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Quake Live goes native and drops OS X, Linux
- wbobeirne 13y agoWhat a strange turn of events for gaming on Linux. AAA developers are porting their games over, while iD is pulling support. I don't think anyone would have guessed this.
- asdf1234 13y agoOther than Valve what AAA developers are porting their games to Linux? I suspect opinions differ wildly on what constitutes a AAA developer. None of the developers that regularly top the console sales charts are working on Linux ports.
- vinkelhake 13y ago4A Games just released Metro: Last Light for Linux. I would say it's a AAA title, but I'd rather not get into a "no true Scotsman" kind of thing.
- nailer 13y agoSo: - Every browser now supports WebGL - This would allow their customers to play Quake without plugins OR downloads (eg, this demo http://media.tojicode.com/q3bsp/ http://media.tojicode.com/q3bsp/) and instead they ditch platforms and require an installer?
- pjmlp 13y ago> - Every browser now supports WebGL With 2006's 3D performance and access to all source code.
- kayoone 13y agothe QuakeLive Engine is from 2000/2001 and has been open sourced years ago. Its actually pretty perfect for asm.js it seems.
- Herald_MJ 13y agoAlso, WebGL wouldn't run with Quake 3's codebase (which is basically what QuakeLive does).
- nailer 13y ago2006's 3D performance is an xbox 360. Code access is to a minified client-only source * for an Open Source engine, gamers could possibly write their own backend matchmaking service and host and maintain it themselves, but I suspect this isn't worth most people's time. (that said, anti-aimbot type stuff might be a real problem) * As someone else pointed out, ASM.JS is more than just minified, it's unreadable. Eg, Epic have UE3 ASM.JS hosted online.
- bilbo0s 13y ago"...I suspect this isn't worth most people's time...." Doesn't have to be. Only needs to be worth one person's time to render the effort commercially dubious.
- nailer 13y agoSure, it only takes one guy to write an OSS backend clone. Does he host it, or does the user host it? If the user hosts it, does it work on Windows, is it a simple install, can an average person figure out how to run their own dedicated server using the software? Does the maintainer respond to bugs? Does the maintainer have time to maintain the app? Does the maintainer work for free?
- azakai 13y ago> With 2006's 3D performance WebGL runs at basically full speed on the GPU. And JS can run at about half the speed of native code, when compiling a C++ codebase like we are talking about here. So this would be far faster than typical 2006 perf. > and access to all source code. Look at optimized+minified compilation output in JS, it is just as unreadable as a native binary.
- angersock 13y agoFirst, it's a C codebase (assuming Quake 3). Second, there's a lot of little fiddly bit-twiddling for certain parts of it, like the PVS sets and whatnot. I would be unsurprised if JS doesn't deal with that well. Third, the level of play is such that stuttering, pauses, or hiccups, even if only on the order of tens or hundreds of milliseconds, can be unacceptable.
- azakai 13y agoIt's possible bit twiddling etc. would be a problem. Need to look at the actual code as used in Quake Live. Of course stuttering is unacceptable, as you say. But it should not happen. If you see it in a browser, please file a bug.
- mistercow 13y ago>access to all source code Access to emscripten output is about as useful as access to disassembled native code.
- prg318 13y agoThe QuakeLive team currently only has a single developer and it seems that they would have nowhere near the developer bandwidth to do a WebGL port (as great as a WebGL QuakeLive would be!)
- azakai 13y agoThe Unreal Engine 3 was ported in one week by a few developers, so porting the much smaller Quake Live codebase should be reasonable. ( http://www.unrealengine.com/en/news/epic_games_releases_epic_citadel_on_the_web/ http://www.unrealengine.com/en/news/epic_games_releases_epic... ) As a long-time fan of the Doom&Quake games I would personally want to volunteer to help out on the JS porting aspect (I work on Emscripten, the compiler used in the Unreal Engine port and others). However, how feasible this would be would depend on how portable the codebase is and so forth, which is not publicly known.
