Doom-Ed

An announcement:

We have hired Robert Duffy as a full time employee, starting in
December.

He has been maintaining the level editor since the release of Q2,
but a number of things have convinced me it is time to have a
full time tool-guy at id.

The original QE4 editor was my very first ever Win32 program, and
while Robert has done a good job of keeping it on life support
through necessary extensions and evolutions, it really is past
its designated lifespan.

I want to take a shot at making the level editor cross platform,
so it can be used on linux and mac systems. I’m not exactly
confident that it will work out, but I want to try.

Many of the content creation tasks seem to be fairly stabilized
over the last several years, and our next product is going to be
pretty content directed, so I can justify more engineering
effort on writing better tools.

It is time for a re-think of the relationships between editor,
utilities, and game. I am still an opponent of in-game editors,
but I want to rearrange a lot of things so that some subsystems
can be shared.

All of that added up to more than I was going to be able to do
in the time left after the various research, graphics, and
networking things I want to pursue.

* added r_speeds timing info to cinematic texture uploads
* fixed loop sounds on movers
* new bfg sound
* “sv_pure 1″ as default, requires clients to only get data from
pk3 files the server is using
* fixed fog pass on inside of textured fog surfaces
* properly fog sprites
* graphics for scoreboard headers
* show colored names on attacker display and scoreboard
* made “no such frame” a developer only warning
* count a disconnect while losing in tournement mode as a win
for the other player
* fixed running with jump held down runs slow
* draw “connection problems” in center of screen in addition
to phone jack icon
* cut marks properly on non-convex faces
* fixed bug with command completion partial match and case sensitivity
* fixed console dropping on level start
* fixed frags left feedback after restarts
* fog after dlight
* removed fogged stages from shader, dynamically generate
* removed fogonly shader keyword, infer from surfaceparm
* removed uneeded reinit of shader system on vid_restart

The next release will be the full “demo” release for quake 3.
It will include bots and a new, simple level that is suitable for
complete beginners to play, as well as the existing q3test maps.

The timing just didn’t work out right for another test before we
complete the game.

We plan on releasing the demo after code freeze, when the entire
game is in final testing, which will give us a few days time to
fix any last minute problems that show up before golden master.

No, I don’t have an actual date when that will be.

—

I got an iBook in on friday. It is sort of neat (I need to go
buy an AirPort, then it will definately be neat), but it is
currently way too slow to play Q3 on.

Apple’s high end G3 and G4 systems with rage128/rage128pro cards
and latest drivers are just about as fast as equivelant wintel systems,
but the rest of the product line is still suffering a noticable
speed disadvantage.

The new iMac has a rage128, but it is only an 8mb/64bit version. Still,
with agp texturing it is a solid platform with performance that is
certainly good enough to play the game well on.

Existing iMacs have 6mb ragePro video. ATI’s windows drivers for
the pro have come a long ways, and Q3 is plenty playbale on
windows with a rage pro (ugly, but playable). On apple systems
(iMacs and beige G3’s), the performance is sometimes as low as HALF
the windows platform. The lack of AGP contributes some to this, but
it is mostly just a case of the drivers not being optimzed yet. The
focus has been on the rage128 so far.

The iBook is also ragePro based, but it is an ultra-cheap 32 bit
version. It does texture over AGP, but it is slooooow. I suspect it
is still driver issues, because it is still very slow even at 320×240,
so that leaves hope that it can be improved.

Another issue with the Apple systems is that Apple 16 bit color is
actually 15 bit. I never used to think it made much difference, but
I have been doing a lot of side by side comparying, and it does turn
out to be a noticable loss of quality.

* new lg splash
* added channel number for local sounds so feedbacks
don’t override announcers
* remvoed scoreup feedback sound
* expand score tabs as needed for large scores
* fixed bfg obit
* fixed swimming off floors
* fixed swim animation when jumping in shallow water
* fixed first weapopn switch problem
* convert all joystick axis to button events (twist is now bindable)

* make sure video is shutfown for errors on startup
* automatic fallback to vm if dll load fails
* compressed jump tables for qvm
* removed common qfiles.h and surfaceflags.h from utils and game
* don’t load qvm symbols if not running with developer
* “quake3 safe” will run the game without loading q3config.cfg
* ignore network packets when in single player mode
* dedicated server memory optimizations. Tips:
com_hunkMegs 4
sv_maxclients 3
bot_enable 0
* fixed logfile on mac
* new time drifting code
* fixed file handle leak with compressed pk3 files
* q3data changed to remove shader references from player models
* throw a fatal error if drop errors are streaming in
* fixed com_hunkMegs as command line parm
* spawn spectators at intermission point
(info_spectator_start has been removed)
* new sound channel for local sounds
* fixed follow toggle on bots
* don’t write to games.log in single player
* fixed improper case sensitivity in S_FindName

* handle window close events properly
* enable r_displayRefresh selection and feedback on mac
* avoid AGEN_IDENTITY when CGEN_DIFFUSE_LIGHTING
* colorized railgun muzzle flash, impact flash, and mark
* exactly synced animating textures with waveforms and collapsed
all explosion sequences into single shaders
* removed unneeded black pass on hell skies
* fixed grenades sticking to steep slopes
* scan for next highest fullscreen resolution when exact
mode fails (fixes SGI flat panel failing to init)
* all cgame cvars now have a cg_ prefix (crosshair, fov, etc)
* clear clientinfo before parsing configstring
* make all feedback voiceovers share the same channel
* fixed nodraw curves
* fixed obits from shooter entities
* fixed chat char issue
* separate gentity_t fields into sharedEntity_t
* reintegrated q_mathsys with q_math
* cg_forcemodel also forces player sounds
* unknown cmd commands don’t chat
* fixed strip order on text quads

* r_primitives 3 path for non-vertex array testing
* specify sex in model animation.cfg file
* proper dropping of failed bot inits
* removed identical pain sounds
* serverTime strictly increasing across levels
* added GL_DECAL multitexture collapse
* windowed mouse on mac
* fixed byte order issue with curve clipping on mac
* made com_defaultextension buffer safe
* fixed levelshot and added antialiasing to image
* don’t clear bot names before kick message
* made servercommand sequences strictly increasing across
level changes
* unpause on vid_restart

* fixed steady snapshot test
* fixed incorrect 0 ping if past client messages
* fixed loser-disconnecting-at-tourney-intermission
sorting problem
* general purpose flood protection, limiting all user
commands to one a second by stalling the client,
so the commands don’t actually get dropped, but
are delayed as needed
* replace headnode overflow with lastCluster
* fixed bad extrapolation on unpausing
* fixed player twitch on unpausing
* print client names on loading screen