Submitted 980429, comments to bk@gamers.org.

"The id Files" - Art Reference Database

Summary:

Full quality releases of the artwork under id Software copyright should be included on the Q3 CD, or an add-on CD for development.

Advantage:

This creates a large, official, standard Reference Database of textures and other artwork. It eases ports of DOOM and Quake map to Q3 and following games. It establishes "branding" by id look and feel. It adds value to the current product at negligible costs, and resolves legeal issues of using artwork from former games.

Disadvantage:

Takes additional space on the CD ROM, which might not be available. A second CD might add to the costs of the product. A separate product might be too expensive, distribution-wise.

Effort:

Over the years, id Software accumulated a large set of high quality artwork - textures, sounds, but also models and sprites. From game to game, these could not be ported for legal reasons. In addition, paletted textures could not be used easily with different palettes. Problems are:

• artistic integrity. Textures for the DOOM palette have to be packaged appropriately (doom.wal). Textures (e.g. DOOM) might have lighting effects added by the artist, which do not look good in more current games.
• resolution. Given hardware texture size limitations of 256x256 pixels, and texture cache limitations, this is not an issue for visual artwork yet, but it is for sound (8bit, 16bit).
• legalese. E.g. Bobby Prince (see his Game Developers Magazine) has a DOOM sound database in 16bit, but it might not be possible to include it on the CD.
• screendoor transparency. Sprites have to be converted to RGBA mipmaps with manual fixes (see Bruce Lewis' glDOOM), which might not be worth the effort.
• incompatible formats. Models or maps might be stored in formats that were game and game revision specific. E.g. DOOM DWD files are nearly useless, Q1/Q2 Map files might not.

Alternative:

None. Conversion and legal issues effectively prohibit use of past artwork, which is unfortunate.

Related Proposal:

Development Package.