Author: {wf}shadowspawn <shadowspawn_at_shadowspawn_dot_net>     Reply to Message
Date: 1/20/2010 8:04:09 PM
Subject: RE: SS - Open source the WFA code!

No.

I opened up q2wf and wfafusion (qfusion).

When I got my hands on the code it was sloppy, all fucked up, and it really required some serious hammering square pegs into round holes and then reusing them all. I had to learn through the eyes, mind, and soul of some serious dyslexic programming.

That was just the stock source from Id Software.

WF/WFA was copied from that.

In other words it was genius. Psychotic, but genius. It's how we all do some things: copy from someone else and slap it together. If it works, don't mess with it.

Of course it doesn't matter if it could be done *better*, if it works then hubris takes over. Tweak this, tweak that.

I stared at it for over a year before I really touched anything.

I learned programming from assembly. Do you realize how fucked up Q3 is if you were to actually put it on dedicated hardware? Someone at Id was in a rush but had the advantage of emerging faster hardware and video cards.

Taking the graphics out of the equation, getting WFA to run fine on a p233 took some serious effort. OMG why on a p2 233? Because when Q3 came out I had a p2 200 xeon.

I'm still of the same mindset. Id is screwing themselves day in and day out by slapping more slop on top of horsepower instead of revisiting their roots.

That's what WFA needs. Some serious root care. And that's what I've been doing for the last few years: revisiting the roots. Not starting from scratch, but making everything so tight that it can run on a chip, not an interpreter.



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