The announcement of QUAKE for Alpha/Linux

[hall at zk3.dec.com (Jon 'maddog' Hall, USG Senior Leader)]

Hello,

One of the great "games" of Linux has been the game DOOM.  Created by Id,
DOOM managed to capture the attention of a lot of people, including Master
Linus Torvalds.

Id created a follow-on game called QUAKE, which is far superior to DOOM both in
graphics and network capabilities.

While this program came out on Intel Linux a month or so ago, it is now 
available
on Alpha systems which have the proper graphics cards.

The port was done by Dave Taylor, of Crack.Com, the original porter of DOOM
to Unix Systems, and is available free over the net.

While I have not played it (I am not into "games"), several notables whose
letters below have tried it.

And in the two years that I have known him, this was the first time that
I have seen Master Torvalds "desparate".  Fortunately he is now "Sated".

Many thanks to David Taylor of Crack.Com, Id, and Digital Equipment Corporation
(for lending the equipment) in having QUAKE ported.

Warmest regards,

maddog
===============================================================================
====


Date: Mon, 12 Aug 1996 19:13:05 -0500 (CDT)
From: Dave Taylor <ddt at crack.crack.com>
To: linux-alpha at vger.rutgers.edu, axp-list at redhat.com
Subject: Alpha Linux Quake


Quake 1.01 (a nifty game) for Alpha/Linux is available on
ddt.is.not.lame.org:/linux.  The xf86quake version is slower and crashes
some Alpha's.  Don't really recommend it.  Kind of a stillborn idea
after I thought about it.  Can't do byte-access to the framebuffer
without reading each pixel you write.  Sigh.

Linus, sorry I couldn't port Doom to the Alpha.  Plz accept this instead.
I think you will dig.

	=-ddt->

- ------- Forwarded Message

On 13 Aug 1996, Martin Ostermann wrote:
> 
> Linus Torvalds <torvalds at cs.Helsinki.FI> writes:
> 
> > Does anybody have the quake files unpacked somewhere? I really simply 
> > don't _have_ any DOS box to unpack things on, and I don't even have 
> > dosemu or anything like that installed anywhere.. I'd love ot try quake 
> > out on my home alpha.
> > 
> > 		"Desperate"
> 
> You don't need them -- the README of the alpha-quake package
> describes how to catenate the data-files together to an 'quakedate.exe'
> file, that can be extracted by lha, which is available for Unix. Even
> comes with RedHat, as far as I remember.

Duh. I _did_ that, and it didn't work. It turns out that the filename 
actually makes a difference: it _has_ to end with ".exe" or lha won't 
work. 

Oh, well. After renaming the file lha worked perfectly and I can shoot 
monsters to my hearts delight. Perfectly playable even at largish screen 
sizes (700+ x 500+). Certianly a lot better than doom, which I had to 
play with the picture coming over the network from a x86 machine..

> I just did that, I am know waiting for alpha-quake to arrive -- about
> 80% done during the last 3 hour's !

Indeed, know what you mean..

		"Sated"

- -- 
=============================================================================
Jon "maddog" Hall                     Internet: maddog at zk3.digital.com
Senior Leader, UNIX Software Group    Executive Director, Linux International

Digital Equipment Corporation         Linux International
Mailstop ZK03-2/U15                   80 Amherst St.
110 Spit Brook Rd.                    Amherst, N.H. 03031-3032 U.S.A.
Nashua, N.H. 03062-2698 U.S.A.

Voice: +1.603.881.1341                Voice: +1.603.672.4557
FAX:   +1.603.881.6059