Reviving the dead fella :) aka GPL Multiplayer Quake Client.

[d1554573r]

Hey guys, recently i had an idea that keeps hunting me so i just simply had to share it with You.

It's nothing new since there were a few not very successful attempts to make this one happen in the past but meh lets get to the point.

Since we got hundreds of maps, dozens of various weapon models, few player models to choose from, and few decent engines and everything GPL why wont we put them all together excluding stuff copyrighted and combine into flashy GPL Multiplayer Quake client?

Yes i know that if we exclude id stuff there will be a lot of quakec stuff write. (Im uncertain but if i recall properly shareware version of quake was distributed with plenty of ports to other systems so this could be an option to skip rewriting qc's)

Foreseeing Your another question - what for? - here are the answesrs:
1. To distribute it with linux distros
2. To make silly newb friendly installer for those that cant handle the hand job there
3. to get more users/meat to slaughter*
4. Both Alien Arena and NExuiz are crap (my personal opinion)
5. We all here <3 quake

I got a specialist in Intellectual property law (the same who defended that guy from Philippines sued by apple for making iphone UI for WInMO back in 2007) who helped me out with blizzard stuff when i was at mmorpg4free.com.

So just in case if someone seems interested in starting project like this give feed back here. Please don't PM me

[lennox]

blah

Hey guys, recently i had an idea that keeps hunting me so i just simply had to share it with You.

It's nothing new since there were a few not very successful attempts to make this one happen in the past but meh lets get to the point.

Since we got hundreds of maps, dozens of various weapon models, few player models to choose from, and few decent engines and everything GPL why wont we put them all together excluding stuff copyrighted and combine into flashy GPL Multiplayer Quake client?

Yes i know that if we exclude id stuff there will be a lot of quakec stuff write. (Im uncertain but if i recall properly shareware version of quake was distributed with plenty of ports to other systems so this could be an option to skip rewriting qc's)

Foreseeing Your another question - what for? - here are the answesrs:
1. To distribute it with linux distros
2. To make silly newb friendly installer for those that cant handle the hand job there
3. to get more users/meat to slaughter*
4. Both Alien Arena and NExuiz are crap (my personal opinion)
5. We all here <3 quake

I got a specialist in Intellectual property law (the same who defended that guy from Philippines sued by apple for making iphone UI for WInMO back in 2007) who helped me out with blizzard stuff when i was at mmorpg4free.com.

So just in case if someone seems interested in starting project like this give feed back here. Please don't PM me

its very simple and has been done in the past.. I dont see what you are trying to get at, there are plenty of versions that are modified from the quake engine, you would like another? None of the alternatives ever really took off, what is different about this? Nothing, seems like a waste of time imo.

[lxndr]

This is where I want to go, a full GPL Quake, but I need to fix my engine first

[d1554573r]

@lennox

I haven't seen any entirely GPL client for quake so far, the idea is to exclude id copyrighted materials so we can freely distribute it.

So far i haven't seen quake in any linux distro repository for example, and yes i know that simple mixing of stuff available is easy.

Concept isn't as lame as it sounds at the first glance dude.

Add fancy website and a little promotion and You got quake servers crowded.

Btw today i had a problem finding ppl to play with at qw wtf?

And i said that some ppl tried making some sort of pluig-n-play quake with new stuff included. But no one did GPL so far.

@lxndr

Your engine is one of few i havnt tried so far seems like ill have to give it a go

[Skutarth]

Yes i know that if we exclude id stuff there will be a lot of quakec stuff write.

What? If I recall correctly, the QuakeC was also released under GPL. So were the maps. You should be able to have everything be legally free and compatible with normal quake clients.

[Baker]

Hey guys, recently i had an idea that keeps hunting me so i just simply had to share it with You.

It's nothing new since there were a few not very successful attempts to make this one happen in the past but meh lets get to the point.

Since we got hundreds of maps, dozens of various weapon models, few player models to choose from, and few decent engines and everything GPL why wont we put them all together excluding stuff copyrighted and combine into flashy GPL Multiplayer Quake client?

First, the biggest problem isn't the models but the 160 or so sounds.

With models, you have 8 weapons (view model and ground model = 16) and 4 powerups and 10-12 projectiles. 10 types of ammo and/or health boxes.

But you also have 170 sounds. I think there are 36 for the player alone.

The multiplayer issues gets thorny. DarkPlaces really does not perform adequately on most computers. And the engine code is so complex that it can really only be modified by LordHavoc so no one else can competently maintain it. I feel those 2 factors effectively eliminate DarkPlaces from any such broad consideration unless someone wants a niche "GPL version" that only a small subset of the population can partake in (Nexuiz has this problem badly whereas Open Arena with ioQuake3 runs fast on virtually all computers.)

NetQuake is great unless your ping or connection is bad. So you lag.

Quakeworld has ridiculous physics exploits which allows experts to literally use bunnyhopping practice to run circles new players.

