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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Carmack: "PS3 Better Than Anything... Except 360"

Before taking his comments too seriously I think there are some crucial aspects you need to understand before giving value to Carmack's opinions.

Carmack was amongst the first of a new breed of game programmers with a decreased knowledge of computing technology. Before this most top game programmers needed to fullly understand what they were doing and how the actual hardware they were working with really operates.

Carmack grew up in the age of technologically very obsolete IBM compatible computers running a very flawed and featureless operating system called MSDOS (which was based on stolen source code of an almost equally flawed operating system called CP/M). There were more advanced systems out there like Apple's GUI based operating systems and more importantly with regard to gaming the Amiga computer which especially shocked Apple's head of Macintosh development at the time for its far ahead of its time functionality and multimedia power.

Quoting Apple's at the time head of Macintosh development regarding the past: "When the Amiga came out, everyone [at Apple] was scared as hell." Apple could not figure out how Amiga Inc could have created the Amiga computer which allowed advanced features such as a fully pre-emptive multitasking 32-bit GUI-supporting operating system with the ability to display thousands of colors and output high quality stereo audio at a time when CLI-only PCs could only beep and like the 2-color soundless Mac could only run 1 application at a time. The Amiga went on to become very popular in Europe as a multimedia and games plaform and for advanced niche markets which required more advanced systems such as at NASA for rocket telemetry, the special effects movie industry and early efforts with regard to virtual reality experiments (including military simulators). The IBM compatible PC took a long time to match the Amiga's capabilities and the underlying architecture was so very obsolete it was really a hell having to operate those systems directly.

But eventually simpler computer languages were developed which more and more hid the underlying obsolete flawed x86 PC architecture from a new wave of less knowledgeable programmers (compare this to translators). Fast forward to today you don't per se need to understand much with regard to computing technology to create a game with many multi-featured pre-baked development tools. For example basically even you don't need to understand anything with regard to computer technology, understanding the underlying architecture to create a fully featured game in for example LittleBigPlanet 2 and the true knowledge of many game “programmers” today don't really extend far beyond this.

John Carmack first received much credit with the release of the very popular game "Doom" at the time. This game greatly helped to put the IBM PC on the map as a gaming platform. This was some 8 years after the release of the Amiga platform. Many consider Doom as one of the first and most advanced FPS games ever for its time, although neither of those two statements would be correct: For example there was already a very advanced virtual reality FPS game called Dactyl Nightmare build with Amiga technology predating even Carmack's Wolfenstein 3D. Unlike Wolfenstein 3D, Dactyl Nightmare allowed multiple hight levels (going up stairs), included stereoscopic 3D graphics, motion control sensors for both hand and head tracking (for example allowing the gamer to bend his arm around pillars hiding behind them or looking above or below you by turning your head) and 4 player network play with realtime spoken microphone communication. (Dactyl Nightmare include Death Match and Capture the Flag modes, game modes still popular today).

Despite the facts Carmack received a lot of praise as Doom was one of the best games for in the home at the time, this despite technologically there were already far more advanced games and this technology significantly predates the arrival of Doom by years. Until the arrival of Doom the Amiga basically reigned home computer gaming and of course he was asked if he would create an Amiga port of his game. His reaction was that it would not be possible and this today underlines his technologically incompetence at the time as the easily portable source code of Doom was released to the public and now runs on Amiga computer configurations older than oldest compatible PCs can run the game (actually meanwhile those nowadays also run Carmack's Quake, which needed a far newer top level PC configurations to run than Amigas can through at the time available upgrades).

So IMO it's very important to understand where he comes from and the kind of games developer he actually is before giving too much value to his comments. A person like him needs technology familiar to him and requires not too much knowledge of how the platform actually operates (simplifications and abstractions).



Naughty Dog: "At Naughty Dog, we're pretty sure we should be able to see leaps between games on the PS3 that are even bigger than they were on the PS2."

PS3 vs 360 sales

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The only place I think he went a bit wrong was here "in theory you can do a lot more, but that's where you come to the difference between theory and practice. And given an infinite amount of development time on there, you can craft a program that's gonna work more efficiently on the cells there than on two additional processors on the 360."

