Quake ported to the Pre, webOS 3D gaming truly within reach
By Paul Miller 
posted January 3rd 2010 2:10AM
posted January 3rd 2010 2:10AM
posted January 3rd 2010 2:10AM
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What would make me perfectly happy forever and ever would be a better way to control games on phones. Sometime like the PSP's stick. It's only half an inch wide, and could easily be put on a lot of these devices. Heck, I'd even settle for a notebook "nipple". Touch screens are not for playing games
@EGOvoruhk
But phones are not ment to play games. Until a smartphone/psp or ds crossbreed is created they will never have good controls.
@Gflo
I beg to differ. Windows Mobile, Android, the iPhone, and the Pre all have a games section in their app stores. They've had them for quite some time too, so it's obvious that there's a demand. Why there isn't a better solution already, is beyond me
@Gflo
"But phones are not ment to play games. Until a smartphone/psp or ds crossbreed is created they will never have good controls."
Tell that to the iPhone fanboys and the dumbass media outlets who claim the iPhone is a better gaming platform than the PSP, or rival it in gaming ability.
No phone will EVER rival hand held systems so long as there are no viable physical controls to utilize -- no matter how precise developers make the tilt / movement controls.
Even the PSP could stand to have another analog stick if it's going to be so heavily 3D-gaming oriented.
@EGOvoruhk I heard a rumor webosinternals was looking into allowing a PS3 controller or wiimote to be used as a control. Not sure if there is any truth to it.
@r34p3r unless they use the psp and add the phone hardware, but yeah even a optical sensor on the HD2 or even better something with a keyboard would be amazing for anyone who does not want to carry a smartphone and a psp around(using my ipod as my portibal gaming device sucked so bad i ended up only playing GBA games on it)
@r34p3r : I'm neither a fanboy nor a media outlet but my iPod Touch has rendered my PSP obsolete at this point. The games on offer are very well suited to a portable device providing a good solid chunk of gameplay for just a couple of pounds (or less) with some of the more recent titles offering a LOT of hours for the money. Touchscreen controls are fine and in some cases actually work far better than physical controls (most puzzle and stratergy games for instance).
Most importantly though I just don't want to play the same games I play at home while I'm on the go, especially if the trade-off for that is worse graphics, worse sound, worse controls and, of course, yet another device to carry. The PSP, frankly, hasn't got the software library to make it a decent platform and was never really very good as a portable platform because of its size. Great for taking on trips, terrible for sticking in a pocket. The Go addresses some of the size issue but the reliance on horribly overpriced downloadable games makes it a non-starter and doesn't address the terrible software library.
Again, not a fanboy, I was surprised when I realised just how much time I spend gaming on my iPod but I can't deny it's become my most used gaming platform.
@EGOvoruhk
My ipod touch is a piece of crap gaming wise compared to the almighty PSP. Even the craptacular DS is better than the ipod
@EGOvoruhk
many keys on both sides ftw
gaming on my Nokia N95 was awesome because it could open up so there were keys for both hands and the keys could be mapped to other functions. here is a pic: http://www.letsgodigital.org/images/artikelen/109/nokia_n95_zoom.jpg
for Doom i mapped the multimedia keys to shooting, sprinting, opening doors and strafing, it was perfect, i got to around lvl 28 before i got a new phone :)
now i have an Omnia HD and i really miss the great gaming controls, especially the D-pad
@EGOvoruhk Well... it's impressive to see a 2010 phone play a game my old Motorola MPX200 played 7 years ago on Windows Mobile 2002.
@Extinction
That's just your opinion. It would be like someone saying a violin plays better music than a guitar. There are no physical controls for the Touch and there are no accelerometer controls for the PSP. I definitely like my PSP, but that's just a personal preference. There are many types of games and some are better suited for different controls than others. I'm fairly certain I wouldn't consider driving a real car using tilt controls, so maybe there is some limit to not having certain physical controls. I probably could drive a real car with a thumb joystick, but I'd still prefer a wheel.
@EGOvoruhk
Dude, its like 5fps, sucks!
@georgemoore13
It's pefectly possible, since they're all Bluetooth and it's all in the software. Although I'm really not sure if I want to lug around a PS3 controller just to play games on my mobile phone.
@cherryboom
I wouldn't go as far to say that Heroes of Sparta is as good as MH on the PSP, at all. It's a great mobile game, and it's great on the PSP too, but it has no where near the depth of gameplay or detailed graphics as Monster Hunter Portable.
@Extinction You must just have never found the right games.. I hate my iPhone, the one thing keeping me from ditching it is the gaming capability. Ever try Need for speed undercover?
@iCello
I second that, and also suggest "Nova", "Eliminate Pro", and "Call of Duty: World at War: Zombies," for people who are more into first person shooters and/or playing against/with others online.
Just out of curiosity- am I the only long-term user on who can use the touchscreen (keyboard included) without looking at the iPod (or iPhone, as the case may be) touchscreen? It's a learning process to be sure, but now it's just like using a computer keyboard for me (albeit a touch slower).
@BOFH Totally agreed. Same here, I actually sold my PSP and DS once I realized I hadn't touche them in over 6 months after I got the iPhone 3GS.
Wow I may end up going back to webos afterall.... On second thought, I'll wait for better hardware from palm... Pre 2?
@cell128 wait, I'll just wait 'till sony makes a PSPhone...
