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[kroenem]

Hey guys, I was wondering about the possibility of being able to add split screen to Carcharius' Quake 3 port? Or perhaps using the source to port the Dreamcast version? Or maybe just mixing the Dreamcast's port with Carcharius' one? I think split screen Quake 3 would be awsome on the xbox controller with a few friends over!

This post has been edited by kroenem: Jan 24 2008, 10:51 AM

[Clockface]

QUOTE(kroenem @ Jan 24 2008, 11:50 AM)

Hey guys, I was wondering about the possibility of being able to add split screen to Carcharius' Quake 3 port? Or perhaps using the source to port the Dreamcast version? Or maybe just mixing the Dreamcast's port with Carcharius' one? I think split screen Quake 3 would be awsome on the xbox controller with a few friends over!

I really doubt that a split screen version of Carcharius' port would be practical, as even with just one human player (as it is now) the port struggles on later maps. Split screen would require even more resources, both speed and memory (it's memory that the XBox really lacks, especially since it has to assign part of it's meagre 64MB of RAM for video memory (unlike a PC, the XBox shares system and video RAM from the same memory pool). Theoretically, the size (and hence the quality) of the textures and other game data could be reduced, which would make the game run better in one player mode (and would maybe free enough resources for two or more players on screen), or (a far more demanding  programming project) the Q3 engine itself could be rewritten to make it more efficient (id aren't exactly known for efficient game engines  (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rolleyes.gif) ), but these aren't trivial tasks, and no-ones done anything so far in the two years or so that the XBox port of Q3 has been available.

I don't know anything about the Dreamcast version of Q3, but I don't think it would be open source? I don't remember id ever writing directly for the Dreamcast, I thought that their console ports were programmed by third party programmers, at least until this console generation? If there's no source code available, then it can't be ported. And I'd imagine that the data files between the DC and the XBox (and PC) versions would be incompatible.

On the other hand, I could be wrong, so hopefully someone will post here to correct me. Maybe a split screen version of Q3 will appear on the XBox (I'll never know why id didn't just release Quake 1, 2 and 3 on the XBox in one package, they'd have sold millions, especially if they'd have released it near the XBox's release), or at least a version without the present slowdown.