Remake Quake Project

[metchsteekle]

So what is the reason why I can't record a demo mid game?

[MH]

So what is the reason why I can't record a demo mid game?

Because I haven't enabled it in the engine.

There's a list of stuff to be done with this project that's literally a mile long. If everybody's favourite feature was at the top of the pile, then everybody's favourite feature would be at the top of the pile and nothing would be finished.

Mid-game demo recording will no doubt happen, but it has to compete with everything else for one person's attention (and that one person has a life and a full-time job to fit in too).

None of this is meant to be snarky by the way, although I accept it might come across that way. It's just highlighting the fact that once again what you've got is a point-in-time snapshot of a work in progress rather than a finished, polished product. Some roughness around the edges is only to be expected.

[FC Zvyozdochka]

MH, may I ask you this question here?

Will your engine support nice lighting and texturing effects in future as DP does nowadays? Or you have another priorities?

[MH]

I'm not out to recreate DarkPlaces. The topic does come up from time to time in team discussions, but it's not something that anyone is absolutely determined to have.

An unreleased build had some cheap-and-nasty bumpmapping but it broke on one of the mapper's video cards and was removed.

Post-demo, I've just put environment mapping on glass surfaces. The reason for this is practical rather than for eye-candy - many people found glass surfaces hard to see in certain circumstances and this is to make them easier. There are still some details to figure out with this.

The original purpose of the RMQ engine was to serve as a demo to other people. To show what features are needed to run RMQ, beyond which it would become obsolete. It's evolved a little beyond that now, but it's still not intended for use as a general purpose Quake engine.

That means two things. One is that certain breaking changes are allowed in it. If a change breaks (say) the Hipnotic mod - that's OK. It would be expected that a general purpose engine would implement things in a more robust way, but the RMQ engine need not. Two is that much of it's development is targetted towards running RMQ content.

RMQ content is heavy. It's heavier than Nehahra, it's heavier than anything Necros builds, it's heavier than Warpspasm. Maps are huge and complex, the QC is big, models are big. Despite that we still target relatively low-end hardware.

So performance is at an absolute premium here, and I'm determined to maintain a single code path throughout the renderer. Adding even a second (to support a higher quality mode) would double what is already a large part of the workload. Yesterday, for example, I had to rework the brush model startup code to procedurally generate shaders, as we now have 128 fragment shaders for brush model surfaces and maintaining them all individually would be madness. Content that already requires minor miracles on a daily basis to run any way well is not best served by piling on eye-candy features that only make things slower.

So - the answer is "most likely, no".

[FC Zvyozdochka]

Thanks for the answer.
But if it is so - why are you reworking your engine to put it on DX11? Just for an optimization?

[golden_boy]

I think there is a confusion over which engine is which.

In MH's last post he talked about the RMQ engine. The DirectX 11 one is DirectQ, I believe.

Anyway, here's a routine screenshot of stuff that might go into the next demo.



Platform Quake (spawnhost)

[FC Zvyozdochka]

Oh, I'm sorry. I've never separated these two engines in my thoughts.

Nice shot, golden boy! Looks like it is of second episode, amirite?

[golden_boy]

Episode One. ;-)

[MH]

Thanks for the answer.
But if it is so - why are you reworking your engine to put it on DX11? Just for an optimization?

Moving this over to here: http://quakeone.com/forums/quake-hel...tml#post106070 cos it's a question that I do need to talk more about.

[seanstar]

I think there is a confusion over which engine is which.

In MH's last post he talked about the RMQ engine. The DirectX 11 one is DirectQ, I believe.

Anyway, here's a routine screenshot of stuff that might go into the next demo.



Platform Quake (spawnhost)

this map looks very nice

[metchsteekle]

is the mapping guide up to date tho/

[golden_boy]

It's not entirely up to date; but all the stuff in the mapping guide should still work, and I recommend looking over the .def and .fgd files for the latest information.

.def file (Radiant):

RMQ mod entity def file - Pastebin.com

.fgd file (Worldcraft):

RMQ mod entity fgd file - Pastebin.com

Please note that the two sometimes contain different information, and that the def file might contain more explanations. So even if you use Worldcraft, it is wise to cross-reference the .def file as well and vice versa.

The files pasted above are the most recent versions as of this date.

Some entities might require assets that are not included in the demos. In such a case, your map can require the SVN version of RMQ and we can probably work something out when you need SVN stuff to release your map.

[metchsteekle]

Ah thanks , but one more question; is there a checkpoint system of some kind for coop games? Because I find that when playing a big map and you die trying to get all the way back to your group is a pain and usually by the time you find them they've wiped out the map.

A good example of this is definitely CZG's Februus Depth

[leopold]

Just replayed the first 2 maps and discovered whole new areas and weapons, awesome work, really enjoyable.

[golden_boy]

Updated my screenshots page. I'm not doing this to spam the forum btw, I'm doing this to motivate myself :-/ Go, me.

@ Metch: I'm not sure, but we'll definitely look at coop in the future. The idea of RMQ coop seems to be somewhat popular.