It's not that difficult. Engine guys love making stuff, you just approach one and ask if he'd be interested in supporting the model you've made. Or even write in the change yourself to a QS fork.

Once it exists, it exists and will get adopted. Same as with any other feature - skyboxes, coloured lights, BSP2 etc. 

I find your optimism appealing and look forward to feasting on it's burnt husk in the future. 

I begged for higher res shadows and .lit2 came and seemingly passed with no real outcome. 

I thought with .lit2 everyone wanted it and then after looking at the actual results we all went "err can you make it blurrier? A bit blurrier still? Actually on second thoughts I'm happy with Quake's original look I guess". 

Not sure how interchangeable the render between quake 1 and 2 are... but I know KMquake engine supports MD3 as a mesh format to use. I for one would LOVE the support of the MD3 format or IQM whichever one is added to the engine builds.

On another note has anyone thought about portal skyboxes like in the original unreal engine? :) That would be fun to build skybox areas that become the levels distant views but with some parallax. 

I would love unreal style portal skyboxes. If that happens though I think alpha on masked textures needs fixing. Currently if you have an index 255 masked { texture it will only alpha as low as .7 I believe. This would need fixing in the main engines.

Also, will someone tell LordHavoc to added masked textures to DP? 

It was the RMQ that first got the ball rolling with fence textures and 2PSB (BSP2).

It's not so much optimism as - if you do it, it will happen, I know because this is how it has happened before when I was involved with feature XYZ.

Complaining that it won't happen because nobody will do it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. 

Bringing back the stencil style of the old quake sky but make it an actual skybox would be awesome. 

ijed - Sure. Awesome. I mean, I'm pessimistic on a new model format being adopted by all engines and people actually using it but I'm happy to be surprised. Go forth. 

 

I'm sure if someone started making a mod that uses .md3 content (I mean you can already use md3 in Darkplaces and a couple of other engines), then I can see Quakespasm following.

It's just nobody is currently making quake stuff with .md3 content so there isn't a demand for it.

People saying how much they'd like md3 is one thing.

But if you can say "I have a mod. It uses md3 and plays in Darkplaces but wouldn't it be great if it played in Quakespasm also?", then that's another thing entirely. 

Demonstrate a real, working example of a problem that the feature request solves. In the case of BSP2 it was created to solve a map that blew right through the clipnodes limit. The map existed, it was there, it could be loaded in an editor, but it wouldn't compile or load in an engine.

It's not good enough to say things like "has anyone thought about" or "it would be fun to build" or whatever. It's easy to forget that a feature requires work to implement, and that sometimes it may not be nicely compatible with other engine features. The feature may end up being cool or fun, but would anybody ever actually use it? To quote from john Carmack's .plan file from 1997:

Sure, any given feature list can be implemented, given enough coding time. But in addition to coming out late, you will usually wind up with a codebase that is so fragile that new ideas that should be dead-simple wind up taking longer and longer to work into the tangled existing web.

The trick is to pick the features that don't fight each other. The problem is that the feature that you pass on will allways be SOMEONE's pet feature, and they will think you are cruel and uncaring, and say nasty things about you.

That's as true today as it was back then.

A good rule of thumb is that if you're asking an engine coder to invest time and effort into implementing a feature, then you should be prepared to show that you've invested time and effort into thinking about the request to begin with. 

"wot Kinn said", in other words. 

I was asking because my shambler remake has nice teeth and Mdl makes it a gibbering mess. Not to mention more subtle muscle details and form that get all garbled by the MDL format as well. Its been driving me a little nuts. I like Quakespasm. Have not used Darkplaces yet so I guess I will test it there for now? No normalmaps though :P Don't care for normals on my retro art remakes.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1849053/Shambler_Wip_02.jpg

Starting to paint this guy up now finally :P 

Shamblers are furry!

Looks like you're off to a great start though!

I agree with Kinn/mh. I would say that there is already a fine case for having md3 models as the limits of mdl are plain and clear to anyone with eyes. The problem I think is that the standard mdl models are good enough as is and people still are making great quality mdl assets.

It's definitely a "would be nice" feature right now. 

the standard mdl models are good enough

Allow me to disagree.

Stock Q1 monsters look like baloon animals. 

In modern vanilla like QuakeSpasm you can push level art way further than mdl characters. I believe this is the problem md3 would solve. 

clear to anyone with eyes 

Stock Q1 monsters look like baloon animals.

I'm more worried about the guns - http://triptohell.info/moodles/junk/theblimpgun.png 

Stock Q1 monsters look like baloon animals.

I'm more worried about the guns - http://triptohell.info/moodles/junk/theblimpgun.png 

I have no idea who's responsible for whatever's on that screen, but they should be banned from using a computer. 

looks like someone put meshsmooth into the engine???? 

 

Yeah that screenshot's like a bingo card of terrible programmer art "enhancements":

Ultra-hi-res replacement textures? Check.

Replacement textures look like they were made with Gaussian Noise?Check.

Parallax mapping on textures dialled to 11? Check.

And so on... 

JoeQuake 0.15 has an implementation of MD3 that mere mortal engine coders could work with. source

But the MD3 implementation in JoeQuake is different than DarkPlaces or FTE.

There are also several outstanding questions like how to communicate eye position?, spinning (unless you don't care if ground weapons work), blood trails, frame groups? and the other flags/info in .mdl not present .md3. And where the texture go, which should be the folder the model is in but I don't think DarkPlaces does that. And how will you colormap the textures or do you just say to hell with it.

Then you have the idea that the implementation should be compatible with DarkPlaces, which could be awkward because you might be talking effectsinfo.txt (name?) to have compatibility for the extra flags.

Then you have the the idea of what MD3 extra features will or won't be supported. Shaders? Alpha?

But JoeQuake has an implementation. Does it work with monsters? Tea Monster MD3 ogre

/Extra info.

If there is *serious* demand for MD3, someone should see if the MD3 implementation in JoeQuake works with monsters and find out how hard it is to make it work. Or even make a prototype for DarkPlaces. Did Spirit's engine inherit MD3 support from JoeQuake?

If people aren't willing to do that, the Quakespasm team has an empty bag of test case scenarios.

/One opinion maybe even wrong.