Textmode Quake 2

Artemis writes: "Following the Quake 2 source code release under the GPL, here's the follow-up of the famous ttyquake, it's a text mode Quake II called aaquake2 which has just been released. Time for more 3d text mode gaming fun! The site includes screenshots for those of you who haven't seen Quake-turned-Text before."

Hmm...

I wonder how much bandwidth it would take to play this via a telnet interface.

-Senine

Uh, use you "brain"... *smacks chest*

First of all, let's figure out how big a frame is. If you have a matrix, like in a terminal, which consists of rows and columns, there is a powerful technique called "multiplication" that will allow you to calculate how many elements there are in this matrix. So, we compute the width (w) by the height (h) to get a product (p), in the form: w*h=p. Whew! That was tricky, but it gets more complicated! Consider that each character on the terminal (for ASCII, not Unicode) is one byte. That is eight bits. Since bandwidth is measured in bits, this what we're interested in. So, we take our product (p) and do that crazy "multiplication" thing again in: p*8. WOW! But let's not slow down there!! We're almost near the end! The result of p*8 (which is actually (w*h)*8, surprisingly) is only for one frame! So what do we do? Think that maybe the average number of frames we'll get per second is 20. That means, that every second, 20 frames of p*8 bits passes through the wire. You know what that means, MORE multiplication! p*8*20, crazy, isn't it? It comes down to (w*h)*160 bits per second. So now, all YOU gotta do is figure out how big your terminal is, and that's now many bits/second it costs! Isn't math fun? (DISCLAIMER: this does not take into account compression, or encoding scemes used to reduce the number of characters sent/received.)

Forget first post

Someone evidently feels the need to be right at the top of every list of downloads

aaquake indeed

Forget it.

This is such bullshit, I've seen this kind of hoax before. All they do is have a bunch of guys sitting at their computer and as each move request come in, they just type out the screen on their keyboard and send it back to your viewer. When they get tired, it's called "lag."

Wake up slashdot and check out your stories before you post them!

cool

this is great, but we all know what the true ascii enthusiast needs: a text-mode version of x-windows

Allright!

Now I can really test the pixel output of my brand-new geForceRS232vt220turbo!!!

Imagine a beowulf clus... ah nevermind.

Screen shots...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but dont those screen shots look just like Quake 1????

It could work

Well, with sufficiently small characters, it should look fine. In fact, as you approach a 1-pixel font it should look quite nice. Add color and you're there. Oh, wait...

Re:It could work

"In fact, as you approach a 1-pixel font it should look quite nice. Add color and you're there."

Approximate with just a constant brown font. This is Quake after all, no one'll know.

Oh man.. I love the sickness!!

I remember playing ttyquake for the first time.. played for an hour and couldn't make it past the first level.. got lost so many times.. after playing for the hour I felt sick to my stomach for days but the pain was worth it..

LIVE ON TEXTMODE QUAKE!! LIVE ON!!!!!!

This is fast becomming one of my favourite things to rant about.. textmode gaming!!

The future is here. ;-)

In case you couldn't use the link above

The link above seems to be slashdotted, try this one [mr.net].

Example for mandatory open sourcing

This gives us an interesting example of what Lawrence Lessig suggested earlier: mandatory source code release after a set period of time for software, which follows a reasonably short period of exclusivity.

This guys speech, as weird and freaky as it is ;), would have not have come to light if Quake II had not been open-sourced after it ceased to become cutting-edge technology. By releasing the code after a reasonable period of time Carmack has given us a golden lesson in copyright. By putting the source in more hands we get more speech and interesting ideas put into the public domain, this is the kinda of thing closed source and excessively long copyright terms deny, e.g. Looking forward to David Fincher's Catcher in The Rye? Keep waiting, that book will still be in copyright over 70 years from now, and he will be long dead.

-Shieldwolf

PS - of course I know the software is still under copyright, e.g. GPL via Id Software, I merely mean that it is gives you an IDEA of how this could work.

Criminalizing secrets

MANDATORY source code release? You want to make it a crime to keep your own information secret for as long as you choose, if that information happens to be source code? Why stop there? Here's a few other things we can make subject to mandatory release after a set period of time:

1. Your PIN
2. Your PGP key and passphrase
3. Your diary
4. Any recorded discussions between you and your attorney.
5. Your complete medical history.

