Quake2 for DC

ZTx3 · Post by **ZTx3** » Sat Mar 02, 2002 1:48 pm

I think since we have a homemade port Quake1 and a retail Quake3 for DC why don't we complete the set?

The source code for Quake2 is out so that isn't a problem

. How hard could it be?

I would love to see Quake2 on DC it would nice to have another kewl quake style game

P.S.Oh one quite slightly of topic question

.

Can the DreamCast do EMBM? because it would be pretty sweet if the unoffical quake patch was applied to the DC version

Van_Lardo · Post by **Van_Lardo** » Sat Mar 02, 2002 1:50 pm

No-one's picked up the project yet (as far as I know)...

I think that any patches the PC can do, the DC could have installed onto the CD as well... but don't quote me on that! I'm not a coder... just a hanger on... (see?)

ZTx3 · Post by **ZTx3** » Sat Mar 02, 2002 3:42 pm

Well it is somthing some one should do imho

Like I said earlyer I would love to have a DC version to takes to friends and stuff

atf487 · Post by **atf487** » Sat Mar 02, 2002 5:14 pm

I think some one over at a quake 2 for pocket pc's was wanting the code to port it to DC. I am 100 percent sure i saw this in an older post.

TheDumbAss · Post by **TheDumbAss** » Sat Mar 02, 2002 6:50 pm

Yes Quake2 could be ported. How well it'd run if ported by a homebrew coder remains to be seen.

Nobody has announced that they ARE working on it. ctr0 has announced that he is NOT going to port it thought.

There was someone who mentioned porting the pocketPC version over... but I beleave the pocketPC source has yet to be released. It is unplayable at this point anyway... ~3fps... with an expected 6fps after optimized.

What is EMBM?

To correct Van_Lardo a bit...
You do have to put the mod on the same disc as Quake. Check the Quakedev site to see how. The correction is... Not every mod works on QuakeDC. Its a bit of trial and error really. If you have a mod that hasnt been tested... try it out and let us know how it went

DoughBoy · Post by **DoughBoy** » Sat Mar 02, 2002 8:10 pm

hmmm.... I'm not saying it's easy. But I think DC could play it very well. I play quake2 on my PC, and it runs alright. But on a console thats dedicated like DC, it should run very well...

Dante · Post by **Dante** » Sat Mar 02, 2002 9:05 pm

It's going to be a pretty talented coder which is going to make this run at anywhere over 15fps on DC. QuakeDC was one thing - it was developed by a development outfit with a few unpublished games behind its belt and a lot of programming experience. For a hobbyist to try and equal that with a conversion of a technically far superior game is going to be no mean feat.

b0nd · Post by **b0nd** » Sun Mar 03, 2002 1:34 pm

I agree with Dante

id must have had loads of fun getting Quake III Arena to run fullspeed on the DC.

SinisterTengu · Post by **SinisterTengu** » Sun Mar 03, 2002 1:38 pm

Well id had the advantage of using official dev kits from Sega, so its not exaclty the same thing...

b0nd wrote: I agree with Dante

id must have had loads of fun getting Quake III Arena to run fullspeed on the DC.

DoughBoy · Post by **DoughBoy** » Sun Mar 03, 2002 2:03 pm

oops, I didn't mention an important detail. Quake2 runs alright on my pentium 233 MHz machine when it had 16 MB of ram. So with DC being dedicated, if somoen could do it, it could run very well.

Lartrak · Post by **Lartrak** » Sun Mar 03, 2002 2:35 pm

Hah, Quake III doesn't even come close to running full speed on the DC. With a single bot, seems to run at around 15-25 FPS, if that.

SinisterTengu · Post by **SinisterTengu** » Sun Mar 03, 2002 2:37 pm

Actually, I think the game still stays at its normal FPS, its just that the bots always move all choppy and spaztik.

TheDumbAss · Post by **TheDumbAss** » Sun Mar 03, 2002 9:45 pm

Cutting the FPS to half would free up quite a bit of cpu time and make the game more playeble if it cannot be optimized to the full 60fps. (Need a decent video card to acheve 60fps on a pc as it is) This method has been used by emulators here and even a commercial game or two.

From what Ive read Quake3 on dreamcast actually runs at 30 fps. (probibly 25 on pal) The engine is so heavy that cut had to be made. The engine is much heavier then unreal's. Supposedly the EA handled PS2 version runs at the full 60fps but the player models seem to be more squatty then they should be. Theres also a few other odditys about the graphics. Hate to say it... but once I got used to PS2's nasty FPS controls I perfered PS2's Q3 over DC's. That is if I put the odd graphics aside. It just has so many more game modes in there...

Quake3's maps were optimized some to help lower the ram requirements too.

For those that dont know there is a topic about Quake2 for pocketpc over on the quakedev form.
http://www.dcemulation.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=4722

Quake2 'running' on the technicly limited ppc shows that it can indeed run on a Dreamcast. How well is the main question.

Myself from earlier wrote:Nobody has announced that they ARE working on it.

