11 ms·

Source code for Quake 2 rerelease

575 points by steveklabnik 3y ago

mmh0000 3y ago
Oh man! Memories. Back in 1999, Quake II was the game I played (like, literally the only one). I sunk so much time in QII and I wrote my very first code building a Mod. I think it's fair to say, Quake II turned me from a computer user into a computer programmer. And set the course for my entire adult life and career. From my original mod, I learned how to calculate vectors, learn an existing code base, integrate autobuilds for rapid testing. I also dabbeled in making maps, learning 3rd art, but, quickly realized I am no artist or designer. Sadly, my version control and backup policies at the time were non-existant and I've lost all my original code. The next game that really got my attention in the same way was Tribes 2, the scriptings and modding you could do there was truly amazing.
- anotherhue 3y ago
  Discovering the drop down console was a revelation. An homage: http://guake-project.org/ http://guake-project.org/
  - AdmiralAsshat 3y ago
    The Windows terminal now has a quake-style dropdown mode by default.
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    I wish I could find a use for that, it is a funny idea. Unfortunately in a world where all of you stuff is in terminals, having one special drop down one is less useful.
    - Shared404 3y ago
      I use Yakuake (KDE's equivalent) for my password manager at work. I find most DE's painful without that ability. The main exceptions are i3/sway or cwm, where I just launvh a terminal and then kill it.
      - bee_rider 3y ago
        I think that must be it, I use i3, so popping open a shell is always an easy option.
    - cyberax 3y ago
      I use iTerm2 that pops up F12, it's surprisingly close to that drop console behavior.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      Never use sudo again! make the drop down be always at your root shell.
      - q87b 3y ago
        sv_cheats 1
    - semi 3y ago
      I hadn't set this back up after getting a new laptop, but it's great for any of the one-off things you might need to do like confirm that some webserver is down like someone on chat complained it was, or lookup an ip or dns entry. So the real benefit IMO is that it then lets you keep your actual terminals more clean and focused, and not just interleave that kind of stuff with whatever you are doing.
- mmh0000 3y ago
  In my endless files, I just found the binary of my mod. https://xn0.co/Xeno-Mod_1.9_Setup.exe https://xn0.co/Xeno-Mod_1.9_Setup.exe Because I'm sure everyone on HN just downloads execs from a random internet source and runs them! But if you have the OG QII, are curious, it is safe to run.
  - klipklop 3y ago
    What does your mod do?
    - mmh0000 3y ago
      This is all from memory so, I might be missing some things: Adds 10 extra weapons Changes the damage ratio of all weapons Imports the "gravity mines" from one of the Q2 expansion packs Adds togglable "moon boots" (low gravity, on a per-player basis) Adds a grappling hook, with swing physics Has "secret" command to turn invisible. (I can't remember what it is). Because back in 1999 I didn't realize people could unpack binaries and read them.
      - thadt 3y ago
        My cousin and I burned hours in Quake2 with a mod that did these. Jumping around in low G while grappling around all over the map while trying to hit each other was fantastic - thank you for some of the best early FPS gaming I can remember!
  - giantrobot 3y ago
    > Because I'm sure everyone on HN just downloads execs from a random internet source and runs them! ...should I not?
    - gonzo41 3y ago
      This is what work computers are for.
      - 3y ago
- mentos 3y ago
  Tribes 2 was my first taste of modding, the game holds a super special place in my heart too. Then came Ultima Online emulators Sphere and RunUO that turned me from a gamer into a programmer too.
  - ljm 3y ago
    Tribes 2 and Unreal Tourney were childhood faves.. when I played something other than CS 1.6
    - johngalt2600 3y ago
      This man computes
  - mcronce 3y ago
    Rune was mine. A buddy and I got into level design, and I got into modding along with it
  - n4te 3y ago
    I had a lot of fun making the HaVoC Tribes 1 mod. It was really cool seeing there was 1000 people online playing my mod at once.
    - mmh0000 3y ago
      You made HaVoC?! I loved HaVoC! Thank you so much for making it and putting time into it. I assume this[1] is your website, please do not ever let the website go offline. It is such a perfect reminder of the time it is from. [1] http://havoctribes.com/ http://havoctribes.com/
      - n4te 3y ago
        Hello! Yes! It's cool you remember. I resurrected the site a while ago and gave it a domain. I also have a HaVoC server running on a Linode, so there will always be a server up. The master servers are a bit of a mess and it's a little hard to setup a client, but it's possible. I skipped T2 and haven't played T1 in a long time. I played Tribes: Ascend for a while, it's pretty good but now dying/dead. I miss T1. PubG and others just don't do it for me. Nowadays I play Rocket League occasionally and that's it.
xaduha 3y ago
Quake II soundtrack is still in some sort of copyright limbo. It's easy enough to find on Youtube, but it's not on streaming services as far as I know. EDIT: maybe it's getting sorted out, there's even a fricking vinyl release https://www.lacedrecords.com/products/quake-2-limited-edition-deluxe-double-vinyl https://www.lacedrecords.com/products/quake-2-limited-editio...
- bsimpson 3y ago
  It was so good that I would sometimes put the game disc in a CD player just to vibe. Unfortunately that CD cracked, so I no longer have access to the music nor the game.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
    I think Sonic Mayhem did QII. NIN did Quake I (or maybe just Trent). I remember the ammo boxes for the nailgun had the NIN logo.
    - progmetaldev 3y ago
      If you use Spotify, you can actually find the Quake I soundtrack under Nine Inch Nails. A real blast from the past. Quake was my first FPS with multiplayer, and I hogged the only telephone line my family had, so I could play mods like capture the flag, including the grappling hook. This was also around the time I started exploring Linux with Slackware, and dialing into my local university professor's Linux server to build web pages (before CSS was even available in browsers). Those are my favorite days of the internet, although it was much slower.
      - johnwalkr 3y ago
        You can still buy Q1 soundtrack on vinyl.
        c-hendricks 3y ago
jandrese 3y ago
I saw grumbling elsewhere about how the re-release doesn't include a Linux version, but here they are with the source and it claims to be tested with clang. Big props to iD for sticking to their principles.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- generichuman 3y ago
  I wonder why they released the source code for this one. Is it purely because of the principles, or did they have a legal requirement since the old one is also GPL licensed? I'm assuming they don't have legal requirements since they owned the old code anyway.
  - tekchip 3y ago
    ID has traditionally release code for their games when they reach...I forget, 10 years, or end of official support or something. This is just continuing the tradition of giving their games the longest of tale by opening them up. Check it out. https://github.com/id-Software https://github.com/id-Software
    - abrookewood 3y ago
      It's such a good thing for the company to do - gives back to the community, generates a load of good will and ensures that we don't lose the history of games. Props to ID.
      - cma 3y ago
        It also helped them out for porting to phones and stuff for official releases if I remember right.
    - generichuman 3y ago
      They used to open source the code after 5 years, but I think they stopped open sourcing their games after Carmack left. It could just be that they started using other proprietary components in their code though. Would've loved to read the source code for Doom 2016!
dopeboy 3y ago
This was the game for me growing up. It introduced me to clans, ladders, and really online gaming culture. My map was The Edge and my weapon was either the rail gun or rocket launcher. I was on dial up back then so finding a server was good latency was critical. Most annoying of course were the folks using that gun that caused lag for everyone. I know Q3 is the bigger game that perfected the genre but my favorite will always be Quake 2. Not only was there a solid single player + expansion packs, but the pace was just right for me. Everything got too fast when Q3 came around.
