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 Post subject: QRack 1.52 Release Notes
PostPosted: Tue Aug 16, 2005 10:48 pm 
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http://www.quakeone.com/qrack

I downloaded and was doing some experimentation with QRack 1.52 (formerly JoeQuake Pro) by SputnikUtah and was impressed with a few different things. I really like the default settings, very nice.

Plus it's great it doesn't use JoeQuake's folder like JoeQuake Pro did, that caused an odd scenario.

While I didn't play around with it as much as I wanted to (I haven't been playing a whole lot of Quake lately), here are some of the things I noticed.

Baker's Usage Notes wrote:
1. I love the default settings. Console transparency, effects, well thought out.

2. No +mlook/-mlook commands. Mouse is always on.

For Qrack's intended audience --> good players, this is great. (I hate to see something like in JoeQuake though, there are keyboarders out there :D )

I have always thought it was annoying that Quake for some reason can't save +mlook to a config so you have to make it read only.

3. No +speed / -speed commands. This is nice, but cl_forwardspeed and cl_clsidespeed and cl_upseed aren't defaulted to 999 so you must manually type those into the console:

Quote:
cl_forwardspeed 999
cl_sidespeed 999
cl_upspeed 999


4. -conwidth and -conheight parameters don't work. In 640 x 480 mode, no big deal. In 1024 x 768, the console letters are microscopic and the hud characters are smaller. I like to use conwidth-512 -conheight 384 with 1024x768 resolution.

5. With some of the old JoeQuake Pro releases, under some circumstances I could cause it to crash if I played multiplayer and then did Single Player, New Game. I wasn't able to cause this to happen in 1.52 but I will keep my eye out.

6. I noticed a default hunk allocation of 32 MB ---> good idea. (I would hate to have JoeQuake do this, there are old computers with Win 98 and stuff and JQ will run on them).

Hunk allocation of 32 MB is the same as -heapsize 32768 or -mem 32. If you use high resolution textures, in my experience if you are not using -mem 32 with JoeQuake the sound gets all jerky at times.

Without the high res textures, like if you are using -nobit24, you don't really need the -mem 32, but most newer machines have plenty of RAM.

7. QRack has just about every ProQuake feature in it (pings in status bars, loc support, identify and even the pq_teamscores thing). I didn't check for some of the more obscure ProQuake features like mouse button 4 support.

8. I noticed on initial launch an error message buried in the startup log about couldn't load coronasa8 image (a typo in the source?)

9. SputnikUtah has added some extra effects. I noticed them, but couldn't tell you what they all are (I know coronas + outlining are available because Yellow No. 5told me once).



QRack is an excellent derivative of JoeQuake and I am happy to see another good graphics Quake client.

As far as I can tell this project to make Qrack started in November 2003 in this post: modified joequake...


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PostPosted: Mon Aug 22, 2005 10:37 am 
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quake.intertex.net
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Quote:
2. No +mlook/-mlook commands. Mouse is always on.

the new cvar is m_look [0/1] default is 1, and its saved to config.cfg.
Quote:
3. No +speed / -speed commands. This is nice, but cl_forwardspeed and cl_clsidespeed and cl_upseed aren't defaulted to 999 so you must manually type those into the console:

???
There is +speed/-speed. But has changed.
If cl_forwardspeed =< 240 (default walk speed) then pressing +speed will run faster. But if you have ALWAYS RUN ON, your cl_forwardspeed > 200 thus +speed will slow u down, since you cant run any faster... +speed aka togglespeed ;)
Quote:
4. -conwidth and -conheight parameters don't work. In 640 x 480 mode, no big deal. In 1024 x 768, the console letters are microscopic and the hud characters are smaller. I like to use conwidth-512 -conheight 384 with 1024x768 resolution.

Fixed.
Quote:
5. With some of the old JoeQuake Pro releases, under some circumstances I could cause it to crash if I played multiplayer and then did Single Player, New Game. I wasn't able to cause this to happen in 1.52 but I will keep my eye out.

Ditto. I have noticed that cl_truelightning caused some probs in singleplayer...
Quote:
6. I noticed a default hunk allocation of 32 MB ---> good idea. (I would hate to have JoeQuake do this, there are old computers with Win 98 and stuff and JQ will run on them).

