Quake 4 supports HT, DC, MP on PC, yeah, now bring this game to the Mac! Options

[dj phat 2000]

http://www.idsoftware.com/documents/readme_update_1050.txt

http://www.idsoftware.com/

This game was just updated with a BETA 1.0.5 patch to enable support and increased performance with intel's HT and Dual core(MP) PC's. Most likely the first game since quake 3 to do so.

Seems to me that id knows what they are doing for the most part on making a game run with SMP. They seem to be the only ones other then the folks that make Unreal.

When I hear things like "we can't get more performance out of dual processors cause it is too hard to code for" I look at Quake 3 and now Quake 4 as a big sign of BS to that statement. So, I don't think by any means. It would be too much to ask that not only does Quake 4 get ported to the Mac, since we have dual core and have had MP systems for YEARS now. Which we would then only need a good video card of like a 9800 or better ATi card and even though a 5200 Nvidia could play it. A 6600 or better would do nice enough.

I'm bitching again I know, but someone has to do it.

[dj phat 2000]

darn it. Could someone be so kind as to edit the topic description to read

Now, bring this game to the Mac!

Sorry and thanks!

[the Battle Cat]

That'll be 5 space credits please.

[dj phat 2000]

thank you kind sir

[yves]

i actually joked about this and now it seems my ridiculous predictions might become a reality afterall. cheers to ID!
I hope the "fps surprise" glenda adams mentioned has to do with this.

[bobbob]

Where's the Doom 3 expansion? It's almost the best part of the game. The gravity gun is about as close as we're going to get to HL2, as well.

[dj phat 2000]

i actually joked about this and now it seems my ridiculous predictions might become a reality afterall. cheers to ID!
I hope the "fps surprise" glenda adams mentioned has to do with this.

mentioned about quake4? Where? Or do you mean another game?

I'd like to see this added to Doom III for Mac. Would be nice no?!

[Batcat]

I'd like to see this added to Doom III for Mac.  Would be nice no?!

I think you're missing something here. D3 was released on Xbox; AFAIK the game is single-threaded. MP and dual-core CPUs on PC were by far the exception... Apparently the D3 game engine can be multithreaded easily enough if the game is originally developed to be so, and was as Q4 is an Xbox 360 game (remember, 3 dual-core CPUs there, and dual-core PC CPUs are getting far more common).

The numbers don't add up to making economic sense for anyone to go back and rearchitect/rework the original game now, 16 months after release.

[Dr. Geebs]

It's still a doom3 engine game; the assets are different, the netcode is hitbox rather than per pixel,and that's pretty much it. Ironically, all of the reviewers of the 360 version are complaining that it hasn't been properly optimized....

[dj phat 2000]

Also, from the info they provide. It looks like they only worked with intel on this. Kinda gets the whole 3 core PPC out of the way right there. Unless it just doesn't matter. In any case, they could have put up that this will work with AMD X2 and whatever dual core CPU they have, and MP as well. But, if I was reading that literally, it would seem as if they only got this working on HT, and intel dual core CPU's.

In the end I don't thinking it matters that much, MP should mean MP on any CPU. If Doom III was the basis for Quake 4, then why they can't patch Doom III to support MP is beyond me. How long of a window do we get to see improvements in a game? 5 months? How puts these limits on such things? So, what we get a new game, it gets a patch or 2 and that is it. Cya, good luck on any more improvements on this. Get a faster computer jerky if you want it to perform better, as we are not gonna even bother with it anymore.

That is kind of how I feel. A performance update of Doom III would be nice to see, if it can be enhanced for MP systems. A free 20FPS boost would be freaking sweet. The game would play like liquid on my G5 1.8GHz dual box. I could turn on shadows for petes sake, and not get sub 30FPS while doing it.

If they could bring quake 4 over to the Mac, it could be playable on a dual 1.2GHz G4 system. With a 9800 video card of course, but it should be playable at least. Any dual faster then that would be better. And any dual 1.8GHz or faster G5 should rock with it.

[Batcat]

Also, from the info they provide.  It looks like they only worked with intel on this.  Kinda gets the whole 3 core PPC out of the way right there.  Unless it just doesn't matter.  In any case, they could have put up that this will work with AMD X2 and whatever dual core CPU they have, and MP as well.  But, if I was reading that literally, it would seem as if they only got this working on HT, and intel dual core CPU's.

In the end I don't thinking it matters that much, MP should mean MP on any CPU. 

AMDZone sez

Back in the prime of the Quake 3 Arena days id added multi CPU support.  Version 3.17 was the last version that worked, but it did indeed improve on performance as we found with our Athlon MP 1800+ gaming rig.  It was one of the very rare games to support dual CPUs.  Today we learned that id had released a beta patch version 1.05b for Quake 4 that supports dual core and HyperThreading.  They had been working closely with Intel, but we had hoped that this would also benefit AMD CPUs.  id only mentioned dual core, but not specifically AMD CPUs.  Would this be a marketing ploy from Intel that just took Quakecon sponsorship from AMD, or would this help out any dual core CPU?  We have been waiting like so many other gamers for 64 bit or dual core performance enhancements to the latest titles. Was the wait finally over? We got to testing as soon as possible.

