Darkplaces Inconviences

[Canadian*Sniper]

I wasn't the one who came up with the value Someone on this forum notified me.

[scar3crow]

ProQuake is a very mild modification

But what it modifies, movement feel and mouse feel, is drastic enough that I cant use it. In ProQuake I am less accurate than I am in GLQuake or DarkPlaces, and the walk motion is visibly stuttering and annoying. This to me is a violation of the core input from the player to the game and thus is the last thing the engine should change unless it improves it (the precision of accuracy in DP - the player motion feels the same).

DarkPlaces needs a more powerful machine

True, though the average GLPro user, and average Quake user in general in my experience has a more powerful machine than I do.

My Geforce 5200FX doesn't perform well enough for steady online play

I actually had the money and capability back then to upgrade, but I had a feeling about the FX series. It was later revealed that they werent so great, and I think Im better off for running the "slower" Ti4200.
I know people out there have slower computers, but Ive encountered maybe 2 really, that I know of. Otherwise, I oft feel embarassed to give my specs, but it has done me well.

I blame Microsoft for retarding the computer upgrade process

I dont hate Microsoft, but Im considering taking the plunge of going SuSe or Ubuntu for my next machine. I like XP, I dont like the difficulty it brings in some hardware cases - I dont have Vista, I simply have little experience with it, but I have no drive to switch to it.

Sorry for the delay in response, I was out of town for several days.

[Baker]

But what it modifies, movement feel and mouse feel, is drastic enough that I cant use it. In ProQuake I am less accurate than I am in GLQuake or DarkPlaces, and the walk motion is visibly stuttering and annoying.

Hmmm. Interesting. I've heard someone else say this before. I haven't really used GLQuake in ages, except for Enhanced GLQuake but only for single player and I never use ProQuake for single player because -- well -- it really is a very out-of-date engine compared to everything else. So I don't have a basis of comparison for the movement.

I know people out there have slower computers, but Ive encountered maybe 2 really, that I know of. Otherwise, I oft feel embarassed to give my specs, but it has done me well.

I wish there were some way to track computer specs and engine usage better. It is difficult to determine precise details.

I know a fairly large number of players, enough to know there are, for instance, more software (non-OpenGL) users than some think, but many possibly that could use OpenGL but either don't because they have opengl32.dll and/or aren't comfortable enough to use a command line OR use Win ProQuake solely because it is faster.

I dont hate Microsoft, but Im considering taking the plunge of going SuSe or Ubuntu for my next machine. I like XP, I dont like the difficulty it brings in some hardware cases - I dont have Vista, I simply have little experience with it, but I have no drive to switch to it.

I have Vista on my laptop. I hate it; they took everything that was perfect about XP and ruined it in the name of perceived "security".

If I have enough time within the several hours, I have some nice stuff for DarkPlaces.

[foq]

scar3crow, the FX line performs like shit for the pirce. Assuming your board can at least to agp 4x...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814136008

[LordHavoc]

One quick note: some of the issues mentioned here (r_glsl saving, cl_bob saving, ATI crashes with r_glsl 1) have already been fixed in betas, I just haven't made a new stable release, pending more testing, naturally testing only occurs when people do use the betas and report back to me, so the beta period is a variable amount of time...

There's one big known issue that has only come to light recently which dates back years and makes DarkPlaces VERY choppy when your framerate limit is just barely below what your computer can render at (like vid_vsync 1, cl_maxfps 59), I'm still puzzling over how to solve this problem, the easiest solution is the setting cl_nettimesyncmode 1 but that option basically makes it as non-smooth as glquake, so I'm trying to figure out how to use that mode when this framerate issue occurs and not otherwise...

[scar3crow]

the_f0qer - thanks for the link, Im running a msi kt3ultra2 iirc, which peaks at agp4x, so I dont know if it would be worth it due to the bandwidth restraints that would occur.

[foq]

If you have an agp 8x board you will notice a great performance increase

[scar3crow]

if im willing to undergo changing my board as well, honestly, ill just save up a whole lot more and go through a total revamp, not just of the videocard.

LordHavoc thinks the 256 would be worth the money still, even with the bandwidth restriction of agp4x, but the cost of the 512 would be pushing it in terms of worth.

[Baker]

The problem with ATI cards (Radeon, etc.) and DarkPlaces -- is that solely related to the r_glsl thing?

I noticed that LordHavoc mentioned in another thread that cl_bob and r_glsl save to the config now, and I really like that.

The r_glsl 1 -- I remember reading in a thread here that this speeds up rendering in a specific situation but that situation either never happens in the regular Quake experience (deluxe mapping? bump mapping?) or is it that it rarely happens?

If that is only thing that currently makes it so an ATI card can't use DarkPlaces (if this is true), shouldn't it default to 0 or use some other method to ensure it is only used if the feature it speeds up is activated?

