A New "ProQuake" Is Imminent

[Baker]

About a year ago, Bam and I spent some time off and on discussing some of the annoying things about ProQuake and I kept a list of these.

As much as I like a lot of the features in the newer engines, part of me just wants "Quake" as it has always been (and part of me likes the new effects).

Mindz said something about a month ago about worrying that as ProQuake goes non-developed that a "new standard" would eventually be forced on people and I've spent some time thinking about that.

Is it really necessary to switch to an engine that doesn't really have the classic Quake look, just because the only classic looking engine that can be used for multiplayer has sort of been getting obsolete?

The one thing about ProQuake I always really liked was "the not changing the look or feel" and also I sort of agree with something Mindz said about how all the new engines are really hard to setup and you can mess up the settings really easily.

Something else that has also been bugging me is that most new engines have issues on at least some graphics cards or just won't work on some, and most of the new engines don't have a WinQuake style companion as a plan B.

I had planned on releasing a "ProQuake 3.60" this morning, but I am going to take some extra time on a couple of refinements (the exact naming is something that will be figured out, I plan on emailing JPG with some questions/ideas).

The new functionality in this "ProQuake" upgrade addresses a lot of badly needed refinements -- bugs, quirks, small things that should have been in the engine and also upgrades the server functionality mildly.

All of it follows the standard line of not adding any unneeded functionality into the engine, just keeping it simple.

The type of changes are things like being able to press TAB when playing a demo to see the scoreboard, not having ALT-TAB screw up the screen on GeForce cards, eliminating 3-5 of the true existing bugs in ProQuake and some conservative new features.

On the surface, this sounds like nothing special. But if those were the only changes, there would be a download link in this post. :d

/Update and download 3-5 days away; awaiting testing and completion of a couple of outstanding items. Note: this is unrelated to another project I am doing, merging ProQuake and FitzQuake.

[Mindf!3ldzX]

oo me likey,tell JPG it needs to be supported by his cheat-free dll once youve reach a rock-solid "final release"..

[Mindf!3ldzX]

and ill beta test

[Phenom]

Great job Baker!

I'm definitely going to me interested in this, as the only reason I switched from GLPro was because I couldn't alt-tab out without my screen being messed up when I jump back in Quake, got irritated with the fact that I couldn't see scoreboard in demos and I'm sure by the sounds of it you have some extra stuff thrown in there

Me personally and probably others feel its time for an upgrade in some things for Quake, not making them look better but fixing the small quirks to the big bugs!

If you want me to help you beta test I'll be glad do, I've done beta testing for large companies like NCsoft, There.com and have beta'd There.com, Joost, Your ProLauncher , Auto Assault and Drupal 5 beta CMS while this means all I did was play a game until it broke or ran a CMS until it self cleans everything off a server without notice then send a report, that's what you should be looking for, someone who's dedicated to help getting dents knocked out! Unless your ProQuake 3.60 is perfect then I guess I'll just use it to play

I'm sure ProQuake 3.60 will probably usher in a few minor things to complain about and thats why we have updates

[Canadian*Sniper]

perhaps the cheatfree should be updated to check for the opengl32.dll scam and such. GL asking JPG Baker

[Baker]

ProLauncher

The ProQuake Launcher was largely a bandage to patch up some things I felt were not user friendly about the engine. Most of the general ideas of the ProQuake Launcher have been implemented in this.

I have always hated -- and it's been true of every engine -- how you have to either make an autoexec.cfg or make config.cfg read-only.

I've done numerous times to eliminate almost all of that. You can start engine the engine, get setup and play without knowing anything now. That's just 1 aspect of the changes.

oo me likey,tell JPG it needs to be supported by his cheat-free dll once youve reach a rock-solid "final release"..

That is one of the things I plan on doing.

I have spent more time think about cheat-free lately. As Neil and Phocus point out, cheat-free doesn't stop all cheating. It's really just protection against out-of-the-loop wannabees from bringing a bot or using pak2 on a server.

There really needs to be an engine neutral way of doing this, but I have a feeling that an engine neutral way of doing it will be solved this year.

Although ProQuake's cheat-free mode does not prevent all cheating, it does at least keep newbie cheaters from, say, downloading a bot and connecting to a server. It does discriminate against other engines, something which I don't think is good but something I think will be solved soon enough.

and ill beta test

Thanks, more testing and feedback will definitely be required. Only a few of the new features have much of a chance to generate bugs, but nevertheless strong testing is needed especially for some of the changes that need tested on multiple video cards/hardware setups.

