Increase FPS 100-200!!

[Baker]

Darkplaces isn't really good for multiplayer, IMO.

I used to strongly believe that. I now strongly believe the opposite.

I have something special that will blow you away, but it won't be available for at least a few weeks.

That being said, there are certain things that DarkPlaces could really use to gain more mainstream acceptance as an multiplayer online engine (bestweapon, iplog, ping in scoreboard, loc support, game clock showing at all times option).

Remember, JoeQuake didn't have some of the these and the second Rook added these to JoeQuake and released QRack, most of the multiplayer types switched to QRack immediately. Joszef later added some of these to JoeQuake and JoeQuake is excellent now for anything except CA and CTF (due to not having loc file support) so is very popular for any player that has no interest in CA or CTF.

[Sajt]

Darkplaces isn't really good for multiplayer, IMO. All the good graphics just distract you and get in your way of the objective : destroying your opponents by any means possible.

On standard settings, it looks almost basically the same as GLQuake (but with overbrighting, improved dlights, etc.). DP is the best multiplayer engine IMO.

[foq]

The best multiplayer engine is GLPRO, IMHO.

[JackHole]

Frames per second should be capped serverside for lag problems.

[scar3crow]

All the good graphics just distract you and get in your way of the objective

Allow me to make a bold statement - if good graphics that run at a fine speed legitimately distract you, then you suck at Quake. And I say this knowing that you can thrash me quite thoroughly. But thats just insane to think that you could get significantly distracted by how cool a rocket fight in DP looks (cause it does look awesome, try the stairwell in dm6, the spokes of light wheeling through the cracks of the stairs and onto the supports looks magnificent, but is still very Quake in its feel - but it doesnt hinder me from my goal of beating my opponent to fucking death - it just looks good while I decimate his flesh).

[Monster]

Well -- when I get that new computer, I'll try out DP and see if it distracts me. good point though. Maybe i do suck at quake.

[foq]

RocketGuy was beating you in RA. And he had 140 ping. Damn European Immunity to Monsters!!

[Monster]

Trust me I just had to warm up a bit. I shouldn't have went easy on you foqer. It didn't warm me up. I beat yellow no. 5 15-14 a couple of days ago, and he beat me like 15-10 or somewhere around there.

RG is a damn good player when hes got some decent ping. I went to a Euro server a few days ago with RG, Peg, and this other dood. I beat out all of them like 50-46... Rocketguy came in 2nd with a 75 ping, peg 3rd with 50 ping. (dunno bout the other dood) I had 150 ping.

[LordHavoc]

iplog
ping in the scoreboard
say_team variables and loc support "I am at RL with 0 armor and 37 health"
gameclock on-screen
bestweapon

I would like to know what is desired in terms of interface for these features, as I run Linux and can't run most engines to check on how they work, and although there is a Linux GLX ProQuake it won't run on my video card because it has too many extensions (crashing the GL_EXTENSIONS print at startup).

So I want to know the details for these features...

Gameclock I understand but would for instance like to know the preferred corner or edge of the screen to put it in. (I can of course make this configurable, but I'd like to know a preferred default)

bestweapon I would do as a "bestweapon 987654321" command, which would send an impulse based on which one of those weapons you have. (So you could then bind it to mouse buttons in an alias for instance, to have an RL button with fallbacks)

Ping in the scoreboard I know how to do also, and without breaking demo playback in other engines (by using a command for the ping list instead of a custom svc_ code, it's less efficient in terms of bandwidth but would keep demo compatibility, I don't know what ProQuake uses for the purpose and whether or not it is demo compatible with other engines).

I don't know the details of say_team variables, what specific codes are desired?

I do know the details of loc support (%l if I recall correctly? And I do know the file format).

Should there be a way to report the location name of an enemy you are pointing at? Any other such enhancements that people would like?

I don't know the details of iplog.

[LordHavoc]

That's what I have my Qrack setup set at. At first I had it set to whatever the max I could get, then lowered it to 150 but like someone said above, the monitor couldn't keep up. Movement was 'lagged' because of it. I now have my FPS locked at 60 and everything works perfectly.

You likely have a keyboard or mouse helper program installed that is intercepting the input queue in Windows and because the game is hogging all the CPU time and Windows multitasking stinks, it rarely gets around to running that program to process the input and pass it on to the game... You should be able to find the offending process in the task manager.

Note this problem occurs any time your fps dips low enough that the game begins hogging full CPU, so in particularly slow maps or whatever the input lag can strike you, often at the worst moments.

An alternative method without removing the offending process is gl_finish 1 in the console, this robs a small amount of framerate but usually solves the input lag by giving the other programs a little time to run.

