I already tried other Quake engines on my system before, and in my opnion they sucks.

QS is the best engine ever created for Quake (especially now, with all its great features and your FX).

I would only like to see some more subtle FX in it, but certainly NOT high res textures with bump mapping ! It's horrible in Quake and extremely heavy on the video card. Solid objects and matter should stay low res in Quake.

However, I think that all fluids, smoke, fire, skies could be great in high res, while still having solid objects in low res. I love your FS styling. The liquids could have a subtle reflection/refraction styling too. Not something ultra-realistic, but something that would add a liquid feel.

Please, could you post more pictures of your testing on liquids that you already showed before ? Why it isn't in your FX QS edition ? 

Basically, what you're saying is that you don't want bumpmapping, and yet you want to simulate bumps on water...

If someone actually wants 'FX' then they should just use FTE. I'm not going to waste my time rewriting lots of code when they can just switch to something that already excels at that sort of thing.
Yes its defaults tend to be more for deathmatch players, but you can configure it to feel exactly like QS if you want. fps_preset vanilla;r_softwarebanding 0; will do most of it.

So really, what specifically is it about FTE that you think sucks about it? Or is it just you/others being too lazy to set it up like whatever engine they're already familiar with? 

... simulating depth on low poly surfaces, hey... kind like what Quake is!!!

I think if done in moderation, just as with colored lighting now, higher res textures, with effects, look really nice. 

I'm not asking for bumps on water (heh !?) ! I'm asking for some gentle reflections and refractions, which aren't the same as bumps (i.e. false 3D textures).

As I said, I already tried all the other Quake engines available for my OS. I didn't liked them. Too slow, too heavy, and the rendering was, well, ... ugly.

And yes I'm too lazy to lose my time in trying to tweak their configuration. I'm just too attached to QS, which is *almost* the perfection.

Spike, come on, show us again your work on water. I think it was pretty, but I don't remember how it was ! 

Just what for mankrip to finish his Retroquad engine. 

http://triptohell.info/moodles/junk/water_nobumps.png
http://triptohell.info/moodles/junk/water_bumps.png 

What you're missing is that adding reflection/refraction isn't as easy or quick a job as you think. It would require gutting and rewriting the entire renderer, and the end result would be slow and heavy.

Sure GLQuake has mirrors. On one surface only. That must be planar. That backs on solid. That is inset from it's surrounds. In the words of John Carmack : not very robust but cool to look at.

A more generalized reflections system is a LOT more work. 

If by refraction you mean caustics on the surrounding walls, I have seen some pictures of this effect in Quake but can't remember on which engine. It sure would be a worthy addition to any engine. My DP with Pretty Water doesn’t even do that! 

Caustics in most Quake engines are crap because they only appear on walls, they don't appear on monsters or other objects underwater. 

I don't know if I've missed this somewhere in this thread but is the AD 1.6 compatible build of Quakespasm going to be a continuation of the original QS or is it going to remain a fork?

Sorry if my ignorance irks anyone. :) 

It is merely an "emergency" enhanced version with increased limits so that sepulchre can run. Should be updated eventually. Ericw said something earlier about wanting to change some limits to be memory allocation based instead of hard limit arrays so maybe he is taking time to do that. 

Spike, your pictures are dark and don't show much.

Come on man, you surely can do more pictures of your FX on water, with a better/clearer view.

A short video, maybe ? 

You could try downloading them then gamma-adjusting them.

But anyway, there are two pictures, "no bumps" and "bumps".

The "no bumps" picture shows reflection without a bumpmap and it looks just like a flat mirror. Not at all liquid-like.

The "bumps" picture shows reflection with a bumpmap and it looks more correct.

So the point Spike is making is that the kind of reflection/refraction effect you're asking for requires using a bumpmap. 

@barnak - I've done a number of tests with reflective liquids using a few different methods in Darkplaces. The demonstration I posted in the screenshots/beta thread a couple days ago has a bit with some reflective blood using realtime reflections and subtle refraction. This is a massive gif of that area. The floor uses realtime reflections and the walls use bump + gloss. Also, here is an old caustics test. This is just an animated decal so it can be used pretty much anywhere and isn't expensive.

You can you use a combo of bump+gloss+cubemaps to get an ok look on small sections of liquid such as puddles, but cubemaps just don't work well on large areas. If you're feeling really sassy you can just copy and flip world geometry and place it behind a transparent liquid texture to get pretty ok fake reflections :P (just kidding, don't do this).

IMO, however cool looking, realtime reflections/refractions are too resource intensive for general use. The effort needed to make them look 'good', especially in a quake-like setting, makes them route even more prohibitive. 

Both of your animations looks very good.

So if I understand clearly what you said, the first rendering is too intense on the frame rate, even for liquids only ?

Would it be reasonable to add the second effect to QS ? 

realtime reflections/refractions are too resource intensive for general use
If your system isn't too antediluvian you should be able to run most Quake maps fine. My old Core2duo E6750 and GeForce GTX 650 can run DP Pretty Water @ at least 30fps in medium to large maps. I only have trouble with the hugest ones (AD, Something Wicked...). 

So if I understand clearly what you said, the first rendering is too intense on the frame rate, even for liquids only ?

Realtime reflection/refraction are expensive, yes. However, in vanilla-ish quake maps without realtime lights with decent hardware you'll get good framerate (though it will still take a large hit).

Would it be reasonable to add the second effect to QS ?

bump+gloss+cubemap or the caustics? Either way, I have no idea of the technical aspect, I'm not a programmer. Practically speaking, there isn't a demand for reflective liquids in general and other engines already do this (FTE, DP). So, "reasonable"? Ask someone that would actually be doing the work :P

at least 30fps

1/8 of the way to an acceptable framerate! 

 

@Qmaster. Thanks for the answer. That makes sense.

It also makes sense to address the limits issue once and for all rather than constantly just 'applying bandages'... :) 

1/8 of the way to an acceptable framerate!
Why? 30fps is enough for the eye to perceive fluidity. And I forgot to mention this was with RTlights on, of course... Should be quite higher off. 

Why? 30fps is enough for the eye to perceive fluidity.

It may be enough for the eye (although remember that movies which run at 30fps use a lot of motion blur which games may not have) but it's not enough for the reflexes/reactions.

There's plenty of work been done on this, we shouldn't have to rehash it and prove it all over again. 

Never noticed a sizeable gameplay diff between fluid and fluider but my precision skills may not be that accurate... ;) 

At 30fps you've got 33ms latency between input events and the response to them; that's the equivalent of a network link from New Orleans to Denver (source: https://serverfault.com/a/137357/5234).

You really don't wanna be doing that. 

Thanks for the info. 

depends on the game and scenario.

For instance, it doesn't matter if you play a point and click game running at less than 30fps. But it matters in a fast paced competitive shooter.