In both NetQuake and Quakeworld, the existing player base is highly formidable. New players would need something like servers made to discourage or be a safe haven against elite players running them out of Quake.

And, while the map sources are GPL ... the map textures are NOT GPL. Those would have to be remade to be GPL.

If someone made a high quality GPL player model, that would be a kick start to such an idea, but the standard Quake player has a ton of frames.

Also the Quakeworld community doesn't like the GPL Quake idea because what they prefer is to break the shareware license agreement via NQuake and have EZQuake download custom maps and pak1.pak models -- so the interest level at, say, quakeworld.nu will be 'nil.

And most map makers, like Func_Msgboard are essentially only interested in Quake single player and without single player (monster models and sounds) of high quality, they wouldn't be interested.

The idea is a great one, but complex. Someone would have to come forth and make others believe in the idea to gain momentum.

[Skutarth]

And, while the map sources are GPL ... the map textures are NOT GPL. Those would have to be remade to be GPL.

I was aware of that, but there are enough retexturing projects out there that you could backport them to something like ProQuake just by scaling them down to original spec. I was merely stating that you can have different textures from other players as long as the geometry and entities match, meaning you can have legally free, GPL-compliant maps in the release that are perfectly compatible with normal Quake clients (even though the textures compiled into the maps are different).

[dfsp_spirit]

The question is whether this is needed and whether this would really bring more players. At first thought I didn't believe that. The crowd of Windows kiddies playing COD5 wouldn't play Quake for free because it's older than they are and if they wanted to play it, they'd pirate it (even they can search google for pak0). But I guess you could get a few players if you could simply apt-get install free-quake on some major linux distributions.

Having a server for beginners shouldn't be a problem at all. The majority of the linux guys aren't afraid to setup a server and it feels like everybody here has his own server (and half of you guys got your own engine ) atm.

As Baker said textures are part of the problem - and they gotta be of high quality if you want to use them as a replacement for the original ones. Making a single good-looking texture ain't hard, but I'm talking about matching colors schemes and saturation for all of them here. If they're too crappy or don't fit together they'll ruin the maps (drop one of the stock Q3A maps into OpenArena to see what I mean). These textures look good and could work if the license was GPL I guess - and the current license almost is the GPL so maybe they'd change it.

@Baker: What about ProQuake as an engine? You'd maybe have to work on the linux part, dunno.

So the sound and model problems remain. I can't say anything on that but there's many high quality models out there for Quake it seems - none under the GPL that work with basic engines?

[lennox]

The question is whether this is needed and whether this would really bring more players. At first thought I didn't believe that. The crowd of Windows kiddies playing COD5 wouldn't play Quake for free because it's older than they are and if they wanted to play it, they'd pirate it (even they can search google for pak0). But I guess you could get a few players if you could simply apt-get install free-quake on some major linux distributions.

Having a server for beginners shouldn't be a problem at all. The majority of the linux guys aren't afraid to setup a server and it feels like everybody here has his own server (and half of you guys got your own engine ) atm.

As Baker said textures are part of the problem - and they gotta be of high quality if you want to use them as a replacement for the original ones. Making a single good-looking texture ain't hard, but I'm talking about matching colors schemes and saturation for all of them here. If they're too crappy or don't fit together they'll ruin the maps (drop one of the stock Q3A maps into OpenArena to see what I mean). These textures look good and could work if the license was GPL I guess - and the current license almost is the GPL so maybe they'd change it.

@Baker: What about ProQuake as an engine? You'd maybe have to work on the linux part, dunno.

So the sound and model problems remain. I can't say anything on that but there's many high quality models out there for Quake it seems - none under the GPL that work with basic engines?

why do people not just you constantly throw linux into the group of people who have servers? 90% of the people who claim to run linux run ubuntu which is basically windows, about 2% even know what linux or a *nix based os is. ubuntu is not linux, its a lame attempt at a lindows.

[d1554573r]

@baker
About textures, i think rygel texture pack seems good enough to be used if he agrees, we would only need to remove the quads or alter them somehow and other 'id' logos.

About sounds heh, im a music producer for about 10 years. There are hundreds of thousands of samples on the web with gpl license. Copyright accoriding to samples allows You to cut samples and use them w/e You like if they arnt longer then then certain time (i cant remember how long the sample can be but its quite long) or You can take longer if You alter it (at least according to European regulations to intellectual property, but from what i know US regulations are more restrictive).

Any how making ambient soundtrack that fits quake isn't much of a problem for me.
Sfx can be found on the net with gpl licence easly.

About engine i have to admit this one seems problematic.


DP would gave more attention from peoples who look for good looking and free game for sure but it doesnt perform well in higher resolutions*
(i need to set 1440x9xx to have 120-400 FPS on dp with rt lights, bloom and hdr turned off)

Qrack haven't been ported to linux using SDL yet if im correct.

Perhaps it would be possible to deliver the free-quake with few engines, but this would force us to maintain portability of *.pk3's or alter the engines code so they would use universal texture naming and directories.

