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Author Topic: Quake III engine question  (Read 17082 times)
Eli
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« on: March 20, 2007, 09:25:29 AM »

How difficult is it to program new games using the now GPL'd quake 3 arena engine?  With the vast ammounts of existing coding work and knowlage in the quake 3 community I don't think it could be that hard.  I intend to make a purely instagib/freeze tag free game using this engine and basically what I'm wondering is would I be better off using a simpler engine like Quake 1's or one of its many off-shoots like DarkPlaces which is also very advanced.  DarkPlaces was my original choice but it seems like games built on it like nexuiz (www.nexuiz.com) tend to run somewhat jerky online, which would simply kill an instagib style game and openarena/quake 3 always runs fine.  I just don't have enough knowlage of the engines themselves to know which would be a better choice so I'm looking for advise.
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dmn_clown
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« Reply #1 on: March 20, 2007, 09:35:39 AM »

Hasn't Blanky already done this with his game?
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Blaenk
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« Reply #2 on: March 20, 2007, 04:23:34 PM »

Hey Eli! Yeah, I'm trying to do this with my game. I don't know about Freeze Tag or how you play it (Having never played Quake 3 myself), but I'm sure once I do it can easily be implemented. I'm not trying to prevent you from doing one yourself if you really want, that's the beauty of open source! But I personally think it'd be nicer if we collaborated on one game instead, to avoid duplicate efforts. If you would like any information regarding anything, please visit my site.

Sorry for doing this guys from OA, my game doesn't really get any attention anyways I hope just letting this one guy here know about it doesn't harm the OA community. But if you really think it would you're welcome to remove this post.
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fromhell
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« Reply #3 on: March 20, 2007, 05:48:53 PM »

Sorry for doing this guys from OA, my game doesn't really get any attention anyways I hope just letting this one guy here know about it doesn't harm the OA community. But if you really think it would you're welcome to remove this post.

Sorry, i'm not a fan of censorship.
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asking when OA3 will be done won't get OA3 done.
Progress of OA3 currently occurs behind closed doors alone

I do not provide technical support either.

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dmn_clown
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« Reply #4 on: March 20, 2007, 07:10:21 PM »

Hey Eli! Yeah, I'm trying to do this with my game. I don't know about Freeze Tag or how you play it (Having never played Quake 3 myself), but I'm sure once I do it can easily be implemented. I'm not trying to prevent you from doing one yourself if you really want, that's the beauty of open source! But I personally think it'd be nicer if we collaborated on one game instead, to avoid duplicate efforts. If you would like any information regarding anything, please visit my site.

Sorry for doing this guys from OA, my game doesn't really get any attention anyways I hope just letting this one guy here know about it doesn't harm the OA community. But if you really think it would you're welcome to remove this post.

IIRC freeze tag is basically team death match but instead of being reduced to gibs you are frozen until a team mate un-freezes you by standing near you in game for a certain amount of time.
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Eli
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« Reply #5 on: March 20, 2007, 07:18:13 PM »

Collaborating would be a great idea Blanky, especially because I have limited/close to no skill with coding, but I'm not sure if we've got exactly the same idea in mind for an exclusively instagib game.  The project I've got in mind is more ambitious and would require a lot of new content besides coding, and also would have several other gametypes making use of instagib gameplay; for instance:  Deathmatch (obviously), Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, One Flag Capture, Free for All Freeze, Team Freeze, and Tag Team.

I wasn't quite ready to show anything for the game yet as all I have is a great deal of concept documentation and artwork done by myself and two other more skilled artists.  We also have someone who is willing to do textures and another for sound, though "willing to help at some point" doesn't mean a whole lot, espicially in these early stages.  If you'd still like to collaborate even though it might end up being a far more abitious project that would be awesome, and I'd get all the art and related concept work to you as soon as possible.

