Tag: ID »

To most people, QuakeCon is an event that is custom built for showing off the latest and greatest in big gaming software. John Carmack, the genius behind id Software, usually gets up on stage and wows the crowd with his new FPS, but this year, it was a bit different.

In his keynote he whiped out his iPhone 4 and said, "iPhone. Rage. 60 frames per second". Rage, his newest FPS, was only expected to be released on the current generation mega machines, so when his iPhone came out, the crowd let out a pretty hearty cheer. What Carmack showed was only a tech demo, but it had all of the textures, lighting effects, and speed that you would expect a solid FPS to have.

The demonstration was built on the id Tech 5 engine, the same engine used for the XBox 360, the PS3, and the PC, which is so advanced that it can run the game at an acceptable speed on a first gen iPhone.

Carmack says in the speech, after explaining how cool the app looks on the iPad, says that the Tech 5 engine could "kill anything done on a previous generation console, like the Xbox or PlayStation 2.".

He does mention the lack of tactile feedback, but I fully expect John Carmack to fix that too. I'll be waiting, Carmack.

Unfortunately for us, id will not be licensing Tech 5 like they do with the majority of their other tech. In an interview with Eurogamer, id's Software boss Todd Hollenshead said that "It's going to be used within ZeniMax, so we're not going to license it to external parties. It's like, look, this is a competitive advantage and we want to keep it within games we publish - not necessarily exclusively to id or id titles, but if you're going to make a game with id Tech 5 then it needs to be published by Bethesda, which I think is a fair thing."

Here's hoping that there will be a slew of great Bethesda titles for the iPhone in 2011.

[Source: Eurogamer, Kotaku]

Phil Shiller is writing back to Steve Frank about the App Store approval process issues. While we wait for Steve Jobs to return our correspondence, here's the latest from the app store.

More Wolfenstein! The game was originally created by Id Software, ported to the iPhone by Firemint, and now published by EA. Delayed for nearly 2 months so as to not compete with with Wolfenstein 3D, the game was released yesterday at $4.99. A low initial price for an EA release.

It's an interesting idea for a game. Take the Wolfenstein 3D game and add an RPG element to it. Early reader reviews are great. We'll try to have a review up in the next couple days.

Plushed looks lush. Plushed, a new game from Blacksmith Games has a fantastic art style. Platformer + goth + pizza = Plushed? We'll have to wait and see if the gameplay delivers. Take a look at the YouTube video for more. Blacksmith Games is also doing a promo where the more people that follow them on Twitter, the lower the launch price of the game will be. Expected release date is September/October.

Push, bid, push, bid. Ebay have updated their app to include push notifications for outbid alerts and watched items. You still don't have a chance against the snipers though.

What a week in apps. With so many new apps and updates available, I definitely haven't payed enough attention to the apps that are being announced. I feel like I just went to a movie and showed up too late to see the previews. What a waste! To make up for this, I am going to create a Thursday roundup of everything (well maybe not everything) awesome that is coming soon to the app store.

First off is the greatest mystery in the history of the app store. I had a friend send me a link to this site the other day, and I wasn't sure what to say. Is it GTA for the iPhone? Is it... not?

I did a bit of research (I scoured the Touch Arcade forums) and found a few different opinions. One clever person, dpmpolo, went to http://whois.domaintools.com/coming-on-iphone.com, and found that the site is registered to Gameloft. DaveMc99 claims that the game is called Gangstar, while another guy CDubby94 said, "It's called The Cartel. I beta tested it. It's almost ready for submission." I love forums.

Admittedly lost, and a bit anxious, I was forced to contact the internet Oracle, who told me that the trailer is actually for Poker vs. Girls 2. Check out the original here, it's amazing.

With that squared away, my attention turned to Doom Resurrection, an amazing app that we reviewed a day or two ago. After reading the review, I thought, "Wow, that looks awesome. I wonder where the original Doom is?". Fortunately, the gaming gods heard my plea and told me to hop over to idsoftware.com to check out the "iPhone Doom Classic Progress Report".

Basically, the article states that John Carmack, the inventor of the modern FPS and the technical director of id