id_notes/John C/1998-07-04_1998-07-05

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Name: John Carmack

Email: johnc@idsoftware.com

Description: Programmer

Project: Quake Arena

Last Updated: 07/05/1998 16:47:26 (Central Standard Time)

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7/5/98

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I am not opposed to adding a flag to control the movement styles. I was

rather expecting it to be made optional in 3.17, but I haven't been directly

involved in the last few releases.

The way this played out in public is a bit unfortunate. Everyone at Id is

busy full time with the new product, so we just weren't paying enough attention

to the Quake 2 modifications. Some people managed to read into my last update

that we were blaming Zoid for things. Uh, no. I think he was acting within

his charter (catering to the community) very well, it just interfered with an

aspect of the game that shouldn't have been modified. We just never made it

explicitly clear that it shouldn't have been modified.

It is a bit amusing how after the QuakeArena anouncement, I got flamed by

lots of people for abandoning single player play (even though we aren't, really)

but after I say that Quake 2 can't forget that it is a single player game, I get

flamed by a different set of people who think it is stupid to care about single

player anymore when all "everyone" plays is multiplayer. The joy of having a

wide audience that knows your email address.

7/4/98

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Here is the real story on the movement physics changes.

Zoid changed the movement code in a way that he felt improved gameplay in the

3.15 release.

We don't directly supervise most of the work Zoid does. One of the main

reasons we work with him is that I respect his judgment, and I feel that his

work benefits the community quite a bit with almost no effort on my part. If

I had to code review every change he made, it wouldn't be worth the effort.

Zoid has "ownership" of the Quake, Glquake, and QuakeWorld codebases. We don't

intend to do any more modifications at Id on those sources, so he has pretty

free rein within his discretion.

We passed over the Quake 2 codebase to him for the addition of new features

like auto download, but it might have been a bit premature, because official

mission packs were still in development, and unlike glquake and quakeworld,

Q2 is a product that must remain official and supported, so the scope of his

freedoms should have been spelled out a little more clearly.

The air movement code wasn't a good thing to change in Quake 2, because the

codebase still had to support all the commercial single player levels, and

subtle physics changes can have lots of unintended effects.

QuakeWorld didn't support single player maps, so it was a fine place to

experiment with physics changes.

QuakeArena is starting with fresh new data, so it is also a good place to

experiment with physics changes.

Quake 2 cannot be allowed to evolve in a way that detracts from the commercial

single player levels.

The old style movement should not be refered to as "real world physics". None

of the quake physics are remotely close to real world physics, so I don't think

one way is significantly more "real" than the other. In Q2, you accelerate from

0 to 27 mph in 1/30 of a second, which just as unrealistic as being able to

accelerate in midair...