Quake 3 Source Code Review

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Posted by Soulskill on Saturday June 30, 2012 @03:02PM from the sleep-is-for-the-weak dept.

An anonymous reader writes "id Software has a history of releasing the source code for their older games under the GPL. Coder Fabien Sanglard has been taking it upon himself to go through each of these releases, analyze the source code, and post a detailed write-up about it. He's now completed a review of the Quake 3 source code, diving into the details of idTech3. It's an interesting read — he says he was impressed in particular by the 'virtual machines system and the associated toolchain that altogether account for 30% of the code released. Under this perspective idTech3 is a mini operating system providing system calls to three processes.'"

74 of 107 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

"code" is OBSOLETE, loosers!!!! by For+a+Free+Internet · 2012-06-30 15:12 · Score: 3, Funny

Todays compotor scientists program with pure thought connected by JSON/XMLhttpREQUEST to a HTML5 document tree located in four-dimensional time on the APP STORE. This "code" shows that Id software is living in the PAST and won't be arouned for long, it is a DINOSORE and I am going to eat its stock markets for BRUNCH with BEAUTIFUL HOOKERS and jesuse!!!!!

--
UNITE with the Campaign for a Free Internet because today, our future begins with tomorrow!
1. Re:"code" is OBSOLETE, loosers!!!! by Hal_Porter · 2012-07-01 03:53 · Score: 1, Funny
  
  If this Carmat guy had spend more time updating his skills with modern languages like PHP his website wouldn't have got pwned
  http://doom-ed.com/
  
  <?php define('DB_NAME', 'wp_doomed_com'); // The name of the database define('DB_USER', 'wp_doomed_com'); // Your MySQL username define('DB_PASSWORD', 'wp15'); // ...and password //define('DB_HOST', 'localhost'); // 99% chance you won't need to change this value define('DB_HOST', 'mysql25.secureserver.net'); // 99% chance you won't need to change this value define('MAIN_TITLE', 'doom-ed.com'); $link = mysql_connect(DB_HOST, DB_USER, DB_PASSWORD) or die('Could not connect: ' . mysql_error()); mysql_select_db(DB_NAME) or zdie('Could not select database');
  
  --
  echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
2. Re:"code" is OBSOLETE, loosers!!!! by AaronLS · 2012-07-01 14:29 · Score: 1
  
  what is a DINOSORE?
I'm a dumbass- by WiiVault · 2012-06-30 15:14 · Score: 2, Interesting

But I can't help but revel in the growth and extension of public domain engines and assets by willing companies. As a dum-dum, I still see a lot of value in Q3 based projects. They really look good enough(for me), and I hear good things about the netcode. It isn't the end-all-be-all of engines, but it really is one of the first modern commercially sold engines available to the rest of us. If I may be so bold; gentlemen start your engines. I can't wait to see what you come up with.
1. Re:I'm a dumbass- by mrchaotica · 2012-06-30 15:23 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  "Start your engines; I can't wait?" Dude, this was released years and years ago. In fact, the guy in the article previously reviewed the Doom 3 source code (which is much newer) and just decided to go back and do this old engine for completeness' sake.
  Wikipedia has a list of games that already exist that are based on the GPL Quake 3 source. You need to crawl out from under your rock a little more often!
  
  --
  "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
2. Re:I'm a dumbass- by santax · 2012-06-30 16:07 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  UDK is free for noncommercial and educational use. You may download a copy here. Licensing is required for commercial use, however. From their site ;)
3. Re:I'm a dumbass- by Tough+Love · 2012-06-30 16:08 · Score: 2
  
  Because you have source code to it and you can make it do new things because of that, while also learning something.
  
