News from March 23, 1997 to April 11, 1997

April 11, 1997

New, new, new!
Slipgate here. LOTS of new stuff around here today. Firstly, the Fault Line cracks anew today with a slightly happier looking and more useful stye to the page. Also, there's some new news regarding both Quake 2 and the Fault Line itself.

I've changed the layout of the page as you can see. You can now finger guys at both Hipnotic Interactive and Id Software. Credit for the Fault Line's new logo (added a few days ago) goes to my feverishly working compadre Nite, who then taught me how to do glowing text, which aided me in producing this new layout. If the page is currently a little too colorful or too naseuating with the color, let me know and I'll change it.

While we were on a sort of hiatus, my buddy Nite started a Quake 2 webring........... we are a member. You can go now to other pages we have located with Quake 2 stuff using the Quake 2 webring.

Sandy Peterson IRC log
Also, I've been kind of sitting on this IRC log from a few months ago when Sandy Peterson showed up on DALNet IRC #quake. It's rather long (30K text file) but he talks a bit about Quake 2, as well as other ID Software stuff. Oh yes, he also gets a very complete amount of kissing up from everyone in the channel, myself included.

Carmack finger updates
Carmack made some finger updates while we worked at this page:

========================================

April 2

The second generation QuakeWorld is out and live now. We will probably release a couple bug fix versions over the next week or so as problems are reported.

Overall, I'm pleased with the results -- I think I have delivered very solid improvements in game play. I certainly learned a lot along the way. If you have anything resembling a decent connection, you should be able to play a good game. A server with a 400+ ms ping and 10% packet loss is still not going to play all that great, but you should just avoid those.

The packet size is about as small as it is going to get for the general cases. Any more shrinkage will have to be game-specific compression, like the specialized nail update.

I can make doors and plats move smoothly, but it will take a good chunk more development. This will probably be done for quake 2.

I have it all set up to clip movement against other players during prediction, but I probably need a day or two to finish it. I'm not confidant that I'll get to that anytime soon, though.

I really want to get client side demo recording and more spectator mode options (see through player's eyes, chase cam, etc), but I just don't have the time right now.

The next major upgrade will be a quakeworld that can run in software and OpenGL modes. A verite module will come later.

This combination (QW networking and switchable rendering) will be the base that we move all of our Quake 2 work over to.

It plays damn well. I've tried it. The new master-less way is much easier. He went on a few days later with this:

========================================

April 4

Ok, the current OpenGL code no longer scales the status bar and console. You can stop complainng now. The next release will be the consolidated rendering code for quakeworld. I'm not sure when I will be able to make a standalone version.

The consolidated quake will also be available on NT-alpha as well as x86. If you have a powerstorm-T card, glquake works pretty good. Glint and oxygen cards don't work well enough, but the normal quake software version should work fine. We may get a little bit of asm code written for the software version.

This was in response to people complaining about the status bar and console being scaled......... dunno, I don't think I'd hate that, but then, I haven't seen it maybe it is really annoying. He again continued a little later with:

========================================

April 8

Technical note:

Instanced brush models are not going to be well supported in the next release of the quake engine. Instanced bmodels are models that are created as an entirely seperate map, like the health boxes and ammo boxes. We are not going to use any instanced bmodels in q2, but I will probably leave the drawing code intact for backwards compatability. You will NOT be able to movement clip against them as a bsp hull, however. You could still use a solid bounding box if you really have to have one, though.

Brush models built as part of the world, like doors and plats, will remain with full functionality.

Instanced bmodels never were lighted properly, and a lot of code gets simpler with this decision.

Too bad. I think Quake 2 will be OK though (here's some real Quake 2 news heheh). His next update was this:

========================================

April 9

Would anyone complain if I took out lookstrafe and keyboard look modifier? I'm cleaning up code, and I don't know of anyone that ever uses those features.

Later on he added this to the above:

update: ok, +klook has it's supporters. Anyone for lookstrafe?

I don't use klook or lookstrafe....... even when I was a keyboarder. Remove them at your will if nobody complains, John.

