-= I =-

The scrap of paper describes a bug where the demo files for a map pack fail to load in the latest version of a mod. You look up and take in your surroundings. Moss-green dungeon walls enclose you, but if you look inwards a stone citadel rises, as if the building has been inverted and the exterior grew within.

Baker reported a bug where the 3 demo files which are meant to play when Warpspasm loads are replaced by the Quoth custom demo files in version 2.2. YOU must decide how to fix this backwards compatibility issue.

To investigate how the demos work in Warpspasm
TURN TO PAGE TEN

To remind yourself how the demos work in Quoth
TURN TO PAGE TWELVE

If you have already decided on a solution
TURN TO PAGE FOURTEEN 

-= II =-

You decide to descend further, looking for the foundations of the building. As you penetrate the fog deeper, you find not solid ground, but a third mightier fortification below. From your new vantage point, you realise the tower does not simply grow from the side of the larger citadel, but that both structures are anchored on the behemoth below.

Hopefully the flavour text has given you time enough to figure out how the demos are playing in Warpspasm - it took me a little while to cotton on. The truth is that the config file from ID1 Quake is kicking them off! Back when Quoth didn't specify any demos, it fell back to playing the standard ID1 demos. The Warpspasm demos are given the same filenames as the three ID1 demos, but are higher up the search path list and so get played in their place. Now that Quoth names different files for the intro demos, the Warpspasm demos are passed over.

When you have considered this long enough to settle on a solution
TURN TO PAGE FOURTEEN 

-= III =-

You turn your attention now to the central tower. The uppermost floors are clearly much less weathered than the layer below and the tower to the side, although they too are beginning to show their age. The nearest feature to the tower's aperture is a large stone buttress supporting an imposing stained glass window, apparently highlighting and illustrating the citadel's interior spaces. The window is angled strangely, necessitating the huge buttresses, apparently to accommodate some eccentricity of earlier wings of the fortress into the design.

Quoth 2.2 introduced a loop of three Quoth demos when you launch the mod without a map specified. The demos are "base.dem", "coop2.dem" and "vongug.dem". Each of these demos is in a different pak file! The first demo was recorded specifically for the new feature, but the other two were just demos that were supplied with earlier patches for players to launch manually (as noted in the manual at the time). The demos are launched by a line added to quake.rc, which names these demos as what to play. It is clear how the new version of Quoth has superseded the Warpspasm demos, but not how they played in the first place.

To remain and contemplate this further
TURN TO PAGE TWO

If you have now decided on a solution
TURN TO PAGE FOURTEEN 

-= IV =-

You circle left to take a closer look at the side tower. The outer walls seem entirely windowless at first, but you notice what looks like the edge of an opening almost obscured by the window buttresses of the main fortress. Keen to glimpse inside the tower, you climb round the loose stonework to investigate. Pressing your head between the stones you see the opening was a grand clerestory, intended to illuminate the interior of the tower. Clearly this predated the latest extension built onto the adjacent building, which paid no heed to this aperture.

Warpspasm on release played three demo files when you loaded the mod, each showing off one of the maps in the pack. The three demos are named "demo1.dem", "demo2.dem" and "demo3.dem". Inspecting the pak files shows all three files in pak0.pak, but no quake.rc or other config file is present to set them off. When running warp with the latest version of Quoth, the original demos still play if you cue them up manually with the command "playdemo demo1". It is clear how the new version of Quoth has superseded the Warpspasm demos, but not how they played in the first place.

To remain and contemplate this further
TURN TO PAGE TWO

If you have now decided on a solution
TURN TO PAGE FOURTEEN 

-= V =-

The citadel bends to your will. The runes show you that by unfolding the dimensions in the correct order, a simple rotation of the upper floors will align the tower's aperture with the citadel's window. From the outside the aperture frames the window, and from within the tower the stained glass design can be seen above.

This solution is the most lightweight solution, as it requires little disk space and bandwidth if the new demos are small, and requires only modification to the most recent Quoth pak file (so it can be issued as a patch). It keeps the filenames of the existing demos exactly as documented in previous Quoth guides. There's also an opportunity to be creative with the three new demos. However, it is not a complete return to the original behaviour in Warpspasm (the Quoth demos will still play after the Warpspasm ones) or in Quoth (three new demos play at the start). For this reason, you score 90% completion for your solution.

COMMENTS

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-= VI =-

The runes swarm over the edges of the page, but it is as if some unseen force guards them from the centre circle. You focus on the blank space, visualising the last details of the incantation.

There are several options on how to change the demos that Quoth plays so that Warpspasm demos will also play. In all cases quake.rc will need to be updated to queue the demos with their new names.f

To rename the existing demo files in Quoth "demo1", "demo2" and "demo3"
TURN TO PAGE SEVEN

To add copies of the current Quoth demos named "demo1", "demo2" and "demo3"
TURN TO PAGE NINE

To add three new demos called "demo1", "demo2" and "demo3" to play before the three current Quoth demos
TURN TO PAGE FIVE 

-= VII =-

The citadel bends to your will. Your whirlwind of reconstruction leaves no stone unturned, from the oldest basement to the newest flagstone of the main fortress. Once you are finished, the unusual angle and bulky buttresses of the stained glass window are erased, and there is a satisfying symmetry between it and the newly rediscovered tower aperture.

This solution restores the demos to Warpspasm, and keeps the demos in Quoth. Once you've made the change, there are no redundant files left taking up space, and everything looks neat. So where does it fall down? Well, the main problem to my mind is that you need to change one file in each of the three paks that Quoth has. This means anyone who wants the fix basically has to download and reinstall Quoth from scratch. And that's a bit of an ask for fixing a small regression. In addition, minor issues like breaking Baker's favourite feature by altering old paks, or invalidating the old Quoth documentation that names these demos as something you may want to watch, count against this fix. Nevertheless, you score 70% completion for a good solution.

COMMENTS

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