Engine X Prelease Information

[Baker]

More ...

[Baker]

Want to learn the spawn points for DM? "tools_showspawns 1" in the console: They pulsate and appear through walls. Don't worry, it isn't possible except in single player.

Not because it is disabled or anything, it depends on breaking the client/server barrier.





A developer mode tools: displays enhanced entity information. Sort of an extension of an idea seen in FitzQuake and DarkPlaces that shows bounding boxes. Might be helpful for mapping, but for working on QuakeC definitely.







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"Future". Like not tomorrow. Not explaining the relevance of the following yet except vaguely, but was playing around with some concepts involving more advanced user interfaces. These are quite real And from a few months ago in an initial concept phase.

(this was just using some photos off the web to write a texture loader from scratch in the rough concept of [insert what this does except I'm not saying right now except obviously it won't be using "stock photos off the internet"])


Future. Like as in not tomorrow. Some people who read Inside3D saw this and know what is up with this:

[Baker]

I don't want to be writing a book on Thursday so I am going to soften the amount I have to type now.

The release version for Thursday will be Engine X 5.50:

1. It is the fastest OpenGL Quake engine, although DirectQ (which is a Direct3D engine and not OpenGL) is about 10% faster.
2. Compatibility: Maximum. Runs on clunkers.
3. OpenGL build. Direct3D 8 build via modified MH supplied wrapper. Hybrid build (both).
4. Windows and Mac OS X.
5. Loads external textures faster than any other engine due to a optimization (find file optimization, I'll explain at Inside3D how this works).
6. Way smaller download size for total content.
7. Kurok support. Half-Life BSP support. Alpha support. "Fence texture support". FitzQuake protocol support.
8. Dynamic assessment of max entities for a map. It reads limit buster map entities and pre-calculates a reasonable memory allocation for such a scenario.
9. Support for stain maps from FTEQW.
10. Writes screenshots to the clipboard optionally.
11. Texture pointer mode, point at a texture and it will display the name.
12. Shadows on all world brush-models. Underwater caustics affect them too.
13. The engine window is resizable at will.
14. Demo playback progress bar and demo save and playback improvements.
15. Developer ability to display entity information above entities.
16. Brush model interpolation.
17. "Wavey water" support. And FitzQuake water warp support. (not same thing)
18. Refined single-pass startup.
19. FitzQuake fog standard. Important for single player consistency among engines.
20. A vital Quakespasm enhancement hard to explain but Spirit will approve of, even though he'll hate this engine (It's ok Spirit, I will understand for sure.)
21. Support for quad particles style rendering. I thought it might be slightly faster, but illogically it was slightly slower.
22. Support for ProQuake/GLQuake looking particle explosions. Engine X can render exactly like GLQuake/ProQuake (optionally). May have a FitzQuake rendering mode too (I can't remember).
23. Sidebobbing. Not really meant for players (more for modders, but I guess you could enable it).
24. Enhanced FOV correction. You won't notice it (which is the feature, you'd notice if it didn't have it Why: You can resize the window at will.). Can be specified by modders to enforce alternate aspect ratios (matters for side-mounted weapons).
25. Some sort of chase cam fix from DarkPlaces that seemed absolutely imperative at the time, yet hell if I can recall right now.
26. Correct rendering of full bright colors in player skins like WinQuake. Which 99.9% doesn't matter but matters for consistency.
27. Basic dual monitor support which I have long since lost interest in and won't be in the released version but can be enabled in the source code.
28. Some sort of special and optimized hardware gamma speed up. I can't remember the details, but it was very important for smooth gameplay on some hardware. (I'm not affected by the "problem", but I've tested on machines with the issue).
29. Support for Kurok environmental mapping and effects via cvars.
30. Several bug-fixes some specific to JoeQuake type of engines; some general to Quake. You won't notice and I won't remember any of them because they won't happen. If I recall some were interpolation bugs, some were particle bugs and then there were other bugs. If I noticed something that made me mad, I conducted an irrational investigation and killed it no matter how long it took (which often seemed like a waste of valuable time) -- hence, I have gained appreciation from foresight engine developer info like some stuff Spike posted about interpolation because these can be insanely hard to track down.
31. Rendering debug tools. Mostly stolen from DirectQ. Stuff like frustum locking. Do you care? No. Why? Because these tools are a pre-emptive strike to prevent rendering bugs which therefore will not be experienced but 3D rendering isn't "easy". I've paid this price many times over.
32. Qrack static gun sizing option. High FOV does not draw gun stupid looking.

Features I can remember that were already present in Engine X: Anything from modern ProQuake. DarkPlaces naming convention for replacement textures (no does not support gloss/bump/other super fancy texture types; future? Hmmm. That is an unknown to be explained later.). Demo rewind/fast forward. FitzQuake 0.85 protocol support. Session-to-session command line history. Actually user-friendly and super-noob to setup ... actually it runs nicely by default but the menus options are minimal and easy and clear. Plays back multi map demos. MP3 sound track capability.

[turtlevan]

Thank You Baker

[Phenom]

When can I break it?

[Baker]

When can I break it?

I'm hoping you can't.

Right now, I looking down a list and trying to make sure I have pesky little details resolved.

Anyways, it'll be released Thursday at 11 pm.

[Polarite]

Can't wait to test it out , looks great

[Ghostbreed]

So, for the newcomer, what is this exactly?

[wicked_lord]

Look fwd to checking it out. Thanks baker.

[PapaSmurf]

Baker, this looks amazing. I can't wait to check it out. Is that a screenshot of sarge?

[Phenom]

So, for the newcomer, what is this exactly?

Read Baker's post above, it has all the information about EngineX, that is what this is. a New Quake engine.

[Baker]

Baker, this looks amazing. I can't wait to check it out. Is that a screenshot of sarge?

Hehe Yeah.

[Bloodshot]

My jaw dropped so far I don't have one anymore