John Carmack id tech 5 demo from WWDC

The idea is to promote concurrent work by allowing a level to be built in a general sense then worked over/play tested and debugged piece by piece (perfecting a physics puzzle etc) without needing all of the artwork to be completely finished while concurrently allowing artists to work on the same level tweaking and perfecting to their hearts content or their deadline, whichever comes first. While this is definitely not a new idea tools to allow this to be done more easily could promote a simplified development model.

i dont get it. why is aspyr shaking in their boots? i mean besides boot camp, and vmware and parallels?

You should have said, "...released by Aspyr, who have to be *quaking* in their boots..." Get it... quaking... Quake? Oh never mind...

Sooooooo many people are missing what Carmack is trying to say.

This ID TECH 5 will speed up the production and development of games. Especially those that are pushing the bar in regards to graphics.

We all know how painfully the development times are for these next-generation games.

I hope there's a good reason for not doing concurrent work that isn't being explained. From what I hear, the artistic part is what takes the most work, and you don't want to delay that any longer than you have to because time to market is an important consideration. The artistic design includes the architecture, landscaping, character & prop design.

Yeah, but I can see problems with doing the game mechanics first and then doing the art-- they're supposed to complement each other. Art shouldn't be an afterthought. But you're right, he's the expert.

Hmm...not sure how well that works, you say. Kinda think that if John Carmack likes it, it probably works pretty damn well indeed. ;)