Id Software designer and project manager Graeme Devine recently clarified the circumstances surrounding the work he is doing on an OS X-compatible version of Quake 3 Arena, the company’s landmark 3D first person shooter.
An earlier OS X-compatible build of Quake 3 Arena had been released by The Omni Group, makers of the OS X-compatible Web browser, OmniWeb and various other Mac OS X and OS X Server software. The Omni Group has been instrumental in Id Software’s support for the new operating system from the start — the company released an OS X Server version of Q3Test, an early testbed of Quake 3 Arena engine technology released in 1999, prior to the full game’s release. This past fall, The Omni Group offered a build of Quake 3 Arena version 1.17 that works on OS X Public Beta.
Since then, work has commenced on a newly updated version of Quake 3 Arena that provides several distinct architectural improvements and laid the groundwork for Quake 3 Team Arena, the official Quake 3 expansion pack. Devine is working feverishly on a new, updated OS X compatible version of that Quake 3 Arena update, and he doesn’t want his work to be construed as a mark against The Omni Group. He recently explained his rationale for doing the work himself rather than delegating it to The Omni Group in a new update to his .plan file.
“I didn’t yank, pull, grab or drop Omni’s excellent work on Q3A to this platform,” said Devine. “They are my friends, peers, and fine people. My reason for working on the OS X build in house is that I simply like OS X and I like working in it. I’ll still share the code with Omni so they can help make the OS X build the best. In fact, I’d like to get more of the tools ported across to OS X as soon as possible so levels, and mod compiling can happen on this platform (see above for time crunch).”
The “time crunch” Devine refers to is related to RoQ, a command line-based image compression program Devine recently posted to the tools directory on Id Software’s FTP server. It takes images of various formats and sounds, and compresses them into a video stream. Devine would like to see the software converted to a QuickTime codec for use as an export option in video editing applications like Adobe Premiere.
A beta version of the Quake 3 Arena 1.27 update for “classic” Mac OS and a Mac demo of Quake 3 Team Arena are available for download from various mirror Web and FTP sites — visit Macgamefiles.com for details.