Miscellaneous news on us
Ok, in addition to all that, my buddy CD-Nite switched clans, you can call him FA-Nite now (just call him Nite). I think I'll have him make the next update so that he can download this update to the site to his HD.

ParadoX interview
Oh, and before I forget, I talked to Paradox of Hipnotic Interactive for some time in a rather impromptu "interview". We talk about Hipnotic's next Quake engine game, and a teensy bit about Quake 2. Here it is for you.........

Slipgate: By the way, the Hipnotic pack was truly incredible. Rogue's was good, but Hipnotic's did things for quake that nothing has ever done...... excellent work, I can't WAIT for Hipnotic's game with the Quake engine.
Paradox: Heh..neither can I - we are working incredibly hard on it. Gonna have some VERY not Quake-like stuff in it. Very cool.
Slipgate: Is scary really frightening or is he normal?
Paradox: He is a freak0. Hehe.
Slipgate: I wonder........ maps have a specific size they can be max...... is it possible to increase that size limit? If it is, i'm sure you guys are doing it :).
Paradox: There is normally no limit.
Slipgate: What about the wraparound? There is a wraparound after all.
Paradox: Oh, I see what you mean. The actual model limit.
Slipgate: Increasable?
Paradox: 4096 total size - yeah, we wont increase that - unnecessary.
Slipgate: heheheh. Something tells me you are gonna pack that space with kikass detail tho.
Edge of Oblivion is a fantastic level to deathmatch in or just LOOK around in. Levelord and you both did great jobs on levels.
Pass that along.
Paradox: Yeah. Levelord rules. Cool guy too.
Something told you right (about detail) heh.
Slipgate: Can you believe in one article 3dRealms claim they left coz they couldn't handle true 3d levels?
Paradox: This aint FragMaster is it? hehe.
Slipgate: Nope.
Paradox: Bah.
Slipgate: 3dRealms sucks at lying through their teeth.
Paradox: The who 3dr thing is insane - 3dr whines, and never lets it drop.
Slipgate: They expect levelord and the others to drop credit for duke, but they aren't ready to do the same thing.
Paradox: They claim everybody that left Apogee ever, never did anything for Apogee. Its not smart.
Slipgate: So, can you tell me ANYTHING at all about your quake engine game? Goblins and crossbows or robots and lasers?
3drealms-even tried to discredit levelord..... puhleez.
Paradox: Makes people VERY angry when their work is credited to another person.
Heh..I would LOVE to tell you about it...hehe.
Slipgate: So, can you tell me ANYTHING at all about your quake engine game? Goblins and crossbows or robots and lasers? Or guys and tits?
:) Levelord....... had to ask.
Paradox: Nah, not yet - wait about another month..hehe. Or maybe less.
Slipgate: A release date? Anything?
Paradox: Nope. Heh.
Slipgate: So you using any of the Quake 2 enhancements?
At least, those already finished like qrad for lighting.
Paradox: We are using Quake 2 technology and adding our own cool stuff. VERY cool stuff that is.
Slipgate: Hipnotic's gonna rule as second in command to id in the 3d world.
Paradox: Thats the plan..
It was a biznatch doing the rotating stuff
Slipgate: Is the Quake 2 style of rotating brushes easier?
Paradox: Our new stuff is tres easy.
Slipgate: Trinity engine game coming out in two years a la Hipnotic i'm guessing.
Paradox: No comment :).
Slipgate: Hahhaha. Hey, thanks for this "interview".
I'll see you around then, and thanks a lot. p.s. if you ever decide to fork over any news, let me know!
Paradox: No prob.
Slipgate: Bye.
Paradox: Later.

April 4, 1997

Meanwhile, in a distant country...
Due to the massive flow of Quake2 news at the moment (hmm...), Slipgate required help to collect all the news together and put it on this page. So, he recruited me. In case you don't know who I am (and you probably don't), I'm Nite, aka CD-Nite. As you all know, two is better than one so I'll be helping Slipgate find new Quake2 news and putting it on this page. You can email me at nite@clara.net. The link to my homepage is over there.

