Carmack. After the success of the Keen games, some of the members of Softdisk broke off and created their own company, ID. In 1991, ID worked on a 3D game entitled Wolfenstein 3D, as part of a deal with Apogee. It was released in 1992, and essentially revolutionised the gaming industry. The main programmer behind this amazing 3D technology was, of course, Carmack.

As time went on, and ID's (Carmack's) engines got better, the world was treated to, among other games, Doom, Doom 2, and eventually the fully 3D, amazing, Quake, and later, Quake 2, which used hardware acceleration.

Meanwhile, an unknown game company, Valve, was working on Half-Life, which used, and expanded on, Carmack's Quake 1 and 2 engine code. Valve worked on the game with a lot of support from ID and Carmack. The game was successful, and if you're on these forums, you probably liked it.

Some years later, Carmack and Valve are now working independantly on their new games, with their own new technology: HL2, and Doom3. Without Carmack's breakthroughs in 3D gaming, Half-Life would most likely never have been made. Valve's new source engine, and HL2, owes it's existance to Carmack and his engines - Valve learned what they know by using Carmack's code.

So essentially, if you are flaming Carmack, you're flaming the one person that made the existance of HL2 possible. If you truly are a half-life fan, you'll have a lot of respect for both John Carmack AND Gabe Newell, and the other members of both companies, reguardless of what you think of them as individuals.

Sorry for the long post, but I hope some of you out there who didn't know all of this now realise the significance of the role Carmack had in Half-Life's creation.

If I'm wrong about anything, correct me Also, add any interesting gaming history if you know any.

 

[ApocalypseNow]

I agree but...... **** Carmack he can goto hell.... j/k

 

[SidewinderX]

He;s also the founder of Armidillo Aerospace

 

[Llevar]

Originally posted by Logic
If I'm wrong about anything, correct me Also, add any interesting gaming history if you know any.

The fact that his team made the first 3d game gives him no more credit than what it says. If it wasnt id then it might have been valve that made the first 3d shooter game. I mean the idea of having 3d games wasn't all that far fetched before we actually had them.

I'm sure the guy is a really good coder but most of his claim to fame is due to luck and word of mouth as there were probably many companies toying with the idea of making 3d games. His just happened to draw the right kind of attention at the right time in the same way CS did when it started out as just another crappy mod and grew to be so big.

Also Wolfenstein isn't really 3d.

 

[Lifthz]

Anyone flaming Camrack needs to get a life in the first place.

 

[Kamakiri]

And he also made Daikitana.

Hhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaahah

game = joke

hahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahahhaah

 

[mannyfresh027]

GET THIS BOOK

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/t...102-8010647-0852140?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

IT KICKS ASS

its basically what that guy said but its really good

 

[Jagermeister]

Why even start another thread?

:rolling:

 

[Logic]

Re: Re: Carmack - once and for all

Originally posted by Llevar
The fact that his team made the first 3d game gives him no more credit than what it says. If it wasnt id then it might have been valve that made the first 3d shooter game. I mean the idea of having 3d games wasn't all that far fetched before we actually had them.

I'm sure the guy is a really good coder but most of his claim to fame is due to luck and word of mouth as there were probably many companies toying with the idea of making 3d games. His just happened to draw the right kind of attention at the right time in the same way CS did when it started out as just another crappy mod and grew to be so big.

Also Wolfenstein isn't really 3d.

I agree that 3D games would have happened with or without Carmack, but Wolfenstein, being the first game of it's kind, spawned every other fps game in existance. If another company developed the first 3D games, would Valve have had the same inspiration for HL, or the same opportunities to create it? They certainly weren't confident enough to write their own engine at the time, since they used Quake technology.

Also, if it were true that Carmack's fame only comes from luck and being in the right place at the right time, he wouldn't be continually at the forefront of gaming technology. No other coder has given as much as he has to the gaming industry.

Wolfenstein isn't fully 3D (characters etc are still 2D sprites), but it was the first game to render 3D environments in real time.

