DirectQ

[R00k]

I can see the future, or at least the future with a future.
DirectQ is an active engine mod, that's built by a very talented author.
It's a native DirectX version of Quake (not unlike the openGL version), with major fixes and enhancements.
Yet, the author doesn't play online in the U.S. where netQuake thrives.
I would NOT like to see a great engine fall to the wayside because lack of
discrete usage. If Dq works on all machine in the past 6 years, what features (besides ProQuake .loc's) would benefit the online netQuake community?

I can tag a few but, DirectQ should be an option besides ProQuake or Qrack, to support netQuake mods.

[Baker]

With a single player engine, you catch the interest of casual players and mappers. They might use an engine every once in a while.

But with multiplayer types, they will use it every single day for as long as they play which could be essentially forever. And if they do play single player, they'll most likely use the same engine.

Well, first ...

Let's look at why ProQuake 3.50 wiped out all the other multiplayer NQ clients until essentially Qrack.

1) CRITICAL: You can stay connected to the server even if you don't have the map.
2) CRITICAL: NAT Fix.
3) CRITICAL: Console backscroll fix. JoeQuake didn't have this an it was annoying. Essentially, during multiplayer, there are a slew of messages like so and so got killed by a rocket and with every new message, GLQuake and other non-fixed engines will automatically scroll to the bottom upon a new message. This means you cannot scroll up to read what someone said if a lot of new messages are coming. In ProQuake 3.50 and later and Qrack you can, DarkPlaces too.
4) CRITICAL: Ping in scoreboard
5) Not critical ... but it is for the serious DM/CA players so it is near critical: Loc support.
6) Effectively critical: "good aim". (ProQuake protocol shorts for angles, not bytes). In DM this is uber important that you fire where the cursor indicates and not to the side one way or another.
7) Not critical, but still important: "smooth cam". JoeQuake never had smooth cam which when you are riding someone as an observer in CRMOD or CAx -- especially with slightly bad ping -- you see jerky movement.
Not critical, but for CRMOD and CAx it kind of is: PQ_TEAMSCORES support. You see the team score total in the status bar so if the other team has 48 frags and the frag limit is 50 you see 48 in the status bar instead of not knowing the score. (There isn't any other way of knowing the team score, not even adding the player scores together works because a player may have disconnected so you wouldn't know their score).
9) Rather important: ability to record demo at any time. Other Quake communities don't get this, but the NetQuake community takes this for granted. We've had this for at least 8 years and everyone uses it. It isn't considered a feature, but is considered normal. (JoeQuake has this too).
10) A bit important, iplog. Overrated to some extent but at the same time some players change names a lot and this feature can prevent them from playing you as a fool.

Being unable to connect to a server if you don't have the map is an instant killer. This is one reason why Qrack displaced JoeQuake, which had many ProQuake support features (NAT fix, precise aim ... even eventually ping in scoreboard).

NAT fix, which it appears DirectQ essentially has a complete implementation of, is also an absolute must.

Ping in scoreboard is important, even LordHavoc added this "unstandard" feature.

[R00k]

Let's look at why ProQuake 3.50 wiped out all the other multiplayer NQ clients until essentially Qrack.

Actuallythe majority report proquake via q_version. ProQuake is the most used client and 100% as a server.

[MH]

There's different types of clients with different users who have different needs. The hardcore multiplayer types are actually a very small proportion of the overall user base - small, but active and vocal, so they tend to seem quite prominent.

When I was working on the GL engine that I had aborted before starting DirectQ, one of the things in my mind was "what reason does this have to exist?" OK, it pleased me to be playing around with the code, but unless one is doing more than that it's kinda masturbatory, isn't it? I looked at the engines that were available, and saw 4 big ones: ProQuake for the hardcore MP types, DP for the propeller-heads, QRack for the eye-candy and FQ for the more trad types. That seemed to cover most bases, but I guess I did find a niche in the end, which was the alternative API support for machines that didn't run OpenGL well.

Right now though (and since the start of 2010) the focus has changed to huge map/big scene support, which is where I invest a lot of my time on it. I honestly believe that nothing else can come close for handling high r_speeds on any hardware, and there's a fascinating technical challenge in overcoming the difficulties this causes. Of course, everyone else gets an engine that's able to run Masque of the Red Death at > 72 FPS on even moderate hardware, which is cool.

It's not going to fall by the wayside on account of a less-than-high profile in the MP scene in other words (you should see my download stats!), but at the same time adding more MP-friendly features is also something of an ongoing project with it too (it just got rcon recently; not released yet though).

Thanks for the kind words!

[Patton]

I noticed a thread on this website earlier today about directq working great on the intel chipset (P.O.S.) graphics for laptops. I have found this is VERY MUCH TRUE!!! Very fast and I like the clean look you got going on MH! I was testing it on the servers and found a very aggravating issue. Server messages are sent to console as well so a game being paused or even a CA game waiting for people to push their buttons for the colors spams the console. Here is my console when someone RQ on me while i was testing it. See the multiple "PAUSED" Images? Any chat is so fast i can't read it cause of the constant "PAUSED" spam and then it is impossible to scroll up to read it.