  --
  When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
4. Re:I'm a dumbass- by arth1 · 2012-06-30 16:14 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Why use the quake 3 engine when you can use the newest unreal engine with all the tools the professionals use for free?
  Because you might want to release the game one day? Then you have to pay for both the engine and royalties.
  Also, you may want to produce a game that can run on a tablet or normal notebook, in which case the Unreal engine requirements disqualifies it.
5. Re:I'm a dumbass- by santax · 2012-06-30 16:17 · Score: 2
  
  Neh different licenses, the regular without source code but for commercial use is USD 99. And 25% of your revenue :P The one that comes with source code = please contact us for more information....
6. Re:I'm a dumbass- by Sir_Sri · 2012-06-30 16:24 · Score: 1
  
  So you can learn how to implement engine components on top of an existing engine that you didn't write. You can do that with unreal as well, but it's done differently, each has its place.
  So that you can do something where you had anyone who wants it the entire source code if you're trying to demonstrate a new idea (e.g. a new bot AI).
7. Re:I'm a dumbass- by Gaygirlie · 2012-06-30 16:27 · Score: 2
  
  Because you might want to release the game one day? Then you have to pay for both the engine and royalties.
  Release, or release commercially? You're entirely free to develop and release completely free games with UDK, you know, you do not need to pay anything then.
8. Re:I'm a dumbass- by tepples · 2012-06-30 16:33 · Score: 2
  
  With a completely free game, how does one recoup the $99 per platform per year fee for a developer certificate?
9. Re:I'm a dumbass- by santax · 2012-06-30 16:42 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Read this: http://www.develop-online.net/news/37234/UDK-devs-making-75k-only-give-1-to-Epic In short, they take 25% if you sell the game, but only if your game makes more than 50.000. They also take into account the 30% that applestore of android take using their distribution platform. But if it's non-commercial, there is no $99 if I'm not mistaken. Btw, that $99, could the average indy develop an engine like this for it? I would say, nah.
10. Re:I'm a dumbass- by hvm2hvm · 2012-06-30 17:06 · Score: 1
  
  Also, even if your game is free to play, I'm sure you can pay the 99$ yourself or get some donations for it. Hosting the game would probably cost more anyway.
  
  --
  ics
11. Re:I'm a dumbass- by camperdave · 2012-06-30 17:19 · Score: 1
  
  With a completely free game, how does one recoup the $99 per platform per year fee for a developer certificate?
  "Please send me a dollar for the ad-free version"
  
  --
  When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
12. Re:I'm a dumbass- by Gaygirlie · 2012-06-30 17:42 · Score: 2
  
  With a completely free game, how does one recoup the $99 per platform per year fee for a developer certificate?
  I do not understand what you don't understand about "do not need to pay anything."
13. Re:I'm a dumbass- by jones_supa · 2012-06-30 18:01 · Score: 2
  
  Hey, at least he warned that he's stupid (just like me). ;)
14. Re:I'm a dumbass- by gl4ss · 2012-06-30 19:55 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  "Also, you may want to produce a game that can run on a tablet or normal notebook, in which case the Unreal engine requirements disqualifies it."
  unreal engine isn't so bad on tablets... http://epicgames.com/infinityblade/
  it's a fine engine. what you render with it is what makes all the difference if it runs well or not.
  
  --
  world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
15. Re:I'm a dumbass- by Smauler · 2012-07-01 02:07 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  I still see a lot of value in Q3 based projects. They really look good enough(for me), and I hear good things about the netcode.
  Literally yesterday, I was looking at a bridge in Lord of the Rings Online (which is quite pretty otherwise), and thought to myself : Why isn't it curved?
  It seems the fashion with engines now is to drop curved edges - I'm not sure why. They look so much better, and have been around for ages. Quake 3 did these brilliantly, and when it came out, I thought that would be the end of crappy lumpy bridges, etc. No such luck, they're still with us, over a decade later.
  Anyone with knowledge of this issue, and why they're still about?
16. Re:I'm a dumbass- by Hal_Porter · 2012-07-01 03:33 · Score: 1
  
  Call your parents and tell them you need $99 for cocaine, hookers, lawyers etc? Hell I'd ask for more.
  