New QWCL released
Once again, it's not Quake2 stuff, but it's getting close. The new QuakeWorld was released a few days ago, and it lives up to its expectations. 32-player Quake is suprisingly playable! The spectator mode works great too. Hopefully these features will be built into Quake2, to save the installation hassles.

April 3, 1997

I live........ again!
To all of you who wondered where I was and where I went............ it's simply that a) Quake 2 news doesn't break every day :) b) I was a bit busy lately c)I have some things in mind for this page that I was sketching out.

WYSIWIG..... not all it's cracked up to be
So far I have been using a WYSIWIG html editor to write this page (if you check the familiar meta tags you'll know which). It's done well for the page so far, but honestly speaking I need to stop using it. The annoying practice of pressing the table button, typing in 1 and 1 over the default 2 and 2 and resetting everything like all my other tabular datelines, and constantly resetting the font is a) making the HTML too large with uneccessary FONT tags b) wasting my time since I can copy and paste the set of tags dealing with my tabular datelines, the green news headers, and the white text, as well as the yellow for quoting. Just a copy and paste of a set group of tags to stop resetting everything and such.
As it is, my HTML editor makes horrible source formatting so its just a pain to read it or edit it manually at this point. What I may do is shuffle all the textual contents of this page over to the manually written HTML so that all the stuff is here but formatted readably. As I continue making updates, I intend to move older stuff into an old news page linked in the left frame, of which this HTML may be the first edition of it. I may just start a fresh page and shuffle this to old, and manually do the new html page, or something else. In any case, I'm thinking of some slight structural changes to the page, a very minor one of which you see here.

This update stinks!
This is just a quick update to let you know I'm not dead of course. Hopefully (crossing fingers) I have a vent to get some real quake 2 info your way. Yeah, umm, yeah.

Multiplayer changes!
Right now, Carmack is doing a whole lot of QuakeWorld work (32 players and BETTER performance, grin) both for Quakeworld and to decide on ways to make it better multiplayer for Quake 2. I'm hoping Quake 2 standalone with have 32 player capacity!

Make a Quake 2 suggestion!
Hey all, I'll throw out an OFFER right now! If you all send me a whole ton of (meaningful and thougth out) Quake 2 suggestions, I will send an organized package of Quake 2 suggestions along to the powers that be at id. Instead of a gazillion discarded letters, I could present a wide-spanning group of suggestions from a group of people, which would take more notice. This idea I got after reading John Cash's idea of a few letters representing group opinions instead of a gazillion individual responses. I am really here, so go ahead........ I'll act as the medium through which id hears you. I have a few questions on my way to id as it is. Mail them to me!

March 28, 1997

John Cash asks.........
John Cash is currently asking opinions about weapon switching in his plan:

Request for Opinions

--------------------

I'd like to know how people feel about automatic weapon switching. There are three events that can cause Quake to switch weapons on your behalf: picking up a weapon, ammo, or backpack (which may have ammo and/or a weapon). I have ideas/opinions, but I want to hear what you guys (and gals) think. Should we ever switch weapons automatically? If so, when and how should the new weapon be chosen? Should it work the same in single player, cooperative, and deathmatch? Remember, there are llamas (oops, I mean "new players") out there so we can not have a system that works well for only leet ass mofos like sCary ;-) Please talk it over and let me know. I'd appreciate it if I could get a small number of emails representing group opinions instead of a gazillion individual respones.

E-mail him with your opinions.

Blue takes over Planet Quake!
The guy who maintains Blue's News is taking over Planet Quake. Anyways, maybe this means I can ask if I can move there again......... Nah, I'll wait for a while more. I'm still the only Quake 2 news page around currently :).

Site will be dusty over the weekend
Except for perhaps finally the incorporation of a counter I can live with............ this site will probably not be updated again over the weekend. Yes, I am using the real life excuse.

March 27, 1997

Now on Mindspring
I'm now on a Mindspring address, as you can see. Thanks to DethQuake for the web space here. Check out his FvF page!

Geocities screwed up
The updates you see for March 26 were uploaded March 26, but somehow Geocities just kept showing the older version of the page. Not such a big deal now that I've moved the page to Mindspring :). Update those bookmarks folks!

