Filed under: Gaming, Software, Video, WWDC
John Carmack id tech 5 demo from WWDC
Here's the demo of id tech 5, id Software's new graphical engine, running on a Mac at the WWDC keynote. It looks very nice (it should, at 20gb of textures), and Carmack says the engine will allow programmers to come in and get the game right first, and then let their artists loose on it. Levels can be designed before anything else, and then artists can come and design the landscape and the colors around that.
I'm not sure how well that works, but we'll see soon: Carmack also says he'll have this showing on both consoles and desktops (Mac and PC) at E3, as well as "another Mac related announcement" that he can't quite bring himself to tell us about at this point. Considering all of id's games are already available on OS X (released by Aspyr, who have to be shaking in their boots after all the announcements this week), we have no idea at all what that might be.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Havelock Holmes said 9:20AM on 6-13-2007
Hmm...not sure how well that works, you say. Kinda think that if John Carmack likes it, it probably works pretty damn well indeed. ;)
Reply
Mike Schramm said 9:47AM on 6-13-2007
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.
Reply
JeffDM said 11:39AM on 6-13-2007
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.
Reply
Joe said 12:57PM on 6-13-2007
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.
Reply
Donald Burr said 1:50PM on 6-13-2007
You should have said, "...released by Aspyr, who have to be *quaking* in their boots..." Get it... quaking... Quake? Oh never mind...
Reply
scott kirkwood said 3:58PM on 6-13-2007
i dont get it. why is aspyr shaking in their boots? i mean besides boot camp, and vmware and parallels?
Reply
aaron said 1:06AM on 6-20-2007
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.
Reply