September 1999
News
09/30/99
Q3A bus tour news
Thresh and The Firing
Squad crew will be joining us next Saturday at the Emeryville CompUSA for a little
challenge and fun. The Q3A bus crew is practicing to get their butts kicked in a
team challenge against them... and since the loser will be paying for dinner, we'll have
to save up our money to take them out to McDonald's.
Seen at Planetgecko2
Pre-Order
Quake III: Arena for $25
TheGeekNextDoor.com
has
this deal where you can pre-order Q3A for a quarter of a C-note! This special offer
expires the 30th so you've got to be quick. As far as I can tell the only hitch is that
you have to set up an account with ValueAmerica
(which is free).
09/29/99
Two more plans today!! NO
Grabbling hook in the release but the code will be there.
Name: Graeme Devine
Email: zaphod@idsoftware.com
Description: Some Guy
Project:
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9/29/99
Ah, grappling hook hoopla – when I read about the hoopla over UT grapple CTF I knew
we’d
have a similar impact (BTW, believe it or not, there is room for both games in the
universe!).
The grapple code is still going to be in Q3A (through bot reachability and so forth),
it’s just
not on the maps we’re shipping with the product. The CTF maps we have in there are
designed
for non-grapple use. CTF and grapple are not tied implicitly together.
Mr. Elusive (aka Jan Paul) is over here from The Netherlands helping finalize the game. He
is
of course the famed author of the Gladiator bot for Quake II. As some of you have been
guessing he’s been working with John Cash on the bots in Q3A. We’re very pleased
to have
Jan’s expertise on Q3A.
Name: John Carmack
Email: johnc@idsoftware.com
Description: Programmer
Project: Quake 3 Arena
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9/29/99
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I wrote this in answer to a question on the mac opengl programming
list, but it is of general enough interest to programmers that I am
repeating it here.
>You also mentioned display lists... Can you explain what some of the
>major things that should be rendered using a display list are? I see
>the importance of using them for characters (animation) and objects, but
>what about using them for the rest of the world, particles, and other
>things that are nifty.
This is not yet a big issue, although even pure software OpenGL's could
perform some optimizations with display lists that aren't possible with
vertex arrays. With hardware geometry acceleration, it can be an honest
4x improvement in throughput.
The important point is that once geometry acceleration becomes a primary
target, practically everything will have to be rendered with display
lists, or you will run into a nasty case of Amdahl's law.
In a busy Q3 battle, the triangle count may be split roughly evenly
between character models and world geometry. Going from an empty scene
to a pitched battle can result in a 50% performance drop if you are
triangle limited. Not great, but livable.
If we kept the same ratios and designed for geometry acceleration with
all the static world geometry in display lists, then the empty scene
could have 4x the geometry and still be running the same speed.
However, current OpenGL display lists can't really accelerate high
quality skinned characters, so when an equal number of character
polygons was in scene and passed through normal direct rendering, the
performance would drop to 20% of the original. Unacceptable.
So, either you would have to use significantly different polygon counts
in characters and the world, or some new API features would need to be
defined. Nvidia has a skinning extension that gives some benefit, but
still requires a character to be broken up into one static list per
bone pair, instead of a single list for the entire character.
Rendering a few thousand particles or other procedurally generated
triangles directly isn't going to be a big issue, but the bulk of the
work is going to move towards static vertex data.
My advice for display lists is to use them for just raw
vertex/color/texcoord data, and keep your state changes done with
direct commands. This allows you to still sort display lists to
minimze state changes, and prevents drivers from ever having to check
state internally. Some hardware architectures can nicely encapsulate
all state changes in a single dma buffer, but register sharing among
different fields sometimes requires the driver to do manual masks,
negating much of the async display list benefits. Texture swapping
also complicates state changes inside display lists.
You want to make the display lists as big as practical, but there is
a tradeoff betwen culling tightness and display list size.
0/28/99
Stomped posted a article called Quake III Arena Status Update it talks about the latest
build at id. Quake 3. Version 1.082 this
is a must read if you a starving for q3 news like me.
FiringSquad got some
more clarification on some of the stuff that was in John Carmack's .plan update from
earlier.
Anybody know what happened http://www.quake-3-arena.com/ to this site
Its been down for two weeks is it gone for good?
Were is the new Q3A test you ask
well its going to be a little while yet. John (The man) updated his plan.
You should already know this if
you are using Webdog I also just added a java
script to post the most recent plan updates in the plan updates link on your left. This is
from Webdog also.
For those that don't here its is.
Name: John Carmack
Email: johnc@idsoftware.com
Description: Programmer
Project: Quake 3 Arena
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9/28/99
-------
Ok, obviously we didn't get a release out in the middle of the month...
We are still hashing out the single player game, so it still isn't
immediately immenent.
