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These are some notes on Qrack, DarkPlaces and JoeQuake 0.15 on the differences between the engines.
I post this mostly because if ProQuake is ever to be "retired"/"fully superceded" so that no one uses that engine -- nor has any desire to -- some engine will have to do it.
I'll start with Qrack just because in the past Yellow No. 5 once told me to make a list of what bothers about Qrack.
Qrack
1. Typing "help" in the console CRASHES the engine.
2. Turning off the QMB particles appears broke somehow with some of the particles rendering as triangles. Particularly noticeable on RQ servers. Unless I am somehow doing something wrong.
3. Uses m_look (0|1) as the mouse look cvar. Every other engine from FuhQuake to DarkPlaces to EZQuake to Quake 2 to Quake 3 uses freelook (0|1) as the cvar. Deviation from Quake standards.
4. I think it is unfortunate that the joystick support was removed from Qrack. Removal of a baseline Quake feature, despite the fact that few ppl use joysticks.
5. +speed is a known way to max your cl_forward/side/back speed in Quake engines; in Qrack this behavior has been modified so this is not reliably true. Deviation from Quake standards.
6. Non-standard default settings. Particularly, the fov_speed thing should be off. It messes up zoom scripts.
7. Mouse look and invert mouse not in options menu. While the majority of players use the mouse and use it without it being inverted, every game I've ever seen has both Mouse Look ON|OFF and Invert Mouse ON|OFF in the options menu. The result of not doing this is that those players have to ask someone how to do it.
8. No software build
9. Would be nice if it displayed the default cvar value like in JoeQuake 0.15.
JoeQuake 0.15
Mostly this is a comparison of JoeQuake 0.15 to Qrack. I don't know if JoeQuake 0.15 will be developed further in the future, but anyways ...
1. Demo record sometimes crashes engine when connect to a server.
2. Demo rewind does not work as well as it did in JoeQuake 0.14, with onscreen "artifacts" (for lack of a better word) appearing from frames.
3. "Go to console" was removed from the Options menu. New players might not even know there is a console if not for that.
4. cl_smartjump 1 crashes the engine when connected to "jump to join" servers like IHOC and xCTF.
5. Compared to Qrack: The lack of pq_smoothcam, pq_teamscores and loc support is very noticeable online. Client disconnects if it doesn't have the map, instead of stay connected with a message like ProQuake and Qrack do.
6. The buttons don't seem bindable via Options when using -dinput. They are in Qrack (I think) and DarkPlaces.
7. The pop-up "JoeQuake" logo that never closes.
8. The console scrolling isn't like ProQuake or Qrack, which can be very annoying.
9. Does not save cvars to file by default. Very unnewbie friendly.
10. Saves weird cvars to file that should not be saved like deathmatch, skill, scratch1. Breaks compatibility with Frog Bots mod and otherwise is something the engine should not do.
DarkPlaces
1. Mostly stuff already known by LordHavoc like the performance if the FPS is just slightly under the refresh rate, record demos thing, no onscreen game block, iplog, test command gone, no PQ rcon, etc.
2. I keep discovering fairly commonly used cvars like r_drawviewmodel that don't save to the config if set to 0. I'll make a list.
3. No software build, but DarkPlaces has never had one whereas Qrack was based off JoeQuake 0.14 which had one, so it seems like more of a loss to me that Qrack doesn't have a non-GL build because JoeQuake always did. DarkPlaces never intended to have one.
4. I think some players get confused by the "black screen" effect when you don't have the map. They don't seem to inherently know why it is happening. I've had to tell a few players "You don't have the map".
DarkPlaces has closed the gap big-time within the last year and LordHavoc has really made DarkPlaces almost a ProQuake equivalent if DP runs well on your machine.
And Qrack has really evolved and has nice new features like the full keyboard support thing, the MM2 different sound thing and the "easy to read" scoreboard change.
This thread is mostly making notes from the perspective of the future obsolence of ProQuake.