The government is obtrusive enough as it is. I don't want the government to be able to force anyone to release information that they don't want to, just because some arbitrarily chosen timer has run out.

Re:Criminalizing secrets

From the way I understand it from Lessig,

The difference is whether you want copyright protection for said program or not. If you want it copyrighted, then hand the source code over to the copyright office, and after x years, they release it upon request, after you have had your chance to make your $$$.

If you don't ever want your source code out there, you don't have to file for a copyright. But, then people could copy/hack the binaries all they wanted.

Interesting tradeoff!

I agree somewhat, but this is apples and oranges

The government is obtrusive enough as it is. I don't want the government to be able to force anyone to release information that they don't want to, just because some arbitrarily chosen timer has run out.

I agree, but this isn't the same thing. It's not really different from, say, copyrights expiring after a reasonable period of time (read: a few years, 7 max for software, just like when copyright law was originally enacted). The limit on software should probably be 3-4 years due to the extremely short lifespan.

In fact, it could be made a part of software copyright law that for a copyright to be granted on a piece of software, it as well as the source must be released into the public domain after the 4-year copyright period.

This is a far stretch from requiring private, personal information from individuals. It's just the original spirit of the copyright law returned. But don't expect to see something so sane get passed, large corporations are making too much off the laws as they are, and pushing for even worse ones like the DMCA and SSSCA.

(Personally I think corporations should be required to disclose all information publically at all times, except for "trade secret" information, which can stay secret for at most a year or two. Patents should not be applicable against individuals or non-commercial entities, only against commercial corporations. Copyrights should also be reduced to 7 years again. But then I might as well wish for world peace or something. :-P)

[OT] Textmode Quake 2

from the we-will-be-getting-duplicate-submissions-of-this-f or-weeks dept.

and given your recent track record i guess you'll post it a couple more times as well &nbsp ;-)

All right! Now I've got a use for...

...that old DecWriter II in the garage, which my wife keeps suggesting we toss. I *knew* text mode gaming wasn't dead!

This is the most perverse, bizarre, absolutely *useless* thing I've seen in a long time. Damn, I wish I'd thought of it first... ;)

A Horrible Rift

...just appeared in the universe. When ttyquake was released, God cried at the absolute wrongness of it. But after this, he has torn the universe asunder. The only way to clense his creation of the horrible mistake is to purge all life from the Galaxy. Yea, even as it happened in the day of Moses, a great flood is being brought down upon us.

In related news, astrophysicists everywhere stood in amazement as the expanding universe slowed, stopped, and began to collapse back on itself.

Also of note, astronomers in the Northern Hemisphere were baffled by the apperance of a new constilation. The collection of never-before-seen stars actually spelled out a phrase. "1 0wn3d j00" could clearly be read in Hebrew.

So Paint The ASCII Green And ...

Taa-daa! Instant Matrix in a box!

Keanu: "What are you trying to tell me? That I can dodge rockets?"

Bad Mutha Lawrence Fishburne the III:"No, Keanu. I'm trying to tell you that, when you're ready ... you won't have to."

Keanu: (pauses) "Dude, you just don't want me camping on the railgun, do you?"

Bad Mutha Lawrence Fishburne the III: "Damn, you've figured me out! Now eat my boomstick!"

BANG!

limit as neat factor approaches zero

seriously, the neat factor degrades in about the time it takes to render one frame as text...oh wait, i meant that to be a short period of time...

No color?

Why doesn't this game have color capabilities?

While I think this is pretty neat (porting a 3D game to text), the screenshot makes it apparent to me that playing the game in black and white would suck. It's hard to distinguish the stairs to the right of you, you can hardly make out the gun, and the crosshairs aren't even visible. What good is a first person game without visible crosshairs?

Bravo for porting Q2, but could we please get some color?

ahhhhhhh!

Ridiculocity Factor......RISING...RISING!!!!! Must play quickly!

Just how fast is it?

