Aghast!

Porting classic Quake levels to Quake2World has sort of been my bag lately. A while back, Vondur released most of his level sources under the GPL. And so this week I ported his dank, swampy level Aghast to Quake2World. Kudos to Vondur for releasing his maps, and a big thank you to the Quake Revitalization Project, who have provided high quality textures for all of our classic Quake level ports.

Modernizing the Quake2 renderer

The Quake2World engine draws a fair amount of attention on account of its performance when compared to other Quake- and Quake2-derived engines. On certain hardware, it does benchmark as much as 400% faster than the 3.21 engine source. And so I figured I'd take a moment to talk about some of my optimizations.

Recent screens

A few screenshots showing off per-pixel dynamic lighting, weather effects, coronas, torches, and sunlight. The levels are, from left to right, a private test-only version of q2dm1, Cardo's Torn Glory, and the legendary classic Quake levels dm2, dm4, and dm6, respectively.

The Pro Renderer and GLSL

The Pro Renderer plugin (r_rendermode pro) is the first alternative renderer to be implemented for Quake2World. Its goal is to provide high visibility and increased performance for competitive play. Recently, the Pro Renderer was refactored to leverage GLSL. The result is an extremely colorful gaming experience complete with per-pixel dynamic lighting -- all at a very playable framerate.

Aggressor

Aggressor is described by its creator Tyrann as "Brutal vertical action is the order of the day here. A medium sized base map that plays well with anywhere from 2-8 players, the more the bloodier. This is still my favourite." We agree. This level was first ported to Nexuiz, then Open Arena, and now Quake2World.

What's New?

Jay's periodic mailing list updates haven't gone out in a couple months, so I thought I'd quickly mention a few things that have been recently implemented in Quake2World..

Quick comparison of Frames Per Second.

Today, I've decided to do a quick comparison as to the difference in frames per second between Quake2World, R1Q2 with R1GL, and Alien Arena. This is not perfect or in-depth by any means, and does not represent the overall frames per second of each game. It was tested on the top edge of q2dm1, looking down at the tip of the lower age.

Why Quake2World?

Today I presented a friend with Quake2World, he promptly responded with a question. He asked me "Why should I play Quake2World?"

That is a very loaded while valid question. This is my public response to that individual and others who may be asking the same question. It is not in-depth, just a summary of my personal feelings about the current state of some attributes of Quake2World, hopefully a justification as to "Why Quake2World?"

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