I'm looking to understand and find the terminology for what causes - or allows - players to interfere with geometry in old games. Famously, ID's Quake3 gave birth to a whole community of people breaking the physics by jumping, sliding, getting stuck and launching themselves off points in geometry.

Some months ago (though I'd be darned if I can find it again!) I saw a conference held by Bungie's Vic DeLeon and a colleague in which Vic briefly discussed the issues he ran into while attempting to wrap 'collision' objects (please correct my terminology) around environment objects so that players could appear as though they were walking on organic surfaces, while not clipping through them or appear to be walking on air at certain points, due to complexities in the modeling.

My aim is to compose a case study essay for University in which I can tackle this issue in games, drawing on early exploits and how techniques have changed to address such exploits and to aid in the gameplay itself. I have 3 current day example of where exploits still exist, however specifically targeting ID Software clearly shows they've massively improved their techniques between Q3 and Q4.

So in summary, with your help please, I'd like to gain a slightly better understanding of this issue as a whole (its terminology mainly) so I can use terms and ask the right questions within the right contexts. In practical application, I know what it is, I know how to do it, but I don't have the benefit of level design knowledge yet and its technical widgety knick-knack terms =)

Many thanks in advance

AJ