Now I'm no programming expert but I gotta figure that's a little hyperbolic. No one so far has managed to do on 360 what Naughty Dog, Guerilla and Santa Monica Studios have done on PS3. And, well, unless those guys have invented worm holes or time travel they seem to have achieved what Carmack suggested would take an infinite (or to put it more mildly an unreasonably long) development time. So ND getting 3 games out in the lifetime of the PS3 each improving on the last, and Guerilla getting 2 games, again the latter improving on the former suggests the developers with the right tools aren't finding PS3 to be a major struggle.

Like anything, what you're used to you find easy to work with. What's new and different takes effort and determination to get to grips with. It's all down to how much you want to try something new. Sounds to me like Carmack is giving PS3 development a good shake and in doing so might make a product on PS3 that's as good or slightly better (because of the Blu-ray being able to fit more stuff on it) than what gets put out on 360. That proves the guy has integrity and takes pride in his work, wanting to get the best out of each machine as possible. And if he does a second project on PS3 then the blood sweat and tears he put into Rage will mean the next game will be a breeze to work on because he will already have tamed the beast, and he might actually have a bit of fun with it.

Now if he comes out and says PS3 is theoretically capable of putting out a game as good as a current (or even 2008) high end gaming PC but it's just too damned hard to do it. Then I'd accept his infinite development time comment with more credulity. But does anyone seriously think PS3 can put out high end gaming PC products?

It will be really interesting to see what id produce for the consoles. If Carmack pushes 360 beyond what has been achieved on PS3 to date then it'll really be something, especially if the Blu-ray advantage with PS3 means he pushes PS3 ever so slightly more. And it will be exciting to see such a result.

If 360 clearly took the graphics crown with Rage then it would serve to really push the Sony's 1st party guys to squeeze more juice out of the PS3, and with Santa Monica and Guerilla both possibly looking at new franchise IP's it could really be something to anticipate. It's about time a 3rd party started challenging the Sony 1st parties.



“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.” - Bertrand Russell

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace."

Jimi Hendrix

 

binary solo said:

The only place I think he went a bit wrong was here "in theory you can do a lot more, but that's where you come to the difference between theory and practice. And given an infinite amount of development time on there, you can craft a program that's gonna work more efficiently on the cells there than on two additional processors on the 360."

Now I'm no programming expert but I gotta figure that's a little hyperbolic. No one so far has managed to do on 360 what Naughty Dog, Guerilla and Santa Monica Studios have done on PS3. And, well, unless those guys have invented worm holes or time travel they seem to have achieved what Carmack suggested would take an infinite (or to put it more mildly an unreasonably long) development time. So ND getting 3 games out in the lifetime of the PS3 each improving on the last, and Guerilla getting 2 games, again the latter improving on the former suggests the developers with the right tools aren't finding PS3 to be a major struggle.

With the arrival of the PS3 you basically heard of conflicting views from developers. You had those who thought the PS3 was horribly complex and those developers who stated the PS3 isn't hard to develop for at all. Basically the developers with a background in games development on console (pre-XBox systems) would find the PS3 not hard to develop for at all and those developers with solely a PC gaming or XBox gaming background would find the PS3's design horribly complex.

The PS3 is easier to develop for than the PS2 or older Nintendo systems, such developers often really went deep into understanding the underlying technology to push the most out of these systems. The PC method of games development was usually extremely inefficient. Basically the used foundating operating system Windows is a huge resource hog to begin with killing a lot of potential CPU cycles and memory usage which could be used for applications and games instead. On top of this you have highly simplified and abstracted programming languages, development tools and game engines which are not optimised for any specific computer configuration (too many different options for consumers to take into account). In addition to this the operating system, tools and game engines at the time were horribly obsolete and inefficient for modern multi-processing. All in all PC gamers only use a small percentage of their PC's true hardware potential. All things considered there is a huge learning curve involved for such PC developers when introduced to PS3 technology.

