We started to have a discussion on the IDTech3 engine inside a WIP topic and it began to derail the WIP thread... I find it to be a fascinating discussion and would like to facilitate it by moving it to it's own thread. The following posts have been moved from the original WIP thread.

Treyarch, IW and activision nah, not really, only 3arc

I just want to point this out, the really basic scripts that make a map work(_load.gsc for example) where originally created by IW, so they probably should get some credit.

IW made the whole COD engine, right? It was just a joke...

IW made the whole COD engine, right?

They did, yes. The engine is their creation in it's entirety. Textures, sounds, models etc all belong to Treyarch. The backbone of it all is Infinity Wards.

They did, yes. The engine is their creation in it's entirety. Textures, sounds, models etc all belong to Treyarch. The backbone of it all is Infinity Wards.

Everything you said is true except for the second sentence. The engine is a branch off of the IDTech3 engine which was used to make Quake 3 Arena and many other games. Along with many other studios (ex Star Wars Jedi Knights Academy from Raven Software), IW bought the engine to make their CoD series. Since then they have been adding in new features on an as-needed basis for the new CoD games, as well as Treyarch and the other more recent studios.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id_Tech_3

Everything you said is true except for the second sentence. The engine is a branch off of the IDTech3 engine which was used to make Quake 3 Arena and many other games. Along with many other studios (ex Star Wars Jedi Knights Academy from Raven Software), IW bought the engine to make their CoD series. Since then they have been adding in new features on an as-needed basis for the new CoD games, as well as Treyarch and the other more recent studios.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id_Tech_3

I forgot about that. Yet another reason why the engine is so rough and dated in areas. I initially thought that it was just based around the same architecture, but then I read an interview some time ago with Jesse Snyder, and he went into some detail about the engine and he actually mentioned it was IDTech. Sure it was in his Haxington Post.

Anyway... I stand corrected.

@Deadra... so... it would seem that ID Software deserve the credit more than IW do, hmm?

I forgot about that. Yet another reason why the engine is so rough and dated in areas. I initially thought that it was just based around the same architecture, but then I read an interview some time ago with Jesse Snyder, and he went into some detail about the engine and he actually mentioned it was IDTech. Sure it was in his Haxington Post.

Anyway... I stand corrected.

@Deadra... so... it would seem that ID Software deserve the credit more than IW do, hmm?

Indeed. Still, even though it was created by ID software, IW definitely made some major changes to the engine, otherwise i doubt it'd be able to handle having 18 players in MP on fairly detailed maps.

Indeed. Still, even though it was created by ID software, IW definitely made some major changes to the engine, otherwise i doubt it'd be able to handle having 18 players in MP on fairly detailed maps.

The maps' detail has little to do with handling X number of multiplayer clients - the detail is left to the clients rendering their own views of the map - which does not rely on how many people are connected to a game. Q3Arena can handle 48 people on a server... http://www.quakeservers.net/quake3/servers/

IW and 3arch have made improvements, yes. But they haven't done much. For instance 3arc added Dynamic Water and Clientscripts for the first time in CoD5. The water performs horribly and has numerous quirks (infinite water under your level, etc), and clientscripts were obviously a hastened hack to achieve clientside scripting for ambiance in CoD5. The list of available functions is totally barebones and was obviously developed on an as-needed basis. They also added some interesting things to the sound engine of CoD5 which I do have to say work well and are effective.

As far as credit goes technically ID Software would deserve 0% credit as all the rights for this build of the engine belongs to IW for their revamp "IW Engine 3". That's looking at it in a legal perspective. When you actually look under the hood obviously as Treminaor has been discussing a lot of the makeup of the engine was already originally done by ID Software.

As far as credit goes technically ID Software would deserve 0% credit as all the rights for this build of the engine belongs to IW for their revamp "IW Engine 3". That's looking at it in a legal perspective. When you actually look under the hood obviously as Treminaor has been discussing a lot of the makeup of the engine was already originally done by ID Software.

Also if you look at the Wikipedia page for IDTech 3, they did not change the name of the engine until CoD2 - CoD1 and CoD:UO are listed as IDTech games. I would assume IW couldn't afford (or couldn't justify) purchasing full rights to the engine until after the success of those games.

Here is some more specific info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IW_engine