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Quake's lightning gun bug explained [video]

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Re: Quake's lightning gun bug explained [video]

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>probably one the top 10 programmers of all time By what metric? Popularity? PR? Net worth? Complex software? Competitive programming? Impact? For every "top" SE there are tens of similarly skilled engineers that you have never heard of

> By what metric? His record speaks for itself. I know it is tough to imagine what it was like programming 3D engines meant to run on graphics non-accelerated PCs running DOS, without the internet knowledge or collaboration available to us now, but the stuff he was doing was absolutely revolutionary. He basically created PC gaming as we know it today by creating a market for 3D accelerators and before that by doing i…

I remember he dropped Doom 3 on us with fully dynamic lighting and shadows in like fucking 2004 or something. I remember getting my hands on the engine leak (in 2003?) and absolutely getting my mind blown to see shadows dancing on the wall (at like 8 FPS on my athlonXP geforce4 rig) at something resembling real-time, in the same map that was used at the Apple developer demo where Steve Jobs announced mac support.

All of Carmack's engines were YEARS ahead of their time. Everyone was doing baked lighting and employing various gimmicks for dynamic-looking shadows, and this dude (and his team) comes in and destroys everyone with this fully-, actually-dynamic lighting system. I don't think anyone else even came close until Crysis in 2007.

If that isn't a top 10 programmer performance than I don't know what is.

2001 macworld demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80guchXqz14

Re: Quake's lightning gun bug explained [video]

#132
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm quite curious to see what Quake would look like given a similar treatment as the new Doom games got. That is, distilled down to a pure essence of what the original was trying to achieve.

Would rather see Quake as a top down roguelike RPG.

Doom, not Quake, but:

https://drl.chaosforge.org/

Re: Quake's lightning gun bug explained [video]

#133
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Empathy is a trait that I value highly on a programmer.

Empathy and faux politeness are different things.

I'm not disagreeing. In fact I would say that faux politeness is a strong sign of low empathy.

On this particular case, Linus has publicly admitted that he struggles with empathy.

Re: Quake's lightning gun bug explained [video]

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quake Live was just Quake 3. Champions was something different. The community was on life support, and the attempt (Quake Live) wasn't enough to bring people back to good eSports, as the market had moved on from pure skill based games.

It was extremely difficult to play for newcomers. You almost didn't even get a chance to frag old school players once because of the skill discrepancy. I could hang with most of the higher tier guys, but there were some that just seemed nearly invincible. They should have had more resources for developing skills. After I stopped playing, I discovered that some were playing Q3 at ramped up physics speeds in single pla…

>> It was extremely difficult to play for newcomers. You almost didn't even get a chance to frag old school players once because of the skill discrepancy.

I think games say a lot about generations.

In the old days you had to persist a lot and be a bit of a "hacker" to play Quake, or at least have basic computer skills. I remember how difficult it was to configure Qizmo for Quake World.

Nowadays everything is ready for you to play and even if you are a beginner you can play with the most experienced. In Quake you can spend 1 year playing and not win a single match.

Re: Quake's lightning gun bug explained [video]

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not saying I never conjure the spaghetti but whoever coded that really was deep into the tail end of a caffeine, coding and sleep deprivation binge ;)

Good chance it was John Carmack, probably one the top 10 programmers of all time. He basically built the Quake engine himself. There is a pretty decent analysis of it here: * https://fabiensanglard.net/quakeSource/index.php I recommend checking it out. EDIT: i was thinking of the analysis done on Quake 2, which is more about the engine: * https://fabiensanglard.net/quake2/index.php while the one about is regarding th…

Ranking programmers is as dumb as ranking musicians.

Carmack is great but you can't really say he's better than say some guy you've never heard of who wrote a bunch of absolutely brilliant algorithms inside a missile defense system and it's all super secret. Or someone who did amazing work on a compiler Carmack used or brilliant work in an OS kernel that you're never going to know about, or some AI code, or something deep within a stock exchange's platform.

Carmack's perceived greatness is elevated because almost 100% of what he has worked on is directly visible to the average consumer.