That's not to say there aren't challenges for console game makers as well. On the PC you see gradual microstep advancements each year. On the console you see major leapfrogging regarding technology advancements every 5 to 10 years. Understanding the underlying hardware will not be hard for such developers at all, nor would it be difficult to port their existing assets, but suddenly they have so many new features, CPU time and memory to their disposal that it still takes many years to take full advantage of the hardware (development of many new game engine components are needed).



Naughty Dog: "At Naughty Dog, we're pretty sure we should be able to see leaps between games on the PS3 that are even bigger than they were on the PS2."

PS3 vs 360 sales

MikeB said:

Before taking his comments too seriously I think there are some crucial aspects you need to understand before giving value to Carmack's opinions.

Carmack was amongst the first of a new breed of game programmers with a decreased knowledge of computing technology. Before this most top game programmers needed to fullly understand what they were doing and how the actual hardware they were working with really operates.

Carmack grew up in the age of technologically very obsolete IBM compatible computers running a very flawed and featureless operating system called MSDOS (which was based on stolen source code of an almost equally flawed operating system called CP/M). There were more advanced systems out there like Apple's GUI based operating systems and more importantly with regard to gaming the Amiga computer which especially shocked Apple's head of Macintosh development at the time for its far ahead of its time functionality and multimedia power.

Quoting Apple's at the time head of Macintosh development regarding the past: "When the Amiga came out, everyone [at Apple] was scared as hell." Apple could not figure out how Amiga Inc could have created the Amiga computer which allowed advanced features such as a fully pre-emptive multitasking 32-bit GUI-supporting operating system with the ability to display thousands of colors and output high quality stereo audio at a time when CLI-only PCs could only beep and like the 2-color soundless Mac could only run 1 application at a time. The Amiga went on to become very popular in Europe as a multimedia and games plaform and for advanced niche markets which required more advanced systems such as at NASA for rocket telemetry, the special effects movie industry and early efforts with regard to virtual reality experiments (including military simulators). The IBM compatible PC took a long time to match the Amiga's capabilities and the underlying architecture was so very obsolete it was really a hell having to operate those systems directly.

But eventually simpler computer languages were developed which more and more hid the underlying obsolete flawed x86 PC architecture from a new wave of less knowledgeable programmers (compare this to translators). Fast forward to today you don't per se need to understand much with regard to computing technology to create a game with many multi-featured pre-baked development tools. For example basically even you don't need to understand anything with regard to computer technology, understanding the underlying architecture to create a fully featured game in for example LittleBigPlanet 2 and the true knowledge of many game “programmers” today don't really extend far beyond this.

John Carmack first received much credit with the release of the very popular game "Doom" at the time. This game greatly helped to put the IBM PC on the map as a gaming platform. This was some 8 years after the release of the Amiga platform. Many consider Doom as one of the first and most advanced FPS games ever for its time, although neither of those two statements would be correct: For example there was already a very advanced virtual reality FPS game called Dactyl Nightmare build with Amiga technology predating even Carmack's Wolfenstein 3D. Unlike Wolfenstein 3D, Dactyl Nightmare allowed multiple hight levels (going up stairs), included stereoscopic 3D graphics, motion control sensors for both hand and head tracking (for example allowing the gamer to bend his arm around pillars hiding behind them or looking above or below you by turning your head) and 4 player network play with realtime spoken microphone communication. (Dactyl Nightmare include Death Match and Capture the Flag modes, game modes still popular today).

Despite the facts Carmack received a lot of praise as Doom was one of the best games for in the home at the time, this despite technologically there were already far more advanced games and this technology significantly predates the arrival of Doom by years. Until the arrival of Doom the Amiga basically reigned home computer gaming and of course he was asked if he would create an Amiga port of his game. His reaction was that it would not be possible and this today underlines his technologically incompetence at the time as the easily portable source code of Doom was released to the public and now runs on Amiga computer configurations older than oldest compatible PCs can run the game (actually meanwhile those nowadays also run Carmack's Quake, which needed a far newer top level PC configurations to run than Amigas can through at the time available upgrades).

So IMO it's very important to understand where he comes from and the kind of games developer he actually is before giving too much value to his comments. A person like him needs technology familiar to him and requires not too much knowledge of how the platform actually operates (simplifications and abstractions).

