Engoo - engwin or engqsb

[TempesT]

I recently downloaded Engoo to replay some quake in software mode, and I love it. It looks great. It came with two executables, and I don't know which would would be better to use. What are the differences between these two executables?

[Mindf!3ldzX]

what are the names of the executables? I have never even heardof Engoo short of yours and Bakers discussion!

[TempesT]

The names are engwin.exe and engqsb.exe. Engoo is a Winquake source port that uses software rendering. There's an interesting article here , that shows the differences between software and OpenGL for Quake. The two other things they don't mention, are the square particles, and the water warp effect when you are under water. OpenGL can't emulate the software water warp effect.

I have been using QuakeSpasm to play Quake, but upon hearing that Quake was designed with software mode, I switched over to Winquake. GLQuake didn't come till after the release of the game. So many people argue that using the software render is the way its supposed to look instead of using OpenGL.

[Mindf!3ldzX]

hehe, about the water warp, I would disable it anyway I prefer my underwater experience to be a crisp/clear as air, easier multiplayer that way.

Well, I did some quick tests on this engine.

There are two executables, a "win" one and a "qsb" one. Quake Standards Base?

The "additive" mode used for water is really good, though it doesn't look additive.

I'm not sure how the screen color effects are done in this engine, but some of them (like the quad damage one) looks amazing, while others (like the underwater one) looks broken.

And red lights are really problematic, but they work well on blue textures, since blue + red = purple.

[Spike]

tbh, an engine wil overbright enabled, 'gl_texturemode gl_nearest_mipmap_nearest' set, fullbright texture support, npot texture support, render-to-texture water warping, ugly badly scaling square particles, fixed sprite modes, mips capped to 4 levels, replacement textures disabled, player model sizes rounded up to the pixel, and gl_affinemodels set to 1 (with drivers that still respond to that uglifying hint), then there's no practical difference between software and gl...
Opengl gets higher framerates. Nuff said.

Back in the day, software rendering used to render immediately. You need about double the framerate with opengl to achieve the same video latency.
That second last item is imho the main reason that software rendering lingered quite so long in the QuakeWorld community.

All of the above items have been done in quake. Heck, quakeforge's glsl renderer actually uses the colourmap still (again, rather)!

Software rendered engines often surprise me in the awesomeness of the things that they do, but most of them get terrible framerates as a result, especially as the polycount rises.
Fog effects, shadows, transparent water, coloured lighting. These things are awesome.
I'm just amazed that people can actually read enough of that code to modify it.
That said, I wouldn't personally recommend using a software rendering quake engine unless it was the only choice for that platform. The GL engines are faithful enough, when the cvars are all set right.

[damage_inc]

Not to go off topic here but... Spike do you remember Unreal's software renderer? At 1024X768 back in the day it rivaled any "3d accelerated" game, at least ihmo.

As far as the topic, BIG PIXELS hurt my eyes! We have enough options now to not even worry about what was brought up no?!

[Mindf!3ldzX]

I remember dumping tons of time into Unreal, the first.

That full-auto gun that shot out white/blue nail looking things was favorite gun ....

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZp1htoYs9I[/ame] shows it in this one.

[Spike]

damage_inc, back in the day, sure. Writing to the framebuffer hasn't gotten much faster in the time since - try running it at 2048*1536-32bit instead of a puny 1024*768-16bit.
Thankfully monitors have actually dropped in resolution, except for the insanely priced ones.

Oddly enough, Quake2 actually seems blurier than Quake for me. Prolly cos its all pure yellow I guess. But hey, beats pure brown...

[TempesT]

Quake was designed without texture filtering, so you're supposed to see the pixels on the textures. You have to take into consideration something called "Pixel Art". Many would say that texture filtering will ruin any 8bit and 16-bit game. Blurring pixels together isn't how the picture was supposed to be seen. The artist took a lot of time arranging those pixels of color lol. It would be like me saying, "The Mona Lisa is a bit too sharp, I need to blur it". We need to take into consideration the way the artists originally want you to view their work.

I know that the water warp effect wouldn't help you much in Multiplayer, but it looks really cool. I enjoy going in the water just so I can see that trippy effect. I mean, you got to admit it looks awesome. A lot better then the OpenGL water warp effect.