- npace12 3y ago
  rail gun and you finish with the machine gun, gg
- emmelaich 3y ago
  You might like the Quakelive servers that use VQL physics rather than PQL. VQL is much closer to Q2, whereas PQL is more CPMA or Quakeworld. Bonus, "The Edge" is also available in Quakelive.
hoten 3y ago
What are people's thoughts on using "_t" as a suffix for types in C/C++, as this source does? My understanding is that it is technically reserved for language defined types, but I haven't come across a reasonable alternative (and having no suffix makes for odd code, for example a custom type for a "viewport" is better imo as "viewport_t viewport;" than "viewport viewport;")
- genocidicbunny 3y ago
  Probably not everyone's cup of tea, but I tend to use CamelCase for types, and under_scores for variables. It does result in constructs like 'Viewport viewport;' but at least it's easy enough to tell that Viewport is the type.
  - cpeterso 3y ago
    Mixing CamelCase type names and snake_case variable names feels chaotic to me, but it’s the standard coding style for Python, Ruby, Rust, and Google’s C++ code. I wonder who used it before Python.
    - gdprrrr 3y ago
      It's been in Java since Java 1.0
- djbusby 3y ago
  I've seen that suffix on loads of C stuff from ages ago. All stuff that circa 90s codes (some older)
- uxp100 3y ago
  I don’t believe that’s a c language thing, but a posix thing. anyway, in my own code for myself I do it, but it is frequently forbidden in coding standards I’ve worked under (even in a non posix environment) and it doesn’t rise to the level of pushing back on it usually, I’ll name types however the style guide wants, even if it’s worse. t prefix, worse. The whole word typedef, worse.
- 3y ago
bombcar 3y ago
Action Quake II remains my perfect shooter.
- tekni5 3y ago
  Still has a tiny but active community on discord, also has been re-released as AQtion on Steam.
  - mensetmanusman 3y ago
    Where on discord?
    - tekni5 3y ago
      discord.aq2world.com
  - t1mmen 3y ago
    Ooh, thanks for mentioning that, I’m ready to re-visit! I wonder if jungle1 and teamjungle are ported? Those were the first maps I made for any game (and I had no idea what I was doing). I fondly remember a conversation with a random person in a bar, about a decade ago. Somehow, they brought AQ2 into the conversation, pointing to my creations as their favorite maps (without knowing I made them). That was a good feeling :)
Cincinnati2 3y ago
If you were a Quake 2 fan and have access to an Oculus Quest 2, try out Quake2Quest. It was a real trip running around in maps that I spent so much time in back in the day.
RockRobotRock 3y ago
Are there any open source asset packs you can get?
schemescape 3y ago
I didn’t realize Quake 2 had been re-released! For what it’s worth, the first expansion (The Reckoning) was probably my favorite single player Quake 2 experience. Favorite multiplayer was Devastation Quake, where one player is in a mech and everyone else has to team up to knock them out.
- UnlockedSecrets 3y ago
  Quake 2 remaster was surprise released and this was released at the same time.
akamaka 3y ago
If I wanted to read the source code of just one version of Quake, to learn from it, which do you think would be the most interesting?
- ovao 3y ago
  The question would be “by what dimension of interesting”? Quake 3’s source is pretty interesting from the perspective of id just transitioning from C to C++, and famously has an implementation of fast inverse square root. It’s also a pretty clean codebase overall with a reasonably modern engine architecture.
  - bhelyer 3y ago
    Quake 3 was still completely C, IIRC. You might be thinking of Doom 3?
    - synergy20 3y ago
      the rerelease mentioned here rename .c to .cpp globally but the code base is still c, why is that? I thought it was rewritten in c++.
      - bhelyer 3y ago
        It's a light touch (looks like the original structure is mostly intact) but if you search for 'std::' in, say, https://github.com/id-Software/quake2-rerelease-dll/blob/main/rerelease/p_client.cpp https://github.com/id-Software/quake2-rerelease-dll/blob/mai... you'll see there's some C++ stuff floating about.
- badsectoracula 3y ago
  Quake 1 is most likely the simplest and most straightforward though it does have a bunch of alternative things for stuff like GLQuake vs software rendering. Quake 3 was designed to be used by 3rd parties and is more well put together, focuses on OpenGL and Carmack considers it his best C code. I'd say one of these two.
afavour 3y ago
Obviously it makes sense but it feels sacrilegious that there’s an official version of the Quake II codebase that relies on… JSON?! Everything should be either a tightly packed binary file or a .ini! (or something)
karim79 3y ago
Incredible and just sent me way back to the nineties. To be fair, I'm talking about the first Quake game here. I had a PC rig on my bedroom floor which as I recall was a Pentium 166MMX, and my friend came over with a similar machine which was a bit faster (a 233) perhaps. No LAN cards insight. Using one of my dad's ancient parallel cables and fooling Windows into thinking it was a LAN connection, which worked well enough, we played for days, until it got kind of tedious. So we then got into the whole modding scene - not creating anything, but downloading and testing the things which were out there. I will never, ever forget Girobot and KQP (Killer Quake Patch). The Girobot bots were a force to be reckoned with when they didn't get stuck in the terrain. It was KQP which added all kinds of crazy mods/weapons/bot systems to the game that was the real gold. The Vampire Gun left us in stitches every time someone was hit by it, because it basically guaranteed a slow but not too slow death in which the hit player would crumble into little chunks of flesh. I miss the nineties very, very much.
- hypercube33 3y ago
  I had 8gb of downloaded-over-modem and sometimes T1 mods, maps, skins for quake 2 multiplayer. I miss the mods so much.
  - autoexec 3y ago
    The endless amounts of user created mods, maps, and skins many of us enjoyed in early days were killed off so that game publishers could make a fortune charging us for a small selection of sanctioned DLC. In the process they killed off an entire ecosystem that grew up around user created content. Forums, review sites, file hosting, and generations of new talent who found their love of programing by creating mods all lost due to greed and a desire for control.
- jasonb05 3y ago
  "Girobot", do you mean the "Gyrobot" by "Gyro Gearloose" [1]? Also, I believe KQP had ZeusBots included (for reference). [1] https://github.com/Jason2Brownlee/QuakeBotArchive https://github.com/Jason2Brownlee/QuakeBotArchive
tekni5 3y ago
Quake 2 Enhanced is very impressive, check out the subtle but clear differences they have made for each model: https://youtu.be/UVKxhoA77Vo https://youtu.be/UVKxhoA77Vo
mjfl 3y ago
Why do people like Quake so much? I'm too young to understand. Does it do something unique compared to other shooter games?
- tekni5 3y ago
  Perfect blend of nostalgia, aesthetics, gameplay, simplicity not to mention that id software releasing everything open source at the end has continued development and created a massive amount of third party content, mods, etc. The same applies to Doom, Duke Nukem and to a lesser extent a few other older fps games.
- h2odragon 3y ago
  It did it all first. They did a lot to open the idea that game mods could be more than cheats and cracks, too. I still remember the grenade launchers and wild modded grenades fondly. the bouncing ones were so much fun in hallways.
  - balls187 3y ago
    One of my favorite modes for Quake II: Weapons of Destruction.
    - h2odragon 3y ago
      thanks for the prompt, i looked and found: https://github.com/ulatekh/quake2-WOD https://github.com/ulatekh/quake2-WOD
- afavour 3y ago
  It was absolutely revolutionary in its time, it’s difficult to think of any current day parallels because the industry has matured so much. For instance, Quake was the first FPS where the maps were truly 3D and could have one piece of floor on top of another. It would be considered insane for a game to not have that now. Quake(World) was the first truly massive online gaming FPS. Quake II was the first game I ever owned that used a 3D graphics card, I still remember the first time loading it up after I installed my card to set this wondrous coloured lighting that followed a rocket when I fired it. Anyway, point is you’re right, you are too young to understand. I don’t mean that in a patronising way, it’s just that it’s not impressive today in any way. The enthusiasm you see here is nostalgia. It’s a museum piece.