Then how do you explain the Quake 3 normalize function trick in ASM with a magic number Carmack used? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_inverse_square_root

 

Come on, Carmack is a billonaire because he is one of the best in what he does. You are only a end user, one that discredits anything that doesn't fit your agenda.



Kynes said:
MikeB said:

Before taking his comments too seriously I think there are some crucial aspects you need to understand before giving value to Carmack's opinions.

Carmack was amongst the first of a new breed of game programmers with a decreased knowledge of computing technology. Before this most top game programmers needed to fullly understand what they were doing and how the actual hardware they were working with really operates.

Carmack grew up in the age of technologically very obsolete IBM compatible computers running a very flawed and featureless operating system called MSDOS (which was based on stolen source code of an almost equally flawed operating system called CP/M). There were more advanced systems out there like Apple's GUI based operating systems and more importantly with regard to gaming the Amiga computer which especially shocked Apple's head of Macintosh development at the time for its far ahead of its time functionality and multimedia power.

Quoting Apple's at the time head of Macintosh development regarding the past: "When the Amiga came out, everyone [at Apple] was scared as hell." Apple could not figure out how Amiga Inc could have created the Amiga computer which allowed advanced features such as a fully pre-emptive multitasking 32-bit GUI-supporting operating system with the ability to display thousands of colors and output high quality stereo audio at a time when CLI-only PCs could only beep and like the 2-color soundless Mac could only run 1 application at a time. The Amiga went on to become very popular in Europe as a multimedia and games plaform and for advanced niche markets which required more advanced systems such as at NASA for rocket telemetry, the special effects movie industry and early efforts with regard to virtual reality experiments (including military simulators). The IBM compatible PC took a long time to match the Amiga's capabilities and the underlying architecture was so very obsolete it was really a hell having to operate those systems directly.

But eventually simpler computer languages were developed which more and more hid the underlying obsolete flawed x86 PC architecture from a new wave of less knowledgeable programmers (compare this to translators). Fast forward to today you don't per se need to understand much with regard to computing technology to create a game with many multi-featured pre-baked development tools. For example basically even you don't need to understand anything with regard to computer technology, understanding the underlying architecture to create a fully featured game in for example LittleBigPlanet 2 and the true knowledge of many game “programmers” today don't really extend far beyond this.

John Carmack first received much credit with the release of the very popular game "Doom" at the time. This game greatly helped to put the IBM PC on the map as a gaming platform. This was some 8 years after the release of the Amiga platform. Many consider Doom as one of the first and most advanced FPS games ever for its time, although neither of those two statements would be correct: For example there was already a very advanced virtual reality FPS game called Dactyl Nightmare build with Amiga technology predating even Carmack's Wolfenstein 3D. Unlike Wolfenstein 3D, Dactyl Nightmare allowed multiple hight levels (going up stairs), included stereoscopic 3D graphics, motion control sensors for both hand and head tracking (for example allowing the gamer to bend his arm around pillars hiding behind them or looking above or below you by turning your head) and 4 player network play with realtime spoken microphone communication. (Dactyl Nightmare include Death Match and Capture the Flag modes, game modes still popular today).

Despite the facts Carmack received a lot of praise as Doom was one of the best games for in the home at the time, this despite technologically there were already far more advanced games and this technology significantly predates the arrival of Doom by years. Until the arrival of Doom the Amiga basically reigned home computer gaming and of course he was asked if he would create an Amiga port of his game. His reaction was that it would not be possible and this today underlines his technologically incompetence at the time as the easily portable source code of Doom was released to the public and now runs on Amiga computer configurations older than oldest compatible PCs can run the game (actually meanwhile those nowadays also run Carmack's Quake, which needed a far newer top level PC configurations to run than Amigas can through at the time available upgrades).

So IMO it's very important to understand where he comes from and the kind of games developer he actually is before giving too much value to his comments. A person like him needs technology familiar to him and requires not too much knowledge of how the platform actually operates (simplifications and abstractions).

Then how do you explain the Quake 3 normalize function trick in ASM with a magic number Carmack used? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_inverse_square_root

 

Come on, Carmack is a billonaire because he is one of the best in what he does. You are only a end user, one that discredits anything that doesn't fit your agenda.


