NewsCaptain Obvious: The Internet is Filled with User Rage
Posted 11/05/08 at 08:11:52 AM by Paul Lilly
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.
NewsCarmack Lied, Rage Will (Probably) Be Digitally Distributed
Posted 10/01/08 at 10:19:10 PM by Nathan Grayson
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.
Newsid: All Versions of Rage Scaled Back as Concession for Xbox 360 (Update)
Posted 09/16/08 at 08:48:45 PM by Nathan Grayson
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.
FeaturesExclusive John Carmack Interview, Part 2: Nvidia vs Intel vs ATI
Posted 08/08/08 at 03:55:25 PM by Will Smith
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. Here’s a snippet:
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.
Click through for the good stuff.
Featuresid Software's Programming Director and Lead Designer Explain why Rage will Kick Ass
Posted 08/08/08 at 01:50:57 PM by Will Smith
John Carmack may be the face of id Software, but he’s definitely not the only person working on Rage or the next Doom. We spoke with Robert Duffy, id’s Programming Director, and Matt Hooper, Rage’s Lead Designer, about their upcoming shooter. The conversation delves into topics ranging from art design to multiplayer modes, and touches on the challenges of developing on both console and PC hardware. Here’s a snippet:
MaxPC: With the combination of driving and fps gameplay, what’s fun and exciting that we should look forward to that we haven’t seen before in games?
Matt Hooper: The thing you haven’t seen is really the mix. We’re still id software and we’re still making this intense, action shooter game. Those moment to moment, finely crafted action sequences – running around with the coolest weapons and shooting guys – that’s still there. We invented that and we’re still going to do that really well. Just around the office everyone likes a lot of cool games. What we did was pull in these different elements that don’t detract from the action but add this little bit of flavor, and the vehicles are a part of that. The vehicles are almost an extension of your FPS avatar – you’re “running” around with a vehicle. It has armor on it, it carries a cool weapon, you fire that weapon, and the other car blows up in a cool satisfying explosion. It’s not as far removed as you would probably initially think. It all feels really good together.
Click through for the entire interview!
FeaturesExclusive John Carmack Interview: The Godfather of Frag's Plan to Save PC Gaming
Posted 08/05/08 at 08:33:08 PM by Norman Chan
We interviewed John Carmack back during this year's E3 when id first announced a partnership with EA to publish their next shooter, Rage. We had a chance to sit with Carmack again at this past weekend's Quakecon, where we followed up on our earlier discussion to squeeze more details out of the legendary game developer. Carmack dished out more details about their plans for Quake Live (including their high expenctations), the technology powering Rage and the next Doom, their cancelled Darkness project, and his thoughts about the current modding community.
Take a seat, grab a Mountain Dew, and click through for the full interview. You'll even find out which aspects of id Tech 5 may not be as powerful as id Tech 4!
NewsQuakeCon 08: No Digital Distribution for Rage or Doom 4; Rage will be on Multiple DVDs for Xbox 360
Posted 07/31/08 at 08:33:20 PM by Norman Chan
Here's some shocking news just breaking from the Quakecon Keynote: Rage and Doom 4 will not be sold online via digital distribution. Rage, being published by EA, would be an obvious choice for EA's Downloader service, but apparently that won't be the case. The only way to buy the two games whenever they come out is in stores with boxed copies.
Additionally, Rage will most likely ship on multiple game discs for the Xbox 360. The DVD-only format for the Xbox 360 is its biggest limiting factor, since the Xbox 360-formatted discs actually hold 1GB less than standard 4.7GB DVDs (multiplied by two when dual-layered). And since the royalty charge per disc is actually surprisingly high, id hopes that Microsoft will make a concession for Rage, or else the company may actually have to sacrifice texture and asset quality to get the game to fit on fewer than THREE discs. The cost of the 3rd DVD alone would cost millions of dollars with the current royalty rate, says John Carmack.
When comparing the Xbox 360 to the PS3, the more spacious Blu-ray format is the only thing Carmack likes more about Sony's console. Everything else is better on the 360, he says.
More QuakeCon keynote coverage on our Liveblog!
NewsQuakeCon 08: id Tech 6 Will Utilize Hardware That "Doesn't Exist Right Now"; Next-Gen Will Still Be Polygon-Based
Posted 07/31/08 at 08:14:19 PM by Norman Chan
John Carmack gave QuakeCon attendees a glimpse into his thoughts about the next-generation of gaming graphics. id Tech 6, for example, probably won't be coded in Java or any protected language. It also will be designed for hardware that doesn't excist right now. With new discrete graphics players entering the field (Larrabee, Fusion, etc), Carmack knows that the PC space is relavent, and that's where he'll be looking when thinking about coding his next engine.
When considering console technology and the next-generation of consoles (whether it's PS4 or Xbox 720), Carmack actually hopes that the console generation will last twice as long as the previous ones -- though he doesn't think it'll be a reality, as console makers will want to one-up competitors with early releases. Doom 4 will come out for this generation of hardware, but anything after that is up in the air. But one thing he's certain of: the practical approach for people who want to code games that look like today's games but better will be polygon-based.
With CUDA and General Purpose Computing, Carmack says he thinks it's interesting, but he's still waiting to see if there will be other real-application standards to drive graphics. There's no solid background for these new technologies like there was with OpenGL and Direct3D. He sees these technologies as toy research products, and not real applications. It's just like the mid 90s, when graphics were in a period of flux. Billions of dollars are being spent to make bets on the next big thing, but he's worried about years being wasted on speculative architectures.
For more QuakeCon coverage, check our keynote liveblog!
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