John Carmack Talks About The Jaguar

[TL]

I found this brilliant story will trawling the internet today:

//// John Carmack <johnc@idcube.idsoftware.com>, Technical Director
at Id Software, answers why Id chose to port DOOM to the Jaguar.

   Feel free to quote this.

   We have a few reasons for not developing on the 3DO, but
   development machine bigotry isn't one of them. I used an apple IIGS
   for snes development (I am never, EVER, going to work with nintendo
   again), and I am suffering with an atari falcon for Jaguar work
   until I can port the tools to NEXTSTEP. I wouldn't turn away a mac
   based environment.

   The biggest reason is that I doubt that 3DO is going to become a
   huge success. $750 is way out of line for a pure entertainment
   machine. Was the NEO-GEO a success two years ago? We bought one,
   but we don't know anoyone else that did. I doubt there will be all
   that many units sold.

   To make matters worse, there are over one hundred third party
   licensees suposedly developing on 3DO. If there were only a couple
   companies developing for it, they might make money. I predict there
   is going to be some serious lossage going on in the 3DO developer
   community.

   The other major argument is somewhat philosphical. I don't like
   what people expect out of CD games. Does anyone think that the
   cheeseball dialog in crash and burn is a GOOD addition? It turns my
   stomach. People expect CD games to have tons of digitized speech
   and video, and the 3DO is going to be strongly associated with it.
   The joke here is that if we ever do a CD version of DOOM, you are
   going to get the game and "The Making of DOOM" a one hour feature
   film. Companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars putting all
   this media into their games, and it often actually detracts from
   it. We don't want to be part of this crowd.

   I would rather cut down to the essentials and fit on a cartridge
   than uselessly bulk up on a CD. I have a minimallist sense of
   aesthetics in game design.

   Many developers are planning on waiting out the eary 32 bit
   hardware wars, but I want to do a cool product even if it doesn't
   make tons of money. Sandy (our map designer) semi-derisively calls
   DOOM jaguar my "reward" for writing DOOM pc. "Good job, you can go
   play with your new toys." :-)

   Our initial appraisal of the Jaguar was "nice system, but Atari
   probably can't make it a success". But when I got the technical
   documentation, I was VERY impressed. This is the system I want to
   see become a standard platform.

   I was slated to do a cut down version of DOOM for the super
   nintendo SFX chip, but I kept thinking about how cool a jaguar
   version of DOOM would be, and nintendo kept rejecting
   wolfenstein-snes for b*****t reasons (a golden cross bonus item
   might offend christians. right.).

   We finaly decided that we didn't want to be a part of the
   chicken-and-the-egg problem of new systems not attracting customers
   because developers haven't written for the platform because there
   are no customers. The jag is cool, I think it has a shot at
   success, and I am going to put my time where my mouth is.

   Why the jag is cooler than the 3DO (from my point of view):  It
   only costs $250. The bulk of its processing power is user
   programmable. The 3DO has a capable main processor (a couple times
   better than the weak 68k in the jag), but most of its power is in
   custom hardware that has narrow functionality for affine
   transformations. The jag has some stupid hardware for z buffering
   and gouraud shading, but I can just ignore it and tell the two
   27mhz risc chips to do EXACTLY what I want. A 64 bit bus with
   multiple independant processors may not be the easiest thing to
   optimize for, but there is a LOT of potential.

   There will probably be a version of DOOM for 3DO. We are talking
   with a few companies about licensing out the port. It would be kind
   of fun to do it here, but I am eager to get to work on the next
   generation game engine that will make DOOM look puny...

Source: http://www.atariarchives.org/cfn/09/03/08/0060.php

[Greyfox]

wast there also one about Wolfenstein too..regarding the jaguar port as well, in fact I think that one was a video...

[TL]

wast there also one about Wolfenstein too..regarding the jaguar port as well, in fact I think that one was a video...

That was a video I posted here fairly recently

[TrekMD]

Gotta love this paragraph, that last sentence in particular.
   Our initial appraisal of the Jaguar was "nice system, but Atari
   probably can't make it a success". But when I got the technical
   documentation, I was VERY impressed. This is the system I want to
   see become a standard platform.

[TL]

Gotta love this paragraph, that last sentence in particular.
   Our initial appraisal of the Jaguar was "nice system, but Atari
   probably can't make it a success". But when I got the technical
   documentation, I was VERY impressed. This is the system I want to
   see become a standard platform.

If only he had got his way 

[TrekMD]

Gotta love this paragraph, that last sentence in particular.
   Our initial appraisal of the Jaguar was "nice system, but Atari
   probably can't make it a success". But when I got the technical
   documentation, I was VERY impressed. This is the system I want to
   see become a standard platform.

If only he had got his way 

[TL]

wast there also one about Wolfenstein too..regarding the jaguar port as well, in fact I think that one was a video...

That was a video I posted here fairly recently

This one in fact: http://www.retrovideogamer.co.uk/http:/ ... ic.php?t=8