Slashdot heeft een Q&A sessie met John Carmack online gezet. In goede /. stijl werden de vragen samengesteld door de Slashdotters zelf. Hier een interessant vraag over Linux en game development (geript van Voodoo Extreme):
ajs asks: I read a sort-of-analysis that you wrote way back comparing DirectX 3D handling to Open GL (with Open GL being far preferable to you). Do you feel that the tools that you and others will need to create the next generation of games exist now under Linux or other Open Source operating systems, or is that still a long way off? What would you recommend that we developers and developer wannabes dedicate our time to?John Carmack Answers: To develop a game, you need coding tools, pixel art tools, modeling and texturing tools, sound tools, and usually music tools.
Coding tools are basically fine under linux, and there is already plenty of force behind their improvement.
Gimp looks serviceable for pixel editing, but I don't know of any professional game developers using it.
I assume there are some basic sound tools available, but I would be surprised if they are equal to the best windows or mac tools. That is probably the most approachable sector to work on improving.
Modeling and texturing tools are the biggest lack, but it is also the hardest to address. They really need to be built on top of solid 3D infrastructure, and that is still in its infancy right now. It would probably be possible to build a simple, focused modeling and texturing program that could get the job done, but full featured programs like MAX and maya have an immense amount of work invested in them. Maybe SGI will get maya ported to linux...
We are going to try to build our next level editor cross-platform, which will probably sort out a bunch of 3D content creation issues. I will be improving the matrox GLX driver as necessary to support the effort.
