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John Carmack: RAGE Probably Won’t Support Dedicated Servers

Nathan Grayson — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 02:26:28 -0600

Well, we now have absolute proof that at least one member of the PC gaming community wasn’t living in the hornets’ nest Infinity Ward stepped on when it announced that Modern Warfare 2 won’t support dedicated servers. Unfortunately, that one person is none other than id Software’s John Carmack.

“It’s not cast in stone yet, but at this point no, we don’t think [RAGE] will have dedicated servers,” Carmack told Variety’s Cut Scene blog. “The great thing is we won’t have to be a pioneer on that. We’ll see how it works out for everyone else.”

If it’s any consolation, RAGE is primarily a single-player game. But then, knowing id, we imagine that the game’s multiplayer component will still be better than most.

Guess we’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we?

RAGE: Beta? Nuh-Uh. Demo? Probably.

Nathan Grayson — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 03:27:43 -0500

Racing and shooting? Sometimes at the same time? Gee whiz, that sounds complicated. Surprisingly, though, id Software’s Todd Hollenshead thinks RAGE can pull off such a tricky balancing act in only one go and – as such – sees no need for an open beta. He said as much in an interview with VG247.

“I doubt there will be an open beta,” he stated, simply.

Well, what about a demo, then? RAGE may look, sound, and perhaps even taste great, but what if we’re still not sold on it? Is there hope for us yet?

“The demo question is hard to answer, because I don’t know what the development cycle will be like. We don’t have anything against demos or tests; we typically do that – probably – to a greater extent than almost anybody else in the industry, so my guess would be that we will have something, but that’s far from set in stone,” said Hollenshead.

So then, what will the demo be called? MILD IRRITATION?

Er, yeah... So, uh, what's the deal with airline food?

QuakeCon 2009 Day One Roundup – New RAGE Trailer, Quake Live Subscriptions, and… Doom 4?!

Nathan Grayson — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 00:07:16 -0500

Day one of id Software’s annual ode to the art of frag is in the books, and as with any slain beast, that which was inside it (usually blood, sometimes candy, but – in this case -- news) is now out in the open for all eyes to see. So, without any further ado, here’s today’s installment of the QuakeCon Times.

Premium service coming to QuakeLive, Carmack confirms – There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch, and Quake Live’s learning that lesson the hard way. According to id’s John Carmack, in-game ads simply couldn’t rocket-jump the game into profitability, so a subscription-based tier was needed. Fortunately, it’s optional, so – whether you’re filthy-rich or dirt-poor – blowing anonymous people into tiny giblets will always be a viable option.

New RAGE trailer makes us feel another emotion: envy – Guys and gals who are play-testing this game right now, we hate you. RAGE looks amazing, but one can only watch a trailer so many times before they start longing for something more. Luckily, we hear RAGE will include that newfangled “gameplay” feature that so many games these days support. Now if only we could try it out…

Carmack says id will put three AAA titles into development – So let’s see, that’s RAGE, Doom 4, and…? Don’t think id’s trying to pull a fast one on you, though; even Carmack and co. don’t know what their third team’s up to – mostly because they haven’t decided yet. Odds are, though, we won’t find out for quite some time, especially because…

Want to see Doom 4? Wait until QuakeCon 2010, says Hollenshead – Sorry, Doom fans. As a reward for your patience after last year’s announcement, you get an IOU. “When we show it to you you’re gonna love it,” Hollenshead added, only breaking our hearts further.

So, that’s that – for day one, anyway. QuakeCon still has plenty more fight left in it, though, and we’ll be on the show floor, bringing you all the news as it happens.

id Software CEO: Rage Coming in 2009 (Update: False Alarm)

Nathan Grayson — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 05:09:34 -0500

Update: Looks like we (along with a few other websites) spent too much time losing ourselves in Hollenshead's beautiful blues and -- hearts full of hope -- skimmed over his real meaning entirely. Maybe if they'd stop making these alarm buttons so red and shiny, we'd be less tempted to press them so often.

“When it’s done,” you’re done. Go running back to Duke Nukem Forever. You knew what this was.

While speaking with GameTrailers TV at last month’s DICE Summit, id Software CEO Todd Hollenshead gave gamers the signal to look out over the horizon, because Rage is a comin’.

When asked whether his company’s latest monosyllabic murder simulator would blow its top in 2010, Hollenshead replied, “No, we'll be out this year."

Well, that’s good enough for us. Rage will be published by Electronic Arts and will probably aid F.E.A.R. 2 and Sadness in helping some website establish a “Best Game Ostensibly about a Vague, One-Word Emotion” award category for their best games of – take of whiff of that new release window smell – 2009. We can’t wait to hear more.

