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This is really cool and impressive... but relatedly...
Has anyone figured out what the minimum specs for Quake are?
I feel like the first thing everyone does with a computer is to determine whether or not it can run quake, and I'm just wondering what the like, most simple computer that could exist is, that could run quake?
You can find a lot of discussion about what the minimum specs for Quake are. Famously, it needs a decent FPU, and the Pentium was a convenient early CPU with a decent built-in FPU. It was significantly faster than a 486.
…But people have managed to run Quake on the 486.
And the myth people tell about Quake is that it killed Cyrix, because Quake performance on Cyrix was subpar. But was that true? And if it was true, was that because the Cyrix was slower than a Pentium, or was it because the Quake code had assembly that was hand-optimized for the Pentium FPU pipeline?
Anyway. “Most simple computer that could run Quake” is probably going to include a decent FPU. If you are implementing something on an FPGA, you can probably get somewhere around 200 MHz clock anyway. At which point you can run Quake II.
My perspective from being a teen doing lan party stuff at the time: Quake ran slow on them, but it was far from the only thing that ran slow. Cyrix was well understood to be the value brand for general office apps and such, but not up to it for more demanding computing, and for having random compatibility issues here and there.
Ultimately what killed Cyrix is they just couldn't offer enough of a discount vs intel to matter, especially with all the lock in stuff intel was doing with Dell, Gateway, etc.
Intel Inside was a successful marketing campaign as well. If you were around back then I bet you can imagine the jingle/chord immediately.
I had a Cyrix 6x86 when Quake first came out. My disappointment at how poorly Quake ran on it was significant, especially because pretty much every other game at the time ran well on the Cyrix. The FPU performance in Quake was doubly handicapped on the Cyrix: not only was its FPU slower than the Pentium's to begin with, Quake's code was indeed hand-optimized for the Pentium's FPU pipeline. Fabien Sanglard's writeup of Michael Abrash's optimizations for Quake goes into great detail: https://fabiensanglard.net/quake_asm_optimizations/
I want to look at this from a different perspective… a single-precision floating-point multiply is pretty simple, no? 24x24 bit multiply, which is about half as many gates as a 32x32 bit multiply.
Maybe I would prefer to rip out the integer multiplication unit first, before ripping out the FPU.
The PS1 doesn't an FPU but got a version of Quake 2, so it's possible. That said, it was somewhat different from the PC version, so it could be argued that it's not the same game.
This is very impressive. How did you learn to design a real computer, not the toy ones a lot of people made? I read part 1 and part 2 and looks like you just “thrown in” Ethernet and other stuffs and it was done. Really hope to learn from the process, thanks!
Quake 2 was the one with the clever approximate inverse square root code, right? I wonder (especially since there’s an instruction nowadays to draw inspiration from), can you implement it “in hardware,” so to speak?
I have the album on my phone. When I get called in to put out a fire and save the day, I like to put on March Of The Stroggs in the car when arriving at the destination. It's a great soundtrack for two reasons - the first one is sweet, wasted youth and the second is it's a great soundtrack.
Section 6 where you link to Quake II is 404. (at the time of this post)
URL: https://blog.mikhe.ch/quake2-on-fpga/part6.md
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Good to see I'm not the only weirdo still using Midnight Commander.
Cool write up, getting initial bill shock from 2 layer to the 4+ layer PCBs is a rite of passage :)
This is really cool and impressive... but relatedly...
Has anyone figured out what the minimum specs for Quake are?
I feel like the first thing everyone does with a computer is to determine whether or not it can run quake, and I'm just wondering what the like, most simple computer that could exist is, that could run quake?
You can find a lot of discussion about what the minimum specs for Quake are. Famously, it needs a decent FPU, and the Pentium was a convenient early CPU with a decent built-in FPU. It was significantly faster than a 486.
…But people have managed to run Quake on the 486.
And the myth people tell about Quake is that it killed Cyrix, because Quake performance on Cyrix was subpar. But was that true? And if it was true, was that because the Cyrix was slower than a Pentium, or was it because the Quake code had assembly that was hand-optimized for the Pentium FPU pipeline?
Anyway. “Most simple computer that could run Quake” is probably going to include a decent FPU. If you are implementing something on an FPGA, you can probably get somewhere around 200 MHz clock anyway. At which point you can run Quake II.
My perspective from being a teen doing lan party stuff at the time: Quake ran slow on them, but it was far from the only thing that ran slow. Cyrix was well understood to be the value brand for general office apps and such, but not up to it for more demanding computing, and for having random compatibility issues here and there.
Ultimately what killed Cyrix is they just couldn't offer enough of a discount vs intel to matter, especially with all the lock in stuff intel was doing with Dell, Gateway, etc.
Intel Inside was a successful marketing campaign as well. If you were around back then I bet you can imagine the jingle/chord immediately.
I had a Cyrix 6x86 when Quake first came out. My disappointment at how poorly Quake ran on it was significant, especially because pretty much every other game at the time ran well on the Cyrix. The FPU performance in Quake was doubly handicapped on the Cyrix: not only was its FPU slower than the Pentium's to begin with, Quake's code was indeed hand-optimized for the Pentium's FPU pipeline. Fabien Sanglard's writeup of Michael Abrash's optimizations for Quake goes into great detail: https://fabiensanglard.net/quake_asm_optimizations/
can it be rewritten to use fixed point arithmetic instead?
I want to look at this from a different perspective… a single-precision floating-point multiply is pretty simple, no? 24x24 bit multiply, which is about half as many gates as a 32x32 bit multiply.
Maybe I would prefer to rip out the integer multiplication unit first, before ripping out the FPU.
The PS1 doesn't an FPU but got a version of Quake 2, so it's possible. That said, it was somewhat different from the PC version, so it could be argued that it's not the same game.
The PS1 version definitely has its own engine, which is not just a port of the Quake 2 engine to the Playstation, but a new engine.
That’s only because everything can run Doom now.
This is very impressive. How did you learn to design a real computer, not the toy ones a lot of people made? I read part 1 and part 2 and looks like you just “thrown in” Ethernet and other stuffs and it was done. Really hope to learn from the process, thanks!
That's some mad dedication to go from kicad schematics to running Quake. Very impressive!
Cool! Have you considered offering this board on Crowd Supply or similar? There don't seem to be many boards available for Efinix FPGAs.
Quake 2 was the one with the clever approximate inverse square root code, right? I wonder (especially since there’s an instruction nowadays to draw inspiration from), can you implement it “in hardware,” so to speak?
No that was Q3 Arena.
The diagonal traces and the empty spaces are throwing me for a loop. Is this the autorouter in action? (But… still, nice work.)
Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sioLAkNQC_I
Very impressive project!
Hey, routing your own length-matched traces, nice. Is this Altium?
Quake II had the best fn soundtrack.
Yes, check out Radioactive Man (from Two Lone Swordsmen) - Trespasser:
https://youtu.be/Zdy9TtInX-c
Lots of Quake II samples.
Sonic Mayhem!
I have the album on my phone. When I get called in to put out a fire and save the day, I like to put on March Of The Stroggs in the car when arriving at the destination. It's a great soundtrack for two reasons - the first one is sweet, wasted youth and the second is it's a great soundtrack.
Another board has become Frag complete. Important milestone!