Ok, the more I mess with Mark V, the more I love it. This is now definitely my favorite Quake client ever. Small, FAST, and not crammed full of altered default settings and eyecandy that changes the way Quake does things, but with extra features to play with and tweak as you want, plus all the little enhancements that SHOULD be default, like correct interpolation and bug fixes.


Continued report of issues in hopes they may be fixed sometime in the future.


Legitimate Bugs:


MP3 soundtrack doesn't play IF you don't have a CD drive! On my netbook, I noticed at startup it would give the error "cdaudio_init: mci_open failed (266)" so I wondered if my lack of a CD drive was disabling the MP3 music too, so I tried running it on my older laptop with a built-in DVD drive and the MP3 tracks worked perfectly. So then I plugged my external USB DVD drive into my netbook and tested again... and heard no MP3 music... UNTIL I adjusted the volume slider for CD music (it wasn't too low, it's just that the music is silent until you change the volume in any direction). I also found that ALT-TABing away from the window and coming back will cause the MP3 tracks to kick in (they are playing from the start -- just silently). As a workaround, I found I can get the MP3 tracks playing correctly from the start (ONLY if I have my DVD drive attached) by including in the autoexec.cfg "bgmvolume 0; wait; bgmvolume 1"


If you try to load a skybox made of JPG files, it will CRASH because they aren't TGAs. That's kind of bad behavior.

Centerprint messages seem to be cut off at 19 lines. In Qrack and other clients you can see more than that (I tried the old arcade mods Paqman and Tetris which use a few more than 19 lines of centerprint to draw the games). Also, it would be nice if the centerprint didn't necessarily appear right in the center of the screen. If there's room near the top, let it appear up there so it doesn't block the view so much. Is there a variable to adjust where it appears?

r_skyalpha doesn't seem to work for me. It just makes the sky look... weird and inverted or something.

Multiple gamedirs... how does this work? I can't get it to work. I thought since I can't toggle Colored Lights off (mentioned below), I'd just place the LIT files in a separate gamedir and then when I wanted to use them I could do something like "-game fvf -game lights," or from the console "game fvf lights" but it doesn't seem to work.




"Kind-Of" Bugs:


All the old methods of stopping Demos from playing at start up no longer work (-map none, for example). This is probably a result of fixing bugs where Quake would just stop if it got an invalid command like that, heh. But now I can't do anything to stop the demos from playing at start!



Not Exactly Bugs (but things that should be included for the added features):


Colored lights can hypnotize. Sparkle someone else's eyes. But there's no way to toggle them off & on like for textures or skyboxes.

When you do "game fvf" from the console, it should exec the autoexec.cfg file located in the new game directory.

I wanted a button to cycle fog off and on, but the "cycle" command doesn't work with "fog" (i.e, bind F4 "cycle fog 0 0.03" would be handy). "variable fog not found."

I would also like a button to turn off skyboxes, but you can't bind a key to "sky "" " because of the quotes needed in that command. It would be great if there was a bindable command to disable skyboxes, like, "sky default" or "sky 0" or something. (Workaround: make skyoff.cfg which contains the command 'sky "" ' and bind a key to "exec skyoff.cfg".)

Also, it would be great to support something like Qrack's skybox.cfg file where you can specify a skybox to load for each level automatically. Failing that, what about just having a certain skybox load instead of Quake's default sky based on the skybox name (kind of like a replacement texture). There are only like 2 skys in Quake, aren't there? Purple and blue.... So if you have like default_blue_ skybox it will automatically load in any level that uses the blue sky, and a purple one for the purple sky.

As for automatically activating fog across maps... a cheap hack would be to have the engine look for a file like "eachmap_exec.cfg" and exec it at the start of each map. Then the user could put whatever fog setting (or other settings they need to repeat each map, like skyboxes too) in that file....

scr_crosshairscale should also scale down (0.5, 0.4...). I really just need a tiny dot in the middle of my screen. Why would anyone want to make it BIGGER? heh.



New Feature Wishlist:

Proquake RCON

Custom Crosshair graphic



Actually, this whole post is a "wishlist" because I wish someone would continue work on this engine :D 

I can confirm centered messages being cut off prematurely. Also, it seems that sometimes an MP3 track from the previous level keeps playing after entering the next level. This way, several tracks are being played at the same time which kind of sucks.

