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 

OGG files aren't supported in Fitzquake ;)


Ok, I investigated the music glitch....
Here's where the problem occurs:

Upon touching the exit there's is a noticeable pause while the mp3 track loads and you see in the console: "current music track: music/track03.mp3" -- that's the Quake intermission track. However, it never stops the current music track from playing at that point, like it should.

And then both (I think) the current background track and the intermission track enter "the phantom zone" and you will hear those tracks playing in the background, EVEN if you alt-tab away from the Quake window! Meanwhile, the new music track for the new level you enter will be playing in Quake (and you will only hear that track when the Quake window has focus -- you always hear the phantom tracks). Additionally, the phantom tracks will not respond to bgmvolume commands in Quake, but the active track will.

It looks like if you just keep exiting levels, eventually you have like ALL the quake music tracks playing at once in the phantom zone....

Note: you do not get the phantom track effect when using the changelevel command as opposed to touching the exit, since Changelevel never tries to run the "end of level" code that should stop the current track from playing then load the intermission music.


If you use "cd off" and then "cd on" right before exiting, it will then play the intermission music and will not continue playing it when you switch to the next map. However, after doing this, any music playing in Quake will no longer respond to bgmvolume commands, and it will still be playing even if you alt-tab away from Quake....


The Correct Workaround:

If you issue "cd stop" just before exiting a level, you're golden. The intermission music will play and not keep playing on the next level, and the music tracks will continue to respond to bgmvolume commands....


Crud. it looks like the "phantom track" is impossible to kill (short of closing Quake) once it starts. So the "cd stop" command MUST be issued BEFORE you touch the exit.... I'll have to fiddle with my QuakeC to see if there's any way possible to issue a "cd stop" command AS SOON as the exit it touched, before any of the glitches can kick in....



Annnnd another issue I have.... Looks like setting "mouslook" to default "on" in the menu is not such a good thing either :/

Two reasons why: It overrides any alias settings I have to temporarily disable mouselook, and more egregiously, if I turn it off in the menu, it turns itself back on the next time I start Fitzquake....

Here's an example of something I set up in a cfg file:

+mlook
alias +nolook "-mlook"
alias -nolook "+mlook"
bind z +nolook

So +mlook is on , but when I hold down the Z button, mouselook will temporarily be OFF so that I can, for example, move a few "inches" forward very slowly using the mouse (to get the perfect view or position for a screenshot or something).

But as mentioned above, the menu setting overrides mouselook ever being off, so I have to turn it off to use this stuff. But the menu setting keeps turning itself back on.... 

Yep, issuing a "cd stop" command via QuakeC stuffcmd to each of the players as soon as the level exit is triggered -- that totally fixes the glitch.

Also, "cd off" was the command I was looking for to completely prevent the MP3 tracks from loading. Though oddly, if I put "cd off" in my autoexec, I will then need to do "cd on" followed by "cd reset" to get the tracks to play again (level change alone won't do it).

If I just issue "cd off" inside of quake (and not in autoexec), then all it takes to get the tracks playing again is "cd on" (and a level change, as usual).