appear to be down... 

I noticed a bit of a pinging problem when I checked there last week.

Quakesrc forums just came back up a few days ago. 

The actual reason is, compatibility. I don't like maps that require one specific engine, websites that only work in one browser, etc. I think it's much better if maps and engines were built to a standard.

I agree with this. I always prefer the map that doesn't require any custom engine, but there may exist some maps that are worth playing but require a custom engine. In other words I can say, I like to play large levels, I enjoy them most of all. And I don't think that everyone will make large levels when FitzQuake increases its limits.
There are only few mappers here who make maps with higher number of edicts or anything like that. And I think their maps are always worth playing and it would be good if their maps were playable in engine that most people here use. 

Despite my hard-liner philosophy, I did turn max_edicts into a cvar, where the default is 1024 (quake is set to 600,) and the max possible value is something like 8192. So you can play ne1sp06 or whatever that big one was with all the monsters. You know, and the lava. 

thanks, sir! :) 

of his soul so the rest of us may tread further and higher. Let us not let him down. 

I, for one, salute you. This is excellent news. Are static ents similarly raised? 

no :P 

Win/GLQuake for mappers. No idea if this is any good : http://user.tninet.se/~xir870k/

This Win/GLQuake version is *not* meant for general play, although it should suffice at least for SP. It's meant to be a stable, high-capacity version of the original Win/GLQuake with some minor features added for convenience. Its main purpose is to be used when other engines fail to load a bsp.

This makes it ideal for mappers who at one time or another experience problems with their maps; there are leaks, entity overflow or other issues that prevent the map from loading in a normal engine. These problems should of course be fixed so the map can be loaded in any engine, but during development this engine can be used to help finding and fixing the problems. 

Win/GLQuake for mappers. No idea if this is any good

Lol, uh yeah, they're AquirRe's Win/GlQuake replacements, in case you were wondering. ;)

And yes, they *are* very good, as are his compile utils. 

is it just a matter of changing a #define or two in the source?

Failing that, can anyone point me to an enhanced *non-GL* build for linux? 

Sometimes they're just a #define away, sometimes increasing one limit will just exceed another and worst of all, sometimes you'll need to change the client/server protocol which may break a lot of interesting things ...

As for Linux non-GL build, check out TyrQuake at http://www.planetquake.com/tyrann . You might need to ask Tyrann for the executables.

Kinn: Thanks for the kind words :) 

Tyr-Quake seems to work nicely. Didn't even take very long to build... thanks for the pointer.

Now I need to remember what all the huge maps I haven't been able to play yet were... some of them were by necros, I think :) 

...hm, maybe the real reason people dislike DP is because there isn't any documentation to let people know that they can turn things off

Its not just that. The problem, as with many other engines, is twofold. Sure, there's a lack of good documentation, making it hard or impossible to figure out how to turn off all the shitty graphical 'enhancements' that you don't want (and that often kill performance, too). But the real problem is that said shitty graphical effects are enabled by default, thereby requiring people to figure out how to turn it off, which they can't figure out because of the lack of adequete documentation... so they just delete it from their system and that's the end of it.

As an engine programmer I'm sure you're asking 'but how are people going to know about and see all my spankworthy new effects if they're disabled by default??'

Well the answer is to have good documentation so the user knows about, and is encouraged to try, all the new options. And put the stuff in the menu where possible.

I'd explore new engines a lot more thoroughly if my first reaction wasn't 'this looks like ass, how do I turn off all these shitty effects!' followed by 'can't figure it out, just delete the shit!' 

what frib said! 

Again, what Frib said.

Sometimes though, extra graphical effects actually fundamentally override existing effects. Take the rocket trail in DarkPlaces, for example. Now, I'm a big fan of DarkPlaces - it's Q3BSP support is what will keep me making Quake levels for years to come - however, it is not possible (at least not with the current version) to make it look exactly like (or close enough to) "Real" Quake, for many people's (including my) tastes.

Ok, I understand that DarkPlaces is meant primarily as a "Total Conversion" engine, so it is assumed that modders will use so many custom models and stuff that the radically different appearance of the built-in particle effects will be irrelevant. However, I feel that nevertheless, there should always be an option to at least "emulate" Quake's classic look and feel, to cater for the purists (or pseudo-purists, I guess if you're into custom engines). 

what frib said 

That bunny hopping bug you reported in DarkPlaces might have its origins in QuakeWorld - check this out: http://www.inside3d.com/qip/q1/bugsqw.htm

Scroll down a bit. Sounds awfully familiar doesn't it? 

meh :\
i'm so *not* surprised. 

Frib - there other people in the world, you know. People who use DP because they think it looks pretty and they *want* the custom effects to work out-of-the-box. If you cared that much, you could take LH up on his offedr and email him, instead of whining in forums that he hardly reads. 

And those people should be culled, to prevent further corruption. 

http://icculus.org/twilight/darkplaces/index.html

Awesome, awesome stuff - LH has been really improving the Q3BSP stuff recently - most shaders will at least load a texture now, and the curve loading has been rewritten. To test it, I fired up Sock's POM map, and played Aard's DMSP mod in it. Seeing the quake monsters running around in that environment was pretty cool, I must say ^_^ 

i just tried the same, and it looks very nice.. plants seem to glow fullbright though, but the implementation of the q3bsp format in darkplaces is very effective, judging from having loaded this level 

If I had to name one problem with Quake, it was that my Radeon 9800 gave a framerate which was too playable. 

Well, in DarkPlaces, I get a consistent 60 FPS in 1024x768 (yes, in Sock's map) on my crappy 2 year old Dell laptop, with a graphics card that can barely play UT2K3, so try fiddling with the graphics options.