It cuts both ways because so-called "GLSL based fancies" can actually be significantly more efficient than brute-forcing something in software.

So in other words, using GLSL for water and sky surfaces will run faster and put less strain on both your GPU and your CPU. So by bumping the hardware requirement a little, the engine can be made more efficient all-round.

Regarding underwater warp, I'd propose that 3 options would be acceptable: off, low-quality (the current effect) and high-quality (a GLSL-based effect). Something like that should suit everybody's requirements. 

 

I think we're on the same page.. QS 0.90 will use some newer GL features than Fitz if they're available on your hardware (world/bmodels stored in a VBO, non-power-of-two textures, and the next release will be able to use GLSL for .mdl rendering.) However, these are all optional - there's a command line flag to disable each extension if needed, and I tried to keep the implementations isolated from the original code. The hardware requirements won't be going up. 

supports NPOT textures already. I know, I begged for it to be added. :P 

not original fitz.

Also, personally I dont see any issue with what mh is suggesting at all. If there is an engine that does bump up hardware requirements that everyone already has but it is more efficient, what is wrong with it being available as a choice? 

10-bits= 1024 color palette. More subtlety to fog and colored lighting while still blending consistently with the 8-bit textures. Possible in gl 2.0?
Engoo does an elegant job of this in 8-bit. The lighting must be designed with the palette colors in-mind for best effect. 10-bits is more flexible. 

For me it's an "all or nothing" thing - i.e. it's only worth doing if the exercise is to emulate software quake's visuals exactly, right down to all the nuances - otherwise stick with true colour and reap the benefits of coloured lighting, fog and whatnot. 

It's worth reminding people that Bengt Jardrup has a version of WinQuake that does nothing fancy beyond raising a ton of map limits.

I remember playing Tronyn's Arcanum episode with it, and the experience was nothing short of...religious.

I don't think that engine has been updated since 2007 though, so I don't know how it would handle many of today's maps - certainly wouldn't load bsp2. 

Would it be feasible to combine bsp2 support with real software renderer? What about framerate on giant maps? 

I'm with Kinn.

Well, mostly ... I mean, I'd be willing to accept colored lights and fog and all that as long as that, too, conformed to the Quake palette at all times.

Might be an interesting look! 

 

I wasn't even drunk. 

 

Well, the framerate in RRP is bad. But it's kinda predictable. What I really don't like is how the engine distorts everything in 4:3 modes.

Not everyone has a widescreen display. Some people have widescreen displays that can show a 4:3 picture without stretching it to fill the screen.

=> It would be nice to have the ability to control aspect ratio correction in the options. 

I have a similar 4:3 situation on an old laptop. Set vid_nativeaspect 1.333 in the console. By default super8 will guess aspect based on the highest available resolution.

Rolling with 8-bit purism theme, the only legitimate framerate comparison is with Quakeforge and GLSL simulated 8-bit. How's that compare on same machine? 

Biggest boost to framerate would be fog 0 in console. But it will never reach Quakespasm fps. (Well, maybe on fast CPU with lousy GPU.) Among all bigmap-capable engines QS is the fastest I've seen.

I usually set cl_maxfps to 24. In SW mode it doesn't feel as choppy as one might think. Hardcore is 12 or maybe 10. Might have been thrilled to get 12 fps in '96. 

I don't know if it's the same issue, but just realized my fov compensation is slightly off-center. The effect is that the view and the vwep are not rotating on the same axis. Fixable. 

Yah, what you said sounds like the culprit. Here is the porblem as I see it:

Look left: http://i.imgur.com/U4aX3sR.png

Look right: http://i.imgur.com/CnvoYH4.png 

>> Pentium 3 laptop?

No, but I often use 640x480 to improve performance, because it's the smallest resolution available to me.

Thanks, "vid_nativeaspect 1.333" helped, although 2D is still distorted. That was my main gripe, really, because unfiltered artwork looks very ugly when stretched by the wrong amount.

>> The effect is that the view and the vwep are not rotating on the same axis.

TBH, it's the case even with the vanilla engine, although it's not nearly as noticeable. 

Thanks for the pics. Bob settings move the model but scr_ofsx, y, and z move player POV. Hadn't thought about that before.

aspect: It might be possible to affect 2D graphics by the override as well. Will look into it. 

Does snd_speed "11025" work? I set this in my config but the sound still seems all crisp and squeaky, like it's stuck at a higher value...? 

Anybody here using QF on Windows 7?

I was giving it a try, and I can't get it to go fullscreen. Console just says "vid_updatefullscreen: error setting fullscreen".

Googling just turns up a lot of "yep that's a problem" sorts of pages, either about QF specifically or about SDL on Windows, so I thought I'd ask here if it is a known QF issue that has a fix/workaround.

Perhaps related: the framerate tanks if I leave QF in windowed mode but increase it to some usable resolution (like 1280x720) using command-line args. 

I tried QuakeForge - can't get it to do anything beyond a 320x200 window.

Buggered about for a few minutes with configs, command line bollox etc, then gave up. 

Sound initialization occurs very early in Winquake. It's in the video code prior to video initialization. According to code comments, this is so that a pop-up error message could be displayed if the audio card is already in use by another program.

In next build this will be a command-line setting:
-sndspeed

Really the only the way to get to it without possibly breaking compatibility. Because that is the case, will leave the original 11025 as default. 

can set -width 800 -height 600 (for example) in cammand line to get a bigger window. Still won't be fullscreen, and the FPS is very low for me.