ljm 3y ago
My first thought is - what will the modders do. I watched some videos about MyHouse.wad (a Doom 2 level/mod that became popular with the indie horror crowd), and it's seriously impressive. I wonder what happens in the context of Quake, after seeing the community take Doom to places Carmack could never have imagined. I'm a lot more interested in how people mess with the rules of the game without necessarily breaking them, leading to some super subversive storytelling, rather than just porting the code onto a smart fridge or some shit.
- dleslie 3y ago
  The Quake source has been around for quite a while, this release is just for the rerelease. Quaddicted is a great site to find mods; QuakeSpasm is a fantastic binary for enjoying them; and nQuake is where the multiplayer is at.
- altano 3y ago
  If anyone's curious, start here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wAo54DHDY0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wAo54DHDY0 If you don't care about Doom (or even video games, honestly): I haven't even thought about Doom in 20 years. Just click the link and watch. One of my favorite YouTube rides of all time.
  - notcensored02 3y ago
    [dead]
  - ljm 3y ago
    The author's enthusiasm is infectious and you can just feel how excited he is when the House of Leaves connections become more clear.
- belthesar 3y ago
  I honestly don't expect anything nearly as impressive as what we currently have in the Doom community. While there's still plenty of folks making PWADs and IWADs that are vanilla Doom compatible, the ZDoom team has brought the technology of Doom so far that it's some mishmash hybrid of capability of Quake 1-2, and folks not only make amazing free mods for you to grab, there's even brand new games being built and released on ZDoom[0], with aesthetics ranging from "this feels right at home as a Doom game" to "a Doom engine game has no right looking this good" to incredibly stylized, unique takes. Nightdive did a nice job giving new tools to make modern mods possible (effectively giving us much of the kit they used to remaster Q2). My read is that this isn't an accessibility to be able to make cool mods problem so much as an inertia one. [0]https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/136771-every-gzdoom-game-on-steam/ https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/136771-every-gzdoom-ga... (Many of the links to games are various grades of NSFW)
DrNosferatu 3y ago
...WASM version anyone?
phkahler 3y ago
Can they just offer the art assets too? Anyone interested is just going to hunt them down anyway.
manual89 3y ago
Q2 explosions were actual meshes which I thought was rather unique.
hyperion2010 3y ago
I'll drop my Quake II anecdote here. Quake II was the first FPS I ever beat (at least I think I beat it). I did it over a week in the summer when visiting a friend out of state (never would have been allowed otherwise). When I started, I had only ever played the original DOOM, so I used those controls, and lo and behold they worked, and I thought nothing of it. At some point as I was playing along, my view suddenly became locked to the ceiling and I was thoroughly confused and stuck. Turns out I had bumped the mouse, and managed to figure out that mouse look was a thing after extended fiddling with the system to try to determine the cause and get back to killing badguys. Needless to say, the game got quite a bit easier after that. There wasn't internet, neither I nor my friend knew what mouse-look was, we had never seen anyone play a true 3d fps. It is hard to imagine how obscure and alien the interfaces for games are because of how pervasive the knowledge has become. Glad to see the source code released!
- Zambyte 3y ago
  > Glad to see the source code released! In case you were unaware, this is actually the source code of the rerelease of Quake II. The source code for the original Quake II has been released for many years[0], along with many of the id Software classics[1]. [0]: https://github.com/id-Software/Quake-2 https://github.com/id-Software/Quake-2 [1]: https://github.com/id-Software https://github.com/id-Software
  - ramranch 3y ago
    In case you were unaware, the source code of the original is included along with the re-release in this repository, as stated in the first sentence of the readme.
    - stefncb 3y ago
      I think Zambyte just wanted to let the GP know that the code for the original had already been released before this one. No need to be mean.
  - kibibu 3y ago
r1ch 3y ago
The title is a bit misleading. In Quake-speak, the "game" is the what defines the game rules, hence what enables modding. This source release does not include the actual game engine, only the gameplay logic, which has traditionally always been released.
mensetmanusman 3y ago
Anyone have a history of being addicted to Action Quake 2? First time programming jumps!
- misterflibble 3y ago
  Yes I really loved that mod
  - bombcar 3y ago
    As someone pointed out to my similar comment, https://www.aq2world.com https://www.aq2world.com exists and is on steam for free.
GreyMolecules 3y ago
The Quake series' source code is a must-read if you wish to learn how to create a fast-paced multiplayer game from scratch. Obviously, you can use Mirror or other 3rd-party middleware nowadays, but reading it gave me multiple layers of knowledge regarding the netcode aspect of a game.
mochaki 3y ago
[dead]
dietrichepp 3y ago
Quake II was my first experience writing C. The code is clear, coherent, and straightforward. I’m not going to say it’s the best source code I’ve ever read, but it set a high bar. I’ve read source code to games since then, and I’ve seen all sorts of weird stuff… I’ve seen functions with nesting levels that go past the right side of the screen, I’ve seen functions a mile long that do a million things, you know. It was an early lesson that you could do cool things with simple code. We used Quake and Quake II to teach a VR class to kids in the late 1990s and early 2000s. You got a VR headset, you got a half-dozen PCs with Q.E.D. or Qoole, and you taught a room of 12-14 or 14-18 year-old students how to make their own virtual reality game. “Make your own virtual reality game” was, essentially, making your own Quake or Quake II level, without any monsters or guns in it. The story for the game could be told through on-screen messages triggered in the level. Students made all sorts of levels. One group made a level with slime you had to cross, and a button that turned on pumps to drain the slime (very much like what you would see in a standard Quake II level). Another group made a 3D maze out of water that you had to swim through, floating in space. I still have some of these student-made levels on my hard drive, after all these years, although I have trouble getting some of them to work. For the class, I made a mod that gave the players a flaregun instead of the blaster. Basically, it was still the blaster, but with a different sound effect and no weapon model. I modified the blaster bolt to be affected by gravity, bounce off of things, and go out after a certain amount of time. (If you were in that class—you may not have gotten the headset. We couldn’t always get it to work.)
- metadat 3y ago
  Can you share any screenshots of the results of this course? It sounds amazing!
- pydave 3y ago
  Appreciation for that id code means you may appreciate "John Carmack on Inlined Code (2014)": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12120752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12120752
- trilinearnz 3y ago
  Certainly id's code is clean and well-structured, however I always had a tough time trying to grok it as a layperson. Comments (those within the functions) are relatively sparse, and the code often contains quite cryptic expressions that are somewhat bewildering to those without an high understanding of 3D graphics. This, of course, makes perfect sense as an output from an industry leader in the field (Carmack). However it definitely requires a lot of foreknowledge and, dare I say it, a mathematical bent to follow with confidence.
wg0 3y ago
