Sorry to be the typical noob posting lots of stuff but I have a small request if that's okay.

I wonder if it would be possible to add a CVAR to centre the message text? At the moment all text (including Showscores) is centred except those in shown in the top left (pickups et cetera). I know it's a trivial aesthetic thing and I know that it wasn't part of the original Quake but I just think it's a 'small thing' to tweak that would make the text aesthetic more consistent.

Hope that makes sense and hope that it doesn't bug you. :) 

You want ammo pickup text to appear in the centre of the view? 

Perhaps I wasn't as clear as I could've been. It would be nice if it could appear in the top centre rather than the top left.

ZDoom offers a similar option in the HUD menu. I just think it looks a lot nicer.

Scores are shown in the bottom centre.
Context messages are shown in the centre.
Pickups et cetera shown in the top middle.

:) 

Quake text is on the top left because it's part of the console. When the console scrolls up, the recent messages stays at the top while the background scrolls up completely.

Changing that would make recent console messages move from the left to the center when the console scrolls up, and that would be weird.

Anyway, that's a matter of preference. 

could fix in in QuakeC with centerprints maybe 

con_centernotify in fte and I believe dp.
also applies to kills, of course. and chat.


probably the best thing is to just remove pickup messages completely. they're basically just spam anyway.
flash an icon somewhere if you want, but expecting the user to read stuff in the heat of battle is folly. 

the only time I ever use pickup text is to see whether I've picked up a 15 or 25 health, just so I know for my next run if I die. Of course, the obvious fix would be to make the health box graphics display this more obviously. 

I've tried it out in FTE and it's great. The in-game text is top-centre while in the console it remains left justified.

Is that something that could be added to QS? You'd make an old man happy! :P 

There was a bug with fog in the SDL1.2 build (quakespasm.exe) - when changing video modes, the fog formula was getting reset to the OpenGL default (GL_EXP) when it should be GL_EXP2.

Quick fix is to just use quakespasm-sdl2.exe. (SDL2 preserves the OpenGL context when changing video modes, which works around the bug, but it's fixed properly now anyway.) 

- Allow for bigger weapon models, or at least winquake style weapon placement. The weapon model on winquake, and in the latest version of mark_v, allows the top of the status bar to be the 'bottom' of the screen, allowing you to see more of the weapon. Guns look silly in QS.

- Despite choosing to have music turned to 'off' most of the time Quakespasm INSISTS on playing the music regardless of setting. It's infuriating!!

- contrast and brightness as separate controls? I dunno if this is possible, it would be nice to have this level of control. I find QS to be a little washed out. 

Yeh, I second the need for a contrast cvar to avoid washed out visuals, I always miss it if I'm using Quakespasm rather than another engine. 

regarding the quakespasm website with all its "Being", "Manifestation" etc. faffery.

What's wrong exactly with the tried-and-tested "About", "Download" etc. type headings?

I'm trying to get some colleagues onboard the Quake train (by way of Quakespasm), and it's something that has been raised more than once in a not-too-enthusiastic way. 

I'm with you on the guns; on a widescreen monitor with the full statusbar showing, the SSG barely pokes out about the top of the sbar.
If you lower "statusbar alpha" to the minimum value in the settings screen, it pushes the gun up.

re: music, the "external music" switch in the settings menu seems to only take effect when you restart the level - it should stay off from that point on, but maybe there is a bug there? I usually just lower the music volume slider to 0 if I don't want it.

contrast adjustment is a good suggestion too. Raising the contrast in MarkV does brighten the image without washing it out. 

I just tried what you suggested to make the gun look bigger but you're trading off the status bar for very little gain. QS basically only displays half the gun model, it looks atrociously bad IMO.

I have the external music switched off in addition to the volume being zero and it still plays the music (at full volume no less!!). 

http://www.quaketastic.com/files/screen_shots/enginedrawdifference.jpg

I believe Mark_V didn't always display properly and was only recently fixed when the option was added for a "winquake" mode... basically the top of the statusbar is considered the bottom of the screen. the behaviour in Mark_V is that as soon as you add alpha to the statusbar the weapon is drawn from the bottom of the screen again (I guess there's no easy fix for this). 

I think it's cool, just a bit of flavor. I have difficulty imagining this being an impediment of any significance to anyone. 

Here here! And now imagine not being a native speaker and wondering even more what those complicated words might mean. 

When I first heard of Quakespasm and went to download it, I saw that weird web page and thought my browser had been hijacked. 

I have difficulty imagining this being an impediment of any significance to anyone.

Yeah I get that for us it's no barrier - we just click on the funny words until we find the one that goes to the page with download links.

It's just not user-friendly to newcomers, that's all. 

The QS website is purposely obtuse for no real reason. 

I thought I had gotten a bad link the first time I arrived there too. FWIW... 

If this was a website for an actual game then I would be more approving. Art has room for the abstract, to allow for interpretation and subjectivity.

I think for an engine, something that provides a utility, the website is quite poor and you cannot apply the same design philosophy. 

And now imagine not being a native speaker and wondering even more what those complicated words might mean.

Ah, this hadn't crossed my mind. I can see how some would find this annoying or even inconvenient.

Perhaps using rollovers would help; hover over Manifestation and the word will change to Download.

Probably not the most elegant solution but it might be more user-friendly while still having a bit of flavor. 

Referring to metlslime as just "Fitzgibbons" reads very awkwardly. 

come on you guys... you click the links till you see 'windows' or 'linux' or whatever you're looking for, then you click the highlighted text.

you don't need to read anything to actually get the engine.

kinn, since you brought it up initially, what were the exact complaints with the site anyway? i mean, i agree it was weird when i first got there, but i just started clicking links till i saw something that looked like a download link.