quake/articles/1997/art-1264

Path: mantis!not-for-mail

From: Riaan vah Niekerk

Newsgroups: rec.games.computer.quake.announce

Subject: Quake for WindowsCE handhelds !!

Date: 1 Apr 1997 02:31:23 +0100

Organization: UUNET Internet Africa

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Message-ID: <01bc3e21$802236a0$339f07c4@riaan>

First there was vQuake for the Verite graphics accellerator chipsets, then

glQuake and ports to the sgi platform, as well as WinQuake. I am very

excited in being able to tell you that as from the beginning of March, a

privately funded effort at the Potchefstroom University in South Africa has

been working on a port of Quake to the WinCE platform. The following

technical information has been made available to me:

1. ceQuake will not run on WinCE version 1 (or 1.1), but is targeted for

version 2.

2. The 3D engine is being rewritten completely in a Java subset called

QuakeJava (rumoured to be a lot more robust and compact than QuakeC). This

version of Java will incorporate the VRML API for composing the stages,

which greatly reduces the resource load on you HPC.

(The programmers initially wanted to write ceQuake in Shockwave, but were

unable to achieve a licence agreement with its owners). However,

Shub-Niggurath (the final-level baddie) does make a guest appearance as a

shockwave-plugin.

3. The first release of ceQuake (beta sceduled for Q4 1997) will - just

like the shareware version - consist of the first episode (all eight

levels), free for downloading from id, stomped.com and other Quake-related

sites.

4. The full version of ceQuake will be available on a standard PC-Card Type

II and CompactFlash Card (12MB ROM each). These cards will also have a

joustick port, where you can attach any joystick/gamepad controller setup

(Assassin 3D and force-feedback controllers included)

5. It is uncertain whether or not QuakeWorld and QuakeSpy will be

incorporated into the initial release of ceQuake.

6. The console will consist of a cgi drop-down menu (most console commands

will be supported).

7. Mouse-aiming will not be supported, for obvious reasons.

Now you ask yourself if and why anyone would like to play Quake on an HPC.

firstly, colour: even though the colour support for WinCE 2.0 has not been

fixed, Quake will still be playable, because the original the original

Quake did not have such a lot of colour anyway, that playing it in only

four colours will not distract from the experience that much.

secondly, the size of the screen: default/normal screen resolutions for

Quake are in the region of 320x200. On the small HPC screen you will be

able to see only marginally less. Because the HPC does not support the

standard 3:4 screen ratio, it will be as if looking at a panoramic view of

your surroundings. ceQuake will not scew on different sizes, and will scale

accordingly, wether you are playing on a Cassiopeia, HP3x series or the NEC

Livingstone subnotebook.

ceQuake will most definitly beat games like tetris and any other dos-esque

games (such as featured in the MS Games Pack). Rumours of Microsoft Monster

Truck Madness for WinCE could not be confirmed.

In anticipation to the release of the full version of ceQuake, a group of

Potchefstroom students have already formed Clan Wince, complete with 2bit

skins (for the time being, they will be playing on regular PCs - with skins

and all).

If you want to see more, (screenshots, shockwave demo(sic), links to the

Clan Wince website, etc.) point your pIEs towards

http://pukrs13.puk.ac.za/wapad/index.html

Riaan van Niekerk

Potchefstroom

South Africa