The legendary programmer speaks to Gamasutra about finishing up work on id's latest game, what's going on with Doom 4, his mistaken predictions for the technology landscape, and the advantages of coding for iPad and consoles over PC.
Neil writes: "Just been paid? Fancy getting a new game added to that backlog of shame? The Xbox Deals With Gold and Spotlight Sale is back with even more discounts on a variety of great Xbox titles. If you've got time in your life for a new gaming experience, the following bargain basement titles are available for your cut-price purchasing between 4th-10th August 2020."
Rage from id Software and Bethesda Softworks was largely overlooked, yet its handcrafted FPS open world and memorable characters transcend genre convention.
YouTube’s members ‘Digital Dreams’ and ‘Jose cangrejo’ have shared some videos, showcasing Pascal Gilcher’s Reshade mod – which adds Ray Tracing/Path Tracing effects – in some really old games such as Star Wars The Force Unleashed, Crysis 2, RAGE and Resident Evil 6.
I'm still learning how to look for the differences. At first I was focusing on shadows for some reason but I don't think that changes much, is it reflections that change?
It is supposed to be simulating how light actually works- so yes if light is reflecting off a surface accurately it should show reflection or an effect that matches what you are looking at in the environment. Next time you play a game look at a puddle of water there may be just a "baked" in texture that if you aren't paying attention seems like it is reflecting but it isn't. I would say though if the light is reflecting more accurately I would think that would give more accurate shadows as well.
I am still not 100% sold on it- it looks okay but I can't get over the hardware price jump for better reflections..
While games won't look immensely better, it opens up more possibilities overall. Understandably, the price jump is huge. But, that can be said for being at the forefront for any new technology. I'm currently using a 2080ti and while I've played a few games that enable it, the gpu also plays everything else incredibly well so it's not like you're buying this tech for ONLY that option. Enthusiasts will pay top dollar to check out the newest things, but this will eventually become an everyday consumer and by then they'll have optimized and become a lot cheaper.
Ray/path tracing can be used how the developer wants it to be. Tracing can be used to calculate shadows/lighting, reflection and even audio, where audio waves are calculated on the bounce off material types to simulate enviroment and echos accuratly.
Should also keep in mind that this ray/path tracing system is different and less accurate option from Nvidias RTX branded type. McFly's is a reshade that layers over the top of the game and therefor the quality will vary drastically. For example you can see nice reflection in the Star Wars demo here but it then introduces colour clipping with the light saber. On a video of GTA 5 for example it was incorrectly projecting a reflection of a red car onto the road which caused a very faint red glow on the ground around the car.
If you want to see a good example of a game developed with ray tracing reflection and lighting in mind then you could look up the youtube video of "Control - Exclusive E3 RTX GAMEPLAY Trailer".
It supposed to add more realistic light Not actually more light effects and explosions
I hate to say it but I’m fine with fake lights, shadows, reflections. I just kind of like the effect, it’s also great it saves resources for other things.
I’ve been checking out some original Xbox games on x360/x1x and the engine has fake light streaming in through a stained glass window, and I love it even though I know it’s not real time lighting. Heck it even shifts as I move about.
I’ve about convinced my self rt and hdr just doesn’t work for me. Before hdr I would even complain damn why are the headlights killing me they are so bright.
I notice most frame rate, then jaggies, then resolution; with the last two interchangeable depending.
Other day watched an enthusiast rave over 4k and the poor guy was in 1080p. I played the same game the night before and thought wow this is clean, I wonder if it’s 4k, but knew differently and I thought wow even resolution is not always important. The next day he apologized and was surprised he could be fooled.
How come the lightsabers don't give off any light? Even in the EA star wars game the guy uses it to light up a dark cave. I guess if it is using frostbite it will support rtx cards.
"Because what I look back as one of the biggest mistakes I made in this generation, was at the beginning, five or six years ago, looking and saying, "Consoles are basically as good as PCs," at the time, and developing the workflow so it worked across both of them."
Looking back now, we have PCs that are an order of magnitude more powerful, and if our workflow is instead focused on explicitly on just... you build and develop on the PC, and you decimate things into a target for the consoles. There are things that I would do very differently.
"And part of that stuff is, the three legs of this that we have now, is we have massive numbers of cores -- I have 24 threads on my desktop machine. Massive amounts of memory -- 24 gigs, and we can throw a lot more in. And we've got solid state drives -- you can put a half of a terabyte in there. And if I take that as the baseline of what I want all our developers to use, I will build a very different system."
I'm Glad they are already thinking about Rage 2 because if the game is a hit which it most likely looks like it is going to be, I don't want to wait forever for part 2...
Especially when in this day and age it's best to start part 2 as soon as you wrap part 1 -it's still going to take a long time, so the sooner they start the better (starting early can cut down about 6 months of the wait time) and in gaming that's huge...
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At least he's not on slamming the PS3 again...
John carmack welcome to the humble club here's your piece of humble pie enjoy!