FilterHN

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?

▲

klodolph

1 hour ago

[-]

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.

▲

polpo

53 seconds ago

[-]

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, Quake's code was indeed hand-optimized for the Pentium's FPU pipeline. Fabien Sanglard's writeup up Michael Abrash's optimizations for Quake go into great detail: https://fabiensanglard.net/quake_asm_optimizations/

▲

NooneAtAll3

1 hour ago

[-]

can it be rewritten to use fixed point arithmetic instead?

▲

klodolph

38 minutes ago

[-]

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.

▲

Narishma

1 hour ago

[-]

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.

▲

klodolph

1 hour ago

[-]

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.

▲

conception

2 hours ago

[-]

That’s only because everything can run Doom now.

▲

markus_zhang

4 hours ago

[-]

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!

▲

bee_rider

1 hour ago

[-]

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?

▲

BoredPositron

54 minutes ago

[-]

No that was Q3 Arena.

▲

argulane

2 days ago

[-]

That's some mad dedication to go from kicad schematics to running Quake. Very impressive!

▲

UncleOxidant

2 hours ago

[-]

Cool! Have you considered offering this board on Crowd Supply or similar? There don't seem to be many boards available for Efinix FPGAs.

▲

klodolph

2 hours ago

[-]

The diagonal traces and the empty spaces are throwing me for a loop. Is this the autorouter in action? (But… still, nice work.)

▲

sznio

3 days ago

[-]

Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sioLAkNQC_I

▲

tkapin

48 minutes ago

[-]

Very impressive project!

▲

absynth

25 minutes ago

[-]

Another board has become Frag complete. Important milestone!

▲

phendrenad2

56 minutes ago

[-]

Hey, routing your own length-matched traces, nice. Is this Altium?

▲

nacozarina

3 hours ago

[-]

Quake II had the best fn soundtrack.

▲

nntwozz

3 hours ago

[-]

Yes, check out Radioactive Man (from Two Lone Swordsmen) - Trespasser:

https://youtu.be/Zdy9TtInX-c

Lots of Quake II samples.

▲

npunt

3 hours ago

[-]

Sonic Mayhem!

▲

wowczarek

1 hour ago

[-]

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.