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Carmack on next Q3 test; parts open-sourced

Posted by Hemos on from the frag-your-friends dept.

SithLordBill writes "Looks like there will be another Quake3 test due in mid-September. This one will include single player bots as well as the Virtual Machine (written to interpret game mods). Anyway, Carmack will be releasing the VM and its modules (as well as the modified compiliers, LCC and q3asm) will be open-source as to give mod developers a head start. Check out his most recent .plan update -- there's a bunch of cool stuff there. "

7 of 91 comments (clear)

  1. God Mode/nightmare by schon · · Score: 2

    You can...

    Nightmare is just skill level 4 with monster respawning & fast monsters... so if you turn these on manually, then cheats will still work.. the appropriate command-line switches are as follows:

    -skill 4 -respawn -fast

  2. Re:... by Signal+11 · · Score: 2
    I was trying to prevent any misinterpretation of the original slashdot posting. I read his .plan file and he plans on making the source for the VM available - but not the gaming engine itself. Some people may have been confused by the difference.

    And yes, I'm aware of John's contributions. :)
    I should know - I have a matrox card -and- play q3test often.


    --

  3. ... by Signal+11 · · Score: 2
    First off - Quake is simply incredible. It lets you repeatedly kill your boss in the office without being arrested. :)

    Second, he is only making the source available for the VM - which helps the mod community. But to make this clear: Quake3 is not open source. For a real open source game, check out Golgotha. I hate it when people call any source release an "open source" release. . .

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    1. Re:... by calc · · Score: 3

      John Carmack is helping out with the open source community quite a lot. He is currently helping write the matrox g200/g400 glx drivers. Also, remember what the first real linux game was? Doom! So please do not complain when companies can not completely open the source to their main source of revenue.

      Thanks John for your support!

      -calc

  4. Re:Is quake getting any better? by Trepidity · · Score: 2

    Quake 3 == Wolfenstein 3D 6

    It's the same basic gameplay as Wolfenstein 3D, the Doom series, and the previous games in the Quake series. Graphics have obviously been improved. New weapons are added each time, and the physics models have improved. There's also some more range of movement, with stuff like crouching and jumping.

    Overall, however, it's still the same game.

    --
    10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
  5. Re:Java q4? by kijiki · · Score: 2

    Actually, lack of pointers should help performance. A major hinderance to optimizing C and/or C++ is that the compiler can't tell if you're aliasing pointers. High level functional languages have the potential with more research and a lot of effort to greatly outperform C. It was only recently that C++ could even compete with FORTRAN for numerical simulation speed. Higher level langauges (fortran is a bad example) give the compiler much more information about what you actually intended, so it can optimize more aggresively. There is lots of interesting research going on in this area.

  6. Programmable bots.... by Bacteriophage · · Score: 2

    Wouldn't it be so awesome if the "bots" that will be available in q3 single-player could be programmed, just like you can program a robot in Robot Battle? It might be fun to have online tournaments where only people's bots that they created could participate. I'm sure this could be done, and it would be a LOT of fun!!! Heck, you could even send a bot you created against a real person and watch them crumble against your awesome programming talent! Yeah!
    "There are no shortcuts to any place worth going."

    --
    "Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work." -Flaubert