At Apple's worldwide developer conference (WWDC) in
San Francisco, California, John Carmack, the chief technology officer of id Software, a well-known game developer, has demonstrated the company's new game engine, which, it claims already works on numerous platforms including game consoles.“In the last couple of years we've been working, pretty much in secrecy, on a next-generation technology and a next-generation game core. This is actually going to be the fist time that we show what we've been doing publicly,?Mr. Carmack said during his two minute keynote at WWDC.
The new game engine, which id calls id Tech 5 supports Microsoft Windows-based PCs, Apple Macintosh computers running Mac OS as well as popular game consoles ?Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3. No information was released about the game engine itself, though, it was implied that it also features MegaTexturing, a feature in id's Enemy Territory: Quake Wars game due out this year.
“What we've got here is the entire world with unique textures, 20GB of textures covering this track. [Artists] can go in and look at the world and, say, change the color of the mountaintop, or carve their name into the rock. They can change as much as they want on surfaces with no impact on the game,?Mr. Carmack explained.
It is unclear how 20GB of textures covering only one “track? even when compressed, can fit into up to 512MB of Xbox 360's memory or 256MB of PlayStation 3's memory. Nevertheless, previously Mr. Carmack said that his primary development platform was Xbox 360, whereas the PlayStation 3 was not optimal, according to him. It also was not announced which graphics card was used to demonstrate the id Tech 5.
The new game engine technology will power the studio's internally created new game property and will be available for licensing to third parties. However, timeframes are not clear at this point.
id Software will be showing id Tech 5 to interested developers and publishers by appointment only at the E3 Media & Business Summit from July 11 ?13, 2007 in Santa Monica, California.
