[ioquake3] Dissertation Support

[James Munro]

Sebastien,

It is likely that I will need to take a look at the inner workings of the VM
when the time comes for a closer analysis. I'm hoping to find a natural
evolution of architecture between the Quake series and the introduction of
the cross-platform virtual machine in QIII is certainly worth a look.

Regards,

James Munro

BSc (Hons) Games Computing
University of Lincoln
Level 3

On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 1:55 PM, Sebastien BERIDOT
<sberidot at libertysurf.fr>wrote:

> James,
>
> Do you have in mind to talk about "vm" code? (In fact, this is a part, I
> don't really undertand, so I would be much interested in that).
> Ciao
>
> James Munro a écrit :
>
>> Sebastien,
>>
>> Thanks for your speedy response. At this early stage I only have a couple
>> of brief ideas, as I do not expect to reach the implementation stage of my
>> dissertation until after Christmas (January at the earliest).
>>
>> My first idea involves creating some form of server-side scripting
>> functionality, with a view to creating quick 'n' dirty modifcations. I was
>> hoping to use a suitable mature scripting langauge such as Lua, to create
>> some useful engine bindings and hookable events so that people can create
>> new game functionality without having to trawl through the engine's source
>> code. I don't intended to implement advanced scriptable logic, just some
>> useful functionality such as events that are called on entity respawns,
>> player deaths and things like this. This would provide me some some valuable
>> experience in understanding the underlying functionality of parts of the
>> engine, a long with binding this to a scripting language.
>>
>> My second idea involves taking a closer look at the PAK filesystem
>> currently used by the Quake engine, with a view to improving it somehow.
>> This might involve using a different compression algorithm to help reduce
>> the overall file-size (though there is a trade-off here between file-size
>> and loading times) or perhaps implementing a transparent encryption layer to
>> enable mod developers to protect their game assets.
>>
>> Please remember that these ideas are only at a basic stage as I've not
>> considered technical implementations and other such problems :)
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> James Munro
>>
>> BSc (Hons) Games Computing
>> University of Lincoln
>> Level 3
>>
>> On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 1:30 PM, Sebastien BERIDOT <
>> sberidot at libertysurf.fr <mailto:sberidot at libertysurf.fr>> wrote:
>>
>>    Hey James,
>>
>>    If you do that, i would be happy to read it.
>>    Thanks
>>    Sebastien
>>
>>    James Munro a écrit :
>>
>>        Hey guys (and girls!),
>>
>>        I'm in my final year of university and for my dissertation I'm
>>        working on an architectural analysis of open-source game
>>        engines, from a software engineering point of view. I will be
>>        looking at various engines, namely the Quake-series (I, II,
>>        III) and also a handful of noteable forks (ioquake3!).
>>
>>        For an implementation part of my dissertation (I couldn't
>>        resist getting hands-on and programming something) I would
>>        like to design and produce an improvement/enhancement to one
>>        of the studied game engines, and at this point I'm certainly
>>        considering ioquake3 as my target.
>>
>>        My question to you guys, is would it be okay to throw a couple
>>        of ideas in your direction to check them for validity and
>>        receive some valuable feedback that may help me on my way. In
>>        the spirit of OSS, I am more than happy to work in
>>        collaboration on such a task and it would be great to document
>>        the process as part of my dissertation report.
>>
>>        I realise that ioquake3 is generally aimed and creating a
>>        bug-free and stable platform for mods to base their
>>        development upon, and it may be that I work on a feature that
>>        looks at introducing a new feature that may conflict with this
>>        direction. In this case, I will simply provide my work as an
>>        optional patch that people may wish to use in their
>>        envdevours. At the end of the day, the emphasis is really on
>>        the process of creating this artefact, lessons learned and
>>        that sort of thing, rather than the specific functionality of
>>        the implementation :)
>>
>>        Thanks for your cooperation,
>>
>>        James Munro
>>
>>        BSc (Hons) Games Computing
>>        University of Lincoln
>>        Level 3
>>
>>  ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
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