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. 

Clicking around until you stumble into what you want is not really the ideal user experience. 

I agree about the labels, they could at least have normal translations above/below. will ask the other qs devs when we are prepping the next release.

Fifth, thanks for the screenshot.
I checked winquake at default settings ( surprised how weird it feels that the gun swings when you look up/down), and you can see the top half of the end of the barrels:
http://imgur.com/lx6DV1F
I'm not sure of the history of it but QS is the same as Fitz 085 I think, except with compensation for 19:9 resolution. I'm sure baker and others have researched and written about the topic so i'll look into it sometime.

Also, if the music volume slider doesn't work, the only explanation I know of is it's playing CD audio - do you have the soundtrack CD inserted/mounted as a virtual drive? The CD support in QS might lack volume control, I never really used it. There is a "-nocdaudio" command line option to disable CD support entirely, or use the -sdl2.exe builds which lack CD support iirc. 

When I originally changed it in fitzquake it was to fix the weirdness of the gun moving when you looked up/down. I was also trying to fix it for wide fov views. I think looking at screenshots now the part I failed at was making the gun look like winquake when the camera is level, not enough gun is showing. 

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

you just have to read it in that lou gossett jr. vortigaunt voice

"the One Fitz Gibbons has come to save us from the dark placessss" 

I don't remember exactly what I did for the gun, but I'm pretty sure I fixed it so even "FitzQuake gun" will always be visible and in the same place no matter the aspect ratio.

I may have calculated one perspective matrix to draw the gun and another perspective matrix to render the world, with the gun matrix being limited to the largest 1:1 square on the screen. (i.e. 1368x768 ---> 768/768).

Having a WinQuake-like gun positioning option ended up being "non-optional" in my mind. I'm not going to make a Mark V WinQuake renderer that can't look exactly like WinQuake. Would make no sense. 

Feel free to bookmark http://quakespasm.sourceforge.net/Quakespasm.html