Q&A With John Carmack/id Software

[obsidian]

I just want to see if there is enough interest here to organize a Q&A session with John Carmack. Keep in mind that even if there is interest, Carmack might still be too busy with Rage nearing completion to answer our questions so this may or may not happen. I'm just trying to see if there is at least enough of us with relevant (no silly favourite colour questions or unannounced IP stuff he can't answer anyway) questions to actually even bother asking.

If there is enough interest, I'll contact him and then host a separate Q3W Questions thread where we can post and organize our questions.

[Infernis]

Voted! I watched the Q&A video yesterday. Very insightfull. Btw, that fat kid who talked about porting Doom 3 to Android was a arrogant cunt.

[Eraser]

Yeah if we can get some good, well thought out questions, this may be really cool. Who knows, if the questions are interesting and thought provoking, Carmack might be more inclined to answer them.

To be honest, I'd love to pop Tim Willits and Todd H some questions as well.

[AEon]

I was always curious about what he has to say about what the competitors do. And the press would just love such "sound bites"... but anyone would probably avoid commenting, since that could only backfire.

Ironically after listing to all the keynotes from the past years (those available on YT)... I think he would not respond, since they simply are irrelevant to him. He experiments with the latest tech ideas, and then id creates a game around it. Since the tech is usually at the forefront, it would be useless to check what Valve, or Epic, or Crytek are doing, since they all seem to have a different set of priorities in their engines.

"Could id spare their tool programmer to spiff up GTKradiant for us?" ...

[VolumetricSteve]

Being mentally locked in the late 90s, I'd be curious to see how they felt about all of the changes they've had to make as designers to publish games for people today and what it took to get them to be able to shift over the years from commander keen to rage.

Personally, I can't escape the simple formulas that make some games fun, doom, descent, quake, etc. Everything else that comes out just seems so foreign to me I don't even think of most games that come out now...as games simply because they cram so much junk into them now; they start to feel like chores to me.

[Hipshot]

I can't come up with anything, I really can't.

Well, maybe, if Rage will be modable to the same extent as previous id tiles...

[InsaneKid]

JohnC.? Dinner?

i think, i got a thousand questions! <:

[fKd]

I can't come up with anything, I really can't.

Well, maybe, if Rage will be modable to the same extent as previous id tiles...

as far as i understand from what carmack has said in various talks, it is and it is not.

its easier for a team with huge quantities of computational power, but bad for bedroom devs.
but im not so sure, itching to get me hands on idtech5 for sure!

as to asking johnc something... cant think of single thing, programming and what he does is far fucking far above my head. his talks are great as he explains what hes going on about. but to ask a question of depth or insite.... i got nothing. will enjoy reading whatever comes from this tho, chur obs

id love to ask the mapping crew/lead a few questions tho. but prolly best after rage so they can freely talk about the tech...

[nbohr1more]

I'd love to ask him if they tried to make any automated tools for generating complex light projection textures in Id Tech 4.

I'd love to know what they tried with the "make ambientmap" stuff.

I'd also love to know about the dynamic internal images and how useful they can be.

Most of my Id tech 4 questions can probably be answered in the source code release though...

I'd like to hear his take on animated normal maps for facial expressions (ala La Noire) verses other animation techniques.

I'd like to know his thoughts on using Megatexture for Vertex Texture or R2VB. Whether he has tried either in testing.

[AEon]

Bit off topic... but then again might still be interesting...

Something that occurred to me listening to an interview Carmack gave, was that his son already knows he wants to "build robots and become a billionaire".

That made me wonder, ever since 2001 and HAL 9000 the "holy grail" with computer science has been AI. If Carmack did or ever was interested in created "intelligent" AI that would rival that of a HAL9000. And or if he was ever interested in robotics/robots himself.

[axbaby]

I would like to ask him:
If he had a time machine and could start designing the first computer and internet what would be some of things from the start that would be different\better then today.

[cityy]

I'd be interested in what he thinks about the future of DeathMatch shooters; if he thinks that fast fps can still be made appealing for today's esports community and if it is even still possible to realize them with modern technology which is a lot more demanding than id tech3.

[fKd]

hes an engineer, not a game designer.

[Hipshot]

He's Carmack.

[AEon]

Waves at Hipshot