Carmack shows 60fps Rage iPhone game

By Tom Bramwell Published 12 August, 2010

Cheap, due in 2010. Bigger game next year.

id Software technical director John Carmack has shown off a tech demo of Rage running on iPhone during his keynote address at QuakeCon 2010.

Carmack said he got the demo up and running very recently and that it would form the basis of a small, cheap Rage title to be released this year.

The first Rage iPhone title would be about making people go "oh my god, look at this", Carmack said, whereas the second Rage iPhone title - due out next year alongside the PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 release - would be more substantial.

The demo, projected onto a big screen, looked amazing, running at 60 frames per second, featuring all the "megatexture goodness" of big-platform Rage, vivid lighting, complex geometry and a number of waving (albeit stationary) enemies.

Carmack said that the eventual frame-rate would be similar to Doom Classic, but better than Doom Resurrection, and said that while the first Rage iPhone game looked great on iPhone 4 - and iPad - it would "run great" on the original 2G iPhone portable.

Carmack said that id Software was "in the process of pulling this into a game framework".

"I spent two full weeks last month working on this," he said. Apparently Carmack now spends about 10 per cent of his time working on mobile products.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (23) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • andromeda #1 2 years ago

    meh!!

    DOOM4 FTW

  • Emmit_Assassin #2 2 years ago

    And I'm supposed to be interested in this because.......?

  • yoomazir #3 2 years ago

    and that was the secret game they were gonna announce?

  • karaokequeen3 #4 2 years ago

    Pretty good work so far. Wonder if it'll be just be on iOS devices?

  • Pirotic #5 2 years ago

    I love the way he just nonchalantly knocks these things out..

    "check out this awesome looking game, just something I knocked together between making my rocket ships and being awesome"

  • soviet_ #6 2 years ago

    There's a video of it on Kotaku and it's impressive. Carmack is brilliant

    http://bit.ly/aReaCI

  • Optimaximal #7 2 years ago

    It's amazing how every time the gaming community calls id/Carmack out as 'irrelevant', they come out with something like this...

  • asphaltcowboy #8 2 years ago

    I *heart* Carmack!

  • Haloboy #9 2 years ago

    I can't stop sucking in every single word Carmack spouts during this keynote. I wish I could. I'm tired. I only understand half of what he's saying. He's just far too hypnotic. Damn you Carmack.

  • Malek86 #10 2 years ago

    Looks really astounding for an iPhone game.

  • darkmorgado #11 2 years ago

    Wow. That kotaku footage is impressive. Puts a lot of current-gen stuff to shame. When you consider this is running on something that fits in your pocket, it makes you wonder why the home consoles are actually that large.

  • paketep #12 2 years ago

    That's up there with Valve's Portal 2 for PS3 as most shitty surprise.

  • Der_tolle_Emil #13 2 years ago

    No doubt the technical achievement here is astonishing. The question is: Do I really care? I'm a programmer myself and I envy his skills but I would have preferred a Doom 4, Quake 5 or whatever announcement over this. As impressive as the technical aspect of this running on an iPhone is, the iPhone itself is not (when it comes to gaming. I need buttons)

  • twoism #14 2 years ago

    Just saw some clips of the tech demo, it's truly astonishing. Will be interesting to see DF's article on it.

  • Redeye #15 2 years ago

    Damned impressive work, even if Carmack's the sort of guy that'd try and get Quake running on an Atari 800 just for shits and giggles.

  • Caimbeul #16 2 years ago

    No show us 60fps on a platform that anyone actually cares about.

  • LowEnergyCycle #17 2 years ago

    What do you mean by "hype"? There wasn't any hype directly from iD specifically. Carmack just posted something on Twitter, and the Internet auto-assumed it was gonna be Doom 4.

    I was watching the live QuakeCon feed last night, and while I was disappointed initially by the announcement, I couldn't help but be blown away when he showed it running.

    The man is a genius.

  • butler` #18 2 years ago

    The man is a genius.

    He's definitely that.

    From Quake to Counter-Strike to CoD4 -- it's all based on his code.

  • Wyrm #19 2 years ago

    'No show us 60fps on a platform that anyone actually cares about.'

    Apple have sold over 50 million iPhones. Are you sure that 'nobody' cares about the platform? Or are you just applying your own opinion to the entire world?

  • Spuzzell #20 2 years ago

    @wyrm

    My grandmother has an iPhone, as do most of her friends. She's not exactly a regular here on Eurogamer is the point Caimbeul was making, and neither will be most of the worlds iPhone owners. 90% of them won't have any idea who Carmack is, and if they did they wouldn't care.

    Also, 60 fps? In what way was that demo running at anything close to that? Static lighting, one static zombie and 15-20 fps is my guess.

    It looked great though. If it can run on iPhone it can CERTAINLY run on 3DS, and the idea of that gives me slight happy trouser time.
    Edited by 1 at 13/08/10 @ 13:14

  • fknetwork #21 2 years ago

    "It looked great though. If it can run on iPhone it can CERTAINLY run on 3DS, and the idea of that gives me slight happy trouser time "

    LOL, this won't be out on the 3DS, the 3DS isn't exactly powerful, ds graphics in 3D, WOW! (sarcasm)

  • Wyrm #22 2 years ago

    "My grandmother has an iPhone, as do most of her friends. She's not exactly a regular here on Eurogamer is the point Caimbeul was making, and neither will be most of the worlds iPhone owners. 90% of them won't have any idea who Carmack is, and if they did they wouldn't care."

    Again, irrelevant. The iPhone is making a lot of people very rich from game sales, this is a stone-cold fact. I don't care who isn't interested in it as a games platform, the fact is a lot of people are interested. Just do a Google search and you'll find impressive sales figures. 50,000,000+ iPhone sales means only a very tiny percentage of the users have to play games for it to be considered a platform people care about.

  • Rens11 #23 2 years ago

    Looks almost unreal for a phone! kinda reminds me of the 1st time you play a new console were the graphics are such a massive leap from what was before that they blow you away!