John Carmack’s 3/18 .plan

I have gotten a significant amount of response on the
Quake 2 extension mechanism. I do read everything that comes
my way (I can’t respond to all of it, though), and I have
learned a few things from the mail.

Nothing is set in stone yet, but it is still looking
like a dll is going to be the primary interface. I have been
seriously considering a java interface, but the tradeoffs
(time spent implementing takes away from something else…)
just don’t quite add up. Other options, like enhancing qc or
using other languages like perl have very remote chances.

One of the primary reasons is that you can allways
build UP — put more functionality on top of a dll, but you
can’t allways build DOWN — accessing the registry from java
for instance.

For Id Software to develop a game, a dll will be most
efficient. We have more cpu power, and we can debug it more
easily. We are directing significant effort towards making
Quake 2 a better GAME, as well as just a better mutliplayer
virtual world. Quake 1 was pretty messed up from a game
standpoint, and we don’t plan on doing that again.

What I can offer the qc hacking crowd is a public
release of the qc interface and interpreter code from Quake 1
when Quake 2 is released. The user community can then bolt
things together so that there can be one publicly trusted DLL
that executes an updated and modified qc language for
portable, secure add ons.

I really do care about portability, but it is just one
factor that needs to be balanced against all the others.
Things just aren’t clear cut.

Speaking of portability, to remove the guesswork that
goes on, here are my current opinions on the various
platforms:

Win32

Win32 rules the world. You are sticking your head in the sand
if you think otherwise. The upside is that windows really
doesn’t suck nowdays. Win 95 / NT 4.0 are pretty decent
systems for what they are targeted at. I currently develop
mostly on NT, and Quake 2 will almost certainly be delivered
on win32 first. Our games should run as well as possible in
NT, we won’t require any ’95 only features.

DOS

We are not going to do another dos game. No amount of flaming
hate mail is going to change my mind on this (PLEASE don’t!).
The advantages of good TCP/IP support, dynamic linking,
powerfull virtual memory, device drivers, etc, are just too
much to overcome. Yes, all of those can be provided under dos
in various ways, but it just isn’t worth it.

Linux

I consider linux the second most important platform after
win32 for id. From a biz standpoint it would be ludicrous to place it
even on par with mac or os/2, but for our types of games that
are designed to be hacked, linux has a big plus: the highest
hacker to user ratio of any os. I don’t personally develop on
linux, because I do my unixy things with NEXTSTEP, but I have
a lot of technical respect for it.

MacOS

From a money making standpoint, the only OS other than
win32 that matters, and it doesn’t matter all that much. We
have professional ports done to MacOS instead of unsupported
hack ports, which is a mixed blessing. They come out a lot
later (still waiting for quake…), but are more full
featured. I have zero respect for the MacOS on a technical
basis. They just stood still and let microsoft run right over
them from waaay behind. I wouldn’t develop on it.

OS/2

A native OS/2 port of any of our products is unlikely. We
just don’t care enough, and we are unwilling to take time
away from anything else.

SGI

I don’t particularly care for IRIX as a development
environment (compared to NT or NEXTSTEP), but SGI has the
coolest hardware to run GL apps on. Safe to assume future
IRIX ports, but its not exactly a top priority.

AIX / OSF / HPUX / SOLARIS

I wouldn’t start a port to any of these, but if a trusted
party (Zoid) wanted to do them, I probably wouldn’t object.

BeOS

I bought a BeBox because I am a solid believer in SMP, and I
like clean, from-scratch systems. I was left fairly non
plussed by it. Yes, it is lean and mean and does a couple
things better than any other OS I have seen, but I just don’t
see any dramatic advantages to it over, say, NEXTSTEP. Lion
(the company doing the mac quake port) has a BeOS port of
quake sort of working, and have my full support in releasing
it, but it will be strictly an act of charity on their part,
so don’t expect too much.

Plan9

I spent a few months running Plan9. It has an achingly
elegent internal structure, but a user interface that has
been asleep for the past decade. I had an older version of
quake dedicated server running on it (don’t ask me for it —
I lost it somewhere) and I was writing a civilized window
manager for it in my spare time, but my spare time turned out
to be only a couple hours a month, and it just got
prioritized out of existance.

NeXTStep

My favorite environment. NT and linux both have advantages
in some areas, but if they were on equal footing I would
choose NEXTSTEP hands down. It has all the power of unix
(there are lots of things I miss in NT), the best UI (IMHO,
of cource), and it just makes sense on so many more levels
than windows. Yes, you can make windows do anything you want
to if you have enough time to beat on it, but you can come
out of it feeling like you just walked through a sewer.

In the real world, things aren’t on equal footing, and
I do most of my work on NT now. I hold out hope that it may
not stay that way. If apple Does The Right Thing with
rhapsody, I will be behind them as much as I can. NEXTSTEP
needs a couple things to support games properly (video mode
changing and low level sound access). If apple/next will
provide them, I will personally port our current win32
products over.

If I can convince apple to do a good hardware
accelerated OpenGL in rhapsody, I would be very likely to
give my win NT machine the cold shoulder and do future
development on rhapsody. (I really don’t need Quickdraw3D
evangelists preaching to me right now, thank you)