- oomkiller 13y agoQuakeLive is basically Quake 3 right? They GPLed the source a while a go.
- azakai 13y agoIt is based on Quake 3, but it is unclear how much they modified it for Quake Live, that part is not public. The UI for example is mostly new, I am not sure about rendering, asset management etc.
- vinkelhake 13y agoThe Unreal demo has some annoying micro stuttering that a Quake Live player would never put up with. Besides rendering there's also sound, input and networking to sort out. It's not insurmountable, but there's a big difference between a tech demo and a final product.
- azakai 13y agoNot sure which stutter you refer to. Could be a bug in a particular browser. Sound and networking are certainly possible. Sound will use HTML audio or Web Audio, if the C codebases uses SDL audio (there is audio in the citadel demo). And networking is possible with not much effort, see for example https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/demos/detail/bananabread https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/demos/detail/bananabread But I fully agree that a week for a tech demo is a small part of the work that a full product needs. Still, that it was just a week seems to say that a full product is feasible, probably months of work. Perhaps id doesn't want to spend that amount of time, and that's understandable if they have other priorities.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- kzahel 13y agohttps://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-quake/ibkbfanmkmadbbgggonficloplenbefh?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/web-quake/ibkbfanm... Something like this for quake live would be cool.
- aw3c2 13y agoWithout installation or anything: https://www.quaddicted.com/stuff/WebQuake/Client/WebQuake.htm https://www.quaddicted.com/stuff/WebQuake/Client/WebQuake.ht...
- venomsnake 13y agoAnd now I feel nostalgic for the times when there was shooting if the shooters. There was always something special about the Quake 3 (and 2) engines - the fluidity, freedom and speed they provided in the games were unmatched. I don't know if it was the engine itself or the developers that flocked to these engines but the feeling of the shooting and movement on the games developed on the Unreal base is much more clumsy. Don't know exactly why.
- angersock 13y agoWas at a hackathon at a university a while ago, and took a few minutes to unwind by fragging some nightmare bots in Q3. I ended up with a few students looking over my shoulder, asking what game I was playing. There's a certain elegance and efficiency of movement the old arena shooters give you that's missing in many of the CoD clones these days--Painkiller has come closest to matching it, along with the Serious Sam tomfoolery.
- sofal 13y agoThey didn't even know what game you were playing? Goddamn am I old or what?
- epsylon 13y agoThey already required an installer, since it was a plugin.
- viraptor 13y agoThis is really bizarre. I couldn't find any reasons for the move mentioned. Does anyone know why they did this? For me that means just dropping QL unfortunately.
- prg318 13y agoFrom the linked forum post: -- Over the past few years, browser support for plugins such as QUAKE LIVE have dropped off significantly, causing problems for plugins to operate in a consistent and working manner. With the recent announcement of Google Chrome's roadmap to turning off plugin support and the upcoming changes in Firefox, it seems that now is the time to make the transition. --
- Globz 13y agoWhat a strange decision...and why dropping support for Linux? I feel this will be a bad move.
- klrr 13y agoThis is great for Xonotic[1] and Warsow[2]! I hope the majority will look for a new FPS on Linux and Macintosh and find either Xonotic or Warsow, both great games. Warsow even got through the Steam greenlight program and will be on Steam soon. 1. Xonotic is a fusion of Quake and Unreal Tournoment. It features secondary fire mode, loads of modes and original maps and foremost a really awesome community. I highly recommend to try out this title if you are interested in this genre. 1.0 is not released yet, but it's already very mature and fun, it's also completely free software. http://www.xonotic.org/ http://www.xonotic.org/ 1. Warsow is a Quake with a unique twist regarding movement and graphics. It got that Borderland cartoonish look and it fits really well in this fast paced genre. It also features a "dash", that is that you can turn without loosing velocity and do walljumps etc. Loads of great original maps, and a active community. Highly recommended as well. Warsow has reached it 1.0 release and is has a free software engine, but the game assets are proprietary. http://www.warsow.net/ http://www.warsow.net/
- prg318 13y agoI'd highly recommend both of these games. I'm really hoping that the lack of Mac/Linux support in Quake Live will bring more players to the Xonotic and Warsow community. If you are into quake-like FPS, do yourself a favor and check out Xonotic or Warsow.