Re: Quake's lightning gun bug explained [video]

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not saying I never conjure the spaghetti but whoever coded that really was deep into the tail end of a caffeine, coding and sleep deprivation binge ;)

>whoever coded that really was deep into the tail end of a caffeine, coding and sleep deprivation binge ;) That's most indie game devs of the period, but more so at id Software which splintered the team during Quake's development due to internal squabbles, causing John Romero and others to leave id. You can even tell that from the quality of Quake's levels which start with beautifully crafted and intricate levels, an…

> causing John Romero and others to leave id

afaik Romero was fired for not working. Cubicle walls came down because Romero was playing Doom on the clock instead of making the game(his form of protest for not making an RPG or something). If you look at Quake code most broken/lazy stuff was done by him. Example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEkjDkr0Qmc

Re: Quake's lightning gun bug explained [video]

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was extremely difficult to play for newcomers. You almost didn't even get a chance to frag old school players once because of the skill discrepancy. I could hang with most of the higher tier guys, but there were some that just seemed nearly invincible. They should have had more resources for developing skills. After I stopped playing, I discovered that some were playing Q3 at ramped up physics speeds in single pla…

>> It was extremely difficult to play for newcomers. You almost didn't even get a chance to frag old school players once because of the skill discrepancy. I think games say a lot about generations. In the old days you had to persist a lot and be a bit of a "hacker" to play Quake, or at least have basic computer skills. I remember how difficult it was to configure Qizmo for Quake World. Nowadays everything is ready fo…

>>Nowadays everything is ready for you to play and even if you are a beginner you can play with the most experienced. In Quake you can spend 1 year playing and not win a single match.

I mean......saying this as a game developer - this is a good thing. You want people to come in and enjoy the game, and not be frustrated by it. Obviously there should still be a mode somewhere where you can truly test your skills and where the top players hang out(in multiplayer shooters that's usually what the ranked mode is for), but new players should be able to just jump in and have a good time. I believe this is a huge part of why games like Fortnite are so successful - because no matter what is your skill level, you will always have a good time, but it also offers an incredibly high skill level ceiling for people who really want to put in the hours.

>>I think games say a lot about generations.

I'm not sure if that is about generations, more about the market - when Q3 came out the only other major game in that space was Unreal Tournament. Nowadays you have so much choice that if a game frustrates you you can always pick a different one. And the market has been completely "ruined" by gamepass and endless promotions, so people don't have attachment to games like they used to. Sure some of them do if they spent £50 on a game, but for an increasing number of games and people, that just isn't true anymore. There is no cost associated with trying a game on Gamepass for 20 minutes and abandoning it.

Re: Quake's lightning gun bug explained [video]

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good chance it was John Carmack, probably one the top 10 programmers of all time. He basically built the Quake engine himself. There is a pretty decent analysis of it here: * https://fabiensanglard.net/quakeSource/index.php I recommend checking it out. EDIT: i was thinking of the analysis done on Quake 2, which is more about the engine: * https://fabiensanglard.net/quake2/index.php while the one about is regarding th…

>probably one the top 10 programmers of all time By what metric? Popularity? PR? Net worth? Complex software? Competitive programming? Impact? For every "top" SE there are tens of similarly skilled engineers that you have never heard of

He popularised BSP for FPS which meant doom ran faster than SystemShock, despite having more complex level geometry

Re: Quake's lightning gun bug explained [video]

#139
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By what metric? His record speaks for itself. I know it is tough to imagine what it was like programming 3D engines meant to run on graphics non-accelerated PCs running DOS, without the internet knowledge or collaboration available to us now, but the stuff he was doing was absolutely revolutionary. He basically created PC gaming as we know it today by creating a market for 3D accelerators and before that by doing i…

The closest guy to Carmack today seems to be Brian Caris, who developed virtualized geometry[1], a rasterization based rendering technique where the geometric detail of static objects is adjusted to the screen resolution in real time. There is another talk (can't find it right now) where he mentions Carmack as an inspiration. I wonder what Carmack would be working on today if he was still in the game engine business.…

Who made DLSS? Using ML to denoise ray tracing is massive.

Re: Quake's lightning gun bug explained [video]

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quake Live was just Quake 3. Champions was something different. The community was on life support, and the attempt (Quake Live) wasn't enough to bring people back to good eSports, as the market had moved on from pure skill based games.

It was extremely difficult to play for newcomers. You almost didn't even get a chance to frag old school players once because of the skill discrepancy. I could hang with most of the higher tier guys, but there were some that just seemed nearly invincible. They should have had more resources for developing skills. After I stopped playing, I discovered that some were playing Q3 at ramped up physics speeds in single pla…

> I discovered that some were playing Q3 at ramped up physics speeds in single player. When going back to playing at regular speed, it feels like you're playing in slow motion.

That's amazing, like training at altitude but for e-sports.

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