John Carmack - Questions And Answers From Quakecon Keynote

Q - What about hardware based ray tracing?

A - Well, it might be right for some specific markets, but it isn't something for the gamer market.

Q - Any possibility of a console version of Doom III?

A - We are committed to doing an X-Box version. The graphics fidelity on the X-Box version will be the same as the PC version.

Q - Will there be a Linux version of Doom III?

A - Yes! It will be a safe bet that you will be able to get Doom III for Linux with at least Nvidia video card support. I will consider helping any other credible open source driver effort for other video card support under Linux, but right now I can't say that I see anything beyond Nvidia support at the moment. ATI is going to release a Linux driver for the Radeon 9700, but I don't have any details on it yet or if it will work correctly with Doom III on Linux.

Q - What weapons will we have in Doom III?

A - All of the regular weapons in Doom should be updated and available in Doom III.

Q - What kind of play length are you looking at for Doom III?

A - Well, it will not be real long and if you are an experienced gamer, you might be able to beat it in a weekend, however the game will feature a lot richer content so that alone will add to the playability.

Q - Do you really need 5.1 sound in Doom III?

A - It really isn't that expensive to do 5.1 sound. I would like to see the standard adoption of 5.1 sound across the board.

Q - Doom III when?

A - We don't want to be one of the companies who continues to show the product year after year at E3 and never ship it.

Q - What about the new 3D Labs video cards?

A - From what I have seen so far, the new 3D Labs cards are not going to be competitive with the highest end video cards. The card has good drivers, however, and the virtual texture mapper is good, and I think other companies will adopt this. I don't think that it will be a card that will be adopted by consumers.

Q - Will Doom III have multi-processor support?

A - Yes

Q - Will it have Multiplayer?

A - Yes, death match at least. We are concentrating on the single player version with the first release of the game. We will have an expansion pack at some point that will have a focus just on the multiplayer.