Quake 3 ported to Android, shows off Droid's graphical prowess (video)
By Vlad Savov 
posted February 25th 2010 5:03AM
posted February 25th 2010 5:03AM
[Thanks, Anders]
posted February 25th 2010 5:03AM
A look back on popular stories from today in a specific year.
Now that we've thrown 'em off the trail, use the form below to get in touch with the people at Engadget. Please fill in all of the required fields because they're required.
Nice! Android Gaming FTW
@NODOGT : It would be nice if they could implement some sort of standard gameport on the android mobiles where you could attach like a small joystick och gamepad a'la Nintendo.
@Argot
I think it is already fairly easy to attach a generic blutooth gamepad.
@NODOGT
milestone is multi-touch right?
they should make mouse look with one finger touching
and when a second finger touches it fires.
would feel more like a mouse
@mrdavedave The Droid has multitouch too.
@PhaseDMA
ain't they the same thing?
im from australia and we don't have the whole droid thing so i'm used to calling it milestone.
@mrdavedave
They're the same thing with slightly different roms.
Android 2.0+ has multitouch built in to the API. You could do multitouch on older versions (like the hero which is 1.5 but has flash and multitouch in the browser) but you had to do it manually.
@thunderbollock
Nah dude, attach a freaking Logitech Mouse and pwn fools on that shiz.
@NODOGT
I just want to play SuperMario 64 on a Droid...and I'd be happy. :)
@PhaseDMA So what's the difference between the Droid and Milestone. I thought they were the same device, but for different regions (Europe/USA). I don't get why features aren't pushed up simultaneously to both?
Installed this on my droid a few hours ago and all I can say is that the ability to play Quake 3 on my phone is awesome but it was not meant to be on a touch screen at all. Playing at the lowest difficulty I still cant beat the bots.
@wuwtk
I use a Bluetooth gamepad for all phone FPS, Racing and emulator games. There are a few to select from and are quite portable. Playing these games on a touchscreen results in a few minutes of novelty, but long-term, gameplay is impossible
@wuwtk Where did you download this from?
@Accidental - which bluetooth gamepad do you use? I may need to drop some coin on one of those.
@wuwtk: Don't know how the BT GamePad will work with the Droid (just too small to fit around the droid...
http://shop.brando.com/bluetooth-gamepad_p01384c0303d058.html
But it works well with other BT smartphones.
@Accidental - I've done a bit more research into this including reading everything on the topic over at AndroidForums.com. It doesn't appear that there are currently drivers or support for either of the BT gaming pads for the Droid/Android. Are you actually using one of these devices specifically on an Droid or other Android phone, or was this comment based on your experience/use on some other phone? I'd really like to know.
@uansari1 http://code.google.com/p/kwaak3/
"I usually play with mouse and keyboard, not used to playing with two hands."
lolwut?
doesn't look that easy to play. but if you want to put on a shame a friend who is showing his latest nonsense iphone app, this definitely works great.
@echoes
Then your friend shows you NOVA and you'll feel all inferior again. Good one.
@echoes This has been out on the iphone for over a year.
@cherryboom quake 3 for iPhone is not a "nonsense iphone app", as well as the other you've mentioned. if you want to defend your iphone at least reply to what I said, not to what you wanted me to say. come on.
Makes me want to have that gamepad controls + qwerty MID even more.
I can do this on my Nokia N82!
http://koti.mbnet.fi/hinkka/
Connected to TV out, using bluetooth mouse and keyboard for control!
iPhone does this since the 2.0 release..
lol i remembered when noone had a powerful enough pc tp play quake3 at full settings :)
@steliosco Yeah and at the same time they were powerful enough to scroll smoothly through lists. What's up with that Android?
@steliosco
i bought a 3Dfx VooDoo3 to play Quake3 11 years ago, i still remember waiting 2 minutes when the game is loading, in this phone it takes 12 seconds.....
@waleedmys
at the same time, flash was already available
... :P
@Timmmmmm
Droid and Nexus one have no problem scrolling through long lists with no lag at all. Its actually one thing they do better that than most anything else.