I post this mostly because if ProQuake is ever to be "retired"/"fully superceded" so that no one uses that engine -- nor has any desire to -- some engine will have to do it.
I'll start with Qrack just because in the past Yellow No. 5 once told me to make a list of what bothers about Qrack.
Qrack
1. Typing "help" in the console CRASHES the engine.
2. Turning off the QMB particles appears broke somehow with some of the particles rendering as triangles. Particularly noticeable on RQ servers. Unless I am somehow doing something wrong.
3. Uses m_look (0|1) as the mouse look cvar. Every other engine from FuhQuake to DarkPlaces to EZQuake to Quake 2 to Quake 3 uses freelook (0|1) as the cvar. Deviation from Quake standards.
4. I think it is unfortunate that the joystick support was removed from Qrack. Removal of a baseline Quake feature, despite the fact that few ppl use joysticks.
5. +speed is a known way to max your cl_forward/side/back speed in Quake engines; in Qrack this behavior has been modified so this is not reliably true. Deviation from Quake standards.
6. Non-standard default settings. Particularly, the fov_speed thing should be off. It messes up zoom scripts.
7. Mouse look and invert mouse not in options menu. While the majority of players use the mouse and use it without it being inverted, every game I've ever seen has both Mouse Look ON|OFF and Invert Mouse ON|OFF in the options menu. The result of not doing this is that those players have to ask someone how to do it.
8. No software build
9. Would be nice if it displayed the default cvar value like in JoeQuake 0.15.
JoeQuake 0.15
Mostly this is a comparison of JoeQuake 0.15 to Qrack. I don't know if JoeQuake 0.15 will be developed further in the future, but anyways ...
1. Demo record sometimes crashes engine when connect to a server.
2. Demo rewind does not work as well as it did in JoeQuake 0.14, with onscreen "artifacts" (for lack of a better word) appearing from frames.
3. "Go to console" was removed from the Options menu. New players might not even know there is a console if not for that.
4. cl_smartjump 1 crashes the engine when connected to "jump to join" servers like IHOC and xCTF.
5. Compared to Qrack: The lack of pq_smoothcam, pq_teamscores and loc support is very noticeable online. Client disconnects if it doesn't have the map, instead of stay connected with a message like ProQuake and Qrack do.
6. The buttons don't seem bindable via Options when using -dinput. They are in Qrack (I think) and DarkPlaces.
7. The pop-up "JoeQuake" logo that never closes.
8. The console scrolling isn't like ProQuake or Qrack, which can be very annoying.
9. Does not save cvars to file by default. Very unnewbie friendly.
10. Saves weird cvars to file that should not be saved like deathmatch, skill, scratch1. Breaks compatibility with Frog Bots mod and otherwise is something the engine should not do.
DarkPlaces
1. Mostly stuff already known by LordHavoc like the performance if the FPS is just slightly under the refresh rate, record demos thing, no onscreen game block, iplog, test command gone, no PQ rcon, etc.
2. I keep discovering fairly commonly used cvars like r_drawviewmodel that don't save to the config if set to 0. I'll make a list.
3. No software build, but DarkPlaces has never had one whereas Qrack was based off JoeQuake 0.14 which had one, so it seems like more of a loss to me that Qrack doesn't have a non-GL build because JoeQuake always did. DarkPlaces never intended to have one.
4. I think some players get confused by the "black screen" effect when you don't have the map. They don't seem to inherently know why it is happening. I've had to tell a few players "You don't have the map".
DarkPlaces has closed the gap big-time within the last year and LordHavoc has really made DarkPlaces almost a ProQuake equivalent if DP runs well on your machine.
And Qrack has really evolved and has nice new features like the full keyboard support thing, the MM2 different sound thing and the "easy to read" scoreboard change.
This thread is mostly making notes from the perspective of the future obsolence of ProQuake.
Thanks for pointing out the bugs I missed.
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