3) CRITICAL: Console backscroll fix. JoeQuake didn't have this an it was annoying. Essentially, during multiplayer, there are a slew of messages like so and so got killed by a rocket and with every new message, GLQuake and other non-fixed engines will automatically scroll to the bottom upon a new message. This means you cannot scroll up to read what someone said if a lot of new messages are coming. In ProQuake 3.50 and later and Qrack you can, DarkPlaces too.

[=peg=]

scr_centerlog 0

to stop it from logging center-print messages to console (annoying in online games, but nice for single-player games)

and yeah, I'd love to see a back-scrollable console in the next release too

[lxndr]

6) Effectively critical: "good aim". (ProQuake protocol shorts for angles, not bytes). In DM this is uber important that you fire where the cursor indicates and not to the side one way or another.

Ugh, not only in DM I suppose, but I guess it's ok to lose some precision with distant target.

10) A bit important, iplog. Overrated to some extent but at the same time some players change names a lot and this feature can prevent them from playing you as a fool.

I was wondering if it was making sense to build a mute system on top of iplog, what do you think ? Is there already something existing ?

There's an other (not so critical) point which was bugging me everytime I played online, when chat messages and game notifications all appear in the same place. I split them and gave chat messages a longer notification time.

[Baker]

Ugh, not only in DM I suppose, but I guess it's ok to lose some precision with distant target.


I was wondering if it was making sense to build a mute system on top of iplog, what do you think ? Is there already something existing ?

There's an other (no so critical) point which was bugging me everytime I play online, when chat messages and game notifications all appear in the same place. I split them and gived chat messages a longer notification time.

Quake is need of better administrative controls. I'll be focusing on that probably after I get ProQuake to 5.0.

We should have really good stats, global administrative controls, nicer administrative controls, multi-mod capability on all servers, yada, yada, yada. It is less hard than one would think ... especially considering some of the work R00k has done that we can build upon (plus some of my ideas combined with things Solecord/Efess can do).

[Walter90]

Ok. I have a question. I run single player with openGL on Linux. Can I use DirectQ?

[Spike]

DirectQ requires D3D, which requires windows. Wine is your only option if you want it to run on Linux.

[Walter90]

I do have wine. I guess I'll try it and see. Luckily, if it doesn't work out if I don't save, no harm done.

[MH]

The specific reason DirectQ exists is to enable you to play Quake on machines that have trouble with OpenGL (bad drivers, poor vendor support, whatever). Part of the solution to that is not using OpenGL, which means using D3D (or software rendering, but there are other options for that).

Of course it does a lot more than that these days (huge map support, excellent support for and performance with complex high-poly scenes, pretty decent multiplayer features, good handling of water and sky polys, etc) but the original reason is still there and is still important.

This does have the side-effect that Linux support is not an option for it.

The RMQ engine which I'm hoping to do a pre-release of shortly uses some of the same ideas behind DirectQ, but is a very different beast in a lot of ways. It is however fully cross-platform and does work on Linux (one of our mappers/designers is a Linux user and would give me a hard time if it didn't! )

[Walter90]

Lol, good! Linux rules!

I have several different video capabilities and i always try stuff to see what works. I'll let you all know how it comes out.

[Magnus]

MH, any chance to get a copy of the DirectQ ver with the timer and iplog?

Thanks!

[Frenzy]

Yes, status bar timer would be GREAT. Also - scr_centerlog should be set to 0 by deafult, as when ppl like myself download it, it takes DAYS to figure it out since there is no (also needed plz) command list for the engine. I just helped Quickdraw find this cmd, and he said he's been looking for weeks! PLZ! directq rocks, and it's the only engine i've used for more than 2 days since testing qrack, but missing a couple simple things

p.s. ill pay upwards of 150$ for whoever makes the a winquake client the fastest with:

1.) automatic downloading
2.) cl_smooth option like qrack or darkplaces if it's possible as i ping 150 avg ping and need this, you lpb's are stressing me out
3.) demo player that can ff, rw, play, pause tab, etc
4.) cl_truelightning (with 150 ping this would be great too)
5.) somewhere in the .zip file, nude pictures of Mindz gf
6.) remote start for my car
7.) be able to set my tivo from the console to record shows i want to watch when i realize they'll be on in 10 minutes but my quake match has 20 minutes left
8.) iplog
9.) NO FULLBRIGHT on the players, i had a winquake almost similar to what i want, but it had fullbright and it was years ago, it may have been just me not knowing a cmd.
10.) if anybody has Boners client from MTOWN (if anybody remembers Boner, he had a client that was ahead of it's time. it had cl_truelightning in a winquake client), i'd use that to build off of.
11.) im serious, ill pay.

fine print: this is not an agreement to pay 150$ to the first person to get it done. this is me asking if someone will do it FAST if i pay them.

been asking rook for a couple years, but he doesn't like beggers and told me "if you ask me one more time ill kill your mother", so I quit bugging him, my mom means a lot to me.

whoever has any pre-release-ctf maps they are working on that are unfinished, please get in touch with me. i am making a 3wave map pak for release upon the re-opening of yaowave (new york, chicago, la) next year.