it's not about speed at all. preach already explained that it's main usefulness comes from reducing the number of operations done, thereby increasing the amount of things you can do in a while loop before the engine complains about it. 

Someone should make the engine not complain about how many instructions are being done. That seems.like a better fix than pretty much inlining every function call. 

That would mean that if you ever code an infinite loop in qc then the engine would hang rather than just drop the server with a runaway loop error message. 

Maybe then how many instructions are needed for a runaway error to be trigger should be increased? It would seem so if the kind of optimizations that were listed earlier are needed to stop runaway. Or maybe I'm crazy. 

but how many loops would trip the runaway loop counter? 

100000 instructions between QC programs - a program being a succession of QC functions called without control returning to the engine. In general this is a sensible limit. An example where it might be a problem is if you need to run a looping on each of a set of entities, 20 entities would leave you only 5000 instructions for each one, disregarding overhead. Whatever you set the loop limit to, you could always push the boundaries, until the computation speed becomes more of a factor.

Of course by then you have a new excuse to optimise. The profile command suggests that once upon a time qc performance was an issue, and if quake were to be popularised in mobile or flash form, it might yet matter. 

Lower it for developer 1? Or have a runtime 'reader' to let you know exactly what's going on?

Like an ingame debugger. 

Have it print to console every 10k, noting the current stack and position. Or maybe even 5k... 

Advanced logging. 

Having extra qc developing tools in engines would be a blessing, but they wouldn't help with this problem because they won't ever be universally adopted - making a mod than only works in engines that have a raised instruction limit would not be wise. By that point you might as well customise the engine to do the intensive calculation for you and add it as a qc extension. It's not the kind of thing that can be set to "progressive enhancement" either - you can't change the logic of your code to suit the capacity of the engine that is running it.

At some point I want to write down my thoughts of "progressive enhancement" - usually a web design term - and how it relates to Quake. It can explain why features like fog and skyboxes were embraced, but things like qc extensions on the whole were not. 

The question is, how can QSB be made. 

i've never really had any problems with the 100k instruction limit and i've done all kinds of weirdo shit in while loops.

the point where you start to hit the limit, you're better off thinking about deferring operations to the next frame or something. 

While I've never had anything proper reach the loop limit yet, I know that it was a problem in Prydon Gate, so I guess it depends how different your mod is. The further you go from the original game, the harder you have to work in qc I guess... 

If I started hitting the 100k limit in QuakeC I'd probably be at the point where I need to be doing an engine mod, not a QC mod. 

speaking of instructions...

i've been trying to figure out a way to be able to have two huge groups of monsters fight each other without slowing down.
i'm talking like 2 or 3k monster teams here.

been experimenting with sort of deferring all ai functions to a 'group leader' but it's sort of hit and miss. you either have like a static group and when you have intermittent LOS, then some of the group can't hit their target, or you have a dynamic group and the code to figure out what group you're in eats up even more time than just running ai on all monsters like normal. :\ 

Oh wait... 

Quick straw poll here:

If I was going to invest some time in a qc project, which would be most useful to mappers?

1) A medium-range navigation system for the AI. Where monsters now walk straight at the player over gaps they can't cross, this system would direct them around to the bridge. Basically navigation on the scale of rooms, not levels.

2) A system to create alternative shapes for triggers. For example, cylindrical, spherical, rotated rectangles, composition of multiple triggers into a single unit.

3) create an event-based system for with inputs and outputs on doors and other funcs. For instance, allowing you fire triggers on the events of a door beginning to open, reaching closed position, being blocked, etc.
On the input side rather than having just a trigger, you might be able to command a door to open (does nothing if it's already open), or shut (vice versa ), or toggle (the old behaviour). Having a system of 'filters' would allow conditional triggers like "pass this input on if door X is still moving". 

AI first

I/O Triggers second

trigger b-box control third.

I guess all would have their uses, but better nav AI for monsters is the coolest idea IMO :) 

 

Would be neat to give monsters specific commands, ie attack this, run over there etc. :E

Being able to give things specific triggers would be great, for example, forcing a door to close only on a specific trigger, or making func_trains that can be made to reverse and go backwards through their track. :) 

I would vote 3, but I don't really *release* maps, so... 

 

Quake is a simple pattern based arcade shooter that lives from its simplistic ai. 3 would allow people to create more atmosphere rich maps. 

Actually, all three.