Carmack not releasing any info yet
I e-mailed John Carmack with some questions about Quake 2. His response was this:

Sorry, we aren't making public statements about Quake 2 now...

John Carmack

For me, this means that this page can only really be updated with big news whenever big news is released. Hopefully at some point I can resend my questions and John will answer them. Of course, you all know what this means: Don't bug Carmack about Quake 2.

PageCount's counter is OK......... but
The counter provided by pagecount.com: I didn't know it would be an ad banner. I guess it's alright. If someone else knows of a simple textual or graphical counter without an ad banner attached that is free, please let me know. I have to find out if I can use cgi scripts of my own here. For now I have removed the counter while I think about it.

Artists, please send me your logos
I need a logo for this done by someone actually good with graphics. (Yup, that one above is by me). Please send me a logo! I'll use it and I will credit you.

March 26, 1997

Got a counter
I now have a counter implemented on the site. It is starting at 0 as of today at about 10 P.M. Thanks to http://www.pagecount.com for the counter.

Got Dissolution of Eternity
Went to return Shrak and discovered that they had already received Mission Pack 2. I got it. I've played it only a little so far. There aren't any rotating brushes (yet) and its very medieval, but its good too. I recommend everyone gets both Mission Packs.

Going to be more Quake 2 oriented
I'm fully aware that as far as Quake 2 news goes, my updates so far aren't that great. I won't say more about this but expect (hopefully) some real Quake 2 news soon.

March 25, 1997

Later that night
Oh god. Anyways, everything you see below except the counter stuff I wrote this morning. Here I am at 10:30 PM. I DID buy Shrak and Scourge of Armagon today, but I made the statement "They are cool!" before I went to install them. I very much dislike Shrak. I won't use explicit words because I know (via IRC) and am on good terms with two of the folks who were involved with it. IMHO, it's not for me and I'm returning it tomorrow morning. The mission pack, on the other hand, rules. It's incredible! I am going to play through it, and then begin investigating the rotating brushes (prepare me for using true rotaters by starting with these :) ). If anyone is heavily debating whether (sp?) they should get Scourge, if you liked Quake you'll love it. This is so bad, it's not Quake 2 related. However, I am making this update because MORE THAN 1 person I know on IRC saw the page and incredulously asked "You like Shrak?". I tried Shrak and I couldn't disagree with their surprise.

Gonna implement a counter
At some point tomorrow I will add a counter to this page. Please remember if you suddenly see the counter that it is new and will not have any of the hits I have gotten since premiere, just a day's worth (and with this being a new site, it's not going to be a huge number). I just really need to see that this page is getting some viewership and that I'm not completely wasting my time (or worse, that as I write this I'm talking to nobody). I will also see about doing some logo myself for the temporary. Oh, and this place uses the QUAKE font and I can't assume you ALL have it, here it is for download, zipped.

DLL situation discussed on Planet Quake's messageboard
I was reading through Planet Quake's message board and I saw a thread about the DLL situation. I tried posting to it but got error messages repeatedly. Anyways, if someone wants to read through it and reply to the posts, you know where to go to Planet Quake.

I finally got em!
Although this isn't really Quake 2 related, today I bought Shrak and Scourge of Armagon. They are cool!

A little makeover
People on IRC made a few suggestions to have the left nav frame smaller in width, with a smaller font and use less obnoxious colors. To that end, I have modified the site a little to fit that idea. I like it better now.

Carmack updates finger
Not Quake 2 related, but some guy hit his F40 and ran. Here it is:

Mar 24

Someone ran into my F40 in the parking lot, then took off. Words cannot do justice to how I feel right now.

If anyone knows a tall white male in the dallas area that now has red paint and carbon fibre on their tan pickup truck, turn the bastard in!

March 24, 1997

The Carmack updates again!
Alright, John Carmack made another informative plan update. He laments the loss of Michael Abrash back to Microsoft, and talks about the Quake 2 situation some more. Here in full is his March 23 (doh, I should have had this yesterday) plan update. The part about Quake 2 is at the end :).

Michael Abrash is working at microsoft again, due to external reasons. This is the only time anyone has ever left id that we aren't better off without. :(

That does give me an excuse to visit seattle more often and pester the folks at microsft about various broken things...