There will also be a Linux build and perhaps with Wood's help, a Mac build.

[ORL]

A new version of Proquake!? Ohh man, I'm drooling!

[Mindf!3ldzX]

anyone with concerns about cheaters can opt to play on CF servers with the newest anti-cheat measures that rook has provided us,coupled with proquake sercurity.dll it should be good stuff

let me know when you have something to check out

[spooker]

please include a fixed crosshair--the crosshair (at least on mine) is slightly offcenter, to the right. i know there is probably a patch for this in the anals of some ancient quake forum or you just have to create an exec.bat.ini.scr.qrs file and update your pbt.cfg file regularly, i think it counts as a straight bug that should be wiped

[Baker]

It has an optional "centered crosshair" option in the menu

Oddly enough, I've discovered I don't like having a centered crosshair; I'm used to the old one.

One major issue I am working on is figuring out a method to allow GLPro and wqpro.exe to ignore, but save, each other's cvars without making them available in the wrong client and I think I've figured out the best way to do this. I may skip this in 3.60 and work on that for 3.70.

I've always hated how if you start wqpro.exe, it wipes out glpro only settings and vice versa.

There are a couple of interesting features in this I am surprised no engine has implemented yet. One thing I love about DarkPlaces and FitzQuake is the gun positioning, this is also something optional.

I might add ... 3.60 will *NOT* have a live in-client server browser; but 3.80 will have one.

[ORL]

What are the list of bugs you plan to fix in future versions?

100th post!

[=peg=]

cl_crossx and cl_crossy to correct crosshair position..

[Baker]

cl_crossx and cl_crossy to correct crosshair position..

That's already in ProQuake (has been a LONG time) but cl_crossx and cl_crossy can't center a crosshair in a resolution independent way. I discovered this real quick. So I added cl_centeredcrosshair 1|0; cl_crossx/cl_crossy can be used with either setting.

What are the list of bugs you plan to fix in future versions?

Without looking at my notes, which is a very large list of notes, the ones that annoy me the most:

1. ALT-TAB issue in GeForce cards (fixed .. Not technically a bug I don't think, more of a driver issue but same difference to me.)
2. Certain FOV mess up rendering in GeForce cards (75% fixed, still acts up with some FOVs, but far fewer. Not technically a bug I don't think, more of a driver issue but same difference to me.)
3. Texture flicker! Gone! (fixed) Verification of no side effects needs to be done.
4. Texture cache mismatch (fixed, thanks to Reckless pointing the code out to me; the code fix itself was by LordHavoc I believe).

There are some other ones. I think r_waterwarp annoys me, but I don't notice it in ProQuake because I've had r_waterwarp disabled since day 1, but I'd still like to put the fix in this.

I can't think of any others at the moment, if you know of any ProQuake bugs I haven't thought of, be sure to post them.

/ORL, I have implemented RocketGuy's server side IP masking as an option and the RQuake sv_dmflag also. I'd like to add Rook's "no crash server on no map" fix as well.

[Baker]

I've drawn the line where I just want to wrap up what I have completed and a couple of things I was going to have in this, won't be until 3.70. There will be plenty of time in the future for the rest of the things.

This needs to get into beta testing. But that will be probably tomorrow or possibly Sunday.

Everything was nice and clean in preparation for testing of a Linux build, probably with Mithril's help -- but recently I added some Windows only things I will need to organize properly to keep them out of the source files that are also used by Linux -- so I have some clean up to do.

Here is what will be in this:

The most noticeable features at first glance:

1. adjust brightness in GL in-game (hehe, it has taken this long to have this?? Sad!)
2. the Nvidia/GeForce alt-tab fix (so easy to fix it is a shame that those of us with the problem have had to live with it for years).
3. full keypad support
4. The gl_clear "fix"/adjustment/change will be VERY noticeable on CA servers when observing. This is where you are "noclipped" a little outside the map and those areas of the screen are rendered horribly messed up.

