The Carmack & The DOOM

nobady needs new computers, that is just crazy talk

Well,it looks like we'll all be investing in new computers equipment once again,thanks to Johnny C. Damm,I just did that again for qIII.

Voodoo Extreme -- When do you think computers will become fast enough so that developers can dump BSP based VSD algorithms for more flexible ones?

John Carmack -- I think this has been mis-characterized for a long time - None of the Quake games have had what I would call a
"BSP based VSD algorithm". The visibility associated with quake is a cluster to cluster potentially visible set (PVS) algorithm, masked
by an area connectivity graph (in Q2 and Q3), followed by hierarchical frustum culling (which does use the BSP). The software
renderers then performed an edge based scan-line rasterization algorithm, which resulted in zero-overdraw for the world.

Early in Q1's development, I pursued "beam trees", which were truly a BSP based visibility algorithm that did exact visibility by
tracking unfilled screen geometry going front to back, but the log2 complexity scaling factor lost out to the constant complexity factor
from the PVS.

uh........ok.......yea.... (wtf??!?!?)
the carmack makes me feel stupid :-(
the scary thing is that he goes on about the same thing for about 6 more paragraphs....

What I'd like to see in the new DooM is a singleplayer game designed for teams.

What I mean is, imagine playing with a group of friends, your pods all come down scattered about the map and the first thing you have to do is meet up with the rest of your buddies. What would be even cooler is relying on your teammates to progress.

For instance imagine you and a friend are holding on for dear life against hordes of hell-spawn to protect a shield generator whilst another couple of your teammates are over the other side of the map (maybe even a different map) desperately trying to restore power. You are fast running out of ammo praying that they get the power on in time.

That sort of co-operative play would really rock for me.

My two cents.

BH

I've heard some stuff about this game and the game sounds like an engine hog and this game and the game will be out a while from now according to Carmack, that's all I know or heard.

In the interests of brevity, IÂ’ll use the abbreviation VSD to mean both visible surface determination and culling from now on.

Why do I think VSD is the toughest 3-D challenge? Although rasterization issues such as texture mapping are fascinating and important, they are tasks of relatively finite scope, and are being moved into hardware as 3-D accelerators appear; also, they only scale with increases in screen resolution, which are relatively modest.

In contrast, VSD is an open-ended problem, and there are dozens of approaches currently in use. Even more significantly, the performance of VSD, done in an unsophisticated fashion, scales directly with scene complexity, which tends to increase as a square or cube function, so this very rapidly becomes the limiting factor in doing realistic worlds. I expect VSD increasingly to be the dominant issue in realtime PC 3-D over the next few years, as 3-D worlds become increasingly detailed. Already, a good-sized Quake level contains on the order of 10,000 polygons, about three times as many polygons as a comparable DOOM level.


- this basically meens that VSD is how you figure out what shit needs to be drawn on screen. The challenge is that you can make it draw exactly what should be on screen, but the tests u make the engine run to do this might be slowing down the PC too much. On the other side of things you can let the engine overdraw (draw shit you are not seeing, so its useless) some triangles and pixels, but then of course u are makeing the computer work harder than it really needs to be working


culling is the act of getting rid of shit u dont need to see

PVS is the potential visible set, and basically it like in quake, when u stand somewhere, u are standing inside of this invisble 3d square or somehting, and if any face of that square, can see another invisible 3d squares face, then the engine draws the things in that invisible square. So with a PVS, in the level file, there is a look up table, that is coucualted when you "compile" the map. so that look up table is the PVS, and when u stand in that invisble square and quake wants to know what triangles need to be drawn, then it just looks up the PVS. It was done this way because looking up somethig was faster than doing a bunch of tests to figure out whats needs to be drawn.

The PVS is created when u compile a map. It the Vis process, and it takes a while sometimes to compile, thats the disadvantage to creating a PVS for VSD.

in the new doom3 i believe carmack is getting rid of VIS to make a PVS and doom3 will figure out on the fly what needs to be drawn by the engine.

or something

In the Voodoo Extreme interview carmack said,

"...The visibility associated with quake is a cluster to cluster potentially visible set (PVS) algorithm, masked by an area connectivity graph (in Q2 and Q3), followed by hierarchical frustum culling...


