Doom 3
maestro speaks
By:
Kieren McCarthy
The Register © 2000
Posted: 21/09/2000 at 15:16 GMT
John Carmack, the co-founder of id
Software, top code creator and man behind the
trail-blazing Doom shoot-em-up game has been talking to
Voodooextreme.com and provided some grand info on where
3D gaming is going.
It's pretty techy stuff - do you know
your BSP based visibility algorithms from your
pre-computed PVS? - but this is a man who knows what
he's talking about and if you're caught up in this
market or are just an obsessive gamer, this interview
series is worth a look.
For us, the most interesting bit about
the latest instalment is what John has to say about
graphics cards and what they can and can't do with his
vision of the next generation Doom game.
Here's a short extract: "The
ideal card for Doom hasn't shipped yet, but there are a
couple good candidates just over the horizon. The
existing cards stack up like this:
Nvidia GeForce[2]: We are using
these as our primary development platform. I play some
tricks with the register combiners to get a bit better
quality than would be possible with a generic dual
texture accelerator.
ATI Radeon: All features work
properly, but I needed to disable some things in the
driver. I will be working with ATI to make sure
everything works as well as possible. The third texture
unit will allow the general lighting path to operate a
bit more efficiently than on a GeForce. Lacking the
extra math of the register combiners, the specular
highlights don't look as good as on a GeForce.
3DFX Voodoo4/5, S3 Savage4/2000,
Matrox G400/450, ATI Rage128, Nvidia TNT[2]: Much of
the visual lushness will be missing due to the lack of
bump mapping, but the game won't have any gaping holes.
Most of these except the V5 probably won't have enough
fill-rate to be very enjoyable.
3DFX Voodoo3, S3 Savage3D/MX,
Matrox G200, etc: Without a stencil buffer, much of
the core capabilities of the renderer are just lost. The
game will probably run, but it won't be anything like we
intend it to be viewed. Almost certainly not enough fill
rate."
If this kind of thing is causing you
to salivate, go here
for the full piece. The final part of the interview has
also just been put up on Voodooextreme's site.
Related Links:
Part
2 of John Carmack interview
Voodoo Extreme
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