"ProQuake" 3.60 - Change Log

Baker

V3.60

Bug Fixes or Really Annoying Things Fixed

- Fixed ALT-Tabbing bug for Nvidia/GeForce cards -- so very annoying of a problem -- yeah technically it is Nvidia's driver fault, but that doesn't change the pain. (From JoeQuake).
- Mirror alpha fix. For some reason, this seems historically important to me.
- Using -window with wqpro.exe actually starts wqpro.exe in windowed mode (ranks up there with one of WinQuake's most annoying shortcomings).
- GL_Loadtexture: GLQuake cache mismatch bug eliminated. Would generate an engine-stopping message going from maps with different textures, like E4M6 and then DM4. Thanks to Reckless for provided the code, fix code by LordHavoc.
- gl_clear 1 doesn't have status bar flicker and is on by default with the color FitzQuake uses. This means if you noclip outside a map, everything looks nice and clean.
- Notifications of "Mousewheel is unbound" and such have been removed (except for currently non-supported mouse buttons 5-8, don't feel like implementing an external DLL fix right now).
- Allow TAB to be pressed during demoplayback to see scoreboard. (Consider expanding a la JoeQuake where any key can be pressed).
- Adjusted default values of pq_spam_rate and pq_spam_grace pq_tempmute as the defaults be very meddlesome in single player, coop, loc and mod testing.
- Shadow flicker fix. It's gone now. Particularly noticeable at E1M1 "earth" you shoot to open access to Quad. (From Unofficial GLQuake-113)
- Notification of non-26000 port connect failure so it doesn't take 5 minutes to figure out you are trying to connect to a non-existent port/server combination (Recommends to try port 26000 if the port is not 26000 -- from Rook's QRack).

Developer Convenience

- Added viewpos command to tell current location. (This has been SOOO BADLY needed for ages.)
- FitzQuake's give armor command (ex: give "a" 200), so you can now give yourself only armor in single player.
- Max edicts raised from 600 to 2048, allowing ProQuake to play most single player map for lazy players that don't/won't use a real single player engine for that. (to do: Make sure this doesn't cause problems as a dedicated server; that would be bad!)
- RocketGuy's sv_dmflag, which allows RQuake to effectively use a DM scoreboard in coop (todo: add cvars to support/use his other changes like color 14/15 support, sv_tellenabled, "quit!" command [which I don't know what it does], anything else I forgot) and Rook's "the server doesn't crash if it doesn't have the map" fix.

Convenience

- Vanilla cmdlist / cvarlist support from Quakesrc.org tutorial (todo: JoeQuake style command/parameter completion)
- Maplist/demolist commands.
- cl_confirmquit 0 - quit without the prompt.
- time command - type in console to display current time.
- full screen windowed mode (from aguirRe's Enhanced GLQuake).
- "-fullwindow" command line option for GL to do a full-screen windowed mode (sort of an expansion of the idea in aguirRe's Enhanced GLQuake). To do: Make it work in Linux.
- Freelook cvar -- this has pretty much evolved to be the standard.
- Zone default increased to 1024 KB. Yeah, 512 KB usually suffices, but 5% of the time it doesn't and this is a trivial amount in the modern day.
- Added cl_mute from Qrack and con_notifylines. If someone is super annoying, just completely ignore them. Also helps for turning demos into movies.
- Made fov, r_drawviewmodel, scr_conspeed, cl_crossx/y, ambient sound, r_waterwarp, etc. save to config.
- cl_crosshaircentered - actually centers the crosshair.

New Functionality

- In-game brightness adjustment -- it could use some more work. (From TyrQuake)
- Bronzing by holding ALT down in console (From JoeQuake). Largely eliminates the need for a Quake name maker. (Question: Do all saved names get saved properly.)
- gl_ringalpha - make weapon visible during invisibility (to do: option to draw weapon model in GL), but transparent.
- Added cl_autodemo from Qrack.
- FitzQuake style keypad binding support (off by default). (Think about: super extended support like JoeQuake where you can bind Left and Right CTRL/ALT separately).
- Added JoeQuake adjust volume on the fly suppport [volumeup/volumedown]. (todo: mute-toggle type of command?).
- r_truegunangle - optionally render the gun angle "properly" (idea from how DarkPlaces/FitzQuake render weapon).

[Phenom]

- Mirror alpha fix. For some reason, this seems historically important to me.

Some how I feel this will already be an issue for ATI video card users, but only the future will tell. I would love to see mirrors back in Quake on my ATI card!