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iD Software John Carmack interview UK Edge magazine by Lost Dragon


high voltage

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I.D giving a few nice comments on the Jaguar hardware, plus areas where Jag version of Doom really shines etc.

Question:Has anyone a scan of or a link to any of these claimed interviews with I.D where they claim Quake is possible?.
I've a full Edge collection, was subscriber to Ult.Future Games etc, yet never seen I.D talk of Jaguar in depth in UK press in anything but this article.
Can anyone help? or is this some mythical my mate read...type claim?.
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Yeah, i was about to ask you Lost Dragon, if you had the interviews were Carmack says that he did some Quake work on the Jaguar. And the one were he says that with the knowledge he gained with Jag Doom, he could now get the Jag to run Doom and 24 frames per second, at a higher resolution and with music, while retaining the Jags superior color and lightning effects... or something like that, hehe.

 

Its great to read how awesome Carmack tought the Jags hardware was.

 

This stuff is pure gold Lost Dreagon, i hope you and high voltage can keep it up.

Edited by sd32
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:-( Whilst i've seen plenty of interviews with Carmac talking about Quake in detail, in UK magazines, there's never been even a hint from him he was confident the Jaguar could handle Quake, let alone that he was working on it.

 

If i had any such interviews, i would of course of put them up.

 

The only UK magazine off top of my head to mention Quake being a WIP was Ultimate Future Games.

 

 

As we've commented on here over the past few weeks, UK Press like EDGE, Raze, Zero, Ace, C+VG, TGM etc made a number of claims concerning various Atari projects that have either turned out to be false or no-one can as of yet confirm or deny work was ever started on.

 

 

I would of expected EDGE if anywhere to carry an interview with Carmac detailing Jaguar Quake as they love the in-depth, technical aspects.

 

Until i see said interview (which person who made the claim about said he cannot even remember where he saw it), i'm going to have to chalk it up as person confusing it with something else. I've searched and searched.....

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Right, the claim that was doing the rounds a few years back about Carmac re-doing Doom differently, being able to handle Quake was, without being harsh here, rather...vague:

 

 

Talk of Carmack's later comments.....this is fine, but there's simply no reference point.No time, date, location of quote or in what context it was made.

 

Carmack quoted as saying if he'd done Doom from ground up, it'd been at twice the frame rate and resolution and him being able to pull off a 'decent' version of Quake for it.

 

 

I've seen Carmack talk of doing Doom better in hindsight and again point out what he loved and was'nt so keen on about the Jaguar and praise the Lynx hardware in same post:

 

http://floodyberry.com/carmack/slashdot.html

 

But nothing on the twice the frame rate/resolution.

 

 

Ideally i'd track down whoever put the claim up in Ult.Future Games that Jaguar Quake was between 20-30% finished and find out the source of this claim.

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That's a pretty interesting detail I never knew, that the Wolfenstein port was actually an initiative of ID and not Atari. Despite Carmack seeming very proud of it I still think the 3DO version blows it away but I know the Jaguar version has its fans and it probably helped the system more since it came out much earlier.

 

It sounds like the high res graphics used on the MAC, Jaguar, and 3DO version were actually initially created for the Jaguar version. That's pretty cool that ID not only initiated the port but really took measures to ensure that it was a notable improvement over other versions. I still wish you could see enemies from other angles than face on though.

 

Would've been cool to see what Carmack could've done building Doom from the ground up, it sounds a lot like they initially shoehorned it onto the system then started rewriting certain parts until it was satisfactory. It also sounds like Atari had a pretty firm dev schedule and release date for Doom planned though if ID had to get permission to delay the game for a month to work on Wolfenstein. So maybe we would've seen music in-game, and reliable networking (and possibly other improvements) had Atari given them extra time.

Edited by Willard
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I'll be able to answer at least one question you raised there, Willard very bloody soon.Trust me on that. I could, technically answer here and now, but that'd ruin the surprise.

All i'm going to say is you guys won't be dissapointed, you've seen the steriling help High Voltage has given me to get the scans up so far, Neo-Geo Ninja will be putting up more scans on my behalf over the next few days, so already i owe these 2 a great deal....
Now a 3rd poster on here has been forwarded some VERY exclusive material.
It's not an Edge scan either.......
:-)
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Question:Has anyone a scan of or a link to any of these claimed interviews with I.D where they claim Quake is possible?.
I've a full Edge collection, was subscriber to Ult.Future Games etc, yet never seen I.D talk of Jaguar in depth in UK press in anything but this article.
Can anyone help? or is this some mythical my mate read...type claim?.

 

 

I haven't seen anything first-hand, but I would not be surprised if JC threw some tests together, just because he could.

 

IMO (and I can back it up) the Quake rendering system could have been translated to Jaguar at some limited resolution, and run well enough for single play, with some compromises. Framerate might even be workable for multiplayer - but that is less forgiving of framedrop.

 

The lightmap system would probably need to be changed. Probably using more than one drawing pass and maybe dropping dynamic lightmaps completely. That's more speculation though, since the Jag could still do some specific things here.

 

The game engine side of it - I'm less sure. There are a lot of animated meshes, lots of 3D collision detection going on and the particles are horribly expensive on any platform. Specialized work on the former (as was done in the JagDoom source, employing the DSP for it) and just dropping the latter might have done it.

 

The QuakeC thing would also have been dumped for 100% native code on Jag.