The 32meg Hunk is a Maximum. You really wont need more mem for the hunk. Basically used for mod data and server aliases etc...
Qrack uses a dynamic memory scheme much like virtual memory in windows. It will use as much physical memory as it can to keep it running efficient, but after 32megs it caches to the HD in a temp file. Ie, all that texture mem wont use all your physical memory, current map memory will be in ram the leftover is in the cache file.

Quote:
8. I noticed on initial launch an error message buried in the startup log about couldn't load coronasa8 image (a typo in the source?)

odd, it looks for 10 corona files... and assigns them if available. and randomizes the images for each lightsource.

Tid bits here and there, I suck at documenting :P And have to look for my comments in the source to remember what all I changed.
Last thing i changed was adding celshading, looks like cartoon quake.
also I lowered the score output. I noticed on some mods,(runequake, and clanarena) holding tab to see who is on the team or scores overlaps the menu and just displays a garbled mess. Now the mod menu is on the top part of the screen and the scores start at the center.

Also fixed the teamscores in status bar. Maybe I should add it to the scr_printstats.. so its displayed larger.


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PostPosted: Mon Aug 22, 2005 10:54 am 
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sputnikutah wrote:
2. No +mlook/-mlook commands. Mouse is always on.

the new cvar is m_look [0/1] default is 1, and its saved to config.cfg.



I had thought about suggesting that ;) I always wondered why mlook wasn't a variable. I hate typing +mlook if I don't have my config read-only.

That solution you implemented also makes it so someone who really needs +mlook can make their own alias. There are some players with really odd setups out there.

Quote:
There is +speed/-speed. But has changed.
If cl_forwardspeed =< 240 (default walk speed) then pressing +speed will run faster. But if you have ALWAYS RUN ON, your cl_forwardspeed > 200 thus +speed will slow u down, since you cant run any faster... +speed aka togglespeed ;)


That would make it so you could have a "WALK" key. I'll have to check that out.



Quote:
The 32meg Hunk is a Maximum. You really wont need more mem for the hunk. Basically used for mod data and server aliases etc...
Qrack uses a dynamic memory scheme much like virtual memory in windows. It will use as much physical memory as it can to keep it running efficient, but after 32megs it caches to the HD in a temp file. Ie, all that texture mem wont use all your physical memory, current map memory will be in ram the leftover is in the cache file.


Does this mean doing -mem 64 or -heapsize 65536 isn't much of a benefit in any client?

Based on the above, it sounds like everyone should use -mem 32 or -heapsize 32768 in any Quake client if it is a maximum.

Am I understanding this correctly?


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PostPosted: Mon Aug 22, 2005 11:12 am 
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The hunk in not used as much as it used to. Old glquake used main memory for storing most of the textures etc.

this is a quote from FUH on the matter ;)
Quote:
Note MAXIMUM_WIN_MEMORY does jack shit.
With glquake + 24bit textures, 95% of the game's memory is due to the OpenGL library handling textures. MAXIMUM_WIN_MEMORY has nothing to do with this, it is for memory that quake allocated directly itself. In the 'old' days MAXIMUM_WIN_MEMORY (i.e. hunk) actually meant something useful because 95% of quake's memory was on the hunk. These days hunk only plays a small role.

which lead to me using that virtual memory for the hunk


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PostPosted: Tue Oct 18, 2005 12:31 pm 
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sputnikutah wrote:
Quote:
8. I noticed on initial launch an error message buried in the startup log about couldn't load coronasa8 image (a typo in the source?)

odd, it looks for 10 corona files... and assigns them if available. and randomizes the images for each lightsource.


What IS a corona? I guess I didn't have any when I used Qrack because the OFF would never become ON :P

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PostPosted: Tue Oct 18, 2005 7:54 pm 
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Coronas are radial light bursts on flame sources, like a solar flare in photoshop. The further away they get 100% size and closer it gets smaller...
imagine a stadium with foggy glasses ;)
I thought i included atleast 1 in the pak file :< maybe i didnt

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PostPosted: Tue Oct 18, 2005 10:23 pm 
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maybe, I don't think I use any pak files in my setup. I forget how Quake checks Pak files, does it look for pako and if not found it discards it? If so then I probably never read from the Qrack pak file.

What's the extension of them and where would they go? Does JoeQuake use them aswell?

ps - My crosshair is better than yours :P

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