help me find a new engine

[boink182]

been a happy darkplaces user for a long time but for some reason i am getting constant driver crashes after upgrading my video card. i've tried using different driver versions, darkplaces versions, every nvidia control panel option and darkplaces setting i can think of and nothing helps. i used to have an ati card and never had any problems. in any case, i would like to use a more traditional quake engine as they give me no problems, however i am having trouble finding a client that allows for rendering independent from the server's frame rate when playing single player which is resulting in messed up physics when i uncap my frame rate. bodies float on descending platforms, stair climbing is abrupt, etc...

does anyone know of any other quake engines that separate the rendering from the server frame rate when playing single player?

thanks in advance!

[Baker]

FitzQuake, ProQuake, Qrack, JoeQuake all have vid_vsync 0|1.

ProQuake uses pq_maxfps, FitzQuake uses host_maxfps, JoeQuake and Qrack use cl_maxfps.


Well wait ... you say you want rendering independent of the server frame rate. I don't believe any of the above do that.

I'm not quite sure this is possible to do in single player, at least not easily. Server physics and rendering are done once per frame (or not, theif maxfps cvar places limits on this) and with single player physics and rendering are sort of locked together, but this would something interesting to look into.

Btw, the problems you describe ... DarkPlaces handles those far better than any other engine so I think the problem would be worse with a non-DarkPlaces engine.

[boink182]

well it already works like this in multiplayer, right? otherwise everyone would be running 20 or 40 fps or whatever. soo... maybe i would be better off running a dedicated server locally running coop and play that way... i'm gonna try it out later.

[boink182]

oh yeah, a quake 2 engine that has this also is r1q2, which is where i first saw something like this. it allows you to take the fps above 90 w/out screwing up the physics.

[Baker]

I'd sure like separate cl_maxfps vs. host_maxfps.

I have an Intel display adapter without vsync lock capability as far as I know, and I get those terrible effects on it especially with elevators in single player.

I'll look into this.

Additionally, FitzQuake truly has the right name for it. But that's not what most people want the fps cvar to do. The server part of Quake should always run @ 72 fps.

[boink182]

thanks, you da man! is fitzquake still being actively developed? i would have been using that this whole time if it had separate host/client frame rates, and model interpolation. if it had those two things it would be the only quake i would ever need.

or if enhanced glquake had square particles and separate frame rates, that would work too i love how you can disable interpolation just on weapons in that engine.

[boink182]

and the reason i don't ever EVER use vsync in any game is i get terrible mouse lag when i do. i think it has to do with the 60hz refresh rate on modern lcd screens.

oh how i miss the crt days.

[Baker]

or if enhanced glquake had square particles and separate frame rates, that would work too i love how you can disable interpolation just on weapons in that engine.

Just so you know, you can disable interpolation on weapons on every engine that supports interpolation.

Often it is gl_interpolate_weapon 0 or r_interpolate_weapon 0.

and the reason i don't ever EVER use vsync in any game is i get terrible mouse lag when i do. i think it has to do with the 60hz refresh rate on modern lcd screens.

oh how i miss the crt days.

Usually you can go into the Windows control panel set the mouse refresh rate. And if you aren't able to do that in the control, there are utilities that let you do that for older versions of Windows.

Here is one very lazy Googling of page with info on setting the mouse refresh rate:

http://smallvoid.com/article/winnt-p...resh-rate.html

[boink182]

i'm using a razer copperhead with 1000hz polling rate.

i'm very sensitive

i've tried setting max frames to render ahead to 0 in the nvidia control panel as some have suggested, and while this does reduce the vsync lag, it is still perceptible enough for me to rather deal with screen tearing and the need for very high fps.

[boink182]

Just so you know, you can disable interpolation on weapons on every engine that supports interpolation.

Often it is gl_interpolate_weapon 0 or r_interpolate_weapon 0.

is there such a command for darkplaces? i was never able to find it.

i know the general model interpolation variable is r_lerpmodels but a tab completion on r_lerp yields nothing weapon specific.

