I'd date alpha support to the Nehahra mod, with the caveat that there were a lot of non-robust implementations floating around before then, accomplished via checking model names or texture names for special characters. But for robust support implemented via the protocol and with the proper bits and entity fields, my memory is that it came in with Nehahra.

Not that there weren't issues with the Nehahra implementation, including overloading protocol 15 with alpha bits, and sending it as a full float rather than a compressed type. The modern robust implementation that solves all of this, and that we've all pretty much standardised on, dates to FitzQuake's original protocol 666. 

 

Here's a dark ambient track, free for use in your projects. Creative Commons 0 License (public domain). Please let me know if you use it in a project.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WAryIhQuYXyNPL0ImOagc9QmRLZW0Zlm/view?usp=sharing

CC0 info https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/ 

New style of mapping video. The map is promsing but the video is kind of a mess. I still think it contains good info for new mappers. https://youtu.be/SQai5AHwghA 

Would it be possible to have a single engine that "toggled" between Quakeworld and NetQuake depending on the server it was connecting to? Local Host vs. Online?

So if you are playing a map in SP it would default to NQ and if you were in COOP or DM it would default to QW? 

Would it be possible to have a single engine that "toggled" between Quakeworld and NetQuake depending on the server it was connecting to? Local Host vs. Online?

So if you are playing a map in SP it would default to NQ and if you were in COOP or DM it would default to QW? 

I bet both Darkplaces and FTEQW does this.

All engines that supports custom protocols already switches to vanilla protocol 15 when playing ID1 demos or connecting to vanilla servers. Engines that supports both QW and NQ protocols will most likely switch between them automatically too. 

DarkPlaces ... doesn't "suck".

It's brilliant.

It has held itself back with a few handfuls of frustrating choices that caused the user grief.

I am expunging those.

https://www.celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=62234

I could produce a list of "mistakes" -- but why bother and I'm no scorekeeper -- instead I will just fix them.

I have great gratitude to LadyHavoc (and others .. DP is the work of a number of contributors) for efforts in DarkPlaces.

Ironically, it was LadyHavoc who got me into engine coding.

In 2007, LadyHavoc was one of the players who joined the "Dredd Server" debut (a server Phenom and I started) ... and late into the night .. R00k (Qrack) and LadyHavoc talked engine coder stuff for an hour. I listened intently as they had a very interesting conversation. I started to wonder if I could maybe update ProQuake like adding FitzQuake's video mode switch to it.

I also went to great efforts around that time to integrate DarkPlaces into multiplayer NetQuake community and LadyHavoc made many changes to the engine, I was always astonished by how quickly.

I think 2007 was also the year mh coded a Direct3D wrapper overnight and we ported it into 6 engines.

DarkPlaces can open some doors that will always remain closed doors without it as things stand now. 

DP still has the best netcode out there. just works. 

big shoutout to LadyHavoc 

I remember in 2012 or so using DarkPlaces and I lost my mind in anger.

I was already frustrated with some stuff that I couldn't turn off because I dont know the words.

Then I save a game.

I cannot find the save anywhere. I do a file search of my Quake folder, it is not there.

Far too many times, DarkPlaces did that kind of thing. 

hm, what happened to LordHavoc 

For the first time since so many years playing Quake1, I found a big map that asked for -protocol 999 during game launch (map addy_cl_m4, which is a true jewel, by the way!). What is this protocol? Should I use it as default to play all my other maps, instead of the regular one with QuakeSpasm? 

If it is the case here, but testing Quasm I found that quakespasm2.2 asks another protocol then quakespasm2.4.
It goes to protocol999 from protocol15.

It can be my poor attitide to see the change in update. 

Is an evolution of the stock FitzQuake protocol 666 with added support for extra-precision angles, larger maps, etc. It's been around for about 10 years now.

I personally think you don't need it, and won't get any advantage from it, unless you're playing a map that specifically calls out requiring it. Otherwise 666 is fine, and well-supported. But there are serious limits in stock Quake protocol 15 that make it unsuitable for anything other than very old maps. 

Is there any drawback or issue by playing all maps and mods with protocol 999, instead of 666?
May I find that some maps don't play well with 999, while it's working great with 666? 

999 was designed so that in it's base format it's identical to 666, with the exception of some "protocol flags" bits which servers can use to announce additional features they require. The intent was for servers and clients to negotiate supported features but the design and implementation never got that far.

These features could in theory be anything. A few were baked into the initial implementation as examples, such as increased co-ord ranges which were required for some of the maps that 999 was designed around, but there's nothing to stop an enterprising coder from building an entirely different protocol on top of 999.

The main drawback of 999 is that in it's current implementations it's still an NQ protocol. That means no prediction if playing online, and no delta states so packet sizes can seriously bloat.

Again, the design of 999 allows these to be added by someone who was willing to put in the work, and the original intent of 999 would have allowed graceful (or at least semi-graceful) fallback to default behaviours if a server or client didn't support them.

Maps that might have problems with 999 are those with large entity counts, where the increased co-ordinate range bloats the packet size in excess of the in-built maximum. The AD particle system in many engines is one case where I could see a risk of that happening. 

That doesn't mean "don't use 999 for AD", by the way. Some AD maps do need the larger co-ord range that 999 gives. 

New video goes live tomorrow along with the new release. It's pretty amazing. A huge upgrade from 0.6

https://youtu.be/9MO3GxoNm8o 

I'll be watching that for sure. But a 27 hour wait ...