Slashdot Mirror


Interview w/ Dave "Zoid" Kirsch about Linux Quake

Dr. Blackwood writes sent us a link to a LinuxPower interview with Dave "Zoid" Kirsch where he talks about (big surprise) the Quake 3 for Linux Port. Lots of interesting bits to read.

29 of 54 comments (clear)

  1. Video by Nick+Ives · · Score: 1

    Now now troll.
    I'll have you know that whenever all the Quakers round this area meet up Linux QuakeWorld is the game of choice. The fact that I can use GLqwcl and run qwsv at the same time on my box without any slowdown on my part or packetloss is a huge plus, as noone wants to have to use their box as a pure dedicated server. You try running qwsv on a 95/98 box and connecting to localhost.
    Doesnt happen on NT, but really, you ever tried Quakin under NT?

    Nick

    --
    Nick
  2. Why no joystick under Linux? by Nick+Ives · · Score: 1

    The answer to this is simple. If you use a joystick you must be braindead and .'. cant figure out how to use Q3A under Linux anyway.
    Get yourself off that stick now, for the good of your frag count! =)

    Nick

    --
    Nick
  3. Just a note... by Alan · · Score: 1

    It's Zoid's birthday today. Maybe we should all send our greets to him :)

  4. Video.. not so spiffy for me :( by Fict · · Score: 1

    Hrm. I have a 300a @ 450 on an asus P2B and a 12 meg voodoo2, but consistantly get ~37 fps, compared to 67 in windows... Any suggestions?

  5. umm...is 10 fps your idea of fine? by Fict · · Score: 1

    Hrm. No.. I am running quake 1 on a dx/4 100. runs great, and significantly higher than 10 frames a second.. too bad i don't have time to run a time demo right now.

  6. Video.. not so spiffy for me :( by Fict · · Score: 1

    I have no idea what an MTRR is. just the ref_gl.so files? Thanks.

  7. Video by gavinhall · · Score: 1

    Posted by OGL:

    I'm running a Pentium II 400, 128 megs of RAM, Creative Blaster Voodoo2. 60fps at 800x600 in Quake2, I don't play Quake.

    -W.W.

  8. Video.. not so spiffy for me :( by gavinhall · · Score: 1

    Posted by OGL:

    Turn off vsync.

    export SSTV2_SWAP_EN_WAIT_ON_VSYNC=0

    -W.W.

  9. Using PMesa to speedup OpenGL code in Q3 by Jon+Abbott · · Score: 1

    I wrote an email to John Carmack about PMesa, which speeds up some OpenGL calculations up to 1.8x on SMP hardware. He said this:

    Its not going to help bandwidth limited applications. Applications with lots of evaluators and lighting probably show worthwhile speedups, but basic vertex/texcoord/color drawing probably doesn't get helped at all (unless the basic geometry code is very badly implemented).

    John Carmack

  10. No Subject Given by TedC · · Score: 1
    The sad thing, is that Linux offers even less.

    Having OpenGL support in the next version of XFree86 will help. Sound is still a problem, tho.

    TedC

  11. What Language by CatatonicBoy · · Score: 1

    I'm sure Brian Hook has said the Quake 2 OpenGL renderer has no assembler. It is pure C, and they don't use C++. Perhaps Quake 2 & 3 have no assembly at all.

  12. /unix/q2ded-3.20-sparc-sun-solaris2.5.1.tar.Z by dylan_- · · Score: 1

    So you can at least get a server going :-)

    dylan_-


    --

    --
    Igor Presnyakov stole my hat
  13. Sound Server? by Rational · · Score: 1

    It's not restricted on SGIs... Lots of fun in the office... :)

    --
    "Be nice, veer left, and never stop thinking" Iain Banks - Walking On Glass
  14. Quake/LinuxPPC/etc. by haaz · · Score: 1

    I talked to John Carmack at the past Macworld Expo. He said if we get certain components like OpenGL ported to LinuxPPC, it might be possible.

    He's worried that the other smaller Linuxes (SPARC, Alpha) would then start demanding it. That would be the classic "Well if we let the PowerPC people have it, we're going to let the rest of the class have it" argument. ;)

    Our next hardware donations are going to be a Blue G3 to the kernel guys to get those running, and a fast Power Mac to a Glide developer to get that ported.

