Thursday, January 21, 2010

1.8.0 Final is Out

Some hiccups getting there, but I see that other people have managed to download it by now so all is good. But for a while I was almost thinking there was some weird cosmic conspiracy at work to prevent this from ever being released...

So the full and and final 1.8.0 has made it out at long last. Enjoy, and keep the feedback, bug reports and all the rest coming in.

I forgot to mention in my readme that there are some people who deserve special credit for this one. If you've read the comments to the alpha and beta release posts you'll have a good idea who most of them are, but one who slips through even there is the mighty JohnFitz, AKA metlslime, AKA he-of-FitzQuake-fame.

Throughout the development of 1.8.0 FitzQuake was the engine I kept going back to for comparison; it was my gold standard and also the one I felt I needed to beat (you'll be the judge of whether or not I succeeded; I think I did in some areas but I have a way to go in others). I even poached some code and ideas from it for one particular part of the work.

Without such a high standard as FQ, and without the inspiration it provided, I can't even think about how 1.8.0 would have turned out, so a massive shout-out and ass-grab for Mr Fitz is due and well-deserved.

7 comments:

Coranth said...

Hey, here's something you might want to add to the 1.8.1 release, which isn't absolutely critical, but would be welcome:

The ability to delete saved games you don't want any more from within DirectQ, via use of the 'Delete' or 'Del' key. Upon pressing said key, have a little confirmation dialogue come up 'Are you sure you want to delete this saved game? Y/N'

Please add this function to the load / save screens. I know it's a trivial thing, but it'd be nice to have.

Andy said...

+1 Coranth.

1.8.0 Final is working like a champ for me thus far (I couldn't wait until the weekend, but I'm not going crazy; just a few maps before bed. . .), and the new icon rocks.

=peg= said...

So far all works great! Love the translucent guns and ETP-correctness :D

I did have another issue with disappearing sky, but I'm pretty sure I know what's going on now..

The thing is, when I play marcher, it loads the skybox that comes with it, but when I then reset my gamedir to id1 and start a new single-player game, the sky is gone.. checking the warping effects menu -> "skybox none/no skybox"
Hmm still no sky though.. -> console -> loadsky "" -> sky is back :D

Guess I should just add that to my autoexec.cfg ;)

mhquake said...

Hmmm - I had the Del key to delete a save in the old GL engine I abandoned over a year ago, and it's utterly trivial to bring it back, so noted.

Likewise with the skybox. I had noticed that myself but for whatever reason never implemented a fix. What I think I'll do is clear a loaded skybox on a game change - I don't want to do a map change as the mapper may intend for the same skybox to carry over between maps without needing to be specified in subsequent maps after the first.

rovaman said...

Something I've noticed that looks a little weird is when using the LG, the screen seems to shake more than what I've seen with other engines. Not quite tearing, but definitely more than the normal weapon kick.

Here's a tiny demo to illustrate what I mean:

http://www.filefactory.com/file/a2e8g4c/n/LGshake.dem

For comparison, here's a demo of basically the same thing in DP:

http://www.filefactory.com/file/a2e8hgd/n/LGshake_DP.dem

Is this normal as designed, or is it some issue with the ATI Radeon vid card I'm running?

Gotta say, 1.8.0 feels great -- nice and snappy. Had to learn to play a bit faster! :)

mhquake said...

Check your value of the r_rapidfire cvar; if it's not 0 set it to 0 and see if the same happens.

This was a cheesy effect I'd added a good few versions back which I'm kinda regretting now...

mhquake said...

Actually no, that's not it. I've found the problem and it's with dynamic lights I've added to the lightning bolts. r_extradlight 0 is a temporary work around, but it will remove a lot of extra dynamic lights in other places. I'll fix this for 1.8.1