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

MikeB on 16 March 2011
Kynes said:
MikeB said:
...

Don't know but from what I heard Wolfenstein 3D wasn't hard to port to Amiga.

In any case I will withdraw from this discussion. I meant no offense to John Carmack at all I even stated his company's Doom was one of the best games of its time...

You withdraw because you have been uncovered as a shill. Your lies are here for everyone to see.

in any case I shouldn't have messed with the gods. I'm sorry, OK?



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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selnor on 16 March 2011
CGI-Quality said:
binary solo said:

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.

Excellent bit, but this here truly sticks out! I feel as if Sony's 1st Party wizards are battling themselves. I'd love to see a 3rd Party make them step their game up, because that would mean that particular title is truly bar raising!

Hop over and see a wealth of Crysis 2 campaign footage. The PC footage is clearly ahead of everything. But the console footage isnt that far off. Seriously impressive stuff is CryEngine 3 on Consoles. It still baffles me that absolutely everything is realtime, with the scale it has. True Crytek form.



selnor on 16 March 2011
CGI-Quality said:
selnor said:
CGI-Quality said:
binary solo said:

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.

Excellent bit, but this here truly sticks out! I feel as if Sony's 1st Party wizards are battling themselves. I'd love to see a 3rd Party make them step their game up, because that would mean that particular title is truly bar raising!

Hop over and see a wealth of Crysis 2 campaign footage. The PC footage is clearly ahead of everything. But the console footage isnt that far off. Seriously impressive stuff is CryEngine 3 on Consoles. It still baffles me that absolutely everything is realtime, with the scale it has. True Crytek form.

I've seen it, and while I think it's easily the best looking multiplatform title, I wouldn't put it with the best of the best just yet.

I wish we had the PC level on consoles kinda. Shows the consoles age. Especially in larger environments.



slowmo on 16 March 2011
goforgold said:
hikaruchan said:
goforgold said:
slowmo said:
CGI-Quality said:

Man, I read this on N4G and was hoping nobody posted it here (because I know what a thread like this can end up like), but it is just his opinion (and he means it in terms of efficiency, not power). In fact, he's admitted that the PS3 has "more peak power" than the 360, but that in the end, the 360 will have it's power better exploited. Nothing many other devs haven't already said.


Strange how that only ever seems to really become an issue when it's the 360 being lauded by a developer and not the PS3 though isn't it.  He also was pretty exact on his reasoning, he thinks the 360 is the better console for everything except storage in terms of the work he is doing.  Right or wrong, it's his opinion and doesn't make it any less valid than the Sony developers who frequently quote opinion as fact yet get worshipped so frequently on here.  I guess my point is, nothing should be prevented from posting just because some of the userbase cannot behave (unless of course it is deliberately misleading/false).

I'm quite happy to admit I think the PS3 is the better hardware by the way, I just prefer the 360 userbase and experience for my gaming needs, plus being a FPS fan doesn't hurt as a 360 gamer.

no he doesn't.....


???

having architecture closer to the PC making it easier to developer for =/= better than the ps3 in every way except storage, and that's not an opinion.

John knows this because it's what he said, don't know what you guys are reading.

http://www.destructoid.com/blogs/ReclusiveSpirit/john-carmack-unplugged-xbox-360-gt-ps3-98107.phtml

It's an old interview and was posted earlier in the thread but it seems his opinion hasn't changed much.  Fair enough though if you don't see how a developer would prefer the 360 as a devleopment environment.  It has almost equivalent power but more flexibility, that's pretty important to a lot of developers.



selnor on 16 March 2011
CGI-Quality said:
selnor said:

I wish we had the PC level on consoles kinda. Shows the consoles age. Especially in larger environments.

Eh, honestly I'm not affected either way. I prefer watching the progression of the visuals to PC level and what both consoles provide right now is more than sufficient.

Just looking to the future, our consoles will one day be powerful enough to run graphics at least on par with PC (they aren't that far off as is).


I know what you mean. But I would love it if this gens consoles could do Crysis 2 PC Beta graphics even. It's not far off. The bit off footage where the Alien ship crashes through the street in normal gameplay running on consoles is pretty damn impressive. Just needed a bit more juice in the HD twins and we would have had it all.

ROFL.



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goforgold on 16 March 2011
slowmo said:
goforgold said:
hikaruchan said:
goforgold said:
slowmo said:
CGI-Quality said:

Man, I read this on N4G and was hoping nobody posted it here (because I know what a thread like this can end up like), but it is just his opinion (and he means it in terms of efficiency, not power). In fact, he's admitted that the PS3 has "more peak power" than the 360, but that in the end, the 360 will have it's power better exploited. Nothing many other devs haven't already said.


Strange how that only ever seems to really become an issue when it's the 360 being lauded by a developer and not the PS3 though isn't it.  He also was pretty exact on his reasoning, he thinks the 360 is the better console for everything except storage in terms of the work he is doing.  Right or wrong, it's his opinion and doesn't make it any less valid than the Sony developers who frequently quote opinion as fact yet get worshipped so frequently on here.  I guess my point is, nothing should be prevented from posting just because some of the userbase cannot behave (unless of course it is deliberately misleading/false).

