"SynQ": Why the future won't resemble the past

[Entar]

You have to have an external texture pack that supports it.

Actually, that's not exactly true. DarkPlaces supports generating bumpmap textures from the original textures - while these textures are many times not as good as textures made specifically for the textures, they're plenty good in most cases. Just do the following in the console:
r_shadow_bumpscale_basetexture 8
I also recommend tweaking r_shadow_bumpscale_bumpmap to 8 or so. Once you've done this tweaking, do
r_restart
and you're good to go.

[foq]

Ok so you are fixing the textures. Now we need to do something about most of those sounds.. lol

[Baker]

Ok so you are fixing the textures. Now we need to do something about most of those sounds.. lol

Hehe, agreed!

The sounds issue has been bugging me. I've been listening to a few different sounds and using them in-game and mentally trying to determine what makes some sounds "good" and some sounds "bad".

There are several options available, but no magic bullet.

Or is there?

I downloaded Audacity which lets you adjust the pitch/base and other characteristics of a sound file. I was playing with a single sound that annoyed me and with a little experimentation, was able to make it much better.

I care about the sounds greatly and view them as the biggest single issue. It will take some time to fix, I am thinking of other aspects of the project right now so it won't be right away.

[MrBear]

Well you are doing one hell of a job, Baker!
Im sure this will start a new level of gaming in the Quake Community and I cant wait to see the end result

[Baker]

Many sounds now improved; still far from perfect but a fair number are greatly improved. The ones that really got on my nerves the most, I either opened up Audacity to somehow "correct" the sound or in rare cases where the sound was just not really salvageable, I located something from a usable source and tweaked into being a replacement sound.

A new release of SynQ will be out very soon. It is mostly now a matter of recompiling a few maps after making several changes to them (nothing involving physical structures -- cosmetic things like texture alignment/position/names and correcting some really terrible lighting mistakes in the real maps).

A lot of work was done on some other fronts, but I'll let those be a surprise.

SynQ -- at least if using DarkPlaces -- is actually now more user-friendly than Quake by a very large margin. I'll have to check into Qrack features and see if I can incorporate what I did for DarkPlaces into it (I did this without changing anything in the DarkPlaces engine, heh).

/Side note: DarkPlaces is EASILY the best engine for modding by a ridiculous margin. Makes life very easy. And some miscellaneous things LordHavoc told me about the engine that didn't quite register with me at the time, I now understand.

[Baker]

SynQ finally has a wiki. Those things are so easy to setup, but a ton of work to finesse and get into shape.

It is sparsely populated, I justed wanted to get it out of the way.

[Lardarse]

Nice looking front page. If you want to change the navigation sidebar, edit [[MediaWiki:Sidebar]]

[Baker]

DM2 in a Quake 4 map



Using imagination ....

I've been looking at screenshots in other games a LOT lately. Unreal screenshots, general textures and other stuff and have some interesting ideas on some of the maps.

One goal of this project is for it to work with any engine, but it can use engine specific features if they "degrade gracefully" in a non-supporting client.

The above Quake 4 screenshot has got me thinking about the HUD. Word is that LordHavoc is pretty close to a complete and perfect implementation of CSQC -- an idea pioneered by Spike in the FTEQW engine.

CSQC, client-side QuakeC, would allow radically altering the HUD to possibly give DarkPlaces a special and cool HUD. Users using Qrack or some other engine simply wouldn't use the CSQC and everything would appear normal.

This is merely an idea at this point, and I want to get the next version of SynQ out very soon, so I won't be thinking about this in the short-term.

But CSQC is a very power thing and would allow having a radical HUD in supporting engines.

[Baker]

I'm not satisfied with this DM5, but it sure looks better than solid color textures so it will be in the next SynQ release as a temporary placeholder:

[Canadian*Sniper]

I like it

[Baker]

DM1 ... about 75% happy with this ... It'll have to do for now.

[Baker]

This DM4 looks too "black and white"-ish and doesn't have enough color.

It'll get revisited in the future.

[Phenom]

I always thought DM5 (Previously my fav level) would look excellent with a metal/industrial theme. Just an Idea

[Baker]

Industrial/metal themes are nice and easy to do and typically look great. I didn't want to make them all the same, but nothing is final either.

There may end up being different options available.

[Baker]

DM2 .. it's "ok". I veered away from the wood theme -- for now.