Best engines

[c0lg4t3]

What is the best quake engine (and newest too). I have found those ez installers but they aren newest one.

[Spirit]

That totally depends on what you want to do. Singleplayer (stock Quake, custom maps or specific mods?), Multiplayer (Netquake (with buddies from this forum or alike)) or Multiplayer (QuakeWorld (probably the better choice if you are european).

[Baker]

Isn't quite an answer to that question (for a lot of reasons), but some of the answers you might find:

ProQuake 3.99r - easy to setup with the standard GLQuake appearance http://www.quakeone.com/proquake and runs on more Windows machines than any other engine.

Qrack - Enhanced graphics with a lot of options and is always fast (JoeQuake style graphics) http://www.quakeone.com/qrack

DarkPlaces - Very advanced capabilities with more options than any other engine http://icculus.org/twilight/darkplaces/

Enhanced GLQuake - higher compatibility with maps and mods than any other engine http://user.tninet.se/~xir870k/

FitzQuake - if you only play single player, this engine adds WinQuake features to GLQuake rendering (full bright map texture support, WinQuake looking water) with enhanced rendering and other conveniences. http://www.celephais.net/board

If you are the colgate player I'm thinking of, you'll probably opt for ProQuake or Qrack.

[megalodon]

Well Baker, your reply isn't a better answer... I think Spirit hit the nail on the had: it totally depends on whether you want to play NetQuake or QuakeWorld.

If you want to play QuakeWorld, I suggest the nquake package which contains EZquake, maps, bots, graphics, etc. : http://nquake.sourceforge.net/

Baker gave the suggestions for NetQuake in his post.

[Baker]

Well Baker, your reply isn't a better answer...

Colgate is a NetQuake player asking what to use

[megalodon]

Colgate is a NetQuake player asking what to use

Ah, if I only knew that

I stand corrected

[Baker]

Ah, if I only knew that

I stand corrected

No worries, man. And yes, ezQuake is a pretty hot Quakeworld client. Very well thought out and packed with features and Empezar did an awesome just with his nQuake package for QW.

[megalodon]

No worries, man. And yes, ezQuake is a pretty hot Quakeworld client. Very well thought out and packed with features and Empezar did an awesome just with his nQuake package for QW.

Yes I'm very happy with it. I play QW and really like that easy install with maps, bots, etc. Also in Europe I got the xs4all server to play on with decent ping.

[Baker]

Also in Europe I got the xs4all server to play on with decent ping.

I've played at that server

One time, I got a 100 ping from the USA. The "pipe" on that server must be very fat, although it was 100 ping, it was an incredibly smooth 100 ping. I like their selection of custom maps, in fact some of them ended up on the Dredd server (asylum, for instance).

In the USA, there is 1 sparsely populated FFA Quakeworld server. If it ran only maps I love (ultrav, ztndm3, aerowalk), I enjoy playing it. But there are some crappy maps in the rotation I can't stand that come up frequently.

I prefer NQ's gritty and realistic physics and the lack of prediction, but if I love the map the differences can fade out of my mind mostly.

There is much rebuilding of NQ to do. For 3 years, there was sort of a blackout of development (2002-2005) due to a GPL violating engine.

But some amazing stuff is going to happen this year. Some of it very soon.

[megalodon]

I've played at that server

One time, I got a 100 ping from the USA. The "pipe" on that server must be very fat, although it was 100 ping, it was an incredibly smooth 100 ping. I like their selection of custom maps, in fact some of them ended up on the Dredd server (asylum, for instance).

Yeah, xs4all does have a smooth server indeed. Still, probably because of my isp, I don't get as low ping as before. It was around 25-35 ms last year, and now it's around 45.

In the USA, there is 1 sparsely populated FFA Quakeworld server. If it ran only maps I love (ultrav, ztndm3, aerowalk), I enjoy playing it. But there are some crappy maps in the rotation I can't stand that come up frequently.

Well honestly, the xs4all mappool changes from time to time and I don't always like the maps that come and go. Maps I like that are up now are especially: ztndm3, spinev2, pkeg1 & rwild.

I prefer NQ's gritty and realistic physics and the lack of prediction, but if I love the map the differences can fade out of my mind mostly.

There is much rebuilding of NQ to do. For 3 years, there was sort of a blackout of development (2002-2005) due to a GPL violating engine.

But some amazing stuff is going to happen this year. Some of it very soon.

Well, I've never learned how to play quake properly in the past and I've had alot of catching up to do. I learned a lot recently in QW. I finally got the strafejumping thing down, which is very different then in other quakes. Last night I had over 200 frags in spinev2, which was a personal record Now that I'm used to the QW physics, it seems I just can't switch that easily and play NetQuake right away.... everything I've learned in terms of movement and prediction shots, etc., just didn't work in NetQuake... I recently tried playing against someone but everything I did was OFF And there are more QW players & servers around here anyway, so I think I'll stick with QW. But I will keep an eye out for improvements in NQ, that would be interesting.

Quite honestly I love the looks of Qrack. Even though I haven't put any 24bit textures in it, it's just so much more atmospheric in terms of lightning.... it's beautiful. EZquake has nice features, but lacks in atmospheric lightning. Dark Places looks nice in the screenshots, but I get better performance in Half-Life2, and Quake4 then in DP... The weird thing is that I have the high quality preset loaded in Qrack and have stable fps in that client. It's just weird that I can't get that in DP. And yes I have experimented with settings. The only way to get the same fps in DP as in Qrack is when I turn everything off, so it looks then like ordinary quake. I got AthlonX2 3800 dualcore, 2ghz ram, Geforce 6600 td 256 mb (not the best card I know).

Anyway, I'm using Qrack now for SinglePlayer And online, I play QW. You should check out this singleplayer stuff from pro mapper Lunaran: http://www.lunaran.com/page.php?id=179

[Baker]

Dark Places looks nice in the screenshots, but I get better performance in Half-Life2, and Quake4 then in DP... The weird thing is that I have the high quality preset loaded in Qrack and have stable fps in that client. It's just weird that I can't get that in DP. And yes I have experimented with settings. The only way to get the same fps in DP as in Qrack is when I turn everything off, so it looks then like ordinary quake. I got AthlonX2 3800 dualcore, 2ghz ram, Geforce 6600 td 256 mb (not the best card I know).

DarkPlaces does have a lot of options to sort thru.

If you put this pk3 file in your quake/id1 folder, DarkPlaces runs fast (I'm not sure LordHavoc would approve ). Hehe.

That pk3 essentially turns everything off (without turning too much off) and lets you start from the bottom and then turn things on, as opposed to the reverse.

Anyway, I'm using Qrack now for SinglePlayer And online, I play QW. You should check out this singleplayer stuff from pro mapper Lunaran: http://www.lunaran.com/page.php?id=179

Lunsp1 is my favorite single player map. :d I judge a single player map by how I felt about it the first time playing it, that map is #1 in my book.

That map was very difficult to unravel for me the first time around; I very much enjoyed playing it. I think that map and Insomnia are 2 of the most challenging (without being too challenging) single player releases ever made.

[megalodon]

Thanks for that pk3... it does improve performance alot indeed.

How can I go from those settings and make water look like this:



That's a screenshot I found somewhere else. BTW: I've thrown out the dpmod folder, because I didnt' like what it did to my movement and don't want these kind of weapons/sounds. I assume I don't need that dpmod for making water look like in the screenie, right?

[Baker]

I've never tried the "pretty water" pack as it is called.

But it's available here:

http://forums.inside3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=797