Id Software designer/project manager Graeme Devine has updated his .plan file with news about a new build of Quake 3 Arena ready for users of Mac OS 9.1 and lower.
Devine noted that the new build is located at his iDisk location. The 462K application file is designed to work with an existing Quake 3 Arena installation — you’ll need to have the full game installed to make it work.
“I love how iDisk is integrated into OS X,” lauded Devine.
Devine said that the new version available for download from his iDisk was built using a new version of Metrowerks’ Codewarrior compiler. “It should run as well as or better than previous builds,” said Devine.
Devine also pointed out a potential issue with Quake 3 Arena — the sound code is taking up more CPU time than Devine thinks it should. “… this is a Quake code issue I’ll resolve quickly,” said Devine.
Devine also said that the long-awaited version of Quake 3 Arena optimized for the Power Mac G4 (using its Velocity Engine registers) is not yet ready, nor is a new version for Mac OS X.
“I’ve not had time yet to build those and update them. The OS X work done for the keynote address demo in Tokyo pulls directly across to the OS X Q3A build, so it should be very straightforward,” said Devine.
At Macworld Expo in Tokyo a week ago, Devine’s co-worker — legendary Id Software co-founder and lead programmer John Carmack — demonstrated a very early development build of the engine he and the Id Software team are creating for a future game based on Id’s popular “Doom” franchise. It was demonstrated on a Power Mac G4 running a graphics card equipped with Nvidia’s GeForce 3 chip. Both the chip and the game’s engine were unveiled for the first time anywhere to Macworld Expo crowds.
Devine is pleased with how the demo turned out.
“Given the beta hardware, daily builds of OS X, hourly patch dumps for the [GeForce3] OpenGL driver, and content/code changes from id, the keynote build ran exceptionally well,” said Devine.
He also counters comments that Carmack has made in his own .plan file and on “News for Nerds” site Slashdot that suggest that the G4’s Velocity Engine, or “Altivec,” as it is known in Motorola parlance — offers little benefit.
“We did not have time to completely optimize for PPC or OS X, as I understand more and more about PPC and Altivec programming, I’m seeing more and more opportunities,” said an optimistic Devine.