To the airport...

Just FYI for anyone who is interested in the N900 ioquake3 work (there seems to be some interest lately.) I'm taking a short vacation where I'll be completely offline for about 6 days. See you when I'm back.

Quake 3 qgl API

I'm sure having the qgl API made sense at some point in time (GL 1.x) however now it's just a pain for doing any kind of porting. The qgl API is a set of function pointers which are initialized by the renderer to point to the real gl API functions (or logging wrappers.) e.g. glClear() becomes qglClear()

I think the original reason for this was logging GL calls (a valid reason, at the time) and handling extensions. IMHO logging could be implemented easier using a GL tracing library (there are a few; Google) and GREMEDY_string_marker for renderer specific messages (begin of function foobar(), etc.)

Actually this is what Robert is doing for XreaL-ET branch, however it's not on the mainline branch yet. I think I'll cherry pick these changes over before doing more work on GLES2 for XreaL. Otherwise the qgl API is going to turn GLES2 support into a massive ifdef mess...

I am quite interested to see what kind of performance SGX can get out of a real VBO optimized renderer.

N900 Quake 3 isn't dead yet...

It's been a while since I've had some free time to hack around with Quake 3 on the N900, and strictly speaking that is still the case, but I've started to look into some issues now. Lightmap support, fixing up the input, and adding support for SixAxis/Dual Shock 3 controllers. :)

Okay, at this point I just have the hardware and basic input working on the device thanks entirely to Tomasz Sterna (and others) work.

I hope tomorrow to get some tangible code added to ioquake3 N900 branch as well as testing out the possible lightmapping fixes and refining touchscreen based input for those who don't have PS3 controllers; I only brought mine today. Btw, does anyone else consider it a bit cheap of Sony not to include a USB to Mini-B cable with the controller, or does the PS3 console come with more than one cable?

Yes, I know it's been a long time, and yes the TS input is currently slightly broken. But well, you know the deal with free-time (or rather the lack thereof) projects...

Maemo 5/ioquake3 with native QVM's...

A number of people have asked me questions along the lines of "can I play my favorite Quake 3 mod with your package on Maemo?" The answer used to be that you could not, due to changes in the Client Game (cgame) module. I've now fixes these issues (mostly absolute vs. relative touchscreen events) so that an unmodified cgame will work correctly.

The short answer: yes, your favorite mod should now work.

I have done absolutely no testing other than checking that the vanilla, unmodified QVM's shipped on the Quake 3 CD work as expected. So your millage may vary.

There are still a couple of issues with UI interaction, but since this is a highly requested feature, and I have a flight to catch in some hours, I'm pushing ioquake3 (1558-maemo6) to extras-devel now.

Also, there are two cvar's you might like to tweak: sensitivity and accel_sensitivity.

Pro-tip: the key combination "Fn (Blue Arrow) + =" is Escape, and "Fn + Sym" is console up/down. Yes, eventually I will write some better release notes. :-)

ioquake3 on the N900

Apparently my little after work project was cool enough to make the news page over at ioquake3.org. :-) I just thought I'd mention here that you can read some more about it in my earlier (first actually) blog post, and there are more pictures over here.

Thanks again to id Software and ioquake3 for a great code base! And to the people at Nokia and Maemo Summit for support and encouragement.

Btw, if you do own an N900 and have played with the ioquake3 port, please leave your comments and suggestions for improvements in case I feel the urge for another weekend hacking session. (I am aware there have been problems installing the package in the past, but they should now be fixed.)

Avatar 3D worth it...

I just got back from watching Avatar in the cinema this time, in much higher quality and in anaglyph 3D; actually I started out at the wrong cinema, Finnkino in Kaisaniemi; luckily the one in Kamppi is only a few minutes walk away.

I've mentioned before that usually these anaglyph 3D effects don't work very well for me due to varying degrees of myopia in both of my eyes, but I thought the movie was visually cool enough to give it a try with contact lenses instead of my normal glasses. I think this helped the effect significantly, but I still get the feeling that my brain starts to adjust to the effect over time so it's most impressive at the start of the movie.

This peaked my interest in ioquake3's anaglyph rendering mode, but unfortunately they ask for the glasses back after the movie, so no chance of trying it out (at least until I order a pair of my own.)

Anaglyph 3D on the N900 might be quite interesting, but of course I would either need to make much more efficient use of vertex buffer objects to make up for halving the FPS, or do a port of XreaL...

I think the later option is better for several reasons, but we'll see; Python, SCons and Scratchbox is a whole bundle of pain that I really don't want to be getting into at 02:00 in the morning.

New city, new job, new blog...

I decided to start blogging again, now that I've somewhat settled down in Helsinki, and hopefully I'll be able to keep some regularity in the postings this time. Picture is from Snellmaninkatu, near my apartment at about 14:00 yesterday.

It's been an interesting year; moving to Finland, working for Nokia, speaking at this years X Developers Conference and Maemo Summit.

Maemo Summit was arguably the most interesting since I was giving a demo of an early version of Quake 3 running on the N900 (also another video.) The whole thing started from a weekend project after chatting to Phil Carmody, who wrote the touchscreen and accelerometer kernel drivers. Actually it ended up turning into a several weekend project, but I digress; funny what happens when engineers get bored after work...

Currently I'm working on fixing two XreaL bugs with projected lights; I did a quick patch for the first issue but the second one is being more troublesome; Robert will probably get that before I do, and when it's 05:30 in the morning, maybe it's time to call it quits for the day.

Although, tomorrow might see the N900 getting more of a workout than Quake 3...