Look for a hardcover compilation of nearly everything Michael has written later on this year. Michael and I are probably going to add some hindsight notes to many of the articles for the new edition.

--------

N64 quake is looking really awesome. We got DM5 (the only level small enough to fit before we take a lot of space saving measures) running perfectly in only two weeks. It looks about like glquake with "picmip 1", and it runs 30fps.

We are going to have transparent water in all the maps, and all the lights will have full color control, so it should look great.

We don't know what maps we are going to use yet. There will probably be a combination of modified quake, level pack, and new maps. The biggest pain is the tiny size of the cartridge. I am going to implement some more space efficient file formats, and all the maps are going to have the non-essentials crunched out, but we are still not going to be able to fit as many on as I would like.

--------

Work is progressing well with the new rendering architectures. I have a test harness that can dynamically switch between using a ref_soft.dll and ref_gl.dll for rendering in the same window. I have a lot of work to do before the entire game will run like that, and there may be some incompatabilities with normal quake, because this is aimed primarily for Quake 2.

The interface to the renderers is very cool -- it only takes a single file of code to harness and exercise all the rendering features. If we actually release with seperate DLLs, people are going to link the refreshes into their own programs and see it as an object level rendering toolkit... You could write a Quake-like game in visual basic. There is a whole mess of biz type issues with that that I don't even want to think about now.

Squirrel comments on Quake 2
I didn't realize this until I reread all the relevant fingers, but it turns out that Brian "Squirrel" Eiserloh has a bit about what he thinks of the DLL situation in his plan.
I didn't think I'd need to set up finger links for anyone but id software folks when I began this page, but it looks like that's not going to be the case after all. In any case, here's his 2 cents (btw, this isn't his whole finger as of now, just the relevant part on Quake 2:

I just finished reading the heated debate on DLLs vs. interpreted QuakeC at http://jord.sbc.edu/quakec.htm. We've been planning on using DLLs here at Ion for quite some time now (Kee already had it working), and I really think that's the way to go. Whoever said there wasn't a performance gain was sorely mistaken - previously QC-controlled functions now HAUL by comparison. The speed increase is such that we can now do all sorts of things not before possible due to CPU constraints. From several cases I've seen here, I'd say John's estimate of a 5%-10% speed improvement is very conservative.

As for the principal objections raised against the prospect of using DLLs:

SECURITY: Yes, DLLs are much less secure than QuakeC is. Why is this an issue? Every day people download .EXEs from the net, not having any idea (beyond the stated description/intent in the .TXT file) what they do, and run them on their system(s). ANYONE could upload a hard drive-wiping program to the net, label it "Bob's Quake Level Editor", and HUNDREDS of people would download it and run it on their system without a second thought. Face it, 'ware on the net is already terminally insecure.

PORTABILITY: As much as I *love* Linux (and acknowledge the existance of Mac), the Quake family of games (including DaiKatana and Anachronox) is intended primarily for Win32. And for the amount of performance gain in that environment, I definitely think it worth the reasonable amount of trouble to these other groups (sorry, guys). Besides, most of the Linux geeks I know recompile their own OS Kernel manually at least once a week (I'm old fashioned - running 2.0.27). I don't envision that kind of person being too upset about having to get sources of quake mods and compile them. (Don't get me wrong - I think Linux rules the cosmos.)

Have a feeling Texas types plain hate the Mac? :)

Quake 2 will NOT star Commander Keen
Just making sure you don't take the New Vore Times too seriously........ they are joking about the Commander Keen/Quake 2 story (just like Tokay's joke a little while back about id splitting up).

Less Blue?
I just feel I am copying Blue too much, so I removed the table borders from my dateline starting today (I retained the one below so people reading this will know what I am talking about). It is less of a jump on Blue's trademark look than my last update was.

