Not sure what this means:
John Carmack Announces Quake III
by Chris Jensen
March 14, 1998
Remember that Quake II Mission Pack you've been reading about? Forget it. Pretend you never
even heard of it. It's been gibbed. Or has it? While Carmack never specifies what Mission Pack,
we can only assume it is the Mission Pack mentioned a few months back, titled the Reckoning. If
not, the status of the Reckoning isn't completely clear. However, getting to the real point --
respawning in its place is something that should really get your chaingun spinning...Quake III.
How's that for a title? Kind of gets your attention.
John Carmack decided to update his plan file today and, well, he dropped a bombshell in doing
so. Seems that everything he wants to do with Trinity will require at least two years of time
investment. In the meantime, he's confident he can come up with a next generation 3D engine and
lay it over Quake 2 gameplay. Ergo, no more mission pack. Everything that was to be in the
mission pack will now be incorporated into Quake III, including such eye-brow lifting features as
24-bit color, a "completely new graphics engine...", mandatory 3D-accelerator requirements,
significantly more high-resolution texture support, and all kinds of other mathematical marvels that
you number-crunchers will love.
This is late breaking news so further details are sparse at best. You can rest assured that as new
developments arise, OGR will bring you the latest information. In the meantime, read the entire
plan file here, sit back...and wonder.
[idsoftware.com]
Welcome to id Software's Finger Service V1.4!
Name: John Carmack
Email: johnc@idsoftware.com
Description: Programmer
Project: Quake 2
Last Updated: 03/13/1998 21:49:47 (Central Standard Time)
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3/13
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The Old Plan:
The rest of the team works on an aggressive Quake 2 expansion pack while
Brian and I develop tools and code for the entirely new Trinity generation
project to begin after the mission pack ships.
The New Plan:
Expand the mission pack into a complete game, and merge together a
completely new graphics engine with the quake 2 game / client / server
framework, giving us Quake 3.
"Trinity" is basically being broken up into two phases: graphics and
everything else. Towards the end of Quake 1's development I was thinking
that we might have been better off splitting quake on those categories,
but in reverse order. Doing client/server, the better modification
framework, and qc, coupled with a spiced up DOOM engine (Duke style) for
one game, then doing the full 3D renderer for the following game.
We have no reason to believe that the next generation development would
somehow go faster than the previous, so there is a real chance that doing
all of the Trinity technology at once might push game development time to
a full two years for us, which might be a bit more than the
pressure-cooker work atmosphere here could handle.
So, we are going to try an experiment.
The non-graphics things that I was planning for Trinity will be held off
until the following project -- much java integration with client
downloadable code being one of the more significant aspects. I hope to
get to some next generation sound work, but the graphics engine is the
only thing I am committing to.
The graphics engine is going to be hardware accelerated ONLY. NO SOFTWARE
RENDERER, and it won't work very well on a lot of current hardware. We
understand fully that this is going to significantly cut into our
potential customer base, but everyone was tired of working under the
constraints of the software renderer. There are still going to be plenty
of good quake derived games to play from other developers for people
without appropriate hardware.
There are some specific things that the graphics technology is leveraging
that may influence your choice of a 3D accelerator.
All source artwork is being created and delivered in 24 bit color. An
accelerator that can perform all 3D work in 24 bit color will look
substantially better than a 16 bit card. You will pay a speed cost for it,
though.
Most of the textures are going to be higher resolution. Larger amounts of
texture memory will make a bigger difference than it does on Quake 2.
Some key rendering effects require blending modes that some cards don't
support.
The fill rate requirements will be about 50% more than Quake 2, on
average. Cards that are fill rate limited will slow down unless you go to
a lower resolution.
The triangle rate requirements will be at least double Quake 2, and
scalable to much higher levels of detail on appropriate hardware.
Here are my current GUESSES about how existing cards will perform.
Voodoo 1
Performance will be a little slow, but it should look good and run
acceptably. You will have to use somewhat condensed textures to avoid
texture thrashing.
Voodoo 2
Should run great. Getting the 12 mb board is probably a good idea if you
want to use the high resolution textures. The main rendering mode won't be
able to take advantage of the dual TMU the same way quake 2 does, so the
extra TMU will be used for slightly higher quality rendering modes
instead of greater speed: trilinear / detail texturing, or some full
color effects where others get a mono channel.
Permedia 2
Will be completely fill rate bound, so it will basically run 2/3 the speed
that quake 2 does. Not very fast. It also doesn't have one of the needed
blending modes, so it won't look very good, either. P2 does support 24 bit
rendering, but it won't be fast enough to use it.
ATI Rage Pro
It looks like the rage pro has all the required blending modes, but the
jury is still out on the performance.
Intel I740
Should run good with all features, and because all of the textures come
out of AGP memory, there will be no texture thrashing at all, even with
the full resolution textures.
Rendition 2100/2200
The 2100 should run about the speed of a voodoo 1, and the 2200 should be
faster. They support all the necessary features, and an 8 mb 2200 should
be able to use the high res textures without a problem. The renditions
are the only current boards that can do 24 bit rendering with all the
features. It will be a bit slow in 24 bit mode, but it will look the
best.
PVR PCX2
Probably won't run Quake 3. They don't have ANY of the necessary blending
modes, so it can't look correct. Video Logic might decide to rev their
minidriver to try to support it, but it is probably futile.
RIVA 128
Riva puts us in a bad position. They are very fast, but they don't support
an important feature. We can crutch it up by performing some extra drawing
passes, but there is a bit of a quality loss, and it will impact their
speed. They will probably be a bit faster than voodoo 1, but not to the
degree that they are in Quake 2.
Naturally, the best cards are yet to come (I won't comment on unreleased
cards). The graphics engine is being designed to be scalable over the next
few YEARS, so it might look like we are shooting a bit high for the first
release, but by the time it actually ships, there will be a lot of people
with brand new accelerators that won't be properly exploited by any other
game. |
