p a g e with its long-dated 8088 cycle counts but a lotf useful
perspectives, son theCD. Add to that themost recent 20 000 words of
Quake material, andyou have most of what Ive learned over the past
decade in one neat package .Im delighted to have all this materia l
in print n a single place, because overthe past ten years Ive run
into a lot of people who have found my writingsuseful-and a lot
more ho would like to read them, but couldnt find them.Its hard t
keep programming material (especially stuff that started o ut
ascolumns) in print for ery long, and would like to thank The
Coriolis Group,and particularly my good friend Jeff Duntemann
(without whom not onlythis volume but pretty much my entire writing
career wouldnt exist), forhelping me keep his material available.Id
also like to thank JonErickson, editor of 7: obbs both for
encourage-ment and general good cheer and foriving me a place to
write whatever Iwanted about realtime3-D. It still amazes me that
Iwas able to find time towrite a column every two months during
Quakes development, and if Jonhadnt made ito easy and enjoyable, it
couldever have happened .Id also like to thank Chris Hecker and
Jennifer Pahlka of the ComputerGame DevelopersConference,
withoutwhose encouragement , nudging, andoccasional well-deserved
nagging there is no chance I would ever have writ-ten a paper for
the CGDC-a pape r that ende d up bein g the mos tcomprehensive
overview of the Quake technology thatsver likely to be writ-ten,
andwhich appears in these pages.I don t have much else to say that
hasnt already been said elsewhere inthis book, in on e of the
introductions to the previous volumes or in oneof the astonishingly
large number of chap ters . s youll see as you read,its been quite
a decade for microcomputer programmers, andhave beenextremely
fortunate to not only be a partf it, but to be able to
chroniclepart of it as well.And the next decade s shaping up o be
justas exciting
