RA3 After All

17 -- Or maybe it\'s because most of those things are perfectly reasonable and obvious things to do, particularly if you\'re trying to license your engine and flexibility is ideal.

18 -- Even with a DLL, both Carmack and Hook (when he was there) were pretty vocally against using C++ for whatever reason. Lots of time spent typecasting should you want to port it I imagine... heh

#13
QVMs are upto 30% slower on baseline machines. I\'ve got 450Mhz CPU and TNT so I\'m more fillrate limited, but even I see a 10% framerate increase when I used native dlls.

I didnt ever hear any problems about portability in Q2 because all the good Quake2 mods were ported to all the supported platforms. QVMs are just too damn limited. You can\'t do any external networking if you use QVMs, you can\'t do any major file i/o, you can\'t add any major functionality. For example, i\'ve added in mp3 support using an external library in my uix86.dll. I\'m working on a playlist editor when i find time, but i find it just too ugly compared to how nice and clean the UI code would have been if it used C++. I would like the flexibility to change it to what i want. I just want the option.

As for id being friendly to mod developers. They don\'t even come remotely close to what Valve and Epic are doing. Anyone remember how long the Q2 3.20 source release was delayed just out of pure laziness ? I believe that they finally got around to releasing the source 4 to 6 months AFTER the patch came out.

id the Microsoft of FPS? Hardly. I would say Epic is the MS of FPS. Base their flagship product completely on a competitor\'s product, embrace and extend (Unreal = Quake + some shit thrown in - soul and good taste). Make exclusive deals with some hardware companies (Unreal/UT runs best by far on 3dfx, Unreal used to be a Windows-only product while id games have pretty much always been cross-platform). Hey, even Microsoft makes IE run on Solaris, and Epic ports UT to Linux, jumping on the bandwagon... UT has a great interface just like MS products, but the core of the product just isn\'t up to par with the Quake games.

id has always promoted cross-platformness and doing the \"right thing\", they have given away major enhancements to their products (QuakeWorld, GLQuake for free), and hardly anything other games companies do can compare.

Sure they\'ll get bashed by some people who just want to play something totally different after all these years. And sometimes it\'s cool to see the big guy hurting. But everything id did to get where they are, they did it through hard work and giving gamers what they want, not by pulling a Microsoft.

dissonance, you pegged one of my biggest gripes. Opinionated people who
have no idea what goes in to developing a mod take CRT\'s word for it be-
cause he\'s CRT. God forbid that he\'s wrong.

id has a long past of being friendly and attentive to the needs and op-
inions of gamers. I think they should be cut some slack. Hell, Graeme
responded to CRT\'s concerns the same day that he posted them. That in
itself shows that they are listening. Have some vision, people.

_foreskin

http://news.statik.org
#rice or #shugashack at irc.enterthegame.com

has id become the microsoft of fps? i\'d think so, everyone is quick to try to hack them, bash them, say something else is better... often without even fully understanding the issues. i dunno, i could be way off but i think there is something to this, they always go after you and are quick to bash you if you\'re not the underdog...

dissonance

Skid,

More flexibility is badly wanted, yes, but I don\'t share your view point
regarding platform-specific libraries. As a hard-core \'nix user, I
believe that portability is a must. Once Nvidia releases a glx module
that is usable for gaming on a GeForce, I\'ll have no reason to continue
trying to develop in a Windows environment with proprietary compilers
that I have to buy, and free compilers that barely, if ever, work well
for mod development.

As a Linux gamer, I must say that I don\'t want to leave it up to the mod
developer to make a Linux port of their mod. There aren\'t that many
Linux gamers, so why should they care? If there were one mod that I
would hypothetically like to play that is Windows-only, it would be one
mod too many.

I think that the limited use of native DLLs is intentional on id\'s part,
to encourage the use of qvm. qvm\'s are apparantly faster than native
libraries, too. This takes the responsibility of maintaining a cross-
platform mod off the hands of the developer. The fact that you don\'t
have to worry about three different source trees for three different
platforms means that you have more time to work on the mod itself.

And I don\'t see what was so bad about QuakeC. Although I\'ve never played
with it first hand, what I\'ve read about its current and future uses
(due the source release) indicates that it is a very flexible and
expandable framework.

I\'m not suggesting that we simply \"bow our heads\" and blindly accept the
limitations presented in this source release. id has always been
sensitive to the community\'s needs, and there\'s no reason for them to
stop now with one of their most popular games just released. I\'m saying
that one of the most recognized mod designers doesn\'t need to go to this
length to get his message across, and there was no need to be as harsh
as he was. id has given us something fun to waste our worthless lives
on, and they will always get the benefit of the doubt with me. There is
no reason to NOT assume that things will only improve from here.