@Eugene Action
that would be the mother of all gadgets I would camp out for that!! Modern warfare portable!!!! Just need 2 analogs and 2 triggers maybe design like psp go??
@cell128 if they were going to do it, they would be developing it around the Tegra 2 for sure. It's a huge contender and would wipe the current devices in terms of graphics and polygon count.
Engadget, please stop referring to these things with "3d acceleration" tags. The only potential acceleration is in the 2D layer, i.e. LunaSysMgr's compatible version of libSDL (the cross-platform DirectX-ish Simple Directmedia Layer) is being used here to run Quake. Quake is using the normal software renderer, not a 3D acceleration library. The 2D path used to get the generated Quake frames onto the screen may be accelerated in some sense, but that is it.
@electrobrains an opengl demo has been posted to www.youtube.com/webosinternals
It's true that Doom and Quake1 are just unaccelerated SDL apps. Have patience. :-)
posted from my Pre engadget app.
@electrobrains CNN is reporting "Quake leaves 20,000 homeless". I'd say that's pretty 3D if it can affect even the houses of people!
Nothing new Doom, Quake 1 and 2 have long been available on windows mobile since like 2004
@OCEAN CLAK
thats nice when the OS has been out for years, WebOS is still very new.
@OCEAN CLAK
a winmo fan? they still exist??!
I'd be happy forever and ever (and since that means a week it works) if Bell got 1.3.5
@smith89: I got tired of waiting so I did it myself using instructions on precentral. Credit goes to whoever discovered it there.
download the webosdoctor 1.3.1 from bell and 1.3.5 from sprint. Exchange the webos tar file in the bell doctor jar with the newer sprint version using winrar. Run the bell doctor on your phone and you will end up with 1.3.5 as if bell just gave it to you. I did a fresh instal so I didn't care what it removed aince I did a backup but you might.
Where's the damn Pixi 3D gaming!?!?! BLASPHEMY I TELL YOU!!!! Just kidding I'm sure Modern Warfare 2 will be out on the Pixi after CES. No really just kidding...
yeah right, maybe on the Verizon Pixi.
@DizeasedMunkey
Devs don't wanna sell games on a phone that has 2 customers.
Yata! My life is now complete... I always felt this overwhelming urge to play first person shooters on a two inch display with cell phone controls. -_-
@Ducman69 how about a Bluetooth keyboard with that?
It think a modern phone, with a small screen don't forget, should be able to run q3, at at least 40FPS, and not q1 at 14fps, it's 2010 and these phones have 600+mHz CPU's, and q1 used to run on desktop with 233MHz CPU's, with the first graphics cards ever made.
But maybe it's because Q1 is so old and modern CPU have to emulate an ancient environment or something.
Anyway I'm disappointed that they didn't skip q1 and go for q3 this day and age, and they released q3 sourcecode too if I recall correctly, so it should be possible to hack it somehow,
@Wwhat
Baby steps. They need to learn how to use the libraries properly. Remember, these are hackers slowly discovering the hidden libraries in the recent update. If the rumors are true, need for speed is right around the corner. I wouldn't be surprised if we see it at CES this year.
@Complex Pants
come on now pants, we both know the rumors are true. Btw internals is hard at work getting some real openGL ES stuff running. Should continue to be an interesting next few days.
> ..."need for speed"...
THAT game probably requires real 3D acceleration unlike Doom and Quake - as someone noted above, the article title (and the previous Doom one) is simply incorrect about what these ports are really doing.
@Complex Pants
OK I'll try to be more trusting and patient!
I'm posting this from the new and wonderful Engadget app for my Palm Pre. It sure would be nice to have all these videos either uploaded to YouTube or formatted in a way I could watch them from my Pre.
@Scape3d
I agree, while I do expect flash to come at CES and if not soon after it would be nice to have it in a format that we can watch on our phones through that app.
@Scape3d: the comment system on the app kind of sucks. When I hit add comment, the entire web page of this storey shows up, not just the fornatted comment section. Also, why is the comment section just a preformatted page. It should be webos components and adding a comment should be some sort of function, not just a section at the bottom. And also, no next buttons. It should auto load the next batch when you reach the bottom of the comments section.
Seems a bit lame when the hardware itself is capable of so much more (Quake 3, fast PSX emulation etc).
Sorry, hate to be that guy.
This looked as if it was just a video playing on the device, but still this would be an important advancement for mobile gaming if it were true.
@substance90 The original release crashed on new game startup but a subsequent release allows full gameplay. I've personally downloaded it and played it myself. I would say the framerate is actually better that demonstrated in the video. Also. To those to are complaining about the framerate, you need to keep in mind that this implementation of Quake has no access to the GPU and is being entirely rendered in the CPU. The fact that it its running this well is pretty impressive. With GPU access, the Pre can output much better graphics at higher framerates. In fact, circumstantial evidence points to epic announcing porting their unreal 3 engine to WebOS this CES.
@substance90
Yeah, I thought the same thing....this video seems fake. Perhaps it's possible to do, but why show a video of it faking it.
N900 does Q3 without breaking a sweat... Why would Q1 be important milestone for any system that runs on several times more powerful processors and several times lower resolution that it was originally?
@incognito:
Engadget is anti-Nokia, that's why they praise Q1 on Pre and ignore Q3 on N900.
@incognito It breaks a bit of a sweat. But it is impressive and playable nonetheless.
@triplea
Maybe if Nokia made themselves relevant to the US? No marketing, no sub'ed phones on any network. Who cares then?