- Pxtl 13y agoAlso there's Cube 2 - uglier than the ones you mentinoed, but it has a fantastic built-in level-editor that minecraft fans should love since it uses a very twisted perversion of voxels - the landscape is cubes where you can nudge the corners around. Somehow, this lets people build terrain that looks like this: http://sauerbraten.sourceforge.net/newerer/screenshot_878348.jpg http://sauerbraten.sourceforge.net/newerer/screenshot_878348... http://sauerbraten.org/ http://sauerbraten.org/ That and I love the beautiful simplicity of the weaponspread. Shotgun, Rocket-launcher, Sniper as the main weapons, and a chain-gun filling in the BFG10k's role of "OP weapon that you burn through the ammo in seconds" and a pistol and grenade launcher for "crappy stuff you start with". Also, you can melee in instagib mode. Just enough stuff to keep the game interesting without bogging you down with too much crap. Edit: Also, there's OpenArena. It's a one-man-show and has some ugly models, but it gets the job done of being a complete content replacement for Quake 3 and capitalizing on Quake 3's open-source code to give you a 100% free/opensource implementation of Q3 complete with compatibility for most mods. http://www.openarena.ws/smfnews.php http://www.openarena.ws/smfnews.php
- prg318 13y agoAs a decade long Quake Live player and subscriber, I am really disappointed by this move. The team was forced to make this move because of the lack of native browser plugin support in future Chrome versions. It seems that the QL team only has one developer at the moment and he is not familiar with Linux. Seems like a wrong move to move away from Linux/OSX when the rest of the gaming industry is moving towards Linux/OSX...
- kayoone 13y agoI dont get really get why they dont use asm.js/nativeclient to make it work without plugins on all platforms. Probably too much hassle but a game like QuakeLive feels like the perfect candidate for asm.js (Quake3 codebase is already opne source, relatively small, not resource heavy, OpenGL based)
- LandoCalrissian 13y agoDidn't Quake 3 originally work on Linux?
- prg318 13y agoYes. Quake Live also works on Linux (until they remove the Linux and Mac support for their Windows installer).
- FedRegister 13y agoThe source code for the Quake 3 engine was also released under the GPL and is available from the ioquake3[1] project. It's currently ported to work under at least Windows, Mac (Universal Binaries), Linux (x86, x86_64, and PPC), and Solaris (both SPARC and x86). [1] http://ioquake3.org/ http://ioquake3.org/
- Herald_MJ 13y agoIsn't "Native Quake Live" just Quake 3 with adverts?
- Strom 13y agoQuake Live has better matchmaking support etc.
- arca_vorago 13y agoSlightly related story, first time I ever played Quake Live was against F4taL1tY, with instagib railguns. I lost by one point and challenged him to a CS match. (played cal back in the pre-source days) He declined... but I got a signed t-shirt.
- hackinthebochs 13y agoThis isn't a "bad move" for them by any stretch. It's a cost/benefit ratio that doesn't lean in favor of linux. The iD that would burn cash just to serve the community is long gone. There just isn't much return on investment from their perspective to maintain a linux port.
- sdfjkl 13y agoWhilst abandoning the browser plugin stuff makes every sense (it never worked well, on any platform), dropping Linux/OS X at a time where those platforms are on the rise (especially with Valve's move to Linux and Windows 8 being universally disliked) is probably not the right direction.
- macspoofing 13y agoFeels like a step back.
