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Full transcript of John Carmack's QuakeCon 2005 Keynote

Ruzbeh

Banned
Ok, I'm getting confused, but what role does John Carmack play in the development of games? I thought he was the guy who codes awesome code and doesn't do any game designing at all.
 

Azih

Member
Gah edited for stupid grammatical error. Sony FANBOY trolling of Carmack.


Carmack's lack of appreciation for A.I is a big issue though, any play through of Halo will show that good A.I can do way more than a page of C code Doom guy A.I.
 

eso76

Member
Apenheul said:
You're so perfect

Yes, i'm quite handsome too and i know how to make a good coffee.

Seriously though, i am not a sony fanboy in the slightest and i can't help listening in admiration when this guy talks about technology and hardware.
At the same time JC only sees things from the perspective (or maybe he puts things in this light because he has to sell 3d engines :p) of someone who gives way too much importance to appearence and sounds completely unable to think of situations where a slightly more advanced ia, a slightly more accurate physics simulation, could be turned into clever, refreshing game mechanics.



The fact he's so important and influent in the industry, but has obviously no clue in game design upsets me for some reason. I'm not saying it's his fault, mind you...but if the game genres have somewhat standardized, that's also because the industry gives too much importance to people like him, to game design schools where you're taught the "rules" you have to follow for your game to be 'fun' and too little credit to ideas, new concepts.

I am also attracted to nice graphics, i am the kind of person who might decide to buy some utterly bad driving game only to admire its' beautiful replays; that would somewhat satisfy me in a way, but it wouldn't trick me into thinking the game is good.
I agree when he says presentation can't be separated from the experience. I've always thought those who claim gameplay is everything and graphics don't matter at all are hypocrites who don't realize how many times they have been playing the exact same formula under a different presentation, getting very different emotions from the experience.

Also, he seems to think IA is nothing but a list of different scripted actions designers 'record' and assign enemies, which involves no processing power. That's absolutely not true anymore, with complex IA which requires enemies' field of vision to be simulated accurately, or requires some "analyzing" the surroundings to see if there's any structure that can be used as cover (and i'm not talking some scripted 'cover spot') or some element that can be shot in a way the physics engine will make it fall onto your head. It's certainly much more difficult figuring and coding ways to use processing power for advanced AI rather than scripting thousands different actions, but it has to be tried.
I don't think we should settle with " we don't have enough cpu power to simulate everything anyway, let's just fake some of it, and with the resources this will save us
we'll display some neat looking flock filter". That's exactly the philosophy responsible for the fact games have mostly advanced from an aesthetical pov while basically remaining the same, gameplaywise.
 
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