* weapon switch animations at 20hz instead of 15hz
cuts switch time from 600 msec to 450 msec
* initial spawn flag for single player
* finished new fog code
* fixed walking underwater friction problems
* autosprite2 now selects the longest axis to pivot on,
and allows any texture mapping, not just unity
* fixed autosprite on entities
* fixed lurching during low timescale
* reduced machinegun damage
* set clamp mode on 2D pics
* take hostname off of single player connect
* remvoed dlighting on skies and solid lava
* fixed lower body twitch when copytobodyque with a motion
* always show your score in second box if not in first
* sarge as default model
* com_blood 0 option for no gibs and no blood on hits
* mouse click aborts cinematic
* show tourney scores in all games, add fraglimit
* removed tripple bunny-hop protection, it was too arbitrary and didn't
accomplish it's goal
* pump event loop during level loading
* added pass count to shaderlist
* default to CGEN_IDENTITY / CGEN_IDENTITY_LIGHTING based on blendSrc
* optional simplified blendfuncs: blendfunc
* new shader command: deformVertexes normal
* new shader command: tcgen vector ( ) ( )
* fixed fog on alpha tested surfaces
* reduced com_maxfps to 85
* defined shaders for menu and console backgrounds
* reset players on clientinfo transitions
* windows icons
* fixed powerups on spinning barrels
* removed some latency from lightning endpoint
* fixed lightning bolt drawing too far
* removed color clamping from entity lighting
* moved all 2D drawing to shader pipeline
* r_printShaders tool
* moved dlighting into world node descent
* pause when menu is up in single player
* fixed double EV_FIRE_WEAPON
* r_singleShader optimization tool
* some renderer optimizations
* better multitexture collapsing
(I can't wait to get my hands on the new test)
09/27/99
Oxygen Tank has a new look.
09/26/99
Do you want a voodoo 2 card dirt
cheap 12 meg for $29.99 yes it is true check it out. Here
I just tried Unreal Tournament and I will have to say it
rocks I lost a whole day to the demo.
Name: Graeme Devine
Email: zaphod@idsoftware.com
Description: Some Guy
Project:
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9/25/99
A few of you have asked about the message of the day text. It’s giving you your exe
startup number since last Monday. So basically, we’ve had over 2 million Quake 3
Arena
games start worldwide since 9/20/99. That works out to around 4 games every second.
09/24/99
I am back my computer kicks A__'s
now. I used the Wicked gl mini drivers for my banchee card this time they rock. Go to Wicked3d.com and grab them.
09/22/99
Well my computer has done it again
it is all screwed up,the only way to fix it is a complete reformat so I will be off line
Thursday night until late, updates will be a day behind (Dam Windows). This shouldn't be a
big deal because news has been real slow lately.
I added the Quake times to my links page.
Fill Rate or Geometry?
Billy over at Voodoo Extreme
posted a great article asking game developers which they would prefer - high fill rate
or hardware geometry.
Direct X 7 released
Microsoft finally released DirectX 7.0. Head over to Microsoft
for the download. That is if you didn't already get it when I posted this Monday
from 3D Force.
09/21/99
Mappers wanted
The boys over at Tritin Films (you know, the guys
that are making the Quad God movie) is in need of a mapper to do Q2 maps and then be
converted to Q3A format for use on their 'sets'. I wish I had more time this sounds like
fun.
09/20/99
Webdog updated again this is one killler program.
If you don't have Webdog, then
download the base 2.0 install here
and then download the 2.0.1023
update.
Quake3Source
is looking for staff. The
webmaster, Zandai, is rushed off his feet
with school and a new job, so if you think you'd be a hard working addition to the team
head over to the site and send in an application. I too Raptor{ctc} could use some help also with
this site!!!!!
09/19/99
Hey I found at 3D Force direct x 7 finial version download now
Q3 source
may not close after all just no updates for
a few weeks while they regroup.
New Webdog 2.0 go get it, its a plan and news tracking
program.
Mad Dog not doing any more updates, still has a
great resource page with allot of info. I hope he changes his mine and updates his pages
once in awhile.
PlantetQ3.com and a new article about the new and
upcoming video cards go check it out Here
09/18/99
FilePlanet has a brand new look, and now sports
a new custom e-mail feature, which mails you the latest updates from whatever sections of
the site you select.
09/17/99
Q3 source
is closing it doors It,s a shame but such is life of busy people, he tells why in his news page that is still up.
Sorry for the lack of updates
yesterday I was busy finishing the game Urban assualt.
Paul Smith sent me this yesterday.
I have posted an article about running all the Quake releases with the
minimum PC requirements. Yes you can run Quake 3 Arena without spending a whole lot of
money.
Cheers...Pulse
Cheers...Pulse
Webmaster http://www.quakefiles.com/pulse
3dfx Gamers page !!!!!
3dfx just recently put up
3dfx just recently put up
a new great site! Go here
09/15/99
Q3 test 1.09
delayed (bummer huh)
Seen this over at ShugaShack, Steve Gibson fired a couple questions to
John C. about when 1.09 is coming out. Sorry to say we won't be able to see the new
skeletal system in this test.
