14 DAY TRIAL // During Engadget's liveblogging of Steve Jobs' WWDC keynote, id Software got their chance to show off their newest technology in developing games. The engine isn't named after the game using it. It's simply dubbed "id Tech 5," most likely in reference to a fifth generation engine, although I'm sure there are more than 5 already.
Carmack presented the technology on the big screen commenting on what everyone present was looking at, as Joystiq reports: "So the last couple of years at id we've been working in secrecy on next-gen tech and a game for it ... this is the first time we're showing anything we've done on it publicly... What we've got here is the entire world with unique textures, 20GB of textures covering this track. They 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."
This sounds promising. It should be quite easy for them to develop the game, isn't it? I mean, the development team will wake up every morning with fresh new ideas and all they'll have to do is add to what they've already done, "change the color of the mountaintop" if they will, "with no impact on the game."
Concluding his speech, Carmack makes a very promising... well, promise: "We're going to be showing on a Mac, PC, PS3, and Xbox at E3, we'll have another Mac announcement at E3." Yup, they're quite confident about this new technology of theirs going so multisystem with it. I must say, I was getting kind of tired hearing that Unreal Engine 3 can do this and Unreal Engine 3 can do that... Is every game supposed to use UE 3 if it wants to look good? We know it can be used for different genres other than FPSs, but really now, Epic can't have all the glory.