QuakeC: Язык программирования для модификаций Quake

Compiled language

QuakeC is a compiled language developed in 1996 by John Carmack of id Software to program parts of the video game Quake. Using QuakeC, a programmer is able to customize Quake to great extents by adding weapons, changing game logic and physics, and programming complex scenarios. It can be used to control many aspects of the game itself, such as parts of the AI, triggers, or changes in the level. The Quake engine was the only game engine to use QuakeC. Following engines used DLL game modules for customization written in C, and C++ from id Tech 4 on.

The QuakeC source to the original id Software Quake game logic was published in 1996 and used as the basis for modifications like capture the flag and others. QuakeC source code is compiled using a tool called qcc into a bytecode kept in a file called The programmers of Quake modifications could then publish their bytecode without revealing their source code. Most Quake mods were published this way. QuakeC allowed the Quake engine to dominate the direction of the first person shooter genre. Thanks to Carmack's idea of extending video game life by adding unlimited expandability (extensibility already played a big role in Doom), an enormous Internet community of gamers and programmers alike has arisen and many modern multiplayer games are extensible in some form. QuakeC is known as interpreted because as Quake runs, it is continually interpreting the progs. dat file.

A decompiler and a recompiler were released by Armin Rigo (called DEACC and REACC respectively). These programs were made through the process of reverse engineering, and were most likely published before the release of qcc. id Software released the source of qcc, their QuakeC compiler, along with the original QuakeC code in 1996. Modified versions soon sprung up, including Jonathan Roy's fastqcc and Ryan "FrikaC" Smith's FrikQCC. These added functionality, optimizations, and compiling speed boosts. In 1999, when id Software released the code from Quake's engine under the GNU General Public License (GPL), the workings of the bytecode interpreter were examined and new QuakeC compilers were released, such as J. P. Grossman's qccx and a new version of FrikQCC. These compilers took advantage of newly discovered features in a backwards compatible way so that the bytecode could still be properly interpreted by unmodified Quake engines. New features include arrays, pointers, integers, for loops and string manipulation. With the Quake engine source code now able to be changed, further features were added to QuakeC in the form of new built in functions. Features long yearned for by QuakeC coders finally reached realization as QuakeC now had file and string handling functions, enlarged string buffers, more math functions, and so on. However, programmers taking advantage of these changes lost backwards compatibility with the unmodified Quake engine. Xonotic since version 0.7 uses the gmqcc compiler.

Some enhanced Quake engines (notably Darkplaces and FTEQW) have support for an extension of regular QuakeC (now commonly referred to as server side QuakeC) that allows client side only scripting of the Quake engine, also abbreviated as CSQC (client side QuakeC). This is especially useful for GUIs, HUDs and any visually heavy effects that do not need to be simulated on the server and transferred over the network.