/Thinking out loud

[Baker]

* I was getting stuck in q1edge alot near the Swamp.

DarkPlaces seems to have a lot of problems with Q1EDGE in all the releases since the March 14th one.

Hug corners tightly in any of the curvy areas or walk around the map for about 5 minutes. It is hard to describe, but many places on q1edge seem to cause serious and signficant problems in the latest DarkPlaces.

I got "hurt" (5 damage) by the map just trying to walk from the boxes/teleporter area to the top area and that's not the only place, somewhat stuck in walls in many areas.

This is very strange, I've used DarkPlaces a ton for the last month on countless different maps and haven't encountered any of the things that happen on Q1edge (except the ammo boxes/armor/health boxes being suspended 5 foot off the ground on some maps, like Solarfall, for isntance).

I noticed sv_cullentities is on by default (this is an anti-cheat/wallhack feature meant to be on servers that causes the entity information to not be sent to a client if they shouldn't be able to see them). There was a very precise area that I was familiar with and expected to barely see the a slightest corner of a health box and it wasn't there. Very impressive work, had it not been for that healthbox, I had otherwise not noticed this was on at all.

[LordHavoc]

The problem with ATI cards (Radeon, etc.) and DarkPlaces -- is that solely related to the r_glsl thing?

Purely r_glsl related, there was some flawed code in my older shader that did not compile on ATI but did on NVIDIA, and I replaced it with some slightly-faster code that used textures, unfortunately I passed the wrong parameters to the function and ATI didn't like that but NVIDIA didn't mind, so I fixed that so it works on ATI again.

The r_glsl 1 -- I remember reading in a thread here that this speeds up rendering in a specific situation but that situation either never happens in the regular Quake experience (deluxe mapping? bump mapping?) or is it that it rarely happens?

Actually in my current benchmarks r_glsl 1 is a universal improvement on GF6, so something must have improved.

If that is only thing that currently makes it so an ATI card can't use DarkPlaces (if this is true), shouldn't it default to 0 or use some other method to ensure it is only used if the feature it speeds up is activated?

As mentioned I fixed that.

[LordHavoc]

DarkPlaces seems to have a lot of problems with Q1EDGE in all the releases since the March 14th one.

Even the current beta? I haven't had a chance to re-test q1edge again recently, I have seen the glitches you speak of the last time I tested.

I noticed sv_cullentities is on by default (this is an anti-cheat/wallhack feature meant to be on servers that causes the entity information to not be sent to a client if they shouldn't be able to see them). There was a very precise area that I was familiar with and expected to barely see the a slightest corner of a health box and it wasn't there. Very impressive work, had it not been for that healthbox, I had otherwise not noticed this was on at all.

Actually r_cullentities_trace is on by default, not sv_cullentities_trace, both of them prevent wallhacks (except that of course someone intending to wallhack could turn off r_cullentities_trace easily).

The server culling has side effects like no shadows from players running out of a hallway (yes that's a vague form of wallhack), the renderer culling doesn't have that issue (shadows are still cast from the players who can't be directly seen), but improves framerates somewhat in some cases, it was added for Nexuiz (which has higher poly player models than Doom3, which take a significant bite out of the cpu), I'm not convinced it should be on in Quake though.

[Baker]

Purely r_glsl related, there was some flawed code in my older shader that did not compile on ATI but did on NVIDIA, and I replaced it with some slightly-faster code that used textures, unfortunately I passed the wrong parameters to the function and ATI didn't like that but NVIDIA didn't mind, so I fixed that so it works on ATI again.

That's good to hear.

Even the current beta? I haven't had a chance to re-test q1edge again recently, I have seen the glitches you speak of the last time I tested.

I downloaded the April 7th one a couple of days ago and rechecked the Q1EDGE thing yesterday and it still has the problem. And it is the only I know of with this issue too so far.

[Baker]

Things I've noticed about the DarkPlaces April 7th build:

1. Zero crashes. The March 14th and later builds could not play Hellchepsout (Link,Download) on maximum effects and high lighting without crashing on me probably 3 times going thru the map. I'm not sure if this is a sign of anything, my config or settings may be different somehow, but I don't think so.

2. On the map Oblivion ((Link)), a Death Knight always seems to commit suicide by falling off a platform into the void a few seconds after attacking me.

Added some more things:

3. Trying to load Marcher Fortress = DarkPlaces freezes

4. So I get some weird lack of frame smoothness (but high FPS) specifically on Rage (all ports) but not on Dredd (also CAx) or any other server nor offline. I'll try the Apr 12 build and some other things.

[foq]

@Baker #4 - you were lagging. If you lag in Darplaces, it feels like bad FPS and not bad ping.