There are so many games that aren't being sold anymore and aren't playable on modern software/hardware stack. I wish there were a law that if you don't release a patch for your software for 20 years to make it workable for newer platforms, you've to release it as open source from the perspective of cultural significance.
npace12 3y ago
This game and slackware3.4 are most of my memories of my early teen years. I played Q2 for hundred (if not thousands) of hours in multiplayer, more than any other FPS. And I only ever played q2dm1 (the edge) to the point to where when I tried other maps, it felt like I was playing a totally different game. The amount of subtle tricks like long jumps you could do due to the openGL "bug", or rocket launcher jumps were so awesome. I remember I played at fov 110 and somehow never missed with the railgun.
smellyshaft1 3y ago
Upvote if the name "Thresh" rings a bell
- CamperBob2 3y ago
  Makes me wonder whatever became of Carmack's 328GTS.
- Solvency 3y ago
  Upvote if you remember watching the curbstomp that was Thresh vs Billox.
Pxtl 3y ago
I hope we'll see some old Quake 2 mods dusted off and reapplied to this new version. There were some greats back in the day - Action Quake 2, Transformers Quake 2, Superheroes Quake 2, etc.
- grendelt 3y ago
  Darn right. Lithium mod was my favorite. The grappling hook and runes made for some incredibly fun LAN parties!
Dulat_Akan 3y ago
Oh, this is the best cool game of my childhood, we play it on a sony playstation and the screen was divided into 4
darepublic 3y ago
I got in trouble for playing this in class from a teacher in her early thirties who I had a crush on. The red hot chili peppers had just released Californication. The matrix was all the rage and felt threatening to my young Christian sensibilities
mvdtnz 3y ago
What do the comments like `// ROGUE` or `// PMM` `// STAND` mean? Also, can anyone explain the code in insane.cpp? Lots of magic numbers and hand-crafted arrays.
- trilinearnz 3y ago
  This nomenclature was often used in licensed Quake codebases to indicate places where a vendor would put their own Mission Pack-specific alterations into the code. I guess they just 'up-merged' the modified code to the main id source when they were done, or perhaps the changes were done by id on behalf of them? I believe there were similar bits in the Quake 1 source, e.g. for Scourge of Armagon (Mission Pack No. 1) you would see things like '// HIPNOTIC'.
glonq 3y ago
Quake 2 was surprisingly playable online even with late-1990s-era ping times. I played the hell out of the LMCTF mod back in the old days. Great times.
- jillesvangurp 3y ago
  We had a thing in university where most of the research staff would do a few rounds of Quake 2 death match around the end of the afternoon. We were all on the same local network; so ping times were great. The same levels over and over again. Great fun. And very satisfying to hear the groans of agony after a rail gun blast.
- goykasi 3y ago
  I played a ton of LMCTF too. The offhand grapple was such a game changer in terms of speeding across maps. The LMCTF community was also great: hours spent on IRC, competitive ladders, forums (nachos), etc. It was a great time to be into online games. Alliance for q3 was also great too, but it wasnt quite the same. There is a Facebook community alive for LMCTF. Last time I checked they have a few servers online and organize pick up games.
synergy20 3y ago
rerelease in c++ that is,cool
sbjs 3y ago
Can anyone get this working? I followed all the instructions in the readme and can't get it compiling.
Lorin 3y ago
Qball mod was likely the inspiration for Rocket League many years later.
jfoster 3y ago
This is essentially Microsoft releasing this. After ZeniMax acquired id, they were acquired by Microsoft.
- danjoredd 3y ago
  Its scary how many products and people are connected to megacorps that don't seem related at first glance. This reminds me of that conversation at the beginning of Deus Ex: “Corporations are so big, you don’t even know who you’re working for. That’s terror, terror built into the system”- Deus Ex, NSF.
  - jfoster 3y ago
    Yeah, and sometimes it leads beyond megacorps to governments, too. Optus (telco in Australia), owned by Singtel, which is majority owned by Temasek, which is owned by the Government of Singapore. You can also substitute in India's 2nd largest telco (Bharti Airtel) for Optus in that example, by the way.
benreesman 3y ago
I’m sure it’s widely known among readers of this thread, and I can’t vouch whatsoever for its veracity, but god damn is “Masters of Doom” a fun read.
tinix 3y ago
hacking games based on the quake engine is how I learned to program initially (ld preload hooking and offsets and such). this brings back memories of hacker servers where we played against other hackers. it was a mix of programming skills and human agility. really fun times... the quake engine sent all world state to every player so you could build ESP functionality and other neat things.
raffraffraff 3y ago
I played the original Quake in college the year it came out. They gave away so much of the game on demo floppy disks that your could play deathmatch for free. We took over a whole computer room in the journalism school (trash 486s, but nobody really used that room so we were left alone). Quake II was at my first proper job, at DEC. I worked on the server/storage support team. At 5pm when the phone lines closed we'd fire up Quake II on a server and at least 20 people would hang around for an hour or two after work to smoke cigarettes and play Q2. The mods are terrific. One person used a perfectly crafted Homer Simpson mod, complete with sounds effects sampled from the show. Also remember a "Bananas in pyjamas" skin and a small floaty robot (which was a bit of a cheat because it was harder to see than Homer). And the maps! Christ, so many great maps. Some of them are in Xonotic, and I still play DM in them occasionally.
immmmmm 3y ago
i learned C, linear algebra and much more from working on the Q1 engine, by far the most influential piece of code for me! thx iD!
aaptel 3y ago
No openGL/Vulkan/whatever. Why are the renderers missing?
ycom13__ 3y ago
I had to laugh at this https://github.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-archive/blob/master/by_year/johnc_plan_1997.txt#L3362 https://github.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-archive/blob/mast... ----------------------------------------- John Carmack's .plan for Jan 31, 1997 ----------------------------------------- I went down to the ferrari dealership today with Ann and American with the intention of buying a new f355 as a "sensible" car (in contrast to my other twin turbo monstrosities). There was an F40 sitting out front. Umm. Sensible car. F40. Sensible car. F40. Hmmmm. American played the evil conscience and Ann played the good conscience. For a while. Then Ann got infected by the Dark Side. :-) I bought the F40. Ok, I now have too many ferraris. I have a plan to fix that. This hasn't gone through all the legal crap necessary yet, but it is my intention to give away my first ferrari as the grand prize of a Quake tournement. Yes, I am serious. DO NOT SEND ME ANY MAIL ABOUT THIS! When we have more to say about it, we will make a formal announcement. This would be a good time to start a heated debate in the newsgroups about what the fairest tourney rules would be, though. The specs: 1987 328 GTS with turbocharged engine. Feature in the january, 1994 issue of Turbo magazine. Made 360 HP at the rear wheels on a chassis dyno. New engine (I melted the first one...), new paint. The interior could use a little work. I plan to also include enough cash to cover tax and insurance.
- spamtarget 3y ago
  A prospective buyer is coming, you say? Hmm, let's park the F40 exactly next to the gate accidentally.
  - wantoncl 3y ago
    As I recall, when Seymour Cray would buy a new car, he'd pick the first car on the left as he entered the dealership. After 2 or 3 purchases, the dealer habitually put the most expensive car in that spot.
cempaka 3y ago
Quake 2 and especially the Jailbreak mod were my first big foray into online multiplayer gaming. I was in two clans, one named after the band 311 (had no idea what it even was when they invited me to join because I hung out on their server which had a decent ping), and then later a clan named Atomic Slug Slingers ("ASS", haha, get it?). It's really too bad that the old ways of independent servers and mods went the way of the dodo. Just the other day for no reason at all I found myself repeating the old guttural "Welcome to GameSpy" voice intro to myself.