  --
  echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
17. Re:I'm a dumbass- by arth1 · 2012-07-01 05:51 · Score: 1
  
  unreal engine isn't so bad on tablets... http://epicgames.com/infinityblade/
  
  Except that that isn't the "free for development" UTK x86 engine we were talking about here, but a much more costly license.
18. Re:I'm a dumbass- by hairyfeet · 2012-07-01 07:09 · Score: 2
  
  I'm sure i'll get hate for saying this but WTF, truth is truth:
  It is NOT the engines that are the problem, hell there are still plenty of guys playing games like Freelancer and Far Cry I out there and those are pretty damned far behind the curve, its the simple fact that the FOSS community simply won't put in the work to make decent games.
  Now don't get me wrong, not saying making games is easy, just that the engine isn't the problem. i mean what did we get from the last source code releases? 50 bazillion rip offs of Q3 Arena that's what. it doesn't really matter WHAT engine you have if they are all putting out the same tired as hell DM and CTF fragfests over and over AND OVER without deviation. No single player, no story, no innovation, they just come up with some maps and character models and away you go.
  So while I'm glad they give out these engines to the community frankly the guys modding non free games have been consistently better when it comes to quality and variety than anything I've yet seen built with one of these free engines. take Freelancer, there have been a dozen new campaigns made by modders, with hundreds of new star systems, a full Elite style economy based system, factions and reputations added, you can play some of those in SP for weeks and not see it all, whereas what will we get from this? CTF and DM and...well that's all, CTF and DM.
  So while i'm sure i'll get tons of hate for pointing this out you all KNOW this guys, its the same thing we've seen with every other damned engine release. do I wish it were different? Hell yeah, I would love it if there were a free game built with this that had a rich story, interesting characters, something that would really spark some interest in FOSS gaming, but instead what we'll get is the FPS equivalent of Tux Racer, just the same old same old. And please, for the love of the FSM no more damned Q3 Arena copies, okay? I mean we already have a fricking bazillion MP only FPS games, we really don't need anymore.
  
  --
  ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
19. Re:I'm a dumbass- by Smauler · 2012-07-01 07:43 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Content is the most difficult thing about games now. Seriously. The engine is not where most of the resources go.
  It's a hell of a lot more difficult creating a decent in game universe than creating an engine. Think about it - games now require _loads_ of textures someone has to paint. Loads of voiceovers someone has to do. Loads of text someone has to write. And debug, optimise, etc. The engine is not the tough bit. A lot of it is dull, dull work.
  That being said, there are success stories, but they are few and far between. Fall from Heaven (civ4), Magna Mundi (EU3) - (though look at how that has turned out now), quite a few for X3, and obviously the old poster boy, counterstrike. These mods relied upon a large initial userbase.
  Seriously, content is king now, and it's hard to do without loads of work.
20. Re:I'm a dumbass- by shiftless · 2012-07-01 08:42 · Score: 1
  
  n short, they take 25% if you sell the game, but only if your game makes more than 50.000.
  So in other words, one is better off using IdTech3/4, unless one plans to sell more than $50k, in which case the Unreal engine might be a viable option.
  25% of sales is HUGE.
21. Re:I'm a dumbass- by santax · 2012-07-01 09:03 · Score: 1
  
  If you sell more than 250K they advise you to contact them, for a full license... So I guess if you happen to get lucky and make between 50 and 250k this is the cheapest way. If you get more revenue you are better of just taking the full license. But they also state that on their site. "if you make more than 250.000usd, you should give us a call.)
22. Re:I'm a dumbass- by savuporo · 2012-07-01 11:43 · Score: 2
  
  If i had mod points .. What a lot of people don't realize is that direct coding budget is often less than 10% of any major title nowadays. A chunk goes to middleware licensing, and the rest is all pretty much content creation, be it story writing, 3d/2d artwork, audio, acting etc.
  
