Szembejött a Slashdoton egy 1999 októberi interjú John Carmack-kal, küzdök a bőség zavarával, annyi témát érintenek. A programozó például elmagyarázza, hogy miért hagyta ott a NeXT platformot a Windows NT kedvéért, mi hiányzik neki a Linuxból, és milyen brutális kocsikkal járni munkába.
Egy olyan kérdés van a sorban, ami úgy istenigazában a WS témájába vág. Ezt el is raktam - mert a blog jegyzetfüzet is - jobb időkre, amikor lesz érkezésem augmentált és alternatív valóságokról írni.
moonboy asks:
I once read, in Wired, an article that said you have an incredible headstart on everyone else for making “virtual worlds” on the Internet using your engine from the Quake games. Do you have any intention of doing this? Has anyone approached you about it? It would seem like a fantastic use of the technology with online gaming being so popular. Entire worlds online could be created virtually and very life-like with many different purposes.John Carmack Answers:
Making Snow Crash into a reality feels like a sort of moral imperative to a lot of programmers, but the efforts that have been made so far leave a lot to be desired.It is almost painful for me to watch some of the VRML initiatives. It just seems so obviously the wrong way to do something. All of this debating, committee forming, and spec writing, and in the end, there isn’t anything to show for it. Make something really cool first, and worry about the spec after you are sure it’s worth it!
I do think it is finally the right time for this to start happening for real. While a lot of people could envision the possibilities after seeing DOOM or Quake, it is really only now that we have general purpose hardware acceleration that things are actually flexible enough to be used as a creative medium without constantly being conscious of the technical limitations.
Two weeks ago, I pitched a proposal to develop some technology along these lines to the rest of the company. I may wind up working on some things like that in parallel with the next game project.