 

 

The problem with Quake on the Jag probably wasn't anything to do with JC getting technically stuck - more like the incentives didn't add up, compared with the other work they wanted to do at the time.

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To be continued in Nov, I'm off to the UK to help with moving/ unpacking furniture and stuff. Renting a huge 7.5t. truck, loading, then to Calais (France) - Dover (UK), and driving to Wales for the final destination. It's gonna be a hard week.

Good luck, sounds like hard work. Thanks for the uploads so far.

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I haven't seen anything first-hand, but I would not be surprised if JC threw some tests together, just because he could.

 

IMO (and I can back it up) the Quake rendering system could have been translated to Jaguar at some limited resolution, and run well enough for single play, with some compromises. Framerate might even be workable for multiplayer - but that is less forgiving of framedrop.

 

The lightmap system would probably need to be changed. Probably using more than one drawing pass and maybe dropping dynamic lightmaps completely. That's more speculation though, since the Jag could still do some specific things here.

 

The game engine side of it - I'm less sure. There are a lot of animated meshes, lots of 3D collision detection going on and the particles are horribly expensive on any platform. Specialized work on the former (as was done in the JagDoom source, employing the DSP for it) and just dropping the latter might have done it.

 

The QuakeC thing would also have been dumped for 100% native code on Jag.

 

 

The problem with Quake on the Jag probably wasn't anything to do with JC getting technically stuck - more like the incentives didn't add up, compared with the other work they wanted to do at the time.

 

I would let this go. The last time someone even mentioned Quake on the Jag he got jumped on and it ended badly:

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/208379-jaguar-quake/

 

Someday maybe somebody will throw up an example of something if it can be done reasonably on the Jaguar. Otherwise we should just talk about Doom.

 

I personally would like to see an optimized version of Doom on the Jaguar. Higher rez and all that.

Edited by JagChris
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Wouldn't it be awesome if Carmack went back and optimized Doom for the Jaguar from the ground up?

 

I'll donate my Skunkboard and Jaguar and start a kickstarter! :)

 

Wishful thinking...

 

 

I don't know why everyone is thinkng there is a 30% done Quake out there for the Jag. There isn't even a 30% done Doom II on the Jaguar by id. You would figure logically that would be the next thing to be done.

 

I enjoyed Doom better than I enjoy Quake anyway.

Edited by JagChris
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I would let this go. The last time someone even mentioned Quake on the Jag he got jumped on and it ended badly:

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/208379-jaguar-quake/

 

Someday maybe somebody will throw up an example of something if it can be done reasonably on the Jaguar. Otherwise we should just talk about Doom.

 

I personally would like to see an optimized version of Doom on the Jaguar. Higher rez and all that.

 

Oh that's ok, I can hold my own. :)

 

Granted - that translating the *game* would involve compromises and changes to make it worthwhile - and I'm not recommending that. But the technology is useful and repurposable, and it's doable on a Jag.

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Oh that's ok, I can hold my own. :)

 

Granted - that translating the *game* would involve compromises and changes to make it worthwhile - and I'm not recommending that. But the technology is useful and repurposable, and it's doable on a Jag.

Following your work on converting Quake II to a STOCK Falcon, this statement is very interesting:

 

 

 

It's interesting that I have still found many optimizations despite so many amazing tricks in there. But I would have badly screwed it up by now without properly getting every single last detail, down to a single innocent looking line of code that doesn't seem to matter much.

 

There isn't a line out of place. If anything they just stopped improving it when it stopped mattering for a fast PC.

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Yes, I'll stick by that.

 

With Doom and Quake It's not enough to just roughly understand how that stuff works, with aim to change or improve on it. It's better to know *exactly* how it all works, or you'll miss something important and not even know. With Doom that applies to some areas. With Quake it applies to most areas.

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Yes, I'll stick by that.

 

With Doom and Quake It's not enough to just roughly understand how that stuff works, with aim to change or improve on it. It's better to know *exactly* how it all works, or you'll miss something important and not even know. With Doom that applies to some areas. With Quake it applies to most areas.

 

And the statement after it also where they just stopped optimizing it when it didn't matter anymore. Realizing just that pushes the fence back on the limits of whats possible in people's minds when it comes to translating Quake/Quake II to these older PCs and consoles.

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Another guy yelling about what's impossible in your thread:

 

 

 

Well, I don't want to be negative, but I'm surprised that Quake 2 on Falcon 30 project is started. Why - because it is much more demanding than Doom. Will not go in speed issues. What for me seems as impossible is that it will work on Falcon with 14 MB RAM. There are some complex maps, levels, which will eat more RAM, I'm sure. Any calculations, tests made in that direction ?

 

http://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?f=68&t=26775&start=50#p256456

 

Here he cites the RAM size needed. I think the recommended on the PC is 8mb system ram for Q2. On the PSX they pulled it off with 2mb system ram. Instead of encouraging you and looking in different directions right away they start throwing out the word 'impossible'.

 

IMPOSSIBRU! IMPOSSIBRU111`ONE1!!

Edited by JagChris
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Porting Quake 2 to a stock Falcon, and figuring that Quake 1 might be somewhat doable on the Jaguar... dml, you my friend are one bad ass coder. I will keep an eye on your Quake 2 to Falcon project. I dont have a Falcon, and dont plan on getting one, but the project is very interesting.

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