I'm quite happy to admit I think the PS3 is the better hardware by the way, I just prefer the 360 userbase and experience for my gaming needs, plus being a FPS fan doesn't hurt as a 360 gamer.

no he doesn't.....


???

having architecture closer to the PC making it easier to developer for =/= better than the ps3 in every way except storage, and that's not an opinion.

John knows this because it's what he said, don't know what you guys are reading.

http://www.destructoid.com/blogs/ReclusiveSpirit/john-carmack-unplugged-xbox-360-gt-ps3-98107.phtml

It's an old interview and was posted earlier in the thread but it seems his opinion hasn't changed much.  Fair enough though if you don't see how a developer would prefer the 360 as a devleopment environment.  It has almost equivalent power but more flexibility, that's pretty important to a lot of developers.

exactly, nothing more really needs to be said

he perfers the 360 becasue of it's ease in development which is totally acceptable, you twisted it into he thinks the 360 is better than the ps3 hardware wise which is incorrect and that's just a fact.



Booh! on 16 March 2011
Kynes said:
MikeB said:
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.

MikeB, is this high level? This function is the most used in the Quake3 program, used to normalize vectors, needed to draw all the polygons:

float Q_rsqrt( float number )

  {

       long i;

      float x2, y;

      const float threehalfs = 1.5F;

 

      x2 = number * 0.5F;

      y = number;

      i = * ( long * ) &y; // evil floating point bit level hacking [sic]

      i = 0x5f3759df - ( i >> 1 ); // what the fuck? [sic]

      y = * ( float * ) &i; y = y * ( threehalfs - ( x2 * y * y ) ); // 1st iteration //

      y = y * ( threehalfs - ( x2 * y * y ) ); // 2nd iteration, this can be removed

 

      return y;

  }

In this function, Carmack uses int operations and bit level operands to solve a sqrt, due to the lack of flop computational power in early x86 processors. Can you tell me with a straight face that this guy isn't a fucking genius? Please stop spreading FUD now, shill.

It's standard C, it doesn't take advantage of specific hardware, so yes it's high level. This is actually a point in favor of MikeB's point: this shows high algoritmic skill, but no hardware oriented programming skill (that's the worst part of modern CS).



Kynes on 16 March 2011
Booh! said:
Kynes said:
MikeB said:
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.

MikeB, is this high level? This function is the most used in the Quake3 program, used to normalize vectors, needed to draw all the polygons:

float Q_rsqrt( float number )

  {

       long i;

      float x2, y;

      const float threehalfs = 1.5F;

 

      x2 = number * 0.5F;

      y = number;

      i = * ( long * ) &y; // evil floating point bit level hacking [sic]

      i = 0x5f3759df - ( i >> 1 ); // what the fuck? [sic]

      y = * ( float * ) &i; y = y * ( threehalfs - ( x2 * y * y ) ); // 1st iteration //

      y = y * ( threehalfs - ( x2 * y * y ) ); // 2nd iteration, this can be removed

 

      return y;

  }

In this function, Carmack uses int operations and bit level operands to solve a sqrt, due to the lack of flop computational power in early x86 processors. Can you tell me with a straight face that this guy isn't a fucking genius? Please stop spreading FUD now, shill.

It's standard C, it doesn't take advantage of specific hardware, so yes it's high level. This is actually a point in favor of MikeB's point: this shows high algoritmic skill, but no hardware oriented programming skill (that's the worst part of modern CS).

i = 0x5f3759df - ( i >> 1 );

Is this standard C? In standard C you use the sqrt() function, you don't calculate the square root using magic numbers, ints and bit level (>>) functions to overcome a lack of float computing power in the Pentium 3/4 processors. This is as close to the metal as you can get in any high level language.



Booh! on 16 March 2011
Kynes said:
Booh! said:

It's standard C, it doesn't take advantage of specific hardware, so yes it's high level. This is actually a point in favor of MikeB's point: this shows high algoritmic skill, but no hardware oriented programming skill (that's the worst part of modern CS).

i = 0x5f3759df - ( i >> 1 );

Is this standard C? In standard C you use the sqrt() function, you don't calculate the square root using magic numbers, ints and bit level (>>) functions to overcome a lack of float computing power in the Pentium 3/4 processors. This is as close to the metal as you can get in any high level language.

It works the same on every hardware, so it does not take advantage from the hardware. Have you got a pentium II? It works that way. Have you got a pentium 4? It works the same way. So it does not take advantage from the hardware, it just works the same on every hardware. BTW Pentium II, III and IV (which wasn't available when Q3 came out) all had floating point registers (SSE), so this is really not needed on those CPUs. This is just an optimization for the lowest hardware specification, that is it works the same on an old pentium MMX and on a (then) modern pentium 4, so it does not take advantage of the hardware.

That sqrt trick is just one of the billions tricks that acknowledged C programmer can use: http://www.azillionmonkeys.com/qed/sqroot.html . I programmed a bit in C and I used alot of tricks like this.



Squilliam on 16 March 2011

Why all this bitching about Carmack? He's a great developer and lauded amongst the games industry for his talent. You don't get lauded in this industry for being a talent-less shill. As far as im concerned he voiced his opinion and that should be taken into account along side any other respected developers opinion.



Tease.