[graph]

We spent hours testing this, and another dual core configuration with the X2 3800+, and we were unable to get anything but a drop in performance from enabling SMP.  In fact just going from version 1.04 to 1.05b dropped performance for us as well.  We also had more stability issues than normal, and had trouble installing the patch on some systems.  Is this a case of Intel trying to drop performance for AMD CPUs to make HyperThreading look better, or could it be the patch does not like SLI or these new Nvidia drivers?  From looking at forums around the net the we saw some other AMD users indicate that their performance also dropped, and saw some HyperThreading enablers see performance increase. 

As this patch is in beta this may take some time to sort out.  Again we hope we do not see a performance drop, and we know id has before come through with multi CPU support that worked.  We will continue to test other configurations with the new patch, and look forward to testing the final version.  Stay tuned for additional results soon.

...If Doom III was the basis for Quake 4, then why they can't patch Doom III to support MP is beyond me.  How long of a window do we get to see improvements in a game?  5 months?  How puts these limits on such things? So, what we get a new game, it gets a patch or 2 and that is it.  Cya, good luck on any more improvements on this.  Get a faster computer jerky if you want it to perform better, as we are not gonna even bother with it anymore. 

That is kind of how I feel.  A performance update of Doom III would be nice to see, if it can be enhanced for MP systems.  A free 20FPS boost would be freaking sweet.  The game would play like liquid on my G5 1.8GHz dual box.  I could turn on shadows for petes sake, and not get sub 30FPS while doing it. 

If they could bring quake 4 over to the Mac, it could be playable on a dual 1.2GHz G4 system.  With a 9800 video card of course, but it should be playable at least.  Any dual faster then that would be better.  And any dual 1.8GHz or faster G5 should rock with it.

I think Glenda ran this down in the Macologist Doom 3 interview. It just isn't practical to do; it's not on the patch level, but a fundamental rewrite of the game engine, and the developer man-hours it would take are cost-prohibitive. Doom 3 is not a multithreaded, SMP-aware game.

I'm sure you can find the interview, it should answer your questions. And if Q4 is indeed multithreaded, then yes, it should do well as a port on dual-core PPCs.

[Eric5h5]

Just to be clear on the "If they can multithread Q4 then why can't they multithread D3" issue: well, they're not the same game, are they? Q4 uses D3's graphics engine...but that's about it as far as I know. There's quite a bit more to games than just the graphics engine.

--Eric

[Dr. Geebs]

There's quite a bit more to games than just the graphics engine.

--Eric

When the game's by id, that's debatable

[dj phat 2000]

Which is what I would like to know. How deep do that D3 technology go? Is Quake 4 mostly D3 and if so, is MP support possible, without doing such a rewrite? I mean, this MP patch is really quick to beta don't you think? How can they patch this game so fast from release, and we hear nothing of Doom III? What did they do for Quake 4 to get SMP support, and can they just apply that to the older Doom III source?

[tman]

http://www.idsoftware.com/documents/readme_update_1050.txt

http://www.idsoftware.com/

This game was just updated with a BETA 1.0.5 patch to enable support and increased performance with intel's HT and Dual core(MP) PC's.  Most likely the first game since quake 3 to do so.

Seems to me that id knows what they are doing for the most part on making a game run with SMP.  They seem to be the only ones other then the folks that make Unreal. 

When I hear things like "we can't get more performance out of dual processors cause it is too hard to code for"  I look at Quake 3 and now Quake 4 as a big sign of BS to that statement.  So, I don't think by any means.  It would be too much to ask that not only does Quake 4 get ported to the Mac, since we have dual core and have had MP systems for YEARS now.  Which we would then only need a good video card of like a 9800 or better ATi card and even though a 5200 Nvidia could play it.  A 6600 or better would do nice enough. 

I'm bitching again I know, but someone has to do it. 

Well... Aspyr has just announced Quake IV for the mac. Hubba Hubba! Hey Glenda... weigh in here and let us know if SMP is planned for the port.

[GlendaAdams]

Well... Aspyr has just announced Quake IV for the mac. Hubba Hubba! Hey Glenda... weigh in here and let us know if SMP is planned for the port.

We'll be looking to merge the SMP support from the PC code into the OS X version, although there are still some unknowns - OpenGL on the Mac is a bit more picky about accessing GL contexts from multiple threads, and the coordination of separate thread rendering can get kind of crazy. But having some good working code from the PC to start with is definitely a step in the right direction. We'd love to get some speed boost on dual core/processor macs!

Glenda

[tthiel]

Your going to need a hefty video card to run this on the Mac. As nice as the new iMac is Apple should have given us a better video card for games. I ran the Quake 4 demo on a 3Ghz P4 with 1 GB of ram and a 6800 GS vid card at 1280X1024. Ran OK but not great but then I had everything turned up.

[dj phat 2000]

OMG!!!!!!



OMG!!!!!!

Hey, Glenda THANK YOU!!!!!!

[dj phat 2000]

Your going to need a hefty video card to run this on the Mac.  As nice as the new iMac is Apple should have given us a better video card for games. I ran the Quake 4 demo on a 3Ghz P4 with 1 GB of ram and a 6800 GS vid card at 1280X1024.  Ran OK but not great but then I had everything turned up.

I played it on a 3.2GHz Pentium 4 HT and an X300 128 PCI-e video card (before I got my 7800GT). It actually couldn't go faster then 30 FPS. More like it was locked there. Didn't really go any lower then that. So, a Nvidia 6600 or at least a 9800 ATi card should be good enough at 800x600 or 1024x768. Especially if they can get good performance on a dual CPU.

God it would be SICK on a quad!!!

[yves]

quake 4 announced AND its being optimized for MP ...a dream come true
thank you