The Death of QuakeC
The old .plan got written over. So here it is again.
During the making and post-release of The Wastes, lots of problems arrived.
Some were extremely frustrating.
One of my older .plan entries talks about how my working prediction code
suddenly broke with a new release of FTE QuakeWorld, the engine we're using.
This caused lots of confusion, frustration and critical-thinking.
Back then it didn't seem viable to dump the QuakeC VM due to undefined
behaviour. Since then the game has been released and I've had more time
to work on things on-the-side while patching the game up and working
towards 1.1 and 1.2.
Basically, there are too many points of failure with QuakeC.
Now, if you're a Quake modder who, just does basic modifications using
the stock Quake 1.06 progs code, or never makes a project with a big scope
to begin with, then it probably won't matter much.
Keep in mind that The Wastes is a commercial title and we want to deliver the
best quality ans stability that we can. We're not here to try and show off
how advanced QuakeC is nowadays, I could care less what people think about it.
So, to get the game running better and to fix 32-bit NIX binaries, I am
dumping QuakeC in favor of native modules. I've been working with Spike in
realizing that and we already have a working menu module after less than 2 days of work. It's got buttons and things.
This API also provided Spike with a clean-slate in terms of interfacing with
the game-logic. It's very nice being able to work without 18 years of bloat
that was added by the community in brute-force.
If you ever hated how messy QuakeC extensions are, then you'll love what we
are doing.
Anyway, that's all about it for now. Will share more once we get to entities
and all that other fancy stuff.
--Marco