Thers a md3 player model that looks decent

But the concept seems doable thou

[Baker]

The concept is doable, but the amount of work is underestimated and the details.

The Quake textures aren't GPL, most of the Quake Retexturing Project textures are resamples and refinements of the originals; they cannot be used.

Same is true for Rygel's texture pack, as much as I admire him "GPL'ing the work" -- he can't actually do that for a lot of the work since it uses a Quake texture as the basis.

DarkPlaces is just simply a no-go for reasons stated above. It might look nice in screenshots but the hardware compatibility is very weak and even the "Quake compatibility" of DarkPlaces is very weak. Ask someone like Spirit about that --- not dfsp_spirit, but Quaddicted.com Spirit.

And DarkPlaces is virtually unmaintainable by anyone except LordHavoc himself due to the extremely high level of code complexity.

Now with all that being said, if you started making GPL ambient sounds and models or texturing maps that *would* make a difference, momentum-wise.

Eventually the Quake engines will grow to the point where they should be. There are plenty of serious engine modders now. I find it hard to believe that in 18 months there won't be a serious "heavy-duty" truly Quake compatible engine if things stay on the current track --- which would be NetQuake physics with Quakeworld bandwidth-friendliness and DarkPlaces server heart beat capability.

[d1554573r]

@baker
"Same is true for Rygel's texture pack, as much as I admire him "GPL'ing the work" -- he can't actually do that for a lot of the work since it uses a Quake texture as the basis."

I have to disagree on this one, they are far more detailed then originals color - and detail wise so, okey they are remakes but they are completely different when it comes to technical stuff.

About dp, hardware isn't the only problem software can make problems to, i played it on Ubuntu 9 and 10 (both 64 bit) and Ubuntu 10.4 runs it extremely slow (like 3x slower then windows xp) on the other hand 9 was running dp whole lotta faster then xp... wtf?

So indeed dp gets ruled out for sure.

[lennox]

@baker
"Same is true for Rygel's texture pack, as much as I admire him "GPL'ing the work" -- he can't actually do that for a lot of the work since it uses a Quake texture as the basis."

I have to disagree on this one, they are far more detailed then originals color - and detail wise so, okey they are remakes but they are completely different when it comes to technical stuff.

About dp, hardware isn't the only problem software can make problems to, i played it on Ubuntu 9 and 10 (both 64 bit) and Ubuntu 10.4 runs it extremely slow (like 3x slower then windows xp) on the other hand 9 was running dp whole lotta faster then xp... wtf?

So indeed dp gets ruled out for sure.

try it in a real linux distro, try debian or slackware, ubuntu is terrible to base things off of.

[MH]

I'd agree that hardware is a problem, but is actually one in the opposite direction to that which is being discussed. The root cause of this is GLQuake, and the - somewhat misguided, IMO - effort to maintain a GLQuake level of compatibility.

GLQuake dates to the VERY early days of hardware accelerated consumer desktop 3D, and it shows. It was written to the OpenGL1.0 spec, ran on boards that weren't actually OpenGL-compliant, and was very much a learning exercise for ID on the way to QII and Q3A.

There are some awful awful things in the GLQuake codebase that prevent it from running well on more modern hardware. By "more modern" I mean "anything that isn't a 3DFX or other first gen board". Awful things like it's cack-handed multitexture implementation, like gl_ztrick, like writing to the front buffer, and like the recent stuff I've been finding out about dynamic light updating.

Maintaining compatibility for just about anything that doesn't support at least an OpenGL 1.4 level is - IMO - a mug's game. You're compromising it's ability to run well on the PC that somebody bought/was given for Christmas, or on the laptop that a business traveller is bringing on the train. And all to serve the interests of a tiny minority of hardcore retro-hardware enthusiasts. Time to stop.

There's a colossal untapped pool of potential players out there, but the typical potential player isn't an enthusiast. They're a regular Joe Soap who might also be interested in football and girls, and who just wants to have a good time playing a fun game. They don't care if Quake will run on somebody else's clapped out banger from 1994, they care if Quake will run on their machine, and if it won't then they won't play it.

DarkPlaces makes the perfectly valid design decision to not worry about maintaining compatibility, preferring to press ahead with improving the quality of the code, and is a better program for it, but it sets the entry level too high. Any hypothetical "Free Quake" thing would need to set it lower. I said OpenGL1.4 and that seems reasonable. A TNT2 will run OpenGL1.4, mobile devices will run it, support is widespread, so it's not a problem at all.

[lxndr]

It's a just a long process with a few steps. First the bones (the engine), then the meat (textures, sounds, models).

The engine doesn't need anything special but to be able to start a given map without id's copyrighted materials. If the map is asking for something copyrighted, the engine can provide a placeholder (textures) or choose to ignore (sounds) or remove (entities) the request.

Then the content can be progressively added, quickly for textures, slower for sounds, and never for models as long as engines will stick with the mdl format.