StarCraft: Orcs in space go down in flames - Page 5

On October 01 2012 20:43 kar1181 wrote:
Patrick's recent blogs on StarCraft's development are amazing (and you must go read his linked article regarding the turmoil that went on over at Ion Storm). His most recent one reminded me of something Michael Abrash (of Quake and more recently Valve software fame - one of the smartest software guys in the world imo) wrote back in the 90s and it's still up on Bluesnews. http://www.bluesnews.com/abrash/chap64.shtml

Basically he talks about a friend of his, Tom Wilson, who had heard that a rival video card manufacturer had used a technique (FIFO buffers specifically) to boost their chipset's performance. Wilson, wracked his brain and pushed himself and his thinking to the extreme to try and figure out what his competitor was doing. In the end he came up with an idea that while not perfect, seemed good enough.

Turns out his competitor hadn't really done anything particularly brilliant and his solution was actually far more effective and dramatically increased the performance of the chipset he was working on.

It's amazing how during this era of computing, individuals could still make a massive difference. It's also remarkable how we see time and time again, when faced with competition how brilliant people can be.

It's funny that despite it's sheer level of dysfunction, we have Ion Storm to thank for our favourite game being as good as it ended up being.