4 ms·

Quake has a software renderer, that probably helps. But most importantly, ID software released the original source code for it quite early. Not that many game

by audunw 4y ago

Quake has a software renderer, that probably helps. But most importantly, ID software released the original source code for it quite early. Not that many game development companies do that. I would've loved to see more Blood ports, but I don't think the source was ever released? So I believe the existing ports were reverse engineered. Duke Nukem 3D source was only released in 2003 it looks like. The quality of the source code of Quake 2 is quite high. Doom is.. a bit messy but OK. There are already abstractions that make porting easier. I'm guessing Quake (haven't looked at the source yet) is somewhere in between. That helps too.

disordinary 4y ago
Blood uses the build engine which was open sourced at about the same time as Quake, there are numerous source ports and it can run on most platforms (although people have gotten it running on mobile devices, there's never been an official port). As nblood is based on eduke32, I'd imagine the only reason it isn't available on more platforms is that no one has volunteered to do it.
- johnlorentzson 4y ago
  The Build engine's source code isn't enough to port any game running on it, since Build was made as a library (I believe most developers using Build in the 90s didn't have access to the source code). Also, wasn't there an official Blood port by Nightdive Studios?
  - z3phyr 4y ago
    Also, the original build code is extremely hard to read!
  - smcl 4y ago
    It may have been fixed up since but the official ND port had some problems at the time of release (if I remember a civvie11 vid correctly) edit: just looked it out, it seems this has been address. I'm linking the videos because they're entertaining :D vid on the original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkG29e-nE-A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkG29e-nE-A and the patched version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFUPNlfWiYg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFUPNlfWiYg
- bluedino 4y ago
  Build/Duke was also Ken Silverman's second game. Doom was probably Carmack's 50th That said, it had some things Doom fans dreamt of, like an interactive level editor that was built into the game engine.
pjc50 4y ago
Quake basically pre-dated hardware rendering on consumer hardware. To a great extent, the consumer 3D accelerator market exists because of Quake. https://fabiensanglard.net/3dfx_sst1/ https://fabiensanglard.net/3dfx_sst1/
- taneq 4y ago
  Aaah the brief, heady days of “no serious gamer would use a hybrid 2D/3D card” and the Voodoo fill rate wars. Fun times!
  - selykg 4y ago
    Voodoo... that's a name I haven't heard in awhile... thanks for that fun memory. Those were interesting times.
- deckard1 4y ago
  Quake and id Software were pioneering things we just take for granted now. I remember playing QuakeWorld when it came out, on Linux, over a dial up modem. You had ping times of 200-300ms and it was playable. You have to remember at the time Doom and other games were LAN-only. John Carmack used to keep a .plan file with some really cool details behind Quake/QuakeWorld development. Check out Aug 02, 1996 for some detail behind the netcode[1]. You can read the future of gaming being invented right there. [1] https://github.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-archive/blob/master/by_year/johnc_plan_1996.txt https://github.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-archive/blob/mast...
pizza234 4y ago
The top sibling parent has the correct explanation, however, I'll expand a bit. Games prior to Quake were bound to specific O/Ss and/or hardware components. DOOM was still bound to DOS AFAIK, so it's not portable without significant changes. Older games are even worse - not only they were bound to DOS, but also to the display adapters of the time (CGA/EGA), which required some sort of emulation (or translation, depending on the approach) in order to be ported. Games based on the Build engine (written by Ken Silverman), like Duke Nukem 3D and Blood are... simply written in very poor form. Carmack is a tidy programmer, Silverman isn't. Quoting Fabien Sanglard: > Looking at the innumerable ports that spawned Doom/Quake, I was always puzzled to see so few ports of Duke Nukem 3D. The same question arose when the engine was ported to OpenGL only when Ken Silverman decided to do it himself. The answer is in his analysis: https://fabiensanglard.net/duke3d/code_legacy.php https://fabiensanglard.net/duke3d/code_legacy.php.
- johnlorentzson 4y ago
  DOOM was definitely made with DOS in mind, but it also ran on NeXT from the beginning. It's pretty portable actually. Since you cited Fabien Sanglard, I guess I should mention that his book about DOOM's source code (Game Engine Black Book: DOOM) explains how the portability stuff (as well as almost everything else) worked in great detail.
  - macintux 4y ago
    Several of us would regularly play it in a Chemistry computer lab on SGI workstations. Annoyed the hell out of the students doing molecular simulations, regrettably.
- flohofwoe 4y ago
  > DOOM was still bound to DOS AFAIK, so it's not portable without significant changes DOOM was always extremely portable, the DOS and PC specific parts are well separated from the other code (DOOM was actually developed on NeXT machines, so separating the platform specific parts probably came naturally).
  - 4y ago
myownclone 4y ago
Yes! SW renderer was one of the reasons I chose that! :-) Also, source code for id tech games is so well written, architected and highly readable.