[Baker]

is there such a command for darkplaces? i was never able to find it.

i know the general model interpolation variable is r_lerpmodels but a tab completion on r_lerp yields nothing weapon specific.

Probably, but I don't know what it is. I didn't see anything obvious in "cvarlist".

There is always the DarkPlaces IRC channel you could ask on:

irc://irc.anynet.org/darkplaces

[boink182]

hmm, i seem to have solved my problem with darkplaces crashing. i noticed i could leave it running demos forever w/out crashes so figured it might have something to do with input. tried -dinput first, no luck, then tried -noforceaccel -noforcespeed -noforceparms and wasn't noticing any crashes for longer than usual. took -noforceparms off and got crashes, put it back on and finished two epsidoes with not a single crash whereas before i couldn't even get through the first one.

have any idea what this means? why would mouse issues cause display driver crashes? i don't even fully understand what -noforceparms does, but i thought it had something to do with mouse buttons. weird thing is i crashed in menus a couple times and wasn't even using the mouse at the time.

wtf? oh well... i'm just glad it's working again.

it would still be cool if we could get separate host/client frame rates in another engine though

[Baker]

hmm, i seem to have solved my problem with darkplaces crashing. i noticed i could leave it running demos forever w/out crashes so figured it might have something to do with input. tried -dinput first, no luck, then tried -noforceaccel -noforcespeed -noforceparms and wasn't noticing any crashes for longer than usual. took -noforceparms off and got crashes, put it back on and finished two epsidoes with not a single crash whereas before i couldn't even get through the first one.

have any idea what this means? why would mouse issues cause display driver crashes? i don't even fully understand what -noforceparms does, but i thought it had something to do with mouse buttons. weird thing is i crashed in menus a couple times and wasn't even using the mouse at the time.

I kind of doubt that has anything to do with your problem.

LordHavoc isn't very interested in playing around with mouse code :d

The mouse code in DP probably hasn't changed all that much since 2005 and mouse code isn't something likely to cause a crash.

[Get mouse position -> force mouse pointer to center of screen -> movement = newx - oldx, etc. That kind of simple logic isn't something that tends to be involved in a crash. And if you aren't using -dinput in the command line, there isn't any driver stuff involved.]

[boink182]

i know that's why i'm kind of dumbfounded.

i was looking through the readme on the darkplaces website, which is very outdated, but there is a cvar listed which seems to have been removed called vid_dga. the description says "make use of DGA mouse input" but the vid prefix indicates this is tied into video output, so i guess it's possible for mouse input to affect video output in some way. whatever, this is way over my head, all i know is darkplaces isn't crashing anymore. since as you say the mouse code is prolly pretty much the same since the original quake, but that being the case, it could be the problem. lordhavoc made a completely new renderer as i understood it. maybe the original mouse code isn't 100% compatiable and this just hasn't been discovered yet. as far as i understand the noforce commands tell quake to let windows handle the associated functions, and whatever quake is doing that this commands bypasses is not playing well with my video card. i don't know if this has anything to do with the fact that i am using vista x64. i have a copy of xp x86 installed but not configured. i will try darkplaces in that tomorrow and let you know if i have the same problem there.

i'll try to run through the first episode again in a little bit, just to make sure, but if i do it will be the third time, and before adding -noforceparms i was not able to do this once and i must have tried a hundred times, no joke, i tried so many different settings and was real methodical about it, making sure to only change one thing at a time.

[boink182]

no doubt about it, just did it again. completed 1st episode 100% nightmare, graceful exit. launch w/out noforce commands and crashed on the first level. changed NOTHING ELSE. coincidence? 6 times in a row?

i don't think so. i wasn't able to gracefully exit the program once before noforce commands. every single time i launched i got a crash, unless i just let the demos run. that's what made me think it was an input issue, because what is the only difference between demo and play? input... and ai, i guess... anything else?

i haven't had a single crash using noforce commands, all other things being equal.