q2-dev

[kren.Z]

... just a taste of what's to come between tastyspleen and q2 (client/server/browser interfacing) while i gain a footing on more advanced  topics in 3D.

The Animation Engine is still a bit buggy ..workin' on that. I haven't added a preloader either, which shouldnt matter since this file is still pretty small ( > 100kb).


Controls:       
W - walk
SPACE - Jump
C - crouch

Click + Drag = rotate camera (careful though, I haven't added any boundaries)
Console displays parsed texture and md2 data from the C header.
                     
http://krenz.tastyspleen.net/q2-dev/main.html

I haven't been able to find a good reference to the .bsp file format, so If anyone knows any good tutorials on reverse engineering binaries, I'm all ears.

I'm new to quake 2 development so expect a lot of questions 

-krenZ

[[BTF]Jehar]

Kickass man, this is looking really promising. Where are you planning on taking this?

[kren.Z]

Where are you planning on taking this?

Well, the furthest it will go of course. Porting quake 2 to the browser would be the ultimate goal, but I think my primary focus now is using it as a tool to be more efficient in things like texture editing, demo/map viewing ...etc and eliminate the need for any stand-alone application. I have a lot of ideas about what i want to do, and the possibilities are endless between a browser/ (customized) server interface streaming real-time data. The native socket classes that I'm working with doesn't support UDP, so i'll have to find an alternative. The biggest difficulty i face as a new developer is understanding and parsing closed source binaries(external file formats) and client/server communication between unknown network protocols.


-krenZ

[console]

just a taste of what's to come between tastyspleen and q2 (client/server/browser interfacing) while i gain a footing on more advanced  topics in 3D.

Nice work.

The biggest difficulty i face as a new developer is understanding and parsing closed source binaries(external file formats) and client/server communication between unknown network protocols.

q2 is open source.  Is there some particular file format or network protocol you are having trouble finding source code for?

Here's an old flipcode article on the q2 .bsp file format--this was written before q2 was open sourced:

http://www.flipcode.com/archives/Quake_2_BSP_File_Format.shtml

But nowadays we can also just look at the BSP file structures in qfiles.h, and the BSP map loading code in cmodel.c (CM_LoadMap, etc.)



Also - for what it's worth, a few years ago some folks ported Quake2 to java.  It would be possible to play in the browser.  (They may be using java web start so that it's not technically playing in the browser, but it could also be made into an applet--if you really wanted it inside the browser.)

http://www.bytonic.de/html/jake2.html


Regards,

[kren.Z]

Thanks a lot quadz...I'm lookin' at the source now and all i can say is "wow". I'm unfamiliar with C, but hopefully it doesn't take to long to navigate through this bad boy. I think if i just understand some of the data structures I'll be alright. Anyways, your cmodel.c in /qcommon seems like the jackpot, exactly what i was looking for. A couple of quick questions if you don't mind,
I see a lot of

typedef struct
{
       //vars

} cnode_t;

or something similar. What kind of structure is this and what's its connection to cnode_t. All of the other code defined below it just seems like a bunch of functions. What's the purpose of header files in relation to .c files?

[console]

I see a lot of

typedef struct
{
       //vars

} cnode_t;

or something similar. What kind of structure is this and what's its connection to cnode_t.

typedef struct
{
    cplane_t    *plane;
    int         children[2];        // negative numbers are leafs
} cnode_t;

This is defining a structure with the typename cnode_t.  (I won't get into details about 'typedef' at this point...)

So, cnode_t is a structure which contains a pointer to a plane, and an array of two integers referring to the left/right child nodes of this node.

What's the purpose of header files in relation to .c files?

Header files exist because the C compiler is not very smart.  The compiler only compiles one execution unit (.c file) at a time, and it doesn't, at that time, have any knowledge of the contents of other .c files in the project.

So if you have a structure or function that you want to be shared among multiple .c files, information about that structure or function must be in a header file, which may be included by multiple .c files.

Thus, header files are for sharing type definitions and function declarations between multiple .c files.


Regards,

quadz