id Software's John Carmack has said that the studio must take a new approach when it comes to developing for the next-generation of consoles and reuse more of its code base.
Our man in Los Angeles suggested the Rage developer would launch games more frequently if it spent less time developing incredible tech.
"If we have eight times the resources in a next-gen console we can't spend a decade writing the optimal technology for that, we need to rewrite the sections that matter and then reuse as much as we can.
"A lot of the things we do these days with AI and animation are really good enough," he added. "There's always things we can do better but there always have to be trade-offs."
The id Software co-founder went on to say that he has two more graphics engine projects on his 'To Do' pile, but that his studio's focus in future will be on optimising development processes creating more content more quickly.
In the same interview, Carmack said consoles are hampering the raw horsepower of PCs.
Hear everything John Carmack had to say on just about everything by watching our 20 minute video interview with the Doom developer.
Comments
4 comments so far...
ckempo on 8 Jun '11 said:
Valve took this approach with the Source engine long ago; steady, iterative development. Basically a steady process of adding new features, rewriting and optimising the code you already have.
iD must have their engine at a point where a similar approach would benefit them now - I think that's what JC is alluding to in the quotes. It would mean a quicker turn around between games, but maybe not such an obviously massive leap between versions (think Half Life 2 -> Portal 2 rather than Quake to Quake 2,3,4). But then you end up with comments such as the Portal 2 reviews like "the ageing engine shows...."
kimoak on 8 Jun '11 said:
I bet there is still code in from the first Quake in their latest engine. You can tell they are evolution jumps in the ID Tech engines. The biggest giveaway is when you drop the console down.
fraxyl on 9 Jun '11 said:
And the people who write comments like that always tend to focus on and whine about what's not there and the bad rather than the good that is there and the bad that isn't. I'll take hilarious writing, good voice acting, decent graphics, animations with detail where it matters and unique game play over "cutting edge" graphics that lose their edge in a matter of months and voices that make me want to rip my ears off.
mike_mgoblue on 9 Jun '11 said:
Rage of the Xbox 360 and PC run at 60 frames per second...But the PS3 version of Rage runs at only 20 - 30 frames per second. John Carmack and id Software has said their goal with the PS3 version is to get it optimized to run at 30 frames (60 fields) per second, so that it is optimized to run at 60hz the way the Xbox 360 and PC versions are. I write about this quite a bit on my blog and explain the technical reasons for this. Here's a link to my blog: www.controversy.typepad.com/videogamenews