John Carmack resigns from id Software
John Carmack recently joined Oculus VR to serve as their chief technology officer, but remained at id Software. However, Carmack found working two jobs quite difficult, and has officially announced his resignation from the Doom and Quake developer.
John Carmack recently joined Oculus VR to serve as their chief technology officer, but remained at id Software. However, Carmack found working two jobs quite difficult, and has officially announced his resignation from the Doom and Quake developer.
"I wanted to remain a technical adviser for Id, but it just didn't work out. Probably for the best, as the divided focus was challenging," he said on Twitter.
"John Carmack, who has become interested in focusing on things other than game development at id, has resigned from the studio," id studio director Tim Willits said in a statement to Polygon. "John's work on id Tech 5 and the technology for the current development work at id is complete, and his departure will not affect any current projects. We are fortunate to have a brilliant group of programmers at id who worked with John and will carry on id's tradition of making great games with cutting-edge technology. As colleagues of John for many years, we wish him well."
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Andrew Yoon posted a new article, John Carmack resigns from id Software.
John Carmack recently joined Oculus VR to serve as their chief technology officer, but remained at id Software. However, Carmack found working two jobs quite difficult, and has officially announced his resignation from the Doom and Quake developer.-
Wow
I'm not sure how to feel about this. I credit id games for my love of computers. Quake really got me looking behind the curtain and digging into tools. Eventual I had more fun setting up services, lans and building maps and skins then actually playing.
Over the years what I found special about id games was lost. Definitely after q3, but even that was not the same. While I always appreciated the technical merits of the id game engines, the soul was missing. There was something that the other members of the team brought that got lost at some point. I dont know who was responsible or when it happened, but it did.
With all that being said it is still sad to know that he has moved on.
RIP id -
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Wow. Truly the end of an era. However, Oculus is a company moving in the right direction.
Any chance we'll be seeing id tech 6, outside of branding purposes? Do you think those Kotaku reports of id being turned into a tech company if they can't get Doom together could even happen now since Carmack's left? I guess id's essentially a new studio leadership-wise. Is Kevin Cloud still there?-
Am I alone in thinking the Oculus Rift is a neat idea for a toy or gimmick but not really something that's important?
I admittedly have not tried one (despite having been at QuakeCon where they had it a few times) so I might change my tune but I personally have some thoughts on what I like about gaming, where I want to see gaming headed, and none of it involves strapping something to your head and looking like a bozo.
I mean yeah if it winds up being this optional method of experiencing something (kinda like how weird mouse peripherals are optional ways of experiencing something) then that's fine but when I see comments like this saying that they're "moving in the right direction" it makes me think that the VR helmet things we see in sci-fi visions of what video games are like in the future is actually what people think they want and I just can't see it taking over.
I mean what we really have here is Carmack who is rich as fuck and likes crazy expensive toys deciding that he wants to play somewhere else now (and kudos to him, I'd love to just do whatever the fuck I want and get paid for it) but I don't know if it's possible to not read more into it.-
At the very least, it's a cool experiment, right? He probably wants a change. id seems to have had some serious trouble the past couple of years with the Rage and Doom 4 teams having problems gelling on the rebooted project. I mean they were hiring a creative director a couple of months ago!
Carmack's a legend. He's done enough. id used to the best games company in the world, but that was a long time ago. It must be liberating leaving all that history behind and starting over at a relatively new company. -
I assumed it was a gimmick until I tried one. It still needs work, higher rez, games designed for it from scratch... but it's the real deal. It really convinces your brain in some fundamental way that you are in a different place. It's kind of scary but it really does change everything... who knew that all that VR hype and dreaming of the past 20 years would turn out to be real...
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There's two major things that make what they're doing unique:
#1 is accurate head-tracking (sub-20ms updates). This increases immersion massively for the players in a way that most people do not appreciate until they experience it.
