Quake was originally developed for MS-DOS, which wasn't a multi-user OS. MS-DOS evolved into various versions of Windows 3.x, Windows 95, 98, 98 SE and ME, at which time that line was killed.

None of them were multi-user OSs, none of them had security, and this stuff just worked.

Windows NT was developed from the ground up as a new OS and new kernel (that just happened to share some common shell and UI elements with the other Windows). From the very first it was a multi-user OS with proper security, admin/user separation, etc.

Windows NT evolved into Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1 and 10.

The benefits of placing per-user content in user profile directories are:

- These are the only directories that non-Admin users are guaranteed to be able to write to.

- If more than one person uses the PC then your saves and cfgs won't mess up somebody else's, and vice-versa.

So, try playing a stock install of Quake on a PC with more than one user, and logged on as a non-Admin user, and see how far you get. 

There are a big amount of users in different Quake forums reporting difficulties with the fact that configs are stored in a VERY different location.
But we NEVER heard difficulties from people with non-Admin issues or multiple users config issues.

For a simple Quake engine? This modern-OS behaviour is way over the top. It only produces trouble and frustration. And in the end... like many affected users did, they change the engine to a better one without this modern-OS behaviour. --> Like all the other Quake engines have.

Other engines never produce trouble like this. They all work as expected and intended.

The honorable intention to implement modern-OS features into a Quake engine ends up useless and even counterproductive in reality.

So, take a minute and think about it. ;) 

yeah, it sucks. I hate it and always use -nohome myself.

that said, using homedirs is the safe option, even if its not the preferable option.
and its NOT nonsense, there are various installers for quakeworld mods that install into "c:/program files/", which then screws everything up when users try other engines in the same dir. maybe not for the nq community, but it IS a problem for the qw community.
its also very common on linux, too, what with debian/ubuntu's quake package requiring it and all.

windows also has a tendancy to lie about whether access is possible and to then write the files somewhere else that's even harder for the user to find, this makes it really messy to try to autodetect whether homedirs are needed or not.

side note: the afterquake thingie expects the user to unzip and add in some paks, and contains a file to explicitly instruct the engine to disables homedirs (because it doesn't expect to have to fight other installers).

winnt actually predates win95, and unix has always been a multi-user system. this is NOT modern-OS stuff. 

Is FTE networking P2P? Does it have NAT punchthrough? 

yes, but only via the xmpp plugin (the method requires a third-party server to relay messages through in order to establish a connection), and that requires accounts and passwords and urgh, so none bothers with it.

the web port can use an existing/3rdparty fte server as a broker for webrtc (but it needs that 3rdparty server to be configured with eg `sv_port_tcp 27500;net_enable_webrtcbroker 1`). You can then host with `sv_port_rtc rtc://brokerip:27500/mygamename` and connect to that server with the same uri.
I keep meaning to implement something equivelent with the desktop ports, but I can never get around to it. 

Quake Real-Time Lighting Project in full beta

https://www.reddit.com/r/quake/comments/9p0n07/quake_realtime_lighting_project_in_full_beta/ 

By default, the game sound only plays for the left screen (first player). Is there a way to enable sounds for all other screens, too? 

switch the audio device away from openal(the default) to any of the other audio drivers (like dsound/wasapi/alsa/sdl), typically via the menu.

openal does its own mixing and only supports a single 'listener', whereas fte's own mixer is smart enough to select the nearest player as the appropriate listener on a per-sound basis. 

That does the trick, thanks. 

Is it a non-avoidable side effect that whenever I enable r_waterstyle > 1 that I basically lose the weapons muzzle flash?

I state it as "basically" because sometimes I do get the the muzzle flash effect but I can't determine exactly why. And it's sporadic.

Sorry that I don't know the name of the actual cvar, its just the flash when you fire the weapons, explosions etc. 

Hi, I tried to get coop to work with the 5361 Afterquake package and it seems that the server is either not running or it actually starts in single player mode. Deathmatch works fine. Am I doing something wrong, or is there a trick to get it running with some cvars? It worked with a previous version (although I couldn't figure out back then which variable would have set no friendly fire - maybe it was just deathmatch which used my coop player starts?). 

works for me...

make sure you've not somehow messed up any cvars - these are the ones that come to mind:
deathmatch 0 //boo hiss
coop 1 //hurrah! friendly mode
maxclients 8 //quakeworld engines limit clients and spectators separately, which is a little messy.
sv_playerslots "" //auto - 32 when deathmatch||coop, otherwise 1. max of 255.
samelevel 0
sv_progs progs //force preference for NQ gamecode over QW gamecode - QW mods tend to have no coop, in case you have a qwprogs.dat from other sources.

really, the only difference between coop and deathmatch as far as the engine is concerned is that coop is set instead of the deathmatch cvar.

to disable friendly fire, not only do you need teamplay set, but you also need the players to use the same lower colour (in nq). 

I set the values with the console and it worked; maybe the menu command didn't reset everything that was required correctly. 

Pants, he means same color pants so you don't hurt each other. 

FTEqw64 version 5361 isn't compatible with Arcane Dimensions?

I'm asking this because i can't load a savegame when i'm using this mod.

When i press F9 or even loading a savefile from the menu, the engine crashes to the desktop and show me this error message: "Bad Entity Lump: 'Particle' not recognised (last ent was 894)"

Even with "sv_savefmt 0" the engine crashes when i press F9.

I also tried the "savegame_legacy" command, but the console says "Error: hidden name (.sav) Unable to use legacy save format"

help :( 

Is there a way to change console sliding speed to be instant...curious if you can instantly hide the console on map start? 

scr_conspeed 2000(def) increase it until it's near instant. 

Anyone knows if FTE has god-rays auto-generated from the sky?

I remember, a while ago, testing this... i just wrote something in the console and BANG... god-rays from the sky...

but i can't remember the command or even if i was using FTE engine or something else :( 

r_sun_colour ( R G B )

Load up start map and try .4 .4 .4 

Thank you very much =D 

Is there any way to make snow or rain in Hexen2 maps with FTE? 

I could be wrong on this but I'd imagine it's no different than for Quake. Since the particles/configs configuration is engine based and not game based.

So the discussion we had recently about Qmasters 2018_xmas map most likely would apply for Hexen2.

But this time I didn't test it so... ymmv! 

But... to make rain or snow in quake i have to open the map with MarkV, use "tool_texturepointer" to find out the sky's texture name, use "copy ents" to make the ent file, and finally edit the ent file with the sky's name calling the weather effect...

How can i do all of that if MarkV doesn't open hexen2 maps? :/ 

Are you trying this for stock H2 maps? 

Yep.

here is what i already tried:
i opened the bsp with quark to know the sky name from the first map and i opened the bsp with notepad++ and copied all the ents to make a ent file (i saw someone talking about this in QuakeOne forums) but even with an ent file calling the rain it doesn't work

but the good news is: the second map came with an ent file (i think it's from an update) i edited it and it worked! Now i have rain in there \o/

in other news... it seems the command line "r_sun_colour (R G B)" to make godrays doesn't change anything in hexen2 :/