QuakeEd 4.0 Radiant
...an interview with Robert A. Duffy, 9th January '98
See also: QuakeLab II, QuakeLab II Radiant Page

 

Radiant Screenshot QuakeEd 4.0 Radiant takes the original editor source code released by id late in '97 that relied on high powered NT systems running powerful OpenGL cards and turns it into an editor that runs well on comparatively low end systems accessible by most of the editing community. Many of us have been waiting to get our hands on the "id editor" for a long time. Now is our chance...

 

Robert, can you tell us a little about yourself - your 'real life' employment, where you live, etc?

I live in Plano, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. I'm 34, married, have one son (almost 4) and we are also helping put a foreign exchange student through college. She is 17 and in her first year of college. Add in four dogs and two salt water aquariums and you have a busy household!

I work for a company that produces data analysis software oriented around consumer response data. I telecommute between Dallas and Los Angeles. Specifically, I spend about 1 week per month in the LA area at the office. I write software for them as well as a variety of other smaller tasks, I deal with equipment issues (when I'm there), do a bit of art and so on. They have been gracious enough to not get bent out of shape over me doing this in my spare time.

What inspired you to start the Radiant project?

First and foremost I'm a gaming fanatic. I have a couple of hundred PC games, several consoles and the like. We do a lot of gaming in my house. I'd put my 3 year old up against just about anyone in Diddy Kong or Mario 64! He routinely beats down the neighborhood teens as well as me. No Kidding. So games are something I love and I have always been a huge fan of id. I've been working with 2 brothers (mine) on a TC for some time and have always enjoyed making levels, 3D art, etc.

I have been involved heavily with retail software development for the last 11 years, primarily for two software companies as an engineer, vp of engineering and/or co-founder. This experience, coupled with my gaming tendencies kind of pushed me into doing something and giving it back to the Quake community.

How soon after the release of Quake 2 did you start working on Radiant?

The morning after the source was released I started looking through it. Later that evening I decided to make a go of the project. I cleared it with my company and started gathering information and making a battle plan :-)

Steve Fukuda at the Quakelab has taken Radiant under his wing a little and done a lot to publicise the editor. How did that come about?

Steve was the first person I contacted after deciding to do the project. He seemed very enthused and offered The QuakeLab as a hosting area. Ultimately it will probably move to our TC site but not until we have it open to the public. Steve has been invaluable with feedback and comments. He adopted it as his primary editor (as far as I know) and has produced some amazing stuff.

How much of the codebase for Radiant is new and how much is the original id source?

Most of the original codebase is still in there. I've modified much of it in the process of moving it to C++ and MFC but the core functionality is the same. QE4 itself was written and used as an internal tool which means it only had to work for id, BUT it is a tried and proven editor and I've been careful to not introduce problems. I've had some e-mail questioning my C++ and MFC decisions but the bottom line is that I've written a zillion lines of MFC and C++ based code and I'm just more comfortable with it. As far as new code, I've probably added another 20-30% to the original base. I've done a lot of interface work, added a decent handful of new features and fixed quite a few problems. I've also included some submissions from other people. Jack Mathews was kind enough to send me some code that allows transparent brushes to preview as transparent.

Have you had any feedback from id regarding their opinion on what you are doing with QE4?

They sent me mail, wondering what I was going to add feature wise. I know they have tried it but I'm not sure they like my flavor of "original" handling for the floating windows. I don't recycle the same window for Textures, Console and Entity output. Instead they toggle off and on which granted is different but for the newer functionality it would be worth the slight change in modus operandi. Plus it crashed on them :-) I really don't expect them to use it or really take an interest in it. They seem to have a pretty productive way of working. I would be flattered if they did however.

What would you say are the advantages to using Radiant over some of its competitors like WorldCraft and BSP?

1. It's proven from a QE4 standpoint. id used it to make Quake2.
2. It is geared for production, meaning once it's learned properly I think it is the most productive tool available.
3. I listen to what people want and as life permits, I will turn this into the best editor available.
4. BrushScripting when it's done (and works).
5. It's free.

Do you plan to implement support for low end standard Voodoo graphics cards like the Monster 3D and Righteous 3D?

Yes, the preview window will soon provide window based rendering based on 3Dfx cards. I'm trying to wrap a few other things up and once they are complete, 3Dfx support is next. Hopefully the 3Dfx OpenGL drivers will be available in this lifetime which may help dramatically for these cards.

What kind of feedback have you had to Radiant so far? Any notable users of the editor?

The feedback has been tremendous. Over two thousand e-mails over the last 3-4 weeks, a lot of positive feedback and, as expected, some negative. Stability under Win95 has made a lot of people happy. I would say overall it has been 99.5% positive.

I know of a couple of licensee companies that are using it in part or possibly full time. I'll let them tell the world if they feel inclined.

Are there any plans for a Radiant-specific tutorial/help file? At the moment a lot of users, myself included, must be ploughing through Zoid and Gateway's documents trying to pick up help useful for Radiant.

Yes, this was one of my first goals but it has fallen behind the feature monster. An end user started a "Getting Started" guide which I need to follow up on. I am going to start looking for someone to write some serious tutorial/manual documentation soon. I plan on shipping tutorial maps with an example of all of the entities. This should help people get going.

In a related area, I plan on making the editor extendible for TC groups and other interested parties. Adding entity defs, etc, will ultimately be very easy. I've envisioned some sort of TC/PC wizard that would spit out all of the default stuff ready to build and go.

How will you balance retaining the integrity of id's editor with adding new features to make the editor a little more accessible to the average user?

Well, I've tried to leave original functionality intact everywhere possible. Except for the slight difference in floating window mode, it pretty much acts the same. You can remap keys if you like and soon will be able to do the same with menus. This will allow me to offer the original menu layout or the new improved (imo) or roll your own. The newer stuff that affects the way vertex editing is handled and other things are pref'd, meaning they can be disabled to work as they did.

In between programming and real life, do you get a chance to actually *play* Quake II and if so (hehe) what's your favourite monster and why? :)

I did until I started this. I've sat down once since and played for more than a few minutes. That really sucks now that I think about it. As I haven't finished the game yet and therefore have not encountered all of the monsters in battle I'm not sure. So far it's the rail gun toting 4 legged spider looking guys (Matt - I imagine Robert means the Gladiator here :) They are tough to kill and accurate with the rail gun.

Ditto, what's your favourite level/unit?

My favorite level in Quake II (I don't remember the names) is where they are processing the biological parts and the soldiers drop into the big meat grinder. This level really makes me want to kick some alien ass!

Finally, are there any Robert Duffy levels we can download? :)

I have a few for Quake that were done for our TC but they are not public. I plan on introducing a small SP level soon using QERadiant. This will hopefully be the end result of a tutorial for the user.

Thanks for your time, Robert.


If you are at all interested in editing and the work of id, I highly recommend you check out Radiant. Robert has done a superb job with the code. I have been using Radiant exclusively now on my first single player Quake II level for about a week and after some initial stumbling about, I feel right at home (I've previously been a WorldCraft user). The latest builds of Radiant can always be found on Steve Fukuda's excellent QuakeLab 2 and on the QuakeLab II Radiant Page.

Interview © Matthew F. Sefton/Robert A. Duffy, 1998. Please do not reproduce this interview in whole or in part without permission.