[quake3] Greetings

[JP LeBreton]

I'm coming to this discussion from yet another perspective, that of an 
indie developer looking for a good engine to build a new game from. 
Q3 is a good solid engine I have prior experience with, I don't really 
need current graphics tech (normal maps, etc) to get the art style I'm 
after, and my game isn't wildly dissimilar from existing FPS games 
that use the tech.  So ioq3 was the best option I arrived at comparing 
it with other projects like Ogre3D where I'd have had to do more 
systems building - I'm a designer first and a programmer second, so 
coding up a collision or network system is out of the question.

It sounds like one subtext of this discussion has been "how 
progressive should ioq3 be in adding new features?"  If I'm reading 
the "NOTTODO" list correctly, Zakk et al are not interested in making 
ioq3 an all-singing/dancing thing you can easily make any sort of game 
with.  Personally I think there's great value in having a stable, 
conservative base that just cares about stability and faithfulness 
(historical preservation, in a sense) to a single, well-liked game 
like Q3A, especially one that has a lot of user content and mods.

On the other hand, I'm pretty interested in the idea of a more 
progressive branch of ioq3 that's targeted at devs who want to make a 
new game.  Call it, say, the "Open3 Engine".  The content paks it 
requires would be very small (<10MB) and very vanilla, sort of like 
the Unreal Runtime if you remember that, but with a proper free 
license.  Remove all the Q3A-specific gameplay code, leave in some 
samples for common gameplay features, like "generic projectile 
weapon", a humanoid avatar, etc.  Merge in engine-level changes from 
ioq3 regularly.

Additions to this sort of project would be judged on the basis of what 
new power they give devs using it.  I merged the Tremulous particle 
and trail system into my ioq3 project (sorry, no patch for ioq3 yet) 
because it made doing good visual FX much easier... things like that.

I'm more than happy to put my money where my mouth is and start up a 
new project for Open3 Engine, but I promised myself I'd finish my game 
( http://vectorpoem.com/purity ) first.  If it's intended as a base 
for future developers, it's worth doing right, with as many smart 
interested people involved as possible, and thinking through the 
design so it's as extensible as possible - again, these are things 
ioq3 needn't bother with, it's good at what it does already.

If nothing else, this would have great value to people faced with what 
I just finished doing - removing all the Q3A pk3 content to make 
Purity standalone and 100% freely distributable.

Hope this wasn't too much of a tangent, but it's been on my mind 
lately and thought it was worth throwing out there.  Anyone else 
interested in this idea of a vanilla engine?

-JP