DirectQ 1.8.8

[Baker]

I have music named track00.mp3 thru track04.mp3 in quake/id1/music and it doesn't play (in a map with the cd track indicated as #1 ... which should play track00.mp3 --- right, since 0 means no track? --- and if not should at least play track01.mp3).

I tried a few other things (short of downloading the source code and looking through it) and it doesn't play

This is DirectQ 1.9 ... any ideas?

[Cobalt]

Pretty sure the format the all the engines will recognize is : track014.xxx
the track has to be in 3 digit format.

[Baker]

Pretty sure the format the all the engines will recognize is : track014.xxx
the track has to be in 3 digit format.

No change.

[martyfender]

For DirectQ and Darkplaces the music must be in: \ID1\sound\cdtracks, starting with Track002.mp3. If I am not mistaken, Track02 works, also. I wish engine authors would be consistant in this and the naming convention. Quakespasm, for example, need to be in \ID1\music\ starting with track02.mp3.

[martyfender]

As far as I can tell, Darkplaces cannot use music in mp3 format, which is a shame. It can use ogg or wav files.

[Bloodshot]

I'm having a similar problem. I used to be able to put the music in ID1/music with any name, and as long as it was numbered in the right order DirectQ would play it - now I can't get the music to play at all

[MH]

For DirectQ and Darkplaces the music must be in: \ID1\sound\cdtracks, starting with Track002.mp3. If I am not mistaken, Track02 works, also. I wish engine authors would be consistant in this and the naming convention. Quakespasm, for example, need to be in \ID1\music\ starting with track02.mp3.

DirectQ supports both id1/music and id1/sound/cdtracks and doesn't enforce a naming convention on the files - precisely because other engines are inconsistent about this.

Every other id engine that plays music from the filesystem uses /music as the directory, but LordHavoc is unfortunately religious on this point so /sound/cdtracks must be supported too.

If LordHavoc, the QuakeSpasm guys, and anyone else involved were to sit down and agree on a single standard, I'll quite happily follow it. Because everybody wants to do what they feel is technically or aesthetically superior themselves, DirectQ gets to be something of a mess as a result.

It's entirely reliant on the codecs installed on your machine. If you have a bad codec installed you'll get undefined behaviour so far as DirectQ is concerned. As a general rule, if you can play it in Windows Media Player then DirectQ can also play it. More specifically format support got restricted to WAV, WMA and MP3 in recent versions because of bad codecs causing crashes/blue-screens with OGGs.

The reason behind all of this is a philosophy of "you do not need to have anything but the engine executable". Other engines supply a host of extra DLLs for various functions and the versions of these DLLs often mismatch, and things often don't work as a result.

It's too much to ask that people create a new Quake installation for each engine that they want to use. That's not an option. So an option that removes the need for this must be used.

Again, if everyone involved were to agree on a single set of DLL versions to use - on the basis that being sane and consistent for players is more important than being technically or aesthetically superior for engine coders - DirectQ would quite happily join in the DLL game.

That's the background. As to why it was working before but not now - I've been unable to reproduce any of these problems on 4 different machines. There are a number of possible reasons that come to mind though, the main one being that the music file is actually playing but is reporting a bad duration (e.g. 0.00) and therefore stopping immediately after it starts.

I'll continue to look into it, but don't expect a magic solution out of the air.

[MH]

Another possible cause is if you have marked your music dir as hidden or system, or if you have compressed or encrypted it.

[R00k]

Two machines that I liked using DQ on was my office PC (Dell Insperion something with intel chipset) and my Sony VAIO with intel 9XX series chip . Both machines using windows XP. Any version after 1.8.666 just doesnt work on those machines... But still using 1.8.666 gives me a soild 100fps of either so im contempt.

Win-phone version would be practical for watching matches or demos (wink wink nudge nudge)..

[MH]

Buy me a WinPhone then.

It's odd that versions post 1.8.666 didn't work for you - development on 1.9.0 continued until very late in the day on a similar Dell office PC (XP Pro, Intel 945 graphics, etc), and the release builds of prior versions were often made on that machine. Puzzled.

[Bloodshot]

So it could be a codec thing? I can play the MP3s fine in WMP but I tried an earlier version of DirectQ and the music still won't play for some reason - maybe I need to reinstall a certain codec that got messed up (and could you point me to which ones I could possibly need?)

[MH]

The codecs that come with Windows should be fine; no need to install anything.

It also occurs to me - particularly if you've used other engines as well as DirectQ - that the bgmvolume cvar might be set to 0. That's probably the first thing to test...

[R00k]

MH on the laptop there was a shader error with 1.90 i can try again and get u some specs. The dell hasnt been updated and might really be lacking software driver support, as the error was something like i need version this or that of something i cant remember

Here's the error:

D3DHLSL_LoadEffect: Fatal error compiling Master Shader 0(1,10): warning X1519: 'demo3.dem' : macro redefinition.
c:\quake\memory(642,29):error X3004 : undeclared identifier 'NumBatchInstances'
c:\quake\memory(642,: error X3074 : 'PartInstancePosition': implicit array missing initial value.

Seems like something didnt initialize successfully and the rest of the init fails using a Mobile Intel(R) 945GM Express Chipset(Calistoga) 128mb.

Buy me a WinPhone then.

K but... doesnt the SDK have a winphone emu in VS2010?

[Bloodshot]

Nah I checked bgmvolume and it was above zero. I wonder why it would just stop working all of a sudden

[MH]

MH on the laptop there was a shader error with 1.90 i can try again and get u some specs. The dell hasnt been updated and might really be lacking software driver support, as the error was something like i need version this or that of something i cant remember

Here's the error:

D3DHLSL_LoadEffect: Fatal error compiling Master Shader 0(1,10): warning X1519: 'demo3.dem' : macro redefinition.
c:\quake\memory(642,29):error X3004 : undeclared identifier 'NumBatchInstances'
c:\quake\memory(642,: error X3074 : 'PartInstancePosition': implicit array missing initial value.

Seems like something didnt initialize successfully and the rest of the init fails using a Mobile Intel(R) 945GM Express Chipset(Calistoga) 128mb.

Same as what Legend reported so it's definitely a code error rather than machine-related.

If you have a DirectX SDK installed, could you check in the caps viewer - under Direct3D9 Devices | <intel thingie> | D3D Device Types | HAL | Caps - see what it says for MaxVertexShaderConst. My current theory is that it's going to be "0" with this part, which is why you're getting this error. If so, I have a fix in the works.