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id Software’s John Carmack, whose first Nintendo DS title, Orcs & Elves, hits UK stores on November 16, recently caught up with IGN to discuss his views on the Nintendo handheld. Despite his fame as the creator of powerful 3D game engines which have powered games including Doom and Quake, the development celebrity thinks the Nintendo DS would make a great platform for a modern generation of programmers, calling it “almost perfect“.
“It is a shame that homebrew development can’t be officially sanctioned and supported, because it would be a wonderful platform for a modern generation of programmers to be able to get a real feel for low level design work, to be contrasted with the high level web and application work that so many entry level people start with,” said Carmack.
Questioned about the future advancements in DS game development, Carmack is of the opinion that there’s not much more to be demonstrated by the hardware, but this doesn’t mean advancements in DS development won’t be seen in the future.
“It is likely that every significant trick of the hardware has been demonstrated, but software is all about combining basic steps to do unique things, so new things will be seen as surely as new books will be written,” explained Carmack. “In any case, all of the implementation decisions will change as the prices for cartridge memory continue to fall. If we had a 128 meg cart instead of a 16 meg cart, all sorts of priorities would have been different. The combination of larger amounts of non-volatile memory on carts with internet access also opens up possibilities for continuously updated games.“
For more on Orcs & Elves head over to the information packed game page.