...I think he's making up his own words now! "FRUSTUM CULLING"?????

c'mon people, let's all go cull some frustums...its fun!

Shit, if this thing used the same interfaces as Q3A, I hope it doesn't have the same kinds of models and the same fake lighting...

Kinda wishing he had mentioned something about processor snot required in the article (did he and I missed it?). I'd like to know if my 900 will be fast enough then.

200

Damnit. So does this mean that the technology isn't completely new?

Like from the ground up, not using anything else but programming skill/experience to make a new kickass engine?

Yeah, fuck man!!! I don't want to look for another key card to open a door. I want to capture an enemy and torture him every possible and painful way so he'll tell me the secret password to that fucking door. The more I torture him the more passwords I get and may be heÂ’ll even tell me about a secret area. ThatÂ’s what I call a game. If id software won't satisfy my need for torturing in Doom 3 then IÂ’ll do it to real people. Enuff said! Fuck!

for any of you guys who are struggling to understand this shit I suggest you read


http://www.bluesnews.com/abrash/chap64.shtml
i find it very helpful, its mike abrash's little write up on the quake 1 tech, which still applies to q2 and q3 engine.

"look for synergies to exploit and parasitic losses to avoid"

Is his Carmackness making a little joke here? Does anybody use the bs word 'synergies' seriously?

Some Parasitic Losses Carmack has skillfully 'avoided':
1)John Romero
2)American McGee

carmack said only one thing which impressed me in this

"everyone got something different out of doom, some single player some multi, we will persue the single player path"


THAT i like (no it's not an exact quote

infact i almost class him as a human being again for saying it.
i am still *VERY* disapointed they opted to cash into a well retired peice of our nostalgia for $$$

star wars episode 1 syndrome....

Carmack doesn't need to say he will make you his bitch, you already are. Constant hardware upgrades... *shakes his head*

DOOM3 WILL FUCKING RULE YOUR SILLY LITTLE WORLD AND THOSE WHO DISAGREE WILL BE SUCKING MY BIG UNCUT PENIF IN YOUR MOUF BITHCES!!!!!!!!1

Cool. I'll be around. Gotta go to class now. Later.

Hmmm... Do we dare bring this up?

Something I want to see in Doom 3 that Quake 2 failed at in my opnion, is better use of captured marines. In Q2, you had to kill them to get goodies (a key, etc). This is just plain wrong - you don't kill your own.

Doom 3 we should be able to liberate prisoners; maybe have them be (I'm going to get my ass flamed off for this one) be temporary side kicks like Daikatana, only the game won't end if they get stupid and die. People to help you out, kinda like in Half-life OpFor.

Taking ammunition from the dead is one thing, that's permittable in real war. Killing the wounded or captured isn't for ammunition isn't.

Y'all think by 2005 we'll need a 20 tetrahertz mega geforce ultra rage pro card just to get the shrink wrap off of the Doom 5 box?

Save dem pennies.

Ok, so id makes a game that requires new technology and it's progress. Someone like Croteam makes a game that runs a little slow on current hardware and it sucks?! Something wrong with the thinking around here.

OK OK OK! Lets talk about important things like. Who jacked off lastnight and though about sex. You owe S.A.M. Money!

I need to learn to proof read before clicking that little button down there.

Hey, can anyone hook me up with a flash 5.0 serial?

Doom III is the jellybean of life. Bow down before it.

Oh Yes!

"The visibility associated with quake is a cluster to cluster potentially visible set (PVS) algorithm, masked by an area connectivity graph (in Q2 and Q3), followed by hierarchical frustum culling (which does use the BSP). The software renderers then performed an edge based scan-line rasterization algorithm, which resulted in zero-overdraw for the world.

This is what I always say. I mean duh!

See, the point is that when you associated quake to be visible all you see is cluster to cluster algorithm which is potentially visible to a naked eye. So the next step is to mask it (your naked eye or quake for that matter) by an area of connectivity graph. I mean if you don’t have a connection then you can’t even play the damn game. The next step is to mask it by hierarchical f****** c****** (which does use the BSP but I’m not going to say it ‘cause some kids may be reading this page).

Tune in tomorrow for the part 2 and 3 of CarmackÂ’s laguage translation.

FART!!!!

Man! That's a very boring interview unless you're into technical stuff!


Bah!