GLQuake reorders the model into the form that it sends to OpenGL (tristrips and fans), the ms2 file is that form cached that to disk.

Both the caching-to-disk (presumably it was faster in '97 to load the file from disk than to reprocess the model) and the rearranging into tristrips/fans are useless nowadays, so no engines do this anymore. 

Okay, thanks.

I was just searching for a way to include GLQuake-optimized models with regular models in a single package that doesn't require tinkering in order to play with different engines. It was a stupid idea, but I wanted to make sure.

This situation with model skins does bad things with my motivation. I wish the habit of shifting texture coordinates died with vanilla GLQuake, but important engines retain it (while other important engines don't), and it's some sort of a standart now (just like not paying attention to garbage fullbright pixels). 

http://i.imgur.com/w0TKakK.png 

Grenade launcher? Like the model. 

What do you mean with shifting tex coords? First time I've heard of that. Just being curious... 

Software Quake (as well as several source ports, including darplaces, strangely enough) places tex coords between pixels. GLQuake shifts them half a pixel right and half a pixel down, placing them at the pixel centers. Elaborate detailing goes out the window. Fitzquake/Quakespasm are also affected. 

Find the Quakespasm thread, do "show all posts" or start at 1 or whatever it is to see every one of the 2000+ posts.

Then in your browser Find look for the word "coord" and you'll find an informative discussion on this from a couple of years ago that discusses the differences that dwere refers to between software Quake and the hardware renderer versions. 

Do you have techniques to minimize the damage? Or do you just work with one engine and hope your model won't look too broken with another? If it's the latter, then which standart do you prefer?

I was thinking about the former, and I can see a way to preserve symmetry where it's needed, but it'd require constructing the model in a certain way. Simply making something decent is hard enough for a novice, and then I have to worry about all this compatibility nonsense.

Why, GLQuake, why? 

When I made the static entity for a convoybelt the hardest part was to make the cell_ammu blocks correspond to each other.

When they all four made the simultaneously movements and I had it right counting on the framenumbers the different engines all made their own movements.

Framegrouping helped, but as each engine treated it accordingly strange effects was the result. 

I'd go with designing your models with GLQuake in mind, for two reasons. The first is that so many more ports are based on glquake, and they're so much more widely used, that they've become the de facto standard now - even if the software vertex placements came first. Secondly, the software renderer has so many approximations and wobbles when it comes to alias models that it's not going to benefit from that level of care and attention.

As your screenshot seems to be going for a pixel-art look, I wondered if you could try doubling the scale of your skin. So each "pixel" on the visible skin would actually be a 2x2 block of pixels. Sure, you've effectively wasted 300% memory compared to the original, but the GL and Software renderings will be more alike. As a bonus, it might look less "muddy" for people not using nearest neighbour in the GL world. 

DirectQ and Darkplaces are using the original way of interpreting tex coords, so it's not that simple.

As for your second suggestion - IIRC, the software renderer can't work with skins taller than 128, so I'd have to redo a lot of things. In any case, I'd rather not resort to something like this.

Thanks for your thoughts anyway. 

I believe the limit is 192? 

regarding max mdl skin height.

MAX_LBM_HEIGHT appears to be 480 in winquake/glquake, here.
Dosquake had a lower limit iirc. 

The limits for skins:

In DOSQuake the max is 200px (so 128px is the tallest power-of-two, the largest sensible size)

In Winquake, that gets bumped to 480px (so 256px is the largest sensible size)

I don't think you need to worry about DOSQuake, I'm pretty sure all the custom software engines start from a base of Winquake at least. For reference, Quoth has included models with 256 pixel tall skins since the first release and nobody has ever complained that it causes a crash.

Bit more of a pain that there are non-software engines emulating the old behaviour. For darkplaces you have the option of creating MD3 copies of your models, with UVs that match the GL versions. Which only leaves DirectQ... 

 

Does anyone still use DirectQ? I stopped using it about 6 month after I joined func_ 

I stopped using it once development/support ceased. I would like to see quakespasm implement the HUD options that DQ had.

DQII was great, would love to see a final build with some of the loose ends tied up. 

I remember a request for tree static entities.
I am using some in my new map so
they may be also in others interest.

Quake trees 

 

forest
<a href=""http://home.kpn.nl/lo2kf8/tree1.jpg">for</a>
<a href=""http://home.kpn.nl/lo2kf8/tree2.jpg">the trees</a> 

for
the trees 

For some reasons statics that are under 1000verts ans 2000 tris won't show up in fitzquake.
Like these trees, there's one that shuts down fiztquake immediately when added to the progs.
It's just the same as the others but it won't fit. 

if not for the entire tree, just the foliage?

The trunk looks quite nice in those pics, but those leaves aren't so hot.

old sprite tree test 

I guess I'll just leave this here: http://www.celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=60831&start=994

Would be nice if more engines supported it :} 

Just one fairy sprite and you'll be able to recreate Ocarina in full :)