RSSQuake 3 ported to iPod Touch with tilt controls
By Michael Hatamoto | Published April 14, 2008, 3:45 PM
Popular id Software game Quake 3 Arena has been successfully ported to the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch MP3 player by Canadian game makers, though don't expect it to be available to everyone just yet.
Game developer HermitWorks managed to get two iPod Touch users playing a head-to-head death match using built-in WiFi after eight to twelve hours of coding. The HermitWorks' version uses an accelerometer to control the player and taps on the screen to fire weapons.
Apple's recently released SDK was not used to help get the game running. Instead, HermitWorks used the ioquake3 edition of the Quake 3 Arena source code, which is a version of id's code that was enhanced can cleaned up by the ioquake3 team. In response to demand from the developer community, id Software released the Quake 3 source code in 2005 under the GPL license, after other titles successfully deployed the Quake 3 engine.
The reason HermitWorks was testing Arena was because its new original game, Space Trader, will soon be released using the Quake 3 engine. HermitWorks expects to have Space Trader available via iTunes in June, and expects to get a small level of support from the Apple SDK. HermitWorks does not plan to release the Arena demo code to the public.
| A demonstration of the game playing capabilities of the iPod Touch, which somehow you always knew was capable of good gameplay. |
This isn't much different from playing it using the editing keys for motion control and another for shooting and dodges.
So it adds a bit of variety and as a result the iPod (and potentially the iPhone) becomes a (more robust) 'Gameboy'.
OK....
It will definitely play to the existing market, but I don't see it significantly changing the overall landscape and growing the market share.
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While I agree that I prefer playing Q3A with a mouse and keyboard, posts published on the HermitWorks' blog indicates a number of people would be interested in giving Q3A on the Touch a try!
I think I would like to play it for a couple of minutes just to get a feel for the tilt controls.
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great work and a very nice demo. but that is way too awkward to have any real lasting appeal. still i'd like to see more games on the ipod touch/iphone
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That is a great game. In fact I just played it today. But putting it on the iphone is pointless. Nobody wants to play a game like that. This game is very fast paced and needs to played with a mouse.
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