 

[Tropico]

Re: Re: Carmack - once and for all

Originally posted by Llevar
The fact that his team made the first 3d game gives him no more credit than what it says. If it wasnt id then it might have been valve that made the first 3d shooter game. I mean the idea of having 3d games wasn't all that far fetched before we actually had them.

Common thats not a valid argument thats like saying that if pasteur didint discover penecilin then someone would have discoverd it.Its just fungus in a bowl...

Give him or all of them credit for what they created.

 

[Xtasy0]

Originally posted by Kamakiri
And he also made Daikitana.

Hhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaahah

game = joke

hahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahahhaah

uhhh.....that was john romero, who worked with john carmack, but romero did daikatana after he left iD...

 

[figge]

Originally posted by Lifthz
Anyone flaming Camrack needs to get a life in the first place.

Camrack > Carmack

 

[Evgeny]

John Carmack deserves a lot of credit. ok so lets say if he didnt create woldferstein 3d and someone else made the first fps. now, would that someone also likely write quake1-2-3 all of which were the best engines at the time. and would that someone also be likely to have a title like doom3 coming up (and you all very well know, that even though were all very excited about HL2, doom3 will also be a great title, especially for those of us with top-of-the-line systems).
now where am i going with this is the fact that you cant start saying "what if". fact is that he has. and those achievements should be given credit for. especially considering all the above-mentioned contributions also belong on his achievment list.

 

[subs]

Carmack is a skinny little nerd, but u gotta admit he is one cool guy whose done great things.

SO i agree with thread.

Oh yah i think i would laff like insane if i saw some1 like Carmack sitting in a freaking ferrari.

 

[Llevar]

Re: Re: Re: Carmack - once and for all

Originally posted by Tropico
Common thats not a valid argument thats like saying that if pasteur didint discover penecilin then someone would have discoverd it.Its just fungus in a bowl...

Give him or all of them credit for what they created.

Actually there's a big difference. Carmack's team didn't "discover" 3d games they were simply the first to implement it in a reliable fashion. I bet you any money there were 3d army simulations way before wolfenstein which is mostly sprites trying to look 3d anyway.

As I said before, I'll give him credit for his coding skills but I think his role in 3d gaming history is largely due to favoring circumstances.

 

[$pazmatazz]

Re: Re: Carmack - once and for all

Originally posted by Llevar
The fact that his team made the first 3d game gives him no more credit than what it says. If it wasnt id then it might have been valve that made the first 3d shooter game. I mean the idea of having 3d games wasn't all that far fetched before we actually had them.

I'm sure the guy is a really good coder but most of his claim to fame is due to luck and word of mouth as there were probably many companies toying with the idea of making 3d games. His just happened to draw the right kind of attention at the right time in the same way CS did when it started out as just another crappy mod and grew to be so big.

Also Wolfenstein isn't really 3d.

If we all follow this logic, then technically no one deserves any credit for anything, because someone else would have just made it later if the original person hadn't.

 

[Logic]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Carmack - once and for all

Originally posted by Llevar
As I said before, I'll give him credit for his coding skills but I think his role in 3d gaming history is largely due to favoring circumstances.

His role in 3D gaming history is entirely due to his ability as a coder. Lets say, hypothetically, someone else beat him to it, and created a 3D game before he did. I doubt that would have stopped him doing what he later did, constantly pushing 3D gaming forwards with the quake series. Give credit where credit's due.

 

[Llevar]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Carmack - once and for all

Originally posted by Logic
constantly pushing 3D gaming forwards with the quake series.

It's called running a business.

 

[Jschultz]

Actually Wolfenstein 3d wasnt the first FPS , it was Catacomb abyss, but that was also made by ID.

 

[Logic]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Carmack - once and for all

Originally posted by Llevar
It's called running a business.