by audunw 4y ago

disordinary 4y ago

Blood uses the build engine which was open sourced at about the same time as Quake, there are numerous source ports and it can run on most platforms (although people have gotten it running on mobile devices, there's never been an official port). As nblood is based on eduke32, I'd imagine the only reason it isn't available on more platforms is that no one has volunteered to do it.

johnlorentzson 4y ago
The Build engine's source code isn't enough to port any game running on it, since Build was made as a library (I believe most developers using Build in the 90s didn't have access to the source code). Also, wasn't there an official Blood port by Nightdive Studios?
- z3phyr 4y ago
  Also, the original build code is extremely hard to read!
- smcl 4y ago
  It may have been fixed up since but the official ND port had some problems at the time of release (if I remember a civvie11 vid correctly) edit: just looked it out, it seems this has been address. I'm linking the videos because they're entertaining :D vid on the original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkG29e-nE-A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkG29e-nE-A and the patched version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFUPNlfWiYg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFUPNlfWiYg
bluedino 4y ago
Build/Duke was also Ken Silverman's second game. Doom was probably Carmack's 50th That said, it had some things Doom fans dreamt of, like an interactive level editor that was built into the game engine.

pjc50 4y ago

Quake basically pre-dated hardware rendering on consumer hardware. To a great extent, the consumer 3D accelerator market exists because of Quake. https://fabiensanglard.net/3dfx_sst1/ https://fabiensanglard.net/3dfx_sst1/

taneq 4y ago
Aaah the brief, heady days of “no serious gamer would use a hybrid 2D/3D card” and the Voodoo fill rate wars. Fun times!
- selykg 4y ago
  Voodoo... that's a name I haven't heard in awhile... thanks for that fun memory. Those were interesting times.
deckard1 4y ago
Quake and id Software were pioneering things we just take for granted now. I remember playing QuakeWorld when it came out, on Linux, over a dial up modem. You had ping times of 200-300ms and it was playable. You have to remember at the time Doom and other games were LAN-only. John Carmack used to keep a .plan file with some really cool details behind Quake/QuakeWorld development. Check out Aug 02, 1996 for some detail behind the netcode[1]. You can read the future of gaming being invented right there. [1] https://github.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-archive/blob/master/by_year/johnc_plan_1996.txt https://github.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-archive/blob/mast...

pizza234 4y ago

The top sibling parent has the correct explanation, however, I'll expand a bit. Games prior to Quake were bound to specific O/Ss and/or hardware components. DOOM was still bound to DOS AFAIK, so it's not portable without significant changes. Older games are even worse - not only they were bound to DOS, but also to the display adapters of the time (CGA/EGA), which required some sort of emulation (or translation, depending on the approach) in order to be ported. Games based on the Build engine (written by Ken Silverman), like Duke Nukem 3D and Blood are... simply written in very poor form. Carmack is a tidy programmer, Silverman isn't. Quoting Fabien Sanglard: > Looking at the innumerable ports that spawned Doom/Quake, I was always puzzled to see so few ports of Duke Nukem 3D. The same question arose when the engine was ported to OpenGL only when Ken Silverman decided to do it himself. The answer is in his analysis: https://fabiensanglard.net/duke3d/code_legacy.php https://fabiensanglard.net/duke3d/code_legacy.php.

johnlorentzson 4y ago
DOOM was definitely made with DOS in mind, but it also ran on NeXT from the beginning. It's pretty portable actually. Since you cited Fabien Sanglard, I guess I should mention that his book about DOOM's source code (Game Engine Black Book: DOOM) explains how the portability stuff (as well as almost everything else) worked in great detail.
- macintux 4y ago
  Several of us would regularly play it in a Chemistry computer lab on SGI workstations. Annoyed the hell out of the students doing molecular simulations, regrettably.
flohofwoe 4y ago
> DOOM was still bound to DOS AFAIK, so it's not portable without significant changes DOOM was always extremely portable, the DOS and PC specific parts are well separated from the other code (DOOM was actually developed on NeXT machines, so separating the platform specific parts probably came naturally).
- 4y ago

myownclone 4y ago

Yes! SW renderer was one of the reasons I chose that! :-) Also, source code for id tech games is so well written, architected and highly readable.