Chapter 184: Spatial Freedom (bonus)

By the time the reporters rushed over after hearing the news, Ethan had already finished his work for the day and returned to the hotel ahead of them. 

He had never expected DOOM to make any money. In fact, he had deliberately priced the game's floppy disks at cost.  2

After factoring in transportation, management, and other miscellaneous expenses, DOOM was just barely breaking even. 

"Phew, today was really something." Vivian wiped the sweat from her brow. "Anyway, at least we accomplished what we set out to do, right?" 

With DOOM serving as the hook, the first batch of graphics cards wouldn't need much time to sell out. 

"The retail market is still in its early stages, so let's take it slowly. There's no need to rush." 

Ethan stretched lazily. What he wanted more than anything now was to return as soon as possible and take part in developing the new game. "For the time being, the bulk of our sales will still be productivity tools aimed at the high-end market." 

Vivian nodded. For now, whether because of manufacturing processes or other factors, NovaRadeon's pricing was still less than ideal. Even the version with the smallest amount of VRAM cost several hundred dollars and was approaching a thousand dollars. 

The 512KB and 1MB versions were even more expensive. But no matter how expensive they made them, there was no need to worry about them not selling. 

"Sam said Lockheed has also placed an order for 50,000 1MB NovaRadeons? Well, well… now that's what I call a real big spender." 1

Who would've thought a game company would end up supplying the aerospace industry? 1

"Mm… and apparently Hollywood wants in on the action too. They're already putting in orders." 1

Vivian smiled. To these truly established old-timers, spending several thousand or even millions of dollars on chips was hardly a major expense. 

"The memory issue is a little more troublesome. We've already maxed out the production capacity for our northbridge chips, and most of Micron's capacity has to be prioritized for the NovaXeno." 

"The northbridge chips currently circulating on the market are still designed for conventional DRAM. If they want to use our SDRAM, they need to replace the entire motherboard." 

And GAMENOVA didn't actually have its own motherboard production line yet. Being able to produce a batch of northbridge chips and hand them over to motherboard manufacturers for OEM production was already the best solution they could find. 

"We don't need to solve this problem ourselves." 

After giving it some thought, Ethan abandoned the idea of finding another motherboard manufacturer. For the time being, there was no need to go that route, as they had a better solution to the problem. 

Cross-licensing, along with standardization. 

Once the market fully accepted SDRAM as the next-generation memory standard, other manufacturers would naturally come over on their own. That was where the whole group of allies they had built up in the PC industry would come in handy. 

For Ethan, semiconductors certainly had to be developed, but they would always remain a means to an end. They would only ever be a means for GAMENOVA to develop the games it wanted more freely. 

Semiconductors could solve the funding problem, and they could solve the hardware problem too. But semiconductors were work, while making games was life. 

DOOM was merely a simple proof of concept. The true next-generation title was still in the lab and hadn't emerged yet. 1

... 

Activision. 

David and the other three members exchanged glances as they watched the group engage in a technical discussion before them. 

Whenever the conversation turned to technology, Carmack would completely change his usual demeanor and suddenly become eloquent, talking nonstop. 

Although Ben Gokey was often challenged by him, he still refused to admit defeat, occasionally arguing back and searching for loopholes in Carmack's words or potential problems in his design concepts. 

Caneghem sat happily off to the side, occasionally chiming in, though most of his remarks were made in jest. 

He had originally planned to go and become better acquainted with the people at Infocom but happened to encounter the two of them debating and brainstorming here, so he simply stayed to listen and learn. 

To Caneghem, Carmack was already an old friend. Their relationship stretched back to the development of Might and Magic on the NovaBox, when Carmack had provided him with plenty of help. 

Although at the beginning, Carmack had inexplicably seemed to hold some hostility toward him and had even repeatedly interfered with his calls with Ethan, by now, the two had become old friends, and their relationship was actually quite good. 

David looked at one of his old friends, Larry, whom he had recently brought back. The two exchanged a glance, then simultaneously gave bitter smiles. 

"Funny how the young developers can surprise you. Sometimes, they're the real heroes." 

At GAMENOVA, young talents like Carmack were the norm rather than the exception. Gerald, one of the company's original veterans, was the only one who was noticeably older; everyone else was barely in their twenties. Carmack and Gokey weren't even twenty yet, so compared to them, their own side was practically filled with old geezers. 

What a headache. 

"The BSP tree still has to be used. That's the core of next-generation 3D rendering." 

Carmack immediately rejected Gokey's proposal to build an entirely new 3D renderer from scratch. "There's no need to reinvent the wheel. The BSP route is the right one. At least for now, it's absolutely the correct choice." 

"We only need to add surface caching and rely on OpenGL's hardware acceleration, putting all the graphical workload onto the graphics card." 

"But there's one thing you said that is correct." 

Carmack stared at the world on the screen, a paper-thin environment still cobbled together from layers of flat surfaces, as his mind raced. 

"We need to move beyond this kind of pseudo-3D world and rebuild the entire system from the ground up with true 3D in mind." 

Gokey tilted his head slightly in confusion, then his eyes suddenly lit up. "I understand. Switch to..." 

"Vertices. Build all three-dimensional spaces out of vertices. Use vertices as the basic units, then construct triangles from them to form shapes." 1

Given Carmack's personality, how could he possibly give Gokey the chance to finish? He directly settled the matter in one breath. 2

Seeing the two of them openly competing against one another, Caneghem grinned. This was great. Having a group of like-minded experts together developing games and studying technology, what a wonderful thing! 

"Completely abandon the old 2D way of thinking, huh? Interesting. Though just thinking about it is enough to give me a headache." 1

Caneghem ultimately wasn't formally trained in the field, nor did he possess Carmack's talent. He could only roughly understand what Carmack wanted to accomplish. 

Just then, Ethan's figure also appeared in the doorway. Before he even got close, his voice had already reached them. 

"For the next game, we need a true 6DoF, six degrees of freedom camera." Ethan had already heard what Carmack had just said. 

Quake 3

That was where the revolutionary nature of Quake lay. It would no longer be like DOOM or Wolfenstein, using 2D to simulate 3D. Instead, it would completely replace the old approach with 3D thinking and use it to define the entire world. 1

And the key to this was precisely the "vertices" Carmack had mentioned. These tiny vertices and the triangular surfaces they formed would lay the foundation for the magnificent future of 3D. 

A brand-new era was about to be opened by them. For players, the most obvious change they would physically feel in a truly 3D world was the 6DoF camera first introduced in Quake. 

Free rotation along all three axes, combined with movement forward and backward, left and right, and up and down. From then on, not only would the game world become 3D, but players also themselves would finally be able to move through that world in true 3D. 

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