Captain Obvious: The Internet is Filled with User Rage

Paul Lilly — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 08:11:52 -0600

Tread carefully fellow surfers, for there are angry netizens all throughout the web. Apparently, the anonymity the internet provides has users flinging insults and saying things online they wouldn't otherwise say in a face to face confrontation. The epiphany comes courtesy of a CNN report, which points out that blogs and forum posts often times "descend into ad hominem attacks, insults, and plain old name-calling." Welcome to the internet, CNN.

The news site put a lot of research into its report and is worth reading if for no other reason than to see a major news outlet devote a paragraph to "lulz" and what the term means. True credit for this one goes out to The New York Times Magazine, who as CNN points out published a story about trolls back in August. As one ex-troll told the publication, "Lulz is watching someone lose their mind at their computer 2,000 miles away while you chat with friends and laugh."

And it's not just caffeinated teens who are responsible for internet-rage. CNN references the recent account of a 43-year-old Japanese woman who killed her online "husband's" avatar after he divorced her. And don't forget those "celebrity gossip sites [that] are full of snarky comments about stars."

Our response to the 1,200-world write-up? "No s*%t." Hit the jump and tell us yours.

Image Credit: Flame Warriors by Mike Reed

Carmack Lied, Rage Will (Probably) Be Digitally Distributed

Nathan Grayson — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 22:19:10 -0500

At this year's QuakeCon, programming god John Carmack turned an entire Internet's worth of heads with his announcement that Rage would only storm your PC's walls via DVD-ROM. Well, kids, it's time to un-cry those salty tears, because id intends to digitally distribute its latest first-person beauty after all.

"We haven't quite worked through our electronic-distribution," said id Software creative director Tim Willits. "John Carmack [id co-founder] made a comment about the media size, which unfortunately wasn't exactly correct because we haven't crossed that bridge yet. He said it was going to be too large to download, and I was thinking to myself, 'You know, uhhhhh, people can do lots of things.'"

"Rage won't break the Internet. Our relationship with Valve and our stuff on Steam has been very successful for us. A lot of the older games that we had to fix to work on newer operating systems allowed us to make them current. I had a Steam account on my machine at work, and if I wanted to load up old Wolfenstein or Doom at work, I [would] load it up on Steam because of DOSBox and all that stuff. And it's actually pretty awesome. We've been very successful with that."

"We haven't figured out what we want to do yet. But I do want to fix the fact that John said [digital distribution is] not going to happen. What I'm saying is that's not true."

Left hand, meet right hand. Again.

id: All Versions of Rage Scaled Back as Concession for Xbox 360 (Update)

Nathan Grayson — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 20:48:45 -0500

Update: Looks like this one got blown out of proportion. Willits, after a glance at his inbox, released the following statement: "During my talk at Austin GDC I mentioned that we originally wanted to have around five or six smaller wasteland environments but later decided instead to have two larger wastelands - mostly because we were going to be shipping on two DVDs for the 360 and felt that it would play better with one large wasteland on each disc so there would be no loading between wastelands. Not loading levels while you drive around is a much better decision regardless of platform. There was NO CONTENT removed from RAGE because of the 360--NONE AT ALL. Moving from multiple wastelands into fewer but larger wastelands was a far better decision and is actually giving us more gameplay in the game. We feel the 360 is a great platform and will provide a fantastic Rage experience."

So, nothing to see here. Move along.

Carmack and co. already tempered the force of this blow at QuakeCon, but a punch in the mouth is still a punch in the mouth, no matter how many fewer teeth are scraping the bottom of your glass of milk afterward. Said id Software lead designer Tim Willits at the Austin Game Developers Conference:

"The PC is limitless in the amount of data you can put on it.The PS3 has about 25GB. But the Xbox 360 roughly has 6 to 8 GB of data. We're hoping we can squeeze the game down to two discs for the 360 version."

"I wouldn't say the overall story was changed in any way in order to fit on the Xbox 360 version," Willits explained, "but how the player experiences Rage's story has been altered."

Foremost, he said, the game's overall structure has changed significantly. Whereas before, Rage featured "several" wastelands in which players could ~~run~~ race and gun, now only two remain. Don't worry, though; the two wastelands have been split into multiple, hardware-friendly instances, so it'll be just like traveling through multiple areas!

Somewhat perplexingly -- though probably in order to wave the game out the door by "When it's done" instead of "When your great grandchild begins balding" -- id elected to take the razor to all three versions of the game, as opposed to merely the Xbox edition.

This, it would seem, is only the beginning of a very slippery slope.

Exclusive John Carmack Interview, Part 2: Nvidia vs Intel vs ATI

Will Smith — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 15:55:25 -0500

Click here for the first part of the interview!

