idTech 5, Rage, and more in 3 Videos

1 minute read

Somehow I keep getting back on this topic. Maybe it’s because of the excitement that was involved with the features promised by the idTech 5 engine as presented in the earlier QuakeCon demo.

Today was one of those exciting days for me. I just finished watching a two part video commentary on the development aspect of idTech 5 that was posted on GameSpy. A third video is an interview with John Carmack on the changes that will be occurring within id Software and other issues. The two commentary videos feature commentaries by John Carmack and Matt Hooper from id Software.

Keep in mind that the “lag” that you might notice is because you’re viewing a technical demo of an unfinished product. Another thing that might be worthy to notice is that the OpenGL API is no longer being used as primary graphics API, yet the company is moving towards DirectX as their primary API.

The first video is presented by John Carmack and is about the development of idTech 5 and Rage. The backdrop for this video is pretty much continuous, so you might want to look away to avoid insanity. He speaks about graphics development, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars and other things that might be interesting to developers.

The second video introduces Matt Hooper as a secondary host and talks more about the tools and assets given to the level designers and artists in idTech 5. For an unreleased product, it looks amazing. There seems to be a great (if not massive) improvement over older tools such as GtkRadiant by having a more intuitive user interface. But you can judge for yourself below by watching the videos attached to this post.

The third video announces a new “game” or adaptation of the existing Quake 3 code base and create a free to download online game, hear all about it in the third video.

Edit: as of 2023, it seems that these videos have been lost to the ravages of time.