Speaking of rotating brushes............
Well, Quake 2 has true rotaters, right? Well, hopefully soon I'll have a certain product with simulated rotating brushes called Scourge of Armagon, hopefully. Tomorrow morning I will be out at Software Etcetera to buy two products I've wanted for a while: Shrak and Scourge of Armagon. Money is a problem, so I may only be able to buy one of them tomorrow morning. Which one remains to be seen. But, as to why I'm saying this: Those of you who follow me (hopefully I've got some readers by now) won't see an update tomorrow morning because I'll be out.

Page input
The Fault Line is two days old and I want to know what people (who read it so far) think of the coloring etc. If you make suggestions, I will listen to you. Also, somebody come up with a cool logo for this page and send it to me please! I'm no Adrian Carmack and I'm no Whaleboy either.

Thinking of adding a counter
I'm contemplating adding a counter to this page. If this page takes off like I hope my plan was to add a counter anyway, but I just really need to see that I've got people reading me. Of course, if you e-mail me on the topic of the counter, that means you've seen the page and that makes me grateful :). I already know where I'd get the counter from............ just a matter of getting it (no, I won't use the Geocities counter script....... that's already taken by my Quake FAQ).

Another site about the DLL situation
Seeing as how Squirrel's finger update included a page, I checked it out. It's http://jord.sbc.edu/quakec.htm and it's dedicated to debating this issue. Now, I've programmed (and am going to college for Computer Science come fall) but I have a question to open out here: As I understand it, a DLL situation would be like Netscape plug-ins, so that more than 1 can be used at once (crescendo and shockwave, for example). If code to change Quake 2 behavior was in DLL's, it would mean that unlike the old progs.dat which had all Quake code in it plus your modification, which made it not possible to just use two progs.dat's simultaneously (how many times have people seen the question as to how to run multiple patches at once on the newsgroups? I'm counting my 50th time today :) ). If its just code relating to the change in the DLL, and like Netscape plugins multiple DLL's could be loaded at once, then couldn't it be possible to run modifications together? Porting the reaper and the grappling hook and playing both together in one game by just using both DLL's sounds a heck of a lot easier than recompiling source together. Sounds almost elegant. Also, I disliked the fact that every progs.dat was roughly the same size or larger and am always constantly aware of how there are multple ocurrences of the same tokenized code chewing up a little bit of my hard drive space. Is my assumption re: this whole DLL thing correct, that its possible to load multiple that way and have small files just relating to themselves, or should I go jump off a building for being an idiot at this point? You tell me. (About the jump off a building thing, I'm joking, I won't).

If you come up with a new way of doing things, stick with it!
Since today I began quoting fingers in the news page, I decided to go ahead and put the March 13 and March 18 John Carmack plan updates together here.

mar 13

Here is a technical issue to be discussed:

I am strongly considering dropping qc in Quake 2 in favor of exporting most of the game logic to a seperate .dll file. This wasn't an option when we had to support dos, but I think it is the correct choice now.

There are a lot of issues involved with this.

As everyone who has tried to do anything serious with qc knows, it has its limitations (ahem). I could improve the language, or just adopt a real language like java, but the simplest thing to do would be just use native code.

It would definately be more efficient as a dll. As we do more sophisticated game logic, efficiency becomes more and more important. For simple deathmatch modifications this wouldn't be a big deal, but for full size game levels it will likely be at least a 5% to 10% overall speed improvement.

It would be non-portable. I am dreading the reaction to this from the linux community. Game modifications would have to be compiled seperately for each target architecture (windows, linux, irix, etc). I do still intend to have the client be generic to all mods (but more flexible than Q1), so it is really only an issue for servers.

There are security concerns. I suppose to a world that embraces Active-X, this isn't really an issue, but binary code patches still spook me.

You would actually need a compiler to hack quake. For the serious people, this isn't an issue, but it would cut out a number of people that currently enjoy hacking quake. I have a strange mixture of pride and shame when I think about the people that have actually started learning programming in my crappy little qc language.

You could debug your patch in a real debugger! Yipee!

========================================

Mar 18

I have gotten a significant amount of response on the Quake 2 extension mechanism. I do read everything that comes my way (I can't respond to all of it, though), and I have learned a few things from the mail.

Nothing is set in stone yet, but it is still looking like a dll is going to be the primary interface. I have been seriously considering a java interface, but the tradeoffs (time spent implementing takes away from something else...) just don't quite add up. Other options, like enhancing qc or using other languages like perl have very remote chances.

