I hope Baker is alright...

[grave_digga]

don't steal Baker's virgins. What he does with them is his business.

OK, so it was 72. I'm a bad muslim.

I read about it some time ago, it's 2 real virgins and 70 "ghost" virgins so you were right at some point.

[golden_boy]

Then it's a scam...

[grave_digga]

Then it's a scam...

Like (to me) any religion.

[Phenom]

They don't specify the type of virgin... it could be 72 6'9'' 350lb hairy guy virgin type.. the type you don't want to jihad over.

[StatiC]

sTaTic aint got time for bitches.

"and even when i die, they wont worry me"...

[StatiC]

They don't specify the type of virgin... it could be 72 6'9'' 350lb hairy guy virgin type.. the type you don't want to jihad over.

60 cubits tall is just a little pushing it...
source: 72_Virgins wikiislam

[Phenom]

fok wikiislam, it take my thunder.

[Frenzy]

They don't specify the type of virgin... it could be 72 6'9'' 350lb hairy guy virgin type.. the type you don't want to jihad over.

hahahaha

[StatiC]

dont sweat it homie, im your lightning ! wait, ewww...

[Baker]

I think I'll take a pass on all those virgins. It can be difficult enough at times dealing with one woman. I'm thinking the Muslim guy who came up with the 72 virgins idea probably was a virgin himself or was unpopular with the females because clearly he had no clue to exactly how bad of an idea it is

One thing I know for certain is that burn out follows an intense period of work as surely as night follows day, and Baker has been in quite an intense period of work lately.

I never hit burnout. More like an ever increasing unwillingness to compromise. When I lost my internet, it was initially frustrating. Then after a few days, I found I had exclusive focus and everything else was a distraction.

Some of the things about the Quake engine that I disliked ... like no shadows on brush entities ... I've solved myself. I've also played with things like rendering brush entities as part of the world chain[s] (didn't gain any FPS).

So teh Zopster was right ...

He went too deep into engine coding, and fell into the abyss. Only Ed Harris can save him now.

I've solved so many things I've hated, and as you know firsthand --- there are mountains of them --- but I have so much focus I would have trouble naming more than a couple because once you solve something it becomes yesterday's news and fades from memory.

As I've gotten deeper and deeper into this, I've developed a special appreciation for 4 engines: FitzQuake and DirectQ due to the high quality rewrites of the rendering code. FitzQuake, for instance, separated out once-per-frame, once-per-view setup and rendering. And in many ways, DirectQ extends that further. (Can you tell that recently I've been preoccupied with rendering?)

The other 2 engines: Qrack and FTEQW. R00k has an extreme preoccupation for solving annoying issues. FTEQW can be counted on having most of the imaginable "what-if" features.

Historically, I released updates to ProQuake or Engine X with a couple of new features and maybe a couple of new bugs, which I would fix subsequently.

I don't want to do that this time. And one factor in the past for more incremental releases is that I didn't have as great of a comfort level and feared unknowns. I still am privately incrementally updating (you can't have quality control without it).

But I am aiming for more of FitzQuake release level of quality, I've always wanted releases to be polished and include a larger feature set.

When I am finally ready to release, the "larger" feature set actually turns out to be a smaller one. A much, much smaller one.

I've eliminated several things that slow the engine down. The idea of configuring a client is essentially dead. I always thought games should be like Doom where you start it up and play. And I've disguised some things.

For instance, gl_clear 0 renders faster because the color buffer doesn't have to be cleared. But the second you go outside the map, you see "HOM". This typically happens only with NO_CLIP (hmmmm ... leaf contents check at beginning of frame instead).

@MH ... p.s. Your modified FitzQuake Plus with the BGRA lightmap format --- the BGRA wasn't the speedup. It was the modification you made to upload lighting changes prior to the start of rendering (well, actually the following frame). [I'm not sure why Fitz specifically has this problem when, say, JoeQuake or Qrack do the same thing without an issue in OpenGL], but this modification this morning provided a much needed speedup with the Direct3D wrapper which is very sensitive to this issue only in fullscreen mode for some reason.

I'm not sure when I will be ready to release the engine, I haven't completed my todo list. It seems like I mark off 3 or 4 issues per day, it is major rewrites that slow everything down ... but these will have major benefits in ways that are not obvious nor do I want to ruin any surprises.

/Until next time ...

[Grim Warlock]

Welcome back Baker!

[Spike]

fix 3 issues, find 3 more. that's the way it is. ^^

[MH]

..... the BGRA wasn't the speedup. It was the modification you made to upload lighting changes prior to the start of rendering .....

You actually need both on some hardware.

But enough of that - wow, seems you've been busy.

[golden_boy]

Me respects your outstanding commitment, Baker. Not seen often.

[Dilligaf]

it.....is.....A L I V E ! ! !

You should throw yourself a party. Slap some BBQ sauce on some kind of dead animal, and have a cool beverage of your choosing. Your hard work does not go unnoticed.