Slashdot Mirror
Original Quake using Doom 3 Technology
tc writes "Charles Hollemeersch is currently developing a source port for the original Quake that adds "stencil shadows". Stencil shadows are extremely detailed and realistic. The results are very impressive. The code is apparently based on the same algorithms used in Doom 3." Sure makes me wish Quake looked this good the first time around, but I reckon my computer wouldn't have been able to render it fast enough to play it, either.
Or, you have a vehicle that allows you to play around with 3D graphics programming without having to go through the whole hassle of writing your own engine, creating some programmer art test data, etc. This guy could've written his own engine, but then it'd be a couple years before we'd see anything, if we ever did (not to mention, that wouldn't show up on Slashdot -- there are quite a few people that dabble in this area). He could've added it to one of the already-existing open source engines, like Crystal Space, but then he'd have to go to the trouble of generating test data (and few programmers are also artists, so it would be more difficult to impress people because they'd get hung up on the bad programmer art and not look past it to the neat effects he's made). Or, he could use the existing Quake 1 engine, leveraging the existing models, maps, textures, AI code, etc, and bolt on his enhancements. The latter is the best option if you're just playing around with some neat ideas you've read about. The first option is good if you want to learn how to write an engine. The second is probably best if your goal is to write a game.
You complain that he's modified old software with new techniques, and then you complain that it doesn't run well on old hardware. Face it -- the anything older than the GeForce2 is old hardware. Get over it. Given a sufficiently powerful CPU (say, a p3-1GHz) and a sufficiently low screen resolution (800x600 or less), I'm sure you'd get playable speeds from this. You wouldn't want to compete online with this client, but then it's not a qw client anyway. Plus, it's still Quake, so all of your old Quake speed-related optimizations will still work.
This wouldnt prevent it, but it should help stop a few;
How about having slashcode check for previous stories with a same link in it, if it finds any matches then it shows the janitor a list of all stories with the same links. They would easily see a few dupes. The only problem with this is all those vauge links to front pages we all love. That wouldnt matter to much if you only show matching story, but still let them be posted if they confirm it
Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx