Why Does Quake3 Always Work?

Pixie Dust Maybe

It takes many to live but it takes one to die.

Pixi_Dust==this_will_always_work;



It takes many to live but it takes one to die.

Well I haven''t noticed non-Quake3 stuff failing on my system often, but if this phenomenon does exist for you the logic explanation may be that so many hardware review sites use Quake3 as a benchmark that people who write video card drivers tend to focus a LOT on the code paths of OpenGL that Quake3 uses. Thusly they are more apt to find and fix bugs in those areas in their drivers.

yeah. i have had problems getting my games to work on other machines... it doesnt work on a raidon64! how can you make a game to work on other video cards?

If you want your game to work on most video cards then you need to develop for the lowest common denominator. Don''t use extensions, shaders etc. One other way to to develop your engine to use graphics features you want but down grade if those are not available (by detected the neccessary features).

The magic you''re referring too is called 20+ years of programming experience, and reading any and every book related to 3D graphics programming throughout that entire period. Add that on top of pure genious == magic == John Carmack.

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Name: TheBlackJester
Team: Wildfire Studios

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this is a good reason why u should use a library like sdl (www.libsdl.org) to set up your window instead of writing your own code

http://uk.geocities.com/sloppyturds/kea/kea.html
http://uk.geocities.com/sloppyturds/gotterdammerung.html

quote:

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Original post by TheBlackJester

The magic you''re referring too is called 20+ years of programming experience, and reading any and every book related to 3D graphics programming throughout that entire period. Add that on top of pure genious == magic == John Carmack.

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If you tried to work with his code, you might think differently.

As for SDL -- even SDL programs wouldn''t work, but q3 would... I dunno, it''s weird.

He bribes the OS... With a large virtual cookie before hand...

Death of one is a tragedy, death of a million is just a statistic.

quote:

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Original post by zedzeek
this is a good reason why u should use a library like sdl (www.libsdl.org) to set up your window instead of writing your own code

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Funny, I've never had any problem with using Win32 function calls to create my OpenGL window. In fact, I tried with my engine to follow the same route that Quake III does when it starts up (funnily enough, it didn't need too much modification). jitspoe, go into Quake III, start a game, then pause it. Hit the tilde (`) key, and the console will appear. Using the page up/page down keys, scroll right to the top.

There, you can see the engine initialization console entries. It tells you everything the program does, from creating it's window, to getting it's hDC, setting up OpenGL and acquiring extensions. My console reads almost exactly like the Quake III one, and it's never crashed or anything...

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[edited by - iNsAn1tY on January 24, 2003 8:25:57 PM]

>>Funny, I''ve never had any problem with using Win32 function calls to create my OpenGL window<<

yes but can sure it will work on ALL cards eg a voodoo2

http://uk.geocities.com/sloppyturds/kea/kea.html
http://uk.geocities.com/sloppyturds/gotterdammerung.html

quote:

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Original post by zedzeek
yes but can sure it will work on ALL cards eg a voodoo2

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No you can''t, SDL isn''t going to stop you using extensions which don''t work on every card... I highly doubt it has anything to do with how you set up your window anyway.

If I had my way, I''d have all of you shot!

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codeka.com - Just click it.

Well, what you do to make sure your code works on old video card is check the gl extensions string, and only use the extensions if they exist.

i didnt mean extensions what i mean is just a simple creating + setup of a window +drawing something to it.
eg with voodoo1/2 cards this very complicated u will need a couple of thousand lines of code (check the source of UT for what it does quake does something similar)

SDL like quake + unreal have been tested on 100''s of different hardware combinations thus should be more stable on strange hardware than the code u + i would write

http://uk.geocities.com/sloppyturds/kea/kea.html
http://uk.geocities.com/sloppyturds/gotterdammerung.html

Hmm -- if you use the SDL, do you have to make your stuff open source (in other words, is it GPL''d)?

No, SDL is LGPL which basically means if you just link to it you can release under any lisence you like.

If I had my way, I''d have all of you shot!

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codeka.com - Just click it.

Cool beans. I''ll have to play around with it. I''ll also have to see if I can figure out exactly what Quake3 does to work its magic.