Is HermitWorks’ Quake III a Go? Just Maybe.

by Eric March on April 16, 2008 at 7:25 pm

Given the big buzz that the Quake III videos generated last week and the news that HermitWorks may not be releasing the fruits of their proof-of-concept labour, I wanted to get the lowdown on whether or not the project will ever see the light of day. To that end, I contacted HermitWorks’ Cameron Tofer to see if I could get some answers, and Cam was kind enough to give me some:

We’re still in limbo with respect to Apple and being official developers, however, we’re still making lots of progress on Space Trader. We’re not really focused on releasing Quake 3 but I’m sure its going to happen at some point. It all revolves around getting the controls right, it’s not hard to get the game up and running, nice comfortable controls is another.

Yes, that’s a big fat probably in there. It isn’t a priority, because their primary efforts are understandably focused on Space Trader — and well they should be, since it’s not only going to be part of their bread and butter, but it’s also going to be a fantastic game besides, especially if you’re a fan of the seminal David Braben/Ian Bell classic Elite from which Space Trader took its cue. However, despite the near-affirmative in his statement, don’t expect it soon, or at all.

We’ve got some good reasons not to release a Quake 3 binary. 1. it’s not really ours, if we ‘release’ it we make some claim of ownership or guarantee of support. 2. It’s not awesome yet. I fear that with something that we only spent a day or so on will be used to prematurely label the platform as being not fit for 3D games. This would be a disaster for us as we’re making an investment to make the platform viable for 3D games.

I personally think the iPod is going to make a great gaming platform but I don’t want to see it become a dumping ground of ports. I think it deserves unique and exclusive content that really benefits players.

Cameron does make some valid points. In particular, because he would be releasing it to the hoi-polloi free of charge, he does not want support issues to become a distraction from the real work. Q3A was really just a proof-of-concept to test the capabilities and limitations of the iPod Touch preparatory to porting Space Trader, which uses the Quake III engine. If they release their Q3A port, it would have to be with the understanding that they could provide little to no support for its installation and usage.

Nevertheless, I am certain that if they were to do so (assuming they do ultimately make it awesome — or rather, more awesome than it already is), us folks wouldn’t have much to complain about, am I right? Let them know what you think in the comments: Would you be fine with a Q3A release even if HermitWorks could provide no support for it?

(Source: HermitWorks)

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Posted in Gaming Related, In The Works