  --
  http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slashdot.org Errors found while checking this document as HTML5!
23. Re:I'm a dumbass- by parlancex · 2012-07-01 11:55 · Score: 4, Interesting
  Q3 engine's curved surfaces are actually quadratic bezier spline patches (9 control points per patch). The patches had to be designed with special tools in an editor and were tessellated at runtime to an appropriate detail level based on the computer's graphics settings. The engine did not support any kind of collision detection with these surfaces so they had to be enveloped in invisible brushes to appease the BSP system for collision and culling.
  While they were interesting at the time the reasons nobody really does this anymore are probably:
  
  The special tools required to design curved surfaces need to be supported by the artist's tools and entire game toolchain, creating more work for artists and tool programmers
  Quadratic bezier patches are one of the simplest types of curved surface but can still be difficult to work with. Certain shapes are hard to construct properly with them.
  Lastly I'd say they've been kind of superseded by smooth / detail surfaces available through subdivision algorithms which can work on conventional geometry and conventional tools, and is supported on modern cards in hardware
24. Re:I'm a dumbass- by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-01 16:51 · Score: 1
  
  That's incorrect. The Quake3 engine does have collision detection on curved surfaces. It generates triangular collision volumes along the curve at a pre-defined level of tesselation. What the curves don't do is participation in the BSP tree generation, so you are required to place "caulk" brushes behind them to seal the level if on an outside edge, or to block visibility if this is an internal wall.
25. Re:I'm a dumbass- by arth1 · 2012-07-01 22:29 · Score: 1
  
  "Please send me a dollar for the ad-free version"
  If you have ads, that counts as income from Epic's perspective, and so does the dollar in donations.
  Once you hit the $50,000 mark in total, they want 25% of both your ad revenue and donations.
26. Re:I'm a dumbass- by tehcyder · 2012-07-02 03:39 · Score: 1
  
  Call your parents and tell them you need $99 for cocaine, hookers, lawyers etc? Hell I'd ask for more.
  If your parents are happy to pay for your cocaine and hookers, why the fuck would you worry about getting a job anyway?
  
  --
  To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
27. Re:I'm a dumbass- by netwarerip · 2012-07-02 05:00 · Score: 1
  
  By 'Call your parents' I am assuming you mean 'yell up the stairs'?
28. Re:I'm a dumbass- by monkeykoder · 2012-07-02 10:16 · Score: 1
  
  I would have written quite a few games myself... Except I absolutely suck at content. It's not like programming is hard at most levels (Optimization is a different story).
29. Re:I'm a dumbass- by Hal_Porter · 2012-07-03 00:48 · Score: 1
  
  ..... Your momma.
  
  --
  echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Yes, you are- by MrEricSir · 2012-06-30 15:29 · Score: 5, Insightful

"But I can't help but revel in the growth and extension of public domain engines and assets by willing companies."
Just so we're clear, Quake 3 and its source code are NOT in the public domain.

--
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
1. Re:Yes, you are- by Baloroth · 2012-06-30 15:46 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Public domain? No. GPL? Yes, which is probably what the OP meant (and to be pedantic, it is the engine that is GPL, not the game as such).
  
  --
  "None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
2. Re:Yes, you are- by qxcv · 2012-06-30 19:32 · Score: 1
  
  The gamecode is open source as well. id just chose not to release the art assets necessary to create a functioning copy of Q3 for free.
  
  --
  "The most dangerous enemy of a better solution is an existing codebase that is just good enough." -- Eric S. Raymond
The most insightful comment. Ever. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-06-30 15:29 · Score: 5, Funny

You have just spouted utter nonsense, and have made a more valuable comment than most other people here.
Re:So this is what happens when reddit goes down. by DeathElk · 2012-06-30 19:20 · Score: 1

Or an aneurism of shit.
App store fee by tepples · 2012-07-01 01:09 · Score: 1

With a completely free game, how does one recoup the $99 per platform per year fee for a developer certificate?
I do not understand what you don't understand about "do not need to pay anything."
It costs per year to get onto the iOS App Store, Mac App Store, Amazon Appstore, or Windows Store, even for applications priced at $0.00. Epic sees none of this. So let me rephrase: With a completely free game, how does one recoup the $99 per year fee payable to Apple for a developer certificate?
1. Re:App store fee by Gaygirlie · 2012-07-01 01:35 · Score: 1
  
