Monday, June 22, 2009

Framerate Dependencies

Out-of-the-box Quake has a number of things in it that are dependent on the framerate; perhaps most notoriously the physics code. Less well known however are effects such as particles, and anything else that you may have added that's calculated from the same frametime.

The next release will fix some of these. I'm in two minds about fixing physics; on the one hand it seems obvious and logical (why should someone with a high or low FPS be at an unfair advantage?), on the other hand it is a gameplay change. Perhaps something for a server-side cvar?

Speaking of the next release, I'm not too certain yet when it will happen. My original plan was to get 1.6 out, then go back and finish off some things on MHColour. However, DirectQ is where my itch is right now, and I'd much rather focus on something I want to do (I leave the "need to do" stuff for the day job).

To summarise the current position: yes, coding on the next release is underway; yes, a good block of changes have already been made; yes, it could be released sooner rather than later as a 1.6.3 (rather than a 1.7).

However - and it is a big however - I think 1.6.2 got me where I wanted to be with the previous block of changes. It's stable, and can stand as-is as the final 1.6 release; no further update is required there. The frequent release policy worked out well, but now I'm back to thinking that I want something more substantial next time around. Something like the long promised but never delivered new particle system.

Internally I'm calling my current codebase "1.6.3", but I'm holding fire on any final versioning or release dates until I get a better idea myself of where things are headed.

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