- zacinbusiness 13y agoBreaking News: Soon you will GET to play Quake as a program that you download and install, rather than HAVING to play it in the browser because...seriously...who wants to do that?
- Arjuna 13y agoI think the reason is two-part: 1. (From the original link): "Over the past few years, browser support for plugins such as QUAKE LIVE have dropped off significantly, causing problems for plugins to operate in a consistent and working manner. With the recent announcement of Google Chrome's roadmap [1] to turning off plugin support and the upcoming changes in Firefox [2], it seems that now is the time to make the transition." 2. (From John Carmack's comments at QuakeCon 2012 [3]): "Linux is an issue that's taken a lot more currency with Valve announcing Steam for Linux, and that does change, factor, you know, changes things a bit, but we've made two forays into the Linux commercial market, most recently with Quake Live client, and, you know, that platform just hasn't carried its weight compared to the Mac on there. It's great that people are enthusiastic about it, but there's just not nearly as many people that are interested in paying for a game on the platform, and that just seems to be the reality." [1] http://blog.chromium.org/2013/09/saying-goodbye-to-our-old-friend-npapi.html http://blog.chromium.org/2013/09/saying-goodbye-to-our-old-f... [2] http://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2013/09/24/plugin-activation-in-firefox/ http://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2013/09/24/plugin-act... [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt-iVFxgFWk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wt-iVFxgFWk -- Based on John's comments regarding Linux, they just are not seeing the return to make it a priority. He mentions that Mac does better than Linux, but perhaps not enough, again, to be a priority.
- zanny 13y agoI went looking for a record of the statistics, but I know that the Humble Indie Bundle 9 had a larger gross revenue share from Linux than Mac, plus significantly higher per-user average payments from those who claimed Linux. But yeah, Steamboxes will make Linux a viable sales platform for games. Without it, you are basically looking at an OS that users have to manually install unless you buy from one of the three Linux pc boutiques online or the specific Dell / HP laptops with Ubuntu, and then you still only have Ubuntu as a distro option. If Linux ends up in stores, especially on the cheaper end playing all the Indie games, running SteamOS at least, the market will explode. I want to say I'm disappointed id is becoming effectively dropping the platform, especially when it has higher adoption numbers now than it ever did when they released any other game for it. Their games probably represent 90% of pre-Humble Bundle / Steam hours played on Linux, considering all the mods and such.
- Cowboy_X 13y agoWouldn't Google Chrome'a "native client" be a perfect fit for this?
- staunch 13y agoI've been using Linux as long as I've been playing Quake, since 1996. I'm a Pro subscriber to QL. This doesn't bother me. What bothers me is no Rocket Arena mode!
- Slackwise 13y agoQuake Live is just Quake 3, which was native and cross-platform by design. Why the hell are they removing OSX/Linux support? Are there any technical reasons for this? If they were smart, they'd put it on Steam, integrate some Steamworks stuff, and enjoy a larger fanbase along with relying less on their own backends. Steamworks could even help them monetize things like skins.
- Fingel 13y agoThat's exactly what I was thinking. Quake Live was cool because it was Quake III running in the browser. Take it out of the browser and it becomes... Quake III again. Which is cross platform. What the hell?
- epsylon 13y agoThere's been a lot of code that's been written / rewritten for QL.
- bWare_iWare 13y agoQuake Live is already native and fully supports Linux. They are only changing the installer from a browser plug-in to a stand alone. Given that they acknowledge they have customers on Mac and Linux and yet they couldn't be bothered to choose an installer that supported them I think we all know where this is heading.
- gambiting 13y agoThey only thing I will say about that is that there is only a single developer working on this project at the moment,so maybe his resources are better used on something else than developing a mac/linux installer.
- swinglock 13y agoQuake Live was always native. This is just what it says in the post; standalone from the browser.
- thrillgore 13y agoHas Quake Live ever made any money for id/Bethesda? It seemed like a loss leader every time I played. No real ads, just lots of begging for "gold."