It was interpreted but it was compiled. QuakeC was not a scripting language as one would say. You had/have to compile it. The engine has a VM to handle it.
yeah, you're right. I grabbed the first line of the WP article and missed the part about bytecode and progs.dat.
Quite embarrassing, since quakeC was one of the first languages I played around with, and I don't remember the compile step. Then again, I was working from tutorials so it's possible there was just a 'compile & run' batch file or something.
It was interpreted but it was compiled. QuakeC was not a scripting language as one would say. You had/have to compile it. The engine has a VM to handle it.