Also, I would really like to know how to get ne_ruins running with Mk V. For me, it always crashes when exiting the intro map. So far I haven't found any way to make it work - and it also doesn't work with Quakespasm, btw. 

Ok, I found the "external_lits" console variable that lets me deactivate the colored lights. I guess that's something that needs a map reload to alter though, but at least the option is there.

About the MP3 music tracks, I wish there was a way to disable/enable them from loading. There is a pretty long delay when the MP3 tracks are loading before each map starts, EVEN WHEN the MP3s aren't actually being played. For example, -nocdaudio on the command line does indeed stop the MP3 tracks from playing... in exactly the same way that having no CD drive stops them from playing... i.e., they are still loaded into memory, and the messages at the start of each map says "current music track: musicblah.mp3" but it is "playing silently" or something and there's no way to actually hear it. A way to truly disable/enable the MP3 loading (other than renaming the music folder) would be great.

By the way, I found a nice workaround for those of us who don't have built-in CD drives but still want to be able to use MP3 soundtracks: download Microsoft's nice little Virtual CD Control Panel ( http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=38780 ) and you can easily set up a virtual CD drive that Quake will recognize and so allow the background music to play without having to adjust the volume to make it start....


And I found something else that looks like a major bug. On levels E1M2 and E2M3 (and only those levels -- I checked them all), the game will crash if you toggle the value of external_textures. EVEN if you don't actually have any external textures in your textures folder.... My external textures do work on these levels IF they are enabled when the map starts. In that case the game crashes when I try to disable them.....


Further thoughts on some of my earlier suggestions:

I think the quad, pent, and biosuit blends are probably fine. The lava blend is pretty dark, but that should be expected if you're swimming in lava.... It's just the ring and water blends are a bit too weak by default.

What about "water_fog" effects? It would be a fog setting that only shows up when you're underwater (that would look better than the blends anyway). It could be a bluish or yellowish fog for the waters, greenish for slime, and redish for lava.


And about saving fog and skybox settings across maps by possibly having the engine execute a re-exec.cfg at the start of each map -- it works petty well (heh, I did it by QuakeC), and in conjunction with some clever aliases it can even cycle through each of your skyboxes automatically on each map change.

It might be more "self-contained" (no external files) to just have the engine activate an alias: "re-exec" for each client at every new map... then the player could set up that alias to do the things they want, like if it was just as simple as 'alias re-exec "fog 0.03; sky blah" ' or if they still want to use a cfg file, 'alias re-exec "exec whatever.cfg" '

Anyway, this is just a cheap, simple hack I thought of, which might be easier to implement rather than saving actual console variables.... 

with colored lights, altnertaively you could not install the .lit file in the map directory in the first place. It only contaisn colored light info I believe so you dont losing anythign else by not installing it. 

@ nitin

Yeah, I may not have been clear in what I was saying. I actually do like the colored lights -- I just wanted a way to toggle them off and on in the game so I could compare what it looked like with and without them. I eventually found the external_lits command briefly mentioned in the documentation, but it's a setting that requires a map restart to kick in.


@ NightFright

Hey, I just found a post on Quakeone where you are working with colored lights and lit files. Could you do me a favor and come and post on my forum? http://www.fvfonline.com/forum/ No registration is required to post (just like here! I hate registering for forums, haha). I'd like to see if you can make some lit files for me -- I'm having varying and non-ideal results depending on which tool I try on the Iikka and Terra maps.... 

I was playing through a episode (deathmatch classics volume 2) and upon switching maps i got a "not enough handles" error and quake crashed

(happened once in many tries)

realy rare to me, hardly ever notice bugs with fitz :) 

Thanks for all the bug reports, I hate bug but like to know what they are too.

Like a ghost, I'm not really here. And the final Mark V is what it is (hint: final).

But I dream too. Maybe Mark V will influence ideas in the remaining active engines like Quakespasm or whatever the next FitzQuake has to offer.

Or both. Or neither.

Or "Hey look, a nickle!".

