Odd light issue in DirectQ

[KillPixel]

I'm experiencing an odd effect with some light, namely light emitted from the enforcers lasers and light emitted from the player while a power-up is active.

It's hard to explain what it looks like, but it makes me think of out of sync frames, filming a TV with a video camera and weird refresh rate stuff. It looks like it's strobing at a fast rate which is out of sync with my fps or refresh rate. Using "lightmaps only" of course.

EDIT: Ok, I did what I should have done before I made this post. I applied vsync and it went away. I guess my only question is why does the enforcer laser pulsate like the power-ups and doesn't just emit static light like fireballs? I guess this is Id-side and not DirectQ-side?

[KillPixel]

I'm experiencing an odd effect with some light, namely light emitted from the enforcers lasers and light emitted from the player while a power-up is active.

It's hard to explain what it looks like, but it makes me think of out of sync frames, filming a TV with a video camera and weird refresh rate stuff. It looks like it's strobing at a fast rate which is out of sync with my fps or refresh rate. Using "lightmaps only" of course.

EDIT: Ok, I did what I should have done before I made this post. I applied vsync and it went away. I guess my only question is why does the enforcer laser pulsate like the power-ups and doesn't just emit static light like fireballs? I guess this is Id-side and not DirectQ-side?

EDIT AGAIN: Meant to put this in Quake Clients not in Servers And Coding...my bad.

[MH]

These lights seem to flicker because they get respecified every frame. Each time one of these lights is respecified it gets a random radius - the rocket effect (which fireballs also use) doesn't have a random radius.

Both the enforcer beams and the powerup light use EF_DIMLIGHT which comes from the original Quake source (as does the random radius) - it must be assumed that the flickering is intentional.

Enabling vsync (or running at a lower maxfps - same end result so far as this is concerned) is still flickering, just much slower.

I can remove the flickering from any EF_DIMLIGHT that isn't coming from the player, but that might go against a mod author's intention so I'm not really keen on doing so (if it can be established that DOS Quake was different and that the flickering was added later - after 1.06, for example - it might change my mind).

[Spike]

yeah, dlights are 'meant' to flicker.
many quakeworld engines have some r_lightflicker cvar to disable flickering if you want some standardly named cvar.
FTE has some code to rerandomize at most at 10hz, which keeps it looking decent regardless of framerates.
vsync still flickers a lot, you just don't get tearing effect so its less noticable.

Hmm, new tactic for deathmatch... use a dlight to induce an epileptic fit in your enemies. :s

[MH]

FTE has some code to rerandomize at most at 10hz, which keeps it looking decent regardless of framerates.

I was thinking of doing similar; I've already got it as an option for lightning bolts.

[KillPixel]

I was thinking of doing similar; I've already got it as an option for lightning bolts.

Cool, so it's not just me. If you decide to ad a cvar to stop light flickering entirely I'd use it

[MH]

I'd actually make it always on and flicker at 10hz. Like Spike said (and when Spike says something, sitting up and listening is well advised!) the effect is intentional and I'm not too keen on the idea of changing parts of the game that were intentionally made that way.

[KillPixel]

"the effect is intentional and I'm not too keen on the idea of changing parts of the game that were intentionally made that way."

truth.

[MH]

The exception is "when what the original game did is obviously crap".

This can be very difficult to define, but an example is with fullbright colours. There are some places in some maps where the non-fullbright combination of textures is actually brighter than the fullbright. An example is the right-hand arrow leading to episode 1 in the start map. If you're using an engine that implements fullbrights in a fairly traditional software-Quake-alike way you can see this if you toggle fullbrights on and off. It's slightly subtle but it's there, so I changed that to take the brightest of the two rather than just replace the non-fullbright pixels with the fullbright pixels (one advantage of enforcing a "shaders only" policy is that you can actually do this kind of thing).

I'm not too certain that these light flickers fall into the "obviously crap" category though.

[KillPixel]

Agreed. I've found nostalgia and loyalty tend to make any real definition of what is crap nearly impossible. I've replaced 3 sound effects in my personal set up and every time I hear them I feel a slight twinge, as if I'm cheating on a lover.

I need a psychiatrist.