What point are you trying to make? Every other company in the game industry has the opportunity to create games that revolutionise, or push forward, the industry, if they are capable of doing so. Do you honestly believe that the success of all of ID's games have been solely due to "favorable circumstances"? Carmack has managed to code engines that are generally better than the other engines around at the time, and the majority of other companies have either used his engines, or created lesser ones. Don't you think this demonstrates that he deserves the recognition he's recieved?

 

[Prince of China]

Carmack lives like a celebrity-he owns a Ferrari(or more)

 

[Apos]

Valve worked on the game with a lot of support from ID and Carmack.

This is misleading. id's contact with Valve was actually fairly limited. Gabe and (I think) Mike Abrash knew each other from Microsoft, and Abrash (who left id soon after Quake because he wanted to make virtual networked worlds, not FPSes, and he felt that id wasn't going to innovate this because the team just wanted more FPS action) recommended Valve's project to id as a promising liscence. The head of the teams met, and though they didn't really hit it off, Valve went home to Seattle with id's code. If id hadn't existed, it's likely they would have just liscenced another engine and made much the same sort of game: though of course it wouldn't have been as solid and nice looking as their Q1 base allowed it to be.

Valve also added A LOT to the basic engine. The current version of HL has very very reworked network code, a very different renderer (their software renderer is considered one of the best ever, and was a major rewrite), not to mention all the AI, animation tech, GUIs, movement code, physics, etc. They decided that a solid rendering base was a good head start to not worry about, but by the end of the project they ripped Q1 up (and a bit of Q2 code they bought on the side) and rebuilt it again to do what they wanted.

So yes, having the source for Q1 and a bit of Q2 was very helpful. But it was hardly like Carmack was around leading Valve by the hand. In fact, Carmack at the time actually didn't expect to see much from Valve at all: he was surprised by the quality of the final title (remember, it was originally supposed to be a B-list title, not a huge seller, just a nice profit to have for a real project). Valve got occasional support from id as time went on, but mostly to clarify comments in the code and so on.

Valve's new source engine, and HL2, owes it's existance to Carmack and his engines - Valve learned what they know by using Carmack's code.

This is mostly not true either, and even Carmack would agree that it was silly. The things Carmack does are not secret magic spells. They are good, solid, and well-optimized implementations of much talked about technologies in the industry that everyone learns about, including Carmack: that's why Carmack spends a lot of his time arguing for one thing or another, one direction or another.

So again, this comment acts like Carmack is the only one in the world who knows how to program a 3d engine, and his ways are the only ways, and you have to learn at his feet to know anything. The reality is that Source was mostly made by people Valve hired en masse at the end or after the production of Half-Life (and I think those people learned more from the mistakes of Lithtech than anything), and it is programmed from the gound up, not taking a base from Q1 (which would be pretty silly, given that even Carmack uses very very different techniques now in his engines)

Valve perhaps owes some of its financial success to the solid base of the Q1 engine (though if it hadn't been Q1, it would have been something like the Unreal engine), but Source is most certainly their own unique achievement.


That said, Carmack is a geniunely fantastic programmer, and everyone in the insutry recognizes it. There are plenty of people of his caliber out there, but few who have been so dedicated to FPS games for so long.

However, it should be remembered that the major success of Doom (and, to a lesser extent Wolf) wasn't just because it was one of the first really fun, creepy FPS, but also because it had a really brilliant marketing strategy that was pretty new at the time for this new kind of game: the shareware demo. They didn't actually sell as many copies of Doom as one would think, but their installed user base was absolutely HUGE. There are many FPS games from that era that are, arguably, better games and even better engines. But none became a phenomenon the way Doom did: mostly because they were niche games (Marathon for Macs only, a bunch of Underworld games for D&D people), and Doom had broad appeal, was easier to learn, and was just killing action: no real story to like or not like and get in the way of the game itself. Great, winning formula.

 

[Boogaleeboo]

Ultima Underworld.

 

[Logic]

Thanks for clearing that up apos. I did make a few assumptions including that ID supported Valve through the development process

I still believe, though, that Carmack's engines have had a huge impact on the industry. So many games (many very successful ones) use ID's engines, and many of them may never have seen the light of day without having these engines available to be used.