Thats not entirely true... Seems someone over on the Q2 for ppc forums has started a port. They have gotten two parts of it done but thats pretty much all thats been said.

Check out the last few post on on this tread over at pocketmatrix..
http://forums.pocketmatrix.com/viewtopic.php?t=3440

I wouldnt post it as front page news until its has a release... but its definatly something to watch for.

Dan East · Post by **Dan East** » Sun Mar 03, 2002 11:00 pm

I released the source to Pocket Quake II within a few days of releasing the binaries. It can be found here: http://dex-plor.com/downloads.php?group=pocketquake2

There is nothing inherent to the Pocket Quake II source to "cause" it to run at a low FPS. The Pocket PC hardware is totally devoid of native hardware floating point processing. The software floating point emulation routines provided by the Pocket PC libraries are responsible for the dismal performance on the 206 mhz Pocket PC hardware. When I ported the original id sources to build for Pocket PC I was careful to #define all PPC specific routines. Of course the graphic drivers would be useless for the DC because they are specific to the 240x320 RGB 565 displays that Pocket PCs use. However, I did provide all necessary UNICODE conversions, etc. So those may be of use for a DC port.

Quake II is very similar to the Quake source. In fact, I was able to plug a few of my fixed pointer integer routines straight over into the Quake II 3d rendering sources. Porting Quake II should be no more of a task than what was required to port Quake. Now of course Quake II is more memory intensive, and you people would have to do whatever it is you do to work around low memory caps on the Dreamcast hardware. That could possibly cause extra work beyond what was required to port Quake.

Dan East

ZTx3 · Post by **ZTx3** » Mon Mar 04, 2002 7:39 am

Iam going to try today a mod for Quake1 that adds color light support,Fog,Smoke Trails, and has a sweet new partical system(adding bullet sparks and what not)

There 2 mods I have to try tho. One called TomazQuakeEngine and MHQuake witch works with just a new .EXE. I will post the result later

Also EMBM stand for EnviroMentalBumpMapping(Not sure thats quite right) the idea behind it is to made flat surfaces look bumpy with out being bumpy. I beleave the DC can do BumpMapping witch is the same thing or at least can produce a simlar effect

The reson I asked that question was because there is an unoffical Quake patch that adds this EMBM along with fog not sur ehte DC could handle all that tho

Boogerman · Post by **Boogerman** » Mon Mar 04, 2002 7:50 am

Q2 is being ported by Lilmuckers according to my sources....

He isn't promising anything, but has claimed that the code is running on the DC...

Schnapple · Post by **Schnapple** » Mon Mar 04, 2002 9:02 am

One thing to bear in mind is that unlike Quake, whose modifications ran using a non-platform specific bytecode file (progs.dat), Quake II's modifications were platform specific (i.e., .DLL's for Windows, .SO files for Linux, etc.) so even if a port of Quake II does get pulled off you won't be able to get the mods to run on/for it unless they're open source, since they'll have to be recompiled for the Dreamcast.

TheDumbAss · Post by **TheDumbAss** » Wed Mar 06, 2002 1:18 am

ZTx3... um...

First... this isnt the right topic for a Quake1 related post. There is a whole forum for QuakeDC here at DCemu.

Next... ALL of those features are in the ENGINE. The engine on QuakeDC does not support ANY of those features. A mod that requires them will (most likely) not work at all on QuakeDC.

There 2 mods I have to try tho. One called TomazQuakeEngine and MHQuake witch works with just a new .EXE.

Again... new .exe means a new (custom) engine. TomazQuake and MHQuake are written and compiled for x86 processors and require a OpenGL compatable video card. Dreamcast has an SH4 processor and PowerVR video. QuakeDC uses WinCE and it's Direct3D interface with PowerVR to do its enhanced (GL like) graphics. So... these custom engines will not work on dreamcast and cannot be used to replace the midway_1.exe.

And the dreamcast can do bumpmapping... if the game was programed to use/need it. QuakeDC was not. So no bumpmapping eather...

The few GLquake engines Ive seen with bumpmapping so far were crude in its implementation. Only one bumpmap was avalible and it covered everything with the same intensity... walls, floors, and ceilings.

Hmm... think I've had a bad day... sorry if this is especially harsh.

XantiaX · Post by **XantiaX** » Mon Apr 08, 2002 5:10 pm

you may sit there saying q3 is choppy and heavier than unreal tournament, but have any of u looked at the vis ares in the maps, the poly's on models etc? unreal tourny on the dc is a poor conversion, running choppy and bulky but still highly addictive. as for quake 3 i havent noticed any slow down when playing against 3 bots as compared to the 30-35fps i used to get on my pc, plus theres extras and new graphics...
as for porting it to the dc i dont see why it should be amazingly hard, quake took a week and quake 2 uses the software and hardware that runs on the dc...

ZTx3 · Post by **ZTx3** » Tue Apr 09, 2002 2:25 pm

My Mistake sorry and thx for clearning that stuff up