/Baker tricked you and scrambles away while you look for the nickle. If you are British, pretend nickle is a "quid", whatever the fuck that is. 

No excuses for shoddy workmanship!!!

;) 

If think it's called 'sustainable currency'. 

A US nickle is worth 0.02998 quid (apparently). Baker is trying to short-change us! 

I found that my lava and pain blends are way too powerful because of my gamma setting. I use the brightest gamma setting that works -- "gamma 0" -- and that makes my screen the correct brightness. Anything else is too dark. But when gamma goes lower than 0.5 the lava and pain blends become so intense they pretty much blind you (especially at gamma 0).

I can't find any way to make adjustments (other than turning off the blends, which I don't want) to alter this.

Like, there is supposed to be a "contrast" adjustment, but "contrast" in the console returns "unknown command."

And none of these settings seem to work right: r_lavacolor, r_watercolor, r_slimecolor. They do nothing if I set them from 0-9, and anything 10 or over just causes the blend to completely go away (just like gl_polyblend 0), and they won't come back until I restart Fitzquake.

Anyone know ways of adjusting the lava/pain blends, or other ways to tweak brightness/contrast in Fitzquake? 

Those are undocumented variables that can alter the water or lava or slime appearance.

The default is Quake normal: r_watercolor "130 80 50 128" (<red 0-255> <green 0-255> <blue 0-255> <percent 0-255>)

But typing r_watercolor "0 0 255 64" would be a blue hue in water as an example.

You weren't really supposed to notice any of those existed, they expect 4 parameters and doing any less than 4 defaults the percent to 0 which means none ... 

I am a power tweaker (not that kind!), and I monkey around with every setting I can find to see what I can adjust/improve.

Thanks for providing a little documentation for those undocumented commands.

Excellent, it works like a charm to adjust the lava color so that it's not so blinding with my gamma setting.

I notice that the default Quake numbers you provided for watercolor are not the default for Fitzquake Mark V. Can you provide the default values for Fitzquake (and standard Quake -- or point me in the right direction to find them) for each of these blends so I'll have a base to start with for tweaking them? My lava ends up looking like cherry jello since I'm not sure what the right color for lava is supposed to be -- I mainly just want to adjust the intensity and leave the color alone.

And I don't suppose there are any other undocumented variables that will control ring, pent, quad, and (especially) pain blends similarly?

Much thanks, Baker. 

Ah, I found the default values for liquids in the Quake code:

cshift_water = { {130,80,50}, 128 };
cshift_slime = { {0,25,5}, 150 };
cshift_lava = { {255,80,0}, 150 };

Setting the lava intensity to 128 seems to work well.

And by my eye it looks like the water intensity is the only changed default in Fitzquake, and it seems to have been changed to a value of 50? That must be why I thought it looked so slight... I think I'm ok with Quake's default value of 128 for that. 

r_skyalpha and r_skyfog only work right if I have "gamma 1" but any other gamma setting causes them to do weird things.

Ya know, I see that solid white "scr_sbaralpha" thing someone else mentioned, but only on my old laptop. I don't see it happen on my netbook where I'm getting the weird sky issues with gamma != 1.


As I mentioned before, Fitzquake Mark V is really insistent upon playing the demos (and there's no way to stop it); so much that it seems to prevent Qview from connecting to a server. When I try to use Fitzquake through Qview, it starts up and I see the message that I'm connecting through Qview, and then the demo starts playing and I don't connect to the server :/ But then I can just type "exec qview.cfg" to get connected, but still.... Fitzquake is gonna play those demos NO MATTER WHAT! 

Gee, it sounds like I'm really complaining a lot with all my bug/issue reports... but here are some more!

Widescreen resolutions seem to cause the weapon model to be much more hidden "under" the bottom of the screen. Like at 800x600 the weapon model sticks up a lot (like in proquake), but at 1024x600 the weapon model doesn't stick up very much (like in standard quake).


In some windowed resolutions, the top of the screen is hidden so that you can't see all the lines of text. Like, in 800x600 (windowed) you never see the first line of text (and maybe half of the second line too) at the top of the screen. So if you start typing a message, you never see what you're typing. Setting my windowed resolution to something weird like 750x550 on the command lines causes the problem to go away.