575 points by steveklabnik 3y ago

Oh man! Memories. Back in 1999, Quake II was the game I played (like, literally the only one). I sunk so much time in QII and I wrote my very first code building a Mod. I think it's fair to say, Quake II turned me from a computer user into a computer programmer. And set the course for my entire adult life and career. From my original mod, I learned how to calculate vectors, learn an existing code base, integrate autobuilds for rapid testing. I also dabbeled in making maps, learning 3rd art, but, quickly realized I am no artist or designer. Sadly, my version control and backup policies at the time were non-existant and I've lost all my original code. The next game that really got my attention in the same way was Tribes 2, the scriptings and modding you could do there was truly amazing.

anotherhue 3y ago
Discovering the drop down console was a revelation. An homage: http://guake-project.org/ http://guake-project.org/
- AdmiralAsshat 3y ago
  The Windows terminal now has a quake-style dropdown mode by default.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  I wish I could find a use for that, it is a funny idea. Unfortunately in a world where all of you stuff is in terminals, having one special drop down one is less useful.
  - Shared404 3y ago
    I use Yakuake (KDE's equivalent) for my password manager at work. I find most DE's painful without that ability. The main exceptions are i3/sway or cwm, where I just launvh a terminal and then kill it.
    - bee_rider 3y ago
      I think that must be it, I use i3, so popping open a shell is always an easy option.
  - cyberax 3y ago
    I use iTerm2 that pops up F12, it's surprisingly close to that drop console behavior.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    Never use sudo again! make the drop down be always at your root shell.
    - q87b 3y ago
      sv_cheats 1
  - semi 3y ago
    I hadn't set this back up after getting a new laptop, but it's great for any of the one-off things you might need to do like confirm that some webserver is down like someone on chat complained it was, or lookup an ip or dns entry. So the real benefit IMO is that it then lets you keep your actual terminals more clean and focused, and not just interleave that kind of stuff with whatever you are doing.
mmh0000 3y ago
In my endless files, I just found the binary of my mod. https://xn0.co/Xeno-Mod_1.9_Setup.exe https://xn0.co/Xeno-Mod_1.9_Setup.exe Because I'm sure everyone on HN just downloads execs from a random internet source and runs them! But if you have the OG QII, are curious, it is safe to run.
- klipklop 3y ago
  What does your mod do?
  - mmh0000 3y ago
    This is all from memory so, I might be missing some things: Adds 10 extra weapons Changes the damage ratio of all weapons Imports the "gravity mines" from one of the Q2 expansion packs Adds togglable "moon boots" (low gravity, on a per-player basis) Adds a grappling hook, with swing physics Has "secret" command to turn invisible. (I can't remember what it is). Because back in 1999 I didn't realize people could unpack binaries and read them.
    - thadt 3y ago
      My cousin and I burned hours in Quake2 with a mod that did these. Jumping around in low G while grappling around all over the map while trying to hit each other was fantastic - thank you for some of the best early FPS gaming I can remember!
- giantrobot 3y ago
  > Because I'm sure everyone on HN just downloads execs from a random internet source and runs them! ...should I not?
  - gonzo41 3y ago
    This is what work computers are for.
    - 3y ago
mentos 3y ago
Tribes 2 was my first taste of modding, the game holds a super special place in my heart too. Then came Ultima Online emulators Sphere and RunUO that turned me from a gamer into a programmer too.
- ljm 3y ago
  Tribes 2 and Unreal Tourney were childhood faves.. when I played something other than CS 1.6
  - johngalt2600 3y ago
    This man computes
- mcronce 3y ago
  Rune was mine. A buddy and I got into level design, and I got into modding along with it
- n4te 3y ago
  I had a lot of fun making the HaVoC Tribes 1 mod. It was really cool seeing there was 1000 people online playing my mod at once.
  - mmh0000 3y ago
    You made HaVoC?! I loved HaVoC! Thank you so much for making it and putting time into it. I assume this[1] is your website, please do not ever let the website go offline. It is such a perfect reminder of the time it is from. [1] http://havoctribes.com/ http://havoctribes.com/
    - n4te 3y ago
      Hello! Yes! It's cool you remember. I resurrected the site a while ago and gave it a domain. I also have a HaVoC server running on a Linode, so there will always be a server up. The master servers are a bit of a mess and it's a little hard to setup a client, but it's possible. I skipped T2 and haven't played T1 in a long time. I played Tribes: Ascend for a while, it's pretty good but now dying/dead. I miss T1. PubG and others just don't do it for me. Nowadays I play Rocket League occasionally and that's it.

xaduha 3y ago

Quake II soundtrack is still in some sort of copyright limbo. It's easy enough to find on Youtube, but it's not on streaming services as far as I know. EDIT: maybe it's getting sorted out, there's even a fricking vinyl release https://www.lacedrecords.com/products/quake-2-limited-edition-deluxe-double-vinyl https://www.lacedrecords.com/products/quake-2-limited-editio...

bsimpson 3y ago
It was so good that I would sometimes put the game disc in a CD player just to vibe. Unfortunately that CD cracked, so I no longer have access to the music nor the game.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y ago
  I think Sonic Mayhem did QII. NIN did Quake I (or maybe just Trent). I remember the ammo boxes for the nailgun had the NIN logo.
  - progmetaldev 3y ago
    If you use Spotify, you can actually find the Quake I soundtrack under Nine Inch Nails. A real blast from the past. Quake was my first FPS with multiplayer, and I hogged the only telephone line my family had, so I could play mods like capture the flag, including the grappling hook. This was also around the time I started exploring Linux with Slackware, and dialing into my local university professor's Linux server to build web pages (before CSS was even available in browsers). Those are my favorite days of the internet, although it was much slower.
    - johnwalkr 3y ago
      You can still buy Q1 soundtrack on vinyl.
      - c-hendricks 3y ago

jandrese 3y ago

I saw grumbling elsewhere about how the re-release doesn't include a Linux version, but here they are with the source and it claims to be tested with clang. Big props to iD for sticking to their principles.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
generichuman 3y ago
I wonder why they released the source code for this one. Is it purely because of the principles, or did they have a legal requirement since the old one is also GPL licensed? I'm assuming they don't have legal requirements since they owned the old code anyway.
- tekchip 3y ago
  ID has traditionally release code for their games when they reach...I forget, 10 years, or end of official support or something. This is just continuing the tradition of giving their games the longest of tale by opening them up. Check it out. https://github.com/id-Software https://github.com/id-Software
  - abrookewood 3y ago
    It's such a good thing for the company to do - gives back to the community, generates a load of good will and ensures that we don't lose the history of games. Props to ID.
    - cma 3y ago
      It also helped them out for porting to phones and stuff for official releases if I remember right.
  - generichuman 3y ago
    They used to open source the code after 5 years, but I think they stopped open sourcing their games after Carmack left. It could just be that they started using other proprietary components in their code though. Would've loved to read the source code for Doom 2016!

dopeboy 3y ago

This was the game for me growing up. It introduced me to clans, ladders, and really online gaming culture. My map was The Edge and my weapon was either the rail gun or rocket launcher. I was on dial up back then so finding a server was good latency was critical. Most annoying of course were the folks using that gun that caused lag for everyone. I know Q3 is the bigger game that perfected the genre but my favorite will always be Quake 2. Not only was there a solid single player + expansion packs, but the pace was just right for me. Everything got too fast when Q3 came around.

