Maybe one last idea ... is hardware acceleration on?

Almost all hardware has the ability to decode mp3 (mp3 is part of the MPEG-2 standard).

https://www.pixelmetrics.com/Tips/VidBlank/MediaPlayer.php

Even thought the option says "video", audio is part of video.

Worth a last try maybe ... 

I tried altering the hardware acceleration settings in WMP, but got no difference (I use the file that causes the 17 second delay for testing, because the delay is very close to 17 seconds every time, like clockwork, though I did also try my newly-encoded file that only causes a 4.5 second delay, but any difference in that one would probably be small).

Watching the tack manager, when I'm just sitting with Quake running in a window, it says Mark V's memory usage is right around 215,920 K. CPU usage hovers around 50% (I get around 0% just watching this web page without Quake running, though it can spike up to 50% when I'm dragging windows around a lot).

When I switch on External Sounds in Mark V, while I'm experiencing the 17-second delay, Mem Usage jumps up to 222,100 or so (and my second processor seems to show slightly less usage on the graph, probably because the video in Quake is frozen).

Then after the 17 seconds, when the music starts playing, the Men Usage goes to around 221,956 K.

Turning the music off again drops me back to the original 215,920 K.

These numbers are pretty consistent.


At any point in the process I can easily switch around to other windows, and it does not feel bogged down or like it's out of memory or anything.... The page file seems to stay pretty constant too. Right now it's around 437 MB while I'm not playing Quake. Running DX Mark V makes it go up to about 888. It goes to around 895 when I enable the music (during and after the 17 second freeze), and right back down to 889 when I disable the music.


Yeahhh, I'm not gonna try to re-install Windows, heh.

And again, only in Mark V do I get this bizarre delay (well, and in DirectQ, which I tried earlier). Using WMP or VLC or Winamp, the MP3 starts up instantly, after the program loads. *shrug* 

DirectShow mp3 playback in Quake engines is not new. Mark V was nowhere near the first engine to use it.

FitzQuake 0.85 + mp3 support --- November 11, 2009 http://celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=60306&start=275

ProQuake with mp3 playback --- July 2010
http://quakeone.com/forums/quake-help/quake-clients/5698-mp3-option-proquake-4-36-a.html

DirectQ - A post from 2012 where someone is asking about mp3 and MH states that DirectQ has had mp3 playback for "about 3 years".
http://quakeone.com/forums/quake-help/quake-clients/7412-directq-1-8-8-a-3.html#post106070

Engine X - September 2010
http://quakeone.com/forums/quake-help/quake-clients/5942-engine-x-4-61-beta.html

Reckless (now known as Revelator) used DirectShow playback for his Realm engine (2010ish?)

And none of these engines were anywhere near the first to use it, probably an ancient MHQuake engine from 2003-2005 was. 

I'm pretty sure that I wrote the DirectShow code for DirectQ because I had this idea that I wanted to use DirectX components for everything. Older versions would have used the Windows Media Player SDK. You can also use MCI which is a little cleaner and more "C-like".

Unfortunately I'm in a similar situation to Baker and just don't have the time to put together experimental code to test all of this out. 

Well I tried Glpro438 just to be thorough, and the MP3 loading delay is the same.


On to other things, I saw the "smooth text" option in DirectQ, and that looked really nice. Mark V could benefit form that.

Also, r_waterripple is neat, but it moves too fast. If the "waves" moved much slower, it would look better.


Uhh, I was trying to make use of the Copy command today, but it failed me... I mean, for some reason, it did not copy the link someone had posted just prior to me issuing the "copy" in order to grab the link. Then I waited a moment and did "copy" again, and it still omitted the link (which was visible in my console), in addition to the thing that was said just prior to the "copy" command again (which was just some chat text).... I can't seem to reproduce it now. I'll mess with it when there are people on the server again....

Here's the section in question. There may have been other things happening in the console farther up, so I don't know if there were any weird characters or what...


