Doom-Ed

d:\>mkdir research

Ahhhh….

I am very happy with how Q3 turned out. Probably more than any
game we have done before, it’s final form was very close to its
initial envisioning.

I will be getting all the Q3 code we are going to release together
over the next week or so. I will write some overview documentation
to give a little context, and since you can do game mods without
needing a commercial compiler now, I will write a brief step-by-step
to modifying the game code.

I’m looking forward to what comes out of the community with Q3.

The rough outline of what I am going to be working on now:

We will be supporting Q3 for quite some time. Any problems
we have will get fixed, and some new features my sneak in.

I have two rendering technologies that I intend to write research
engines for.

I am going to spend some time on computer vision problems. I think
the cheap little web cams have some interesting possibilities.

I am going to explore some possibilities with generalizing 3D game
engines into more powerful environments with broader uses. I think
that a lot of trends are coming to the point where a “cyberspace” as
it is often imagined is begining to be feasible.

I am going to spend more time on some Free Software projects. I have
been stealing a few hours here and there to work on the matrox glx
project for a while now, and it has been pretty rewarding.
People with an interest in the guts of a 3D driver might want to look
at the project archives at http://glx.on.openprojects.net/.
The web pages aren’t very up to date, but the mailing list covers some
good techie information.

* fixed not-telefragging bug
* disabled flood protection with local clients
* fixed headoffset and gender on some model changes
* init cg_autoswitch cvars in cl
* fixed clearing of vm bss on restart
* fixed hang when looped part of song isn’t found
* fixed two NAT clients connecting to same server
* fixed warning on random once only triggers
* added “g_allowVote 0″
* added developer background sound underrun warning
* move sound loading before clients so low memory
defer works across maps
* changed cgame load failure to a drop

Linux version isn’t going to make it tonight. We got
too busy with other things. Sorry. Tomorrow.

* shrink zone, grow hunk
* flush memory on an error
* fixed crash pasting from clipboard
* test all compiler optimizations — 5% speedup
* fixed major slowdown in team games with large
numbers of players and location markers

The mac version is out. Go to www.quake3arena.com for links.

The mac version going out has the executable fixes that we
have made in the last couple days, but most of the fixes
have been in code that runs in the virtual machine, and we
can’t update that without making it incomptable with the
pc version.

The game remains very marginal in playability on 266mhz imacs
and iBooks.

A 333mhz imac should be playable for a casual gamer if the
graphics options are turned down to the “fastest” setting.

There is still a lot of room for improvement on ATI’s side
with the RagePro drivers. Almost all the effort so far
has been on the Rage128 drivers.

The G3 systems run fine, but a little slower than a pc of
equal mhz

The rage128 cards in the G3s are only clocked at 75mhz, so
you can’t run too high of a resolution, but you can get
very nice image quality. I usually play with these settings:
r_mode 2 // 512*284 res
r_colorbits 32 // 32 bit color
r_texturemode gl_linear_mipmap_linear // trilinear filtering

I haven’t played on one of the new iMacs or G4’s but they
both use the rage128 driver, which is fairly high quality
now, so they should perform well.

We found a fairly significant problem with inputSprockets and
mouse control (motion is dropped after 40msec). I have done a
little working around it, so mouse control should be somewhat
better in this version, but it will hopefully be fixed
properly by Apple in the next IS rev. It isn’t an issue if
your framerate is high enough, but iMacs never see that
framerate on their very best days…

Linux version tomorrow night, if nothing horrible happens.

Some advance warning about something that is sure to stir
up some argument:

We should be handing off the masters for all three platforms
within a day or two of each other, but they aren’t going to
show up in stores at the same time. Publishers, distributers,
and stores are willing to go out of their way to expedite the
arrival of the pc version, but they just won’t go to the
same amount of trouble for mac and linux boxes.

THE EXECUTABLES FOR ALL PLATFORMS WILL NOT BE AVAILABLE FOR
DOWNLOAD UNTIL AFTER CHRISTMAS. This means that if you want
to play on the mac or linux, don’t pick up a copy of the pc
version and expect to download the other executables.

Our first update to the game will be for all platforms, and
will allow any version to be converted into any other, but
we intend to hold that off for a little while.

We are doing this at the request of the distributors. The
fear is that everyone will just grab a windows version,
and the separate boxes will be ignored.

A lot of companies are going to be watching the sales
figures for the mac and linux versions of Q3 to see if
the platforms are actually worth supporting. If everyone
bought a windows version and the other boxes sold like crap
in comparison, that would be plenty of evidence for most
executives to can any cross platform development.

I know there are a lot of people that play in both windows
and linux, and this may be a bit of an inconvenience in
the short term, but this is an ideal time to cast a vote
as a consumer.

Its all the same to Id (I like hybrid CD’s), and our continued
support of linux and mac (OS X for the next title) is basically
a foregone conclusion, but the results will probably influence
other companies.

* fixed getting your own dropped / kicked message
* added developer print for all file open write’s
* fixed occasional bad color on connecting background
* fixed occasional telefrag at start of skirmish game
* fix not being able to ready at intermission if
you were following a bot
* never timelimit during tourney warmup
* fixed local timer on map_restart
* offset sorlag’s head model for status bar
* added g_gametype to the votable commands:
map, map_restart, kick, g_gametype
* changed sound registration sequence to fix losing
default sound
* “sv_floodProtect 0″ to turn off flood protection
* converted sequenced messages to static arrays
* fixed custom skin reassignment on all LOD

The demo servers have general purpose flood-protection that has
caused some confusion.

