http://quakeone.com/markv

Download: Windows - DirectX | WinQuake
Download: Linux GL | Linux WinQuake

Changes:

* Sky entity support (redfield)
* Alpha masked models w/fullbrights fixed in DX9 (redfield)
* Ctrl/Shift bind firing/console if on server (gunter)
* Linux "Cache LRU link_active" fix (Dr. Dumb*uck)

Also available are a couple of alternative/requested builds: extra builds 

Just related a note, (as I've reported before) my func_illusionary guy with his fullbright pixels still isn't transparent unless I set gl_fullbrights 0. The same goes for weapon models except the axe when I have a ring (unless custom weapon textures are used, which contain no fullbright pixels). 

Now, a fun story!

Oh my gosh.... I just went on a very frustrating adventure to try and make one point... and ended up with several points to make.

So to do this, I decided to try out Mark V's "install" command for map pack from Quaddicted. I've never messed with this feature before.

I tried "install qump" then I went to Single Player, New Game (because Mark V's "map guessing" feature is supposed to make that work)... but... it didn't start Qump.

So I looked at how it was installed, and I see that everything was put directly into the id1 folder....

So I checked the Qump readme, which explained that everything should be installed to a Qump folder.... But I scanned down and saw that the first map was titled "Beginning" (by PRITCHARD!), so I tried "changelevel beginning" -- map not found.

So I looked in the id1/maps folder and saw all the maps were actually named qump_[something], but there was no qump_beginning.... but I saw a "start.bsp" which had been installed.... Ok, that must be it, BUT because of unpacked files not taking preference, doing "changelevel start" will not go to that map!

Ok, so let's start over. I do "uninstall qump" ... NOPE! Mark V tells me the qump folder does not exist.... But.. you just INSTALLED it that way! argh!!!

Ok, I MANUALLY delete all the files that Mark V installed, using the list it told me in console. Handy.

And I notice that it overwrote my id1 start.lit file with qump's start.lit file.... *grumble* So I'll have to replace that with the correct lit file later.

Now, I remember people saying something about specifying a gamedir to install things to with the "install" command, but the HELP info for "install" doesn't tell me how to do that....

Soo.... I just guessed it would be something like "install qump qump".... buuuut that doesn't work, and produces an error message that I find unhelpful:


Need the game to install or the entire URL with
the http:// in it
Example: install travail or install [http://URL]

The version of libcurl used does not support
https:// at this time


So I give up on that and come to the conclusion that I dislike the install feature and will just install everything manually from now on!


I noticed when removing files that the qump.zip file has been downloaded to a id1\_library folder, so I just unzip that and it already contains the Qump folder, making it very simple to install correctly.


Next I switch to the qump game dir and start a New Single Player game, and I'm in the qump start map (because it's correctly named start.bsp, making map guessing completely unnecessary).

So am I happy now? Nope! I finally got to the (only) issue which I started out wanting to illustrate: Mark V does not play the background music for this single-player release from Quaddicted because it's in OGG format!! XD

So I started up DirectQ (mh's engine!) since I knew it supports both MP3 and OGG (with preference for MP3) and did "game qump," and to my surprise it automatically tried to exec an autoexec.cfg file in the qump gamedir!! Which is now the third issue I have previously argued for in Mark V, which mh has strongly argued against, which I have later found to already be incorporated into his own quake engine!


So let me just go through this checklist:

[continued in next post, because I write more than 5000 characters!] 

[continied]

So let me just go through this checklist:

Mark V:

1. Failed at correctly installing with the "install" command (and overwrote one of my lit files), and I couldn't find in-game help info to tell me how to do it correctly. So I had to install manually by just extracting the zip file, as usual.

2. The "map guessing" feature failed to help whatsoever, because in the first situation the start.bsp was installed to the id1 folder, and Mark V gives preference to the pak files (yeah, that's the Quake default, but it shouldn't be, because if someone has copied new files, like this new start.bsp, that should obviously take priority -- I guess that's issue 2.5). Then, once I installed qump correctly, the "map guessing" feature was pointless because the map pack correctly has its own start.bsp... and even if it didnt, I could have used the Levels menu to select a map.

3. Mark V does not play the background track because it's in OGG format, even though (on my system) Mark V can easily play OGG -- it's just hard-coded to only see MP3 files.

4. If I had set up my own cfg files in the Qump directory with any special configurations I want for Qump, Mark V would not run those for me when I switch to the Qump game folder....



Compare this to DirectQ, which is old and no longer being developed:


1. No difference in the first step -- I have to install the qump folder mahually. But since I know I have to do this, I wouldn't have to go through that annoying experience I had trying to use Mark V's install command!

2.5 Even if I had installed incorrectly into the id1 folder, DirectQ would have handled it correctly because it gives preference to unpacked files!

3. DirectQ automatically plays the background music because it hasn't been hard-coded to ignore OGG files.

4. DirectQ automatically runs the autoexec.cfg file in the qump folder when I switch to that gamedir (just the autoexec, not quake.rc), so any settings I want to use for qump will be automatically applied, as they should be.


Now, I'm not actually considering switching to DirectQ, but damn, it did EVERYTHING better in this example!! And each of these issues are things I have strongly argued for in Mark V. And ironically, every one of these things are things that mh has argued with me about, taking the opposite position! Well, not specifically on the "map guessing" feature -- I don't think he's said anything about that, but DirectQ also has a map selecting menu like Mark V does (which is the most correct option for starting custom maps).

mh may suggest that he made mistakes by including those features in DirectQ (he's done that before: #1640 ), but I'm serious here: mh, don't sell yourself short -- these features I've just encountered were great additions to DirectQ, because they "just work" and make things easier for the user without getting in the way or causing problems.




