What If World (ProQuake, DP, Qrack, ...)

[Baker]

A somewhat rare event occurred last night at Dredd when both LordHavoc and Rook, the respective authors of DarkPlaces and Qrack/CAx were both on the server and they touched on some interesting ideas that prompted this thread.

In a what-if world, what if ...

1. ProQuake and Qrack both supported DarkPlaces protocol 7.
2. ProQuake and Qrack were both wired with DarkPlaces automatic map/model download capability.
3. ProQrack -- Rook's modified ProQuake server -- were modified to support automatic download for supporting clients.
4. Some sort of cheat-free 2.0 were drafted and ProQuake, Qrack and DarkPlaces all supported it.
5. ProQrack was modified to report to a master server, perhaps a DarkPlaces master server.
6. The DarkPlaces server browser was put into ProQuake and Qrack.

This is just a theoretical discussion. I have no idea how much work this would be, but it would be far better Quake universe if these kind of things could be done.

This would eliminate a lot of different client barriers that currently exist and address compatibility issues.

Again, just a thread for discussion.

Maybe the above would be a massive mountain of work. Or maybe not. I'm not an engine coder at all, so I am not familiar with the issues involved, but right now DarkPlaces and Qrack cannot connect to ProQuake cheat-free and Qrack/ProQuake don't have a server browser and DarkPlaces does not have a master server to locate vanilla Quake servers.

[Canadian*Sniper]

From what I gathered by my discussions with r00k, he will probably code qrack to connect to dp7 in the future. This was a talk a few months ago.

If you modify Proquake, how would you get every proquake user to convert? I'm sure you wouldn't be allowed to call it Proquake (new version) without JPG's permission.

[Baker]

ProQuake could be named a little different if need be the case. We could write up a petition asking JPG to allow the community to keep the ProQuake name for versions 4 and beyond or perhaps a distinct name would be better.

That issue isn't really isn't a show stopper, I don't think.

how would you get every proquake user to convert

Well, in this theoretical world there are 2 scenarios:

1. *IF* this theoretical ProQuake upgrade was as stable, compatible and otherwise a true upgrade with no downsides at all, no one would object to this.

2. IF the theoretical ProQuake was unstable or somehow not as good in some way, there would be issues.

In a #1 scenario world, you could set a server like Rage to refuse connections to ProQuake clients lower than 4.00 with a message "Only ProQuake version 4.0 or higher is required to play at Rage, please upgrade at www.whatever-is-appropriate.com"

This is assuming that it would be "right" to do this, but case in point, Rage currently refuses ProQuake versions below 3 currently so this isn't a theoretical thing.

Again, I don't know if you force anyone to upgrade. But it can be done.

[Mindf!3ldzX]

sure you can,microsoft does it every 4-5 years or less.


bwahahahha