Quote: "It was written in C, John Carmack thinks OOP is the devil."
No, it was written in C++
Carmack doesn't think OOP is bad, he just never felt the overhead was worth the benefits.
Given he coded the Quake Engine without any OO in less than 18months this includes 3 major rewrites from scratch. (along with Romero and Abrush) it's pretty fair to say, that as far as his comments went about Object Programming ... really it wouldn't have added much in terms of coding speed over program speed.
Quake 2 has some Object Programming in it, not much though. Mostly the interfaces were Objects the rest were still standard interfaces.
Quake 3 added much larger class based Object Programming over the C Interfaces. Some sections were still Assembly level though in order to keep compatibility and speed.
Doom 3 is almost full OO, and it shows compared to his old engines. Carmack might be a genius when it comes to programming, but as far as optimisation goes; he is still learning.
This is why on the other projects guys like Micheal Abrush were brought on-board. Because Carmack can make awesome code, but someone needs to refine it in order for it to run on a reasonable computer specification.
This years QuakeCon speech (watched the video for last nite) really shows how Carmack in particular is out of touch with modern gamers.
He is still trying to make games for my Generation of gamers. Those people who bought and played Wolf3D, Blake Stone, etc.
He isn't looking at the market as it is now. Valve on the other hand know exactly how the market is right now and are playing it just how they want to.
Each day you look at Valve evolving it's clear to see thier roots showing more and more. Difference is, they're actually learning and evolving as the industry does. They've embraced the Mod market better than iD has.
I mean iD made modifiable engines, but they're still highly specialised. Source on the other hand has been designed as a much broader and tuneable engine to fit to any situation; much like the Unreal 2.X Engine. There is also quite alot of back'n'forth between Valve and Mod Teams.
I for one have recently been talking with them, actually gettin responses to my questions FROM the team. Where'as with iD Software, your lucky for it to be acknowlaged on iddev.net in the FAQ.
Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 might on thier own be reasonable games, but in all honesty. Not many gamers are amped getting Half-Life 2 because of Half-Life 2. Sure many people got it, played it, loved it. But the biggest part of Half-Life 2 was you got Counter-Strike: Source. That is the biggest reason many people bought the game.
That is the biggest reason why the game is just so damn popular.
The original was popular, but it never really took off in that whole phenomenom it became, until Counter-Strike and Day of Defeat.
The online Mod culture made it what it is. Valve aren't denying that at all.. they know they have a good game, but they also know that more than anything the fans are what keeps it great. Keep the fans happy, make them feel that Valve are part of the culture. Rather than on some pedestal looking down at the peon gamers.
That's what makes them far more popular. As I said, Carmack is out of touch with the gamers. Not sure if he will personally ever be back in-touch with them.