The idea that the pointer doesn't change means you can save valuable QC operations by not assigning the return value of subsequent calls to ftos or vtos!

local string a;
a = ftos(self.health); //store pr_string_temp in a
dprint (a);
ftos(self.max_health); //a already stores the pointer to pr_string_temp
dprint(a); //so no need for an assignment
vtos(self.origin);
dprint(a); //vtos uses the same string buffer

Remember: saving 3 QC commands in your debugging routines should be your top priority when coding.


To make it even more efficient, why not just use a global!

string pr_string_temp;

void() worldspawn
{
...
pr_string_temp = ftos(0);
...
}

Never assign to the variable again, and just use the following pattern in all ftos code:

ftos(self.health);
dprint(pr_string_temp);

Although it was born from a daft optimisation idea, there is one nice thing about this coding structure. It makes explicit the gotcha with using ftos - that internally it uses a single temporary buffer. Consequently you'd be much less likely to use it incorrectly by calling ftos twice without writing the buffer to screen or console first. 

#653:
In theory, yes.

In practice, the original QCC has a bug where only the last of the return values is actually used if they appear in a single statement, so it becomes random()*4. Spike claims to have fixed this in FTEQCC, but I remain slightly skeptical.

#660:
Note that some engines will likely break this behaviour... 

In practice, the original QCC has a bug where only the last of the return values is actually used if they appear in a single statement, so it becomes random()*4. Spike claims to have fixed this in FTEQCC, but I remain slightly skeptical.

So we're back to it not working then? :( 

Some compilers will do this wrong thing:

� call random once - store the return value
� call random again - overwrite the return
� call random yet again - overwrite the return
� call random finally - overwrite the return
� add the final return value to itself four time

The difference between this and the ftos problem is that ftos overwrites the result on the engine side, but this bug occurs on the QC side so better compilers can fix it. I'm pretty confident that FTEQCC compiles this correctly but you could test it with the following code:


float counter;

float() increment_counter =
{
counter = counter + 1;
return counter;
}

void() test_compiler =
{
local float total;
total = increment_counter() + increment_counter() + increment_counter() + increment_counter();
dprint( ftos (total));
}

Compilers with the fix should output 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10, the original qcc compiler will output 16. There's no difference here between a builtin returning a float and a compiled QC function which does the same. 

excellent! everything is peachy, preachy! 

you are a poet! 

OK, some basic QuakeC questions here...

1. I know if I set the velocity on an entity, it will start moving in that direction. I read that avelocity is a force acting on that. Does that degrade over time or something? Like, is it a temp force or is it always there?

2. Velocity moves an entity regardless of it's angles, correct?

3. Is there a quick and dirty way to tell an entity to face the direction that it's moving in? Like, say I fire a rocket from a point in space -- I want it to face the direction that it's moving in. This is escaping me for whatever reason.

Thanks! :) Hopefully these aren't too rudimentary. 

To expand on the rocket things, say the rocket fires from EntityA towards EntityB. So the direction is:

normalize( EntityB.origin - EntityA.origin ); (or vice versa, I can never remember that)

That gives me a unit vector I can use to calc a velocity for flying but how do I make it point at EntityB while it's doing that? 

1. avelocity is angular velocity and has no bearing on velocity. it does not degrade either. the engine just increments .angles by this much every second.

2. velocity moves an entity IF it's .flags does NOT contain the ON_GROUND flag.
yes, it does move it regardless of angles. to move in the direction of angles, you need to do makevectors(self.angles)
self.velocity = v_forward * someSpeed

3. yes: self.angles = vectoangles(self.velocity) turns the velocity into an angle. 

Excellent, thank you! Yes, what you said in #3 fixed my rockets as well. Woot! 

I contend that the th_* style ai functions are over-engineered in the original qc code.

There is not, to my recollection, a single instance where quake monsters share a th_* function like th_melee, th_pain etc. Therefore it would be best to just have a single function

.float th_handle(float eventnum)

for each monster. The eventnum would then have EVENT_MELEE, EVENT_RUN and so on, and which handler to run would be chosen from a switch statement. There's no reason to suppose that the handling code would all go inline, most likely each statement in the switch would just call the relevant function.

The two big wins of this change would be:
Firstly to get rid of all that cruft for all the other entities in the quake universe.
Secondly to allow many more 'events' to be handled. Whack in default handling which does nothing and you can add event handling for just selected monsters. Things currently dealt with by hacky classname searching like monster waking sounds or attack decision making could be refactored into events.

Having laid out a grand vision, I would grant mercy to the special case of th_pain. Mercy is extended on the grounds that pain functions are parametrised on attacker and damage, and hacking around that would probably be worse than just letting it stay. 

wouldn't it be better to expand the .functions available to monsters?

for example, replacing all the sight sound checks with wake functions so each monster could have it's own method of playing sounds (some monsters might want different attenuations, other might play random sounds).

one thing i liked about doom3 monsters was that their animations and thinking were separated into two threads. that'd be interesting to do in quake, have your monster model with frame handling and some invisible thinking entity that actually animated based on events and such. 