  It costs per year to get onto the iOS App Store, Mac App Store, Amazon Appstore, or Windows Store, even for applications priced at $0.00. Epic sees none of this. So let me rephrase: With a completely free game, how does one recoup the $99 per year fee payable to Apple for a developer certificate?
  I really fail to see how that is related to UDK. As for the answer to the question: put away $10 a month by e.g. drinking a few beers less? Ask for donations? Even if you only got 10 donations, each for $10, you'd still afford to pay the $99 fee. Or just release the game on your own website instead of App Store. Quite simple, really.
2. Re:App store fee by tepples · 2012-07-01 02:21 · Score: 1
  
  Or just release the game on your own website instead of App Store
  Which would mean each user would have to buy his own developer certificate to install it. I guess I could make it exclusive to PC and Android.
3. Re:App store fee by Fujisawa+Sensei · 2012-07-01 11:29 · Score: 1
  
  $99 is a drop in the bucket. How do you recoup the $100/hr that you as an independent contractor should be charging for your labor?
  Unless of course your time isn't worth anything.
  
  --
  If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
4. Re:App store fee by Fujisawa+Sensei · 2012-07-02 08:59 · Score: 1
  
  The reality of American life is pay to play.
  
  --
  If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Re:Hint by drzhivago · 2012-07-01 01:25 · Score: 1

I laughed when he said the first striking thing was that the solution had multiple projects in it.
Is the second striking thing that id used an existing 3D API for rendering?
What's the point of this system? by loufoque · 2012-07-01 02:41 · Score: 2

From a quick reading, I don't get the point of this system.
Couldn't they just compile their C code to a dll normally and then load that dll and call vmMain?
I don't see what those "virtual machines" are bringing.
1. Re:What's the point of this system? by Andor666 · 2012-07-01 03:25 · Score: 1
  
  RTFA:
  http://fabiensanglard.net/quake3/qvm.php
2. Re:What's the point of this system? by loufoque · 2012-07-01 03:31 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  I wrote this very comment *because* I read that article.
3. Re:What's the point of this system? by purpledinoz · 2012-07-01 03:34 · Score: 1
  
  I was thinking the same thing. But I would imagine this was done to restrict what the code run by the VM can do. This way, the code is guaranteed to not to interfere with the core engine. Imagine what would happen if all the Quake 3 modders out there were able to do anything they wanted in C code. Invariably, most mods would probably have bugs in them that would cause the game to crash all the time. And I guess this wouldn't apply just to the modders, but also other game developers building on top of the Quake 3 engine.
4. Re:What's the point of this system? by loufoque · 2012-07-01 03:38 · Score: 1
  
  I see, so the whole system exists for sandboxing.
  But then why not do a simpler approach where each module runs in its own process and communicates with the master through an IPC mechanism (sockets, shared memory, named pipes...)?
5. Re:What's the point of this system? by purpledinoz · 2012-07-01 04:03 · Score: 1
  
  My guess is performance. It's probably faster to have code running within the same process, rather than having the IPC overhead. You have to remember how slow the hardware was when Quake 3 was released. I'm impressed at how smooth that game ran on that slow hardware.
6. Re:What's the point of this system? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-01 04:59 · Score: 1
  
  Security. Viruses can't be implemented in mods if they run on a VM.
7. Re:What's the point of this system? by loufoque · 2012-07-01 05:12 · Score: 1
  
  Whatever overhead an IPC mechanism would have would be insignificant compared to the overhead of running interpreted code as was initially desired.
8. Re:What's the point of this system? by purpledinoz · 2012-07-01 05:33 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Apparently, he got around this by compiling the bytecode to x86 code on the fly:
  