    --
    -- haaz.
  15. Use XDM to secure permissions by roystgnr · · Score: 1

    Take a look at the "GiveConsole" and "TakeConsole" scripts in /etc/X11/xdm - you can do a "chmod o-rwx" on any device like /dev/dsp that you don't want non-console access to, then add lines to these scripts to change the owner of these devices to the current console user.

    And if the console user wants to "chmod o+rwx" and let other people decide what he listens too, that's allowed - just make sure that "TakeConsole" sets the permissions back when he's done.

  16. no SMP! :~( by GypC · · Score: 1

    He said you could run a server on one processor and the client on the other... thast ought to give you a nice performance boost!
    .

  17. Sound Server? by Geinus+Roy · · Score: 1

    adduser SuperDave audio

    That will let SuperDave do audio things with out changing the permissions.

  18. USB mouse by N1KO · · Score: 1

    Does Linux support USB mouses? I've heard those are much, much better than the normal mice.

    I play quake 2 only with the mouse and the spacebar.

  19. Sound Server? by Kludge · · Score: 1

    Why do no programs in Linux use a standard sound server? It's a pain in the butt that I have to set all my sound devices to user write/readable or run things as superuser just to use sound. It also makes programming a pain in the ass.

  20. Sound Server? by Kludge · · Score: 1

    That's my whole point. That's why we should have a semi-standardized sound server, like we have standardized video server (X11).

  21. Sounds like a kludge to me. by Kludge · · Score: 1

    All this changing of permissions is stupid. What if I want to run multiple programs using the sound, like I use multiple programs displaying on my video screen?

    What if every program that printed something had to write directly to the printer rather than sending it to lpd? We'd call that DOS.

  22. What about TNT users? by red_one · · Score: 1

    Quake 3: Arena on Linux is good and fine, but since it's hardware based, what about all us TNT users who won't be able to play it until someone writes Mesa drivers for our kick-ass cards?

    :(

  23. win98 4 games by geekd · · Score: 1

    how about you just use Win98 for the ONE thing it *is* good for? Playing games.

    I applaud the efforts of those who want to port/write drivers/etc for games on Linux. But I code all day at work. When I get home I just wanna frag some ass and go to bed.

    Linux 4 work, win98 4 play. Everything has it's place.

    :-)

  24. Video by X-Type · · Score: 1

    PII at 300Mhz, 128mb sdram, and
    as for video: Matrox G200 8mb SGRAM
    I think that it would run fine.

    --
    010110000010110101010100011110010111000001100101
  25. Video by Mr.+Piccolo · · Score: 1

    PPro 180 MHZ
    Monster 3D Voodoo 1
    Stealth 3d 2000 PRO (S3 ViRGE/DX)

    I don't have a problem running GL or Software at 30FPS (as long as I don't push the resolution too high in software ;-) ) Seems pretty playable to me... of course if you're used to 60+ FPS itmay not seem that way...

    Quake 2 engine games start to slow down though :-/

    --
    Glückwünsche, haben Sie Slashdot ermordet, indem Sie zum korporativen Druck beugten und Subskriptionen einlei
  26. Video by apathy · · Score: 1

    I run a PII 350 with an ATI all in wonder pro(pretty poorly configured for linux at this point) with a Voodoo 2 for 3-d accel, i get better framerates under linux for Quake 1/2 and i have even seen Q1 played well on a 486 linux box

  27. um by creinig · · Score: 1
    How does this relate, if at all, to PenguinPlay?

    (Im a PenguinPlay dveloper)


    I actually think PenguinPlay and that one fit together quite nicely. They are defining a standard client environment (i.e. for people wanting to play games) while PPlay is assembling/defining a suite of game *development* code/tools.


    Anyway, well talk with them.




    Cu

    Christian


    PS: Yup, I know that the PPlay homepage looks pretty dead. Our Webmaster disappeared some time ago and the new one starts to completely reorganize it. Will take some time. In the meanwhile the FAQ is really up-to-date. Promise ;)

  28. What Language by Badfish · · Score: 1

    Its great that there will be a port, but with what language is it going to be written in. OpenGL, C, C++, assembly. Do I have any hope of seeing it on my LinuxPPC box??

  29. What Language by bitwize · · Score: 1

    I suspect that most of the game is written in optimized C or C++ with the really tight parts written in ASM. A Linux/PPC port should be nontrivial but not difficult. It all depends on if id Software is willing to create and support it.