Expanding the available functions is exactly the sort of thing that was motivating me. The feeling I have is that there's a tension between adding all the fields a monster could ever need and not burdening all the other entities in the game with stuff they don't use. This leads us to the current compromise where the most vital events get handlers and the rest get hacks.

Adding new fields is possible, but if you wanted to support 50 or 60 events it would get pretty crazy. In a world where lots of monsters shared th_melee or th_stand functions, or even where such things might change dynamically for a given entity (like an injured monster switching to a limping run) the current architecture would have more weight. But as it is, you're born with the think functions of one class, and you die by it, so why not bundle the whole package into one function for the monster to carry about? 

i know what you mean about the th functions...
i run into it when designing a boss monster that doesn't fit into the standard mold of 1 melee, 1 ranged.

i usually end up overriding the checkattack function for those monsters with a function that directly calls whatever attacks are needed.

still, a function field is stored as, what, an integer? or float? 32 bits is not really a big deal, even with thousands of entities.

seems like it would be more hard to deal with code where there is a single entry point for all monsters and hundreds of checks for each one.
that would be very annoying, i'd think. 

You could have a list of the events starting with the mandatory ones

//====MANDATORY====
float EVENT_STAND = 1;
float EVENT_RUN = 2;
float EVENT_MELEE = 3;
...
float EVENT_WAKE
float EVENT_DIE = 8;

//=====OPTIONAL====
float EVENT_OPTIONAL_START = EVENT_DIE + 1;
float EVENT_STRUCK_BY_LIGHTNING = EVENT_OPTIONAL_START;
float EVENT_SHOT_MIDAIR = EVENT_STRUCK_BY_LIGHTNING +1;
...

Then the pattern for event handling goes:

void monster_shamber_handler(float eventnum)
{
��if(eventnum < EVENT_OPTIONAL_START)
��{
��//code to handle events all monsters are expected to deal with
��//even if grunt response to EVENT_MELEE is no-op etc.
��return;
��}
��else
��{
��//handle any other selection of events with set of if..else lines
��}
}

In theory you could do some sort of jump table with the mandatory events using the event number as an index. Of course, since qc doesn't really handle integer calculations all that well you'd probably find the most efficient solution was to redefine all the event numbers to already be the desired offset into the table stored as an integer bytewise. Assuming you need 4 qc instructions per handler to call a function and return you'd be looking at

float EVENT_STAND = 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000056051938;

And so on...wasn't there a compiler that let you define integer constants like %4. 

I've never ever looked into mucking around with the HUD before - but would like to do one thing if possible...

You know when you press tab to see your monster and secret counts? Is it possible with QC to change the text "secrets" to say something else? As well as on the end level tally screen? 

the score bar (when you press "tab") is hard-coded in the engine.

The intermission screen is an image, so you could edit that image to say anything. 

hmmm, so i can change one but not the other :/ 

you could always make your own menu/screen.

even with stock quake exe you can make a functional menu that pauses the game. 

you could always make your own menu/screen.

Nah that would be huge overkill for what I'd be doing. Besides, I realised what I originally had in mind is probably just a silly gimmick anyway, I'm gonna shove it to one side for now. 

So let's say I have a brushmodel and i want the texture it wears to change according to events. From what I understand, all I can do is this:

- have an (optionally) animated looping texture with frames following the +0blah, +1blah etc. convention, then change to a non-animated image with the +ablah naming convention, by setting frame = 1 on the bmodel.

What I'd like to do is have 4 different non-animated textures, and i can just swap between any one of these images.

I assume it's not possible without doing crap like having 4 seperate bmodels and hiding 3 of them (or I guess just using 2 if i abuse +0blah and +ablah).

Or is it?

Also I don't wanna use a .mdl 

yeah, you'd need multiple bmodels.
the frame stuff is hard coded, unfortunately and treats +0 ... +9 as a frame group, hence frame = 0 and 1 only. 

I'll move to plan B which is to do the effect with sprites. Lighting won't be ideal, but i think i can get away with it. 

so, spawning a lightning bolt:

WriteByte (MSG_BROADCAST, SVC_TEMPENTITY);
WriteByte (MSG_BROADCAST, TE_LIGHTNING2);
WriteEntity (MSG_BROADCAST, self);
WriteCoord (MSG_BROADCAST, org_x);
WriteCoord (MSG_BROADCAST, org_y);
WriteCoord (MSG_BROADCAST, org_z);
WriteCoord (MSG_BROADCAST, self.enemy_pos_x);
WriteCoord (MSG_BROADCAST, self.enemy_pos_y);
WriteCoord (MSG_BROADCAST, self.enemy_pos_z);

no matter what i set the vector org to, it only spawns the bolt starting from the entity origin - basically the calls for setting the starting point are ignored - is that how quake works?