T w e n t y S i d e d

You know the drill by this point. Here is the full presentation at Quakecon 2012. My comments with timestamps follow. Note that I’m just watching the video, pausing to comment at points that I think are interesting or could use some clarification for the masses.

8:05: “Doom 3 still holds up.”

YES.

I’ve said before that this era was pretty much a turning point in graphics technology. Doom 3, Half-Life 2, World of Warcraft, Thief: Deadly Shadows^*, and Far Cry. We can argue a bit about the true high point. Maybe you want to move it back to 2002 so you can include NOLF 2. Maybe you want to move it forward a year or two to include the likes of Half Life 2: Episode One, or Quake 4, or whatever. But the point stands that right here we hit a magical spot on the visuals vs. cost trade-off. Games could still be produced in two-year intervals, and they had just enough graphics that characters could emote. But they hadn’t yet dropped into the uncanny valley of photorealism or become so expensive that nothing short of mega-blockbusters could hope to turn a profit.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “John Carmack 2012 Keynote Annotated:Part 2”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.