npace12 3y ago
rail gun and you finish with the machine gun, gg
emmelaich 3y ago
You might like the Quakelive servers that use VQL physics rather than PQL. VQL is much closer to Q2, whereas PQL is more CPMA or Quakeworld. Bonus, "The Edge" is also available in Quakelive.

hoten 3y ago

What are people's thoughts on using "_t" as a suffix for types in C/C++, as this source does? My understanding is that it is technically reserved for language defined types, but I haven't come across a reasonable alternative (and having no suffix makes for odd code, for example a custom type for a "viewport" is better imo as "viewport_t viewport;" than "viewport viewport;")

genocidicbunny 3y ago
Probably not everyone's cup of tea, but I tend to use CamelCase for types, and under_scores for variables. It does result in constructs like 'Viewport viewport;' but at least it's easy enough to tell that Viewport is the type.
- cpeterso 3y ago
  Mixing CamelCase type names and snake_case variable names feels chaotic to me, but it’s the standard coding style for Python, Ruby, Rust, and Google’s C++ code. I wonder who used it before Python.
  - gdprrrr 3y ago
    It's been in Java since Java 1.0
djbusby 3y ago
I've seen that suffix on loads of C stuff from ages ago. All stuff that circa 90s codes (some older)
uxp100 3y ago
I don’t believe that’s a c language thing, but a posix thing. anyway, in my own code for myself I do it, but it is frequently forbidden in coding standards I’ve worked under (even in a non posix environment) and it doesn’t rise to the level of pushing back on it usually, I’ll name types however the style guide wants, even if it’s worse. t prefix, worse. The whole word typedef, worse.
3y ago

bombcar 3y ago

Action Quake II remains my perfect shooter.

tekni5 3y ago
Still has a tiny but active community on discord, also has been re-released as AQtion on Steam.
- mensetmanusman 3y ago
  Where on discord?
  - tekni5 3y ago
    discord.aq2world.com
- t1mmen 3y ago
  Ooh, thanks for mentioning that, I’m ready to re-visit! I wonder if jungle1 and teamjungle are ported? Those were the first maps I made for any game (and I had no idea what I was doing). I fondly remember a conversation with a random person in a bar, about a decade ago. Somehow, they brought AQ2 into the conversation, pointing to my creations as their favorite maps (without knowing I made them). That was a good feeling :)

Cincinnati2 3y ago

If you were a Quake 2 fan and have access to an Oculus Quest 2, try out Quake2Quest. It was a real trip running around in maps that I spent so much time in back in the day.

RockRobotRock 3y ago

Are there any open source asset packs you can get?

schemescape 3y ago

I didn’t realize Quake 2 had been re-released! For what it’s worth, the first expansion (The Reckoning) was probably my favorite single player Quake 2 experience. Favorite multiplayer was Devastation Quake, where one player is in a mech and everyone else has to team up to knock them out.

UnlockedSecrets 3y ago
Quake 2 remaster was surprise released and this was released at the same time.

akamaka 3y ago

If I wanted to read the source code of just one version of Quake, to learn from it, which do you think would be the most interesting?

ovao 3y ago
The question would be “by what dimension of interesting”? Quake 3’s source is pretty interesting from the perspective of id just transitioning from C to C++, and famously has an implementation of fast inverse square root. It’s also a pretty clean codebase overall with a reasonably modern engine architecture.
- bhelyer 3y ago
  Quake 3 was still completely C, IIRC. You might be thinking of Doom 3?
  - synergy20 3y ago
    the rerelease mentioned here rename .c to .cpp globally but the code base is still c, why is that? I thought it was rewritten in c++.
    - bhelyer 3y ago
      It's a light touch (looks like the original structure is mostly intact) but if you search for 'std::' in, say, https://github.com/id-Software/quake2-rerelease-dll/blob/main/rerelease/p_client.cpp https://github.com/id-Software/quake2-rerelease-dll/blob/mai... you'll see there's some C++ stuff floating about.
badsectoracula 3y ago
Quake 1 is most likely the simplest and most straightforward though it does have a bunch of alternative things for stuff like GLQuake vs software rendering. Quake 3 was designed to be used by 3rd parties and is more well put together, focuses on OpenGL and Carmack considers it his best C code. I'd say one of these two.

afavour 3y ago

Obviously it makes sense but it feels sacrilegious that there’s an official version of the Quake II codebase that relies on… JSON?! Everything should be either a tightly packed binary file or a .ini! (or something)

karim79 3y ago

Incredible and just sent me way back to the nineties. To be fair, I'm talking about the first Quake game here. I had a PC rig on my bedroom floor which as I recall was a Pentium 166MMX, and my friend came over with a similar machine which was a bit faster (a 233) perhaps. No LAN cards insight. Using one of my dad's ancient parallel cables and fooling Windows into thinking it was a LAN connection, which worked well enough, we played for days, until it got kind of tedious. So we then got into the whole modding scene - not creating anything, but downloading and testing the things which were out there. I will never, ever forget Girobot and KQP (Killer Quake Patch). The Girobot bots were a force to be reckoned with when they didn't get stuck in the terrain. It was KQP which added all kinds of crazy mods/weapons/bot systems to the game that was the real gold. The Vampire Gun left us in stitches every time someone was hit by it, because it basically guaranteed a slow but not too slow death in which the hit player would crumble into little chunks of flesh. I miss the nineties very, very much.

hypercube33 3y ago
I had 8gb of downloaded-over-modem and sometimes T1 mods, maps, skins for quake 2 multiplayer. I miss the mods so much.
- autoexec 3y ago
  The endless amounts of user created mods, maps, and skins many of us enjoyed in early days were killed off so that game publishers could make a fortune charging us for a small selection of sanctioned DLC. In the process they killed off an entire ecosystem that grew up around user created content. Forums, review sites, file hosting, and generations of new talent who found their love of programing by creating mods all lost due to greed and a desire for control.
jasonb05 3y ago
"Girobot", do you mean the "Gyrobot" by "Gyro Gearloose" [1]? Also, I believe KQP had ZeusBots included (for reference). [1] https://github.com/Jason2Brownlee/QuakeBotArchive https://github.com/Jason2Brownlee/QuakeBotArchive

tekni5 3y ago

Quake 2 Enhanced is very impressive, check out the subtle but clear differences they have made for each model: https://youtu.be/UVKxhoA77Vo https://youtu.be/UVKxhoA77Vo

mjfl 3y ago

Why do people like Quake so much? I'm too young to understand. Does it do something unique compared to other shooter games?

tekni5 3y ago
Perfect blend of nostalgia, aesthetics, gameplay, simplicity not to mention that id software releasing everything open source at the end has continued development and created a massive amount of third party content, mods, etc. The same applies to Doom, Duke Nukem and to a lesser extent a few other older fps games.
h2odragon 3y ago
It did it all first. They did a lot to open the idea that game mods could be more than cheats and cracks, too. I still remember the grenade launchers and wild modded grenades fondly. the bouncing ones were so much fun in hallways.
- balls187 3y ago
  One of my favorite modes for Quake II: Weapons of Destruction.
  - h2odragon 3y ago
    thanks for the prompt, i looked and found: https://github.com/ulatekh/quake2-WOD https://github.com/ulatekh/quake2-WOD
afavour 3y ago
It was absolutely revolutionary in its time, it’s difficult to think of any current day parallels because the industry has matured so much. For instance, Quake was the first FPS where the maps were truly 3D and could have one piece of floor on top of another. It would be considered insane for a game to not have that now. Quake(World) was the first truly massive online gaming FPS. Quake II was the first game I ever owned that used a 3D graphics card, I still remember the first time loading it up after I installed my card to set this wondrous coloured lighting that followed a rocket when I fired it. Anyway, point is you’re right, you are too young to understand. I don’t mean that in a patronising way, it’s just that it’s not impressive today in any way. The enthusiasm you see here is nostalgia. It’s a museum piece.