Also I agree with fromhell, censorship is for douchebags.
« Last Edit: March 20, 2007, 07:28:00 PM by Eli » Logged
Blaenk
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« Reply #6 on: March 20, 2007, 08:26:14 PM »

I was just saying that if he wanted to and my post bothered him then he could remove it (Not like I was giving him permission, if he wanted to do it he would've done it)

Eli, what makes you think my project isn't ambitious? I mean, SORRY for being the only one working on it everyday and in some way or another at least applying one change each day (Sarcasm). I'm the only one working on it, that's why we use Open Arena's content (Which we sometimes modify, add to, or remove). The only help I get is encouragement from my friends. I only have two people 'helping out', in quotes because they're not committed, and only help out when they can. One is just a hobbyist, who sometimes helps out with art (Sometimes as in, has only contributed two things), and another friend that really is a great artist is busy at some digital art university.

I'm a 'programmer' (In quotes cause some might question that Tongue). Although I can sometimes do simple art things, I'm in no way comparable to a dedicated artist. The version out there on the site, 0.5, was released last August. But that doesn't mean I haven't worked on it since then; I've been working on it practically every day since. There are instructions on the wiki on getting the subversion revision, and I also just created a script/program that checks for updates in the subversion repository and if there are any downloads them for you.

So, even though I'm the only one, I'm pretty ambitious. If you really were so quick to judge my game maybe you should've read the About link, which explains that it's always been my dream to make something like this; an exclusive, free universal Instagib game. All of the game types you mentioned are supported by my game, except for freeze tag. By the way, thanks for the explanation, dmn_clown. Freeze tag shouldn't be too hard to implement. I think collaboration would be a god send, since like I've mentioned a couple times already, I'm the only one working on this, and we seem to have the same idea and goals.

But I think we should stop talking about this here I don't want to seem like I'm advertising a different game on another game's property (As it seems that's a problem with most). So why not come by and talk in the forums ?

EDIT: At first, I wasn't really thinking about offering the script I'm working on to Open Arena, since I had a feeling it wouldn't be accepted or appreciated. But since I've seen many people here wondering how they could get the latest Subversion release, once I'm done polishing it, I'll show you guys (dmn_clown and leileilol) it and you could see if you would like it or not. Hopefully this way people can play with the latest things without having to keep nagging at you about when 0.7 comes out. Of course this will be optional. What do you guys say? It's up to you of course, I'm just offering it as a gift, since I figure you guys would have more use for it. It's written in Python and aimed to be cross platform, and it makes use of GNU Utilities such as wget and md5sum, which are easily available for most platforms.
« Last Edit: March 20, 2007, 08:33:57 PM by blanky » Logged
Eli
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« Reply #7 on: March 21, 2007, 06:00:20 AM »

Sorry dude, I didn't mean to imply that your "pro-censorship" or that your project is specifically not ambitious.  Anyway I can probably alter my project a bit if you really think having two free instagib games would create conflicts, though yes working together would be better.
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dmn_clown
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« Reply #8 on: March 21, 2007, 01:18:32 PM »

Hopefully this way people can play with the latest things without having to keep nagging at you about when 0.7 comes out. Of course this will be optional. What do you guys say?

A python script still requires people to install the python runtime which is a little more effort than most will be willing to do not to mention that will start a lot of whining about not being able to connect to the pure servers.  It is a fairly simple process to install an svn client of choice and point it to the svn repo and use one of the build scripts to zip your pk3's.  Why take that choice away from anyone by automating the process?

Besides 0.7 will be released the day before Duke Nukem Forever, keep your pants on. d-;
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tw3k
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« Reply #9 on: March 21, 2007, 01:27:58 PM »

lol
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Blaenk
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« Reply #10 on: March 22, 2007, 02:21:50 PM »

Quote
Why take that choice away from anyone by automating the process?

Actually, I said it was optional. Of course, someone that would be actually using the Subversion for something other than just to get the latest revision to test it doesn't need automation in the first place. But there are some people that like to retrieve the latest revision of the Subversion just to play it. Of course pure servers wouldn't accept this, but then people could just create bleeding edge servers like Malikith mentioned, something like this would be really sweet. The server would automatically download the latest packages and the clients could run the script to download any new updates if there are any, and then play in the bleeding edge server.