_foreskin

http://news.statik.org
#rice or #shugashack at irc.enterthegame.com

#11
The simple gust of the matter is that we _want_ more flexibility. I refuse to go back and code in a sandbox like QuakeC. I want to port the code to C++ and then have fun with it. Thats not possible until id allows the choice of qvms or native code libraries. They cite portability and security as the reasons behind this restriction. Portability isn\'t an issue since all the good Q2 mods were ported to different environments. Security, well I\'ve never heard a malicious Q2 mod either. So what we are essentially left with is a restrictive slow environment to modify. After the comparitive freedom of Q2, this does not come as a welcome change. You might just bow your head down and \"DEAL WITH\" whatever id throws, but most of us just don\'t feel the same way anymore after the \"alpha beta test point release\" jokes of Q3A.

I made a post over at Stomped regarding this, and I\'d like to re-post
it here, as I would like to get some constructive criticism from other
people regarding what I had to say:

I think CRT has a serious attitude problem. I concede that Q3A
probably wouldn\'t be Q3A had CRT not written some very awesome mods,
but he\'s acting like King Shit in Turd Land.

The .dll-in-the-root-directory issue is an inconvenience, nothing
more. Its not a major design flaw, because you don\'t release a Q3A
mod with DLLs. From a development perspective, you have to have
multiple Q3A directories if you want to develop and debug multiple
mods. So what? Expect to crunch a lot of disk space when you\'re
developing anything. I know its a pain in the ass, but its just one
of those things that you DEAL WITH.

The client having to specify gametype from the command line, I don\'t
see a problem here. I wish he would elaborate a bit more, because it
seems to me that what he proposes is broken actually works. Is he
talking about client/server path differences? I mean come on, this is
a bit more than vague. Gametype auto-detection IS a very useful and
needed feature, for sanity\'s sake. I agree that it should have been
included in the game, but I think something like this would have been
added in a point release regardless of CRT\'s rants.

I have yet to find anything that need \"hacks\" that break
compatibility between point releases. Again, some examples would have
been nice. I don\'t think there is much that you can\'t do with the
souce in its current condition if you use some creative thinking. If
it doesn\'t do what you want it to do, find a way to make it work.
Simple as that.

I call this total unwillingness to adapt to a new development
environment. Quake 3 Arena is not Quake 2. Expect to have a different
environment with a different game.

Not to beat a dead horse, but as everyone mentioned, the source
hadn\'t even been out for A DAY before CRT started blasting id Software
for being inflexible and ignorant of the needs of the mod development
community. id has already made a big effort to keep mappers informed
with Paul Jquays being a face for id over at www.quake3world.com\'s
forums. I don\'t imagine that they would offer support for mapping, but
not modding. CRT didn\'t even ask, he hopped up on his soap box.

All CRT did in this little episode is generate more email than is
necessary to Graeme Devine. There were people on IRC that had no idea
where to even begin making a mod joining channels and telling
everyone that they have to email Graeme because RA3 is never going to
get made if these \"major problems\" aren\'t fixed. Sure, send a
\"constructive\" email to Graeme Devine. The fact that you have to tell
people not to spam id Software with flames shows that most people have
no idea what is \"constructive\" and what isn\'t. He may as well have
said, \"Everyone please spam Graeme Devine on my behalf.\"

This whole event has really lowered my personal respect for CRT. I
still think he made one of the greatest mods ever, and I eagerly
await RA3, but I\'m not that upset that we\'re loosing him to Unreal
Tournament.

_foreskin

http://news.statik.org
#rice or #shugashack at irc.enterthegame.com

Maj just shut up.

Do you realize cgame is reloaded every time the map changes?

All they have to do to switch mods is reload ui, cgame, and game, and voila a new mod is in use.

Scared? I doubt it. Had an oversight pointed out to them? Definitely.

- Holesinswiss

Heeeh. ID got scared.

[cross-posted to the original CRT/RA3 thread and the follow-up post]
#4, I\'ve been playing with the source a little and I\'ve had an annoying problem that may be the cause of your problem.

I compiled all the modules, game, cgame, and ui to a native DLL to see if I could eek some more framerate out of my system. All fine and dandy, it seemed to work with a mild benefit.

But upon messing around, starting and quitting games, going back to the menu, etc., etc., I found that the game wasn\'t always using the DLL! Sometimes it would switch back the QVM file! This was verified by the console messages when it says it\'s either compiling the VM file or using the native file, and by looking at the information dumped by \'vminfo\'.

The real problem comes from the fact it seems totally random when it decides to use the DLL or the QVM. Every time I load a map, it would show a different combination of DLL/QVM usage. One time it\'s using all DLLs, the next time, it\'s UI:QVM, GAME:DLL, CGAME:QVM. Ah! After leaving the game, sometimes the UI would come back using the QVM and sometimes the DLL.

And as a result, sometimes the code modifications I made worked and sometimes they didn\'t.

Anyone with insight on this?

- Holesinswiss

well I\'m glad that\'s over with ,of course ra3 was the only reason I got q3a in the first place. now I can sleep at night again.

crt doesn\'t need to wait for id. He can start now, the code will be the same. the .exe just needs to look somwhere else for dll.

I\'m actually surpised to see this come up. Didn\'t Id make ANY mention of it while Q3 was in development? Weren\'t they asking for feedback from mod authors? I for one am very looking forward to RA3, too bad they have to wait for Id to fix their fuckups