> Really like it's performance, runs big stuff better than any other engine I tried :)

It should, it's been built to. Really though, it means a lot to me to hear people saying this. Cool! :) 

Was a bad description of mine to call it lag, it's acceleration, and definately not just a sensitivity effect :(

If you want me to try any cvars or something I can try fiddling with it :p 

I became a little curious, as playing the test maps with the QRM engine from Assembly were much more easy.
I formatted my computer and installed winxp.
Now as I start up the e1m6qr map there's a warning:

failed to create GLSL shaders

Then my computer boosts and keeps hanging.
I don't know what it is causing. 

That looks like a driver issue (or else you've got really old and really bad hardware). It does have an alternate rendering path for when shaders aren't available (the same as original QuakeSpasm's) but most hardware from the last 10 or so years shouldn't need it. Try updating your drivers. 

> Was a bad description of mine to call it lag, it's acceleration, and definately not just a sensitivity effect :(

Done some research and can confirm that this is an SDL problem. SDL doesn't provide an API for adjusting mouse acceleration parameters (aside from a highly dubious looking putenv thing which doesn't appear to be portable) so it seems necessary to jump into OS specfic code. I'll have a look and see how other SDL apps handle it.

> If you want me to try any cvars or something I can try fiddling with it :p

No cvars; I really haven't touched the input code so what you get here is the same as what you get in QuakeSpasm. 

Apparently changing resolution can fix it. The same thing happens in Directquake... sometimes it starts with lag but randomly changing the resolution to something different fixes it.

Odd but hey ho. 

Do shotguns still explode underwater? 

No. They do possibly damage you if you try doing that, but you keep the weapon. 

Very poor framerates in a few areas for some reason and also some of my sounds disappeared a couple times. The ambient sounds would stay, but weapon and monster sounds disappeared . A reload fixed it.

The sound setting in the readme made no diff. Running darkplaces as well - I'm not keen on installing extra dll shit just to play some engine when I like dp.

ssg was confusing as to why some shamblers would go down in like 2 shots. I didn't really notice monsters dishing out hella pain like some have mentioned - maybe I didn't get hit enough times. Try not to go overboard on changing all the weapon/attack damage and health (of player and monsters) too much. It'll just end up being a 'oh look i fckd with all the gameplay settings for no reason' mod that so many other games have.
Having said that, I don't mind a more powerful ssg and tougher enemies - they are pretty fkn easy after playing the game for 15 yrs. Just don't overdo it.

Horde combat has been done enough. Spawning into a map and seeing i've got 600 monsters to kill is just daunting and offputting. So if there's an in-between in RMQ that'd be great.

Just in this map, there could have probably been another 20 monsters or so to give it a bit more action, however if some of the other maps are more action oriented then that's okay.

Didn't like the hook. Controls were awkward... apparently press weapon next to real in. Press it, move a foot. um okay.... now what. Didn't realise for 30secs that you need to keep hitting it repeatedly for it to work. For some reason after I restarted the game the hook become unbound, so I just noclipped the hook areas. The puzzle was ok once, I hope there aren't too many more though, personally not a fan of puzzle games. Boxes move way too slow.

God moded the end because chthon appearing was bouncing me the fuck all over the place with ridiculous framerates. I actually thought the new model was very cool. Old chthon is just that... old. And the button/lightning thing has been done to death now.

Are any of the monsters going to be reskinned?

Fall damage = bad. Make it the same as standard.

The level itself looked really good though! Strange, but good. 

You don't need to install the dll, just copy the dll files to the quake folder 

Can I ask the developers what's the rationale for making so many weapons handicapped under water? 

> Very poor framerates in a few areas for some reason and also some of my sounds disappeared a couple times. The ambient sounds would stay, but weapon and monster sounds disappeared . A reload fixed it.

You're going to get this in most other Quake engines to be honest; they're just not capable of handling the heavy brushwork and dynamic lighting efficiently. The RMQ engine *is* capable of handling them, and is highly recommended unless for some reason you're unable to use it.

> I'm not keen on installing extra dll shit just to play some engine when I like dp.

OK, this is something that a few have had trouble with now and obviously needs to be addressed. Serious question though - even if you didn't need the SDL dlls for RMQ would you have used DP anyway?

> Horde combat has been done enough. Spawning into a map and seeing i've got 600 monsters to kill is just daunting and offputting. So if there's an in-between in RMQ that'd be great...Just in this map, there could have probably been another 20 monsters or so to give it a bit more action, however if some of the other maps are more action oriented then that's okay.

There's plenty of variety in the other maps. This one is just a snapshot of one style, which is more of a tricks-n-traps style. Did you play on Easy, by the way? Easy is deliberately monster-light.