I'm curious about this. Obviously there's a fair amount of CPU crunching going on to render the screens and a certain amount of character refreshing, but just how much?

Could you play this on a Pentium 100, for instance? How about over a telnet or ssh session?
What would be the bps limitations?

I just have visions of labs of vt100s connected for a quick frag between class...

I beat them to it.

I had Quake2 in textmode long before this. I hacked the aaquake svgalib-emulator module so that it supported multiple video pages.

I'm updating my homepage right now with some screenshots, see it at my homepage [nanosoft.ca].

Next logical step...

Excellent! Does this now mean that Quake 2 can be used as a BBS door game [slashdot.org]? Where's my list of phone numbers... is Telenet still around? It's 7,E,1, right?

This has been done with Quake2:

Relnev's Quake2 already had SDL support, so if you ran it as:

export SDL_VIDEODRIVER=aalib
./quake2

You would get the same results. And, when you get quickly bored of it, the same binary can do the regular graphics, too.

(SDL just uses AAlib as one of the drivers, so effectively, you get the same end result with either project, but this is more unified, and unified is good.)

Relnev's project page [icculus.org] and cvs-over-the-web [icculus.org].

--ryan.

Text Mode Porn is Next

And my wife won't know what I'm looking at.

Blind FPS Interface

Although I think this is cute but useless, it brings up an interesting question.

What are the possibilities for a useable interface for the blind to first person real time games on the net?

Maybe a big brail grid (3x3) with something like this being rendered? Coming up with character standards for color/depth?

are you sure...

this isn't how they ported Quake over to the GameBoy Advanced?

Worthy?

Did this really need to be posted to slashdot?

-This isn't flamebait, I just don't understand why this is a "good" story.

I can now _REALLY_ enjoy...

... playing Quake2 on my brand new Geforce3, in text mode. This is exactly what I have been waiting for all this while....

That's it! I'm not human!!

There is just something wrong and inhuman about my ability to perceive in a way that is similiar to all other humans. Here is a short list of things I cannot read:

1. Music
2. Prenatal sonograms
3. tty Quake and Quake2

Now, I've been able to see those "optical illusions" in the Sunday funnies. I can even read hiragana, katakana and a few Kanji characters as well. But those three things and probable a few others I can't think of right now escape me entirely!

I can't "see" the sound it's [music] supposed to make. I can't "see" the baby and I certainly can't tell if it has a penis or not. I can't tell where I'm going on those screens!!!

Am I alone in this?!

Enough is enough

I know you linux guys pride yourself on your console use, but come on, there's a limit...

An upgrade

Compare to UserFriendly, Dec. 29. [userfriendly.org]

Well, It wouldnt compile.

Humm, Why is it, when something cool comes out you cant compiled it on linux?

Had to get the files q2source-3.21.zip and quake2-ref_softaa-0.1.tar.gz
then it complained of some files missing, had to get MesaLib-4.0.1.tar.gz and svgalib-1.4.3.tar.gz. Dont know if they are the correct version but it had the includes It needed.

Then

gcc -Dstricmp=strcasecmp -g -fPIC -I/usr/local/src/Mesa-2.6/include -I/usr/include/glide -o debugi386-glibc/ref_gl/gl_draw.o -c ../ref_gl/gl_draw.c
In file included from ../ref_gl/gl_local.h:39,
from ../ref_gl/gl_draw.c:23:
../ref_gl/qgl.h:484: parse error before `0x84C0'
make[1]: *** [debugi386-glibc/ref_gl/gl_draw.o] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/temp/quake2-3.21/linux'
make: *** [build_debug] Error 2

Any ideas?

-
Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won't work. - Thomas A. Edison (1847 - 1931)

Life imitating art? (or whatever passes)

For those who read UserFriendly, you may remember seeing something similar, Sid, and the gang playing Quake2 with punchcards (http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20011229 )

Hmm... interesting...

If the source code to Half-Life ever got released, who'd wager that we'd see a text-mode CounterStrike?

I'd be interested to see how people manage to get a text-mode wallhack for text-mode CounterStrike... ;)

Paper Quake

Now just send the text output to your printer, staple the pages together and make a nice animated quake flip book. If you flip the pages fast enough you should get a faster frame rate than most high end video cards.