------------
Gunter: what the link again?
Sgt-PieFace: cobalt PMed you on the forum
Sgt-PieFace: for this server I think

]copy
Copied console to clipboard
Sgt-PieFace: wana stop by RN? me and cobalt are there

]copy
---------------


There was text in both the blank spaces in my console. I'll try to do more testing. 

1) "copy" copies the context of the console --- like "You've got nails" "Host Error" ... whatever.

Maybe I described what it does poorly.

But if you need some of the text in the console -- it copies the whole thing and you can paste it into notepad.

Fine tuning the copy ability further would be a PITA.

2) Smooth text.

Smooth text is for scenarios that would cause stretching and the make the console look terrible.

ProQuake uses it when the someone is using an odd combination of resolution + "2d resolution".

At some point Mark V will likely have smooth text.

Notice that ProQuake has the very superior "console width" option in the discrete "advanced settings" menu.

Well, that knocks the snot out of every other Quake engine because the
a) setting is easy to use
b) offers a few different choices easily
c) and the text looks good every time

(* DirectQ might have had a similar feature, I can't recall. Even if it did, I wrote my mine first ;) Haha )

But yeah, Mark V doesn't have that option -- solely because there were bigger fish to catch.

3) r_waterripple is neat. I forgot about that feature. It probably is a bit too fast and lacks customization. Mark V has a few experimental things like that which are defaulted off which are like that. 

For this kind of thing I always prefer to see it controlled by a fractional value of the cvar rather than adding an extra cvar. So maybe r_waterripple 0.5 for half speed, or would that make more sense for height of the ripple?

r_waterripple really depends on water surfaces being subdivided too (and is sensitive to the value of gl_subdividesize). 

I don't know if you have seen this, but as someone who maintains a QuakeC code base, you may find this interesting ...

Type "tool_inspector" in the console. Type impulse 9 to give all weapons.

Change the information seen by selecting a different gun.

Examining map issues or QuakeC problems under some circumstances becomes far more convenient. 

And one last thought since you do coop,

Mark V has a per player coop scoreboard if Mark V is the server. Defaults on. It's one of the sv_ options. 

Yeah, I understand how the Copy command works -- I was fine with copying the entire console to be able to also grab the link. The problem was, the Copy command left blank spaces in what it copied, and I didn't get the link....


In regard to that "console width" slider in Proquake, Quakespasm does it better with that nice "scale" slider. It seems to adjust all the things that I am setting manually in Mark V:

scr_sbarscale 1.55
scr_conscale 1.55
scr_menuscale 1.55

But yeah, that tends to make the text a bit jaggedy.



I think we already get the full scoreboard like that in FvF, because it runs in kind of a hybrid Deathmatch+Coop mode (it's kind of like team Deatmatch against the monsters). Well, FvF can be voted into regular Deathmatch mode, but people seem to prefer the Quest mode.


Wow! I like that undocumented tool_inspector thing. I think I will definitely have use for that. 

i would recommend scale values that are whole numbers like 1,2,3, etc. Much clearer looking text. 

@gunter - A one-factor master scale cannot adequately address a four-factor scaling problem.

It'll just offer a lot of different ways for most of the possible settings to get jaggy text and scrunched 2D graphics.

LordHavoc and R00k were both on a server one time talking about engine development topics and got into a long conversation about 2D scaling challenges. I didn't even know how compile a Quake engine at the time, and stopped playing to listen to their fascinating engine conversations.

The 2D scaling conversation was the conversation that really drew me in -- at one point in the future I took what LordHavoc and R00k said the problems were and drafted up a blueprint to address each bullet point in ProQuake -- I had to rewrite all of the 2D rendering mechanics in ProQuake, the text renders smoothly with any setting.

---

Co-op scoreboard. I meant for use with things like releases like Travail or Quoth or Arcane Dimensions or the Mission Packs and such.

