quake like collision detection system

[Masm]

hi! i'm going to implement collisions for my not very advanced game engine...i'd like to know how it's done in quake or any good game, i mean: what 3d shape is best to associate with player or monster to be able to detect collision with good results?
could this be just bounding box or it's better to use some other 3d object without sharp edges (don't think any game uses an exact player's model to detect collision as nowadays they often happen to have more than 2000 faces)....thx for any replies

[This message has been edited by Masm (edited 03-04-2002).]

[Lighthouse]

This is off topic here. Try Flipcode or Gamedev.net.

[jwatte]

Quake models the player as a sphere, and sweeps this sphere through its level BSP tree, which turns into a bunch of sphere/plane intersect tests, alternately line segment/offset plane tests, which is quite fast. Of course, it's limited in its expressivity.

No, OpenGL can't efficiently do these tests for you.

[nagual20]

I believe Quake uses a bounding box, not a sphere. Each object is "bounded" by 2 vectors: vec3 mins and vec3 max, which represent upper and lower opposite corners of a bounding box. Unreal uses a cylinder shell with variable radius and height.
Find some tuts on collision/intersection.

-nagual