HermitWorks’ Cameron Tofer on Quake 3 - iPod Touch Edition

Tue, Apr 8, 2008

When news surfaced late Saturday afternoon that a YouTube user made a pair of iPod Touch units play Quake 3, many probably thought "Wow, that's cool. Some YouTube user made a pair of iPod Touch units play Quake 3."

Not GameCyte.

GameCyte had to know how, why, and above all, where we could get our very own copy. And when GameCyte asks... GameCyte delivers.

Following the trail of cookie crumbs from Engadget to PMP Today, then on to Crunchgear and 9to5Mac, we finally found the source -- a simple, nondescript Blogspot page dubbed HermitWorks, where the following YouTube video rested peacefully in an ocean of creamy white and orange, accompanied only by a pair of posts about a game named Space Trader and a single line of text, reading

So we've been playing around with Quake 3 and Apple's iTouch. Scott grabbed the icculus source and with a few modifications had it running pretty quick. Here's a video of him with two iTouch's in multiplayer.

Having been hypnotized once more by the pleasing merge of accelerometer and rocket launcher, we got to thinking about Quake... and HermitWorks... and Space Trader -- and then it hit us. This video wasn't the work of some random attention-hungry iPhone hacker; it's a legitimate attempt to develop mobile games on the part of HermitWorks, a company founded by former BioWare game designers Cameron and Marcia Tofer. Space Trader? It's their interstellar Drug Wars-inspired FPS.

Minutes later, we found a direct line to the answers we were looking for -- Cameron Tofer himself.

How?

Porting a game can often be a timely and expensive process, but according to the blog post, Quake 3 on iPod Touch was up and running "pretty quick." How quick? "All told, it was probably between eight and twelve hours," says Tofer. Good luck replicating that feat -- HermitWorks are old hands when it comes to the open-source id Tech 3. After all, it's the same engine that powers Space Trader...

Using a pair of jail-broken iPod Touch units and no official SDK for support, Tofer's crew pumped basic accelerometer data right into the open-source Quake executable, hooked up both units to local Wi-Fi and hosted a TCP-IP game on the device itself. According to Tofer, what you're seeing involves no wires -- no dedicated server -- just a pair of mobile devices directly connected over the airwaves. Theoretically, Tofer says there's no reason why you couldn't host a full 64-player deathmatch; Quake III system requirements are rather lax in this day and age. But don't expect to see Quake III -- iPod Touch edition anytime soon.

Why?

Sure enough, HermitWorks has set their sites on Apple's mobile gaming platform the iPhone, but their goal isn't to enable armies of iPod-wielding Apple fans to play Quake III; instead, they're "madly coding," says Tofer, to port their own Space Trader to iPod and iPhone, hopefully in time to be released in June with the official iPhone App Store. "I'd love to have it by June; we're just in a kind of porting frenzy right now." Problem is, in order to be a part of Apple's official offering, they'd need at least minimal support in the form of the official Apple SDK, which has been rather late in making the rounds. HermitWorks doesn't want to be viewed as a group of iPod hackers: they want "people to be able to go to iTunes and download" their games through an official channel.

But Tofer says they're not waiting around for Apple -- with their two jail-broken devices, they have everything they need to run the application; and iTunes Store integration, while desirable, runs secondary to actually having a good-looking mobile game on the bargaining table. HermitWorks hopes with that done, Cupertino will be then be quick to snap it up. First step? Refining the accelerometer input. "It's pretty simplistic right now," explains Tofer. The iPods you see in the video can only tilt forward, back, left and right, but HermitWorks is making the tilt functionality more precise, and is experimenting with a combination of touch and tilt they believe will allow for advanced control. Graphical fidelity will also jump when the studio implements per-pixel lighting.

What's next?

Details were scarce, but HermitWorks has something else hidden away in their dusty straw hut: the underpinnings of a casual iPhone RPG, tentatively called Quest. Before you call up memories of King's Quest, Puzzle Quest or even Peasant's Quest, know that this game isn't your average 2D Fetch Quest. Using the same modified Quake III with the graphics "kicked up a few notches," HermitWorks promises a heavy-duty 3D single-player role-playing experience with one very ambitious addition: instead of NPCs, characters you meet will often be other players.

Tofer was quick to dispel the notion that players will just be sitting around in shops just waiting for the hero to come buy something, but instead imagines that characters won't always be questing about -- "Once you defeat the bad guy, what's next?" -- and envisions 'king of the hill' situations where successful players could be toppled by others attempting to rise to power themselves.

We could detect a certain excitement in Tofer's voice as he detailed the studio's casual RPG plans, and no wonder: for Cameron and Marcia Tofer, respectively engine programmer and art director on Baldur's Gate II, it will be a return to their digital pen and paper roots.