Clients are only allowed to make one command a second of any kind.
This prevents excessive flooding by chats, model / name changes,
and any other command that could possibly be exploited. The
command streams are stalled, so it doesn’t have any effect on
processing order or reliability.

This means that if you issue two commands immediately after one
another, there will be a one second stall before the second
command and all movement clears. You see this on the lagometer
as yellow spiking up for a second, then dropping away.

Hitting tab for the scoreboard sends a command, so you trigger
the flood protection if you bang tab a couple times. This has
been fixed so that the scoreboard will never send more than
one update request every two seconds, but you will need to
watch out for it in the existing demo.

The defered model loading has also caused some confusion, but
that is a feature, not a bug.

In previous tests, you hitched for a second or two whenever a
client with a new model or skin joined a game.

In the demo, when a client joins the game they will be given
the model and skin of someone else temporarily, so there is
no hitch. The only time it will hitch on entry is if it is
a team game and there isn’t anyone on the team they join. I
make sure the skin color is correct, even if the model isn’t.

These “defered” clients will be loaded when you bring up the
scoreboard. You can do this directly by hitting tab, or you
can have it happen for you when you die.

The point is: you died BEFORE it hitched, not as a result of
the hitch.

The scoreboard header is up, but it is still a bit easy to miss.

* fixed high server idle cpu usage
(it was spinning in place until maxfps was used!)
* fixed g_password, which is crashing in the demo
* moved svs.snapshotEntities to the hunk
* enable lagometer whenever running a non-local game
* cg_drawTeamOverlay cvar, set to 0 by default
* finished authorize work
* better reporting of unused highwater memory

The way vertex lighting is working in the existing demos is that
only two pass shaders (lightmap * texture) were collapsed to a
single pass, all other shaders stayed the same.

Xian added some chrome and energy effects to parts of q3tourney2,
which changed them from two pass to three pass shaders. We felt
that that 50% increase on those polygons was justified in normal
play, but as people have pointed out, when you are playing with
vertex lighting, that three passes stays three passes instead
of collapsing to a single pass, resulting in a 300% increase
on those polygons over the way it was before. Still faster than
lightmap mode, but a large variance over other parts of the level.

Today I wrote new code to address that, and improve on top of it.

Now when r_vertexlight is on, I force every single shader to a
single pass. In the cases where it isn’t a simple light*texture
case, I try and intelligently pick the most representative pass
and do some fixups on the shader modulations.

This works our great, and brings the graphics load down to the
minimum we can do with the data sets.

Performance is still going to be down a couple msec a frame due to
using dynamic compilation instead of dll’s for the cgame, but that
is an intentional tradeoff. You can obviously slow things down by
running a lot of bots, but that is to be expected.

I am still investigating the high idle dedicated server cpu utilization
and a few other issues. The server cpu time will definately be
higher than 1.08 due to the dynamic compiler, but again, that is
an intentional tradeoff.

A set of go-fast-and-look-ugly options:
r_mode 2
r_colorbits 16
r_texturemode GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_NEAREST
r_vertexlighting 1
r_subdivisions 999
r_lodbias 2
cg_gibs 0
cg_draw3dicons 0
cg_brassTime 0
cg_marks 0
cg_shadows 0
cg_simpleitems 1
cg_drawAttacker 0

* icons for bot skills on scoreboard
* r_vertexlight is now “force single pass” for all shaders
* modified cd key check to be fire and forget on the client
* file handle debugging info in path command
* network address type of NA_BAD for failed resolves
* better command line variable overriding
* cache scoreboard for two seconds
* sync sound system before starting cinematics
* fixed many escapes disconnect from server exiting the game
* fixed shotgun pellets underwater expending all temp entities

The demo test is built. It should go up in a couple
hours if nothing explodes.

Mac and linux builds won’t be out tonight.

* clear SVF_BOT when exiting follow mode
* render temp memory
* new mac GL initialization code
* no zone memory use in music thread
* added check for trash past zone block
* explicitly flush journal data file after a write
* added FS_Flush

* graphic for defer
* don’t set any systeminfo vars from demos
* A3D fix
* spectator follow clients that disconnect
* stop follow mode before going to intermission so you can ready
* use (fullbright) vertex lighting if the bsp file doesn’t have lightmaps
* auto set demo keyword on servers
* finished cd key authorization
* fixed symbol table loading for interpreter
* reconnect command
* removed limit on number of completed commands
* changed default name to “UnnamedPlayer”
* awards over people’s heads in multiplayer
* fixed global powerup announcements

* teamplay menu comment
* shrank and moved “RECORDING demo:” text
* identified and worked around Apple input queue issue
* properly send configstring resets on map_restart
* don’t clip sound buffer on file writes
* don’t draw scoreboard during warmup
* auto load added bots in single player
* swapped order of map_restart and warmup configstring
* disable dynamic lights on riva128 due to lack of blend mode
* put frags left warning back in all gametypes
* removed joystick button debug prints

* fixed spinning barrel on respawn issue
* clear eflags before intermission
* shutdown menu on starting a cinematic
* mask name colors to 0-7 range
* fixed jpeg loading alpha channel
* try for not-nearest spawn twice instead of once
* made unzoomed exactly identity mouse modifier
* cl_debugmove [1/2]
* m_filter
* fixed time warnings
* allow timelimits to hit with only a single player
* filter local games with different protocol versions
* fixed bad arg 0 after sysinfo configstring
* removed unneeded svc_servercommand at start of command strings
* fixed redundantly loaded level bug
* fixed journal playback from demo build
* removed background image from viewlog window