Coop-oriented mods like FvF or RQuake already have that taken care of. ;-) 

Hmm, I have another interesting note about the fog in the DX version. If I turn gl_overbight off, I seem to get 2X the number of fog bands on lighted areas of the wall. This makes it look better because it's a smoother gradient... but it's weird that it does not show up on unlit areas of the wall. He's a screen comparison, again with gamma ramped way up and in an area that makes the fog look extra ugly:

http://imgur.com/BAyPhy2


In (my older version of) GL Mark V, I do not see the same thing happen when toggling the setting. Ah hah! That's one reason why the GL version fog looks better -- it ALWAYS has those extra bands on the lit areas of the wall. They are just really hard to see because they make a much smoother gradient... but I see them now that I'm looking for them.


In summary:

GL version has 2X the number of fog bands on lit areas of the wall, always.

DX version only has 2X the number of fog bands on lit areas of the wall if gl_overbright 0.
gl_overbright 1 removes the extra bands and makes the fog extra ugly due to a less gradual gradient. 

Confirmed that it's the weird Quake characters that cause blank places in the COPY'ed text.

Didn't test all the various characters, but if you use the one that kind of looks like the left side of a bar, like this for your name (imagine the (= =) are the weird characters):

S(=name=)

Then anything appearing on that line after the S would be blank in the COPY'ed text. 

+1 ... Great bug report. Shouldn't happen.

Using this can you hover your mouse over the appropriate character and tell me the number.

http://www.quaketerminus.com/hosted/oqnm_4_20/oqnm_4_20.htm

I need to know the character code. My caveman-like brain can't quite imagine which specific one you refer to. 

128 is the character in question which will blank the rest of the line after it appears.

Additionally (you didn't think I would neglect to test everything else, did you? heh), the following characters will insert a newline in the COPY text:

141
140
139
138



Also, when you get around to fixing that, please stop it from actually committing the name change every time you change one character, because my console looks like this just from using backspace and typing characters in the name field:

---------------------
Gunter's name12 renamed to Gunter's name1
Gunter's name1 renamed to Gunter's name
Gunter's name renamed to Gunter's nam
Gunter's nam renamed to Gunter's na
Gunter's na renamed to Gunter's n
Gunter's n renamed to Gunter's
Gunter's renamed to Gunter's 1
Gunter's 1 renamed to Gunter's 12
Gunter's 12 renamed to Gunter's 12n
Gunter's 12n renamed to Gunter's 12na
Gunter's 12na renamed to Gunter's 12nam
Gunter's 12nam renamed to Gunter's 12name
]copy
-------------------- 

I did say you were a quality beta-tester. ;-)

At some point in the future I will refine the namemaker to commit the change "all at once", but it is better than the old system of committing the name "all at once" and having to choose "Accept" and accidentally hitting ESC and losing the name you spent a few minutes making. It's always been on the todo list to make that less spammy. 

I don't suppose you could give me some kind of test build that would spit out some error messages when it crashes (or save it to a file)? Because it crashes a lot! Well, tonight it seemed that way.... But sometimes it goes for quite a while without crashing, seeming to run just fine. It seems to like to crash right when a map first loads, after exiting the previous map. Perhaps some maps seem to trigger it more than others, like e3m2 seems mighty prone to crashing.

Sometimes it just exits, and other times I'll get a Windows error box asking if I want to report it... and I can check more details about that, but it's mostly incomprehensible gobbeldygook.

It'd also be nice to figure out why the GL version crashes right away too... 

Well, we have back to the old catch-22.

I don't have time to commit to engine development now (engine development is extremely time consuming), nor will I have that kind of time in the near future either.

Maybe some time in the 2nd half of 2017 I will.

This engine is in beta, and is not being actively developed at the present time.

It's not the first big gap of non-development of the engine either.

Quakespasm is a stable release. There's also Qrack and such as options.