#2 is accurate depth-perception. Unlike Nvidia's 3D mode, the depth here has a significantly better convergence point that follows your head movement (it's still not accurate, aka, it does not track eye movement to lock a proper focal and convergence point) - But it is a significant step up from the flawed convergence point parallax problem that static-positioned monitors have.
The immersion factor is massive, but until you've experienced it you do not understand how much more it can add to many games. Trying it out with something like Amnesia or Project C.A.R.S. is... you have to experience it to understand why people who use or develop for it are calling it the future of display technology. Until you have, you just will not understand. -
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Yeah you sound like Dean Kamen telling us how one day the Segway will take over the world and people will design cities with it in mind.
Segway being one of the comparison points as to why Google Glass is going to bomb. At least with normal people anyway.
Or for that matter people who think tablets are going to replace all PC's one day.
It's not going to happen.-
The segway offered almost no value proposition to the average person, the current equivalent would be CastAR - cool tech/solution, but useless to most people. Almost everyone could have an experience they enjoy in VR, its just a matter of if it gets sidelined into the cultural ghetto of video games, since those are the tools and skills that will be applied first.
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What I showed was a technology demo, written from scratch, but using the RAGE content creation pipeline and media. We do not have the full RAGE game running on iOS, and we do not plan to try. While it would (amazingly!) actually be possible to compile the full-blown PC/console RAGE game for an iPhone4 with some effort, it would be a hopelessly bad idea. Even the latest and greatest mobile devices are still a fraction of the power of a 360 or PS3, let alone a high end gaming PC, so none of the carefully made performance tradeoffs would be appropriate for the platform, to say nothing of the vast differences in controls.
-John Carmack
http://www.bethblog.com/2010/10/29/john-carmack-discusses-rage-on-iphoneipadipod-touch/
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I disagree completely. He might have not adjusted to the realities of the industry (which is an entirely different issue) - or maybe he's thinking too far ahead for the general audience (having a game running at 60 FPS WILL be important) - but to claim that technically he's not relevant, sorry, but you're mistaken.
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Let me get this straight. You think the technology that allows artists to choose exactly where they spend all of their memory budget while maintaining 60 Hz is proof that John has lost his edge?
I realize people are not in love with Rage for various reasons, but technologically it was pretty amazing. As a result, I hear developers talking about megatexturing with a lot of regularity. -
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He threatened to walk out of the company several times unless the team agreed to make the game he wanted to make. He also used his position to have people fired that disagreed with his design principles.
He might have not had a direct influence on minute game design details, but his ideas dictated what games id have made since Romero left.-
Bullshit, Adrian Carmack was the asshole who disagreed with the rest of the team, John Carmack then threatened to leave if Adrian didn't cut out his crap. Adrian was the one who fired someone (Paul Steed), and it's no surprise he got forced out of id later for being such a shitbag.
John Carmack has typically always said he designs technology to support the developers and artists (which is why he focused on giving the artists more freedom with MegaTextures instead of masturbating over every new whizbang trick like CryTek). The two examples of him making design decisions I can think of are the lack of a use key in Doom 3 instead favoring the mouse driven GUI system, and the focus of atmosphere in Doom 3...which unfortunately got gutted by the time the final game came out. The leaked alpha was a far more compelling experience...movement was slower, making you pay more attention to the environment...your pistol fucking exploded when you fired it, the sounds in the final game are pathetic...zombies would get back up, so after creeping through some corridors and taking out a few zombies, you'd suddenly realize they've gotten back back up and are creeping on you. And of course you could stand on them so they couldn't get back up, which was just really funny.
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hey, id software is hiring!
http://jobs.zenimax.com/locations/view/1 -
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http://www.tucows.com/ shutting down.
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Holy shit! Well this just makes me more excited for the future of Oculus!
He said himself in a recent interview that there is almost no room for more innovation in 3D renderers comparatively speaking. He wants to work where he can make the most difference, and he probably felt like he was just iterating at id. I can't wait to see what he does with the next rift!