  Moreover their design is much more elaborated: They combine the security/portability of Quake1 Virtual Machine with the high performances of Quake2's native DLLs. This is achieved by compiling the bytecode to x86 instruction on the fly.
  And here's the evolution of this:
  
  Trivia : The virtual machine was initially supposed to be a plain bytecode interpreter but performances were disappointing so the development team wrote a runtime x86 compiler. According to the .plan from Aug 16, 1999 this was done in one day.
9. Re:What's the point of this system? by loufoque · 2012-07-01 05:48 · Score: 1
  
  This was decided later. It still doesn't explain why they'd think their system would be faster than inter-process communication.
10. Re:What's the point of this system? by gl4ss · 2012-07-01 09:50 · Score: 1
  
  simplicity, reproducibility, not needing the level scripters & etc to constantly be compiling the engine itself.
  anyhow, you can do .dll mods for q3.
  but unless I'm totally mistaken, only the other type of mods which are ran in the vm thingy can be loaded on the fly from the server.
  
  --
  world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
11. Re:What's the point of this system? by Drinking+Bleach · 2012-07-01 10:05 · Score: 2
  
  Portability is a HUGE advantage to the VM architecture. Quake 3 has been ported to many OSes and CPU architectures that didn't even exist when the game first came around (or many of the mods). With the QVM, it's no problem to have a native Quake 3 port to Linux x86_64 and still run all the old mods without having to rebuild them. Additionally, ports to Android (Qauke 3 on ARM) also don't affect mod compatibility.
  I think it's a huge step back that they regressed on the role of the VM in Doom 3.
12. Re:What's the point of this system? by loufoque · 2012-07-01 13:40 · Score: 1
  
  Linking a DLL does not require recompilation.
13. Re:What's the point of this system? by loufoque · 2012-07-01 13:42 · Score: 1
  
  What kind of advantage does that have over recompiling the mods for a new architecture?
14. Re:What's the point of this system? by Dog-Cow · 2012-07-02 00:23 · Score: 1
  
  Um, is this question for real?
  Only a few handfuls of people on the planet will have access to the source for the vast majority of mods. Who's going to recompile your favorite mod for you for some new Android toy when the mod hasn't been updated at all in 4.5 years?
15. Re:What's the point of this system? by loufoque · 2012-07-02 00:47 · Score: 1
  
  So essentially the advantage of this virtual machine is that it forces mod providers to provide a retargetable source of their mods?
16. Re:What's the point of this system? by HPXX · 2012-07-02 11:08 · Score: 1
  
  From http://fd.fabiensanglard.net/doom3/pdfs/johnc-plan_1999.pdf "The interpreted code has two prime benefits: portability and security." He also discusses the VM in http://fd.fabiensanglard.net/doom3/pdfs/johnc-plan_1998.pdf "With significant chunks of code now running on the client side, if we stuck with binary dll's then the less popular system would find that they could not connect to the new servers because the mode code hadn't been ported" The documents are interesting, if you get the some time for reading I recommend you check them out.
Re:Hint by UnknownSoldier · 2012-07-01 03:19 · Score: 2

The third striking thing where he he discovered "circular buffers" but calls them "Array index cycling." Are programmers really that clueless that they don't realize MOD N can be optimized with AND N-1 ??
http://fabiensanglard.net/quakeSource/quakeSourceNetWork.php
arrayIndex = (oldArrayIndex+1) % 64 ;
arrayIndex = (oldArrayIndex+1) & UPDATE_MASK;
Which came from:
Network Model (Part 3 of 5)
The array cycle with the famous binary mask trick I mentioned in Quake World Network (Some elegant things).
Re:So this is what happens when reddit goes down. by Hal_Porter · 2012-07-01 03:22 · Score: 3, Funny

I believe it spelled "aneurysm". They were discovered by Aneurysm Bevin, evil inventor of British death panels.

