Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Getting Back To DirectQ

OK, as I said earlier the plan is to now get back to DirectQ and start on moving it back to fixed functionality. I've decided not to do a big-bang apporach on this one though, so the next release will most likely be a half-and-half affair. The major outstanding item is water warps - I still don't have a satisfactory fixed functionality replacement. Render to texture warp updates are closest in terms of quality, but the video RAM overhead (as well as the per-frame mipmap regeneration) precludes this from being a realistic prospect.

I'll post later about exactly what the problem is with water warps.

Anyway, before I start on that I need to do a total rewrite of video startup. It's clear to me now that I have too much legacy baggage in there from the old GLQuake startup (which was based on WinQuake startup, and which assumes that certain things happen in certain a certain order). This needs a fresh new beginning to get a stable baseline going forward.

But before I even do any of that I'm taking a break. I burned myself out a little towards the end of Quake II, so it's time for one of my periodic recharges. It's a good opportunity to reflect on things learned during the QII process rather than diving straight into code. I'll continue to post some thoughts on the direction of the engine, things to come, and problems to be solved, during this break; but I won't be actively working on anything for a short while.

1 comments:

Nyarlathotep said...

Great work. I'm not sure why so few comment on your development blog, but it's so rare - and welcome - to find these that I felt compelled to do so. I'll fire up DirectQ II over the weekend and post thoughts later, if you'll have 'em.

Enjoy the rest and relaxation - the last thing anyone wants is for a talented coder to burn out and decide that watching reality TV is the way to go.