Hey, I've been learning to play with bots in Q1 and it's come to my attention that compatibility with some bots is borked in QS.

Frogbots seem to be the best bots around but sadly they're one of the bots that don't work. Frogbots work fine in Fitz et cetera

Is it possible to add support back in to QS?

PS: The Xinput support is a godsend for my tired old wrist! Thank you. :) 

"Couldn't find a cdrip for track 0" the console tells me.

happens in aop, and in some custom maps like teacups. playback works fine *most* the time(?) so i am at a loss.

hoping this is just a case of operator error.

using win7 and the xinput build of qspasm. 

I just checked and AOP's qc code sends a "svc_cdtrack" command to the engine requesting track 0, which is what causes that warning to print. Possibly QS should suppress that warning message, not sure.

btw, valid music tracks are 2-11 for the original soundtrack. You can enter a console command like "music track03" to start music manually, if a map doens't have it set up. 

hmm. well ive got my naming convention correct, and my oggs in the proper dir. so perhaps i will just go with the manual playback for now. thank god for the console.

i wonder if the tracks playback sequentially in the game, or what. i need to find out. i guess that is the real problem now? not knowing what track an author has intended for their map. 

It doesn't sound like an issue with the engine or with your setup. It sounds like the mapper forgot to specify an appropriate music track. 

i wonder if the tracks playback sequentially in the game, or what. i need to find out. i guess that is the real problem now? not knowing what track an author has intended for their map.
They don't play sequentially; mappers can set a key on the worldspawn entity of their maps to specify a cdtrack.. I forget the key off hand. All of the original game maps do this.
e.g. the base maps e*m1 all use the more industrial sounding music track. 

I think mappers used to set the music track to track00 so that no music would play during their map even if a CD was in the drive...

I vaguely remember someone creating a track00 song so that one could listen to that instead if one liked (I think that was around the time Travail was released). 

it would be cool if there was a way for the user to specify a custom playback via autoexec.cfg ie

music_eXmX "trackXX"

manually playing tracks via the console is an acceptable workaround, i know 100% aop compatibility is not a huge community priority :D 

You could always bind keys to whatever tracks you like. Then it would only be a single keystroke instead of going into the console every map. :) 

// entity 0
{
"classname" "worldspawn"
"message" "Centerprints this text on map start"
"worldtype" "0" // specifies silver and gold key models
"sounds" "10" // specifies CD track to loop
"wad" "path to wad; path to wad" // paths to texture wads used
"fog" "0.025 0.50 0.50 0.50" // fog density and color
"sky" "skyboxname_" // specifies skybox to use 

My main laptop has a partially broken keyboard; the C and D keys doesn't work. Due to this, to play Arcane Dimensions I've went to the Controls menu and configured QuakeSpasm 0.91.1 like this:
bind 2 +forward
bind w +back
bind q +moveleft
bind e +moveright

Now I'm using an external keyboard, so I've decided to reconfigure the movement controls back to the WASD keys. I've done this through the Controls menu again, but to rebind the "impulse 2" to the number 2 key I'd have to use the console.

And this is where the problem happens. Take a look at the ABNT2 keyboard layout. This is the keyboard layout for Brazilian keyboards. Also, remember that vanilla Quake engines does not require quotation marks around the command string for the bind command. But QuakeSpasm does, and instead of using a fixed American keyboard layout like vanilla Quake does, QuakeSpasm uses the actual keyboard layout from the OS.

Now put these factors together, and you'll understand the problem. QuakeSpasm made it impossible for me to rebind impulse commands through the console. If I don't put quotation marks, QuakeSpasm doesn't accept the binding, and when I try to type the quotation marks, QuakeSpasm toggles off the console - even if I type "disconnect" to get a full screen console (it switches to the main menu).

From an usability perspective, this is an awful situation. The only way to restore that binding without resetting everything else is to manually edit the config file.

Such problems must be predicted when designing input interfaces. Even the American keyboard layout can have problems in some cases, since the tilde character is used in some filepaths. The solution I've implemented in the latest versions of Makaqu is to not toggle off the console when pressing that key; the Esc key should be used instead.

Also, an additional user-friendliness feature can be to only toggle off the console by pressing that key if there's nothing typed in the commandline. That would prevent the user from starting a line with tildes, quotation marks or other stuff, but the user can work around that by inserting a space first. 

Not knowing history means being doomed to repeat it:

DarkPlaces 2007-03-15

"Changed default value of con_closeontoggleconsole cvar to 1, to put an end to the nearly 2 years of complaints about the tilde key not closing the console." 

That's an awesome bug report for the Quakespasm guys.

I'm just pointing out your suggestion was the most universally reviled feature that DarkPlaces ever had and people complained about it without end. 

That's why I also suggested to only close the console if the commandline is empty. 

Thanks for the detailed report Mankrip.. that does sound annoying. :(

I was hoping all keyboard layouts would have some unimportant character at the tilde key location, but double quotes break that assumption. That microsoft site looks really useful.

I'm not sure what fix we should take.
- Maybe 'Alt+console key' suppresses toggling the console, and types the character instead?
- a '-uslayout' command line option makes the keyboard act like a US layout, like vanilla Quake? 

I'm not sure what fix we should take.

Making the "toggleconsole" key not toggle the console if the console prompt isn't empty should be a good solution for everyone. When the prompt is empty, let it toggle as usual.

I've just created a tutorial for it, and implemented it in Retroquad. Worked perfectly:
User-friendly tilde typing in the console 

Making the "toggleconsole" key not toggle the console if the console prompt isn't empty
Sorry that is a really annoying feature in DP, that in order to close the console you have to clear the console line of anything typed! Having a single key toggle the console regardless is certainly a good feature. 

Why not just make it so the user can specify which key toggles the console?

Am I missing something? 

of course you can already do this. just edit the config.

bind "~" "toggleconsole"

replace ~ with your key of choice

So what's the bloomin' problem here? 

Kinn: Looks like ~ is hardcoded, even if you bind another key to toggleconsole. It was like that in winquake too. Not sure it's a bug, there could be some value in having it hardcoded in case a mod rebinds it by accident. Anyway, a cvar to move it completely to another key might be good.

I agree with sock, blocking the toggle when there is text typed annoys me in DP because the QS beahviour is muscle memory for me, I don't even think about it. 

Shift-escape is nice 

 

I agree with sock, blocking the toggle when there is text typed annoys me

How often does that really happen? In my case, it's almost never.

Is is okay to effectively punish some users in order to keep a behavior that is not a concrete need?

- Making a command work is a concrete need.
- Avoiding seldom small nuisances is a emotional need.

I give up. I don't debate things when emotion is put above reason. Nevermind the users who must enter commands that the default behavior doesn't allow them to. 

just hit escape if there's already text there.
shift+escape to get to the console, escape to close it. then keymaps make no difference.
ideally you shouldn't be going to the console very frequently anyway.

small note regarding tilde... it should actually be bind ` rather than bind ~, as the actual key is backtick rather than tilde.
note that this clearly leaves the console inaccessible with that keymap because backtick requires shift to get at it, and thus shift+escape to get at the console starts to sound so very much better.

the issue is also present on german keymaps, in a different form.

and wasd key layouts on french azerty keymaps just do not work. :P

and laptops... *shudder* 

How often does that really happen? In my case, it's almost never.

I imagine that lots of players are in the habit of toggling the console to cancel a command. Even if you offer a alternative, there's a cost to breaking a habit.

That's not to say that we should leave players with non-US keyboard layouts stranded, but having a fix behind a cvar which defaults to vanilla behaviour is probably the best of a bad bunch of options.