This of course would require a seperate tree for the bleeding edge installation, but this is as simple as simply creating a couple folders and copying files over to the correct place.

Not trying to insist you guys take it, I was only offering it as a gift, just trying to show a couple possibilities it can be used for.
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fromhell
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« Reply #11 on: March 22, 2007, 02:26:37 PM »

putting ease into leeching the svn will result in overleech (like from digg for example) and screw us bandwidths over. I'd prefer it'd be used by 'power users' and developers
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asking when OA3 will be done won't get OA3 done.
Progress of OA3 currently occurs behind closed doors alone

I do not provide technical support either.

new code development on github
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« Reply #12 on: March 22, 2007, 06:52:13 PM »

Yeah I guess you're right. Just to clarify though, the place where the 'updates' are downloaded from is just any computer that can check out the latest Subversion revision; the users don't actually export/checkout the revision themselves, another computer/server does that and packages it into pk3's, which the clients then download if the updater script judges they have to.

But yeah I understand what you mean, I was just trying to clarify on what I thought was misunderstood. It's alright though, if you guys ever need anything just let me know, I'll try my best, I owe you guys Tongue
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Caldiar
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« Reply #13 on: March 22, 2007, 10:34:35 PM »

The original Q3 code was a horrid mess in my opinion.
This made it pretty intimidating to the newer modders. I'd frequently get lost in 20 source files as I would spot something I would want to work on and ditch my current work to start tweaking something else.

I wonder, is OA also reorganizing the code on top of the rewrite to make it easier to work with?
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dmn_clown
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« Reply #14 on: March 22, 2007, 11:14:21 PM »

We're basically stock ioq3 which is MUCH cleaner and easier to follow than iD's code but still C.

I think we should all put a request in to Carmack to code as if everyone is going to look at it, because eventually we will.
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Caldiar
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« Reply #15 on: March 23, 2007, 09:56:01 AM »

Ah I see. No wonder this project did such an excellent job in keeping the feeling of Quake 3.

I was under the impression that OA was a programming and content replacement project.

Does this mean that OA is just simply a content-replacement project to allow for the ioq3 code to be distributed and playable while being completely free under the GPL license?
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dmn_clown
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« Reply #16 on: March 23, 2007, 03:14:34 PM »

Sorta yeah and sorta no, the original engine was the q3 engine but it moved to ioq3 at 0.5 for security reasons and better features like flares (seta r_flares 1), OpenAL (seta s_doppler "1" + seta s_useOpenAL "1" ), and better portability (Stock q3 isn't AMD64 clean).  fromhell could give a better list of reasons as I wasn't involved in the project back then.
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Blaenk
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« Reply #17 on: March 23, 2007, 05:31:12 PM »

Quote
We're basically stock ioq3 which is MUCH cleaner and easier to follow than iD's code but still C.

The code is pretty much the same thing, just organized and patched here and there, and the code tree is a lot nicer as well, but it's the same thing nonetheless.

Caldiar, exactly. Something many people fail to realize is that Open Arena basically just is the GPL'd Quake 3 Engine with their own media content, with a little adjustments here and there, but most of the work is done by the guys over at IOQuake3 (Who patch it, enhance it, and what not), though the actual game code is not affected. I'm not trying to put Open Arena down, this is actually a good thing I guess, since they're trying to be as close to Quake 3 as possible while being pure GPL'd, and it's easy once they already have the game written for them, all they have to do is make/replace media (Not trying to say that's something easy, either). But yeah, often people come and say "Man this is really like Quake 3! You guys are great!", well, it is Quake 3 haha, minus the media content of course. Just a clarification, so that people won't start crap about illusions they have, for example "Man, but in Quake 3 I remember that blah blah, and you guys should also build this into Open Arena".

But yeah, some people have structured the code tree to be a lot nicer, like the XreaL engine, where they even threw in SCons. But like I mentioned, most of the code is still the same, id written code. Somebody didn't just wake up some day and write a complete identical clone to id's code, it's just id's code, refined.
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