One of the primary reasons is that you can allways build UP -- put more functionality on top of a dll, but you can't allways build DOWN -- accessing the registry from java for instance.

For Id Software to develop a game, a dll will be most efficient. We have more cpu power, and we can debug it more easily. We are directing significant effort towards making Quake 2 a better GAME, as well as just a better mutliplayer virtual world. Quake 1 was pretty messed up from a game standpoint, and we don't plan on doing that again.

What I can offer the qc hacking crowd is a public release of the qc interface and interpreter code from Quake 1 when Quake 2 is released. The user community can then bolt things together so that there can be one publicly trusted DLL that execute an updated and modified qc language for portable, secure add ons.

I really do care about portability, but it is just one factor that needs to be balanced against all the others. Things just aren't clear cut.

Speaking of portability, to remove the guesswork that goes on, here are my current opinions on the various platforms:

Win32

Win32 rules the world. You are sticking your head in the sand if you think otherwise. The upside is that windows really doesn't suck nowdays. Win 95 / NT 4.0 are pretty decent systems for what they are targeted at. I currently develop mostly in NT, and Quake 2 will almost certainly be delivered on win32 first. Our games should run as well as possible in NT, we won't require any '95 only features.

Dos

We are not going to do another dos game. No amount of flaming hate mail is going to change my mind on this (PLEASE don't!). The advantages of good TCP/IP support, dynamic linking, powerfull virtual memory, device drivers, etc, are just too much to overcome. Yes, all of those can be provided under dos in various ways, but it just isn't worth it.

Linux

I consider linux the second most important platform after win32 for id. From a biz standpoint it would be ludicrous to place it even on par with mac or os/2, but for our types of games that are designed to be hacked, linux has a big plus: the highest hacker to user ratio of any os. I don't personally develop on linux, because I do my unixy things with NEXTSTEP, but I have a lot of technical respect for it.

MacOS

From a money making standpoint, the only OS other than win32 that matters, and it doesn't matter all that much. We have professional ports done to MacOS instead of unsupported hack ports, which is a mixed blessing. They come out a lot later (still waiting for quake...), but are more full featured. I have zero respect for the MacOS on a technical basis. They just stood still and let microsoft run right over them from waaay behind. I wouldn't develop on it.

OS/2

A native OS/2 port of any of our products is unlikely. We just don't care enough, and we are unwilling to take time away from anything else.

SGI I don't particularly care for IRIX as a development environment (compared to NT or NEXTSTEP), but SGI has the coolest hardware to run GL apps on. Safe to assume future IRIX ports, but its not exactly a top priority.

AIX / OSF / HPUX / SOLARIS

I wouldn't start a port to any of these, but if a trusted party (Zoid) wanted to do them, I probably wouldn't object.

BeOS

I bought a BeBox because I am a solid believer in SMP, and I like clean, from-scratch systems. I was left fairly non plussed by it. Yes, it is lean and mean and does a couple things better than any other OS I have seen, but I just don't see any dramatic advantages to it over, say, NEXTSTEP. Lion (the company doing the mac quake port) has a BeOS port of quake sort of working, and have my full support in releasing it, but it will be strictly an act of charity on their part, so don't expect too much.

Plan9

I spent a few months running Plan9. It has an achingly elegent internal structure, but a user interface that has been asleep for the past decade. I had an older version of quake dedicated server running on it (don't ask me for it -- I lost it somewhere) and I was writing a civilized window manager for it in my spare time, but my spare time turned out to be only a couple hours a month, and it just got prioritized out of existance.

NEXTSTEP

My faviorite environment. NT and linux both have advantages in some areas, but if they were on equal footing I would choose NEXTSTEP hands down. It has all the power of unix (there are lots of things I miss in NT), the best UI (IMHO, of cource) and it just makes sense on so many more levels than windows. Yes, you can make windows do anything you want to if you have enough time to beat on it, but you can come out of it feeling like you just walked through a sewer.