@steliosco
I remember when everyone in the computer lab had to play Wolfenstein 3D in a little postage stamp sized viewport in the middle of their screen to run at a usable frame rate.
@Timmmmmm
Yep, that's the one point which really annoys me with Android.
It seems like nothing in the UI, not even a simple list of text items ever exceeds an animaotion speed 15 frames per second. Especially if you are used to the butter smooth scrolling on an iPhone.
Okay, maybe the Nexus One does better, but on my Magic and on the Droid a played around for a bit the UI almost always feels a bit sluggish and laggy. Not in an unusable way, not even close. It's just a bit annoying.
I guess one day they will finally manage to draw the whole UI using OpenGL.
And release a JavaVM with the "Performance addon".
Damn, Quake 3 spent five years as my sole PC(Mac) gaming experience. Love it.
Last I played it though was on the iPhone 3GS (http://blog.steventroughtonsmith.com/2009/06/quake-3-on-iphone-3gs.html); looks like the performance is pretty much the same (high FPS on the iPhone but it has less pixels so it doesn't count).
Of course the Quake 3 / id Tech 3 engine is the basis of ngmoco:)'s Eliminate. It's nice to see that 11 years on it still has a place in the world :-)
@steventroughtonsmith
Yes but iPhone was playing this at the resolution that is 4 time smaller !
@sliderem
About 2.5x the resolution in fact. Somehow I don't think fillrate will be the limiting factor for screen sizes like this either.
@steventroughtonsmith
How do you know if the droid is even running at native resolution? It could be the same and jsut be scaled.
@SirMaster I don't! I'm assuming the porter made it full res, as it's easier than trying to set up scaling (it's not like phones can change resolution on demand)
This needs combining with either accellerometer or some fancy jiggery-pokery with the rear camera (or both!) so that it works like the GameGun.
Winmo's been doing this since forever. Welcome to winmo's yesteryears google
@Einlander
Yeah, native code execution is much faster so WinMo has the upper hand in that respect. Hopefully the Android NDK allows for some improvement in application performance though.
@Einlander You're right. The OS has been out on a phone for a whole year and half, so this should have been done *ages* ago. Another thing that would be great is an app that reboots my Nexus One everyday for me when it gets slow (I had that for my WinMo phones). Oh wait, I don't need it...
Now if only someone would bring out a smartphone with a physical keyboard that has a clickable trackball on the right, instead of 4 seperate direction buttons...
Lets face it... so far its just a gimmick for showing off, no real playability here.
@Kavoriken
For gameplaying a 5 way d-pad is much better. The only things the trackball is better than the D-Pad for is doing things you should be using the touchscreen for anyway!
@Bratyr
I do not fully agree with that. While i dig a Controller-like D-pad, i have yet to see a phone with a propper one for gaming. In Fact, the only mobile Device with a propper one ive ever held in my hands was the ASUS A620 PDA, which was a blast to use for NES/SNES/Gameboy Emulators.
Secondly, i see onscreen controls working for games that require a D-Pad, but for FPS Games like Quake... nono.
LOL It may have graphical prowess, but it has such inaccurate digital input, you'd have to stick with BFG's and Rocket Guns exclusively, since you couldn't aim very well. Rain Guns would especially be "out".
(cf. how Droid had extremely inaccurate finger-input compared to iPhone, in older Endgadget post)
@darex lol, duhhhhh, lol....drool
Dude, that "report" was debunked. It was by one guy, with no scientific basis. Yea, everything you read on the intertubez is really real. Geezus.
@joshai Yeah, I laughed my ass off when I saw that page. "Now if you move your finger across the screen in a straight line" Yeah right bro.
Can anyone explain to me how this is technically possible? Doesn't all Android apps have to be written in Java? Because the native SDK doesn't have access to all the APIs?
Thanks in advance
@onehipcat Of course it's possible. Android has Linux kernel and GLIBC (The C-language library) + to help porting Google has released native C/C++ development kit long time ago.
What comes to Java - well, Android's Java is not Java ME or Java SE - it has Java's syntax, but the Dalvik virtual machine is far more optimized and powerful to anything you've come used to with regular Java.
@jussipussi
Thanks! I'm going to try and research a bit to fully understand what u wrote