Darkplaces - apologies- Newbie setup question

[Mr.Burns]

I was playing quite happily on the Euroquake server last night using Qrack, and whilst Baker was giving us all a 'good ole ass whippin' I thought rather than seccessfully explode for the 37th time in front of him I would drop out of the game and give darkplaces a try. I Downloaded the latest version, fired it up and tried to reconnect at which point I reached the connection accepted stage and was repeatedly unable to connect. I'd like to give it a try so any ideas would be much appreciated? BTW I immediately went back on with Qrack and 'fountained' at Baker's hands another 13 or so times Incidentally, WingQ, ProQ and JoeQ are also fine and dandy through my router

Also how do you lighten the damn thing up to a useable level as none of the internal settings from the menu(s) seemed to make much difference ? I know pro's like Jackhammer (tm ) and Baker hardly even need to be turn the monitor on in order to win but I'm not so gifted.

Any advice would be much appreciated

Kind regards

Monty

[scar3crow]

For gamma, hardware gamma or color control should be on, cant recall the name (I dont need it, apparently my monitor is brighter than the sun), then the color control sliders will allow you to adjust the gamma.

Keep trying, for some reason some of the servers people play here (though not all, I have no problems with IHOC for example) just dont like Darkplaces on the initial connection and so you just gotta insist, then it will let you in and play as normally. Shmack has refused me up to 4 times in a row. Ive not tried the Euroquake server so I dont know about that.

[Jackhammer]

I know its not much help but I just tried it and had no problems connecting to servers, didnt have to change anything just allow it on the old firewall..

God knows about the gamma (perhaps darkplaces is a perfect name) found it commented out in a cfg and it wont load my autoexec with my controls and settings , although it doesnt feel like quake to me somehow so Im not that bothered for multiplayer

[scar3crow]

For gamma enable it in the options, its right by Color Control and Color Control is the gamma itself.

You must have some weird shit in your cfg...

[Baker]

It took me 2 tries, but I connected to bigfoot.quake1.net successful without doing anything special in DarkPlaces.

I was using my default router settings --- the way it comes out of the box, which couldn't connect to IronRocket or GCHQ (a month or 2 ago) so I was able to test the setup of these servers, so I think Jackhammer's assessment that there is no issue is correct.

As to the other questions, the Gamma control in DarkPlaces doesn't work with my video card, my video card being an old GeForce2, but I figure most ppl don't use that card.

In 20-45 depending on the order I work on things, I will have a preconfigured (for deathmatch) DarkPlaces setup available with some other things I want to be a surprise that take advantage of DarkPlaces pk3 support. I have a number of things I want to finish, and the order I do them makes a great deal of difference on the timing.

[Jackhammer]

Thanks nicer to see now.

My autoexec.cfg is not to out the ordinary ....works with every other quake engine qrack, glpro, and qw fuhquake ezquake normally I would just put in in the qrack folder for example and it would load up my controls/weapon binds etc.

edit I use a 7800 gtx and the gamma does work on mine.

[Yellow No. 5]

I've been hoping someone would write up a guide on how to setup and config darkplaces for use on the regular netquake servers, and have asked a few of the dp zealots *cough* scar3crow *cough* if they were interested, to no avail.

[scar3crow]

o_O Ive seen no such questions for such before...

If I do so, Id want to run it by someone more thoroughly versed like Sajt, or this guy I hear knows a fair bit about the engine, LordHavoc.

To be honest, all of my positive experiences with DP come from it out of the box, its not a "setting up" engine in my experience at all... I unzip and run the exe. No frontends or anything like that. I just... point it to a server and play.

Ive no idea on the autoexec or any other config, Qrack is the engine that doesnt recognize my config (where as DP, Fitz, PQ, GLQuake, TyrQuake, winQuake have no problem).

[=peg=]

as fas as the loading of the cfg goes it is my experience that a lot of engines come with a pak0 supplied including a quake.rc file.. this file is the file the engine will load by default.. in most cases it just contains something like "exec autoexec.cfg" i believe this is why the default settings will load instead of ur own cfg (even if u call it autoexec.cfg.. becouse it is in fact the quake.rc that the engine checks for)

i'd sugest to open up the pak0.pak in a pak explorer and remove this file and put one of ur own in ur -game folder and make its content "exec myconfig.cfg" where 'myconfig' is ur own cfg file..

[foq]

Servers usually refuse me too but I just type "ping" in the console (no quote marks) and it lets me connect, same with every other engine in the universe that you'll find that wont let you connect immediately.

[Mr.Burns]

Thanks for all the constructive replies. I was hunting around trying to find the brightness controls and they were indeed in the Color section.

After a little persuation I've also managed to successfully connect to bigfoot.quake1.net

Thanks again.

Kind regards

Monty

[foq]

Is your avatar from UT with custom skins, Monty, or a screenshot from UT with something drawn in, or neither?

[Monster]

I think its a custom skin. I remember when I used to play UT a ton, I would be bored and looking around at all the p1mp skins and I saw Homer simpson skin, and most likely a monty burns skin.

[LordHavoc]

as fas as the loading of the cfg goes it is my experience that a lot of engines come with a pak0 supplied including a quake.rc file.. this file is the file the engine will load by default.. in most cases it just contains something like "exec autoexec.cfg" i believe this is why the default settings will load instead of ur own cfg (even if u call it autoexec.cfg.. becouse it is in fact the quake.rc that the engine checks for)

i'd sugest to open up the pak0.pak in a pak explorer and remove this file and put one of ur own in ur -game folder and make its content "exec myconfig.cfg" where 'myconfig' is ur own cfg file..

DarkPlaces does not include ANY data, as a matter of policy, it tries to make the most of the existing Quake data rather than changing anything.

It actually generates a few procedural textures at load (like particles).

Naturally one can run -game dpmod if one wants some custom data (such as realtime world lights files that are optimized for better performance and graphics than running without them, etc), but I focus purely on enhancing the Quake experience or making it (in my opinion of course), more fun.

Oh also a tip - in DarkPlaces the paks do NOT override standalone files, so you can just extract quake.rc and edit it as you wish and it will override the one in pak0.pak (this is opposite other engines). It also loads all .pak and .pk3 files in the directory (not just ones named pak#.pak), which can cause problems for some people who have random paks lying around.

[Mr.Burns]

Is your avatar from UT with custom skins, Monty, or a screenshot from UT with something drawn in, or neither?

Neither, I do actually look like this :d

I got it from the UT section of Polycount. There's a much better one of Burnsy standing on a huge UT logo but it didn't seem appropriate on a Quake site. I prolly get lynched.

Kind regards

Monty