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Re: Jason Jones interview
Posted By: M-ClassDate: 1/13/02 12:27 p.m.

In Response To: Re: Jason Jones interview (M-Class)

Q. Were there performance issues, where something works, but it's so slow you had to use a different algorithm or change the game architecture slightly or a lot, perhaps to improve performance?

A. Yes, that happened. It's kind of interesting because most of the time, for instance, the rendering engine and texture mapping are the most speed-critical parts, and we rarely rewrote those for speed. We rewrote them because they didn't do something right or we needed to do more with them. Every time we rewrote them, they would get faster, of course, because we would get better at it. So, the only rewrite that was specifically intended to speed the game up was the one that put the texture mapping into assembly. We never rewrote a huge part of the code just because it didn't run quickly. It was usually because it didn't do something we wanted it to do.

Q. These rewrites were more for design or game play issues than for performance.

A. Right. One of the reasons that Marathon was started only in May was that we were rewriting large parts of it that we were not happy with. We could have shipped it at the end of August, but we weren't happy with it, so we didn't. I think that was a really good decision. I would make the same decision again. If I'm not happy with something, we're not going to publish it. We're going to continue to do cool 3-D stuff and we are working on something now, but we're not talking about it.

Q. Will this something use advanced MacOS services like QuickDraw 3D?

A. No, it will not. Thehardware acceleration options in Quickdraw 3D are very interesting to us. I'm really excited about having hardware acceleration for 3-D texture mapping. But the software services of QuickDraw 3D, which is primarily what is available now, are not as interesting to us because we'll always be able to outdo the software because we're trying to code a very specific case, and QuickDraw3D handles the general cases.

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Pre-2004 Posts

Replies:

Jason Jones interviewAndrew Nagy 1/9/02 8:31 a.m.
     Also, while playing Marathon 2 the other day...Andrew Nagy 1/9/02 9:10 a.m.
     Re: Jason Jones interviewHamish Sinclair 1/9/02 9:17 a.m.
           Re: Jason Jones interviewwhocares 1/9/02 11:31 a.m.
           Re: Jason Jones interviewM-Class 1/9/02 2:51 p.m.
                 Re: Jason Jones interviewM-Class 1/9/02 3:11 p.m.
                       Re: Jason Jones interviewM-Class 1/9/02 3:24 p.m.
                             Re: Jason Jones interviewM-Class 1/9/02 3:43 p.m.
                                   Re: Jason Jones interviewM-Class 1/9/02 3:54 p.m.
                                         Cool. Are you going to continue? *NM*Hamish Sinclair 1/9/02 9:28 p.m.
                                               HAMISH!!Khral 1/10/02 2:39 a.m.
                                                     Re: HAMISH!!Hamish Sinclair 1/10/02 3:11 a.m.
                                               yep, I got sleepy last night *NM*M-Class 1/10/02 10:58 a.m.
                                         Re: Jason Jones interviewM-Class 1/10/02 11:17 a.m.
                                               Re: Jason Jones interviewM-Class 1/10/02 11:34 a.m.
                                                     Re: Jason Jones interviewM-Class 1/12/02 9:43 a.m.
                                                           Re: Jason Jones interviewM-Class 1/12/02 10:06 a.m.
                                                                 Re: Jason Jones interviewM-Class 1/12/02 10:31 a.m.
                                                                       Re: Jason Jones interviewM-Class 1/12/02 10:44 a.m.
                                                                             Re: Jason Jones interviewM-Class 1/12/02 11:01 a.m.
                                                                                   Many thanks *NM*Hamish Sinclair 1/12/02 12:22 p.m.
                                                                                   Re: Jason Jones interviewM-Class 1/13/02 11:08 a.m.
                                                                                         Re: Jason Jones interviewM-Class 1/13/02 11:31 a.m.
                                                                                               Re: Jason Jones interviewM-Class 1/13/02 11:58 a.m.
                                                                                                     Re: Jason Jones interviewM-Class 1/13/02 12:27 p.m.
                                                                                                           Many thanks. *NM*Hamish Sinclair 1/14/02 12:14 p.m.
                 Re: Jason Jones interviewDan Aris 1/10/02 2:13 p.m.
                 I have this Book! I will sell it if anyone wants!Ernie TMBM 1/11/02 2:53 p.m.
                       Re: I have this Book! I will sell it if anyone wanHamish Sinclair 1/12/02 9:05 a.m.
                             Re: I have this Book! I will sell it if anyone wanErnie 1/15/02 12:39 p.m.
                             Re: I have this Book! I will sell it if anyone wanErnie 1/15/02 12:40 p.m.
           Re: Jason Jones interviewVid Boi 1/10/02 2:20 a.m.



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