Romero on 3D Nomenclature
While discussing the UE3 editor, some friends and I wondered where the term “brush” came from to describe the pieces of 3D geometry that make up the base mesh of a level. So on a whim, I emailed ex-idSoftware (Doom, Quake etc.) founder John Romero for insight. He replied almost immediately (gotta love the iPhone). So for those few fellow geeks who have wondered the same thing, here is the answer from the horse’s mouth:
We came up with the term “brush” while writing QuakeEd in 1995. At the beginning we were moving around a 3d rectangle as the only building block for creating level geometry and as a level editor is akin to a paint program (and we were still using DeluxePaint 2 on Quake) the name “brush” made the most sense as the basic thing you used to “paint” levels with.
With Wolf3d and Doom that terminology wouldn’t have fit. I didn’t know UE3 used the word still - that’s cool! And deathmatch, spawn(point), frag, gib and telefrag are still used after 14 years :)
posted by monty · at 9:37 am · filed under News