modulus is basically the remainder. like you do long division and stop before going into decimals.

so 2%3 is 2 because 2 can't fit into 3 at all, so you have 2 as the remained.
same with 45%89.

otoh, if you had 3%2, it's 1, because 2 fits into 3 once, and you have 1 left over. 

I'm sure you meant to say: 3 can't fit into 2 at all, that's why 2 % 3 = 2. Look at this, Ricky:

0 % 3 = 0
1 % 3 = 1
2 % 3 = 2
3 % 3 = 0
4 % 3 = 1

etc.

Just try a few examples and you'll get a feel for what the modulo operator does. 

I also figured he meant a three, but I was pretty cross-eyed already ;)

I think I'm starting to understand it. C++ is weird though, because sometimes you get a negative short. Which is weird. BUT I'm beginning to get my head round it. Which means I'm learning :D 

haha, apparently math doesn't fit at all into my head. :P 

You're probably messing up the types (using signed short instead of unsigned or something). 

A real gem from the walkmonster_start_go code I've never noticed before today:

self.ideal_yaw = self.angles * '0 1 0';


Why not just use self.angles_y? Because that wouldn't be vectorised and involve lots of awesome multiplication! 

...because then self.ideal_yaw_x and self.ideal_yaw_z may not be set to 0. 

ideal_yaw is a float though 

It's the dot product, so it returns the sum of all three components once you do the componentwise multiplication. Very handy some of the time, but a bit of a waste here. 

What is it that gives rocket (and grenades) their flight trails? 

There are flags you can set on models which select which (if any) effect that applies. If you open one with QMe it gives you a nice tickbox interface if you bring up the model properties box. 

Thanks Preach 

This is distinct from the QC .flags field - you can't change the particle effects from QC (other than having multiple models and switching between them). 

Understood: I found the flag on the model immediately and was able to change them as required.

Is there any effect on performance if I suddenly add lots of these 'particle' effects? 

i don't think you'll feel it on an engine with the original particles (or even fitz' circular ones) but DP and other engines with 'fancy' particles can start to chug. i know some players using DP found the lava splash effects in ne_ruins would just kill their framerate, for example but i wouldn't even notice it in quakespasm. 

I think older engines have a maximum number of particles they will show. 

even glquake had -particles though and i always used to use -particles 20000. these days, i use -200000, but i think modern engines don't even use that anymore? i just leave it because it's in a batch file. :P 

A hell knight fires 5 projectiles with trails in a single attack. Launching 1 projectile with five trail should be within scope. 

is:

val = random();
val = val + random();
val = val + random();
val = val + random();

the same as:

val = random() + random() + random() + random();

? 

as long as assigning the result of random() to val doesn't lose any information.

e.g. for the first case, if the language was C, val was an int variable, and random() returned a float between 0.0 and 1.0, the right hand side of each statement would be truncated to an integer before being stored in val, so in most cases you'd end up with val as 0, unless one of the random()'s returned exactly 1.0. In the second case the floats would be added up before being truncated to an int.

I think in QuakeC they are equivalent because random returns a float and the only numeric type is float. 

this is purely for quakec.

my question was along the lines of ftos() vs random() and if random() has the same problem ftos does.
my head tells me it shouldn't, since floats are primitives, but my gut tells me qc may do things in a weird way. 

Ah. here's the implementation of random: (pr_cmds.c)


static void PF_random (void)
{
float num;

num = (rand() & 0x7fff) / ((float)0x7fff);

G_FLOAT(OFS_RETURN) = num;
}


it looks fine.. I think the "G_FLOAT(OFS_RETURN) = num;" just stores the result in the vm global for return values. so it's not using any shared buffer like ftos.

... but I'm a qc noob so maybe someone more experienced should chime in :-) 

i'd totally test this, except it's random. XD 

Yeah, it's basically about return values in C. A return value of a float is passed by value - i.e. copied to the return value and therefore to the QC. So subsequent calls to rand get different values.

The problem with ftos is that strings in C aren't primitives. Instead what gets returned is a pointer, and passing a pointer by value is effectively passing the string by reference. In the case of ftos there is only a single buffer used, so the pointer which is returned always has the same value: the address for the start of the buffer. 

in a way, qc is a lot like java...

thanks, preach.