In the real world, things aren't on equal footing, and I do most of my work on NT now. I hold out hope that it may not stay that way. If apple Does The Right Thing with rhapsody, I will be behind them as much as I can. NEXTSTEP needs a couple things to support games properly (video mode changing and low level sound access). If apple/next will provide them, I will personally port our current win32 products over.

If I can convince apple to do a good hardware accelerated OpenGL in rhapsody, I would be very likely to give my win NT machine the cold shoulder and do future development on rhapsody. (I really don't need Quickdraw3D evangelists preaching to me right now, thank you).

If you see any spelling errors, let me know. Somehow my text capture put spelling errors in it that I caught, but there might be more. The actual finger has no spelling errors.

Wonderful idea, Slipgate, just dandy
Today I realized how stupid having a files section of PLAN updates is. So it's gone, out, kaput. Finger links are available, and all the finger updates that were there are quoted here now anyways. If Quake 2 comes out with a shareware version, I'll have a link to it. But unless I'm asked to bring the files area back, I don't see the need of one (yet).

March 23, 1997

The Fault Line begins to crack
Well, here's the start of my page, the Fault Line. I'll begin my Quake 2 endeavor by reporting all of the news on Quake 2 so far. To Blue: What can I say, I love the way your page looks. At least I didn't take the color. By the way, anyone who can come up with a cool logo, I will use it and give them credit. Please mail me any logos you make! I can take attachments at my Erol's e-mail address.

John Carmack's plan updates
John Carmack has made two significant updates on his finger, March 13 and March 18, where he talks about foregoing the old QuakeC for a Windows DLL style. I'm not sure about portability to other non-windows platforms, but otherwise what he's talking about sounds good to me. Both plan updates are still in his finger, and are also in my files area, so you can get it from either place.

Quake 2 will have rotating brushes
Quake 2 will have what is termed as "rotating" brushes. Brushes made up the level architecture of Quake, and they could be stationary OR move in any horizontal direction, straight up and straight down. Rotating brushes will allow them to also TURN based on a certain point of reference. The level designer knows what this means for him. For the players: Things like hamster wheels and drawbridges are possible. Rotating brushes were simulated in the Quake Mission Pack 1: Scourge of Armagon, but for Quake 2 they will be actually built into the engine. Much better. Hexen 2, for those who wonder, will also have the true rotating brushes.

Lighting improvements
Quake 2 will be using a new lighting mechanism termed "qrad". Qrad will do more realistic and dynamic lighting than Quake's regular lighting by using a radiosity algorithm with more shadows and atmosphere. I wonder if it will be able to reflect light off surfaces or if that will have to be reserved for a 3d accelerated version of Quake 2 (a la GLQuake or VQuake for Quake). Again, Hexen 2 will also make use of Qrad (I hope this turns out more of a Quake 2 page than a Hexen 2 page :) ).

Things I'd like to see in Quake 2
I'm eagerly awaiting Quake 2. However, there are some things that I hope make it into Quake 2 that I'll just set down here. First, the Quake player cannot go upside down. I was reading somewhere that the gravity in Quake 2 would be more realistic than Quake's gravity in that you could do things like climbing up a wall with special boots. I'd like to see the ability to go horizontal and upside down in the game. Naturally, its not a normal ocurrence, but in low gravity situations as well as underwater you should be able to do it. I first became disappointed at this when I was the coder of a TC (got cancelled) where we got the idea for gravity changing buttons in levels. I began imagining turning around free in a low gravity world, shooting at things. However, I could not get look down or look up to not stop at a certain angle and just continue as you held it, putting you in a vertical 360 degree turn. That would have and would still rule. That's all I can think of right now. The reason I bring this up is that if a Quake 2 player is walking up a wall in a multiplayer game, first, he's walking up a wall, and second, he is going to have to look like he is walking up a wall, so he is going to need to be rendered sideways. I don't think that Quake can render a model flipped on its side. It can render from different views and angles, but I don't think it can render that. If I'm wrong, feel free to correct me. (Before you do, I mean in the game itself, not flipping the model in a model editor and then putting it in the game so the thing is always sideways)

Quake, Quake 2, and the stylized are registered trademarks of id Software, Inc.