So while Carmack may not be solely responsible for HL's existance, HL certainly is what it is today because of it's use of the Quake code. Whether it would have been as good or successful, or whether Valve would have created such a masterpiece (and later the source engine) without it, we'll never know, but we certainly can't deny Carmack's contribution. He does deserve credit for his accomplishments, if only for the fact that he accomplished them.

 

[Apos]

I still believe, though, that Carmack's engines have had a huge impact on the industry.

Without any doubt. Anyone who doesn't acknowledge his contribution is simply foolish.

It may not be true that he always made the right decisions or the best implementations: he's not God. But he has been totally unavoidable in the industry for years, and his decisions have had major impacts on both software and hardware development.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned is his support of OpenGL. While another person may have been in his place, that person is unlikely to have been so gung-ho about defending and pushing OpenGL. In fact, I'd go as far to say that without him, 3d cards wouldn't have widely launched as early as they have, but they also wouldn't have had to keep supporting OpenGL. OpenGL is definately a great API, and Carmack may well have been right that it should have been where the bulk of the industry has gone. However, that said, at this point it might well be better for everyone if there weren't two major APIs to worry about for hardware GPU manufacturers and driver developers.

 

[Llevar]

Apos just said pretty much what I was trying to say all along only I didn't want to go on for a page explaining it. Carmack is a great coder, granted, but he is not some programming god to whom we owe everything we have in the current gaming industry. As Apos correctly pointed out, much of his teams success belongs to their marketing strategy and relied on word of mouth in wolf and doom days. Most of the techniques used in engines made by Carmack are and were widely known. The question is who has the resources to develop them.

Especially nowadays, developing a really successful title costs millions and many companies who have all the talent to create games that are no worse than doom 3 are not able to do so because of financial limitations. It is because id made a lot of money during the golden age of the gaming industry that they could afford to make quake, and quake 2, and quake 3, and now doom 3. I am a professional programmer myself and I'm willing to bet money that I could write any part of the doom 3 engine given the opportunity and desire to do so. I believe it is necessary to recognize the guy's contribution to the industry but one should stay realistic in his assessments.

 

[Guest]

http://www.3dnews***/documents/3911/carmack.jpg

"im pretty I made quake and stuff" :cheers:

 

[Apos]

Heh heh. The Festival of Books.

 

[Logic]

Well, I humbly withdraw the statements I made that are unrealistic and\or incorrect

It is certainly true that the shareware method of distribution did allow for Doom to be as successful as it was. I guess the reason I'm defending Carmack, though, is that considering what he is capable of (represented by what he's created), I believe that whether or not Doom was as hugely successful as it was, he would still have gone on to create great things, and have a huge impact on the industry. He's talented and dedicated, and it's got him where he is today, on his own merit.

I created this thread originally because I was getting irritated by immature flaming of Carmac simply because Doom 3 is an obvious competitor to HL2, and I have to say, I'm glad it's turned into an intelligent debate - I've actually learned something for a change :cheers:

And Llevar - are you working in any game companies, or do you have interest in doing so?

 

[nsxownzme]

Bah! Who gives a shit?
Carmack can go to hell for pushing the release of D3 to 2004.

 

[Logic]

*sigh*

 

[GRIMEY]

Another pointless topic about nothing.

I don't know why I bother.

 

[Logic]

Explain how it's pointless\about nothing, and what you were bothering with! :|

Personally (thanks to apos\llevar) I have a better understanding of ID's connection to Valve and HL, so I'm sure there are some other people out there who have been interested too.

What's pointless, are posts like "Who gives a crap" or "Another pointless topic about nothing" that add nothing to the discussion.

 

[BlumenKohl]

Look at some of you children.

When given the opportunity to learn something new, something you didn't know, you choose to say "who gives a crap" and "it's pointless"

And then when you get into an argument, you start to pull crap out of your ass.