But that a side, I'm still kind of confused about the two executables. I don't know which one is better to use. I'm using the "win" executable just because I have a Windows machine. I think mankrip is guessing what "qsb" stands for. I don't think he sounds too sure when he said "Quake Standards Base", hence the question mark after it.

[damage_inc]

TempesT, I appreciate that you like to view it as it was "meant" to be, really. In fact, while rediscovering Quake these past few weeks I also played a Doom source port with Doom64... as it was meant to be w/square blocky pixels and all!!!

And I'm not saying one is better than the other for everyone. But for me, while individual pixels were blurred, the game was just easier to see... the scene as a whole.

Also, I think the artist was a bit "held back" by tech back then a lil' more than them wanting to be an actual "pixel" artiste!! Hehe

Either way, it's all good.

[TempesT]

while rediscovering Quake these past few weeks I also played a Doom source port with Doom64... as it was meant to be w/square blocky pixels and all!!!

I'm pretty sure Doom64 actually used Texture Filtering. The N64 was able to perform texture filtering and I believe it was utilized for the N64 port. Only the PC versions of Doom had no texture filtering. So you shouldn't see any square pixels at all when playing Doom64. I hope the source port you were using was Doom64EX . Its a port from the actual Doom64 source. They reverse-engineered the N64 cartridge or something like that lol.

Also, I think the artist was a bit "held back" by tech back then a lil' more than them wanting to be an actual "pixel" artiste!! Hehe

I don't think this is a reason to change someones work. That would be like saying "All the artists back then used paint brushes, we should redo all there work using high precision pen and drawing tablet for the PC". I don't know about you, but PS1 games with texture filtering look plain wrong. The PS1 couldn't do texture filtering, so all the games never used it. So PS1 games had that blocky pixel look. But when adding texture filtering to a PS1 game via an emulator, the game doesn't look right anymore. Everything is blurry, and you loose the detail that all the pixel artists put into arranging those pixel colors. But hey, to each their own.

[damage_inc]

I actually loaded up engoo, both exe's, in a virtual machine and played it. Just for reference.

Also, I searched for info in regards to your question about the two exe's... nothing! Well, I say nothing but that's not entirely true!!!

It seems a rather entrenched Quake community member here was once a wee bit "intoxicated" and actually got "into it" with this engines developer, hahaha But that's all transparent vis'd water under the bridge now, so to speak :-P

Did you read the readme, it's quite funny:

"Concept simplified: A Winquake that wants to be Darkplaces"

and yet... from the website this"

"The ideal and perfect Engoo version would be as purely close to Quake v1.01 as possible by default as a 640x400 window rendered from 320x200."

It's like saying, "We're absolutely gonna stay true to the original, with an enhanced feature modern source port. Only.. in software!"


And yes, it is Doom64EX I am using. I didn't enjoy Doom64 as much as I thought I would, it was a bit UnDoom'ish feeling to me.

It was the most tech savvy Doom of them all though, had alot of features not previously found in Doom. I dare say, Duke3D type features.

Enjoy

[TempesT]

And yes, it is Doom64EX I am using. I didn't enjoy Doom64 as much as I thought I would, it was a bit UnDoom'ish feeling to me.

Well Doom64 used texture filtering, so it smoothed out all the pixels. One of the definitive looks of Doom for the PC was the blocky pixel look. Doom64 however used texture filtering to smooth out the pixels, hence no blocky pixel look. Doom64 specifically used bilinear filtering. I got that info from here . So Doom64 had no blocky pixel look, which IMO, is one of the things that defines Doom's look.

Another thing is, I'm pretty sure different people designed the maps. Midway made the game, so I don't think anybody from ID had involvement with the game. So completely different people were working on the game, instead of ID. So that's another big reason it may not feel like Doom.

[damage_inc]

Doom64 however used texture filtering to smooth out the pixels, hence no blocky pixel look.

I had to fire it up, you are so right... it wasn't pixelated, just low res graphics on a big monitor.

[TempesT]

I would play Doom64 with texture filtering, but I would play Doom for the PC without it, because that's simply how the game was designed. That's all I'm after. Accuracy. I want to play and view the game how the people who made it played and viewed it. Because that's how the original developers want you to play it lol. I hope I shed new light on the matter for you. Maybe you will appreciate pixel art more.