FTE QW engine.

[echos]

as much as i like darkplaces it is lacking full support of q3a shaders, so i wanted to try using FTE which has it plus realtime lights. But i was having some very bad bugs.

#1 on first startup the video looked really jacked up, almost as if using a too small fov or something, changing video mode fixed it, but leads to bug #2
#2 changing video modes or the renderer from gl to d3d using the menu causes the 2d size of menus to be extremely small to where its barely readable, doesnt happen when adjusting them via console. this happens again and again if you change mode or renderer, even after you pick a large enough 2d size. also the current 2d size doesnt show in the menu, if you change it then it shows the wrong one.
#3 whole screen flickering and big black box in lower left quadrant of my screen if you enable bloom while using the gl renderer
#4 couldnt make bloom or realtime lighting work at all in the d3d renderer
#5 couldnt figure out why it wasn't loading the md3 replacement models in my pk3's?

[Spike]

#1 I don't know of any such bugs. a screenshot would help.

#2 alt-tabbing can cause issues such as you described. this should be fixed in the svn version, or maybe that tweek was the cause of the bug you describe :s

#3 bloom is kinda ugly unless the content is designed explicitly for it. I believe bloom got reworked after v1 which should fix blurryness and hopefully black boxes...

#4 the d3d renderer is more limited and doesn't support bloom or any type of rtlights (properly). It doesn't get much attention, so should be treated as a fallback, I suppose.
It should be able to run q1/q2/q3, but does lack other extraneous renderer features.

#5 the 'path' command will show all pk3s that are loaded and active. Make sure your pk3s are listed there. 'flocate progs/somemodel.mdl' will also show you exactly which package the file is being loaded, if you have duplicate files in multiple pk3s.

'nightly' svn builds are compiled by moodles and available here: Index of /moodles

[echos]

i tried the nightly build and it seems to fix those bugs, all the monsters have garbled textures in that one though, otherwise it looks much better :p

[Spike]

the monsters? o.O
damn gremlins.

[ultraviolent]

I would like to ask couple questions about this engine before I make my mind between FTEQW and DP

Does FTE QW support IQM models?
If not what alternatives are supported for skel. animation?
Is hardware skinning supported as well?
Can it use real physics through ODE/Bullet/Newton?

Thanks in advance

[Spike]

Yes.
can use md5[mesh/anim] and psk, and a couple of other uninteresting skeletal formats.
only for iqm (keep meaning to add support for the other formats too).
fte supports ode much like dp does, just clientside too. tbh its a pain in either engine, at least for ragdoll/IK stuff. You can do that stuff, but there's little to make it fast.

[golden_boy]

Let's hear it for the miracle engine.

[wicked_lord]

Now those are some sweeeeeeet looking screenshots ^^^^^^^^^^

[Mr.Burns]

Let's hear it for the miracle engine.

Holy Moly! Well done Spike That's got to be worth a try even if just for demo recording, single player, screenshots, etc ['m sure I would be castigated out of the NetQuake club if I try it with QW (jk)].


@gb: Are they your maps? if so they look intriquing and I was wondering if there was a dl available somewhere?

Kind regards

Monty

[Spike]

a toolchain that supports polymeshes, higher lightmap sampling, and radiance, is a wonderful thing.

[golden_boy]

The shots are from Scout's Journey, yeah. Some of the lighting quality is due to FTE's support for FBSP map format, and the last shot demonstrates FTE's heightmap terrain, particle rain and pretty water features as well as its good performance with excessively large maps (the fortress area is the size of 4 vanilla Quake maps).

In addition to what Spike named above, it also has great support for Q3 shaders, CSQC, stuff like Freetype fonts, and plugins that allow you to run an IRC client, an X server or Google Chrome inside the engine. Pretty much the kitchen sink but with really good performance as well.

Regarding what engine to choose for a game project, I always recommend actually trying out all alternatives. You've got to get a feel for each of them before you make your decision. I used FTE, DP, QFusion and even idtech4 and made maps for / ported maps to all of them before making my choice. Also check what kind of mods exist for certain engines, and check these mods' websites and feature lists, that is usually a good indicator for what the engine is capable of.

Finally, it's good to pick an engine whose developers are willing to listen to you.

Edit: yeah, q3map2 / Quake 3 provides much better tools, but the engine has a certain part in supporting the resulting maps ;-)

[talisa]

hey spike,

thought it post this here instead of hexen2 thread since it about your FTEQW engine

tried playing hexen2 with inkub0's textures ad lit files and such, and i must say it looks superb with rt lighting on and such and all effects at max

theres a couple problems though.. theres some problems with 3 weapons however

first of all, some of the particles have black squares around them, the assassin's crossbow and 2nd weapon from necromancer:




second weapon from necromancer also gives an error when first time firing it:




and the 3rd weapon from necromancer is broken even




and in portal of peavrus the strongest weapon from demoness also has the same prob with black squares around the particles:




im using the latest stable win32 release

[inkub0]

rtlights are only the converted lits and are pretty confused...

i'm working on a serius RTLIGHTS files set

[talisa]

oh really? already looks real fancy, cant wait to see how it'll look with actual rtlights then

anyways... the prob isnt with the lights, its with some particles not working corrrectly, and one weapon being broken even

is there a build you can recommend in which those all work fine inkub0?

[Spike]

black bits, effect 40, and mm_explo0 should already be fixed in svn builds.
you can try one of moodles' builds here: Index of /moodles