Wirehead Studios

Generations has been reliant on the Quake 3 executable for .99f and prior, and the internal test build has been using a custom version of the Quake 3 1.32b source code.  This was adequate but not optimal.  Other source ports such as IOQuake3 have greatly enhanced Quake 3's functionality on modern machines, and it was known that eventually Wirehead would want to take advantage of this.

This day has arrived.

Wirehead is adapting the IOQuake3 engine to support Generations going forward.  This transition will definitely require a bit of tweaking as there are many changes that have affected certain features Gen needs, such as the particle system and grey scale special effects for Doom and Earth's invulnerability.  Once these bugs are squashed it should be much easier to adapt Generations for use on Linux and MacOS as well since IOQuake3 has a pretty straight-forward compile process for these OS's.  This will also allow Generations to fully support 64-bit OS's and have much greater stability going forward.

Well, it's always nice to know that the mod is slowly and steadily getting better.
I personaly like IOQuake 3. It is kinda my number one choice for launching Quake 3 for quite some time now, so I'm confident you've made a right choice to switch to he IOQuake 3 engine.

Thanks.  There's some growing pains with adapting some of our effects to the OpenGL2 renderer, but I'm certain they can be resolved.

This is very exciting news!
I'm especially to see what sort of bells and whistles come along with the OpenGL2 renderer.
I assume this also helps to make modern resolutions and aspect ratios more easily configured?

I'll have to take a deeper look under the hood, but any mode settings supported by IOQuake3 should be available from within Gen once the menus have entries for them.  It's definitely more stable in windows 10 than the old 1.32b source code, and will be a lot easier to compile for Linux and MacOS as well.

Hopefully Gen will still be compatible with all the awesome custom maps made for Quake 3 :slippy_thumb: I might not be posting often, but I periodically pop in and check on how Gen is progressing. It's tempting for me to ask and nag about it, but then I think about all the pet projects I've not finished (some of which are Q3A maps) and don't want to come off as a hypocrite when I try to contain my anticipation.

As long as the maps are compatible with Q3A they will be compatible with Gen. :doom_thumb:

Interesting news. I remember using IOQuake3 1.36 back in 2010 or so when I heard of it first time, though I only used it for a short period of time before I went back to the original Quake 3 executables (versions 1.11 and 1.32 worked the best for me) because I kinda preferred them more due to nostalgic reasons. I know that there are various projects that use IOQuake3 engine as base, such as OpenArena, Q3Rally and World of Padman.

Anyway, it looks like nowadays IOQuake3 has switched to Test Builds (the latest Windows build is from April 2021) and the original 1.36 installer is no longer available to download (don't worry, I still have those archived, yes even the Catch the Chicken one). I guess I should use IOQuake3 again, been quite nostalgic recently to revisit Quake 3 Arena, Team Arena and various maps/mods. So this might be an excuse to do it, though the original executables (at least 1.11 and 1.32, not the ones like 1.27 and 1.30) seem to work fine even on newer OSes such as Windows 10.

Good luck with adapting the IOQuake3 engine for Generations Arena. I'm guessing the IOQuake3 version being used as base is the latest one from the source code, right? Either way, I'm looking forward to the results in the future. :slippy_thumb:

I'm not surprised but I don't mind, whatever makes the game the best it can be :doom_thumb:

Here's what I was thinking... Bethesda has already released 2 remasters of Quake (1 and 2). And what if Nightdive Studio will release a remaster for Quake 3? Just then in that case we could contact them to adapt Generations Arena on the KEX Engine, so that it would be easier to work with the mod.

I don't think it's terribly likely that Nightdive does a port of Quake 3 for modern platforms, given that their work has largely been focused on obscure single-player titles; Quake and Quake 2 are the only real exceptions to that, and even those ports are most likely to have a single- rather than multi-player legacy in the long term.

Also, working as directly with Bethesda as that would immediately open up questions of legality that, especially with how things in the games industry work these days, would most likely result in a quick "no" at best, and a "you need to end your project right the frick now" at worst.

The better scenario, should KEX compatibility ever actually become a concern, would be for someone on their end to approach Wirehead about making sure the mod works with such a version, much like they did with various MegaWAD's for the Unity port of Doom. And while I won't presume to speak for Phoenix, being the only workhorse (work...bird?) of the project at this point, I doubt such a thing would push forward without some amount of actual compensation... and even then, I have my doubts.

I also want to add that I'm exploring the Quake3e engine as well as IOQuake3 at present due to someone introducing me to it and I'm actually kind of impressed with how freaking FAST Quake3e loads everything.  So... I might port to both engines because why not?

Regarding Nightdive and a possible Quake 3 KEX port, that's something completely in Id/thesda's court, and based on what discussions I've had with some people on the Nightdive team there's no publicly available information as to whether or not that would happen.  If it does I'm certainly not averse to cooperating with anyone in an official capacity for Generations to be compatible with a KEX port.  As it is, 99% of the logic for Gen resides within the .qvm logic, with only a few special considerations requiring direct modifications within the engine so having Nightdive port Gen from the current modified Q3A engine to a KEX build should not be difficult in theory.

We'll just have to wait see what happens down the line.  :doom_thumb:

Wow, you even had a Nightdive connection?! That's awesome.

But I still feel that there will be a port of Quake 3, for a few reasons: First, it's an online game, and the publisher loves online games, so they'll want to remaster it. Secondly, they will leave both the original parts in one launcher game (Quake 3 arena, Team arena), and they can put there little needed Quake Live.

And then, the publisher will be calmer when fans will get a working remaster working on modern machines without dancing with tambourines.

But what I have doubts about the remaster (and from that it will be sad for me) is not getting a remaster of Quake 4, which I wanted with all my heart, but.... reality is cruel.