Quake 3 is an easily portable high level programmed game. It's even ported to AmigaOS4, MorphOS and I was indirectly involved through the Phoenix Developer Consortium in porting the game to QNX Neutrino.

The port to AmigaOS4 only took 1 developer a few weeks, it provides nothing specifically hardware optimised. Actually I know the programmer who ported the game to AmigaOS4 pretty well (I did dozens of interviews). Usually he is working on more difficult tasks such as operating system kernel development and development tools laying the foundation to make ports possible. The kind of programmers I have ties to include developers who actually design operating systems and development languages. These are the sort of people who really understand the fundamentals of the hardware well.



Naughty Dog: "At Naughty Dog, we're pretty sure we should be able to see leaps between games on the PS3 that are even bigger than they were on the PS2."

PS3 vs 360 sales

Around the Network
MikeB said:

Before taking his comments too seriously I think there are some crucial aspects you need to understand before giving value to Carmack's opinions.

Carmack was amongst the first of a new breed of game programmers with a decreased knowledge of computing technology. Before this most top game programmers needed to fullly understand what they were doing and how the actual hardware they were working with really operates.

Carmack grew up in the age of technologically very obsolete IBM compatible computers running a very flawed and featureless operating system called MSDOS (which was based on stolen source code of an almost equally flawed operating system called CP/M). There were more advanced systems out there like Apple's GUI based operating systems and more importantly with regard to gaming the Amiga computer which especially shocked Apple's head of Macintosh development at the time for its far ahead of its time functionality and multimedia power.

Quoting Apple's at the time head of Macintosh development regarding the past: "When the Amiga came out, everyone [at Apple] was scared as hell." Apple could not figure out how Amiga Inc could have created the Amiga computer which allowed advanced features such as a fully pre-emptive multitasking 32-bit GUI-supporting operating system with the ability to display thousands of colors and output high quality stereo audio at a time when CLI-only PCs could only beep and like the 2-color soundless Mac could only run 1 application at a time. The Amiga went on to become very popular in Europe as a multimedia and games plaform and for advanced niche markets which required more advanced systems such as at NASA for rocket telemetry, the special effects movie industry and early efforts with regard to virtual reality experiments (including military simulators). The IBM compatible PC took a long time to match the Amiga's capabilities and the underlying architecture was so very obsolete it was really a hell having to operate those systems directly.

But eventually simpler computer languages were developed which more and more hid the underlying obsolete flawed x86 PC architecture from a new wave of less knowledgeable programmers (compare this to translators). Fast forward to today you don't per se need to understand much with regard to computing technology to create a game with many multi-featured pre-baked development tools. For example basically even you don't need to understand anything with regard to computer technology, understanding the underlying architecture to create a fully featured game in for example LittleBigPlanet 2 and the true knowledge of many game “programmers” today don't really extend far beyond this.

John Carmack first received much credit with the release of the very popular game "Doom" at the time. This game greatly helped to put the IBM PC on the map as a gaming platform. This was some 8 years after the release of the Amiga platform. Many consider Doom as one of the first and most advanced FPS games ever for its time, although neither of those two statements would be correct: For example there was already a very advanced virtual reality FPS game called Dactyl Nightmare build with Amiga technology predating even Carmack's Wolfenstein 3D. Unlike Wolfenstein 3D, Dactyl Nightmare allowed multiple hight levels (going up stairs), included stereoscopic 3D graphics, motion control sensors for both hand and head tracking (for example allowing the gamer to bend his arm around pillars hiding behind them or looking above or below you by turning your head) and 4 player network play with realtime spoken microphone communication. (Dactyl Nightmare include Death Match and Capture the Flag modes, game modes still popular today).

Despite the facts Carmack received a lot of praise as Doom was one of the best games for in the home at the time, this despite technologically there were already far more advanced games and this technology significantly predates the arrival of Doom by years. Until the arrival of Doom the Amiga basically reigned home computer gaming and of course he was asked if he would create an Amiga port of his game. His reaction was that it would not be possible and this today underlines his technologically incompetence at the time as the easily portable source code of Doom was released to the public and now runs on Amiga computer configurations older than oldest compatible PCs can run the game (actually meanwhile those nowadays also run Carmack's Quake, which needed a far newer top level PC configurations to run than Amigas can through at the time available upgrades).