> For some reason after I restarted the game the hook become unbound

Another engine bug that the RMQ engine fixes. 

Yeah, probably still would have used DP anyway. If it's the full release i'd install dlls then probably. Just when it's 1 map i'm too lazy and will use dp instead.

Nah played on medium I think. there were 40 something monsters...

If the framerate is DP's fault, then nothing much you can do about that. We don't want limitations just because other engines can't it, i'd rather use the rmq engine for sure. The framerate wasn't that bad anyway, just in a few areas and the final battle. 

Yeah, the engine is the way to go, for now at least. We support DP, but not much. We're busy putting everything together to work under our own stuff right now, external support is low on the to do list. For final release we will be giving such things a lot more attention, but for now the dev process means we shouldn't.

We're looking at the QSB format quite a lot, even though its not really what we're doing. In theory a Quoth or Nehahra map will run inside RMQ. In practice, if special triggers and cinematics are used, probably not - at least yet.

The SSG is an elephant gun - from point blank it'll make mincemeat of most enemies, although we're still tweaking lots of things. Shamblers will become more resistant to damage in general, as well as gaining more fearsome abilities that fit their personality, for want of a better description. At long range the SSG is next to useless.

A lot of people like the hook - it took me longer than most to get used to it as well though. I think it's more of an interface / comfort zone of playing thing than the hook itself, which works pretty well once you get used to it. The hook is a lot of fun, but don't expect to see it in every level. Different levels with have different toys to play with.

Horde combat will still happen, depending on the mapper. Basically the monsters are more dangerous and less predictable, and the player weapons more lethal when used properly. This allows for 400 knight slaughter fests (they will gain proper horde tactics as opposed to id1 AI clusterfucking) or 3 knight measured battles.

We could just have bumped monster health to cope with the weapons, but that's the easy way out.

Monster reskinning or hirez textures aren't our focus. Maybe one day they will be - we are supporting hirez level textures. Since the monster skins are in progress making highrez versions is best saved for later, so we can decide on a format. Maybe just a warp style sharpening up, keeping the grittiness.

For water combat, we're wanting it to be completely different from the original game, something brand new but in keeping with the spirit of it. There's additional aquatic enemies in the works and under discussion not used in the level and the player is limited to melee, grenades and nails. As always, this is in progress - we've got a lot of ground to cover to get it right.

This means making a level with a lot of water sections so we can playtest the fuck out of it and get what feels right and makes sense in the Quake universe.

Thanks for the comments and questions :) 

Shamblers will become more resistant to damage in general

And that's different from just raising their HP how? 

They dance around bullets, duh! 

Our Shamblers will DANCE BACK! 

 

that was re: ijed, not re: dodging shamblers 

The answer was - it's just a health raise.



































And some salsa lessons. 

And Then They Wonder Why I Left The Team

because shamblers' healths are being raised?

you've lost me. there's no need to be cryptic about it... if there's a reason you left then just come out and say it normally? i don't think anyone will be pissed off about that. the above-quoted post just seemed a bit, well, bitchy. as did post #29, which left people scratching their heads a bit on the trac... 

i've found DP is just a slow engine in general. i don't really understand why, but even with everything disabled/set to lowest, it's still not as fast as fitzquake engines. 

SDL.dll is used for a ton of games. It's a well known crossplatform graphics/audio/network library for games. Many gamers will already be using this without even noticing. idtech4 uses it for example, so do several Quake / Quake 2 engines.

I made a packaging error by not putting them in the toplevel directory, but then I was rather exhausted and it was the 24th. We'll fix that in future releases. Anyway, our pal Baker made a nifty Windows installer for RMQ (because he rocks), which is now advertised in huge red letters on the RMQ blog.

Low FPS in Darkplaces: This is unfortunate; however we have little influence when it comes to that. Our own engine runs these maps like a lean, mean machine. Without wanting to sound respectless, consider asking Lord Havoc about performance improvements in DP.

Fall damage, point taken; I will compile a list from the feedback in this thread and we will go and fix these issues in a point release.

Underwater combat will develop a lot in the future, don't judge it by its current state. The weapon malfunctions are an extension of the Shaft behaviour. At least they don't explode anymore.

Let's see what comes of it. 

In Soviet Russia bullets dance around Shamblers!

The key point is that *everything* is still work-in-progress. The purpose of a demo like this one is to get player feedback, gauge where things are going in the right direction (or not!) and give you something cool and different to hopefully have some fun with. Negative comments (on a level above "this is shit, I don't like it") or indications of where things don't work out as well for you as they should are *extremely* valuable here. 

It's a demo. While we hope you have fun playing it, you not having fun and telling us why is probably more useful, long term.