Quake 2 problems

[Ranger]

When I set my visible screen size (not resolution) to max, and then I go underwater, Q2 crashes and says:
Quake2.exe has encountered a problem... blah... blah

I got the latest 3.2 patch

[Skutarth]

Where's the info? Rig/OS/engine build/renderer/etc.?

EDIT: Can't reproduce it. I'm running my own personally modified Q2CP build.
http://www.enigmaticsoftware.com/q2cp/

[dfsp_spirit]

It's quite common to use custom engines with Q2, just like with NQ. In case you're still using the original q2, you may want to give a modern engine like r1q2 or Jake 2 a try.

[Skutarth]

I would try Q2CP first. It's as faithful to vanilla Quake 2 as possible.

[Ranger]

Rig/OS/engine build/renderer
3.5gB RAM, dual CPU/XP Media Center/quake2.exe from patch/Software

Does Q2CP do software rendering? I read the site... no specific info about it

I'm also having some other problems with Q2:
* I can't run full screen on max resolution
* I have a limited surface count (large maps appear to have holes/invisible walls)

Q2CP fixes all these issues?

[Skutarth]

Rig/OS/engine build/renderer
3.5gB RAM, dual CPU/XP Media Center/quake2.exe from patch/Software

Does Q2CP do software rendering? I read the site... no specific info about it

I'm also having some other problems with Q2:
* I can't run full screen on max resolution
* I have a limited surface count (large maps appear to have holes/invisible walls)

Q2CP fixes all these issues?

Q2CP does software rendering.

You should be able to run it in full screen as long as you have a resolution set that is supported by your monitor.

I don't know about the limited surface count. The engine has a lot of bug fixes and tweaks, so it might be fixed. Try it out and see whether or not it works.

[MH]

Any particular reason why you're running the software renderer? If you're able to run the hardware renderer, I suggest you try that and see if you also crash when going underwater. It will help to determine if the problem is in the core engine or in the renderer module, even if you don't intend running the hardware renderer always.

From memory the Q2 software renderer is not wildly different to the Q1 one, so maybe could you also confirm if it happens with WinQuake?

[golden_boy]

Can you try running the Quake2.exe from a DOS prompt? That's because the engine should print a more interesting error message into the console when it crashes, which might be more helpful than the Windows error box.

I'd be interested in the error message from the engine itself.

Can't run fullscreen: This might be fixed by using a different engine.

Limited surface count: This can probably be fixed by using console variables to increase the limit; we'd again need the output directly from the engine, ie from a console prompt. A more modern engine might fix this issue as well.

[Ranger]

Good news is that I can go underwater with my screen size set to max in openGL.
Bad news is that I still can't full screen.

The game resoultion is my desktop's.

Nothing like this happens in Winquake; full screen & max screen size is all fine.


Q2CP... works fullscreen, but still crashes when underwater with max screen size (in Software)

[Skutarth]

Good news is that I can go underwater with my screen size set to max in openGL.
Bad news is that I still can't full screen.

The game resoultion is my desktop's.

Nothing like this happens in Winquake; full screen & max screen size is all fine.


Q2CP... works fullscreen, but still crashes when underwater with max screen size (in Software)

I've reproduced the crash. It seems to be a problem with the software renderer's memory management. If you set your resolution above 1024x768, it will crash. Either set your resolution to 1024x768 (or below) or use the OpenGL renderer, which doesn't have this problem. I recommend using OpenGL anyway, since you'd be missing out on features that were in mind when Quake 2 was being designed, such as colored lighting. On top of that, OpenGL will probably run faster on a huge majority of computers over that of the software renderer (including computers with integrated chipsets).

EDIT: If you insist on using the software renderer, set the following in the console:

sw_waterwarp 0

I'll see if I can go about fixing it so you don't have to do that.

[Skutarth]

It looks like the error happens because the sine table used for transformations is not long enough. If I change it, it no longer crashes. The water's surface gets screwed up when underwater, though. I assume it has to do with using a non-4:3 aspect ratio resolution, and I'm too lazy to fix it.

EDIT: Did more testing, and it will work at 1600x1200 if the sine table is extended. Incidentally, that resolution is also 4:3. It looks like it renders the game screen at 320x240 into a buffer then does sinusoidal transforms for the wavy effect on the resulting buffer. The buffer is at screen resolution, though. The distortions look tiny compared to lower resolutions. The tables also don't take aspect ratio into account. For now, I don't give enough of a damn to get it working right. Use sw_waterwarp 0.

[koverhbarc]

This is the only thing I could find online about the problem with Quake2's software renderer. The too few surfaces is blatantly obvious when playing many quake 2 mods - I'm more interested in software renderers than in quake2 specifically, so don't tell me to just use GL.

I looked at the source and saw that there is a max surfaces check, but as quadrupling that limit and recompiling did nothing, increasing the limit in the console also did nothing, and using the commands (which are implemented) supposed to print a message when the surface or edge limit is hit also do nothing, I have to assume that what's happening is somewhere else. I can't believe it has anything to do with CPU speed as mine is so much faster than the systems quake2 was designed for, and I notice no slowdown ever.