9fans archive / 1995 / 08 / 20 /    prev next

From: John Carmack johnc@idn...
Subject: Quake on plan 9
Date: Wed, 2 Aug 1995 22:30:29 -0400

I am going to buy a system to run plan 9 on.  Are there any =
integrators in the audience that will provide a ready-to-run, high =
performance pc system?  I want to be able to make a standalone =
plan 9 network with a pc and a couple old NEXTStations, as well as =
mount some NFS volumes from our main file server.

My first project will be to bring up Quake.  If anyone has any =
comments on troubles I am likely to run into, please let me know.  =
The game's requirements are:

Good keyboard event handling.  Up / down notifications for all =
keys is ideal, but I can live with some keys being special.

A rapid bitmap blitter.   Mapping the framebuffer is ideal.  A =
single copy to screen from shared memory is usually fine.  Pumping =
a bitmap through a generic imaging function generally isn't.  For =
actually playing games, as opposed to developing them, an easy way =
to change the display resolution, like xfree86, is great.

Low level sound access.  Mapping the recirculating dma buffers =
with a call to get the current dma position is ideal.  A blocking  =
write to a sound stream is fine if I can get tight control of the =
buffering done in the driver.  Does a sound driver even exist?  It =
sounds like a fun and straightforward project if not.

Non blocking, non buffering TCP/IP.  Any implementation that =
handles the BSD sockopts should be fine.

A way to get raw mickey counts from the mouse would be cool.  Our =
NEXTSTEP and X versions have to live without mouse input.

John Carmack
Id Software