ljm 3y ago

My first thought is - what will the modders do. I watched some videos about MyHouse.wad (a Doom 2 level/mod that became popular with the indie horror crowd), and it's seriously impressive. I wonder what happens in the context of Quake, after seeing the community take Doom to places Carmack could never have imagined. I'm a lot more interested in how people mess with the rules of the game without necessarily breaking them, leading to some super subversive storytelling, rather than just porting the code onto a smart fridge or some shit.

dleslie 3y ago
The Quake source has been around for quite a while, this release is just for the rerelease. Quaddicted is a great site to find mods; QuakeSpasm is a fantastic binary for enjoying them; and nQuake is where the multiplayer is at.
altano 3y ago
If anyone's curious, start here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wAo54DHDY0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wAo54DHDY0 If you don't care about Doom (or even video games, honestly): I haven't even thought about Doom in 20 years. Just click the link and watch. One of my favorite YouTube rides of all time.
- notcensored02 3y ago
  [dead]
- ljm 3y ago
  The author's enthusiasm is infectious and you can just feel how excited he is when the House of Leaves connections become more clear.
belthesar 3y ago
I honestly don't expect anything nearly as impressive as what we currently have in the Doom community. While there's still plenty of folks making PWADs and IWADs that are vanilla Doom compatible, the ZDoom team has brought the technology of Doom so far that it's some mishmash hybrid of capability of Quake 1-2, and folks not only make amazing free mods for you to grab, there's even brand new games being built and released on ZDoom[0], with aesthetics ranging from "this feels right at home as a Doom game" to "a Doom engine game has no right looking this good" to incredibly stylized, unique takes. Nightdive did a nice job giving new tools to make modern mods possible (effectively giving us much of the kit they used to remaster Q2). My read is that this isn't an accessibility to be able to make cool mods problem so much as an inertia one. [0]https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/136771-every-gzdoom-game-on-steam/ https://www.doomworld.com/forum/topic/136771-every-gzdoom-ga... (Many of the links to games are various grades of NSFW)

DrNosferatu 3y ago

...WASM version anyone?

phkahler 3y ago

Can they just offer the art assets too? Anyone interested is just going to hunt them down anyway.

manual89 3y ago

Q2 explosions were actual meshes which I thought was rather unique.

hyperion2010 3y ago

I'll drop my Quake II anecdote here. Quake II was the first FPS I ever beat (at least I think I beat it). I did it over a week in the summer when visiting a friend out of state (never would have been allowed otherwise). When I started, I had only ever played the original DOOM, so I used those controls, and lo and behold they worked, and I thought nothing of it. At some point as I was playing along, my view suddenly became locked to the ceiling and I was thoroughly confused and stuck. Turns out I had bumped the mouse, and managed to figure out that mouse look was a thing after extended fiddling with the system to try to determine the cause and get back to killing badguys. Needless to say, the game got quite a bit easier after that. There wasn't internet, neither I nor my friend knew what mouse-look was, we had never seen anyone play a true 3d fps. It is hard to imagine how obscure and alien the interfaces for games are because of how pervasive the knowledge has become. Glad to see the source code released!

Zambyte 3y ago
> Glad to see the source code released! In case you were unaware, this is actually the source code of the rerelease of Quake II. The source code for the original Quake II has been released for many years[0], along with many of the id Software classics[1]. [0]: https://github.com/id-Software/Quake-2 https://github.com/id-Software/Quake-2 [1]: https://github.com/id-Software https://github.com/id-Software
- ramranch 3y ago
  In case you were unaware, the source code of the original is included along with the re-release in this repository, as stated in the first sentence of the readme.
  - stefncb 3y ago
    I think Zambyte just wanted to let the GP know that the code for the original had already been released before this one. No need to be mean.
- kibibu 3y ago

r1ch 3y ago

The title is a bit misleading. In Quake-speak, the "game" is the what defines the game rules, hence what enables modding. This source release does not include the actual game engine, only the gameplay logic, which has traditionally always been released.

mensetmanusman 3y ago

Anyone have a history of being addicted to Action Quake 2? First time programming jumps!

misterflibble 3y ago
Yes I really loved that mod
- bombcar 3y ago
  As someone pointed out to my similar comment, https://www.aq2world.com https://www.aq2world.com exists and is on steam for free.

GreyMolecules 3y ago

The Quake series' source code is a must-read if you wish to learn how to create a fast-paced multiplayer game from scratch. Obviously, you can use Mirror or other 3rd-party middleware nowadays, but reading it gave me multiple layers of knowledge regarding the netcode aspect of a game.

mochaki 3y ago

[dead]

dietrichepp 3y ago

Quake II was my first experience writing C. The code is clear, coherent, and straightforward. I’m not going to say it’s the best source code I’ve ever read, but it set a high bar. I’ve read source code to games since then, and I’ve seen all sorts of weird stuff… I’ve seen functions with nesting levels that go past the right side of the screen, I’ve seen functions a mile long that do a million things, you know. It was an early lesson that you could do cool things with simple code. We used Quake and Quake II to teach a VR class to kids in the late 1990s and early 2000s. You got a VR headset, you got a half-dozen PCs with Q.E.D. or Qoole, and you taught a room of 12-14 or 14-18 year-old students how to make their own virtual reality game. “Make your own virtual reality game” was, essentially, making your own Quake or Quake II level, without any monsters or guns in it. The story for the game could be told through on-screen messages triggered in the level. Students made all sorts of levels. One group made a level with slime you had to cross, and a button that turned on pumps to drain the slime (very much like what you would see in a standard Quake II level). Another group made a 3D maze out of water that you had to swim through, floating in space. I still have some of these student-made levels on my hard drive, after all these years, although I have trouble getting some of them to work. For the class, I made a mod that gave the players a flaregun instead of the blaster. Basically, it was still the blaster, but with a different sound effect and no weapon model. I modified the blaster bolt to be affected by gravity, bounce off of things, and go out after a certain amount of time. (If you were in that class—you may not have gotten the headset. We couldn’t always get it to work.)

metadat 3y ago
Can you share any screenshots of the results of this course? It sounds amazing!
pydave 3y ago
Appreciation for that id code means you may appreciate "John Carmack on Inlined Code (2014)": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12120752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12120752
trilinearnz 3y ago
Certainly id's code is clean and well-structured, however I always had a tough time trying to grok it as a layperson. Comments (those within the functions) are relatively sparse, and the code often contains quite cryptic expressions that are somewhat bewildering to those without an high understanding of 3D graphics. This, of course, makes perfect sense as an output from an industry leader in the field (Carmack). However it definitely requires a lot of foreknowledge and, dare I say it, a mathematical bent to follow with confidence.

wg0 3y ago

There are so many games that aren't being sold anymore and aren't playable on modern software/hardware stack. I wish there were a law that if you don't release a patch for your software for 20 years to make it workable for newer platforms, you've to release it as open source from the perspective of cultural significance.

npace12 3y ago

This game and slackware3.4 are most of my memories of my early teen years. I played Q2 for hundred (if not thousands) of hours in multiplayer, more than any other FPS. And I only ever played q2dm1 (the edge) to the point to where when I tried other maps, it felt like I was playing a totally different game. The amount of subtle tricks like long jumps you could do due to the openGL "bug", or rocket launcher jumps were so awesome. I remember I played at fov 110 and somehow never missed with the railgun.

smellyshaft1 3y ago

Upvote if the name "Thresh" rings a bell

CamperBob2 3y ago
Makes me wonder whatever became of Carmack's 328GTS.
Solvency 3y ago
Upvote if you remember watching the curbstomp that was Thresh vs Billox.