[Baker]

I would like to know what is desired in terms of interface for these features, as I run Linux and can't run most engines to check on how they work, and although there is a Linux GLX ProQuake it won't run on my video card because it has too many extensions (crashing the GL_EXTENSIONS print at startup).

Welcome to the forums, LordHavoc :d

We can provide you with anything you need to help you understand how that feature works.

I know there have been some issues with that GLX ProQuake on Linux, Phenom couldn't get it to run. (The only Linux engine he could to run was DarkPlaces, which doesn't surprise me).

Gameclock I understand but would for instance like to know the preferred corner or edge of the screen to put it in. (I can of course make this configurable, but I'd like to know a preferred default)

bestweapon I would do as a "bestweapon 987654321" command, which would send an impulse based on which one of those weapons you have. (So you could then bind it to mouse buttons in an alias for instance, to have an RL button with fallbacks)

Ping in the scoreboard I know how to do also, and without breaking demo playback in other engines (by using a command for the ping list instead of a custom svc_ code, it's less efficient in terms of bandwidth but would keep demo compatibility, I don't know what ProQuake uses for the purpose and whether or not it is demo compatible with other engines).

I'm pretty sure ProQuake demos play in any engine. JoeQuake has adopted a fair chunk of the ProQuake code and speed runners at the SDA use JoeQuake like a religion. However, I'll look into this more.

I don't know the details of say_team variables, what specific codes are desired?

The standard say_team variables are %h - health
%a - armour, %t - time, %l - location, %d - location you died , %r - (have RL, don't have RL), %x (# rockets), %c (# cells), %p (powerups), %w (weapons) and are documented on the supplementary ProQuake features page at this link.

The most important ones are %a, %h and %l. The other ones -- while probably valuable in a team deathmatch games, are not so often used -- at least right now.

I do know the details of loc support (%l if I recall correctly? And I do know the file format).

Should there be a way to report the location name of an enemy you are pointing at?

I don't know the details of iplog.

That would be an interesting feature to have and I think a lot of players would love to have one like that. (location of enemy you are pointing at).

I can get you the details of iplog.

Any other such enhancements that people would like?

Let's find out :d

[HERB]ED]

So anyways I know for a fact getting higher fps even by small amounts makes you play better. Anyways I read a little in this thread and I gotta ask where the hell do I get pq 4.0? I found out why I have had so much problems getting my computer going. It was because I had a virus that had not yet been put on the anti virus' and therefore I couldent fix my pc. But now I have some scans going on and well they are finding stuff so I should be around later on tonight.

[Yugo2Heck]

your fps doesnt really matter above a certain amount, because your monitor cant keep up with your graphics card. A decent new monitor today will have a refresh rate of say 8 milliseconds (thousandths of a second), which means it can refresh 125 times per second. So, above 125 fps, any experienced benefit may be purely psychosomatic, no?

The Quake client engine sends an update to the server after each frame is rendered. Thus by increasing your frame rate you increase the frequency of client-to-server updates, which makes interactive response just a little bit quicker. This also shows in ping times.

Unfortunately, increasing the client-to-server update rate can easily overload servers with limited bandwidth. The Essentrix servers have plenty of bandwidth so that's not really an issue, but it caused a lot of problems for my old SDSL-based servers. If your upstream bandwidth is limited (like 128K or less) you could also fill that up and lag yourself silly by letting your FPS get too high.

[foq]

There is no PQ 4.0. It's just a list of suggestions Baker put in FOR PQ 4.0. So, there is no such thing, as of yet (and probally never will be).

[LordHavoc]

The Quake client engine sends an update to the server after each frame is rendered. Thus by increasing your frame rate you increase the frequency of client-to-server updates, which makes interactive response just a little bit quicker. This also shows in ping times.

Unfortunately, increasing the client-to-server update rate can easily overload servers with limited bandwidth. The Essentrix servers have plenty of bandwidth so that's not really an issue, but it caused a lot of problems for my old SDSL-based servers. If your upstream bandwidth is limited (like 128K or less) you could also fill that up and lag yourself silly by letting your FPS get too high.

DarkPlaces has a cl_netinputpacketspersecond feature on the client to limit how many are sent when the client framerate is very high, by default this is 50 which works for most connections (I'm told the standard ADSL connections in Germany can overload on this though, so German players may want to set it lower).

For this reason, DarkPlaces defaults cl_maxfps to 1000, which most people don't exceed outside of simple test levels.

Of course it's still pretty meaningless to run faster than your monitor, so vid_vsync 1 is probably best for playing, just not for bragging about framerates.