The names in the scoreboard when you press Tab are "bronze." I don't like that; it's usually harder to read on top of Quake's mostly-brown world. The names should be the proper color (white) unless the person used bronze characters to make their name.
OH... if I actually make my name with bronze characters, then it appears white in the scoreboard! It seems backwards....


The r_noshadow list should also include k_spike.mdl and lavaball.mdl (glowing things shouldn't really cast shadows). And I mentioned before that bolt.mdl should be in there, but I'll clarify that "bolt1.mdl" should be renamed to "bolt.mdl" since there is no bolt1.mdl in (standard) Quake. For other people who wanna fix this, you just need this altered list in your autoexec.cfg file:

r_noshadow_list "progs/flame.mdl,progs/flame2.mdl,progs/bolt.mdl,progs/bolt2.mdl,progs/bolt3.mdl,progs/laser.mdl,progs/k_spike.mdl,progs/lavaball.mdl"

I guess I'll mention that trying to make shadows for bolt.mdl (if it's kind of long) causes a major slowdown for an instant, but this behavior didn't happen in standard Fitzquake 0.85


Hm, I think I have to mention a niggle I have with the r_nolerp list: it contains models that are not a part of standard Quake. I don't think you should be catering to all the different mods out there by adding their modiels to the default settings in "standard" Fitzquake. That's something that each mod author (or possibly player) should have to configure themselves, with a custom r_nolerplist, and not expect the engine author to account for all their custom models.... If you start accounting for all the possible custom mods out there, the list is going to become really bloated (hey, I've got a few models from FvF you could add to that list ;).

Not that it matters, since it is how it is and probably isn't going to change; that's just my thought on the matter.


I'm really not just trying to complain with all these bug reports.... It just shows that I'm playing the heck out of Fitzquake! And the only little annoying issue that I can't work around is the centerprints and scoreboard appearing right in the middle of the screen and blocking the view. I really wish they behaved like in proquake and appeared near the top of the screen....


Hmm, and here's something I've seen several times: Fitzquake V doesn't always honor the -window command on the command line (from my batch file). Like I just ran standard Fitzquake without any parameters (so it ran full screen), and then after I closed that and ran Fitzquake V -window -width 750 -height 550 (batch file) it started up full-screen.... Then when I hit ALT+ENTER it switched to the proper-size window. 

Widescreen resolutions seem to cause the weapon model to be much more hidden "under" the bottom of the screen. Like at 800x600 the weapon model sticks up a lot (like in proquake), but at 1024x600 the weapon model doesn't stick up very much (like in standard quake).

isn't this desired behaviour? it retains the look of the weapon regardless of fov or aspect ratio. older engines would make the weapon look weird at wide screen or high fov. 

Having a tiny weapon is annoying. However I play my game with these variables to make the weapon look "chunky".

r_viewmodelfov 110
v_gunangle 2

Give it a try? 

never had any trouble, but i dont use a batch file just exec my command line 

Having a tiny weapon is annoying. However I play my game with these variables to make the weapon look "chunky".

r_viewmodelfov 110
v_gunangle 2

Give it a try?

If I "view" a "model" at the right "angle", when I "play my game", my "weapon" also goes from "tiny" to "chunky"... 

It took me way longer than I will admit to to understand what you were getting at there Kinn...




Perv! ;) 

Yes, having a tiny weapon is annoying :p Everyone laughs at you. So I've heard....

The desired effect is that your weapon looks the same (sticks up the same amount) no matter what resolution or FOV you are in.

@ FifthElephant

r_viewmodelfov 110 does the trick to make the weapon model look the same in wide-screen modes as it does normally in non-widescreen modes. Too bad that's not automatic, but it's good to know there's a way to adjust it. Thanks.

v_gunangle seems to be an unknown command though. 

v_gunangle might be for another engine to be honest. Maybe directq. 

One bug I've noticed is that when you complete a level, the music doesn't stop playing and will continue to play over the song in the next level. I am using mp3 files in the music folder by the way. Everything else works great though!

One work-around is to save your game, quit, and reload your save. Another is to simply turn off the music, but that's a bit drastic... 

Try using ogg files instead