Here’s the second part of our exclusive QuakeCon interview with John Carmack. In the first part of our conversation, Carmack discussed his hopes for Quake Live and the id Software’s new gaming direction in Rage. This time around, he gets more into the heady technical stuff with his thoughts on Nvidia’s CUDA, physics accelerators, general purpose computing, and ATI’s rumored Fusion technology.

MaxPC –Can we talk about PhysX and GPUs and Cuda and stuff like that for a sec?

John Carmack – I was well known as not being a supporter of the PhysX accelerators. It’s always felt like a gimmicky plan with people setting up a company to be acquired. For years, the tack has been what do you do with any time Intel delivers something more with processors and more cores? It’s never really proven out right and there’re a lot of reasons for it.

For one thing you can’t scale AI and physics in general with your gameplay, while with graphics, you could scale. Without scaling, you can’t design a game that requires fancy AI and then turn off the fancy AI for the low end systems because practically that’s not possible. Similarly for physics, if it’s anything other than eye candy, you also can’t scale. If the building is going to fall down you need to know whether you’re going to be able to get past it on the high end or the low end.

So what’s happened of course is that PhysX is degenerated to fancy eye candy. You got your fields of grass, you got your walls of blocks that come tumbling down and things that aren’t crucial to the actual game, and that is just a fancy cookie that you throw at the player, which admittedly has some value. So in terms of the general purpose acceleration it was clear even when AGEIA was starting, that we knew that the graphics processors are going to be getting more generalized, and we never thought that they had any special sauce in their hardware that was fundamentally going to be better.

So what’s going on with the Cuda approach is and I think Nvidia is being very wise about their approach where they’ve brought in something early on so some people could start getting some things done with Cuda. So they’ve got a community of high performance computing research guys working with Cuda and it’s great because it’s so important to get that out of your labs and into a customer’s lab and just seeing how things work in the real world. They’re going to have several generations of extra insight over Intel by the time larrabee ships.

Right now the switch between GPU and Cuda is a really heavyweight switch. In the next-gen stuff, it’s much more lightweight so you can toggle back and forth, and in the future, it’s all mix and match. They’ll [eventually] run GPU and Cuda processes simultaneously and it opens up a lot more avenues for computation. There are still some fundamental worries that I have about vector length on there where all of these things that are set up to be GPUs first they’ve all got very long vector lengths. So while you may have a 128 sort of banks of threads, each of them are doing 32 things at the same time. I still see a huge potential for miserable utilization where even if you could suck up all the threads, if you don’t have something that can use wide vectorization, you wind up with only 5% utilization.

MPC – that combined with the heavy switch is disastrous right now, right?

JC- Yeah, you can’t really use it in a game right now. It doesn’t make a lot of sense but it’s going to in the near future and by the time we get to next-gen console stuff all of that is going to be a nice finely integrated stuff. Right now you have this continuum from a general purpose processor like we’ve got as the main CPUs on the 360 or the PS3, then you’ve got like the Cells which are general purpose processors but they’re all wide vector with no caches special DMAs. Then you got things like Cuda thread processors and each one is more hassle than the other and the one before that.

The Cuda processors are moving up, clearly. They’re going to get caches and more general purpose programming abilities but they’re not going to be all the way to what larrabee is doing which is really independent processors with a couple of cores and a couple of threads. It’s going to be interesting to see how all that plays out where, my suspicion is that for a lot of applications they’re designing and benchmarking for, Intel will wind up having good performance. But the internals of it, the software that they write for it is pretty ugly while the code that you could write for Cuda is pretty clean.

I think Intel is going to be fine on the peak performance numbers and will probably have a process advantage, which is always one of Intel’s big hammers. So it’s going to be interesting how Nvidia’s greater experience in utilizing all this parallelism plays out versus the kind of might that Intel is going to have in their raw process advantage in applications.

MPC – Where does ATI fall into this?

JC – We’ve gotten the pitches on the Fusion project and how they’re putting it together with the more general purpose stuff, like with the AMD CPUs on it. We have less insight into that than we have into other projects. In general ATI doesn’t have quite a good developer relations support as we get from Intel and Nvidia. Again, it’s going to be interesting to see how all that plays out. I know their market share isn’t doing real well on the different PC cards.

MPC – Do you think an open API will help them?

JC – It’s a tough thing because I think that trying to spec an API for experimental hardware like this is really tough, and like I said last night it’s very different than what it was with graphics where we had examples of all that research that had been done and we knew how to do it and we were just cleaning it up and doing it better.

But in this type of situation, we really can’t say that anybody that gets up there and clearly acts like they know exactly the way things are going, is just putting up a good front because the work just hasn’t been done yet. Nobody has written major applications that are working on these things, and one of these approaches may turn out to be fundamentally better than the other. We just don’t know which one.