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Quake's lightning gun bug explained [video]

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

#191

Post by sjm »

phoboslab wrote: post #66
isoprophlex wrote: post #7

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 ;)

I've been working with the leaked wipEout source code for a while[1] and I can assure the quality of the Quake source is absolutely stellar in comparison. While Quake's source may not be up to modern best practices, the overall architecture certainly has a lot of structure and thought put into it. Modifying Quake to run on the Occulus Rift was a breeze[2], compared to the mountains of garbage I have to wade through w…

Sure, but there's a big difference between leaked code vs. code cleaned up and officially released over 3 years after launch. Who knows what the Quake source looked like on the date they initially shipped. Quake also remained in development for quite a while, with the latest patch released ~March 1997 (original release June 96), and QuakeWorld last released end of 1998.

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

#192

Post by sjm »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #181
phoboslab wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You assume that the quake maps were built sequentially, but that's not the case. Since this was all new technology, the "best" maps were conceived at the end of development, after the team was familiar with the tech. You want those maps to be at the start of the game, as it's the first thing the player sees. Also, the distinct style of the last episode is easily explained by the fact that all of its maps were built b…

Yeah, I didn't like Petersen's levels much at the time, but looking back on them later as a designer (I worked on a couple doomed Unreal projects) I can see he was trying to be as creative as possible within the limits of the engine, as far as getting away from "find the yellow key" style design that frankly, everyone was already bored of. I had a pirate pre-release copy of Quake that I'd wished I'd saved. But in any…

Yeah, the boss at the end of episode 1 (e1m7, House of Chthon) was way more interesting than end.bsp, and I remember really blew me away as a kid. Makes sense based on what others were saying about having the best levels up front.

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

#193

Post by jcl »

kvark wrote: post #5

They missed the 3rd(!) bug in those few lines of code? The normalization was done before zeroing out the Z component, so the resulting vector isn’t actually normalized.

To be fair, bug #1 was that the normalization call had no effect, so the fact that it’s also being done in the wrong sequence doesn’t actually have a further effect on gameplay.

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

#195

Post by sjm »

beebeepka wrote: post #58
Zardoz84 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, but I don't agree with you. Quake 2 was the BEST Quake

No, it is not. I still play a few matches every now and then. 1. Movement is weird. Teleports suck immensely. 2. Weapons are slow to fire, and somehow, even slower to recharge/change. The 15km/h rocket projectiles don't make any sense. 3. Stock maps are crap. Thank God for ZTN 4. Has the worst community. Clients and mods are horrible. Zero quality of life stuff

Q2 being so slowed down compared to QuakeWorld makes a lot of sense when you read that John Carmack _hated_ the bunnyhopping bug in QW, and wanted everyone to be slow moving Terminators walking down hallways.

I'm with you though, I hated it, and my friends and I quickly went back to QW (+ QWTF) after trying Q2 briefly. I did have a soft spot for Rocket Arena 2 in Q2 though, that was fun.

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

#196

Post by Eisenstein »

Agentlien wrote: post #69
Eisenstein wrote: post #25

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…

I loved the video, I love this type of analysis of bugs and glitches. This comment, however, just makes me nervous. It's like my innermost worry. I spend so much time trying to do a good job which I can be proud of and yet I always know there are bugs and I just hope not too many players notice and get annoyed by them. And here we are, pointing out poorly written code in practically ancient software and attributing i…

I found this looking through Carmack's .plan files. Perhaps you will appreciate it.

Snippet:

I want bug free software. I also want software that runs at infinite speed, takes no bandwidth, is flexible enough to do anything, and was finished yesterday.

Every day I make decisions to let something stand and move on, rather than continuing until it is "perfect". Often, I really WANT to keep working on it, but other things have risen to the top of the priority que, and demand my attention.

* https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-ar...

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

#197

Post by jcl »

NotYourLawyer wrote: post #167

Pretty interesting. Was this code just never tested at all?

So, it seems that the intent of the code is to add two parallel, invisible kill beams to augment the main beam. The nature of the bugs are such that the added beams are positioned in roughly the right place, for a certain axis-aligned view.

I’d guess that the feature was tested manually in such a view, and seemed to work OK. And that the feature was subtle enough of a behavior tweak that no one noticed that it didn’t work correctly in most other situations, since the main, visible beam worked correctly, and no one could see it killing enemies behind walls.

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

#198

Post by cubefox »

George83728 wrote: post #183
webkike wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But gunplay and movement is the essence of Doom, unless you're saying that the best part of the original Doom games were the labyrinthine level design

> unless you're saying that the best part of the original Doom games were the labyrinthine level design Not the best part, but certainly one of the best parts. Doom and Doom 2 did labyrinths really well, much better than wolf3d (wolf's labyrinths were too samey and dull due to engine constraints) and I think better than nearly any game since. Games started foregoing labyrinths around when Half Life 1 came out (see al…

Many early first-person games (pre Wolfenstein 3D) were dungeon crawlers, not shooters, so the labyrinth design of early Id games reflects that heritage. Modern single player shooters have now very much abandoned this approach in favor of linear level design (Half-Life / Call if Duty approach), or they went straight into the "open world" direction (Farcry approach), which also doesn't feature dungeon/labyrinth levels. Closer in terms of non-linear level design is perhaps Metroid Prime (which recently got a remake), but it focuses more on environmental puzzles than on shooting.

There are probably indie games which are close to the original Doom formula. They often feature genres that have been neglected by big studios.

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

#199

Post by Solvency »

baal80spam wrote: post #190
i_c_b wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can read Carmack's .plan archive from 1996 here, if you're so inclined: https://github.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-archive/blob/mast... It's a _fascinating_ snapshot into Quake's development. I have no idea if his .plan is a record of what he, specifically, was doing, or if he was just capturing what the programming team was doing, but at the very least, it makes clear that he was aware of huge amounts of very hi…

Wow, this link is something else - you can track what problems he tackled and what he worked on DAILY.

Guessing you're on the younger side? I used to read these voraciously as a 11 year old. Felt like a magic window into the game industry.

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

#200

Post by pdntspa »

JohnFen wrote: post #155
pdntspa wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anyone here means top 10 in a strict ranking sense of the phrase. But I think Carmack very easily has a place amongst the pantheon of programming gods, whether you measure by 'brilliance' (whatever that means) or impact. He has done a ridiculous amount of innovation over the years, and set the pace for game engine and real-time rendering development for something like 20 years.

> I think Carmack very easily has a place amongst the pantheon of programming gods, whether you measure by 'brilliance' (whatever that means) or impact. I guess? I don't know. There are so many programmers that have had a much greater overall impact and such than Carmack has (which in no way takes away from Carmack's accomplishments!) that I find it hard to say either way. That's part of why I think trying to rank pe…

Like who? I can think of Brian Kernighan, Dennis Ritchie, Linux Torvalds, Steve Wozniak, Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper, Richard Stallman, Edsger Dijkstra, Bill Gates, John Carmack. Maybe Alan Turing. With the exception of the real OG's I think Carmack fits in that list quite nicely.
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