Full Carmack Quote.
Note his views on Be!
via BluesNews
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John Carmack's.plan
March 18, 1997
I have gotten a significant amount of response on the Quake 2
extension mechanism. I do read everything that comes my way (I can't
respond to all of it, though), and I have learned a few things from the
mail.
Nothing is set in stone yet, but it is still looking like a dll is going to be
the primary interface. I have been seriously considering a java
interface, but the tradeoffs (time spent implementing takes away from
something else...) just don't quite add up. Other options, like
enhancing qc or using other languages like perl have very remote
chances.
One of the primary reasons is that you can allways build UP -- put more
functionality on top of a dll, but you can't allways build DOWN --
accessing the registry from java for instance.
For Id Software to develop a game, a dll will be most efficient. We have
more cpu power, and we can debug it more easily. We are directing
significant effort towards making Quake 2 a better GAME, as well as
just a better mutliplayer virtual world. Quake 1 was pretty messed up
from a game standpoint, and we don't plan on doing that again.
What I can offer the qc hacking crowd is a public release of the qc
interface and interpreter code from Quake 1 when Quake 2 is released.
The user community can then bolt things together so that there can be
one publicly trusted DLL that executes an updated and modified qc
language for portable, secure add ons.
I really do care about portability, but it is just one factor that needs to be
balanced against all the others. Things just aren't clear cut.
Speaking of portability, to remove the guesswork that goes on, here are
my current opinions on the various platforms:
Win32
Win32 rules the world. You are sticking your head in the sand if you
think otherwise. The upside is that windows really doesn't suck
nowdays. Win 95 / NT 4.0 are pretty decent systems for what they are
targeted at. I currently develop mostly on NT, and Quake 2 will almost
certainly be delivered on win32 first. Our games should run as well as
possible in NT, we won't require any '95 only features.
Dos
We are not going to do another dos game. No amount of flaming hate
mail is going to change my mind on this (PLEASE don't!). The
advantages of good TCP/IP support, dynamic linking, powerfull virtual
memory, device drivers, etc, are just too much to overcome. Yes, all of
those can be provided under dos in various ways, but it just isn't worth
it.
Linux
I consider linux the second most important platform after win32 for id.
>From a biz standpoint it would be ludicrous to place it even on par
with mac or os/2, but for our types of games that are designed to be
hacked, linux has a big plus: the highest hacker to user ratio of any os. I
don't personally develop on linux, because I do my unixy things with
NEXTSTEP, but I have a lot of technical respect for it.
MacOS
>From a money making standpoint, the only OS other than win32 that
matters, and it doesn't matter all that much. We have professional
ports done to MacOS instead of unsupported hack ports, which is a
mixed blessing. They come out a lot later (still waiting for quake...), but
are more full featured. I have zero respect for the MacOS on a technical
basis. They just stood still and let microsoft run right over them from
waaay behind. I wouldn't develop on it.
OS/2
A native OS/2 port of any of our products is unlikely. We just don't
care enough, and we are unwilling to take time away from anything
else.
SGI
I don't particularly care for IRIX as a development environment
(compared to NT or NEXTSTEP), but SGI has the coolest hardware to
run GL apps on. Safe to assume future IRIX ports, but its not exactly a
top priority.
AIX / OSF / HPUX / SOLARIS
I wouldn't start a port to any of these, but if a trusted party (Zoid)
wanted to do them, I probably wouldn't object.
BeOS
I bought a BeBox because I am a solid believer in SMP, and I like clean,
from-scratch systems. I was left fairly non plussed by it. Yes, it is lean
and mean and does a couple things better than any other OS I have
seen, but I just don't see any dramatic advantages to it over, say,
NEXTSTEP. Lion (the company doing the mac quake port) has a BeOS
port of quake sort of working, and have my full support in releasing it,
but it will be strictly an act of charity on their part, so don't expect too
much.
Plan9
I spent a few months running Plan9. It has an achingly elegent internal
structure, but a user interface that has been asleep for the past decade. I
had an older version of quake dedicated server running on it (don't ask
me for it -- I lost it somewhere) and I was writing a civilized window
manager for it in my spare time, but my spare time turned out to be
only a couple hours a month, and it just got prioritized out of
existance.
NEXTSTEP
My faviorite environment. NT and linux both have advantages in
some areas, but if they were on equal footing I would choose
NEXTSTEP hands down. It has all the power of unix (there are lots of
things I miss in NT), the best UI (IMHO, of cource), and it just makes
sense on so many more levels than windows. Yes, you can make
windows do anything you want to if you have enough time to beat on
it, but you can come out of it feeling like you just walked through a
sewer.
In the real world, things aren't on equal footing, and I do most of my
work on NT now. I hold out hope that it may not stay that way. If apple
Does The Right Thing with rhapsody, I will be behind them as much as
I can. NEXTSTEP needs a couple things to support games properly
(video mode changing and low level sound access). If apple/next will
provide them, I will personally port our current win32 products over.
If I can convince apple to do a good hardware accelerated OpenGL in
rhapsody, I would be very likely to give my win NT machine the cold
shoulder and do future development on rhapsody. (I really don't need
Quickdraw3D evangelists preaching to me right now, thank you) |