--
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Re:Hint by Anonymous Coward · 2012-07-01 07:58 · Score: 1

Are programmers really that clueless that they don't realize MOD N can be optimized with AND N-1 ??
you forgot about the part where gcc compiles both variants to exactly the same assembly...
Re:Hint by taxman_10m · 2012-07-01 12:20 · Score: 1

Not a programmer. Did gcc do that back in the Q3 days or does it do it now?
Re:Hint by UnknownSoldier · 2012-07-01 12:44 · Score: 1

Correct.
Compilers do it NOW but they didn't always use to UNLESS you turned optimizations on. Debugging un-optimized code is a lesson in pain. Especially when you are trying to debug a real-time system and can't due to performance issues.
Looking for a first job by tepples · 2012-07-01 23:53 · Score: 1

Consider the case of somebody who doesn't (yet) have a job in a given industry. A job seeker will want a portfolio to present to those responsible for hiring, and I don't see how anybody will pay a job seeker to build a portfolio.
1. Re:Looking for a first job by arth1 · 2012-07-02 00:43 · Score: 1
  
  Consider the case of somebody who doesn't (yet) have a job in a given industry. A job seeker will want a portfolio to present to those responsible for hiring, and I don't see how anybody will pay a job seeker to build a portfolio.
  Welcome to the modern world. Not long ago, vocational schools encouraged students to build a portfolio, and graduation ended with the student presenting a major work, which became the crown of the portfolio and basis for acceptance for apprenticeship (and later in life, the major work would hopefully be replaced by a masterwork).
  Some countries still put great value in technical and trade schools.
  And some schools still allow or support students in building a portfolio. But yes, times have changed, and employers today want to hire a 25 year old with 30 years experience, and abhor anything that smells of guilds.
2. Re:Looking for a first job by tepples · 2012-07-02 02:28 · Score: 1
  
  So if a programmer seeks a job in the video game industry, what should be in his portfolio, and how should he support himself while building it?
3. Re:Looking for a first job by arth1 · 2012-07-02 02:55 · Score: 1
  
  So if a programmer seeks a job in the video game industry, what should be in his portfolio, and how should he support himself while building it?
  I would think that a game or demo developed while studying would be a good start. If painters are expected to present example paintings at the end of their study, it's surely not to much to ask that a games developer can present a game or demo?
Re:Hint by Thiez · 2012-07-02 04:17 · Score: 1

That trick is only guaranteed to work if N is a power of two. It's much better to just use mod and let the compiler figure out how to optimize, lest you run into mysterious bugs when someone changes N.
So? by Fujisawa+Sensei · 2012-07-02 09:10 · Score: 1

So what?
You want to build an app for IOS, sell it for a buck or 5 and act like a pro.
If you want to give it away as portfolio material so someone might give you a job. The stop whining and spend the $100 as a cost of education. Maybe you'll get a job or maybe not. But its still a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of money you don't make by not having a job, or the amount of money you spend getting an education.

--
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Games including what? by tepples · 2012-07-02 11:19 · Score: 1

I would think that a game or demo developed while studying would be a good start.
I agree with this. However, Slashdot user CronoCloud has told me that certain games that I have made available on my web site would be a net negative in my portfolio for various reasons. What aspects are video game companies looking for in the games and demos in one's portfolio?
Any SlashDotters ever develop with APL? by lsatenstein · 2012-07-03 02:24 · Score: 1

I was an APL biggot in the late 70's and early 80's. I could get more done in an hour than an excel expert, a gui expert, a numerical analyst, a text manipulator expert could do if given a Monday Morning assignment.
I finished a project to convert several thousand TSO and JCL scripts in about three hours that in the contest with the System Programmers, took them about 10 days.
The SP guys wanted something that was low overhead. I needed something NOW. Surprisingly, my solution worked and was used for another 10 years in the department, until that support person retired. At that point, the language also retired with him.
I am trying to resurrect my skills in APL development. It is a language for fun and profit. No, it is not about Quake, but I could not figure out how to introduce a new topic.

--
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada