Let’s run down the highlights of the Carmack keynote speech. There’s a decent amount of stuff to pick through, so we’re just hitting the high points. GGL Wire does have video footage of the first hour and a half, if not more (it’s currently filming).
Here we go.
Dates first:
1) QuakeCon 2008 kicks off July 31 through Aug. 3, 2008.
2) Enemy Territory: Quake Wars hits store shelves Oct. 2nd, 2007.
A new Wolfenstein game is in the works, and Raven is doing the singleplayer while 3Wave does the multiplayer. There’s also a live action Wolfenstein film coming, written and directed by Roger Avary and produced by Samuel Hadida.
All old id titles up to Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil will be available through Steam as of right now!
Quake Arena Arcade is coming to Xbox Live Arcade. This is different than Quake 3: Arena, by the way.
id Software is building a second team to work on “Quake Zero,” a web browser-based, ad-supported, totally free version of Quake 3. There are plans for tournaments and sponsorship to grow the player base.
The new id Tech 5 game is called “Rage.” Rage has shooting sequences (phew) and car races in what seems to be a post-apocalyptic wasteland. “Maybe it was time to do something that wasn’t ‘too dark.’” The crowd cheers!
Rage is expected to ship on two DVDs or one BluRay — no HD-DVD SKU.
Quake is coming to id Tech 5, eventually.
Quake Zero will run on the Macintosh. Carmack wants to set up oscilloscopes to get latency measurements from every piece of hardware, firmware, drivers, etc. on the Mac because Apple controls their entire hardware and software chain.
Carmack said: “Apple is almost uniquely positioned” for highly responsive gaming due to their control of the OS, hardware, etc. He mentioned that this is for the type of people that turn down the graphics and want the most responsive game possible (!!!!).
“We can concentrate on making it the most responsive game possible,” said Carmack.
Miscellaneous:
WRT mobile gaming: “Java’s the worst thing — good way to make things a tenth as fast as they should be.”
“There’s no doubt that when you have a problem moving [a game over to consoles], it’s gonna be the PS3.”
Carmack wants to make a Quake Arena-style game for the DS, but with a Doom perspective (2 1/2D). Full on freelook doesn’t work too well with the thumb on the touch screen.
QuakeCon 2007 coverage overview