You might try FTE, it's pretty damn nice.

http://triptohell.info/moodles/win32/fteqw.exe

You can tell Spike that "nqconnect quake.shmack.net" isn't working in this build I linked :(

On 2nd thought, nevermind. I forgot you have an Intel 845, FTE is pretty big on the shaders and such, althought it does have a Direct3D version too.

http://triptohell.info/moodles/win32/fted3dqw.exe

What would Spike say? "Your mileage may vary" ;-) 

You can tell Spike that "nqconnect quake.shmack.net" isn't working in this build I linked :(
What would Spike say? "Your mileage may vary" ;-)
I would also say 'works for me'...
(I actually bothered to test that just now!)

(also, you can drop the 'nq' from 'nqconnect' if you want to explicitly specify the port, hurrah for nq+qw using different default ports! or just use the server browser, but whatever)
(also that first build contains both gl+d3d9 renderers, you can switch between them in the menus, and yes with basic settings it should still work without glsl, but certain features obviously will not). 

Sorry, I have 10 copies of FTE in my Quake folder. I blew it, the "fteqw.exe" in my folder is out of date and quite old.

@gunter: FTE supports external textures and if you like options, compared to FTE, Qrack doesn't even have any options.

The number of features FTE has is off the charts.

And should have almost every possible feature you have ever seen. 

Oh my... yes, FTE certainly does seem to have a ton of options. And the GL version runs just fine for me.

At the "nice" preset, I get 70 FPS, but at the "real-time" one I get like 4 FPS -- it may be one of the effects like that oldwater thing like in Quakespasm, but I don't know the setting to toggle it in FTE.

Is there lots of documentation about all the console variables so I can test stuff? Or I guess I'll have to go in and see what all the menu settings do....

The MP3 music seems to start up without delay... though it doesn't seem like it's playing the same tracks. hmm.

I will play around with this and see if I can get it set up how I like. I could sure use some exhaustive documentation! *searches around FTE site* 

There's a wiki for it that has some information.

http://fte.triptohell.info/wiki/index.php/Main_Page 

Setting my Contrast really high makes most things look really good -- the colors are vibrant and the walls aren't all bland. And it allows me to use a lower Gamma setting.

However, any fullbright textures become completely crunched and actually lose their contrast -- they just appear as one (way too bright) color, mostly, except for in the most contrasting areas (for example, torches).

gl_fullbrights 0 fixes the problem, making the torches (and any other fulbrights) again look nice even with high contrast, but of course that turns off the neat fullbright effect.

I already have both gl_overbright settings at 0

So, to keep the fullbrights from looking nasty, I have to crank the Gamma up higher to make things bright enough, but that tends to make things look a bit washed out and bland...


I saw above you said, "at some point I'll try to implement a sneaky tactic of shoving gamma+contrast into the textures (and hope it looks right). But that's for the future. "

Was that implemented? If so, the easy fix would seem to be to NOT have contrast affect any fullbright textures. Then everything would look good. I don't know if it would otherwise be possible to have "contrast" not affect fullbright textures if contrast is being controlled by hardware....



Also, just a thought (for potential future fixing): sure, the shadows are a hack, but a tweak that would improve them is to make sure they are not drawn at all if the distance to the model is greater than a certain amount. This would stop them from dancing around on surfaces way below where the model is actually standing (this is one of the common issues with the hacked shadows). 

I'll keep that in mind for future consideration.

Spike has caused the need for a Mark V update with ipv6 and (likely) ProQuake with ipv6, by making the code easily available and saving me a lot of time.

It'll need tested and one main concern I have is Windows XP.

Not sure when it will happen, but I expect it to be soon.

Because metlslime pointed out a quick way to solve your DirectX + model transparency thing, seems likely I can put that in there.

And if I am lucky, your clipboard interfering evil characters fix/scrub because that should be a 2 minute fix (probably a char codes 128-160 dequaked (-128) to control chars issues).

Can't say exactly when. I don't really have any time, but I've been sizing it up.