Cool

I feel like killing with snake-vision. :D

think that's twisted?

GGI has a renderer that will render *any* graphics context into ascii art. Neither that nor ttyquake are really all that interesting, all they are is really low res greyscale that chooses characters from a hand-made table based on how "bright" they appear.

What would be really neat would be something that converted bitmap displays into *line* art.

what about color ?

Why are all these textmode projects in grayscale ? What about a color textmode quake2 ? The vga textmode can do 16 foreground and 16 background colors. Why don't it use them ? Very likely it wouldn't work over a network connection when that would require a lot of ANSI codes but it could be really good localy.
What about something like a textmode vnc ? For things like playing textmode quake it could be much better than the old style telnet.

ppc linux support?

Of course if you don't have an i386 machine then you'll have to change "i386" to whatever your architecture is (but I'm not sure it will even compile on anything else).

with almost zero graphics (text) req's, would i be able to run this on a 69k processor (w/32 megs of ram, os 8)? veeeeeeeeery slowly?

has anyone tested this on the ppc linux yet?

Textmode Quake....

why?

Slashcode improvement needed...

Some articles (and all posts) just scream to be rendered only with the teletype font.

Oh, I get it

I thought they meant something like this:

QUAKE II
Copyright (c) 1991-2001. All rights reserved.

West of steaming pit of hell
You are standing in an open room west of a steaming pit of hell leading down.
There is a gun here.

>

More AA Lib Action in an X Server!

Some fool compiled an xserver with aalib and you can see the output including screenshots of enlightenment menus etc here:

http://www.meow.org.uk/stan/xserver/

Maybe that'd work with xquake?

And as usual no Windows port!

Gates is right! This open source moment is out to get windows!

Eh, I won't get excited...

...until I see a Dreamcast port. :-)

Textmode Holodeck

This gives me hope that someday in the future my children will experience a textmode holodeck.

Text-mode Quake

You are in a twisty maze of passages, all al-*BLAM!*

- You have died. -

Somebody please port Q2 to OS X, not text mode!

nuff said :)

Unoriginal and uesless

Com on, it was obviously useless for Quake I so why did somebody else feel they had to do it to Quake II?

At least Doom 2D [www.ukg.kz] is playable.

Glasses?

Will I need glasses to read quake if its all text?

Re:I have just one question.....

Excuse me while a go write a program that will help Windows render my wallpaper as a text box of ASCII characters...

I think someone's already done that.

Re:I have just one question.....

Excuse me while a go write a program that will help Windows render my wallpaper as a text box of ASCII characters...


You don't need to - recent versions of windows already has a program (called kernel32) that randomly renders your wallpaper as a blue screen with indecipherable text upon it. It's not usually enabled with a straight out of the box install of windows though. Best way to get the blue text renderer going is to actually try and do some serious work with your windows computer. Ensuring that you do not save your work for at least an hour will often cause the renderer to appear as well.

Hope this helps.

Re:P.O.S.

It has to render 3d images with ascii art. Thats auctually more work than rendering 3d images as pixels.

Re:I have just one question.....

This is perhaps the biggest ever display of time-wasting I have ever seen.

So, you're saying that the original Quake in graphics mode is not a waste of time? Hasn't this one family of programs been one of the biggest drains of people's productivity, educational potential and physical health since the introduction of TV and alchohol?

I cringe when I think of how much more I could have accomplished by now using the time I've wasted playing computer games.

At least this hacker probably learned something new by doing this.

Re:I have just one question.....

I beg to differ... Consider what would happen for a moment if say, you changed the shades of the letters from grey to, um lets say green. So you now have a world rendered in green letters of different shades! Hold that thought... Now you up the resolution a lil bit, write a new character base for ascii to use (i'm not a programmer so i dont know the feasability for this). Now making this even more complex animate these characters that form the game world so that they move downwards to become more like the character that was below it, not replace it or you would end up looking upwards. This idea would need some work i'm sure, but i think u can see what i am getting at - a rendering mode that looks very much like how Neo ended up seeing in the matrix - and one that is vastly superior to the one in 3dMark2000 Any further thoughts on this?