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John Carmack Interview
11–20 of 24 posts
Re: John Carmack Interview
#12"...At the last Quakecon I took a show of hands poll, and it was interesting to see how almost as many people there had an Android device as an iOS device. But when I asked how many peple had spent 20 bucks on a game in the Android store, there was a big difference. You’re just not making money in the Android space as you are in the iOS space."
Interesting
Re: John Carmack Interview
#13I've spent somewhere in the range of $20 on various apps in the Android market. That includes one single game -- an okay racing game. Do I want to spend more? Absolutely (I spend an average $50 a month in Steam on the PC) Why don't I? Because there is an dearth of high quality applications.
So when Carmack -- as a leader of high quality applications -- does his survey's and unsurprisingly find that people haven't purchased many apps (the platform runs on the power of Google's apps, which for most has to suffice), he's presenting a chicken/egg situation. If Rage were available on Android it would sell very well. The general absence of good apps would virtually guarantee that it go gangbusters.
He is acting like a follower. Eventually A-games will come to Android and id will have missed a remarkable opportunity. He can then do his poll and say "Gosh, I guess it's a good platform now" and can wander over and be just a me too competitor in a crowded market.
Re: John Carmack Interview
#14Penis.
Re: John Carmack Interview
#15"...At the last Quakecon I took a show of hands poll, and it was interesting to see how almost as many people there had an Android device as an iOS device. But when I asked how many peple had spent 20 bucks on a game in the Android store, there was a big difference. You’re just not making money in the Android space as you are in the iOS space." Interesting
But...are there any $20+ games on the Android market? Are there any $20+ iPhone games, for that matter?
People will accept significantly higher prices for iPad games, because there's a different class of games that can be played on a tablet device. A phone's too small.
There's a bit of a catch-22 going on here in general, where Android users are spending less money on apps because there are fewer really good apps available. I'm one person who owns multiple devices. But I wind up spending lots of money on iOS because 1) there's plenty of good stuff, and 2) the app store is nicely designed to make me buy things.
Re: John Carmack Interview
#16"...At the last Quakecon I took a show of hands poll, and it was interesting to see how almost as many people there had an Android device as an iOS device. But when I asked how many peple had spent 20 bucks on a game in the Android store, there was a big difference. You’re just not making money in the Android space as you are in the iOS space." Interesting
But...are there any $20+ games on the Android market? Are there any $20+ iPhone games, for that matter? People will accept significantly higher prices for iPad games, because there's a different class of games that can be played on a tablet device. A phone's too small. There's a bit of a catch-22 going on here in general, where Android users are spending less money on apps because there are fewer really good apps ava…
The question he asked at Quakecon 2010 was actually "who has spent at least $20 on the Android app store?"[1], not just on a single game. Your catch-22 scenario still holds, though I think the quantity and quality of free apps in the Android app store has also raised the bar for pay apps.
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_SdC8LVODY&feature=playe...
Re: John Carmack Interview
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you think 60Hz is the right rate? Just seems like such a huge jump over 30. Does 48 make more sense?
In competitive play it makes a big difference. Each frame of a 60Hz game spans 16.66ms, while in a 30Hz game it's 33.33ms. Depending on how well the engine is coded, there will be at least one frame of latency between input and reactions, and maybe more. So we could be looking at the difference between 33 and 66 milliseconds of input latency, at least. This doesn't even consider latency from input to the computer, or…
Digital Foundry has a series of interesting articles about measuring input lag in console games; I think this is the first: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-lag-factor-...
Re: John Carmack Interview
#18"...At the last Quakecon I took a show of hands poll, and it was interesting to see how almost as many people there had an Android device as an iOS device. But when I asked how many peple had spent 20 bucks on a game in the Android store, there was a big difference. You’re just not making money in the Android space as you are in the iOS space." Interesting
Apple are very good at getting people to hand over their credit card details before they even intend to make an app store purchase. Then, when it comes to buying something via an Apple store it doesn't require filling in any annoying forms to make the payment.
On Android meanwhile, once you see something you want to buy you then have the tedious task of typing in numbers and for a trivial app many people will feel it's not worth the effort.
Re: John Carmack Interview
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you think 60Hz is the right rate? Just seems like such a huge jump over 30. Does 48 make more sense?
You can't control the actual refresh rate of the monitor or TV. The display refreshes at 60hz, you can draw every frame, or every other frame and have twice the time. And yet, like he says, Rage looks better than most 30hz games.
Depends on the monitor. You're pretty much stuck when it comes to most current TVs and LCD/LED displays as well (60Hz, 70Hz, 75Hz sometimes 100Hz).
Before flat screens were affordable we were all using CRTs. A good CRT could push a 150Hz refresh rate. When Quake3 was still being played competitively (it /kind/ of still is with QuakeLive, but it's not the same anymore imo) we ran the game at a capped 120 FPS, set the monitor refresh to 120Hz and then turned on V-sync which equated to the smoothest and most responsive experience I've ever had in a game - it's pretty much indescribable and most people would argue that you wouldn't be able to tell the difference anyway, but even though solid 60 FPS on a v-synced 60Hz screen in most modern games comes pretty close, you can definitely feel the difference.
The worst is when you have some FPS lag with v-sync enabled - then it's a lot more noticeable than without v-sync.
I remember that during Quake4's (the 60FPS cap was hardcoded in Quake4, and somehow part of the engine, which in theory at least, made 120FPS/120Hz redundent) short run on the comeptitive scene, players complained that they wanted the cap lifted from 60FPS to 120FPS (or just any configurable number) so they could play on 120Hz monitors. id finally caved and released a patch which allowed this, and this made a huge difference. It definitely gave you an edge over the 60/60 players.
Re: John Carmack Interview
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
In competitive play it makes a big difference. Each frame of a 60Hz game spans 16.66ms, while in a 30Hz game it's 33.33ms. Depending on how well the engine is coded, there will be at least one frame of latency between input and reactions, and maybe more. So we could be looking at the difference between 33 and 66 milliseconds of input latency, at least. This doesn't even consider latency from input to the computer, or…
Digital Foundry has a series of interesting articles about measuring input lag in console games; I think this is the first: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-lag-factor-...
Interesting article. I'm not much of a console gamer (not much of a gamer anymore in general) but those figures are horrifying for a PC gamer to look at! 100-150ms lag (not counting any network lag on-top) would be pretty hard to swallow for me, but I'm biased and have a bit of a purest view on these things. I guess the most important thing is that you have fun - in which case, if the game achieves this but lags a bit, who cares?