Now, back to the only point I was trying to make when I began this ordeal: some single-player map packs at Quadiccted contain the soundtracks in OGG format (as that was a pretty commonly-used soundtrack format for Quake engines), and Mark V, even though it could easily play them (though not on every platform, I understand), will not do so because you basically won't allow it to look for OGG files.... So... Mark V is (intentionally, in this case) not compatible with maps packs like the following, which contain OGG soundtracks, ranging from 1, 4, up to 11 songs:


https://www.quaddicted.com/reviews/rotcs.html
https://www.quaddicted.com/reviews/quck_demo.html
https://www.quaddicted.com/reviews/func_mapjam9_2.html


These are just the ones I found when specifically looking.... Are there more? I would expect so.

You've said compatibility with single-player releases from Quaddicted if one of the main goals of Mark V, so why deny compatibility to the platforms (like Windows) which are easily capable of playing OGG if you would simply allow it to do so?


And oh yeah, all those other issues which I have argued for in the past, which just happened to come up when I was testing this example:

- No "map guessing" -- it causes me problems in addition to not working or not being needed.

- Unpacked file preference -- if a user installs unpacked files, those are obviously what he wants to use rather than the defaults stored in a pak.

- Exec autoexec.cfg when changing game dir -- if a user has an autoexec in a game dir, he obviously wants it to auto... exec it for that game.


Well, that was fun! XD 

Are you sure you are using the most recent version of Mark V? 

There's no way current Mark V would install/unpack qump to anything except its own folder.

Johnny Law and I used qump as one of the test subjects for getting the install unpack perfected. 

Ah, you're right about that; I have a separate test folder and didn't copy the today's newest Mark V there before testing. I was using 1.98.

I'm testing again with 1.99 annnd... it installed correctly to a qump folder.



Johnny, since you are familliar with a lot of the map packs, do you know of any others besides the 4 I mentioned that come with OGG soundtracks? 

Quick comment -- I wanted to look at qump's skyboxes on the original start map. Of course, qump includes its own start.bsp, meaning it overrides the usual start.bsp (as it should).

Then I went to the Levels menu and scrolled down past Qump's "Start - Between Worlds" map, all the way to the bottom section for "Original Quake Levels," hoping Mark V would know to use the start.bsp located in the pack file if I selected it from the "Original Levels" list... but... it doesn't, and qump's start.bsp still runs.

How about forcing it to use the original levels from the pak file if they are specifically selected from that section of the Levels menu? Is that possible? 

Thinks: I wonder if this same topic "over and over and over and over spam" reaches the point where moderator assistance becomes necessary? I sure hope not. 

I wonder if moderators will start taking action on all the passive-aggressive posts on this site? I sure hope not, even though a lot of people around here are [edited by moderator] 

Good catch.

What you want is possible as long as the unpacked maps are in a different gamedir (qump/maps) while the original Quake packs remains in id1.

Start the pack with -game qump, and type map ../../id1/maps/start in the console.

When running mods, it would be wise for the maps menu to add this relative path to the original maps' names. 

i don't get that fancy shit, like automatically extraction to that given folder, the peeps are too lazy nowadays

just download the hotdamned archive, and extract it according the readme file 

 

About the "OGG drains too much battery" issue, that can be perfectly worked around by making the engine transcode the OGG files to MP3 and saving the resulting MP3 files to the storage flash/disk drive during engine bootup. This way, when the game wants to play music the MP3 files will be there.

Optionally, the OGG files could be automatically deleted after the MP3 files are saved, to conserve storage space. I'd leave such an option turned off by default, though. 

It's true. Few people will use the install command.

It's a stepping stone to full blown built-in "Quake Injector".

At this point is only needs a nice user interface inside the engine.

I want it to be very sophisticated like the Quake Injector, but I also want it to look nice and Quakey in the engine.

Maybe next "development season" I'll talk with Johnny Law and get his thoughts.

I would also kind like of like to enhance the frogbot support to offer some way of setting up the frogbots nice and easy in the engine. (Maybe "development season".)

/Next time things 

Ended up doing a final revision for redfield especially because the map uses alpha masked models (I like alpha masked models and want them to be used in Quake).

I'll be back sometime before Christmas and do split screen for sure and I'll probably check the thread every few weeks in read-only mode.

/Back around Christmas, I imagine. 

I would also kind like of like to enhance the frogbot support to offer some way of setting up the frogbots nice and easy in the engine. (Maybe "development season".)

Wow, sounds nice! 

Or so he said last time. We'll see.... 

@mankrip, nice, that would be a really clever way to "support" OGGs on systems such as Android that can't play OGG natively. Though I'm not sure how much of a delay might occur the first time the transcoding occurred. And it wouldn't help in my situation, as I would be right back where I started, with MP3. But still, that would be a clever workaround to allow maximum compatibility for soundtracks on all platforms. 

I've got a pretty thick skin so I can handle being called a "dumbf*ck." But I have never run Quake on Linux and have not tested Mark V on anything but Win7.

As far as the install command. I plan on covering that in the upcoming Mark V video. I love that feature and anything that will make it easier for people to play my maps is welcome. It's not laziness IMO. There are too many alternatives for people's attention. 

Mistaken identity. There's actually an FvF player called Dr.DUMBFUCK who I told to come here and report his Linux issue, heh. #2137

But I guess you could be Dr. Dumptruck! 

it wouldn't help in my situation, as I would be right back where I started, with MP3.

Then I don't see what's the problem. I don't pay attention to most posts. 

Shortest version: on my WinXP netbook, loading an MP3 causes Mark V to completely freeze up for up to 20 seconds, but an OGG file of the same track loads in 1 second or less. 

Then the MP3 playback needs fixing.