Pxtl 3y ago

I hope we'll see some old Quake 2 mods dusted off and reapplied to this new version. There were some greats back in the day - Action Quake 2, Transformers Quake 2, Superheroes Quake 2, etc.

grendelt 3y ago
Darn right. Lithium mod was my favorite. The grappling hook and runes made for some incredibly fun LAN parties!

Dulat_Akan 3y ago

Oh, this is the best cool game of my childhood, we play it on a sony playstation and the screen was divided into 4

darepublic 3y ago

I got in trouble for playing this in class from a teacher in her early thirties who I had a crush on. The red hot chili peppers had just released Californication. The matrix was all the rage and felt threatening to my young Christian sensibilities

mvdtnz 3y ago

What do the comments like `// ROGUE` or `// PMM` `// STAND` mean? Also, can anyone explain the code in insane.cpp? Lots of magic numbers and hand-crafted arrays.

trilinearnz 3y ago
This nomenclature was often used in licensed Quake codebases to indicate places where a vendor would put their own Mission Pack-specific alterations into the code. I guess they just 'up-merged' the modified code to the main id source when they were done, or perhaps the changes were done by id on behalf of them? I believe there were similar bits in the Quake 1 source, e.g. for Scourge of Armagon (Mission Pack No. 1) you would see things like '// HIPNOTIC'.

glonq 3y ago

Quake 2 was surprisingly playable online even with late-1990s-era ping times. I played the hell out of the LMCTF mod back in the old days. Great times.

jillesvangurp 3y ago
We had a thing in university where most of the research staff would do a few rounds of Quake 2 death match around the end of the afternoon. We were all on the same local network; so ping times were great. The same levels over and over again. Great fun. And very satisfying to hear the groans of agony after a rail gun blast.
goykasi 3y ago
I played a ton of LMCTF too. The offhand grapple was such a game changer in terms of speeding across maps. The LMCTF community was also great: hours spent on IRC, competitive ladders, forums (nachos), etc. It was a great time to be into online games. Alliance for q3 was also great too, but it wasnt quite the same. There is a Facebook community alive for LMCTF. Last time I checked they have a few servers online and organize pick up games.

synergy20 3y ago

rerelease in c++ that is,cool

sbjs 3y ago

Can anyone get this working? I followed all the instructions in the readme and can't get it compiling.

Lorin 3y ago

Qball mod was likely the inspiration for Rocket League many years later.

jfoster 3y ago

This is essentially Microsoft releasing this. After ZeniMax acquired id, they were acquired by Microsoft.

danjoredd 3y ago
Its scary how many products and people are connected to megacorps that don't seem related at first glance. This reminds me of that conversation at the beginning of Deus Ex: “Corporations are so big, you don’t even know who you’re working for. That’s terror, terror built into the system”- Deus Ex, NSF.
- jfoster 3y ago
  Yeah, and sometimes it leads beyond megacorps to governments, too. Optus (telco in Australia), owned by Singtel, which is majority owned by Temasek, which is owned by the Government of Singapore. You can also substitute in India's 2nd largest telco (Bharti Airtel) for Optus in that example, by the way.

benreesman 3y ago

I’m sure it’s widely known among readers of this thread, and I can’t vouch whatsoever for its veracity, but god damn is “Masters of Doom” a fun read.

tinix 3y ago

hacking games based on the quake engine is how I learned to program initially (ld preload hooking and offsets and such). this brings back memories of hacker servers where we played against other hackers. it was a mix of programming skills and human agility. really fun times... the quake engine sent all world state to every player so you could build ESP functionality and other neat things.

raffraffraff 3y ago

I played the original Quake in college the year it came out. They gave away so much of the game on demo floppy disks that your could play deathmatch for free. We took over a whole computer room in the journalism school (trash 486s, but nobody really used that room so we were left alone). Quake II was at my first proper job, at DEC. I worked on the server/storage support team. At 5pm when the phone lines closed we'd fire up Quake II on a server and at least 20 people would hang around for an hour or two after work to smoke cigarettes and play Q2. The mods are terrific. One person used a perfectly crafted Homer Simpson mod, complete with sounds effects sampled from the show. Also remember a "Bananas in pyjamas" skin and a small floaty robot (which was a bit of a cheat because it was harder to see than Homer). And the maps! Christ, so many great maps. Some of them are in Xonotic, and I still play DM in them occasionally.

immmmmm 3y ago

i learned C, linear algebra and much more from working on the Q1 engine, by far the most influential piece of code for me! thx iD!

aaptel 3y ago

No openGL/Vulkan/whatever. Why are the renderers missing?

ycom13__ 3y ago

I had to laugh at this https://github.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-archive/blob/master/by_year/johnc_plan_1997.txt#L3362 https://github.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-archive/blob/mast... ----------------------------------------- John Carmack's .plan for Jan 31, 1997 ----------------------------------------- I went down to the ferrari dealership today with Ann and American with the intention of buying a new f355 as a "sensible" car (in contrast to my other twin turbo monstrosities). There was an F40 sitting out front. Umm. Sensible car. F40. Sensible car. F40. Hmmmm. American played the evil conscience and Ann played the good conscience. For a while. Then Ann got infected by the Dark Side. :-) I bought the F40. Ok, I now have too many ferraris. I have a plan to fix that. This hasn't gone through all the legal crap necessary yet, but it is my intention to give away my first ferrari as the grand prize of a Quake tournement. Yes, I am serious. DO NOT SEND ME ANY MAIL ABOUT THIS! When we have more to say about it, we will make a formal announcement. This would be a good time to start a heated debate in the newsgroups about what the fairest tourney rules would be, though. The specs: 1987 328 GTS with turbocharged engine. Feature in the january, 1994 issue of Turbo magazine. Made 360 HP at the rear wheels on a chassis dyno. New engine (I melted the first one...), new paint. The interior could use a little work. I plan to also include enough cash to cover tax and insurance.

spamtarget 3y ago
A prospective buyer is coming, you say? Hmm, let's park the F40 exactly next to the gate accidentally.
- wantoncl 3y ago
  As I recall, when Seymour Cray would buy a new car, he'd pick the first car on the left as he entered the dealership. After 2 or 3 purchases, the dealer habitually put the most expensive car in that spot.

cempaka 3y ago

Quake 2 and especially the Jailbreak mod were my first big foray into online multiplayer gaming. I was in two clans, one named after the band 311 (had no idea what it even was when they invited me to join because I hung out on their server which had a decent ping), and then later a clan named Atomic Slug Slingers ("ASS", haha, get it?). It's really too bad that the old ways of independent servers and mods went the way of the dodo. Just the other day for no reason at all I found myself repeating the old guttural "Welcome to GameSpy" voice intro to myself.