So IMO it's very important to understand where he comes from and the kind of games developer he actually is before giving too much value to his comments. A person like him needs technology familiar to him and requires not too much knowledge of how the platform actually operates (simplifications and abstractions).

Are you really a software developer (hobbyist or otherwise)?

Cos I just want to say that a lot of this is nonsense.

"and this today underlines his technologically incompetence at the time as the easily portable source code of Doom was released to the public and now runs on Amiga computer configurations older than oldest compatible PCs"

and

"A person like him needs technology familiar to him and requires not too much knowledge of how the platform actually operates (simplifications and abstractions)."

Surely these are jokes? The man wasn't afraid of new tech at all. Hell, the original Quake 1 editor was built on a neXt step workstation, because he needed the extra power for the precomputation number crunching. Some of Doom was developed on it too, if I recall correctly.

Carmack's speciality has been to take popular platforms and get the most out of them. Nobody ever claimed they were the best in class. NES hardware scrolling was superior to what PCs could achive at the time, but Carmack's Commander Keen engine managed to produce fast EGA scrolling for PCs. Quake 1 had radiosity based worlds running on a 486.

So he likes the X360... It's not at all because it's like a PC (or at least the kinds he is most knowledgeable of). I don't remember him doing anything for 3-core power PCs before the X360. It's well known he preferred OpenGL over early varients of D3D. So X360 programming is his first attempt in 10 years at D3D on a completely new version. Yet he prefers it over a system using GL, which he is practically a master at. So how exactly does he need familiar stuff to produce good work?

The reason he prefers the X360 is simple. It has the best development environment and programmers will ALWAYS prefer a 100% easier environment to a 20% faster product. For all of Microsofts faults, the one thing they do really well, is to make awesome developer tools/environments. Hell for all the D3D vs OpenGL wars over the years, people forget that the best OpenGL development environment is actually on Windows.

-edit
And don't forget he started out programming for the Apple II



Booh! said:
snfr said:

So the PS3 version of Rage will look inferior, I'm calling it!

Anyway, nothing against his opinion. I guess many developers favour one console, and there is nothing wrong with it.
Although I think he should have given a reason why he prefers the 360...


He gave it a few days ago, he prefers DirectX over anything else.

open gl ftw 



Of Course That's Just My Opinion, I Could Be Wrong

Before people getting upset with what I wrote above I would like people to read the perspective from Mike Acton of Insomniac games, a games console programmer:

http://www.develop-online.net/features/181/QA-Insomniacs-Mike-Acton

http://www.developmag.com/interviews/175/QA-Insomniacs-Mike-Acton-Part-2

He addresses a lot of points I have been advocating since many years before that interview and I agree 100% with his given perspective there.

IMO Microsoft had a lot to do with the point Mike Acton addresses above. Microsoft has indeed bribed many university corporate managers to try to influence the industry and push through their dominance. This also by providing students and universities with free development tools. In the end Microsoft of course wants new developers to become familiar and even dependent upon the solutions they provide, actually the more dependent the better. For example if XBLA fully ties you to their platforms/solutions they will do everything they can to facilitate this.

I understand Microsoft is a commercial company, but this not at all helps with the education of more knowledgeable and free thinking programmers and developers from the grand perspective.



Naughty Dog: "At Naughty Dog, we're pretty sure we should be able to see leaps between games on the PS3 that are even bigger than they were on the PS2."

PS3 vs 360 sales

Pokemonking said:

sorry but its been proven that ps3 has a more powerful hardrive and has any game ever got close to uncharted graphics?

stop being a bind FANBOY John Carmack is right with what he says from a PC developer point of view the 360 is better the only drawback for the DVD9 it uses.



Japanese Pop Culture Otaku

We all know true power is in the moving parts.

 

The fan in my PS3 spins at a higher RPMs value than the fan in my 360.  Easy comparison