Want $10,000? Get Quake III to run on Raspberry Pi

[Gahars]

Talk about a quake buck!

Earlier today, Broadcom announced the release of full documentation for the VideoCore IV graphics core, and a complete source release of the graphics stack under a 3-clause BSD license. The source release targets the BCM21553 cellphone chip, but it should be reasonably straightforward to port this to the BCM2835, allowing access to the graphics core without using the blob. As an incentive to do this work, we will pay a bounty of $10,000 to the first person to demonstrate to us satisfactorily that they can successfully run Quake III at a playable framerate on Raspberry Pi using these drivers.

Raspberry Pi

For those of you interested, here is the full list of competition rules.

Better get working - everyone's gonna want a piece of this Pi.

 

[FAST6191]

I saw this the other day, an interesting contest. Hopefully it gets some of the bigger graphics players (read AMD-ATI and Nvidia) to also play along similar lines. Probably not likely when patents work the way they do in several of the biggest markets but hey.

 

[BORTZ]

Read the title, though this was spam lol

 

[Covarr]

Looking at the rules, it seems they want 1080p and a minimum 20FPS. Should be quite feasible for someone who knows the hardware, knows the game, and has experience optimizing code... but I have no clue how common or uncommon that particular combination of characteristics actually is.

 

[Psionic Roshambo]

Looking at the rules, it seems they want 1080p and a minimum 20FPS. Should be quite feasible for someone who knows the hardware, knows the game, and has experience optimizing code... but I have no clue how common or uncommon that particular combination of characteristics actually is.

1080P at 20FPS... I looked over the specs of the machine and 700Mhz 512MB's shared with the GPU... I mean sure I ran the game on a PC close to those specs but I think I ran the game at about 60 FPS at 800X600 lol

I think it can be done but wow that's going to require some work.

 

[Snailface]

3ds homebrew development will likely to take a back seat until this is over. :/

 

[Fat D]

The point of the contest is not so much optimizing a game, but writing an open-source graphics driver that can make use of hardware acceleration without having to resort to closed-source binaries.

 

[Sicklyboy]

Read the title, though this was spam lol

I have to admit that's the only reason I clicked.

This could mean a lot for what the rPi is capable of graphically.

 

[Foxi4]

I don't know if this isn't asking too much of the hardware provided. For all intents and purposes, Quake ]I[ is already available and playable on the Rapsberry Pi:



The problem isn't so much the game as it's the "1080p @ >= 20 FPS" which can be a challenge with limited resources. Is it doable? Yes, possibly, with a lot of work. Is it worth it? With $10 000 on the line? Sure, but don't expect any other ports of similar games to pop up at similar quality.

 

[FAST6191]

Is it doable? Yes, possibly, with a lot of work. Is it worth it? With $10 000 on the line? Sure, but don't expect any other ports of similar games to pop up at similar quality.

I would be stunned if this was not one of those "fancy a job?" situations.

 

[Foxi4]

I would be stunned if this was not one of those "fancy a job?" situations.

Compress the textures to really poor quality, cut out all the fancy effects and you'll run it at 1080p @ 20 FPS. It'll still look like crap, but hey - 1080p!

 

[XDel]

Does it count if I place my computer tower on top of a Pi and begin playing Quake III on it?

 

[Reploid]

I'm gettin' tired of that pi stuff.

 

[Centrix]

I work at Radioshack and we just got in three Rasberry Pi's over here, I haven't sold one yet mostly due to the price it would seem lol

 

[Fat D]

For all intents and purposes, Quake ]I[ is already available and playable on the Rapsberry Pi:

Yes, but only using closed-source drivers. That is the real point of the bounty.

 

[obcd]

It's a contest with a smell. They offer a huge amount of money to just one person.
So you could be working months on this, and someone else could get the requested result one day before you.
Most of the Pi founders work at Broadcom. Who says some aren't having the original blob code.
They can't join the contest, but how difficult is it to find someone unrelated claiming he wrote the stuff.
Looks like a perfect way to withdraw some money from the foundation and have some great advertising at the same time.

They always minimised the Pi usb problems as well and blamed all usb devices which worked perfectly on all other hardware.
Pi usb is working better now, but still not perfect.
But if you think you should join the contest, don't let me stop you. Good Luck with it.

 

[DaVince]

Most of the Pi founders work at Broadcom. Who says some aren't having the original blob code.

Actually... Everyone has the original blob code now. Because Broadcom released that recently to the open source community. The Raspberry Pi Foundation is not actively looking for people to improve said driver so that Quake III may run well on it.

Not a bad target. Maybe the wrong way to go about it, because of the reason you stated, though - you might be working hard for months and someone else who was basically duplicating the same effort might get it before you.

 

[XDel]

It's a contest with a smell. They offer a huge amount of money to just one person.
So you could be working months on this, and someone else could get the requested result one day before you.
Most of the Pi founders work at Broadcom. Who says some aren't having the original blob code.
They can't join the contest, but how difficult is it to find someone unrelated claiming he wrote the stuff.
Looks like a perfect way to withdraw some money from the foundation and have some great advertising at the same time.

They always minimised the Pi usb problems as well and blamed all usb devices which worked perfectly on all other hardware.
Pi usb is working better now, but still not perfect.
But if you think you should join the contest, don't let me stop you. Good Luck with it.

USB sucks in general. It's very difficult to get USB to function 100% as it should under alt OS's. If only Firewire had become the standard, sighhh...


SCSI vs IDE all over again.

 

[naxil]

Why quake3? isn't only Multiplayer games?, is not better say; " we need the Quake3 engine 3d work at 20fps on pi?" With working engine is possible make some good...

 

[Psionic Roshambo]

Why quake3? isn't only Multiplayer games?, is not better say; " we need the Quake3 engine 3d work at 20fps on pi?" With working engine is possible make some good...

Quake 3's bots where actually pretty good and where also kind of fun, not as much fun as Unreal Tournament but still fun even in single player mode.