Yeah, Carmack is amazing. Last I heard, he was making cellphone games -- he still doing that? Are they good? I have a Motorola Q, and I imagine it plays games.
A role-playing adaptation of "Doom" was Carmack's first stab at cell phone games. Now he's created "Orcs and Elves," which is the first new intellectual property from id Software since "Quake" was released in 1996.
Finding the time to create it proved difficult.
In addition to working on id's next major release and assisting with games like "Enemy Territory: Quake Wars" and the next "Wolfenstein," Carmack spends Saturdays and Tuesday nights at Armadillo Aerospace, working on those aforementioned rockets, and he's got a son who's just shy of two years old.
To get "Orcs and Elves" made, he had to retreat to a hotel with no Internet connection, where he worked on nothing but the game for two days.
"I just sat down and programmed for the fun of it," he said. "I thought I'd get like a smoker's tick and feel the need to check e-mail, but I was pleased to find I didn't."
"We're probably going to have a sequel to 'Orcs and Elves' but I'm really into the idea of a massively multiplayer cell phone title," he said. "I have absolutely no interest in going and competing with Blizzard in the high end of that market, but a cell phone version might be interesting."
In an ideal world, where I could either stop time or clone myself, I would act as a lead programmer for some smaller projects. In the real world, I can't justify spending much time away from the high-end work, so the low-end work gets done in a few short bursts of engine creation and foundation laying, which is then handed over to the Fountainhead team to actually build a great game. After that, Anna mostly uses me as a threat -- if her programmers tell her that something she really wants in a game can't be done, she threatens to call me up and have me tell them how straightforward the problem really is, which usually fuels them to figure out how to do it on their own.
John Carmack likes rocketry. Will Wright likes robotics and rocketry. But even though they're both geniuses in their own ways, their personalities are complete opposites.
John Carmack likes rocketry. Will Wright likes robotics and rocketry. But even though they're both geniuses in their own ways, their personalities are complete opposites.
Carmack and Wright even mentioned in the same sentence is almost more awesome than I can take.
Can you imagine what would happen if Carmack and Wright worked together on a project?
Maybe Uematsu and Mitsuda can do the music.
Oh and Tim Schafer would be involved somehow.
I guess the only problem is that they would make any other game unnecessary permanently.
John Carmack likes rocketry. Will Wright likes robotics and rocketry. But even though they're both geniuses in their own ways, their personalities are complete opposites.
Carmack and Wright even mentioned in the same sentence is almost more awesome than I can take.
Can you imagine what would happen if Carmack and Wright worked together on a project?
Maybe Uematsu and Mitsuda can do the music.
Oh and Tim Schafer would be involved somehow.
I guess the only problem is that they would make any other game unnecessary permanently.
You'd have to use a shrink ray to get all that ego into one room.
Plus that'd probably be the worst game ever since there would be waaaayyyyy too many chefs in the kitchen :P
John Carmack likes rocketry. Will Wright likes robotics and rocketry. But even though they're both geniuses in their own ways, their personalities are complete opposites.
Carmack and Wright even mentioned in the same sentence is almost more awesome than I can take.
Can you imagine what would happen if Carmack and Wright worked together on a project?
Maybe Uematsu and Mitsuda can do the music.
Oh and Tim Schafer would be involved somehow.
I guess the only problem is that they would make any other game unnecessary permanently.
You'd have to use a shrink ray to get all that ego into one room.
Plus that'd probably be the worst game ever since there would be waaaayyyyy too many chefs in the kitchen :P
Well they all have different things that they're good at though. Coding by Carmack, Wright on design, Schafer on story...
I'm pleased to see how it plays a whole lot like Final Fantasy Adventure (the original Sword of Mana), which to me will always be a phenomenal RPG and one of the best Gameboy games ever made. Obviously, then, it plays like Zelda on NES as well. Besides the story being a clusterfuck, the controls are tight and it's fun overall so far. I plan to continue trudging through it. But after watching that Google Video series, I safely haven't the slightest plan to touch the PC version, even after reading Romero's emotional harping over the game.
If anyone is interested in the relationship of Romero and Carmack then I really suggest you get "Masters of Doom" Great book which tells the story of iD from the very start to around about quake 3. Its a great read.
EDIT: Just realized a bunch of people had already talked about it, god damnit. Still go get it!
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Yeah he also made Orcs Vs Elves 2 on Mobile and Nintendo DS and that fandangled new Rage Engine with it's fancy texturing and shit.
PS- FUCK Timed mobile games.
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I'm pretty sure the design part was done beforehand for the cellphone version and he just had to actually write the thing.
Still very impressive. But, I mean, fuck, it's John fucking Carmack.
http://money.cnn.com/2006/05/17/commentary/game_over/column_gaming/index.htm That is impressive.
Edit: Two blog entries on the programming the game:
http://blogs.ign.com/OrcsandElves/2007/11/02/70591/
http://blogs.ign.com/OrcsandElves/2007/11/08/71156/
Edit:
What FP was there in Lost Planet's FPS?
Carmack and Wright even mentioned in the same sentence is almost more awesome than I can take.
Can you imagine what would happen if Carmack and Wright worked together on a project?
Maybe Uematsu and Mitsuda can do the music.
Oh and Tim Schafer would be involved somehow.
I guess the only problem is that they would make any other game unnecessary permanently.
You'd have to use a shrink ray to get all that ego into one room.
Plus that'd probably be the worst game ever since there would be waaaayyyyy too many chefs in the kitchen :P
Well they all have different things that they're good at though. Coding by Carmack, Wright on design, Schafer on story...
I'm pleased to see how it plays a whole lot like Final Fantasy Adventure (the original Sword of Mana), which to me will always be a phenomenal RPG and one of the best Gameboy games ever made. Obviously, then, it plays like Zelda on NES as well. Besides the story being a clusterfuck, the controls are tight and it's fun overall so far. I plan to continue trudging through it. But after watching that Google Video series, I safely haven't the slightest plan to touch the PC version, even after reading Romero's emotional harping over the game.
EDIT: Just realized a bunch of people had already talked about it, god damnit. Still go get it!