Quakeweek
June 9, 1997


Archives

MPlayer Software Suspected in Plane Crash

Disney Begins Production on Quake! The Animated Movie

Fox Licenses Quake 2 Engine

PointCast Unveils .PlanCast

Nike 'Foxes' AirFist

Carmack Scraps DLLs, Not 'BASIC' Enough

Carmack's Ferrari Made 'Internet-Ready'

id Renews Business Contract

NY's Dept. Of Transportation Eagerly Awaiting Quake Rally

Raven and Columbia Tristar Sponsor 'Serpent Rides'
Quake64 Nears Completion


Quake LogoST. PETERSBURG, FL (NiKoDeMoS) - Following a recent trend to bring the excitement of Quake to any and all platforms, hacker turned legitimate programmer Brain Freeze has taken on the enormous task of a Commodore 64 port. According to Brain Freeze, his task is almost complete.

"I was really excited about the idea," stated Brain Freeze in a recent interview, between long drags on his super-sized Slurpee cup. "The Commodore 64 was practically designed with Quake in mind. We have sprite graphics, collision detection, even three voice sound. The port is going very well."

When asked about the public’s concern regarding 4-bit color, Brain replied, "I’m not quite sure that I understand what all the hype is about. Before we even knew about 8-bit color, we were perfectly content with 4-bit color. In fact, we thought it was the greatest thing since 1-bit color. I feel very lucky in that the programmers at id Software have provided me with a decent palette. If you think about it, Quake’s palette isn’t too far off from 4-bit color. I only had to blend several segments and sacrifice some full bright colors. The end result is a very dark, playable game."

While he would not allow us to take screen prints for distribution to the general public, Brain Freeze showed us several miraculous demos of the work in progress. The game is almost identical to PC based Quake, with the exception of 240 colors. It is a bit awkward to adjust to a 160 x 100 resolution screen (the Commodore 64 only provides 4 colors in 320 x 200 mode), but the demo appeared to be quite playable.

"I am working on the networking code right now. I want my Commie users to be able to enjoy deathmatch. The problem that I’m having is adjusting the rather noisy Quake networking protocol to send reliable packets over a 1200 baud connection. I’ve had to tear out a lot of bells and whistles that don’t really impact gameplay, like projectile weapons, explosions, and player movement. I cut out all levels but one and shrank it down a bit. My only major obstacle seems to be successfully playing 40k WAV files on a machine with only 64k of memory."

Brain Freeze concluded the interview with the statement that his port should be completed sometime late June. "If this project runs as smoothly as Quake Rally, I feel very confident about the June deadline. June 1998, that is."